L’Éternel retour [1943)

You might wade through theories near and far.

About the indestructability of energy.

And they would be true.

Great poets put their pens to page.

And poured out their hearts.

Rage!!!

Nay, sage…

Neigh, cage.

Nain, has a lot of courage to die in this way.

He’s not dying, he’s living.

He’s the positive man.

Wounded and scared.

Since the birth of the gun.

At least.

Must be hard to follow an endless stream.

As just a pebble.

And these my feet.

Right about now, the break.

Chalumeau.

Achille.

Zero acceleration.

Enormous forearms.

A clinically depressed quarterback.

Zero awareness.

Idiot savants all.

We welcome more to the eternal return.

Jean Cocteau.  Wrote the film.

Auteur.

And Jean Delannoy directed the film.

Auteur?

World War II and two blondes are battling it out in love.

And the only brunette is mon oncle…with his perverse moustache.

They call him Mr. Blond (which makes things extremely confusing).

How you know you have become a writer:

I must write or I will die.

Some famous for writing diaries.

All manner of writing.

And when we first fall in love she is reading.

Like Anna Karina…near the end of Vivre sa vie…or was it Made in U.S.A.?

Should be easy from black white to Lichtenstein popping.

But I see colors when there is only the absence of color.

And specific colors in the full chromatic.

A white scarf.

We can get the sweat of the desert gun running Rimbaud from Jean Marais.

Aden.  Mocha.  Sanaa.

A hitch in there somewhere to Abyssinia.

In the time of the assassins.

We all descend on Aswan high as kites for burial rites.

Now that I’m flying, I don’t feel so tired.

Two blond specimens of perfection.

Lorded over by the brunette fuhrer.

A war film.  Resistance.  Don’t capitalize.  To hell with the umlaut.

I’m feeling better, getting that out of my system.

That wave of sadness.

Regret and memories lapping at my feet on a Corsican shore.  I assume.

Nietzsche to inspire Cocteau.  (Occupied Cocteau?)

Cocteau always several orders of magnitude more brilliant than his peers.

Nietzsche was a foundational literature for the Nazis.

And Webster Tarpley has Nietzsche as a foundational literature for the neocons.

And so making this film in censored times.  Under German occupation.

The only other film which jumps out at me is Les Visiteurs du soir (1942).  And then our L’Éternel retour of 1943.

And so you saved something of the war.

Surreptitiously.

Filming even before the columns of tanks had left.

Rossellini.

Culture jamming meets national security state.

Woo-ha!

Each Spartacus.

It’s a miracle he fell in love with her.

A miracle.

I’m the dwarf.  I’m Marais.  I’m Murat.

I’m among those lining the street to see Madeleine Sologne’s parade.

Lovingly.

And all alone shot with the realization that I’ve found a reader.  A genius.

A spark plug pulled from a pocket.

Must step over her bed.  To access the stairs.

That’s a moment of love.  Slow drag dancing on her cigarette.

As much as blondie’s fatted hair parted smart.

Hear your laughter at being upside down.

Heels over head.

Such a romance as only the French know.

And I know.  I seek.  Found.  Find.  No more.

Factories of love struggling with the lutte.

People married to their devices.

Too ugly to get a date.

There we go.

Me and Lester.  And Chuck.

Throw some more guys from the skunkworks in.

The name.  They work.  All night long.  Don’t bathe.

Maybe put in another day.

Don’t wash clothes.

Don’t even change clothes.

How “Skunk” Baxter got put on missile defense team.

You never know, folks.

There may be love yet to be had.

Pure love.

Mad love.

Keep your eyes and minds open.

And maybe if it’s even just a boring day.

Maybe there will be little pieces of art in the things you say.

Because you are toiling on something far beyond your current abilities..

So I praise film!  And France!

First review written while sleepwalking.

 

-PD

I fidanzati [1963)

This is a fucking depressing film.

I don’t think I’ve ever started like that before.

Because it matters.  How you start.

But maybe it’s just a mirror.

This film.

I can imagine few pieces of cinema summing up my life at this moment quite as well as I fidanzati does.

I’m sure there’s a dangling modifier in there somewhere.

But what about the welder?

The man adrift.

Sent to some godforsaken place for the company.

I made the right decision.  But I went to the wrong place.

Unfortunately, there is no separating the two.

Work.

Too much work.

All of our thoughts occupied with work.

And what do we get out of the equation?

Nothing.

Almost nothing.

Might as well be nothing.

It is a particularly Italian version of hell on display in I fidanzati.

Ermanno Olmi was a brilliant director here.

And he lives.  84 years young.

Sure.

Some things end well.

Young girls like happy endings.

But this one is hard to get over.

It’s really harrowing having nothing to live for.

And how would I know that?

You have a phone.  It doesn’t ring.

In fact, you sometimes wonder whether your messages get delivered at all.

You have a heart.

When is the last time someone spoke to your heart?

I understand.

We are shackled.  Paralyzed.  Crippled.

Life is sucked out of us like a lemon peel in the Sicilian heat.

No, I don’t understand.

Is this how karma works?

Surely this jungle will spare me.

I can think of Anna Canzi.

Her face is a melody.

And I relate to those sad cheeks.

You keep writing because you haven’t yet expressed it.

It.

That which you need to get off your soul.

Soul.

That living feeling inside you.

Primitive man suffering with his superstitions.

Poor man paying for his ignorance.

Not all are willfully unprepared.

What could have prepared you for this situation?

Other than this situation?

That is Situationism.

Science and humanities will argue that metaphor…or rather analogy.

That this will teach you.

It is like this.  And like that.  But unlike the other thing.

No.

I disagree.

It is unlike anything I’ve ever known.

Youth was lonely.

This is vicious.

There is.

A bar down the street.

But only in the movies.

Yet here it is exposed for what it really would be.

Empty.

Loud music and louder lights.  Life!  Vitality!  Excitement!

Inside is an old woman at a cash register.

There is a little metal display tree with ballpoint pens on one side.

The rest of the lopsided taunt is vacant.

And then the little boy.

Getting ahead in life.

Like Michele Sindona.

Making the espresso.  Quicker!  Faster!

Washing the dishes…

And hauling the fruit back and forth…

The citrus.

The service.

The difference in price from one location to another.

Goldfinger.

They Drive by Night

Good god…

It doesn’t get much more depressing.

And there should be some positive message to end it off.

And there is.

Which makes it even more sad.

Because the film was running long.

And maybe it won’t win shit at Cannes.

Did you ever think about that?

So then you have a depressing film on your hands for domestic audiences.

And they spend their hard-earned cash.

And what the fuck is this shit?

Oh…Anna, Monica…don’t go see this film.

It is so depressing!

But there’s the answer.

I fidanzati succeeds because it shows a side of life we don’t want to see.

What?

It succeeds…53 years later.

Because it was true.

It stuck to its guns.

It was meaningful.

So many other films from that year…

Utterly pointless.

Diversions.

Sad candy.

But here…

Yeah.  It’s a bummer.

But it’s real.

You can stare up at it and wonder how Signor Olmi painted such color in black and white.

How he lovingly distinguished gray from grey…and Juan from Gris.

Is it the same?

From language to language?

Gray?

Even within the Commonwealth…

We damned Americans.

No.

And yes.

This.

Sadness transcends.

No explanation needed.

The machines rule us.

Time is our master.

Money mocks our fragility.

On every continent.

An indispensable story.

 

-PD