My mum's name was Barbara Anne. So whenever we had the opportunity to do so, we would sing Barbara Anne, by the Beach Boys, to her really loud. And of course she loved it. Actually, she hated it.
And in the tradition of hating songs with your name in them, so I hate Mustang Sally. I can say it's not my name, because it's spelled differently, but it all sounds the same when your family's yelling 'RIDE, SALLY, RIDE' at you.
But then something happened. Songs that I actually like started to have my name in them. The first is Long Tall Sally (I am neither long nor tall. Nor is my name spelled Sally - but I digress)- by a lot of people but the versions I love are by the Beatles and the Kinks.
The second is Don't Look Back in Anger by Oasis. And lately it's been one of those songs that I've written about before - songs that inspire scenes for projects I'm turning over in my little brain.
The song has this pervading sense of weariness, and it fits in perfectly with this feeling I want to create in one of my projects. I've written about a story I want to write that's sort of an exploration of the idle rich, or about people who live in a world of no consequence, and whether that's really true. It's certainly not original - the idea's been covered in a lot of texts and films that I admire. Actually, it's mostly in novels that this idea has been examined. And Gossip Girl. Ahem.
At the moment, my idea is about a group of young, rich, Sydney socialites who do nothing but be seen. One of them wakes up one morning, and something feels different. She wonders if she doesn't care about anything. I guess it's sort of an analysis of societal expectations and how we construct meaning - at the moment it feels like a hybrid of Less Than Zero and Nausea. I've thought of a line that I think sums up the entire feeling of the film, and that is, "I don't know. I just can't feel thinking that the party's over."
Which is why Don't Look Back in Anger has been so inspiring. That world weariness seems so perfect for this project. But it has also inspired a scene. I want a character to die, and see how this affects the group. I had an idea that it could be the result of a drug overdose or suicide, but I feel like that suggests that the character's actions have lead them to this - that they are being punished, in effect, and that's not the point. It's really about testing Liriope's ability to connect with her world, I think.
I was listening to this song on the bus, and what it originally inspired was Liriope's reunion with a character outside of her social scene, but to me that was too much like Gossip Girl, or insulting. Why must the problems of her inner self be solved by something external, and by a boy no less! And again, it would be another way in society enforces meaning on her life by dictating what she should care about. Lame.
Lately it's given me a scene in which Liriope, after witnessing the death of one of the people in her circle, is walking in a daze along a motorway, her white lace minidress stained with blood.
That's all I have for that at the moment. I'm listening to Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Tom Waits at the moment, so I'm sure they'll give me even more material. And of course, Morrissey and the Smiths are a constant source of inspiration for comments on the meaning of life and how people, on the whole, suck.
But cheer up and watch this. Your life will be better for it.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Post-Script, Post-Haste!
So I was intending on explaining how I separated the films I believed were the best and the films I love the most. But...erm, I forgot. But I like, and I'ma gonna let you finish, but first I gotta tell you why these films are so good.
So, the basic idea were films that moved me emotionally, or used the medium of film in a particular way.
So - Here's the list again, including explanations:
Citizen Kane - This film is proof of the almost indefinable perfection of the Classical Hollywood Cinema, because it looks like it's breaking all of the rules. Yet if you're watching very closely, you will see that it glides effortlessly from convention, to experimentation with convention. Not only that, but this is Welles' first film - there are so many techniques he carried over from his experience in radio and theatre that seem so wonderfully suited to cinema that forever after people would be saying to themselves 'why didn't we think of this before?' Oh, and the score by Bernard Herrmann? EXQUISITE.
Vertigo - I'm not even sure where to start on this one. Is it that breathtaking opening by Saul Bass? Is it those 20 minutes in which our protagonist's character and his relationship to Madeleine is slowly revealed in perfect silence? Maybe it's the subtle subversion of Jimmy Stewart's persona? Or is it the romantic treatment of a man's obsession with an image that makes for some wonderfully creepy viewing? It could even be the amazing costumes by Edith Head or the haunting score by Bernard Herrmann. But I believe it just might be one scene after all. It's the scene in which Scottie's makeover of Judy into Madeleine is complete. She walks out of the hotel room, the glow of the green hotel light giving her the appearance of a ghost becoming corporeal as she moves from the bathroom to Scottie. They embrace, and we, like Scottie, no longer care that this is sick and twisted, and that he is crushing a young girl's personality and spirit for his own ends. Because we want the image too. We want Madeleine just as much as he does. And that is why Hitchcock is a fucking genius.
Wild Strawberries - I actually haven't seen this is in a while, and I think it's a testament to Bergman that even though I haven't watched it for ages, I still feel its power as a film. What is so amazing about this film is its story, and the way Bergman portrays the unfolding of a man's character through experimentation with genre, and particular film movements. What I also like is that it's a story about a man and his daughter-in-law - not a relationship you see explored in film very often.
Pulp Fiction - One thing I love about Tarantino is that he's a film geek to the core. Every single film he makes is merely an excuse to admire his favourite filmmakers. The man is also about homage, self-reflexivity, and genre. People may see that as irritating, that he's just assembling his films by taking other more talented filmmakers' work and pretending he thought of it first. Not true at all. What they fail to see is that Tarantino's films are partly a game - it's the cinematic equivalent of putting obscure song lyrics as your Facebook status and waiting to see who recognises them and comments with another line from the song - the effect is twofold; people know you're clever, and you find out which of their friends are awesome like you. So why is Pulp Fiction in particular so good? Well, it's the game. But more than that, it's to Non-Linear Narrative what Citizen Kane and the Classical Hollywood Cinema. What looks like a very celebrated example of a non-linear narrative is actually a perfect example of the three-act structure, and a classical structuring of temporal relations. If you want proof, read 'Breaking, Making, and Killing Time in Pulp Fiction', by Kevin Howley. He translated my thoughts into this article just in time for me to cite him in an essay about Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction and the Classical Hollywood Cinema.
Breathless - Perhaps translated a little roughly, A Bout de Souffle (out of breath, more than Breathless) was one of the first films that changed French cinema in the late 1950s and changed the way critics thought about film as art. Not only were Godard and Co. filmmakers - they were film critics first. Their understanding of film as art allowed them to explore the medium fully. Fascinated by Hollywood cinema, and the work of Hitchcock in particular, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, and Rohmer sought to make the kinds of films they wanted to see, and elevate Hollywood cinema to the status of art. Breathless is Godard's exploration of the Film Noir genre. Where Welles' exploration was one that stayed within the conventions of the classical Hollywood cinema, Godard's seems to stay firmly outside it, taking a conventional plot and story and subverting it - while the classical Hollywood cinema privileges character motivation in service of the narrative, Godard removes it almost entirely. But the brilliance is that he doesn't entirely removes it but merely makes the cinema itself the character motivation. His anti-hero, Poiccard, acts like a character in a Film Noir. Patricia acts as the femme fatale, because she is the femme fatale and this is how they act. The other reason I love this film is because Patricia and Poiccard escape to a cinema and watch a film - the film is merely two actors reciting lines from a Voltaire poem, another clear statement from Godard that the cinema is pure art.
Taxi Driver - some have suggested that Scorsese hasn't made any films recently that have surpassed his former glory, and while that's probably true, I find many of his films seem to be a sort of history of masculinity and violence in America. And on that level you can't dismiss the power of films like Gangs of New York and The Departed, films that are most definitely a part of this cycle, even if you don't like them. I hate the former and like the latter, by the way. What I love about Taxi Driver is that it is an exercise in unease. Nothing much happens until the end, but the film is all about the climax. And that's true of every film, or should be, but the beauty of Taxi Driver is following a young man as he slowly unravels. In his mind, he is becoming a hero. The audience can only see a man becoming incredibly dangerous. And at the end, you're not sure if he's going to kill the girl he is trying to save, or rescue her. And if that storyline sounds familiar, then you've seen John Ford's The Searchers. Scorsese takes this idea of a flawed hero and turns the entire film into a character study. Not only that, but it also belongs to a series of films exploring the Vietnam War's effect on the men who returned home. Mean Streets is also an interesting take on this idea of the Vietam Vet and his capacity for violence. So is First Blood...yes, I'm referring to Rambo.
Crimes and Misdemeanors - I've devoted an entire blog to why this film is legen - wait for it - dary in the past, but if you can't be bothered reading that post, then I shall sum it up here. Essentially, the film is a study in morality and faith. What if everything we believed about acting in a moral way was wrong? If we are never punished for our misdeeds, either by the law or by what we refer to as our conscience or soul, how then do we derive meaning from the world? Is it proof that God cannot exist if a man can commit a terrible crime and never feel the effects of what he has done? Yes, a Woody Allen films explores all of these questions. And I was so tempted to put Manhattan in this list but thought it would be strange to have two Allen films in this list. I'll talk about it in the other section.
Rashomon - I've heard it said that Kurosawa's Rashomon has no English title because the word Rashomon is actually a kind of Japanese onomatopoeia - a word describing the sound a moving train makes. I've been too scared to Google it, because I really hope that's true. The film uses the perspective of multiple witnesses to portray one event, which was pretty pioneer type stuff when the film was made. The story is this: a nobleman is murdered, his wife raped, and a local bandit has been put on trial for the crime. A witness to some of the events relays the court proceedings to a monk while seeking refuge in a monastery during a rainstorm. The bandit gives his account, the noblewoman, and even the nobleman, through the use of a...erm, like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost. Only no one gets to make out with the noblewoman. Anyway. Their accounts of the event are all different - the bandit portrays himself as the victim, as does the noblewoman. The nobleman portrays himself as a fallen hero. However, the witness has seen more than they realise, and reveals them all to be selfish cowards. But the film's true message, and this is why it kicks serious arse, is that the concept of objective reality may be nonexistent at worst and problematic at best. Memory is subjective, and our perspective will always be coloured by our personal investment in situations. And you thought Kurosawa was awesome because he inspired Lucas in writing Star Wars. Oh, and Toshiro Mifune is a one-man masterclass in acting as the Bandit.
No Country For Old Men - The Coen Brother have made some seriously awesome films - Fargo and Blood Simple spring immediately to mind, but this may be their masterpiece. It's almost flawless. The acting is incredible, particularly Brolin and Bardem. The editing perfectly elicits tension at all moments. The cinematography is breathtaking. And the much talked-about ending is absolutely spot on. I've also been told that it is almost completely faithful to Cormac McCarthy's novel. I'll just bet it is. Never stop making films, Ethan and Joel. Please.
Mystic River - Clint Eastwood is the king of making films that in anyone else's hands could be cliche-laden. Gran Torino is the story of an old racist learning a valuable life lesson from an Asian teen and his family. That just sounds ready for sentimentality and heavy-handed moralising. But it's Eastwood so it's an touching examination of the ways in which violence separates people. Mystic River's spot in my list is earned in its end: When Sean Penn's character seeks vengeance for his daughter's murder and enacts it, we the audience see that he has the wrong man. And it's utterly devastating.
Und now, for my most loved films and why.
Singin' In The Rain - I could list all of its cinematic virtues, but that's not why it's top of my list of most-loved films of all time. The reason is simple. My mum loved it. My mum died when I was 15, and I don't think I will ever quite move on, some 12 years later. It's so horrible to lose a parent, especially when they're the parent you get along with best. The first time I watched Singin' In the Rain was with Mum, on the ABC one Friday night. I think she was making me comb her hair at the time. But we stopped and just sat and enjoyed the film, and honestly, I think it was the most fun film I'd ever seen - and Gene Kelly, what a fox! People often ask; what's your favourite film of all time? And knowing study film, they're expecting something pretentious and/or foreign and/or obscure. So they're always surprised when I say Singin' In The Rain. But the only criteria for favourite film is: does it remind you of someone? Does it make you happy? Is it fun to watch? Three definite yay's to those.
The Philadelphia Story - The ABC really did change my life. Daria and I Love Lucy after school, Rage and Recovery Saturday and Sunday mornings, The Late Show on Saturday nights. And all Aunty's done for me since then. It bought this little gem to me. I had always admired Katharine Hepburn, but this movie made me love her. It's clever and funny and the cast is champagne cinema: Ms. Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. It's about a very stubborn socialite, Tracey. She's kicked her ex-husband out, and is remarrying. Meanwhile, she and the rest of her family have shut her father out of the house for the impending nuptials for his infidelity. Add to this two tabloid journalists sent in to get as much dirt on Tracey as they can, under the guise of wanting to cover the wedding for a lifestyle magazine. I haven't seen a lot of Cukor films, but if they're all as expertly handled as this one, then the man was a genius. And hey, he did make The Women and It's a Wonderful Life. There are some pretty choice lines, such as Cary Grant's observation that all writers are alcoholics, and proceeding to wish that he was a writer. But I think the best part is when Hepburn and Stewart get drunk and flirt with one another - some of the best drunk acting I've ever seen in my life. The message of the film is a little ambivalent (there's a hint of the need to put a strong woman in her place),but in the end, as intellectual equals, we all know Hepburn and Grant belong together. And it's all the sweeter when they realise this too.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off - So many things to love, I think my brain will explode if I think about them too much. For some reason, I love films set over a short period of time - like The Breakfast Club, which takes place entirely during a Saturday detention, or Dazed and Confused, which takes place on the last day of school before summer break. And the idea that you can live a lifetime in one day of wagging school is an appealing one. Oh, and young Matthew Broderick - BABE.
Pulp Fiction - I love the way the story unfolds, I love the colour of it, and I love the dialogue and the music. And deep down, the reasons I think it's amazing are the same reasons why I love it. I am a film critic, after all.
Vertigo - It's the romantic cinematography that allows for that feeling of unease to spread through your bones throughout the film, it's the score, but mostly...it's Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster and Edith Head's costume design.
Manhattan - It was so close between this and Annie Hall, but this won out. I love that the lighting is so dark that you can often only make out one character at a time. I love that Allen uses the frame to suggest Isaac's almost subconscious attempts to sabotage all of his relationships - there's a scene in which Isaac, his teenage girlfriend Tracy, his friend Yale and his mistress Mary are walking down the street talking. Mary's control of the conversation and Isaac's unconscious attraction to her is executed perfectly as Isaac is literally pushing Tracy out of the frame and allowing Mary to move into his onscreen space. But what made it pip Annie Hall to the post? The line, 'the winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Maturity award.'
The Royal Tenenbaums - what I love about all of Wes Anderson's film is that they're about family. And how awkward they can make you feel. And I love that his films really are dramas about incredibly serious people who have no idea they're hilarious. Not only that, but I love the almost cartoonish treatment of the characters. But they don't feel one or two-dimensional at all, which is why I love Anderson so much as a director. His films at times are almost tableaux - the most powerful moments are nearly always these static shots. Oh, and Pagoda. I love Pagoda.
The 40 Year Old Virgin - Underneath this story of a guy who has perhaps gone way too long without getting some of the good stuff, and all the crass jokes, is a story about a man who seems to know more about women without physical contact with them than the men who've been physically intimate them. I think Judd Apatow has realised as long as you write at least one joke about porn, you can sneak a message into a film. Sort of the way mum would sneak tomatoes into our rissoles when we were kids. But I still hate most tomatoes. Similarly, I didn't think Knocked Up was that successful at this.
Hot Fuzz - I have loved Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg for a long, long, long time. It's their love of film and their examination of genre that make me love them. That, and their babe status. Why is this on the list rather than Shaun of the Dead? That's like asking why The Empire Strikes Back is better than A New Hope. Or why Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a more superior film. You still love the fun of the original, but the second is more layered, emotionally complex and darker. And has the line, 'you want to be a big copper in a small town? Fuck off up the model village!'
Amelie - When I first watched this film, I couldn't help but be infuriated by Amelie's whimsy - I thought that if she smiled that special needs child smile one more time, I would scream. But then I was introduced to all of the other wonderful characters in the film, and I appreciated Amelie's strength and independence, I learned to love it. And that scene where she rides the Ghost Train looking for the boy of her dreams? Dear me. Best scene committed to film.
And there you have it. I am a pretentious wanker who would appear to favour almost any cinema over her national one. And loves American film more than any other. Damn.
So, the basic idea were films that moved me emotionally, or used the medium of film in a particular way.
So - Here's the list again, including explanations:
Citizen Kane - This film is proof of the almost indefinable perfection of the Classical Hollywood Cinema, because it looks like it's breaking all of the rules. Yet if you're watching very closely, you will see that it glides effortlessly from convention, to experimentation with convention. Not only that, but this is Welles' first film - there are so many techniques he carried over from his experience in radio and theatre that seem so wonderfully suited to cinema that forever after people would be saying to themselves 'why didn't we think of this before?' Oh, and the score by Bernard Herrmann? EXQUISITE.
Vertigo - I'm not even sure where to start on this one. Is it that breathtaking opening by Saul Bass? Is it those 20 minutes in which our protagonist's character and his relationship to Madeleine is slowly revealed in perfect silence? Maybe it's the subtle subversion of Jimmy Stewart's persona? Or is it the romantic treatment of a man's obsession with an image that makes for some wonderfully creepy viewing? It could even be the amazing costumes by Edith Head or the haunting score by Bernard Herrmann. But I believe it just might be one scene after all. It's the scene in which Scottie's makeover of Judy into Madeleine is complete. She walks out of the hotel room, the glow of the green hotel light giving her the appearance of a ghost becoming corporeal as she moves from the bathroom to Scottie. They embrace, and we, like Scottie, no longer care that this is sick and twisted, and that he is crushing a young girl's personality and spirit for his own ends. Because we want the image too. We want Madeleine just as much as he does. And that is why Hitchcock is a fucking genius.
Wild Strawberries - I actually haven't seen this is in a while, and I think it's a testament to Bergman that even though I haven't watched it for ages, I still feel its power as a film. What is so amazing about this film is its story, and the way Bergman portrays the unfolding of a man's character through experimentation with genre, and particular film movements. What I also like is that it's a story about a man and his daughter-in-law - not a relationship you see explored in film very often.
Pulp Fiction - One thing I love about Tarantino is that he's a film geek to the core. Every single film he makes is merely an excuse to admire his favourite filmmakers. The man is also about homage, self-reflexivity, and genre. People may see that as irritating, that he's just assembling his films by taking other more talented filmmakers' work and pretending he thought of it first. Not true at all. What they fail to see is that Tarantino's films are partly a game - it's the cinematic equivalent of putting obscure song lyrics as your Facebook status and waiting to see who recognises them and comments with another line from the song - the effect is twofold; people know you're clever, and you find out which of their friends are awesome like you. So why is Pulp Fiction in particular so good? Well, it's the game. But more than that, it's to Non-Linear Narrative what Citizen Kane and the Classical Hollywood Cinema. What looks like a very celebrated example of a non-linear narrative is actually a perfect example of the three-act structure, and a classical structuring of temporal relations. If you want proof, read 'Breaking, Making, and Killing Time in Pulp Fiction', by Kevin Howley. He translated my thoughts into this article just in time for me to cite him in an essay about Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction and the Classical Hollywood Cinema.
Breathless - Perhaps translated a little roughly, A Bout de Souffle (out of breath, more than Breathless) was one of the first films that changed French cinema in the late 1950s and changed the way critics thought about film as art. Not only were Godard and Co. filmmakers - they were film critics first. Their understanding of film as art allowed them to explore the medium fully. Fascinated by Hollywood cinema, and the work of Hitchcock in particular, Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, and Rohmer sought to make the kinds of films they wanted to see, and elevate Hollywood cinema to the status of art. Breathless is Godard's exploration of the Film Noir genre. Where Welles' exploration was one that stayed within the conventions of the classical Hollywood cinema, Godard's seems to stay firmly outside it, taking a conventional plot and story and subverting it - while the classical Hollywood cinema privileges character motivation in service of the narrative, Godard removes it almost entirely. But the brilliance is that he doesn't entirely removes it but merely makes the cinema itself the character motivation. His anti-hero, Poiccard, acts like a character in a Film Noir. Patricia acts as the femme fatale, because she is the femme fatale and this is how they act. The other reason I love this film is because Patricia and Poiccard escape to a cinema and watch a film - the film is merely two actors reciting lines from a Voltaire poem, another clear statement from Godard that the cinema is pure art.
Taxi Driver - some have suggested that Scorsese hasn't made any films recently that have surpassed his former glory, and while that's probably true, I find many of his films seem to be a sort of history of masculinity and violence in America. And on that level you can't dismiss the power of films like Gangs of New York and The Departed, films that are most definitely a part of this cycle, even if you don't like them. I hate the former and like the latter, by the way. What I love about Taxi Driver is that it is an exercise in unease. Nothing much happens until the end, but the film is all about the climax. And that's true of every film, or should be, but the beauty of Taxi Driver is following a young man as he slowly unravels. In his mind, he is becoming a hero. The audience can only see a man becoming incredibly dangerous. And at the end, you're not sure if he's going to kill the girl he is trying to save, or rescue her. And if that storyline sounds familiar, then you've seen John Ford's The Searchers. Scorsese takes this idea of a flawed hero and turns the entire film into a character study. Not only that, but it also belongs to a series of films exploring the Vietnam War's effect on the men who returned home. Mean Streets is also an interesting take on this idea of the Vietam Vet and his capacity for violence. So is First Blood...yes, I'm referring to Rambo.
Crimes and Misdemeanors - I've devoted an entire blog to why this film is legen - wait for it - dary in the past, but if you can't be bothered reading that post, then I shall sum it up here. Essentially, the film is a study in morality and faith. What if everything we believed about acting in a moral way was wrong? If we are never punished for our misdeeds, either by the law or by what we refer to as our conscience or soul, how then do we derive meaning from the world? Is it proof that God cannot exist if a man can commit a terrible crime and never feel the effects of what he has done? Yes, a Woody Allen films explores all of these questions. And I was so tempted to put Manhattan in this list but thought it would be strange to have two Allen films in this list. I'll talk about it in the other section.
Rashomon - I've heard it said that Kurosawa's Rashomon has no English title because the word Rashomon is actually a kind of Japanese onomatopoeia - a word describing the sound a moving train makes. I've been too scared to Google it, because I really hope that's true. The film uses the perspective of multiple witnesses to portray one event, which was pretty pioneer type stuff when the film was made. The story is this: a nobleman is murdered, his wife raped, and a local bandit has been put on trial for the crime. A witness to some of the events relays the court proceedings to a monk while seeking refuge in a monastery during a rainstorm. The bandit gives his account, the noblewoman, and even the nobleman, through the use of a...erm, like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost. Only no one gets to make out with the noblewoman. Anyway. Their accounts of the event are all different - the bandit portrays himself as the victim, as does the noblewoman. The nobleman portrays himself as a fallen hero. However, the witness has seen more than they realise, and reveals them all to be selfish cowards. But the film's true message, and this is why it kicks serious arse, is that the concept of objective reality may be nonexistent at worst and problematic at best. Memory is subjective, and our perspective will always be coloured by our personal investment in situations. And you thought Kurosawa was awesome because he inspired Lucas in writing Star Wars. Oh, and Toshiro Mifune is a one-man masterclass in acting as the Bandit.
No Country For Old Men - The Coen Brother have made some seriously awesome films - Fargo and Blood Simple spring immediately to mind, but this may be their masterpiece. It's almost flawless. The acting is incredible, particularly Brolin and Bardem. The editing perfectly elicits tension at all moments. The cinematography is breathtaking. And the much talked-about ending is absolutely spot on. I've also been told that it is almost completely faithful to Cormac McCarthy's novel. I'll just bet it is. Never stop making films, Ethan and Joel. Please.
Mystic River - Clint Eastwood is the king of making films that in anyone else's hands could be cliche-laden. Gran Torino is the story of an old racist learning a valuable life lesson from an Asian teen and his family. That just sounds ready for sentimentality and heavy-handed moralising. But it's Eastwood so it's an touching examination of the ways in which violence separates people. Mystic River's spot in my list is earned in its end: When Sean Penn's character seeks vengeance for his daughter's murder and enacts it, we the audience see that he has the wrong man. And it's utterly devastating.
Und now, for my most loved films and why.
Singin' In The Rain - I could list all of its cinematic virtues, but that's not why it's top of my list of most-loved films of all time. The reason is simple. My mum loved it. My mum died when I was 15, and I don't think I will ever quite move on, some 12 years later. It's so horrible to lose a parent, especially when they're the parent you get along with best. The first time I watched Singin' In the Rain was with Mum, on the ABC one Friday night. I think she was making me comb her hair at the time. But we stopped and just sat and enjoyed the film, and honestly, I think it was the most fun film I'd ever seen - and Gene Kelly, what a fox! People often ask; what's your favourite film of all time? And knowing study film, they're expecting something pretentious and/or foreign and/or obscure. So they're always surprised when I say Singin' In The Rain. But the only criteria for favourite film is: does it remind you of someone? Does it make you happy? Is it fun to watch? Three definite yay's to those.
The Philadelphia Story - The ABC really did change my life. Daria and I Love Lucy after school, Rage and Recovery Saturday and Sunday mornings, The Late Show on Saturday nights. And all Aunty's done for me since then. It bought this little gem to me. I had always admired Katharine Hepburn, but this movie made me love her. It's clever and funny and the cast is champagne cinema: Ms. Hepburn, Cary Grant, and James Stewart. It's about a very stubborn socialite, Tracey. She's kicked her ex-husband out, and is remarrying. Meanwhile, she and the rest of her family have shut her father out of the house for the impending nuptials for his infidelity. Add to this two tabloid journalists sent in to get as much dirt on Tracey as they can, under the guise of wanting to cover the wedding for a lifestyle magazine. I haven't seen a lot of Cukor films, but if they're all as expertly handled as this one, then the man was a genius. And hey, he did make The Women and It's a Wonderful Life. There are some pretty choice lines, such as Cary Grant's observation that all writers are alcoholics, and proceeding to wish that he was a writer. But I think the best part is when Hepburn and Stewart get drunk and flirt with one another - some of the best drunk acting I've ever seen in my life. The message of the film is a little ambivalent (there's a hint of the need to put a strong woman in her place),but in the end, as intellectual equals, we all know Hepburn and Grant belong together. And it's all the sweeter when they realise this too.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off - So many things to love, I think my brain will explode if I think about them too much. For some reason, I love films set over a short period of time - like The Breakfast Club, which takes place entirely during a Saturday detention, or Dazed and Confused, which takes place on the last day of school before summer break. And the idea that you can live a lifetime in one day of wagging school is an appealing one. Oh, and young Matthew Broderick - BABE.
Pulp Fiction - I love the way the story unfolds, I love the colour of it, and I love the dialogue and the music. And deep down, the reasons I think it's amazing are the same reasons why I love it. I am a film critic, after all.
Vertigo - It's the romantic cinematography that allows for that feeling of unease to spread through your bones throughout the film, it's the score, but mostly...it's Kim Novak as Madeleine Elster and Edith Head's costume design.
Manhattan - It was so close between this and Annie Hall, but this won out. I love that the lighting is so dark that you can often only make out one character at a time. I love that Allen uses the frame to suggest Isaac's almost subconscious attempts to sabotage all of his relationships - there's a scene in which Isaac, his teenage girlfriend Tracy, his friend Yale and his mistress Mary are walking down the street talking. Mary's control of the conversation and Isaac's unconscious attraction to her is executed perfectly as Isaac is literally pushing Tracy out of the frame and allowing Mary to move into his onscreen space. But what made it pip Annie Hall to the post? The line, 'the winner of the Zelda Fitzgerald Emotional Maturity award.'
The Royal Tenenbaums - what I love about all of Wes Anderson's film is that they're about family. And how awkward they can make you feel. And I love that his films really are dramas about incredibly serious people who have no idea they're hilarious. Not only that, but I love the almost cartoonish treatment of the characters. But they don't feel one or two-dimensional at all, which is why I love Anderson so much as a director. His films at times are almost tableaux - the most powerful moments are nearly always these static shots. Oh, and Pagoda. I love Pagoda.
The 40 Year Old Virgin - Underneath this story of a guy who has perhaps gone way too long without getting some of the good stuff, and all the crass jokes, is a story about a man who seems to know more about women without physical contact with them than the men who've been physically intimate them. I think Judd Apatow has realised as long as you write at least one joke about porn, you can sneak a message into a film. Sort of the way mum would sneak tomatoes into our rissoles when we were kids. But I still hate most tomatoes. Similarly, I didn't think Knocked Up was that successful at this.
Hot Fuzz - I have loved Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg for a long, long, long time. It's their love of film and their examination of genre that make me love them. That, and their babe status. Why is this on the list rather than Shaun of the Dead? That's like asking why The Empire Strikes Back is better than A New Hope. Or why Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a more superior film. You still love the fun of the original, but the second is more layered, emotionally complex and darker. And has the line, 'you want to be a big copper in a small town? Fuck off up the model village!'
Amelie - When I first watched this film, I couldn't help but be infuriated by Amelie's whimsy - I thought that if she smiled that special needs child smile one more time, I would scream. But then I was introduced to all of the other wonderful characters in the film, and I appreciated Amelie's strength and independence, I learned to love it. And that scene where she rides the Ghost Train looking for the boy of her dreams? Dear me. Best scene committed to film.
And there you have it. I am a pretentious wanker who would appear to favour almost any cinema over her national one. And loves American film more than any other. Damn.
Pretentious Top Tens
So I came across an insanely pretentious Top Ten on a scenester's blog, and it made me think about the films I think are amazing, and I wonder if they're not just as pretentious?
I personally didn't think someone could actually watch a lot of the films on the list more than once, but I think sometimes the films you think are the best films aren't necessarily the ones that you love and watch all the time. For me, these top tens would be very different.
To demonstrate this, I will give you the list of my top ten best films, and my favourite films.
Top Ten Best Films
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
No Country For Old Men (Coen Brothers, 2007)
Mystic River (Eastwood, 2003)
11th on the list (Hottest 100 does it, so why can't I?)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
They're tied - couldn't decide.
Very almost unashamedly American. Almost.
Top Ten Loved Films
Singin' In The Rain (Donen, 1952)
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Hughes, 1986)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (Apatow, 2005)
Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)
Amelie (Jeunet, 2001)
11th
The Hangover (Phillips, 2009)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Stoller, 2008)
I'm as surprised by you probably are to find that there are common films on both lists. What is interesting, though not that surprising to me, is that the films I think are incredibly powerful either contain violence or carry a threat of implicit violence, or a story of flawed men - or both. Meanwhile, the films I love are mostly comedies, but they too are mostly about deeply flawed men, or contain violence, or both. Luckily, three of them are predominantly about strong, independent, eccentric women.
I really must explore my fascination with representations of masculinity. Which reminds me - Bad Education (Almodovar, 2004) should really be on these lists.
I personally didn't think someone could actually watch a lot of the films on the list more than once, but I think sometimes the films you think are the best films aren't necessarily the ones that you love and watch all the time. For me, these top tens would be very different.
To demonstrate this, I will give you the list of my top ten best films, and my favourite films.
Top Ten Best Films
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, 1957)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Breathless (Godard, 1960)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)
Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
No Country For Old Men (Coen Brothers, 2007)
Mystic River (Eastwood, 2003)
11th on the list (Hottest 100 does it, so why can't I?)
Chungking Express (Wong, 1994)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
They're tied - couldn't decide.
Very almost unashamedly American. Almost.
Top Ten Loved Films
Singin' In The Rain (Donen, 1952)
The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (Hughes, 1986)
Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson, 2001)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (Apatow, 2005)
Hot Fuzz (Wright, 2007)
Amelie (Jeunet, 2001)
11th
The Hangover (Phillips, 2009)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Stoller, 2008)
I'm as surprised by you probably are to find that there are common films on both lists. What is interesting, though not that surprising to me, is that the films I think are incredibly powerful either contain violence or carry a threat of implicit violence, or a story of flawed men - or both. Meanwhile, the films I love are mostly comedies, but they too are mostly about deeply flawed men, or contain violence, or both. Luckily, three of them are predominantly about strong, independent, eccentric women.
I really must explore my fascination with representations of masculinity. Which reminds me - Bad Education (Almodovar, 2004) should really be on these lists.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Face of Narcissus feels Nauseated about her apathy.
So I'm almost finished the first of the fiction I've been referring to as 'research' (God, I hope that means I can claim them on tax or something), Emile Zola's The Kill, and the characters are performing a tableaux of the story of Narcissus and Echo. Mention is made of the Liriope, mother of Narcissus. And I had, not brain-freeze, but brainwave.
I was inspired by the Swell Season in my story of the cost of indulgence and the ways in which we use fiction to console ourselves about our life choices, and I've been searching for a protagonist - as I stood on the balcony of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, overlooking the Harbour surrounded by Sydney's cultural elite, sipping red wine and boutique beer, I felt like I needed a female voice - mostly because I am one, and because so many films have a very dominant male voice (the hangover, etc). I always played Sonia in Mortal Kombat, and I feel this is merely the logical development of my early feminist gaming tendencies.
But I am definitely not setting out to make an Australian Gossip Girl - I can't keep up with the Oedipal drama and high fashion. And I don't want to simply retell the stories I've been reading.
Advice I received last week was figure out what story you want to tell. Extremely good advice. But I also need to know my characters or at the very least, my main character.
I want to explore these ideas of the pursuit of hedonism at all costs, the idle rich, morality, and the way we use fiction to try and balance out the inequaliy we all face in society.
But I forgot someone I really shouldn't have. Jean Paul Sartre. I began reading Nausea and put it down ages ago. Mistake. Because I think I'm feeling this existential nausea. I wanted to explore my apathy toward the world and my interest in, well, mostly my hair. Do I really not care? Is my own life meaningless? What if a person was to suddenly realise that their life is devoid of anything more than an obssession with images. Would it make them feel ill?
And just by seeing that name, Liriope, I knew I had my heroine and a story to tell. Liriope Clifton, socialite, obssessed with nothing but the new, suddenly wonders if her life without meaning? Why can't she bring herself to care about things that other people care about, things that are apparently of substance? Global warming, poverty, inequality, homelessness, etc. Does she belong to a world entirely without a moral compass?
Is she simply worried about an arbitrary societal construct? What does it mean to have a meaningful life? What does it mean if it is all arbitrary?
Perhaps I am just retelling Nausea. But it's fine if I'm reinterpreting it and placing it in a different societal and cultural context?
Meanwhile, can anybody tell me how to find a black wool or felt cloche hat for Autumn/Winter? I'm feeling a roaring 20s look, but with an edge. And by edge I mean wearing jeans.
I was inspired by the Swell Season in my story of the cost of indulgence and the ways in which we use fiction to console ourselves about our life choices, and I've been searching for a protagonist - as I stood on the balcony of the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House, overlooking the Harbour surrounded by Sydney's cultural elite, sipping red wine and boutique beer, I felt like I needed a female voice - mostly because I am one, and because so many films have a very dominant male voice (the hangover, etc). I always played Sonia in Mortal Kombat, and I feel this is merely the logical development of my early feminist gaming tendencies.
But I am definitely not setting out to make an Australian Gossip Girl - I can't keep up with the Oedipal drama and high fashion. And I don't want to simply retell the stories I've been reading.
Advice I received last week was figure out what story you want to tell. Extremely good advice. But I also need to know my characters or at the very least, my main character.
I want to explore these ideas of the pursuit of hedonism at all costs, the idle rich, morality, and the way we use fiction to try and balance out the inequaliy we all face in society.
But I forgot someone I really shouldn't have. Jean Paul Sartre. I began reading Nausea and put it down ages ago. Mistake. Because I think I'm feeling this existential nausea. I wanted to explore my apathy toward the world and my interest in, well, mostly my hair. Do I really not care? Is my own life meaningless? What if a person was to suddenly realise that their life is devoid of anything more than an obssession with images. Would it make them feel ill?
And just by seeing that name, Liriope, I knew I had my heroine and a story to tell. Liriope Clifton, socialite, obssessed with nothing but the new, suddenly wonders if her life without meaning? Why can't she bring herself to care about things that other people care about, things that are apparently of substance? Global warming, poverty, inequality, homelessness, etc. Does she belong to a world entirely without a moral compass?
Is she simply worried about an arbitrary societal construct? What does it mean to have a meaningful life? What does it mean if it is all arbitrary?
Perhaps I am just retelling Nausea. But it's fine if I'm reinterpreting it and placing it in a different societal and cultural context?
Meanwhile, can anybody tell me how to find a black wool or felt cloche hat for Autumn/Winter? I'm feeling a roaring 20s look, but with an edge. And by edge I mean wearing jeans.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. -Oscar Wilde
Hello there. It's been a while. You look good, have you lost weight? Oh. Well, your hair looks - oh. Ahem.
I haven't blogged in a while and I sincerely apologise to my large and devoted readership. Just let me dream, will ya? Anyways, I've been writing something with a friend and of course, because I just love the blog, I've been focused on that one and not on this one.
But my mind has been a-tick, tick, tickin' away. If you've read my previous entries, and I just know you have...ahem...you'll know that I've been reading and watching a lot of stories about morality and the soul and the very things that ole Oscar is talking about in this entry's subject. The idea that we use all of these devices to justify our position in life to ourselves. I've been reading a lot about the idle rich and watching what could only be described as a shitload of Gossip Girl and though I'm not sure at this stage which side I'm coming out as being on (do I write something that glamourises high society or do I tread in the same shoes as Wilde, Fitzgerald and co. and write yet another story of the cost of living the high life?), but inspiration has come perhaps the unlikeliest of places: Irish folk music.
I believe I've written before about the ways in which music can inspire a story or a mere image for me, and last night I went to see the Swell Season at the Sydney Opera House. For those of you who have never heard of them, watch the film Once. More than once. What inspired me was a group of artists truly passionate about their art and revelling in it - they were all so happy to be there and it was lovely. And this passionate, meaningful, organic performance seems to be in complete contrast to the kind of story I'm developing, but it made me ask myself what I want to communicate with this project. And their last song really added a new dimension.
It was a traditional Irish song called The Parting Glass. Sung at gatherings and particularly at wakes, the song is about wishing people well. No fear, no regrets, no guilt. At wakes it is sung from the perspective of the corpse. Essentially asking those left behind not to be sad, to let go and just appreciate the time we have on this earth. It was so moving. And I think what I want to say with my project is this: do whatever you want, just make sure it means something to you.
Thoughts, etc?
I haven't blogged in a while and I sincerely apologise to my large and devoted readership. Just let me dream, will ya? Anyways, I've been writing something with a friend and of course, because I just love the blog, I've been focused on that one and not on this one.
But my mind has been a-tick, tick, tickin' away. If you've read my previous entries, and I just know you have...ahem...you'll know that I've been reading and watching a lot of stories about morality and the soul and the very things that ole Oscar is talking about in this entry's subject. The idea that we use all of these devices to justify our position in life to ourselves. I've been reading a lot about the idle rich and watching what could only be described as a shitload of Gossip Girl and though I'm not sure at this stage which side I'm coming out as being on (do I write something that glamourises high society or do I tread in the same shoes as Wilde, Fitzgerald and co. and write yet another story of the cost of living the high life?), but inspiration has come perhaps the unlikeliest of places: Irish folk music.
I believe I've written before about the ways in which music can inspire a story or a mere image for me, and last night I went to see the Swell Season at the Sydney Opera House. For those of you who have never heard of them, watch the film Once. More than once. What inspired me was a group of artists truly passionate about their art and revelling in it - they were all so happy to be there and it was lovely. And this passionate, meaningful, organic performance seems to be in complete contrast to the kind of story I'm developing, but it made me ask myself what I want to communicate with this project. And their last song really added a new dimension.
It was a traditional Irish song called The Parting Glass. Sung at gatherings and particularly at wakes, the song is about wishing people well. No fear, no regrets, no guilt. At wakes it is sung from the perspective of the corpse. Essentially asking those left behind not to be sad, to let go and just appreciate the time we have on this earth. It was so moving. And I think what I want to say with my project is this: do whatever you want, just make sure it means something to you.
Thoughts, etc?
Monday, February 8, 2010
An Andalusian Dog is a Cemetery Man's Best Friend: The Body in Art Cinema and Horror
There has long been the perception of art cinema and the avant-garde as something belonging to high culture and horror belonging to low culture. Joan Hawkins argues that the relationship between art cinema, experimental film and the avant-garde, and horror or low forms of cinema is much more complicated than that, arguing that “the lines between arthouse (high culture) cinema and trash (exploitation, horror, soft porn etc) have never been as clear-cut...The midnight screenings and “grindhouses… that once enlivened Times Square”... were historically the site where high art and trash cinema commingled in the United States.”i Arthouse cinema or more particularly alternative cinemas to that of the Classical Hollywood Cinema have been always been marked as being outside of traditional cinema and at this level, both art cinema and horror share this position outside the mainstream. It can also be argued that art cinema and horror share the same thematic concerns and demand similar responses from the spectator, particularly in the ways in which both art cinema and horror treat images of the body. Indeed, I first viewed Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou (1928) and Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) in a course examining the development of the horror genre. Though this has been met with surprise from academics and fellow students alike, it is not so strange when considering that both art cinema and horror often focus on explorations of the body and its representation onscreen, and often rely on eliciting a bodily response from the spectator. I would argue that it is the main aim of both the avant-garde and art cinema and horror to challenge traditional notions of narrative and therefore provide a space for an alternative experience of the cinema. But the question remains, for what purpose does each cinema achieve this?
Bryan Frye argues that at the heart of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage's work, in particular his Pittsburgh Trilogy, is a concern with “with metaphysical questions of Being:”ii
The three films: Eyes, Deus Ex, and The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, document the police, a hospital and a morgue, respectively. All focus on the mechanics of the body: how it is ordered in life, how it is repaired when broken, and what remains when the person who animates it has perished.iii
The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes has a particular focus on the body. As Frye describes, the film is set in a morgue and chronicles the process of an autopsy. Hawkins suggests that the film “encourages an uncomfortably visceral reaction in the spectator,”iv while Amos Vogel offers a slightly different perspective on the film's subject matter and Brakhage's possible intent with the work, arguing that “[the film] dispassionately records whatever transpires in front of the lens: bodies sliced length-wise, organs removed, skulls and scalp cut open with electrical tools.”v While the camera may be recording dispassionately, Brakhage, arguably, is not and demands a similarly passionate response from the viewer, especially if, if Frye is correct, Brakhage sought to represent in his work not reality, but the act of perceiving the world. A spectator of The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes is surely being asked to meditate on the human condition, to bear witness to the decay of the body. While this may not be quite the same intent of the horror film, there is still a focus on the decay of the body, with a demand that the spectator contemplate the demise of their own body.
Many of Brakhage's films, including The Dead (1960) and Sirius Remembered (1959), reflect on the decay of the body, and what happens after we die. The Dead, filmed in Le Cimitiere du Père Lachaise in Paris, uses images from the tombs of the dead, while Sirius Remembered uses images of the decay of a family dog after its death. In what way does Brakhage's analyses of death and decay echo the horror film's analysis of the same themes of mortality and human frailty?
In an article published in The Guardian, Shaun of the Dead writer Simon Pegg had this to say on the subject of zombies:
As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.vi
While Pegg may not be relating this from a perspective of art cinema, what he is suggesting echoes Frye's analysis of Brakhage's Pittsburgh Trilogy – the exploration of death and the decay of the body, and the question of what happens after we die. Not only that, but both Brakhage's films and zombie films such as Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004), George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) reveal our fear of death and the complex relationship we have to our body – the desire to, and simultaneous fear of, witnessing the body in decay. Not only that, but they also offer an insight into the rituals and processes involved in death. For example, in Romero's film there is a theme of the improper attitude toward the dead – the film opens with a brother and sister visiting the grave of their father. The brother's lack of respect for his father's memory results in his attack by a member of the undead, resulting in him cracking his skull on a tombstone. More than anything else, for the spectator at least, the zombie film is characterised by the human fear of death, and of seeing our mortality and that of our loved ones, but as R.H.W Dillard notes:
The idea of the dead's return to a kind of life is no new idea; it is present in all the ancient tales of vampires and ghouls and zombies, and it has been no stranger to films...All these tales and films spring from that ancient fear of the dead.vii
As Brakhage's films and their release prior to Romero's Night of the Living Dead will attest, it is not simply Hollywood or even narrative cinema in general that has examined these themes of death and mortality – as an alternative to narrative cinema, the art film can engage directly with the spectator on these themes and privilege emotion and sensation rather than the intellectual processes of film spectatorship. However, as Kyle Bishop points out, the zombie is primarily a visual manifestation of the human fear of mortality, and thus can engage the spectator in a similar way to that of Brakhage and his peers, arguing that “because zombies do not speak, all their intentions and activities are manifested solely through physical action. In other words, because of this sensual limitation, zombies must be watched.”viii What Bishop suggests is that because the zombie is limited to the sensual, so must the spectator. There is virtually nothing to do but watch the degradation of the human body, and watch it attack the living as an extreme metaphor for mortality. Again, this echoes Frye's estimation of the images in Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes:
The key image of The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes is quite likely the bluntest statement on the human condition ever filmed. In the course of an autopsy, the skin around the scalp is slit with a scalpel, and in preparation for exposing and examining the brain, the face of each cadaver is literally peeled off, like a mask, revealing the raw meat beneath. That image, once seen, will never leave you.ix
Not only that, but Brakhage also limits his images to the realm of sensation, by not using sound in these particular films. Once again, both the zombie film and Brakhage's exploration of the body both demand a purely visual and emotional response from the spectator at the sight of the body's decay. Though one is placed within a traditional narrative framework, the slow-moving advance of a silent being onscreen arguably disrupts the narrative and goes beyond it – as it asks for nothing more than a sensational response.
Michael Koller writes that within his work, Luis Buñuel reveals perhaps an intention to “shock and insult the intellectual bourgeoisie.”x The film opens with the title Il etait une fois (Once Upon a Time), then we cut to the image of a barber, played by Buñuel himself, sharpening a razor. He walks outside and looks up at the full moon. We then cut to the barber holding a woman's head in place. Drawing the razor up to her eye, he holds it open. Then, we cut to the full moon being sliced by a cloud, and it seems the spectator can make the assumption that the slicing of the woman's eye will not be shown, the cloud cutting the moon acting as the visual metaphor for what is about to happen to her. Instead, Buñuel cuts back to an extreme close-up of the woman's eye as the razor slices through it, spilling open the contents. It is also worth noting that the eye slicing, for all intents and purposes, is real. Buñuel used a dead calf's eye in place of the woman. This is also not the only scene to feature dead animals – in a later scene a man drags a grand piano piled with dead donkeys.
While this opening image is indeed shocking in its immediacy and proximity to reality, and many fellow students loudly exclaimed with shock and surprise during the viewing in our class on the horror film, there is also another dimension to this scene in the film. This is the boundary between the the body that is seen, and the body that is unseen. There are films in which this boundary is revealed to be flimsy at best and nonexistent at worst. Clover argues that this is also part of the fascination audiences have with the horror film, citing examples from Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974):
Beyond that, the slasher evinces a fascination with flesh or meat itself as that which is hidden from view. When the hitchhiker in Texas Chainsaw 1 slits open his hand for the thrill, the onlookers all recoil in horror – all but Franklin, who seems fascinated by the realisation that all that lies between the visible, knowableoutside of the body and its secret insides is one thin membrane, protected only by a collective taboo against its violation. It is no surprise that the rise of the slasher film is concomitant with the development of special effects that let us see with our own eyes the opened body.xi
Clover argues that the horror film and the slasher film in particular has opened up a new way of seeing the unseen – and that this has changed the way spectators regard depictions of violence onscreen, arguing that in the modern horror film “we see heads being stepped on so that the eyes pop out, a face being flayed, a decapitation, a hypodermic needle penetrating an eyeball in close-up, and so on.”xii Indeed, it appears that she can also add 'eyeballs being sliced with a razor' to the list. She argues that this is a new trend within the cinema and especially the horror film, and that these advances in technology engender a new, more complex spectator response:
With this new explicitness also comes a new tone. If the horror of Psycho was taken seriously, the “horror” of the slasher films is of a rather more complicated sort. Audiences express uproarious disgust (“gross!”) as often as they express fear, and it is clear that the makers of slasher films pursue the combination.xiii
While Clover's main focus is on the development of the horror film and the pattern of representation of gender within it, she may have overlooked that this phenomenon in film is not limited to the horror film, and neither is it mutually exclusive with advancements in special effects technologies. In 1928, Buñuel and Dali were employing the same techniques that later makers of the slasher film would employ, and it is an effect still experienced in the present. Koller argues that the opening image of Un Chien Andalou is still shocking today, and the reaction of my classmates in the viewing of the film would seem to testify to this. This onscreen fascination with revealing the inner workings of the body produces a particular effect in the spectator and again, the kinds of audience response to these images in both art films such as The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes and Un Chien Andalou in particular is again linked inextricably to the horror film.
In her article 'Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, Excess,' Linda Williams relates that she and her young son look to view films that “promise to be sensational, to give our bodies an actual physical jolt.”xiv These are films often categorised as being 'gross', and she identifies these 'gross' films as belonging to a wider genre she calls body genres. These are films that trade almost exclusively on images designed to elicit a bodily response from the spectator:
What are the pertinent features of bodily excess shared by ...'gross' genres? First, there is the spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion...The body spectacle is featured most sensationally in pornography's portrayal of the orgasm, in horror's portrayal of violence and terror, and in the melodrama's portrayal of weeping.xv
For Williams, what separates these genres from other film genres that elicit a physical response from the spectator, such as comedy, is the idea that there is too much emphasis on the physical response on the spectator, and indeed too much emphasis on the spectacle of the body, and this is why they are deemed 'gross': their focus on sensation rather than narrative is what evokes disgust. Not only this, but Williams argues that because of this, spectators feel manipulated by body genre films – they feel they are being, in effect, forced to have an emotional and bodily connection to the images onscreen.xvi
One may suggest, from this, that while avant-garde filmmakers such as Brakhage, Buñuel, Dali, and Deren may on the surface reflect the same thematic concerns and engagement with the spectator as makers of horror films such as Romero, Pegg, Wright, and Hooper, the intention is completely different; artist filmmakers do not seek to manipulate the spectator, but only ask for an alternate way of experiencing the cinema. As Joan Hawkins notes, so the argument goes that films like The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes “use sensational material differently than many body genre films do...[and] are deemed to have a higher cultural purpose, and certainly a different artistic intent.”xvii The first response to that argument is that in the study of spectatorship the emphasis is on the way in which the spectator interprets the images, and not an examination of the intent of the filmmaker. And whether the artistic intent or cultural purpose is different or not, as Joan Hawkins observes, film audiences tend to feel similarly toward art cinema as they do toward horror:
Clearly designed to break the audience's aesthetic distance, the films encourage the kind of excessive physical response that we would generally attribute to horror. Furthermore, their excessive visual force...mark them as subversive. Banned, marginalised through being screened exclusively in museums and classrooms, these are films that most mainstream film patrons will never see.xviii
And while the former is elevated to a higher cultural status than the latter, film audiences traditionally feel a certain amount of frustration with both, because of their existence outside the boundaries of narrative. They are both either banned from public theatres, or restricted to viewing in galleries. Both can be difficult to access for people interested in these films. This frustration with the art film's apparent refusal to have an easily accessible meaning or structure would arguably lead to a similar feeling of manipulation or disgust with the images the spectator is presented with.
Buñuel and Dali both argue that Un Chien Andalou is a conscious attempt to reject meaning, with Buñuel himself stating that “our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” Buñuel went even further, explaining that “We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why.”xix This statement is interesting, because when it comes to the cinema and the spectator, it is almost impossible for the consumer of an image not to attempt to make meaning from the images, despite the aim of the producer of the image. The simple act of viewing a film involves deriving meaning from a set of seemingly randomly assembled images. What causes perhaps an alternative viewing experience when the spectator views a film such as Un Chien Andalou is the refusal of the film's images to allow for meaning or narrative structure, and the spectator's natural desire to derive meaning from the images. Koller asserts that due to the nature of the film and the intent of filmmakers Buñuel and Dali, the film is “open to a myriad of interpretations, rendering such analyses redundant.”xx
The film appears to provide a space in which to contemplate two aspects of the cinema and its engagement with the spectator; the desire to see the unseen, and the extent to which a film can evoke a response from the spectator at a bodily level. The experience of viewing Un Chien Andalou is apart from that of a narrative film, and this is heightened, perhaps ironically, through the use of the conventional editing techniques of narrative cinema, most notably, devices for the structuring of time (titles such as Once Upon a Time, and 8 Years Later). Dali asserts that the aim of the film is “to disrupt the mental anxiety of the spectator,” and we can already see that the film demands a particular kind of viewing experience separate from traditional narrative films.xxi The film demands an emotional and bodily response, as an intellectual response is refused at all points both within the film and by the filmmakers themselves. In this way, the link between the film and horror is clear. These techniques all serve to evoke a response from the spectator that deals primarily in sensation, not interpretation.
Williams notes that all forms of cinema are characterised by their opposition to conventional narrative cinema:
The repetitive formulas and spectacles of film genres are often defined by their differences from the classical realist style of narrative cinema. These classical films have been characterised as efficient action-centred, goal-oriented linear narratives driven by the desire of a single protagonist, involving one or two lines of action, and leading to definitive closure.xxii
Both art cinema and horror films most often operate outside of the 'classical realist style of narrative cinema.' In this regard we can consider them as belonging to a cinema with an alternative system of constructing meaning from sets of images. Both art films such as The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes and Un Chien Andalou and horror films such as Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre use images of the body in order to challenge the spectator and evoke an alternative response from them. According to Aristotle, "objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies."xxiii All of the aforementioned films use the reality of the body in such a way as to allow the spectator to witness and reflect on mortality and the unseen parts of the body and in that way also push the boundaries between the cinema screen and the audience. And as Hawkins argues, these can be used to both “challenge and titillate:”xxiv
...one kind of audience pleasure – doesn't necessarily preclude the other. It is possible for someone to be intellectually challenged and physically titillated; and it is possible for someone to simultaneously enjoy both the intellectual and physical stimulation.xxv
Arguably, it is a testament to the power of alternative forms of cinema such as art cinema and body genres such as horror that they can produce both of these sensations in a way that stands apart from the more traditional forms of cinema, and this goes beyond questions of high and low culture and perhaps even gender, as it is a phenomenon that takes place entirely in the body of the spectator engaging with the images onscreen. The images these films produce must not only be watched – they must be felt, too.
So....there are endnotes, but I can't copy them on my computer. They will be here soon, promise.
Bryan Frye argues that at the heart of experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage's work, in particular his Pittsburgh Trilogy, is a concern with “with metaphysical questions of Being:”ii
The three films: Eyes, Deus Ex, and The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes, document the police, a hospital and a morgue, respectively. All focus on the mechanics of the body: how it is ordered in life, how it is repaired when broken, and what remains when the person who animates it has perished.iii
The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes has a particular focus on the body. As Frye describes, the film is set in a morgue and chronicles the process of an autopsy. Hawkins suggests that the film “encourages an uncomfortably visceral reaction in the spectator,”iv while Amos Vogel offers a slightly different perspective on the film's subject matter and Brakhage's possible intent with the work, arguing that “[the film] dispassionately records whatever transpires in front of the lens: bodies sliced length-wise, organs removed, skulls and scalp cut open with electrical tools.”v While the camera may be recording dispassionately, Brakhage, arguably, is not and demands a similarly passionate response from the viewer, especially if, if Frye is correct, Brakhage sought to represent in his work not reality, but the act of perceiving the world. A spectator of The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes is surely being asked to meditate on the human condition, to bear witness to the decay of the body. While this may not be quite the same intent of the horror film, there is still a focus on the decay of the body, with a demand that the spectator contemplate the demise of their own body.
Many of Brakhage's films, including The Dead (1960) and Sirius Remembered (1959), reflect on the decay of the body, and what happens after we die. The Dead, filmed in Le Cimitiere du Père Lachaise in Paris, uses images from the tombs of the dead, while Sirius Remembered uses images of the decay of a family dog after its death. In what way does Brakhage's analyses of death and decay echo the horror film's analysis of the same themes of mortality and human frailty?
In an article published in The Guardian, Shaun of the Dead writer Simon Pegg had this to say on the subject of zombies:
As monsters from the id, zombies win out over vampires and werewolves when it comes to the title of Most Potent Metaphorical Monster. Where their pointy-toothed cousins are all about sex and bestial savagery, the zombie trumps all by personifying our deepest fear: death. Zombies are our destiny writ large. Slow and steady in their approach, weak, clumsy, often absurd, the zombie relentlessly closes in, unstoppable, intractable.vi
While Pegg may not be relating this from a perspective of art cinema, what he is suggesting echoes Frye's analysis of Brakhage's Pittsburgh Trilogy – the exploration of death and the decay of the body, and the question of what happens after we die. Not only that, but both Brakhage's films and zombie films such as Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004), George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Michele Soavi's Dellamorte Dellamore (1994) reveal our fear of death and the complex relationship we have to our body – the desire to, and simultaneous fear of, witnessing the body in decay. Not only that, but they also offer an insight into the rituals and processes involved in death. For example, in Romero's film there is a theme of the improper attitude toward the dead – the film opens with a brother and sister visiting the grave of their father. The brother's lack of respect for his father's memory results in his attack by a member of the undead, resulting in him cracking his skull on a tombstone. More than anything else, for the spectator at least, the zombie film is characterised by the human fear of death, and of seeing our mortality and that of our loved ones, but as R.H.W Dillard notes:
The idea of the dead's return to a kind of life is no new idea; it is present in all the ancient tales of vampires and ghouls and zombies, and it has been no stranger to films...All these tales and films spring from that ancient fear of the dead.vii
As Brakhage's films and their release prior to Romero's Night of the Living Dead will attest, it is not simply Hollywood or even narrative cinema in general that has examined these themes of death and mortality – as an alternative to narrative cinema, the art film can engage directly with the spectator on these themes and privilege emotion and sensation rather than the intellectual processes of film spectatorship. However, as Kyle Bishop points out, the zombie is primarily a visual manifestation of the human fear of mortality, and thus can engage the spectator in a similar way to that of Brakhage and his peers, arguing that “because zombies do not speak, all their intentions and activities are manifested solely through physical action. In other words, because of this sensual limitation, zombies must be watched.”viii What Bishop suggests is that because the zombie is limited to the sensual, so must the spectator. There is virtually nothing to do but watch the degradation of the human body, and watch it attack the living as an extreme metaphor for mortality. Again, this echoes Frye's estimation of the images in Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes:
The key image of The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes is quite likely the bluntest statement on the human condition ever filmed. In the course of an autopsy, the skin around the scalp is slit with a scalpel, and in preparation for exposing and examining the brain, the face of each cadaver is literally peeled off, like a mask, revealing the raw meat beneath. That image, once seen, will never leave you.ix
Not only that, but Brakhage also limits his images to the realm of sensation, by not using sound in these particular films. Once again, both the zombie film and Brakhage's exploration of the body both demand a purely visual and emotional response from the spectator at the sight of the body's decay. Though one is placed within a traditional narrative framework, the slow-moving advance of a silent being onscreen arguably disrupts the narrative and goes beyond it – as it asks for nothing more than a sensational response.
Michael Koller writes that within his work, Luis Buñuel reveals perhaps an intention to “shock and insult the intellectual bourgeoisie.”x The film opens with the title Il etait une fois (Once Upon a Time), then we cut to the image of a barber, played by Buñuel himself, sharpening a razor. He walks outside and looks up at the full moon. We then cut to the barber holding a woman's head in place. Drawing the razor up to her eye, he holds it open. Then, we cut to the full moon being sliced by a cloud, and it seems the spectator can make the assumption that the slicing of the woman's eye will not be shown, the cloud cutting the moon acting as the visual metaphor for what is about to happen to her. Instead, Buñuel cuts back to an extreme close-up of the woman's eye as the razor slices through it, spilling open the contents. It is also worth noting that the eye slicing, for all intents and purposes, is real. Buñuel used a dead calf's eye in place of the woman. This is also not the only scene to feature dead animals – in a later scene a man drags a grand piano piled with dead donkeys.
While this opening image is indeed shocking in its immediacy and proximity to reality, and many fellow students loudly exclaimed with shock and surprise during the viewing in our class on the horror film, there is also another dimension to this scene in the film. This is the boundary between the the body that is seen, and the body that is unseen. There are films in which this boundary is revealed to be flimsy at best and nonexistent at worst. Clover argues that this is also part of the fascination audiences have with the horror film, citing examples from Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974):
Beyond that, the slasher evinces a fascination with flesh or meat itself as that which is hidden from view. When the hitchhiker in Texas Chainsaw 1 slits open his hand for the thrill, the onlookers all recoil in horror – all but Franklin, who seems fascinated by the realisation that all that lies between the visible, knowableoutside of the body and its secret insides is one thin membrane, protected only by a collective taboo against its violation. It is no surprise that the rise of the slasher film is concomitant with the development of special effects that let us see with our own eyes the opened body.xi
Clover argues that the horror film and the slasher film in particular has opened up a new way of seeing the unseen – and that this has changed the way spectators regard depictions of violence onscreen, arguing that in the modern horror film “we see heads being stepped on so that the eyes pop out, a face being flayed, a decapitation, a hypodermic needle penetrating an eyeball in close-up, and so on.”xii Indeed, it appears that she can also add 'eyeballs being sliced with a razor' to the list. She argues that this is a new trend within the cinema and especially the horror film, and that these advances in technology engender a new, more complex spectator response:
With this new explicitness also comes a new tone. If the horror of Psycho was taken seriously, the “horror” of the slasher films is of a rather more complicated sort. Audiences express uproarious disgust (“gross!”) as often as they express fear, and it is clear that the makers of slasher films pursue the combination.xiii
While Clover's main focus is on the development of the horror film and the pattern of representation of gender within it, she may have overlooked that this phenomenon in film is not limited to the horror film, and neither is it mutually exclusive with advancements in special effects technologies. In 1928, Buñuel and Dali were employing the same techniques that later makers of the slasher film would employ, and it is an effect still experienced in the present. Koller argues that the opening image of Un Chien Andalou is still shocking today, and the reaction of my classmates in the viewing of the film would seem to testify to this. This onscreen fascination with revealing the inner workings of the body produces a particular effect in the spectator and again, the kinds of audience response to these images in both art films such as The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes and Un Chien Andalou in particular is again linked inextricably to the horror film.
In her article 'Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, Excess,' Linda Williams relates that she and her young son look to view films that “promise to be sensational, to give our bodies an actual physical jolt.”xiv These are films often categorised as being 'gross', and she identifies these 'gross' films as belonging to a wider genre she calls body genres. These are films that trade almost exclusively on images designed to elicit a bodily response from the spectator:
What are the pertinent features of bodily excess shared by ...'gross' genres? First, there is the spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion...The body spectacle is featured most sensationally in pornography's portrayal of the orgasm, in horror's portrayal of violence and terror, and in the melodrama's portrayal of weeping.xv
For Williams, what separates these genres from other film genres that elicit a physical response from the spectator, such as comedy, is the idea that there is too much emphasis on the physical response on the spectator, and indeed too much emphasis on the spectacle of the body, and this is why they are deemed 'gross': their focus on sensation rather than narrative is what evokes disgust. Not only this, but Williams argues that because of this, spectators feel manipulated by body genre films – they feel they are being, in effect, forced to have an emotional and bodily connection to the images onscreen.xvi
One may suggest, from this, that while avant-garde filmmakers such as Brakhage, Buñuel, Dali, and Deren may on the surface reflect the same thematic concerns and engagement with the spectator as makers of horror films such as Romero, Pegg, Wright, and Hooper, the intention is completely different; artist filmmakers do not seek to manipulate the spectator, but only ask for an alternate way of experiencing the cinema. As Joan Hawkins notes, so the argument goes that films like The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes “use sensational material differently than many body genre films do...[and] are deemed to have a higher cultural purpose, and certainly a different artistic intent.”xvii The first response to that argument is that in the study of spectatorship the emphasis is on the way in which the spectator interprets the images, and not an examination of the intent of the filmmaker. And whether the artistic intent or cultural purpose is different or not, as Joan Hawkins observes, film audiences tend to feel similarly toward art cinema as they do toward horror:
Clearly designed to break the audience's aesthetic distance, the films encourage the kind of excessive physical response that we would generally attribute to horror. Furthermore, their excessive visual force...mark them as subversive. Banned, marginalised through being screened exclusively in museums and classrooms, these are films that most mainstream film patrons will never see.xviii
And while the former is elevated to a higher cultural status than the latter, film audiences traditionally feel a certain amount of frustration with both, because of their existence outside the boundaries of narrative. They are both either banned from public theatres, or restricted to viewing in galleries. Both can be difficult to access for people interested in these films. This frustration with the art film's apparent refusal to have an easily accessible meaning or structure would arguably lead to a similar feeling of manipulation or disgust with the images the spectator is presented with.
Buñuel and Dali both argue that Un Chien Andalou is a conscious attempt to reject meaning, with Buñuel himself stating that “our only rule was very simple: No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” Buñuel went even further, explaining that “We had to open all doors to the irrational and keep only those images that surprised us, without trying to explain why.”xix This statement is interesting, because when it comes to the cinema and the spectator, it is almost impossible for the consumer of an image not to attempt to make meaning from the images, despite the aim of the producer of the image. The simple act of viewing a film involves deriving meaning from a set of seemingly randomly assembled images. What causes perhaps an alternative viewing experience when the spectator views a film such as Un Chien Andalou is the refusal of the film's images to allow for meaning or narrative structure, and the spectator's natural desire to derive meaning from the images. Koller asserts that due to the nature of the film and the intent of filmmakers Buñuel and Dali, the film is “open to a myriad of interpretations, rendering such analyses redundant.”xx
The film appears to provide a space in which to contemplate two aspects of the cinema and its engagement with the spectator; the desire to see the unseen, and the extent to which a film can evoke a response from the spectator at a bodily level. The experience of viewing Un Chien Andalou is apart from that of a narrative film, and this is heightened, perhaps ironically, through the use of the conventional editing techniques of narrative cinema, most notably, devices for the structuring of time (titles such as Once Upon a Time, and 8 Years Later). Dali asserts that the aim of the film is “to disrupt the mental anxiety of the spectator,” and we can already see that the film demands a particular kind of viewing experience separate from traditional narrative films.xxi The film demands an emotional and bodily response, as an intellectual response is refused at all points both within the film and by the filmmakers themselves. In this way, the link between the film and horror is clear. These techniques all serve to evoke a response from the spectator that deals primarily in sensation, not interpretation.
Williams notes that all forms of cinema are characterised by their opposition to conventional narrative cinema:
The repetitive formulas and spectacles of film genres are often defined by their differences from the classical realist style of narrative cinema. These classical films have been characterised as efficient action-centred, goal-oriented linear narratives driven by the desire of a single protagonist, involving one or two lines of action, and leading to definitive closure.xxii
Both art cinema and horror films most often operate outside of the 'classical realist style of narrative cinema.' In this regard we can consider them as belonging to a cinema with an alternative system of constructing meaning from sets of images. Both art films such as The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes and Un Chien Andalou and horror films such as Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre use images of the body in order to challenge the spectator and evoke an alternative response from them. According to Aristotle, "objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies."xxiii All of the aforementioned films use the reality of the body in such a way as to allow the spectator to witness and reflect on mortality and the unseen parts of the body and in that way also push the boundaries between the cinema screen and the audience. And as Hawkins argues, these can be used to both “challenge and titillate:”xxiv
...one kind of audience pleasure – doesn't necessarily preclude the other. It is possible for someone to be intellectually challenged and physically titillated; and it is possible for someone to simultaneously enjoy both the intellectual and physical stimulation.xxv
Arguably, it is a testament to the power of alternative forms of cinema such as art cinema and body genres such as horror that they can produce both of these sensations in a way that stands apart from the more traditional forms of cinema, and this goes beyond questions of high and low culture and perhaps even gender, as it is a phenomenon that takes place entirely in the body of the spectator engaging with the images onscreen. The images these films produce must not only be watched – they must be felt, too.
So....there are endnotes, but I can't copy them on my computer. They will be here soon, promise.
I. Need. To. Know.
For a while now, possibly the greatest defence of the cinema and graphic novels has remained in literature form. Never has a novel been better suited to a visual rendering than The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and yet there is hardly any info on a film version. But then, I found this.
If this is true, a note to the director currently attached to the project:
DON'T FUCK IT UP. KTHNX.
If you haven't already, please read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. Buy it. You need it. We alllll need it.
If this is true, a note to the director currently attached to the project:
DON'T FUCK IT UP. KTHNX.
If you haven't already, please read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. Buy it. You need it. We alllll need it.
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