Casablanca

In Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), the first sight we get of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) is his arm, his hand, signing a cheque (sign of power), playing chess (a game of power, calculation), before we see his face. This suggests that, Humphrey Bogart having all the charisma that he had in Hollywood and in the cinema, that Curtiz wanted to give his lead an image o being powerful outside of Bogie’s famous persona. As they say, human beings are Casablanca’s primary commodity. But Casablanca is going to be a great film even without Bogart, Curtiz tells us, although we know it would not nearly be the same without him. Of course he made everything that he touched amazing. Even the way he smokes his cigarettes – or the way he picked up his cigarette, before we saw that it was him.

‘What is your nationality?’

‘I’m a drunkard’

‘And that makes Rick a citizen of the world.’

Opening Night

I have written previously about the startling effect of a cinematic apparatus controlled by emotion, rather than convention. And just like in A Star Is Born (1954) where George Cukor allows for the inclusion of shots that have gone out of focus, John Cassavetes in Opening Night (1977) lets his camera go out of focus to retain the raw and unavoidable emotional involvement that his camera and his actors provoke.

The camera flashes out of focus in the opening few minutes of the film, but  following this it remains very much in focus, barely allowing his audience a chance to look away from the faces of his actors. This reveals their beauty but also their imperfections, weaknesses, perhaps thoughts. This heavy use of the close-up creates an intimate frame for us as audience to view the characters, but also draws us into the experience of the film – noticably, rather than watching we are being taken along.

This also may help us to accept the characters, but not necessarily assist in understanding them. I am still struggling to get into the mind of Myrtle (Gena Rowlands), neurotic and confused and depressed.

But while we get all these close ups there is one characters who, significantly, we did not really get to see as we saw everyone else. That was, in a sense, the director’s other woman, his wife Dorothy (Zohra Lampert). For who is more important in a director’s life than his leading lady? – this showbiz ‘tradition’ is scrutinized and harshly criticized by Cassavetes. Manny Victor (Ben Gazzara) directs the play The Second Woman written by Sarah Goode (a beautifully aged Joan Blondell) with Myrtle in the title role. The ’second woman’ being the older woman, one spent of youth and in the ’second’ stage of life. Although the second woman is, really, Manny’s wife, in the shadows, not forgotten but – we’re not sure – not loved? Does he love Myrtle? – when he kisses her on the cheek and she says ‘be careful’ to him, is this because they had an affair the evening before? Or because she knows of the delicacy of his other, his ’second’, relationship. Everyone knows, Cassavetes shows this. The actor, to the director, will never be the second woman.

Transvetitism to suicide

The Tenant (Polanski, 1976) is a psychological horror film, its restraint accentuating those moments which are  harsh, sharply intense. Roman Polanski, acting as the lead man Trelkovsky, is very gentle himself (look at him, he’s very sweet), which affects the spectator into a meek state of mind, so that everything that happens to him jolts us in much the same way. We are made almost passive, like him, so the aggression of the effects and the horror is made stronger.

A staircase – threatening, nervous. Classic space of psychotic thriller.

Trelkovsky is a Polish man living in France, a French citizen, but his legitimacy for being there is constantly doubted. His immigrant status is held suspiciously against him. And he is doubly an outsider; in the country, and in the building complex where his apartment is located. He is coded as ‘different’, as one who at first does not respect the rules (although unintentionally) and never forgiven. This active and verbal exclusion works on his psyche as a neurotic lack of trust, leading to distortion of reality and distortion of all people around him. As he is the only one whose mind is in this neurotic space, everyone else is thus excluded, and everyone, in his mind, is against him.

In a review of the film here, this:

In another, a ball bounces with supernatural uniformity before his third floor window; upon closer examination, we find that it’s actually a human head. In a less imaginative film, an explanation would arrive, killing the enigma by consigning it to the supernatural or to a dream. But Polanski declines to make sense of it for us, and we leave the film with the mystery unresolved.

This is incorrect. The ball is not a human head ‘upon closer examination’. It begins as a ball. As Trelkovsky notices it, the film’s identificatory state slips into his mind – he sees it as a human head. Is it actually? It is true that this remains unresolved, and the mystery is part of Polanski’s mastery. It could be. But it could also be a part of Trelkovsky’s mind, the reality he is creating for himself which is really a distortion, but for him, to make the rest of the events fit into an explanation, this is what he sees.

More later, maybe…

Music by colour

Guys and Dolls (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1955) shares qualities with Gene Kelly musicals – An American In Paris (Vincente Minnelli, 1951), Singin’ In The Rain (Stanley Donen, 1952), Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967). It’s bright, colourful, the sewer has rainbow pipes and bright orange facilities. Richard Dyer writes in ‘Entertainment and Utopia’ (from Movies and Methods: An Anthology) that there are five qualities of a musical that qualify a film as utopian: abundance, energy, intensity, transparency, community (1985:228). Guys and Dolls has all of these. And Frank Sinatra is beautiful – I would want to marry him too.

It’s interesting though that in this film he has an addiction – gambling – and in The Man With the Golden Arm (Otto Preminger. 1955), a heroin addiction. Constructing him as a public figure with addictions which are detrimental to his wellbeing at the same time as him having links to the mafia.