https://open.spotify.com/track/7swW0bfNGLAmpcDZPUQjHA?si=874c503f74a345e1
Recommended if you like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.
Dig, Lazarus, dig!!!
Tag Archives: montage
Histoire(s) du cinéma {Chapter 2(a): Seul le cinéma} [1989]
So here we go again.
They told Beethoven it was a horrible way to begin his 5th Symphony.
With a rest.
It’s unheard.
Of.
Unheard.
Only the players see it.
Only the conductor pays it much mind.
So the first “note” (beat) is silent.
The conductor must give it.
But there are at least two schools of thought on how this is to be done.
First, a conductor might do as they always do and swiftly move their baton downwards to indicate visually that the first (silent) beat is occurring.
The only problem with this is that the symphony players must then abruptly jump onto the very next beat (which is an “upbeat”).
They happen in very quick succession.
Nothing/Everything.
The whole orchestra.
Tutti.
And they get one shot.
To come in together.
Like an attack.
[rest] da da da daaaaaaaaaa
[rest] da da da daaaaaaaaaa
The second school of thought is more practical.
It advises that, in this particular situation, a conductor giving a downbeat is not particularly helpful to the orchestra (because no sounds occur on that downbeat).
Therefore, the conductor motions the orchestra that the UPBEAT is happening.
When the baton (or hand(s)) come down, that is the precise time to make noise.
It is not hard to see why this might lead to a more successful outcome.
For the goal is to have the orchestra stick together.
An orchestra of individuals who are a mere microsecond off from one another creates a sound which is generally not highly-valued in Western music (at least not in the performance of Beethoven).
But this STILL leaves a problem.
The conductor of this second school, whose job it is to try and lead his orchestra to a faithful rendition of this masterwork, is thereby IGNORING what Beethoven wrote (or, more precisely, HOW Beethoven wrote it).
The beginning.
Godard comes back more fit and trim in this episode of his greatest work.
1a is probably the nuke.
1b is a psychological warfare manual (perhaps)
2a returns us to kinetic warfare.
More or less.
With some lulls.
But there is genuine artistry within these 26 minutes.
Like a symphony by Beethoven or Bruckner.
The beginning is weighted heavily.
1a = 51 mins. (the longest of all eight parts)
1b = 42 mins. (the second longest “movement” of the bunch)
The entire first section is, therefore (carry the zero), 1 hour and 33 minutes.
That’s the first quarter of this “ring cycle”.
And it is truly operatic.
So now we are into a bit of a scherzo.
26 minutes.
Now you can see the influence of television.
The “producers” of this film.
Canal+ (French TV channel)
CNC (part of the French Ministry of Culture [and Godard is Swiss!])
France 3 (a French TV channel)
Gaumont (a French film studio)
La Sept (a defunct French TV channel)
Télévision Suisse Romande (a defunct, French-language Swiss TV network)
Vega Films (Godard’s production company at the time)
26 minutes.
Enough time for eight 30-second commercials.
Arriving precisely at a sum total of 30 minutes’ programming.
It’s generous (no doubt owing to the fact that this was educational programming).
If you look at the true running time of an American half-hour sitcom these days, it is roughly 21 minutes of what you want to see.
The other 9 minutes are reserved for at least 18 30-second commercials.
In the tradition of James Joyce.
The pun.
Which Hitchcock so admired.
…and the Oscar goes to.
Oscar Wilde.
Irishmen in France.
The recurring scene from Salò…
Julius Kelp.
Literary history vs. cinematic history.
Godard has a curious frame which reads, “Your breasts are the only shells I love.”
It is a line from the poet Apollinaire.
[tes seins sont les seuls obus que j’aime]
But I must say, the exciting parts here are the “booms”!
The fighter jet exploding in midair.
Bernard Herrmann’s music from Psycho juxtaposed with scenes from Disney’s Snow White…(1937).
The agitation of Stravinsky.
Cluster chords on the piano.
Godard’s voice fed through an Echoplex.
And, just as in 1a, world-class editing!
Let me be clear.
EDITING is what makes Histoire(s) du cinéma the greatest film ever made.
It’s what makes F for Fake the second-greatest film ever made.
And what makes Dog Star Man the third-greatest film ever made.
It is more pronounced in Histoire(s) and Dog Star Man.
Orson Welles’ “editing” (montage) in F for Fake is done more at the story level.
It is a juxtaposition of content.
The Kuleshov effect with ideas rather than images.
[more or less]
Godard’s camera-pen makes some of its boldest strokes in this episode.
It rivals the 1a excerpt involving Irving Thalberg.
Which brings us to a very important point.
Godard CHOSE to use the concept of “double exposure” (two images–one on top of the other–but both seen to a greater or lesser extent) to ILLUSTRATE the subject and title of his greatest film.
Though it runs 266 minutes, that amount of time STILL wasn’t enough in which to lay out the history of cinema.
So images needed to be doubled up.
Tripled up.
Simultaneous to that, words needed to be spoken.
And furthermore, DIFFERENT words than those being spoken NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN ON THE SCREEN.
If you are not a native French speaker, you will probably need to have the subtitles on when viewing this film.
Which gives you A-N-O-T-H-E-R visual stimulus which must be taken into account.
Yes.
This film should be mandatory viewing for fighter pilots.
Practice your OODA loop here.
Observe.
Orient.
Decide.
Act.
Constantly looping.
If you want to survive in this jungle of meaning.
Night of the hunter…
Klimt.
Fred Astaire.
James Dean.
Burt Lancaster.
It’s all true.
That weary look.
From Hollywood.
It’s all true.
Which brings us to value (that thing which capitalism so gloriously creates…far more efficiently and in much greater abundance than with any other economic system).
“What is the value of knowing how to read this film,” you ask?
Just this.
It allows you to know how to read the complexity of the world.
It is a brain teaser.
With an infinite layering of meaning.
Like Finnegans Wake.
Joyce’s masterpiece should be the only required reading for a codebreaker.
Or a codemaker.
Take heed, National Security Agency.
Your curriculum needs adjusting.
Assign only Finnegan.
And reap your gains.
And what of Histoire(s)?
Its most direct application would be for analysts.
Whether they be Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, or INSCOM.
Know how to read the image.
Know how to analyze the video.
You must think outside the box.
Sudoku the fuck out of your employees.
And thereby fight crime and keep hostile actors in check.
Which is where we musicians come in.
To analyze the phone call.
To make sense of the audio…from the video.
It cannot be taught in a bootcamp.
It has to be loved.
Nurtured.
If you had one analyst like Godard, you would have a super-soldier equal to an entire special forces unit.
The trial of Joan of Arc.
Not to be confused with her passion.
Laurel and Hardy.
Gustave Courbet.
Marcel Duchamp.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Which brings us to a very delicate situation.
What is the President planning this weekend?
And with whom is he planning it?
If Ronald Reagan was an actor (and he was), then how much more talented is Donald Trump in getting a reaction with his lines…and his gestures?
HIS lines.
HIS gestures.
Accordion music.
Munch’s vampire.
A President who has been attacked from ALL sides UNRELENTINGLY for nearly four years.
And now finds himself in the midst of the hottest biological/psychological/economic war in recorded history.
Where complexity reigns.
As globalization magnifies each twitch of activity.
And this same President STILL finds himself under attack from the same “bad actors” who have unremittingly assailed him.
As in peacetime, so in war.
These enemies of the state.
Masquerading as journalists.
And their masters above them.
Straight from the latest conclave.
“…two if by sea.”
-PD
Le Livre d’image [2018)
And so I’m back.
Sort of.
Maybe.
With Godard.
Can we go from back to front?
After having gone halfway from front to back?
More importantly: WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST WATCH?!?
I’m guessing JLG might relish such a reaction.
But really.
Le Livre d’image (The Image Book) is a thoroughly fucked-up film.
Music stops and starts.
Ok, standard Godard.
Images run and then go to black screen.
Again, standard Godard.
But something is further about this film.
Perhaps the most accessible touchstone would be the glitchy music of Radiohead circa Kid A and Hail to the Thief (to name my two favorites).
To wit: Godard seems to be enjoying fucking with his audience.
Every possible convention of cinema is destroyed and frustrated by his anti-art approach.
It is Swiss. It is dadaist (in a certain sense).
But it is stranger…
Which brings us to a crossroads.
Is Godard getting senile?
I mean, seriously: is this the work of someone falling apart?
It may be.
There is an achingly-sad moment near the end when we hear that trademarked Godard narrative voice break up.
Coughing.
Too many cigars.
Almost 90 years old…
But there are other possibilities.
Indeed, The Image Book hearkens back to the Godard of his Dziga-Vertov years.
Extremely obtuse.
Painful cinema.
A cinema of cruelty (for Artaud).
We catch glimpses (literally) of Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Yes.
There is a pessimism here.
But mostly a hard reality.
And yet, is it reality?
The Image Book is surreal…while being mostly in a stark cinematography.
A bit like Picasso’s Guernica.
But more boring.
Can I say that?
Boring.
When you’re 88 years old (like Godard), perhaps things move slower.
Perhaps you could call it “slow cinema”.
But it is FAST and boring.
Many cuts.
Many, many cuts.
Painstakingly (painstakingly?) spliced.
It seems.
Also seems random.
Aleatory.
I Ching.
John Cage.
But onto another aspect.
That of revision.
Revisiting.
The Image Book is to Godard’s oeuvre as Histoire(s) du cinéma is to film history as a whole.
Le Livre d’image could be said to be a sort of CliffsNotes to the work of Jean-Luc Godard.
But there’s just one catch.
You would need to know the oeuvre in its totality to really make much of this pithy summation.
So it is, in a sense, useless.
But it still speaks.
Galileo.
And yet it moves.
Godard is not dead.
Not yet.
And he should know that he will never die.
Not with the timeless body of work he has contributed to humanity.
And yet, that tobacco cough says otherwise.
To live in those lungs.
To feel the weight of mortality pressing down.
Le Livre d’image is a frustrating piece of work.
It has very little (almost none) of the lyrical poeticism that its predecessor Adieu au langage had.
Indeed, perhaps this is a purposeful “let down”.
Like Neil Young’s On The Beach or Lou Reed’s Berlin.
To extend the metaphor there, it is mostly like Metal Machine Music.
It is jarring.
Annoying.
It gets under your skin.
But it makes you think.
And perhaps that is the whole point.
Perhaps Godard is reaching for a new filmic language.
He may not be there yet, but he is reaching.
This is essential, cranky cinema.
The bleeding edge…
-PD
Sunset Boulevard [1950)
This is the story of O.J. Simpson.
This is the story of Phil Spector.
Too much foreshadowing?
Scramble. Scramble.
Scramble the meaning.
This is Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon come to life.
Fifteen years before anger published.
In France they have Angers.
And every George is a multiple.
Georges.
But what passion!
Yes, dear friends…
Sunset Boulevard is one of the strangest films ever made.
If you want to know from whence Mulholland Drive came, start here.
SUNSET BLVD.
Mulholland Dr.
If you’re really daft (and I am), you’ll think you’re watching that guy who played The Professor on Gilligan’s Island in one of the best films you’ve ever seen.
But there’s a big fucking difference between Russell Johnson and William Holden.
Or is there?
Just let the wind blow through the bellows of the pipe organ for a moment.
And imagine yourself in a dream so dark it could be a nightmare.
But it’s merely spooky.
The great art.
Has mystery.
What was director Billy Wilder groping for?
Never mind, for a second, the bursting cast.
Every extra a novel in themselves.
Just the story of Sunset Boulevard is enough to make a thinking person stagger into the intersection on the Rue Campagne-Première.
But there are so many intersections…
Mon ami.
It starts bad.
Like a second-rate Raymond Chandler ripoff.
But it compels you to stay with it.
A little underwater photography.
Novel.
The adjective.
So much hinges on Paramount Pictures.
The gate.
The arch.
And how criticism can thwart a career.
The straw that broke the needle in the camel’s eye.
It’s like something out of Breathless or Dr. No.
The precipitous turn.
Kicking up dust.
Before the boulevard was broken dreams and crack vials.
Syringes.
Just ordinary fascism.
Triumph over violins.
And we trace the line.
A shoulder.
A chin.
A palazzo. A collection of post-Impressionists.
Because we want to know.
For nothing could be more mysterious.
Lost a husband to the Spanish flu.
Lost two more, too.
But one lives as a ghost.
And his monocle groove is strangely vacant.
Erich von Stroheim.
Unreal.
Whether in a Jean Renoir picture or here.
Whether behind the camera or acting in his own film.
In two places at once.
Like Schrodinger’s cat.
But nobody remembers Schrodinger’s chimpanzee.
And a little coffin.
And the steps Stroheim has to take to stand in a hole.
This is the story of Michael Jackson.
This is the story of Emmett Miller.
Not gone, but forgotten.
And it is the true way entertainment worked.
When mass media was born.
At a million miles an hour.
1900.
Or 1898.
Churning out pictures.
From the dream factory.
And wax cylinders.
And who cares about these young girls…we can always find more.
But Buster Keaton sits in for Miller.
Because there is nothing more sad than a sad clown.
The waxworks…
The rogues gallery.
It could have been Elektra.
But it had to be Richard Strauss.
1909. 1911.
Great silence on one coast.
And great noise on the other.
Direct from Europe.
This is the story of Thora Birch.
The greatest star who ever was.
And I am just a humble servant.
Max.
There will be Max.
Always a sadness over beauty.
When beauty is counted in but one way.
One dimension.
3-D clustered, but without 4 time.
But you can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
And actors are all full of nothing.
Must empty out.
Each time.
To fully fill.
May the best shell win!
So that she stalks the shit outta him.
Like some Transylvanian octopus.
And Igor schleps his stuff in the middle of the night.
Like some dream from Dreyer’s Vampyr.
What the fuck?!?
Poor William Holden is living in the decline of the West.
The sagging tennis court.
The bowling alley in the basement we never see.
Because it would be like the Biltmore on hard times.
Truly grotesque.
Decay. And decadence.
Taken separately. Different connotations.
A piece of rotting fruit in the trash.
And champagne supernovas of drunken, naked excess.
But they are one and the same.
When rooted word-wise to rot.
Gloria Swanson is the hysterical car-wreck-of-an-actress here.
You can’t look away.
Bride of Frankenstein. Hell, Frankenstein himself. Sex changed. Sexless.
More hideous internally than externally.
And more nuts than the peanut gallery of an old picture house.
But no locks.
Perhaps a lock of hair…
But no gas.
No blades.
No.
It’s quite a spooky thing to be trapped in such luxury.
Such trappings.
Camelhair. Vicuña.
What the hell!
She’s paying, right???
Tails.
For godsake, man…Valentino danced the tango here!
But now the tarantula hums.
Manipulative receives new meaning.
An actress. A star! And that Roaring Twenties, gilded, cocksure, brassy optimism.
Unfazed by decades of disuse.
“She’s doin’ the ballet on/both of her wrists”
Goddamn…
If Echo & the Bunnymen were around in 1950…
William Holden has been sucked in.
To a vortex.
And it ain’t no fun.
No funny business. No funnymen.
Plenty of echoes.
Of his past life.
Mingled with her omnipresent portraiture fecundating the stale mansion.
“He could die happily ever after”
Bob Dylan knew about the pillars.
And the pillory of fame.
And so C. B. DeMille was a natural choice.
To depict the heartbreak.
Of a washed up life.
Hate to break it to you, kid…
But the diva is in denial.
Yes, the bitch is back.
Take Elton and a whole gaggle of crocodiles…and the Isotta Fraschini with the leopard seats.
Several leopards died for your ass(es).
How’s the weather up there?
And so she rides a white swan because she’s born to boogie.
With the swagger of Bolan.
Norma Desmond.
Monomaniacal about beheading the past.
On a platter.
American montage shows the unwieldy devices–to make young again.
Strobo-oscillo-sonic skin tauteners.
Franju had a less frightening story sans yeux.
Face without eyes.
Ah! […]
But the eyes have it all!!!
The fire of once-great dominance.
Champagne. Caviar.
The eeriness of Sunset Boulevard is that Gloria Swanson WAS once a great star (sort of).
And even more so, Erich von Stroheim WAS (REALLY FUCKING WAS) a great director!
And so Billy Wilder managed to tell their stories.
Only the names were changed to protect the guilty.
Devotion till the end.
Love for cinema.
Love for a woman.
A woman is a drum.
Where’s Duke Ellington when you need him???
Jealousy.
Jalousie.
Film noir.
Horizontal shafts of light.
But shadows all the more prominent.
This is our Rembrandt.
Our chiaroscuro.
How insensitive…
Norma with bitter, vindictive precision.
And then the curtain is pulled back on the waterworks.
And the fucking Pompidou explodes in hideous reds of dysfunction.
Yes.
Come and see where I live.
In a lonely place…
Maybe it’s better you don’t know me.
But he really wants to say, “Will you marry me?”
On this night.
What sadness.
We think such overwrought misery only exists in the movies.
But the intersections of real life sometimes make such tragedy possibly.
And we shouldn’t wish such on our worst enemies.
She can’t stand the shock.
But cinema is the ultimate beauty.
So fragile at the end…
We give thanks to see such a picture.
To see Stroheim one more time.
“Alright, boys… Let’s rev up those cameras!”
To see the silent era stagger down the stairs one more time.
Like a wrought-iron flower.
With a green patina.
Nickelodeons penny on the dollar.
Kicked to the curb.
Save for Langlois.
She just needed one more shot at youth.
It was too much, too soon.
One last shot in the arm of that excitement!
That camaraderie of Hollywood.
Before it became a drag.
Her youth.
Memory is scary as hell.
-PD
Incompresa [2014)
This is the longest movie I’ve ever watched.
Not really.
But at one hour and 46 minutes, that’s not a good thing.
To feel like it’s taking forever.
Which is not to say this is a bad film.
It’s not.
It’s a very good film.
With a very disturbing ending.
Yes, I’m warning you.
Don’t (like me) get sucked in by all the cuteness and expect our still-mediocre filmmaker to give you a good ending.
But maybe I’m wrong…
Let’s investigate.
First, Asia Argento is a very talented filmmaker.
But she’s still mediocre.
There are two main problems with this film.
The editing (as in cut some of this superfluous shit out) and the ending.
My guess is that Argento could not bear to see any of her precious footage cut (to any significant degree).
So I am not complaining about the découpage (editor Filippo Barbieri does a fantastic job…especially in the palimpsest intro), but rather the montage (in the French sense).
The ending is a cheap stunt.
David Bowie predicted such excess on Ziggy Stardust…
I will leave it at that.
But suffice it to say that Asia Argento put her heart and soul into this film.
And much of it (most of it) is magical.
This was in spite of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s overwrought, tacky performance.
Charlotte is a wonderful musician.
One of the best alive.
I adore her music.
But she is a terrible actress.
Even so, Argento should have reined in Gainsbourg’s diva performance considerably.
Yet nothing can take away from the true magic contained in Misunderstood (this film’s title on Netflix).
Maybe it’s not Gainsbourg’s fault.
Maybe the role called for a soulless bitch.
But we’ve seen Charlotte in other dire films (like Melancholia).
For all of Asia Argento’s imperfections as a filmmaker (and there are a few), she is like Orson Welles compared to the utter shite that Lars von Trier churns out.
Not to mince words, but “von” Trier has to be one of the worst filmmakers working today.
And so let’s get to why Argento marginally succeeds with this film.
The answer is so very simple: Giulia Salerno.
Salerno must have been about 13 (or younger) when this film was shot [though she is ostensibly nine years old…in the context of the story].
Her acting, really, is a revelation.
The entire movie revolves around her.
She and her cat Dac.
It’s a sad story.
But Aria [Salerno] makes everything joyful.
Ah, the resilience of kids!
I was blessed with wonderful parents growing up.
Aria’s parents in this film are reprehensible in just about every way imaginable.
There is something of a Les Quatre Cents Coups to this tale.
Aria wanders back and forth.
With her little pet carrier (for the cat).
She has no stability.
Indeed, she ultimately has very little love at all.
I don’t want to spoil the story for you.
But here are the takeaways.
Asia Argento has the talent to become a world-class filmmaker.
This was an admirable and artful first effort.
It is a very special film.
Now it’s time for her to stop surrounding herself with ass kissers.
She’s not an auteur yet.
[I don’t care who her father was!]
Giulia Salerno has the brigtest future imaginable as an actress.
She is now about 15 years old.
And she’s already put a performance like this under her belt.
I hope that Hollywood and the cinema of her home country Italy take notice of her incredible thespian gift.
And I will give Argento one more compliment: she sure shocked the shit out of me with that ending.
And though it was trite and tasteless, it didn’t completely ruin what was a very fine film.
Indeed, the editor needed for the bulk of this film would have lopped it off forthwith (if they were at all worth their salt).
-PD
Sběrné surovosti [1965)
I don’t usually review short films by themselves,
but this is such a gem.
A pearl, if you will.
The Junk Shop.
By director Juraj Herz.
Truth be told, I assumed it would be feature-length.
So when it ended, I was surprised.
But it was nice.
Just the right length.
It’s a very charming first film which delves into the depth only ragpickers can evoke.
There are, indeed, very few inventors who can claim to have “invented” the garbage can.
One (or the one) lends his name to the bin in French: Eugène Poubelle.
Just like Joseph-Ignace Guillotin.
But let’s back to director Herz.
It might be more proper to call him a Slovakian director.
Though this film hails from the Czechoslovak days.
Born in Kežmarok: “cheese market”.
And so what is the difference between Czechia (the new name for the Czech Republic) and Slovakia? Why the split?
Not to be confused with the city in Croatia. Split.
1918-1993. One country. Czechoslovakia.
But you’re here for film. Perhaps.
Long before The Holy Mountain in 1973.
Iconoclasts. Plastic Jesus. Flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark.
I assume my audience knows when I am quoting.
If this had been a full-length film, it would have been neck-and-neck with Closely Watched Trains and A Report on the Party and the Guests.
But there’s also something “cute” about The Junk Shop.
It has a wry smile which is usually found only in children’s films.
Oh, to see her shake out her sheets.
To beat her rug.
Leaning over the railing.
An old man’s one joy.
Such priceless joys in the messy actuality of the everyday.
Anna Karina is on the wall.
She has been rescued from metric tons of paper.
She is recycled visually. But not literally.
A poster.
Pin-up girls.
To keep the ragpicker company.
And the forerunner of American montage (by way of Eisenstein).
Stop motion Dadaism.
Synchronized on the beat.
-PD
Žert [1969)
It would be, perhaps, best to list this as a Slovak film.
Slovakia.
We always talk about Prague.
But not enough about Bratislava.
Yet all of this would make little difference were this film not notable.
And it is quite notable.
The direction by Jaromil Jireš is admirable.
He plays with time. A very unusual montage of flashbacks.
Haunted. Haunting. Hunted by communism.
This, then, would be a subversive film.
To show the corruption within Czechoslovakia.
To show the nightmare of reeducation.
The term is never named as such, but that’s what it is.
Punitive military service.
The soldiers with no weapons.
Because their country doesn’t trust them with such.
In the mines.
On the ground.
Relay.
Hup hup hup.
Power trip of professional army in service to socialism.
Trotsky is forbidden.
And so is humor.
Don’t make your jokes too pointed.
There’s no squirming out of the fact that you stand in opposition to the ethos of your government.
I.
It may not be a momentous occasion to realize that literature is being made.
For it skips under your nose as mere nonsensical rubbish.
Poppycock. Hogwash. Eyewash.
Tropes and memes and drupelets hanging low. Evolving necks. Giraffes.
I am of two Yiddish species:
schlub and schmuck.
Unattractive. Fool.
Me and Josef Somr. Who lives! Age 82.
A masterful performance. As real as my daily routine.
Shirt coming untucked.
I have kept my hair, but his combover parallels my gut (his too). Sucked in.
Beware of jokes.
You are being watched.
Your letters are being intercepted.
And you will have to answer for your words.
Just what exactly did you mean by, “…” ???
Well, this is Milan Kundera with the story.
And I rebelled all the way.
I drew Baudelaire with lightening bolts. And chartreuse dreams.
Kundera lives! Age 87.
Born in Brno. (!)
But let’s back to this love-hate.
Not Mintzberg.
At the same time.
Alternating. A constant election.
Affinities.
I will achieve 17,000-word vocabulary. Just you watch.
I almost hate my town too. I know.
Was I imprisoned?
No.
But I lost music.
Like Ludvík.
The name is significant.
Like lost hearing.
And so the clarinet is indispensable.
I mention Jana Dítětová because she was from Plzeň.
Pilsen. Pillsbury.
The selfish gene.
Tricked. Objectified. MILF revenge reified.
Pithy memetics.
MIKE MILF.
Markéta is significant.
…Lazarová. Two years previous.
A permanent opium war of mankind.
Opiate of the masses. Asses. Snippets of military abuse.
You’ve never seen…like this.
We can still insult liberalism. And neoliberalism. And neoconservatism.
We can still find Starbucks artless. And Subway.
But Wal-Mart passes over to kitsch. Of which Kundera would understand.
Like Warhol meets Flavin.
All that fluorescence.
Non-stop.
Europe endless.
Schubert.
Dip the waves.
Coyoacán borough of Mexico City. D.F. Day effay.
Trotsky died the same year Conlon Nancarrow moved to Mexico.
1940.
And Nancarrow would make Mexico City his home.
Las Águilas. With his Ampico player pianos.
Ludvík is expelled from his teaching position like Dr. James Tracy.
History is always with us.
We see the corruption of good intentions.
Communism. Socialism.
Teachers of Marxism.
How the country had slid.
And Věra Křesadlová eats her cotton candy. Stunning.
We wonder why the movie couldn’t have been about her.
But we needed the schlub/schmuck.
And the attempted suicide with laxatives.
Which is to say, there are far more than six stories in narrative history.
Bollocks Schenkerian analysis.
-PD
Häxan [1922)
One of my ancestors was hung for being a witch.
Susannah Martin.
1692.
When I speak of it or think of it, it gives me chills.
It.
What?
No, she.
As Danish director Benjamin Christensen makes so clear in this masterpiece.
Häxan is Swedish for “witch”.
Our film was released by Svensk Filmindustri: a Swedish film production company which still exists to this day.
Thus the Swedish title. And the Swedish premier(s) in 1922. And the Swedish intertitles.
The Danish would be Heksen.
Swedish, Danish, English…
Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered.
This is the horror of religion. The horror of irrationality. Violence against women. Abuse of the elderly. Mistreatment of the mentally ill.
Christensen’s film is a masterpiece precisely because it combines the clarity of modern thought with the mists of medieval superstition.
It begins almost as a documentary.
Unlike me, he lists his sources.
But then the film takes on a life of its own.
As if the director was not quite sure whether to dismiss superstition outright.
As if some dark Freudian specters were haunting his deliberate phantasmagoria.
It was meant to be a lucid montage.
But the letters became transposed.
Lucid, Lurid. Live. Evil.
Miles Davis had it right. And Howlin’ Wolf (by way of Willie Dixon) [not to mention Howlin’ Pelle].
Svensk Filmindustri. Founded a mere three years before Häxan.
Only fitting that the parent company (Bonnier Group) should have its roots in København.
Because Benjamin Christensen is brilliant as the Devil.
And now for the juicy stuff.
Not Hell, but Hellerup. Denmark.
Birthplace of Stine Fischer Christensen (ooh la la!).
But we’re mainly interested in ASA Filmudlejning.
Or are we?
An unfinished symphony of horror.
…eine Symphonie des Grauens
1922.
Possessed by self-punishment.
“More weight!”
And even more wait.
Tom Waits for no man.
I was tricked.
Must have been needles and pins. Voodoo.
He can’t even remember her name.
Ripped my heart from my chest.
Call it punk rock.
Moloch. Bohemian Grove.
If it’s all a bunch of bollocks, then these blokes are just bluffing, right?
-Bechtel
-H.W.
-Warren Christopher
-George Creel (investigative journalist and propagandist)
-Harlan Crow (this guy…son of Trammell Crow…buddy of Clarence Thomas [more on him later]…Thomas, who gave Crow the Bible of Frederick Douglass [what the fuck?!?]…Crow…owns at least one painting by Hitler…Napoleon’s writing desk…the Duke of Wellington’s sword [ca. 1815]…but weirdest is his Alec Trevelyan (006) / Janus sculpture garden which includes such spoils of war as Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Marx, Mubarak, Tito, Ceausescu, and Guevara)
-Draper
-David Gergen (of course)
-Inman
-Kissinger (naturally)
-John Lehman (9/11 commission)
-Henry S. Morgan (cofounder Morgan Stanley)
-Reagan (Owl’s Nest)
-George Shultz [sick]
-Tony Snow [“]
-Caspar Weinberger
Weaving spiders come not here.
-PD
Spectre [2015)
There’s a moment in this film when a character says “shoot” instead of “shit”. It is the linchpin of the film. What follows is the strangest cut in James Bond history since Roger Moore abruptly went gaucho in Moonraker. But what we cut to is perhaps the first truly vicious, self-inflicted attack of self-parody the James Bond franchise has ever experienced. Yes, self-parody. Vicious. Like a postmodern vomit of confetti. This whole film. But mainly starting at the amorous activities which follow the word “shoot”.
Derrida would find his hinge for deconstruction at “shoot”. As if the film could not bear one more mild expletive and still retain its PG-13 rating.
But let’s dig a little deeper.
A series notorious for running low on creativity must have been thrilled to have the intellectual property rights to S.P.E.C.T.R.E. following the death of Kevin McClory. It was not just the death of McClory which allowed the franchise to resurrect its proto-NWO, but also the acquisition by MGM and Danjac LLC of McClory’s estate in late 2013.
And so things must have looked rosy for Eon Productions.
Sadly, they made a few blunders.
Those blunders became the ramshackle, mutilated would-be masterpiece Spectre.
And so just what were these mistakes?
My guess is that many of them occurred behind closed doors.
There are moments in this film at which a film school freshman could have done a better job reeling in the mise-en-scène than did Sam Mendes. But there’s a problem with that equation. Sam Mendes is not that bad a director. NO ONE wielding a nine-figure budget is that bad a director. And so chalk another crappy movie up to the real villains: MGM and Colombia Pictures. Credit Eon Productions likewise with rubberstamping this high-school-science-fair of a picture.
But we can’t let Mendes off that easily. I hope it was a good payday (again) Sam, because this film is generally a piece of shit.
HOWEVER…there are moments of what could have been. If the executives had kept their noses (and asses) out of the production process, this could have been a homerun.
Christopher Waltz is good when approached with Hitchcockean framing. As a silhouette. You can feel Mendes reaching for Mulholland Dr. But as per the Sony hacks, eventually you have to show the guy (or do you?). Suffice it to say that Mr. Waltz is the least-scary Bond villain ever and barely more creepy than Jar Jar Binks.
And so it becomes obvious that cost cutting has its downside. Who was the other bloke they were going to get for the villain? Who cares. Waltz sucks royally. And yet, he is more competent as an actor than the film is solid in structural integrity.
As a whole, Spectre is a disaster which should never have made it out the door of the dream factory. Anyone with an artistic bone in their body could have “fixed” this film. Mendes was apparently not allowed to actually direct.
Fix number one would have been cutting an hour’s worth of superfluous meh. I mean, really godawful, expensive, explosive meh. Jesus…this film didn’t need to try and compete with Spiderman or whatever the superhero flavor of the week is.
The writers (God, the writers…) of this film are not worth their weight in rancid butter. I heard rumors that the dialogue was bad. Truth is, it is dry-heave bad…but mainly near the end of the film (the last quarter).
Next time, spend $200 mil. on a single, competent writer (Pynchon perhaps) and <$1 mil. on stunts and CGI. This film experiences a leveraged shite effect throughout. Oh, by the way…the opening scene in Mexico City is probably the weakest part of the film. I would rather see Daniel Craig take a moist crap on a silver platter.
But let’s be fair…
This film tried. It had grand aspirations. SPECTRE…yes, bringing it all back home. Establishing credibility from New World Order to Snowden. Awesome. Well-done in that regard.
As for the execution…for fuck’s sake.
I’d rather have a clumsily-performed lobotomy than watch this film again any time soon.
The biggest upside of the film is Léa Seydoux. Ok, so casting got one thing right. It almost makes up for Christopher “The Last” Waltz.
There are very important themes addressed in this film. This could have been a light for liberty. Someone sabotaged it. Find that corporate person and you have found the real head of the real SPECTRE.
-PD
Detective [1985)
How do you get that much emotion into a film review? In order to start saying things again, we must stop saying things as we have been saying them.
Year zero.
As much as I might like to find fault with this film, I cannot. Not really.
What for some directors would be their masterpiece is for Godard merely another step in the journey.
We get used to genius.
We expect perfection.
But let us descend from the cosmos to discuss the film at hand.
No…on second thought.
It is the prolongation of the opening titles. Not like James Bond. It is not a formulaic gun-barrel sequence.
It is merely (merely?) the opposite of diminution. Augmentation. A fugue.
There are too many words to remember.
And so Godard takes his sweet ass time telling us about the players.
Quite a cast.
If we come in blind (and cold), each addition piques our interest further.
Was it Alain Sarde who put together this troupe?
Perhaps he only wrote the checks?
No no…it is better to discuss how Godard used this extensive cast.
A cast of thousands. Mahler Symphony #8.
Wikipedia. Poor pathetic Wikipedia.
But maybe not.
If you are accustomed to mainstream fare, this picture may appear to have no plot.
It is the pacing. The cuts. Montage?
No. No diatribe.
On to the cast.
Jean-Pierre Léaud. How long had it been?
And Claude Brasseur! Christ!!
But we really start moving with Johnny Hallyday.
Once upon a time…
(should start)
I (me)…I was in some city…I believe it was Quebec. Quebec City. Québec.
I had a room at the top of the world for the night. I believe it was the 22nd floor.
Enough to make you shit yourself…
And in the morning, there we were…a band apart. Bleary eyed, perhaps.
And out comes Monsieur Hallyday.
And the press clicked away. The hands went up to shield the bright lights.
And all I was impressed with was that he’d been in a Godard movie.
This one.
But let us not forget Nathalie Baye.
She is extraordinary here.
Brasseur is very strong.
Hallyday is surprisingly perfect.
All of these pop stars in films by the former nouvelle vague…
But let us really focus on the viscera.
Emmanuelle Seigner.
I have written about her before in relation to Berlin: Live at St. Ann’s Warehouse.
Yes. She is indispensable here.
And Julie Delpy. With the licorice stick.
(that would be, clarinet)
Poorly documented.
Actresses age. They become harder to distinguish from their former selves.
A stage of facial age.
But really the star (STAR)…(STAR) is Aurelle Doazan.
Sometimes it is her legs. We study every shot in every Godard film.
The market for films. The clearing prices. For rare cinephilia. Paraphernalia. Saturnalia.
Alea iacta est.
Les jeux sont faits.
The sound.
All bets are in. The die is cast.
The games are done.
Have been.
Godard here makes an art of either A.) saying nothing at all, or B.) saying everything that can possibly be said.
We happen to know he improved.
This experiment. AGFA. Audio Cassettes……….Video Cassettes.
Making an entire movie in a hotel.
Just deliver the equipment.
Arriflex. Mitchell. Panavision.
Schubert. Liszt. Honegger.
François Musy.
The engine is rattling. Abandon ship.
-PD
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