Defending Cinephilia 2020 (10) - Serious cinephile Michael Campi overcomes lockdown in pursuit of his calling

 Editor's Note: This is the final post in this series for 2020. If you would like to read the others CLICK HERE TO TAKE YOU THROUGH TO A PAGE WITH LINKS TO THEM ALL 

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A calendar year of sudden, unexpected upheaval and tragedy is nearly at an end as the pandemic continues to sweep the world regardless of the timelines we set ourselves. For some, the passing of these many months has been slow but for many of us engaged in following our various paths of cinephilia, the weeks and months proceeded curiously at quite a pace, especially in the many weeks of being confined to home for 23 hours a day with specific short-term exemptions. Much of our passion for cinema has been directed to the ever-increasing range of material on line, posted generously for free, by one payment per view or through longer term subscriptions. 

Marlene Dietrich, Angel

Melbourne Cinémathèque's weekly screenings through more normal years are always a high point for cinephiles in that city. In March 2020, the Cinémathèque followed its six film cross-section of the work of Vittorio de Sica with the announcement of three programmes devoted to the career of Marlene Dietrich. During the second screening which included Lubitsch's ANGEL, the potency of Dietrich's line "Travelling's becoming quite complicated, isn't it?" was only just becoming apparent.  Indeed, within days, cinemas had closed. Planned trips were cancelled or deferred. The final Dietrich programme couldn't be presented. Two festivals running in Melbourne cinemas were stopped in their tracks and the masterpiece with some of the greatest of Lubitsch touches was the last film I saw in a cinema until December.  

 

One of the most disappointing consequences was the postponement of an eight film season of some masterworks of Shimizu Hiroshi, one of the great Japanese filmmakers especially from the 1920s to 1940s. A collection of his major films had been in development stage for quite a while but was stifled by the increasingly destructive path of the virus. While three of the programmed films have been more broadly available on disc and otherwise through Criterion and Shochiku, several of the titles have been extremely difficult to see more recently such as the silent films ECLIPSE and A HERO OF TOKYO along with sound masterpieces like FORGET LOVE FOR NOW and the almost indescribably affecting A WOMAN CRYING IN SPRING, Shimizu's first talkie before he returned to silent films for a few more years. The failed opportunity to see these works in three programmes over a couple of weeks in a cinema setting is truly disappointing. Let's trust this can be rectified before too long.

Shimizu Hiroshi

 

Online viewing

 

Leaping ahead a few months to the end of August, when Bologna's Il Cinema Ritrovato became a part real and part virtual event, a later Japanese master's work was also out of view for most of the people who couldn't attend the films in real cinemas in that welcoming city. The Bologna festival's notes tell us Kawashima Yuzo "is the 'missing link' between the classical Japanese cinema and the New Wave." They screened six of his features theatrically but none in their online event. Only BAKUMATSU TAIYODEN (1957) is available on English subtitled commercial disc to my knowledge. Others have appeared on the MUBI streaming platform but only in certain territories and I don't believe they have become part of their continuing library. Let's hope the Bologna celebration will help to highlight the versatility and importance of this large body of work: nearly fifty features made in less than twenty years from the final months of World War 2 until the director's early death in 1963 at the age of 45. More on Il Cinema Ritrovato below. 

 

From May the deluge of online film festivals and other curated film events was burgeoning from its previous steady stream of mostly subscription viewing to become a visual tsunami of choices that's been ongoing ever since. This huge change to the cinephile's regular ways of watching old and new cinema seems irreversible. For some, watching a variety of great movies on one living room screen tended to have a dulling sameness of environment. Changing surroundings could be beneficial. Choices might be made to watch more visually spectacular films on a larger screen, Q&A and lecture sessions on the laptop, other material, less demanding visually, might be seen on a Tablet or iPad.  

 

The first of the curated festivals to take over a week of my viewing was "We are One: A Global Film Festival" in May with contributions suggested by over twenty film festivals, from the major A class events to exciting other suggestions from Annecy, Guadalajara, San Sebastian, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Sarajevo and more. A mixture of short films and features reminded us that over recent years some imaginative work makes its mark in a couple of festivals but doesn't become part of the more publicised global trail.  Specially rewarding films from a few years ago were two contrasting dance films, DANTZA (2018) by Telmo Esnal and LOS PASOS DOBLES (2011) by Isaki Lacuesta, both designed to work magical rhythms into the viewers' legs along with MARY IS HAPPY, MARY IS HAPPY (2013), the second film  by Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit whose wonderful latest film HAPPY OLD YEAR is streaming in many places on Netflix now. Fukada Koji's THE YALTA CONFERENCE ONLINE (2020) is a wry look at that historical event by the theatre troupe Seinendan:  history seen through videoconferencing with women as Stalin and Roosevelt. Athina Rachel Tsangari's 24 FRAMES PER CENTURY (2013), Mati Diop's short film ATLANTIQUES (2009), her first short film and a precursor to the feature ATLANTICS, which is streaming at the moment, and the multi-director BRIDGES OF SARAJEVO (2014) were also highlights of a very stimulating week.

 

Mati Diop

Other festivals, some partly in cinemas and online, some completely virtual, provided some fine ways to see new films contrasted with curated older ones. The Far East Film Festival in Udine presented early chances to see Derek Tsang's BETTER DAYS (2019) with its school bullying theme, Layla Zhuqing Ji's VICTIM(S) (2020), a Malaysian Chinese noir thriller and Thop Nazareno's EDWARD (2019), which engages as we watch a quickly maturing adolescent caring for his father in a public hospital.  Sadly, some promising titles were geo-blocked and haven't reappeared. 

 

As another example of extended and generous cinephilia, part of the annual Locarno Film Festival could be streamed in August. Again we could see significant older and some newer films. Top of my list was another opportunity to see Garin Nugroho's magnificent MEMORIES OF MY BODY, first on view in 2018-19, a rich look at a very personal journey and a cinema counterpoint to Nugroho's second live performance event in Melbourne: THE PLANET - A LAMENT,  part of Asia TOPA just days ahead of the first Covid-19 restrictions being introduced in March. 

Garin Nugroho

 I was also pleased to see again Yeo Joon Han's vivacious 2008 musical SELL OUT! while Mouly Surya's WHAT THEY DON'T TALK ABOUT WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT LOVE reappeared after some festival screenings back in 2013.  It was timely to be reacquainted with Riri Riza's ATAMBUA 39 DEGREES CELSIUS from 2012. Several of Riza's other films are on Netflix at the moment. However, APPARITION (2012) was new to me, a potent tale of an order of Catholic nuns believing they would be undisturbed by the rigours of the new Marcos regime. The film's credits show the director as Vincent Sandoval, a fascinating filmmaker whose recent impressive new LINGUA FRANCA, part of the online Melbourne Queer Film Festival Interrupted is signed by Isabel Sandoval.  I was also impressed by new shorter works streamed from Locarno such as Hirai Atsushi's RETURN TO TOYAMA (the final image at bottom of this post), Viet Vu's AN ACT OF AFFECTION, Pham Ngoc Lan's THE UNSEEN RIVER and Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke's AININSRI DAENG which takes a wry look at Thai cinema traditions and gender roles.  Locarno also provided online, though geo-blocked locally, films by Pasolini, Tanner, Rossellini, Duras, Yang, Akerman and many more. 

 

Closer to home, the Melbourne International Film Festival decided many months before opening night that this year's event would be completely virtual and available across Australia. In retrospect, this was a sensible decision rather than to find, as some other international festivals experienced, some films had to be dropped as producers or sales agents wouldn't give permission to show their work once festivals moved from cinemas to home screens. MIFF presented about a quarter of its usual number of features. However, of the three dozen films I watched, almost all were of a most pleasing high standard, sometimes conveniently grouped in booking bundles, making online purchase easier. Standouts were Catarina Vasconcelos' METAMORPHOSIS OF BIRDS with its beautifully textured 16mm colour images revealing a woman's relationship to the father who was almost nearly absent from his children, Jayro Bustamante's eerie third feature LA LLORONA, mixing ghost film horror with the exposure of rightwing political atrocities, and Valentyn Vasyanovych's ATLANTIS (one film that really needs a larger screen for our eyes to wander a very wide landscape). Three other highlights shared the filmmakers very personal experience: Myriam Verreault's KUESSIPAN, Faraz Shariat's NO HARD FEELINGS and Ulrike Ottinger's PARIS CALLIGRAMMES.  

 

Catarina Vasconcelos

This year Venice Film Festival also shared an online selection with some fine premieres such as Pedro Collantes' ART OF RETURN, Uberto Pasolini's NOWHERE SPECIAL, Ahma

Bahrami's THE WASTELAND, Adilkhan Yerzhanov's YELLOW CAT, while Shahram Mokri's CARELESS CRIME is his third feature after making an impact a few years ago with the one-take noir FISH AND CAT.  The new film experimentally looks at the awful event of nearly fifty years ago when a group of men decided to lock patrons in a cinema and set fire to the building during a screening of Masud  Kimiai's THE DEER.  Not long after Venice, a kind university streaming programme gave us the chance to see THE DEER in context with Ehsan Khoshbakht's FILMFARSI, an authoritative look at aspects of Iranian pre-revolutionary cinema. It's been interesting to see some of these films' journeys through later festivals.

 

Khoshbakht is also a curator of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. After nine successive editions, I had decided to take a break from another trip at Bologna's usual festival time. Of course the travel didn't happen.  Though postponed for two months, Bologna's legendary festival went ahead with indoor social distancing and more cinema screens to accommodate audiences.  The regular massive catalogue was produced and arrived with incredible speed to be consulted by those who opted for a certain payment level of the much reduced virtual event encompassing restored features and a couple of live presentations each day.  

 

Maureen O'Sullivan, Henry Fonda, Let us Live

Excellent copies of familiar Henry Fonda films were one focus of the programme: John Ford's THE GRAPES OF WRATH and YOUNG MR. LINCOLN looking specially fine. Bologna also gave us a rare chance to see John Brahm's LET US LIVE, something of a forerunner of Hitchcock's THE WRONG MAN. One of the most impressive inclusions was the restoration of another Iranian film, THE CHESS GAME OF THE WIND (1976) by Mohammad Reza Aslani, seen in a visually sumptuous restoration from recently rediscovered picture and sound elements which many thought lost for decades.  Since Bologna, the film has blazed a trail through international festivals and smaller Iranian events.  

 

Chess in the Wind

Meanwhile there was a continuous and often overlapping parade of other online festivals plus screenings from national events like the local Korean (sadly abandoned before the end) and Japanese film festivals.  The Taiwan Film Festival in Australia streamed some fine titles midyear while Taiwanese dialect films of half a century ago could be found from some specialist university and festival sites with a series of Taiwanese noir films streaming with discussions elsewhere on line as well. It's commendable that a selection of the unique Taiwanese dialect features of half a century ago has been restored and issued on disc with English subtitles.  However, its purchase from outside Taiwan seems complicated if payment is not by Taiwanese credit card.

 

One boutique festival designed for cinephiles was The Calvert Journal: 7 Days of New East Cinema online. I was specially impressed by George Itzhak's short film from Uzbekistan, WAITING FOR THE SEA, which asks the question if an electronic music festival can be powerful enough to draw attention to the disaster that caused the Aral Sea to dry up. Damjan Kozole's HALF-SISTER is a serious and sometimes humorous look at a divided family in the Balkans while Bulgarian filmmaker Hristiana Raykova's THE PIT is a 2019 documentary set around a communal mineral pool on the Black Sea, a popular meeting place for locals but its free access is threatened by developers. 

Mark Rappaport

 As a bright contrast to much of the year's viewing, the Munich Filmmuseum can't be thanked enough for streaming, a few at a time, a large number of the features and shorter essay works by Mark Rappaport, probably best known for his feature ROCK HUDSON'S HOME MOVIES (1992). It was a refreshing delight to explore the imagination in Rappaport's I, DALIO, THE VANITY TABLE OF DOUGLAS SIRK, JOHN GARFIELD and L'ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À DACHAU among many more. These demonstrated a particularly devoted passion for the history of cinema together with an extraordinary memory for detail and nuance. For several weeks, this was a glorious tribute to our love of and inspiration from the movies. 

 

Several contributors to this year's Cinephilia series have commented on Pordenone's Le Giornate del CInema Muto, the long-running silent film festival held in the beautiful Friuli district in North-East Italy around early October.  Because of clashing festivals and mostly because of other travel arrangements, I've managed to attend this event only once, back in 2017, when the timing was perfect between ending a trip through the Balkans and starting some real relaxation around Lake Maggiore. This year's festival was mostly a virtual event but one developed in the most inviting way by cinephiles as an online substitute for actually being in the city. Each day festival director Jay Weissberg introduced the programme from a different attractive part of town: reminders of the visual beauty of the place for those unable to be there this year and acting as a potent lure for newcomers. Eleven film sessions were presented over eight days, seemingly a light load compared to other weeklong events but when factoring in many hours of zoom-like discussion sessions each day,  it was quite an immersive time. The explanatory Giornate video sessions included regular daily discussions on the presentation of music for and new books about silent film plus a panel of critics and archivists talking about each film programmed. 

 

Festivals such as those in Pordenone, Bologna, Locarno etc. offering streaming options this year have broadened their audiences, some of whom could never be there in person (distance, timing) and others who may not have been as encouraged as this year when the excitement of the programmes was brought into their homes. 

 

Abwege

In this year of unusually restricted movement, it was an inspired idea to begin Pordenone's week with a programme called "The Urge to Travel", a collection of short actuality reels showing New York, Kraców, Bruges, Trieste and Ostend among other locations that nearly a century ago were viewed keenly by armchair travellers in cinemas around the world. Other contributors have discussed their favourite Pordenone features this year. My own highlights were GUO FENG (NATIONAL CUSTOMS), a late Chinese film from 1935 co-directed by Luo Mingyou and Zhu Shilin co-starring the legendary and tragic Ruan Lingyu (in her final screen appearance) with the sprightly Li Lili best known for her films directed by Sun Yu.  Pabst's ABWEGE from 1928 with Brigitte Helm glowed in a luminous restored copy.  A lively roster of musicians for silent films can be heard in both Bologna and Pordenone each year.  There's a rich range of performance styles and informed choices of interpretation.  Of all of these, the accompaniment which impressed me the most this year was the one for ABWEGE by Mauro Colombis who should be familiar to those in Sydney who have been fortunate to hear his work there. Colombis' piano accompaniment of great subtlety and introspection was ideal for a film of many contrasting moods and striking visuals, deftly creating an atmosphere that never called attention to itself.  Let's hope silent film enthusiasts in Melbourne and other cities can hear his work soon.

 

Guo Feng

Blu-ray releases of special interest. 

 

WIth so much streaming to many sizes of home screens, let's not overlook some outstanding releases on Blu-ray and DVD.  One of the casualties of Covid-19 in the second-half of the international film festival year, KRABI 2562 premiered at Locarno in 2019 but its normal festival trail was interrupted by the pandemic.  It's the first joint feature by two directors with significant followings: Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong.  Just released is a Blu-ray disc from Anti-Worlds in the U.K. which adds a commentary by the directors to a very fine copy of the feature film. The disc is packed with extras from an experimental perpetual loop of a sequence taken from the film, GHOST SONATA which is Ben Rivers' diary film about KRABI 2562, THE AMBASSADORS - the directors' first collaboration, some short films by Anocha Suwichakornpong along with several contributions by the sound designer. 

Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong

Another other essential purchase reflects cinephilia at a peak with Criterion's Blu-ray and DVD third box set in their Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project series. The six titles will be familiar to those who have followed one of the recurring strands at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. For most of the films, it's their first first release on disc at least with English subtitles. Solás' LUCIA, Ismail's AFTER THE CURFEW, Babenco's PIXOTE, Oro's DOS MONJES, Hondo's SOLEIL Ô and Beyzaie's DOWNPOUR.  A wide international selection from filmmakers whose other works we should be able to see more easily. The usual Criterion extras are bountiful including a booklet and many disc supplements.

 

Much has been written about Bong Joon-ho's reworking of two of his colour films into monochrome versions: MOTHER and PARASITE.  Ash Mayfair's THE THIRD WIFE (2018) enjoyed success at international festivals and some commercial release including in Australia following its screening at the Sydney Film Festival. In its original colour version, the film is a sumptuous portrait of strict traditions in 19th century rural Vietnam. The director decided to rework her film into the monochrome BETWEEN SHADOW AND SOUL, in the process eliminating the original soundtrack including the dialogue, replacing them with a completely new atmospheric score by the same composer An Ton That and occasional English subtitles. As only a little of the dialogue is translated, various interpretations may develop in some scenes adding another layer to the experience of the original film. The film is also available for streaming in some territories. 

 

Ash Mayfair on DVD

Moving image celebrations in gallery spaces

 

For a month from early August, the Tate Modern gallery in London presented the first major Steve McQueen exhibition for twenty years since he won the Turner Prize in 1999. Over a dozen works contrasted his sculpture, photography and film. Let's hope this will travel widely as a reminder that McQueen is such an important visual creator. His most recent SMALL AXE cycle has been hailed for its five narratives which powerfully investigate aspects of the sociopolitical situation in the U.K. in the latter part of the 20th Century. The urgency of their heartfelt stories extends beyond the shores of Britain.  McQueen's narrative films have such strong scripts that what is not discussed so much is the cinephile aspect of the impressive visual appearance of his work extending beyond his installations. SMALL AXE develops five unique and separate films in a far more imaginative way than many a usual longform episodic series.  Each work is presented in a different aspect ratio (although reports suggest the small screen reality might reduce this to three) and the running times are very different for each film.  Three of the films have music by one of the most striking of today's composers, Mica Levi whose scores for MONOS, JACKIE and UNDER THE SKIN have added much to the success of these works. 

 

Steve McQueen

Cinephilia much closer to home for me, the Art Gallery of Ballarat, west of Melbourne, is presenting MONTAGES: The Full Cut 1999-2015: Tracey Moffatt and Gary Hillberg, running until March 14, 2021. This exhibition presents together for the first time the eight montage films by artist Moffatt and her collaborator Hillberg, spanning sixteen years of their working together. The gallery announces "The exhibition is an ode to cinema and its form, offering unprecedented insight into the stereotypes that populate our collective cultural imagination". The films include LIP (1999), ARTIST (2000), REVOLUTION (2008) and the most recent THE ART (2015).

 

Tracey Moffatt

A long awaited in-depth volume in English on a great European filmmaker. 

 

The Films of Douglas Sirk: Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions.  Tom Ryan's enquiries into the work of Douglas Sirk have extended through the course of the many years of his exploration of writings about cinema history, styles and authorship. I still have the passionate and enthusiastic correspondence from the time of his first arrival in the UK in the early 1970s to study with Robin Wood. His excitement at  discovering the wonders of the films of Douglas Sirk, which his research could access through archives in London, are still very palpable.  Through his many longer articles and shorter weekly film reviews, the author has engaged using his elegant prose to exquisitely reveal elements which excite him in the cinema.  This is highlighted in this unique volume in English to examine every film directed by Sirk in Europe and the U.S.A.  Every film is discussed in detail with chapters devoted to contextualised groupings of the American films. When the writer first began his study of Sirk's work, only a few films were available generally in cinemas, 16mm prints or shown on television before the age of video recordings. Today's readers should celebrate the fact that the majority of Sirk's most pivotal films are now easy to access in various video formats and with deeper investigation all of his films can be seen one way or another. 

Streaming on Netflix - John Baxter explores the mind of Walter Tevis and the world of chess obsessives in THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT (Scott Frank, USA, 2020)

Anya Taylor-Joy

       Walter Tevis admitted that the primary characters in his novels – the pool player of The Hustler and The Color of Money; the alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth;  the chess virtuoso ofThe Queen’s Gambit - all drew their inspiration from his need for alcohol  Whatever the stage on which the drama played out, the real subject was that incurable urge to drink.

       Such hungers are too far past reason to be shared. Sometimes, however, his obsessives are befriended by another who suffers from a lesser addiction, and can understand their plight. “Fast Eddie” Felson has his moral and professional nemesis, “Minnesota Fats”, and, in The Color of Money, a greedy protege, Vincent. Blinded Thomas Newton endures his stranding on earth by sharing the enthusiasm of his nurse Mary-Lou for gin. Hence Alma Wheatley, tippling piano-playing adoptive mother of chess prodigy Beth Harmon in The Queen’s Gambit. 

Marielle Heller, Anya Taylor-Joy

       Anya Taylor-Joy as Beth has the limelight in this Netflix seven-parter but, as Alma, Marielle Heller’s is the greater achievement. For most of the story, her halting progress towards friendship with Beth drives the narrative. Beth’s fearsome lack of people skills keeps her at a distance until the older woman learns that chess can mean money. Her self-interest furnishes a motive Beth can understand. After that, their relationship blossoms. 

       Once they politely negotiate a division of profits, Alma fakes reasons for Beth to stay out of school and the two jet off to Las Vegas or Mexico City, where chess by day funds booze and bad behaviour at night. Sadly they attain the sense of family each desires only when both are too damaged to enjoy it. Alma dies alone and Beth is left to the cold embrace of her first love, chess.

       Director/co-writer Scott Frank (with Frank Scott, scenarist of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now) is sufficiently experienced to know certain battles can’t be won. Chess is more important to Beth than sex, so he treats perfunctorily her few sexual relationships. The torch she carries for the handsome D.L.Townes (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) fizzles out when she discovers he’s gay (if that is indeed what she doesdiscover, since the key scene expires in a puzzling exchange of embarrassed looks.) Another lover is spurned as too adoring (“It’s because of you that I had my teeth done!”, he says desperately)  and it’s only with Benny Watts (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), a swaggering fellow champion, that she achieves orgasm. Rolling towards the camera afterwards, she murmurs thoughtfully “So that’s what it’s supposed to feel like” and, curiosity satisfied, falls asleep. 

Thomas Brodie Sangster, AnyaTaylor-Joy

       In 1991, Frank wrote the screenplay for Little Man Tate (1991),about the problems of raising a gifted child. He may have learned then to avoid those scenes where a parent is warned that a superior and precocious mind may drive itself into insanity. 

       Steven Zaillian tried anyway in Searching for Bobby Fischer(1993), casting Ben Kingsley as real-life authority Bruce Pandolfini precisely so that he could show Joe Mantegna what awaited his seven-year-old son should he dedicate his life to the game. The dark, shabby rooms they tour and the obsessives that prowl them may be poor advertisements for a life in chess, but such demonstrations miss the point. One might as well insist that every chess set bear a futile health warning. As the alcoholic is never cured but only “recovering,” gifted players can no more deny their gift than change the colour of their skin. (Pandolfini acted as advisor on The Queen’s Gambit but probably didn’t like it any more than he did Zaillian’s film.) 

        Queen’s Gambit was Tevis’s least successful novel. The 1983 edition was remaindered, and is a rarity these days. Tevis died the following year, aged only 56. The Netflix series has restored him, and chess, to the headlines, but while sales of paraphernalia are apparently booming, it is Anya Taylor-Joy who will emerge the winner. And she is, God knows, hypnotic, with a frowning stare that can, in a breath, go from chilling the blood to bringing sweat to the brow. Roll on her Hedda Gabler,Regina Giddens, Lady Macbeth. 

       But she is as alien to chess as is Thomas Newton to our world in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Chess will always belong in dark, curtained rooms and in public parks where hustlers at battered cement tables jeer one another and clash for cash. Television is television, however, so the series ends with Beth, clad in radiant white, receiving the adoration of her admirers in a Russian park, having become a deity, the embodiment of the Queen itself (picture below). 

"Let's play"

       It may be good television but hers is not a fate, judging from the unhappy lives of other grand masters, to which any of them aspired. Most chose anonymity and seclusion, some oblivion. The film is truest in its final shot, when Beth sits down opposite an anonymous older man and says simply “Let’s play.”

The Current Cinema - Rod Bishop recommends (with one reservation) CROCK OF GOLD: A Few Rounds With Shane MacGowan (Julien Temple, UK, 2020)

Shane McGowan, who together with his band The Pogues, remapped the landscape for Irish music has always stayed one step ahead of Keith Richards as the most wasted figure in contemporary music.

Let’s take one performance indicator in a matrix of musical longevity – teeth. 

Even when the rest of him looked pretty crook, Keith’s teeth have always been sound. Shane MacGowan’s, on the other hand, are one of the wonders of our time. 

Although not highlighted in this Julien Temple profile of MacGowan, they remain a mesmorising facial feature.

We first see them on a five-year-old Shane when his parents introduce him to alcohol; then there’s the crooked teenager teeth in need of a brace; followed by the scary yellowed and blackened fangs in The Pogues during their glory years.

So little does Temple make of MacGowan’s teeth, I needed to consult Wikipedia to find out what happened to them. Apparently, they were all gone by 2008, before a nine-hour dental procedure in 2015 gifted him a new set of dental implants. 

There’s not much evidence on YouTube that MacGowan had any teeth at all during those intervening seven years and in many clips, he is clearly toothless. It’s a miracle he has made it through alive and it really seems a little unfair his teeth gave up sometime back.

A lifelong IRA supporter, MacGowan was introduced to the Irish rebellion at five-years-old, along with the alcohol. His family home, The Commons in Tipperary, was an IRA safe-house. When he and his friends played ‘Vietnam War’, MacGowen was always a Viet Cong.

Later, in London, his libertarian, musical, Irish patriot parents let him roam at will. Expelled from school for selling drugs; his earlobe was bitten off at a Clash gig; he stacked shelves in grocery stores; worked in construction; and spent time as a rent-boy (“Just hand jobs.”)

His first punk band The Nipple Erectors morphed into The Nips and were regarded as promising enough to open for The Clashand The Jam. As MacGowan’s songwriting became more accomplished he helped to form Pogue Mahone(“Kiss my arse”) and later, he alchemically married punk to traditional Celtic Irish folk music. Throw in lyrics peppered with Irish history, republicanism, nationalism and alcoholic lament and The Pogues were born.

MacGowan has literally lived the lyric “I’m drunk today and I’m seldom sober” from the Irish classic Carrickfergus (a prototype Pogues song if ever there was one). His work sits comfortably alongside that song as well as the Irish alcoholic poets and writers such as Brendan Behan and the hard-drinking culture of the lads from The Dubliners. 

 

Some of MacGowan’s lyrics:

 

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne

And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone

Frank Ryan brought you whisky in a brothel in Madrid

And you decked some fucking blackshirt who was cursing all the Yids

At the sickbed of Cuchulainn we’ll kneel and say a prayer

But the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devil’s in the chair

 

-       The Sickbed of Cuchulainn

 

 

May the whores of the Empire lay awake in their beds

And sweat as they count out the sins on their heads

While over in Ireland eight more men lay dead

Kicked down and shot in the back of the head

 

-       Streets of Sorrow

 

I could have been someone

(Well so could anyone

You took my dreams from me

When I first found you)

I kept them with me babe

I put them with my own

Can’t make it all alone

The boys of the NYPD choir

Still singing ‘Galway Bay’

And the bells are ringing out

For Christmas Day

 

Fairy Tale of New York

 

On a rainy night in Soho

The wind was whistling all its charms

I sang you all my sorrows

You told me all your joys

Whatever happened to that old song?

To all those little girls and boys

 

A Rainy Night in Soho

 

So drunk to hell I left the place

Sometimes crawling, sometimes walking

A hungry sound came across the breeze

So I gave the walls a talking

And I heard the sounds of long ago

From the old canal

And the birds were whistling in the trees

Where the wind was gently laughing

 

A Pair of Brown Eyes

I gave my love a late night kiss

I tried to take a late night piss

But the toilet moved so again I missed

 

-       Rain Street

  

Johnny Depp may have staked up much of the production finance for this documentary given his “Johnny Depp presents” opening credit. He joins Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams, MacGowan’s wife Victoria Mary Clarke and musician Bobby Gillespie as interviewers. Depp is easily the worst of them, all infantile sycophantism and attention-seeking.

 

MacGowan, confined to a wheelchair and recovering from a broken pelvis, vapes and drinks on top of god-knows-what prescription drugs thundering around his system. Only with Gerry Adams does he give the appearance of sobriety.

 

Temple has made his career from music videos and his feature length music documentary subjects include Keith Richards, The Clash, Joe Strummer and The Sex Pistols.

 

Here, Temple takes an obvious tack. Make it all as high energy and exhausting as a Pogues concert. It’s not a bad call, but through all the animation clips, historical photographs, film clips, Ralph Steadman illustrations and the crash-cut editing, the two elements you want more of are the same two elements that always made The Pogues so arresting – its creative front man and his music.

 

The Pogues discography contains a few covers including Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town and Eric Bogle’s musical masterpiece about Gallipoli. Written when Shane MacGowan was probably still in short pants, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda was quintessential Pogues material:

 

Eric Bogle

Now when I was a young man, I carried me pack, and I lived the life of a free rover

 

From the Murray’s green basin to the dusty Outback, I waltzed my Matilda all over

 

Then in 1915, my country said son, its time you stopped rambling, there’s work to be done

 

So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun and they marched me away to the war

 

And the band played Waltzing Matilda, as the ship pulled away from the Quay

And amidst all the cheers, the flag-waving and tears, we sailed off for Gallipoli

And how well I remember that terrible day, how our blood stained the sand and the water

And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay, we were butchered like lambs at the slaughter

Johnny Turk he was waiting, he'd primed himself well. He shower'd us with bullets,

And he rained us with shell. And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell

Nearly blew us right back to Australia…

 

…So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed, and they shipped us back home to Australia.

The legless, the armless, the blind, the insane, those proud wounded heroes of Suvla

And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay, I looked at the place where me legs used to be

And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me, to grieve, to mourn, and to pity

 

The band played Waltzing Matilda, as they carried us down the gangway

But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared, then they turned all their faces away…

 

 

WhenThe Pogues version is used in this film, we aren’t shown any footage of Gallipoli or even the First World War. Rather, as a voice-over laments Ireland’s low population we have a montage of Irish immigrants arriving by boat in New York and footage of the ocean liner RMS Andania.

 

The only concession to Eric Bogle’s lyrics coming from a defining Australian cultural experience is a shot of a liner going under the Harbour Bridge and a still photo of the Bridge under construction. The idea seems to be to show Irish immigrants as a working-class diaspora.

 

(Construction on the Harbour Bridge didn’t start till 1923, five years after the end of the First World War and eight years after Gallipoli).

 

The cultural theft of Bogle’s music and lyrics to illustrate something entirely different is what you’d expect from a Pommie filmmaker in the 1950s. 

 

Still, only a few years ago I took an English acquaintance to a NSW country town and watched in amazement as he tried to use English coins to buy a carton of milk.

 

What can you do?

 

Tiocfaidh ár lá!  

 

(Republican IRA graffiti for “Our Day Will Come”)

On French DVD and Streaming on Stan and MUBI - Janice Tong uses holiday time to renew acquaintance with the films of ERIC ROHMER

Inspiration

Editors note: Originally published on Facebook

Le genou de Claire (1970) Claire’s Knee

L'amour l'après-midi (1972) Love in the Afternoon

La femme de l'aviateur (1981) The Aviator's Wife

Le beau marriage (1982) A Good Marriage

Pauline à la plage (1983) Pauline at the Beach

Les nuits de la pleine lune (1984) Full Moon in Paris

Le rayon vert (1986) The Green Ray

L'ami de mon amie (1987) Boyfriends and Girlfriends

 

It seems that every time I return to this thread, I come back with more Éric Rohmer films. The master, I must admit, has a light touch, and provided me with an avenue of escape from the sombre realities of 2020.

 

Of the 8 films listed above the last 6 are from his Comedies and Proverbs series and the first two films continue as the 5th and 6th installations of his Six Moral Tales which are as follows: The Bakery Girl of Monceau, Suzanne's Career, (both short films), then The Collector and My Night at Maud's, (I have reviewed these earlier on), and then the last two in the series - Claire's Knee and Love in the Afternoon. I would say that all of these films could be seen as intimate studies of love – a kind of understated, almost quotidian quietly observed humanism.

Claire's Knee

 

What is so remarkable about Claire’s knee, (as in her actual knee) so as to have a film made about it? Perhaps nothing, but that is precisely the point - that sometimes, something so moves us that we can’t help but be enthralled by it. As people, we almost never connect on a grand scale with each other; (if we do, is all airs and pretence) whether we would like to admit it or not, it is with some of the most trivial or intimate observances, feelings, inklings that connects one person to another. And this 'thing' is always more noteworthy than some showy grand gestures of romance. So, it is precisely from this principle that Claire’s Knee is born - a gorgeous film where love and obsession ebb and flow quietly. The young Béatrice Romand (below with Jean-Claude Brialy) is wonderful as Claire's half sister Laura, who falls for Jérôme, who in turn falls for Claire('s knee). 

 

Claire's Knee

Romand went on to collaborate with Rohmer in many of his later films; and you recognise her talent even here (in her second film); you'll also find a young Fabrice Luchini (with Brialy below) who is all fresh-faced, lanky and blond (he appears again in The Aviator's Wife). 

 

Love in the Afternoon on the other hand is not as delicate in describing love, but explores a consuming, stifling kind of obsession that is addictive when one is on the receiving end. This is what happens to Frédéric, played by Bernard Verley, who is happily married with a child and another on the way; when his ex-lover reappears in his life. They began spending their afternoons together. However, when there is no sex involved, where does this 'affair' leave you? Is an affair of the mind not equally as dangerous as a sexual affair? My favourite scene is the dream sequence where all the women from Rohmer’s other Moral Tales appear to Frédéric as a kind of chorus. 

 

Love in the Afternoon

For his Comedies and Proverb films, there are two common themes that run throughout his close observations of the female psyche - the fragility of relationships and a belief in chance encounters. Other directors, such as Wong Kar-wai also explored these themes (think Fallen Angels, Ashes of Time  and Chungking Express). 

 

The Aviator's Wife

The Aviator's Wife  is the first in the series. I adored this film with its many meanderings and its open-ended ending. Philippe Marlaud played the lead role of our unnamed protagonist, a postal services worker, who sees a man, (Christian, an airline pilot) coming out of his girlfriend's (played by the beautiful Marie Rivière) apartment one morning, and suspecting the worst, he follows him onto a bus, (and then into a park) where by chance, he meets a charming young 15 year old girl Lucie played by the wonderful Anne-Laure Meury (later appearing with cropped hair in Boyfriends and Girlfriends), who has decided to skip school to go to the park for inspiration. The theme of transience and transition are embodied by its characters who are either displaced from where they were meant to be, or they assist in the idea of the traversal of messages e.g. notes gets left, letters are posted, messages missed being passed on. Together, the pair wander around Paris by following Christian and the blonde woman through the streets of Paris, just like Sophie Calle in one of her games. I was sad to learn that Marlaud died in 1981 only 6 months after this film was released from an accident whilst camping. He was only 22. I would like to pay him tribute here. 

The Aviator's Wife

 

Arielle Dombasle is lovely in both Pauline at the Beach and A Good Marriage, she is the ‘wiser’ of the two women in both instances; whilst the young Pascal Greggory (second below), a broodingly handsome jilted lover of hers, steals the scene in Pauline at the Beach. Pauline played by Amanda Langlet (below) - short-haired tanned by the European Summer - is reminiscent of Haydée Politoff in Rohmer’s earlier film La Collectioneuse. It is the Summer holidays and boys and girls meet and have dalliances - how wonderful it is to be young! 

 

Pauline at the Beach

Béatrice Romand is ‘unlucky’ in love, or so she self-professes in A Good Marriage; whilst a young André Dussollier doesn’t do much to proof her theory wrong (both below).

 

A Good Marriage

In Full Moon in Paris, we get a glimpse of the talented Pascale Ogier (Bulle Ogier’s daughter) who was only 25 when she made this film, but passed away shortly before her 26th birthday. For anyone who was a teen in the 80s you would remember the fashion, music, dance moves and hair styles (a preference for curly hair with a bow tied at the top) that Louise (Pascale's character) embodied. She was an 80’s ‘free spirit’; self-assured and always seeking a good time; she took up an apartment in Paris as her a pied à terre, before spending more and more time away from the out-of-town apartment she shares with her partner. She flitted from one party to the next, accompanied by a young Fabrice Luchini before falling for a Billy Idol lookalike saxophonist played by Christian Vadim (you guessed it, Catherine Deneuve and Roger Vadim’s son).

 

Pascale Ogier, Christian Vadim, Full Moon in Paris

Whereas in Boyfriends and Girlfriends, Blanche is more unsure of herself and is often tongue-tied when meeting a new boy; unlike her new friend, Lea. Ennui sets in when it’s the Summer vacations, unless, of course, by chance you meet your girlfriend’s boyfriend. 

Le rayon vert

 

Saving the best till last; Le rayon vert is perhaps my favourite of Rohmer’s Comedies and Proverbs series of films. The proverb that Rohmer had selected for this film is this: “Ah! Que le temps vienne | Où les cœurs s’éprennent” from Rimbaud’s Song of the Highest Tower, which simply means “Ah, may the time comes when our hearts catch on fire.” However, the film borrows its name from a Jules Verne novel (graphic at the top), which describes a rare phenomenon where a brilliant flash of green can sometimes be seen when the setting sun hits the water in the horizon. This story is told anecdotally by a man who had just read the book to his companions at a beach. Delphine, visiting on her own overheard his intriguing comments, stayed to listen. 

Marie Rivière’s Delphine is gloriously sensitive and vulnerable; again ennui, solitude and Summer do not mix very well. Can Delphine find happiness? One can only wish that for her. 

 

Verne’s story deems that anyone who sees this green ray will have a clarity of vision, into other’s feelings as well as your own. I see the phenomenon as a reversal to the lament for the end of Summer, and instead, hints at the burning in one’s own heart that matches burning rays of the sun. This, too, is a rare phenomenon.

 

Treat yourself to the superb Éric Rohmer boxset (below) from Potemkine Films in Paris  (I got this for Christmas!). Or, a couple of the Australian streaming service are also showcasing Rohmer’s films.

 

You can catch The Aviator’s Wife, Love in the Afternoon, Pauline on the Beach, A Good Marriage and Full Moon in Paris on #stan and all 6 of his films from the Comedies and Proverbs series are available on #mubi

 

Vale Jean-Pierre Coursodon - Adrian Martin and David Hare remember the life, contribution and influence of the major French film critic

Desire is All: Vale Jean-Pierre Coursodon

 

By Adrian Martin

 

At the very dawn of 2021, the world of film criticism has lost another of its greats, and I have lost another friend. 

 

To me, Jean-Pierre Coursodon (born 1935) was a giant; his monumental 50 ans de cinéma américain (most recent update 1995) co-written with Bertrand Tavernier is one of the two reference books closest to my writing desk at all times. Jean-Pierre was (alongside Jean-Luc Godard and Luc Moullet) one of the last survivors of those French cinephiles who began their writing life in the 1950s (1957, in his case); he could tell great tales of the various groups & magazines (Cahiers du cinéma, Positif, the surrealists – “Ado Kyrou was hysterically homophobic” – the auteurists, etc), but he abhorred all chapels, sects and cults, flitting in and out of them as he wished, remaining fiercely independent. (I recall his rage at the way his friend Tavernier was considered a pariah in certain ‘hip’ circles of French film culture until Serge Daney’s Trafic magazine happened to embrace one of his films!)

 

As far as I know, Jean-Pierre spent most or all of his life as a freelancer (he lived in the USA from 1965); his probably very modest lifestyle was supported by his work as an English-to-French translator, and he was among the best. Among his other book publications there’s a superb studio-history of Warner Bros in French, and the English-language 2-volume American Directors that he edited and wrote a good deal of (the credited co-editor, as Jean-Pierre would eagerly divulge, did less than his share of the work). Some of today’s cinephiles know him mainly through his involvement with the feisty, long-defunct online discussion group “A Film By” (where he often expressed his impatience with emigrants to English-speaking countries who had not mastered the language as well as he!). 

 

In my case, his major mid 1970s Film Comment essay on Jerry Lewis (highly critical of the ‘French cult’ around Lewis), splendidly titled “No Laughing Matter?”, was among the very first serious pieces I read and re-read as a cinephile teenager; and virtually on my first day at Teachers College at age 17, Tom Ryan handed us his piece translated in a 1968 Melbourne Film Bulletindefining “The Gag” in cinema – a mere snippet from Jean-Pierre’s lifelong appreciation of film comedy (Buster Keaton, especially). With Brad Stevens and Dan Sallitt, Jean-Pierre participated in an extraordinary email-round-table on Keaton masterminded by Craig Keller for a DVD release in 2006 (https://keatonroundtable.wordpress.com/).

 

It wasn’t much longer after that time in 2006 that I started hearing less from Jean-Pierre, and then not at all; possibly his last published piece is an essay on Arthur Penn in a Positif issue of 2011. Alzheimer’s took him away from us in this past decade. I have heard rumours of an updated new edition of 50 ans in the pipeline; I don’t know how much Jean-Pierre was able to be involved in it. But I well recall how pleased he was when, back in the days of Rouge magazine, I told him how much I admired his text in Cinéma 84 on Hitchcock’s Rope, “Desire Roped In” – which he promptly translated and rewrote for me to publish (http://www.rouge.com.au/4/rope.html). He also translated for me his piece on Altman’s Tanner on Tanner (2004) in 2008 (http://www.rouge.com.au/12/tanner.html) – Altman was someone he remained faithful to, right to the end of that director’s career. 

 

In general, Jean-Pierre is someone who could be blunt while remaining entirely civil. When I sent him my very positive review of Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher (2001), he responded: “Thank you for the piece. Now I know why I hate the film so much”. One thing on which we saw 100% eye-to-eye was a point he regularly fulminated about on “A Film By”: he couldn’t stand the Cahiers line (consistent from the ‘50s to the 2010s) that preached ‘a director must love their characters, not hate them or act superior to them’ – thus downgrading many forms of narrative cinema, including the grotesque, cartoonish, caricatural, etc (J-P always defended the Coens on this plane, for instance). He often exclaimed (I am paraphrasing): “But these are not people you met on the street, they are characters on screen! Directors can take any attitude they like toward them!” Likewise, his sense of mise en scène as, first and foremost, a matter of spectacle wielded a big influence on my own work. 

 

Jean-Pierre could be wary of ‘theories’ – to him, they often came with a sect-like, exclusionary, irrational faith in their own absolute truth – but he knew well their content, and his own 1976 essay “A Ritual of Frustration: Notes on the Star as Merchandise” (published in Cinéma d’aujord’hui) is a crucial theoretical intervention. It also provides a glimpse into his own experiences with sadomasochism, a topic he (like Noël Burch) was happy to discuss with anybody sincerely interested. Here is a small passage from that piece:

 

[Bazin did not realise] the extent to which frustration is a condition of the star system, nor how much it tends toward a situation of generalised masochism. Indeed, the supreme (and no doubt most crucial) masochistic pleasure is the ability (or action) of refusing orgasm … That’s what happens at the very heart of this enigmatic ‘deviance’: there is profound wisdom and logic in this awareness that desire is all, added to the drive to preserve it against the fulfilment that dissipates it. On this level, all classical cinema is masochistic; or, to be more precise (because in this area we are always mired in ambiguity), this cinema imposes sadistically on the spectator – through the treatment of the star, the character, the storyline – an expectation that we know will never reach its conclusion, and that we enjoy precisely for that reason.

 

Essentially, and throughout all changes in intellectual fashion, Jean-Pierre remained a superb critic: fixed on the details of a film or a comparative group of films, drawing on the most pertinent factors of social and historical context, bringing out the special tone, mood and inflection of a director’s style or treatment of material. I will miss him, and his distinct critical voice. I will also miss his wisdom: in an exchange where Brad Stevens asserted that “to die without illusions” would be the supreme achievement of a human life, Jean-Pierre responded that, when it’s his turn to shuffle off the mortal coil, what he wants most of all, at that moment, is to retain his illusions! Not a bad way to go. R.I.P., J-P.

 

© Adrian Martin, 2 January 2021 

David Hare writes:

Brad Stevens has just reported the recent death of Jean-Pierre Coursodon. 

The first punch back from reality for the new year. I tenderly keep a first edition of the first version of "Cinquante Ans du Cinéma Américain" in my major major film writers bookcase. As well as the Masters of Cinema round table on Keaton which added immeasurably to their boxset of Keaton shorts. 

Jean-Pierre mostly wrote for Positif, not being of comparably doctrinaire correctness for Cahiers. Despite which his position was infinitely more flexible than anyone else writing for the former journal. As an example, he loved I Love Melvin far more than Fritz Lang’s last two American films, and made no bones about finding so much more pleasure in Don Weis’ mise-en-scene than he did from Lang’s. 

 

I learnt an awful lot from him, as I also did from Tag Gallagher. He was a regular face at a_film_by and davekehr’s old blog, which is where we “met”. He was a friend and a great encouragement to me there and still “what would Coursodon think” is always on my mind when I’m really wrestling with something. 

Here is a Facebook sample of Coursodon and Tavernier’s writing on Yolanda and the Thief.

“Car ce sont, finalement, les collaborations de Minnelli avec Astaire qui domine son oeuvre dans la domain de musical. Yolanda occupe une place unique dans l’histoire de genre par la trés grande complexité de son atmosphère (elle déroula complètement public et critique à l’epoque) où s’équilibrent miraculeusement comique et mélancolie, innocence et cynicisme, inquiétude et joie de vivre. Ce conte naïf (une riche orpheline qui sort du couvent prend un escroc pour son ange gardien) se nourrit en fait de craintes, d’ambiguités, de tensions que l’on retrouvera modulées à travers toute l’oeuvre ultérieur de Minnelli. La tentation de rêve, l’hésitation entre le monde du fantasme et celui de la réalité trouvent ici leur première expression dans un film de Minnelli. Le ballet rêvé non seulement transpose choréographiquement les données de l’anecdote, en concrétise, sous formes d’images et de métaphores, tous les thèmes sous-jacent.”

 

My translation:

 

In the end it’s the collaborations Minnelli made with Astaire that dominate his work in the musical genre. Yolanda holds a unique place in the history of musicals for the extraordinary complexity of its atmosphere.(It was panned totally by the public and the critics at the time of its release.) Here is a miraculous balance between comedy and melancholy, innocence and cynicism, disturbance and joy. This simple, naive tale (a rich orphan girl leaving the convent and adopting a crook as her guardian angel) enriches itself with fears, ambiguities and tensions which one finds all through the textures of Minnelli’s work. The temptation of the dream, this hesitation between the fantasy world and what is found to be “Reality” finds its first clear expression here in MInnelli’s work. The dream ballet (“Marry Me”) not only transposes choreographically the points of the narrative, in concrete forms, but with images as metaphors, and the subtexts are subservient to them.

 

Who else for so long would sing the praises of all these glories: Minnelli's crane, Lourié's 5/4 choreography, the Technicolor, Conrad Salinger's swooning celli and ringing brass. Click on the link below.

 

Vale Jean-Pierre.

Take a look