essence of film

24 Hours of Inertia in L.A.

Model Shop (1969), directed by Jacques Demy, is often overlooked as a mere curiosity of the late 60’s Californian culture with little cinematic effort, though in reality appears as a bold and original film to any film lover familiar with the director’s work. Eight years have passed since Demy’s feature debut Lola (1961) and now, in his first film made in the States, he returns to similar themes, story and even character. Although some arguments about the low productional quality — as if that meant something — dialogue and thinness of the subject in Model Shop may have a basis, it still stands out as a significant landmark in Demy’s oeuvre and one of the best American films made in the late 1960’s.

The beginning dolly shot seen during the opening credits immediately triggers associations to Lola: it is as if the camera was attached to a car while it records the stagnant life of an industrial area until it stops by a run-down shack, which could, in fact, be any building. Such imagery of roads and cars becomes the basic aesthetics of the film — part of the Demyan iconography.

As stated, Demy’s first American feature bears a striking resemblance to his debut made eight years earlier in France. One can be certain that he could’ve done any kind of film after the great success of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). But instead he made a very different film compared to his biggest hits. In a word, Model Shop is a chamber drama whose events are placed in one whole day. It is an interior of a fleeting moment, implemented with a few characters and milieus in the kammerspiel tradition.

The central milieu of the film is Los Angeles which is portrayed from its poor periphery to the rich hills and crowded downtown. The periphery is the industrial area already portrayed in the first dolly shot. In fact, Model Shop begins and ends there — the landfill of the dream factory — where the misfits, the abandoned and the forgotten wait for their turn. The turn which will just be another setback.

Not surprisingly, such a milieu is perfect for a portrayal of alienation and frustration, but at the same time Demy seems to make an elegiac homage to the tradition (that is before the late 50’s) of American cinema — its hope, dream and, above all, great humanism. In the atmosphere, which Demy always creates with his tender touch, there is a strong sensation of departure — exodus — and hope for freedom, the fulfillment of dreams, provided by it.

Generally speaking, one of the things, or perhaps the only thing, from which Model Shop is recognized of is its period picture. The year is 1969. The United States started bombing Vietnam few years ago. One generation of young males have grown up, knowing that some day they will be called. At the same time while a war is being fought on the other side of the globe, the American society is going through a socio-cultural transition. Young women have liberated from the kitchen ages ago, hippies are everywhere, and drugs are used carelessly. Nonetheless, this generation feels numb, frustrated. It is no accident that such haste liberalization brought such loneliness with it.

From these social and current themes Demy creates a veritably personal film, studying individual personality and freedom. The protagonist, played by Gary Lockwood, is a young man who, among many others, waits for his call-up to the war. He is afraid. He is fresh from university where he studied architecture, but feels frustrated on the brink of despair in front of the commercial nature of the trade and, therefore is out of job. Soon the viewer learns that he began studying architecture because he wanted to construct. But now he has met the real world, face to face, and seen the world’s incomprehensible desire to destroy beauty. On the top of all this, he is distressed due to living in a futile relationship with an alien spirit. The viewer is constantly reminded that the protagonist is surrounded by nice and helpful friends, but something is missing — a meaning.

To add insult to injury, a debt collection agency threatens the protagonist of taking his car away in twenty-four hours unless he comes up with a hundred dollars. He borrows the money from a musician friend of his, but ends up spending them on a mysterious woman, played by Anouk Aimée. After following this woman, to whom he ran by blind chance, he finds out that she works in a model shop — a place where customers can come to take pictures of models in a private room.

Later on he returns to the same shop to take pictures of the same woman. He reveals himself in front of her, and at the backyard of the shop, surrounded by garbage, confesses his love only to receive an embarrased chuckle in return. The woman can’t believe him, although this is probably the only real moment in the artificial milieu of the unreal where they live.

In fact, all the characters talk very roughly, in a simple, clumsy manner. This has made the viewing experience rather unpleasant for many, but to me the dialogue appeared as deliberate and authentic. The characters express the frustration of a generation which ought not to be embellished. The town remains silent. No one can really say anything.

When it comes to the similarities between Lola and Model Shop, the most integral element is the title character. As a matter of fact, Model Shop can be taken as a “direct” sequel to Lola. In Lola the viewer observes the events from Roland’s perspective, a lonely man who is desperately in love with Lola. In Model Shop the viewer’s point of reference, the protagonist, is almost an identical character to Roland, but more importantly Aimée plays the exact same role of Lola which she did eight years earlier. The reference isn’t subtle, and there is no need for it to be. It is precisely direct and unambiguous, making it veritably poignant and an essential element in characterization.

Thus, the viewer is allowed to see what happened to Lola after she chose Michel and her son over Roland’s desperate passion. Eight years have passed. Now Lola has divorced from her husband Michel. She has lost everything. The promised American dream was never fulfilled. Instead of a cabaret, Lola now works in a model shop — the salon of loneliness — where men come to drown their loneliness, to experience intimacy, power and meaning.

It is intriguing to ponder why Demy chose the shop as the title of his film. My take on the subject is that the model shop is the plastic heart of the milieu. It is the climax of artificiality that surrounds. A sad game with its own pathetic rules. Above all, it is a place which embodies inertia. It exhales human languor and fatigue. And Lola is one of its fallen angels who have burnt their wings.

Striking is what time has done to Lola. Eight years have aged her terribly. Naivety and faith in goodness have been replaced by grief and maturity brought by disappointment. However, one shouldn’t think that time had aged the actor, Anouk Aimée, at least in a negative fashion. In fact, a year earlier in A Man and a Woman (1968) she was charming (probably the only good thing in the film). Hence, it isn’t really the time that has aged Lola, but despair and misfortune have drawn their mark on her face. Agony and suffering have given odd, extraordinary, unique beauty to her look.

As stated above, the film includes a strong sensation of departure. This is mainly contructed on the level of characterization, but Demy enhances the effect by dissolving the soundscape of the protagonist’s appartment to airplane noises. Humonguous crafts fly above his house. Every discussion, every dash of hope is about to sink into the unforgiving din of hurry, technology and departure. It is as if the noise suffocated us. Beside the emotion of exodus, the airplane sounds represent the new, alienated world where the protagonist — the current generation — can’t fit in.

To solve his financial problems, the protagonist borrows a hundred from a friend of his to pay the debt, but ends up spending the money to get near Lola. He goes to the model shop twice. After confessing his love and having sex with her, he gives away the last remnants of the borrowed money for Lola’s voyage — her departure for the indeterminate.

Although this romantic affair ended abruptly, the protagonist feels for the first time in his young life the possibility of happiness. It was brief, but rewarding. In fact, such an encounter between two lonely ones is an essential theme for Demy and can be found not only in Lola but also in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Bay of Angels (1963). Two lonely people, who haven’t met before, but share a bond, can truly help each other even if it seemed artificial as inclined in the confession at the backyard.

In the end, the protagonist returns to his home. A whole day of twenty-four hours has passed from the beginning of the film. His girlfriend leaves him and so does his car, but he doesn’t care. Demy ends the film with a close-up of the protagonist while he is calling to say goodbye to Lola. Unfortunately, he is too late. However, this isn’t important. There is an authentic feeling of a new beginning as the echoes of the protagonist’s words reach the spectator. At least he is a little happier even if absolute destruction and new disappointment waited at the end of the road.

Although there are arguably distinct connections between Demy’s films, he always finds something new every time. If Lola and Bay of Angels were about people who were unable to move forward despite the distressing shadow of departure cast on them, then Model Shop is, above all, a film about inertia. It studies existential fatigue, stagnation, and how to rise from its dreary abyss. In a detailed and honest fashion, Demy depicts human inertia which is a consequence of frustration, lack of love and all meaning. The characters are tired. They can’t keep up any longer, but still there echoes a quiet, suffocated faith in the possibility that at least one can try the capacity of one’s wings.

Raw Poetry of Crime

What makes a good crime film? That is if one even wants to contemplate on such a commercial basis. Does it have to be suspenseful? Does it need surprising twists? Is a clear and logical structure essential? If the answer to all these, and especially to the third one, was yes, then Heaven and Hell (1963) by Akira Kurosawa is a good crime film. In fact, it is not just one of the best crime films ever made but an excellent masterpiece of the cinema in general. The film could arguably be praised merely for its aesthetic unity and utter beauty but, moreover, it’s one of Kurosawa’s most insightful works. It is a film of moral brutality, existentialist anxiety and social grimness which leaves the viewer speechless.

The masterful structure of Heaven and Hell, its precision, serves well the simple crime plot which is, however, interpreted in an entirely original fashion by Kurosawa. Not surprisingly, the title has a social connotation, referring to the bourgeoisie, who live close to heaven, and the proletariat, who suffer on the surface of hell. During the opening credits the viewer sees overview images of industrial Tokyo and the reality of the society which the criticism of the dichotomous structure, suggested by the title, is aimed at. Immediately after the credits, Kurosawa takes a closer look.

The first part of the film happens almost entirely in one apartment, a luxury chateau on a hill. Kurosawa begins the film by depicting the heaven of the rich. Gondo, an executive of a shoe company, has schemed a plan to buy the majority of the company in order to gain full control over it but, out of the blue, he hears that his son has been kidnapped. The kidnapper demands 30 million yen. Gondo is ready to pay even at the risk of losing charge over the company. However, soon it turns out that the crook kidnapped the wrong child, the son of Gondo’s chauffeur, but the threat remains: 30 million yen or the boy dies.

After the ransom has been delivered and the chauffeur’s son is at home once again, the film makes a shift as the second part begins. Kurosawa’s camera moves to hell, among people — to the area of life which is blissfully unknown to the residents of heaven. Thus begins an exciting manhunt for the captor at the gates of hell until, in the end, justice is done, or is it?

The shift from heaven to hell is all in all absolutely brilliant but also cinematically in relation with everything. In hell, the cosy chill of heaven turns into unbearable heat, calm editing to hectic, lingering harmonic rhythm to quick, mise-en-scène from reduced to profuse, although still extremely precise. Moreover, silence is replaced by Schubert’s melodies. In the heaven sequence, the music would have probably been associated with visual clarity and, therefore, the reason for its use would’ve been more aesthetic. However, in the hell sequence, I believe, the impact is more dramatic, for it is merely in relation to the emotional power of the chain of events and not necessarily to the visuals.

In addition to music, noises become more important in the second part. For it was, in fact, very quiet in heaven. The sounds of hell were only heard when the windows of the chateau were opened and even then as elusive and distant. In the hell sequence, the sound world becomes noisy and almost chaotic. The din of the crowd, factories and public transport creates an intense aura to say the least.

The way I see it, it is precisely the performance of Toshirô Mifune as Gondo which connects these two parts. I don’t merely mean his character but his intimate acting throughout. It is really his ferocious vigor which offers a sustainable contrast to the chill of heaven but also keeps the viewer at the edge of his or her seat from the very beginning to the unforgettable end.

As stated, the visuals of the film constantly support the story and its structure as well as Kurosawa’s social criticism. The criticism, however, for the social order referred by the title isn’t probably anything new to the viewer, but Kurosawa’s way of dealing with it most likely is. His passion, his fiery frenzy, which flames against capitalism and the class society is what makes the social criticism of Heaven and Hell essentially efficient and venomous. Kurosawa cuts an incision with his camera to a society which is based on crime and competition, deceit and betrayal. Such poignant analysis is very similar to the crime films by Otto Preminger and Robert Aldrich but when it comes to Kurosawa, the grip is much deeper. It seems as if Kurosawa created a symphony of the modern world in which people try to solve all of their problems — even the impurity of their souls — with money and material. In a word, the characters lack the ability to see. 

This world view of Kurosawa is presented in the very beginning through characters. As soon as the mistake of the wrong boy is revealed, the chauffeur is brushed aside. But this isn’t anything unusual. It’s perfectly natural, in fact a necessity, for the chauffeur belongs to a lower class. Furthermore, he isn’t allowed to the phone. He is constantly in the back. He must observe the situation behind the shoulders of others as his master is negotiating with the kidnapper about the fate of his son. By the end, he must humble himself and pray Gondo to save his son. After the boy has been returned to his father, he tries desperately to recollect the last remnants of his glory by helping to find the kidnapper. Yet, he is still in the side. He isn’t in the news, Gondo is. He isn’t an interest.

Another interesting visual expression when it comes to the social message lies in the architecture — in the relation between the chateau and the city. This is associated with the distant sounds mentioned above but also with the distant landscape unfolding in the horizon. As Gondo looks outside of his windows he looks like a king observing his kingdom. But the film focuses on an occurrence when the situation has been turned upside down since the kingdom of several unknown eyes is now observing Gondo, and he doesn’t like it. He hides behind curtains. The police (the king’s minions) dig up the criminal, who caused this disharmony between the castle and the town, and return order once and for all.

During the film the viewer constantly comes across with one striking element, the curtains. Together with the police, Gondo and his family hide behind the curtains of the house. They stay there, planning for their next move. They cover the view to heaven until the captor’s suspicions rise. Even in their investigation the police hides to darkness to study evidence. Then there is of course the ending in which this brilliant visual motif climaxes: an iron curtain descends between Gondo and the captor whose screams are still echoing in the space — these screams from hell are once again covered behind the curtain, and Gondo is left to stare, helpless and alone, the teary reflection of his soul on the glass between heaven and hell.

I guess one could, in fact, talk ages on the visuals of the film but I’m not sure whether it would actually elaborate anything. Since all in all, Heaven and Hell is an extremely simple film and precisely due to that a work of sheer brilliance. Each image is in relation with the story line, each visual detail with the aesthetic content and each theme with the thesis. There is not a single detached, or “poetic”, moment or even shot in the film because, just as in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky, poetry exists in the film form itself and, consequently, doesn’t have to be added from the outside — a phenomenon which is far too common these days, resulting in banal pseudo-intellectual cinema. Discussing a Japanese artist, I guess it would be reasonable to associate this with haikku (the purest art of simplicity?) which, also to Tarkovsky’s mind, bears a philosophical resemblance to the cinema in its poetic particularity.

There is something truly enchanting in Heaven and Hell and it’s not merely the 60’s Japan where it takes the modern viewer. There’s something more. Its psychological tension and seedy mood draws parallels to American detective stories: the purgatorial conditions which the captor lives in — Chinatown, the dance hall, the drug cave, the streets and the hotel — are like straight from Raymond Chandler’s universe. As a matter of fact, Heaven and Hell is loosely based on a crime novel by Ed McBain. There’s simply something utterly unique in the mood of the film. There’s a dash of film-noir, a little bit of classic Greek drama and a background of a ransom thriller. However, trying to list different genres that have merged in the film is futile. For there is only one word to describe it: Kurosawa.

The most suspenseful sequence of the film, in which the tension is at its extreme, takes place in a Japanese high-speed rail. The clatter and speed of the train bring a new dimension to Kurosawa’s poetics of space. As if the travellers were prisoners, and power was used outside of the prison. It is precisely a train of fate because Gondo knows what will happen. Holding two briefcases of cash, he is heading towards self-destruction, his financial catastrophe. What is more, the sequence provides a brilliant shift from heaven to hell.

At his heart, Gondo is a weak individual who still has his own ethical convictions. Although money presses him to moral regardless whereas his wife, the chauffeur and the police to friendliness, it is necessary to realize that, in the end, Gondo makes his decision by himself and for the sake of his conscience. It’s a decision which concerns his entire existence in both social and moral context. Beaten down, he gains the sympathy of the general public. But slowly the big picture unfolds to the viewer: the distinct precision of the investigation sequence highlights that maybe the police wouldn’t have been this interested in helping a citizen of hell; and perhaps the public’s sympathy would’ve have remained unattainable without the help of the media. Sure, the capturer acted in a cruel fashion but only because there is nothing but cruelty in his world. Or, as Kurosawa once himself proclaimed, “in a mad world, only the mad are sane.”

One might want to take a closer look at the captor because he’s really one of Kurosawa’s most interesting characters. He seems to be a social casualty, vulnerable and weak. He is connected with the drug scene. He lives in a world where people die like stray dogs. He is, like the protagonist of Albert Camus’ The Stranger (1942), enslaved by the sun that eats his soul and entire existence. Needless to point out the obvious but just as Camus’ hero so has the captor lost his mother to death. If one pays attention to the words he utters, one will note that they are like straight from Camus’ pen which have, nonetheless, travelled through Kurosawa’s poetic consciousness.

However, the case isn’t all black and white because the viewer does feel sorry for Gondo as well. This counterpoint climaxes in the ending which offers the viewer an existentialist conclusion. A reflection of Gondo’s disillusioned face drills down to the spectator’s mind. Gondo didn’t encounter a monster but a broken down individual.

Above all, the finale is a moment when the viewer realizes that Gondo and the captor aren’t very different after all. They’re both abandoned loners, one by the society and the other by the power of money. Like Camus’ Mersault, the captor is regardless and distressed even though he sees himself as honest. However, unlike Mersault, he doesn’t collapse due to a priest’s visit, from which he denies, but due to the encounter with Gondo which he hoped for. The viewer identifies with Gondo and therefore, experiences existential helplessness. How dared we hate the captor? In the end, our desire for Gondo’s survival and helping the captor collide. Yet, Kurosawa doesn’t feed us with a satisfying moral solution but throws the reality in front of our eyes because all this concerns something much more wider and unsettled.

PS: this was my 100th post. Thanks for the support and all the feedback I’ve received!

The Tragedy of the Old Left

There are films that touch me. There are films that teach me. There are films that change who I am, films that haunt and stay with me. Then there are films that inspire me to a large extent. The latter is a group which Alain Resnais’ fourth feature La guerre est finie (1966, The War Is Over) has always belonged to. This of course doesn’t mean that the film couldn’t have touched me, let alone changing me, but its unquenchable source of inspiration has always been the element I’ve admired the most. It remains as one of my favorite Nouvelle Vague pictures. Such admiration isn’t, however, merely due to its inspirational style of editing and structure, but emerges from Resnais’ ability to transfer the rhythmic back-and-forth flow of time, made famous by Vertigo (1958), into a completely different film without losing its melancholic, wistful and rather romantic sense of the past.

Let us first declare the fact: La guerre est finie requires multiple viewings. I believe that it is impossible to be understood in a coherent sense on the first view. But understanding the details of the story line isn’t what’s important. What is vital, is to see beneath the surface, to hear the sounds of the past, and to immerse into the Resnais universe — to the poetic world where Resnais took us with the famous opening dolly shot of Last Year at Marienbad (1961). 

First Encounters: Perplexed and Amazed

I remember when I first saw La guerre est finie and didn’t understand practically any of it. Now a few years later, having seen it a couple of times, the film has really grown onto me. To my mind, this is precisely due to the fact that it’s not a portrayal of characters nor of situations. It’s a flow; more of a duration rather than a story. Though quite paradoxically, I also think La guerre est finie can be called Resnais’ most straight-forward film of the 60’s. Perhaps this is why it took time for me to appreciate it. Marienbad is easy to digest. It’s emotions. But this is politics. Above all, I guess the reason was probably that it takes time to understand time, doesn’t it?

The film is basically a story about a man, Diego Mora, played by Yves Montand, who flees to France, where he lives, as a Spanish refugee, only to return to his native soil in the end. During his visit, Diego meets a lot of his old comrades from the Spanish Civil War who are now planning a general strike in Paris. However, Diego doesn’t fit in. He tries to adapt to the young radicals but finds their views too contradictory to his. The only thing that seems to be working is his relationship with the woman he loves, Marianne, wonderfully played by Ingrid Thulin, although he is still sexually attracted to a younger girl. 

In a sense, La guerre est finie belongs to the same category with The Rules of the Game (1939) and Un chien Andalou (1929) because it is something entirely new to the viewer. It’s all about the expression of emotions and thoughts, events and their casual links rather than the depiction of situations (Hawks) or even, at least in the conventional sense, characters (Renoir). The films by Resnais must be approached as the paintings of Pablo Picasso. Noteworthy is that Picasso also made a piece of work dealing with the Spanish Civil War (Guernica, 1937) and perhaps even more fascinating is that Resnais made a documentary of that particular painting (Guernica, 1950). Still it’s not really about the cubism of the aesthetics of the images in La guerre est finie but of the film form — of how time is structured in it; how the entirety is constructed through editing.

Furthermore, the collage-like complexity of time is purely an expression of the mechanisms of human memory. A theme which Resnais had already studied in Hiroshima, mon amour (1959) and Last Year at Marienbad. By extraordinary means of editing Resnais characterizes the relation between the past and present on an aesthetic level. Although editing isn’t necessarily the most integral element in film making,  it is the element which gives the film its structure — the assembly of shots — and thus Resnais, through the rhythm created by the rapid pace between the shots, gives out his perception of time.

Unlike Godard, in Breathless (1960) for one, Resnais doesn’t use jump cuts merely because they’re beautiful. Alexandr Dovzhenko used jump cuts in Arsenal (1929) to reflect the movement of the human mind but for Resnais the reason is, above all, to express the shattered nature of memory. Through jump cuts, back-and-forth dolly shots, inner monologue and shifts in time and space, Resnais characterizes the existential experience of his protagonist (how Diego cannot see the big picture but only details), the position of Diego’s generation (how the left-wing has fragmented) and historical situation (how the relation between past and present remains unsolved). Needless to say, all of these levels are overlapping and thus coincide. 

The shattered time structure — or its cubism — is never self-deliberately perplexed but requires what we call emotional intelligence. In cinematic means Resnais depicts what the flow of time feels like. The camera withdraws from a hallway, tracks towards a woman’s face and withdraws from a gate. Similar back-and-forth flow repeats all over the film. Even though this might seem somewhat revolutionary and incomprehensibly abstract, such rhythm and poetics of time was inspired by none other than Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo,whose greatest fans the new wave directors were. I believe that in Vertigo the viewer is precisely enchanted not by the mysterious story but by Hitchcock’s perception of time, in other words, his sense of rhythm. By the enigma how one looks down into the abyss as the abyss, at the same, lifts up as one falls down to it. How one is trapped in a never-ending spiral of going back and forth, up and down. Such themes are, of course, nothing new to a director who has made a film like Last Year at Marienbad.

Memories of the Past

In La guerre est finie, by all means, Resnais settles to deal with memory and oblivion, independently and absolutely, for politics and the characters themselves have broken down in the flow of time. Yet, no matter how chaotic Resnais’ editing was and how difficult it would be to understand this thematic treatment, the viewer can always rely on Yves Montand.

I think Andrew Sarris was right when he called La guerre est finie Resnais’ most satisfying film, and added that it was due to Montand’s vivid and honest performance as a Spanish revolutionary. He interprets the hopes, fears and frustrations of his character in an impressively integrated fashion despite the film’s fragmentary nature. No matter how fragmented and opaque Resnais’ thoughts were, Montand serves his function as a cornerstone. In a word, Sarris wrote that Montand’s humanity tames Resnais’ editing. Moreover, he pointed out how the viewer is no longer touched by the flamboyant counterpoints in the story and montage, but precisely by Diego’s doubts, fears, hopes and fantasies. It is through Montand’s character how the viewer understands the political theme of the film: Resnais’ portrayal of the dying old left. 

The main conflict of the film is how to come to terms with one’s past so that one can head towards the future. As a matter of fact, Resnais shows exceptional fascination for the future by analyzing the past in La guerre est finie. So often we have seen films by him where he is merely interested in the past without being interested in the future. Even Je t’aime, je t’aime (1968) which is a science fiction story set in the future is much more interested in studying the time that has gone by rather than the present. This main conflict of La guerre est finie is structured on not only the character of Diego, who spent his youth in the Spanish Civil War and adulthood in the resistance, but also Spain which offers as vivid memories from the past as Berlin or Auschwitz, for instance. 

All in all, Resnais’ thesis, if there is one, exists in the title of the film. For the true tragedy of the old left wasn’t the Spanish Civil War but the fact that the war ended. Since the war is over, nothing can be done. The dream was never redeemed and therefore these tired old men have become prisoners of the broken dream. They are doomed to dream, to live in the past, but also never to understand the present reality. They feel no connection with the young Bolsheviks. The dream in Spain has died and has become, in Diego’s words, “the dream of tourists” — the symbol of the war. 

Thus Resnais tells us about the tragedy of the old left. He talks of communists who can’t accept that the war is over. However, one should bear in mind that Resnais was a Marxist himself and one of the most politically aware directors of the Left Bank. He understands his characters and the reasons why they can’t forget. Perhaps it’s their duty not to forget? They all wait for the situation to settle, to solve on its own so that they could return to Spain. Hereby, La guerre est finie turns into a melancholic ode to the old left or, in fact, to the whole generation that lived during Franco’s reign: to the generation which was, on the one hand, regardless but, on the other, distressed and helpless. Hence, this is precisely a generation film and maybe because of that I can never fully understand it. 

All the Spanish members of the Parisian resistance are living in the past and so is Diego. But soon he has a moment of realization as he understands that Spain is no longer the dream of 1936 but the truth of 1966. After this, he decides to travel back to Spain in order to help a friend. But the other members suggest him to rest and think it over because his perspective is too subjective. In the end, Diego doesn’t listen to them and, consequently, Marianne is sent to get him back from Spain.

When it comes to the political theme and Diego’s inner drama, Resnais constantly counterpoints fantasy with reality. As said, Diego and his comrades live in illusion. They are still living in 1936 and wish to win the war. When Diego is ready to give up on these illusions, he rises against the leaders of the resistance and goes to save his friend. However, this isn’t a happy moment, though breaking out from illusion and attaining reality would seem to be. All this is very tragic and everything is dealt with in an elegiac tone. 

This contrast of fantasy and reality is highlighted in characterization as well. Nadine, the younger girl played by Geneviève Bujold, represents fantasy for Diego. Diego lifts up her blouse and touches her soft skin. Thus the viewer is allowed to enter Diego’s fantasy: we see Nadine, nude, against a white background of nothingness; we see her shoulders, her spreading legs, we imagine and fantasize with Diego. The viewer instantly associates the sequence with Godard’s Une Femme Mariée (1964), in which a woman’s body is chopped in pieces, although Resnais’ method in fact bears a stronger resemblance to Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967) in which the female body is constructed in a cubist fashion.

Not surprisingly, Marianne (the “wife”) represents reality for Diego. Not to mention the striking differences in the women’s outward appearances, fantasy and reality are contrasted in the sequence, described above, and the romantic scene between Diego and Marianne. In the latter, details are not longer detached, for they are in a fruitful relation with the entirety. Diego lifts up Marianne’s skirt and touches her aged skin. These visual observations can be associated thematically since Marianne is meant to save Diego, whereas Nadine to drive him into doom.

This set-up of fantasy and reality is highlighted by Diego’s life which is controlled by counterfeited IDs and secret messages in toothpaste. These elements bring certain ambiguity to his existence — a surreal tone of the unreal but not merely in a Kafkaesque context but in relation to Resnais’ melancholic social vision, to the whole hopelessness of the situation.

In one particularly expressive image Diego is walking in a street. He ambles further, deeper into the frame, as a group of children pass him by, going out of the frame. This is a strong visual expression of Diego living in the past, of him sinking deeper, as if he went backwards in time. The vision established by this image is continued by the scenes where Diego argues with the young Bolsheviks as well as the old rebels. He experiences severe not only political but existential detachment from everything.

Postscript

The film ends in an unforgettable superimposition: Diego is sitting in a car, driving to his friend, and Marianne is walking in a hallway of an airport, travelling to warn him. Accompanied by wistful musical score, the image seals this elegiac tragedy. Although the narrative reason for this image remains clear, on an emotional level it’s more subjective. The reason for Diego’s departure is that he can’t live anywhere else but, tragically yes, he can’t live in his homeland either. In the final superimposition the tender, nostalgic melancholy of despair that Resnais has been portraying for two hours climaxes. The desperation for the condition of the old left. 

What is sad in the film is what it reveals. Resnais portrays the final form of solidarity, the last surviving fraternity, which is practiced at graveyards as comrades are escorted to death. The fraternity which is experienced at customs, kitchens and streets. The fraternity which ought to live forever but is determined to die in front of the faceless and impersonal eyes of neo-fascism. 

The last time I saw La guerre est finie was just a few minutes after watching Ken Loach’s Fatherland (1986). A film that is actually surprisingly similar — in a thematic sense — dealing with collective memories and the power of the past over present reality. Every time I see the film by Resnais I find something new. After each viewing, I’m always left with the feeling that I didn’t reach something. That there’s still more to look. That I missed something. And this is amazing. And that’s why I can’t wait for the next time I get a chance to see La guerre est finie.

An old review on IMDb

The Power of Light in Lola: It’s Black and White

Film is art of light. By creating contrasts of visual impressions, counterpointing light with dark shadows, for instance, film entices its spectator to a luminous labyrinth of time. Film is drama where silence and shades exchange dialogue. A subtle dissolve or an elusive cross fade can tell more than a thousand words. An eerie shift from one light scale to another can create such an enduring sensation that one is left speechless for days. Such films as Cries and Whispers (1972), Nostalgia (1983) and Faust (1926) are forever remembered for their use of light in the architectural construction of space, and thus creating such phenomena. However, one film in particular always amazes me with its luminosity and visual-emotional power, and that film is Lola (1961) which was Jacques Demy’s first feature.

The poignant yet purifying emotion of the passing, lost love is relayed in an impressive fashion in the light scale. The mood is so nostalgic, melancholy and wistful that even if one didn’t understand the story, one would be enormously touched. All the characters are desperately lonely and try to numb their anguish by pseudo-romantic encounters. Unfortunately, in the world of Lola, the luck of one is always the grief of another. 

The people of Lola are tormented by distressing yearn for love. The protagonist’s grief, however, is highlighted by his existentialist anxiety as well. He goes through a realization that it isn’t enough to live, for one must also know how to live. He is just about to leave the city of trespassing, when he comes across with his loved one — only to disappoint once again.

Lola is a realistic fairy tale which happens in the tension between the comic and tragic. It takes place in a trespassing zone where people wait, leave and pass by, some of whom are doomed to wait forever. Demy has well created an impression in which love is also a character. Love is a spirit. It’s a cross-sectional power which radiates through the universe giving it the light it requires. 

Demy was precisely a sculptor of lost, but not destroyed, love. And doesn’t a visual conflict, which, in this case, is created in the light scale, fit perfectly for an emotional theme like this? In the middle of the emotional, existential and even cosmic contrasts, Demy wonderfully captures the universal randomness that surrounds us. However, Demy’s philosophy, which is relayed through the aesthetics of Lola, must be interpreted relying on the knowledge of him as a mighty poet of love.

The first thing which jumps to the spectator’s eyes in Lola is the musical-like counterpoint of major and minor, also in the light scale, which works on the level of emotional and existential experience. Let alone the various thematic contrasts of the film — grief and joy, loneliness and love, oblivion and remembrance; what is gone and what is left to come.

In addition, Demy not only creates antitheses in the poetics of space but also in the architecture of the film. First, there is the new post-war block with the cabaret, American cars and cranes. Secondly, there is the old baroque block with statues, staircases and street corridors. The aesthetics of the two city blocks exchange dialogue. As in many films, they are in a dialectical process with each other. On a social level, this confrontation reflects the cultural-social transition of France. For, after the war, a great number of new buildings were built as liberalism also began to invade the society instead of outdated conservatism. 

The new city block represents the liberation from the old. Life is jolly and fun. People are dancing, living in luxury and enjoying careless existence. They have sex and own a decent deal of property. However, this is a mere illusion. For the faces of people hide something behind. Something ugly. This is precisely highlighted by the old city block. It reflects the anxiety and alienation beneath the fashionable surface. The past has been left to decay out of the future’s way. As an existentialist comment, Demy portrays a man who has alienated from himself. Above all the old block is, however, about time. How old memories of lost love exhale from the beautiful baroque architecture but are once again sacrificed at the altar of the anxiety of the new world. 

Such aesthetic power lies in Lola that a decent comparison is difficult to be found. There is the visual-poetic attitude of Vigo but also the mature and wise approach to the human nature which characterizes the melodies of Handel’s Sarabande. It’s simple. Lola is one of the best debuts in the history of cinema.

The characters of Lola are living in “here and now” reality — in the present. Or, in other words, in the grip of what has gone by and what is still left. But this is obvious as presented in the comparison between the city blocks. Yet, the aesthetics of the blocks aren’t the only elements which highlight this tension of contrasts. Several others can be also detected, such as the town of trespassing called Nantes and the big city called Cherbourg; statues and cranes, youth and old age, France and the States, touch and yearn. 

In a sense, Demy’s Lola is a cheerful yet melancholy tragicomedy filled with contrasts. It is a tender film beneath which we discover bitterness. Demy’s impressionism of sights, emotions and visual details, creates true poetic realism which was, of course, an essential legacy from Vigo cherished by the Nouvelle Vague. The basic idea of French poetic realism in the 30’s is carried out — near to perfection by Demy and the cinematographer Raoul Coutard — in Lola as social reality meets emotional atmosphere. As they merge, a synthesis of the light scale is formed, and thus works as a comment on human existence reigned by love. 

If film is born from light, can light still be an absolute value when it comes to aesthetics in cinema? First, at the turn of the 20th century, light was merely needed for the spectator to see what was happening in the film, and it actually took a while before light was used with true innovation. The Danish and the Swedish were the first who truly understood its essence. Not surprisingly, it didn’t take long before Hollywood had realized this as well — only after German Expressionism had taken the use of light in aesthetic styling to the extreme. 

In the 1920’s, a revolutionary lightning technique was discovered which was used to highlight the luster of stars. This is known as the three-point-lighting, which is artificial studio lighting, where light sources are placed in three different positions around the object to create a lustrous effect. By using three-point-lighting, filmmakers were able to make characters stand out from the background. They could create blissful halos around divine figures — to reinforce the eroticism of a scene, for instance. Later on, this developed into what is known as the soft focus which is used to guide the gaze of the viewer to what is essential. 

Although in Lola Demy has abandoned the use of soft focus, he has taken a lot of influence from classical Hollywood cinema, which can also be seen in his characterization of the American sailors. Thus, the American and the French tradition are combined in the form of the film. In any case, it is the light in Lola which lures us. The way Demy separates Anouk Aimée, who plays the role of Lola, from the background is unforgettable yet extremely difficult to describe. Aimée’s plangent, melancholy face in dim lighting is what the entire film is about. Not to mention the sinking of Marc Michel (Roland) into the dark abyss of memory. 

There is a strong contrast with regards to light between the internal and external space. Every time the characters are indoors, it is very dark. In turn, when they go outside, it is luminous. In the dark rooms, the windows reveal a whole new world which let’s just enough light in, so the viewer is able to distinguish the characters from the background. The characters’ faces are constantly characterized by an indelible impression of darkness. The few times when Michel and Aimée meet indoors are excellent examples. At the coffeehouse, for example, where Roland confesses his love and is left alone with unbearable humiliation.

Another opposite example of this contrast is the slow-motion image of Cecile and the sailor. It is as if the broad daylight made an angel out of Cecile. The reason why Demy slows the action down seems to be that he tries to hold the absolute beauty of a moment — for another moment, for us. During the slow-mode effect, the outside world disappears and nothing but light and reality exist. Only beauty and love live. Light is actually rather glaring in this particular scene. Although in reality, there isn’t that much more of it in comparison to other external scenes, but something in the bright light truly touches the viewer. 

As a matter of fact, Cecile’s home might just be the only fully lighted internal space. Through this aesthetic device, Demy manages to highlight the juvenile hope of youth but also the acceptance of old age which is, however, characterized by a dash of bitterness. In turn, Lola is in the most painful age of the human life — in the age of disappointment, remorse and self-loathe. This particular character juxtaposition highlights the fact that the three women represent the same person in the different stages of her life. They are the three incarnations of Lola.

The polarization of dark and luminous, that is to say the change between dim and bright lighting, must be associated with the counterpoint of major and minor mentioned above. All the contrasts, whether in the light scale, space or characterization, seem to reflect the shadows of the past. The grim, harrowing edifice of memories which continues to torment the human soul. Thus, this tension of contrasts creates a timeless message for the ages.

Such is the power of light in Lola. Demy has confessed that he first wanted to make the film in Technicolor, and some film buffs still hope that he would’ve but I beg to differ. In fact, I think it would have been crazy to shoot Lola in colors. For it is at its most beautiful in black and white CinemaScope. At least its sensational power of light wouldn’t be half as memorable and haunting as it is in black and white. I am puzzled by the question how Demy would have carried out the counterpoint of major and minor in Technicolor aesthetics.

In the end of Lola, the circle closes as the shadow motives and thematic contrasts reach their climax. To my mind, the ending is close to cinematic perfection. Everybody leaves: Cecile goes to Cherbourg, Frankie the sailor to USA and new sailors, now dressed in black, arrive to the cabaret, which inclines that the same painful pattern will repeat itself all over again. The older incarnation of Lola is left alone, and Lola the dancer leaves with the long-awaited husband who finally arrived. In the final image, Lola looks back at Nantes as she is traveling towards her blissful future. She sees Roland walking alone to his everlasting loneliness. Yet, Lola decides to neglect and forget. But we know it’s not possible. For happiness is never absolute or unconditional. Ever since the end of Casablanca (1942) blessed the screen, we’ve known it for sure. Light invades the screen but darkness descends once again as the curtain falls. Lola was the only one who redeemed from the distressing grip of the trespassing zone. But the viewer knows that this equals the torture of others. Thus, we are forced to both cry and smile as the lights switch back on in the cinema.

Lola, A Poem of Lost Loves

Poetic Reflections on the Mirror of Ivan

“On earth there is no death. All are immortal. All is immortal. No need to be afraid of death at seventeen nor seventy. Only reality and light exist. In this world there’s neither darkness nor death. We’re all already on the sea-shore, and I am one of those who draws the nets as a shoal of immortality comes in.” (Andrei Tarkovsky)

Born in Soviet Union, Andrei Tarkovsky was a master of world cinema whose production is notably concise but range undeniably wide — from historical epics to futuristic visions and movements of the human mind. He made precisely universal stories instead of national ones and succeeded to reveal something enduring and imperishable of the human soul. Ivan’s Childhood (1962) was his first feature length film, which was based on a short story by Vladimir Bogolomov published a few years earlier, but still features the essential elements which were to characterize all of his subsequent films. As a matter of fact, it well works as a key to unlock the entire work of the director. Over the years, a great deal of critics and viewers have been astonished by the film and its vivid portrayal of war from a child’s perspective, which instantly proved Tarkovsky’s mastery and unique personality.

Although Ivan’s Childhood is filled with poetic associations and abstract shifts, it is still the closest to a plot film, in its conventional function, of all the films by Tarkovsky. It is rather difficult to give a compact view of the story line because it consists of several non-linear episodes from a certain period of the Second World War. However, a uniting element, a red line of the narrative, is the protagonist — a 12-year-old boy Ivan who has lost his family and now works at the eastern front. Due to the boy’s aggressive refusal to leave, the soldiers are coerced into keeping him and thus, let him take part in military actions. Moreover, he is able to cross the German lines and collect information without getting caught and therefore, gains benefit for the army.

During Ivan’s story, the viewer also comes across with others whose lives have been influenced by the phenomena of war such as the young nurse, the crazy old man and two nameless corpses who have been hung. Yet, not even mentioning the various episode-like sequences which are loosely tied together can express the haphazard structure of the film which is, of course, very common in Soviet cinema. The narrative of Ivan’s Childhood has, in fact, a lot of national poetic tradition in it while it also modernizes it. It is as if the new wave and Aleksandr Dovzhenko would collide in the highly original eye of Andrei Tarkovsky.

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A Prophetic Tragedy of Vanity

Rigid with terror, alone in the dark and tormented by a constant fear of complete destruction as the social conflicts of the world have descended on the shoulders of the individual. The Cold War was at its hottest, the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened the existence of mankind, nuclear weapon tests were held in Nevada and, as to top it all, the brightest star of Hollywood decided to kill herself. In an age like this John Frankenheimer gave birth to his most famous film about hysteria and mind control, The Manchurian Candidate (1962) which must be interpreted in its historical context.

John Frankenheimer was an American filmmaker of the so-called TV-generation of the 1950’s, which also brought up such directors as Sidney Lumet, Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah. In his own words, Frankenheimer owed all he had learned about film making to television. It was his education. Working in television didn’t only exercise him to work under limited settings but it also helped him to define his own original aesthetics of extreme close-ups with dim lighting. It didn’t take long for Frankenheimer to discover his bravura in political thriller where he was due to show his skills and abilities — Seven Days in May (1964) being one exquisite example. Yet, the same genre classification doesn’t necessarily work for The Manchurian Candidate. For, the former portrays intricate political decision whereas the latter focuses widely on the nature of the American society. Consequently it may indeed be more sensible to call it a social tragedy of historical conditions. In any case, whatever the correct genre definition was, one thing is for sure: The Manchurian Candidate still stands out as one of the finest works of the golden age of political films in the history of Hollywood.

The Manchurian Candidate in the Cold War

The film begins by portraying the first concrete formation of the Cold War — the first pain point — the Korean War, and then continues by depicting its resumption as a state of mind. How postwar disillusions haunted the society. How, in fact, the war was still active on another level. These themes are especially fruitful because the Korean War was the first war which was experienced as a bad war in the States. It was felt as the war of loss and vanity which, therefore, caused a wave of anti-militaristic cinema where the essential idiocy of war was well captured.

The Manchurian Candidate could actually be seen as the terminus of this pacifistic development, and Michael Paul Rogin has, as a matter of fact, eagerly labeled it as the last and the most sophisticated Cold War film. Properly speaking, Frankenheimer gained such reputation with three films which some like to call “the paranoia trilogy” (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, Seconds) and managed to capture the Cold War zeitgeist in an original fashion — to take the anti-militaristic development as far as possible. 

The way I see it, The Manchurian Candidate succeeded to attain pure objectivity in the middle of communism and capitalism which was quite rare in those days.  This, of course, should not be seen as a necessity of any kind but the way the film was able to show the madness of both of the parties — of all people — was at least groundbreaking. The whole pathological sickness of the society revealed. The desolation which the Cold War triggered in the minds of the people.

Moreover, and on a wider note, The Manchurian Candidate established a vision of the war as a big farce. A circus act where individuals were hypnotized for the vacant ideals of their leaders. Frankenheimer reveals the truth behind the veil: no one truly fights for his or her ideology — everyone is merely in for to get more power to their hands. In this rather Kafkaesque milieu, each breath of innocent love suffocate and decay. People are exploited, murdered and silenced. They are used as chessmen in the game of vanity.

Portraying this kind of collective and individual madness, it is not hard to see The Manchurian Candidate as a fierce and satirical reaction to McCarthyism and the anti-communist cinema of the 1950’s. Senator Iselin, controlled by his wife Eleanor Iselin, brilliantly played by Angela Lansbury, is in his silliness a grotesque, and even banal, travesty of senator Joseph McCarthy. He makes up numbers regarding the amount of communists in the defence council and then, after a hard day, goes home to rest on mama’s lap. He is the Manchurian candidate: a populist fool through whom others are able to commit their actions.

One of the most important observations, whether it’s politics or the human condition, is the fact that The Manchurian Candidate was made one year before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which adds a frightful connotation to it. From the very beginning a strange, gloomy atmosphere reigns the film and it could easily end with the assassination of the president of the United States. Such anxiety had filled the society to this point that one could almost feel an absurd, surreal thing like that happening. Thus, my thesis follows: The Manchurian Candidate is a prophetic tragedy. Not only does it make a pessimistic proclamation but it also reveals the anxiety (of the society) which had now become existential. Everything the world had gone through culminated in a few bullets. The balance of terror had attained its highest peak — as had its subsequent anxiety.

Given this, the absurdity of the film feels quite natural. As it is a battlefield of dreams, memories and hallucinations. However, these three do not dominate. For, reality is constantly reflected on them. The anxiety has converted real into unreal and vice versa. Due to this, some have approached the Freudian aspect of The Manchurian Candidate. The surreal dreams and nightmares, the elusive line of reality and fantasy. How what is real and what is not and, conversely, what is right and what is wrong becomes obscure. Yet the psychological perspective of the film is still one of its weaknesses; and reveals its old age. But psychology shouldn’t necessarily be taken into account with regards to the interpretation of the dreams and solitaire, for they are precisely at their best in their social purpose.

To put it simply, The Manchurian Candidate is indeed a story about a POW who is conditioned by North-Korean communists and controlled via playing cards to assassinate the opponent of senator Iselin. But this isn’t what is most essential. As a matter of fact, in the 1960’s this kind of plot must have felt like a foolish fantasy but, later on, it has become reality for us. For, in the course of time, theories about the “victims of mind control” have been cultivated to a large extent when it comes to the numerous assassinations of politicians.

However, the film hasn’t lost any of its absurdity and I would claim that a lot of viewers still find the film confusing — maybe even foolish. Although Rogin might be right about The Manchurian Candidate being the most sophisticated film of the Cold War, there was still a lot to come. It did indeed put an end to a certain era but not to Cold War films. One lucid example of this is the fact that the film sees state institutions as powerful organizations, in a positive sense, which are ready to prevent such incidents as political murders. But the next decade marked a substantial turning point in this as the Watergate scandal, Vietnam and The 1973 Chilean coup d’état gave rise to political films to turn against FBI and CIA. Such films as Network (1976), All the President’s Men (1976) and Marathon Man (1976) indicating the inevitable transition, for example.

In fact, one could say that the raw cynicism of The Manchurian Candidate would have turned into an Orwellian dystopia in the 1970’s — into severe criticism of the American society.

“Why Don’t You Pass the Time by Playing a Little Solitaire?”

In the story, solitaire works as a remote mechanism to control Raymond Shaw, the American assassin, and the only one who finds this out is Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) who is therefore also Shaw’s only hope. In the end, Marco might have succeeded in breaking the chains of the victim’s mind, and Shaw frees himself by disobeying his mother (Eleanor Iselin). He shoots Eleanor and senator Iselin instead of the original target. To top it all, as Marco rushes to him, Shaw, wearing his medal of honour, shoots himself too. In the last scene Marco mourns the incident. Only rain and misery remain. Goddamnit.

The release mechanism, which is used to control the mind of Raymond Shaw, is the queen of diamonds, the motif of the film. One interpretation says that the queen is Shaw’s dominant mother but, taking into account all the scenes with it, the queen of diamonds makes the viewer associate all of the central female characters with each other.

There is something veritably Hitchcockian in the mother character, in her obsessive nature and constant need to dominate the world through her son, the way she uses guilt and her position as a weapon. On one level, Frankenheimer has presumably culminated his hatred for right-wing momism of the 1950’s — American mother worship — to this character. The concept of momism refers to excessive devotion to one’s mother but, on a wider note, it also means over-protectiveness by which the States pretty much justified the demonization of the Soviet Union, let alone covering up the nuclear tests.

Another female character, who is of paramount importance with regards to the subject matter, is Rosie, wonderfully played by Janet Leigh; a temptress with a possible sinister agenda. Rosie is obviously the counterpart of the mother. For she is a nurturing woman and much more mother-like than the exploitative Eleanor. As a matter of fact, without Leigh’s character The Manchurian Candidate might have come out as rather misogynistic to the average movie-goer. The third remarkable female character is Jocelyn who helps Shaw in his distress where Rosie does Marco. The trio together gives an idea about Frankenheimer’s view on women and works as a crucial strike on the social phenomenon of momism.

To some extent, the acts of these characters might seem foolish, and if the film is taken as a mere story (as a presentation of certain events) it does indeed seem unbelievable and crazy. However, the matter ought to be associated more widely: for now the meaningless, which is the dream, has become the meaningful, which is the reality. It cannot be interpreted “concretely” since all that is concrete in it is in the beginning.

In this context the film undoubtedly works as an assertive field for social criticism. A film historian Peter von Bagh has expressed this quite concisely by calling The Manchurian Candidate “a heavy, eccentric and intelligent tableau of the faces and masks of democracy.” Patriotic frenzy and political fanaticism are treated severely, side by side. However, I believe that four years later Frankenheimer took this sort of social treatment even further. For, Seconds (1966) portrays people who are completely dissatisfied with their lives. It depicts poignantly the drift of the American dream to its breaking point. Both of these films are characterized by outstanding visual creativity, nightmarish surreal dream sequences and total paranoia which maddens human beings. In Seconds Frankenheimer succeeds to reveal the growing anxiety behind social issues. How the problems have now turned for the worse. How they’ve become cosmic.

Paradoxically, time has both done harm and good for The Manchurian Candidate. As if it was now more believable, after the Cold War. The thought of a Manchurian candidate has begun to feel real, almost reasonable during these unreasonable times.

At first glance, The Manchurian Candidate may seem mad and strange. It might even look like a senseless farce. But this is fully intentional. For the logical consistency is really deeper, in the structures of absurdism and, therefore, cannot be fully understood on the first viewing. As said, it must be watched in its historical context — as an allegory for the Cold War. To my mind, no other film has captured the hysteria of the age as impressively as The Manchurian Candidate. Let alone the exceptionally brilliant transformation of the spirit of the time into a disturbingly dark menacing mood which prevails the film. American politicking appears as a plain chaotic mayhem of brainwash and the media. Patriotism is just one crazy parade. Thus, an infallible and enduring vision is recorded to the viewer’s consciousness: the Cold War was merely solitaire where all waited and hoped to get good cards.

The Dim Shadow of the Bomb

Fail-Safe (1964) is a gripping Cold War thriller directed by a famous American filmmaker Sidney Lumet who brought such films as 12 Angry Men (1957) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) to the screen. Fail-Safe isn’t his most well known piece of work but, to my mind, among his finest. It’s an evocative statement made in the spirit of the time; an apocalyptic vision of the bipolar world, while its well-handled complexity, modern cinematography and outstanding performances balance out the possible flaws. As an exceptional catasrophe picture, it must be compared with all those political thrillers of the second half of the Cold War. But above all it is the dead-serious counterpart of Stanley Kubrick’s Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove (1964).

During the Cold War, a great number of different genres found new forms through which they could approach the reality of the war, as well as the people, in a new
manner. For one, the crises of the war, such as Vietnam and Korea, reflected their nature on the genre of western (The Wild Bunch, 1969) whereas science fiction, on the other hand, often dealt with the fear of communism (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956), the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. Soon paranoia and anti-communism became a part of film-noir (Pickup on South Street) as well, and thrillers became characterized by the balance of terror and the threat of a nuclear disaster in the Atomic Age. Fail-Safe belongs to the latter but among other films, such as Seven Days in May (1964) and The Bedford Incident (1965), it is exceptional with its new wavy editing and cinematography. What is more, its ability to reconstruct humane experiences — much more efficiently than On the Beach (1959) — pushes Lumet’s artistic image to the limits and makes the film stand out from the mass.

This rather exquisite film has suffered a lot, actually more than it should have, from the immeasurable success of Dr. Strangelove. In fact, Kubrick even accused the production company for plagiarism and, because Paramount also produced Kubrick’s film, he was able to get his film released first. Not surprisingly, after Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe seemed like a dull version of the same story in the eyes of a regular movie-goer. However, nowadays one shouldn’t let the mastery of one dilute the value of another.

It was already the sinking of Titanic in 1912 and the shockingly massive destruction of the First World War which threated the belief in progress — man’s unwavering reliance on reason and science. Next, it was the Second World War, the the concentration camps and Hiroshima grew out to be the symbols of human cruelty. After this, in the age of the Cold War, the threat of a nuclear disaster came to the minds of people. Hundreds of films have been made about this, mainly war films, but only a few for the ages. A picture which had the guts to do this was easily distracted on the common moral dilemma of American war film: how to transform horror into entertainment; to give a word of warning to the audience in a pleasent manner.

During the golden age of this time, in the 1960’s, political thriller founds its true, most blooming, form which was continued in the 70’s (The Anderson Tapes, 1971, Serpico, 1973). Before that satirical aspects reigned the films which dealt with Vietnam and cosmic consciousness. But now, however, allegorical conspiracy films became popular and, quite quickly, turned into disaster movies. The devastation of civilization was now a new genre — Fail-Safe belonging to its finest achievements.

The plot of the film is quite simple: the president of the United States is trying to prevent a nuclear war from happening, when the bombers are already heading to Moscow. It all starts one day when an unidentified flying object is detected at a nerve center which keeps an eye on the air space of the United States and Soviet Union. The UFO could be a hostile aircraft and, therefore, the state gets ready for it. However, the object soon turns out to be an off-tracked airplane and the incident expires. Yet, quickly after, the people at Pentagon and at the nerve center notice that one American bomber is still heading for Moscow for some reason. There has been an error which has to be corrected before it is too late.

Although Fail-Safe is far from surrealism, it still includes a great deal of nightmarish elements. As if its documentary-like narrative would turn into absurdly tragic occurances in the context of narrative. The rising suspense is purely logical for its growth to the climax. Lumet was able to dodge the moral dilemma of war film by making a similar film as 12 Angry Men. For, the big question of the fate of the world inevitably turns into an exciting story. The approaching threat and the desperate attempts to prevent it are dealt with great talent; comically and tragically.

Above all, the characterization of the film is absolutely brilliant with outstanding actors. The film starts with a fast-paced introduction sequence in which we meet a pilot who keeps seeing the same dream about a matador over and over again, a soldier who lives in a run-down apartment and later on loses his nerves, an anti-communist warmonger who would ruthlessly want to attack the Soviet Union before it’s too late, a peaceful president and his young sympathetic interpreter. The complexity of these humane stories, set in different milieus but around the same problem, which are constantly interlaced with each other is extremely well
handled: the Pentagon, the nerve center, the President’s emergency room
and the tiny airplanes with narrow space where the final solutions are truly
made. This kind of complexity is playing on dangerous ground where the
true endurance and stability of the script are being tested. To publish the results: Lumet survived exquisitely.

Perhaps at times a little overrated, and surely not among the best directors, Sidney Lumet was still an integral witness of an era with such contemporary partners as John Frankenheimer, Otto Preminger, Alan J. Pakula, Arthur Penn and even Roger Corman on the field of horror. This was the generation who had seen the Korean War and thus, began the antimilitaristic wave in the cinema. One might say that the Korean War was the first “bad” war for the States, whereas WWII has been seen as a “good” war for America. The Korean War was truly the war of loss, failure and vanity — it was the illustration of the essential idiocy of war, which later on culminated in Vietnam.

Associating this with the work of Sidney Lumet, it is much easier to understand his thoughts, themes and style as a filmmaker. Moral pathos is often taken to the extreme as a rhetorical device in his films, the ideal and reality collide in an aggressive manner. Lumet adapted the works of many playwrights (Chekov, O’Neil, Williams) and theatrical aspect is, in fact, an inseparable part of his aesthetics, whether one looks at Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1964) or 12 Angry Men. Some accuse Lumet for banality, unambiguity and black and white one-dimensionality and, to a large extent, they are true but, what is more, this is balanced out by outstanding performances which are an essential part of Lumet’s profile — collaboration with Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Katharine Hepburn and Al Pacino .

In Fail-Safe, Lumet is able to subtly but efficiently relay the agonizing atmosphere of the Cold War which has been reflected on just about everything. The sound scape, for example, with the distressing humming noise of the computers and the
whimper of the nuclear explosion. Furthermore, the film is impressively shot in brutal black-and-white contrasts: the shadows on the faces of the characters, the magnitude of the object and the marginality of man, which is brilliantly established in the shots were characters are placed in front of the computer screens. Has Lumet ever achieved such maturity in mise-en-scène? At first, the shots are long, the editing is calm and the framing consists of mainly long and medium shots. However, as the story becomes more gripping; the editing gets faster, the shots shorter and the frames turn into extreme close-ups.

Let’s take the president’s emergency room for example: the first phone conversation with the president of the Soviet Union is calm and filmed within only one long shot. But the next one consists of several extreme close-ups of the interpreter’s face, the president’s lips, eyes and ears. The room is also brilliant for its mise-en-scène which fits for the minimalistic visual aesthetics of the film: the flamboyant phone to which the observation point is attached, the over-sized lamp, large table and the metallic water tray.

At its heart, Fail-Safe is a story about people who try to act correctly in a crisis situation but it also works a portrayal of a world where the devices man has created to protect himself have partly enslaved him. Technology is no longer man’s best friend, nor a servant. It has become its master. Or, as the president states in his monologue, how people are in charge for making weaponry and machines so qualified that they are impossible to be controlled by man. Thus, to some extent, Fail-Safe is an extreme example of the disappearance of humanity and human touch in the everlasting hysteria of consumer society.

The magnitude and mastery of technology is not, however, only told to us in the dialogue but in the cinematography as well — the gigantic screens and computers which make the characters seem marginally insignificant. They are only tiny fragments in the wide picture. Or, if we take the first scene at the president’s emergency room, the phone is at the front of the frame and appears to us bigger than the president or his interpreter. A luminous picture showing how people have created devices that take over the reality, enslave us and eventually win over.

In all the films made during the era, reality and fiction have begun to merge and from this particular film a link to the real world is quite easy to discover — a direct allegory for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 which almost turned into a nuclear war. Fail-Safe merely wishes to give the opposite possibility of what could’ve happened. In fact, many times Hollywood has succesfully written reality, but fortunately not this time. The brief message, attached to the ending credits, that the makers of the film completely trust the military forces of the United States which have been established to prevent these kind of incidents inevitably feels ironic. No matter whether it was intentional or not. As the film is very pacifistic, anti-militaristic and critical towards the foreign policy of the United States, one is immediately reminded of the satirical nature of Dr. Strangelove. Although the president of the United States takes the moral high ground in the end, I wouldn’t blame the film for highlighting the message but thank it for the courage to reveal something essential. Even if partly in a conventional manner.

The ruthless anti-communist, played by Walter Matthau, is another character that might feel a bit forced — being the McCarthy-like bad guy. However, a good thing to keep in mind is that the film isn’t pro-communist, let alone pro-Soviet, and
during the Cold War these kind of characters were quite rare. He is just one of the common characters in our world to whom war is the answer. To state the obvious here, he is the Strangelove of Fail-Safe. In addition, it is made clear that neither of the parties are to blame. Both of them are responsible for letting science and technology take over.

The film begins with a dream about a matador which, as a matter of fact, works as a brilliant metaphor throughout the film. First of, the dreamer, a pilot, doesn’t know who the matador is. He doesn’t see his face, he only sees him killing a bull. In the end, via phone he says to his wife that now he knows who the matador was: “It was… me.” Just before he bombs New York City (which the president sacrifices because he was unable to prevent the bombing of Moscow) and kills himself with poison. The man kills an innocent creature, millions of innocent people to be presice. Thus, the bull is Moscow; the Soviet Union. And the matador is the fighting airplane; the United States. During the ending credits we hear people cheering which highlights the desolation of the film. Happiness received when the viewer isn’t feeling that great. The roar of the audience of course refers to the
matador dream but works exceptionally well in this case because there is no score in the entire film, allowing it to drill down to minimalism and get closer to humane experiences.

Cold War films are always compared with each other and they are often
being tested against Kubrick’s black comedy Dr. Strangelove (1964) whose
dead-serious counterpart Fail-Safe is. As if Dr. Strangelove was the symbol of Cold War cinema. However, it shouldn’t hinder the appreciation of others but only reinforce. If Kubrick appealed to emotion in his film, Lumet definitely did to reason. As one of the film’s marketing posters suggested Fail-Safe will have the viewer sitting “on the brink of eternity”. Not due to mere suspense but because of the rational knowledge that this could really happen. Hereby, it’s not just the characters who live under the vast shadow of the bomb nor the people of the time — it is the audience as well, who are now coerced into sharing the dreary existence of the time for two hours.

The world view of Fail-Safe is very dark and its caliber of thematics is surprisingly wide: from the Cold War to the relation between man and technology; from ideologies to humanity; and from psychology to politics. No other film has achieved to depict the balance of terror as aptly. The nightmarishly authentic atmosphere doesn’t suffer a bit from the assurance of the end how an accident like this could never happen. For one, it is understood in its historical context but doesn’t it really work as an ironic climax of the film? The embodiment of idiocy? As if it was stipping on the viewer’s face and asking “Do you really buy into that?” Thus, Fail-Safe manages to relay the concrete, nearly physical, emotion of fear which not only reigned the world of the Cold War but also the human condition.

An Ode to a Flop or I Salute Thee, Billy Wilder

“Okay, here the downhill starts.” This is how people often discuss the film Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) which was Billy Wilder’s 19th feature and, perhaps, his most abominated work. It’s a screwball-type comedy with witty dialogue which is out of control in flushing conventional set of values down the toilet. The flaw in most criticism the film faces is that people don’t just label it as the point where Wilder began to lose his touch but condemn it at first glance. I for one don’t believe that a director like Wilder could make an awful film, for even his weakest efforts are more than most will ever achieve. To me, there is always something unexpected in his films and this is how I would express my relation with Kiss Me, Stupid. Its primary appearance, being the jokes, doesn’t really amuse me but its quiet connotations and subtle yet burlesque wildness have always fascinated me.

The story begins when a successful singer and teen idol Dino (Dean Martin) arrives at a small hick town called Climax, where two geeky wanna-be composers wish to rank in money and thus, try to lure Dino into buying their songs. However, the other composer, who is extremely paranoid about his wife, needs to hide her from Dino’s attraction. Hereby, he replaces his wife with a local prostitute Polly the Pistol (Kim Novak), who’s job is to keep Dino focused while he tries to sell his poor songs to the celeb. And, not surprisingly, nothing goes as planned.

The film was made in between of Irma la Douce (1963) and The Fortune Cookie (1966), both of which are funny and fascinating but not among Wilder’s most appreciated works. To put it bluntly, people hate them. If these films do really reveal the growing weakness in Wilder during the mid-1960’s, what would explain this phenomenon?

First of all, the golden age of Hollywood was created by those who escaped to America from Europe at the dawn of the Second World War. With their business know-how and abilities to play by the rules in market economy, they rose, made Hollywood a global product and thus, expanded the variations of film. Because these people were Europeans, Hollywood was in fact built by those who had to get rid off their past — which is rather paradoxical knowing the amount of cheerful laughter and joy in these films. During this time, when Kiss Me, Stupid was made, film had begun to transform into pop-art on account of television which had already invaded the homes of millions of Americans. Moreover, it was also the time when the old studio system of Hollywood started to collapse, old directors were mocked and the movement of the New Hollywood gained ground.

To this historical context, Kiss Me, Stupid fits perfectly. A film where lies, forgery, double-cross and exploitation are dealt with strong determination. Elements which had become natural in Hollywood. It’s a burlesque comedy whose irony arises from the ridiculous nature of gender roles, the illusions of the American dream; misunderstandings, the idyll and insecurity, while brushing such tiny issues as alcoholism and prostitution. It portrays a cruel world where success has won over love and honesty — where emotions are only in the way. All it takes, to attain this affluence, is to combine a little bit of luck, fraud and hoax.

Yet, this can’t all put on the record of the time, for Wilder had done such fiery films earlier as well — Sunset Blvd. (1950) and Some Like It Hot (1959) being the finest, both of which are among the best studies on the American culture ever seen on the screen. I might have mentioned a couple of times in my other writings how it was the Europeans who succeed to portray America, honestly, ahead of all the illusions. Of course, nowadays these directors are known as Americans and Wilder was one of them. His ability, I believe, for critical approach stemmed from his past when he worked in the film industry of Germany. At the time, the so-called New Objectivity prevailed in German cinema and life was observed extremely bluntly in an objective sense, for the First World War and inflation had taken the self-esteem away from the nation.

As a story-teller, especially in dialogue, Wilder was a master. He was good at creating ironic humour from everyday life. Yet, in visual narrative he was rather conservative. He opposed the attempts to regenerate of Hitchcock and Welles, and saw their stylistic devices only as harmful for telling the story. To my mind, this reveals something essential about Wilder’s work; not only about his attitude but his philosophy.

The decision that Kiss Me, Stupid was filmed in black-and-white probably shocked the Wilder-fans of the time, since his earlier film had just been shot in Technicolour. On the other hand, it meant an attempted return to the themes and topics of Some Like It Hot and The Apartment (1960). Fortunately, this was the case because filming Kiss Me, Stupid in colour would’ve been a bad idea. In fact, I count myself among those who don’t appreciate the films Wilder made in colour. Why? It is just that Wilder is able to create a greater visual impact in black-and-white than in colour. Especially when one thinks of medium close-ups and scenes where the camera follows the characters, when it is almost tied tightly to them.

As a brilliant writer, it is the characterization through which Wilder was able to express his views and feelings; social and personal. Therefore, Kiss Me, Stupid, like all of Wilder’s best works, also portrays a world where nothing is what it first seems to be. Everything is a lie and all is an act. I think Wilder couldn’t have been more clear in expressing his vision this time.

The man, Orville (one of the composers) suspects his wife although he himself should be expected. He even thinks that she is cheating on him when, in reality, she is planning for an anniversary surprise which Orville manages to spoil. It is as if he wanted to fulfill the fantasy of declining from sex with his wife. Even the divorce in the end was a charade. Let alone the Belly Button which ought to be a glamorous place full of sexy prostitutes but turns out to be a run-down shack of elderly and draggled losers. When it comes to this theme of illusion, the scene where Orville tries to entertain and entice Dino by creating a nice and warm idyll is absolutely brilliant — “You’ll knit and I’ll read. No, wait. I’ll knit and you’ll read.”

Furthermore, during this sprint of comedy the roles keep changing continuously: First, Dino is the entertainer but at the town he becomes the entertained. The prostitute becomes the wife for the evening, and the wife replaces her place as a prostitute, due to which Dino sees the reality upside-down. In the bathroom, everybody thinks — in turns of misunderstanding — that the one in the shower is someone else. Moreover, Orville is unable to understand what people are saying — first he’s mad at Barney (the other composer) and then he begs him. All the intentions, even the good ones, are misinterpreted. Polly, who has also experienced double-cross in her past, thinks that Orville wants sexual intercourse, even though he only ordered her for Dino. He has built an anti-idyll where the fact that he is cheating his wife is a constructed illusion. In other words, everybody pretends to be someone else, to live somewhere else and to care for something else.

Another dimension of Wilder’s criticism, which is always logical and apt although sometimes a little too plain, is the theme of social gender. Ever since his first films he has attacked on this topic — most fiercely in Some Like It Hot where the gender roles are as artificial as the clothes the men wear. The complete perversity of the idea that there would be sex roles, controlled by the society, amuses Wilder and thus, appears in all its absurdity.

In his films, men and women have their own worlds. The harmony of these worlds is only kept in order by ignorance and certain distance. The moments when the harmony is about to break up are devastating and chaotic — everything begins to crumble and nothing is certain. The temporary intimacy, which often causes the breakdown, usually reveals the woman’s pain and the insignificance of the man’s own, personal goals. To a large extent, Dean Martin and Kim Novak give out a good impression of this. The former by playing a self-ironic role with charm and neat lines whereas the latter as a sympathetic prostitute who waits for a brighter future.

However, Polly and Dino aren’t the only couple of the film, for especially in the beginning the viewer gets to know Orville, his wife and life more closely. He’s a geeky man who wears college shirts of famous composers to raise his own ego. What is more, he is constantly doubting the fidelity of his wife exactly because he is himself haunted by paranoia, fear and neurotic anxiety — his own dreams of greater life have been buried ages ago. In a while, his continuous doubt turns into an attempt to make himself as disloyal. Hereby, with his new constructed identity, he gives his wife a new husband as an anniversary present although the wife isn’t actually his wife. By acting someone else, Orville is able to fulfill his fantasies of being wild and evil until he finds out that it is no life for him.

This geeky man and other funny characters portrayed in the film are common folks of Americanism for Wilder. They are people who have been betrayed and enslaved by sexuality and passion; fooled by the delusions of Hollywood. But above all they are controlled by television, and even Polly’s parrot likes to watch media violence. Thus, this charming American milieu is approached without any illusions. Through Wilder’s clever treatment of taboos, bourgeois institutions — religion, family, marriage — and values — fidelity, decency — bruise and, eventually perish on this ride.

Already in Ace in the Hole (1951) Wilder did an outstanding treatment of an American milieu where people were extremely easy to manipulate. To my mind, this is truly continued in Kiss Me, Stupid where the portrayal of a hick town gets new dimensions: the deserted landscape, the bleak gas station and the continuous need to get out — to attain the fame and fortune relayed by the created images of television. A place where some live in chateaus and others must settle for caravans; a place where money is power; where all are waiting for their chance to come — to get out.

In the end all is forgiven, including Orville’s imaginary affair and his wife’s night as a prostitute. The composers even get a deal with Dino. But this isn’t a happy ending. In fact, some might complain about it being too mean, referring to the final line “Kiss me, stupid” which could be interpreted as an “anything goes” life philosophy or morale. However, those people who mock the ending don’t get the irony Wilder makes here. For, the reconciliation of the characters is actually insightful criticism for conventional morality. Although Wilder sees human love as the only solution, the exaggerated success in the end is pure irony — fame, welfare and guilt-free existence were nothing but illusions. In the final image, the viewer sees Polly driving away to new, probably even worse, adventures. Only darkness and more despair awaits her.

Not surprisingly, this unconventional comedy faced a lot of criticism from contemporary critics. Specifically the Catholics liked to destroy its promiscuity, however, by which they only revealed their own stupidity. For isn’t the final solution, where each and every one are able to forgive, quite Christian? But, of course, they didn’t care about that. All they cared about was the things that were said and shown, what senses were aroused and how dangerous they could be for the prevailing morality.

Certainly the criticism has got its reasons, and the film does suffer from the problems of inner balance and mechanical jokes. Therefore, many consider it as the starting point of Wilder’s downhill. It surely does lack on the relaxation that characterizes the finest comedies by Wilder but, nonetheless, even as a weaker work it is still intriguing and special. Besides, it’s much more interesting to study the considered failures of a director than his masterpieces whose perfection are nearly scientifically proved as accurate. In art, perfection should never be clinic which, in a way, characterizes the films by William Wyler. They are so smooth. There is no room for giving the finishing touches. Hitchcock had his banal stories and, I guess, Wilder his vulgar, maybe even embarrassing, humour.

To my mind, it is the grotesque humour of his films which hold the vulgar fascination whether it is the hut humour of Stalag 17 (1953) or the transvestite jokes of Some Like It Hot. The downside of Wilder’s oeuvre must be accepted in order to move forward. For without it, his masterworks wouldn’t be the same. First and foremost, he wants to entertain us but he never let’s us just sit down and enjoy the escapism in the comfy seats of the theater. He surprises us with things that we do recognize but aren’t used to see on the big screen. Or as Wilder himself has put it:

“Making a movie is like entering a dark room, you never know if you gonna break your neck over some unseen piece of furniture.”

What is more, Wilder’s complexity is always characterized by strong dynamics; or a movement between the horrifying and the hilarious. A tension which tightens but will always come loose as well. As in his finest films, Kiss Me, Stupid also includes a funny game of egos which leads to a farce where the masks of the society fall down. Furthermore, the people run so fast in the rat race of market economy that their identities begin to fall off. On one level and in his unique way, I believe that Wilder asks us what does one have to do to attain success?

However, all the perversions of this sex satire, which depicts gloomy morale, are the results of a patriarchal society where the man has the right to give the permission to others to touch his wife — “Show him a little western hospitality.” Still it’s not all gloomy and bleak, for romance and sentimentality unfold slowly on the side of the comedy. All in all, most interesting in the film is Wilder’s amusement of Americanism which already began when he arrived there for the first time.

The invasion of television, which here reigns in Wilder’s world, offers the characters both an escape from the anxiety but also the only way to reach the fame and fortune they are all seeking for which, in fact, caused the anguish in the first place. However, when the star of television Dino arrives he isn’t really what the residents were expecting or at least not in the viewer’s eyes. He seems even more crummy than the townspeople. So, what does all this mean? What does Wilder want to say? Perhaps simply that one ought to live by his or her preconditions and not follow illusory dreams, created by our society, which shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

Poetics of Prey and Vultures in the Space of Fear

“(Jancsó’s films) consist of approximately ten-minute long shots which resemble collective ballet and usually record shifts of the relations between rulers and the oppressed, often in a violent form. The masterfully controlled technique is not, however technical playing but a natural consequence of the director’s historical vision; formed from its pressure.” (Peter von Bagh)

Silence and Cry (1967), directed by Miklós Jancsó, is one of the finest achievements of East European New Wave, and is of paramount importance when studying the greatest era of Hungarian cinema. A wildly poetic and masterful study on fear and love. It is quite an unknown film but its historical and political relevancy should not be neglected. For, it is an outstanding work made during the age of the Brezhnev Doctrine and social turmoil. After a year, in 1968, the Prague Spring took place and Soviet tanks silenced the people. This is the era when Godard and Buñuel made their wildest films. The revolutionary decade of the 60’s which, more than anything else, manifested in the cinema. But in order to understand the social backgrounds of Silence and Cry, we must take a look back.

Unlike in many other European countries, Hungarian film industry wasn’t nationalized until the year 1948 when communists came to power. Although the People’s Republic was what it was, it did wonders to the film industry — as did the fierce control in Soviet Union. In fact, the situation was so propitious that Hungary had the potential to achieve something similar Italy did with neo-realism. It had the theoretic, as well as the artistic talent, but the fascist dictatorship, which had ruled from 1919 to 1940’s, simply had made the possibility too difficult. The dawn of tomorrow was too far away, so to speak.

Due to this, it took some time before Hungarian film rose to its feet. But once it did — in a decade — it was ready to produce something exceptional and magnificent. Already in its earliest days, Hungarian art has been characterized by ontological questions, such as “what is blind chance?” and, in turn, “what was determined to happen?” but it was in the 1960’s when these issues developed their social associations; and exactly in Hungarian cinema. As a matter of fact, a film critic and historian Peter von Bagh has written how the late 60’s of Hungarian cinema represents the most free and creative atmosphere of the whole Eastern Europe.

In addition to Miklós Jancsó, this era of Hungarian cinema was also reigned by András Kovács who was a leftist pioneer of cinéma vérité and, above all, István Szabó whose films have been continuously associated with the Nouvelle Vague. In Szabó’s films reality and fantasy, past and presence conduct dialog. He created his own poetics, which was very close to surrealism. A famous piece of his style is Mephisto (1981) which dealt with the serious problem of Europe — the relation between art and power. Now, by studying these contemporaries we get to the core of Jancsó’s art. For, the way I see it, it was his style which reassured the success of Hungarian film. It was him who made Novi-Film rise above. Jancsó is the director of the East Europe in the 1960’s. Only Andrei Tarkovsky can beat him. Jancsó is not only the most famous but also the most controversial Hungarian director of all times.

One of Jancsó’s best films Silence And Cry begins with a montage of still images which take us to history: the year is 1919 and the age of white terror is upon us. In the first scene the viewer sees an empty hill which three men arrive to. One of them is a prisoner, who is executed by shooting in the back. Nothing is heard but silence; and quiet birdsong. In fact, this is the image which the entire film is based on. During the white terror, reds were constantly searched and executed. Peasants were put under house arrest, under the watching eyes of the police. This group of people is represented by the protagonist, who is also wanted by the police. Two women fall in love with him and, therefore attempt to poison their master to free themselves. The story unfolds to many directions and gets a lot of dimensions but, at its heart, it is based on the landscape — on the horizontal vision of empty hills.

All the milieus of the film feature simplified landscapes which seem to depict isolation; or alienation — the spaces are extremely open. As if, the characters were unable to hide; they are like rats under the eyes of vultures; and in this supervised milieu of fear, no room is left for love and tenderness. In a way, this draws a tenuous parallel to the Cold War; to the puppet states of Soviet Union where Stasi (The Ministry for State Security) took care of Orwellian surveillance.

In fact, this is a central realization in Jancsó’s style: the pure unity between visuals, themes and historical conditions. It is really this what separates him from Michelangelo Antonioni whose films seemingly bear a striking resemblance to his. For Jancsó’s films aren’t really abstract, although several critics seem to highlight this. To my mind, his films are, yes abstract — in a certain fashion — but deal with historical conditions in a concrete manner. He creates realist cinema. Still characterized by that psychological depth which drills down to the innermost of man; through which he analyzes the workings of the mind.

The greatest topic of all — history — is constantly dealt with in Jancsó’s films: whether it was the war in The Red and the White (1967) or the peasant uprisings in Red Psalm (1972). However, Jancsó never took historical topics unless his themes demanded it. For, isn’t the social surveillance and agony portrayed in Silence and Cry strongly related to its existentialism and gloomy depiction of the bleak reality? One shouldn’t see the symbolism and poetry, both of which are an essential part of his films, as a boundary but as an accessory to his realism; to the realism of historical mythology. Especially while watching Red Psalm, this idea might just be more than useful.

Jancsó uses extremely long shots and very little dialog which ties him to the Hungarian master of contemporary film Béla Tarr. Practically, Jancsó only cuts when a sequence changes. The camera moves and observes reality. To a similar monotonous atmosphere, typical for Tarr, Jancsó doesn’t even try to achieve, for his space is constantly full of action; of movement. The camera circles around the characters and follows their moves. It is as if, the camera or the narrator coexisted with the characters; creating reality of fear. In the result of this, the information about the characters is given to the viewer, not through dialog, but through action. However, in the story itself, much doesn’t happen.

Silence and Cry is shot in magnificent black-and-white CinemaScope where naturalistic realism obtains even expressionistic features. The cinematography and the composition are characterized by certain poetic elements, such as the white horse and the well, but the same repeats on the sound track as well — in the song of the bird and the howl of the wind. Yet, as in the films by Tarr, the viewer sees ground, mud and top of the trees which prevents seeing the edge of heaven. If the director’s philosophy can be found from this, his state of mind lies distinctly in the description of the environment: grey reeds, cold ponds and dead trees, which build up the architectonic composition of desperate desolation.

It seems that, in addition to the landscapes, the cinematography indicates the existential state of mind of the characters; their continuous fear for their lives. In fact, it is truly fear and hate what this is all about. As many great European novels, Silence and Cry also has both social and individual dimensions — the historical condition of classes which have ran into a violent confrontation. It is, actually, these conditions through which Jancsó studies individual human beings and, in the result of this, dialectic poetics always characterize his films and play an integral role in his stylistics.

Although Jancsó is never self-evident, and at times he even seems to be politically objective by showing the cruelties of both parties, he should not be seen as an anarchist director. Even if he tenuously criticized the state of Hungary, he was clearly a Marxist-Leninist. He seems to hate war and respect life, but still highlight situations where things, which are worthy enough to be categorized as the price of life, can exist. He was a communist, however in his films, political dimensions aren’t as important as philosophical.

“All over the world irrationalism is spreading in a manner which awakes anxiety — its manifestations are, for example, religion, obscure nationalist ideologies and right-wing anarchism. In most parts of the world, the citizens’ participation to political decision is not in order and thus, citizens feel the need to turn to gods and other forms of irrationality.” (Miklós Jancsó)

In the last image of Silence and Cry all is summarized: the protagonist is given a gun — “you can do it yourself” — but, suddenly, he turns and shoots his executioner. This surprising gesture is followed by an equally surprising freeze-frame which contradicts to the entire visual appearance of the film. In fact, as the title suggests, this aesthetic choice seems to highlight the slowly unfolding aggressiveness, beneath the severe themes, from which an angry thesis of the historical conditions is formed.

Oh, the Jolly Julie Andrews

“The Sound of Music, one of the most viewed films of all times, is made in a big fashion. Those viewers who were fascinated by the Cinderella story, which included nuns, children, Nazis and Julie Andrews, were literally stunned (there were all of the four sufficiently), and they had to watch the film two or three times until they could settle down and go back to the safety of their normal lives.” (Ethan Mordden)

The Sound of Music (1965) is one of the most popular films ever made and has gained quite a reputation with an intense cult following. Back in the day, it was indeed a huge economical success and even won five Oscars. But, what is more, in the course of time, the film has aged very well and newer generations seem to have taken it to their hearts as well. However, not surprisingly while discussing a big hit like this, the film has faced a lot of criticism. Although, it is no masterpiece The Sound of Music is an intriguing film from a historical and cinematic perspective. The colours and landscape pans of Austria are gorgeous but beneath the nostalgic shell one can find several themes that will fascinate even a demanding viewer. Moreover, its setting is so absurd that it takes time to realize how absurd it actually is: during the years of the rising of the German national socialists; a jolly governess and a group of spoiled brats spend their time singing in the Alps.

The initial position of the film is, of course, horrible. But it must be accepted in order to get forward. It would be too easy to reject the film for the artificially cheery songs, too cute children and an idealistic bourgeois who bravely resists the Nazis. To top it all, the Nazis don’t sing because they are determined to lose. This idea can be associated with the philosophy of musical — searching for the meaning of life in the form of song. Nonetheless, one should keep in mind that for some people horror movies are difficult to watch because of their amount of gore and violence but, in turn, musicals are difficult for some viewers because of their amount of cheerful songs and light-hearted surface. In any case, one should try to break the ice and look behind the veil of the external image.

The film begins with wonderful landscape shots which set the spectator’s mind into a romantic tone. At last the camera reaches a woman (Julie Andrews) who sings the title song on a mountain. The opening credits start and images of Austrian architecture are shown to the viewer. Soon the viewer learns that the woman is Maria, who is cheery and dashing in every way but too blunt and inpatient to become a nun. She rather spends her time singing on the mountains than following the rules of the convent. Therefore, the abbess sends her as a governess to the family of von Trapp.

The father of the family (Christopher Plummer) is very strict and maintains order and discipline in the household. The mother has died and the father is always away, due to which the children lack attention and, therefore try to get it by teasing the governess. However, Maria’s arrival and her positive attitude change their behaviour. In the end, even the father softens. Soon, Maria and Georg (the father) begin to fall in love. But, unfortunately, Georg has already arranged a marriage with him and a baroness. After a few adversities the baroness gives in and Georg confesses his love to Maria, and they get married. Suddenly, Germany’s grip on Austria tightens and Georg should sign up to the army. To avoid this, the family decides to run away and, in the final image, they climb over the mountains to freedom in Switzerland.

The historical background of the story can be found from the late 1930’s. Already in 1932 the NSDAP had won the election and, a year later, Adolf Hitler received the powers of a dictator. In 1935 he took the civil rights away from the Jews and started to gather troops. In the following year, he slowly began to conquer the tribal nations of Germany: first he re-militarized Rhineland. Two years later he attached Sudetenland of Czech to Germany and then it was time for Austria. The west did nothing with its appeasement politics. This is the time The Sound of Music focuses on. However, it doesn’t attack on the reluctance of other nations’ to help but quite well portrays the growing fear in Europe; the beginning of horror to which one can only answer with a song.

Robert Wise, the director, who had already tried his skills in film-noir (Born to Kill, 1947), science fiction (The Day the Earth Stood Still, 1951) and musical (West Side Story, 1961) succeed very well in humanizing this unpleasant topic; which is, as a matter of fact, a lot when discussing a massive production like The Sound of Music. However, beneath the superficial surface many themes from politics to history; moral to love; and from the nature of reality to happiness can be found.

Already in the 1950-60’s Broadway musicals had brushed traditional “written directly to the screen musicals” aside. Most of these were empty and unimportant films, with only a few exceptions. The Sound of Music continued this trend but was the finest achievement of it while, at the same, put an end to it all. Between the years from Singin’ in the Rain (1952) to Cabaret (1972), The Sound of Music was the only good American musical. Surely many musicals of the time included nice songs and cute plots but anything cinematic they didn’t have to offer.

A film critic Geoff Andrew has highlighted how Nazism has been perceived in a more captivating manner in The Sound of Music, than in Cabaret which is often celebrated for its depiction of the gloomy morale of the time. The political aspect of The Sound of Music depicts the historical conditions of the rising of the Nazis in a consistent manner. In fact, Robert Wise found great cinematic counterparts to reflect a certain form of evil in the language of film; for, all this doesn’t feel banal because the series of events that lead to the rise of Nazism have been relayed to the viewer concretely. And, in reality, the corny songs are talented resistance.

For the radical left-wing, which rose up in the 1960’s, the film was of course too much. Too much merriment and joy. But in a historical sense the film was also about a new form of information sharing: to give knowledge of Nazism, the backgrounds of WWII and what had been won over, for the new generation. So the question remains: Is this propaganda? Perhaps. Is it bad propaganda? No chance.

At its heart, the film is a story about an individual who attempts to bring freedom to an authoritarian world. It condemns totalitarianism and violence and praises peace and individuality. Maria, of course, as a free spirited wild child represents the latter. God appears to her in the beauty of nature. She arrives to a new strict world when she enters the mansion. Even its architecture seems to represent high social status and hierarchy. But Maria fights back. In fact, The Sound of Music could be seen as a battle; the battle between reason and emotion. For, Georg is very rational where Maria, on the other hand, constantly relies on intuition and sensibility. Moreover, Georg is experienced and Maria innocent with regards to sexuality. The bike and rowing trips with the children are an essential part of nature’s dramaturgy and, therefore epitomize Maria’s consciousness where, in turn, the architecture of the mansion does Georg’s.

Above all, however the film is a growth story about: Maria’s maturation and Georg’s recovery — the strict severity caused by the wife’s death softens. So, in other words, emotion and reason collide and complete each other. In addition to Maria and Georg, this confrontation of reason and emotion is also highlighted by the presence of Germany (the tyranny) and Austria (the dear homeland); but also by reality and the unreality of musical; the latter offers sentimental chaos for the sterile order of the former, which is characterized by the gloomy morale of the national socialists.

As a matter of fact, towards this historical context, the criticism of the viewers was most strongly aimed at. Many saw the theme of Nazism quite useless and unimportant for the time. “Where’s Vietnam,” so to speak. This is a common critic many American films received in the 1960’s but the fact those people seem to have neglected is the allegorical approach to war. For even if the first American war films on Vietnam were made in the 1970’s, other genres touched the topic through allegorical stories — western being the most famous: The Wild Bunch (1969), The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966) and The Great Silence (1968).

In 1964 the Vietnam war had begun and a year later the States started the severe bombing and this most likely accelerated the theme of Nazism in the film. Many of the film’s moments and themes can actually be located into the context of Vietnam or any other war, which reinforces its allegorical nature. No matter whether it is intended or not, for each historical film is, unintentionally or intentionally, a reflection of two ages. One example is the wistful waltz Edelweiss, sung by Plummer, which tells about love for the father’s land and resistance to the Nazi tyranny. Let alone the film’s aesthetics of national romanticism. In addition, on a widely associative note, the film portrays a classical battle between good and evil; and deals with an important theme which exceeds the limits of all wars, nations and ages.: the pursuit of happiness in difficult circumstances.

However, all this is relayed to the viewer in an impressive fashion with strong architectonic vision. A film historian Peter von Bagh has written that Wise “turns verbal poetry into visual images” which quite well summarizes the visuals of The Sound of Music. Wise indeed analyzes the space brilliantly and enhances the nature of the milieu — the songs as only a natural part of it all. Unlike in many other musicals, they are no longer detrimental for the film. Few examples shall be mentioned of Wise’s talented direction: 1) The montage of dolls and facial expressions in the puppet show scene. 2) How choreography is used to accompany the Austrian-romantic architecture. 3) The wedding ceremony’s grandiose filming and how the breakaway from its grip truly can be felt. Last but not least, 4) the structure of the space is nearly perfect in the pavilion scene where Georg and Maria confess their love: the extreme expression of depth which is reinforced by the contrasts and windows; the beautiful silhouettes of the characters; the column-like shapes and strong shadows. It is an extremely romantic image that aptly embodies the spirit of the film’s aesthetics.

The Sound of Music is not as easy as it seems to be. Even though it is often categorized as a family movie. It is an intriguing look at historical conditions and the difficulty of happiness for both, the young and the old. Above all, nature is an inspiring force in the film which partly links it to the hippie movement of the time but, moreover highlights its themes of love and eternity. Love faces obstacles but, in the end, wins over. Although, the film is artificially cheery and sweet, it does deal with many important issues; even if in a more light-hearted sense: falling in love with its problems, love for one’s homeland, and the importance of emotions. In conclusion, The Sound of Music is a film about the triumph of endurance, love and freedom over the hardship of the world.