TWO FILMS BY PARE LORENTZ
Pare Lorentz was an unlikely hero in the history of the documentary.
He was a journalist and film critic with no knowledge or experience
of how to make a movie when he was tapped by FDR's Resettlement Administration,
because of his work with a Newsweek article on the subject, to direct
a film about the Dust Bowl. After arduous location shooting through
which he had to learn his job on the spot, he found himself struggling
to get some stock footage from a hostile Hollywood establishment (as
a critic he had slammed the Hays Office, among other sins). King Vidor
finally came to his rescue. Lorentz then persuaded the composer Virgil
Thomson (also a film novice) to write the score. He edited the film
himself to fit the music. The result was THE PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS
(1936).
The film is a biography of the land, showing how the fields of grass
gave way to ranchers, followed by the railroads, and then farming. An
economic boom stimulated by the need for grain in World War I led to
massive migration. The film then explains how overplowing helped destroy
the land's fertility, with drought and Depression finishing the job
by the early 30s. Lorentz avoids either a dry, matter of fact narration
or the godlike air of authority assumed by the newsreels of the time.
Instead he uses a cadenced, descriptive method which is remarkably effective
in sustaining viewer interest in a story that deals with the general
movement of people and events rather than particulars. The coordination
of the editing with Thomson's majestic score is brilliant. The film's
one major flaw is the long middle section, in which the follies of the
farm boom are conveyed by insistent and repetitive imagery that becomes
tiresome.
Instead of ending with an optimistic message, as was customary, The
Plow That Broke the Plains closes with a solitary dead tree in a
desert, a courageously bleak note of warning.
Lorentz had to cover the costs of going over budget out of his own
pocket. The theaters, owned by the studios, wouldn't show his movie
until the Rialto in New York gave it a chance. It was a critical success,
although it was attacked by the anti-New Deal factions. The RA then
offered Lorentz more money to make a movie about the Mississippi and
the various projects, including the TVA, created to control it. THE
RIVER (1937) is in every respect a more accomplished work. Thomson once
again wrote the music. The editing is more fluid, the camera placement
and choice of imagery more various in effect. Lorentz happened to be
on the scene for a major flood on the Ohio, which provided spectacular
footage.
The movie opens with a wonderful sequence which traces the course
of the river from its source in Minnesota all the way to the Gulf. Gradually
but dramatically it portrays how massive logging upriver led to erosion
and devastating floods further down. At a time when no one used the
word "ecology" The River depicted the delicate balance of environmental
influences in an understandable way. But what makes the film really
stand out is the narration, written by Lorentz, which employs a rugged,
Whitmanesque poetic style, with a potent use of repetition and dramatic
heightening. Nothing quite like it had been done before for a film,
or has been attempted since.
There's no disguising the fact that these two films were propaganda
for the New Deal. Still, Lorentz showed a new way for the documentary,
his influence was felt by Grierson, his fellow pioneer in England, and
he paved the way for future creative work in non-fiction film.
STRIKE (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925).
Eisenstein's first film tells the story of a fictional labor strike
in pre-Soviet Russia. The suicide of a worker leads to a mass walkout.
The bosses and political authorities employ spies and a gang of street
thugs to sabotage the strike. When that fails, they bring in armed Cossacks
to crush the rebellion by force.
The film shows the young director already in command of the elements
of montage to an astonishing degree. The sense of precision, the instinct
for combining editing rhythm with drama and the movements of people,
practically assault the viewer with the force of a revelation. Along
with this power over the image comes a vaguely oppressive feeling -
everything we see is so exactly determined by the director's vision
that the viewer's eye and mind can feel hampered - a common characteristic
of Eisenstein's early masterpieces.
The weak points of Strike are the acting (most of the performers
show evidence of their stage backgrounds by being overly theatrical
in their gestures) and the propagandistic caricatures of the capitalist
bosses. Eisenstein stacks the deck by depicting the bosses as overweight,
cigar-puffing villains wearing top hats. That was a stereotype even
then. Now it tends to puncture the film's seriousness.
Strike ends with two amazing set pieces. The first shows the
fire brigade turning its hoses on the protesting workers. Never have
I seen anything so realistic. Those people are really getting blasted
by the water, and the dynamic cutting and sense of detail create a riveting
immediacy which is a model for any sequence of its kind. The second
set piece is the invasion by the mounted Cossacks on the workers' tenement
housing. A sort of precursor to the Odessa Steps scene in Potemkin,
this long and blisteringly violent tour de force is almost as great
and certainly as horrifying as that celebrated sequence.
The Kino Video edition of Strike features a marvelous score
by the Alloy Orchestra. The print is in absolutely mint condition -
the image so crisp that it looks almost like a brand new film.
KADOSH (Amos Gitai, 1999).
In an Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem, the devout Rivka (Yael
Abecassis) has been in love with her husband (Yoram Hattab) for ten
years - but because they are childless, his rabbi urges him to divorce
her. Meanwhile, Rivka's younger sister Malka (Meital Barda) loves a
man outside the community, and longs for more freedom, but nevertheless
agrees to a traditional arranged marriage.
A clear-eyed, powerful indictment of the strictures on women within
fundamentalist society, Kadosh displays admirable attention to
the details and everyday rituals of its subject. From the opening scene,
with the careful morning prayers and preparations of Rivka's husband
Meir, right through to the end, Gitai patiently illuminates a hidden
world. It seems so real that I could hardly believe I was watching actors.
Abecassis is the emotional center of the film, and she conveys her
slow transition from serenity to crisis of faith with a delicate intensity
and depth. Barda is wonderful too - her inner conflicts more evident
on the surface, and more ruthlessly repressed. Gitai's feeling for silence,
and the meanings that are unspoken, counteract the story's isolation
(most of it takes place indoors) with an openness of perception. In
the mute rituals of the women, the viewer is allowed to see and feel
the truth of their condition.
Comparisons with Dariush Mehrjui's Leila are inevitable. In
that film, a childless Iranian woman is pressured by her husband's family
to accept him marrying a second wife. Both pictures understand how the
woman's acceptance of her role, her internalizing of oppression, plays
as much a part in the tragedy as outside forces. In the case of Leila,
however, the focus is more psychological and secular, albeit in the
context of traditional Islamic beliefs. Kadosh is very interested
in the way religion provides a framework for an entire system of dominance
that extends into family, education, sex, gender roles, and society.
Gitai portrays the fundamentalist approach to life as a suffocating
contraction, without ever becoming heavy-handed about it. Calmly, with
an occasional wryly humorous touch, he shows this little society turning
in on itself, with the suffering inflicted on its women as the ultimate
consequence.
LOST HORIZON (Frank Capra, 1937).
An English diplomat (Ronald Colman) escapes by plane, along with a
motley crew of survivors, from the war in China, only to crash in the
Himalayas. They are rescued by a mysterious people who take them to
a hidden utopia called Shangri-La.
Capra's most expensive film for Columbia was based on a popular novel
by James Hilton, and it in turn was a major success at the box office.
The idea of Shangri-La, a kind of philosopher's kingdom in which there
is no greed or violence, must have struck a chord with audiences who
were revolted by the carnage of the previous war, and anxious about
the prospects of a new one.
Utopia, it turns out, looks a lot like a wealthy estate in southern
California. Actually the set design is rather interesting. I wish I
could say the same for the film, but its ideas are too feeble to maintain
the sense of drama and significance to which it aspires. Shangri-La
is administered by a benign old fellow named Chang (H. B. Warner), who
explains that the perfect society is based on moderation, as if this
little bromide were enough to solve the world's problems and tame human
passions. Then we learn that paradise was founded by a wandering Christian
monk, and peopled by Europeans who were attracted by its rationalist
solutions to life. In fact, the Europeans seem to run the show, while
the simple natives do their bidding - all this displaying typical naivete,
as well as ignorance of the fact that a Buddhist culture actually existed
in Tibet that really did offer some sort of an alternative to war, but
with no debt, alas, to beneficent western influences.
Of course none of this was meant to be realistic. It's fantasy, and
if the fantasy quality could have outweighed the ponderousness, it might
have been fun. But unfortunately Lost Horizon, in addition to
being pretentious, is dull. Colman frolics a bit with Jane Wyatt, and
comic relief is provided by way of some sparring between Edward Everett
Horton and Thomas Mitchell, but nothing is really happening. By the
time Colman meets the High Lama (Sam Jaffe looking dreamily at the ceiling
while speaking in a sing-song holy voice that must have been Capra's
idea of what a really spiritual guy would sound like) I was praying
for the movie to end.
Time has not been kind to Lost Horizon. Half-baked slogans
and ideals didn't stop World War II, and now they just seem sad. Peace
comes through facing reality and dealing with it, not running from it.
SHADOW OF A DOUBT
(Alfred Hitchcock, 1943).
Young Charlie (Teresa Wright) is feeling despondent about her unexciting
life in her average family in the extremely normal small town of Santa
Rosa, California. But things perk up when the man she was named after,
her charming and colorful Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) comes to visit.
Unfortunately Uncle Charlie appears to be a little too colorful - the
police suspect him of being the "Merry Widow murderer," a romancer of
lonely widows, who then kills them and steals their money.
On loan from Selznick to Universal, Hitchcock was blessed with a brilliant
script (Thornton Wilder helped with a lot of the dialogue) and a fortunate
combination of a sunny American setting with the dark themes of human
evil and loss of innocence. In style, it is one of his most subtly controlled
efforts, with each shot and sequence serving to move the story, reveal
the characters, and link symbolic ideas. A scene in which Uncle Charlie
gives his niece a ring, for instance, sets up a major plot point, while
highlighting his faintly incestuous attitude towards her. At the same
time, it echoes the idea of a wedding ("Merry Widow") and symbolizes
the two as mirror images of each other, with one of them (the niece)
unaware of the implications. The entire picture is layered with meaning
like this, so casual that it is absorbed without being conscious, so
artful that the story evokes a rush of conflicting ideas, feelings and
impressions. The incest angle is, of course, never explicit, but it
adds to the picture's frisson in a way that must have been intended.
In all this, Hitchcock employs his full arsenal - deep focus, tracking
point-of-view shots, startling angles, gliding camera movement within
a scene - and he makes it all look easy, even simple.
Joseph Cotten's performance is perhaps the best of his career. Peeking
through the surface of his charm is a disturbing coldness and disdain,
a deadness of the heart. His scenes at the dinner table with the family
are seething with hostile undertones. The underrated Teresa Wright is
fully up to her task of portraying an innocent girl awakening to a sense
of horror. There is also an amusing motif in which young Charlie's father
(Henry Travers) concocts fantasy murder plots with a bookish friend,
played with hilarious deadpan by Hume Cronyn - while of course the real
thing is happening right under their noses.
The film's one false note is the obligatory romance between Wright
and the detective (Macdonald Carey). In a film with such a subversive
tone, this trite element is wholly out of place. It's a minor flaw in
a masterwork.
Shadow of a Doubt has been, if you'll pardon the expression,
overshadowed by Hitchcock's more spectacular work in the 50s and 60s.
It is different from what you might expect if you come to it with these
later films in mind. For one thing, it looks softer - the picture was
shot on location in Santa Rosa (an unusual method in those days), so
the usual sharp studio lighting effects are missing. But more than that,
it is one of the director's more psychologically plausible efforts.
The thriller elements are merged with a naturalistic approach, and this
creates an unusual blend that is worth the effort it takes to absorb.
Supposedly it was Hitchcock's own favorite among his films. It is certainly
one of mine.
©2001 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
