Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau - 1927
Murnau uses some pretty distant framings at times. Most notably, putting the couple low down in the frame, and using the top. He creates some of the greatest images in the cinema with the somplexity of the lighting, and this tiered composition, in the dance hall sequence. He also uses variations for entirely different effects, for loomings and overhangings, of the vamp near the end, for example.
Pictorially, the off-centre hard backlight provides beyond beautiful images. Murnau won't cut on these too quickly. This allows for two of the greatest performances of the cinema; not overdone, full of nuance and depth (whatever that is...), but also clear and simple, of the country folk.
Their is really a plethora of effects here, that would be verging on ridiculous anywhere else, but are used so perfectly to work. Endless impositions, of a city, a dream, cinema across time. And of course the wonderful movement. We have slow tracks, so smooth, so sensual, that are, yes, erotic, in a more gentle than brutal way. The horizontals across the city, at once calm but wildly exciting.
This is what the city is; the place of beauty, coming from the tram window (simple, but sharp), surrounding with love, with hope. But often the place of predators, despair, the couple caight in the traffic, for all the beauty, across time and space, of their tracking walk through it. The city is at once the storm, but how can one live without it?
What is 'Sunrise'? It is the most beautiful day of our life. And with that I take a short break to these entries.
Showing posts with label Re-Watch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Re-Watch. Show all posts
Monday, 29 August 2011
L'Annee Derniere A Marienbad
Alain Resnais - 1961
Let's mention the music before I start; very powerful, I liked it, almost absurd in the organs strength, matching the arch humour throughout the work.
Lights usually come from back and behind, to mention. We have a camera crawling along walls, strokes in both directions, camera stylo writing, also moving up and down. 'Marienbad' as the anatomy of the track (smooth); dissection of role of that move, of a camera, as desire (When the eventual move backwards comes, falls off the wall, we have its reverse, a dissection, the negation of desire; what is that?).
These erotic tracks are not actually too explicit, then huge orgasm on ironic Italian melo burst in, repetition of a track into the feathered arms, one of the most powerful moments I know in the cinema.
Also worth to say that there are quite a few close views- and why not. That is the feeling, it conveys it.
Marienbad won't be reduced, but let me talk of specificity and abstraction. If time doesn't matter, nor does place; says the man, abstraction. Yet also, there is specificity in eroticism, among the interchangeable walls we have the one moment, the walk I made for you through carpets so thick we had silence. This is all in the same way the voice (over)/ poetry (Robbe-Grillet, yet also the words of some kind of characters)/ acting (mannered, singular, general stand-ins) is specific and abstract.
Where to start on the shadows of the garden; not for blocks, but specific humans? Too easy. The location is at once so clear, big blocks referenced in the final words, yet among them I lose you.
For all, in a way this is quite simple; man meets women, she can't remember, montage cuts between then and now, some maybe true, some not, all indeterminate, maybe, or specific in erotic. The only confusion is deliberate, the need, perhaps, for mystification, the way life is clear, clear blocks, but I still can't find you, the mystery of a white wall, a gaudy stucco. One just needs to accept continuous time has collapsed in the montage.
Returning to the key question of specificity; does time matter between moral decisions? Does what is in between matter? If there was a decision now, and then, does time exist between? What is going on in the cut, in impossible spaces where space is clearly 'unreal'? Does this matter, for life?
Is there a lack of politics here? This is a film from a director of the mouvelle vague, in some way; one occassioanlly realises, in the deliberate humour often, this is after all people dressing up. The nouvelle vague was horribly apolitical in many ways; and like them, you have to say Resnais at least centers erotiticism as much, if not more, than engagement (fatalism?). I would call this, if I could name things, a film about eroticism, really. But eroticism and politics are intertwined; the film is about eroticism in a degraded world, how it can only exist as deliberately obscured, confused, not making sense. This is the fetish element, shoes and bondage.
How can the specificity of desire manage in the degraded world of this hotel/ spa? Marienbad, Fredericksbad, twists these confusions, which are necessary. Desire only possible through what looks like heavy formalism; the only way to save it, by intellectualising it?
For all, there are clear politics; the spa (I want!) is clearly the bourgeois/ aristocracy, the fading abstractions of the brutal walls that enclose, only one way, that turn my footsteps to silence in the carpet, yet can be heard in the gravel that may or may not be under your window.
O.K., Resnais is allowed one symbol, and the quite funny game is perfect for capitalism; he can lose, but never does. Is this my favourite symbol in cinema? Clear, beautfiul, beyond simple unpacking.
The greatest film ever? Never a good phrase- it is on that highest plateau, which isn't even a plateau, but the unsayable.... The most erotic film (Dreyer?), moments of losing control, the voiceover in crashes of specificity. The most visually pleasing? Maybe. Perfectly formed location, architecture geometric and mysterirous, tracks around corners. The most intelligent? Visually, in literature, it achieves greatness.
Let's mention the music before I start; very powerful, I liked it, almost absurd in the organs strength, matching the arch humour throughout the work.
Lights usually come from back and behind, to mention. We have a camera crawling along walls, strokes in both directions, camera stylo writing, also moving up and down. 'Marienbad' as the anatomy of the track (smooth); dissection of role of that move, of a camera, as desire (When the eventual move backwards comes, falls off the wall, we have its reverse, a dissection, the negation of desire; what is that?).
These erotic tracks are not actually too explicit, then huge orgasm on ironic Italian melo burst in, repetition of a track into the feathered arms, one of the most powerful moments I know in the cinema.
Also worth to say that there are quite a few close views- and why not. That is the feeling, it conveys it.
Marienbad won't be reduced, but let me talk of specificity and abstraction. If time doesn't matter, nor does place; says the man, abstraction. Yet also, there is specificity in eroticism, among the interchangeable walls we have the one moment, the walk I made for you through carpets so thick we had silence. This is all in the same way the voice (over)/ poetry (Robbe-Grillet, yet also the words of some kind of characters)/ acting (mannered, singular, general stand-ins) is specific and abstract.
Where to start on the shadows of the garden; not for blocks, but specific humans? Too easy. The location is at once so clear, big blocks referenced in the final words, yet among them I lose you.
For all, in a way this is quite simple; man meets women, she can't remember, montage cuts between then and now, some maybe true, some not, all indeterminate, maybe, or specific in erotic. The only confusion is deliberate, the need, perhaps, for mystification, the way life is clear, clear blocks, but I still can't find you, the mystery of a white wall, a gaudy stucco. One just needs to accept continuous time has collapsed in the montage.
Returning to the key question of specificity; does time matter between moral decisions? Does what is in between matter? If there was a decision now, and then, does time exist between? What is going on in the cut, in impossible spaces where space is clearly 'unreal'? Does this matter, for life?
Is there a lack of politics here? This is a film from a director of the mouvelle vague, in some way; one occassioanlly realises, in the deliberate humour often, this is after all people dressing up. The nouvelle vague was horribly apolitical in many ways; and like them, you have to say Resnais at least centers erotiticism as much, if not more, than engagement (fatalism?). I would call this, if I could name things, a film about eroticism, really. But eroticism and politics are intertwined; the film is about eroticism in a degraded world, how it can only exist as deliberately obscured, confused, not making sense. This is the fetish element, shoes and bondage.
How can the specificity of desire manage in the degraded world of this hotel/ spa? Marienbad, Fredericksbad, twists these confusions, which are necessary. Desire only possible through what looks like heavy formalism; the only way to save it, by intellectualising it?
For all, there are clear politics; the spa (I want!) is clearly the bourgeois/ aristocracy, the fading abstractions of the brutal walls that enclose, only one way, that turn my footsteps to silence in the carpet, yet can be heard in the gravel that may or may not be under your window.
O.K., Resnais is allowed one symbol, and the quite funny game is perfect for capitalism; he can lose, but never does. Is this my favourite symbol in cinema? Clear, beautfiul, beyond simple unpacking.
The greatest film ever? Never a good phrase- it is on that highest plateau, which isn't even a plateau, but the unsayable.... The most erotic film (Dreyer?), moments of losing control, the voiceover in crashes of specificity. The most visually pleasing? Maybe. Perfectly formed location, architecture geometric and mysterirous, tracks around corners. The most intelligent? Visually, in literature, it achieves greatness.
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Gion Bayashi
Kenji Mizoguchi - 1953
The camera is getting closer with each one (which is silly, as this is before 'Sancho' in time, but anyway). Moving to quite a few at least mid shots; perhaps it is because it is modern day, less a tale, more a social analysis. It does keep the Mizoguchi looking and looked at, but it does some things differntly. This shift, when I think of my own reaction to it and something similar in Kurosawa, usually finds me an advocate of at least the equality of the modern day, against some critical opinion.
What I like, and I like this film very much, is how very specific it is. There is a kind of humour here, in the details; the lawyer, the legal codes given, the way the horror of the situation is reduced to these exact formulations (also congratulate the oppenness; anything better than Hollywood).
We have crushing fate again, which has cause, effect, solution, but is so built in as to be inevitable. It is pretty clear where Mizoguchi stands, hating the Geisha principles. One more thing; he can cut in, he does sometimes move in for tears. Just not always.
The camera is getting closer with each one (which is silly, as this is before 'Sancho' in time, but anyway). Moving to quite a few at least mid shots; perhaps it is because it is modern day, less a tale, more a social analysis. It does keep the Mizoguchi looking and looked at, but it does some things differntly. This shift, when I think of my own reaction to it and something similar in Kurosawa, usually finds me an advocate of at least the equality of the modern day, against some critical opinion.
What I like, and I like this film very much, is how very specific it is. There is a kind of humour here, in the details; the lawyer, the legal codes given, the way the horror of the situation is reduced to these exact formulations (also congratulate the oppenness; anything better than Hollywood).
We have crushing fate again, which has cause, effect, solution, but is so built in as to be inevitable. It is pretty clear where Mizoguchi stands, hating the Geisha principles. One more thing; he can cut in, he does sometimes move in for tears. Just not always.
Friday, 26 August 2011
Sancho Dayu
Kenji Mizoguchi - 1954
In many ways this is a play of looking, seen in distance what is looked at, with the back turned to the camera, and the look, seen close up, where we don't see the other half of this double. This, as in the famous boat scene, is used in variations for the appropriate effect. In this sense, editing is key for all this; a deliberate edit, not always tied to narrative extrapolation.
We have that lovely dappled forest throughout, and many huge long shots; a finish again on the notion of work, the singular plowing the field, or beach here. I again felt, with the mysticism, the wide open islands, the idea of powers swirling, not settling.
I can't help but have to bring up fatalism; throughout this and other works of Mizoguchi, perhaps? A pile up of problems, what I dislike is the dramatic arc to them, which gives me a feeling of a sense of relish to them. To be fair, specific problems are dealt with (slavery, land rights), but really it seems more like the principle of misery is more at play than anything.
In many ways this is a play of looking, seen in distance what is looked at, with the back turned to the camera, and the look, seen close up, where we don't see the other half of this double. This, as in the famous boat scene, is used in variations for the appropriate effect. In this sense, editing is key for all this; a deliberate edit, not always tied to narrative extrapolation.
We have that lovely dappled forest throughout, and many huge long shots; a finish again on the notion of work, the singular plowing the field, or beach here. I again felt, with the mysticism, the wide open islands, the idea of powers swirling, not settling.
I can't help but have to bring up fatalism; throughout this and other works of Mizoguchi, perhaps? A pile up of problems, what I dislike is the dramatic arc to them, which gives me a feeling of a sense of relish to them. To be fair, specific problems are dealt with (slavery, land rights), but really it seems more like the principle of misery is more at play than anything.
Saturday, 13 August 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, 11 August 2011
Entr'acte
Rene Clair - 1924
Short film; I would genuinely call it surrealist. This is because it deals with the everyday; not larger than life characters, or in costumes, but just part of life. The trick as that this life moves; from one thing to another, without one knowing or understanding the sequence. The speeded up procession, a camel (why not?), the pointless chase, the magician at the end. The exciting montage of the chase is cinema creating for the purpose of pushing on a narrative, though there isn’t a narrative; it is positively Rivette-esque.
Clair also uses various possibilities of the cinema, its capacity to make these ‘illogical’ moves. It’s capacity to evoke images, ideas that aren’t ‘really’ there; for creating an emotion through its ability to make people disappear, double the screen. This even extends to those extremely fast, though smooth, pans.
I’m not going to pretend the film discusses or uses these kind of possibilities with any of the same kind of intelligence, depth, or power as ‘Qui Sauve Peut’ (always stupid to compare to Godard). It rather shows them, and its historical in that sense.
Short film; I would genuinely call it surrealist. This is because it deals with the everyday; not larger than life characters, or in costumes, but just part of life. The trick as that this life moves; from one thing to another, without one knowing or understanding the sequence. The speeded up procession, a camel (why not?), the pointless chase, the magician at the end. The exciting montage of the chase is cinema creating for the purpose of pushing on a narrative, though there isn’t a narrative; it is positively Rivette-esque.
Clair also uses various possibilities of the cinema, its capacity to make these ‘illogical’ moves. It’s capacity to evoke images, ideas that aren’t ‘really’ there; for creating an emotion through its ability to make people disappear, double the screen. This even extends to those extremely fast, though smooth, pans.
I’m not going to pretend the film discusses or uses these kind of possibilities with any of the same kind of intelligence, depth, or power as ‘Qui Sauve Peut’ (always stupid to compare to Godard). It rather shows them, and its historical in that sense.
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Playtime
Jacques Tati - 1967
Tati uses Often high, very deep compostitions. There are no lines in these Fordian spaces (though Ford is low- and Tati can also be)meeting in distance. The camera moves from from one precise postion to another with often little tracks, very precise, moves in. Each carefully chosen positions allows the visual ephemera to appear, allows Tati's cinema.
Again, Tati is full of set-ups. We also have more than ever returning jokes, my favourite centering around the overseasoned Turbot. These don't have to conclude. One constantly goes 'ah, yes', as one recalls the strand.
Tati's fram employs multiple points of action. Each one is complex, in so far as people living lives, talking to each other, small gestures, small niceties, a world and in short, a life, to see. Yet at the same time the difficulty in fully training the eyes on any one of these points does not necessarilly mean one misses much; this is because the points are not 'actions', just people living, talking, usually presumably banalities (which are the most fasinating, and worthy of study, for the student of life). Each piece deserves study as a point of morality; each deserves to be concentrated on closely. This is what doesn't happen fully, yet to an extent. For this reason I wouldn't call Tati a humanist (not a criticism); he rather wants to create a milleu full of humans, wants to understand group behaviour before individual (that is the way his study goes).
And what an environment is Tati's city, light blue, grey colours, buildings so similar, the classic landmarks only reflections on those endless glass doors and tea towels. The compelling, yet montomous colour palette often uses darker colours, or rather shaed of navy, near its front. And one more thing about this world; you can
see the cardboard cut outs in the background!
This kind of conformity of dress, colour and behaviour is most interesting when we see it mirrored even in Hulot; as well as businessmen there are also multiple Tati's. There is no way to escape the group, the figure of Hulot himself can't be read fully as a romantic outsider.
So many wonderful sequences; T.V. watching, and of course that restaurant scene; really remarkable.
Tati uses Often high, very deep compostitions. There are no lines in these Fordian spaces (though Ford is low- and Tati can also be)meeting in distance. The camera moves from from one precise postion to another with often little tracks, very precise, moves in. Each carefully chosen positions allows the visual ephemera to appear, allows Tati's cinema.
Again, Tati is full of set-ups. We also have more than ever returning jokes, my favourite centering around the overseasoned Turbot. These don't have to conclude. One constantly goes 'ah, yes', as one recalls the strand.
Tati's fram employs multiple points of action. Each one is complex, in so far as people living lives, talking to each other, small gestures, small niceties, a world and in short, a life, to see. Yet at the same time the difficulty in fully training the eyes on any one of these points does not necessarilly mean one misses much; this is because the points are not 'actions', just people living, talking, usually presumably banalities (which are the most fasinating, and worthy of study, for the student of life). Each piece deserves study as a point of morality; each deserves to be concentrated on closely. This is what doesn't happen fully, yet to an extent. For this reason I wouldn't call Tati a humanist (not a criticism); he rather wants to create a milleu full of humans, wants to understand group behaviour before individual (that is the way his study goes).
And what an environment is Tati's city, light blue, grey colours, buildings so similar, the classic landmarks only reflections on those endless glass doors and tea towels. The compelling, yet montomous colour palette often uses darker colours, or rather shaed of navy, near its front. And one more thing about this world; you can
see the cardboard cut outs in the background!
This kind of conformity of dress, colour and behaviour is most interesting when we see it mirrored even in Hulot; as well as businessmen there are also multiple Tati's. There is no way to escape the group, the figure of Hulot himself can't be read fully as a romantic outsider.
So many wonderful sequences; T.V. watching, and of course that restaurant scene; really remarkable.
Thursday, 4 August 2011
Film Socialisme
Jean-Luc Godard - 2010
Godard doesn't really ram us with literary ideas; there is certainly a lot, a thousand more times thinking in languga than other films, but it isn't a complete overload, trying to confuse one at all. Much of it is simply looking at the image, recognising that the figure is listening to music.
The montage is, also, not non-sequiter; there is an associative train of thought, obviously very loose, prone to digressions (the wonderful little look at Egypt, in silence, for example, the Odessa Steps sequence), but it is often quite clearly there. Why do we follow the editor's train of thought? Or are we really following our own, making connections?
And one more technical point; Godard manipulates focus a lot, using it quite shallow at times (along with at others video's deep capacity) to imbue his images.
The first half here seemed to me less straightforward mocking, much more complicit in the hell it presents. Yeah, its hateful, but mockery isn't really the point; this is what we are. The second section may have given me the most this time around. Tender, absolutely full of ideas, shot in a coldly elegiac way, if that is possible. The final section, when we now know images are lost, texts but imitations, had the few single moments (not whole parts, which is alot) that really brought the house down. Godard is clearly uncomfortable with cinema's ability to have these great emotional, intellectual moments, but he gets away with one in particular- when I say 'get away' it usually means they haven't really, but here it does- where a smile destroys the universe, a smile not even seen. Montage, cinema, mis-en-scene. This is a film. Because it's not a thing. But it is a thing (Les Choses Comme Ca).
Godard doesn't really ram us with literary ideas; there is certainly a lot, a thousand more times thinking in languga than other films, but it isn't a complete overload, trying to confuse one at all. Much of it is simply looking at the image, recognising that the figure is listening to music.
The montage is, also, not non-sequiter; there is an associative train of thought, obviously very loose, prone to digressions (the wonderful little look at Egypt, in silence, for example, the Odessa Steps sequence), but it is often quite clearly there. Why do we follow the editor's train of thought? Or are we really following our own, making connections?
And one more technical point; Godard manipulates focus a lot, using it quite shallow at times (along with at others video's deep capacity) to imbue his images.
The first half here seemed to me less straightforward mocking, much more complicit in the hell it presents. Yeah, its hateful, but mockery isn't really the point; this is what we are. The second section may have given me the most this time around. Tender, absolutely full of ideas, shot in a coldly elegiac way, if that is possible. The final section, when we now know images are lost, texts but imitations, had the few single moments (not whole parts, which is alot) that really brought the house down. Godard is clearly uncomfortable with cinema's ability to have these great emotional, intellectual moments, but he gets away with one in particular- when I say 'get away' it usually means they haven't really, but here it does- where a smile destroys the universe, a smile not even seen. Montage, cinema, mis-en-scene. This is a film. Because it's not a thing. But it is a thing (Les Choses Comme Ca).
Saturday, 30 July 2011
The Magnificent Ambersons
Orson Welles - 1942
Ah, what wonders. The shadows on the faces in that long, winding house; not dappled lighting because it's too hard. The small camera movements (or the big ones) that takes us along and through it, statues that are living in some mechanical way, but never really. The voiceover that is not fateful, rarely ironic. Those longer shots than usual in Welles, the house like a dolls house house, the car like a toy; and at once like a work of a master.
The death of the Gods; time takes away all that was once holy, some fight against it, most will simply dissappear, away from the former grandeur.
Ah, what wonders. The shadows on the faces in that long, winding house; not dappled lighting because it's too hard. The small camera movements (or the big ones) that takes us along and through it, statues that are living in some mechanical way, but never really. The voiceover that is not fateful, rarely ironic. Those longer shots than usual in Welles, the house like a dolls house house, the car like a toy; and at once like a work of a master.
The death of the Gods; time takes away all that was once holy, some fight against it, most will simply dissappear, away from the former grandeur.
Cet Obscur Objet Du Desir
Luis Bunuel - 1977
Perhaps my favourite Bunuel. Quite a lot of camera movement really, following people round in its smooth, almost dream like tracks (closer than the black and white pictures, of course), and also going off on its own, a particularly memorable track backwards in Rey's apartment. The lighting is often pretty hard, completely illuminating all of the face (the shadows are soft and under the chin), though in the night time a hot air is created by mixing this harshness with shadows. The focus is shallow, the colours disgusting, people sinking into the backdrops, as though the bourgeoise is a stage, with curtains to go behind.
The terrorist attacks that are total subversion, the random moments of robbery, violence are explosions from the outside, while the bourgeoisie explode inside. Desire, closing the eyes and following the path.
An interesting way of looking at this might be to try and see Conchita as more than just the phantasmic figure; what does she want? Freedom?
The framing device, of the storytelling, has the very process of telling the story as part of the eroticism... there is so much here. Marvellous.
Perhaps my favourite Bunuel. Quite a lot of camera movement really, following people round in its smooth, almost dream like tracks (closer than the black and white pictures, of course), and also going off on its own, a particularly memorable track backwards in Rey's apartment. The lighting is often pretty hard, completely illuminating all of the face (the shadows are soft and under the chin), though in the night time a hot air is created by mixing this harshness with shadows. The focus is shallow, the colours disgusting, people sinking into the backdrops, as though the bourgeoise is a stage, with curtains to go behind.
The terrorist attacks that are total subversion, the random moments of robbery, violence are explosions from the outside, while the bourgeoisie explode inside. Desire, closing the eyes and following the path.
An interesting way of looking at this might be to try and see Conchita as more than just the phantasmic figure; what does she want? Freedom?
The framing device, of the storytelling, has the very process of telling the story as part of the eroticism... there is so much here. Marvellous.
Thursday, 28 July 2011
Citizen Kane
Orson Welles - 1941
Sadder than ever, slower at the beginning.
Pictorially, and this is far from being the point, it is incredibly beautiful. Often with blacked out sillouhettes, which helps depth, but also great plays in the composition. And shadows on the faces of main actors; still wild.
Welles can do long takes, but his camera is less still than Ambersons. Many tracks in and out, movements of desire, of the search. Their are zig-zag compostions that are developed in these moves. The over-the-shoulder of Thompson investigates the very poissbility of that shot; what can we know about either side of an SRS. In truth, nearly every device is used at some point; closer shots, longer ones, quick cuts, and slow.
Note the huge divergences in the sound design; famously the overlapping dialogue, pure noise, put also quiet dialogue, low in the sound mix, and smart uses of silence for emphasis. And of course the smash cuts to parrots and so on.
And of course Toland's depth, with the precise compostions. After half an hour the impression is gained of time being passed through, as though by making such of the space the film manages to make time visual, or tactile, or rather more, just there.
Time pushes one way, on a single line, but it brushes against, things stick before ;ater falling; it is not truly linear. The montage sequences are like Godard's jumps, no importance between moral decisions. Yet parts are also like rolling a marble down a cathedral hall; time is seem to move. This film is architectural, if it can be related to other art forms; one can see time in its huge distances, of space and of time.
There are 1000 views that can be made on it, but that doesn't mean there is more than one object. Welles repudiates Freud and the pre-modernist novels linear, single chronology, as he does Faulkner's time shattering in 1000 pieces. There is only one way, Kane is imbued with past and future always (the end at the start). Yet neither are every really 'there'; time always marches to its own beat, it can't be frozen and surveyed (statues, photographs). This is modernist art, as it reacts to the problems of time. And it answers that question as a film. Like all the great films, it could only be cinema, and it is an argument for the singularity and greatness of the cinema. Only in images that move can this sense of unstobbable movement, yet tracked to a past, (slow motion?) continue. In a novel, describing something in two ways, thanks to language's referential function (at least in our minds, at the present) means two different things. The cinema does something different.
The strange thing is, I remembered Kane's story, and still do, chronologically? Why does memory work like that? How are moral decisions singular events, and in time? Why can cinema answer this in a way nothing else can?
Sadder than ever, slower at the beginning.
Pictorially, and this is far from being the point, it is incredibly beautiful. Often with blacked out sillouhettes, which helps depth, but also great plays in the composition. And shadows on the faces of main actors; still wild.
Welles can do long takes, but his camera is less still than Ambersons. Many tracks in and out, movements of desire, of the search. Their are zig-zag compostions that are developed in these moves. The over-the-shoulder of Thompson investigates the very poissbility of that shot; what can we know about either side of an SRS. In truth, nearly every device is used at some point; closer shots, longer ones, quick cuts, and slow.
Note the huge divergences in the sound design; famously the overlapping dialogue, pure noise, put also quiet dialogue, low in the sound mix, and smart uses of silence for emphasis. And of course the smash cuts to parrots and so on.
And of course Toland's depth, with the precise compostions. After half an hour the impression is gained of time being passed through, as though by making such of the space the film manages to make time visual, or tactile, or rather more, just there.
Time pushes one way, on a single line, but it brushes against, things stick before ;ater falling; it is not truly linear. The montage sequences are like Godard's jumps, no importance between moral decisions. Yet parts are also like rolling a marble down a cathedral hall; time is seem to move. This film is architectural, if it can be related to other art forms; one can see time in its huge distances, of space and of time.
There are 1000 views that can be made on it, but that doesn't mean there is more than one object. Welles repudiates Freud and the pre-modernist novels linear, single chronology, as he does Faulkner's time shattering in 1000 pieces. There is only one way, Kane is imbued with past and future always (the end at the start). Yet neither are every really 'there'; time always marches to its own beat, it can't be frozen and surveyed (statues, photographs). This is modernist art, as it reacts to the problems of time. And it answers that question as a film. Like all the great films, it could only be cinema, and it is an argument for the singularity and greatness of the cinema. Only in images that move can this sense of unstobbable movement, yet tracked to a past, (slow motion?) continue. In a novel, describing something in two ways, thanks to language's referential function (at least in our minds, at the present) means two different things. The cinema does something different.
The strange thing is, I remembered Kane's story, and still do, chronologically? Why does memory work like that? How are moral decisions singular events, and in time? Why can cinema answer this in a way nothing else can?
Saturday, 23 July 2011
North By Northwest
Alfred Hitchcock - 1959
Completely absurd, often filthy, directed with such elan.
Hitchcock manipulates time quite spectacularly; some sequences go on and on, the long lull before the cropduster (and of course space is also used there), the incredibly quick ending, the long first love scene (which is really remarkably frank). All for the old suspense, of course.
As far as composition, I am sure, with the exception of a few sequences (at the Gehry house, for example) Hitchcock uses less eyeline matches. His camera is in fact often alowing medium shots, twos or threes, more 'objective' one could say. Gives the impression of Grant as the action puppet thrown around.
The plot is completely absurd, but surely the logic of it is a clear emotional one. The comic idea of the mistaken man, the man in the wrong place. Taken on a wild adventure, he turns out to rather enjoy it, and, having at first tried to reassure his mother, sticks two fingers up. Then finding that in this new world, where beautiful women seem to fall for him, he is betrayed; they are really out for him, he's not a part of that world. Grant is always an outsider here. Think of the scene as he goes into the auction house; tragic, his amour is with the other man, and he thought he was in that world. Then finding out others are equally trapped, lonely. How much of this is personal to Hitchcock, outsider, playing the game but detached?
This is, as Grant tells us, an absurd plot, flying along in all directions, implausible, who cares. It tells us of urgent feelings, in a riotously, expertly entertaining manner.
Completely absurd, often filthy, directed with such elan.
Hitchcock manipulates time quite spectacularly; some sequences go on and on, the long lull before the cropduster (and of course space is also used there), the incredibly quick ending, the long first love scene (which is really remarkably frank). All for the old suspense, of course.
As far as composition, I am sure, with the exception of a few sequences (at the Gehry house, for example) Hitchcock uses less eyeline matches. His camera is in fact often alowing medium shots, twos or threes, more 'objective' one could say. Gives the impression of Grant as the action puppet thrown around.
The plot is completely absurd, but surely the logic of it is a clear emotional one. The comic idea of the mistaken man, the man in the wrong place. Taken on a wild adventure, he turns out to rather enjoy it, and, having at first tried to reassure his mother, sticks two fingers up. Then finding that in this new world, where beautiful women seem to fall for him, he is betrayed; they are really out for him, he's not a part of that world. Grant is always an outsider here. Think of the scene as he goes into the auction house; tragic, his amour is with the other man, and he thought he was in that world. Then finding out others are equally trapped, lonely. How much of this is personal to Hitchcock, outsider, playing the game but detached?
This is, as Grant tells us, an absurd plot, flying along in all directions, implausible, who cares. It tells us of urgent feelings, in a riotously, expertly entertaining manner.
Friday, 22 July 2011
Eloge de L'Amour
Jean-Luc Godard - 2001
Heartbreaking, brilliant, complex, enigmatic, dense.
The first section has that incredible black and white imagery, again using strong outside light and completely underexposing the rooms it shoots in. The low angle, among others, acts to cut off heads or not let us see who is talking. It's people, but it's also abstract shapes. Then that piano motif comes in, the heartbreaking one. The remarkable thing is it never comes in on an 'emotional' scene; there is not a single such scene in this film/video in that sense (though I'm not sure quite how to describe the 'L'Atalante' shot). The emotion, the Elogie, rather builds up through memory, and comradeship. The shooting on the street is again dark (and black and white), Bresson references, on park benches, the only lights shining being the whites of headlights. Can we tell the story, the history, without falsifying it? Memory requires comradeship, comradeship requires memory. The titles flash; quelquechose de l'amour.
The second half of video is remarkable. He lights his video, again, pretty hard in many ways, nearly always backlight, backlight backlight; and then he films with no side or front, so the shapes we see on the interior are pretty much in black. Maybe it's the colours, the sea and the sky, that are most distinctive. Huge blue, green, and that orangey yellow seem to be almost the entire palette. I don't know how we got that white balance; post-production, it's got to be. We could make the film about the past, about history, before the Americans colonise it.... but we can't. The hatred of the Americans is clear, but balanced; they want a memory too, that's why they snatch ours, or our attempts. The end is strangely affirming, the train (always the train) and the walk, nothing was said, but there's more... I never wanted this to end.
Heartbreaking, brilliant, complex, enigmatic, dense.
The first section has that incredible black and white imagery, again using strong outside light and completely underexposing the rooms it shoots in. The low angle, among others, acts to cut off heads or not let us see who is talking. It's people, but it's also abstract shapes. Then that piano motif comes in, the heartbreaking one. The remarkable thing is it never comes in on an 'emotional' scene; there is not a single such scene in this film/video in that sense (though I'm not sure quite how to describe the 'L'Atalante' shot). The emotion, the Elogie, rather builds up through memory, and comradeship. The shooting on the street is again dark (and black and white), Bresson references, on park benches, the only lights shining being the whites of headlights. Can we tell the story, the history, without falsifying it? Memory requires comradeship, comradeship requires memory. The titles flash; quelquechose de l'amour.
The second half of video is remarkable. He lights his video, again, pretty hard in many ways, nearly always backlight, backlight backlight; and then he films with no side or front, so the shapes we see on the interior are pretty much in black. Maybe it's the colours, the sea and the sky, that are most distinctive. Huge blue, green, and that orangey yellow seem to be almost the entire palette. I don't know how we got that white balance; post-production, it's got to be. We could make the film about the past, about history, before the Americans colonise it.... but we can't. The hatred of the Americans is clear, but balanced; they want a memory too, that's why they snatch ours, or our attempts. The end is strangely affirming, the train (always the train) and the walk, nothing was said, but there's more... I never wanted this to end.
Thursday, 21 July 2011
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?
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?
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Vivre Sa Vie
Jean-Luc Godard - 1962
Yes; I think I said what I wanted to say in the last entry. What struck me again? The simplicity of the narrative; this really, in many ways, isn't as reflexive as the later works which develop the same themes. It is nearly like the laying out of a number of themes. It is also so close to a classic documentary in many ways.
Yes; I think I said what I wanted to say in the last entry. What struck me again? The simplicity of the narrative; this really, in many ways, isn't as reflexive as the later works which develop the same themes. It is nearly like the laying out of a number of themes. It is also so close to a classic documentary in many ways.
La Chinoise
Jean-Luc Godard - 1967
Godard has this as a moment; a moment in the struggle that can then be critiqued, without navel-gazing worries.The logic used on the train isn't intended to mock the struggle, but to put it on the path, take it beyond the simplistic Maoism of that summer.
And simplicity is the question here. The three primary colours, the slogans everywhere. Too simple has to be the conclusion. But when we try to do this theory, takes words as materials, someone says I don't love you, and it's difficult to keep it that. The theory was all in the wrong order. Back to work; zero.
The use of interview is key here, allowing us to consider the actors as people, as involved in what they do. This is a renactment of an event; and this film is one of the strongest argument for the Melies cinema, the reenactment of events. As with the Vietnam play, here is what we can take as truth. The reality of the reflection, not the reflection of reality. Art and politics; thinking about two things at once.
Also, a couple of things about the camera; Godard moves it less as the sixties go on, but what here about those tracks along the window. Seperating?
Godard has this as a moment; a moment in the struggle that can then be critiqued, without navel-gazing worries.The logic used on the train isn't intended to mock the struggle, but to put it on the path, take it beyond the simplistic Maoism of that summer.
And simplicity is the question here. The three primary colours, the slogans everywhere. Too simple has to be the conclusion. But when we try to do this theory, takes words as materials, someone says I don't love you, and it's difficult to keep it that. The theory was all in the wrong order. Back to work; zero.
The use of interview is key here, allowing us to consider the actors as people, as involved in what they do. This is a renactment of an event; and this film is one of the strongest argument for the Melies cinema, the reenactment of events. As with the Vietnam play, here is what we can take as truth. The reality of the reflection, not the reflection of reality. Art and politics; thinking about two things at once.
Also, a couple of things about the camera; Godard moves it less as the sixties go on, but what here about those tracks along the window. Seperating?
Tuesday, 19 July 2011
2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle
Jean-Luc Godard - 1966
A film that goes beyond what was before; Godard extends literature, and then here, he deciseively goes beyond it. I can talk about this film; but better to make a visual response.
There is such an affair of confusion, but such confidence in the presentation. Thw whisper. Is the machinery brutal objectivity, the interviews sujectivity? Godard displays such patience, such incredilbe patience with his subjects. Each owrd cries for a digression, but he stays with them, keeping the eyes and the ears open.
This is about Paris, but it enters into philosophy. It is about as abstract as I will let it get, but the crossing with the image, the relation to that sociology. A teacup does contain the world; so does Marine Vlady.
Everything can contain its opposite, or could be its opposite. That is the arbitrary nature of words? Who is she? A fractured jigsaw that can't be put back together. Each object can also be something else. Deconstruction, verging on the po-mo, in film.
This is a way of seeing; Sontag argues the content of the ideas is less important, which is true to an extent, but I still would feel I was missing something if they were ignored. The slogans that hit us; how do we take in words about Vietnam out of the mouths of children? Violence and life, how do we live with them, how do we coexist. We forget about everything. Then we listen. So we go back to zero.
A film that goes beyond what was before; Godard extends literature, and then here, he deciseively goes beyond it. I can talk about this film; but better to make a visual response.
There is such an affair of confusion, but such confidence in the presentation. Thw whisper. Is the machinery brutal objectivity, the interviews sujectivity? Godard displays such patience, such incredilbe patience with his subjects. Each owrd cries for a digression, but he stays with them, keeping the eyes and the ears open.
This is about Paris, but it enters into philosophy. It is about as abstract as I will let it get, but the crossing with the image, the relation to that sociology. A teacup does contain the world; so does Marine Vlady.
Everything can contain its opposite, or could be its opposite. That is the arbitrary nature of words? Who is she? A fractured jigsaw that can't be put back together. Each object can also be something else. Deconstruction, verging on the po-mo, in film.
This is a way of seeing; Sontag argues the content of the ideas is less important, which is true to an extent, but I still would feel I was missing something if they were ignored. The slogans that hit us; how do we take in words about Vietnam out of the mouths of children? Violence and life, how do we live with them, how do we coexist. We forget about everything. Then we listen. So we go back to zero.
Masculin / Feminin
Jean-Luc Godard - 1966
With this work, Godard foregrounds what has always been there; the question of his own role. Or rather, he problematises it more than before. Just by stepping into the shoes, by enacting what happened, one does not understand them. Is this a counter to 'if you take away the inside, you find the soul'? It surely is in dialogue with his role, in, say, 'Vivre Sa Vie', as the social investigator who just needs to probe harder to understand.... he doesn't know what understanding means, or at least that is the intial question. It is about understanding the modern world.
This, oddly enough, means we get more 'identification' than usual. The Leaud model thinks he can understand revolution, the conditions of life. But he is hopeless, undermined, gets nowhere. He tries to act like a movie star, but they want to talk about Sandy Shaw. He surely is Godard's stand-in to some extent.
Godard sees possibilities in the documentary, in some form of interview. He cuts to shots of street-filming. The use of ideas as slogans, intertitles and so on, at once put across modern life as this series of hopes, disconnections from the 'truth', and the array of responses their are to the world. In form, it is trying to help but, like Leaud, finding little behind the slogans. But that is just his life; and he can't escape it. He and we find ourselves always on the edges of what should be the 'film'; little bits of great heartbreaking situations, actors, killings, and so on. There is an element of absurdism, but also of the idea of the after the lord mayor's show character, of not being able to be truly involved in that. The wish to is Marx; modern life, love affairs and commerce, are Coca-Cola. Or well, love, may cross somewhere.
So Godard wants some kind of documentary. Not to ask leading questions. Though one always must. Wisdom is trying to see clearly. This leads to, stylistically, a much less elaborate film than before. There are some tracks, but largely we have pretty sober straight twos or threes, and singles. This might be Godard's contribution to the neo-realist legacy. We do see the places the young Parisians of '66 live in. We do hear their thoughts, see the streets. And the interviews. What are these? Investigations? How to not know the answers before we ask the questions? There must be theory, but that should be the start of the debate, not the end. The key interview is maybe the long one, with Miss 19. She is clueless, though she sincerely tries to answer, and is revealing. I partly felt this was almost cruel. It desperately tries not to be, but is. Must one be cruel? Why did I say she is 'clueless'? What did I want from her. How can I learn to see? Godard moves towards (I know this, I've seen some of what comes after!) the use of 'documentary' footage, ideas directly given, and other things (they tell us two or three things...). How to put them together? The difficulty, frankly the worry and the paranoia here, are evident. A film of questions.
And we give it all for two or three shots. Hanging around against the wall, General Doinel waiting for the car. Legging it up to the projection box. That cut, classical profundity to the painful but true inconsequentiality of modernity (so inconsequential as to be consequential), from the camps to the pop charts, an incredible cut, one brutal one among others here. A film less sure of itself than 'Vivre Sa Vie' and 'Le Mepris'.
With this work, Godard foregrounds what has always been there; the question of his own role. Or rather, he problematises it more than before. Just by stepping into the shoes, by enacting what happened, one does not understand them. Is this a counter to 'if you take away the inside, you find the soul'? It surely is in dialogue with his role, in, say, 'Vivre Sa Vie', as the social investigator who just needs to probe harder to understand.... he doesn't know what understanding means, or at least that is the intial question. It is about understanding the modern world.
This, oddly enough, means we get more 'identification' than usual. The Leaud model thinks he can understand revolution, the conditions of life. But he is hopeless, undermined, gets nowhere. He tries to act like a movie star, but they want to talk about Sandy Shaw. He surely is Godard's stand-in to some extent.
Godard sees possibilities in the documentary, in some form of interview. He cuts to shots of street-filming. The use of ideas as slogans, intertitles and so on, at once put across modern life as this series of hopes, disconnections from the 'truth', and the array of responses their are to the world. In form, it is trying to help but, like Leaud, finding little behind the slogans. But that is just his life; and he can't escape it. He and we find ourselves always on the edges of what should be the 'film'; little bits of great heartbreaking situations, actors, killings, and so on. There is an element of absurdism, but also of the idea of the after the lord mayor's show character, of not being able to be truly involved in that. The wish to is Marx; modern life, love affairs and commerce, are Coca-Cola. Or well, love, may cross somewhere.
So Godard wants some kind of documentary. Not to ask leading questions. Though one always must. Wisdom is trying to see clearly. This leads to, stylistically, a much less elaborate film than before. There are some tracks, but largely we have pretty sober straight twos or threes, and singles. This might be Godard's contribution to the neo-realist legacy. We do see the places the young Parisians of '66 live in. We do hear their thoughts, see the streets. And the interviews. What are these? Investigations? How to not know the answers before we ask the questions? There must be theory, but that should be the start of the debate, not the end. The key interview is maybe the long one, with Miss 19. She is clueless, though she sincerely tries to answer, and is revealing. I partly felt this was almost cruel. It desperately tries not to be, but is. Must one be cruel? Why did I say she is 'clueless'? What did I want from her. How can I learn to see? Godard moves towards (I know this, I've seen some of what comes after!) the use of 'documentary' footage, ideas directly given, and other things (they tell us two or three things...). How to put them together? The difficulty, frankly the worry and the paranoia here, are evident. A film of questions.
And we give it all for two or three shots. Hanging around against the wall, General Doinel waiting for the car. Legging it up to the projection box. That cut, classical profundity to the painful but true inconsequentiality of modernity (so inconsequential as to be consequential), from the camps to the pop charts, an incredible cut, one brutal one among others here. A film less sure of itself than 'Vivre Sa Vie' and 'Le Mepris'.
Le Mepris
Jean-Luc Godard - 1963
I'll try and say some things about this great film by splitting into three parts. Any of the comments I make can surely apply to the other parts; the division is pretty much arbitrary, around when they crossed my mind (the division itself seems slightly justified; pretty flat, flat, Capri; if not definitive).
The first section, before Capri. Those wonderful, beautiful stately horizontal tracks. This is is so many ways an elogy for beauty, for classical art and its remnants in the modern renaissance and so on; for beauty. It is incredibly moving. We have those statues, eyes coloured. Throughout, we see the ancient as modern, the modern as ancient. Or as that just our hubris; was Ulysses really a modern neurotic. I have to side with Lang; it's a bad way of looking at things. The music, (which Greenaway has been listening to) makes us conscious that we are manipulated, pushed into this position; it doesn't lessen the effect. And then there is Lang. What beauty he has created, what cinema. Simply, what a great man, dwarfing those around him, all ironies aside. Yet Godard won't let us revel; ugliness so quickly intrudes, for all the bare emotion here. A key question here also seems to be; what is Bardot in the film? We look at Bardot, we look at her body. How is it possible to treat her, and not deserve her contempt? Godard again asks, who is he really filming? And we have a lot of the translation adventures in the first part. The lack of communication, the idiocy, cruelty in that. It is extremely funny, also, or because.
The second section, the flat. An excrutiatingly long analysis of a marriage, of the fluctuations, a meditation on screen time. Shot in those long takes, with the panning camera from a still point (and some wonderful framings; colour palette throughout is just...). And yet we know an eternity passes. How? The cinema. 'Realistically' justified, she can change dresses, hair, the house can change. The vacillations can seem ridiculous, all in one place. Cross this with Angelopoulos, past and present in the frame together; cinema and history. It is just.... The complexities of a relationship in time, all in one shot, a shot through time. Time is so important in this film; the long distances and slow movements, and the swelling music, called to mind the idea of cinema as movement through time, and for me the greatest single shots; 'La Dolce Vita', 'L'Eclisse' and 'Il Deserto Rosso', 'Kane'. And we also have the essayistic breaks in this movement. The turn to a voiceover and the image, sound and image together. This scene flaunts its length, toys with the audience; it isn't purely pleaurable, I partly thought 'it goes on too long'. But it might also be one of the greatest films there is.
The final section; Capri. We have the notion of fate. Godard's repeated motif; what one must do to live in the world. Again, Dreyer. Why must money shape the way things are? But as Lang says, the world is as it is. How to live with that, compromise. We see Piccolli compromise here, 'be to careful', allow his wife to go off with Palance. We see it isn't good enough. But how else to live? What does Lang do? Lang damn well fights, every inch of the way, every second, against the Palance's who are the world (who is not evil, who does have his phrases; he's just an idiot. But as he tells us, let's not get too superior, try to humiliate; it's his world). What Piccolli finds himsself in is a situation where he, like us, in the cinema and life, live in a world where we cannot but deseverve contempt for what we do (to survive is to prostitute oneself). There is no real exit here. There is just art, beauty, Lang. Does Godard disagree with Lang's boats beating on (why can't I think of a Lang phrase? He's light years ahead of Fitzgerald). Well, it's a different perspective, one of many in Godard;s films. The death of Bardot and Palance is, with the monumentalism, deserving of that move in, the swell and the 'Scope. This world has its fatefulness, it's measure, but always undercut. Not tragic, but in memory of it. Having to live, having to lose, deserving contempt.
I'll try and say some things about this great film by splitting into three parts. Any of the comments I make can surely apply to the other parts; the division is pretty much arbitrary, around when they crossed my mind (the division itself seems slightly justified; pretty flat, flat, Capri; if not definitive).
The first section, before Capri. Those wonderful, beautiful stately horizontal tracks. This is is so many ways an elogy for beauty, for classical art and its remnants in the modern renaissance and so on; for beauty. It is incredibly moving. We have those statues, eyes coloured. Throughout, we see the ancient as modern, the modern as ancient. Or as that just our hubris; was Ulysses really a modern neurotic. I have to side with Lang; it's a bad way of looking at things. The music, (which Greenaway has been listening to) makes us conscious that we are manipulated, pushed into this position; it doesn't lessen the effect. And then there is Lang. What beauty he has created, what cinema. Simply, what a great man, dwarfing those around him, all ironies aside. Yet Godard won't let us revel; ugliness so quickly intrudes, for all the bare emotion here. A key question here also seems to be; what is Bardot in the film? We look at Bardot, we look at her body. How is it possible to treat her, and not deserve her contempt? Godard again asks, who is he really filming? And we have a lot of the translation adventures in the first part. The lack of communication, the idiocy, cruelty in that. It is extremely funny, also, or because.
The second section, the flat. An excrutiatingly long analysis of a marriage, of the fluctuations, a meditation on screen time. Shot in those long takes, with the panning camera from a still point (and some wonderful framings; colour palette throughout is just...). And yet we know an eternity passes. How? The cinema. 'Realistically' justified, she can change dresses, hair, the house can change. The vacillations can seem ridiculous, all in one place. Cross this with Angelopoulos, past and present in the frame together; cinema and history. It is just.... The complexities of a relationship in time, all in one shot, a shot through time. Time is so important in this film; the long distances and slow movements, and the swelling music, called to mind the idea of cinema as movement through time, and for me the greatest single shots; 'La Dolce Vita', 'L'Eclisse' and 'Il Deserto Rosso', 'Kane'. And we also have the essayistic breaks in this movement. The turn to a voiceover and the image, sound and image together. This scene flaunts its length, toys with the audience; it isn't purely pleaurable, I partly thought 'it goes on too long'. But it might also be one of the greatest films there is.
The final section; Capri. We have the notion of fate. Godard's repeated motif; what one must do to live in the world. Again, Dreyer. Why must money shape the way things are? But as Lang says, the world is as it is. How to live with that, compromise. We see Piccolli compromise here, 'be to careful', allow his wife to go off with Palance. We see it isn't good enough. But how else to live? What does Lang do? Lang damn well fights, every inch of the way, every second, against the Palance's who are the world (who is not evil, who does have his phrases; he's just an idiot. But as he tells us, let's not get too superior, try to humiliate; it's his world). What Piccolli finds himsself in is a situation where he, like us, in the cinema and life, live in a world where we cannot but deseverve contempt for what we do (to survive is to prostitute oneself). There is no real exit here. There is just art, beauty, Lang. Does Godard disagree with Lang's boats beating on (why can't I think of a Lang phrase? He's light years ahead of Fitzgerald). Well, it's a different perspective, one of many in Godard;s films. The death of Bardot and Palance is, with the monumentalism, deserving of that move in, the swell and the 'Scope. This world has its fatefulness, it's measure, but always undercut. Not tragic, but in memory of it. Having to live, having to lose, deserving contempt.
Monday, 18 July 2011
Vivre Sa Vie
Jean-Luc Godard - 1962
It's, again, not much use giving my normal type of analysis; there is enough in each scene to write a book on, not that I would feel particularly able to go beyond speculation. It's a film, not a code, after all. But I'll say a few things.
If I, watching it here, had a chief subject, it was the identity. The soul, what you get if you take away the inside. What are we filming? Anna Karina, a 1962 prostitute, a film star. Godard fractures the identity through his Brechtian titles, some long takes, keeping the camera on when Karina fluffs a line, looks at the camera, before a shot starts.
How is she a cinema star? Through the association with Joan of Arc. Through her place as a model of Godard, made clear as the effective voiceover of the 'Oval Portrait' chapter, where sound is shown seperate from image. In the documentary voiceover parts, in the movements to song, we see her for what she (in part) is; someone in a film, someone Godard is filming, a film star. With all these identities in place, is she free? One vpice tells us she is; the words. Does the image agree? Cinema tells us she must follow a path; hence the Aldrich-esque conclusion, necessary for the binded film star.
Lets look at two techniques of these parts, these identities, never really seperate. We have the camera that, rather than going into SRS, swings back and forth; is this a reaction against the eyeline matches of Dreyer we have just seen? A metaphor for the shifting identities? A clear show of the manipulation of our positions?
By the by; Godard's horizontal pans, smooth, are really wonderful. With the sound design, it shows us we are in a location, not part of a film set... perhaps. It creates, by its ease, a whole location.
With these identities, what can a film show? When it turns to a newsreel documentary; do we believe the sound, or the image, which seems in a way to enact, but do we see more, or because it's not 'real', and we might traditionally say the words 'are real', less? Are the words lying without the image? But we know that the images are 'fiction'! This relates to the philosopher's discussion of language; we have to balance, to contemplate, perhaps in the words, the 'facts', and we have to live. What is Godard's cinema? Sort of both...
What does this, as documentary, tell us about? Paris, the social situation in '62? That's what it's a documentary about. About the nature of film? Godard wants to talk about that? About the 'human condition'; on the surface, not so much. Freedom ,identity, surely? But always refracted through the cinema, that is how these themes are presented. After all, it's a film.
It's, again, not much use giving my normal type of analysis; there is enough in each scene to write a book on, not that I would feel particularly able to go beyond speculation. It's a film, not a code, after all. But I'll say a few things.
If I, watching it here, had a chief subject, it was the identity. The soul, what you get if you take away the inside. What are we filming? Anna Karina, a 1962 prostitute, a film star. Godard fractures the identity through his Brechtian titles, some long takes, keeping the camera on when Karina fluffs a line, looks at the camera, before a shot starts.
How is she a cinema star? Through the association with Joan of Arc. Through her place as a model of Godard, made clear as the effective voiceover of the 'Oval Portrait' chapter, where sound is shown seperate from image. In the documentary voiceover parts, in the movements to song, we see her for what she (in part) is; someone in a film, someone Godard is filming, a film star. With all these identities in place, is she free? One vpice tells us she is; the words. Does the image agree? Cinema tells us she must follow a path; hence the Aldrich-esque conclusion, necessary for the binded film star.
Lets look at two techniques of these parts, these identities, never really seperate. We have the camera that, rather than going into SRS, swings back and forth; is this a reaction against the eyeline matches of Dreyer we have just seen? A metaphor for the shifting identities? A clear show of the manipulation of our positions?
By the by; Godard's horizontal pans, smooth, are really wonderful. With the sound design, it shows us we are in a location, not part of a film set... perhaps. It creates, by its ease, a whole location.
With these identities, what can a film show? When it turns to a newsreel documentary; do we believe the sound, or the image, which seems in a way to enact, but do we see more, or because it's not 'real', and we might traditionally say the words 'are real', less? Are the words lying without the image? But we know that the images are 'fiction'! This relates to the philosopher's discussion of language; we have to balance, to contemplate, perhaps in the words, the 'facts', and we have to live. What is Godard's cinema? Sort of both...
What does this, as documentary, tell us about? Paris, the social situation in '62? That's what it's a documentary about. About the nature of film? Godard wants to talk about that? About the 'human condition'; on the surface, not so much. Freedom ,identity, surely? But always refracted through the cinema, that is how these themes are presented. After all, it's a film.
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