Reading the Movies: Some Books for Cinephiles!

I’ve been asked by fellow-blogger Movieman0283 over at The Dancing Image to join him and a few others in writing a little something each on our favourite books on cinema. I don’t really know where to start so have reached for the first things on my shelves I could find that I could hold my hand on my heart and say ‘Yes, I really like this book!’ So, without further ado:

 

1. Hitchcock, by Francois Truffaut (ed.)

The first book to get on Hitchcock and the one that you’ll keep turning back to over the years. My edition, from 1969, is a snug size that I can fit into a broad pocket – much nicer in my opinion than the clumpy A4 editions that seem to be the norm for this book at the moment. I very much like the cover design too with a vertiginous swirl distorting Hitch’s face with the left side of his face darker than the right, much like Judy’s face appears at that moment in her apartment in Vertigo. This book is simply jam-packed full of ideas about filmmaking – Truffaut got a great deal out of Hitch and follows him through his whole career chronologically. His famous contrast between suspense and surprise is in here but so too is his fascinating notion of ’saving’ the long shot, with everything in a scene (what we would typically term the ‘establishing shot’), until it can be put to a purpose. It’s also fascinating to read as a marker of its time, the mid-60s (when the interviews were done.) Truffaut and the Cahiers gang had all made films but were still young and Truffaut’s admiration for the man he clearly considers THE master of cinema is palpable. Incidentally Hitch doesn’t come across as too enthused about Chabrol and Rohmer’s portrait of him as a Catholic filmmaker in their monograph. Here are Truffaut’s words on Hitchcock at the close of his introduction:

     If in the era of Ingmar Bergman, one accepts the promise that cinema is an art form, on a par with literature, I suggest that Hitchcock belongs – and why classify him at all? – among such artists of anxiety as Kafka, Dostoevsky and Poe.

     In the light of their own doubts these artists of anxiety can hardly be expected to show us how to live; their mission is simply to share with us the anxieties that haunt them. Consciously or not, this is their way of helping us to understand ourselves, which is, after all, a fundamental purpose of any work of art. 

 

2. The Women Who Knew Too Much, by Tania Modleski

There are of course many great books on Hitchcock that I could cite here but this is one that’s certainly had an effect on me personally. Modleski basically attempts to stand between the polar opposition of perspectives on Hitchcock’s view of women – that he was a misogynist (Mulvey) or that he was a proto-feminist (Wood.) She humorously undercuts Wood’s wish to “save” Hitchcock for feminism as auteurist romanticism, making it clear that her intention is to “save” feminism for film studies (or vice-versa.) She achieves this through the close study of Hitchcock’s position on women in seven films. Modleski terms Hitch “ambivalent” about women and – similarly to Truffaut above - suggests that his talent, and more importantly his value for a feminist “reader” of his films, comes from the clarity of his expression of his anxieties about women.

 

3. Controlling Hollywood: Censorship and Regulation in the Studio Era, by Matthew Bernstein (ed.)

The Depth of Field series is a terrific one and I could just as easily have recommended the collections on Film and Nationalism and Movies and Mass Culture in this series. These collections bring together previously published work by some of the most important academic figures on the subject. The books are very well put together and the introduction is always authoritative.

4. Parallel Tracks, by Lynne Kirby

A book on film with a truly innovative form in its discussion on the interrelation of the railroad and cinema as twin engines of the onslaught of modernity. It’s also a joy to read combining in all the right ways history, theory and textual analysis of the movies and the railroad. The kind of book I’d love to be able to write someday… 

 

5. “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange 1920-1939, by Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby (eds.)

A groundbreaking collection that takes as its starting point a small period in the late 20s and early 30s in which there was a hope that a “Film Europe” could be established, with the nations of Europe combining forces in an attempt to match and compete with Hollywood cinema’s worldwide “Imperialist” dominance of cinema screens. While this hope ultimately failed the book uses this as a means towards discussing Hollywood world-dominance in the inter-war period in a manner that is refreshingly clear of hyperbole and that goes beyond the notion of a simple, top-down hegemony. This book is full of historical details on tariffs, embargoes and contingencies and definitely not one to take with you to the beach… But it goes beyond the details of economic exchange on this subject laid out so well in Kristin Thompson’s Exporting Entertainment, putting as much emphasis on cultural exchange. It’s a difficult read but really worth the effort,  to get a strong, grounded sense of the globalism and transnationalism of cinema that was just beginning at this stage but that is now central to the medium; lest we forget that, for example, The Lord of the Rings was really a German film…

 

6. Fritz Lang in America, by P. Bogdanovich

Fritz Lang, in my opinion, was a serious intellectual and you can learn a lot from what he had to say about his films. It’s necessary to take Lang’s specific historical details and his self-mythologising with a pinch of salt, but the essence of Lang’s views on cinema in this book are invaluable. 

 

7. The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy

I think we all get an attachment to the specific editions of books that we’ve read, but again I prefer this edition to the regular one with a colour photo. Ok, since I’ve written quite a bit on this book on this site I’ll redirect you to this stuff, of which I’m quite proud. First there is a segment from the opening of the novel here, then there is a piece of writing on that segment and its discussion of cinema here and finally there is a follow-up piece here. It’s all quite easy to read I promise!

 

8. Hollywood Modernism, by Saverio Giovacchini

The film still on the cover is from Confessions of a Nazi Spy (WB, 1939) the first film, as the tag-line went, that dared to ‘call a swastika a swastika.’ It’s a fascinating film that strangely, considering its historical importance, still remains completely unavailable on DVD or VHS. I have a copy of the film on the now obsolete format of the Video-CD (VCD), which is probably quite rare and seems to be the only way this film has been released. Giovacchini’s book forcefully counters the myth that Hollywood cinema, and Hollywood culture in general, of the 1930s and 40s produced only vacuous mass entertainment and was completely unwilling to discuss politics and the problems of modern society. He draws attention to heated discussions over the nature of “realism” in the 1930s and the immense national strength and influence of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. I’ve written a little about the HANL in an essay on Meet John Doe (1941) here. Giovacchini’s book is a very enjoyable read.

 

9. Time Out Film Guide 2008, by Geoff Andrew (ed)

You’ll notice I’ve put the 2008 edition here – this is no slight on the latest edition but just the edition I happen to have; it also has a rather lovely image of Penelope Cruz that I couldn’t resist having on my site.. Anyway, the Time Out Film Guide is without a doubt the best film guide on offer in Britain – I haven’t looked at that many of the US ones but they’d have to be pretty strong to compete. It certainly seems to be the guide with the most space for World Cinema. There are no star ratings and reviews don’t generally contain synopses – instead they offer acute observations and understanding of the films discussed, crammed into very few words. Reviews do generally make it clear if the critic liked the film but are so well drawn that you can come away from a review that slammed a film with so much detail that you feel you want to see the film anyway. This happened for me, for instance, when I read the review of Gregg Araki’s Nowhere (1997), which described the film as ‘a piece of shit.’ In this instance the critic got it wrong, by the way – hardly a great film but kind of weirdly enjoyable. But I’ll repeat that generally the reviews are uncannily accurate.

 

10. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960, by David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson

I’ve been pondering over what should be my last book here and felt I couldn’t really leave this one out. Love it or hate it The Classical Hollywood Cinema is probably one of the most important books in film studies. Bordwell et al set out to define the characteristics of an “ordinary” film. Of course it is contentious to imply that Golden Age Hollywood set the “norm” for which all other kinds of cinema (0f the “World” or the “avant-garde”) become the aberration and risks simplifying matters. Yet within the specific context of mainstream American cinema, in the period of the Studio System and its “dream factory”, this model certainly has value. The research in this text is incredibly thorough and when reading through a chapter you occasionally get the sense that the information and ideas here are equivalent to the amount you’d get from reading ten other books. Bordwell’s blog on cinema Observations on film art and Film Art is also essential reading.

 

That’s as much as I have the energy for right now! By the way, they’re not in any order of greatness, of course… Please comment to let me know what you think of these choices, whether you’ve read the books or not – I love to hear what you guys think. And get reading!

Metropolitan (1990)

I’ve just watched Metropolitan (1990) on BBC iPlayer and if you happen to be checking-in here in late June I suggest trying to catch it there, as it’s an excellent film. Actually I should say “re-watched”, since I saw this film when I was very young. My parents showed it to me when I was, I’d say, about 12 years old. I remember being very affected by the film at the time, the reason why I’m now tapping these keys at 2.30 am..

The thing I remember being most affected by was the suggestion by the male protagonist Tom Townsend, an ardent socialist in amongst the cream of New York’s “social scene”,  that it wasn’t necessary to have read Austen or Tolstoy to have an opinion on their works’ relative merit. Tom has read far too much theory and become detached from the “work itself” the film is partly telling us, yet Tom’s world of ideas is shown respect in this scene:

Charlie Black: Fourierism was tried in the late nineteenth century… and it failed. Wasn’t Brook Farm Fourierist? It failed.

Tom Townsend: That’s debatable.

Charlie Black: Whether Brook Farm failed?

Tom Townsend: That it ceased to exist, I’ll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said.

Charlie Black: Well, for me, ceasing to exist is — is failure. I mean, that’s pretty definitive.

Tom Townsend: Well, everyone ceases to exist. Doesn’t mean everyone’s a failure.

Anyway this kind of prattle fascinated me as a kid and I’m happy to say that as an adult all the smart and witty chatter (which I can fully understand now!) still seemed pretty smart. I remember being stunned by this idea anyway, that you could read the critics on the books and not the books themselves – I was fascinated at the time, no doubt spurred on by the fact that my parents are both English teachers…

I say the film’s “male protagonist” and this perhaps shows an anxiety over the gender-ownership of the film’s narrative. I started to realise halfway through watching Metropolitan that the film’s female character Audrey Rouget was as central if not more central than the man who had appeared to be clearly the lead, an outsider poor West-side New Yorker discovering and socialising with the wealthy East-siders. Molly Ringwald was the undisputed star of John Hughes’ ’80s teen-films and as intellectual as Metropolitan is on the surface its social-networking narrative makes it clearly in part an extension of these classic films. As it happens Carolyn Farina, who plays Audrey Rouget, is the spitting image of Molly Ringwald. And actually the film opens with a scene between Audrey and her mother, emphasising the film’s status as a coming-of-age film and appearing to present this as her coming-of-age. Yet the character that we follow the closest throughout the film is actually Tom.

If there’s a dialectic in the film, for me right now, it’s between Molly who is incredibly well-read in literature and Tom who is incredibly well-read in theory. This theory/art dialectic is I guess ultimately just the age-old opposition of man-intellect/woman-heart. Perhaps theory is intended to be the loser of the battle, since Tom admits that Fourierism may not have been so great after all. But if so this is hardly rammed down our throats. I certainly didn’t accept this as a kid, even tho I remember my mum suggesting that really you should read Austen if you’re going to talk about her.. And all the way through the film Tom is admired by the whole social group for his intelligence.

Yet I think it is the admiration of Audrey for Tom and her search for a copy of a book by Fourier that most affirms that Tom’s theories may not be so bad after all. This crossover of interests between the pair also asserts something that I felt throughout the film – not only the  assertion that ideas are as important as art, but also that the pair cannot be separated. Tom brings from his poorer background a wealth of ideas to his newfound beautiful, decadent friends. As in Brideshead Revisited - another childhood TV experience for me – Metropolitan indulges in a significant amount of romance and nostalgia around the narrative of the “downward mobility” of the “feminised” heart of the high aristocracy in the modern world (in Brideshead “homosexualised”), seen again from the p.o.v. of a male protagonist from a poorer background. Yet Metropolitan is equally, from another angle, another version of the admiration for quick-witted intellectualism to be found in Manhattan (1979.) Anyway, whatever it is it’s a wonderful film all of its own and I’m surprised to see that its writer-director Whit Stillman doesn’t seem to have gone on to do anything that much since. Well, this one’s a memorable one, so check it out if you have the time!

A Conference Crawl: ‘Textual Revolutions’ at the University of Stirling and ‘Pioneering Endeavours’ at the University of Essex!

This weekend I spoke  at two conferences, one at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and the other at the University of Essex. This is the first time I’ve given papers.. Friday I read my paper in Stirling and took the sleeper train down that night. Saturday I was in Essex and read the paper again there. So, a bit of a baptism by fire!

The first conference, at the University of Stirling, was on ‘Textual Revolutions.’ It was interdisciplinary and its Call For Papers, put together by organisers Gary Cape and Steven Craig, was an extremely inspired one, if a little intimidating:

Hegel’s belief in the redemptive power of revolution – that revolution is part of an essentially benign process of history – is at odds with Friedrich Nietzsche’s position that revolution is a ‘source of energy in mankind grown feeble but never a regulator, architect, artist, [or] perfector of human nature’.  This tension over the nature of revolution constitutes our point of departure in an interdisciplinary forum that seeks to explore ‘revolutions’ and the language of revolution.

 I won’t lie – I modified work that I already had, making it fit the conference title.. At the same time the title and the questions posed were thought-provoking and had some effect on my final draft. The conference at Essex, called ‘Pioneering Endeavours’, was a smaller occasion, with my fellow PhD students, and I got some particularly valuable feedback here from colleagues. I’m really surprised at how much writing a paper for a real audience, and working on the assumption that many of them would not be from a Film Studies discipline, helped me to clarify for myself a sense of what my study is all about. It makes you simplify things too. While this can certainly have its problems, it does allow you to see things in a slightly more abstract way, seeing the bigger picture to some extent. Talking of which, I publish below the “abstract” that I initially sent out. I’m hoping to get a video-recording up here too, fairly soon, of the full paper, along with a text version. But for now!:

—–

Between Griffith and Brecht: Cinema and the Transnational in Fritz Lang’s Fury.

Fritz Lang’s first American film Fury (1936) poses both ontological questions on the nature of cinema and political questions on the position of the émigré. Close textual analysis of the ways in which these questions interrelate within Fury reveals a work deeply engaged with the complexities and contradictions of the turbulent 1930s.

Beyond more obvious readings of Fury as representing either Nazism in Germany or lynching in America, we can see the film as offering a transnational discourse on the nature of cinema. This is achieved through a division at the film’s mid-point, shifting from an impulsive cinematic style to a rationalist meta-cinematic one, codified as in turn “American” (via e.g. the technique of cross-cutting developed by Griffith) and “European” (via e.g. Brecht’s lehrstucke, or learning-plays.) Contrary to readings of the film as, through its outsider protagonist, in support of the apparently superior perspective of the “exile” filmmaker, this dialectic places both the director and audience within the text as active agents of cinematic form. Considering Lang under the alternative paradigm of the “tourist” reveals, ironically, a politically committed filmmaker. Caren Kaplan notes that ‘Rather than simply inventing modernity through … recognition and documentation, the tourist acts as a witness to the breakup of modernity. The tourist … straddles eras, modes of production, and systems of thought.’ Close analysis of Lang’s Fury reveals a Marxist filmmaker, grappling with his new role in Hollywood, not merely allegorizing the differences between “American” and “European” cinema (as in his previous films) but rather tying this dialectic into the film’s structure and its patterns of audience identification. Encouraged to recognize the inevitably “touristic” nature of the cinematic experience the viewer of Fury becomes, potentially, part of a transnational cinematic language of revolution.

Movies in Literature Part 4: Paul Auster’s ‘The Book of Illusions’

 

Above are a couple of pictures of Hank Mann, a silent comedian with a big moustache. I think these can serve as nice illustrations for the character Hector Mann in Paul Auster’s Book of Illusions. In fact online I find a description of this guy that reminds me a little of the silent comedian  that Auster lovingly constructs in his novel: ‘His junkyard-dog face was softened a bit by a huge paintbrush mustache, which emphasized his expressive, almost wistful eyes.’

In the first chapter of The Book of Illusions we meet our protagonist-narrator David Zimmer, an academic in Comparative Literature who has recently lost his wife and children in a plane crash. In the depths of his depression he turns the TV on to find a retrospective of silent comedy and becomes glued to the image of the long-forgotten Hector Mann. As an academic he, of course, can’t leave it at that and with the money from his wife’s life insurance he jet-sets it across the globe, planning to watch the surviving films, in various nations’ archives. 

The three short sequences selected below come from Chapter Two of the novel, beginning with Zimmer’s description of Hector Mann’s character and moving on to his description of a late Mann film Mr Nobody, the darkness of which is attributed to production difficulties and the fears of the coming of new sound technology. In Mr Nobody Hector runs the Fizzy Pop Beverage Corporation and is turned invisible by an assistant, who wants to take control of his company. This simple comic trope is given something of a philosophical turn in Auster’s hands..

*****

  Before the body, there is the face, and before the face, there is the thin black line between Hector’s nose and upper lip. A twitching filament of anxieties, a metaphysical jump rope, a dancing thread of discombobulation, the mustache is a seismograph of Hector’s inner states, and not only does it make you laugh, it tells you what Hector is thinking, actually allows you into the machinery of his thoughts. Other elements are involved-the eyes, the mouth, the finely calibrated lurches and stumbles-but the mustache is the instrument of communication, and even though it speaks a language without words, its wriggles and flutters are as clear and comprehensible as a message tapped out in Morse code.

  None of this would be possible without the intervention of the camera. The intimacy of the talking mustache is a creation of the lens. At various moments in each of Hector’s films, the angle suddenly changes, and a wide or medium shot is replaced by a close-up. Hector’s face fills the screen, and with all references to the environment eliminated, the mustache becomes the center of the world. It begins to move, and because Hector’s skill is such that he can control the muscles in the rest of his face, the mustache appears to be moving on its own, like a small animal, with an independent consciousness and will. The mouth curls a bit at the corners, the nostrils flare ever so slightly, but as the mustache goes through its antic gyrations, the face is essentially still, and in that stillness one sees oneself as if in a mirror, for it is during these moments that Hector is most fully and convincingly human, a reflection of what we all are when we’re alone inside ourselves. These close-up sequences are reserved for the critical passages of a story, the junctures of greatest tension or surprise, and they never last longer than four or five seconds. When they occur, everything else stops. The mustache launches into its soliloquy, and for those few precious moments, action gives way to thought. We can read the content of Hector’s mind as though it were spelled out in letters across the screen, and before those letters vanish, they are no less visible than a building, a piano, or a pie in the face. 

  In motion the mustache is a tool for expressing the thoughts of all men. In repose it is little more than an ornament.

…

  He goes outside again and starts walking through the streets. The downtown boulevards are deserted, and Hector appears to be the only person left in the city. What has happened to the crowds and commotion that surrounded him before? Where are the cars and trolleys, the masses of people thronging the sidewalk? For a moment we wonder if the spell has not been reversed. Perhaps Hector is visible again, we think, and everyone else has vanished. Then, out of nowhere, a truck drives by, speeding through a puddle. Plumes of water rise up from the pavement, splashing everything in sight. Hector is drenched, but when the camera turns around to show us the damage, the front of his suit is spotless. It should be a funny moment, but it isn’t, and in that Hector deliberately makes it not funny (a long doleful look at his suit; the disappointment in his eyes when he sees that he is not splattered with mud), this simple trick alters the mood of the film. As night falls, we see him returning to his house. He goes in, climbs the stairs to the second floor, and enters his children’s bedroom. The little girl and the little boy are asleep, each one in a separate bed. He sits down beside the girl, studies her face for a few moments, and then lifts his hand to begin stroking her hair. Just as he is about to touch her, however, he stops himself, suddenly realizing that his hand could wake her, and if she woke up in the darkness and found no one there, she would be frightened. It’s an affecting sequence, and Hector plays it with restraint and simplicity. He has lost the right to touch his own daughter, and as we watch him hesitate and then finally withdraw his hand, we experience the full impact of the curse that has been put on him. In that one small gesture – the hand hovering in the air, the open palm no more than an inch from the girl’s head – we understand that Hector has been reduced to nothing.

…

  The screen fades to black. When the picture returns, it is morning, and daylight is flooding through the curtains. Cut to a shot of Hector’s wife, still asleep in bed. Then cut to Hector, asleep in the chair. His body is contorted into an impossible position, a comic tangle of splayed limbs and twisted joints, and because we aren’t prepared for the sight of this slumbering pretzel-man, we laugh, and with that laugh the mood of the film changes again. Dearest Beloved wakes first, and as she opens her eyes and sits up in bed her face tells us everything – moving rapidly from joy to disbelief to guarded optimism. She springs out of bed and rushes over to Hector. She touches his face (which is dangling backward over the arm of the chair), and Hector’s body goes into a spasm of high-voltage shocks, jumping around in a flurry of arms and legs that ultimately lands him in an upright position. Then he opens his eyes. Involuntarily, without seeming to remember that he is supposed to be invisible, he smiles at her. They kiss, but just as their lips come into contact, he recoils in confusion. Is he really there? Has the spell been broken, or is he only dreaming it? He touches his face, he runs his hands over his chest, and then he looks his wife in the eyes. Can you see me? he asks. Of course I can see you, she says, and as her eyes fill with tears, she leans forward and kisses him again. But Hector is not convinced. He stands up from his chair and walks forward to a mirror hanging on the wall. The proof is in the mirror, and if he is able to see his reflection, he will know that the nightmare is over. That he does see it is a foregone conclusion, but the beautiful thing about that moment is the slowness of his response. For a second or two, the expression on his face remains the same, and as he peers into the eyes of the man staring back at him from the wall, it’s as if he’s looking at a stranger, encountering a face he has never seen before. Then, as the camera moves in for a closer shot, Hector begins to smile. Coming on the heels of that chilling blankness, the smile suggests something more than a simple rediscovery of himself. He is no longer looking at the old Hector. He is someone else now, and however much he might resemble the person he used to be, he has been reinvented, turned inside-out, and spat forth as a new man. The smile grows larger, more radiant, more satisfied with the face that he has found in the mirror. A circle begins to close around it, and soon we can see nothing but that smiling mouth, the mouth and the mustache above it. The mustache twitches for a few seconds, and then the circle grows smaller, then smaller still. When it finally shuts, the film is over.

Movies in Literature Part 3: Leonard Cohen’s ‘Warning’

 

 

 

                                        WARNING
                                                            from Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956)

                                        If your neighbour disappears
                                        O if your neighbour disappears
                                        The quiet man who raked his lawn
                                        The girl who always took the sun

                                        Never mention it to your wife
                                        Never say at dinnertime
                                        Whatever happened to that man
                                        Who used to rake his lawn

                                        Never say to your daughter
                                        As you’re walking home from church
                                        Funny thing about that girl
                                        I haven’t seen her for a month

                                       And if your son says to you
                                       Nobody lives next door
                                       They’ve all gone away
                                       Send him to bed with no supper

                                       Because it can spread, it can spread
                                       And one fine evening coming home
                                       Your wife and daughter and son
                                       They’ll have caught the idea and will be gone

King Vidor on European Films!

 

I reprint below an interview with King Vidor on European cinema. It’s taken from Close Up, a ‘British’ film magazine written from 1927 – 1933 for an ‘international’ audience (which, of course, means Western Europe and America – copies were sold in Paris, Berlin, London, Geneva, New York and LA.) The magazine’s editor Kenneth MacPherson was British and lived in Switzerland and the magazine had foreign correspondents in each city in which it was sold, as well as in Moscow. 

Close Up is highly critical of the American dominance of the global marketplace and often displays blatant anti-Americanism – as when its editor states that ‘damp and treacly’ ‘American sentiment’ is horrible for the ‘European mind’ but is alright for Americans who are ‘naive’, ‘adolescent’ and ‘unsophisticated. Nevertheless the magazine is at the same time not uninterested in Hollywood and can also include some quite rational and interesting reflections on the relationship between European cinema(s) and Hollywood. 

Close Up didn’t need to make a profit since it was funded by MacPherson’s wealthy wife Winifred Bryher, who also funded his only film Borderline. We can therefore assume that sales to America and foreign correspondents not being necessary for commercial success, rather point to an editorial interest in American cinema culture, even if mainly as an antithesis to the great ‘art’ cinema coming from Russia and Germany. 

A particularly likable example I found is of a letter from an American reader who writes to offer Close Up ‘all the ecouragement I can in your venture’ as well as a few corrections of the magazine’s position on America. The latter include the fact that ‘Griffith is not producing much now, and we can see pictures that were shown 10-12-15 years ago’, due to the nation’s size keeping the films in circulation, a reference to Close Up’s ambitions for cinemas in Europe that would play older films. The writer also notes that the eyelashes of Greta Garbo, who had moved to America by this point, were not sewn on, as Close Up had previously stated. 

The magazine’s interest in American cinema had a lot to do with the wish to compare or contrast it to European cinema. The interview I am reprinting below is with King Vidor and was published in Close Up in October 1928. It takes an opposing view to the mainstream position of criticising Europeans cinemas for trying to copy the Hollywood model. It seems to me that the wish to print the views of an American on the state of cinema in Europe shows a willingness to accept a multiplicity of opinions on cinema and an openness to debate. Here’s the interview in full:

*****

KING VIDOR ON EUROPEAN FILMS

 European producers, instead of competing with American films on a straight production basis, are fighting for supremacy with freak and futuristic screen experiments.

 This was the finding of King Vidor, noted director, who studied the foreign production field during his extensive trip abroad.

 “The foreign producers are more courageous and making more headway than in the past,” Vidor observed. “This progress, however, has not been from a solid foundation of sound production methods as was the development of the film industry in America.

 “There are any number of ‘little theatre’ movements to be encountered, and it is in these houses that the unique productions being made abroad are to be found. I saw one in which the entire story was told in close-ups, a daring experiment that is admirable, in effort, but scarcely to be considered anything more than a very well done novelty. Others were done along similar lines, the producer attempting to strike upon some unusual camera work or treatment as an outstanding feature.

 “All of these pioneer steps are laudable and hold much promise. They are interesting and worthy of the attempt. But as earnest competition to American films they are woefully lacking.

 “It is apparent that the foreign producers are not trying to match their products with those of American producers. They have not built up their organizations and concentrated for their actual benefit upon straight productions. They are more intent, it seems, upon a cinematic fishing expedition that might net something worth while, but in all probability will be quite unproductive.

 “In my opinion the chief fault with the foreign producing market is that they appear reluctant to invest sufficient capital in their films to make really good productions. They cannot seem to see what enormous returns they can obtain from such investments by making good pictures. These ‘arty’ efforts are splendid, and often show strokes of genius. But they will not and cannot make money. And unless pictures make enough money to justify the tremendous financial outlay the producers cannot weld together a strong organization.

 “Another thing I noticed abroad is that while films are very popular, yet there are a great number of people who seldom find time to go to the picture theatres. With this great potential audience yet to be educated to screen entertainment it would seem that the foreign production market would have a very happy opportunity to expand and enlarge upon their production methods.

 “There is plenty of room in the film field for the foreign producer. There is no cause of any jealousy on this point. Better pictures raise the standards of the entire industry regardless as to who makes them.”

 Vidor, who directed The Big Parade and The Crowd, as well as Show People, soon to be released with Marion Davies and William Haines co-starring, expressed a desire to make a film abroad.

 There are many ideal location possibilities, he said, that can only be found in Southern Europe, where many towns remain to-day as they were hundreds of years ago. Such an atmosphere, he declared, defies reproduction and cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

Early Ingrid Bergman at the Bfi Southbank

 

A few weeks ago now (2nd January) I was lucky enough to attend screenings of two very early Swedish-language Ingrid Bergman films, at a mini-season of her films at London’s own Bfi Southbank – with my good friend Christian Hayes. One of these was The Count of the Old Town (1934/5) and seems to have been her first role, although IMDb suggests she played, uncredited, a ‘girl waiting in line’ in a film before this. At any rate it’s her first starring role, at the age of 19. Although she doesn’t seem to be quite an actress yet her star presence is there in spades; I can’t tell you how much it meant to me to be able to see the star of Notorious (1946) at the outset, finding her feet.

I’m actually someone who came to the concept of the star persona relatively late, in that I didn’t feel it as an instinct as a child or even as a teenager: first I was fascinated simply by the stories and characters, then by the “art” of the films, focusing on the director. In my early twenties something clicked. There were stars before Ingrid but I think it was the double-whammy of her alongside Cary Grant in Notorious that did it for me. Notorious was my favourite Hitch for a long while, which had as much to do with the Ingrid/Cary combo as with Hitch.. 

In The Count of the Old Town Bergman plays a hotel maid. Our first sight of her is through a slightly ajar door, half-dressed. And this is from the point-of-view of a handsome young man who convinces her to let him hide in her room, away from the cops.

Her face really does light up the screen. Because it’s the very start of her career (as well as partly because I think ordinary films can have a tendency to do this), it feels, watching this, as though you’re getting a pure, unfiltered version of her personality.. Well anyway I took from the film a sense that although at times Bergman came across a little Joan Fontaine-insipid, her true character appeared full of tenderness and inner strength. Here’s a picture from the film that maybe illustrates this:

In many ways The Count of the Old Town is a fairly ordinary film- although it does have a number of nice, offbeat characters. It’s a little like the folksy atmosphere of a provincial Renoir picture in a way.. The eponymous Count is a drunk and hangs out with another drunk called Cucumber, so-called because this was what he used to get hold of for people on the blackmarket in a time of rationing. There’s some storyline about diamonds being stolen and the police searching for the thief, but thankfully nobody on the film seems to be paying too much attention to the plot. Instead we have a whole host of wonderful character actors filling out a lovely little movie.

The film has, really, one scene that plucks it out of the ordinary which involves our hero, again hiding from the cops, dressed in an incredible beetle-suit that covers him and has a flap covering his face that he can open, to take a look-out. The costume has words on it that say something very strange I can’t quite remember, but which seemed to serve in an obscure way to mean something along the lines of “The End is Nigh”.. We then see him chased by a cop in this beetle-suit. I really can’t explain why this was so funny and seemed so absurd. I think it had to do with the way that he actually looked like a life-sized beetle, being chased down the streets, his feet the only visible human element- it really felt like the spirit of Kafka had taken this otherwise fairly ordinary movie completely unaware. 

The other movie we saw that night is one I highly recommend: Walpurgis Night (1935.) It stars not only Bergman but the great Victor Sjostrom – yes, another double-whammy actor movie. The film is set around the Spring Festival of the title, which comes about once a year (and which Wikipedia tells me was named, back in the 8th century, after a woman called Walpurga, who, bizarrely, hailed from Devon.) Anyway, Ingrid’s father (Sjostrom) in the film runs a newspaper and, an old romantic, insists on covering the Spring Festival rather than all the more juicy stories around about celebrities and murders. He’s weary of the falsity of the business, particularly critical of his colleagues’ pretense towards engagement with serious political issues, when they repeatedly take the side that’ll sell.

Meanwhile Ingrid is leaving her boss because she’s secretly in love with him – and he’s married. The scene is incredibly touching and the silent love between the pair is undoubtable – maintained throughout a long scene in which everything said is cosmetic alongside those impassioned looks. At times Ingrid seems really a silent movie actress – here she brings an absolutely palpable emotional impact to this scene, through her carefully nuanced movements and gestures, and her eyes. Needless to say he convinces her to come out to the Spring Festival; they’re photographed and when daddy gets shown the photo he buys it, so as to cover up the story.

The title would seem to imply the film’s status as a romantic comedy. Indeed Walpurgis Night opens with a Lubitsch-esque scene as we see a line of mothers with identical prams, one of which has newspapers in it. Cut to the newspaper office and a debate about lack of housing, which Sjostrom blames on young couples being selfish, having kids and taking all the houses! Yet the film swiftly deepens. The story is strong, touching on complex areas such as abortion and suicide with the kind of maturity rarely seen in Hollywood. But it is the performances of Ingrid and Sjostrom, their development of a constantly changing father-daughter relationship, that make the film something special. While Ingrid develops her character silently in a seamless transition from small and modest girl into poised, solemn young woman, Sjostrom gives his performance conviction through a development of his voice alongside his physical performance as a direct extension of his character’s enveloping physical rage. 

I should be headed out to a couple more Ingrid movies tonight – tho Hollywood movies this time round. I’d really love it if somewhere would show more of these early Swedish films of hers – they all sound pretty special.

Movies in Literature Part 2: John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ (continued)

 

John Steinbeck comes across as, like many writers, somewhat ambivalent about the value of cinema. The short sequence from Chapter 23 of The Grapes of Wrath quoted in the last post is, however, far from a blanket condemnation of cinema. It closes with the suggestion that the light entertainment offered by mainstream Hollywood cinema has a value in helping those that ‘git enough sorrow’ to ‘git away from it’. If you haven’t seen this yet I suggest checking this out here.

Nevertheless cinema surely loses the battle when pitted against oral storytelling, which is seen as connected to the people and to their Nation’s intricate, complex history. The difference is between two forms of ‘popular’ storytelling, the latter seen as following this word’s originary meaning, ‘of the people’, the former perhaps not so much..

The tale from the man who was a ‘recruit against Geronimo’ proposes a version of American history that we would not ordinarily hear – that of the sympathy that some soldiers apparently had for their Native American foe. The figure of the Native American man here seems intended as a point of identification for those suffering through the Depression. They likewise might have felt tall and strong like this ‘brave’ and yet had now been cut down ‘All tore to pieces an’ little.’ This identification is clear as the storyteller describes him as appearing to the soldiers ‘like a cross’, linking him to the Christian image of unjust sacrifice.

Steinbeck’s claim to a breaking-down of racial barriers through oral storytelling seems to serve in part as a means of differentiation of this form from cinema. Indeed this sympathy for the Native American, significantly, was absent from movie Westerns at this time. This notion of the importance and value of empathetic identification across barriers in a time of crisis, seen here, is central to this novel as a whole, where the principal barrier is not, however, race but that of class.. Steinbeck’s novel as a whole wants to show his characters as more than their poverty.. as human beings in a fuller sense than capitalism would dictate.

And it’s implied that movies on the Depression don’t offer this kind of empathy. While in the movie the rich couple are pretending to be poor, the poor guy who’s just seen the movie can’t remember the moral of the story – suggesting this was probably pretty banal. The Depression is seen to be exploited as a subject matter only in order to sell cinema-tickets.. It seems all the glamour of Hollywood remains intact in spite of the trouble that the rest of the US was facing.

Still, the paralleling of the ‘Injun’ and cinema as being both in someway bigger than us is intriguing. Perhaps it suggests that cinema has something innate within it that might still have some potential.. The potential to tell the kind of a big story that Steinbeck is trying to get at in his book..

By the by, I gather Steinbeck very much liked John Ford’s movie of the book. I recommend checking this out if you haven’t seen it yet..

Movies in Literature Part 2: John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’

 

This novel came out in 1939. Steinbeck was trying to write, as he put it, a ‘truly American book’ – to speak to the people, through the troubles of the Great Depression. It’s a wonderful piece on that time.. One thing I like about this book is the way that it attempts to offer a “universality” that could speak to everyone, while at the same time remaining dispersive in its writing style.. It doesn’t assume that the poorest people, who were generally the least educated, only want to hear a good story..

The sequence below is from Chapter 23 of The Grapes of Wrath. This chapter has no relation really to the novel’s “story” as such and instead has a meditative, essayistic feel – it weaves its way through various amusements of the migrants of the Depression, moving from oral storytelling to cinema, then on to drunkenness, music, sex and religion. I’m quoting just the bits on storytelling and cinema – if you’d like to read the full chapter, please follow the link after..

*****

  The migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement. Sometimes amusement lay in speech, and they climbed up their lives with jokes. And it came about in the camps along the roads, on the ditch banks beside the streams, under the sycamores, that the story teller grew into being, so that the people gathered in the low firelight to hear the gifted ones. And they listened while the tales were told, and their participation made the stories great.

  I was a recruit against Geronimo-

  And the people listened, and their quiet eyes reflected the dying fire.

  Them Injuns was cute – slick as snakes, an’ quiet when they wanted. Could go through dry leaves, an’ make no rustle. Try to do that sometimes.

  And the people listened and remembered the crash of dry leaves under their feet.

  Come the change of season an’ the clouds up. Wrong time. Ever hear of the army doing anything right? Give the army ten chances, an’ they’ll stumble along. Took three regiments to kill a hundred braves- always.

  And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.

  They was a brave on a ridge, against the sun. Knowed he stood out. Spread his arms an’ stood. Naked as morning, an’ against the sun. Maybe he was crazy. I don’ know. Stood there, arms spread out; like a cross he looked. Four hunderd yards. An’ the men- well, they raised their sights an’ they felt the wind with their fingers; an’ then they jus’ lay there an’ couldn’ shoot. Maybe that Injun knowed somepin. Knowed we couldn’ shoot. Jes’ laid there with the rifles cocked, an’ didn’ even put ‘em to our shoulders. Lookin’ at him. Headband, one feather. Could see it, an’ naked as the sun. Long time we laid there an’ looked, an’ he never moved. An’ then the captain got mad. “Shoot, you crazy bastards, shoot!” he yells. An’ we jus’ laid there. “I’ll give you to a five-count, an’ then mark you down,” the captain says. Well sir- we put up our rifles slow, an’ ever’ man hoped somebody’d shoot first. I ain’t never been so sad in my life. An’ I laid my sights on his belly, ’cause you can’t stop a Injun no other place- an’- then. Well, he jest plunked down an’ rolled. An’ we went up. An’ he wasn’t big- he’d looked so grand- up there. All tore to pieces an’ little. Ever see a cock pheasant, stiff and beautiful, ever’ feather drawed an’ painted, an’ even his eyes drawed in pretty? An’ bang! You pick him up- bloody an’ twisted, an’ you spoiled somepin better’n you; an’ eatin’ him don’t never make it up to you, ’cause you spoiled somepin in yaself, an’ you can’t never fix it up.

  And the people nodded, and perhaps the fire spurted a little light and showed their eyes looking in on themselves.

  Against the sun, with his arms out. An’ he looked big- as God.

  And perhaps a man balanced twenty cents between food and pleasure, and he went to a movie in Marysville or Tulare, in Ceres or Mountain View. And he came back to the ditch camp with his memory crowded. And he told how it was:

  They was this rich fella, an’ he makes like he’s poor, an’ they’s this rich girl, an’ she purtends like she’s poor too, an’ they meet in a hamburg’ stan’.

  Why?

  I don’t know why- that’s how it was.

  Why’d they purtend like they’s poor?

  Well, they’re tired of bein’ rich.

  Horseshit!

  You want to hear this, or not?

  Well, go on then. Sure. I wanta hear it, but if I was rich, if I was rich I’d git so many pork chops- I’d cord ‘em up aroun’ me like wood, an’ I’d eat my way out. Go on.

  Well, they each think the other one’s poor. An’ they git arrested an’ they git in jail, an’ they don’t git out ’cause the other one’d find out the first one is rich. An’ the jail keeper, he’s mean to ’em ’cause he thinks they’re poor. Oughta see how he looks when he finds out. Jes’ nearly faints, that’s all.

  What they git in jail for?

  Well, they git caught at some kind a radical meetin’ but they ain’t radicals. They jes’ happen to be there. An’ they don’t each one wanta marry fur money, ya see.

  So the sons-of-bitches start lyin’ to each other right off.

  Well, in the pitcher it was like they was doin’ good. They’re nice to people, you see.

  I was to a show oncet that was me, an’ more’n me; an’ my life, an’ more’n my life, so ever’thing was bigger.

  Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it.

  Sure- if you can believe it.

  So they got married, an’ they foun’ out, an’ all them people that’s treated ‘em mean. They was a fella had been uppity, an’ he nearly fainted when this fella come in with a plug hat on. Jes’ nearly fainted. An’ they was a newsreel with them German soldiers kickin’ up their feet- funny as hell.

*****

My reading of this sequence can be found here.

The full text of the novel can be found here.

Shopping and C******

 

I’m an avid fan of Christian Hayes’ Classic Film Show. My thoughts here have developed from and in response to some of those raised in his article The Obsessive Movie Collector: Space, Time and Videotapes. I particularly like Christian’s honesty. ‘You really shouldn’t be buying more movies – you haven’t even watched the ones you’ve got’ he says. ‘Sorry mom’, we respond. Then sheepishly, as if with a little grin he admits, ‘Well, if I’m honest, this weekend I..’

And he’s right. I doubt very much he and I are alone in having many more movies and books in our respective houses than we’re really going to watch or read anytime soon. Christian briefly brings up box sets – I think this is the thing that tips the balance for many of us.. They’re just so damned cheap. And yet each one leaves you with four or five more films you really want to watch but still haven’t. Each time you buy one.. The guilt mounts.. ‘I have too much stuff and no space!’

I’m going to leave aside Christian’s emphasis on collecting, which may be more his thing than mine. I want to talk about shopping and… charity. Like many people these days it is an extremely rare occasion that I buy either books or movies at full price. The reason for this is a combination of having only a moderate amount of money and having a certain degree of pride at being good at sniffing out a deal. I go online, yes, and things are always cheaper. But mostly I go to charity shops. 

In both cases – but particularly the latter – the possibility of buying cheaply comes with an important added prospect. Chance. When you can afford to buy something on the hope that it might be interesting you discover things that, before, would have been out of sight, or perhaps visible only on the periphery. Now they sit on your shelf. You glance up at the dense book called Social Theory and all of a sudden you’ve read a chapter on Hegel and you’re thinking dialectically and feeling very clever. Then you notice the kids’ book that a friend, who’s a schoolteacher, told you was quite special and it turns out to be sharp and breaks your heart. And then again you read a collection of stories because it has Louise Brooks on the cover..

The kids’ book was The Boy With the Striped Pyjamas. I’m going to let you guess about the short stories – Any ideas? I picked up The Moviegoer from a charity shop, too. I’d never heard of Walker Percy. Just a few examples..

The book Close-Ups (pictured above) set me back £1.50 in a PDSA shop today – it is A4, over 600 pages long and includes writing by industry figures from Hollywood’s Golden Age - writers, directors etc – on the stars of the Golden Age (as well as unfortunately ‘beyond’.) Most books in charity shops are not quite this good value! And, thinking realistically, many of these books I buy remain on my bookshelf untouched. Yet saving money has nothing to do with what I’m talking about here. In fact I sometimes like to imagine the duds as counteracting the successes, so that I don’t really save much money, as it makes me feel less as though I’m ’stealing from the charities.’

Even if I had the money to buy books and films in bulk from mainstream bookstores this kind of chance occurrence simply wouldn’t occur to the same degree.. Firstly, almost all the books I buy in charity shops are simply not available in the mainstream bookstores. Secondly, the shelving is set out to avoid random chance and to set up instead calculated chances, e.g. you’re tricked into only buying recent fiction with special ‘3 for 2′ deals, rather than anything older. (I sometimes feel a little wary of the ‘If you like this, you’ll love these’ operation on Amazon for this reason- that it can deter you from looking elsewhere on the site.) And thirdly, sections of book genre are rigidly separated and subdivided.. Customers that are into ‘buses’ might get disturbed by ‘cars’ every once in a while but that’s about as crazy as it gets.. (The search engine system can cause the same problem on Amazon and the web in general since you decide what genre you want in advance, by the words you choose, rather than really browsing over everything on offer as you might in charity bookshops.) In contrast, charity shop staff are not paid so they are under no obligation to expend too great an amount of energy on shop layout etc!

So. It’s the combination of sheer bulk, obscure titles and genres of book outside one’s normal scope that matters. These three are what charity shops offer a reader who is willing to truly respect chance – to walk into a shop with no idea what kind of book he’ll come out with.. And videotapes too – I found the original 70s TV series of Survivors on video a few years ago. I’d never heard of it before – and it’s terrific. I got Timeslip recently too, another 70s TV series, which may not be as good I fear. That’s the risk you take, but it’s definitely worth it.. And who cares if you end up with too much stuff – just take the stuff you don’t want right back to a charity shop – preferably one that’s for a really good cause like the British Heart Foundation or Cancer Research – and let the whole thing come full circle. Happy buying!

p.s. You’ll notice I didn’t even mention second-hand bookshops in this article.. They didn’t even occur to me most of the way through writing – surely a sign of the times, since these can really only be found in Central London now. There’re some that say charity shops are taking over from second-hand bookshops and these people are not happy about this.. Let me know what you think on this anyone? Certainly there are more specialisms and rarities in second-hand bookshops. Tho on the flip-side they always seem to be a bit more expensive and they’re shelved more clearly – both of these lead to less possibilities for chance to have its effects.