Here it is: Fox Home Video’s follow-up to last year’s stunning “Ford at Fox” collection is perhaps even more impressive, offering major upgrades of such classics as “Sunrise” and “Seventh Heaven” while getting a number of titles back into circulation that haven’t been visible in years, if at all: “They Had to See Paris,” “Song ‘o My Heart,” “Liliom,” “After Tomorrow,” “Young America,” “Bad Girl.” Particularly striking is what seems to be a first generation print of Murnau’s “City Girl,” which restores remarkable photographic qualities to this often overlooked title and will, one hopes, aid in its re-evaluation. That Terence Malick quotes extensively from “Sunrise” in “Days of Heaven” is well known, but “City Girl” seems even closer to the roots of Malick’s inspiration.
The set, which I review here, carries a whopping list price of $239.98, but is being widely discounted.
Of course, cinephile greed knows no bounds, and I’m already looking forward to next year’s Fox box. Raoul Walsh? Allan Dwan? Harry Lachman? The possibilities are endless . . .
Jean-Pierre, I didn’t mean for the word caricature to carry a judgmental taint. Everyone is Wilder is a little exagerrated, and it intrigues me more and more as I get older. Dramatic enhancement doesn’t seem quite strong enough to me. What Saada says seems right.
I must say that the last time I saw SUNSET BOULEVARD, Norma did seem like the saddest and most sympathetic character in the movie.
Kent, it was precisely because Beatty and Lubitsch seem like (and surely are) such contrasting directors that I thought their shared characterization (by you and dm494, respectively) as directors who left key functions (editing, cinematography, respectively) to assistants that I thought the pair served nicely to dramatize the conjecture that an “artist” director need not closely attend to each and every major aspect of a film’s making.
Yeah, but what dm meant by it and what I meant were two very different things. Like most of the great directors who began in the silent era, Lubitsch was thinking so precisely of how the film would come together that he probably didn’t have to spend much time in the cutting room. By the same token, he was so precise about what happens in his shots that he doesn’t seem to have left much leeway to the DP. Beatty, on the other hand, seems to have given Storaro a very general kind of directive on the order of “make it look good” or something like that, and more importantly to have left the composing of the shots to him as well. And judging from the finished product, it looks like Dede Allen had her work cut out for her in the cutting room.
At the risk of irritating further with my remarks about Lubitsch (which were not, by the way, intended as criticisms, only as observations), has anyone ever suggested a similarity between his style and Bresson’s?
This sounds paradoxical, but I don’t see anything incompatible between being extremely detail-oriented and being unconcerned with certain kinds of details: a director can have a style–and a very precise one, at that–to which some types of detail are irrelevant. And I never meant to imply that Lubitsch is vague–it was a concrete/abstract contrast which I was pushing in his case, not a precise/vague one.
Dave describes Lubitsch as an extremely economical filmmaker, the ultimate “metonymist”. I definitely agree with that, since the hallmark of Lubitsch’s style strikes me as a penchant for shots that isolate an object, a gesture, a glance, but always as things that stand for other things. He singles out something X, whose importance for him is not that it’s X, but that it signifies Y.
Kent: couldn’t we say that drama (any kind, including tragedy) always verges on what you call caricature? Drama is bigger than life and that’s what caricature is too. So why single out Wilder, or anyone else?
Dave: although I’m not a Midwestern pragmatist, I entirely subscribe to the concept of the simplest explanation.
Dave: I see Wilder as engaging in deconstruction, no matter his standing within the Hollywood establishment. It may just be that the Midwestern pragmatist in you does not respond to his films as this urban New York queer does (or as my husband does who is a rural Southern queer).
For example, when I read your takes on John Ford, you are describing a filmmaker I do not encounter on screen. I recognize the formal elements you are responding to, but your responses are not mine (I know this fact is obvious, but I think it plays an important role in our divergence on Wilder). Your preferred explanation that Wilder has no gift for filmmaking might be reconstructed to say that Billy Wilder has no gift for the type of filmmaking (and does not possess a world vision) that resonates with Dave Kehr. Also, I cannot take credit for the wonderful “brutalizing the formality of cinema”; it was Nicolas’ succinct insight.
For me, Wilder possesses a deconstructive density that I enjoy: he sticks his thumb in the eye of lyricism and ends up with a new kind of beauty – more transitory, less eternal than what has come before, but beautiful nonetheless. Will such bruised beauty be to all tastes? No. But then I love jazz and my husband prefers classical music. I am not saying that all movies are beautiful in their own way. Some are just plain ugly. But just as there is tonal and atonal music, there are lyrical and alyrical films and both types can justly be regarded as beautiful. And (to carry your dichotomy forward) maybe atonal music and alyrical films demand more ornate, more ingenious explanations/mechanisms to unlock their riches than more traditionally structured art works do. As a queer, I learned to develop and perfect ornate/ingenious strategies in order to survive and not be gay bashed/brutalized, so a work of art that calls upon this survival talent of mine is going to resonate deep within me and be looked upon with favor.
As for Norma: I agree that her rage comes between Joe and Betty, but what is the root of her rage? Is she raging for rage’s sake? I think not. She was given the brush off for no reason comprehensible to her (or any human being) other than she was no longer in fashion (talk about brutalism). Her anger and delusions over her unmerited cultural dismissal make her tremendously sympathetic to me.
Joe Gillis on the other hand consciously uses and betrays two women. Did he really need to dress down Norma? Couldn’t he have let Max do his job and keep Norma from finding out? Also, did Joe have to expose himself as a gigolo so brutally to Betty? Was he doing it for her benefit or to satisfy his own selfish/masochistic desires? Joe is a first class heel who pretends to act in other people’s best interests, but never does.
As for Wilder’s alleged cynicism, I just do not see it. Is his vision on the dark side? You bet. But he does not believe in his own cynicism for the very good reason that he is not cynical. Skeptical? Yes. Distrustful? Yes. But Bud and Fran end up together. Polly gets out of Climax and Zelda and Orville have their marriage strengthened. Harry ends the insurance scam. The hope Wilder offers is not always of the most robust variety, but to me it is realistic and pragmatic: most often when people do the right thing in this world, the victory over self-interest is what sports fans would call a squeaker.
The only transgression Billy Wilder is guilty of is having noticed that all people are an incongruous, ever-shifting, never predictable combination of hustler and altruist. Sentimental? Nope. Cynical? Not at all. Just real.
I do not think Lubitsch left to an assistant director or a DP ANYTHING in his movies, unless he was seroiusly ill, and the he assigned them to Preminger (or Cukor in “One Hour With You”). To watch closely – and the film demands precisely that – “Lady Windermere’s Fan” shows that probably he invented Hitchcock’s style (which Hitch developed and adapted to other kind of stories, of course). In that sense, dm494′s connection of Lubitsch and Bresson is not as far-fetched or wild as it might seem, and I do certainly feel there is a strong connection between Lubitsch and Bresson, as well as between Sternberg and Bresson: the three “wrote” with images, something not even all great filmmakers do.
Mike, of course I meant each of the filmmakers I mentioned had a particular, personal sense/use of space, as different as possible in many cases, whereas the others – which, of course, use space also, I can’t think of any filmmaker that can avoid that – have a more “general”, “period” or “conventional” use of space, perhaps they do not think much about it or take it for granted, or thing what matter is the story, the plot, the actors’ performance, and take space as something “neutral” or indifferent. My distinction – as all generalizations, a bit crude, and open to all kind of exceptions – does not imply neccessarily more or less camera movement or more or less use of close-ups. It has more to do with how the action, the movement of actors, is distributed on the screen, and how the whole space is selected and framed by the camera throughout a whole film or series of films.
Kent, I know many people (myself included) love “The Big Sleep” and may even consider it the favorite Hawks film. I must say that if I did not know it was his, and had I seen it without credits and before seeing “To Have and Have Not”, I doubt very much I would have identified it as a Hawks film.
Miguel Marías
Kent, your point about the difference between Beatty and Lubitsche is even clearer. However, dm494′s differently stressed “I don’t see anything incompatible between being extremely detail-oriented and being unconcerned with certain kinds of details: a director can have a style–and a very precise one, at that–to which some types of detail are irrelevant” precisely makes my point.” As for Beatty’s directorial precision, I’d say it’s in the content of the scenes and all that constitutes them from — acting, mise-en-scene, script and related historical sensibilitys. Although I do not wish to compare Beatty to Lubitsch on precise construction, much less overall quality, I would not underestimate the extend to which the construction of such amazing scenes as the Red dialogues in the Village and on out on Long Island pretty much prescribe their editing. (Then there is the tale of actor womanizers schooled in great imperial metropoli who would begin careers in film directing historical spectacles and romantic farces, for Beatty only directed one of each genre and Lubitsch was fat.)
Alex, all I can say is that I disagree with you. For the simple reason that, in my opinion, Ernst Lubitsch and Warren Beatty exist on two completely different planes as directors. One is great, the other just isn’t. This is my opinion, of course, but even if one likes Beatty and not Lubitsch, I just don’t think it’s possible to see anything like the same kind of precision in his work. Of course there are certain scenes in REDS that dictate their editing. There are also a lot of montages and sequences that, to my eye and ear, look like emotional patchworks and acting free-for-alls. Beatty and Keaton themselves trike me as far away from the era portrayed in the movie – Keaton in particular is very much a figure out of the 70s/early 80s. If you’re going to look for a director who thinks precisely but leaves certain aspects of the film up to others, there are plenty of other examples. Durgnat on the shooting of RULES OF THE GAME: “Renoir had to start studio work immediately, leaving the ‘massacre of the rabbits’ to be shot by two assistants, Zwoboda and Corteggiani, on the basis of a very detailed shooting script…By June 1939 42,000 metres of film, which had cost over five million francs, were ready for editing. The enormity of the task left Renoir exhausted and confused and, according to Brunelin, he simply fled, occasionally effering his editor, Marguerite Renoir, advice from afar.” Kazan on the cab scene in ON THE WATERFRONT; “I’ve been highly praised for the direction of this scene, but the truth is I didn’t direct it. By the time Boris and I figured out what to do with the set, the morning was gone and Brando was leaving at four, there was nothing to do except put the actors in their places – who on which side of the seat? did it matter? – and photograph them. By that time in the schedule, brando and Steiger knew who they were and what the scene was about – they knew all that better than I di by then – so I didn’t say anything to them.”
Jean-Pierre, I myself am a Northeastern pragmatist from Metaphysical Club country. And at this point, I will defer to you and agree that a better choice of words than “caricature” is in order.
Miguel, Robin Wood says pretty much the same thing about THE BIG SLEEP in his Hawks book. Apparently the film violated his idea of Hawks. I know you like it, but I don’t understand what’s so atypical about it. All you have to do is look at one exchange between Bogart and Bacall or the scene where Bogart throws the gun to the ground and kicks the guy in the face when he bends down to pick it up, and you know whose wing of the house of cinema you’re in.
Brian Dauth writes (apparently in all seriousness):
“To love a Wilder shot is to love the molesting of this tradition with the intention of shaking something loose or revealing what all the elegance is trying to hide (the shot of Jack Lemmon sitting on his couch eating a TV dinner in THE APARTMENT is well-composed in a Hollywood way, but also suffused with the emptiness and futility of Bud Baxter’s life/career. The image is like the concrete facade of a Brutalist building where the traces of its construction have been left on view.”
Huh?
Kent, we’bve been largely just talking past each other, you to the non-artistry of Beatty relative to, first, (and dubiously, DePalme, who may not have a film as good as “Reds”) and, secondly, (and unquestionably) Lubitsch; I to the possibility of artistry without close and comprehensive control. This you’ve just around to embracing for cases other than, and much better than, Beatty.
The Kazan cabscene anecdote probably goes farther than Welles meant when he said that “a direct5or is a man who presides over accidents”: might as well just be a precient and alert producer sometimes.
Alex, André Téchiné once put it very well. I’m paraphrasing, but he said somehting like: “The term director is meaningless – as if we’re puppetmasters controlling everything from behind the camera. It’s the actors who are are exposing themselves, laying themselves on the line.” What Welles is describing in that quote is a hallmark of any good director’s work: carefully creating conditions in which surprises and happy accidents can occur. He himself saw nothing of the kind in Bresson and Antonioni, and he hated them for it. Of course, surprises and accidents on the most intimate level happen in Bresson. Perhaps a little less in Antonioni. In any case, the director as ultimate controller of absolutely everything probably takes us down the wrong path. Precision incorporates accidents, unanticipated values, openness, sudden inspiration. Even in Hitchcock – especially in Hitchcock! Although he himself would never have said so.
I’m inclined to agree with you that De Palma never made a movie as good as REDS. although I do think he’s the better artist.
Carlye, let’s go easy on Brian. If hard-pressed, I’d have to describe the passage in question as a “delirium of interpretation,” to quote Jonathan on the writing of a mutual acquaintance. But in this case it’s borne on the wings of love for Billy Wilder.
Kent: There is an enormous amount of “delirium of interpretation” going around, including on this site, but then, what is “interpretation” if not a form of delirium? Ideally we should be “against interpretation.” Unfortunately hardly anybody knows how to discuss anything without falling back on interpretation. Whether it’s borne on the wings of love for an artist’s work or from a less altruistic desire, or both, doesn’t matter. We’re all slaves to interpretation, and interpretation tends to become murkier as time goes by. I must confess that I have no idea what Brian is talking about most of the time, and he’s not the only one who keeps me puzzled that way. I don’t believe in putting down writings just because you find them obscure, but neither do I think you should admire them because they seem above your head. In the past I spent a lot of time deciphering that sort of stuff,either for fun or out of annoyance, breaking it down to the basic simple thoughts that the verbiage concealed. I myself may have been guilty of the same thing (sometimes I don’t understand what I meant when I re-read something I wrote a long time ago). Still I get the impression that a lot of serious writing about film these days has become so abstract and convoluted that it works against an appreciation and understanding and enjoyment of the works discussed. Maybe it’s just a generation thing, maybe I have lost touch with the current critical lingo just as I have lost touch with teenagers’s slang or their musical tastes.
I have drifted away too much from interpretation. Enough said.
Brian: Is “Ace in the Hole” the exception that proves the rule of what you’re saying about Wilder? The Kirk Douglas character does have a victory (of sorts) over self-interest, but I’m not seeing the whipped cream in that particular cup of coffee. Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s a dazzling piece of storytelling, but either it’s even more cynical than I remembered, or I’m getting less cynical as the years pass. Most of humanity’s better impulses are shoved aside or presented condescendingly as characteristic of only the poor, salt-of-the-earth types. Porter Hall has to stand in for “the Truth” all by his little lonesome. Of course, venality gets its comeuppance in a big way, but it doesn’t kill the sour aftertaste of Wilder’s misanthropy. Maybe he got some measure of catharsis with this one; as you noted, his other films add at least a few grains of sugar to help the medicine go down.
jean-pierre coursodon,
I thought the broad philosophical line was that approaches to “knowledge” was divided between “naturalism” and “interprtation,” and that folks in the humanities were nearly all interpretivists. Further, it has been my personal impression that interpretiviusts where like that woman who told Stephen Hawking that the universe rested onthe back of a turtle and who, when asked on what does the turtle rest, answered, “it’s turtles all the way down” (i.e., it’s interpretation all the way down).
Jean-Pierre, I fully and wholeheartedly agree. I would even say that the moment anything becomes “lingo,” it should go out with the trash. Simply describing something – anything, from a movie to an apple to a sunset – is hard work.
Jean-Pierre, I also whole heartedly agree about the dangers of interpretation.
David Bordwell is complaining loudly about too much interpretation in criticism. He says all the rewards, both inside and outside academia, go to critics who interpret (and he says this is true for all the arts).
I keep trying to be descriptive and analytical. There is so much to be said about composition, camera movement, color, costuming. And plot structure and narrative technique. When I do talk about content, I try to make it very close to the ground of the film, e.g, talking about all the use of media in Fritz Lang, or the use of science and technology in film stories. This is not “interpretation”, hopefully – just a literal look at film content.
jbryant: perhaps Wilder added those grains of sugar as a reaction to the fact that ACE IN THE HOLE, one of his best films, was a critical and commercial flop — everybody hated the “cynicism.”
It’s Norma who calls Betty to tell her that her boyfriend is a prostitute. Said prostitute responds by cruelly dressing down Norma, and exposing all of her sad illusions, to which she responds by shooting him twice in the back and once in the stomach, in an action filmed by Wilder as a sexual frenzy. There’s pathos, sure, but it’s a condescending pathos directed toward a fallen monster. Kent, I can only assume that the “Sunset Blvd.” you recently saw was the bungled, over-restored Paramount DVD issued a few years ago, in which every shot is made to glisten like your grandparents’ plastic-wrapped furniture.
Joe’s trajectory in “Sunset Blvd.” is pretty typical of the Wilder protagonist: a couple of hours of reprehensible behavior accompanied a constant beat of masochistic self-flagellation (and no one was better than Jack Lemmon in that register), followed by a deus-ex-machina ending that finds the protagonist mysteriously cleansed of his sins and sent on his happy way (Joe being one exception, though he does get to float like an angel). I suspect that Wilder was so popular with the audiences and the critical establishment of his time because he was always careful to add the final, arbitrary note of redemption — topping the nastiness with sentiment, or if you prefer, adding the spoonful of schlag to the kaffe — which may be the most cynical gesture of all.
The OED defines interpretation as”,” and interpret as “1. a. trans. To expound the meaning of (something abstruse or mysterious); to render (words, writings, an author, etc.) clear or explicit; to elucidate; to explain.” And interpretation can only be the act of doing what’s odone when one interprets.
I really don’t see how one can get beyond interpretation in discussing film. Of course one can “describe” in a sense that includes only “facts’ extrinsic to the film as “text’ – who made it, what technique were used, etc. – regarding such ‘facts’ as non-interpretative (though they are at best partially constituted by taken-for- granted or epistemologically/ontologically privileged interpretation above the terms suggestion of tentativeness) –, plus, regarding the film text/experience itself, what Bordwell calls “referential” or “explicit” (“obvious”) interpretation.
Of course, such more descriptive activity (as opposed to more “implicit or “symptomatic” or “ideological” interpretation” may be all that’s stress by the may be all that’s mean by proceeding non-interpretively: for a example a historical and empiricist scholarship, or critical assessment a particular, well-mastered discourse. Problem is , such few are confined to a single community of discourse; and such communities are shifting and numerous; and many not especially inaccessible works are indescribable without more than “referential” or “explicit” interpretation (e.g., those of Ki-duk Kim or early Eisenstein, any surrealist – indeed almost anything well described, though you can try to describe The “Big Sleep” sans Chandler or “Birth of a Nation” without some take on “Reconstruction” and Jim Crow“ or ‘Cable Hogue” without comprehension of a world where young single women are almost invariably hookers).
“…the shot of Jack Lemmon sitting on his couch eating a TV dinner in THE APARTMENT is well-composed in a Hollywood way, but also suffused with the emptiness and futility of Bud Baxter’s life/career. The image is like the concrete facade of a Brutalist building where the traces of its construction have been left on view.”
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
All I see when I look at the scene is a guy eating a TV dinner in front of the TV – not necessarily infused with a lot of information and only bordering depressing.
Alex,
If you use the word “interpretation” to mean, vaguely, any sort of commentary, then everything is of course interpretation.
But lots of things are not what Bordwell calls interpretation.
A few months ago, Dace Kehr mentioned a circular camera movement in a film. I noted that around 20 of Joseph H. Lewis films had circular camera movements, and described their arcs. This is not what most people call interpretation.
In fact, I was immediately blasted because my post didn’t ascribe any “interpretation” to them: ie, happiness, capitalism, the oedipus complex…
I recently suggested that the lateral tracks with foreground objects in Lewis derive from the track-to-the-swamp in Sunrise, and that all those rooms with glass walls in Lewis come from the dance hall and cafe in Sunrise. This is not interpretation.
I wrote the the first episode in Three Times (Hou) was built around green with a subsidiary motif of red-and-white, until Hou introduced blue in the finale. This is not interpretation.
Even my remarks that there were a lot of research scientist and engineer heroes in late Borzage is not really what most people call “interpretation”. It’s basically a factual statement about plot elements that everyone who sees the films would agree on.
My critical writing tends to go very light on interpretation. This makes it different from a lot of contemporary criticism.
OK, I’ll try again; correcting a typo…
“…the shot of Jack Lemmon sitting on his couch eating a TV dinner in THE APARTMENT is well-composed in a Hollywood way, but also suffused with the emptiness and futility of Bud Baxter’s life/career. The image is like the concrete facade of a Brutalist building where the traces of its construction have been left on view.”
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
All I see when I look at the scene is a guy eating a TV dinner in front of the TV – not necessarily infused with a lot of information and only borderline depressing.
Yikes, that’s Dave Kehr!
(I wish I could type better)
Billy Wilder had a great ear for quirky, idiosycratic dialogue, was hit-or-miss directing actors (seeming to respect men more than women) and had a competent eye, at best, as a filmmaker. No more, no less.
Which reminds me…
There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s “Manhattan,” in which Isaac Davis (Allen) does his best to put up with an insufferable conversation between his best friend, Yale (Michael Murphy), and Yale’s pretentious mistress, Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton).
Yale: (to Mary) “Gustav Mahler? Hmmm, I think he may be a candidate for the old Academy… ” (to Isaac) “…Oh, we’ve invented the Academy of the Overrated – for such notables as Gustav Mahler…”
Mary: “And Isak Dinesen, Karl Jung.”
Yale: “F. Scott Fitzgerald…”
Mary: “Lenny Bruce! We can’t forget Lenny Bruce now, can we? And how about Norman Mailer?”
I can’t say that I agree with Yale’s and Mary’s picks but I’d probably add Wilder to their list. And Altman, too. And, yes, Allen.
Mike, I agree with everything you say and, I think, with everything that you at least implicitly recommend. However, it does seem to me that there is a thin, blurry line from plot and narrative as they may be conventionally understood in a film to different takes on them, narration and the sort of interpretation described by Bordwell as implicit and symptomatic/ideological. I think these are pretty basic to making sense of a bunch of not especilly esoteric films (“Rules of the Game” and farce and French class, “3-Iron and Buddhism, “Pretty Baby” and Dante, etc.).
I guess good literary critics have always relied on maneuvering clearly about as wide a sector of common sense understandings, and little additions to it as, as congemial and possible.
jean-pierre: yes, I had originally written “(Wilder’s) subsequent films add at least a few grains of sugar to help the medicine go down,” but changed “subsequent” to “other” at the last second, thinking maybe I wasn’t being inclusive enough. Ace in the Hole does have that “note of redemption” that Dave mentions, but overall it seems to be the closest we ever got to straight Wilder, no chaser.
Sarris went through a doubtlessly interesting switcheroo on Wilder between his substantially cynicism-centerted criticism of Wilder in The American Cinema and his, “Why Billy Wilder Belongs in the Pantheon,” Film Comment, July/August 1991.
Alex, of course you’re right – interpretation is unavoidable. But I think what Jean-Pierre is reacting against is the tendency of certain writers to let the interpretation of the object in question obscure the object itself, to such an extent that one no longer recognizes it.
Jean-pierre wrote: “Still I get the impression that a lot of serious writing about film these days has become so abstract and convoluted that it works against an appreciation and understanding and enjoyment of the works discussed.”
I find a lot film writing today to be more about the writer using a film or filmmaker to showcase his/her writing style, which is usually full of self-appreciatory remarks and grandstanding. Overwrought and full of “cleverness” but lacking in any real analysis.
‘interpretation is unavoidable. But I think what Jean-Pierre is reacting against is the tendency of certain writers to let the interpretation of the object in question obscure the object itself, to such an extent that one no longer recognizes it.’
That is true. But, talking to someone who is not cinephile about movie, sometimes they say to me, ‘Junko, you are making too much interpertation.’ Example, in TOUCH OF EVIL Capt. Quinlin stands under bull head in bordello and on same wall is picture of matadors and small mirror. In one instant Vargas has face in that mirror, so I thinking Capt. Quinlan is like bull and Vargas is like matador who will kill him. Maybe cinephile thinks this is possible interpertation, but someone who is not cinephile will say this is too much interpertation.
Michael is pointing to the second most irritating quality in film criticism, the first being ignorance.
Junko, your observation about TOUCH OF EVIL is very good and subtle, because Welles really does suggest a bull and Heston really does comport himself like a matador. In fact, it seems likely that Welles was working from this image, consciously or not, when he made the movie. Since you’re necessar ily more attuned to these matters than your (non-cinephile) friends, it’s easy to understand why they’d accuse you of excessive interpretation. But that kind of mental image is not supposed to hit the viewer over the head but to sort of inform the action without them even realizing it. But I don’t think you’re over-interpreting.
I’d never heard the Norma Talmadge as Norma Desmond connection. In her later life, Talmadge is supposed to have brushed off a fan with a curt “I don’t need you anymore.” I would like to believe the story that Wilder offered the Desmond part first to Mary Pickford, then Pola Negri, before Swanson. My ideal parallel-universe Sunset Blvd is Negri as Norma and Charlie Chaplin as Max. Now THAT would be a black comedy.
jbryant: ACE IN THE HOLE is maybe the most harsh of Wilder’s films with the least amount of whipped cream added. Jean-Pierre has already speculated that the film’s failure encouraged Wilder to make sure he added enough sweetness in future films, and for the most part Wilder did. But in general, I think each spectator’s understanding of how the world operates determines where she falls along the cynical/not cynical continuum with Wilder (I suspect that those who subscribe to the just world hypothesis view Wilder as an unrepentant misanthrope). For me, he is just a realist: humans are aggressive; humans are predatory; humans can be kind to others, sometimes out of altruism and sometimes out of self-interest. But I do not believe that the world tends to an inherent state of fairness or justice. I think Wilder understood these truths and made films accordingly. I think people who believe that good naturally triumphs over bad are bummed out by Wilder’s work and have an immediate instinct to condemn his vision as cynical.
Dave: The question for me is why does Norma do as she does? Is she just a monstrous female who is out of control? Or is she a person who has been pushed to and then over the brink of madness? I do not experience her shooting of Joe as emanating from sexual frenzy (that is Bette Davis at the beginning of THE LETTER), but more as an act of utter lunacy. Swanson’s gestures are disjointed in a way that does not connote for me sexual frenzy.
Also, I do not think that the intimations of hope at the end of Wilder’s movies are cynical touches. They are small, tentative, problematic, and provide a glimmer of possibility on a human scale: he does not traffic in tropes of transcendence or eternalism (a level-headedness that people could mistake for cynicism). Wilder merely offers the suggestion that people can change, while still leaving the question open as to how long such change might last. For me, Wilder’s characters finish up poised on a precipice of uncertainty – Wendell in AVANTI! may have just (in his way) confessed his love for Pamela, but the film abandons him literally in midair, and there is no definitive indication of where or how he will land (or if he will ever take flight again).
Interpretation: As Alex points out, the question is the vexing one of whether there is some reality beyond human beings’ concepts and ideas that exists independently and toward which we grope, or whether all humans can do is understand reality through the mediation of language. If there is a way out of interpretation, out of the conceptual schemes with which we apprehend/comprehend the world, I would love to know about it since I have yet to figure out how to get there. Your approach Mike just isn’t enough for me: I think it is useful to know about the circular camera movements in Joseph H. Lewis’s movies, but is the work of film criticism merely to catalogue a list of statements that anyone can read and then watch a film to verify whether they are true or false?
Dave and I both agree that Norma shoots Joe at the end of SUNSET BLVD., but he sees an act rendered as sexual frenzy while I see one born of madness. If film criticism is reduced to just what can be agreed upon by all parties, then there will not be much to talk about: laundry lists are dull. Also, think back to the discussions about THE WIRE: you and other people all watched the same episodes, but saw completely different things, and everyone posting would affirm that they were following your lead and sticking “very close to the ground of the film.”
Kent: I agree that good interpretation needs to be grounded in the aesthetic object, but it also needs to reflect/admit the reality of the individual spectator. When I experience/encounter an aesthetic object, I am going to respond in a unique way even though my response may share some/many commonalities with those of others. As I posted earlier, atonal music is music to some, but not to others. Either way, there is not some eternal, unchanging form called “Music” out beyond human consciousness against which all music can/should be measured in order to determine if it really is what it claims to be.
For me, the point is to ground aesthetic responses as thoroughly as possible in both the object and (as I learned from William James) the body/consciousness of the spectator herself. Norma’s gestures/movements when she shoots Joe evoke in me a sense of madness. But Dave watches those same gestures and sees sexual frenzy. We are both right and both used the film object as the ground of our response. I think the dread of multiplying interpretations stems from the fact that people are rejecting the lemming-like spectator posture championed in the past, and instead claiming a place for their own body and consciousness in the aesthetic experience.
Brian, you seem to be taking a wayward route to saying something pretty straightforward: subjectivity always enters into criticism, invited or uninvited. Laundry lists of commonly understood elements are indeed dull; so are recitations of subjective impressions. You and Dave obviously bring different viewpoints to the party, but you’re still seeing the same film. The point, at least from my perspective, is not to elucidate my own unique experience of a film – this would seem odd to me since every new look affords new insight. The point is to look closer and closer at the film, or the painting, or the dance, or the flower, or whatever, to get an increasingly refined sense of how it works, what it is in its totality. No one here, at least that I know of, dreads multiplying interpretations. What some of us dread, myself included, is the interpretation overwhelming the film in question. I do agree – acknowledgement of subjectivity is important. The signalling of subjectivity in the name of honesty seems far less important.
Kent wrote: “The point, at least from my perspective, is not to elucidate my own unique experience of a film – this would seem odd to me since every new look affords new insight. The point is to look closer and closer at the film, or the painting, or the dance, or the flower, or whatever, to get an increasingly refined sense of how it works, what it is in its totality.”
Bartender, give that man whatever he so desires!
Kent: I agree that I am saying something straightforward, but I think many people downplay the large role subjectivity plays in aesthetics. “How a film works” is only revealed when a spectator experiences the object. Take Lewis’ circular camera movements. If one of the ways a Lewis film works is with/through these movements, the supporting evidence lies in whether or not they are experienced as meaning something or causing a response when viewed. The art object does not begin to “work” until it is experienced; until the moment of encounter it is merely a collection of non-functioning attributes.
You do need to “elucidate [your] own unique experience of a film” in order to convey how a film works. A work of art is not like a combustion engine whose method of operation can be objectively determined and communicated. I can start an engine and walk away and it will still work. Once I disengage from an art object it ceases to work.
If I had the talent, I could convey to you how an engine works, and if you had the talent you could then build an engine that worked the way I had described. But as articulate as you are about Kazan, his films will never work for me the way they do for you. In fact, if you do not chronicle your experience, then no one will ever know that a Kazan film can work in this way.
We need interpretations to proliferate since each new interpretation represents the arrival of another understanding of how a film works, thereby increasing the robustness of its totality.
Brian,
When Jean-Pierre mentioned his concerns about interpretation, it played into one of my hobby horses. I too really believe that film criticism has to do much more to explore the formal elements of film making.
But I had no intent of piling on you.
My bone to pick is with film criticism as a whole. Not you personally.
Peace!
Brian, who would possibly argue with you that a film can’t exist independent of a film viewer? I don’t get what you’re insisting on here. If it’s the necessity of signalling one’s subjecvtivity at any given moment of a critical piece, then I simply disagree.
Brian,
So I gather what your saying, via your comments on Kazan, is that you do no need to reconsider your analysis/”experience” one you arrive at it. But what if your “experience” of a film or filmmaker’s work has resulted in a misreading or misunderstanding? Are you incapable of conceding that you may have erred? What is the point of film criticism and analysis if it is to be rejected simply because it does not equal your “experience”? Why should anyone consider what you write if your criticisms of a filmmaker did not reflect what they “experienced”? Based on my feelings on Mankiewicz and following your argument, I can simply ignore your book.
Also,what about the author’s intent? Being that you have written plays and seen them produced, I have always wondered how you would react if the director passed your play to around to the actors, the production staff and the audience who all in turn gave their interpretation which was then added into the production. How would you feel about the end product?
What I do not understand is: if we are only supposed to describe our experiences,and that everyone’s interpretation is correct, why have any discussion at all? Is this all just an exercise is self-validation?
What I do not understand is: if we are only supposed to describe our experiences,and that everyone’s interpretation is correct, why have any discussion at all? Is this all just an exercise in self-validation?
One can be analytic, descriptive, and interpretive all in the same act of criticism. The advantage of David Bordwell’s book on Making Meaning is that it can help us all become betters interpreters (or makers of meaning)if we pay close and rigorous attention to what is on the screen and then go on from there.
Tony,
You’ve got a good point.
Brian Dauth, Yes, as you write to kent, “if you do not chronicle your experience, then no one will ever know that a Kazan film can work in this way.”One of the reason some of the more literary reviewers of decades gone by — like Agee and MacDonald even Kael, who didn’t know all that much about film history or style, much less theory, can be very good is that they are great at describing their reactions (personal in cases like Agee and Kael, rich in non-film knowledge and perspective like MacDonald).
Alex, for the reasons you’ve mentioned, I prefer Manny Farber to Agee, MacDonald and Kael. His experience is there, but it’s embedded deeply within the prose – there’s an extremely taut relationship between the film and the film-watcher. Agee could write a beautiful sentence, but he drives me up the wall with all his diagnostic stuff: “this film would have been better if they’d done this, this and this.”
As a belated answer to Kent, I must say “atypical” is not for me derogative in the least. An “atypical” film can be both most revealing and wonderful. Another quite “atypical” Hawks film, “Land of the Pharaohs”, seems to me among his best, as does “7 Women” in Ford’s work, whereas the quite typical “Rio Lobo” is not one of Hawks major works. “The Big Sleep” seems to me more WB/Chandler/”noir”/Forties/Bogart than Hawks, although evidently it is full of Hawksian items (since Hawks repeated himself all the time). And “A Girl in Every Port” may be good, and even prototypically (if sketchily) Hawksian, but I don’t like it too much, and there are things in it which I really dislike (more or less the same as in another good film, Raoul Walsh’s “What Price Glory?”).
Miguel Marías
I’ve always had a problem with the whole “Hawksian” thing. In general, I think that one of the traps in auteur-driven critical thinking is the pursuit of thematic consistency. Hawks is obviously much more thematically concsistent than most directors, but working from there runs the risk of elevating something like RED LINE 7000, which has been discussed at length here. I looked at the movie again after a discussion with Blake Lucas, and it’s very interesting, but the proliferation of “Hawksian items” in that movie are what finally make it (for me) a self-limiting film. Now I realize you’re not disparaging THE BIG SLEEP by calling it atypical, and I also realize that it doesn’t have the same kind of dramatic elements that RIO BRAVO or TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT possess. But Hawks gives of himself from movie to movie in many ways apart from his favorite “themes” – the sense of relaxation, the pragmatism, the gestural beauty, the realization of thought in action. For me, this all comes together in that walk through the murder scene as Martha Vickers giggles to herself, twice as long and twice as good in the earlier cut. When I think of Hawks, that scene generally comes to mind. Other than that, it may be a difference of temperament, but the film has never struck me as remotely “noir” or even terribly “Chandler” (MURDER MY SWEET is much closer to the spirit of Chandler in my book). Forties and WB? Yeah, thanks to Sid Hickox and Max Steiner, but your typical WB movie of the 40s isn’t so relaxed or digressive.
I don’t think that considering that SOME (not a hundred) directors are the true or main “authors” of their films can be called “auteur-driven critical thinking”. It is certainly not “driven” by that concept, and the “auteur” policy, theory, poetics or whatever one choses to opt for cannot (or should not) be applied to everybody, but only to “auteurs”. Of which Hawks would certainly be one, of course. In my view, this critical method has nothing (or little) to do with the “pursuit of thematic consistency”, in fact it was accused of “formalism” by all the thematically content-driven critical schools of the day. I thought it was clear that content is not what is cinematographical, and that (explict) themes can be very important and the film very poor, while minor subjects and conventional plot-lines could be the basis of great films. In any case, if I were trying to introduce someone to Hawks, I would never show them “The Big Sleep” in the first place, but rather say “Rio Bravo” or “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”. I would not begin with “Red Line 7000″ (perhaps the most unfairly treated, neglected and unseen of all his major films), but for quite different reasons; it should wait until Hawks had become a familiar enough thing for the viewer. That the films is (for me) “atypical” doesn’t exclude there are in “The Big Sleep” things which one can instantly recognize as Hawksian, but if “The Big Sleep” is not “noir” then I don’t have the slightest idea of what can “noir” be.
Miguel Marías
Miguel, I don’t really understand what you mean by atypical, so I made the mistake of linking your view of THE BIG SLEEP to Robin Wood’s.
There’s some kind of cultural divide here. If you were to poll most of the people on this blog, I’ll bet they wouldn’t characterize THE BIG SLEEP as “noir.” Not that this would invalidate your point of view, especially since “noir” is so spongy and endlessly shifting a term. On another front, RED LINE 7000 would most certainly not be a good place to start with Hawks, because it only makes sense within the broader context of Hawks’ work. As opposed to RIO BRAVO.