The mirror and the scene have yielded to the screen and the network. Obscenity begins when there is no more spectacle, no more stage. We no longer partake in the drama of alienation, but are in the ecstasy of communication... Jean Baudrillard
In his review of Boyhood, film writer Michael Smith identifies the Malick connection, but notes Malick's film couched in "pretentious sequences involving digital dinosaurs and voice-over narration cloaked in cosmic-spiritual hokum" something from which Linklater's film entirely avoids.
The use of music in Boyhood is also intrinsic to its overall effect, much in the way Martin Scorsese selects music for effect Linklater does the same here, and the choice of Coldplay's song Yellow, to open the film recontextualised it and perfectly embodied that feeling of a time and place, tugging ever so slightly at the heart strings, I was reminded again of how fond I once was of that song and how fond I am of this film the masterpiece Linklater has been working towards from the beginning.
Before Midnight isthe third instalment in Richard Linklater's exceptional and unique series of films which trace the ongoing relationship between Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) from the streets of Vienna and Paris to southern Greece and the rupturing unease of parenthood and middle age. It's hard to accept that nearly 20 years have passed since the idyllic young couple met on a train.
Jesse and Celine are still to an extent the same idealistic young lovers who met on a train and wandered the streets of Vienna and later Paris, but this time they're older, they're wiser and where else could the wisdom and the tragedy and trajectory of theirs and every romance be embodied but in Greece. Their relationship has passed through the youthful phase of dreamy
romanticism and although there are moments of the tenderness
of the first two films, Before Midnight adds a richer and tougher flavour. It's the transition from innocence to experience.
Richard Linklater has a way of working with real-time scenes like nobody else in cinema today and it has been a theme since his first picture Slacker (1991). Particularly great is a sequence at the beginning of the film where the couple are driving with their two young children from the airport to the Greek villa they've been holidaying at. As with the walking scenes in both Before Sunrise (1995) and Before Sunset (2004) it displays the level of sophistication and fluidity of the dialogue Delpy and Hawke have developed and allows them opportunities to talk more conversationally than perhaps other scenarios would. And because of this their dialogue, their interaction are immediately recognisable as genuine, as something we've all experienced, without any trace of pretence. Again and again in each of the films Linklater has returned to this technique to reveal how the characters are just like us.
Here is a smart and witty film which tastefully rounds off the series of films which relate the eternal struggle of dualities in relationships and the yearning to retain a newness and innocence through dichotomies (Jesse's melancholy at having partially lost his son to create a new life with Celine) and power struggles, and the yearning for a true communication and understanding. How many couples will watch this set of films and recognise themselves and over and over again, year after year like Jesse and Celine in Before Midnight try and get back to the start again.
Afternoon slips into evening, the sky is the same white veil colour as the film I'm watching, it's so close and at any moment it might rain. A film that captures white shadows. Every frame numbing. Every word poetry, every movement breathes a new angle on existence, a new perception.
Bergman is one of my favourite film makers and like all those who reach certain artistic heights, they have inspiring things to say about the genesis of their art and how they continue to express themselves. This is a lengthy piece by Bergman, but I feel it deserves to be read.
EACH FILM IS MY LAST
by Ingmar Bergman
From Essays in Criticism (Oxford University Press, 1975)
Artistic creation always manifested itself to me as hunger. I
acknowledged it with a certain satisfaction, but during my conscious
life I never asked myself what caused this craving. In the last few
years the hunger has diminished and been transformed into something
else; now I am anxious to find out what the reasons for it were. I have
an early childhood memory of my desire to show off achievements:
proficiency in drawing, playing ball, the first swimstrokes. I had a
strong need to draw the grownups' attention to these signs of my
presence in the external world. I never felt that people took enough
interest in me. When reality was no longer sufficient, I started to
invent things: I entertained my friends with tremendous stories of my
secret exploits. They were embarrassing lies, which failed hopelessly
when confronted with the level-headed scepticism of the world around me.
Finally I withdrew, and kept my dream world to myself. A child looking
for human contact, obsessed by his imagination, had been quickly
transformed into a hurt, cunning, and suspicious daydreamer.
But a daydreamer is no artist except in his dreams.
The need to be heard, to correspond, to live in the warmth of a
community, was still there. It grew stronger the lonelier I grew. It
goes without saying that film became my means of expression. I made
myself understood in a language going beyond words, which failed me;
beyond music, which I did not master; beyond painting, which left me
indifferent. I was suddenly able to correspond with the world around me
in a language spoken literally from soul to soul, in phrases which
escaped the control of the intellect in an almost voluptuous way. With
the whole stunted hunger of a child I seized upon my medium and for
twenty years, tirelessly and in a kind of frenzy, I supplied the world
with dreams, intellectual excitement, fantasies, fits of lunacy. My
success has been amazing, but at bottom it is an insignificant sequel.
I do not underestimate what I may have achieved. I think that it has
been and perhaps still is of importance. But now I can see the past in a
new and less romantic light; that is security enough for me. Today my
situation is less complicated, less interesting, above all less
glamorous than it was. To be completely frank, I experience art (not
only film art) as insignificant in our time: art no longer has the power
and the possibility to influence the development of our life.
Literature, painting, music, film, and theatre beget and bring forth
themselves. New mutations, new combinations arise and are annihilated;
the movement seems–seen from the outside–nervously vital. With
magnificent zeal the artists project to themselves and to a more and
more distracted public pictures of a world that no longer cares what
they like or think. In a few countries artists are punished, art is
considered dangerous and worth stifling and directing. On the whole,
however, art is free, shameless, irresponsible; the movement is intense,
almost feverish, like a snake's skin full of ants. The snake is long
since dead, eaten, deprived of his poison, but the skin is full of
meddlesome life.
If I have become one of these ants, I must ask myself if there is any reason to continue my work.
The answer is yes. Although I think that the stage is an old, beloved
kept woman, who has seen better days. Although I and many other people
find the Wild West more stimulating than Antonioni and Bergman. Although
the new music gives us the sense of being suffocated by mathematically
rarefied air. Although painting and sculpture, sterilized, decline in
their own paralyzing freedom. Although literature has been transformed
into a pile of words without any message or dangerous qualities....
I think that people today can dispense with theatre, because they
exist in the middle of a drama whose different phases incessantly
produce local tragedies. They do not need music, because every minute
they are exposed to hurricanes of sound passing beyond endurance. They
do not need poetry, because the idea of the universe has transformed
them into functional animals, confined to interesting–but from a
poetical point of view unusable–problems of metabolic disturbance. Man
(as I experience myself and the world around me) has made himself free,
terribly and dizzyingly free. Religion and art are kept alive as a
conventional politeness toward the past, as a benign, democratic
solicitude on beha1f of nervous citizens enjoying more and more leisure
time....
If I consider all these troubles and still maintain that I want to
continue to work in art, there is a simple reason. (I disregard the
purely material one.) The reason is curiosity. A boundless,
insatiable curiosity, that is always new and that pushes me onwards–a
curiosity that never leaves me alone and that has completely replaced my
craving for community. I feel like a prisoner who, after serving a long
term, suddenly is confronted with turbulent life. I note, I observe, I
keep my eyes open; everything is unreal, fantastic, frightening, or
ridiculous. I catch a flying grain of dust, maybe it is a film–what
importance does it have? None at all, but I find it interesting and
consequently it is a film. I walk around with the grain of dust that I
have caught with my own hands. I am happy or sad. I jostle the other
ants, together we accomplish an enormous task. The snake's skin moves.
This and only this is my truth. I do not request that it be valid for
someone e1se, and as a consolation for eternity it is of course rather
meager. As a basis for artistic activity during some future years it is
completely sufficient at least for me. To devote oneself to artistic
creation for one's own satisfaction is not always agreeable. But it has
one great advantage: the artist lives exactly like every other living
creature that only exists for its own sake. This makes a rather numerous
brotherhood....
THOU SHALT
Experience should be gained before one reaches forty, a wise man
said. After forty it is permissible to comment. The reverse might apply
in my case–no one was more certain of his theories and none more willing
to elucidate them than I was. No one knew better or could visualize
more. Now that I am somewhat older I have become rather more cautious.
The experience I have gained and which I am now sorting out is of such a
kind that I am unwilling to express myself on the art of the
filmmaker.... The only real contribution the artist can make is his
work. Thus I find it rather unseemly to get involved in discussion, even
with explanations or excuses.
The fact that the artist remained unknown was a good thing in its
time. His relative anonymity was a guarantee against irrelevant outside
influences, material considerations, and the prostitution of his
talents. He brought forth his work in spirit and truth as he saw it and
left the judgment to the Lord. Thus he lived and died without being more
or less important than any other artisan. In such a world flourished
natural assurance and invulnerable humility, two qualities which are the
finest hallmarks of art.
In life today the position of the artist has become more and more
precarious: the artist has become a curious figure, a kind of performer
or athlete who chases from job to job. His isolation, his now almost
holy individualism, his artistic subjectivity can all too easily cause
ulcers and neurosis. Exclusiveness becomes a curse which he eulogizes.
The unusual is both his pain and his satisfaction....
The Script
Often it begins with something very hazy and indefinite–a chance
remark or a quick change of phrase, a dim but pleasant event which is
not specifically related to the actual situation. It has happened in my
theatrical work that I have visualized performers in fresh make-up but
in yet-unplayed roles. All in all, split-second impressions that
disappear as quickly as they come, forming a brightly colored thread
sticking out of the dark sack of the unconscious. If I wind up this
thread carefully a complete film will emerge, brought out with
pulse-beats and rhythms which are characteristic of just this film.
Through these rhythms the picture sequences take on patterns according
to the way they were born and mastered by the motive.
The feeling of failure occurs mostly before the writing begins. The
dreams turn into cobwebs, the visions fade and become grey and
insignificant, the pulse-beat is silent, everything shrinks into tired
fancies without strength and reality. But I have decided to make a
certain film and the hard work must begin: to transfer rhythms, moods,
atmosphere, tensions, sequences, tones, and scents into a readable or at
least understandable script. This is difficult but not impossible.
The vital thing is the dialogue, but dialogue is a sensitive matter
which can offer resistance. The written dialogue of the theatre is like a
score which is almost incomprehensible to the ordinary person;
interpretation demands a technical knack and a certain amount of
imagination and feeling. One can write dialogue, but how it should be
handled, the rhythms and the tempo, the speed at which it is to be
taken, and what is to take place between the lines–all that must be left
out, because a script containing so much detail would be unreadable.
I can squeeze directions and locations, characterizations and
atmosphere into my film scripts in understandable terms, but then I come
to essentials, by which I mean montage, rhythm and the relation of one
picture to the other–the vital "third dimension" without which the film
is merely dead, a factory product. Here I cannot use "keys" or show an
adequate indication of the tempos of the complexes involved; it is
impossible to give a comprehensible idea of what puts life into a work
of art. I have often sought a kind of notation which would give me a
chance of recording the shade and tones of the ideas and the inner
structure of the picture. If I could express myself thus clearly, I
could work with the absolute certainty that whenever I liked I could
prove the relationship between the rhythm and the continuity of the part
and the whole.... Let us state once and for all that the film script is
a very imperfect technical basis for a film.
Film is not the same thing as literature. As often as not the
character and substance of the two art forms are in conflict. What it
really depends on is hard to define, but it probably has to do with the
self-responsive process. The written word is read and assimilated by a
conscious act and in connection with the intellect, and little by little
it plays on the imagination or feelings. It is completely different
with the motion picture. When we see a film in a cinema we are conscious
that an illusion has been prepared for us and we relax and accept it
with our will and intellect. We prepare the way into our imagination.
The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feelings without touching
the mind.
There are many reasons why we ought to avoid filming existing
literature, but the most important is that the irrational dimension,
which is the heart of a literary work, is often untranslatable and that
in its turn kills the special dimension of the film. If despite this we
wish to translate something literary into filmic terms, we are obliged
to make an infinite number of complicated transformations which most
often give limited or non-existent results in relation to the efforts
expended. I know what I am talking about because I have been subjected
to so-called literary judgment. This is about as intelligent as letting a
music critic judge an exhibition of paintings or a football reporter
criticize a new play. The only reason for everyone believing himself
capable of pronouncing a valid judgment on motion pictures is the
inability of the film to assert itself as an art form, its need
of a definite artistic vocabulary, its extreme youth in relation to the
other arts, its obvious ties with economic realities, its direct appeal
to the feelings. All this causes film to be regarded with disdain. Its
directness of expression makes it suspect in certain eyes, and as a
result any and everyone thinks he's competent to say anything he likes,
in whatever way he likes, about film art.
I myself have never had ambitions to be an author. I do not wish to
write novels, short stories, essays, biographies, or treatises on
special subjects. I certainly do not want to write pieces for the
theatre. Filmmaking is what interests me. I want to make films about
conditions, tensions, pictures, rhythms, and characters within me which
in one way or another interest me. The motion picture and its
complicated process of birth are my methods of saying what I want to my
fellow men. I find it humiliating for work to be judged as a book when
it is a film. Consequently the writing of the script is a difficult
period, but useful, as it compels me to prove logically the validity of
my ideas. While this is taking place I am caught in a difficult conflict
between my need to find a way of filming a complicated situation and my
desire for complete simplicity. As I do not intend my work to be solely
for my own edification or for the few but for the public in general,
the demands of the public are imperative. Sometimes I try a venturous
alternative which shows that the public can appreciate the most advanced
and complicated developments....
The Studio
I stand in the half-light of the film studio with its noise and
crowds, dirt and wretched atmosphere, and I seriously wonder why I am
engaged in this most difficult form of artistic creation. The rules are
many and burdensome. I must have three minutes of usable film in the can
every day. I must keep to the shooting schedule, which is so tight that
it excludes almost everything but essentials. I am surrounded by
technical equipment which with fiendish cunning tries to sabotage my
best intentions. Constantly I am on edge, I am compelled to live the
collective life of the studio. Amidst all this must take place a
sensitive process which demands quietness, concentration, and
confidence.
I mean working with actors and actresses. There are many directors
who forget that our work in films begins with the human face. We
certainly can become completely absorbed in the aesthetics of montage,
we can bring together objects and still life into a wonderful rhythm, we
can make nature studies of astounding beauty, but the approach to the
human face is without doubt the distinguishing quality of the film. From
this we might conclude that the film star is our most expensive
instrument and the camera only registers the reactions of this
instrument. But in many cases the position and movement of the camera is
considered more important than the player, and the picture becomes an
end in itself–this can never do anything but destroy illusions and be
artistically devastating. In order to give the greatest possible
strength to the actor's expression, the camera movement must be simple,
free, and completely synchronized with the action. The camera must be a
completely objective observer and may only on rare occasions participate
in the action. We should realize that the best means of expression the
actor has at his command is his look. The close-up, if
objectively composed, perfectly directed and played, is the most
forcible means at the disposal of the film director, while at the same
time being the most certain proof of his competence or incompetence. The
lack or abundance of close-ups shows in an uncompromising way the
nature of the director and the extent of his interest in people.
Simplicity, concentration, full knowledge, technical perfection must
be the pillars supporting each scene and sequence. However, they in
themselves are not enough. The one most important thing is still
lacking: the intimate spark of life, which appears or fails to appear
according to its will, crucial and indomitable.
For instance, I know that everything for a scene must be prepared
down to the last detail, each branch of the collective organization must
know exactly what it is to do. The entire mechanism must be free from
fault as a matter of course. These preliminaries may or may not take a
long time, but they should not be dragged out and tire those
participating. Rehearsals for the "take" must be carried out with
technical precision and with everyone knowing exactly what he is to do.
Then comes the take. From experience I know that the first take is often
the happiest, as it is the most natural. This is because the actors are
trying to create something; their creative urge comes from natural
identification. The camera registers this inner act of creation, which
is hardly perceptible to the untrained eye or ear. I believe it is this
which keeps me in films. The development and retention of a sudden burst
of life gives me ample reward for the thousands of hours of grey gloom,
trial and tribulation....
Morality
Many imagine that the commercial film industry lacks morality or that
its morals are so definitely based on immorality that an artistically
ethical standpoint cannot be maintained. Our work is assigned to
businessmen, who at times regard it with apprehension because it is
concerned with something as unreliable as art. If many regard our
activity as dubious, I must emphasize that its morality is as good as
any and so absolute that it is almost embarrassing. However, I have
found that I am like the Englishman in the tropics, who shaves and
dresses for dinner every day. He does not do this to please the wild
animals but for his own sake. If he gives up his discipline then the
jungle has beaten him. I know that I shall have lost to the jungle if I
take a weak moral standpoint. I have therefore come to a belief based on
three commandments. Briefly I shall give their wording and their
meaning. These have become the basis of my activity in the film world.
The first may sound indecent but really is highly moral:
THOU SHALT BE ENTERTAINING AT ALL TIMES
The public who sees my films and thus provides my bread and butter
has the right to expect entertainment, a thrill, a joy, a spirited
experience. I am responsible for providing that experience. That is the
only justification for my activity.
However, this does not mean that I must prostitute my talents, at
least not in any and every way, because then I would break the second
commandment:
THOU SHALT OBEY THY ARTISTIC CONSCIENCE AT ALL TIMES
This is a very tricky commandment because it obviously forbids me to
steal, lie, prostitute my talents, kill, or falsify. However, I will say
that I am allowed to falsify if it is artistically justified, I may
also lie if it is a beautiful lie, I could also kill my friends or
myself or anyone else if it would help my art, it may also be
permissible to prostitute my talents if it will further my cause, and I
should indeed steal if there were no other way out. If one obeyed
artistic conscience to the full in every respect then one would be doing
a balancing act on a tightrope, and could become so dizzy that at any
moment one could break one's neck. Then all the prudent and moral
bystanders would say, "Look, there lies the thief, the murderer, the
lecher, the liar. Serves him right"–never thinking that all means are
allowed except those which lead to a fiasco, and that the most dangerous
ways are the only ones which are passable, and that compulsion and
dizziness are two necessary parts of our activity; that the joy of
creation, which is a thing of beauty and joy forever, is bound up with
the necessary fear of creation....
In order to strengthen my will so that I do not slip off the narrow path into the ditch, I have a third juicy commandment:
THOU SHALT MAKE EACH FILM AS IF IT WERE THY LAST
Some may imagine that this commandment is an amusing paradox or a
pointless aphorism or perhaps simply a beautiful phrase about the
complete vanity of everything. However, that is not the case.
It is reality.
In Sweden, film production was halted for all of 1951. During my
enforced inactivity I learned that because of commercial complications
and through no fault of my own I could be out on the street before I
knew it. I do not complain about it, neither am I afraid or bitter; I
have only drawn a logical and highly moral conclusion from the
situation: each film is my last.
For me there is only one loyalty: to the film on which I am working.
What comes (or fails to come) after is insignificant and causes neither
anxiety nor longing. This gives me assurance and artistic confidence.
The material assurance is apparently limited but I find artistic
integrity infinitely more important, and therefore I follow the
principle that each film is my last. This gives me strength in
another way. I have seen all too many film workers burdened down with
anxiety, yet carrying out to the full their necessary duties. Worn out,
bored to death and without pleasure they have fulfilled their work. They
have suffered humiliation and affronts from producers, critics, and the
public without flinching, without giving up, without leaving the
profession. With a tired shrug of the shoulders they have made their
artistic contributions until they went down or were thrown out.
I do not know when the day might come that I shall be received
indifferently by the public, perhaps be disgusted with myself. Tiredness
and emptiness will descend upon me like a dirty grey sack and fear will
stifle everything. Emptiness will stare me in the face. When this
happens I shall put down my tools and leave the scene, of my own free
will, without bitterness and without brooding whether or not the work
has been useful and truthful from the viewpoint of eternity. Wise and
far-sighted men in the Middle Ages used to spend nights in their coffins
in order never to forget the tremendous importance of every moment and
the transient nature of life itself. Without taking such drastic and
uncomfortable measures I harden myself to the seeming futility and the
fickle cruelty of film-making with the earnest conviction that each film is my last.
How Green Was My Valley is a beautiful and heart-wrenching film. It's both idealistic and sentimental, yet it's depiction of the disintegration of a culture and way of life, set against the changing social mores of the time using the trials and tribulations of the Morgan family as metaphor, is handled deftly by the great director John Ford and his superb cast.
The
film covers a number of story arcs, from the forbidden attraction between Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon) - an educated outsider who comes to the village to preach at the local chapel - and Angharad Morgan (Maureen O'Hara) and her subsequent
unhappy marriage to the pit owners son, to the heroes journey of young
Huw Morgan (Roddy McDowall) to better himself and escape the trappings of the rustic life alongside the struggle of tradition against change as seen through the frugal yet warm and moralistic Morgan family patriarch Gwilym Morgan
(Donald Crisp).
The village appears idyllic and harmonious, a rural community built around a coal-pit reaping the benefits of its labour, but
over time as the pit owner seeks to make more profits and with the ever
growing surplus of workers, they begin laying off
the older better paid men with the younger more unskilled who
they can pay less wages to. We see a still half agrarian and feudal culture slowly declining, it's notions of morality being questioned against the shadow of a encroaching and ever more pernicious Capitalism tearing at the social fabric of community and family. It's
an age old story and just as poignant today.
The most
emotional element of the film features young Huw Morgan who loses
the use of his legs and is comforted and cajoled back to health by Mr. Gruffydd. Gruffydd acts as a culturing influence on Huw and soon he regains the use of his legs and becomes the first of his family and the entire community to venture outside the village and
be educated at school. He
soon discovers that for all the hypocrisies of the local culture, its petty
quarrels, small mindedness and gutter talk, the wider world itself offers further
challenges and the village - for all its hypocrisy - is a
nurturing environment. He is beaten by his school mates and his school master, but when the locals
discover this he is taught to box and to defend himself, in this climate of change and uncertainty in Huw we see a child making the journey into adulthood. His subsequent
academic successes are sadly overshadowed by the death of his brother in an accident in the coal pit and although his father Gwilym encourages him to continue
his studies and has wishes for his son to better himself, Huw decides to
return home and to become a miner like his brothers, his aspirations cut short.
The myth of John Ford as a patriotic right-winger seems all but irrelevant after viewing How Green Was My Valley which
speaks more to the importance of family and community of altruism and good will and speaks to some greater truth about human nature. In our ever more technologically interlinked yet segregated and atomised culture, amidst the constant light of media and communication, films like How Green Was My Valley become more prophetic, more and more important and yet somehow sorrowful because they speak to our continual decline in the face of the politics of neo-liberalism and profit.
Duncan Jones' 'Moon' is a classy homage to Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey'and a tasteful and subtle love letter to science fiction.
You could say that with 'Moon', Jones boldly wears his influences on his sleeves but I think this embrace of cliché is one of the film's strengths. We know the territory, but we enjoy the journey irrespective. Getting Kevin Spacey to voice GERTY, a sort of benevolent Hal, was inspired. You have the impression that at some point the GERTY
is going to turn, that something insidious will happen and it's this possibility which sustains the tension. The film opens as an advertisement for Lunar, an energy company which supplies the majority of the worlds population with energy resources obtained from the moon. Astronaut Sam Bell, played brilliantly by the ever impressive Sam Rockwell, is nearing the end of his 3 year contract to the company and misses his wife and young daughter. Growing increasingly weary he makes what one could call without revealing too much, an act of self discovery.
Hue and Cry tells the story of a gang of boys, Joe chief among them, who discover that a criminal gang are communicating to each other covertly through a comic book called Trump. He reaches out to the comic book's author, played by Alistair Sim (best known for his portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge) for clues and begins to piece together the activities of the criminal gang. Little does he realise how close to the central figure of the criminal gang he is. Joe and his friends pursue a sinister lady who works for the publisher of the comic books as they suspect that she is is in cahoots with the leader of the criminal gang, played by
Jack Warner masquerading as a fruit and veg seller in Covent Garden.
I was reminded somewhat of Luis Buñuel'sLos Olvidados (1950), which shares the same social realist context featuring child protagonists growing up amidst poverty, yet in Hue and Cry
we witness children living in poverty who do not turn to crime and
delinquency but attempt to uncover the immoral actions of the adults.
For a film with a dark side, this is a light hearted romp
through post-war London. Here the children are bold and triumphant and the adults are devious or disconnected and distant.
This film is now considered culturally significant because it is one of
the last to truly show the damage inflicted on London during the Blitz.
In the years that followed, rebuilding projects would considerably
change whole sections of the city, and in many ways this film preserves
the memory of an older and now lost London.
It's a Barnum and Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me
'It's Only A Paper Moon' - Harold Arlen (1933
Utilising black and white much as with The Last Picture Show (1971), Peter Bogdanovich goes vintage again and captures the period, the dust, the radio (archived recordings of Jack Benny); the artefacts of a time gone by.
Paper Moon is the story of Addie (Tatum O'Neal) a girl who has lost her mother and needs to be relocated to her aunt's. A man called Moses (Ryan O'Neal) shows up at her mothers funeral, he is given the responsibility of delivering Addie to her aunt's. He might well be her father (Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal are father and daughter) but this will remain an unknown. Their relationship at first turbulent eventually evolves into a duo up to mischief and adventure. It's a beautiful little road movie about a rather unorthodox 'father/daughter' relationship.
The opening shot in Paper Moon
The film opens with the sound of wind rustling across the plains and the
strains of the hymn 'Rock of Ages'. The beautiful opening shot of Addie has evokes Dreyer and Pasolini. Addie is a child of the depression and over the next decade and a half there will be many changes
and advances which will define the America she has known, against the
one that is to come.
Addie listening to Jack Benny
Radio plays a crucial role in Paper Moon, and at every juncture Addie relies on it for escapism. She listens to Jack Benny and her frequent references to Frankie (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) contextualises the impact radio had on the population and how FDR's fireside chats connected the country and shaped the consciousness of the people.
Moses and Addie sit in a cafe, while a Will Rogers plays across the street
From the shots of Kansas, to the encroaching commercialism and images from the outside world present in the cafe Moses and Addie dine at it's clear the film presents an America undergoing great cultural and technological changes. Brand names and advertisements are seen on the walls and across the street a Will Rogers film, Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) plays. The American dream is epitomised by the caption 'Dream' which suggests the growing influence of cinema on the American way of life as a form of escapism but also as a medium for reflecting American culture back on itself and in the process changing and reshaping the culture.
Moses and the hillbilly wrestle
Paper Moon depicts the evolution of the American way of life and the slow homogenisation of the smaller cultural cliques, state to state, town to town - the exchanges of the rural and the City. Much of this is is also represented by the difference between the small towns and the rural areas, highlighted particularly in a scene where Moses trades in his car for a truck and the hillbilly owner of the truck refers to him as a "city boy". The battle of town and country, quaint and new is established in the wrestling fight between the hillbilly's son and Moses.
'Just around the corner there's a rainbow in the sky'
Things turn sour on the duo's adventure when they encounter a local bootlegger in Kansas and Moses and the music on the radio changes as well. The use of 'Down On The Banks Of The Ohio' by the Blue Sky Boys is perfectly placed after the previous scene which involved Moses discovering the woman from the carnival in bed with the hotel manager, a tryst arranged by Addie, resulting in Moses and Addie leaving for the next town. The song, a Murder Ballad, tells the tale of a man who murders his lover because she would not marry him. The song's theme outlines how Moses and Addie have entered the dark underbelly of American life, and is specifically more rural than the city-sounding tunes heard so far on their radio. It is a rural song about the real grit of love and death in a still wild
untamed and morally abtuse land and perfectly placed as it showcases
the transfer of early Folk (English to American) into early Country Music against the more refined and newer city tunes of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. Unlike 'Ohio', 'Paper Moon' is a city song about dreams and aspirations in an
increasingly plastic (or was it Bakelite?) world. The song underlines the darker scenes to follow where Moses and Addie discover that the bootlegger's brother is a crooked Sheriff.
There is a happy ending to Paper Moon. But it's certainly not entirely one of make believe. Addie arrives at the home of her aunt and given the choice to live the perfect American family life, she hesitates and returns to a reluctant Moses. The moment is bittersweet because she would rather remain on the road with him on a path of uncertainty and adventure and he would rather she remain with her aunt. This is a film of surfaces, of subtext, and the final scenes evoke this beautifully. Its not so much how the characters interact or what they say, there is an emotional intensity which suggests the feelings underneath the dialogue. There is no embrace between the two, but as with doubts about Moses denial that he is her father, you sense in the same way that deep down somehow he wants to her to come along with him after all.
The film is highly stylised. Wide shots and close-ups help evoke the sense of classic Americana, the relationships between the characters and their surroundings. Some of the establishing shots in the film are interesting in how they present characters against their environment, particularly in an early shot where Moses aims to swindle Mr Robertson out of $200 because of his brother's connection to Addie's mother's death. Here the perspective shots of the characters in relation to the car, the factory office and the factory, create a beautiful still image, in each case the small insignificance of the characters against their environment. There is something hyperreal about the dainty looking office (which looks much like an American home) against an overbearing industrial backdrop.
Paper Moon is framed by the song 'It's Only A Paper Moon', written by Harold Arlen. It was the sage advice of Orson Welles which resulted in Peter Bogdanovich naming the film Paper Moon. In fact Welles said it was so good that, "you don't even need to release the film, just put out the title on it's own". It was originally used in the film Take A Chance (1933), which was a rehash of a Broadway musical where two small time gamblers leave the carnival circuit to seek out fame and fortune. There is certainly something of this in Paper Moon when Moses forms a relationship with a women from a travelling carnival
"I wondered if a memory is something you have or something you've lost"
'Another Woman'
is an example of life as deception, that to go on living we must
deceive ourselves on more than one level and that some of us have a
larger capacity to do this than others. Sometimes we awake from these
little deceptions, sometimes it takes a great trauma or event for us to
awake from the greater deceptions and sometimes the mirror of someone
else's life is enough.
Anyone who appreciates the films of Woody Allen is likely to include Manhattan, Hannah And Her Sisters and Annie Hall in
their list of his best films. Over the next
few weeks I'd like to suggest some more unlikely candidates,
starting this week with Another Woman and following with one or two controversial
choices.
Another Woman is a bit of a departure
for Woody Allen, it's a quiet and thoughtful musing on love and regret
in late middle-age. Perhaps Allen was reading Proust and thinking about
Ingmar Bergman. Bergman's long-time collaborator Sven Nykvist is the
cinematographer here. To an extent Allen's own stylistic voice is
somewhat muted, although usual themes of love and neurosis are present;
comedy is not the prevalent driving force here. Some will find the film
deeply moving others may even find it boring for the same reasons. It is
not one of Allen's better known works but it features a masterfully
understated Gina Rowlands (best known for her work with John
Cassavettes) and a sad, dreamy and watery-eyed Mia Farrow.
Rowlands
plays the part of Marion Post a university professor who rents an
apartment adjoining a psychiatrists office while working on a new book.
She overhears a session in the psychiatrists office with a heavily
pregnant and suicidal woman, Hope (Mia Farrow) and is drawn to the
woman's story.
She becomes something of a voyeur
initially but then begins to reflect on her own life, her marriage to
Ken (Ian Holm) and another earlier love interest, novelist Larry (Gene
Hackman). The conversations she overhears help reveal to her the
cognitive
dissonance she has lived with many years, the denials she has sheltered
and the illusions she has fostered. She comes to realise that apart
from her step-daughter who idolises her, she has both knowingly and
unknowingly manipulated and hurt many of those close to her, and is seen
by those in her periphery as often quite calculated.
Rowlands reminds me of a combination of characters, Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
and for some reason Liv Ullman. Perhaps it's the Bergman influence.
Rowlands was not the original choice for the lead part and although she
is more well known for playing manically intense psychologically driven
characters in her husband John Cassavette's films, here she gives one of
the performance of her career, quiet and understated.
"For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.
"
In one of the best scenes in the film, Marion reads
Rilke's 'Archaic Torso of Apollo' from a book of poetry her mother once
owned. She finds the line "you must change your life" underlined and her
mothers teardrops staining the page. It underlines the film also.
Another Woman
is an example of life as deception, that to go on living we must
deceive ourselves on more than one level and that some of us have a
larger capacity to do this than others. Sometimes we awake from these
little deceptions, sometimes it takes a great trauma or event for us to
awake from the greater deceptions and sometimes the mirror of someone
else's life is enough.