CONSPIRATORS OF PLEASURE
(Jan Svankmajer, 1996).
The brilliant Czech animator makes films that explore the nether reaches
of our minds and behavior, with a sensibility so odd that it's unclassifiable.
This is one of his forays into live action (although animation eventually
plays a part). The theme is fetishism, but the treatment is anything
but salacious.
We first follow the mysterious activities of a balding, reclusive man
who, after buying some pornography, begins to use papier-mâche
and chicken feathers to construct -- what? It's not clear at first,
and in the meantime we follow the inexplicable actions of other people
who happen to be in his orbit -- a female letter carrier who rolls bread
into little balls of dough, storing the balls in a small box; the porn
shop owner who builds a contraption with mechanical hands while transfixed
by the image of a woman news anchor on his TV; a police inspector who
steals scraps of material from second-hand shops and the clothing of
passersby in order to make a variety of implements in his tool shed.
There are six characters in all, and as the film cuts back and forth
between their weird private activities, it gradually dawns on us that
they are each preparing for some sort of elaborate solitary sex ritual.
There are no words in the film -- everything is performed in a solemn
pantomime, with the dry humor left up to our own imaginations. Eventually
the character's actions make a kind of sense, but the interior world
that Svankmajer is portraying retains a quality of murky impenetrability.
The director's vision, I would maintain, is not misanthropic, but deeply
respectful of the lengths humans will go to in order to create pleasure
in an environment dedicated to repression and concealment. There is
no communication or intimacy, and so our protagonists focus on the most
mundane objects -- nails, gloves, dolls, bits of fur, those chicken
feathers -- transforming them into little machines of sexual gratification.
When the animation effects take over, the result is very funny, but
never condescending. The essential isolation of these urban wanderers
is touching, sad, heroic, and grotesque all at once.
Svankmajer remains, unfortunately, a well-kept secret. In any event,
his hermetic themes and concentrated, deadpan style are probably too
heady for popular taste. But those who patiently attune themselves to
his perspective will be richly rewarded. Conspirators of Pleasure
is a feast for the mind.
L'ARGENT (Robert Bresson, 1983).
A couple of schoolboys pass off a forged 500-franc note at a photography
shop. Later the shop owner recognizes the forgery, but instead of taking
the loss, allows the note to stay in the register, and it is eventually
given as change by his assistant to a man named Yvon (Christian Patey)
who delivers the store's heating oil. When Yvon tries to use the note
at a restaurant, he is accused of forgery, and takes the authorities
to the shop, where the owner has bribed the assistant to say that he's
never seen Yvon before. The inexorable series of events continues until
the consequences become deadly serious.
Bresson's final film is based on a Tolstoy short story, but he's not
as interested in the tale's simple moral about the escalating cost of
dishonesty as he is in the larger theme of inhumanity as the way of
life for modern man, or in fact as a mode of being and experiencing.
The actions of the characters take place within the narrow scope of
fear and self-interest, with no awareness of, or commitment to, the
connections between people, so the suffering that results seems like
the outcome of a process of mechanical necessity. To be able to show
this fact, as Bresson does, rather than tell it, as almost any other
director would try to do, is the mark of his austere genius.
As the stakes get higher, and the events involve more destructive crimes,
the human response becomes less and less rational, yet still confined
within a limited idea of self. We see Yvon, the victim, gradually change
through the force of his anguish into a senseless perpetrator. The only
way out of all this is to break through the chain of circumstances with
some kind of redemptive act, even an insane and desperate one.
Bresson's consistent methods throughout his work -- nonprofessional
actors, the avoidance of psychological or dramatic expressiveness, a
relentless awareness of the physical -- is arguably more effective here
than in any of his other films. The careful, dispassionate observation
lends ordinary scenes and objects an almost eternal significance. A
sequence, for instance, where prison inmates discuss a man's apparent
suicide is both rigorously matter-of-fact in tone and symbolic of the
story's entire narrative arc. The latter part of the film, involving
an inscrutable woman who takes Yvon into her house, is something of
a leap from the social concreteness of the film's earlier sections into
a kind of religious or allegorical realm of silence and dread.
Writing about Bresson's films is difficult because most of the meaning
is contained in what is not said, and in fact can not be said, but only
felt. L'Argent is a tragedy that resists rational analysis. When
we suffer, when we experience the suffering that we create ourselves
from our own sense of separation, we must either learn to suffer for
everyone -- or for nothing.
THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME
(Ernest B. Schoedsack & Irving Pichel, 1932).
A big-game hunter (Joel McCrea) is shipwrecked on an out-of-the-way
island, where he is taken in by a mysterious count (Leslie Banks). Two
other guests are there -- a beautiful young woman (Fay Wray) and her
alcoholic brother (an embarrassingly bad performance by Robert Armstrong).
Although the count claims to have a ship that will return his guests
to safety, he is in fact planning to stage a different kind of big-game
hunt -- with human beings as the prey.
Produced by Merian C. Cooper for RKO, the film was shot simultaneously
with King Kong, which was directed by Cooper and Schoedsack and
also featured Wray and Armstrong. The jungle sequences were shot on
the same set, and are in fact the best aspect of the film. Once the
plot gets into gear, and McCrea and Wray are being chased by the mad
count through the jungle, there are some exciting moments, climaxing
in a great scene with McCrea being attacked by hunting dogs near a waterfall.
Banks is a bit of a ham, but he doesn't go completely over the top
in the villain role. Wray gets to display her unrivaled talent for screaming.
The atmosphere is fun, cheesy, early-30s horror, and the picture is
so compact that it flies by rather painlessly. Compared to the great
Kong, though, it's a throwaway -- one of those implausible potboiler
adventure stories in the Edgar Rice Burroughs vein, perfect for a Saturday
matinee.
SEVEN CHANCES (Buster Keaton, 1925).
A young businessman (Keaton) is near financial ruin when he discovers
that his grandfather has left him seven million dollars in his will.
The catch: he must get married by 7 PM on his birthday, which happens
to be the day he learns of the bequest. His proposal to his sweetheart
(Ruth Dwyer) backfires, and she is offended. His partner (T. Roy Barnes)
persuades him to try to find someone else who will marry him on the
spot, and this of course leads to humorous complications.
The story is uncharacteristic of Keaton at his best because it is based
on a David Belasco farce that Joe Schenck, Keaton's producer and father-in-law,
insisted he use. Consequently, much of the film is taken up with misunderstandings
and theatrical plot devices that were completely foreign to Keaton's
style. He spices things up with a few good gags and some interesting
effects (such as getting into a car, and then getting out into a different
scene without the car having moved) but the first two-thirds of the
picture are rather tame compared to the brilliant, anarchic work he
had done before.
Fortunately, Keaton added an extended chase scene to the film's final
third that manages to redeem the movie. After his friend has placed
an ad explaining the situation and asking for prospective brides to
meet Buster at a certain church, the place is mobbed by a huge crowd
of women in bridal outfits. After he learns that his sweetheart wants
to marry him after all, he races to her house, with what looks like
hundreds of brides in pursuit. A scene where he runs down a hill just
ahead of an avalanche of huge boulders stands among the funniest in
his career. The film luckily succeeds in the end, by becoming what it
should have been all along: a Buster Keaton movie.
The Kino Video release also includes two Keaton shorts. NEIGHBORS (1920)
is a very tightly edited and funny story with Buster trying to court
the girl next door (Virginia Fox) against the wishes of her father.
It features brilliant bits of slapstick involving a clothes-line, and
four men standing on each other's shoulders so that Keaton can get in
a window. THE BALLOONATIC (1923) is a rather episodic piece featuring
Buster going camping in pursuit of Phyllis Haver, who can do quite well
without him. There are some sublimely funny moments involving a canoe.
Both films were co-directed by Keaton and his writing partner, Edward
F. Kline.
A curious footnote: I keep noticing brief gags involving African Americans
in Keaton's films. In Seven Chances, he resorts to the joke of
having someone whose back is to Keaton turn out to be black, unexpectedly,
which I recall also occurs in Steamboat
Bill, Jr. In Neighbors, he is covered by a sheet
while trying to hide from a cop, and when he stands up, he scares a
black woman, who thinks he's a ghost. Although Keaton never uses blatant
race-baiting humor (in fairness, I should mention that a black messenger
ends up saving the day in Seven Chances), these stereotype jokes
are still offensive. I don't suppose this was peculiar to Keaton. Probably
it was something that vaudeville-trained comedians would sometimes fall
back on.
MAYERLING (Anatole Litvak, 1936).
Archduke Rudolph (Charles Boyer), heir to the Hapsburg throne, hates
his dissolute life of luxury, and spends a lot of time with with dissident
students and other radicals, much to the chagrin of his father, the
Emperor, and his chief minister, who has him followed in an attempt
to discredit him. But resigned to his fate, he agrees to an arranged
marriage. Then he meets 17-year-old Marie Vetsera (Danielle Darrieux),
whose innocence and unwavering love for him wins his heart. But the
royal family disapproves of the liaison, and will go to any lengths
to stop it.
Rudolph and Marie were real historical figures whose affair scandalized
1880s Vienna. The film presents a vivid picture of the Austrian aristocracy
from that bygone era, with exquisite art direction (the great Andrej
Andrejew), costumes, and acting that beautifully evokes the social conventions
of the time. Under Litvak's direction, the camera glides and whirls
through the sets with astonishing grace. It's a stylistic tour de force
of old-school romanticism, and it only took five weeks to shoot.
This was the film that turned Boyer into an international star. He
is not merely handsome and romantic -- he has real depth of character
here, a sadness and inner conflict that makes the story of forbidden
love come alive. Although Rudolph is surrounded by hangers-on, and can
have any material thing he wishes, he longs for just one person who
would understand and accept him for himself. Marie is so single-mindedly
devoted to him, that she seems both simple and incredibly courageous.
The character is too good to be true, but Darrieux (only a couple years
older than the girl she is playing) gives a sensitive, touching performance
that suspends our disbelief.
Litvak, a Russian exile, demonstrates a bitter awareness of the corruption
inherent in the old ways of the aristocracy, but the film can't help
but shed something of a nostalgic glow over the story as well. I confess
that I love the period films, and films of "poetic realism," from France
in the late 1930s almost to distraction. Mayerling doesn't have
the conceptual weight of Renoir's works, or some of the Carne/Prevert
films, but it has a smoky, dreamlike visual texture, and it captures
the tragic undertones of romantic passion as well as any film I've ever
seen. Litvak and Boyer went on to distinguished careers in Hollywood.
©2004 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
