Charlie Bartlett [2007)

There is a battle on between history and life. And one of those battlegrounds is at the movies. It is a storied fight between the little punk shit Bob Dylan and bearded, august Johannes Brahms. 1955 brought us Rebel Without a Cause which displayed what is truly at issue. Can a piece of art (an artifact) speak to teenagers and still be timeless? The history of cinema has proven the answer to be a resounding “yes.”

Nicholas Ray was one of the directors most admired by the French New Wave…particularly by Jean-Luc Godard. Wim Wenders would celebrate the brave auteur as he passed from one world to the next in Lightening Over Water (1980). But what is most enduring is the spirit Ray and other prescient filmmakers evinced–that spirit which lived on in John Hughes’ cult film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986).

That brings me to the film in question. When I first saw Charlie Bartlett I had a pretty unspectacular life. I had just seen Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and fallen in love with Kat Dennings. I had to see more. I even went so far as to buy The House Bunny as a new release…just to get a few more minutes of this enigmatic actress. Now that I have blown whatever street cred I had remaining as a film critic, I might as well fess up to having done a similar thing when I fell in love with Thora Birch after seeing Ghost World. Yes, I forked out to buy Dungeons & Dragons (2000) on VHS. Yikes!

When I first saw Charlie Bartlett, the teenage drama-comedy genre conventions struck me as mostly trite and hackneyed. In a word: hollow. But my reappraisal of this film couldn’t be more different from my first impression.

The world of art films tends to speak its own cinematic language on screen. At times, the overly-precious, self-conscious products come off as caricatures of better films. In Ghost World, a classic awaiting its proper place in film history, Terry Zwigoff perfectly frames this empty art film posturing by referring to a nonexistent picture called The Flower That Drank the Moon. It sums up the disconnect between the world of Cannes and the world at large. Want to see Godard’s new film Adieu au langage at your local movie theater? Good luck!

And so my assertion is this: Charlie Bartlett is a masterpiece. Is it as good as Ghost World? No. Is it as good as Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist? Not to these eyes. But is it a classic which got swept unjustly into DVD cut-out bins? Yes. And here’s why.

Jon Poll kept a million pieces in balance. His direction, while not perfect, should be commended with the highest accolades. The screenplay by Gustin Nash goes a long way towards giving this film in a daunting genre a chance at being timeless. The fact that the movie grossed just under half of its budget (a $6 million loss) should be welcomed by MGM as a blessing. This film will be reborn in the history yet to be written.

Hope Davis gives a nuanced, touching performance as Charlie’s mother. Anton Yelchin, as Charlie, is beyond fantastic. It is a performance which requires multiple viewings to appreciate. Robert Downey, Jr. gives a real piece of his soul to this film which was unjustly overlooked by the world. Tyler Hilton manages to channel Adam Baldwin from another criminally underrated flick My Bodyguard (which just happened to feature Joan Cusack’s first substantive role).

Kat Dennings is remarkably good at such a young age. She manages to cheer the hearts of all of us who perhaps identify a little too much with Kip Crombwell (Mark Rendall). Rendall is shockingly adept in his miniscule role.

Perhaps the funniest aspect of this review is that I am clinging lustily to a piece of nicotine gum as I write this. That’s just how life works. Though it only figures into Charlie Bartlett as a mini-MacGuffin, it sets up a pivotal scene. But nothing measures up to Downey and Yelchin by the poolside. What to do when life has gone to shit… A single father losing his teenage daughter… The overtones are almost right out of Knut Hamsun (though the subject matter be unrecognizably morphed).

Substance abuse is at the forefront of this film, yet it is alcohol which finally precipitates a climax. The emotional lift is brought via Dennings singing a song in the school play. It is delicate and honest. We have been made to relate to Downey’s struggle to find himself. He just wasn’t cut out to play “bad cop.” And that is the overarching crux: the bad cop (Downey) jealous of the good cop (Charlie). The wrong career can destroy you…and it does so from the inside out. It’s not worth the extra money.

But the most important role (and element) of this entire film? Dylan Taylor as Len Arbuckle. You see, Charlie rides the short bus to school. Bartlett is seemingly oblivious to the differences between the mentally and physically challenged and himself. Peas and carrots. Charlie Bartlett has a good heart…and an angel notices.

-PD

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Petunia [2012)

A lesser film critic would rip this movie to shreds. You have to wait for it. Poor Charlie Petunia… It’s just like in life: we choose to accept or reject someone’s mannerisms and way of speaking very early on into our first meeting with them. In the cinema, sometimes it takes us a bit to adjust to a particular film’s tone. We must adjust to the budget, the philosophical slant, etc….or we walk out. If we are at home, we simply say, “You know what? Fuck this. I’m not watching this.”

To be brutally honest, the first 15 minutes of this flick don’t seem to bode well for what must follow, but what does follow is a pretty damn good film. However, it is scary.

The End.

It’s like Week-end: one senses a double meaning in the final pronouncement. End of Cinema. Thus spake Godard. His was a bold manifestation of ego (and a humble diagnosis of what was already known by the intelligentsia of France).

Why scary? Because this is the last we have heard of the inimitable Thora Birch. Her Wikipedia says she “is”… Every time I click on Jean-Luc Godard’s Wikipedia page to find that he still “is”…my world is a better place.

Why review Petunia three years after its release? To put it out in the cosmos…even if Miss Birch never reads this…to render the appreciation of which she is deserving.

Thora and her dad Jack are credited as producers. I’m not going to rake muck and give you the Kenneth-Anger-Hollywood-Babylon version of a back story. Suffice it to say that Thora’s parents are some interesting characters. I know that her dad acted as her manager. For how long, I’m not sure. People can carp about Mr. Birch’s manner of going about things, but that really defeats the purpose here. The focus should be on the artists and the work of art. This film is a masterpiece against all odds. Funny enough, the focus is not really on Thora that much (though she is in most of the film). [I believe I spotted her brother Bolt in a scene as well. He was quite good though he had only a few lines. Wikipedia mentions a brother named Kian?]

And now there is a cat meowing outside my window.

That really sums up this film. Once again, Thora’s recently starred in a film for which the director (Ash Christian) has a dead link on Wikipedia. I say dead link, but I mean stub. This is actually a step up from Winter of Frozen Dreams (for which the director had no hypertext love whatsoever). For a moment I thought this might be a pseudonym for Birch herself, but I see that Mr. Christian (why couldn’t it be sister Christian???) is an actual director from Paris, TX. Wow. That’s rich.

Well, Mr. Christian has done a formidable job with this picture.

Let’s talk characters, shall we?

Tobias Segal. His is a performance which grows from tentative beginnings to a quiet crescendo of understated brilliance.

Christine Lahti. Pretty darn fabulous turn…especially at the botox (?) joint and the bong scene. [Real…tomato ketchup, Eddie?]

Brittany Snow. This actress really steals the show. I was thoroughly impressed with how she turned a somewhat small part into an emotional punch in the gut.

Michael Urie. His character grew on me, but this Yaley is pretty hard to like.

David Rasche. Excellent performance. Almost like an extension of Norman-at-the-bus-stop in Ghost World, it’s as much what he doesn’t say as what he says.

Eddie Kaye Thomas. Some pretty dry acting on the front end is made up for by a nice sprint down the homestretch.

Jimmy Heck. Meh.

But you know: there’s a bit of “meh” in Thora’s performance too. As if her heart wasn’t really in this one. She still looks as beautiful as ever and her acting chops are all there. God damn it! Someone give her a great role already!!!

But you know what? The main thing is that these people are creating. They are putting it out there. Thora, Jimmy Heck, all of them. Even when Thora is less than inspired, she still puts to shame the work of most every thespian working.

-PD

Les Carabiniers [1963)

Iskra. И́скра. Spark. Good film criticism requires a spark…something which separates it from run-of-the-mill recounting. Our society is so impoverished. Apparently Wikipedia didn’t put any of its recent fundraising money towards their article on The Caribineers [sic]. Nay, I had to stray to the rival IMDb to find what I was looking for. I know how Wiki works (more or less). People contribute information, at various levels of veracity and artfulness, to topical articles about which they feel at least an interest if not an expertise. Perhaps IMDb works the same way. I’m not sure. One thing is sure in my book: Wikipedia is the more powerful tool and, just as importantly, it is artfully austere–the Bauhaus of digi-pedias. IMDb is not lacking in breadth (as concerns film), but it is clunky and feels like a really shitty version of amazon.com.

Business. Amazon has owned IMDb since 1998. I’ve gotten some great stuff from Amazon…some of it at a good price. But Wikipedia does has a different feel, and for that it is to be commended. It is the utopia ideal at work. And that tangent brings me to the name.

Odile Geoffroy. IMDb claims she was in Vivre sa vie as well as Les Carabiniers. Perhaps. It appears to have been quite a small role. I do not recall it. But at least IMDb (Amazon) gave me her name. The same cannot be said for the woeful, woeful Wikipedia article titled The Caribineers.

Why Ms. Geoffroy? Because her part in Les Carabiniers is anything but trivial. Iskra. Spark. Из искры возгорится пламя. From a spark a fire will flare up. Yes, the brutes of Les Carabiniers really have a tough time offing Ms. Geoffrey’s character…even with a white handkerchief over her perfect, blond visage. It’s the only way. Her beauty is too strong for the base, lecherous soldiers tasked with shutting her up. And then she begins to speak…

Yes, she has a mind. She is not a mindless Venus–nor a venal Cleopatra. But they shoot her anyway. In fact, it takes a magazine full of bullets to finally keep her synapses from firing; her limbs from moving.

And so we have another political film from Jean-Luc Godard. Again, like Le Petit soldat which preceded it by release but not creation, the political slant is not really towards a particular faction (as far as I can tell). In other words, the Marxist-Leninist spark is just that: a quick, tentative reference to something which was perhaps still taking hold in Godard’s mind.

What we do get is an anti-war film along the lines of Renoir’s La Grand illusion, but with the gritty realism of Rossellini’s first post-war films. Roberto’s spirit is inextricably woven into the fabric of Les Carabiniers. Albert Juross portrays the idiocy of war as well as Catharine Ribeiro portrays the pretty spoils of mo-bil-i-za-tion. The latter (Ribeiro) would enjoy a long career as an iconoclastic singer. Which brings up another point:

where was Anna Karina? Belmondo? It might have seemed at the time that the Karina-Godard synergy had abated. Nothing could have been further from the truth of what followed. Some of her best starring turns for Godard lay ahead of her, but this strange film served as a bit of punctuation for Godard…almost a continuance of Le Petit soldat. It bears mentioning that of his first five features, only Une Femme est une femme had been in color. This from the auteur who was to yet shortly give the world Pierrot le Fou and Le Mépris.

Les Carabiniers is really rather a dense film to dissect. I think Pauline Kael and Susan Sontag would be aghast at having been cited on such a paltry Wikipedia article as The Caribineers. It is to Godard’s credit that this seldom-mentioned classic from his oeuvre poses a problem in breadth for being even beyond the scope of a time-on-my-hands blogger like me.

-PD

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Ghost World [2001)

“I have to admit…things are really looking up for me since my life turned to shit.” If only. The consolation? This is a perfect film. There’s no use in denying that any longer.

Back in the watershed year of 2001, this film hit me like a bolt out of the blue. Just how I ended up in that movie theater in Austin, Texas I’m not entirely sure. The important thing is that this film stood my world on its head. There was a new tilt to the cosmos after seeing Thora Birch personify everything I was looking for in a girl…everything which I couldn’t articulate.

Brice Parain puts it so simply in Vivre sa vie: thought cannot be separated from language. And if we say “goodbye” to language? That still involves a word. Perhaps we can simply gesture?

“Waving goodbye…I’m not saying hello.” Just three years earlier an album had put my world on edge. I was studying music composition as an undergrad when a rock and roll record called into question everything for which I was striving. That record was Deserter’s Songs by Mercury Rev. As I slipped the virgin vinyl onto the turntable in my vacated music lit classroom, I was astounded to hear a noise rock band coming back through the speakers as an autumnal, symphonic opus. Opus 40…

And so three years later at that little arthouse cinema in north Austin I clamored into an open seat with a couple of friends… Friends… It seems so long ago since I had friends. Some statements are infinitely sad, but others are like old faded pictures. I don’t really recognize myself anymore. I’m too young to be old, but…

Ghost World. It is the world I live in. Terry Zwigoff made a perfect film. He learned the nuances from R. Crumb…and then applied the secrets to Daniel Clowes. The secret is in the power lines…the sprawl…the daydream nation which American Beauty tried to capture but failed in comparison to Ghost World. If the Palme d’Or was fair, Terry Zwigoff would have one sitting on his mantle. So would Jean-Luc Godard. So would Thora Birch.

It’s kinda like the Nobel Prize in Literature. Where’s Joyce? Where’s Pynchon?

Enid Coleslaw. There’s no I in end. End. I…is someone else. So says Nana Kleinfrankenheim. Thora Birch. Anna Karina. The Louise Brooks wig. Brigitte Bardot. Initials B.B. Bertolt Brecht. B.B. King. Devil got my woman…

“…since my life turned to shit.” I’d rather be the devil. Me and the devil. Nick Tosches. Emmett Miller. Henry “Ragtime” Thomas.

Skip James. Gossamer-perfect. Thora stands in a daze…perhaps after a long day of shooting. We get The Buzzcocks, but then we get D-A-D-F-A-D…that deep, hollow sound from 1931. Like the high, lonesome Hank Williams. Somebody’s in a world of hurt. “Nothin’ but thee devil/change my baby’s mind.”

She is the girl we can’t have. And you can’t have me either, world. Not for free. Few artists got this. Alex Chilton got it. Affonso Beato captured its fleeting presence at twilight in his cinematography. A bus. Bus stop. Joshua Logan. No, Thora Birch. Yes. That route was cancelled in 1956. Cancelled in 1962. Mensan I.Q. Cancelled in 1967. And still, Thora boards the bus and does the impossible in a magic realism which takes her back over the Mississippi at Baton Rouge…back to Appleton, WI…back to Los Angeles. The nighttime bores the daylights out of me. We’re in exile with the Radio Shack and the Allstate and the Chevron and the Shell… R.I.P. Brad Renfro.

-PD

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Vivre sa vie: film en douze tableaux [1962)

This. This was the film which started it all for me. My fatal love for cinema. You must excuse me if I write in the tone which Godard employed. It is one of the most complex branches of his filmlanguagetree. And you must excuse me if I dabble Joycean here and there.

Really, it all started with a book by James Monaco called The New Wave. Once upon a time my paperback copy had a cover. I believe I paid 50 cents for the book…maybe 25. But that cover is long gone and now my copy begins with page five. Ah, but it is all so clear in my memory. It was bathtub reading. My first successful experiment with this was a few years previous when I’d read Henry Miller’s The Rosy Crucifixion during a particularly impoverished time. Unemployed and discouraged, I had given up hope of finding gainful employment and, rather, resorted to afternoon baths with the erotic anarchy of Miller to keep me company.

And so it was…about four years ago, that I made Monaco’s book my mental edification during absolutions. Yes, the book would inevitably get wet, fall in the water…even on the edge of the tub…but as it died, I lived.

First came Truffaut. Enjoyable enough. I rented all of his films I could find and imbibed the criticism of Monaco. Then came Godard. I had probably seen a bit of Sympathy for the Devil as a kid. “What is this pretentious shit?!?,” I must have thought at the time. Indeed, delving into Godard can be a shock in many, many ways. Much later (as a young adult) I saw my first JLG film proper. Week-end. I was blown away by its brilliance, but still I didn’t equate the cerebral invention as specifically Godardian. No, I chalked it up to the brilliance of the French in general…along with Renoir and Truffaut.

It would take many years before I returned to French cinema. Girls came and went. I changed dwellings often. And as I started to read Monaco’s chapter on Godard I noticed an ad in the Austin Chronicle for a showing of the film in question: at the University of Texas student union ballroom. And it was free!

And so I strode off into the night and paid to park my car…it must have been December…a cold night if I remember. I sat amongst what, at the time, I didn’t realize to be film students. The whole concept was foreign to me. It didn’t even register that UT had a film department. I was a professional musician. I knew music. That was it.

And then it started. “Somebody better check the projector,” I thought (as the sound seemed to sputter in stops and starts). Something’s not right here. Is she moving? Yes! You can see her lips move. Wait, I just saw her blink!

And so Godard ushered the world (including Susan Sontag, back in the day) into his third feature film. Hot off the unexpected success of Breathless and the 180 turn that was A Woman is a Woman, Godard again turned the tables on audiences. The stark noir is reminiscent of Godard’s first film, but the mood is…moody.

This is, without a doubt, my favorite of Godard’s classic-era films. I think it is the best movie he ever made. His great work is Histoire(s) du cinema, but that is really other as Roland Kirk might have said.

We see Godard challenging himself here…filming actors from behind (multiple times throughout this picture). After two features, he seemed ready to push, push…farther. But along with these dodecaphonic experiments, there is still the magic of chance (?) like the woman emerging from the alley across the street, running as if late (while Anna Karina and mate play a leisurely game of pinball [another motif, that]).

This entire website owes its visual stamp to the third tableau: La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. Karina sits in a movie theater, perhaps trying to forget her woes, and (to paraphrase Neil Young) she falls in love with an actress…playing a part she could understand. The mysterious Renée Jeanne Falconetti…who only appears in this film and two others according to IMDB (one being a short, the other a blank page on Wikipedia)… Suffice it to say that “Falconetti” (as someone in the theater (Godard?) can be heard to say during the silent scene-within-a-scene) is known today almost exclusively for her role in this Carl Th. Dreyer masterpiece from 1928. As Anna Karina watches Falconetti and Antonin Artaud (also an actor in this film), she is brought to tears in what is the most cinematically delicate and gossamer-perfect moment of Godard’s entire (ongoing) career.

Karina is fantastic in this film. The cinematic language employed obscures the pathos of her performance somewhat. We don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Indeed, in the ending segment of the whole film (think Magazine’s “Shot From Both Sides”) I let out a nervous laugh upon first seeing this in the theater as if I was Joan of Arc in the hands of Jacques Rivette (her funeral, my trial). It’s amazing though how this movie hits me differently now with some years under my belt. For all its panache, this really is a sad, sad story. But in homage to B-movies, it doesn’t take itself too seriously…fumbling over itself like Chaplin bleeding to death.

I can’t/won’t discuss every aspect of this timeless Fabergé egg, but one scene bears mentioning above all the rest: Nana’s dance. It is Anna Karina at her best…trying to pretend she’s in a musical and not in a drab neorealist sob fest. It is Michel Legrand at his best…providing the swagger of a Gainsbourg instead of the syrup which he poured on Demy’s fairy tales. And it is Jean-Luc Godard at his best…making sure the billiard balls click during the pregnant pauses of a go-go, ye-ye number which otherwise would have seemed overdubbed. Even if it was, they still click. That is the magic of cinema in the hands of Godard. It is the jazz of foot traffic…the gambler’s audacious framing of everyday life.

-PD

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Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist [2008)

The great director Samuel Fuller said in a cameo during Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou that, “Film is like a battleground. Love. Hate. Action. Violence. Death. In one word…emotion.” Writing about film is often an intellectual parlor game. Drop the right reference. Sound erudite. But one must confront the emotion of film with the emotion of criticism…in a harmony of pathos.

This film makes me cry. We’ve all heard a similar phrase, but perhaps never applied to this new classic from director Peter Sollett. When this film came out, I needed this film. It restored my faith in the romantic quest–to find a soul mate.

From the opening titles this film hits all the right notes. Much has been made of Sofia Coppola’s prescient use of music in her films. To not only employ the proto-shoegaze of 10cc’s “I’m Not In Love” (The Virgin Suicides), but also follow it up with some MBV (Lost In Translation) before Kevin Shields and company mercifully reformed a few years later is, in a word, genius. However, Peter Sollett and crew (editor Myron Kerstein and music supervisor Linda Cohen) score a coup right off the bat which sets the stage for a brilliant cinematic experience…intertwined with the trappings and longings which a life in music (whether as performer or enthusiast) weaves into our thoughts and very being.

Simply put, “Speed of Sound” by former Big Star member Chris Bell is my favorite song off of his posthumously released masterpiece I Am The Cosmos. To know that someone else felt the same way about this particular composition is really what Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is all about.

Chris Bell was a homosexual heroin addict in the deep South (Memphis) who got kicked out of his own band, ended up working at his dad’s hamburger restaurant, and (like Marc Bolan) died when his car collided with a tree. That such a sensitive soul was subjected to such unbefitting circumstances and then layed down the tracks at Château d’Hérouville for the sublime strains which open this picture is truly touching. Sure, “In The Street” by Big Star (from his time in the band as co-writer) was used as the theme for That ’70s Show, but the song placement for “Speed of Sound” long after his death is a tribute to both his genius and the artistry of Peter Sollett and his team.

But here I have up and gone on a tangent…and deviated from my goal of emotion for emotion.

Reset. A few days ago. My birthday. I walk into Barnes & Noble with a fistful of dollars. I look at almost every DVD in the joint. Criterion, action, sci-fi/fantasy, thriller, drama, comedy…even family! And I come out of the place with one film: the one under review.

The reason is simple. Kat Dennings is an acting goddess among (mostly) prattling girls. With this film she took up the reins which Thora Birch strangely released after Ghost World. Peter Sollett has made a timeless film of equal to the cinematically stunning aforementioned Terry Zwigoff gem.

But back to Dennings. There are moments in this film (very few) where her acting might be termed hesitant, but in retrospect I believe this to be part of the Norah character which she was conveying with the utmost thespian delicacy. For the vast majority of her screen time, she shines like the new star which she is. I imagine that I’m not the only one who came away from this film wishing that her character was real and that I might meet a Norah around the next corner (just as Thora Birch had made me believe that Enid Coleslaw was really out there somewhere).

A word about Michael Cera. I didn’t think much of his acting on first view, but I realize now that his droll comic timing might just presage his emergence as the Woody Allen of this generation. He is, without a doubt, talented beyond many of his peers.

Kudos to writers Rachel Cohn and David Levithan (as well as to screenwriter Lorene Scafaria) for working the Where’s Fluffy? idea into this tapestry (almost like a nod to The Residents…mysterious anonymity in rock music). Likewise, the supporting cast here is essential and outstanding (particularly Aaron Yoo and Rafi Gavron). Also indispensable is Jonathan B. Wright in the small role as Lethario.

Two final bits about this music-infused juggernaut… The Electric Lady Studios portion (particularly the potentially unwieldy orgasm segment) is director Sollett at his finest. As the VU meters monitor a keyed mic in the main room we are brought the irresistible symbology which the auteur has been tracing throughout this hipster Easter egg chase in a yellow Yugo…perhaps zipping past the parking garage where Warhol’s Factory used to stand…speeding with exhilaration over the Velvets’ old stomping grounds…the deli where Max’s Kansas City once stood (but now with a mile-long sneeze guard around its salad bar)…maybe past the empty hole where the Mercer Arts Center once stood before it collapsed. Director Sollett takes us “into the red” at just the right moment…just as Lou Reed knew when to step on the stompbox after delivering the line “and then my mind split open” in the song “I Heard Her Call My Name” from the classic angst-fueled White Light/White Heat album (1968).

Last bit…Mark Mothersbaugh delivers just the right dose of simpatico for this journey to the end of the night. Thank you friends. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.

-PD

Une femme est une femme [1961)

I don’t know if it’s a comedy or a tragedy, but it’s a masterpiece. So says Jean-Claude Brialy near the end of this film. This is, indeed, a complex turning point in Godard’s filmography. It is important to note that Godard made a film in between Breathless and A Woman is a Woman (Le Petit soldat), but it was banned by the French government because it focused on torture (as part of the ongoing Algerian War). What is obvious is the dramatic shift from the stark noir of Breathless to the candied colors of A Woman is a Woman.

But there are many things strange about this relatively “normal” film (relative as regards Godard). There is a sexual, existential tension between Anna Karina and Godard the director which is played out in a complex quasi-real paradox of a love triangle. Bear with me… Brialy and Belmondo are both symbols, but at times it seems that Belmondo is a symbol for himself. Brialy is more obviously the “Godard” character. Knowing the history of Karina and Godard, it might seem rather premature for them to be having relationship problems, but that’s why it is essential to note that her first film as Godard’s muse was Le Petit soldat. [It would eventually be released after Vivre sa vie as his fourth film (and, importantly, after the Algerian War had ended).]

I would go so far as to say that Godard is weirder in this film (last I checked, the only of his films available on Netflix=his most lasting contribution to the mainstream) than Jodorowsky is in The Holy Mountain. That might seem to be a stretch, but again: bear with me. Jodorowsky, while brilliant, is over-the-top in such a way which harkens back to the earliest of avant-gardes…the films of Dali and Bunuel. Godard, on the other hand, while seeming to “play the game” to a certain extent was in actuality creating a new language. Just the first few moments of A Woman is a Woman alone are enough to indicate as much. The role of sound and music in this film is paramount. While perhaps little noticed, Godard (together with the music of Michel Legrand) had developed a sort of audio jump cut. He would use this device to greatest effect in the opening credits of Vivre sa vie. The inexplicable stops and starts in both the soundtrack and the ostensibly synchronized sound (dialogue and such) serve to once again make the viewer subtly ill-at-ease (just as Breathless had done visually).

James Monaco had it right when he talked about the Nouvelle Vague exploding genres from the inside out. Godard here chooses the American musical. I could go on at length, but I will keep it short. No one has dug deeper into themselves time after time to give the viewer a truly novel and thought-provoking experience than Jean-Luc Godard. Understood on a strictly intellectual level, it is fascinating. Viewed over the course of a long, persistent career, it is truly touching.

-PD

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A bout de souffle [1960)

To paraphrase Lester Bangs regarding The Velvet Underground, modern cinema begins with Jean-Luc Godard. The strangest part is that Godard’s trajectory has been somewhat like that of the great French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Both would be primarily recognized in their lifetimes for their first creation. For Céline it was the groundbreaking spleen of Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) and for Godard the film in question (his first full-length feature). The most criminal aspect of this whole equation is that Godard IS STILL ALIVE AND MAKING GREAT, GREAT FILMS!

For awhile, my dissatisfaction with the public’s reception of Godard over his long career led me to undervalue his earlier works (to perhaps balance out the disproportionate attention these films get in relation to his oeuvre as a whole). What cannot be denied, however, is that Breathless (literally “at the end of breath”) is as important to film as Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage…) is to literature. There are more similarities. Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is not so different from Céline’s Bardamu. The spirit of youth and anarchy run throughout these two works…all of it tied together with a dark humor which disarms as much as it offends.

The key to Godard’s film is that it is radical while also being somewhat subtle. Perhaps this is only accurate in hindsight (considering what has followed Breathless in the cinematic canon), but the avant-garde nature of the film is really in all of the little rules it breaks. The most oft mentioned are the jump cuts (and there are plenty of them). A deeper reading into the history of the film might reveal that Cécile Decugis and Lila Herman were responsible for this novel approach as much as Godard. Agnès Guillemot did not become Godard’s regular editor until Une femme est une femme (or Le Petit soldat…take your pick). There is reason to believe that the jump cuts were mainly in the service of keeping the action going. Along with Martial Solal’s excellent noir jazz, the pace rarely slackens but for a few contrasting scenes.

What is less-discussed is the plethora of filmic references which play like an inside joke for the Cahiers crowd. Breaking “the fourth wall” is just one of the many transgressions which Godard takes up joyfully in this affront. One might venture to guess that what was truly “dégueulasse” to Godard was the state of the French film industry leading up to his first real foray into direction. At every turn, the “tradition of quality” is left in the dust as Breathless speeds away wild and free.

-PD

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The African Queen [1951)

For people who try to do the right thing, the world is a cruel place. Ebola virus disease was named after the Ebola River in what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo. Near the start of this film we see a hurried burial of the Methodist minister Samuel Sayer (played by Robert Morley). That scene was filmed near the village of Biondo (DRC): about 450 miles from the Ebola River.

In 1951 (and ostensibly 1914) it was the Germans who came to burn huts and round up the villagers of Rev. Sayer (most likely forcing the natives to become soldiers). In 1976 it was a strange virus which came to the region near the Ebola River to inflict terrible and mysterious suffering.

This tangent serves the purpose of relating our subject (an amazing piece of cinema) to the present times. Our principal players (Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn) gradually made their way about 300 miles northeast to Lake Albert (actually further…to the Ugandan side), but not before many real and fictional travails.

Reality and fiction… The Ebola River is the headstream of the Mongala River. Fact. The Mongala River is a tributary of the Congo River. Fact. Scenes of the African Queen (the boat) going over the falls were filmed at Ubundu (formerly Ponthierville) on the Lualaba River in the DRC using a model with tiny Bogart and Hepburn figurines. Fact. The Lualaba River is the greatest headstream (by water volume) of the Congo River. Fact. Ebola virus disease is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Definitely maybe.

Everyone needs a little help from their friends. Hollywood makes no pretense to being anything but a pretense–except when the projector is rolling. The suspension of disbelief which is at the essence of fictional films requires audience participation. Rarely have directors taken a different approach to the process, but one notable exception was Roberto Rossellini. His version of Neorealism created a tributary in reverse (flooded by directors like Godard) which traced cinema’s roots back to the source: truth. Twenty-four times per second (historically) a frame was given its moment to shine. The shift was imperceptible. Through the phi phenomenon we perceive motion on the screen.

We see Charlie Allnut scratch his steamer beard. We see Rosie Sayer transform from a teetotaling harmonium pumper into a war strategist for improvised explosives. We laugh when Bogie monkeys around. We swoon with the romance and gravity of it all. We relate to Sisyphus as skipper–mired in mud and pulling his own ship with a rope. After the Spar torpedoes eventually serve their purpose, we believe that our heroes swim to safety in Kenya.

But what we really learn is to not drink the water. For director John Huston and Bogie it was whiskey all the way (while filming on location in Africa). They were the only two not to succumb to dysentery. Hepburn had to play the pump organ with a bucket nearby (in case she got sick).

Through immense struggle we learn not to drink the Kool-Aid. I bet Humphrey Bogart wouldn’t have dismissed Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz without giving Emerging Viruses (1996) a fair shake.

-PD

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Histoire)s[ du cinema 2a

Imitation of life. Is it normal and logical that the film industry be compared to “the industry of death”??? All stories. One history. The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world which harmonizes. All the stories to come. All the stories that have been.

Raptors of greed. Godard begins chapter 2a of his greatest work by telling us that the film industry was first sold to the industry of death. Early on there were plenty of babies being fed and flowers growing, but where were the bursts of machine gun fire? Likewise, cinematography could have been invented in color. Color photography existed, but at the beginning of the 20th century it was decided that black and white would be the technique used to reproduce life on the screen.

Morality was still strong says Godard. But not for long. Nevertheless, cinematography began with the colors of mourning: black and white.

Godard dedicates this episodic chapter first of all to Armand J. Cauliez. There is scant info on this person, but he seems to have been a writer on film (having authored books on Tati and Renoir). The other dedicatee is Santiago Álvarez (a Cuban filmmaker).

The historian must be precise. This is his job. Cinema was the art of the 20th century, but it was really a 19th century art which was “resolved” in the 20th. From Oscar Wilde to the Academy’s Oscars…

We see a shot from Pasolini’s Salò and another from Tabu by Murnau and Flaherty. We see Godard himself as an actor in his own film King Lear and a shot of Jerry Lewis from The Nutty Professor. Godard seems to be trying to tell his story in order to tell the story of cinema. We are placed in the milieu which gave birth to not only JLG as a filmmaker, but also to Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette and Rohmer.

For the historian of literature starts with Homer and progresses to Cervantes and on to Joyce. Godard seems to be trying to single out the films which are truly foundational to cinema, but he likewise seems to infer that there are very few. Few at the beginning? Few of true worth? Few that have not been lost?

Truly, Godard gives us the recounting of a passion to create. Film was his only way of completing himself. We could steep ourselves in the same books as the master…Goethe, etc. We can trace the art references…Klimt, etc. Diderot, Baudelaire, Malraux, Truffaut, Edgar Poe, Faulkner, Edgar Ulmer, Howard Hawks…

What is certain is that Godard values the history of cinema over all other histories, “because it projects itself.” It is a neat trick which he singles out.

The analogy is Jean-Victor Poncelet…an officer in Napoleon’s army in a prison in Moscow. Poncelet reconstructed the treatise of geometric findings which he had learned from Monge and Carnot: the properties of projection of figures. Published in 1822, the general method of the principle of projection in the demonstration utilized by Desargues to understand the properties of the circle on the mystical cones and put to use by Pascal… Make sense? In other words, “your breasts are the only that I love.” Perhaps.

Back to our French prisoner facing a Russian wall…it is the mechanical application of an idea…for projecting figures on a screen…practically, the cinematic projector.

Godard never stopped learning. He was always a child with his stamps and maps and his universe has always remained vast. By lamplight, the world is big. In memory, small… In reading and studying we find amazing intricacies and ramifications. Godard’s is truly a mind on fire.

Consider the film Night of the Hunter. It was the only film which Charles Laughton directed by himself. Godard relates to the children who float down the river, “singing lullabies to our infinity.” Some lullabies are joyous while others are horrors. It may depend on the country.

Again with Klimt…and Fred Astaire in Band Wagon. Cinema is a woman. We drown in the eyes of movie stars. And directors are drunk on space and light.

Is that Cyd Charisse? Again Klimt…and James Dean. We want to journey…and fill the boredom with joy. Enjoy. The children of Marx and Coca-Cola. We want to enjoy the boredom of our prisons. We want to pass on our spirits. It’s all true says Orson Welles.

Ahh, boredom… We must remember the cautions of Baudelaire. And remember Bresson…simplicity. Yes, the aleatory clouds will always be more mysteriously attractive than the richest city or the largest country.

Chaplin behind a camera. Laurel and Hardy. We are those of childish mind. Painted nails. The fatal beauty of Snow White. A little poem by Brecht. We enter Debord territory when pondering the television. The origin of the world as updated by Duchamp. The fatal shell. Orbs of obus. The boring spectacle of immortal sin. The image which lies.

An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom. Cinema. Raise the anchor…this country bores us.

à suivre

-PD

paulydeathwish

musician and film critic

Tag Archives: Jean-Luc Godard