Andrew Sarris and The American Cinema

Yet, anyone who loves the cinema must be moved by Daughter of Dr. Jekyll, a film with a scenario so atrocious that it takes forty minutes to establish that the daughter of Dr. Jekyll is indeed the daughter of Dr. Jekyll. (p. 143)

Andrew Sarris's book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 is among the most influential and popular books within cinema studies and among cinephiles the world over. It is often said to be the birth place of the "auteur theory" (allegedly taking the critical writings in France, especially in Cahiers du Cinéma, and condensing their ideas into a theory), and it has been a central part in many people's cinematic lives; being used as a guide book to American cinema and what to look for in that rich cinematic history. It is also a book that has been criticised or ridiculed by film scholars who find the idea of authors and auteurs misguided, or romantic, or ideologically suspicious. Feminists have also criticised it for its lack of women filmmakers.

But like many books and articles of such influence, it has also taken on a life of its own, an almost mythical position, and, like Laura Mulvey once said about her own article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema": "it has acquired a balloon-like, free-floating quality." Both its friends and foes often seem to not necessarily pay that much attention to what Sarris is actually saying. They are talking about their ideas of the book, rather than the actual book. I have written before about how off-putting it can be when people base their judgement about films and directors entirely upon what Sarris has said about them, or what they think Sarris has said about them. He is one of those people whose followers do not always do him justice.

But while it is wrong to dismiss The American Cinema as some kind of romantic love song to towering geniuses (Sarris is appropriately aware of the constraints of filmmaking and its collaboratory nature), the book has its flaws and weaknesses. It is also a book of infectious enthusiasm and passion, and there are many wonderful sentences and insightful observations in each part of the book.

***

Films are not made by single individuals alone, they are made by a group of collaborators. But these collaborators do not all have the same impact on the film, and most are only concerned with a specific aspect of the film. It is usually only the director, whether or not she has a screenwriting credit, who has all aspect of the film as her responsibility. This is not a theory but a known, empirical fact about how films are made, and those who have written about films, at least from the 1910s, have as a rule taken this position. The great British critic Dilys Powell mused about the national, industrial and cooperative aspects of cinema in an article in 1946, and then asked the rhetorical question: “How can one man leave the mark of his personality and his talent on this hugger-mugger?” which she answered with “But he does.” This is the same question and answer Sarris gives, and he is also trying to provide an explanation as to how.

Raoul Walsh and Ernst Lubitsch

His definition of what he means by "auteur theory" is this: "The auteur critic is obsessed with the wholeness of art and the artist. He looks at a film as a whole, a director as a whole. The parts, however entertaining individually, most cohere meaningfully. This meaningful coherence is more likely when the director dominates the proceedings with skill and purpose." (p. 30) He then discusses various constraints, including studios and producers, and says "The strong director imposes his own personality on a film; a weak director allows the personalities of others to run rampant. But a movie is a movie, and if by chance Robert Z. Leonard should reign over a respectable production like Pride and Prejudice [1940], its merits are found elsewhere than in the director's personality, let us say in Jane Austen, Aldous Huxley, Laurence Olivier, Greer Garson, and a certain tradition of gentility at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer." (p. 31)

I think it is unfortunate that he used the expression "auteur theory" in the book because there is no such thing, at least not as it is commonly understood. The idea that a director usually is the creative force behind a film is not a theory, any more than it would be a theory to say that Frida Kahlo or Hilma af Klint are the creative individuals behind their respective paintings, or that Anne Tyler is the author of Breathing Lessons. As there is no "painter theory" or "author theory," there is no "auteur theory." He does correct himself at one point by saying "the auteur theory is not so much a theory as an attitude" (p. 30) and on another page he says that it is "merely a system of tentative priorities" (p. 34) yet he continues to say "auteur theory."

Sometimes those who criticise him, or "auteur theory," will mention an important scriptwriter or cinematographer or editor and use their names as an argument for why Sarris is wrong. But he is not denying their presence or importance. Those who criticise him for romantic ideas about artistic geniuses should pause to consider that of all the directors he writes about in the book, few of them are said to be great, and even fewer geniuses. "Not all directors are auteurs. Indeed, most directors are virtually anonymous. Nor are all auteurs necessarily directors." (p. 37) He uses The Americanization of Emily (1964) as an example of a film in which the writer, Paddy Chayefsky, is more important than the director Arthur Hiller. Some of those who criticise Sarris claim that he ignores the production circumstances of filmmaking but he does not do that either, it is rather the opposite. It is precisely the modes of production, that others claim invalidate his arguments, that are the basis of his argument. He writes "The auteur theory derives its rationale from the fact that the cinema could not be a completely personal art under even the best of conditions. The purity of personal expression is a myth of the textbooks." (p. 32) and a little later: "To look at a film as the expression of a director's vision is not to credit the director with total creativity. All directors, and not just in Hollywood, are imprisoned by the conditions of their craft and their culture." (p. 36) Neither does he ignore filmmakers' weaknesses or how consistencies can be liabilities: "All that is meaningful is not necessarily successful. John Ford's sentimentality in The Informer [1935] is consistent with the personality he expresses throughout his career, but the film suffers from the sentimentality just the same." p. 35 He also mentions Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and Hawks's Red Line 7000 (1965) as two other films that are clearly personal and consistent yet have, to him, obvious weaknesses.

Marnie

Almost all of what he has to say about auteurs and directors are widely accepted ideas and beliefs, and many of those who have criticise him probably feel the same way, unless they are of the belief that human agency and personal vision could never possibly appear in filmmaking. What he wants to do with the book is not to idealise directors or ignore the production circumstances. His main concern is to bring forward the riches of Hollywood cinema and say "Look, here are films and filmmakers as great as any from Europe or the rest of the world!" and the book is a polemic against a certain kind of criticism that sees American cinema as only mainstream trash, with a few serious-minded films. He makes an important distinction: everybody is a potential auteur, or is potentially great, and it is only after you have researched, investigated and analysed their work that you will be able to tell. "Welles is not superior to Zinnemann 'of course,' but only after an intensive analysis of all their respective films." (p. 32) That he himself is at times unable to live up to this ideal of "intensive analysis" is another matter.

He also criticises those who look at films only from the perspective of plot and story, and disregard the visual element. As a director will be explicitly concerned with the look of the film, its visual elements, even when somebody else wrote the script, it is only natural that directors are especially important to Sarris. There is nothing romantic or ideologically suspect about that, and there is nothing there that is revolutionary or remarkable, and no particular reason for anybody to get upset or provoked by it. Yet upset and provoked people were, and the kind of critics and scholars he was criticising are still prevalent today.

***

That was the first part of the book, the historical and theoretical groundwork. The next part, the largest part, are the brief entries about individual filmmakers. There is great writing in this section of the book, but here I will focus on what I think are its flaws, and the key weakness of the book: Sarris's judgements, ranking and his system of 11 different categories. The weakness is that they are often difficult to understand, and at times contradictory.

These are the categories:

Pantheon directors
The far side of paradise
Expressive esoterica
Fringe benefits
Less than meets the eye
Lightly likable
Strained seriousness
Oddities, one-shots, and newcomers
Subjects for further research
Make way for the clowns!
Miscellany

The first thing to note is that Fringe benefits consists of directors who are not Americans and have not made films in the United States, except one, René Clair. So why are they in this book? I have never understood it. If he felt compelled to add some European filmmakers he should at least have explained why, and why these 11 randomly chosen ones. It is a mystery. It is also a mystery why Clair is in this section. Jean Renoir and Max Ophüls has not made more American films than Clair, but both are included in Pantheon directors and not Fringe benefits. This seems arbitrary. Not that Clair should also be included in the pantheon, but if they can be included among American directors then Clair should be able to as well, in a suitable category; maybe Lightly likable.

The problem with the other categories, except Make way for the clowns!, is that it is rarely clear or obvious why a particular filmmaker is in one category and not in another. At times it feels like there has been an editorial oversight; as if Sarris had put the director in a different category but somebody got the categories and entries mixed up. Judging by what Sarris writes about Victor Fleming, why is he in Miscellany and not Lightly likable? Why are Jack Garfein and Leslie Stevens in Miscellany and not Oddities, one-shots, and newcomers? Some in the category Subjects for further research, like Rex Ingram, Sarris seems to not know much about and therefore they belong there, but he has as much to say about Henry King as he has about many others in other categories, so why is King there and not in Lightly likable or Miscellany? Although the category of Miscellany feels especially muddled, as most of the directors within it might as well have been included in other categories. In Pantheon directors, there is nothing in his entries about Flaherty, Lang and Renoir that explains why they are in that category and not in The far side of paradise or Expressive esoterica. On Chaplin, Ford, Griffith, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Lubitsch, Murnau, Ophüls, von Sternberg, and Welles he is better at emphasising what he thinks makes them special and great, and why they are in the pantheon.

On the other hand, his entry on George Cukor in The far side of paradise suggests that Cukor, rather than Lang or Renoir, belongs in the pantheon, whereas Anthony Mann might as well have been placed in Expressive esoterica as in The far side of paradise where he now is. (Personally, I think Mann belongs in the pantheon.) And what is George Stevens doing in The far side of paradise? It would have been more understandable, based on what Sarris has to say, if Stevens was to be found in Strained seriousness. Allan Dwan should clearly not be in Expressive esoterica but in Subjects for further research. And what exactly is the difference between Less than meets the eye and Strained seriousness, and why are there so many English directors in either category? Carol Reed and David Lean are in Less than meets the eye, yet Reed had made only two films that can be said to be American, and David Lean had not made any (although some had international funding), and neither had Jack Clayton, Bryan Forbes (except King Rat (1965)), Karel Reisz or John Schlesinger (all four in Strained seriousness). As with Fringe benefits, I do not understand why they are in the book at all. Sarris does mentions this in the preface, saying that "the doctrine of directorial continuity within the cultural marketplace of the English language takes precedence over ethnographic considerations" (p. 16), but I still do not understand why. Would he have included, say, Ernst Lubitsch, Howard Hawks, and George Cukor in a book called The British Cinema?

It is also peculiar that Richard Fleischer, John Sturges, and Robert Wise are in Strained seriousness. Neither of them, it seems to me, whatever their strengths and weaknesses, might be accused of "the mortal sin of pretentiousness. Their ambitious projects tend to inflate rather than expand." (p.189) which is how Sarris defined that category. He has not explained in what sense this is applicable on Fleischer, Sturges or Wise. An individual film here and there of either director maybe, but not their careers as a whole, which is what Sarris claims to be interested in.

I could give more examples, but I have mentioned too many directors already and I think I have made my point. In short, I find the disposition of the book confusing, and the logic and reason for the various categories, and the directors placed in them, to be lacking. Why have the categories at all, when it seems as if Sarris himself cannot really keep them apart? "One reason is to establish a system of priorities for the film student. Another is the absence of the most elementary academic tradition in cinema. /.../ The rankings, categories, and lists establish first of all the existence of my subject and then my attitude toward it." (p. 27) he says, but he sets a poor precedent for students by his bewildering system.

***

It is possible that the problem is not in the categories but in Sarris's writing. Maybe it is obvious to him why this director is in that category, and vice-versa, but he has not been able to explain this to the reader. Most entries are too short anyway to be of much help. The short entry on William Dieterle is almost offensive in its unthinking dismissal. William Wyler is barely discussed at all, despite being a formidable director of remarkable talents. It is clear Sarris does not think Wyler has much talent at all, but you will have to do a lot better work in explaining why than he does. Henry Hathaway (in Lightly likable) gets about as much space as Wyler, but Sarris goes into more depth. I do not agree with what he says, as I think Hathaway is one of the best, but unlike the entry for Wyler, I get what he is saying about Hathaway. Another I do not understand is the entry about Carol Reed. He begins by stating that the "decline of Carol Reed since Outcast of the Islands [1951] is too obvious to be belabored." (p. 163) but then he goes on to say that Reed's films before 1952 are bad as well, so does he mean that Reed declined from being a bad director to being a terrible director? He says that "Reed steadily lost control of his medium as his feigned objectivity disintegrated into imperviousness," (p. 164) I do not know what this means, but I have never associated Reed with being particularly objective. And Reed's decline is not at all obvious. The Man Between (1953) and Our Man in Havana (1959) are as good as his earlier films, and both A Kid for Two Farthings (1955) and Trapeze (1956) are fine films. I also like The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965) but that is admittedly a lesser film, even though it is an improvement on Reed's previous The Running Man (1963).

After mentioning some of Henry King's films that he finds better than average, he says they are "not quite forceful enough to compensate for the endless footage of studio-commissioned slop which King could never convert into anything personal" (p. 234). Compare this to what Sarris said about Ford: "Critics of the thirties always joked about the way that the Hollywood system compelled Ford to make three Wee Willie Winkie for every Informer. The joke, then as now, was on the critics." (p. 45) What is the difference between Sarris's view on King, and these alleged critics of the thirties' views on Ford? I think he makes the same mistake that those critics made.

***

It is a curious thing, but judging by the book his tastes are surprisingly narrow. I like both Phil Karlson and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, both Sam Fuller and William Wyler, but Sarris seems more binary. It is either one or the other. But the problems with the book is not that I often disagree with him, but that it too often is not much to agree or disagree with, as he is confusing and vague. This is probably inevitable for a book of this kind, but it also has the feeling of having been written and published in too great a haste. More time might also have given him the chance to include some noticeable omissions, such as Edward Dmytryk, John Farrow, Anatole Litvak, and the great George Sherman.

One might also ask why the subtitle of the book is Directors and Directions 1929-1968. Since many directors discussed in the book, such as Ingram, Griffith, Murnau, and Victor Sjöström, made almost all of their films before 1929, it would make more sense for the subtitle to be Directors and Directions 1915-1968.

***

I have been reading The American Cinema for maybe two decades. It is an important book for me, as it is for many others. "If you received The American Cinema at the right moment in your life, and many people including myself did, it came with the force of a divination, a cinematic Great Awakening. I suppose that makes Andrew Sarris, its author, the Jonathan Edwards of film criticism." is how Kent Jones put it in an article from 2005. It came to me later in life, and it was not a great awakening, but I treasure it, despite the issues I have raised in this article.

One of my favourite sentences in the book comes from his entry about Fred Zinnemann. "In cinema, as in all art, only those who risk the ridiculous have a real shot at the sublime." (p. 169) I do not agree with much of what he has to say about Zinnemann, as I would put Zinnemann in the pantheon if I was using Sarris's categories. But I do like that phrase, and I understand what he means, and how it relates to Zinnemann. Zinnemann's last film Five Days One Summer (1982), which unfortunately is not particularly liked by anyone, is a film in which I think he did risk the ridiculous, and reached the sublime. I am thinking in particular of the last half of the film, in which the mountains of Switzerland take on a life of their own. I am told that Sarris liked it when it came out, but I have not been able to locate any writings by him on it. I would be interested to know what he had to say.

Five Days One Summer

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The quotes from Powell, Mulvey, and Jones are from:

Powell, Dilys, Dilys Powell Film Reader (1991), p. 37

Mulvey, Laura, Visual and Other Pleasures (1989), introduction

Jones, Kent, "Hail the Conquering Hero: Andrew Sarris" in Film Comment, May-June 2005

Link to a recent piece on Henry Hathaway: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2018/06/summing-up-hathaway.html

Link to my argument for why Anthony Mann should be considered one of the best filmmakers of all time: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2018/01/anthony-mann.html

The Nun's Story (1959)

In an earlier post about late style and last films I mentioned Fred Zinnemann and The Nun’s Story (1959). Since it is such an exceptional film I want to discuss it more.

It is about Gabrielle van der Mal, a Belgian woman who in 1930 decides to enter a convent and to try to become a nun. The process of being introduced into the life of the convent, of becoming a nun, is the focus of the first section of the film. The film begins with her saying goodbye to her siblings and then her father drives her to the convent. After they too have said goodbye she, together with several other young women, are taken through a door which is then locked behind them. They have now moved from a secular space to a religious space, a space which is almost treated as if it was a prison. From the closing of that door, which happens eleven minutes into the film, follows 35 minutes of all the procedures that a woman has to go through in order to become a nun. First they change clothes, then there is an introductory prayer and then the schooling begins. Learning how to be silent and use specific signs in order to communicate, learning obedience to the bell, how to write down imperfections, learning how to achieve complete detachment from their former life, learning how to walk, getting the hair cut, and moving from one set of clothes to another, as the women go from postulate to novice and from novice to nun. Finally, after several years, Gabrielle van der Mal has moved through all of these stages and is welcomed into the congregation and given her name as a nun, Sister Luke. Then the Reverend Mother tells her that ‘Tomorrow you will leave for the School of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp.’ and by that scene the first part of the film is over, around one third of the length of the film. (The second part is about her life as a nun, first in Belgium and then in the Congo, filmed on location and those locations include an actual leper colony.)

This first part, which is concentrated on procedure, is also to a large extent silent. There is hardly any dialogue, and the music come only in a few brief spurts. It is not completely impersonal; on a few occasions it is shown how Gabrielle fails to follow the rules. She might be late, or walk too fast, or being unwilling to leave a patient when the bell tolls, even though she must. So the interior struggle which is at core of the film is there from the start. But in this first part it is not the focus, it is the rituals themselves that are in focus.

This is also true for the very last sequence of the film, in which Sister Luke returns to being Gabrielle van der Mal. She has asked to be allowed to quit and permission has been granted. In the end she walks into a room with Reverend Mother and a representative from the Archbishop. She is asked to sign a document (three copies of it) and then she is to walk into an empty room where her old clothes are. She changes clothes, removes her religious symbols and insignia and then she rings a bell. A door opens and she walks out of the door and away. There is no music and the camera dispassionately observes as she walks further and further away from the door, moving from the religious space back into the secular. She eventually turns right, after a slight hesitation, and the words ‘The End’ appears. It is a sequence, and ending, of rare perfection; emotionally and artistically.

***

To return to the first part of the film; it was not in the book the film is based on, written by Kathryn Hulme and based on the experiences of a friend of hers (Robert Anderson wrote the fine script), and neither is it something that enhances the telling of the story (which on a basic level is about a woman who becomes a nun and then finds it is too difficult and quits). Yet it is exactly this section, and later, similar ones, that makes the film what it is, and is what specifically signals that it is a film directed by Zinnemann. Gabrielle van der Mal has to make a profound decision, whether to be true to her conscience or to remain where she is and not cause any trouble, so that recurring theme of Zinnemann is present, but it is the style of which the film is told that is most explicitly Zinnemannian. The long sequence on the procedure by which one becomes a nun, before Sister Luke’s interior battle begins, is not for the sake of storytelling but for the sake of an investigation into the heart of the convent, and the rituals that the nuns perform. This is a key aspect of Zinnemann's art, wanting to know, and wanting to show, how something is done. It forms a link to his early documentaries. But the film could also be discussed as transcendental, in Paul Schrader's sense.

The Nun’s Story is the first film that is made in Zinnemann’s late style, in which the narrative moves slowly and is interspersed with contemplative images of trees, statues, clouds and such. That is a change from the more brisk and efficient style of storytelling that Zinnemann used earlier, but which had begun to loosen up over time. The Nun’s Story is 150 minutes, longer than any of his earlier films except Oklahoma! (1955), a musical which do not really count here as it is so different in many ways. These later films are longer and slower but not because they contain more information or events but because they are told in a different style, more contemplative; a style which from now on would be his usual one. This stage in Zinnemann's oeuvre is rarely discussed but it is one of the great treasures of world cinema.

Late work and last films

In Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman argues that after Psycho (1960) Hitchcock lost his creative touch and began making bad film and that this was due to the lavish praise he had received during the 1950s, particularly by French critics, which had gone to his head. I do not buy this as all. It is true that his films in the late 1960s are not as good as before, but he had been highly praised already in the 1930s and should be used to it, and his two films after Psycho, The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) are not the films of a director in decline. Whatever happened after Marnie is related to other things; personal issues, changes within the film industry, changing tastes and so on. And he did get back on his creative feet with Frenzy (1972). Besides, Hitchcock made only two films between Marnie and Frenzy: Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), and they have their merits. They are not worse than some of his earlier films, like Stage Fright (1950).

This is about a topic that interests me a lot, that of late films, or a "late phase", in a filmmaker's career. These films are often dismissed or unacknowledged and in general it is earlier works that are the focus of peoples' and critics' attention. Sometimes, as with Satyajit Ray, it is only the very first films that are talked about at any length. I remember a discussion I once had with a student about Billy Wilder being a filmmaker who (the student claimed) lost it completely in his later stage, and the student is not alone in this belief. But Wilder in the late 1960s/early 1970s is to me as good and interesting as he was in the 1940s, there is no decline there.

The first thing to wonder about is at what stage in a career it becomes appropriate to talk about a late phase. When does it begin? How should it be measured? Obviously the career itself must be of some length, spanning a couple of decades at best. And what is meant by it? There has to be a distinct change in the films for there to be a point of talking about a late phase. With Hitchcock it seems possible to see Psycho as the beginning of such a late phase. With Howard Hawks I would like to suggest Rio Bravo (1959) as the first film of his late, and glorious, phase. It was made after a longer pause, and it and his later films are looser, more meandering and even less concerned with plot than before. While thematically consistent with his films of the 1930s and 1940s, they have a different tone, mood and pace.

What about John Ford? Is there a late phase beginning with Sergeant Rutledge (1960) maybe? When he, as is sometimes suggested, began make films that deliberately questions assumptions and ideas from earlier days. (Although he had already done that too, in the late 1940s for example.) Does Vincente Minnelli's late phase begin with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962)? David Lean's late phase, when he ventured abroad and made long epics, began with Bridge of the River Kwai (1957); a phase which, with the exception of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), is also often disparaged. Michael Powell's late phase began after the thrashing Peeping Tom (1960) got by British critics. After The Queen's Guard (1961) he did some TV-work, two fine films in Australia and an adaptation of Béla Bartók's opera Bluebeard's Castle.

Some filmmakers move around and this might make it easier to distinguish phases. Luis Buñuel's late phase might be said to begin when he began making films in France, with The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), or perhaps better to push it forward to 1967 and Belle de Jour. Jean Renoir, who also did a version of The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), could be said to having inaugurated his late phase when he left the US, first for The River (1951) in India, and then his last films in France. Max Ophüls is another filmmaker who moved around, and could be said to have three phases, first a European, then in the 1940s an American and then in the 1950s a French phase, although in his case the last phase is too similar to the earlier ones for it to be meaningful to talk about it as a distinct "late phase". This is also his most celebrated phase; much like Yasujiro Ozu, the later films are the ones most people talk about. Buñuel is a similar case. They are exceptions to an otherwise strong rule.

Vittorio De Sica and Ophüls on the set of The Earrings of Madame de... (1953).

But is there any value of talking about a late phase? Or argue about when it might have begun? I think there is, if you are interested in film as art, and in the artists who make them. The conventional response is to focus on the earlier work, or some alleged golden age, and then ignore or belittle the later work, but often only because the later films are in one way or another (or more ways) different from the earlier ones. Sometimes this can be put down to an inability among critics and people at large to appreciate change and development, and often it comes from an unwillingness to look beyond the usual classics and established "masterpieces". Another reason might be that a late phase is often not in tune with the prevailing styles and themes of the younger contemporary filmmakers' work, and is therefore not considered hip and trendy and consequently dismissed as old and conservative. This is often unfair though and leads to dismissals on shallow grounds. But these aspects are still interesting to discuss. To follow a filmmaker's long and winding career can be very rewarding, and lead to insights about not just personal developments and creativity but also to discussions about how filmmakers navigate changing societal and industrial contexts and circumstances, and also to discussions about how we evaluate films. Another aspect is to consider how artists deals with ageing and mortality, including their own, in their later years. Many filmmakers have done this, from Hawks to Ozu, and some not yet mentioned here such as Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa.

Sometimes it is in their late phase that filmmakers really burrow deep, get personal and sometimes reach for the sublime. I think Fred Zinnemann began to blossom in his late phase, which began with The Nun's Story (1959).

***

Related to this, and particularly poignant to me, is a filmmaker's very last film, and even the very last image of them. I am not talking about the solution to the story but the very last thing we see, the final image. Here are five last images that have always struck me as being particularly suitable or poignant, from the last films of Buñuel, Lean, Hitchcock, Minnelli and Ozu.

Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) ends with a sudden and unexplained explosion, a fabulous end to an explosive and surreal style of filmmaking. Lean's A Passage to India (1984) ends with Judy Davis's main character turning away from a window, on which it is raining. A temperamental person trapped in a damp English apartment which is too small for her outreaching personality. Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976) ends with the main character, played by Barbara Harris, looking directly into the camera and wink to us, as if it has all been one big joke and Hitch wants to let us know. Minnelli's last film, the flawed but marvellous A Matter of Time (1976), ends with a freeze frame of the face of his daughter Liza Minnelli, who plays the lead. But most moving of all is the last shot of Ozu's last film An Autumn Afternoon (1962). Chishu Ryu who had played the male lead in Ozu's films ever since the 1930s, sits alone in a small room, now old and tired, looking away from the camera and us, faced with his own loneliness and approaching death. It is the end scene to end all end scenes.

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The meaning of a last image might change, or deepen, depending on whether you know if the filmmaker knew that this was the last film they would make. That is a topic worthy of a book...

And speaking about books, Goldman says a lot of dumb things in his book, but I shall have to come back to that another day.

Zinnemann and Hawks

Been working on a long piece about Fred Zinnemann. Below is an excerpt where I am comparing him with Howard Hawks. It is somewhat abrupt, and a work in progress, but still intelligible I hope. 

***

Zinnemann is sometimes compared and contrasted with Howard Hawks, as them being the antithesis of each other, and the fact that Hawks’s Rio Bravo (1959) was to some extent made as a response to Zinnemann’s High Noon [1952] is often invoked. Yet the two filmmakers are more alike than this would suggest. As filmmakers they were independent, and they made films about people who did not accept the conventional rules and hierarchies of society but lived by their own personal moral codes. Hawks has always focused on professionalism and it could be argued that Zinnemann has shown a similar interest in professionalism. Both Hawks’s and Zinnemann’s characters are men and women completely dedicated to their tasks, and loyal to their beliefs and responsibilities. Finally, while their styles are different from one another, their relation to space is quite similar. That is, they do not have an interest in pictorialism or scenery; they are not landscape filmmakers like John Ford or Anthony Mann. Neither does the space in their film take on a metaphysical meaning as in the films of Michael Powell or David Lean. It does not come alive as it does in the films of Akira Kurosawa. Instead they can seem rather indifferent to the surroundings. What matters to them both are the actors and the characters that these actors embody and space has no meaning in its own right, it is just the place in which the characters happen to be. In a telling quote, Zinnemann once said to cinematographer Ted Moore, when making A Man For all Seasons [1966], that it is ‘[n]ot important where people are’. Instead space is only where the characters happen to be and it is their inner struggle that matters. (Five Days One Summer (1982) is an interesting exception however, a film in which the landscape is unusually important and almost becomes the central character.) But, like with Hawks, the space can often be seen as claustrophobic, as if the characters are trapped. In Hawks it is the world at large that is hostile (and the characters have sometimes created their own private space) whereas in Zinnemann it is the institutions, which the main character is a part of, that are keeping them down and contained (and there is no private space). 

In Zinnemann’s case the view of space is linked to his overarching interests in ethical dilemmas and procedures. He is, again like Hawks, almost exclusively interested in people under pressure and how they deal with that pressure, whether it is as a drug addict in A Hatful of Rain (1957), a refugee from a concentration camp in The Seventh Cross (1944), a marshal in High Noon, a chancellor in A Man for All Seasons, to name a few examples. His focus on characters and their interiors is emphasised by his extensive use of close-ups. Sometimes characters seem to be cut off from their surroundings, floating in an unspecified space, especially with the close-ups of heads and faces. In High Noon there are a few “floating heads” shot, which means that the camera is focused so tightly on the heads of the actors that not much else is seen so they appear to be floating in space. In A Man for All Seasons cardinal Wolsey (played by Orson Welles) sometimes seems to consist of a head only, and his red dress is absorbed by the red walls. (Although the film begins with a close-up of first his medallion and then his hands, his face is not shown.) 

/.../ 

[But there are obvious differences between them too and Zinnemann's focus on individuals is where] he differs the most from Hawks. Hawks’s films almost always focus on a group, and the characters are seen as being together. Being alone is not a condition a character in a film by Hawks finds himself in, whereas in Zinnemann’s films the opposite is true. The quintessential image from a film by Hawks is of a group, in complete harmony, but in Zinnemann’s films it is of a lone individual estranged from his surroundings, strikingly emphasised for example in the opening shot of From Here to Eternity [1953] where Prewitt (played by Montgomery Clift), a lone man, is walking vertically through the shot while a long line of men are walking horizontally in the foreground. 

The marshal in High Noon, abandoned by everyone.