Early surrealism

 

Le Voyage dans la lune (Georges Méliès, 1902) is one of the greats of early cinema. It blends narrative with luscious screenscapes- although obviously sets, their presence is a powerful imagination of place. The first visual aspect that struck me was the lighting on the canon, ready to shoot out the ship toward the moon- a gleaming structure, dominant over everything else on earth.

Then, the man in the moon really does exist- a surreal realisation of how we have imagined the moon to be. And the careless ease with which the ship destroys the moon’s eye suggests the destruction that man’s industrial and technological development will have on the natural world. The men leave the ship, explore the moon’s territory, and an early commentary on colonialism ensues- the white men attack, destroy, the native creatures of the moon. Surrounded by the beautiful fauna (mushrooms- not just a coincidental parrallel with the hallucinogens, I think), the white settlers become obsessed with destruction and escape.

What follows is pure absurdity- the ship bounces out of the sea and all is well. I would love to know what the surrealists really did think of this film. I imagine they would have loved it- although made by a French filmmaker, it dealt with exoticism and the expansion of the world. As Chénieux-Gendron writes, ‘On the borders of continents, the boundaries of normality.’

Superheroes and the Body Politic

Scott Bukatman (man I love the guy) writes, in Matters of Gravity (p70):

The mutant superhero, like the adolescent, is inarticulate within the social system – a categorical mistake that upsets the notions of order and hierarchy through an investment with dangerous, disapproved and uncontrollable powers.

This is true. Society does not know how to handle the teenager, a social entity that has been created in between the innocence of childhood and the control over life of adulthood. The teenager possesses both of these things and the tension betwichfor one of the best explorations. See Rebel Without A Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955) for one of the best explorations. Also The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967), and even Imitation of Life (Doulgas Sirk, 1959), which has just about every issue you want in it.

I know that Bukatman goes into this later in his book, and I will come to it when I read it again, but I am wondering the extent to which all superheroes are mutants? Many are- not just X-Men, who are his main focus, but also Spiderman, whose body is mutated. But this is only when he chooses it to be, he becomes Spiderman from the regular Peter Parker. This control over a choice to mutate separates him out from other superheroes, and yet he still upsets the order of heirarchy within our social system. As a teenager, Peter Parker was seemingly non-existent even within his own demographic of high schoolers, and as a superhero Spiderman place in society becomes dictated by a parochial newspaper mogul.

And what for a non-mutant superhero- I am thinking of Batman. Although Bruce Wayne created his superhero alter-ego from scratch, with capital and resources rather than a freak mutation, Batman still has no place within the social system of Gotham City. He exists above it, accesses it laterally rather than from within the bounds of the regular city dwellers. His construcrtion of a man-suit in the later films expresses a very distinct desire to upset set heirarchies- rather than being a mistake, Batman shows that social systems are not impermeable, that the body has, and needs to use, its power.

Jean-Luc Godard

Godard’s films, however they start, often end up detailing the destruction of a human relationship. A woman who suddenly falls out of love with a man; La Chinoise (1968), Le Mépris (1963), We find out from Fritz Lang- although we know anyway- that ‘Man must suffer.’

Godard’s camera often pans back and forth, left to right, between sides of conversation. Paul and Camille, the group of filmmakers, softly distorting the way in which we see their interaction. Le Mépris, about film outside of and concerned with Hollywood, is filled with visual references to such films. In Week-end (196) Godard makes reference to his most lauded of Hollywood directors, Nicholas Ray, with the rebellious group who identify themselves as films; also Eisenstein, John Ford. More externally self-aware than Le Mépris, this film segments itself with intertitles, the final statement declairing (despairing?) ‘THE END OF CINEMA’.

In many of his films Godard does what has been said of Stan Brakhage (and Warhol, Jonas Mekas): that by ‘[c]ompounding this identificatory process, the triangulation of filmmaker, subject, and viewer makes possible the continued expansion of an otherwise introverted subculture’ (Paul Arthur in Lines of Sight: American Avant-Garde Film Since 1965, p35). While the American filmmakers did this through, as Arthur writes, cinema of portraiture, Godard uses light absurdity and an observation of (simulated) reality.

Both  Week-end and Le Mépris begin with a focus shot on a woman’s naked body, post-coital, sexualised. The leading female in the latter (Brigitte Bardot) is killed in a road collision at its end; one that has an effect as horrific, although less drawn-out, than the ten-minute camera pan of a car build-up in Week-end. She suffered; she is dead. But Paul (Michel Piccoli) suffers too; eternally, as he finishes the film. He is alone, surrounded by scenic beauty but akin with none of it. The spectator is served such beauty of cinematic form, but we leave, often, wtih the knowledge that we can find it in nothing more that the cinema.

Men in Suits

I love them. A man wearing a suit, especially when he wears the tie right, and it just goes perfectly with his suit, can be the most attractive thing. Nothing impresses me more.

It struck me today that, then, I am definately in the right field of interest to get maximum exposure to men in suits.  Because in film they can often be the most perfect.

Also, working part time in a retail store at the business end of town, selling items to businessmen, can be very nice. Some days at work are good.

The Production Code

An excerpt from Joseph Breen’s Motion Picture Production Code of 1930:

The enthusiasm for and interest in the film actors and actresses, developed beyond anything of the sort in history, makes the audience largely sympathetic toward the characters they portray and the stories in which they figure. Hence they are more ready to confuse the actor and character, and they are most receptive of the emotions and ideals portrayed and presented by their favourite stars.

Sourced from Pre-Code Hollywood, Thomas Doherty, 1999.

Which is true enough (see Richard Dyer’s Stars, for one), but doesn’t detract from the parochial conservatism that dictates his formation of this belief. And the rest of the sickening morality that he parades around in the Code.

A Star Is Born

“There’s always a harp in a dream sequence, don’t be silly.”

Damn modern cinema. I watched A Star Is Born (George Cukor, 1954) last night, but was hesitant to because of its 169 minute running time. But, no surprise, it was amazing, because three hours of an amazing film is amazing. It was damn Pirates of the Carribean, at 168 minutes, that put me off such a long running time – but only because it was a poor film. Never again!

Also, Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) had me thinking the other day that it had made the wonderful achievement of a few scenes of long takes. Fair enough, Cuarón’s would have taken hours/days to set up, prepare for, and probably several takes to get a suitable one for the film, but he also had the convenience of CGI to easy up the task, and polish up any ‘imperfections’. But Cukor did phenomenal single-take scenes, and long takes, and this was in (and perhaps before) the fifties! Cukor uses the single-take to sustain the emotion of the actor on screen, to create their energy into something that we can feel as we spectate. There are two points in the film that clearly demonstrate the director’s intention to do this- at the Academy Awards ceremony, when Norman, walking drunkenly towards the camera, goes out of focus for just a second. And during Judy’s first true performance, in the bar, singing ‘The Man That Got Away’. Again, one long take filming her song as a whole, her perfermance as a whole, and it is this that is more important than eliminating those few frames in which Judy slides out of focus. No CGI to fix that up, because celluloid is a raw form in itself that can capture what is most important.

I didn’t appreciate everything so intensely, though. Cukor’s decision to have dialogue playing back over still shots of the characters to condense several important developments was a little jarring. Have seen it done as well in What I Have Written (John Hughes, 1995) and wasn’t too keen on it there, either. But Cukor wins favour a little by being a smart arse: when Norman (James Mason) is drunk on set he says they should ‘cut some corners’ in the filming- just what Cukor is doing.

But just like I felt with Young Man With A Horn, I wish I could just sing a song, perform for myself, when I was feeling melancholy. Judy did. Probably didn’t make a difference. Liza seemed to stop doing it too after a good run, probably because it wasn’t making much of a difference. But it would still be lovely (or excessively melancholic, depressing, if that’s your thing) if I could.

Ever since this world began

There’s nothing sadder than

A one-man woman looking for

The man that got away

Is Pirates worth it?

I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End last night. Am not really one for huge Hollywood blockbusters, wasn’t too excited about seeing it, but it wasn’t bad. Entertaining, did get bored in parts (mostly due to its 168 minute running time) but then jumped back on the entertained train often enough. There were lots of threads going on continuously, which probably accounted for why I didn’t stay bored for long periods, but also contributed to why I didn’t like it.

But everything in this film just screamed money to me. Every frame, every sequence, every set, costume, every computer imaged landscape. Every minute that a computer had to generate movement in Bill Nighy’s tentacle-beard would have, I imagine, cost thousands of dollars. A production budget of US$300 million, and sure, it’s already grossed $700 million in box-office revenue worldwide, but that doesn’t account for its expenditure in my book. Money being thrown around, almost.

Plus, the film is just not that great. Loved the first one, but by this stage (I missed the second) the only real appeal of seeing this over a repeat viewing of the first is to see several Johnny Depp’s (and his eyeliner) at once.  Definately don’t go to see the ‘exotic’ female ‘goddess’ Calypso, with an accent as bad (and made up) as Kendra’s in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and makeup (‘bodyart’, no doubt) as offputting as anything. And don’t go for the über-cliché of the mid-battle wedding proposal/ceremony. It’s just far too much.

Will kids like it? Probably enough of them have seen it by now for me to be able to ask one, but I don’t know any, so I’lljust make my own analysis. Maybe they’ll be impressed, maybe they’ll be drawn in by the action, but as far as much of the story goes, it would probably fly far over their heads. Too much detail, too much for little minds to focus on, remember, absorb, for all of the minutes of the film and all of the money wasted on it to be worth it.

The loving performer

In a recent university lecture, I was told of Germaine Greer’s declaration on humanity; ‘the mask of art more faithfully portraying the soul beneath.’  The cinema is full of films that depict art and performance as the outlet for the human soul.

Young Man With A Horn (Michael Curtiz, 1950) does this most memorably. The trumpet, for Rick (Kirk Douglas), the voice for Jo (Doris Day), and piano – maybe? – for Amy (Lauren Bacall) all allow the characters to feel something when they are deprived of emotion, or when they are otherwise unable to satiate their feelings. As a young boy, Rick has nothing to do but to wander the streets- it is wandering, often cinematically (and in real life) an activity that leads to love, helps people fall in love. It is on his wanderings that Rick finds his trumpet. Playing was his ‘way of talking’- he knew no expression for himself other than through his music.

During the first scene where Rick is rehearsing with his new band, the camera continually cuts between he and his trumpet, and Doris Day – women and music both as his outlets for love. But he chooses one over the other. After he leaves Jo – their romance never consummated but always hinted at – Rick and his piano-playing buddy Smoke (Hoagy Carmichael) sing jollily along in a car together- a comical image of two men in love with their music, instead of in love with a woman and in a car with her (but that didn’t go so well in, say, Two For The Road).

‘It isn’t there any more – that expression on your face. When you were playing that trumpet you were exalted…Now you’ve undergone a rather startling transformation, Richard.’

So says Amy to Rick, the woman who becomes his wife, damages his ability to love through his performance by her/his/society’s false idea of love. As (my lecturer) Mark Nicholls writes, ‘passion comes from poetry and performance’, but the stark emotionlessness of her apartment drains his ability to perform.  When he goes for a note in the studio that he cannot reach, it is Jo, her face lit so beautifully, framed to perfection to suggest that she truly understands the feeling within music, she tells him that there is no such thing as what he wanted. His perfect note is not reachable.

What does this mean? Rick then walks the streets a fallen man, drunken, brawling – without hope, but more importantly, without his trumpet. He has lost his love and, continuing his melancholia, he buys another trumpet- that does not work, will always remind him of his failures. That he can no longer release his feelings through his art.

Graffiti is public art. Yep, art.

Thanks to Gothamist, found this article.

The artists definately have a point. They have a right to artistic and creative ownership over anything that is of their own. Photographers and publishers who try and appropriate ’street’ culture or whatever they think it is strip it of definately some of its value, diminish its effect and its origins as ‘public’, very potentially ephemeral art, by immortalising its.

I like the part where the ’struggling artist’ calls herself (and her ‘clan’) generous and shameless self promoters. Very honest. Nice and egotistical, probably just about as much as you need to be in that environment. Publicatios that attempt to convey how certain groups ‘express’ themselves will often be doing so for their own motives, to serve their own purposes (moral, monetary, anything) rather than actually with any interest in the people who they are ethnographicising. Which is a difficult issue when sorting out cultural studies, of course, but one that needs more consideration when it occurs.

One part in particular I take issue with: that graffiti artists (and this is coming from an artist, too) are ‘accustomed to feeling this is never going to last forever. So we photograph them for our archives.’ That is what is so amazing, beautiful, and important about graffiti and public art- that it doesn’t last. That its existence is always illustrative of a transitory moment between one sense of expression and the next. It should be a tangible, yet always intangible, signifier of the liminality of human culture.

I Like It Hot

I watched Some Like It Hot this evening as celebration for having finished my final semester paper three days before it’s due. I hadn’t seen the film in about a year, last time I watched it with a friend and a bottle of vodka (‘I don’t want you to think I’m a drinker. I can stop any time I want to, only…I don’t want to.’) I love this film, in spite of Jack Lemmon’s irritating imitation of a female – once he takes his wig off, it’s all okay. Plus Tony Curtis is so good looking I could barely take my eyes off him (and his lips!) for the entire running time.

Being the first Marilyn film that I’ve watched in months, I was reminded of how amazing she was. My last encounter with her was at the World’s Most Photographed exhibition in Bendigo, where I was struck again by her beauty and by her unmistakable ability to be a star. In Some Like It Hot, Marilyn does again what she often did best, as Richard Dyer writes (in his book Heavenly Bodies, but also elsewhere, and often), which is combine ‘naturalness and overt sexuality’ in her performance. We know that she is performing her sexuality, but she does it so that it seems a part of her- in fact, it is a part of her, at least as much that we know of her as what she performs. And by so often insisting (in the film) that it was men who always saw her this way, without her making much effort, she implies that in fact she doesn’t need to put on a sexual performance, that it is a natural part of her.

Which goes to show how incredibly smart she was. She recognised the structures of being attractive, the structures of star appeal, and she took control of them…and us.