|
BLIND HUSBANDS
28 July 2005
In the Silent Film section I've just posted a commentary on the film "Blind Husbands" (from 1919) which starts
this way:
"Blind Husbands" remains the most astonishing directorial debut in the history of American movies. The film
has been compared to "Citizen Kane" in that regard, but it has also been pointed out that Welles's startling debut
was preceded by a significant body of work in theater and radio which brought him serious critical acclaim as well as national
prominence, and made the phenomenon of "Kane" less surprising.
Erich Von Stroheim had worked as an assistant in various capacities on the Griffith lot and for director John Emerson,
and he'd made a name for himself as a character actor doing variations on his trademark wicked Hun impersonation. He had,
in fact, more practical experience of filmmaking than Welles did before he made "Kane" -- but there was nothing
in his resume which could have prepared anyone for the mastery of the medium, the creative brilliance, on display in "Blind
Husbands" . . .
For the rest, go here:
BLIND HUSBANDS
KID VEGAS
Part Two
25 July 2005
On their second day in Vegas I took the Rossis to Caesars Palace, to help them get in touch with their Italian heritage.
They were photographed with Caesar and Cleopatra, saw the performing statues and visited F. A. O. Schwarz.
You enter that toy store between the legs of a gigantic wooden horse, three stories high. On the second story of the
place you can enter the horse's belly, which houses a selection of vintage toys for sale. Among them, way overpriced, was
a Roy Rogers Ideal Fix-It Chuck Wagon set, an example of which I recently found on e-Bay. The one on sale inside the horse
was in pristine condition and cost about three times what I paid for my set. I must say I did covet the perfect box.
Harry and Nora rated the Caesars Palace experience at 10 (out of 10) on the cool-fun scale.
That night we dined at the Hofbrauhaus, the replica German beer hall near where I live. Nora drank her fill of good German
beer -- Harry tried impersonating a lusty German beer-hall serving wench.
Nora requested the oompah band to play a little German ditty she learned in school -- which they did. This was very gratifying.
Harry and Nora rated the Hofbrauhaus at 10 on the cool-fun scale.
GROTESQUE CINEMA
SOME NEW THOUGHTS ON "GREED"
23 JULY 2005
After WWI the American moviegoing public developed a pronounced taste for the grotesque. It produced a kind of genre
of the grotesque, which catapulted Lon Chaney to the first rank of box-office stars -- an extremely unusual development given
that Chaney was a non-comedic character actor. The genre might be compared sociologically to the genre of film noir that
emerged after WWII. It's almost as though the organized mass killing of the two wars opened a window onto the darkest regions
of the human heart, and people had a need to peek into it occasionally, perhaps as a way of processing the horror.
There was also a tremendous vogue for spiritualism after the Great War, perhaps also reflecting a search for ways of processing
the spectacle of so much carnage, or finding an anti-materialist answer to it. Spiritualism and the genre of the grotesque
were counterpoints to the frivolity that also gripped the Roaring Twenties, but they were important and significant counterpoints.
It's impossible to understand the context of Eric Von Stroheim's mutilated masterpiece "Greed" without understanding
these two counterpoint trends in the culture of his time. "Greed" was a very dark film. It incorporated elements
of the Grand Guignol mode that audiences loved in the Chaney vehicles, but it used them for a higher end -- to construct a
sweeping, epic Jeremiad aimed at the materialism of American society. In this aim, it connected with the anti-materialist
sentiments of spiritualism.
It was a radical new formulation to be sure, but it drew on Von Stroheim's profound understanding of his audience. Von
Stroheim is often presented as a renegade artist in the Romantic vein, following his obsessive private vision in spite of
the commercial exigencies of Hollywood -- but this couldn't be further from the truth. He was, in fact, though visionary
and profligate, a consummate popular artist, whose films had done exceedingly well at the box office before "Greed",
and would do so again.
A version of "Greed", mutilated almost into incoherence by the corporate functionaries at MGM, which had taken
control of the film through a merger with the studio that originally financed it, found its way into theaters and made a profit.
This is hard to credit today, given how grim and shocking even the cut version is, but it obviously reflected Von Stroheim's
canny appreciation of the national mood.
There is no way of knowing how a longer cut approved by Von Stroheim might have done commercially, but good reason to
guess that it might have done very well indeed. All of the more lighthearted and hopeful elements of the narrative were removed
by MGM, which would have made the thing less unrelievedly dark, and the majesty of the overall conception along with the sheer
exhilarating brilliance of the filmmaking might well have enraptured audiences enough to keep them in their seats for three
and a half hours.
One thing we cannot say is that the grotesque elements of the film or its anti-materialist passions would have automatically
caused it to fail. Those opinions were simply the self-serving excuses of the corporate thugs who destroyed a great work
of art.
Some more thoughts on the film here:
GREED
KID VEGAS
Part One
21 July 2005
My sister and my niece Nora (8) and my nephew Harry (11) have been visiting from Los Angeles. We've been on a spectacular
whirlwind tour of the attractions of Las Vegas.
A week ago last Monday they rolled into town in the early evening and we hit the Paris -- first dining at Mon Ami Gabi,
where we sat out on the terrace in the hot desert night, ate well and watched the passing crowds and the Bellagio fountains.
Then we ascended to the top of the half-scale Eiffel Tower for a view of the valley and its myriad lights.
Harry and Nora rated the Paris experience at 10 (out of 10) on the cool-fun scale.
THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD
19 July 2005
What I like about Bernard Hopkins, the great middleweight champion, is exactly what I dislike about him -- he fights by
craft and guile and never does more than he needs to do to win. This is probably the smartest way to proceed as a fighter
but it's rarely the most exciting or inspiring. Hopkins is the Odysseus of the modern prize ring, and while I admire Odysseus
above all other Homeric heroes, I'd rather follow the exploits of Hector and Achilles when it comes to mixing it up in combat.
At 40, Hopkins is getting on in years, for a fighter, and it was inevitable that sooner or later some young gun would
show up and send him into an honorable retirement. A lot of people thought that Jermain Taylor would be that young gun and
would prove it at the MGM Grand Garden Arena last Saturday.
It wasn't quite that simple.
Taylor won a controversial split decision over the champ, but hardly triumphed in a fashion that would settle the matter
once and for all.
I happened to agree with the decision, watching the fight from some distance away in the MGM arena, but I'll need to reserve
final judgment until I watch a tape of the fight. So many rounds were nearly too close to call.
I had trouble giving Hopkins any of the first six rounds. He ducked and bobbed and slipped but still got hit repeatedly
by Taylor's beautiful fast jab, and often enough by a follow-up right. He offered little offense in reply.
Hopkins came on stronger in the second half, and won most of the last six rounds, but to my eye not all. So I had Taylor
ahead on points by about one round -- more or less the way two of the judges had it. (The other had Hopkins defeating Taylor
by an even greater margin, which was clearly preposterous.)
It wasn't an exciting fight, or a dramatic one, except for the first six rounds, when it seemed that Taylor had gotten
Hopkins's number, but the rematch should be thrilling. Taylor, who's a great young fighter, will have studied this first
meeting carefully and I suspect he will learn from it -- and then it really will be time for Odysseus to set sail for home.
KID CINEMA
17 July 2005
My nephew Harry made a short film for this web site. It features stop-motion animation of the extraordinary 12"
action figures made by Sideshow.
It's very silly and quite cool.
Those with a high-speed Internet connection can see it here:
Dear Lloyd
LILLIAN
15 July 2005
It's really great to have a full, detailed and well-researched biography of Lillian Gish -- and that we get in Charles
Affron's "Lillian Gish: Her Legend, Her life". It's also really annoying that Affron adopts such a peevish tone
throughout it.
Like many stars, Gish was a self-mythologizer -- one who never decided to drop the pose and level with her fans, as some
do later in life, when their work is mostly done. Gish was never done with her work, she trouped on to the end, and she burnished
her self-image with relentless consistency. This is interesting, and part of her character, but from Affron's book you'd
think it was the definition of her character, and a blemish on her artistic achievement.
Gish had nothing terribly shameful to cover up -- like Chaplin's dealings with his child lovers, for example -- she just
liked to inflate all her motives to lofty idealism and present herself as more saintly that she really was. In that respect
she remained a Victorian woman to the end . . . but in her independence and ambition she was a 20th-Century woman to reckon
with.
Affron's sour attitude from start to finish finds expression in his grudging, though apparently sincere, appreciation
of her art and her many fine qualities . . . contrasted with his rabidly enthusiastic exposure of her self-mythologizing tendencies,
by which her every achievement is qualified and subtly belittled.
Of course everyone enjoys discovering the secret failings of a goddess, but Affron tries to twist Gish's failings into
tragic flaws -- and he just makes himself look naive and churlish in the process. As the record of her extraordinary lifetime
of achievement grows in the book one comes to love this distant and emotionally elusive woman, and one comes to resent Affron
for his bitchiness about her.
In the Seventies I heard Gish lecture, in a small hall at a boy's prep school in New England. The place wasn't full,
and she seemed a mystery to the few students and local townspeople who showed up to hear her. For me, seeing the star of
"Broken Blossoms" and "True Heart Susie" was like seeing Cleopatra in the flesh -- an experience verging
on the supernatural. Her flowery, sentimental rhetoric about the movies and Mr. Griffith seemed old-fashioned to a kid in
his early twenties -- but I was deeply moved by her evangelical fervor for an art form I loved, by the fact that she'd taken
her passion on the road, to small towns and small halls and small audiences, sharing her mythic person with spuds like me.
Afterwards I got her to sign my copy of "The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me". In it she wrote -- "With every
fond wish, Lillian Gish". But did she mean it -- really mean it?
I don't care!
LITTLE GIRL BLUE
That's Little Z in the picture above, with her brother throwing a paper airplane behind her.
Recently my friend Jae laid down a guitar backing as Little Z improvised some awesome kid blues.
Listen to it here:
Once In A While
"AND HE TOUCHED YOU WITH HIS LIPS . . . WHERE?"
11 July 2005
I saw the 1931 version of Dracula so many times as a kid, and listened so often to a tape of its soundtrack I made off
the TV, that at a certain point I couldn't see or hear it anymore. Even watching it today I sometimes find myself speaking
the lines before they're delivered, with the exact (and always eccentric) vocal inflections of the actors.
I stopped watching it in my late teens, a bit embarrassed by its clunkiness and lack of sophistication -- so it was something
of a revelation to see it again recently in the restored version now out on DVD and find myself wondrously entertained.
It is a truly demented film, in a way none of the other classic Universal horror films are -- and the dementia must be
credited largely to Tod Browning, because it echoes the perversity of so many of his silents.
Everyone in the film looks drugged -- moves like a sleepwalker or someone in a woozy erotic reverie. The slow pace can
perhaps be attributed in part to the recent transition to sound -- to the need for actors to avoid stepping on each other's
lines and to the silent-era habit of lingering on movement for character or narrative exposition that could now be supplied
by the dialogue. But a bigger part I think is a stylistic choice by Browning -- his way of creating an otherworldy and yet
insistently sensual mood.
It's not quite campy, as James Whale's style can be -- there's no real wit to it, no winking at the audience to let them
in on the joke. We simply seem to be watching a film in some unfamiliar Kabuki-like performance tradition, which demands
from its performers a greater degree of deliberation and a slower pace than we're used to. The effect is unsettling but adds
to the uncanny atmosphere.
The restored version gives one a chance to appreciate how beautifully the film is shot -- with exquisite lighting and
infrequent camera moves that are nevertheless always effective, either in enlivening an otherwise static interior scene or
in giving the spectator a sense of being drawn in to a forbidden precinct. The film is so much more stylish visually than
most of Browning's work that I guess one must credit the speculation that cameraman Karl Freund was a kind of co-director
on the film -- or at least that Browning gave him total license in creating the look of it.
It has many lapses of continuity, few of which are really jarring -- evidence, as has been suggested, that someone took
the shears to Browning's original cut. But when the film slows down in the second half, with its maddening repetition of
expository material in the dialogue, you find yourself wishing for the shears yourself. The script is simply very clumsy,
and I'm convinced the cutting was done to eliminate unnecessary dialogue rather than to address any directorial lapses by
Browning, who after all was charged with shooting the script approved by the studio.
The film is never scary, exactly -- but it's creepy, spooky, strange, in its own unique way. It has a dreamlike quality
that allows its subversive themes to gain sway over the spectator's unconscious experience of the film.
A DINING EXPERIENCE
A follow-up on my report of 23 June 2005, "The Fungible and the Unique", inspired by a reading of "The Experience
Economy":
I heard Wolfgang Puck on the radio discussing the best meal he'd ever had in his life. It was at a restaurant in the
South of France but, astonishingly, Puck cannot remember what he ate at the meal. It was the atmosphere and the service and
the food which combined to make the meal into an experience -- transcending any particular detail of the whole.
In their book, Pine and Gilmore expand upon this phenomenon in their analysis of the emerging experience economy, of which
Las Vegas is the epicenter. It is not coincidental that Puck was the pioneer here in making dining part of the experience-oriented
appeal of Sin City.
There were plenty of standard upscale dining opportunities in Las Vegas before Puck, generic replicas of fine dining establishments
elsewhere, but the chief culinary attractions were the buffets -- which offered a kind of experience . . . one remembered
and talked about the abundant offering and the shockingly low price, even if there was nothing particularly memorable about
the food itself.
The experience of the buffet quickly became a Las Vegas cliche, and thus a commodity. By concentrating on the experience
element of dining, Puck found a way to add value to the traditional Las Vegas eatery and transformed the town into one of
the world's great culinary centers . . . making a lot of money for himself along the way.
You can now have a Puck dining experience at five different locations in Las Vegas. You can buy Pine and Gilmore's book
here:
The Experience Economy
1968
8 July 2005
In 1968, when I was 18, about to graduate from a venerable New England prep school called St. Paul's, I helped write and
distribute a letter of protest about the state the school was in at the time. It was signed by a majority of the graduating
class -- called the Sixth Form at St. Paul's -- and caused a furor at the school, way beyond anything we could have imagined.
Here's a picture of our Film Society from that year -- trying to recreate the cover of the Rolling Stones album "December's
Children". That's me in front on the left, Rick King in front on the right. Two other ringleaders of the letter incident
are also pictured -- Lang Clay, last row center, and Hugh McCarten to his left, behind Rick . . .
Not long before the incident, Columbia University had been shut down by student protests, and the letter might be seen as
our mild excursion into student radicalism. But looking back on it it seems to be something else.
The crux of the whole incident, I now believe, was that our class was being sent forth into the America of 1968 -- with
its political upheavals and cultural derangements -- unprepared socially and psychically. We had been debating things like
pizza ordering privileges, and were versed in the abbreviated mating rituals of Dance Weekend, while in a few months we would
be living in co-ed dorms, navigating the reefs of the sexual revolution and confronting policemen with real weapons in political
demonstrations. (That Fall, Rick King, the letter's co-author and our class president, used the money from an academic prize
at St. Paul's to post bail when arrested at an anti-war protest in the streets of San Francisco.)
I think we were trying, too late, to start a dialogue with the school about the modern world that we were about to enter
but that St. Paul's (SPS as we called it) seemed unwilling to. It was on some level a cry for help -- and also a deeply caring
exchange with the school . . . which we truly wanted to change for the better, if not for ourselves then for those who would
come after us. Just weeks away from graduation, we had ourselves absolutely nothing to gain from the changes our letter proposed.
Those in the faculty and administration who saw the letter as "ungrateful" -- a word they used a lot -- seem
to have missed that point. The letter was our class gift.
I should add that I don't think the problem was the traditional structure and discipline the school provided -- these
can be useful in times of change and uncertainty -- but that they were being applied as a kind of denial of the world outside
and not as tools for dealing with it.
The letter went out at first unsigned, and the school administration tried desperately to identify its perpetrators in
order to expel us. When it was presented with the endorsement of a majority of the graduating class, that was no longer a
practical response to the letter's message.
Instead, the letter became a catalyst for sweeping change at the school in the years ahead -- including the enrollment
of women, one of the key proposals we had made.
It's strange to read the letter again after so many years -- strange to imagine being that young. But I can still feel
the passion in it -- and that's a good thing. I wrote the text up to the quote from A. S. Neil -- Rick King wrote most of
the rest. It was emended and edited by a number of others, including classmate Cam Kerry, John Kerry's brother -- who also
took a lead in copying and distributing the letter.
Here it is -- an odd little window on 1968, a very unusual year:
The Sixth Form Letter
The photo below was snapped right after our official class picture was taken:
HARMONY
6 July 2005
Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" is one of the great American novels. He took three weeks off from writing
it to pen "The Desert Rose", which is a fine novel in its own right, and one of the best ever written about Las
Vegas. Set in the 80s, when Vegas was a little down on its luck, it's the story of a showgirl coming to the end of her career
as her teenage daughter starts one, as a dancer in the casino where her mother works. It captures the melancholy laced with
enchantment that can overtake people who actually live and work in this strange town -- the good-natured sadness you often
see in the eyes of older cocktail waitresses . . . in their relentless hopefulness that you're not going to be a jerk.
There are only a couple of revues left in town which feature showgirls like Harmony, the novel's protagonist, but the
type of woman who is basically paid to be beautiful remains -- and the town has its share of girls like her daughter Pepper,
whom the system has robbed of joy and compassion.
In Harmony, McMurtry creates a character whose only strength is optimism, but he grants her the grandeur of that strength,
without condescension. She's a wondrous creation -- as heroic in her way as any of the legendary frontiersmen of his period
fiction.
"The Desert Rose" is period fiction itself now, twenty years on, but the feel of the city hasn't changed all
that much -- it still takes courage to find real joy amidst the ruthless merriment of it all . . . and women like Harmony
are still the key to everything.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Above is an ad for Paul Kolnik's annual exhibition in Saratoga Springs, New York -- where the New York City Ballet has is
summer residency.
Below is a brief statement I wrote for the show:
These stunning images by Paul Kolnik record moments from the life of the New York City Ballet after Balanchine -- when, following
his spirit and method, new works were created as part of the process of the company's day to day work.
Balanchine's legacy is so profound, his body of work so prodigious, that there must have been a temptation to retreat
into a mind-set of reverent conservation and tribute -- but this would have violated the dynamic of renewal and innovation
that always characterized the New York City Ballet under Balanchine's direction.
A ballet company cannot remain truly alive without new technical challenges, new offerings, new steps. Dance lives in
the moment, and a repertory composed of old triumphs alone, old masterpieces alone, courts complacency and creative stasis.
The dancers in these images, and the choreographers who set them in motion, were all engaged in a conversation with Balanchine's
legacy, Balanchine's example, Balanchine's precedent. That required courage and faith in the future of dance, the future
of the New York City Ballet.
We may be grateful that Paul Kolnik was there to record the exhilarating dialogue that ensued -- a greater testament to
Balanchine's genius than any static and backward-looking monument could ever have enshrined.
Here is life, movement, aspiration -- the core of Balanchine's work echoing forward into the future.
Below is a link to Paul's web site, where you can see examples of his work for various ballet companies and Broadway productions,
as well as more personal images:
Paul Kolnik
SUDS
I've just written a new piece on Mary Pickford which begins this way:
When you discover the work of Mary Pickford, which is now finally practical thanks to the continuing release of her surviving
films on DVD through the Mary Pickford Foundation and Milestone Films, you begin to realize that the entire early history
of cinema needs to be reimagined, reconstructed, rewritten in the light of her awesome art. The most important female artist
of the 20th Century, and indeed one of the most important of any age, Pickford has languished for several generations in an
odd sort of oblivion. She has been hiding in plain sight -- recognized as one of the world icons of silent film, admired
as one of the few powerful female figures in the economic structure of the early film industry, and remembered, fondly or
not, as a curly-headed incarnation of the Victorian child-woman. The echo of her celebrity survives -- her art has been insufficiently
examined and appreciated.
And ends this way:
With the possible exceptions of "Intolerance" and "Greed", which are very special cases indeed, "Suds"
is as great as any film made in the silent era, as great as any film Chaplin ever made, as great as any film Keaton ever made.
But to most it's just a Pickford film -- a vehicle for America's Sweetheart. That phrase continues to damn her. Grand as
it is it diminishes her stature as a filmmaker, as an artist -- institutionalizes her as the object of a nation's affection
and hides the true source of that affection . . . her profound aesthetic and moral genius.
For the extensive, thrilling (and I think incontrovertible) argument which intervenes, go here:
SUDS
WAR OF THE WORLDS
2 July 2005
Hollywood has now managed to absorb on a conscious level that the failure of fatherhood is a central issue of our culture,
and that people are desperate for stories which address this issue and offer images of fatherhood redeemed.
It's a subject that has always attracted Spielberg, at least on an intuitive level. He's always said that "E. T."
was about divorce -- about the ways a child scarred by divorce and an absent father can use fantasy to survive. The knowledge
came from his own personal experience with the phenomenon as a youth.
In "War Of the Worlds" he takes on the subject from the father's, not the child's perspective -- and that may
reflect his own maturity and experience as a father. It also takes us closer to the crux of the crisis.
Phenomenally successful films like "The Lion King" and "The Sixth Sense" dealt with the effect of
fatherlessness on sons and, like "E. T.", offered coping mechanisms, images of transcendence. "War Of the
Worlds" deals with the source of the pathology -- the emotionally self-indulgent and incompetent father himself.
As I say, Hollywood knows the appeal of the subject -- one finds it "layered" into otherwise conventional spectacles
like "The Day After Tomorrow", where it has the feel of a perfunctory marketing ploy. Spielberg, as usual, goes
deeper.
Taking as his model the 50s-era sci-fi film, which exploited our fears of nuclear holocaust and alien (i. e. Communist)
invasion, Spielberg taps the post-9/11 malaise for the subliminal terror of his tale. Alien sleeper-cell creatures erupt
from within to devastate our civilization, and in the crisis our assumptions about everything are tested.
For Spielberg's protagonist, Ray Ferrier, a self-centered lifestyle, in which he has neglected the children of a failed
marriage, who now live with their mother and her new husband, is shattered when he's forced by unimaginable disasters to step
up to the plate and protect them. And to protect them, he needs to know them -- something he's failed so far to do.
It's a brilliant scheme, which places Ray's failure as a father center stage, and makes it far more unnerving and devastating
than the lethal space invaders and their horrifying acts.
The greatness of the film is that it doesn't posit absolute redemption for Ray -- he has lost more through his failure
as a father, and his children have lost more, than his last-minute heroics can ever restore. But he has come face to face
with his failure, and has grown up in the process -- and that is more affecting, more real, than any contrived feel-good catharsis
could ever be.
Ray remains a tragic figure, a reminder that the true lost souls of post-WWII America are not the children betrayed by
feckless fathers, but the fathers themselves, who surrendered the deepest meaning of their lives for a transitory, an illusory
freedom.
|
