Viewing Log #47: Eliminate the laminate [6/14/10 - 6/20/10]

by Ryland Walker Knight

—Must love dogs

• Bell Book and Candle [Richard Quine, 1958] Fun to think of how Hitchcock must have seen this, after his perfect picture with this pair, and how he might've dug it if only for how much sexier Novak is in this flick. Novak's got more to go on, here, and gets to play a person instead of an idea, but it's more than just an "arc" that makes her radiate (and she radiates green a few times); there's a sense of true wounds getting fingered like buttons; and who doesn't like "ironic" reversals when it comes to romance? Worth noting, too, that this is a film for any lover of New York—Old New York, New York as haunted, New York as a nest or as pregnant—as a place for lovers. I'm not so sure I still hold that same esteem of that great city, but I cannot deny my affection for it and its odd promise of aches and pains to go sidelong with dreams.
  
• Caddyshack [Harold Ramis, 1980] # Basically: I want to, at some point, tell a big crowd of people gathered on a deck, "Hey, everybody! We're all gonna get laid!" Failing that, I'd like to adopt some of Chevy Chase's glib tactics with the ladies. Weird that Bill Murray's something of a weak link.
  
  
• To Have and To Have Not [Howard Hawks, 1944] # I've never taken a film production course at a university level before so I'm curious: do any smart profs teach Hawks? Because his model of economy is instructive for anybody with meager means hoping to make movies. There's about six sets, maybe seven, used in this movie. And all Hawks pictures move forward without asides or flashbacks—true continuity—so there's plenty to learn on a storytelling level. Then you get to the idea of acting that's all over this film and covers nearly his entire filmography: get the characters to actually perform things for other characters as a way to indicate their own character; then comment on it, slightly, in the dialog to show these are thoughtful/aware people with plenty of intention behind every play; with a decent distraction story, you've got a tight little structure to build dramatic significance. And, maybe, you can get some friends to charm the pants of the camera. Bacall's little dance out of the saloon always kills me. Bogey's masculinity is sometimes a bore but his physical posture's so bad, the whole bit gladdens me.
  
  
• L'enfance nue [Maurice Pialat, 1968] Funny that Truffaut presents this film, as the credits read, but it's just about the opposite kind of sensibility as that of that calling card about a boy he made first (which I still enjoy, but cannot love save a few choice moments). This one, though, only gets things right. Things like anger. But it's not a psychological film; it's all actions. What you do. What you do doesn't define you but it sure does indicate a lot. Great to see Pialat had the same impulse to shear away plot this early. I'd love to know how he wrote: did he film forever, or write forever, and then delete/edit? Or was his brain so strong that he simply trusted his storytelling enough to jump so often and sometimes so far?

Don't get too greedy

by Ryland Walker Knight

I did my best to resist the evaluative while comparing how Where the Wild Things Are and Fantastic Mr. Fox address their audiences. I don't know how well I succeeded on either of those fronts. I know I let my distaste for the Jonze picture creep in as much as my enthusiasm for the Anderson picture shines through what little I had to say. It's a pretty simple argument, really, that I might be able to boil down to: if you're going to go the sadness route, you ought to make me feel something besides annoyance at the tedium of hurt. I know that part of life all too well already. I enjoy Fox and other Wes Anderson pictures precisely because they're adventures, and comedies, and about exploring the world with some imagination and wit. But I'll have more to say about that at a not-much-later date for a different outlet. So, until then, read this and that and the other thing I threw together (threw up?) in The Notebook. If you want to read something smarter, and more cohesive, and maybe even more honest, read Sicinski's piece in Cinema-Scope. If I'd had the gumption, I'd've talked in public about how much of me I saw or didn't see and how that swayed me. But I'll save that for my face-to-face friends.

In the works: Doillon at FIAF.

by Ryland Walker Knight

Last Tuesday marked the beginning of the current Jacques Doillon retrospective at French Institute-Alliance Française with a screening of 1985's La Vie de famille, which Dan Salitt says is lovely. I missed it, and I'm bummed. However, I can say that tonight's film, Le petit criminel, is well worth seeing if you happen to live in New York City. I hope to have some words formed about it, and next week's Ponette, for your reading pleasure at The Auteurs' Notebook soon. I'll keep you updated. What's most striking, so far, looking at Doillon's cinema in the order of its programmed appearance at the FIAF, is the focus on children—and their complete "naturalness" in front of the camera. The close-up effaces, or makes transparent, any masks they (wish or hope to) wear. Set mostly in a two-door almost-truck, Le petit criminel is meager, and subtle, a restricted (head) space prone to jammed signals, to cluttered thoughts. The endgame may appear "open" to some but, as the cop says earlier in the picture, there should be no doubt as to where the story winds up; how the angles converge and how the camera pushes into that space (as well as away) define its characteristic (to say, stubborn) resilience. I can only guess how this plays out fuller in La vie de famille, as this trailer below hints at a film teeming with a lot of things I love, like Juliette Binoche, words, language, direct-address, diegetic video use, family problems despite good intentions, life's inherent corruption (and corruptibility), Sami Frey all man-like some 20-plus years after Godard had him dancing all boy-like, and so on; my attraction should become readily apparent as you click play.

Since I'm following the screening schedule, kinda, this puts my viewing of Doillon's films of the 1970s back a bit in my personal queue. This is fine by me, of course, as I've subscribed to a certain curriculum, if you will, but it makes it a little harder to gauge at this point how much similarity his work bears to those of his post-vague filmmaking brethren (the press release mentions Eustache and Garrel to get nerds like me excited) over against a larger tradition of gallic cinema. So far, it seems like he's got more to say to Truffaut and Pialat than those other dudes. More soon. —Oh, and a quick thanks to all the ideas and thoughts thrown my way in that last (now enormous) thread at Girish's joint. [x-posted at the curator corner.]