Friday, July 03, 2015
Gaav / The Cow (2014 digital restoration by Pishgamane Cinemaye Arya / National Film Archive of Iran)
After scanning the original negative in 2K, digital restoration was done by Pishgamane Cinemaye Arya in 2014 with funding by the National Film Archive of Iran. A new negative was produced and approved by the film’s director.
Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Scorsese (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato) (A Simple Event: the Birth of Iranian New Wave Cinema) with e-subtitles in English and earphone translation in Italian, 3 July 2015
Ehsan Khoshbakht (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue and website): "There are other films about men and cows (The Cow and I, for one) but unlike The Cow they can hardly be called love stories, nor are they works that so powerfully explore madness, solitude and obsession as this film does. This milestone of Iranian New Wave cinema tells the story of a poor villager (played by stage actor Ezzatolah Entezami in one of Iranian cinema’s greatest performances) whose only source of joy and livelihood is his cow, which provides milk for the village. (Not surprisingly, when the film came out, the milk was viewed by the left as symbolic of oil). One night the cow is mysteriously killed and that’s when the madness, or rather transformation, begins."
"A filmmaker who has reinvented his approach to cinema in every decade since the 1960s, Mehrjui can move from the sombre tone of a Salinger adaptation, to a hilarious comedy of sorts. From humble beginnings he went on to study philosophy at UCLA and upon his return to Iran was assigned to direct a James Bond-type thriller which had nothing to do with his authorial ambitions."
"It was his second film, The Cow, based on short stories by Marxist psychiatrist Gholam-Hossein Saedi, which served as his breakthrough. “While making The Cow I had no idea what effects it would have on the history of Iranian cinema”, says Mehrjui, “it was more a reaction on my part to the trend of the totally commercial and somehow vulgar film industry dominating that period. I always wanted to make a film in a village with rustic spaces, especially after seeing Au hasard Balthazar and Los olvidados”."
"Promptly banned from export, one of Mehrjui’s French friends smuggled a print out to the Venice Film Festival, where it was shown without subtitles and became one of the first films of the Iranian cinema given international appraisal. Poignantly wrapped in layers of religion and leftist politics (two major forces of the 1979 revolution), The Cow came under the spotlight more than a decade later, when Ayatollah Khomeini identified it as an example of good cinema, in opposition to the many ‘corrupting films’ from the Pahlavi era." (Ehsan Khoshbakht)
AA: A tale of a man so devoted to his cow, essential for the entire village, that when the cow dies, nobody dares to tell him the truth, but he guesses it anyway, and turns (mentally) into the cow himself. A tale of a society in a state of madness. A tale of backwardness and dishonesty so deep that it is hard to face. A tale of the vicious circle of lying: one lie begets another, and lying keeps getting worse. There is an important parallel motif of harassing and bullying village fools. There are three thieves, the Boulouris, constantly looking for a chance to strike at night and steal livestock.
A simple and realistic approach to a weird tale. The milieux and the weathered faces look true. There are ellipses in the narrative.
The music is interesting and original, performed on native instruments apparently.
The cinematography is stark.
The DCP is bright and clean. There was a digital freeze of some three minutes in the middle.
Thursday, July 02, 2015
Namus / Honor
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| Hamo Beknazaryan / Amo Bek-Nazarov: Նամուս / Namus / Honor (SU-AM 1926). Click to enlarge the images. Poster by Stenberg. Susan (Maria Shakhubatyan-Tatieva) surrounded by visions of her lover Seyran (Samvel Mkrtchan) and husband Rustam (Grachya Nersesyan). |
Նամուս.
SU-AM 1926. D+DC: Hamo Beknazaryan / Amo Bek-Nazarov. DP: Sergej Zabozlaev. C: Ovanes Abelyan (Barchudar), Asmik (Mariam), Olga Maysuryan (Gul’naz), Grachya Nersesyan (Rustam), Avet Avetisyan (Ayrapet), Nina Manucharyan (Shpanik), Samvel Mkrtchan (Seyran), Maria Shakhubatyan-Tatieva (Susan), Ambartsum Khachanyan (Badal), Siranush Aleksanyan (Susambar), Ripsimiya Melikyan (Sanam), Amasy Martirosyan (Sumbat).
P: Goskinoprom Georgia, Gosfotokino Armenia. 35 mm. 1904 m. 83’ a 20 f/s. B&w. From: Gosfilmofond.
Based on the novel (1885) by Alexander Shirvanzade.
As a change into the programme in which the sonorized version was announced a silent version of Namus was screened instead, with Gabriel Thibaudeau at the grand piano. (The sonorized version to be screened separately.)
Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Officinema/Mastroianni (Bologna) (Armenia. Genocide and After) in an original bilingual version with Armenian and Russian intertitles with simultaneous earphone translation into Italian and English with an introduction by Peter Bagrov, 2 July 2015.
Anna Malgina (Il Cinema Ritrovato catalogue and website): "Namus was the first Armenian film to be released in June 1926 by the film studio of Gosfotokino in Armenia, in collaboration with the Goskinoprom of Georgia. The film, based on a novel by the Armenian writer Alexander Shirvanzade, describes the everyday life in a provincial town of Shamakhi during the 1860-70s, and the tragic events that result from the prejudices of pre-revolutionary Armenia. The plot evolves around the drama of the two young lovers who fall victim to the cruel and omnipotent adat, the traditional rules and laws. After extensive acting experience in pre-revolutionary Russian cinema, as well as experience directing film at the Georgian film studio, Hamo Beknazaryan became the first film director of the Republic of Armenia."
"Namus became the first realistic Soviet film that portrayed the everyday life of the 19th century East. In contrast to the many examples of previous Oriental films, which were made in other countries, the director managed to avoid vulgarization and simplification of Eastern exoticism. On the contrary, Beknazaryan’s realism reaches its depth in such episodes as the wedding scene. In its depiction of an earthquake, for instance, the film even becomes a striking example of extreme naturalism. Some critics defined Namus as an ethnographic film, mainly because of its focus on the ancient customs and the old way of life. But for Beknazaryan the ethnographic material is only a background for the depiction of the national characters."
"Similarly, through the use of close-ups he highlights characteristic details in images of the Armenian people. The real, non-schematized portraits of Armenians with their gestures, facial expressions, habits, relationships appear on the film screen. One of the main advantages of the film, in the critics’ opinion, was the choice of the actors who mainly came from the national Armenian theatrical background."
"Beknazaryan combines good acting with cinematic techniques like cross-cutting and dissolves and the film surely benefits from the combination. On the one hand, it is a powerfully accurate image of reality, on the other, – a romantic love story."
"The film enjoyed a tremendous success – to which the Moscow tobacco factory Java responded by the immediate introduction of a new popular cigarette brand called Namus. The film was released not only in the Soviet Union, but also in Europe, America and in the Middle East."
"In the early 1930s the film was post-synchronized (according to the common practice in Soviet cinema) with specially written music by Armenian composers Nikoghayos Tigranyan, Sargis Barkhudaryan, Martyn Mazmanyan and with authentic folk music played on a traditional instrument, the zurna."
"Gosfilmofond holds two versions of Namus: the sound print with the original bilingual (Armenian and Russian) intertitles, plus a silent version, re-edited in 1938 at the Erivan film studio, with slightly modified intertitles. The recently rediscovered sound version of Namus with the Armenian musical accompaniment will be presented at the festival." (Anna Malgina)
AA: A memorable, important film, a strong tragedy from the Caucasus.
In his introduction Peter Bagrov told us about Hamo Beknazaryan / Amo Bek-Nazarov, the founding father of Armenian cinema, of both fiction and non-fiction, works of ethnographic value. He worked both in Armenia and Georgia, and he covered many genres. Not obsessed with montage he found excellent actors from the Armenian theatre. Nobody took him seriously as an artist. Pepo is generally considered his masterpiece.
The tragedy of Namus starts in 1895 with an earthquake. We are introduced to the brutal patriarch who disciplines his family horribly with beatings and whippings, also on the soles, also his daughter Susan, to the point that a doctor is needed. Susan loves Seyran, the potter's son, but a matchmaker is engaged, and the deal is made of a marriage with Rustam the rich merchant. There is a grand wedding, a failed kidnapping plan by Seyran, a long account of wedding traditions, and a stream of consciousness montage of Susan's wish to commit suicide. After the wedding Rustam goes on with his successful business and Seyran becomes a drunken tramp. Yet Rustam is madly jealous, and due to a ruse of Seyran's (as a childhood friend he is aware of a mark in Susan's breast) he is ready believe anything. There is a general grief in the end as the parties of the tragic triangle die.
Dignity in the visages of people facing devastation. The milieux and the situations are strikingly realistic. The acting is underplayed.
In the relay translation into Italian and further into English a lot was left untranslated or badly translated which made it occasionally difficult to follow the film. (Also the introduction on this Gosfilmofond Istoriya series print was not translated).
The print was fine to ok.
American Military Mission to Turkey and Armenia 1919
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| American Military Mission to Turkey and Armenia 1919. Click to enlarge. |
US 1919. 425 m /18 fps/ 21 min. B&w. English intertitles. Silent. 35 mm. From Nara Archives.
Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Officinema/Mastroianni (Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna) (Armenia. Genocide and After), with earphone translation in Italian, introduced by Jay Weissberg, with Neil Brand at the grand piano, 2 July 2015.
Jay Weissberg (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "With peace declared in 1918, opportunities opened for intrepid cameramen to record the humanitarian crises left in the War’s aftermath. Significant voices in the American press including Ezra Pound, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and H. L. Mencken had been calling for forceful condemnation and/or intervention following the Armenian Genocide (then referred to as massacres), so with the public stirred, the chance to show moving images of impoverished refugees and traumatized orphans became a powerful tool for disaster relief efforts."
""Sensationalism guided Auction of Souls (1919), aka Ravishing Armenia, the embellished story of Aurora Mardiganian (poor quality fragments are available on YouTube). Less exploitative were newsreels from a still volatile Turkey, many produced under the auspices of charities and missionary societies. In February 1919, Glen Russell Carrier, cameraman for International Film Service, sailed to Asia Minor under the sponsorship of the American Committee for Relief in the Near East; he took with him 23,000 metres of film, charged with making “permanent records of the atrocities of the Turks and Huns”."
"American Military Mission to Turkey and Armenia had a different purpose, and was not meant for public view. In August 1919, Woodrow Wilson appointed Major-General James G. Harbord to lead a commission investigating Ottoman atrocities against the Armenians, and to advise on the feasibility of creating a U.S. mandate in the fledgling Armenian state. Among their number were two photographers from the Signal Corps – presumably one or both of these as yet unidentified men shot the footage we’re viewing. The trip, via boat, train and car, lasted 30 days and encompassed a broad swathe of territory throughout Turkey and Transcaucasia, including Mardin, Diyarbakır, Malatya, Erzurum, Kars, Erivan, and Tbilisi."
"The footage is a remarkable record of an area wracked by war: massive refugee crises, deadly tensions between ethnic groups, territorial uncertainty, civil war, and shifting spheres of influence. In the end, Congress ignored Wilson’s mandate request, paving the way for the Soviet invasion of 1922." (Jay Weissberg)
AA: There is little to add to Jay Weissberg's excellent program notes above. The film is a basic record of life in Armenia: agriculture, herding livestock, customs of the people, children looking at the camera, a bridge under construction, a military procession, wandering people, tents, music and dance, posing for the camera. Visually uneven, mostly modest, like raw footage, slightly boring, partly in low contrast. Yet a priceless document.
[Armenia, Cradle of Humanity] (2015 digital restoration / Bologna)
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| [Armenia, Cradle of Humanity] (1919-1923). |
1919-1923. 70 m. 4 min. B&w. Silent. From: Library of Congress. Digitally restored in 2015 by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory from a nitrate positive print from Library of Congress
Viewed at Cinema Lumiere - Sala Officinema/Mastroianni (Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna) (Armenia. Genocide and After), introduced by Mariann Lewinsky, Neil Brand at the grand piano, 2 July 2015
AA: Stark Armenian imagery, boats full of refugees, faces in pain, desolate views. From a tinted source.
AA: Stark Armenian imagery, boats full of refugees, faces in pain, desolate views. From a tinted source.
Vertigo 5: Music and more
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| Making Vertigo: Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann. Reportedly this image is not posed. |
One of my memorable Vertigo experiences has been at Cinema Orion when the film felt particularly music-driven. (Cinema Orion has good natural acoustics as it was designed as a silent cinema with a permanent live orchestra). We the audience were haunted by the music, and everybody stayed dumbfounded after the final crushing deep chord of Bernard Herrmann's compelling score. (Every film programmer can tell when an audience is gripped by a movie and by what elements: the audience seems the breathe in the rhythm of them. That time it was the music that moved us most).
The motifs of the haunting score are famous and have been performed and recorded independently as suites, although they work best in their original context. The "Madeleine", "Scène d'amour", "Liebestod" and "vertigo" motifs are among the strongest. This time I paid attention to the haunting prelude theme being repeated in the d'entre les morts scene where the metamorphosis of Judy back to Madeleine is completed. I also enjoyed the old-fashioned dramatic narrative passages: "The Letter" (peripeteia), "The Park" (passing by the loving couples at the Golden Gate Park / Conservatory of Flowers / Lloyd Lake / Portals of the Past), "The Necklace" (anagnorisis), and "The Return" (driving back to the scene of the crime). They evoke silent film scores, in turn inspired by narrative traditions in melodrama and opera. Herrmann had already a rich experience in narrative dramatic uses of music as the composer of the Mercury Theatre radioplays for CBS Radio in the 1930s.
The Spanish dimension of San Francisco and the Carlotta Valdes story is acknowledged also in Herrmann's music, in its vibrant, sensual habanera rhythms (the "Carlotta's Portrait" motif).
Of the performances I found James Stewart's part even greater than before. I also realized the importance of Barbara Bel Geddes's Midge in a new way as a foundation stone of the movie, a difficult part connecting the oneiric story with human reality. Barbara Bel Geddes, daughter of the great designer Norman Bel Geddes, was a big Broadway star, blacklisted in Hollywood since 1951. Hitchcock revived her Hollywood career in four episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (including in Lamb for Slaughter), and in Vertigo.
Kim Novak got to play one of the most unforgettable dream women in the Dream Factory. She is so easy on the eye that it is easy to ignore the complexity of the role - or roles. We get to know her as Madeleine Elster, then we learn that she is actually Judy Barton, whom Scottie Ferguson starts to remake as Madeleine, but by now she is reluctant to play that part again. Dual roles are an actor's dream, and Kim Novak uses the opportunity well in her unique fashion. She displays the cool, ethereal, otherworldly Madeleine elegantly. There is the short sequence as Judy Barton where she is her natural, sensual, and temperamental self. All too soon starts the long tragic process of Scottie trying to make her over. He also brings her to tears, he causes her agony, he robs the smile from her face. The romantic obsession is one-sided, although the feeling of love is mutual.
The first story of Madeleine and Scottie is based on fraud, but the love affair is genuine even though both are committed to prevent it. The second story is based on Scottie's obsession which is so extreme that he fails to connect with the real woman although her feelings are true. Kim Novak rises to the occasion in all these complex situations. We feel her torment, yet realize the love underneath. Without it she would not have risked everything in starting the affair with Scottie again.
Women have a harder time in relating to Vertigo than men.* For a male viewer relating to Vertigo is a matter of simultaneous identification and distanciation, perhaps in a way similar to the famous Vertigo shot of simultaneous tracking and zooming. Scottie is an anti-hero, in the final movements of the story in the grip of an obsessive aggression towards a woman who loves him. Both are victims of the master criminal.
From a female viewpoint I would imagine that Vertigo would be important as a story relevant to feminism, as an essential thriller about male domination (the original Carlotta Valdes backstory, the Gavin Elster master plot, and Scottie Ferguson's imitation). There is a center of sanity, Midge, but she is perhaps too practical and mother-like for identification in a movie which is both romantic and anti-romantic, again perhaps like the Vertigo shot which moves simultaneously forward and backward. The figure of Madeleine / Judy may be too difficult for identification: we are introduced to her as an image, and when we learn that her act was a fraud all possible previous identification is demolished, and of the real woman we get to learn very little. Judy is an accessory to murder, after all, also hard for a lawman / retired policeman to relate to, either. Madeleine is an Idea, a ghost, and a personification of death, not even meant to be identified by us in any normal sense.
From a female viewpoint Scottie is not a strong love object. An important hint is the remark in the beginning that Midge and Scottie had been engaged, but after three weeks she had cancelled the engagement. Each viewer can speculate why. In the beginning Scottie is a sober and nice guy. But perhaps he is not a good lover, perhaps he is emotionally challenged, perhaps he is not the family kind of guy, perhaps he has little interest in sex, perhaps his mind is abstract. His entire Madeleine / Judy affair has an otherworldly character, dealing with a romantic ideal rather than a woman of flesh and blood. Judy, a red-blooded woman, complains that Scottie does not even want to touch her.
Postscript, 2 August 2015: I have been jotting down these remarks for a month now after the Bologna screening of Vertigo. I had not written about Vertigo since I contributed an essay called "Kohti pyörteen silmää" ["A Descent into the Maelström"] on the re-release of the "five missing" films for the special Hitchcock issue of Filmihullu magazine (5/1984). I then covered Hitchcock in general with a focus on Vertigo. I had read Peter von Bagh's thesis on Vertigo in the 1960s and been deeply influenced by Robin Wood's book from which I was learning English in 1969. In 1984 I had recently been impressed by the excellent special issue on Vertigo of the German Filmkritik magazine (Juni 1980) with illuminating passages of close reading.
About Vertigo interpretations I agree with Heikki Nyman's sober judgement about terms such as "voyeurism" and "necrophilia" in this context. They have been a little flippantly used, not least by Hitchcock himself, who could be amazingly shallow in his verbal statements about his most profound achievements. In their literal meaning those terms refer to clinical, pathological conditions, and as such they are not illuminating here. Vertigo is about love in death, but not in the sense of necrophilia. I agree with Robin Wood that Vertigo is about the lure of death in which Scottie feels not only an attraction but an identification with Madeleine as a personification of death.
* Postscript, 12 August 2015: In a profound sense, Vertigo might have been fertile material for George Cukor because of the Pygmalion theme: in the Cukor approch the protagonist is a woman whose hidden potential is awakened by an encounter with a man who becomes her mentor (What Price Hollywood?, Little Women, Born Yesterday, Pat and Mike, A Star Is Born, Wild Is the Wind, My Fair Lady). The horror reversal of the male protector's mental power is Gaslight. In Vertigo Cukor might have been able to solve the overwhelming challenge of female identification in the narrative but the result would have been more sober and lacking in tragic urgency and l'amour fou.
MY BLOG REMARKS ON VERTIGO (2015)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-vintage-la-cinematheque.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-2-james-stewart-perspective.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-3-making-sense-of-vertigo.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-4-death-drive.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-5-music-and-more.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/11/vertigo-6-1996-restoration-in-70-mm.html
CINEMA AND PSYCHE (SYMPOSIUM 2019)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/03/film-and-psyche-12-look-symposium.html
HAUNTED BY VERTIGO (ANTHOLOGY 2021)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2021/10/sidney-gottlieb-and-donal-martin-ed.html
Vertigo 4: Death drive
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| Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo (US 1958). Ferguson (James Stewart) rescues Madeleine (Kim Novak) at Fort Point by Golden Gate Bridge. |
With a chuckle, Jean Douchet summed up his Bologna introduction by saying that Vertigo is about premature ejaculation, and we chuckled, as well. That gross explanation makes little sense, as so much about Vertigo. It would make a bit more sense to say that Vertigo is about coitus interruptus. It is true that there are sex symbols in Vertigo. The towers are male symbols; the spirals are female symbols; the spiral movement is a symbol of intercourse (the union of the straight line and the circle). And rather than premature ejaculation Vertigo is about impotence. The fear of heights is (among other things) an image of the inability of getting to the top, reaching a climax / fulfillment / release. Hitchcock loved to flavour his films with saucy touches (he is on record on insisting on the visibility of Coit Tower as a phallic symbol), but they are not what Vertigo is about. Rather they are part of the sense of the life force important for the poetic balance in a tragic mystery play which is really about the death drive.
Robin Wood visited Vertigo twice in superb essays which are in my opinion the best written about the film. Typically for him, the essays are totally different but not incompatible. The later essay focuses on patriarchy, revealing the structure of male domination. In the name of romantic love the male protagonist remakes the female protagonist according to his dream image, thereby divesting her not only of her preferred clothing and outlook but also of her sense of humour, her joy of life, her identity, her autonomy, her self, turning her to a shadow of her former self, a ghost, shattering her to death. The contemporary story of Madeleine also reflects back into history, "the power and the freedom" of patriarchy to exploit women mercilessly, exemplified in the tragedy of Carlotta Valdes.
This time I experienced Vertigo more in the sense of Robin Wood's earlier, original essay which I had not read in a long time. A key concept of his there is the death drive. The death drive (der Todestrieb) is a concept first invented by Sabina Spielrein (who, however, did not use that word) in her essay Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens (1912). It was soon adopted by her mentor Sigmund Freud as an intriguing speculation, but gradually it grew into the second foundation of his entire theory especially after the experience of World War I. Eros and Thanatos became the twin drives of his metatheory. There is nothing mystical in the death drive. All organic beings have a drive to grow and reproduce, and they have also an inbuilt drive to wither and die.
Wood connects the death drive to the theme of vertigo in the first sequence of the film where Scottie Ferguson remains hanging from the rooftop gutter. Life is hard: it is strenuous to keep hanging on. Death is easy: let go, and everything is over. The life force and the death drive are dramatized in an extremely simple and powerful image. The secret of vertigo is in the simultaneous contradictory upward pull of the life force and the downward temptation of gravity.
The same idea is expressed in Bernard Herrmann's score, in its vertigo motif: the ascending chords rising step by step (twelve steps in the music) - and then the swirling, inviting, seductive, descending spiral melody.
Herrmann also does an open hommage to Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, and creates his own version of the Liebestod theme. Further, he appropriates Wagner's famous Tristan chord and integrates it into Hitchcock's sound of suspense.
Liebestod, "love death", means the consummation of the impossible love of Tristan and Isolde in death. From this perspective, the logical final image of Vertigo would be of Scottie jumping after Madeleine. Having overcome his fear of heights Scottie would overcome his fear of falling. We see no such image, but the music continues after the final image of Scottie standing by the abyss, and the music ends with a crushing, tragic, deep, descending chord. There is no "The End" caption in Vertigo.
MY BLOG REMARKS ON VERTIGO (2015)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-vintage-la-cinematheque.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-2-james-stewart-perspective.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-3-making-sense-of-vertigo.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-4-death-drive.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-5-music-and-more.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/11/vertigo-6-1996-restoration-in-70-mm.html
CINEMA AND PSYCHE (SYMPOSIUM 2019)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/03/film-and-psyche-12-look-symposium.html
HAUNTED BY VERTIGO (ANTHOLOGY 2021)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2021/10/sidney-gottlieb-and-donal-martin-ed.html
Vertigo 3: Making sense of Vertigo
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| Madeleine (Kim Novak) watching the portrait of Carlotta Valdes at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor |
Most of my film expert friends do not particularly like Vertigo or do not rate it among Alfred Hitchcock's best. A deeply mixed reputation is part of the Vertigo enigma.
On the other hand, there are those of us for whom Vertigo is a cult movie. When we visit San Francisco or drive the Pacific Coast Highway, whether we make the Vertigo tour or not, we are spellbound, we sense the spirit of the place like Hitchcock did in Vertigo.
Vertigo is a surrealistic film, and like Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock knew that the most persuasive cinematic dream visions are grounded in physical reality. (Vertigo's dream sequences are less oneiric than the regular action.)
In the English-speaking world Vertigo's reputation started to grow after the publication of Robin Wood's book Hitchcock's Films in 1965. Before him, Frenchmen had written on Vertigo with great insight, for instance Eric Rohmer in his article "L'Hélice et l'Idée" ["The Spiral and the Idea"] (Cahiers du Cinéma, 93, mars 1959). Intriguingly, Rohmer and Claude Chabrol had published their book Hitchcock (Paris: Éditions Universitaires, 1957), the first monograph on the master, just before the release of Vertigo, covering his oeuvre until The Wrong Man. Yet in that book one can already anticipate Vertigo as a culmination of motifs and themes examined by the writers. For instance Rohmer and Chabrol study Hitchcock as a great inventor of forms, focusing on the figures of the circle and the straight line. The spiral motif in Vertigo is of course a combination of the two - the circle moving in depth.
Several monographs have been written on Vertigo, and inspired by the Bologna screening I read what I consider the best of them, Dan Auiler's Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
The first Vertigo monograph may have been Peter von Bagh's Elokuvalliset keinot ja niiden käyttö: Alfred Hitchcockin Vertigo [Cinematic Means and Their Use: Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo], Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 1968, his master's thesis also published as a mimeograph edition, republished as a regular printed book in 1979 as Hitchcock: merkintöjä Alfred Hitchcockin elokuvasta Vertigo [Hitchcock: Remarks on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo]. There is even another Finnish monograph on Vertigo, Heikki Nyman's Vertigo: rakkaus kuvaan: tutkielma Alfred Hitchcockin elokuvasta [Vertigo: Loving the Image: A Study on Alfred Hitchcock's Film], Helsinki: Heikki Nyman / Yliopistopaino, 1990, also incorporated in his magnum opus Hitchcockin kosketus: Alfred Hitchcockin elokuvat 4, Väärästä miehestä (1956) uran loppuun [The Hitchcock Touch: Alfred Hitchcock's Films 4, From The Wrong Man (1956) Till the End of His Career], Helsinki: Heikki Nyman, 1992. Nyman's works have been published as private mimeographed limited editions, available at the National Library and the KAVI Library.
Both Finnish Vertigo monographs cover a lot of ground and have interesting points of emphasis. Among other things, Peter von Bagh discusses Vertigo's affinities with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, including "The Oval Portrait". ("And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved: -- She was dead!") The philosopher Heikki Nyman's entire Hitchcock project focuses on themes of perception and the question of seeing - in all meanings of the word.
The disappointment of many people with Vertigo may have something to do with expectations of Alfred Hitchcock as "the master of suspense". As a thriller, detective story or murder mystery Vertigo fails miserably.
The composition is full of loose ends. How did Scottie Ferguson survive the rooftop chase? (Did he?) How did Madeleine disappear from McKittrick Hotel? (Was she even there?) The murder plot is outlandish, unconvincing and full of holes. Nobody would plan a murder like that. And why did Judy keep the bracelet of Carlotta Valdes?
Things look different when we see Vertigo without genre expectations, outside conventional categories, or perhaps in a special category such as a tragic mystery play, a surrealistic dream play, a mythic tale of modern romanticism, or an Orphic legend. Pygmalion and Galatea, Orpheus and Eurydice, Tristan and Isolde, and Svengali and Trilby have been evoked in discussions about Vertigo, as well as Edgar Allan Poe's tales of mystery and imagination. Vertigo is a suspense story, but the suspense is of an existential kind, a soul battle in realms of immanence and transcendence.
The Finnish counterpart of Orpheus in Kalevala is Väinämöinen, a shaman and a bard able to visit Tuonela, the Land of Death. Jean Sibelius's shamanic composition The Swan of Tuonela has been playing in my mind as I've been thinking about Vertigo.
It is interesting to observe how Hitchcock was expanding his scope as "the master of suspense" in the late 1950s. The Man Who Knew Too Much is based on a different psychological structure than the regular suspense thriller because the protagonists do not feel anxiety for themselves but for their child. The Wrong Man is quasi-documentary. And Vertigo is a Wagnerian Liebestod legend.
I would argue that French film critics had a lot to do with the fact that Alfred Hitchcock got the courage to produce a highly personal and poetic film such as Vertigo in the heart of the Hollywood studio system (he produced it himself, to be distributed by Paramount). Hitchcock had always been known as a skillful entertainer; even André Bazin saw him only so. But Rohmer, Chabrol, and Truffaut saw more. It is an important turning-point in a man's life when he sees his most private and precious aspirations appreciated on the most profound level of understanding. Hitchcock had met sympathetic critics about to become fellow artists and professionals, all deeply influenced by him. That encouraged him to create his most personal masterpiece.
MY BLOG REMARKS ON VERTIGO (2015)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-vintage-la-cinematheque.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-2-james-stewart-perspective.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-3-making-sense-of-vertigo.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-4-death-drive.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-5-music-and-more.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/11/vertigo-6-1996-restoration-in-70-mm.html
CINEMA AND PSYCHE (SYMPOSIUM 2019)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/03/film-and-psyche-12-look-symposium.html
HAUNTED BY VERTIGO (ANTHOLOGY 2021)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2021/10/sidney-gottlieb-and-donal-martin-ed.html
Vertigo 2: A James Stewart perspective
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| Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo (US 1958) James Stewart as Scottie Ferguson. Please click on the image to enlarge it. |
When the "five missing" Hitchcocks, Vertigo among them, were re-released in 1983 after having been out of circulation for a long while, four of them starred James Stewart. All James Stewart - Alfred Hitchcock collaborations were included.
As far as I understand, Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart were not close friends. The link between them was Lew Wasserman. Both Hitchcock and Stewart had been liberated from their long-term contracts in the late 1940s, Hitchcock from his David O. Selznick contract, and Stewart from his MGM contract. They then became freelancers under the successful guidance by Wasserman.
James Stewart became one of Alfred Hitchcock's two major alter egos. Whereas Cary Grant became Hitchcock's idealized romantic alter ego, most prominently in North by Northwest, James Stewart got to project inner agony in Vertigo. Stewart had already played an invalid with Schaulust (scopophilia) in Rear Window. On the other hand, Stewart had gotten the male lead in Hitchcock's only remake, the highly personal The Man Who Knew Too Much, where he is not a sick man but a doctor, and where the suspense is not based on what happens to the protagonists personally but on their anxiety for the fate of their child. In the first Hitchcock-Stewart collaboration, Rope, Stewart had been the professor who realizes to his horror that his students are interpreting his teachings on Nietzsche and der Übermensch literally.
During WWII James Stewart had become the first major Hollywood star to wear a uniform. He had joined the U. S. Army Air Corps (reorganized as U. S. Army Air Forces in 1941). Stewart was an experienced flyer who flew cross-country to visit his parents and possessed both a private pilot certificate and a commercial pilot certificate. He had been born into a family with a long military tradition and started his own military career during WWII early and unobtrusively, advancing from private to colonel during the war and being promoted to major general when he retired in 1968. He ended his military career as an observer in Operation Arc Light missions on a B-52F Stratofortress in Vietnam in 1966. "He held the highest active military rank of any actor in history" (IMDb).
Stewart flew in dozens of dangerous combat missions on the European front. He hardly ever spoke about his wartime service and refused publicity about his military life, but he knew about war trauma having killed many people and seen many friends die. He also knew about the responsibility of the officer in sending men to missions with a high death count.
Because of the war Stewart interrupted his successful Hollywood career for five years. After Ziegfeld Girl (1941) his next film was It's a Wonderful Life (1946). He considered ending his acting career but when he decided to go on he was committed to become the best. Cary Grant commented that Stewart mastered natural, mumbling, stuttering, overlapping dialogue long before Brando. Stewart was so natural that it was easy to ignore that he was a great actor. His approach was so unobtrusive and unpretentious.
Stewart's scope widened. Hollywood usually celebrated the American Dream of success, promoted winners and steered the narrative to a happy end. Stewart also chose projects and roles with sympathy for the loser, and an insight in madness, obsession, and mental breakdown, even suicide as a real alternative.
No actor has portrayed agony, torment, pain and suffering more grippingly. Of his two main directors in the 1950s Anthony Mann seemed to sense this particularly well. But Vertigo is the culmination of this current in James Stewart's development.
John Ferguson is presented to us as a lawyer and a policeman with career ambitions to become chief of police. He is known as "the hard-headed Scot" with little patience in the irrational.
On a dangerous police mission, however, during a chase on the San Francisco rooftops, John and his police partner fail to catch the criminal, John slips and is left hanging on a rooftop gutter, and his partner falls to his death trying to help him.
John survives, but he becomes mentally unstable, suffering from acrophobia and vertigo and a guilt complex having failed to prevent his partner's death.
As a private investigator he accepts an assignment from his school friend Gavin Elster to observe the strange behaviour of his wife Madeleine. Because of his fear of heights John is unable to follow Madeleine to a bell tower from which she jumps to her death. John experiences a mental breakdown. Beside his former problems he now also suffers from acute melancholia which renders him catatonic. He is taken to a mental hospital.
It takes a year for him to recover. Still obsessed by Madeleine he meets a woman, Judy Barton, who vaguely resembles Madeleine, and starts to make her over until he realizes that she is the same woman who had been employed by Gavin Elster in a plot to murder his wife. The final revelation takes them back to the bell tower where a shadowy figure moving in the darkness so scares Judy that she falls to her death. The film ends in the desolate image of John having lost everything for the third time.
Anton Kaes has written a book called Shell Shock Cinema; Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War where he studies Weimar cinema as a coming to terms with the post-traumatic shock of the war.
I would argue that some of James Stewart's post-WWII roles from It's a Wonderful Life to Vertigo can be seen on one level as shell shock cinema - coming to terms with a condition we now call a posttraumatic stress disorder. In such roles Stewart lives the parts of ordinary men facing extraordinary challenges which can break them physically and mentally. Stewart lets himself become a medium, a conductor, a personification for processing overwhelming pain and failure which may lead his characters to ask if life is worth living. In such roles Stewart proved to be a great tragic actor. In tragedy, the protagonist has potential for greatness, but due to a fatal error or weakness he fails. The feeling of grandeur in a tragic masterpiece such as Vertigo is based on the fact that we are asked to expand our consciousness enormously, to rise to a higher level of seeing the full extent of the devastation, to achieve transcendence which can provide catharsis. James Stewart had range from comedy to tragedy. In Vertigo he was at his tragic best.
MY BLOG REMARKS ON VERTIGO (2015)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-vintage-la-cinematheque.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-2-james-stewart-perspective.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-3-making-sense-of-vertigo.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-4-death-drive.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-5-music-and-more.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/11/vertigo-6-1996-restoration-in-70-mm.html
CINEMA AND PSYCHE (SYMPOSIUM 2019)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/03/film-and-psyche-12-look-symposium.html
HAUNTED BY VERTIGO (ANTHOLOGY 2021)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2021/10/sidney-gottlieb-and-donal-martin-ed.html
Vertigo (vintage La Cinémathèque française print, 35 mm dye transfer Technicolor features derived from VistaVision colour negatives)
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| Vertigo poster designed by Saul Bass. Click to enlarge. |
Filmed in Vistavision / VistaVision: 35 mm dye transfer Technicolor features derived from VistaVision colour negatives.
Viewed at Cinema Arlecchino (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Technicolor & Co. / Peter Forever, Homage to Peter von Bagh), introduced by Céline Ruivo (La Cinémathèque française) and Jean Douchet, with e-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra, 2 July 2015.
The subtitled print was screened at 1,66:1.
Peter von Bagh (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website):
“I really identified with the story because to me it was saying: Please, see who I am. Fall in love with me, not a fantasy” (Kim Novak).
“It’s an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world” (Lord Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde)
"The means, tricks and central images of Vertigo are like verses of a poem, visible, identifiable, yet retaining their mystery, never obvious. Visual motifs reappear hypnotically: flowers, trees, the necklace, the ocean, the church, and the passages and stairways which are like labyrinths of self-deception and whose spirals are like invitations to hell. The very beginning leads to an entirely unreal emphasis: Scottie remains hanging from the roof-top gutter, and it is impossible to imagine that he could survive in the ‘real world’. His borrowed time takes him to situations that are no less difficult to master. Typically for Hitchcock, the most famous single image of the movie is a feat of both technical virtuosity and profound psychological insight. He told that he conceived it after fifteen years of thinking about a vision he had had in a moment of being terribly drunk and having the sensation that everything was going far away. It occurs at the church where Madeleine runs upstairs. Scottie cannot follow due to his acrophobia and when he looks down the stairwell everything escapes his eyes into a strange sawing pattern. Hitchcock realized that the viewpoint had to be fixed while the perspective changed lengthwise so he ended up using a simultaneous zoom and a dolly in opposite directions with a camera set-up where a miniature staircase was photographed sideways." (Peter von Bagh) - AA: Extract from Peter von Bagh’s posthumous unpublished manuscript for a book on Alfred Hitchcock covering all his films with an emphasis on a single shot from each. Peter von Bagh was a champion of Alfred Hitchcock since the 1950s. His master’s thesis for the Department of Aesthetics and Literature at the University of Helsinki in 1968 was Cinematic Means and Their Use: Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’. In 1968 von Bagh interviewed Hitchcock, who was visiting Helsinki in preparation for his projected spy thriller The Short Night. The interview was published on a full page of the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat with the title "Logic Is Dull". As we know initially Vertigo was not generally highly regarded, but since the 1983 re-release its reputation has steadily grown until it was voted as the best film of all time in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll. (AA, Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website)
AA: I have never seen a good print of Vertigo. This seems remarkable about a film that has been voted as the best film of all time in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, and, more importantly for me, a film Robin Wood considered one of the few most profound works of art the cinema has given us.
Born in 1955, I did not get to see Vertigo during my school days. It had been withdrawn from circulation, and it had never been telecast, nor were there any prints that film societies or film archives could access.
But studying in West Berlin I did get to see a 16 mm print of Vertigo in April 1981. It was in the distribution of Peter Vollmann who regularly screened it in his Thalia cinema. I believe it was shortened by 10 minutes (intentionally I believe as no dialogue or key event was missing) but the colour seemed right; I had seen enough genuine Technicolor prints to have a sense of that.
Then finally came the 1983 re-release of the "five missing" Hitchcocks. The reason for the fact that they had been missing for such a long time was that Alfred Hitchcock himself owned them, and first after his death they were re-released. It was great but the prints of Vertigo were not particularly good. They looked duped and darkened.
In 1996, Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz finished their big and ambitious restoration of Vertigo in 70 mm - an accurate way to process the ratio of the original VistaVision negative. Because of differential separation shrinkage in Technicolor negatives there was significant colour correction and computer assisted colourization. For the new 6-channel DTS stereo soundtrack Harris and Katz re-recorded some sound effects via the foley process and even added sound effects to camouflage hisses, pops and bangs. (I copy here formulations from Wikipedia). This is the version of Vertigo that has been in general use since - until the 4K digital restoration of 2014. We have been very happy to screen it while aware of the fact that it is an approximation.
But because of this background it is exciting finally to see a vintage print of Vertigo. Some people criticize the very term "vintage print", but here it is justified. This is an original release print, a Technicolor print in which we can observe the original remarkable colour world of Hitchcock and his brilliant artistic team.
Céline Ruivo in her introduction commented that 1,85:1 was the standard aspect ratio for Vertigo but because of the French subtitles 1,66:1 would work better. There were two special projectionists: Pietro Piazzo on behalf of the festival, and a La Cinémathèque française projectionist.
The colour is beautiful. Here we can see the original reds, golds and greens of Vertigo, and the shades of blonde hair and gray dress of the dream woman. Much of the film has been shot with a realistic approach, but there is also a consistent painterly dimension in it. Green is of exceptional importance. On the one hand, the lush natural green of Judy Barton's dress: in February I saw the original dress in the Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Academy Museum, and now the vintage film image. At the other extreme, the ghostly green halo surrounding Judy made over as Madeleine by Scottie at the Empire Hotel.
The otherwordly reflections at Mission Dolores can be here observed as intended; they must be difficult to reproduce in duplication. The strange reflections are not photographic or special effects; they actually emerge from way the white walls reflect sunlight.
On the other hand, the sequence at Pop Leibel's Argosy Bookstore was created with elaborate photographic and matte effects to convey a darkening atmosphere while we hear the story of Mad Carlotta. This too can be observed here as intended.
I have been impatient with the difficulties of digital in conveying forest and nature in general. I have to admit that nature has always been difficult for three-strip Technicolor, as well. The fit of the three Technicolor separation masters is never perfect enough to produce an unblurred image of a tree whose leaves are moving in the wind. Also in this vintage Vertigo the sequoia forest is blurred in a Technicolor fashion.
To sum up: this is the colour world of Vertigo I will try to memorize, and I will always be grateful for Il Cinema Ritrovato and La Cinémathèque française for that.
This print has been in heavy use, and it looks like it has been screened a thousand times. It is full of scratches, "rain" and cuts (more than one minute is missing). Some scratches are severe, the proud battle scars of a much loved classic.
MY BLOG REMARKS ON VERTIGO (2015)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-vintage-la-cinematheque.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-2-james-stewart-perspective.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-3-making-sense-of-vertigo.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-4-death-drive.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/07/vertigo-5-music-and-more.html
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2015/11/vertigo-6-1996-restoration-in-70-mm.html
CINEMA AND PSYCHE (SYMPOSIUM 2019)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2019/03/film-and-psyche-12-look-symposium.html
HAUNTED BY VERTIGO (ANTHOLOGY 2021)
https://anttialanenfilmdiary.blogspot.com/2021/10/sidney-gottlieb-and-donal-martin-ed.html
BLANDINE ETIENNE (LA CINEMATHEQUE FRANCAISE): VERTIGO, COPIE CONFORME
Wednesday, July 01, 2015
Woman on the Run (2015 UCLA restoration)
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| Norman Foster: Woman on the Run (US 1950). Dennis O'Keefe (Daniel Leggett) and Ann Sheridan (Eleanor Johnson). |
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| Norman Foster: Woman on the Run (US 1950). Dennis O'Keefe (Daniel Leggett) and Ann Sheridan (Eleanor Johnson). Please click on the images to expand them. |
Il mistero del marito scomparso / Murhaaja etsii itseään / Vittnet som försvann.
US © 1950 Fidelity Pictures Corporation. P: Howard Welsch per Fidelity Pictures Corporation.
D: Norman Foster. Dal racconto [1948] di Sylvia Tate. SC: Alan Campbell, Norman Foster. DP: Hal Mohr – b&w. ED: Otto Ludwig. AD: Boris Leven. M: Arthur Lange, Emil Newman.
C: Ann Sheridan (Eleanor Johnson), Dennis O’Keefe (Daniel Leggett), Robert Keith (ispettore Ferris), Ross Elliott (Frank Johnson), John Qualen (Maibus), Frank Jenks (detective Shaw), Victor Sen Yung (Sammy Chung), Jane Liddell (la ragazza), J. Farrell McDonald (il capitano), Steven Geray (dottor Hohler).
89 min
Helsinki premiere: 1 June 1951 – Metropol – released by Bio-Kuva Oy.
Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding by the Film Noir Foundation. Preserved from a 35 mm nitrate dupe negative, a 35 mm nitrate composite print and a 35 mm acetate composite print. Laboratory services by Film Technology Company, Audio Mechanics, DJ Audio, and Simon Daniel Sound. Special thanks to BFI, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, Universal Pictures.
35 mm print from: UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Viewed at Cinema Arlecchino (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Ritrovati e Restaurati), introduced by Cecilia Cenciarelli and Yoram Kahana (The Hollywood Foreign Press Association), with e-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra, 1 July 2015.
Steven K. Hill (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "Shot largely among the gritty working class landscapes of mid-century San Francisco, Woman on the Run spotlights Ann Sheridan as an acerbic wise-cracking wife in search of her estranged husband who suddenly disappears after witnessing a gangland assassination. After suffering through a series of disappointing roles at Warner Bros., Sheridan bought out her remaining contract and turned to the upstart independent Fidelity Pictures in an attempt to re-establish her career as a leading lady. The resultant film was Woman on the Run, and Sheridan delivers a tour-de-force performance, aided by equally strong turns by Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, and Ross Elliott in the supporting roles. Director Norman Foster, a former protégé of Orson Welles, had just returned to Hollywood after helming a successful string of features in Mexico and captured the anxiety-driven mood of Alan Campbell’s screenplay with seemingly effortless dexterity. The Bay Area location filming – in addition to the opening sequence shot in Bunker Hill and the dramatic climax staged at the Santa Monica Pier – was beautifully shot by esteemed cinematographer Hal Mohr and adds atmospheric realism to the production that studio-bound efforts of the era could not hope to match."
"Although the film opened strongly amidst positive critical reviews, attendance dwindled precipitously due in part to a bizarre advertising campaign that touted the movie as a woman’s picture: “a probing study of the failure of modern marriage”. Quickly falling into obscurity, the film has been long and unjustly neglected, compelling Film Noir Foundation founder and president Eddie Muller to remark that “If Woman on the Run had been directed by Raoul Walsh or Joseph H. Lewis or Don Siegel, it would have been rediscovered decades ago and heralded as a minor masterpiece”."
"For years it was believed that a restoration of Woman on the Run was impossible after the last known surviving print of this film was destroyed in a studio fire."
"An exhaustive worldwide search was eventually rewarded with the discovery of duplicate pre-print elements in the vaults of the British Film Institute." (Steven K. Hill)
AA: This film noir is a chase story. Frank Johnson is chased by the mob because he has witnessed the killing of a key witness. But he does not want to get into police custody and is chased also by the police with the help of his wife Eleanor. Ominously, Eleanor is helped by Daniel Leggett who pretends to be a newspaperman for Graphic but is actually a hitman for the mob. Leggett manages to win Eleanor's confidence.
On another level, Eleanor fears that Frank has now left her and is actually escaping her. The clues Eleanor keeps getting from Frank during the chase affirm her trust in her husband's love.
On the deepest level, Woman on the Run is a vision of existential Angst. Nobody can be trusted, and even the trust in the nearest one can lead into a fatal trap.
The action is well directed, the dialogue is witty, and the film has been conceived in powerful visual terms thanks to the inspired location shooting by the old master Hal Mohr, a veteran who had started in Hollywood before WWI (Salomy Jane), often excelling in shooting on location.
Woman on the Run is in public domain which may explain why good theatrical prints have been hard to come by. UCLA has done a fine job of restoration of this solid film noir.
35 mm print from: UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Viewed at Cinema Arlecchino (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Ritrovati e Restaurati), introduced by Cecilia Cenciarelli and Yoram Kahana (The Hollywood Foreign Press Association), with e-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra, 1 July 2015.
Steven K. Hill (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "Shot largely among the gritty working class landscapes of mid-century San Francisco, Woman on the Run spotlights Ann Sheridan as an acerbic wise-cracking wife in search of her estranged husband who suddenly disappears after witnessing a gangland assassination. After suffering through a series of disappointing roles at Warner Bros., Sheridan bought out her remaining contract and turned to the upstart independent Fidelity Pictures in an attempt to re-establish her career as a leading lady. The resultant film was Woman on the Run, and Sheridan delivers a tour-de-force performance, aided by equally strong turns by Dennis O’Keefe, Robert Keith, and Ross Elliott in the supporting roles. Director Norman Foster, a former protégé of Orson Welles, had just returned to Hollywood after helming a successful string of features in Mexico and captured the anxiety-driven mood of Alan Campbell’s screenplay with seemingly effortless dexterity. The Bay Area location filming – in addition to the opening sequence shot in Bunker Hill and the dramatic climax staged at the Santa Monica Pier – was beautifully shot by esteemed cinematographer Hal Mohr and adds atmospheric realism to the production that studio-bound efforts of the era could not hope to match."
"Although the film opened strongly amidst positive critical reviews, attendance dwindled precipitously due in part to a bizarre advertising campaign that touted the movie as a woman’s picture: “a probing study of the failure of modern marriage”. Quickly falling into obscurity, the film has been long and unjustly neglected, compelling Film Noir Foundation founder and president Eddie Muller to remark that “If Woman on the Run had been directed by Raoul Walsh or Joseph H. Lewis or Don Siegel, it would have been rediscovered decades ago and heralded as a minor masterpiece”."
"For years it was believed that a restoration of Woman on the Run was impossible after the last known surviving print of this film was destroyed in a studio fire."
"An exhaustive worldwide search was eventually rewarded with the discovery of duplicate pre-print elements in the vaults of the British Film Institute." (Steven K. Hill)
AA: This film noir is a chase story. Frank Johnson is chased by the mob because he has witnessed the killing of a key witness. But he does not want to get into police custody and is chased also by the police with the help of his wife Eleanor. Ominously, Eleanor is helped by Daniel Leggett who pretends to be a newspaperman for Graphic but is actually a hitman for the mob. Leggett manages to win Eleanor's confidence.
On another level, Eleanor fears that Frank has now left her and is actually escaping her. The clues Eleanor keeps getting from Frank during the chase affirm her trust in her husband's love.
On the deepest level, Woman on the Run is a vision of existential Angst. Nobody can be trusted, and even the trust in the nearest one can lead into a fatal trap.
The action is well directed, the dialogue is witty, and the film has been conceived in powerful visual terms thanks to the inspired location shooting by the old master Hal Mohr, a veteran who had started in Hollywood before WWI (Salomy Jane), often excelling in shooting on location.
Woman on the Run is in public domain which may explain why good theatrical prints have been hard to come by. UCLA has done a fine job of restoration of this solid film noir.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
La Fin du jour / The End of the Day (2015 digital restoration by Pathé)
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| La Fin du jour. Michel Simon, Louis Jouvet. Click to enlarge the images. |
Arquillières / Alexandre Arquillière (Monsieur Lucien).
Song: "Le Temps de cerises".
Viewed at Cinema Arlecchino (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Ritrovati e Restaurati) with English subtitles on the DCP and e-subtitles in Italian by Sub-Ti Londra, 30 June 2015.
Introduced by Sophie Seydoux.
Roberto Chiesi (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "Julien Duvivier knew the secret to creating explosive opening scenes where in just a few minutes he could condense the atmosphere of a world and the features and story of a character with masterly visual fluidity. La Fin du jour opens with a performance of Alexandre Dumas’ Antony in front of a half-empty audience, and the troupe is in a hurry to finish the show so they don’t miss the last train. All but Saint-Clair (Louis Jouvet), an old actor performing his swan song. He brags about an upcoming vacation but instead is about to go into a retirement home for actors at the Saint-Jean-la-Rivière abbey. It is another confined space (as is often the case in Charles Spaak’s screenplays – Grande illusion is another example) in which the story of Saint-Clair is intertwined with that of Cabrissade (Michel Simon), a failed actor used as a stand-in, Marny (Victor Francen), a showman who is laid up because of depression caused by the loss of his wife, and a lively array of carefully characterized old actors and actresses (including Gabrielle Dorziat and Sylvie). Duvivier describes old age without sugarcoating, dominated by feelings of regret, bitterness and frustration. He entrusts to the genius of Michel Simon the guise of a loser who stubbornly refuses to accept old age, taking refuge in unyielding childishness. There is also an autobiographical echo in the scene where Cabrissade is about to finally play the role of Flambeau but forgets his lines as he goes on stage. It was something that actually happened to the young Duvivier in 1916 when treading the boards at the Odéon."
"The frailty of old age is reflected in the vulnerability of being actors, living in a make-believe world, often also off stage, a fiction which Duvivier (sometimes alluding to the real identities of the performers) also shows in its aspects of deception, a game of masks that can drift into madness: the Saint-Clair of the great Jouvet, cynical seducer, confirmed narcissist (he sends himself old letters from lovers to make others believe he is still adored) and cruel manipulator, tries to provoke a young waitress to commit suicide.Made by Duvivier following his first Hollywood experience (The Great Waltz), the film was awarded the Coppa della Biennale at the 1939 Venice Film Festival, troubled by the outbreak of war. The Italian version was cut by around twenty minutes." (Roberto Chiesi)
AA: The 1930s were Julien Duvivier's anni mirabili, and La Fin de jour was his penultimate film during a decade in which he also directed David Golder, La Tête d'un homme, La Bandera, La belle équipe, Pépé le Moko, and Un carnet de bal.
Carried by the brilliant dialogue by Charles Spaak La Fin du jour is a study in illusions in the last stage of life of professonal creators of illusions, set in a retirement home for actors. Gilles Marny (Victor Francen) is known as the actor who had talent but no success. Cabrissade (Michel Simon) has been the talented understudy of a master actor - Lucien Guitry - who was never sick. Saint-Clair (Louis Jouvet) is the brilliant man of the surface, a master seducer and a dazzling performer. There are those who act the parts and those who live the parts. As a contrast to Saint-Clair's illusionary love affairs there is the happy couple who has lived together for 35 years and who now decide to marry in an official wedding. A final climactic sequence is a benefit performance of Edmond Rostand's L'Aiglon.
A memorable scene takes place during the singing of "Le Temps de cerises" where we hear a quick version of Letter from an Unknown Woman with Saint-Clair in the role of the seducer who never remembers.
As a story about ageing people there are affinities in La Fin du jour with Make Way for Tomorrow and Tokyo Story.
It is fascinating to observe such a cast, ranging from the actor of the cinema's first super-villain, Arquillères (he created Zigomar) to a young François Périer in one of his first screen roles.
The digital restoration is bright and clear.
Visita ou Memórias e Confissões / Visit or Memories and Confessions
Conversazione privata.
PT 1981 [catalogue: 1982]. Posthumously released: 2015.
D: Manoel de Oliveira. SC+Dial.: Manoel de Oliveira, Agustina Bessa-Luís. DP: Elso Roque. ED: Manoel de Oliveira, Ana Luísa Guimarães.
C: Manoel de Oliveira, Maria Isabel de Oliveira, Urbano Tavares Rodrigues (se stessi), Teresa Madruga, Diogo Dória (voci). P: Cineastas Associados. 35 mm. 68’. Col. From: Cinemateca Portuguesa.
[A 2015 print. Two years are given on the print: 1981 as the year of production and subsidy and 2015 for the laboratory work.]
M: Ludwig van Beethoven: Klavierkonzert Nr. 4 op. 58 (1806).
Viewed at Cinema Arlecchino (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Ritrovati e Restaurati), introduced by Gian Luca Farinelli and José Manuel Costa, with e-subtitles in English and Italian [tbc: English subtitles on the print?], 30 June 2015
Lorenzo Codelli (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "Filmed in the early 1980s to be released posthumously, Visita ou Memórias e Confissões led Manoel de Oliveira to film the house in Rua Vilarinha, Oporto, designed by architect José Porto, that he had built and then used as his family home for four decades after his marriage in 1940, until he was forced to sell it."
"Visita ou Memórias e Confissões is an autobiographical film of ‘memories and confessions’, hence the filmmaker’s wish to keep it unreleased during his lifetime. “A house is an intimate, personal relationship, where one finds his roots”, “upon my request, Agustina wrote a very beautiful script, that she called Visita. And I added some reflections on the house and on my life” (Manoel de Oliveira)."
"Thank you, dear Manoel, for leaving us one of your most beautiful films as a posthumous gift! Forced to sell your house-labyrinth surrounded by an enchanted garden, where you had lived and created for forty years, you decided in 1982 to film a Visita, like Marienbad, through its twists and turns, its hidden secrets, supported by a lyrical text written by your faithful Agustina Bessa-Luís and recited by two voices. Furthermore, you wanted to tell us standing up, facing the camera, like in one of Escher’s mirrors, your ‘memories and confessions’. Back then, you had made just six films, a fifth of your work. You told us about your father, a powerful industrialist, your wife, a devoted muse, and women in general, your children, your nefarious stay in Salazar’s prisons, your turbulent century, and above all your vocation. “Cinema is my passion. For him, I have sacrificed everything”. Already in Porto da minha infância, from 2001, you told us about your youth as an athlete and a cinephile."
"Your parable, from well-heeled bourgeois to great artist, including fatal falls and audacious flights, how you sketched it with such studied nonchalance! Freed, for eternity, from Time. Thank you so
very much."
"P.S. Note to distributors: do not dare call it a ‘documentary’!" (Lorenzo Codelli)
AA: A highlight of the Festival. Manoel de Oliveira (1908–2015) who died in April spoke directly to us from the screen in a projection of a posthumous film made over thirty years ago. The audience at Cinema Arlecchino was ideal. The message was gratefully received.
It is a confession of love to the director's wife Maria Isabel and their family. Woman for Oliveira is a symbol of the equilibrium of the world. "I love life, but death does not scare me". "Only love can give life its ultimate meaning".
Two invisible guests wander in Oliveira's family house, and we keep meeting Oliveira himself at his typewriter and 16 mm film projector. We see home movies and hear the Oliveira family story, including the story of the family industry until the Carnation Revolution. During the Salazar dictatorship Oliveira was caught by the secret police PIDE and taken to prison after he had made Acto da Primavera.
We also hear about valued friends such as André Bazin, Paulo Rocha, and Erika and Ulrich Gregor.
The family home is a site of love and culture, and we are invited into a last tour to the house that has already been sold, to witness the 1930s architecture, the garden, the furniture, the paintings, the photographs, and the objects.
Co-written with Oliveira's favourite author Agustina Bessa-Luís the dialogue and commentary is of high literary value. I hope it will be published.
Shot by Elso Roque, the film is a refined visual journey into the garden and the interior of the house.
The new photochemical print is beautiful.
The Dumb Girl of Portici (2015 digital restoration from Library of Congress)
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| The Dumb Girl of Portici. Douglas Gerrard (Alphonse), Anna Pavlova (Fenella), Edna Maison (Elvire). Click to enlarge. |
Viewed at Sala Mastroianni (Bologna, Il Cinema Ritrovato, Recovered & Restored, Beloved Bluebirds, About a Hundred Years Ago. 1915), introduced by Mariann Lewinsky and John Sweeney, grand piano: John Sweeney, percussions: Frank Bockius, earphone translation in Italian, 30 June 2015
Based on the opera La Muette de Portici (FR 1828) composed by Daniel Auber with a libretto by Germain Delavigne revised by Eugène Scribe.
Geo Willeman and Valerie Cervantes (Il Cinema Ritrovato, catalogue and website): "The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916) was a project by two powerful artists: director Lois Weber and dancer / choreographer Anna Pavlova. The production was huge, one of Universal’s most expensive up to that time."
"The only version known to have survived was a 35 mm nitrate reissue print dating from the 1920’s preserved at the BFI until we located a second print at the New York Public Library. Even though this was 16 mm and probably duped from a Kodascope reduction, it could be used to complete the existing 35 mm print and bring the film back closer to the original version."
"The 35 mm print had remade 1920’s intertitles but fortunately the 16 mm print had the original plain-looking titles standard to Universal productions. The decision to replace all the titles in the 35 mm print with the originals considerably smoothed the narrative flow."
"As examined the 16 mm print in detail, we found extra shots that were absent from the 35 mm print. (Invariably, these turned out to be scenes of extreme violence and bloodshed – pretty graphic stuff for 1915.) It was fairly easy to reinstate them into the continuity of our digital workprint from a narrative point of view and although the image quality is decidedly lower than the bulk of the film, we feel that the restored version is now probably as close as we can get to the original continuity until (wishful thinking) a more complete print is unearthed."
"A final story: the ending of the film bothered us – it bore one of those awkward reissue titles and was exceedingly abrupt. The film ends with a Pavlova dance number, but in the 35mm print, had been cut to about 35 seconds. We looked back over the 16 mm print and discovered something that had been there all the time, spliced near to the beginning of the film, where the star does a short exhibition dance. It was well over two-and-a-half-minutes long and a complete routine – Pavlova’s parting gift to her audience. Feverishly, we placed the sequence at the tail and removed the intertitle and – there was our ending: delicate, beautiful, sad, and joyful." (Geo Willeman and Valerie Cervantes).
AA: According to Wikipedia the opera La Muette de Portici is "loosely based on the historical uprising of Masaniello against Spanish rule in Naples in 1647." The opera is famous as the first French grand opera and as a revolutionary opera which actually launched revolutions: in Belgium (1830), as well as in France (the 1830 revolution). "Richard Wagner remarked, in his 1871 Reminiscences of Auber, that the opera "whose very representation had brought [revolutions] about, was recognised as an obvious precursor of the July Revolution, and seldom has an artistic product stood in closer connection with a world-event."" Thanks to the central part of the dumb woman "it marked the introduction into opera of mime and gesture as an integral part of an opera plot." Famous dancers were cast in the central role of Fenella, the dumb woman. "La Muette de Portici played a major role in establishing the genre of grand opera. Many of its elements – the five-act structure, the obligatory ballet sequence, the use of spectacular stage effects, the focus on romantic passions against a background of historical troubles – would become the standard features of the form for the rest of the 19th century". "Auber's pioneering work caught the attention of the young Richard Wagner, who was eager to create a new form of music drama. He noted that in La Muette, "arias and duets in the wonted sense were scarcely to be detected any more, and certainly, with the exception of a single prima-donna aria in the first act, did not strike one at all as such; in each instance it was the ensemble of the whole act that riveted attention and carried one away..."". "It also played a large role in the founding of the Kingdom of Belgium. The riots that led to the independence started after hearing the opera."
Mariann Lewinsky introduced Anna Pavlova's only feature film. A 60 piece orchestra would be needed to play Daniel Auber's music.
The Dumb Girl of Portici has been adapted to film by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley in Film d'Art style in the year when The Birth of the Nation among others revolutionized film narrative. The film is mostly constructed as tableaux conveyed in long takes and long shots with an immobile camera. Intertitles predict action. But there are also camera movements (pans and tracking shots) and superimpositions.
The performances are mostly based on grand histrionics. Feelings are telegraphed in grand gestures. The playing is mostly anti-realistic.
Anna Pavlova's stylized and exaggerated pantomime fits into the general performance mode. It is a wild and consistent performance, a grand tragic interpretation which leads to a transcendent final dance number - the ascent into heaven.
The inflammatory revolutionary spirit of Daniel Auber's opera is still alive in Lois Weber and Phillip Smalley's silent film adaptation. There is a true epic sense of history and tragic grandeur. The Dumb Girl of Portici still partly belongs to the "before Hollywood" period - before a general streamlining into slick and polished studio production. It is one of the big early film epics with a constant sense of danger and surprise. The violence is startling in the massive sequences of tyranny, oppression and revolt.
John Sweeney did a splendid job in arranging and performing a piano adaptation of Daniel Auber's music, together with Frank Bockius in the percussions. It was an amazing experience.
The restoration has been conducted with loving care from often battered and difficult sources, sometimes in 16 mm. There was an irresistible drive in this memorable performance of a film which has not been shown in a decent way for generations.
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