THE SEVENTH SEAL (Ingmar Bergman, 1957).
Surrounded by the ravages of the plague, a medieval knight (Max Von
Sydow), who has returned home from the Crusades, is confronted by Death
(Bengt Ekerot) whom he challenges to a game of chess. As he wanders
the country with his squire (Gunnar Björnstrand), who is a bitter
atheist, he struggles with doubt about God and life, encounters a wandering
circus troupe that includes a gentle fool (Nils Poppe) and his wife
(Bibi Andersson), and all the while continues his dialogue, and chess
game, with Death.
This was the film (his 17th) that propelled Bergman to international
fame. It's easy to see why. The movie presents a kind of medieval world
of the mind, boldly translating a grief-haunted theology into stark
visual terms. The spooky dreamlike imagery (wonderful black- and-white
photography by Gunnar Fischer), the over- powering sense of the Middle
Ages as a strange time of cruelty and suffering, the remarkable set
pieces such as the procession of the flagellants through the village,
are all combined to create an effect that was different than anything
audiences had seen since the days of German expressionism. Even the
quieter moments of seeming contentment, such as the knight eating strawberries
with the young couple from the troupe, have the ominous feel of a pause
for rest in the middle of a fight to the death.
To understand Bergman one must recognize that his genius is essentially
theatrical. This is not to say that his films don't possess strong visual
qualities--just that the images almost always serve a simple dramatic
structure. In this case, to present such weighty moral and metaphysical
concerns in an abstract way, like a folktale or parable, goes against
the naturalistic tendency of cinema, but Bergman went ahead and tried
it anyway, as he continued to do throughout his film career in one form
or another, because his interest is with the dramatic conflicts occurring
in the soul rather than with form or even a realistic depiction of the
world.
The plague, and the atmosphere of fear, turmoil and madness in the
film's world, is a spur to the knight's questions, namely: What meaning
could there be in all this suffering? and, For what purpose does God
allow all this? and of course, Is there even a God at all? The cynical
attitude of the squire is the philosophical counterpoint to the knight's
quest (with Björnstrand turning in the film's standout performance),
while the various actions of the other characters represent people trying
to survive and get along in one way or another.
Ultimately, Bergman's philosophical concerns are conveyed more completely
by the picture's visual style and emotional texture than by the dialogue.
The Seventh Seal is one of those cases in which fame has
caused a diminishment of power over the years. The images of the caped
angel of Death, and his chess game with the knight, are now so familiar
(to the point of being repeatedly imitated and even spoofed) that it's
difficult to shake off the impression of cliché. Symbolic drama
of this sort is bound to fade into a seeming pretentiousness with time,
but with fresh eyes and an open mind one can still recognize the picture
for the startling, original and disturbing work of art that it is.
CRISS CROSS (Robert Siodmak, 1949).
An armored car driver (Burt Lancaster) is involved in a plan to rob
his employers. In a flashback that takes up most of the film, we find
out how he returned to his home town to find his ex-wife (Yvonne De
Carlo) now married to a gangster (Dan Duryea). He's still in love with
her, so he gets involved in the robbery scheme, while plotting with
her to betray her husband so they can run off together.
Siodmak's visual style typifies what later came to be known as "film
noir." Shadows and smoke are used to good effect throughout, including
an excellent long sequence where the crooks plan their job (featuring
a bizarre turn by Alan Napier as a half-cocked criminal genius), and
the heist itself--a little symphony of chaos. The director and his d.p.,
Franz Planer, get the most out of a gliding camera and long perspectives
(such as an eerie glimpse into a hospital corridor late in the picture)
without getting too fancy. Lancaster plays an obsessed loser drowning
in pride and fatalism, which doesn't fit with his natural vitality,
but the film surrounds him with a dark urban landscape (there are almost
no daytime scenes) and an unrelenting tension.
Some weak points include the hero's pain in the neck detective friend
(Stephen McNally) constantly nagging him with unheeded warnings, and
plot twists that you can see coming from a mile away. Duryea is his
usual smirking self. De Carlo, however, doesn't show much range, although
she looks great. The script can't seem to make much of this very believable,
and the story meanders, so when all is said and done the film's parts
are more impressive than the whole. But the style still makes it worth
your time.
NOW, VOYAGER (Irving Rapper, 1942).
Neurotic, repressed Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis), lives with her mean,
dominating mother (Gladys Cooper) and almost suffocates with loneliness.
She is befriended by a wise psychiatrist (Claude Rains), who persuades
her to go on a luxury cruise. There she falls in love with Jerry Durrance
(Paul Henreid) who turns out be married. Later, in a rather unlikely
turn of events, she becomes a sort of surrogate mother to Jerry's unhappy
teenage daughter.
Rapper balances sentimentality and romanticism (aided by one of Max
Steiner's lush scores) with a fresh, humanistic point of view. The doctor
sees through the empty moralism of Mrs. Vale, and later on in the film,
Charlotte is able to successfully stand her ground against her mother
in a way that seems both satisfying and real. The script (adapted from
an Olive Higgins Prouty book by Casey Robinson) affirms the right of
the child to be free of the parent, just as it also envisions a woman
who can love a married man without guilt. There's more than a bit of
wish-fulfillment fantasy in all this, but the air of freedom gives it
life. And although the scenes with Jerry's daughter are awkward and
overdone, the point is consistent with the rest of the movie: a mother
can support a girl in being herself rather than trying to rule over
her with phony ideas of propriety.
Now, Voyager is of course famous for Henreid lighting two cigarettes
and then handing one to Davis, which was considered terribly romantic
and now seems silly. But it's Bette Davis that makes the film truly
memorable. She gives a measured, carefully controlled performance, with
many subtle shades and touches rounding out the character. In some ways,
it's the essential Davis role, portraying a journey from despair to
love and dignity. And Charlotte even stands up to her lover as well--the
final scene, with its famous phrase about the moon and stars, is a keeper.
WHITE NIGHTS (Luchino Visconti, 1957).
A lonely young man (Marcello Mastroianni) meets a woman (Maria Schell)
standing on a bridge over a canal, weeping. Over the next few evenings,
he reaches out to her, falling desperately in love. She is waiting for
a mysterious lover (Jean Marais) who promised to return after a year's
absence and marry her. When it is rumored that the lover has returned,
she asks him to take the man a message, and he is torn between his desire
to help and his wish that she would love him instead.
The film is adapted from one of Dostoevsky's early, pre-Siberian stories,
and it's remarkably faithful to the source, with that quality of youthful
romanticism combined with melancholy that is so characteristic of the
Russian author's work before his imprisonment. (At least three other
films have been made from the tale, including one by Robert Bresson
in the '70s.) Schell is touching and luminous; Mastroianni is wholly
convincing as an idealistic daydreamer, which contrasts with the worldly
types he usually played. It's difficult to make this kind of story work,
I think--the ardor and self-sacrifice of youth can easily become ridiculous
if the director is heavy-handed. Visconti's touch is delicate and honest,
and consequently the emotional effects are successfully achieved.
The film was shot in less than a month on the huge Cinecittà
studio in Rome. The locale, a kind of make- believe miniature Venice,
is made up entirely of constructed sets. Furthermore, all the action
takes place within a small neighborhood of bridges and sidewalks, with
occasional forays into an interior, and it all happens at night (a proper
instance of fidelity to the source). The soft-definition photography
(Giuseppe Rotunno) and haunting music (Nino Rota) accentuate the dreamlike
atmosphere, but there's also a sense of artificiality that works against
the picture. The location is so obviously a set (as if Visconti deliberately
aimed at a theatrical effect) that the film seems a bit too closed off,
sealed within a bubble, or one of those little snow globes containing
miniature human figures. The director had been one of the pioneers of
neorealism-- now going in the opposite direction, he seems to go too
far. The sets in the old Hollywood studio films tried to create the
illusion of reality. Visconti doesn't try, and the result can seem hermetic,
too stylized for its own good. Nevertheless, this minor work possesses
considerable charm and sensitivity.
PLATFORM (Jia Zhangke, 2000).
Jia's landmark film follows the lives of a group of young people from
a provincial Chinese town in the 1980s. They are members of one of the
many state-sponsored theatrical troupes, traveling the countryside to
perform propaganda plays. As government policy shifts from Maoism to
limited privatization, the troupe evolves into what passes for a rock
and roll band.
The story sounds straightforward enough, but the treatment is wholly
original. Jia relies heavily on long shots, and rarely moves the camera.
Consequently, the characters, usually viewed as a group, are overshadowed
by the landscape. The buildings are block-like and bare. When a young
couple, unsure of whether or not to break up, wanders the town's walled
fortifications, the gray stonework towers over them, accentuating their
loneliness.
Rather than depict the passage of time through a series of dramatic
changes, the film presents long sections of slice-of-life scenes in
what amounts to real time. People in the same room avoiding each other's
glances, smoking, making elliptical comments, staring out the window--we
only gradually come to distinguish the personalities and relationships
within the group, and they're all under a cloud of passivity and alienation.
Jia has found the visual counterpart to a social order that elevates
a narrow idea of "the people" (an idea that ultimately amounts to nothing
more than the State) above the feelings, thoughts, needs, and wishes
of existing individuals. At one point, the troupe's truck stalls in
the middle of nowhere, and while they sit there, the radio plays a song
with the lyrics, "We are all waiting." Life for young people in China
is a constant waiting for something that never comes. Rather than say
this in so many words (a statement that may have an impact on our minds
but not penetrate into deeper levels of experience), Jia thoroughly
embodies this truth in the film's style. We are slowly and patiently
soaked in the dye of an all-encompassing emptiness, this diminishment
of the self in favor of a crushingly banal and anonymous outward force.
This is a difficult film, therefore, because the private realm is always
portrayed furtively, even subliminally. Frustrated desire is represented
by new fashions--the boys wearing bell bottoms, the girls using make-up
and getting perms. One of the boys is arrested for having sex out of
wedlock--the scenes where he and his girlfriend are harassed by the
arresting officials provide a crucial glimpse of the pervasive ideological
tyranny--and the girl eventually gets a secret abortion. The adoption
of a market-driven economy does not liberate these youths; conformity
only puts on a new face, and their cheesy rock shows are greeted with
either apathy or derision.
This is a film of great melancholy. In a way, the style takes the point
of view of the oppresive cultural atmosphere itself, so that we are
left to divine the stirrings of inner life through an effort of imagination--a
situation similar to that of the characters. A scene near the end with
a young office worker dancing by herself sums it all up beautifully.
Platform is enveloped by a remarkable soundtrack of incidental
noise: vehicles, distant voices, music from radios, the daily background
of small town existence. This brilliant work recreates a repressive
world in the most counter-intuitive way: from the outside in.
©2006 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
