Il Fiore Delle Mille E Una Notte (Arabian Nights)

Pier Paolo Pasolini - 1974
Well, Pasolini goes from his close views on faces, moving out then to very long views, his reverse shots are actual reverses, a full 180'. The shaking camera, deliberately slightly school play ish, chaotic staging. And also the most Bresson-like acting I can remember in Pasolini. This is either to kill psychology, all is a story, only truth that way, or it forces us to focus on the psychology.
I really got nothing except a deep annoyance here. One story as not enough, all as true, we are told; fine. Yet the stories are all about sex, endlessly, namelessly, that seems to be in the entire world, no variety. And that hugely irritating play at some kind of 'simplicity', with endless laughter whenever anyone gets naked, it is hugely grating really.

Othello

Orson Welles - 1952 ; I can't legislate for the restoration.
Maybe I preferred 'Mabeth' by Welles... I'd have to see both again. This is really extremely Russian; some very fast cutting, lots of still shots from a low angle of dramatically framed figures. Great shadows and decenterings. Typical Wellesian touches of overlapping dialogue, and in his historical mode the real earthiness, enthusiasm for the time.
Welles focusses on the beastly aspects; his Othello is still, flat faced, never blinking. Framed many times bursting through covers, there is the real 'La Belle et La Bete' feel. Deeply sexually repressed, the question of the lacivious is crucial. I also got the feeling of a strange kind of abstraction, taken away to Cyprus, a bizarre hothouse. The lack of ellipsis in the 'convincing' scene, Othello and Iago from stone room to stone from outside, with that long walking tracking shot outside. And the wonderful shadows, geometrical faces, huge rooms and focus of the final momologues. This, with the beating music, give that sense of fate and doom also there in the threat of invasion.

L'Eclisse

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1962
Antonioni- about as good as it gets. Again, the sound, the busy street, the silence, the light hums and the metallic. Some of the great images of the cinema; a light area and a dark area, using the limits of the frame- Delon at Vitti's wondow. Tracking moves that follow about for little stretches. A lot of decentered stuff. Also, the most obvious uses of Vitti sinking into the background; when not animalistic, she wears the whites of the interiors. The cacophony of mid-shots in the stock market, space ripped up.
A slightly glib reading of this film is of the precise moment, fragile, where modernism was able to look at postmodernism. Emtpy containers, all is a frame, life dissappears. What is left is the last humans, the semblances of subjectivity; a thousand locations left, but why no romances in them? The only possbility, as Delon and Vitti show near the end, is imitation; but always fakery.
And of time. Time is destroyed, watches meanginless, I'm not sure the scenes at the end could be said to be linear. Without time, which is turned into space (Deleuze), space loses ontiguity, turns into a series, as at the end, of scenes of a crime, of the crime of the twentieth century, ripped apart, empty, humming with electricity.
For all these thoughts, this is the least abstract I know of Antonioni's films. The diversion into a critique of ethnography. The discussion of the stock market, which all I say above can be translated into, and nuclear warfare. I have no trouble saying that this, (and 'L'Aventurra'), is for me, at the moments, not surpassed in 'narrative' cinema.

La Notte

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1961
Maybe it's a touch more awkward than the two films on either side of it; only a masterpiece, not a flat out 'greatest film ever'. Here was the first time I strongly focussed on the sound; Antonioni uses great differences in dynamics, from crashinbg outsides to the remarkable quiet of the insides.
Has a later filmmaker had more to do with Lumiere? Antononioni uses a great depth of field, and as the frame diagonally slopes off he lets his characters come, walk, closer to the camera. There is really quite a lot of fish-eye stuff here, depth through stagings close to the camera.
Abd of course the edit; there's not a system, just always the most imaginative, disconserting, unpredictable, always perfect next shot; you expect one place, but then it's much longer, or just straightforward not 180' stuff. Often what is the supposed 'reverse' shot fails to include in it what the original was of; a ninety degree move, from frontals to sides.
The story of a relationship over one night, or perhaps a lifetime, little ellipsis. The arbitrary decisions with the weight of the world, but the ease to change. Situations, the backs of heads, the unknowability of the human mind and the concrete consequences of this.

Teorema

Pier Paolo Pasolini - 1968
I'm a real fn of Pasolini; but I can think of very few nice things to say about this. Using lots of long shots, it is all but silent, with lots of those long mving shots, long takes, then punching in for a few, but not very much, close work.
My problem here is that there was an unfortunate essence of Louis Malle seemingly at work. What I mean is that Pasolini falls victim to symbolism, endless symbolism, making the film a rather silly crossword. The silent images mixed in with the insanely abstract shots of the desert, and of the biblical texts that are contextless on their own.
The story is interesting, oft seen elsewhere, and we have some better classical Pasolini examinations of eroticism and degradation, even if its does get a bit silly and, dar I say, pretentious in some of the artisitic mysticism and naked screaming.

Death In Venice

Luchino Visconti - 1971
The adaption of Mann's novella.
Some huge long shots (though some headshots and super closes, i.e. on his lips), as though carrying the weight of the frame, of the hotel, of a panorama, in that massive 'scope. The camera, as well as zooming in, scanning the locale, often makes slow movements across these horizontal milleu, as though to savour it. This was effective in so far as, like the eyeline match, it established a connection, and also in that idea of slow movement; the best parts of this film are often people walking, either Auerbach himself with that limp, or others ambling across him.
Horizontals are key here, and at times, especially with the succesful stage of blue used (a kind of cold vividness), can succesfully convey the atmosphere. However, there is a lack of actual shots of Venice, and I found some of the shots oversaturated, which didn't bring much to me.
There are fundamental problems in what is really a very faithful adaption. Auerbach is far too pathetic here, his discourses on art and so on absent, except in some perfunctory voiceover, make him seem pathetic; this isn't the point, Auerbach should be the very best of us. Further, the character is overemphasised; Tadzio looks at him too soon, Auerbach is too obviously rude and pathetic. Making him a composer is perhaps more cinematic, as music allows us to understand on the screen, but it also takes away for me one of the most important aspects of Mann's work; how he sets up a (probably not quite 'true', but I can run with Mann) contrast, or play, of exterior and interior. This film doesn't really grapple with these diffences, with us only getting the pathetic outer. As a novelist, Mann's figure can play the written psychology, with the music it can't really come together; but within this form (this kind of film; what would Rivette do?), making him a novelist would just mean more bad voiceover.
There are moments in this film where it looks like it might be great. Certain looks, pictures of Bogarde's face. Those oans across the rooms, people walking, moments of truth that outstrip Mann in characterisation of person and place. I couldn't quite accept it as an equal of its source, overall, however, if made to compare (which I'm not).

L'Avventura

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1960
Huge expectations, exceeded.
The editing of Antonioni's Italian films is, for me, about as good as it gets. Each cut produces a surprise, then you expect to be surprised, and it surprised you with something different. This is what seeing the world afresh means. One never quite gets the geography of the island, or indeed pretty much any space. It just isn't quite contiguous, somebody comes from the 'wrong' place, though I'm always unsure what the 'right' one could be.
This is carried on by the frequent motif of people talking 'to' each other, yet not looking at each other. This notion pretty much destroys the ideas of classical SRS (hence we usually have both at once; that's how I know this), classical montage just won't work in the modern age.
Has anyone written a study of Antonioni and Hitchcock? I slightly prefer the former, maybe. In him I find a slight essence of Hitchock, also on the eyeline matches; I do though feel he is less idealistic, his world is less controlled than the vision of one man. The world is bigger than Antonioni, an ethically superior positon, to my thinking.
This notion of constant surprises is also a little Hitcockian, and what i really mean is that there is simply an unusual level of thought and, ultimately here, brilliance, in the mis-en-scene. A head or body part pops into the frame unexpectedly, a camera moves reveal someone or something unexpected; that is directing, because it creates something new in us, we can't be complacent, constant learning, art. The camera moves aren't really very baroque (well, compared to Visconti), but are pretty active, moving around corners as we move from image to image at a leisurely but not self-regarding pace.
Let's talk about Antonioni's compositions. With the off-centered stuff I know, he frequently divides his frame. The last shot, stone and, to be reductive, the 'modern' on one side, the mountain, old Europe, on the other. Often there are big differences half to half, outside to inside, one kind of shape or lighting to another. There are generally more verticals than horizontals, often a play with them, a move being made to highlight a dialogue or conflict between the shapes.
The framing often hides, a face, a thing, a person. We see so much of the back of Vitti's head. And then she turns around; this film can be read as a series of Vitti turning her head around, beautiful, childish, playful, old, that word 'enigmatic', bored, superior, intelligent. Is the turn a development, of greatest interest, than a simple (Stewart- 'Vertigo') eyeline match.
Antonioni is the master of the environment and architecture, we are told; I entirely agree. What we have here is more people sticking out from the environment; a different shade, popping slghtly in often pretty deep compositions; uneasiness. One often hears about Antonionians sinking in, and this does happen, even to Vitti here, but apart from the party scene near the end I didn't see this as a motif; usually agianst the sky or wall there is a contrast. It is just too simple to talk about 'sinking in'. The sticking out usually gives a sense of outline, but this seems to come more from a lack of frontlighting than any particular focus on backlighting.
The architecture is stunning; each Antonioni location is just invested with a look I haven't seen before, a surprise, a new way of looking at the world. At once abstract, but with clear, modern signs ('..BAC'). We have the old town hall, the ruins, churches, huge doors and walls. There is usually looming over. Yet also, for example in the waiting room, something different can be achieved. The disorientation of a place, abstract yet dirty, not empty.
And that famous narrative. It surprises us; we don't notice Anna goes missing either. It teases with half a dozen little nods at suggestions, nothing too much formed, just ideas that float away... like the themes. It discusses our expectations as well, aware of the difficulty of telling a story. It surprises by moving on. How can it make Vitti (her acting, partly the answer) just sitting on a bed beyond fascinating? This idea of seeing anew; I was constantly asking myself, as a situation overtakes the characters (always); 'what the hell are they meant to do now'? The most powerful is perhaps the fight, then the church and boys that go past.
Oh and, and.. the slow moves with their boats going past, with impressions of time, time going past. The story moves slowly, they walk slowly, but that's not the point with movement... Every shot is so beautiful, so precisely composed yet not anal or idealistic, dark on light, looking out and not seeing the face, an evocation of an enviroment before a person, but so much in the person, not really a difference.
This film is really incredible, as they say, the talking, the text can't quite explain, yet we talk.... this connects with the great films of modern life in my mind at the moment, even 'Filme Socialisme'.... wow.

Ossessione

Luchino Visconti - 1943
Shot on clearly pretty filthy stock, in filthy locations. Air of unwashed laundty, dirt, portray the houses and dustbowls. This is all exacerbated by getting pretty close in, avoiding a lot of establishing shots, where we get a real sense of dirt, sweat, the dark parts of the human body, quite literally. The faces are shadowed, dark hair, stubble.
The camera moves are really very baroque, in this early piece of neo-realism as it is called. The camera does a lot of panning, perhaps proportionally more on the track / pan scale than later Visconti. It is fine to pan with someone moving very far away until they walk up pretty close to the camera; it doesn't always use the same length on people.
Nevertheless, their are early examples of Visconti's distinctive very long, grand shots, panoramas almost, dusty bowls and so on. And their are some extremely elaborate tracks, around corners, circling in not at all precise circles around people. What is Visconti doing? Trying to get a better look, trying to establish the space.
The lack of ellipsis in the montage is the most obvious neo-realistic, as is how we watch the people, with some almost Wellman-esque shuffling about, hanging around, doing a bit of work, eating and that sort of thing.
The plot is perhaps the modern Macbeth; 'The Postman Always Rings Twice'. Here it is filthy sexual tension, with the critics right about the broiling, seething. There is a sense of desire at once confused, with clear homoerotic undertones (constantly noticeable in Visconti).

La Terra Trema

Luchino Visconti - 1948
Early Visconti, shot on scratchy film whose speed gi ves overexposure and makes that remarkable, heoic, sculpted face of Antonio. There is something distinctly Russian in much of this. High and low angles, aggressive framing, tableaus of the workers confronting the bosses. Yet unlike the early Soviets, the scenes continue’ the workers retreat into the deep compostion after their pose.
But we also have many aspects that speak of later Visconti. Those huge long shots, stately movements on landscape, with figures, here dark clad, framed against the sea. And then the move in from this. The family saga, deeply in a discussion with the novel.
O.K., this is pretty hardcore neo-realism, in that it is slow, close, crying calls of the placce (rather like 'La Pointe Courte', in a different tradition), and the focus on everyday lives of workers. As is the sense of tragedy, and push to melodrama, though the way this is handled is Visconti's own.
As a critique of capitalism it is heroic, perhaps a little self-regarding but ultimately a powerful message.

Ginger e Fred

Federico Fellini - 1986
Fellini seems to actually be using two shots more, here, at the tail end of his career. Among the gaudy colours and tubing of the TV sets, and unnatural lights coming through windows.
The emotional effect here is really from how nasty the world they are in is, there is that kind of solemn dignity about their wish, their lives (though I've now established I have a problem with Massina's acting). Fellini, for me, is far too accomodating of the hellish world of TV, seeing it as more gaudy and silly than completely vile and evil.

Fellini's Casanova

Federico Fellini - 1976
Fellini's images, by this stage, really can be remarkable. He often uses, say, a bowl of fruit, something riotously saturated or so on with lights, on one half of the image, and Donald Sutherland on the other. This juxtaposition isn't one negating the other, but in fact emphasising it.
The seascape, among other images, is clearly 'fantasy'. What Fellini does specially is that he asks the audience to extend their imagination, making all his films at Cinecitta, not just his own imagination, but sharing it, asking us to extend ours.
The strange thing about Fellini's images is that he doesn't really stick very long on them. He cuts surprisingly quickly, one to the other. Tough to say why; I think it would be way too simple to talk about commercialism.
Fellini is fascinating in, to make a rather simplistic analysis, he takes the unusual answer to a normal question; the vapid life or pleasure? He, in his films, explores pleasure, in a way perhaps more complicated than others (does, say Bunuel examine this in a way?). The theme of innocence remains; is Casanova still 'innocent', trying to keep something alive? Yes, probably. But what is innocence, a touch of love in this world? A 'fake' love, a machine...

The White Sheik

Federico Fellini - 1952
Strangely similar to The Grunde film 'The Strabe' at times. Clearly a satire on a certain kind of values, it is at once silly but also poignant. Quite an affectionate film.
It is the earliest Fellini I have seen, and it is pretty straight. The direction is nicely done, if not too innovative, as I have seen before on early Fellini.

Amarcord

Federico Fellini - 1973
A series of vignettes, surely autobiographical, through that busy world of Fellini's. And then, the striking image; let me take Mussolini's head, and the peacock in the snow.
They are clearly both fantasies of Fellini, representations of what the world was like, what it was felt to be like, the power and the imaginary. What I like is that Fellini does not blast them at us with awe (though they may be awe-some), but rather puts them in a local context, considers them, juxtaposes them with the ordinary, the completely unspectacular, to create something quite new. A peacock, the snow, the town; by themselves quite down to earth, as this film is, but together a strange new ambiguity is formed. Maybe I should be looking to late Fellini more for my kicks; the image as more important than what goes on, not a brutal image, but one that can act ass more than an accompaniment to words.

8 1/2

Federico Fellini - 1963
In and out; long shots to close shots, seems to be Fellini's rule, along with some very high and low angles. Thoughtful and invenetive, really, without too much strictness. There is a sense of finding the best way to capture a scene that is already happening, regardless of the camera. Which is theatre. The camera can move fast, pans and tracks, around and about the swirling milleu, as Guido is accosted and swoops from room to room, person to person. Also not some of Fellini's favoured framings; half of the frame a close portrait, the other half strecthing to the distance, something usually either walking to or from the camera.
The whites are clearly very original; I would guess he does them by overexposure, or at least a slow film. The whites are not always heavily nuanced, while the darker portions of the frame are pretty soft (also, no huge depth).
Fellini's inteerest is surely in the power of his images, the story a series, a sort of jazz solo. What is the real interest of these images, apart from mere curiousity into the functioning of a man's mind? Perhaps to gain their full power they need the big screen.The play of shades and colours is surely remarkable, but so far...
Is this film self-induglent? Yes. It answers, or rather affirms its own critics, on that count. Fellini wants to say cinema can just be my personal fantasy, which can be confused. What are we then to do when we deeply dislike the fantasist? Guido doesn't seem interested in others; he is deeply unpleasant, making people build sets then stewing over, navel gazing (which Fellini repeats as autocritique incessantly) basically, then blowing them off. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is; the 'truth' of a mind. Maybe. But the truth of a bad, and for that uninteresting, except as documentation, one?

Nights Of Cabiria

Federico Fellini - 1957
Opening with an extremely long shot, pans back and forth. Fellini often frames full body and more, the world as the big stage. And then he can move in, really quite close, portraiture at furthest away; here for SRS and eyeline matches, usually strongly shading towards one character, Cabiria.
This is where one should say that Massina's performance is lively, strong, full of joie de vivre, wiping water off the face, hugely expressive eyes, Chaplinesque. Her stlye is almost expressionist, broad. Frankly, I got little out of this; I found it, and her, annoying. This is partly one of the points of the film; how do we react to such a display of innocence? My problem was perhaps more that it seemed to me predictable, for all the pyrotechnics almost tired; the story is hugely predictable.
The grimness that follows is pretty ritual, I'm really not at all sure what the point in the excercise is; perhaps as a social document, fine, but I'd like a bit of a more complex analysis then. The final shot, Fellini's classic music, is again broad, but the look into the camera does some interesting things (by the by, I can't say I picked out special lighting in this scene).

The Passenger

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1975
Antonioni's camera works in an interesting way. Often it moves away from the person it starts on, or moves towards them. It would be uncomfortable to film in a 'normal' way. There is more handheld, movement around than I can remember in other Antonioni. This atmosphere is also in the framings. Decentered, often for some reason to our right.
And it is always Antonioni's edit that really gets me. Never ever does he make the obvious move. Space isn't the continous entity. Supposedly SRS scenes will take a different angle than expected in the 'reverse', we will move away, the 'action' will be obscured. Notice also the architecture; how it is framed, in his often perpendicular compositions, to glower over, to reflect confusion in some of Gaudi and other's escher-like contraptions, that people are forced to walk through.
Colour is as ever key. Nicholson seems very red, and his clothes are often violently sperated from the surroundings. Yet he can also sink in; perhaps always the opposite of what he wants. A man out place.
What happens in an Antonioni film? The realisation that the course of events isn't part of a grand plan, but just one step in front of another. Nicholson is over his head, strange conspiracies, in flavourless international locations, pop up. He can't escape his identity, but neither one seems real.
He can't stand the camera turned on himself. The man cured from blindness sees too much to live as part of the world, like Locke, the documentatrian. I feel about this as I do 'Blow-Up'; a clear extrapolation of Antonioni's themes, when he is at his best in the earlier works when pure visuals take over.

Le Quattro Volte

Michelangelo Frammartino - 2010
The Godardian Goat- A Multiplied View on Le Quattro Volte

Le Quattro Volte, directed by Michelangelo Frammartino, refuses narrative synopsis. Even describing the meagre detail a viewer could follow- of a single ‘life’ transmigrating from dust, to man, to goat, to tree, to dust- would be a lie, in that there is no shot in the film that narrates the story of a single life-form. Every take, often high and long to enable comprehension, rather sets off multiple movements and presences. At every moment the viewer must make a choice; whether to watch the goat chewing on the left, or the dog playing on the right.
The Calabrian countryside is the setting for this teeming environment where, except in the most pantheistic way, the majority of elements are part of no ‘story’. If there is a tradition- from distracted modern Hollywood to early Lang and Strike- of ‘single cell’ shots of quickly processed unitary information, Le Quattro Volte has found an interesting way to reject it. In other words, Frammartino has watched a Jacques Tati film, or perhaps, to pick another, Edward Yang’s Yi Yi.
Allowing significant complexity into the frame presents a challenge to classical narrative. Every film has some dispersal of points of interest, but films based around this principle can reach a level where new storytelling problems develop. With a complex frame, the issue arises that the viewer can’t be expected to take in multiple causes or effects at once. This is why in Tati, and in Le Quattro Volte, there is a sense of circularity before progression. The past can’t be allowed to be left behind, as the cause of a later effect, because the viewer may well have missed the original action (or, any process of change that mustn’t be missed- for Le Quattro Volte the old goatherd’s progressive coughing seizures- is repeated so often that even slow Joe in the back row can pick up the idea).
What allows Le Quattro Volte to have stable themes, rather than being just a loosely related collection of similar images, is how its complicated images are themselves the film’s theme. Le Quattro Volte’s recurring disruption of the human world by the natural is always present as the film’s images enact this very disturbance. Narrative directions are curtailed because our focus is equally on a directionless goat. An attempt to use a cooking pot is foiled by the snails on the opposite side of the screen. Animals disrupt the camera’s, and the audience’s, project of telling a progressive story.
In this sense, the animals are malignant. Goats supposed to follow a path jump out of the centre of the frame to perch on a wall, presumably having watched their Hitchcock and realising that statically staring from a great height will freak the humans out. Nature is chaos to a systematising mind, an uncontrollable power. Humans and animals may be made of the same elements, but an animal’s decomposition carries entirely different connotations from a human’s. Rather than being fear-inducing, a portrait of a tragic loss of power, an animal’s life-force seems to nearly grow in strength as it is rechanneled into the earth. This differs from the sickness of a dying old goatherd; this isn’t a mind reintegrating, but disappearing.
Nature is chaotic in that multiple separate focuses refuse to tally. The movements strike one another, setting off rather than clearly unifying the components. Like Tati, Frammartino can also use sound to create a focus separate from the image. Animals are Godardian, Frammartino realises; the crazed bleats crossed with the docile blankness of a goat’s eyes are a perfect sound/image disjunction. The opening of the film, where in fact the image of a workman and the sound of his spade do join, is quickly undermined. It’s not just a spade we’re hearing, it’s also a heartbeat. The audience is immediately distanced from direct, perhaps diagetic, conceptions of the film’s sound mix. Two focuses are set up, only one of which can be fully comprehended at a time (for the images, because a cinema screen is quite large).

What Frammartino doesn’t do is give any of the multiple aspects of his screen much complexity. The viewer’s choice is often between a goat eating and a goat staring at a tree. When humans form part of the mis-en-scene they are wordless and not particularly excitable figures. Sometimes the second point of interest is only a shadow, or even just an explicit place in the frame given to the absence of anything (drawing attention, by framing decisions, to an absence can often be more effective than placing a nondescript item in the gap- think of most horror films, or the final shot of Shoot The Pianist).
Playtime and Yi Yi are masterworks set in a city; the old theory of overloaded perceptions, traffic and crowds and advertisements, explains the city as a setting that is experienced in a multifaceted way even outside of the cinema. Within the width of a camera frame multiple complex (physical or emotional) acts take place. Two people can be oblivious to one another, a businessman and a tramp, but their actions reverberate across the frame. In Le Quattro Volte, no matter how long the shots, two complex developments do not take place at once. We are, ultimately, choosing between an ant and a log. Le Quattro Volte is the form of the ‘multiple movements’ I have outlined, with next to nothing to say about the movement’s content. This is perhaps why I became uncomfortable whenever humans were involved; stripped of dialogue and reason, they became silly little shapes.
A variant in the film’s images are those of the great lump of black materials that make up a scarazzi- essentially a natural oven created to produce charcoal. These shots, give or take a workman plodding about, do in a sense constitute a single centre of interest. Yet this is undercut by how the scarazzi itself is a complex monster of crisscrossing smokeholes and branches. It is a singular hummock but, in that, a deeply complex one. It reminded me of a brain; thousands of neurons interlacing in a structure which is one only insofar as it is a collection of parts. The idea of a human brain is a baffling one, full of complexities beyond our current comprehension. Equally, we can’t look inside a scarazzi; only marvel at the little paths of white smoke pouring out.
There’s an unfortunate degree of underdeveloped gaping in Le Quattro Volte; none of the multiple aspects of the mis-en-scene are investigated, critical thinking ends with a misty ‘all is one’. If a single cut sums this attitude up, despite being completely out of keeping with the rest of the film’s gentle pace, it is the shock-cut to a goat plopping out of its mother’s womb. I was knocked back, failing to process the image with much clarity. For all the obvious thought involved in the conception and planning of Le Quattro Volte, the finished work seems to almost discourage its audience from applying proportionate critical skills.

Rocco And His Brothers

Wide-ranging family epic from Luchino Visconti, 1960
A before, we have Visconti's wide, deep takes. There is a reticence to these, we do not cut in too often in the longe takes, though do change angle. The images are deep, complicated, full of contrasts. The cinematography is deeply, specially beautiful in this film; panoramas of a city with a wonderful soft transfer from Eureka, as always. The diffusion of the light, even in night scenes, means the blank walls themselves become part of a wonderfully judged, wide, mis-en-scene. As in 'Bellissima', as the film progresses, the emotions ramp up, the camera moves in, to close-ups, by the end. This movement of stages is not immediately noticeable, but fits the dynamic of the piece. One other interesting camera piece is the boxing scene9s); though largely kept still and from a distance, there is some movement in to some very modern, presumably handheld in some way, tight tracking.
Visconti's cinema, here and for us, is a nocelistic cinema. Here we have the nineteenth century realist novel of the family saga (though all close in time). Thomas Mann, who of course Visconti went on to make 'Death in Venice' from, springs to mind. Whay novelistic? The deep, rich stories of each brother, the crossing of points of view, the sheer time and scale of how we get to know each. This is done quite classically, with establishing, often a kind of love interest, develoment and twists, interconnections, climax, and truly epic series of stories coming together. Each series we have, like chapters in a novel, is quite a long one; there is hardly any crosscutting until the big climax (for thematic's sake) very near the end. Also notice the elipses that cover months, even years, between the chronologically contiguent chapters.
This thought of the great social novel is there in the themes, which here I can no more than indicate to. There are themes of class, of country and the city, an economic determinism in place again reminiscent of Mann. Again, it is hard not to go auterist and examine Visconti's attitude. We have the condemnation, anger, of the idiocy of some actions, and yet a deep, deep something, almost a veneration of Delon and other's pure goodness, at times. As in the great realist novels, there is a distance often absent from more subjective traditions. This film is really hugely ambitious in the themes it tackles, and it has universal aspirations (for my mind, largely achieved) for its analysis of a society, a generation even.
At a closer level, we have Delon and Giradot as two centres, who are allotted close-ups even at the start. Their beauty seems to suck the camera in. The case of Giradot in this film is fascinating. Again, I worry about Visconti's treatment; she seems to be seen through the eyes of the men almost exclusively, there is a nasty tendency to blame her, and the one act that is the toughest moment of this film is surely passed over with far too much ease. Giradot's performance and character seems though to burst out of this reduction; her laight, her charisma over the viewer's and the brothers, make her far more than she should, on paper, be. She is perhaps the most interesting character here; one wonders if Visconti could account for this.
The focus on the men though is the structuring element, and one slowly reads the aggression, the frustration, the moments of comreadeship, of these deeply complex and rendered creations. Their is a fatalism, with the shining sheer goodness, and the impossbility, that leads to at once tragedy and melodrama at the end. Not here the calm final sequence of 'The Leopard'. Visconti's scenes can look like the cliches of Italian cinema, but the underlying richness means they can't really be laughed at or dismissed. In thematic and narrative ambition, this film shoots for the moon. It achieves a world, and a deeply powerful one, with its fine images and warm characters.

Bellissima

Luchino Visconti, 1951
Visconti has a wide mis-en-scene of complex and even complicated images. These long shots (full bodies), often long takes, have multiple areas active at once. The multiple points of interest mean that it isn't a necessity (in fact, relatively rare) to have a single figure centered; but the scene as a whole is centered, to balance off the various charatcers in the mis-en-scene all at once. The staging is also in depth, with the first plane often close to the camera, adding to the richness. The frame is still much of the time, but when it does move we have smooth, elegant pans. This style in fact becomes less and less explicit aas the film goes, and by the end we are getting quite close (as satire gives way to affect), even to almost close-ups, though the off-balance remains.
The plot quickly establishes the location, psychology, and goals. In fact, this piece is a pretty conventional establishment-development-climax, this is classical filmaking (with a key exception, top be mentioned. There is even a deadline at the end. The narratve develops slowly, bit by little bit, with lots of side scenes shading in character and locale. This film is clearly an offshoot of the neorealist tradition in setting and emotional valence.
What struck us most in this scene is the near constant dialogue kept up, largely by Magnani. She appears to be addressing the audience in a near constant narration on events, tiring and even annoying, quite deliberately, a little endearing too. The speech is fast, all are shouting over each other, and this film is about as hysterical, one could even say stereotypical of Italian matriarchs and domestic life, as one can get.
This turns to one factor, which is the initial worry, perhaps with some truth, that Visconti is mocking his characters and their class (also, why is editing a failure?). This isn't really correct; Viconti is really showing more of an ambivalence, which includes a negative look (which, sadly, strays into contemtpt occassionally) at certain aspects of his (presumably) people and culture. This may be a class analysis; Visconti holds this attitude towards the class. I must confess I was rather worried for a large proportion in the middle of this film. The woman are insane, while the men are either the caring father or the not overly condemned, though deeply cynical, studio underling.
What Visconti does though is turn this; deep sympathy is shown. This doesn't cancel out the earlier criticism, but it has to be seen as part of a wider story. The Sympathy for Magnani is acheived through some quite startling, and abrupt, character changes, which you would not see in the classical tradition. Magnani carries this off, and Visconti just about does, by it turning out that we have effectively had relevent information withheld (in a non-classical manner); 'The usual four slaps' is a startling, electric line. Magnani reveals herself in a new light, emotion streaks through our contempt, as we see the other side of the story (the screening room) we suddenly see Magnani in a new light (a great close-up with hard lighting, being so rare in this film extra powerful).
One can't, still, quite escape the idea that Visconti is still slightly ambivalent, unwilling to really embrace the Magnani character; the men can't really be that bad, the film almost says, the domestic violence is gestured at rather than investigated, and slightly washed over, which isn't very acceptable. We can see Visconti's struggle taking place on the screen, to give a real auterist reading.
The child, the high emotion, the opressed exploited, and the ending, along with the location, again demonstrate neo-realist roots. This is though not a neo-realist film; the attitude is more detached, analytical for all the hysteria (we look at, rather than feel, the atmosphere), and more personal.

Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Francis, God’s Jester)

Roberto Rossellini, 1950
It would be fair to say Rossellini made a film that was deliberately, visually, quite rough; beautiful, but with friction in the images, rejecting classical exact framings. The issue of space here is very interesting. We move between groups, speakers, who are separated. This separation is not done for SRS reasons (though it is SRS), but is a thematic choice, as shown by the seemingly deliberate lack of continuity in some of the back and forths. These, often high angles, mean our focus is on the image, that is the message, as we are forced to concentrate as we are (due to the non-continuity).
The story, as there is, of the film is fascinating. We have at the beginning and a little of the way in a voiceover, with subtitles the rest of the time, that pre-empt an action (though not the only action) of a scene, a practice obviously Brechtian, though it would be too simple to say Rossellini uses it for Brecht’s purposes. A parable structure? Not quite. Life is too complicated for that.
What we have are long episodes, the sections, broken down to lots of short actions in a contiguous space, following one another internally, but the episodes not really relating to each other otherwise. It would be fair to say this isn’t really narrative cinema, in any traditional way.
Rossellini works with the poles, to start with, of the ridiculous and of grace. But this is complicated. On one side we have the world of dirt, the rain and the mud. We have the ascetic stupidity, the petty organisation and world denial (politically, sensually) of the order, the pettiness (the dichotomy is really too simple to understand the complex; it is really a web rather than a dualism). We have idiocy, and what is key, the scene with the leper. The fools and the freaks, what St Francis could appear to the cynical viewer. The outcasts, the defamed. What they turn into, without losing their original character, is a kind of grace. Or at least a hope of salvation, represented of course in Francis. However much we hit, or test, they do not flinch, they come back. They are idiots. The understanding is that this cannot come without the dirt. Stuck in the metal armour (a remarkable, beautiful, itself clunky but also defamiliarising costume). There is undoubtedly also suggestions of a natural/ unnatural divide; the former contains the dirt and the truth.
For all these reasons, this film could be said to be simple, and it does have a simple/non-existent narrative, but it is not pious. In fact, whatever Rossellini may think, I wouldn’t call it simple; it shows truth, salvation, in its social and concrete complexity. In this way it differs from Bresson; the minimalist mis-en-scene, non-actors, and theme of salvation would otherwise conflate the two (there are parallels, but I would argue this is not Bressonian transcendence). This film is not pure, unless purity is always compromised, and dirty, caught in the mud and rain.