Pale Blue Eyes in Hanoi

It is summer and this blog will go on vacation. There will still be tweets on twitter.com/fredrikonfilm but that is all I will permit myself to do for the next couple of weeks. I hope my summer days will be as serene as this:



The Vertical Ray of the Sun aka At the Height of Summer (2000) is Tran Anh Hung's third film, and quite wonderful (as is his first film The Scent of Green Papaya (1993), I am not as keen on the others). When the blog reawakens from its slumber in August I might write something about them. Tune in then!

On big screens vs small screens

It is no secret that since the dawn of cinema there has been a widespread reluctance to give it its rightful place among the arts. Scholars, critics and even the man on the street have often treated it with some kind of disrespect, intentional or unintentional. It is considerably less so now perhaps, but it is still there. To say, as if it was an objective fact, that "the book is always better than the film." is an example of this. You often read literary critics explaining why literature is "better" than film. Some people who would not be caught dead reading a detective novel have no quarrels with watching action films and thrillers because, I suppose, films are not to be taken seriously anyway. Another more institutionalised example is that when films (long, short or experimental) are shown at museums they are often treated with a disrespect (in terms of projection for example) that would be unthinkable for other works of art, such as paintings, photographs or installations.

But what is even more disconcerting is that among people who claim to love cinema, and take films very seriously, there are numerous ways in which they belittle their own chosen art form. The perhaps most common example is that they believe that watching films at home are as good, or even better, than watching them at the cinema. This is something I just do not understand. One argument for staying at home to watch a particular film, rather than watch it at the cinema, is that it is just people talking, there are no big action scenes or outdoor scenery, so the TV screen is enough. But seeing it on a big screen, where everything and everybody is much bigger than you are, is a completely different experience. You might miss important things and lose the feelings intended by the director. I had seen Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) at home many times before I saw it on the big screen, but it was a different film. For example the dehumanising vastness of the office in which C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) toils away does not exactly have the same impact when seen on the small screen at home. The idea that the experience at home is as good as the one in the cinema is related to the idea that the words and the story are the most important things in a film. I once read a critic who said (seriously) that Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was better seen at home on a TV than in the cinema in order to fully appreciate the dialogue scenes in the tents. In that direction clearly lies madness, and one wonders if he also prefers the Cliffs Notes version of Tolstoy's War and Peace in order to better appreciate the plot. Since films are made for the big screen (as opposed to made-for-TV-films) that is where they must be seen in order to get the full experience. If having the choice how can you possibly justify watching it in some other format than the intended one. Film is a visual experience, even if it is only close-ups of faces, and you have not experienced it the way it was intended if you have seen it only on your laptop. Are there any art lovers who says "You don't have to go to the museum, you might as well watch the painting on a postcard." or music lovers who says "Don't bother listen to that record on a hi-fi stereo, a Walkman is good enough."?

Another reason given for watching films at home is that if is not a very good film you might as well see it on TV. But that might only be a valid point if you have already seen it on the big screen and did not enjoy it, although why would want you to watch it again if you did not like it? Other reasons given are that it is cheaper (although that depends on how much you spend on your home cinema equipment), you can talk while watching it if you must, pause when going to the toilet, and you do not have to suffer the odour of popcorn. But these are not reasons that have anything to do with the art form, only your comfort. It is also more comfortable to watch a documentary of a safari in your own home than going to the Serengeti and face mosquitoes, snakes and the hot, humid air.

I am not saying that we should never watch films at home. It is often the only chance we have to see certain films and it is better to have seen it on a small screen than not at all (although in some cases I wonder...). But we should never kid ourselves into thinking that watching it at home is the same, or better, than watching it at the big screen. Any film which is any good takes advantage of the scope and space provided by the medium and we as viewers (and listeners) should do the same. If film lovers themselves do not show more respect for the art form, why should others?

The Great Gatsby (2013)

Whenever a well-known book becomes a film the world is suddenly filled with experts on the source, and more often then not they do not know what they are talking about. I sometimes feel that filmmakers show more fidelity to the novels than critics who complain about alleged detours and changes. The same is true for The Great Gatsby. A personal favourite is an article in which the writer complained that they had changed the ending since Gatsby does not kill himself. [Spoiler alert, he does not kill himself in the book either, at least not in the versions I have read.] Yet whether any changes have been made is more or less immaterial, unless you do a compare and contrast study, specifically looking for the things that have been removed and added. The only thing that matters when evaluating the quality of the film is whether it is any good on its own, not how closely it follows the original work, a topic I have elaborated on earlier here.

To focus on the film, I liked it a lot. This was primarily because of Leo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. The film has mainly be described as an extravagant party zone but I was pleasantly surprised by how sweet it often was, and it was when these two, Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, were together. They have an awkward date, drinking tea in a sea of flowers, and afterwards Gatsby take her on a tour of his majestic house. This was probably the highlight of the film, where the visual flourishes of Baz Luhrmann was held in check. Here the night really was tender. But it was not just that sequence, from start to finish I thought DiCaprio was excellent and convincing. It has been a long time since I saw an actor carry a film to such a degree as DiCaprio does here. It was a shame that Tobey Maguire, as Nick, was not his equal, but rather made the screen unbalanced when they had scenes together. With Mulligan the balance was just right. The other actors, although good, did not make much of an impression because the film, more than the book, was all about these three characters, Gatsby, Daisy and Nick.

The first 20 minutes or so of the film were rather annoying, because they were so forced and frenetic, with people screaming rather than speaking. Then things settled down, including the characters, and it was easier to enjoy the film. There was just one thing that got in the way. Nick's voice-over, which nearly ruined several scenes because it was so superfluous. It explained the scene for us, what we were seeing, and it was always unnecessary, not to say insulting. Apparently Luhrmann have very little regard for the emotional intelligence of the audience. But it was not so bad that I was not able to enjoy the film, all the way to the beautiful last scene.

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This post is my contribution to a number of blog posts about The Great Gatsby from Swedish bloggers. Here are links to the others. The first one is in English, the others are in Swedish:

http://thevelvetcafe.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/gatsby/
http://bilderord.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/the-great-gatsby-2013/
http://jojjenito.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/the-great-gatsby/
http://fripp21.blogspot.se/2013/05/the-great-gatsby-2013.html
http://www.fiffisfilmtajm.se/den-store-gatsby/
http://www.harduintesettden.se/2013/05/the-great-gatsby/

An image, frozen in time (Out of the Past)

Films are moving images and often a single image needs the context of the images that come before and after to be meaningful. But sometimes they can stand alone. The image is sufficiently expressive and does not need to be further understood, or it is visually beautiful, and needs no explanations. Some makes you want to enlarge them and hang them up on the wall.

"An image, frozen in time" is where I take a particular still image, one that I happen to like, and write about it, in just a few words.

The first one is connected to last week's post about Jacques Tourneur as it is from his Out of the Past (1947). It was hard to chose a specific image from that incredibly rich and beautiful film so I might do more but this is for today.

The stars of the film are Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas, but the part played by Virginia Huston is equally memorable. She plays Ann, the girlfriend of Jeff (played by Mitchum) and in some ways she is the real victim in the film. She is kind and sweet where the others are cynical, scheming and cruel, yet she too will lose in the end, without having done anything wrong. The image is from a scene in a car when Jeff reveals his past, that he is not the man Ann thinks he is, and about his previous affair with Kathie (played by Greer). Her expression is so delicate, not angry or upset, she is just pained and sad, and it is enough to make you cry.

Jacques Tourneur

"I never saw her in the daytime. We seemed to live by night. What was left of the day went away like a pack of cigarettes you smoked. I didn't know where she lived. I never followed her. All I ever had to go on was a place and time to see her again. I don't know what we were waiting for. Maybe we thought the world would end." 

That is how Jeff Bailey (played by Robert Mitchum) describes his relationship with Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) in Out of the Past (1947), and it is also a description for any number of films by Jacques Tourneur, the master of shadows and possibly the most graceful image maker there ever was.

Another quote that is very revealing, almost as if Tourneur is analysing the themes of his own films, is this from The Curse of the Demon (1957), spoken by a sinister professor:

But where does imagination end and reality begin? What is this twilight, this half world of the mind that you profess to know so much about? How can we differentiate between the powers of darkness and the powers of the mind?

That twilight might have been what Paul Willemen was referring to when he wrote in 1975 that "although the films dramatise the conflict between terms A/B, it is the '/' which constitutes the enigmatic pivot upon which Tourneur's films turns." And this is another line from The Curse of the Demon, spoken by the main character played (very well) by Dana Andrews: "Nobody's free from fear. I have an imagination like anyone else. It's easy to see a demon in every dark corner." Tourneur himself once said that "The real horror is to show that we all live unconsciously in fear."

With these quotes most of Tourneur are more or less summed up, fear, darkness, fleeting moments and ambiguity. But it is not so much these motifs as the style in which he made them come alive that matters. There are few who has such a refined, elegant, sombre style of filmmaking, where things stay calm and controlled. It is as if the terror he unleashes is contained by the precision and beauty of each shot. The acting style in his films is subdued, sometimes almost sleepy. When directing his most common suggestion was for the actors to hold back, to quiet down. He wanted them to "lower their voice, eliminate inflections, and give the sentences a different, less dramatic rhythm." as he explained it in an interview in 1971.

Of course, he did not only do horror and thrillers, he also did westerns and adventure, and even a few comedies (much to his surprise), but they were also done in the same style, and with the same evident grace and elegance. There is a case to be made for his first film in colour, Canyon Passage (1946), as being the most beautifully shot film in the whole of film history. It is a kind of western but the term does not in the least explain the power and allure of that film, which is filled with life, characters and stories, all interacting, and where the focus lies on the community rather than the individual, even though it has a central character, Logan Stuart , played by Dana Andrews. Stars in my Crown (1950) is another magnificent film about community, and also about race, racism and the Ku Klux Klan, with a great performance by Juano Hernandez, as well as Joel McCrea as the kind preacher who is the central figure in the community and the film. It shares with the best of Tourneur the same grace and beauty, this strange quality of the images which is distinctly his.

During the 1940s he hardly ever faltered, with his three supernatural films Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), The Leopard Man (1943) and the thriller Berlin Express (1948) being the high points together with Canyon Passage and Out of the Past. The 50s are more uneven, but with at least two sublime films, i.e. Stars of My Crown and The Curse of the Demon. After that things got difficult for him, and he mainly worked in TV, and I have seen very little of that. I want to see everything though, because Tourneur has such immense powers that even if he only manages to get one shot right in an entire film, it will still be worth it.

Here is a clip from The Way of a Gaucho (1952), an uneven film perhaps, but still good and filled with unforgettable compositions and movements:



There are two things here, first the beauty of the colours and the shadows and second the ambiguity. Did she see a man, or did she just imagine him? It is exactly this that is at the heart of Tourneur's art, shadows and ambiguity, the zone between the real and the unreal, the art of the uncanny.