Some Came Running

The first time I saw Carl Theodor Dreyer's "Vampyr"...

The old woman calls the shadow revels to an end...; Vampyr

...was on November 4, 1980. Election day of that year. I had come into Manhattan from New Jersey to spend some time with a pretty-much-former girlfriend (hope, although for what exactly I couldn't say, tending to spring eternal back then), on just what pretext I can't remember. She made some joke about keeping me out until after the polls closed—she was an avowed Reaganite and wanted some insurance for Jersey, or something.

Or maybe hanging out with the former girlfriend was a sidelight, and I had actually come into town to see Godard's Sauve qui peut, which was playing up at the Lincoln Plaza, and I enlisted the former girlfriend (I guess that about now I ought to dignify her with a name—Debra, it was) to come along on account as she was still pretty much the only person I knew in New York (aside from the Brooklyn Kennys) and she was interested in Godard in the way that many non-film/film studies majors at NYU were interested in Godard at the time, that is, kinda/sorta. I don't know.

The point is we wound up seeing three films that day. First, the Godard, which at the time, coming after such a long period of silence (his last picture to get any kind of meaningful exposure in the States had been Tout va bien in '72; of course he had been working, making video and film, the whole time of his putative exile from "commercial" cinema, but we just weren't seeing the work) was beautiful and strange; Godard the pop artist and agitator was gone, replaced by an elegiac post-classicist. I don't think that's how I actually put it to Debra as we walked down Eighth Avenue and into Times Square.

Monday Morning Foreign-Region DVD Report: "The Devil, Probably"

For its first hour or so, The Devil, Probably, Robert Bresson's 1977 film, seems like the most difficult of the inimitable master's works, for the most banal of reasons: that is, the viewer really just wants to give its putative protagonist a sharp smack in the chops.

The film focuses on a group of Parisian young adults who are, quite reasonably, at furious and impotent odds with The World As It Is Today*. It's almost ten years since '68, and as they look about them, things are worse than ever**. They hang out in cathedrals, bookstores, offices, lecture halls; they screen film footage of the destruction of various environments, the clubbing of baby seals, the victims of mercury poisoning in Japan. "These pictures can't be shown too often," one character flatly intones while watching some particularly horrific material.

The putatively charismatic not-quite-ringleader of this group, long-haired genius Charles (Antoine Monnier), is, for a time, the most prickly of Bresson's heroes/heroines. The occasional mulishness of Mouchette in the eponymous film grated on, and eventually shamed, the viewer. The passivity of Au hasard, Balthazar's Marie shocked, and eventually shamed, the viewer. In Devil, when Charles, after a mocking dialogue with earnest writer Michel (whose girlfriend he's pretty much absconded with), makes for another young woman's sports car, telling Michel his acquaintance with her is "comme ci, comme ca," the viewer's blood is, I believe, meant to boil.

You stand accused of being Orson Welles

The talk here of The Dark Knight has, in comments, led to talk of the next really big superhero movie/graphic novel adaptation, Zack Snyder's Watchmen, based on the book by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons. Commenter Dan Coyle links to an Entertainment Weekly interview with Moore, in which his complete lack of interest in seeing what Snyder does to his work, and in having pretty much anything to do with Hollywood, is much-discussed. The gentlemanly Moore doesn't come off in the least bit churlish, sounding eminently reasonable and rather resourceful in having gotten to a place in his career where he need not deal with corporate interference of any kind, and good for him.

I was taken a little aback by an assertion in the lede of the piece (which is by my old Premiere colleague Nisha Gopalan, who must have been thrilled to do it; she's a graphic-novel adept from way back): "It's no surprise that Moore has been accused of being comics' Orson Welles — exceedingly talented, if profoundly prickly — and perhaps in certain incidents he's earned that description."

I have always thought that to be compared to Welles would be a major compliment. But what does it even mean to "accuse" someone of being like Welles? The facts on the ground, as opposed to the fabrications and suggestions of Kael's "Raising Kane," indicate that, whatever his quirks or weaknesses, Welles was more sinned against than sinning. "Profoundly prickly?" Are they talking about those radio ad outtakes where he criticizes the grammar of the copy? Again, whatever Welles' faults, he wasn't known for being particularly prima-donnaish on his own sets.

Left with no sensible explanation, one must conclude that the comparison speaks to a particular attitude, a determined, faux-reluctant resentment of the artist who won't play ball and needs a little chastisement. By invoking another putative maverick known for his tangles with the system, and implying that the tangles were the fault of the maverick rather than the system, the article is saying, "Boy, that Alan Moore. Talented guy, done some great stuff, but he should do himself, and us, a favor and just get with the program. Would it kill him to give his blessing to the Watchmen movie, maybe do a couple of scripts? He ought to turn that bearded frown upside down! Look, the President of DC says the company is still 'great fans of his work'!"

I dunno. I figure Moore's doing pretty well for himself, by himself.

As for Watchmen: It's been a while since I looked at the graphic novel—read it when the completed book first came out, in the late '80s. I was mondo impressed then. I thought, among other things, that it achieved (to steal a phrase from Robert Christgau) a complexity of tone that's pretty rare in any kind of art. And no way is Snyder going to be able to replicate or even simulate that. And Moore's particular brand of tragic/sardonic irony doesn't strike me as something Snyder or his collaborators are even able to grasp, let alone embrace. The trailer does look "impressive," though.

The Blake Lively Name Game

So lately I've been seeing quite a bit on the intertubes about this vacuous starlet from this ghastly television show "Gossip Girls" whose success on said show is apparently going to be a portal to a "film" career, although by "film" career I'm not sure if "they" (whoever exactly "they" are) mean breaking in via a bunch of putatively legit or genuinely legit indie/art films a la "Dawson's Creek" alum Michelle Williams, or just starring in a series of Japanese horror remakes a la Sarah Michelle Gellar, and truth to tell, I don't much care, except, what is up with her name?

Her name being, of course, "Blake Lively," which, I don't care what she and/or her parents say, can't be real.

I know this because I've broken down the process by which her name was chosen, and I will now share it with you. It's not unlike that old "porn star name" formula wherein you find out yours by combining the name of the street on which you spent most of your childhood with that of your first pet. (Mine: "Ranger Muffins.") In the Blake Lively Name Game, you calculate your "Blake Lively" name by taking the last name of a favored English-born poet, and combining it with either an adjective ending in "ly"... or just a plain old adverb. An acceptable variant on this formula is given in the third of my examples. Please feel free to add your results in comments. As that's the whole damn point, inasmuch as there is one.

THREE EXAMPLES:

1) Larkin Slovenly

2) Coleridge Aptly

3) Shelley Incorrigible (var.)

Now go.

I ain't no joke(r)

My review of The Dark Knight—with concomitant musings on the state of our culture, just for fun!—is over at The Auteur's Notebook. Here are a couple of tastes: "This may seem like faint praise, but about the highest compliment I can give Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight right now is to say that there were many long stretches during which I didn’t even realize it was a superhero movie;" "Anybody who infers and then goes on to imply that [Ledger's] labors here somehow led to his death is slandering him in the worst way—by impugning his professionalism, for one thing."

The whole thing's here, and you can comment there or here. Enjoy!

Jean Luc Godard and me: three decades, three scenes

SCENE THE FIRST

Early winter, 1968. 26 Ranger Road, Dumont, New Jersey

GLENN KENNY, nine years old, is sitting at the dining room table, poring over the Grove Press "film book" of Godard's "Masculine Feminine." His mother, AMELIA, is dusting around the dining room and living room.

GLENN (looking up from the book): Mom, why do think it is that Godard wears sunglasses all the time?

AMELIA (continuing to dust): I'd imagine it's some sort of affectation.

GLENN: What's an affectation?

AMELIA (not unaffectionately): Go look it up.

Some notes on "Mamma Mia!"

Sophie's Choice: Seyfried (far right) sizes up three potential dads: from left, Skarsgard, Brosnan, Firth

1) Any film that asks us to imagine the comingled semens of Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, and Colin Firth competing in the fallopian tubes of Meryl Streep ought to be at least slightly more compelling than this.

2) In terms of what we film snobs call mise en scene, this thing makes Across the Universe look like, erm, It's Always Fair Weather.

3) My Lovely Wife notes that just about every production number looks like something you'd see on the satellite music video channel they have on all the time at that Uzbeki restaurant in Queens.

4) Speaking of My Lovely Wife: Her and Colin Firth=Officially Over.

5) It would have been kind of cool if in that scene where Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) gets on the boat with her three probable fathers, she...no, I can't say it.

6) That dude Christine Baranski is mauling in the "Does Your Mother Know?" number—is that, like, Eddy Grant's grandson?

7) Wow, I really do feel kind of bad about all those nasty things I said about Across the Universe.

8) Boy, "S.O.S." sure is a catchy sumbitch, ain't it?

9) Anyone who slags Pierce Brosnan's vocal stylings in this picture clearly has not experienced the majesty of Oliver Reed in Tommy.

10) Actually, I've got to give Brosnan credit for trying, and for doing some homework—he applies the mannerisms of Mark Knopfler (and sometimes even Richard Thompson and John Martyn) to his gruff pipes, which is apt. Apt for his pipes. Not necessarily for ABBA songs.

11) Meryl Streep is demented!!

12) (SPOILER ALERT!!!!) It's kind of cute that Skarsgard ends up with Dudley Moore at the end. No, wait, that's Julie Walters.

13) My Lovely Wife, as it turns out, isn't all that familiar with Julie Walters. Attempting to sum up Walters' place in '80s cinema, I described her as "Emily Watson avant le lettre." That's pretty good. I think I'll use it some time.

14) I'll admit it: the "Waterloo" rendition in the end credits almost made the whole thing worth it.

15) I kind of want to have sex with Christine Baranski. Is that weird?

Monday Morning Foreign-Region DVD Report: "Black Narcissus" (Blu-ray) (UPDATED)

Forgive the dodgy qualities of this screen grab; as I don't yet have the equipment to do Blu-Ray disc frame burns directly (and to be completely honest with you, I'm not likely to be getting such equipment for some time), I'm using my Olympus SP-55OUZ to shoot images directly off my Hitachi plasma. As you'll see later, they will suffice for our current purposes.

How long ago was it, that I sat in a now-defunct movie theater listening to a lecture by the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff? The film restoration maven Robert A. Harris was in the audience, and during the Q&A period, he stood up and asked: "Is that lavender tint that suffuses the extant prints of Black Narcissus supposed to be there?" and Cardiff looked a bit surprised and said, no, not as far as he was concerned. And a real rustle went through the audience; that lavender tint was not only on prints, but on the venerated Criterion laser disc of the film—the highest quality home video version of the movie available anywhere!—and now we learned that, no, it's not right. Calamity. Something would have to be done.

Something was done—in 2000 Criterion put out its DVD of the film (the company's 93rd DVD) with a new digital transfer created in tandem with Cardiff. No more lavender tint, and a fairly breathtaking image. The Criterion version of the film became a home video reference. As is usually the case.

Department of I-guess-it-all-depends-on-who-you-talk-to

"Here come the warm ICBMs," Green Cine Daily's David Hudson drolly notes, anticipating the howls of outrage he believes will greet Stephanie Zacharek's review of Richard Brody's Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard in today's New York Times Book Review, in which, among other things, she responds to Brody's insistence that Godard's later work is deserving of critical reevaluation with an insistence that it is, well, not. So okay then.

Stephanie is a friend, and an admired colleague, and we know each other's aesthetic predilections pretty well, so I doubt she'll be surprised to learn that I take exceptional exception to many if not most of her points. But I'd rather debate her in person than harangue her from this perch. I will cite one bit from her review that I thought kind of funny, not in and of itself, but, well, you'll see. Recounting Brody's detailing of Godard's "rudeness" on various film sets, she invokes Jacques Rivette, saying his "filmmaking methods are better examples of the collaborative ideal of the '60s and early '70s. To make his 12-hour-plus epic 'Out 1,' Rivette gave his large cast of actors guidelines for creating their characters, and they wrote most of the movie's dialogue themselves."
That is true, as far as any of us who weren't there can tell. Still, when Kent Jones interviewed Out 1 actor Jean Pierre Leaud (pictured here in a scene from the film) in 1999, Leaud summed up his experience with Rivette thusly: "It was a very exciting adventure for a young man, but I wouldn't want to repeat it. I guess that the vampiric, sadistic methods that Rivette used to make that film were a part of the moment."

So, yes, sometimes it all depends on who you talk to. And also, with artists as with politicians, there are always pitfalls to judging them according to which one you'd prefer to have a beer with, or think you'd prefer to have a beer with.

Hmm. Inputting that just made me flash on these lines from The Dictators' immortal "Two Tub Man," perhaps the greatest approximate-rhyme heroic couplet ever written, to wit: "I'm just a clown walkin' down the street!/I think, Lou Reed is a CREEP!"

And it's true—Lou Reed IS a creep. But still...

Evelyn Keyes, 1916-2008

The penultimate shot of The Jolson Story, 1946, Alfred E. Green/Joseph L. Lewis

I'm gonna sound like a heel for saying this, but I always thought Evelyn Keyes made a better Ruby Keeler than Ruby Keeler did.

Keeler, some of you may recall, had the great good fortune of having been married to World's Greatest Entertainer and Insufferable Egomaniac Al Jolson from 1928 to 1940. It has long been speculated that Keeler's own showbiz career flourished under Jolson's significant influence; to watch Keeler's game but ultimately hapless attempts to keep up with, say, James Cagney in the "Shanghai Lil" number in Footlight Parade is, to my mind at least, to give such speculations almost inviolable creedence.

Keeler ceased performing after divorcing Jolie (as we fans like to call him; c.f. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner's still side-splitting track "Jolson" on 2000 and Thirteen) and refused to speak of The Man when she made a comeback in the '70s. More to the point, she refused to allow her name to be used in the 1946 biopic The Jolson Story, so the producers just...changed the character's name, to Julie Benson, and had her starring in the likes of 42nd Street. It isn't as if the rest of the picture isn't a fiction either.

Keeler often came off on screen as willfully trying to work some kind of coy little girl effect; by contrast, Evelyn Keyes' Julie Benson is never less than wholly womanly. Sane, sexy, and sometimes sassy. Keyes' natural charisma defeats her efforts to make Benson a convincing would-be homebody, and that's actually fine. Her natural grace makes the few dance moves she shows off in the picture work like a charm.

Keyes had a solid career, but deserved a better one. Less than a decade after walking out on Jolson, she and her brat would be departing for the Catskills, leaving hubby Tom Ewell alone in their Manhattan flat, the better for him to drool over Marilyn Monroe, in Wilder's The Seven Year Itch. In between, though, she did great work in two under-seen films—1948's unusual family saga Enchantment, and Joseph Losey's ahead-of-its-time 1951 thriller The Prowler. Her offscreen life was a vivid one—she was married to John Huston, and then Artie Shaw, for heaven's sake, and managed to stay married to the notoriously fidgety Shaw (she was his eighth wife—for real) for almost thirty years.

Keyes was 91 when she died on July 4.