Some Came Running

Literary interlude, with supplemental illustrations

Leo and Elmina were staying up on Sepulveda at the Skyhook Lodge, which did a lot of airport business and was populated day and night with the insomniac, the stranded and deserted, not to mention an occasional certified zombie. "Wanderin all up and down the halls," said Elmina, 'men in business suits, women in evening gowns, people in their underwear or sometimes nothing at all, toddlers staggering around looking for their parents, drunks,drug addicts, police, ambulance technicians, so many room-service carts they get into traffic james, who needs to get in the car and go anyplace, the whole city of Los Angeles is right there five minutes from the airport."

"How's the television?" Downstairs Eddie wanted to know.

"The film libraries on some of these channels, " Elmira said. "I swear. There was one on last night, I couldn't sleep. After I saw it, I was afraid to sleep. Have you seen Black Narcissus, 1947?"

Eddie, who was enrolled in the graduate film program at SC, let out a scream of recognition. He'd been working on his doctoral dissertation, "Deadpan to Demonic—Subtextual Uses of Eyeliner in the Cinema" and had just in fact arrived at the moment in Black Narcissus where Kathleen Byron, as a demented nun, shows up in civilian gear, including eye makeup good for a year's worth of nightmares.

"Well I hope you'll be including some men," Elmina said. "All those German silents, Conrad Veidt in Caligari, Klein-Rogge in Metropolis—"

"—complicated of course by the demands of orthochromatic film stock—"

Oboy. Doc went out to search through the kitchen, having dimly recalled an unopened case of beer that might be there.

—Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice, 2009

Kathleen Byron, Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947

Conrad Veidt, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1919

Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927

Hey, that's smooth

In her less-than-enthusiastic review of Inglourious Basterds today, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis kind of brings the  professional self-loathing or some such thing. Describing the film's fourth chapter, she notes that it throws in "a risible fiction: a suave film critic."

It's hard to know the extent to which she's kidding or not, given the genuine displeasure the notice seems steeped in. Still. Come on. One ought not overgeneralize on the geekiness and putative social unacceptability of the paid cinephile. I mean, look at Michel Ciment, at far right.  Sure, the fact that he's French kind of makes him suave by definition, but the cat can rock the tweeds like nobody's business. And how can we forget Manohla's predecessor at the Times, Mr. Elvis Mitchell (that's his badness on the left), who is most aptly described as a suave mother...shut your mouth! Hey, I'm just talking about Elvis. And we can dig it. And while I myself am currently far too chunky to convincingly bring the suave,  I believe I've had my moments. So: who are your own favorite cinephiles of suavitude?

Snark import...

Turns out there's really no way to do the Topics/Questions/Exercises of the week without bringing out the, shall we say, sharp-edged humor, so I let loose in a special 3-D edition (not really, but, you know) over at The Auteurs' today. 

Eva Green's mom

No, seriously, for it is indeed Marlene Jobert...

...at the end of Maurice Pialat's staggering Nous ne viellirons pas ensemble (We won't grow old together), which I examine in some detail over at The Auteurs'. Next week,I look at Pialat's answer film to High School Confidential. Exhilarating stuff, all of it.

"The Golden Coach"

Just kidding! It's Mothra, by Inishiro Honda, 1961. Yup, I got the Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection. If my apartment had really kick-ass air conditioning, and I myself had two or three Oxycontins, I'd obviously be enjoying the best afternoon ever with this stuff, but helas, such is my physical discomfort at the moment that I can only deal with this material piecemeal. Dave Kehr has a typically thoughtful and informative review of it here, which doesn't deal with the set's biggest problem—its cheap-ass packaging, rightfully deplored over at DVD Beaver. A single case with a longer center spindle on which you have to pile each of the three discs. Handle with care indeed.

"The Headless Woman"

Image courtesy of OutNow.CH

First saw this puppy at Cannes last year, and this is what I wrote then:

"Confession time: as a result of hitting a Cannes wall that I really didn't see coming, I zoned out and occasionally even dozed through substantial bits of Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel's new film, the title of which translates as The Woman Without A Head. [Well, over-literally it does. The film's current U.S. distributors have given it a more apt title, I admit.—G.K.]Some of the detractors of the film (which does not feature any decapitations) might try to comfort me with the notion that the 87-minute-film is, in fact, boring. And while Mujer is a far quieter film than Martel's sardonic 2001 feature debut La Cienega, not to mention it's followup, 2004's The Holy Girl. Mujer doesn't lack for stuff—but the register of the film's nuances is so narrow that unless you're paying proper attention, the image will disappear before your eyes. A fancy way of saying that I need to see this story of the discreet guilt-trip of one particular bourgeoisie again. 

The picture concerns a woman of privilege (Maria Onetto, who as a blonde here resembles a younger Geraldine Ferrarro—an unfortunate coincidence that could have disastrous effects for the film's U.S. prospects) who, reaching for her cell while driving, hits something (the first of the many jarring, convincing sound effects the picture throws up). We see a dog, but she believes she's killed somebody, and grows thoroughly withdrawn from her family and friends. Throughout, Martel places the character in shallow focus widescreen close-ups; therein, those people in her periphery—generally servants, workers, and so on—are diffused, hazy. It's an oblique way of reflecting on contemporary class relations, but it's apt, and in point of fact this is one of the few films in the largely-socially-conscious Competition that reflects on class relations as such. I also admired the way Martel drops in quasi-irrational elements; in one shot, Onetto goes to use a bathroom sink, as bizarre sparks emanate from a space behind her. For a moment one suspects that she's entered the world of Eraserhead, and then out of the space steps a welder. Such drollery is nevertheless in keeping with an overall dryness which makes me unsure as to whether I'd agree with a friend's assessment that this film is the Bunuel version ofA Woman Under the Influence. As I said, I'm gonna have to see it again."

And so I did, at the New York Film Festival later in the year, and man, did it ever kick in. My friend's assessment is utterly right-on. (We encountered Martel and her lead actress at a nice hole-in-the-wall Cannes restaurant a couple of nights later and gushed at them like teenage Beatle fans circa 1964.) The film is absolutely mesmeric, very apt to repay repeat viewings, and while it does make some very potent points, it does so seamlessly, without any hectoring. One thing I see that the reviewers talking about it today are missing is how weirdly funny it is. Which it is. The picture opened in New York's Film Forum today; see it if you're in town, keep your eyes peeled for it if you're not. 

Image courtesy of OutNow.CH

First saw this puppy at Cannes last year, and this is what I wrote then:

"Confession time: as a result of hitting a Cannes wall that I really didn't see coming, I zoned out and occasionally even dozed through substantial bits of Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel's new film, the title of which translates as The Woman Without A Head. [Well, over-literally it does. The film's current U.S. distributors have given it a more apt title, I admit.—G.K.]Some of the detractors of the film (which does not feature any decapitations) might try to comfort me with the notion that the 87-minute-film is, in fact, boring. And while Mujer is a far quieter film than Martel's sardonic 2001 feature debut La Cienega, not to mention it's followup, 2004's The Holy Girl. Mujer doesn't lack for stuff—but the register of the film's nuances is so narrow that unless you're paying proper attention, the image will disappear before your eyes. A fancy way of saying that I need to see this story of the discreet guilt-trip of one particular bourgeoisie again. 

The picture concerns a woman of privilege (Maria Onetto, who as a blonde here resembles a younger Geraldine Ferrarro—an unfortunate coincidence that could have disastrous effects for the film's U.S. prospects) who, reaching for her cell while driving, hits something (the first of the many jarring, convincing sound effects the picture throws up). We see a dog, but she believes she's killed somebody, and grows thoroughly withdrawn from her family and friends. Throughout, Martel places the character in shallow focus widescreen close-ups; therein, those people in her periphery—generally servants, workers, and so on—are diffused, hazy. It's an oblique way of reflecting on contemporary class relations, but it's apt, and in point of fact this is one of the few films in the largely-socially-conscious Competition that reflects on class relations as such. I also admired the way Martel drops in quasi-irrational elements; in one shot, Onetto goes to use a bathroom sink, as bizarre sparks emanate from a space behind her. For a moment one suspects that she's entered the world of Eraserhead, and then out of the space steps a welder. Such drollery is nevertheless in keeping with an overall dryness which makes me unsure as to whether I'd agree with a friend's assessment that this film is the Bunuel version ofA Woman Under the Influence. As I said, I'm gonna have to see it again."

And so I did, at the New York Film Festival later in the year, and man, did it ever kick in. My friend's assessment is utterly right-on. (We encountered Martel and her lead actress at a nice hole-in-the-wall Cannes restaurant a couple of nights later and gushed at them like teenage Beatle fans circa 1964.) The film is absolutely mesmeric, very apt to repay repeat viewings, and while it does make some very potent points, it does so seamlessly, without any hectoring. One thing I see that the reviewers talking about it today are missing is how weirdly funny it is. Which it is. The picture opened in New York's Film Forum today; see it if you're in town, keep your eyes peeled for it if you're not. 

Unhip priest #2

A teaser for Preston Miller's upcoming God's Land, which is looking pretty good. Your humble correspondent, slightly slimmed-down from The Girlfriend Experience, can be glimpsed gazing at the sky with a couple of the film's principals.

Pelé

Barcelona, Whit Stillman, 1994

Tarantino's minimalist maximalism

Christoph Waltz rocks the meerschaum in Basterds

I've always been a sucker for narrative artists who mess around, cleverly or joltingly or what have you, with the compression and expansion of time. I understand that his motivation was largely to do with a self-imposed deadline of 52 composing days, but I do love that Stendhal expended so much verbiage and so much elaborate description of hero Fabrizio del Dongo for most of the length of The Charterhouse of Parma, only to wrap up the story, which was intended to make up a whole second volume and which contains, among other things, the book's only explanation of the title, in five pages or so. What bloody brilliant nerve. Jacques Rivette employed a similar tactic in his 1965 film adaptation of Diderot's The Nun. The always modern D.W. Griffith divides Way Down East into two halves; the first half spans years, the second only a couple of days; both are of about equal length. Reading Nabokov's time games, and Borges', are like witnessing multiple rounds of three-dimensional chess.

In his latest film, Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino doesn't do anything quite so ingenious and/or supple as the radical shuffling of relative narrative time that was part of what made Pulp Fiction such a kick. What we've got here is more foursquare, linear. Still, his use of time in the context of what's supposed to be, on one level, a sweeping historical narrative, is pretty unusual. We may all recall the incredible waiting-at-the-station opening of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West. Watching Inglourious Basterds, one often gets a sense that Tarantino wanted to make a film that was made up entirely of such powerful, discrete units, and nothing else. He doesn't quite do it here. But he comes close. 

What follows is a structural breakdown of the picture based on my second viewing of it yesterday. I've tried to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I think that just by grasping the outline without its particulars, you'll be able to put together how formally unusual the film is.

"Thick" and nasty

Bit of a change-up in the Foreign Region DVD Report this week—a foray into, heaven forfend, television. Inspired by the sharp and nasty comedy In The Loop, I thought it would be fun to look into its forbear, the BBC comedy series The Thick of It, wherein inspired actor Peter Capaldi originated the role of preternaturally bilious spin-meister Malcolm Tucker. And fun it was. I report on some of my findings at The Auteurs', as ever.