CHAUVEL CINEMATHEQUE

My curatorial swansong - this week at Cinematheque

2009-02-23T09:08:00.016+11:00

Yes folks, you read it right, my time as curator at the Chauvel Cinematheque has come to an end. On the 5th of February I received an email from the manager of the Chauvel Cinema stating that my services programming cinematheque would no longer be required. I knew the writing was on the wall when the Saturday screenings were canned a few months back and replaced with sessions of Madagascar 2, but it was still a shock.

A Cinematheque will continue at the Chauvel, but the programming will now be done in-house. You'll now have to go to the Chauvel website to find out what's on.

After more than two and a half years and close to 300 shows, I still felt I had more to give, in fact I felt I was just starting to find some real momentum, with some exciting new film suppliers in the wings, a growing active membership and growing input from the members.

The good news is that my tenure as the curator of the Cinematheque will go out with a bang. The last show is on at 6:30 March the 2nd and is the last part in a month long look at the phenomenon of multi-screen movies, or movies that use multiple projectors.

The ultimate night comprises a double feature of multi-screen works by local arts/music experimentalists The Stud and Track Recording Company. The first is a retooling of a 1999 show performed live at the Side On Cafe in Sydney called Idaho Transfer. This show uses a captioned-for-the-deaf print of Peter Fonda's bizarre 1973 science fiction film (above), projected in a twin screen format and given a new, improvised, lo-fi, psychedelic, garage-rock soundtrack by the Stud and Track House Band. The music was recorded at a rehearsal for the show in 1999 and will be remixed live on the night by Brad Maiden.

The second half of the show is a new work, Journey to the Seventh Planet, devised especially for this show. It features a twin screen presentation of the Z-grade Danish science fiction film, a kind of poor man's Solaris, with a new soundtrack that combines elements of the film's original soundtrack, with ambient, electronic and experimental music.

Both shows will showcase the amazing power and fidelity of Lenard Audio's Cinesthesia sound system.

I've always dreamed of filling the main Chauvel cinema and this is my last chance, so if you've enjoyed cinematheque in the past, please come and say hello... and goodbye. Hope to see you there.

I have enjoyed my tenure as the curator of the cinematheque and thank Chauvel and Palace Cinemas for giving me the opportunity in the first place. I will take some time out to renovate the home, concentrate on my University studies, and look after my (soon-to-be) two kids. Hopefully, I can get something else together sometime later in the year. The wheels are already turning. I have a giant backlog of material that was meant for this blog, so I will be updating it regularly. Thanks to all the members past and present.

Expanded Cinema - this week at Cinematheque

2009-02-18T21:28:00.004+11:00

Week Three of a month long look at the phenomenon of multi-screen movies continues this week at the Chauvel Cinematheque. This special event is devoted to (mostly) Australian experimental art films that use two and three projectors.

6:30pm Monday 23/2/9 EXPANDED CINEMA

Razor Blades USA/1968/Colour/25mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Paul Sharits.

From the filmmaker: “A mandala opens to the other side of consciousness. Since the film ends as it begins and because its inner fabric is made up of loops, an infinite loop is suggested.” Sharits hopes this twin screen flicker film provides "occasions for meditational-visionary experience."
“A barrage of high powered and often contradictory stimuli… We feel at times hypnotised and re-educated by some potent and mysterious force.” David Beinstock, Whitney Museum.

Rotunda Australia/1980/Colour/11mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: John Dunkley Smith.

An exercise in perception involving spatial and temporal interplay. Although shot patterns have been determined with a mathematical precision, the film is constructed by the viewer's apprehension/ordering/re-ordering of the constituent elements. There is also scope for the intrusion of chance elements not only within the images themselves but also in the slight variations of image juxtaposition which can occur as a result of the differences in running speed between projectors. This film involves a panning camera placed in the centre of a rotunda in a park. Twin screen presentation.

Experiments Australia/1982/Colour/54mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Dirk de Bruyn.

A series of experiments employing a range of techniques including refilmed images, solarisation, time-lapse, animation of found objects, word-puns, letrasetted and recycled soundtracks, pixillation, hand dyed film and rapid editing. The filmmaker describes it as 'a scream from suburbia' and 'a statement about filmmaking itself'. A twin screen film.

The City Australia/1970/Colour/8mins/16mm/NFVLS Producers: Arthur Cantrill, Corinne Cantrill.

A composite view of the city is created by three films screened simultaneously. The centre film has a soundtrack of mechanised noise.

Meteor Crater - Gosse Bluff Australia/1978/Colour/6mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Arthur & Corinne Cantrill.

A composite view of a meteor crater is created by a central picture of superimposed images framed by two circling images of 360 degree pans of the crater.

Cheesla Grills (Prat 2) by Pia Santaklaus

2009-02-18T12:14:00.003+11:00

CHELSEA GIRLS (part2)

Tonight (16 February 2009), we watched the second half of CHELSEA GIRLS.

This inappropriately named film (note: there are often more males than females present on the screen) is yet another indication of how ruthlessly exploitative the Warhol machine was. Perhaps ‘CHELSEA BOYS’ wouldn’t have enough pull. Advertising sorts will tell you that girls sell more product than boys and so the film title (like the movie poster) becomes another tool of deception.

I remain hesitant to write more on this film as it affords the undeserving subject further publicity, though I can use this opportunity to state that CHELSEA GIRLS remains barely worth watching. In the hands of a real craftsman or artist, the film ‘highlights’ could be distilled into a 3 minute short that could hold something valid. As it sits, CHELSEA GIRLS is a kind of dated precursor to today’s mindless BIG BROTHER ‘reality’ shows, in which fame-seeking, extrovert youth are followed by a camera and microphone picking up even the most (unedited) mundane, unscripted behaviour unfolding.

It’s amazing how little quality Warhol achieved here, even using such a large number of people at the Factory. You’ve heard ‘Many hands make light work’; in this case ‘light’ translates to ‘insubstantial’ and ‘of little importance’. CHELSEA GIRLS really does look like perhaps a few lazy, inept individuals got up one day with a surprising pinch of pseudo-motivation and decided to rally their pitiful combined lowly energies into a stumbling together of fumbled, base, crass, indulgent drivel. CHELSEA GIRLS is not Art, by non-artists.

Sequence 7 returns to the arrogant, chubby, bald fellow still in bed with the slim fellow (“Patrick”) who’s good ‘bouff’ of hair is again messed up and tussled by an envious balding fellow who can’t leave the ‘do’ alone. Various others enter the picture, including a wigged person (in drag) who loves singing cabaret-style numbers.

Already people begin to leave the cinema. I don’t blame them. These ‘leavers’ must respect their valuable time, not willing to waste it on what appears to be the hazy reality of hazy non-entities on the screen. Not everyone wants to watch the jealous ranting of an overweight “smelly” bald guy with “ugly toes”. “Ingrid” enters the picture as well; she clearly picks her nose, and offers the camera ‘the finger’ a few times.

Sequence 8 introduces colour to the screen. Gerard Malanga is on a bed with an angry old woman(?), a bull whip and a crucifix on the wall in what seems to be an exercise in uninterrupted tedium. Also appearing in this segment is the quite attractive head ‘bitch’ from last week’s sequence 5 & 6 who mostly sits there looking fatale.

At times the sequence becomes so boring and uninspired that the person behind the camera begins to add ‘something’ by providing more ‘non-action’ with irritating, harsh, fast zooming in and out. The effect is pathetic, uncontrolled and random. I wonder if it amused the cameraman. Malanga puts on perhaps a dozen long beaded necklaces… time passes slowly in what seems to be a game of ‘what can we do now to fill more time in front of the camera?’. The boredom continues uninterrupted until sound comes on and we hear some interesting, eerie psychedelic music playing in the background.
Sequence 9 is also in colour, but this time an intense, bright ‘solar’ orange filtered aura surrounds a fair youth in close shot. Though no photographs could possibly exist of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe SHELLEY (1792-1822), this young ‘actor’ with his inoffensive dimpled chin, fair skin and long hair has an uncanny resemblance to the radical poet whose image was captured in paintings and drawings of the time.

In this sequence, which seems to be in some kind of sensory deprivation space, he speaks slowly in a free-flow fashion. Awash in warm red light stating he “can’t feel a thing, eyes can’t focus” and “I wish I was a piece of sweat”, he focuses considerable attention on his own hair. He plays with his hair and asks “don’t you want to comb your hair?” before he begins combing and caring for his hair. He describes his hair as “beautiful” and also discusses how “Hair lets people down”. He adds various vacuous comments about how he likes having “fun” and “eating apples” and “meeting people”.

More audience get up and leave the cinema. It is painfully obvious that we are sitting here in the dark watching underwhelming people doing and saying nothing much.
Though this sequence experiments with light and colour it isn’t enough to warrant attention. The light in the background becomes a contrasting intense blue as the red-lit ‘actor’ becomes a little ‘blue movie’ presence; he performs fellatio on his own finger, then gets “hot” and takes off his shirt as the camera zooms in very close to his hairy chest. He coyly takes off his pants, tips his head back and rubs his long hair over his back saying he loves the “tingle” and “I’m very sensitive”. It feels like we’ve been tricked into watching soft male porn as a pulsating strobe light and changing colour effects play ‘hide n seek’ with his form. He finds a hairbrush and combs his hair down to hide his face and states “I’ll pray with my hair”. It seems more and more that the underlying running theme (if any) in CHELSEA GIRLS is hair…

Concurrently, sequence 10 is being projected. The same ‘actor’ is present in both sequence 9 & 10. At one point he turns his head and seems to be looking at himself in the other projected sequence. In sequence 9 he is alone in the coloured dark (sometimes holding a mirror) and in sequence 10 stands amongst a crowd gathered together looking down from what appears to be a kind of elevated theatre ‘box’; the crowd aglow in blue light all appear to be watching a ‘show’ that we cannot see…not available to the cinema audience, we are watching them watching something we can only hear. Sure!

More people get up and leave the cinema.

Sequence 11 sees the return of the “Pope” (the ‘therapist’ in last week’s 2nd sequence). Here the film is in black and white. This deluded figure ties a tourniquet around his arm and injects his hand. He appears alone, moody, irritable and cannot think of what to say for the camera. He needs to somehow fill 35 minutes and asks Paul Morrissey (who is behind the camera) “What should I do, comb my hair?” He sees himself as an all-important holy figure. He dubs himself “Pope” and discusses his “flock” of “homosexuals, perverts, thieves, criminals, rejects”. He wants to be idolized and even alludes to being God. He wants a confession and soon a female enters the scene to provide one. They pseudo-philosophize and at one point he tells her “Where is heaven? It’s on my shoulder”. It seems she innocently said something he didn’t agree with and in a snap he becomes horrifically angry and obnoxious and with a kind of sick religious fervour, he genuinely, slaps, beats, hurts and curses her in an act of uncontrolled violence. After the terrified girl is driven away, the worked-up ‘Pope’ rants on about various opinions including something about 1954 when “The Roman Catholic Church has disappeared and Greenwich Village took its place”. He is full of himself and is aware that “this may be a historical document”.

On another projection we see the 12th and final sequence featuring Nico (who had appeared in the opening sequence - perhaps conveying a cyclical element). This time Nico is alone and in colour. The scene opens with her looking teary, sad and contemplative. In shadows, colours and lights project onto her face. More zooming in and out to disguise the lack of action, it is perhaps the slowest-moving sequence yet. Nico does so little that she could be mistaken as an anthropomorphic representation of a projection screen. Her face provides the stage and platform to be used for a mini ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ psychedelic light show. The background noise is groovy echo-chambered psychedelic.

Finally it’s all over!

I am far from impressed with this overlong film which exposes Warhol as a charlatan. Warhol was a problem unto himself. Many of his physical characteristics were not strong. He disliked much about himself including his weak eyesight, his bulbous nose and his early balding head. It drove him. For his eyes he wore glasses. For his nose he had surgery, and for his lack of hair he became obsessed with hair pieces, wigs and such. It’s quite possible the weak thread theme ‘hair’ running through this film was suggested by Warhol, relating to his own insecurity which developed when follicles thinned out quite early.

I see Warhol as a kind of pale, wig-wearing, lonely succubus who ‘rapes’ those unsuspecting inside and outside his sphere of influence. He enticed lost youth into his world and absorbed the fruit of their ideas; though he would surely know the fruit wasn’t so sweet, he also knew he could market and package even the rotting stuff in such a way as to fool enough people to provide him with credit.

Warhol had a hunger to be rich and famous; he somehow achieved this, then went on to become his own cliché, which in effect is a cliché of something wrong.

Pia Santaklaus
16 February 2009.

RAW-HOL & THE CHEESLA GRILLS by Pia Santaklaus

2009-02-17T01:05:00.006+11:00

09 February 09:

CHELSEA GIRLS (1966)

Firstly, I must mention that I should not be writing a report on a film that has already had too much hype, exposure and free advertising, but I do it (at the risk of further promoting it) to say that this curio has almost no redeeming qualities and that perhaps if every copy of this film were destroyed, the world might still manage to keep turning.

By far and away the best thing about this film is the fabulously impressive, imaginative and sexy movie poster designed by artist Alan Aldridge (who had worked with the Beatles and the Who) which offers far greater reward than Warhol’s tedious film could ever hope to. Warhol knew the movie wasn’t as good as the poster and in a rare show of humility admitted it to Aldridge. The poster design was inspired by the surrealist work of Rene Magritte and I believe the success of CHELSEA GIRLS owes almost everything to that poster. The poster got more ‘bums on seats’ than Warhol could have hoped for, but then at such a cost; imagine the massive anticlimaxes experienced by most viewers when they suddenly realize they’ve been swindled. (You can’t judge a film by its poster!!!) This is TRULY one of the greatest examples of an exploitation movie. Cheap and nasty, often out of focus, unedited, overlong, boring, ugly, incoherent, mostly insignificant subjects, no real highlights, poor sound quality…the list goes on… Stand back for a moment and you should see that Warhol’s philosophy of filmmaking must surely translate in parallel to the philosophy of Warhol’s printmaking. If so, then the true worth of his prints comes into focus…they too begin to appear unworthy and exploitative. Warhol is the ‘King Rat’ overseeing a bunch of smaller rotten rats, and all together they leave behind great mounds of rat shit.

Shot mostly at the Chelsea Hotel and The Factory, the film is an amalgamation of around a dozen sections, each approximately 35 minutes. It is customary to show these sections on 2 projectors, not only halving the time it takes to expunge the tedium, but viewers might also imagine there is twice the possibility that something interesting might happen, although keeping the eyes busy still isn’t enough to save this film.

The opening scene presents a slow-moving Nico standing around a tired, messy, kitchenette snipping away at her hair. Her hair looks impressive, but it seems to take forever to trim a few ‘bangs’. Nico would later go on to record a solo album called CHELSEA GIRL to capitalise on the movie title. (Recorded April-May 1967, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, John Cale and others contributed greatly to Nico’s album). Apparently the Nico scene was added later in the process to replace an earlier scene featuring the enigmatic and popular Edie Sedgewick (who later actually moved in to the Chelsea Hotel) who insisted her sequence be taken out of the movie. She requested Warhol stop showing her films. The ‘team’ of Sedgewick and Warhol (blonde on blonde?) had a falling-out by late 1965. Sedgewick, perhaps justifiably, had felt over-exploited by Warhol and was considering working with Bob Dylan and his management. It seems she may have even been under some kind of contract with them whilst CHELSEA GIRLS was being made. A film called ‘AFTERNOON’ eventually surfaced with edited footage of Edie from ‘Chelsea Girls’. Charismatic Edie’s presence may have saved this sinking vessel… the footage of her should never have been taken out of this film. While Nico preening herself is of some interest for about 3 minutes, too much footage reveals that even ‘Stars’ end up in cheap dirty kitchens and lame situations.

The next sequence, partly scripted, partly ad-libbed, is the manipulative therapist (‘the-rapist’) who verbally forces himself on a sad creature called “Ingrid”. The role is something akin to a ‘priest and confessor’ in an “ex-Catholic boudoir”. Ultimately, these characters don’t hold enough interest to warrant complete focus on them for over half an hour. The split screen running 2 images simultaneously adds significantly to the watchability of this drab segment.
Regarding the ‘psychiatric couch’, a relatively new ‘invention’, I imagine Sigmund Freud got the idea from understanding the significance, outrageousness and profit potential of millions of devout Catholics (and other religious) unloading their issues in a private box, to a faceless ‘agent’ of God. Confession is an ages-old practise that seems to help sinners get things ‘off their chest’. It supposedly provides healing for the ‘soul’ with the grace and forgiveness of God. I believe modern psychiatry is closely related to confession (‘psyche’ means ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’). Psychiatry probably took confession one step further as the troubled can unload their ‘burden’ on a ‘faceless’ ear, and all the while they can even lie back on a comfy couch… this value-added innovation (providing a comfortable couch) was enough to begin charging people money for their ‘confessions’… Today, we also have TV talk shows to provide some tarted-up healing.
At one point the 2 screen images seemed to offer an ever-so-vague synch. While Nico preens her hair on one screen, Ingrid washes the hair of the ‘priest/therapist’ with champagne (or beer?) out of a bottle.

As early as this, audience members who don’t care so much about ‘hair care’ synching began to leave the cinema. CHELSEA GIRLS is really NOT riveting stuff. I’m sure these unsuspecting cinema patrons felt their soul contaminated by this movie ‘inexperience’. I’m also already aware that this movie was hyped into significance. Mostly pretentious and pathetic, it remains a poorly executed series of home movies.

Soon we are watching another sequence. An overbearing, aggressive, chubby female with extremely thin lips and a nose that almost snouts, manipulates a syringe and injects a female (“Mary”?). She later injects herself through her jeans. Deluded, she is called “Duchess”. She calls her little syringed ‘victim’ “Tina Louise” (perhaps a reference to the attractive, soft-spoken actress in ‘Gilligan’s Island’).

The 4th sequence opens with 2 men lying side by side on a mattress. One man has a full head of slick, healthy, luxurious hair on a slim, smooth, hairless body, whereas the other man is the antithesis with a bald head on quite a hairy, plump body. At one point the bald man messes up the other man’s locks (hair care envy?). Two women enter the picture and tie up the man with the full head of hair and pull down his underwear. Narcotic paraphernalia is strewn around the messy ‘bed’. The scene becomes more disturbed as the young, handled man seems increasingly ‘out of it’ writhing around like he’s someone’s sick bondage pet. Soon lots of males (including Gerard Malanga) gather around, but we cannot hear the conversation as only one screen at a time is presented with sound.

Meanwhile on the other screen (with sound), the drug dealer-pusher ‘Duchess’ confides that she is evil and that she gave ‘Tina Louise’ “an OD” (overdose). She also gives some insight into Factory life; crediting “silver paper” as being “where it all started”. (Warhol used silver foil to cover the old walls of the Factory- never underestimate the power of a gimmick – something so superficial can hide an array of faults). A ‘hair-dresser’ enters the sequence (again, the ‘hair-care’ theme) and with his considerable skill, works on the chubby one’s hair, actually making the unattractive, loud-mouthed ‘duchess’ presentable (almost glamorous). Perhaps hair-care IS important. Like the gimmicky silver paper used to cover crumbling brick walls, a gimmicky glamorous hairstyle can hide an array of issues. Unfortunately, good hair can only go so far…it’s disturbing how ugly most of the characters seem underneath…even the talented Nico suffers here from an overdose of vanity and superficiality.

At this point another audience member gets up and walks out. As he passes by, I hear him curse “Indulgent shit!” and by golly, I believe he’s right.

The perverse stench continues with the 5th and 6th sequences. Shot on the same day with the same participants (wearing the same clothes), these are ‘bitches’ sequences. One pathetic masochistic soul is ‘imprisoned’ under a desk whilst other sadistic vamps look on arguing and swearing at her. This ‘Girl’s room’ feels like the ‘sleepover’ from Hell. The most attractive girl is also the most beastly. Misguided vanity put these attractive females before the camera and almost nothing is achieved. These crappy ‘home movies’ persist with trivial, trivial, most trivial trivialities! Sound remains weak and difficult to understand. Lighting remains dodgy. Not that it would make much difference, but often, Warhol is not even behind the camera as he delegates ‘directing’ duties to Paul Morrissey.

A veritable feast of sins… vanity, sloth, lust, gluttony etc…is well represented here… Warhol and/or Morrissey point a camera and shoot (a 5 year old really could do it as well) their conceptually daring capture of banalities like sex and drugs. This film is a product of perfect timing on Warhol’s part. In context to what was happening during this time, he picked the right moment to be brash, risky and shocking. One might applaud Warhol for that… but it is difficult when we never see Warhol himself shoot up heroin or stripped naked or humiliated. Something akin to a self-serving politician who sends OTHER people’s children to war (not his own), Warhol hides safely behind the camera, whilst using gullible, love-starved minions and dogsbodies to do his dirty work.

It must be admitted that this so called ‘art statement’, like many other questionable art statements, is really only a well-calculated, over-hyped, poorly constructed piece of talentless drivel created by charlatans for a gullible audience. If an artist can’t be technically proficient or aesthetically satisfying, then at least a good new idea would be something to cling onto. Unfortunately Warhola doesn’t achieve anything close to artistic integrity with this film. The idea may be considered daring, but cannot be considered a good one. Art should not qualify as such based on bad ideas.

That’s it for ‘Part 1’! Next week 6 more sequences (Part 2) and I don’t know if I should waste my time with it. Still, one must be fair, so I (grudgingly) give the whole film a chance. A completist, I feel compelled to finish this difficult thing, though I can safely say I will not be voluntarily watching CHELSEA GIRLS again in the near future.

As always, Brett Garten did a magnificent job screening this film, particularly with the added technical challenge of split screens. In probably the busiest Sydney Cinemateque session so far (A lot of disillusioned new members turned up for the rumoured titillation… the poster really does work!), we witnessed something that needed to be seen once in order to affirm any suspicions of Warhol’s lack of talent. It’s little wonder the coy weasel kept so quiet… too afraid his lack of credibility might unintentionally slip out of his mouth.

Chelsea Girls ephemera

2009-02-10T08:39:00.004+11:00

These two items were found in the film cans for Chelsea Girls...

Click to enlarge.

Serial Picture Gallery

2009-02-10T08:37:00.026+11:00

The Chelsea Girls - this week at cinematheque

2009-02-02T14:19:00.011+11:00

This week we say goodbye to the serial and look once again to the 1960s as Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls kicks off a month of multi-screen movies at the Chauvel Cinematheque.

MON. 9/2 at 6:30pm sharp - THE CHELSEA GIRLS PT. 1

USA/1969/Colour & B&W/105mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Andy Warhol.

Chelsea Girls comprises twelve reels of film (the last four in colour) each running 35 minutes in a continuous unedited 'take' shot with a static camera but with sometimes frequent use of zoom. Each reel was supposedly shot in rooms in New York's Chelsea Hotel with Warhol Factory types, sometimes drug-dazed, more or less being themselves or acting out sketchily conceived roles. Warhol's film is both a document of the period and a film which implicitly has as its subject the nature of cinema and cinematic expression, from the role of the camera through the notion of stardom to the conventions of projecting and viewing the finished work. Chelsea Girls makes a transition from the aesthetic minimalism of Warhol's earlier films to the relatively more commercial movie-making of Lonesome Cowboys and Paul Morrisey's subsequent films. The cast includes Nico, Ari, Bob 'Ondine' Olivio, Bridget Polk, Ingrid Superstar, Ed Hood, Mario Montez, Eric Emerson, Mary Might, International Velvet, Marie Menken, and Gerard Malanga.

“The results are often spellbinding.” Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

NOTE: The film will be projected in a twin-screen format with sound from only one of the two reels on the screen and projection staggered to allow for reel changes. Due to the length of this film, the film will be screened in two parts over two weeks. As the film is non-narrative it is not necessary to see both parts, but it is recommended.

MON. 16/2 at 6:30pm sharp - THE CHELSEA GIRLS PT. 2

Chelsea Girls Pt. 2 USA/1969/Colour & B&W/105mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Andy Warhol.

“In stripping the cinematic medium of its pretensions and decorations, Warhol has produced an art statement that is likely to be acceptable only to the very few. Whatever one's opinion of the merits of the films, it must surely be admitted that Warhol has finally forced a realignment of the purpose, place, and function of the artist, who is no longer solely a technician or a decorator, but is now strictly an idea man and director. Much of his subject matter is, in one way or another, the subject matter of the commercial artist; in this manner big business and the immediate past, probably the two most difficult things for the contemporary artist to come to terms with, become for Warhol both the content and the product of his art." Gregory Battcock, Art Journal

Review of Judex by Pia Santaklaus

2009-01-27T00:46:00.010+11:00

JUDEX by Pia Santaklaus.

6 Fabuary 2009.

Although I really enjoyed the zany, stylish, abstract and absurd short animation FANTORRO, today I’ll discuss this week’s main feature JUDEX (1963).

JUDEX (1963) is Director Franju’s feature film ‘remake-tribute’ which tries to evoke the aura of the original 1916 silent-era serial JUDEX… At the close of the movie we read that this film is “a souvenir of an unhappy time”.

It is quite a moody, serious piece with few light touches. Besides the main characters, JUDEX features a likeable detective (Mr Concantin) portrayed as a cross between Lewis Carroll, Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chaplin. Mr Concantin reads escapist literature such as ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and ‘Fantomas’, he is kind to children and in turn a boy-child helps him as a sort of side-kick ‘Watson’ or ‘Robin’.This particular film is stylistically strange and ‘out of time’ – in parts it looks and feels like it is faithfully set during the early 20th century and yet at other times it presents quite comfortably as 1950’s or 1960’s. Some aspects (such as the clothing and dialogue) curiously flow in and out of context… perhaps in an attempt to reach a ‘timeless’ or more eclectic mood. It’s amazing to hear talk of selling “Rio Tinto shares” even back then.

This film was surely made with great love and respect for the original subject matter… The sometimes excruciatingly slow pace is perhaps forged deliberately that the viewer might have ample time to analyse, observe and admire details in an attempt to convey a dreamlike, creepy mood piece.

The sets are gorgeous. Art Nouveau details such as wallpaper, lamps, furniture, buildings and more, work as a kind of eye candy.

Judex is a mysterious master of disguise, a magician, a heroic vigilante figure who has, and uses cutting edge technology (such as surveillance) in his personal war against Favraux the ruthless banker. ‘Judex’ meaning ‘Judge’ is an appropriate name for a vigilante archetype. I think the later ‘Judge Dread’ carries a similar psyche.

In some ways JUDEX (and FANTOMAS) is a forerunner of themes and images found in such successful later ventures as ‘Batman’ and ‘V For Vendetta’. ‘V for Vendetta’ (comic book series and 2006 film) features a mysterious vigilante anarchist who wears a Guy Fawkes mask and tries to thwart the controlling system. Common themes between JUDEX and V for Vendetta are: masks, cloaks, secret lairs, rooftop action, investigators, surveillance systems, imprisonment and more…

The Catwoman in the campy 60’s Batman serial may have been inspired by the female criminal in a black ‘cat-suit’ that Judex must struggle against.

Filmed in black & white, the characters in JUDEX also seem very black & white… in a world of good verses evil with few shades of grey.

I suspect some religious elements creep into the film as well; one scene sees the ‘death’ of Favraux and his subsequent resurrection after 3 days (he was not dead but drugged by Judex)… perhaps this somehow reflects on Christ’s own death and resurrection...

There is little or no music for long stretches of the film which adds to the somewhat empty and slow-pace of various sections.

I really liked the use of bird imagery in JUDEX. Birds are appropriately symbols of freedom and communication… My favourite scene was the bird-themed masked ball. The surreal ambience was jaw-dropping and reminded me of some of Max Ernst’s early, strange collages some of which had formally-dressed, early 20th century figures with bird heads. Many of the original films and serials of Feuillade (including JUDEX) deeply inspired the Surrealists (including Dali, Cocteau and Ernst).
Franju’s JUDEX had enough for me to want to chase down at least one of his later films ‘SHADOWMAN’ (NUITS ROUGES) which I understand deals with the quest for the grail.

Thanks for a good movie experience Brett.

What are the chances of seeing Fanju’s SHADOWMAN at Cinemateque?

Judex - this week at Cinematheque

2009-01-27T00:17:00.006+11:00

This Monday the 2nd of February sees the last in a special month long program dedicated to the motion picture serial. This week looks at the influence of the serial on successive generations of filmmakers and will include an introduction by film historian Barrie Pattison, a selection of trailers of recent films informed by the serial, Jan Lenica's animated short Fantorro, and Georges Franju's feature length Judex.

Fantorro

Germany/1971/Colour/12mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Jan Lenica.

Animated fantasy presenting episodes from an imaginary science fiction serial set in Paris in 1900.

Judex

France/1963/B&W/99mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Georges Franju.

Judex is a homage to Feuillade's serials made in 1916. The characters - Judex the implacable avenger (magician Channing Pollock), the evil banker, his innocent daughter, the comic detective, the adventuress and the glamourous, acrobat-battling vamp, Irma Vep - are derived directly from the serial. Surreal set pieces abound, including a murder at a masked ball filmed in the contrasty black and white of early cinema. On the surface Franju's atmospheric nouvelle vague film seems to foreshadow postmodern pastiche but the difference lies in the gap between the random stylistic allusion of the latter and Franju's loving immersion in the 'surreal innocence' of an earlier time. One of Maurice Jarre’s groundbreaking scores adds to the atmosphere of menace and wonder.

The Fantom Menace by Pia Santaklaus

2009-01-21T18:40:00.014+11:00

Sydney. 12 January 2008.

The programme began with a remarkable BATMAN serial from 1943. This particular episode featured both Batman and Robin. At one point Bruce Wayne (Batman) knocks out a fortune teller and takes his place to warn a femme fatale she is in imminent danger. The whole scenario is riotous! I loved it as a period piece and a pop-culture curio!

Then we were treated to the screening of FANTOMAS - (1913). This was the 2nd episode (Juve Contre Fantômas) in the exploits of the popular French fictional arch-villain ‘FANTOMAS’ - created by Frenchmen Marcel Allain (1885-1970) and Pierre Souvestre (1874 -1914) both of whom were involved in law, journalism and then writing, collaborating on 32 books involving Fantomas from early 1911 till 1914.

Fantomas is a sociopathic criminal who doesn’t balk at killing. Fantomas is ruthless, merciless and unfaithful; a master of disguise, he can assume the look and persona of those he kills. In the first Fantomas novel (1911), set in Paris around 1900, Fantomas (as ‘Gurn’) kills with a hammer. Many of the stories feature a French Police Detective called ‘Juve’ whose aim is to catch Fantomas. Other main characters include ‘Fandor’ a French journalist friend of Juve, and ‘Lady Beltham’ who is Fantomas’ aristocratic English mistress.

The Fantomas books reveal Fantomas’ exploits, some of which were turned into silent film serials from 1913. Five silent serials were made in total. Importantly, Fantomas marks a transition between gothic era villains and modern pulp heroes.

His popularity ensured many remakes… in 1920 a 20 episode serial was made in America called ‘Fantomas’ starring Edward Roseman. Along the way, Fantomas films were also made in 1932, 1946, 1948, 1964, 1965 and 1966. The 1960’s Fantomas were made in a more James Bond style. In 1980 a TV series was made. In addition, various Fantomas comic books have been published; 1941, 1957, 1962, 1969 and in the 1990s.

The original French Fantomas novels inspired numerous French Avante Garde and surrealist artists including Guillaume Apollinaire and Rene Margritte. Fantomas also inspired other creations including Tenebras (by Arnould Galopin), Masque Rouge (by Gaston Rene), Belphegor (by Arthur Bernede), Demonax (by R. Collard) and Tigris, Fatala, Miss Teria, Ferocias (all by Marcel Allain). There is suggestion that even the original 1963 Pink Panther film borrowed elements from Fantomas (ie: Sir Charles Lytton was called ‘the Phantom’ and Inspector Clouseau was modeled after Inspector Juve).

Possible inspirations for Fantomas may have included ‘Arthur J. Raffles’ the gentleman burglar of London, created in the 1890s by E.W Hornung. Like Sherlock Holmes, Arthur J Raffles is a master of disguise and has a loyal sidekick (Harry ‘Bunny’ Manders); Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick was ‘Watson’. Under another guise A.J Raffles also keeps a great London apartment where he stores his many disguises. Another possible inspiration for Fantomas, similar to A.J. Raffles and ca ontemporary of Sherlock Holmes was the popular French character ‘Arsene Lupin’ - another gentleman thief of detective fiction; French writer Maurice Leblanc created Arsene Lupin and from July 1905 Arsene Lupin stories were serialized. It is thought that Arsene Lupin may have been inspired by the real-life clever, generous and sharp-witted anarchist Marius Jacob (on trial March 1905) or an even earlier fictional gentlemen thief, Arthur Lebeau (1901 by Octave Mirbeau). Yet another possible inspiration for Fantomas was Zigomar (created by Leon Sazie), serialized in magazines in 1909 and 1913. French writer Gaston Leroux wrote ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’ first published in serial format from September 1909 to January 1910. The novel got an English translation in 1911. Like Fantomas after him, the fearful, gothic ‘Phantom’ wears a mask and inhabits a mysterious personal landscape.

While watching the movie and trying to piece together the many elements, I noticed various scenes in FANTOMAS featured a strong, mysterious lady. Perhaps she is the 'Princess' or ‘Lady Beltham’ (Fantomas’ mistress); either way, she certainly doesn’t look or dress like the aristocracy of the day, certainly not English aristocracy, but rather like someone more ancient, perhaps from a Biblical time and place… curious!

Though unclear, it is thought that Fantomas might be of British and/or French background. In the books, Fantomas gets around, even reaching India around 1895. By 1897 Fantomas was in USA and then Mexico. In 1899 he was in South Africa and soon, back in Europe… This habit of ‘wandering’ might suggest Fantomas is of the then-often ‘homeless’ ‘Wandering Jew’ or gypsy stock. Perhaps he is a German or Russian Jew immigrant or perhaps some kind of mistreated minority. When seen in context with another Feuillade film, JUDEX (1914) one might extract further possibility of a Jewish connection…

JUDEX is a French silent serial made in 1914. The release was delayed till December 1916. ‘Judex’ was filmed soon after ‘Fantomas’ by Frenchmen Louis Feuillade and Arthur Bernede. Like many other popular flamboyant villains of the time, Judex was a mysterious dark being, a master of disguise with a secret identity, who often wore a large hat, cloak and a mask (very similar to ‘The Shadow’). A master fighter, Judex also had his own secret subterranean headquarters beneath a castle (similar to The Phantom of The Opera who had subterranean quarters beneath an Opera House) anticipating Batman’s ‘batcave’ as here is where Judex kept all his technological gadgetry. Interestingly ‘Judex’ means ‘Judge’ and his complex quest in life is to exact revenge on his arch-enemy, a corrupt banker who swindled people. The positions of Judge and Banker are often associated with the Jewish people. In the book of Judges (Old Testament), we find a history of Biblical judges who helped and guided the Israelites whilst in the modern world there is remains a ‘Jewish Bankers’ conspiracy that anti-Semitic subscribers buy into.

It is difficult to explain the popularity of Fantomas when he clearly acts in an unsocial, unethical manner. To try and explain, perhaps an example of the French socio-political upheaval of the times may be helpful, as seen in one of modern Europe’s most notorious and controversial political events; the ‘Dreyfus Affair’. Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) was a French officer of Jewish extraction. Born in Alsace, his family moved to Paris around 1871 after the Franco-Prussian war. Many believe Dreyfus became a victim of anti-Semitic sentiment when he was tried on charges of treason and convicted in 1894. France had a Catholic identity and a strong campaign ensued which led to the release of Dreyfus from prison in 1899. By 1906 he was exonerated and readmitted into the army as a Major and then made a Knight of the Legion of Honour; some may see this as sweet revenge.

Minorities, migrants, the persecuted, the homeless, the poor; many folk were hurting. Masses wanted and needed rescuing. Tyrants needed beating. The concept of the ‘superhero’ was long overdue and about to make a splash. In this world, Fantomas took the law into his own hands and made his own rules, dishing out death to whoever he felt deserved it. This vigilante behaviour may herald back to Robin Hood who was in his own way a vigilante-antihero with tights (I might call him a ‘thieving ruffian’ or ‘robbing hood-lum’!). From this path, Fantomas could have inspired what eventually became the superhero phenomenon. Superman, Batman, The Shadow, The Spirit, The Phantom… many, many heroes wearing cloaks, gloves, capes, hoods, cowls, hats, tights etc all hiding their identity.

Coincidentally or deliberately, the name of Lee Falk’s popular comic strip hero ‘The Phantom’ (created 1939) has a similar ring to ‘Fantomas’. They both wear masks, tights and have a dog although Lee Falk has stated that The Phantom (Ghost who walks) was inspired by various sources including myths, legends, folklore and characters like King Arthur, El Cid, Tarzan and in particular Robin Hood.The difficult migrant experience may have contributed to modern psychiatric concepts and newer understandings of darker ‘fantomas’ elements in humans; consider the result of migrants disposing of their past lives, passports and Ids in order to gain entry into various countries, having to adopt new names, voices and personalities in a bid to assimilate. These displaced souls would have to keep their true identities very secret as we see in characters such as Superman or Fantomas – a secret identity or disguise becomes necessary whilst One’s real personality (ID) is hidden deeply away, not exposed in public. One would need a very private shelter or place where one could relax and be oneself and so, perhaps wishes are ignited for a personal base, a home, one’s own private place – fortress of solitude – a secret headquarters (even read ‘mind-space’) where none can disturb and one can be free to express true inner self. Perhaps as a kind of reaction to requirements brought on by rootlessness, bases were soon to become standard inclusions in even the hero genre armory. Places like the ‘Fortress of Solitude’ (Superman) and the ‘Batcave’ (Batman) are good examples.

I may be going too far out on a limb and I don’t imagine anyone else has yet expressed this, but perhaps even Freud’s concept of the inner ‘Id’ came from such analyzing conflicted personal I.d (Identification). I suspect Freud’s concept of the 3-part ‘psychic apparatus’ of the psyche (Id, Ego, Super-ego)* was developed through a new understanding of the workings of the migrant psyche, mind-set and 'balancing' function…echoed perfectly in the later 3-part psychic concept of Kal-El (Id), Clark Kent (Ego) and Superman (Super-ego).

Moving on… I appreciated the introduction to tonight’s program by Barrie Pattison who made some very insightful and incisive calls. As he often does, he also provided a pertinent detailed A4 sized, double-sided flier, this one titled ‘The Weird World of Movie Serials’ with useful historical information.

The picture quality of the tonight’s film, though compiled from various copies (the originals lost), was breathtakingly good in parts, considering it is now approaching 100 years old.
The soundtrack was a special treat. A live, new, ambitious original score created in only 2 weeks by talented Adrian Clement and his most worthy recruit Alex Robinson (percussion-drums). This was Adrian’s second venture into the world of movie soundtrack performance and was also Adrian’s 2nd live original film score, coming only a fortnight after his wonderful first foray and in many ways this one was even better.

Tonight Adrian surprised us by utilizing a more synthetic electronic keyboard organ sound for much of the movie. At times, the soundscape presented like some far-out, 70s prog rock/art rock groove with elements of Pink Floyd and Yes style synth elevating the experience to something credible, dignified and all-new. Adrian and Alex played with force and went beyond standard silent film music fare. It astounded me how much good noise these 2 guys made.

Various abstract sounds filtered in and out of the mix. The structure seemed to comprise of individual sections sometimes bridged by a suite of percussion held together by Alex Robinson. Some excellent improvising throughout, the whole music would make a wonderful album.

Appropriate electronic effects and varying time codes followed the film action perfectly for much of the movie. At times the listening experience outshone the visual experience. Both musicians gave solid performances, blending ambience with solid notation. The addition of sound bites such as traffic, car horns, train sounds and much more, added vital texture and clarity, not unlike the various additional effects Pink Floyd utilized on their various albums.

At one point, the music became a mash of 1930s American cabaret-acoustica –jazz-Latin guitar (Eddie Lang - Django Rheinhardt style), deliberate atmospheric drums and other mystery sounds; the effect was intoxicating.

Paced beautifully, the music built up layers of sound, peaking in the last 5 minutes where it seemed to take off in an absolute masterwork of pumping groove as the action reached a crescendo. A synthesized bass line rang out complementing the driving drums.

A touch of theatrics and flamboyance, both Adrian Clement and Alex Robinson donned dark, fantomas-styled costumes for their performance. Presented on stage, in front and below the screen, they looked and sounded appropriate.

Adrian and Alex should record this stuff. I picked it up as aural nectar. It had grace, dignity, invention, and above all, cool! Impressive, I would love to listen to that music on my own home stereo.

All up, a very fine Cinemateque experience; many thanks to curator Brett Garten for his work and insight putting it all together! Marvelous! (and DC-ous!)

*The ID (identity) is pure, instinctive, uncoordinated, creative, infantile and driven by a basic primal search for pleasure and gratification through life and death instincts… babies are Id-ridden; The Ego is practical, diplomatic, organized, defensive, intelligent and aware enough to function and respond to and with the reality it identifies. It tries to keep the Id happy in ways that minimize upset from potential conflicts in the real world. The ego also mediates between the Id and the super-ego, aiming to please both; The super-ego is critical, moralizing, prohibitive, idealistic and a perfectionist. It is the opposite of the Id and is concerned with the social good. It is one’s conscience. Freud first developed this structural concept between 1920 and 1923. The terms Id, Ego and Super-ego are Latinized translations of Freud’s terms.

The Saga of the Serials Pt. 2 - this week at Cinematheque

2009-01-19T23:45:00.008+11:00

Serial-mania continues this week at the Chauvel Cinematheque with the second part of Barrie Pattison's look at the Saga of the Serials. This Monday the 26th of January at 6:30pm sharp, Barrie will reacquaint us with the legendary super-hero figures of the classic serial - Batman, Zorro, Flash Gordon, Dan Winslow and others. Many believe the cycle reaches its peak with Hollywood’s Saturday morning comic strip heroes. In this program, see caped crusaders battle malevolent mega-villains and their paunchy underlings and understand the the ongoing influence of the form on the Hollywood blockbuster - James Bond, Batman, Indiana Jones, etc.

The Saga of the Serials Pt. 1 - this week at Cinematheque

2009-01-12T23:23:00.006+11:00

Following up from last week's screening of Fantomas, Barrie Pattison, Australia's leading film historian, delves deeper into the morass of episodic melodrama in the first part of a special two week look at the wonderful world of the movie serial. In this week's program, screening at 6:30pm sharp on Monday the 19th of January, Barrie will look at Pearl White, Fantomas' stalwart American counterpart of the early silent film era. Gasp as Pearl/Pauline suffers perils in the company of Craig Kennedy the scientific sleuth, as we study the peak achievements of the ambitious American silent serials, and follow what many see as a decline, when sound introduces strip cartoon adventures and khaki-clad heroines menaced by giant insects.

A fascinating compendium of episodes and excerpts from many classics of the form, including…

The Story of the Serials

USA/1959/Colour/26mins/16mm/NFVLS

Excerpts from famous silent serials - including The Perils of Pauline and even earlier productions - succeed in recapturing the atmosphere of those early thrillers. A study of the forgotten achievements of the American silent serial.

Program Note for The Weird World of Movie Serials by Barrie Pattison

2009-01-12T23:22:00.005+11:00

Thanks to Barrie for writing this up.

Click to enlarge.

Fantomas - this week at Cinematheque

2009-01-06T02:35:00.006+11:00

The Chauvel Cinematheque's in-depth, month-long look at the motion picture serial, a forgotten but still reverberating form of motion picture history, kicks off this Monday the 12th of January at 6:30 with an episode of Louis Feuillade's 1913 silent French serial Fantomas.

With an introduction by film historian Barrie Pattison and a new score performed live by the "young Franz Liszt" Adrian Clement, this event promises to be a lot of fun.

Join Australia’s leading film historian Barrie Pattison as he delves into the weird world of motion picture serials in the first of this four part program. Follow the cycle as it moves from its surreal origins with the serials of Louis Feuillade to James Bond, Indiana Jones and the Dark Knight. This program contrasts Feuillade’s archetypal serial drama Fantomas with the Batman serial of the 1940s.

Fantomas France/1914/B&W/60mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Louis Feuillade.

A long excerpt from the classic French serial devoted to the exploits of the criminal anti-hero Fantomas. Our detective hero battles the hooded terror of the Paris streets, who brings his own vamp characters and boa constrictors into the fray. Combines a sense of fantasy and lyricism with documentary details of pre WWI France.

Click on the new program link on the right sidebar to find out about the rest of the screenings in this thread.

Transcript of an Introduction to Detour

2009-01-06T01:30:00.009+11:00

By the one, the only, Jimmy Vargas...

DETOUR... THE HOLY GRAIL OF AMERICAN NOIR.

by JIMMY VARGAS

DETOUR....1945...Film Company PRC
Director Edgar G Ulmer.
Starring Tom Neal as Al Roberts and Ann Savage as Vera.
Story from the novel Detour: An Extraordinary Tale by Martin Goldsmith.

DETOUR... THE PLOT

B-boite piana-thumpa AL ROBERTS as played by Tom Neal, and his blonde canary ammorata Sue, (Claudia Drake) squawble out pre-war juke hits in an lower east side cabaret. Miss Peroxide soon ditches both the double douche act and said affair, high-keeling it off to Hollywood, as a single-o in aspiration of becoming a Z-grade Bronx Bettie Grable.

Al is left behind plucking both heart and piana strings shucking out a deaf toned career in the same skid lounge, to zilch clientele.

Months pass.

Al, still a-strokin at the cuckold horn he's born forced to bear, fones his cuckoo on the humiliation hot line for another ear wax of rejection.

But Susie, jerkin the hankie routine that her Hollywood hubba hubba hopes has turned to hash, coo ca choos that she misses him, and as a result both, pitch'n'woo a California rendezvous in order to jump-start both their love life and showbiz careers.

With no coin, our galah-cad, sets out to hitch hike across the ol' USA on the cuff. A good samaritan Edmund McDonald (Charles Haskell) gives him a lift, but through a fatal accident, Eddie tragically dies en route to the West Coast. Al decides to dump Ed's body, hijacking both car and identity of his deceased benefactor.

One half reel later, Al himself picks up hooch cooch hitch-hiker, the viperous VERA aka AnneSavage. An existentialist tragedy on the Route 666 ensues. Al, caught up in the double crossin of Vera's low harlot high heels, never to reconnect with his blonde tweetie bird.

DETOUR... THE BACK STORY

Based on the cult novel Detour: An Extraordinary Tale by Martin Goldsmith... 1938. The screenplay was also written by Goldsmith with uncredited contributions by a Martin Mooney.

The script had been purportedly shopped around at Warner Bros studio as early as '42, with brooding broadway boxer and method actor, Julius Garfinkle aka John Garfield mooted for the lead of Al, with those nitrate saloon dames Anne Sheridan, and Ida Lupino propo'd for the wraith persona Vera that Anne Savage eventually claimed.

The orphan script eventually landed on the desk of a Leon Fromkess, President of glitter gulch studio... Producers Release Corporation, a cheapjack production house, that was known in the trade as PRC, initials that the Big Five of the Hollywood studios spurned with the epithet of Poverty Row Crap.

The trades were more polite, monickering PRC with the euphemistic title of "That haven of no- budget 'melos'," a term that distinguished it from other nickle grindsters like Monogram and Eagle Lion in the late forties. PRC, in reality was the iconic Hollywood bottom feeder, where black balled directors and actors went to expire.

DETOUR... FILM PRODUCTION AND COSTS.

Detour was shot on 3 sets, with the standard cheapjack back projection scenery, as befitting a dime store corporation as PRC. The reeler was filmed over six days, with Ulmer zipping through 52 set ups per diem. (A Normal production schedule, filmed at A studios, MGM or Warners would usually cover a mere 10 set ups per day.)

The flick could have passed in under budget of $14,500 but there were major editing problems.
In order to parallel the westbound New York to L.A. travel of the characters Al and Vera with right-to-left movement across the screen, many scenes had to be flipped. This caused the cars to appear to be driving on the wrong side of the road, and the hitchhikers to enter the car on the driver's side. Negative and promotional costs eventually came into the bone-crunching cost of $15, 332 dollars.

DETOUR...THE CINEMATIC AESTHETIC.

The paucity of PRC's budget, props, decor, and the soiled sweaty character wardrobe of it's anti-heroes however informs and legitimizes the existentialist nightmare that is DETOUR. It is this very construct that reverberates a true noir resonance from its grimy sepia cels.

With the director Edgar G. Ulmer verbally whipping his stars with the autocratic command of "Faster , Faster, Faster !", due to budget/schedule constraints, the dialogue whip-cracks with a viperous velocity, as if both Vera and Al, with their cryptic clipped delivery, don't want to breathe in each others halitosic despair, the soylent fart of each other's reply, or for that matter inhale the evil air of their Americana skid domain, in fear of having their souls sucked out.

For in this route 666 diner, Al and Vera are not only bereft of air conditioning, salvation ain't on the menu either.

As the sets, that are stripped to skeletal frame, so too is the husk of Al's and Vera's existence shucked to a crude, boned, venal desperation.

The arid, desolate tundra that is America's desert, over which they sport in a stolen jalopy, mirrors their own spiritual vacuum.

Ulmer, in aiming to avoid having the viewer witness the collapsing three wall set, kept his subjects nailed in to the hacksaw furnishings like roaches to a pool hall dartboard. The patina rimming off PRC's substandard film stock, bastes it's subjects with a glaze of putrefication and decay, and the oily smear of the character's greed/lust engulfs and vaselines inside the camera lens, meta-phylizing the stonk of rank roadside diners, the odourous soiled sheets of a skid crib, Vera's sour mash dimestore parfum, and the fetid groin sweat of the American underbelly.

DETOUR... AMERICAN FILM NOIR & THE FRENCH EXISTENTIALIST CONNEXION

Detour the novel, in both it's philosophy and plot/narrative influenced, (as had many American pulps at the time), the burgeoning French Existentialist and Italian Neo-Realist auteurs that sprang forth at the end of the Second World War. This was not a casual synchronicity.

One can see a direct umbilical thread between Goldsmith's classic noir of 1938, and Jean Paul Sartre's Huis Clos (No Exit), the stage play which was premiered shortly after the liberation of Paris in 1944.

Both Goldsmith's and Sartre's opus' deal with people who are trapped in the hell of themselves and each other, damned in a soul scorching environment, suffocated by an external and internal fascism.

Ironically enough, Ulmer, tonight's film director utilises certain embellishments in his mounting of Detour, particularly the skid row crib scene between Vera and Al, that recall similar staging mechanics, physical dynamic and interaction, of the lead characters, from the original transcript of Sartre's play No Exit, where the Parisian anti-heroes too are bound in an airless, barren hotel room not unlike their American doppelgangers.

And for another example of the helixical twining 'tween Sartre’s and Ulmer's opuses, Sartre's Huis Clos is a Parisian slang term for "In Camera". The existential author not merely pre-meditating his play's cinematic appeal, but revealing that the play itself was a camera.

Ulmer in DETOUR too, places this instrument as a third accomplice, his deleriant-tremened, hand-held camera baits his subjects with a claustrophobic clawing that suggests more than a peep show voyeurism that predates Hitchcock, but a succubian nightmare, and a diabolic invasion.

Ulmer gazumps Sartre's assertion to cinematic notoriety, by re-claiming Detour back to it's original American terrain and street vernacular, before it's imitator No Exit managed to get to the screen in 1954 with female director Jacqueline Audry at the helm of the French production. Ulmer, it most be noted was no dervativist nor plagiariser however, for he himself had started in the film industry as a set designer for famed German director F.W. Murnau at that progressive Berlin film studio UFA in the twenties.

He arrived in the U.S.A. in 1923, as one of Murnau's trusted adjutants, a benefitee of the Hollywood studio carpetbaggery system that raided a dissolute Berlin in the pre-WW2 years, cherry-picking willing creative krautskis from the rubble of the inflation stricken Wiemar Republic, and the simmering fascist putsch.

It must be noted that all of Ulmer's own Hollywood film work, bears the UFA's Expressionist birth mark, the principal DNA of that bastard American offspring we now classify as film noir.

THE POLITICAL POLEMIC OF DETOUR.

Detour can be so regarded as the holy grail of pure American noir. Beyond it's existensial allusions, it's a demented 16mm travelogue of underworld U.S.A, circa '45 - a nation facing an atomic annihilation, recession, communism, and gender battles in the bedroom.

Al can be well viewed as the crippled American every-man - a hicksville joe doe, de-neutered by a Great Depression, de-balled by an Iwa Jima land mine, still stalking the heartland of America's shadow psyche, haunted, paranoid on a freight train to noir-town.

The Manifest Destiny of Self Determination and Success has been denied this returning doughbuoy.

As Al constantly voice overs in a monotnous mantra of self loathing "That's life. Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you."...He carries preternatural guilt, for a yet uncommitted crime.

The schnarl 'n' spit coupling of Al and Vera too is stripped to the pornographic husk of the true male/female relationship in post war America.

In Detour sexual extortion is the courtship.

Psychic rape is romance.

Death is matrimony.

Al and Vera... Vera and Al... Bound eternally by the swangin' wire coil of Ma Bells telephone cord.

Detour presciently pronounces the shift of the sexual gestalt in the late forties USA. The gelding and eventual sissification of the American male, and the masculinization of the new American woman, who through the social and economic liberation of war is unshackled by Depression era propieties and can now party on independent coin, hustle and pursue her own sexual self determination.

As Vera's tongue alternately coos and cobras with convoluted hustle-baits, Al's responses, echo the strangulated coitus of the new american castrati. When Vera lashes him with the flip "Shut up... you are making noises like a husband..." She has him pegged as a submissive, a wife, and she, Vera, has already appropriated the status of dominant male.

THE BOX OFFICE

Detour was released as a bottom of the bill filler to grindhouses in the fall of '45, where-after it recouped it's negative cost, was shuttled off the big screen and into the junkyard of midnight TV reruns after PRC sold off the rights. With the expiring of its copyright the movie shunted into public domain.

Upon the noir revivals of the seventies and eighties, Detour slowly circulated back into the cinematic radar, no doubt assisted too by ANNE SAVAGE who was known to hawk her own 16 mil copy of the flick at Festivals held in her honour.

In 1992, the Library of Congress named Detour as the first film noir and "B- movie" inducted into the National Registry of Film.

In the same year a remake of DETOUR was produced by Wade Williams and starred Tom Neal, Jr. playing his late father's ill fated role.

THE CINEMATYRS OF ALL AMERICAN SHOWBIZ LOSERS

TOM NEAL and ANN SAVAGE had both shared screen time together as cinematic pardners in three 'B' reelers for Columbia Studios, KLONDIKE KATE, TWO MAN
SUBMARINE , and UNWRITTEN CODE between 1942 and '44.

Thus their rythmn, and risque rapport had already been cemented into the American cinematic psyche as a tussling, torrid two-some during those warrin' forties.

But by 1944, both were dropped by Columbia Fuehrer HARRY 'KING' COHN within weeks of each other, their careers subsequently spiralling into Z-grade obliviana at PRC.

An observant viewer can witness a mutual cognizance of each other's decline in Ulmers pix. It adds a poignant, epitaphical note to the sordid cine-massacre that is Detour.

SAVAGE's and NEAL's nitrate sizzle is all too real. As the two of them gnash, claw, and shred up both each other and their cheapjack soundstage, they are not merely playing out the death throes of a screen marriage, but a snuff reel of the double shotgun suicide of their respective careers.

THE ACTORS... ANN SAVAGE.

Though having enjoyed 'A' league status with Columbia Pictures in the early forties, and cache as a popular Esquire pin up girl during World War 2, the post war ANN SAVAGE, like the character of Vera she played, was doomed to B grade hell after her Detour appearance. Her career went south to TV land throughout the forties and fifties, where she appeared intermittently in turkey productions such as the Schlitz Playhouse at C.B.S - on the same Columbia stages she used to exalt on not yet ten years before. With the death of her husband/agent BERT D'ARMAND, in 1969 she left the busines all together.

Upon the art house revival of noir in the eighties, Savage was lured back into the spotlight, by notable noir curators such as EDDIE MUELLER who having her make stellar appearances at his annual SAN FRANCISCO FILM NOIR FESTIVAL, helped resurrect Miss Savages's dormant career.

Her reappearance onto the national stage brought her back into cinematic circulation, and she was awarded an "icon and legend" commendation by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the 2005 Oscars.

In 2006, she was coaxed before the cameras again by Canadian director GUY MADDIN, having her play his mother in his own autobiographical flick My Winnipeg.

In 2007, Time Magazine named ANN SAVAGE as one of the "Top Ten All-Time Best Cinematic Villains", for her "walking nightmare persona' of Vera in Detour.

She is still alive in Los Angeles today.

TOM NEAL

The plotline of DETOUR itself however served as a prescient forecast of the tumultuous career spiral of TOM NEAL - his own life a harrowing sequel, living out the obscene nitrate curse of his cinematic alter ego, AL ROBERTS.6

Neal, originally coming from prime American moneyed stock, had been a member of the boxing team at the esteemed Northwestern University, and had earned himself a law degree from Harvard, before scoring plaudits on the Broadway stage in '35 season.

In 1936 he went west, and enjoyed both inkage and wattage under the Columbia umbrella, where he was groomed as the studios answer to Clark Gable. His careeer slinked to sewer city in the mid forties due to his boozing, whoring and cop bashing activities, and by '44 Harry Cohn shucked off his contract, and he was a muscle mouth for hire. Throughout the late 1940's and into the 1950's, NEAL appeared mostly as bruisers, and hard-hearted hucksters in Hollywood low-budgeters.

In 1951, in a dispute with his former clutcheroo, the faux platinum Barbara Payton (herself a blonde doppelganger junkie hooker version of Vera), he took to violence against Payton's new and more successful Hollywood beau, the bisexual actor Franchot Tone, mangling the matinee idol's head into the gawping mouth of the gold dragon mascot outside Sid Graumanns Chinese Theatre at a Hollywood premiere.

As a result of the very public altercation, the major Hollywood film studios black-listed Neal.

Turning to the production side of the industry, TOM NEAL, with fledgling pulp crime scribbler, bit actor, and James Dean confidante JOHN GILMORE, vainly attempted to get seed money together for their filming of 1940's Hollywood murder mystery, the BLACK DAHLIA onto the screen.

L.A.P.D cops and A-list Studio executives, who were complicit accesories in the killing breathed relief, when in 1965, NEAL was found to have shot his third wife Gale, with a .45-caliber bullet to the back of her head after a domestic dispute.

Californian Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Tom Neal, aiming him for a gas chamber bounce for the felony, however a sympathetic trial jury, convicted him only of "involuntary manslaughter", and Neal was sentenced to 10 years in jail, of which he served only six. Eight months later, in February 1972, Tom Neal died of heart failure.

The nitrate ghost of Al Roberts was purportedly seen to rise up from that grindhouse graveyard of the Hollywood Forever cemetary to greet him with..."That's life. pal... Whichever way you turn, Fate sticks out a foot to trip you."...DETOUR... EPITAPH... ROAD CLOSED.

The movie Detour itself can be caustically viewed as an industrial promotional film for a dying studio, a funereal vignette created by director Ulmer, offered as a nitrate corsage to his reel life/ real life doomed actors Savage and Neal, and the moribund production house that boasted this cheap flickeroo.

Allegorically Detour is not only about the ill-fate suffered by one emotionally marooned and failed pianist heading for Los Angeles, but a paean to the failure of American showbiz, a clueless caste who without success to define them, wander L.A. as the new class of Un-American Untouchables, mooching and scooching nickel bait hustles, not realizing that their harping skeletal frames are merely coal-bait to keep that noir dime-factory of Hollywood Auchswitz a-grinding.

(C) JIMMY VARGAS 2009… www.jimmy vargas.com

Le Braissive Denture by Pia Santaklaus

2008-12-24T04:57:00.001+11:00

23 Densemble 2008

Saturday 20 December 2008: Cinemateque put on a very fine program ‘THE FILMS OF IVAN MOSJOUKINE’. A truly great superstar of his day, perhaps the reason Mosjoukine keeps fading away is because his name is so difficult for Westerners to remember and to pronounce. Think ‘Charlie Chaplin’…unforgettable!

Anyway, it was a real treat to have film historian and fanatic Barrie Pattison present his immaculately unearthed and researched material. Barrie’s sense of history, purity and purpose put the remarkable and complex Ivan Mosjoukine back into perspective. Barrie’s seemingly encyclopedic knowledge never ceases to amaze me. As always, curator Brett Garten did a beautiful job with the screening of the various bits and pieces and bringing the whole thing together. Thank you Barrie! Thank you Brett!

Monday night, 22 December 2008 saw the follow-up program with a presentation screening of a full-length film starring and directed by Ivan Mosjoukine himself. LE BRAISIER ARDENT (1923). After all these years this film maintains a strong visual impact. It had something for everyone; all in one movie Mosjoukine managed to define himself in guises as diverse as a dashing gentleman, a pious Bishop, a professional psychiatrist, a gothic warlock, a dark vampiric presence (he resembles Bela Lugosi), and of course as a sentimental, foolish, infatuated lover.

The film itself is defined through blocks and flashes of surrealism, nightmarish underworlds, beautiful topography, elegant boudoirs, complex sets and gorgeous cutting-edge designs of the times.

According to expert Barrie Pattison, the original film was run at a slower speed. Tonight, we watched it at a faster pace that purists might find unacceptable and so Barrie wasn't there for this presentation to help with some of the translations required. His absence was an upset. Regardless, the film moved along very nicely and the picture quality of this print was absolutely remarkable considering the age of the film.

Furthermore, the audience was lucky to be treated to a new, live soundtrack, provided by young and upcoming talented pianist Adrian Clement. Only 18 years of age, this usually reserved composer took to the piano with a forthright and comfortable energy. He owned the keyboard like a young Franz Liszt, improvising much of the music and bringing a fresh, youthful bounce to the film. Much of the time the music married flawlessly with the images. Adrian’s ability to confidently play through long stretches was admirable.

At one point he introduced a second ‘voice’ with some eerie, spectral, prerecorded sounds. Together with the piano, it was an awe-inspiring moment. With his relentless strong left hand ‘plonking’ and ‘skipping’ onto the lower keys and his right hand playing emotional changes, Adrian provided the necessary momentum and spaces necessary. His score was at once reminiscent of classic silent-era scores and yet with a modern vitality that helped move the film along. His chords were firm, edgy and risky… At no point did it get boring. My one, minor criticism is that he might do better to pull back and create a more sentimental, open and delicate pieces of music specifically for romantic scenes. This was only evident in the last few minutes of the film.

The story, about a suspicious-jealous husband who hires a psychiatrist to convert his woman’s passion for Paris into a fear of the ‘City of Love’, called for something neo-classical, looming and ‘up’. Adrian provided an appropriate brisk hit.

All in all, a fantastic musical debut for Adrian at the Chauvel and I look forward to hearing him again accompanying the upcoming silent film FANTOMAS.

In closing I must thank curator Brett Garten for his tireless dedication and his ability to bring together so many great complex elements.

Pia Santaklaus

Saturday screenings canned until further notice

2008-12-23T00:26:00.002+11:00

That's right folks, from this point on cinematheque will screen only once per week - Mondays at 6:30pm sharp. The 12 noon Saturday screenings are no more (at least for the time-being).

Regrets...

Brett

Blanche - this week at Cinematheque

2008-12-23T00:21:00.005+11:00

Cinematheque ends for 2008 with...

Blanche

France/1970/Colour/92mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Walerian Borowczyck.

Set in 13th century France, this dark Arthurian tragedy is centred on Blanche, the beautiful young wife of an ageing baron, who falls prey to the lusts of three men: her stepson, the king, and his page. Borowczyk's initial interest in recreating the period and depicting courtly intrigue is gradually replaced by his characteristic cold, flat formalism - instead of fleshing out his main character, Borowczyk turns Blanche into an automaton. Yet despite its almost inhuman cruelty, the film achieves a kind of tragic catharsis. Based on the novel Mazepa by Juliusz Slowacki. In French w/ English subs.

Read more about Borowczyck here.

Jan-Feb 2009 Program

2008-12-23T00:19:00.004+11:00

Click to enlarge.

Enjoy!

Marinecktie by Pia Santaklaus

2008-12-21T07:26:00.004+11:00

13 December 2008

Hi Brett, I enjoyed today’s Cinematheque session and offer some thoughts:

The first film was the Italian documentary FUTURISM (1971) which presented an excellent array of Futurist artists, their art and history, in a concise and informative, fast-paced style. It set the tone for the rest of the session.

As I now understand it, Futurism developed and sprouted around the same period as Cubism, preceding and inspiring later movements such as Art Deco, Dada and Surrealism. It more or less began in 1909 when Marinetti published his ‘Futurist Manifesto’ in France. In it he blasted and rebelled against nature, the establishment and everything old, while exulting youth, modernity, technology, speed, innovation and power. Other mostly Italian males agreed with this philosophy and joined the movement. The Futurists also glorified violence describing it as “the world’s only hygiene” and scorned all womankind. In time, Marinetti and other Italian Futurists adopted Fascist leanings becoming supporters of Mussolini which may have something to do with the seeming suppression of the movement since.

In what feels like hypocrisy, I believe it transpired that Marinetti eventually moved to the old city of Rome, became less radical and less combative by marrying, taking an academic position, promoting religious art and even espousing and declaring Jesus as a Futurist. With the death of Marinetti in 1944, Futurism expired.

The second film, BOCCIONI’S BIKE (1981) was a very impressive animation. I imagine it a real labour of love for the maker who with such a simple story managed to convey so many elements of the Futurist ‘movement’. He’s gone the full cycle! (Ha!)

Now I’ll focus on the third film, MARINETTI (1968) which left me with a hazy impression. The director Albie Thoms was there today to introduce the movie he’d made 40 years ago. It must have felt quite surreal for him to watch his own work on the big screen after all this time. I imagine he spent a lot of money restoring his film so that a brand new print might exist. I think it was a worthy exercise so that now he can reach new audiences (like us) from younger generations.

The film title was named in honor of the Italian poet and founder of Futurism, Filippo Marinetti (1876-1944).

MARINETTI (1969, shot in 1968) has with the passing of time become an important document, being one of the few Australian full-length feature films of the late 1960s in the experimental, psychadelic, avante-garde genres. It is an audio-visual ‘trip’ that used now-dated camera techniques and angles, frequent nudity and a complex multi-layered soundtrack to build itself into an ultimately difficult, unreassuring but necessary piece.

Historically, this ‘time capsule’ is fascinating. We see images from a long-gone Sydney Australia. In one scene, on a breakfast table we see a packet of Kellogg’s cereal (Coco Pops) and on the streets outside we see the public transport (Sydney buses), just two of the many images that remind us just how much things have changed and yet stayed the same.

I read somewhere that Albie Thoms once said the film “had no message, no revelation for the world…”; perhaps this film was made for his own personal gratification or as an indulgent portrait. In many ways it looks like a glorified home movie. The title may lead some to imagine this is a tribute to the Italian Futurist Marinetti; it may be, or perhaps it’s merely a springboard for director Thoms to unravel his own agenda, the same way Fellini claimed to resurrect and pay tribute to E.A. POE with TOBY DAMMIT (1968) while all the while only very scant tribute is evident as Fellini’s personal vision indulges his own ends.

MARINETTI opens with an extended, uncomfortable stretch of blackness. Sporadic, instant glimpses and bursts of scratching, flashing light are generated as the eyes stare blankly at the screen for a long while. The ears awaken as we sit in mostly darkness listening to the sound of Albie Thoms’ voice in a recorded conversation about Marinetti.

The flashes of white light become more and more pronounced; green flashes are gradually introduced. Around 10 minutes into the film we see full colour… the world of this community begins in the living room of an inner-city Victorian terrace. At the time (around 1968), those old suburbs and that style of architecture were not as fashionable as they’ve become today, making them a good, cheap, chic choice of housing for artistic communities to inhabit.

At one point in the film we hear mention of T.S. Eliot’s disjointed and prophetic poem ‘The Waste Land’ (1922). Perhaps the unkempt, crude, gritty, dissonant, unelegant persons and real inner city wasteland backdrops parallel and conjure Eliot’s impressions. In another scene you might catch a glimpse of TS Eliot amongst the super-fast edits (micro-seconds) of what appear to be the director’s inspirations which included amongst many others The Beatles and Ezra Pound. (Ezra Pound helped Eliot with ‘The Waste Land’ and in 1925 Eliot dedicated ‘The Waste Land’ to Ezra Pound).

It has been noted Eliot chose the title ‘The Waste land’ as an adjunct to Jessie L. Weston’s book ‘From Ritual to Romance’ (1920) which alludes to the sterile land of the Fisher King in the grail legend. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ includes a section ‘The Burial of the Dead’ which alludes to the Anglican ‘The Book of Common Prayer’. Here the narrator (as ‘Son of man’) includes lines of Old Testament allusions and finds himself in a desert. We recall the Old Testament God telling the prophet Ezekiel Israel will become desolate, broken and cities will lay in waste, while in Ecclesiastes, God warns the Jews to remember their youth, for in old age "fears shall be in the way" and "then shall the dust return to the earth as it was". In both Ezekiel 6:4 and Ecclesiastes 12:5-7, human failure seems pre-destined.

On a happier note, the film soundtrack/sound montage is compounded with a multi-tracked, multi-layered, psychedelic, jazz, avant-garde soundscape that works well with the images and the added voice-over narration. Sound quality was pristine and included in the mesh, snippets of at least 2 Beatles songs: Good Day Sunshine (1966) and With A Little Help From My Friends (1967). Nice touch.

Following the Futurists’ philosophy, Thoms used strong light and movement in this creation. Particularly as it progresses into the second half, the film revealed even greater intensity of light, colour and movement.

Hard to watch, now-dated, cheap n’ cheesy camera techniques and effects such as fisheye lenses, garish colour filters, fast in-out zooming, spinning camerawork, slide and film projections and more, imbue MARINETTI with a 1965-1967 Swinging London aura. (Australia was a little behind in those days). It reminded me of films on Pink Floyd’s 1967 experimental light-sound shows at London’s UFO club.

MARINETTI is unattractive, uncommercial and strewn with lascivious content, perhaps for perv value or an opportunity to shoot some ‘tits 'n’ ass’. Sex keeps selling and I would guestimate that female presence in the film outscreened male by 9:1. Unfortunately, in today’s less ‘radical’ climate, most of the femmes in the film seem to take on a loose, lost, lamentable lustre.

Many shaky images rest over the melancholy male voice-over that recites supposedly profound lyrical insights; this narrator provokes with words like “Come!” and “Enjoy!” as females writhe and pose in sensual scenarios.

Indulgent, pretentious, exploitative and dated, MARINETTI is nevertheless a brilliant document of a collective of relatively youthful men and women (mostly women) in a slightly claustrophobic circle in a time when very few real ‘gods’ (eg Lennon-McCartney) walked the earth, while millions of try-hard followers and wannabes polluted and corrupted their afterglow. With some effort, one might see MARINETTI as a film on the creative process, especially the role women might play as muses for men desperately seeking inspiration in the mostly naked flesh of the ‘goddess’. This Robert Gravesian (White Goddess) ‘play’ is magnified by the overabundance of female sexuality which culminates in the resulting child… a product of the union.

Unfortunately, some of these ‘goddesses’ seemed more like ladies of quashed vitality. Sad-eyed sisters of a suburban wasteland lost on a fast track to desolation row. If their role was some kind of muse for the glory of creativity, their limp parading and luxuriating wasn’t convincing enough. These potentially “beautiful people” are old enough to know better - just how ugly one can appear under the suppressive veil of drink and drugs… The true Goddess’s forte is unblemished perfection and strength.

We move on… MARINETTI shows increasing complexity as it goes along. By the 2nd half, the film revealed itself above the status of an ‘anybody can be a filmaker’ film. One could appreciate it for it’s technical skill. The editing became far more impressive and the use of animation overlay and sections of ‘extra’ footage such as the frantic jazzy nightlife cityscape (a highlight), synchronized motorbike routines, gymnastics displays and more, drew the viewer away from the ‘baccanalian boudoir’ and towards other life aspects.

I’ll go out on a limb and add my own personal interpretation of the film. (It may help others…or not). I imagine this movie as a condensed expression of the complete cycle of humanity’s existence. The film opens with blackness and closes with blackness; a full circle is run that we might return ‘home’. Before mankind, we imagine there was nothing but God! (in darkness). We read in the Bible that “in the beginning was the Word” and so we suddenly get ‘words’ in the blackness (we hear the sound of Albie Thom’s talking words). As “the Word was God” (see: Gospel Of John), we may imagine God as filmmaker- 'a creator'. Remembering Genesis and God saying “Let there be light”, a sudden shift from the blackness; the Word is joined by sudden bursts of white light. Subsequent green light in the film may be seen as the creation of nature. We then have the Garden of Eden (?) (a cosy terrace house) followed by humanity appearing one by one and before you know it we are caught in a cycle of birth…sex sex sex sex sex; flesh on flesh and the undeniable generation of new flesh (birth and the young child) continuing the human dilemma. As we near the end, we may seem to abandon sexuality to some degree to focus more on evolutionary skills, techniques and knowledge (seen in the difficult bike synchs, tricky gymnastics and Futurist scribblings and edits). Finally we ‘return’ to a new light (white screen) before we re-enter the void (black screen) where the Word has changed into music though it seems the prophecies wont be denied. Humanity is doomed to wander wasteland Earth forever.

OK, so this is my own philosophizing and hypothesizing and may have nothing at all to do with this film, but for me it’s enough to wax it worthy of another viewing. I recommend you watch this film and see if you can make your own sense of it.

Brett, Thanks for yet another interesting Cinemateque experience. You make great and interesting choices on a very regular basis. Look forward to the next.

Pia Santaklaus

Short Article on Marinetti by Adrian Clement

2008-12-21T07:25:00.004+11:00

Albie Thoms’ 1968 experimental Australian film Marinetti, was screened at the Chauvel Cinema on two dates as part of the excellent Chauvel Cinematheque, curated by Brett Garten, and included two short films, including Futurism, a 1971 historical documentary on the Italian Futurists directed by Guido Guerassio, and Boccioni’s Bike, a 1981 animation directed by Skip Battaglia. Seeing how I suggested this program, I thought it is fitting that I write a short article outlining my thoughts on it, having now seen it.

For starters, I think that it’s important to state that Thoms sees his film Marinetti as a tribute or homage to the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), who’s 1908/9 “Futurist Manifesto” kick-started a revolutionary nationalist movement which spanned a wide range of mediums such as painting and sculpture and sound art (Luigi Russolo’s manifesto “The Art of Noises” [1913] and his highly unique and unusual instruments that captured industrial and mechanic sounds are usually what critics point to as the first instance of intentional “noise music”). As the film is a tribute or homage, we can deduce that the film has ties to the Futurist movement in some capacity, whether that be stylistically, structurally, aesthetically and so on.

In twenty minutes, Guerassio seemed to provide a very good overview of the Italian Futurist movement, outlining some of its major artists, historical developments and ideas (including those imbued in Marinetti’s manifesto). It also summed up quite well an idea developed in Futurism which Thoms adopted for Marinetti. In 2003, Thoms stated, in interview with Danni Zuvela for Senses of Cinema, that, in Marinetti, he “adopted the Futurist notion of minimalisation of plot and characterisation”. This gives way to an experience that is largely non-verbal and highly subjective which bypasses verbalised pigeonholing. This was the intention of filmmaker Stanely Kubrick for his brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey (released in 1968, coincidentally the same year as Thoms’ Marinetti), who in an interview with Playboy Magazine from 1968 argued that verbalising a single message would shackle an audience “to a reality other than their own” and “erect an artificial barrier between conception and appreciation.”

On a stylistic and artistic level, Battaglia’s Boccioni’s Bike was as much a tribute or homage to the painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) as Albie Thoms’ film Marinetti was to Marinetti. In his adventurous nine minute animation, Battaglia depicts a cyclist in a style that alludes to the dynamism of form and style quintessential in Futurist painting and sculpture.The image of a bicycle is pivotal as it references an event which influenced Marinetti’s decision to write the “Futurist Manifesto”. In 1908, Marinetti was involved in a small car accident, after trying to avoid two cyclists on a road just outside Milan. Helping himself out of the ditch, Marinetti vowed to “destroy the museums, the libraries, every type of academy”. He wrote that the Futurists “will glorify war - the world's only hygiene - militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.”

Above everything thing else I appreciated and enjoyed about Thoms’ Marinetti was its brilliant score. Thoms employed “blank verse voice-over narration as part of a sound montage” which mangled together with experimental and/or psychedelic rock music and a large palette of non-musical sound sources. Contextually, Marinetti was released roughly the same era as “The Gift” by The Velvet Underground from White Light/White Heat (1968), which is considered an experimental track because it combined spoken word with rock music, and likewise the same era as Frank Zappa’s avant-rock compositions, which played with language in a similar way to Thoms (but perhaps not as extreme).

In conclusion, just as Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) was a translation of Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness (1899) from a Belgian-Congo era context to a Vietnam War context, Marinetti is as if Thoms was looking at 1960s Australia quite literally through the lens of a Futurist. Today I spoke with Brett Garten about how the film was received on its second screening. Roughly forty years since the film was first screen it still received the same response, with half of the audience walking out according to Brett. This time around however, most of the people who left were still hanging about outside until it finished to discuss the film, conveying a much higher level of interest in the film that was perhaps non-existent 40 years prior from an Australian audience.

Films of Ivan Mosjoukine - this week at Cinematheque

2008-12-09T01:48:00.013+11:00

Two big screenings this week. First up is Saturday the 20th of December, where at 12noon, Australia's most persistent moviegoer, film historian Barrie Pattison will look at the life and work of Ivan Mosjoukine.Mosjoukine was the leading actor of the Russian Tsarist era, when he fled the Bolsheviks and became the most adored romantic idol of the European silent film, with a side trip to Hollywood. Great actor and sometime director, his Rabelaisian life was as extraordinary as his work but all this was forgotten for most of the Twentieth Century. Now a shift of political climate in Russia and the work of the archives has brought Mosjoukine back from deepest limbo.

For the second show, on Monday the 22nd of December at 6:30pm, Barrie Pattison returns to present a rare screening of the Mosjoukine film Le Brasier Ardent (The Fiery Furnace) featuring a new score supervised and performed live by Adrian Clement and a new translation from the French, translated live by Barrie Pattison. The pick of the small number of movies in which Mosjoukine directed himself, the film co-stars Natalie Lissenko and Nicholas Koline. Plot, decor and performance elevate, to the near demented, this mix of Boulevard comedy and surreal fantasy.
From Barrie's press release:

Teenage Ivan used the newly arrived Cinematograph to become the greatest actor in
Tsarist Russia. His triumphs in the movies got him lead roles in the Moscow Theatres and
his collaborations with director Yakov Protazanov (of the science fiction classic Aelita)
produced the greatest film of the pre-revolutionary era, their adaptation of Queen of
Spades, dominated by Mosjoukine’s glowering Herman.

This film lived in only the memory of the few viewers who survived the decades it was
believed lost. Mosjoukine had another claim to fame however. He was the actor who
contributed the close-up to the reel which demonstrated “the Kuleshov effect.”

The famous montage theoretician took a shot of Mosjoukine doing his intense tabla rasa
stare, into which were cut pictures of a plate of soup, a baby and a naked woman. The
response was always “What a great actor! See how he shows hunger, affection and lust.”
This reel, now actually lost, was known to every commentator on film in the world.

When the Bolsheviks nearly shot him, Mosjoukine, along with his then wife Natalie
Lissenko and Protazanov, lit out for Europe, settling in France where, in middle age, he
began his career over again. Gathering with the exiled Russian performers and
technicians in Marseilles, they made a series of increasingly flamboyant costume dramas
and adventures. These turned Mosjoukine into the great European silent screen idol. He
was Valentino and Paul Muni in one package.

His fame reached Germany, where he co-starred with Brigitte Helm, fresh from her
triumph as the 17 year old heroine of Fritz Lang’s epic Metropolis. He filmed with
legends of the French cinema like Charles Vanel and Michel Simon and he was taken to
Hollywood for a movie opposite Mary Philbim, from the Lon Chaney Phantom of the
Opera.

Off screen, his association with the great beauties of the day, notably the famous artist’s
model Kiki de Montmartre, drew as much attention as his acting. He enjoyed a life of
extraordinary hedonism, eating epicure meals with celebrity friends, collecting books and
art and indulging himself in legendary romances.

And suddenly his fabled celebrity came to an abrupt end for the second time. The sound
film revealed his thick Slavonic accent, limiting the parts he could play and alienating
much of his ecstatic fan base.

He would die in poverty and isolation only a few years later. Breaking into the meagre
apartment, where they located the actor’s dead body, investigators found cupboards
crammed with fan mail containing marriage proposals, money and bank drafts. These,
had he opened them, would have let him live in luxury.

Even more disastrous, the extraordinary body of work Mosjoukine had generated, all but
vanished. The Soviet Arts Bureaucrats had no interest in the pre-Communist cinema and
recollection of the European silent film rapidly funnelled down to the work of a few
celebrity directors. Only in the legendary Paris Cinematheque, was it possible to see the
star’s flamboyant output. Their curator was devoted to Mosjoukine. A poster for his
L’Enfant du Carnival dominated the foyer of the Chaillot Palace auditorium and the editor of Breathless donated her time to restoring the surviving copies of Mosjoukine
films for preservation.

However with glasnost, the Russian archive was able to admit that they had squirreled
away examples of the Tsarist film. Movie Historians homed in on the fustian work of
director Evgenyi Bauer and your best chance of seeing Mosjoukine was in Bauer
productions. However, somewhat to official discomfort, audiences singled out the actor’s
work and the Pordenone Italy festival picked up on this and, noting that there had never
been a tribute to Mosjoukine, gathered all his surviving films for a retrospective, which
included the amazing, rediscovered 1923 serial House of Mystery.

Barrie Pattison, Australia’s most determined movie goer, had followed Mosjoukine in
the Paris screenings and glimpses of his work in the obsolete 9.5mm format home movie
library. With the motivated few, he converged on Pordenone, rounding out a lifetime of
enthusiast interest. His presentations at the Chauvel Cinematheque on Saturday
December 20 and Monday December 22 draws on this research and other archival and
collector sources.

The Mozjoukine event is unique in Australia, revealing the work of one of the Cinema’s
most flamboyant, most talented, and most neglected figures.

Futurist Films - this week at Cinematheque

2008-12-09T01:42:00.008+11:00

SAT. 13/12 @ !@ NOON & MON. 15/12/08 @6:30PM

FUTURIST FILMS

Director Albie Thoms will introduce this program on Saturday the 13th only.

Futurism Italy/1971/Colour/20mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Guido Guerrasio.

The Italian Futurists were the first artists to celebrate modern technology. This film captures the restless experimental energy of futurism and portrays the work of its major artists: Marinetti, Balla, Boccione, Carra, Russolo, and Severini.

Boccioni’s Bike USA/1981/Colour/9mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Skip Battaglia.

Animated, hand-drawn, lyrical film in the graphic style of the Italian futurists, accompanied by the sounds of a futurist orchestra.

Marinetti Australia/1968/B&W & Colour/80mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Albie Thoms.

A tribute to the Italian futurist poet Marinetti, the film is also a record of the avant-garde art circles in Sydney in the late 1960's. The film's bold structure includes long stretches of black and coloured footage interpersed with extremely rapid flashes of photographed footage, culminating with a statement of the "Hand-Made Film Manifesto" of 1968.

Queen of Titicut by Pia Santaklaus

2008-12-07T18:54:00.009+11:00

This week’s Cinematheque experience started off very lightly with 3 SCOPITONE music clips, becoming progressively weirder and darker with the next two pieces QUEEN OF APOLLO (1970) and TITICUT FOLLIES (1967). Overall, a most thought-provoking session!

The three SCOPITONE clips were so cringe-worthy they were brilliant. Tasteless, badly acted, inappropriate; they put a very uncomfortable smile on my face. Completely fascinating! Perhaps the cheesiest choice was the clip for the song ‘Strangers In the Night’ in which a young couple rendezvous and flirt beneath a wide open, bright, sun-shiny sky somewhere in Europe…not a hint of “night” anywhere. I can’t wait for more Scopitones!

Next up, QUEEN OF APOLLO (1970); a short film directed by Richard Leacock. For those who find wedding videos boring and offensive, this film carries a similar aura as it opens with a young lady in preparation for an ‘important’ event. Look carefully and this seemingly innocuous piece may reveal a deeper, more idiosyncratic underscore, perhaps even pagan ritual, metaphor and symbolism.

Unless you move past the preening, brushing, grooming, fussing and self-involved ugliness, you may miss any deeper meaning strewn within. We assume the girl being prepared for the symbolic ‘royal event’ is the ‘Queen Of Apollo’. A young boy is trained to hand her a sceptre and she pats his head. Sceptres of course are ceremonial wands used as royal emblems of monarch authority.

Later, at the actual ceremony inside a hall, the ‘Queen Of Apollo’ promenades around her faithful, waving her gloved hand for them; in a corner stands a large fake tree trunk with a constructed door and door-sign above with ‘MR SANDERS’ written in child-like, (Winnie The Pooh style) scribble; the significance elusive. ‘Sanders’ is an old word for ‘sandalwood’, and also means ‘son of Alexander’, but this doesn’t help us much.

In the background, a scrappy house band plays a sloppy rendition of the 1961 Shirelles hit Baby It’s You (also recorded by The Beatles in 1963). This Burt Bacharach, Luther Dixon and Mack Davis song includes the line “You should hear what they say about you –cheat!” Meanwhile an amassed youthful (?) mob bounce up and down in their bright satin outfits like some psychedelic KKK gathering hidden beneath their conical hats, masks and long shiny robes. Something about the demeanour of the rabbles suggests white supremacists…the young ‘Queen’s’ mother’s own hairstyle looks seriously modelled after Queen Elizabeth’s pompadour.

This doco was filmed in USA (New Orleans, Louisiana) locales that might hint a connection with some KKK, Freemasons or other organization. The Ku Klux Klan was a secret organization originally created in 1865 by 6 Confederate veterans from Tennessee. They derived the name by joining the Greek word for ‘circle’ (kyklos or κυ-κλος) and ‘clan’. The KKK used violence and intimidation to stop blacks voting and to suppress Republican votes. Before the Presidential election of November 1868, over 2,000 people were harmed or killed in Louisiana. After reading pro-Democrat Thomas Dixon’s (1864-1946) Ku Klux Klan trilogy of books ‘The Leopard’s Spots’(1902), ‘The Clansman’ (1905) and ‘The Traitor’ (1907), renowned film pioneer D.W. Griffith glorified the original Klan in his film ‘THE BIRTH OF A NATION’ (1915). Like Dixon, he used iconography inspired by old Scotland and the Historical Romances of Sir Walter Scott’s works. As an example, the international flag of the ‘Scottish Rite of Freemasonry’ is also the flag of the United Nations depicting the world nations surrounded by the laurel of Apollo circling (κυ-κλος) the world. Present-day Ku Klux Klan is no longer a single organization, but many smaller, independent groups across America, which makes it harder for researchers to infiltrate.

Still, QUEEN OF APOLLO may simply be chronicling an exemplary, elegant and chaste exclusive event; perhaps a debutante’s big day; perhaps the ‘APOLLO’ in the film title has to do with something as trivial as the name of the reception lounge, possibly called something like ‘Apollo Theatre’ or ‘Apollo Lounge’… somehow this seems doubtful!

I imagine more likely the ‘APOLLO’ in the film title has to do with the then topical ‘Apollo Space Program’. NASA conducted the Apollo space flights between 1961 and 1975 aiming at human moon landing missions. For those who believe it was accomplished, the greatest moment was on 20th July 1969. It is thought that around one fifth of the world population watched the live transmission of the first Apollo moon landing. The lunar landings of the Apollo program are still seen by some as humanity’s greatest achievement.

The Apollo program was named after Apollo, the Greek god of light. Before the Apollo program, America had the Mercury program (another god) to compete with the Soviets (who were the first to fly man to space -12 April 1961). NASA made space travel believable though others suspect that every Apollo mission was a carefully orchestrated and rehearsed Top Secret mock-up. Some see occult metaphors and symbolism in the Apollo missions. Eg: The Numerological ‘staged’ explosion (death-sacrifice) of ‘Apollo 13’ at 13:13 hrs on 13 April 1970; (13 is seen as the symbolic number of death and rebirth/reincarnation). This event and the filming of QUEEN OF APOLLO happened very close together…

NASA-Masonic conspiracies continue to exist; as reward for “pulling off” the Apollo space mission, C. Fred Kleinknecht (said to have headed the Apollo space project) was later made Sovereign Grand Commander of the Council of the 33rd Degree of the Ancient Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in Washington DC. Others say it wasn’t C. Fred Kleinknecht, but rather his brother Kenneth S. Kleinknecht (also a 33 degree S.R. Mason) who worked at NASA. Note: The most active and exceptional serving Masons receive the prestigious and Honorary 33rd Degree. It is said, the ‘Scottish Rite’ is part of the Masonic family degree system. There are apparently few of the first 3 degrees, then, those who apply and pay for them are conferred with the 4 to 32 degrees, and the 33rd degree is for exceptional service to Freemasonry. Very few receive this recognition which might be seen as somehow ‘elite’.

It is believed that all of the early astronauts were Freemasons. By showing the people of Earth that we can leave our planet and travel to space, it infers that other beings might also travel to Earth. Alien conspiracies still flourish.

For many in awe of astral bodies, the worship of the Sun, Moon and Stars continues. We still call many planets after the old Gods, Eg: Venus, Mars, Neptune, Mercury and Jupiter… Humanity has always noticed patterns in the movement of the Sun, Moon and Stars. The ancient Greeks explained the Sun’s daily journey as the work of Apollo riding a fiery chariot across the heavens. The ancient Egyptians explained the waning of the Moon as a monthly re-enactment of the dismemberment of the god Osiris. When humanity discovered the Earth revolved around the Sun, it destroyed our arrogant notion that the universe centred round man. This painful truth revealed our relative insignificance while affirming The Sun as the most brilliant object in our Solar System (and so Apollo shares in that importance). The Moon which seems to magically affect natural life on Earth as it reflects the light of the Sun (Apollo) is also important…perhaps seen as the Goddess, or Queen, (Queen of Apollo?), her gravitational pull influences the tides and the cycles of life, perhaps even our emotional cycle.

Alternatively, in other mythology, Apollo did have a Queen at one stage…Apollo’s famous affair was with his lover Queen Hecuba. When she had a son (Troilus) to Apollo, an oracle foretold that Troy would not be defeated if Troilus reached age 25, so Troilus was killed by Achilles during the Trojan War. Hecuba (Queen of Apollo?) later went insane when 2 of her other children (Poydorus and Polyxena) died.

If the word ‘Sun’ is substituted for the word ‘Apollo’, the title QUEEN OF SUN (or ‘Sun Queen’) might come into play. Perhaps some connection to ‘Nefertiti’ is in order. She was known as Egypt’s ‘Sun Queen’. Her name means “a beautiful woman has come”. It is believed she was from wealthy, privileged, elite Egyptian royalty. Nefertiti was the wife of pharaoh Amenhotep (perhaps the earliest monotheist). It is thought she helped her husband systematically erase the worship of the supreme Egyptian god AMEN, replacing AMEN with ATEN.

Anyway, some occultists see Apollo as ‘Lucifer’, linked to Mars and the coming of the Antichrist.

One cannot be sure who is on the right track…I still wonder about many possible connections between events, mythologies and this strange 12 minute doco QUEEN OF APOLLO.

The next piece was TITICUT FOLLIES (1967); shot in 1966, this is a harrowing documentary film that reveals a hideous male-dominated world of crime and punishment inside a mental institution. If ever you need proof that humanity is a mess, here it is! It’s enough to make you question how the universe got it so wrong. This film could easily be reclassified as ‘HORROR’. Filled with ugliness in many guises; patients, wardens, doctors, buildings, behaviour…ugly, ugly and so ugly! ‘Moe’, the guy running the show, comes off like a spotlight-starved, show-tune-obsessed dictator; a most forceful, unattractive presence.
If the oppressed patients are flawed, this film reveals serious counter-flaws in the staff as well, who, in turn show most questionable traits. Unhygienic, sick, rude, brutal… perhaps most questionable are the psychiatrists and doctors condemning the poor lost souls…At one point we see the tragic force-feeding of a soon-to-be-dead patient.

Filmed in black and white by Frederick Wiseman at an institution in Massachusetts, the inmates and patients are seen to be deprived of comfort, privacy and freedom. Left naked in stark individual cells, they are violated, bullied, ridiculed and shown no dignity.

I recall the artwork of the masters Goya and Bosch who once captured the horror of the ugly human soul pushing outward from the flesh. Many faces seen in Titicut Follies affirm the old masters’ gruesome visions with their foul presence…Paradise truly is lost and freedom is but a dream.
I’m not pointing the finger at any one particular group, though I’m struck by the emotionally challenged, empathy-lacking staff and wardens who have probably been dealing with inmates on a daily basis and are most likely worn down and numb to empathy… all that’s left is an inhuman process of pain. Even in front of the camera they torture the prisoners; one could only imagine what horror they’d inflict off camera.
This film shows the sad leading the sad (though we could also substitute ‘sick’, ‘blind’, ‘mad’ and ‘poor’ for sad). Indeed, this is one of the saddest film experiences ever.

Thanks for such a difficult and thought-provoking Cinemateque experience Brett.

PS: Afterwards, I had a look on the internet and found QUEEN OF APOLLO is included on a long list of PENNEBAKER-HEGEDUS films. I believe Leacock collaborated with D.A.Pennebaker, whereas D.A Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus formed a documentary filmmaking team in the mid 70s where she would co-direct with Pennebaker. Like Richard Leacock (QUEEN OF APOLLO), who’s cinematic style creates a sense of actually ‘being there’, they too have been responsible for many respected and candid pieces. Using unobtrusive handheld cameras, they leave the film subject to determine the result. The Pennebaker-Hegedus team received the D.W.Griffith Award for their documentary THE WAR ROOM (1994).
In 1960, Leacock helped invent sync for cameras and sound recorders which helped sprout the new style of filmmaking taken up by many including D.A.Pennebaker.
Leacock (Born in London 18 July 1921) had spent years as a combat photographer in Burma and China; he also spent over a year as cameraman on Robert Flaherty’s ‘Louisiana Story’ (1948). Later Leacock also worked on Robert Drew’s film PRIMARY (1960), which is an intimate look at the JFK – Hubert Humphrey primary election. Leacock co-shot it and D.A.Pennebaker edited it. When Robert Drew went to work for ABC-TV, Leacock-Pennebaker was born, producing many films including DON’T LOOK BACK (1965).

Warrendale - this week at Cinematheque

2008-12-02T01:03:00.004+11:00

Following up from last week's screening of Titicut Follies is another look at institutional life, Warrendale.

Warrendale Canada/1967/B&W/101mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Allan King.

A cinema verite study of the treatment of emotionally disturbed children at the Warrendale Centre in Ontario. The patients have behaviour abnormalities too severe for normal living, but here are given minimal restraint and encouragement to express their feelings however violent their form. Warrendale shared the 1967 Cannes Festival award with Blow-Up.

“This shattering documentary emerges as an engrossing, stark film. Variety
“The depth of emotion may embarrass some audiences, but it is the only way to deal honestly with material of this importance.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

Screens with...

The Anatomy of Cindy Fink USA/1965/B&W & Colour/12mins/ 16mm/NFVLS Dir: Patricia Jaffe, Richard Leacock, Paul Leaf.

A cinema verite portrait of a young dancer rehearsing in an artist's studio in Greenwich village.

Le Brasier Ardent - Xmas Show - coming soon to Cinematheque

2008-12-01T09:19:00.008+11:00

The Chauvel Cinematheque is pleased to announce a special Xmas screening of Ivan Mosjoukine's 1923 silent film Le Brasier Ardent (The Fiery Furnace) featuring a new score supervised and performed by Adrian Clement and a new translation by Barrie Pattison. Click to enlarge the flyer.

Titicut Follies - this week at Cinematheque

2008-11-25T00:29:00.009+11:00

SAT. 29/11 at 12 noon & MON. 1/12 at 6:30pm

Just in time for Xmas, a two week program of feel-bad, cinema verite documentaries kicks off this week with the oft-mentioned but rarely screened classic of the genre...

TITICUT FOLLIES

USA/1967/B&W/84mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Frederick Wiseman.

Filmed in the state hospital for the criminally insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, Wiseman's first film had the unique distinction of being banned from public screening by a court order following a change of mind by the state authorities who initially agreed to both the filming and the release of the completed film. The title comes from the annual revue staged by both the inmates and the staff. The basis of the film's structure is the encounter between the employees of the institution and the people they serve.

Screens with...

Queen of Apollo
USA/1970/Colour/12mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Richard Leacock. A cinema verite documentary about a 1970 debutante. Shows the "Queen of Apollo" on her big night - an exclusive New Orleans mardi gras ball.

Reep on Kockin by Pia Santaklaus

2008-11-23T19:39:00.005+11:00

19 November 2008

Hey Brett, I really enjoyed last week’s Cinematheque show, Keep on Rockin! I’d seen it on TV as a young child, but it was beautiful to watch it on the big screen and I particularly appreciated how you turned up the sound volume so that the experience washed over the room.

COSMIC RAY (1962 – filmed in 1961) is a daring, sexy and strange B&W short film by American counterculture beatnik artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner (b.1933) featuring Ray Charles’ song WHAT’D I SAY, Conner uses innovative, fast-cut proto-psychedelic visuals which seem vastly incongruent and trippy alongside the somewhat dated Ray Charles hit. Visually ahead of its time, the film screams Sex and Revolution… The sensual sirens, ‘sex-bombs’, look and act like they sprung from the naked liberated later years of the 60s. This is a most beautiful experience for those looking for some 60s style turn-on.

KEEP ON ROCKIN’ is an essential document directed by the now legendary D.A Pennebaker. With the help of at least 8 other camerapersons he covered a lot of ground. The cameras seeped into the atmosphere capturing the intimate minutiae and incidents; especially prevalent amongst the crowds was footage of beautiful, youthful ladies…

Filmed 13 September 1969 and released in 1972, KEEP ON ROCKIN’ (the title named after a comment Janis Joplin made whilst watching an early screening) is basically a documentary of a Rock and Roll Revival Festival which featured many Rock and Roll greats. These artists had been big names over a decade earlier and here they were again to try and show a young crowd how to do 50s RnR properly.

Many other artists such as Gene Vincent, The Doors and John Lennon played at the show but didn’t make it into this particular film, though we did catch a glimpse of Ray Manzarek as part of the cavalcade of transport heading to the venue and John Lennon in a white suit and ginger beard was also spotted exiting a limo.

First up on stage we see Bo Diddley (1928-2008). He played song after pumping song with a broken guitar string while the invasive camera nudged in for some extreme close-ups, so much so that at moments it was literally only centimeters from Bo’s strumming hand, below hip level.
The band was cool. The stage was shaking. Here was a heavy-handed hound that heated the crowd with his ‘hambone’ stomping Rock and Roll blues.

Adding to the mix, the camera was drawn to the entourage which included a beautiful and sexy dark-skinned lady in a provocative mini-dress playing the tambourine and singing. At times the camera went so low that the viewer would virtually get a perve up her skirt.

Next up we saw Jerry Lee Lewis (b. 1935). For the first few songs it was fascinating and out-of-place to see JLL strumming on a Fender Stratocaster guitar when he is so well-known for climbing all over a piano. Showing his versatility, he soon mounts his trusty piano and belts out a good mix of classic songs… Jerry Lee did seem a little subdued on the day, but nevertheless performed great covers of some huge Elvis Presley hits and his own hits including Great Balls Of Fire. His Elvis impersonation was spot on.

Chuck Berry was up next. Arguably the most hard core of the bunch in the film, he treated the crowd to a long medley of his own songs… a kind of innovative live mix. During his rendition of ‘Johnny B Goode’ (1958 –written in 1955), he broke out his trademark one-leg hop march (often mistaken for his other trademark, ‘duck-walk’).

The feigned panic in his eyes as he did the splits was completely hilarious. Years later Eddie Murphy will often put on that exact same expression.

Chuck Berry exuded radiance… this poet shared his early vigorous anthems with this new tarnished generation… He riffed in a style at once sweaty, sweet, sure, sexy and scary. This singular showman in many ways one could imagine him to be Jimi Hendrix’s hip older brother. He wore a vibrant matching pants-and-vest set over a white shirt and shiny patent leather shoes.
One can only imagine how many times Chuck Berry had performed those songs up until then, yet he still seemed excited by them. He provided a raw, restless freshness which imbued the songs with renewed vitality and energy. A truly incredible performer!

Born in 1926, he is a dapper 43 year old man on stage blowing the minds of this crowd of young, (perhaps unworthy) worshippers…The man can still be found playing live shows today, almost 40 years later!

John Lennon once said: “If you tried to give Rock and Roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’”

One could call Chuck a real muse in his own right… He strongly inspired both the Beatles and the Stones; both bands shared a great respect for this talented musician and changed the world...

Finally as night descends, Little Richard (b. 1932) hit the stage. Flamboyant, camping it up in a sparkling tunic that made him look like a human mirror-ball, the deep well from which his energy flowed seemed bottomless. He stood astride his grand piano with a huge cheesy grin; his manic antics and rapport with the audience reveal him to be a somewhat feel-good alien strutting. He teases and taunts the crowd offering them the boots off his feet and even his glittering outfit, eventually leaving him shirtless, dripping in sweat and pulsing pure Rock and Roll.

All that day Canadian flags unfurled amongst the crowded lines of the hordes; some fine, some swine and some divine, particularly the beautiful wide-eyed muses lighting up the many camera lenses.

Ultimately, the camera must return to these great musicians-songwriters. These are not young men, yet they show the much younger crowd a vitality that seems missing in those lives. These old rockers resemble priests or healers injecting old-world spunk into a generally lifeless brood.

With so many cameramen capturing so much, often we lose sight of the great performers as edits focus on images of the crowds and the ambience; a pity to take one’s eye away from the stage, but still a wonderful way to get a fuller picture of the day and the times.

One feels a part of the experience. It’s very immediate.

50’s Rock and Roll never pumped so clearly and loud. It comes a little late, but better late than never. Oh to have had these cameras and sound equipment during the 1950s. Imagine the energy!

To paraphrase Jerry Lee Lewis, these beings are not as young as they used to be, but they’re not as old as some people think. They did this material over a decade earlier, but here, in 1969, their songs colour the air with a kind of youthful kick and naïve primal power. These ‘fathers’ of Rock and Roll, giants in their field, seem like Old Gods of a dangerous core - their inner fire and great commercial sense bring them back to revisit the Earth to shine their glorious magic on the sleeping millions.

Thanks for another top viewing experience.

Pia Santaklaus.

Holy Water Hose Down

2008-11-23T09:11:00.006+11:00

Get the story here

Filmmaker Double - this week at cinematheque

2008-11-21T06:39:00.006+11:00

SAT. 22/11 at noon & MON. 24/11 @ 6:30 FILMMAKER DOUBLE

Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight

Canada/1997/Colour/60mins/ 16mm/NFVLS Dir: Noam Gonick.

This documentary about Canadian film-maker Guy Maddin offers a penetrating account of an obsessive cinephile struggling in isolation to make movies. The film is narrated by passionate Maddin devotee, Tom Waits (joining a fanclub that also includes Martin Scorsese), and features a real-life cast as outlandish as that of one of Maddin's own films.

SCREENS WITH...

Document of the Dead
USA/1978/60mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Roy Frumkes.

An in-depth look at the production and distribution of the 1976 George Romero horror classic Dawn of the Dead. This doco was made as a film school project led by director Frumkes. His intimate access to the production is reflected in the excellent behind the scenes footage and in-depth interviews. There are wonderful interviews with Romero and make-up man/stuntman/actor Tom Savini, as well as John Amplas, Steve Bissette and Gahan Wilson.

The Namesake

2008-11-18T12:35:00.003+11:00

Click to enlarge.

Keep on Rockin - this week at Cinematheque

2008-11-13T08:37:00.005+11:00

SAT. 15/11 @ 12 noon & Mon. 17/11 @ 6:30

KEEP ON ROCKIN!

USA/1972/Colour/94mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: D.A. Pennebaker.

Filmed at the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival, this concert film features four legends of rock ‘n’ roll: Bo Didley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. The compere is Kim Fowley. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix also feature.

Screens with:

COSMIC RAY

USA/1961/B&W/4mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Bruce Conner. A rapid montage of images cut to the music of Ray Charles.

White Dog - this week at Cinematheque

2008-11-04T08:33:00.003+11:00

SAT. 8/11 at 12 noon & MON. 10/11 at 6:30pm

WHITE DOG

USA/1981/Colour/84mins/35mm/HP Dir: Sam Fuller.

One of the most famous "unseen" films, White Dog never got a theatrical run in the US even though it had a well-known cast, a legendary director, and a powerful subject - racism. Writer Curtis (L.A Confidential) Hanson and Fuller fashioned an intense yarn about an up-and-coming LA actress (Kristy McNichol), who takes in a German shepherd after she hits it with her car, only to discover that her new pet is a deadly White Dog, trained from birth to hate anyone with black skin. Music by Ennio Morricone.

“White Dog is an unusual, often powerful study of racism in the guise of a man vs animal suspenser.” Variety

TARO, the boy ARTO by Pia Santaklaus

2008-10-28T08:09:00.009+11:00

18 October 2008

Hi Brett,

I enjoyed today’s Cinemateque feature TARO, THE DRAGON BOY (1979) and present a few personal thoughts:

I understand this Japanese animation is an adaptation of a famous Japanese folk tale.
However, I cannot pinpoint which particular folk tale or how old that folk tale might be, but noticed this particular retelling owed a great deal to ancient Greek mythology and in particular the myth of Heracles. Until proven otherwise, I imagine this to be the case.

The Homeric heroic archetype on a great odyssey is strongly hinted in Taro, whose tale also includes fantastic personalities, creatures, beasts and challenges.

I believe TARO is based on the strong-man archetype classically found in the Heracles/Hercules story from many centuries BC. Heracles was the greatest and strongest Greek hero, the half-divine son of Zeus/Jupiter to a mortal woman. In TARO, Taro has dealings and ultimately friendship with a Red Demon who becomes the ‘Thunder God’ in the sky, not at all unlike the main traits of Zeus/Jupiter (the sky god of thunder whose symbol was the thunderbolt).

Like Hercules (and later Superman), Taro uses his super strength for good, to help save humanity. He is guided to destroy monsters, rights wrongs and perform various ‘Olympian’ services. Taro too meets an old man (The mentor archetype) who gives him purpose and further strength (equal to 100 men).

Heracles had a twin mortal brother born to his mortal mother. They shared the same mortal mother, though Heracles was also strongly involved with the goddess Hera/Juno. In the Roman telling of the Heracles story, Heracles suckled on a sleeping Goddess’s breast as his real mother was a mere mortal. In a sense, Heracles had two mothers as does Taro whose mother was a mere mortal but also a powerful dragon. Hera sent 2 serpents to kill the baby Heracles as he lay in his cot. The young babe throttled the serpents and thrived.

As a baby, Taro suckled on the milky white eye-balls of his dragon mother who consequently was left blind so that the child might thrive. Perhaps the 2 eyeballs are a variation on the serpent theme though Taro’s mother wanted to keep an eye on him –Ha! Suckling on eyeballs adds a new spin on “Eat with your eyes” or “eye-watering foods”. I understand some cultures still actually eat the eyes of various beasts and birds. Anyway, eyes are organs that detect light. In Roman mythology, Lucina was the goddess of childbirth “she who brings children into the light”.
Furthermore the Greek Goddess Artemis (also known as a goddess of light) is the Goddess of hunting, forests and fertility. While pregnant, Taro’s mother selfishly hunted for fish knowing that it would be beneficial in her state. Fish is widely recognized as a good food source for nutrients promoting good eyesight.

Taro, like Heracles was a champion who performed good deeds on his journeys, making the world a better place and learning about self-sacrifice along the way.

As with Unico, Taro seems to carry some oedipal complex. Taro imagines his mother to look like his pretty young muse friend with a musical pipe in her mouth and when Taro finally meets his dragon-mother, he must grip the horns and she says “mount me”. A later scene finds her in a bare naked state facing her son and embracing him, her full, fleshy breasts pressed in a tender hug. At one point in the movie, Taro is enveloped in snow and dying. He calls out for his Mother in this moment of crisis. Help arrives in the form of a pale horse. The iconography is not unlike that in UNICO (1979) in which the mother is seen as a white unicorn.

In TARO, a glorious flying horse is not unlike the mythical Pegasus. Incidentally, the flying white horse in TARO reminded me of the flying white unicorn in the recent screening of Tezuka’s UNICO (also 1979).

The name Hercules/Heracles itself means ‘Glory of/through Hera’ which suggests a powerful ‘maternal’ or female undercurrent in the hero’s life. Heracles was tormented by Hera as Taro is tormented in his difficult journey to find his dragon mother.

Taro meets a pretty, young girl, who plays the flute; she might be seen as Taro’s muse.
At one point Taro imagines his long-lost mother looks like this girl. She taught him modesty.

Classic Heracles iconography portrays him nude and holding a long club and later donning a lion skin to cover some of his nudity. Taro too is shown in various states of undress, genitals exposed, until he later wears a loin cloth. There may be reasons; Firstly, the boy may be entering a more mature age where innocence is replaced by experience and so for modesty’s sake, he wants to cover his own ‘sex’. Secondly, it may have to do with the concept of a superior man. In the ancient Analects by the Chinese philosopher Confucius we find three things which the superior man guards against. In youth he guards against lust (and so the modesty), then, when he is strong and the physical powers are full of vigor, he guards against quarrelsomeness and when he is old he guards against covetousness.

When Taro kills the fearsome giant ‘Black Demon’, in a sense he kills that part of him that is lustful, quarrelsome and covetous. Like Heracles, the Black Demon carried a long dangerous club.

Heracles made himself a slave and spent some years in the servitude of various persons, one being Queen Omphale of Lydia. Taro too allows this to happen as he dedicates himself to others.

The music in the film is beautiful and very classical in a Japanese sense, however in one part when Taro wanders onto the plantation of an exploitative old lady (“rich old hen”), behind a veneer of classical Japanese instrumentation can be heard the disguised yet clear Western structure of a backwater-swampy 12 bar blues as though Taro’s stay at the old lady’s rural farm was somehow akin to the Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (1911-1938) who stopped at the crossroads to make his rumored deal with the devil. Johnson himself lived on a rural plantation much of his life.

In another scene Taro enters the house of a lusty, busty, possessive woman who frightens him and Taro runs away. This may have allusions to the jealous third wife of Heracles who was instrumental in his death due to an acidic woven shirt she gave him which had destructive properties. The lusty lady in TARO also had a spinning wheel with which to weave a shirt.
In one of Heracles’ Labours he had to clean the filthy Augean horse stables and he cleverly did this task by rerouting two rivers so the filth would be washed out. Taro also is seen diverting various rivers and manipulating dams.

Various task-masters would often refuse to honour agreements made with Heracles and this too is also represented in Taro’s journey. Heracles had to capture the Erymanthian Boar. Wild boars feature in TARO, however Taro captures their hearts in a friendly way. Heracles was a Demi-God due to his strange heritage. He was not the cleverest hero, but certainly the strongest and one of the most courageous, witty and playful. Heracles was also known for his sexual prowess and for completing 12 Labors for King Eurystheus. Taro, like Heracles becomes a cultural hero. In Taro’s case, he gains great recognition by spreading the good grain (rice) to the poorer peoples.

Heracles has been connected with Melqart (Phoenician God) and Shu (Egyptian God) and it is thought that via Greco-Buddhist culture, (which developed between 4th century BCE and 5th century CE), the far east received the Heracles myth. This may be witnessed in various Japanese Buddhist temples in the Nio guardian deities. A consequence of a long chain of cultural interactions begun with Greek forays into India from the time of Alexander The Great, Indo-Greek rule was established for centuries and extended and flourished in the Hellenized empire. It is now believed that Greco-Buddhism influenced the artistic and conceptual development of Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism before Buddhism was adopted in Central and Northeastern Asia from the 1st century CE and ultimately spreading to China and Japan.

There is debate as to the earliest anthropomorphic images of Buddha; some scholars believe these images were a result of of Greco-Buddhist interaction. Before this innovation, Buddhist art was dominated by symbolic representations which didn’t portray him in human form. The Greeks worshipped human form and were probably the first to represent Buddha this way. The Greeks developed syncretic divinities, fusing together potentially incongruous religious symbols. (eg Sarapis is a God combining both Greek and Egyptian Gods). In India, the Greeks helped combine the Greek God Apollo with traits of Buddha to create a single divinity. In early sculptures, Buddha is represented with unmistakable external characteristics wearing a classic Greco-Roman toga and having curly Mediterranean hair. Gradually, this anthropomorphic representation of Buddha took on more Indian and Asian appearance. Other Buddhist deities were influenced by the Greeks. Heracles (the protector deity of Demetrius I) was the model for the Buddhist protector VAJRAPANI who was later seen as the strong Japanese protector deities NIO (seen at the entries of many Buddhist temples). It has also been suggested that the Japanese wind god FUJIN was inspired by the Greek BOREAS.

Rulers were sometimes deified by the Greeks, particularly in the wake of Alexander The Great’s far-reaching reign. This concept of god-king seems to have been absorbed by early bodhisattvas who had probably also exchanged intelectual and philosophical ideas with the Greeks and who sometimes portrayed Buddha with the face of Apollo. Buddha was elevated to man-god status in purely human form as was done in the West. Buddha’s life-cycle and story shares similarities to the Greek man-gods (eg Heracles) of old.

Anywaves, perhaps too much analysis. Interblending produces the new. Though based on older concepts, Taro is still modern and most enjoyable as a film.

Thanks Brett. Nice choice. Thanks also to the generous Japan Foundation for providing the subtitled print.

Pia Santaklaus

Liquid Sky - this week at cinematheque

2008-10-28T07:38:00.007+11:00

SAT. 1/11 @ 12:00 NOON & MON. 3/11 @ 6:30

LIQUID SKY

USA/1982/Colour/112mins/35mm/HP Dir: Slava Tsukerman.

Aliens are after the heroin-like substance produced by the human brain at the point of orgasm. Anne Carlisle, who co-wrote the screenplay, plays a dual role as a lesbian punk model and a male homosexual punk model. A subplot involves Otto von Wernherr, a government scientist investigating the UFO on Carlisle's roof. This offbeat film, directed by a Soviet-born filmmaker, captures New York City in the grip of the New Wave movement of the early 1980s.

“Recasts Weimar Germany - with its attendant androgyny, drugs, and general air of apocalypse - as a New York New Wave nightmare.” Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film Journal

November/December 2008 Program

2008-10-27T09:04:00.002+11:00

Click to enlarge.

Aliens from Spaceship Earth - this week at cinematheque

2008-10-21T08:10:00.007+11:00

6:30 MON. 27/10 ONLY

ALIENS FROM SPACESHIP EARTH

USA/1977/93mins/Colour/35mm/HP Dir: Don Como.

Using interviews and rare archival footage, this film documents the counterculture’s involvement with the new religious movements of the 1960s and 70s. The film speculates that yogis and gurus may be driven by aliens with a New Age agenda - the evolution of human consciousness. Featured in the film are Sai Baba, Ram Dass, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Father Yod, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, and many other spiritual leaders, as well as starry-eyed testimonials by Cybil Shepard, Martin Landau and Raymond Burr. Folk-rock singer Donovan narrates and provides the soundtrack.

“One of the only films of the era that intelligently and provocatively counteracts the schlock and mass media sensationalism that basically demonized a generation of seekers in the 70s.” Jodi Wille, Process Media

If you enjoyed Shangri-La and Amazing World of Ghosts at past screenings, you'll definitely groove on this far-out 70s schlock-doc.

That's Exploitainment by Pia Santaklaus

2008-10-15T10:42:00.004+11:00

I much enjoyed the Cinematheque presentation you made today entitled THAT’S EXPLOITATION. Informative and well curated. You obviously did a lot of research and managed to collect a very interesting bunch of film snippets, sound bites, slides and other quirky and impressive memorabilia. The talk seemed quite extensive and I imagine after the 2 full hours allocated for the presentation you had to cut your talk short. It isn’t surprising, as this is a very big subject and 2 hours can barely do it justice; nevertheless, you managed to fit in a lot of good information, and you did it in a clear and ordered way. I would have loved to have seen and heard all the rest of the program you’d prepared but had to limit.

You credited film historian Eric Shaefer’s book BOLD! DARING! SHOCKING! TRUE! as the major resource for today’s presentation. I aim to see if I can get a copy of that book to find out more for myself.

Permit me to share a few of my own thoughts on the subject of exploitation films:

I imagine that during the 1930s, 40s & 50s the often-present, ever-growing industry of smaller film companies and initiatives who made these non-Hollywood pictures did satisfy a definite gap in the market. One might see the energetic makers of these so-called exploitation films as the rebellious, independent, misunderstood or misrepresented little brothers of the bigger brother we call Hollywood.

Their influence was felt not only by all society, but Hollywood also. Their drive and ability to make quick, profitable films would have been secretly admired by parts of the perhaps less resourceful Hollywood. Their ‘hijacking’ of cinemas, distribution routes, audiences and related structures would have irked the Hollywood machine which would have preferred to own a monopoly over the industry. In all, the so-called exploitation market took some customers and profits away from the Hollywood machine in what I see as a ‘David and Goliath’ struggle; the giant Hollywood could not successfully quash or regulate the effective smaller rebel element.

When one considers that much of history has been written by the ruling powers, one might get some idea as to how the smaller, so-called exploitation industry (that often challenged and ignored the Hollywood path), were labelled with such a derogatory moniker.

To say that the so-called exploitation films are any more exploitative than many Hollywood films through the years is simply wrong.

One cannot assume that an audience is any more exploited by the so-called exploitation films than the audience of bigger budget mainstream Hollywood films. The audience has a choice whether or not to see films from either camp and in fact often demand such entertainments.
One cannot assume that the cast and crew of the so-called exploitation films are more exploited than those of Hollywood films. Clearly the Hollywood machine has a history of chewing up and spitting out (exploiting) many, many directors, actors, actresses, technicians and other employees. The relative term ‘exploitation’ negates itself in this scenario. One cannot single out audiences or makers of either film camp as being any more or less exploited than the other.

If nothing else, the smaller size of the so-called exploitation film crews would ensure smaller overheads and more control, and in this way, they might produce a less exploitative, more guaranteed, truer, clearer, less-compromised individual vision; something many Hollywood heads, being beaten at their own game, may have envied and deeply resented. Almost certainly, parts of Hollywood would have felt exploited by the perhaps piratical element of the so-called exploitation mob.

It is most likely that Hollywood initiatives developed the slanderous phrase of ‘exploitation’ in order to lead a wave of negative energy against their competition, the so-called exploitation groups. This tactic however, does seem hypocritical, as the makers of the so-called exploitation films were in many ways only following in the steps of big brother Hollywood, but on a smaller, cheaper, scale. Both provided product that had an audience, both shepherded their audiences into cinemas and ultimately, at the end of the day, they both tried to make money, some more than others. Hollywood accusingly calling their little prodigal brothers ‘exploiters’ is a lot like the pot calling the kettle black, or the raven chiding blackness. The criticism is unfair as the term might just as easily apply to the accusers.

I would offer that the so-called “exploitation films” deserve a more appropriate relabelling; something more befitting and approachable to market them with. I suggest ‘exploration films’, ‘calculation films’, ‘resolution films’, ‘challenge films’, ‘feeler films’, ‘questy films’, ‘dodge films’, ‘grapple films’ or any other name more suitable for these enduring, influential pieces that have been so wrongly given the negatively suggestive name ‘exploitation’.

Brett, thanks again for the fine effort.

Pia Santaklaus

Maniac Bride Child by Pia Santaklaus

2008-10-15T10:40:00.005+11:00

I’d like to offer a few of my thoughts on today’s double at Cinematheque, MANIAC (1934) and CHILD BRIDE (1938).

First MANIAC: With all its flaws, I still enjoyed this relatively slap-dash, generic, low-budget ‘horror’ film. This film experience would have had a lot more impact in its day particularly as psycho-therapy was still in its relative infancy and viewers probably hadn’t been saturated with this sort of horror film. It opened with some beautiful haunting music and some early-scientific theories on mental disease, interestingly distinguishing the mind from the brain, suggesting the mind being the brain’s operator.

One of the main characters, Dr Meirschultz (A Jewish-German name meaning ‘bright overseer’) worked in his lab wearing a white lab-coat, a kind of cliché mad-professor- cum-doctor. His ‘assistant’, Don Maxwell, was a vaudeville actor and impersonator who helped the doctor in a kind of ‘Igor’ capacity, though he looked more presentable than a cliché ‘Igor’. Maxwell would ultimately kill Dr Meirschultz and take over his likeness perfectly. Maxwell had this capacity to become a doppelganger. This doppelganger theme was probably taken from the Edgar Allan Poe story ‘William Wilson’ (1839) in which it features most heavily.

Shades of the Frankenstein story and motifs crept into MANIAC as Maxwell and the Doctor enter a morgue to snatch a dead body with the aim of reanimating it. During the morgue scenes we see short interspersed cuts of footage featuring a cat chasing a mouse (reflecting the real cat and mouse game they were playing), then we later see cat fighting with a cat, and later a dog fighting with a dog. Perhaps this prepares the viewer for the ‘cat fight’ which takes place in a subterranean vault even later in the movie between two real women struggling in their dog-eat-dog world.

So many Edgar Allan Poe references are scattered throughout this film that I would not baulk at suggesting that without the influence of Edgar Allan Poe, this movie could not have been made.
In one scene a woman actually mentions Poe and his story ‘Murder In The Rue Morgue’ (1841) which featured an orangutan. One scene in MANIAC finds a patient accidentally injected with adrenalin and turned into a beastly man resembling an angry wild orangutan or similar primate. In his hyper, ape-like state, the patient picks up a beautiful female and escapes with her in his arms (perhaps shades of KING KONG - 1933) to satisfy his primal urges. Again this ‘orang-utan’ scene references Poe, as Poe had employed the ape as a character in one of his stories.

Another scene in MANIAC, finds Maxwell ‘burying’ the Doctor behind a brick wall which is an obvious tip of the hat to Poe’s short story ‘The Cask Of Amontillado’ (1846).

Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ (1843) is also heavily referenced in MANIAC. In Poe’s story ‘Tell-Tale Heart’, the narrator has an imaginative mind which creates irrational fear that someone’s eye has a vulture-like gleam and imagines the gleam to be evil. In MANIAC, Maxwell sees a satanic gleam in various character’s eyes including Dr Meirschultz, female patients and even a cat that he fears enough to rip out it’s eye and swallow it to avoid the gleam.

On more than one occasion we see superimposed footage of ritualistic, satanic imagery, probably designed to represent the hidden evil that conspires to corrupt Maxwell. The dark side of his mind influences him in the wrong direction. This theme also might have its origins in a Poe story; in this case THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE (1845), the ‘Imp’ of course being a small inner demon that leads decent individuals to do the wrong thing and get in trouble.

On the subject of Poe, he also wrote a story called ‘The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether’ (published 1856) which dealt in part with the old torturous form of physical punishment that coincidentally featured in today’s second movie CHILD BRIDE (1938) in which the local female teacher closely escapes ‘tar and feathering’ by a vengeful mob of unsavoury men. I imagine the taunting insult “Chicken!” may have originated from this system of victimisation.

CHILD BRIDE starred a young actress Shirley Mill who adequately played the child bride ‘Jennie’. Some of her characteristics, including her demeanour and particularly her voice and the way she enunciated, seemed to very much mimic or respond to the style of the then upcoming popular young actress Shirley Temple.

In CHILD BRIDE we find a dwarf called ‘Angelo’ (angel) with a simpleton buddy called ‘Happy’. I wonder if the name ‘Happy’ was influenced by the animation SNOW WHITE (1937) in which one of the seven dwarves was called ‘Happy’.

I believe there is supposed to be an infamous skinny-dipping scene included in this film. Unless I fell asleep during the session, I did not see such a scene and so did not find the movie ultra-exploitative. The reality of child brides is indeed horrific, but this movie does go some way in exposing such issues. The young bride Jennie is admired and loved by a young boy called Freddie whose age is more appropriate to hers, and the movie ends on a ‘happy’ note with Jennie and Freddie together at last, though I’m not too sure the young, possessive Freddie will grow up to be a suitable enough husband for Jennie as he may have some anger-management issues which he revealed when we saw him intent on gunning down (murder?) the girl-bride’s evil and too-old husband.

A wonderful choice of films Brett. I thank you again, till next week.

Pia Santaklaus.

12th Japan Foundation Japanese Film Festival

2008-10-15T10:29:00.002+11:00

The Japan Foundation have announced the line-up for the 12th Japanese Film Festival.

Here are the details.

Enjoy.

Horny Beast - Pia Santaklaus on Unico

2008-10-15T10:01:00.007+11:00

HORNY BEAST

Though I’m not great follower of manga and anime, I still enjoyed today’s CINEMATHEQUE experience and offer some thoughts on tonight’s double.

ASTRO BOY (1963 B&W) the episode called ‘Memory Day’ in which we find many families ordering and purchasing humanoid robots to replace loved and missed human relatives no longer with them. Tezuka certainly seems to be ahead of the pack. It not only reminded me of the later Spielberg movie Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001) based on the Brian Aldiss short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long (1969) about a robot boy in a story where humanity, intelligent machines and aching loneliness clash, but also the film Bicentennial Man (1999) starring Robin Williams and based on the Isaac Asimov novella of the same title (1976) in which robots are no longer merely mechanical servants, but trusted and loved family members.

ASTRO BOY was followed by Osamu Tezuka’s film UNICO (1979): The story about a very cute baby unicorn looking to please with his magic powers. Immediately obvious are the physical and characteristic similarities between Unico the baby unicorn and Kimba the White Lion (first created by Tezuka in 1950); both very cute 4-legged beasts, though Kimba has larger ears and Unico has more hair in a messy, wavy, mop-top fashion, plus off course a unicorn has the obligatory horn. Note: Tezuka himself was one of a very small percentage of Japanese with wavy hair, a rare trait considered messy by Japanese.

Early in the film, Unico suffers a Genesis-style expulsion from the paradisical land when the Gods deem it necessary and suddenly, like an Old Testament punishment, Unico is expected to struggle for happiness, not unlike Adam and Eve who were expelled from Eden and forced into a world of pain and toil.

In Unico, Tezuka seems to present a life that is more or less in the hands of the Gods. Tezuka offers a ‘fishbowl’ existence of examination, where outside forces can scrutinize one’s every move. Perhaps a result of stifling overpopulation, life in Japan may not have felt completely one’s own, but rather a judged existence where escape is difficult, but ultimately necessary. Perhaps Tezuka saw the West as his eventual escape. He gave his main characters larger, rounder eyes. ‘Caught’ in one place, perhaps we are living for others and must be seen to do only good and show a good example, even to the evil or devilish… Unico feels the need to bring pleasure to others even when he is moved around, displaced like a boat without a rudder, literally on the winds of change while somehow trying to make friends or have some fun along the way in order to avoid his fear of loneliness.

Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but I couldn’t help noticing and thinking that Tezuka has loaded this film with subliminal sexual and adult content. I guess it wouldn’t be the first time he has done this as his film ‘CLEOPATRA: QUEEN OF SEX” (1970) and his series MARVELOUS MELMO (1970-72) confront sexual issues with varying degrees of explicitness. Furthermore I understand his later project BUDDHA (1974-84) is a somewhat sexual portrayal of the Buddha.

In UNICO, I imagine that the baby unicorn is actually Tezuka in search of himself. Perhaps Tezuka unwittingly offers himself (and us) this strange allegorical autobiography and insight into his own sexual labyrinth. I wonder if it is deliberate or unknowing. Did he feel the need to analyze or interpret his perhaps complex psycho-sexual aspects with this unraveling? Is he confessing? I think it begins with the concept of a stiff horn on a unicorn as a metaphor for an erect phallus on a creature of free will.

I do not know Tezuka’s sexual orientation, but in Unico we find manifold issues. Unico is a friendly male creature with a loving, effeminate voice. He seems to be a victim much of the time. The Gods desert him, he gets lost, bullied, chased, moved, ignored, hurt, and even gets his horn sliced off.

Removed from the world of his mother, he finds himself far away and out of the scrutiny of his ‘family’ where he soon enters a ‘blue’ mood by befriending a little blue Devil (Beezle). Unico offers love to the little male Devil and shows his affection by trying to gently lick it to happiness with his tongue, however, the Devil seems not so compatible a ‘bedfellow’ for Unico, as Beezle prefers a rougher, sadistic path to fun and friendship. At one point we see Beezle in a frenzy riding and whipping a complaining and sore Unico. It seems Tezuka/Unico was not meant to have a lasting friendship here.

The word UNICO could be broken down into two words UNI (one-single) and CO (company-with) which may cryptically reveal loneliness or a solo ‘dark horse’ nature. (Ed: The 'dark horse' or 'lone wolf' archetype is a staple of Japanese culture, and occurs in various genres, particularly yakuza and samurai stories. The ronin, or masterless samurai, is the epitome of the lone wolf archetype). Did Tezuka prefer himself for company? Perhaps it reveals a yearning for one love and loyalty… monogamy…

We find Unico’s power-source is built-into his own horn. It scares him to have to share it. When the little blue Devil remembers his own big, virile, Devil-father had a horn similar to Unico’s, he desperately wants to take Unico’s phallic part (penis envy?) so he might be like his father, but Unico finds it near impossible to share it. It seems like Unico has a kind of ‘castration anxiety’ (a Freudian concept found in his writings on Oedipus) and fears he could lose his power and the love of ‘mother’ (object of affection). Yet, Unico’s longing for company is so strong that he surrenders his horn to Beezle – BUT only for one day! Beezle soon learns to trust and fall in love with Unico.

Unfortunately for Beezle, Unico seems to have commitment issues as well. Just as the two male creatures get closer, it seems Tezuka’s Unico avoids further intimacy by heeding the sudden fateful unfolding of life and Unico must move on, leaving behind a broken-hearted Beezle.

Is Unico promiscuous?

Unico soon meets a mischievous female cat called Chao. At first she is simply a pussy, but with Unico’s controlled input and the power of his horn, this pussy can be seen as a complete person (Cheri). It seems he wants to love this girl but he tells her that his horn doesn’t work if she doesn’t love him first, and yet his horn did work earlier for the blue Devil even before Beezle loved him. Curious!

Later in the film, when Unico gets his horn sliced off (castration again?) by an evil being, the terrified young girl promises NOT to be a girl anymore in the hope that Unico’s hornless limp body might once again become strong and upright.

Later, Unico makes another male friend in the form of a little brown injured monkey. Unico tries to revive and awaken the limp creature by licking his body till it perks up.

The main evil opponent in the film is a dashing male with dandy clothing and very long flowing hair. Androgynous elements creep in as the lines between power and trust, good and evil are blurred.
I hazard a guess that Tezuka’s real life mother was a very strong presence in his life. Unico’s mother was presented as a majestic and radiant unicorn with an intact horn (ie a female with the power of a phallic appendage). When Unico is separated from his mother, he feels great loneliness. Was she the dominant parent in Tezuko’s life? It seems that there was a less strong male presence in the young Tezuka’s life. His mother would comfort and encourage him and tell him fascinating stories and take him to the theatre (which by the way, was made up completely of women…even male roles were performed by females…perhaps young Tezuka wondered what was underneath their robes and make-up).

In UNICO, Tezuka doesn’t shy away from potentially dangerous and heavy themes. At one point in the film, the young girl is drugged (by eating magic plants) and in another, she is made very drunk with glass after glass of wine. In her intoxicated state she is manipulated and compromised by a controlling force. At another point in the film we see the girl in a bondage scenario, helplessly chained up to a long, tall phallic pole. These unsettling themes can and should act as a cautionary lessons to the unsuspecting.

Disney’s influence on Tazuka is also present in various images. Tezuka’s representation of the under-utilized ‘Night Wind’ in purple and black has the same strong visual impact as the Wicked Queen in Snow White (1937) and the old kind “witch” in UNICO looks similar to the sneaky Wicked Witch with the huge nose in Snow White. Furthermore, the scary anthropomorphic trees and cute forest animals (deer, bunnies) also mimic Disney.

The film finishes on a not-so-happy, ambiguous note. We know Unico is unable to get back home. He can never return home to the overpowering elements (The Gods? His Family?) and so must be a nomad or Wandering Jew kind of being condemned to drift till the end. He is gone with the wind and chooses not to commit to anyone. He leaves behind those who love him, the little devil, the pussy and the brown monkey and goes in search of himself. The answer Unico may be blowing in the wind. Tezuka's mother used to tell him to look to the blue sky... A sequel would be nice.

Pia Santaklaus.

Unico fansites

2008-10-14T08:48:00.006+11:00

A couple of sites devoted to Unico, Tezuka's cute, blue baby unicorn: Here and here

Program Notes for Toon Time Sessions 3 & 4 - Japanese animation

2008-10-14T08:37:00.006+11:00

Thanks to Barrie Pattison for providing these program notes.

Click to enlarge.

Program Notes for Toon Time Session 3 - Films of Tex Avery

2008-10-10T09:01:00.004+11:00

Below are the program notes for the Tex Avery program. Thanks to Barrie Pattison for presenting the program and compiling these notes.

Click to enlarge.

October 2008 New Program Up!

2008-10-07T08:31:00.003+11:00

Click to enlarge

The Little Prince And The Eight Headed Dragon (1963) 1/11

2008-10-07T02:06:00.003+11:00

Production sketches from Little Prince and the 8 Headed Dragon

2008-10-07T01:35:00.012+11:00

Click to enlarge.

The Films of Tex Avery - this week at cinematheque

2008-09-30T12:19:00.008+10:00

Two shows: SAT. 4/10 at 12 noon & MON. 6/10 at 6:30

The maddest of madcap animators, Avery piloted Droopy through his exploits at MGM and popularised lechery in cartoon form - Wolfie’s reaction to Swing Shift Cinderella is a touchstone of the WW2 years. Fred “Tex” Avery’s reputation was fading, when the French took up his cause and moved him out of history and into legend. A program of the great Technicolor MGM cartoons in beautiful 35mm is a must see event.

Includes Happy-Go-Nutty, Jerky Turky, The Screwy Truant, Swing Shift Cinderella, Lonesome Lenny, Northwest Hounded Police, Uncle Tom's Cabana, King Size Canary, What Price Fleadom, Daredevil Droopy, Symphony In Slang, Magical Maestro and more.

Program Notes for Toon Time Session 2 - Films of UPA

2008-09-30T11:48:00.005+10:00

The following program notes were penned by Barrie Pattison to accompany his Toon Time presentation on the films of UPA.

Thanks to Barrie for a very interesting and entertaining session.

Click on the pics to enlarge.

Program Notes for Toon Time Session 1 - History of Animation

2008-09-30T11:22:00.005+10:00

The following program notes were penned by Barrie Pattison to accompany his Toon Time presentation on the history of animation.

Click on the pics to enlarge.

It's 'Toon Time at the Chauvel Cinematheque

2008-09-23T10:34:00.010+10:00

The Chauvel Cinematheque proudly presents ‘TOON TIME! - an exclusive and entirely unique four week season of cartoons and animation from around the world!

From pioneers Emile Cohl or Stuart Blackton drawing stick-men on their blackboards, via the Merriest of Melodies or the most surreal Euro master-visions, to today's big screen, state-of-the-art CG epics from Pixar, cartoon filmmaking is as lively a process as you’ll ever come across – and ‘TOON TIME is the perfect primer for Sydney audiences to better their appreciation of, or reacquaint themselves with, this most magic of big-screen art forms.

The selected programs contain works that have captured the imagination of succeeding generations and challenged the idea of what films can be – and the Chauvel invites you to experience these hilarious and stimulating wonders for yourself!

Above: the title character from Osamu Tezuka's Unico

IT’S ‘TOON TIME 12 noon Sat 27 Sep only

Film historian Barrie Pattison introduces the season with a presentation of archival excerpts and short cartoons, drawn from over a century of production. Termite Terrace meets Zagreb. Felix the Cat and Flip the Frog jostle the great French master Jacques Prévert and Belgian surrealist Raul Servais. The division in this presentation between child-friendly entertainment and high art pieces is still very much in evidence in modern times, as critics applaud PERSEPOLIS, while audiences pour into MEET THE ROBINSONS.

‘TOON TIME: THE FILMS OF UPA 6.30pm Mon 29 Sep only

United Productions of America are now best remembered for their characters Gerald McBoing Boing, Christopher Crumpet and near sighted Mr. Magoo. Born out of the red scares and industrial disputes, UPA artists were like a bomb-burst in the conservative Hollywood 1940s animation industry, and the older studios struggled to catch up. In this program of extraordinarily hard to find copies, follow the development of these incredibly influential UPA artists through title sequences and industrial movies, to major studio features and great one-off cartoons.Above: Background art from UPA's Gerald McBoing Boing

‘TOON TIME: TEX AVERY: 12noon Sat 4 Oct & 6.30pm Mon 6 Oct.

Though a generation of kids grew up on “Swing Shift Cinderella”, “Symphony in Slang” and the adventures of Droopy, Fred "Tex" Avery's reputation was fading, when French admirers took up his cause and moved him out of history and into legend. The maddest of madcap animators, Avery introduced Porky Pig and popularised lechery in cartoon form. This program of Avery’s great MGM 'toons in glorious 35mm Technicolor is not to be missed!

‘TOON TIME: THE LITTLE PRINCE AND THE EIGHT HEADED DRAGON 12noon Sat 11 Oct

Yugo Serikawa’s spectacular feature length is a peak achievement of the imposing Japanese cartoon features that preceded Tezuka, Anime and Miyagawa. This wide-screen adventure follows its diminutive hero’s exploits into one of the great cartoon set-piece climax battles. Little seen since its 1963 release, this rare screening of a new sub-titled copy, with its original Japanese track, is a pointer to a wealth of ignored material. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.

‘TOON TIME: UNICO 6.30pm Mon 13 Oct

With its endearing unicorn hero, UNICO is one of the peak achievements of Ozamu Tezuka, “the Japanese Walt Disney”, creator of 150,000 volumes of Manga comic books and a series of brilliant feature films, along with the two series for which he’s known outside his native country - “Astro Boy” and “Kimba the White Lion.” The original sub-titled Japanese track features the voices of famous performers, including super star Keiko Baisho. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.

'TOON TIME: TARO, THE DRAGON BOY 12 noon Sat 18 Oct

In this adaptation of a famous Japanese folk tale, a stocky little boy living with his grandmother in a remote, mountainous village, is regarded by his neighbors as "a glutton and a sloth." Taro eventually learns from his grandmother that his long-lost mother was transformed into a dragon and still lives, albeit at the bottom of a lake many mountains north of their village. Taro begins a long odyssey to find her, encountering various demons, witches, snow women, and other fantastic creatures along the way. The lovely abstract backgrounds are rendered in the style of sumie, or ink painting, and do an exceptionally fine job evoking the oppressive, mountainous landscapes required by the story. The film makes superb use of the CinemaScope-shaped frame, with striking compositions throughout. Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.

'TOON TIME: AVANT-GARDE ANIMATION 6:30pm Mon 20 Oct

Capping off the season is a large selection of experimental and avant-garde animation spanning the hundred years of cinema and covering a wide variety of styles, techniques and themes. Included are films by Carmen D'Avino, Larry jordan, Frank Mouris and many more. Details to follow.Above: Still from Frank Film

‘TOON TIME AT CHAUVEL CINEMATHEQUE!
Sat 27 Sep – Mon 20 Oct

Exploitation Double Feature - this week at Cinematheque

2008-09-15T23:30:00.015+10:00

Following up from last week's special on the history of classical exploitation movies, this week sees a special exploitation double featuring Dwain Esper's 1934 anti-classic Maniac and a mystery 2nd feature...

Maniac USA/1934/B&W/110mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Dwain Esper. Cast: Bill Woods, Horace Carpenter, Ted Edwards, Phyllis Diller.

This truly bizarre no-budget exploitation film made by a husband and wife team is thinly disguised as a docudrama on madness with more than a passing nod to Edgar Allan Poe. The opening title proclaims fear to be a psychic disease. A mad scientist, Dr Meirschultz, experiments on dead bodies obtained from the morgue by his even more insane assistant, Maxwell, a former vaudeville impersonator, who turns out to be the true maniac. Maxwell's bizarre visions include excerpts from Witchcraft Through the Ages and Siegfried.

Girl Gang Trailer

2008-09-09T09:33:00.002+10:00

Here's a taste of this week's That's Exploitation program at the Chauvel Cinematheque.

That's Exploitation - this week at Cinematheque

2008-09-09T08:50:00.007+10:00

This week at the Chauvel Cinema, Cinematheque presents the first in a special two week program devoted to the exploitation film of the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

Starting this Saturday the 13th of September at 12 noon, and repeating on Monday the 15th of September at 6:30pm, Cinematheque curator Brett Garten presents a multimedia lecture on the social history of this colourful and controversial industry that grew in the shadow of Hollywood during the Hays code era.

Using rare film excerpts, trailers, and dozens of slides, Brett will explore the fascinating social and cultural factors that saw the exploitation film emerge, profile the shady entrepreneurs that pioneered the industry, as well as look in detail at some of the major films. Far from being just bad movies, films like Reefer Madness, Mom & Dad and Maniac, reveal a great deal about the anxieties of American life in the 20th century and the issues they raise are still debated today.

Films about Parenting - this week at cinematheque

2008-09-02T08:33:00.006+10:00

SAT. 6/9/8 & MON. 8/9/8 - FILMS ABOUT PARENTING

With a new baby boom upon us, this timely program presents a selection of quality educational films about raising children.

Terrible Twos and the Trusting Threes Canada/1950/Colour/ 22mins/16mm/NFVLS
A study of child behaviour at two and three years showing how parents can deal constructively with problems presented by this age group.

The Time Has Come: An Approach to Non-Sexist Parenting USA/1977/Colour/22mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Jamil Simon.
Demonstrates the ease and accessibility of a non-sexist approach to child rearing. Explores the non-sexist elements of the home environment as well as influences from outside such as television and school. Suggests ways for parents to expand options for their children.

Misbehaviour: What You Could Have Done but Didn't USA/ 1977/Colour/29mins/ 16mm/NFVLS Dir: Skip Farmer.
Identifies the four goals of the disruptive and discouraged child; attention seeking; power; revenge; and inadequacy. Adults who have identified these goals can respond in constructive ways that will encourage behaviour improvement in the child.

New Relations: A Film about Fathers and Sons USA/1980/Colour/ 34mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Ben Achtenberg.
As his son's first birthday approaches, the filmmaker explores the costs - both economic and emotional - as well as the rewards of having decided to become a father in his mid-thirties, and of choosing to share childcare responsibilities equally with his wife, who also has a career.

"Handled with extraordinary subtlety, and with full respect for the perspectives of both sexes." Robert S. Weiss, PhD

Introduction to Cabin in the Sky by Jimmy Vargas

2008-09-02T00:03:00.021+10:00

We's a got dem ol' miscegenation blues!

CABIN IN THE SKY
DIRECTOR...VINCENTE MINELLI
MGM ...1943.

THE PLOT

CABIN IN THE SKY is a sepia tinged Faustian tale. Think Goethe swaggerin' down the mean streets and the crap houses 'n' saloons of Harlem, themed with a soundtrack of swarthy swanky Ellingtonian blues.

CABIN's back plot tells of a small time cad / card-shark 'Little Joe' played by EDDIE 'ROCHESTER' ANDERSON ( of Jack Benny fame), who is gunned down over unpaid gambling debts. He is given six months reprieve by the General aka God (KENNETH SPENCER) to redeem his soul and become worthy of entering the big casino upstairs, or his soul will be condemned to the hothouse and the daemon clutches of Lucius / Lucifer (REX INGRAM).

On the sidelines, playing a barterer for both his heart and his billfold is the copper toned temptress Georgia Brown, as inter- preted by sassy canary LENA HORNE, while Little Joe's wife Petunia, a role filled by haunchy big boned blues mama, ETHEL WATERS, battles for his righteous soul. Other cast members featured are LOUIS ARMSTRONG who toots his trumpet for the Lucifer brigade.

Based on the Broadway musical CABIN IN THE SKY, which itself was inspired by the LYN ROOT play of the same title, performed by an all star black cast, with famed jazz swing maestro DUKE ELLINGTON ticklin the ivories in the original stage production, it was transplanted to the soundstages of MGM, it's ebony soul intact, ELLINGTON's combo recruited along for the ride in the studio orchestra pit, and the famed MGM musical producer ARTHUR FREED breaking in neophyte director VINCENTE MINELLI, for his first virgin screen directors gig.

MGM

METRO GOLDWYN MAYER were of course one of the major five studios in Hollywood in the forties, and indisputably so regarded as the mecca of gaudy glamorous ruritarian musicals. They were seen however as taking a major risk at the time by putting mucho coin behind the production of CABIN IN THE SKY. Racial tensions in the film town had already escalated with the calamitous Zoot Suit Riots and Sleepy Lagoon case in that same year, between the Mexican community and the white marines who saw the pachucos attire as both a fascist and unpatriotic extravagance as well as an affront against the gospel of economical wartime thrift as preached by President Roosevelt.

This time it weren't the black brothers however who were in the hot tub with belligerent white swabs, and they gladly stepped aside so some other caste could take the battering blows of rascist nailed baseball bats.The race question at least between Negroes and Whites in L.A. had already worked out its own demarcation / mason dixon line in both geographical, social and cinematic boundaries by the early forties.

LOUIS B. MAYER, the MGM roaring lion's El Presidente was a closet political progressive, and intuitively sensed a new zeitgeist, black coloured. Noting the influx of even more Negroes into the California state, and predominantly Los Angeles itself, to either sign up for war service in the armed forces, or garner employment in the many factories and shipyards that had been turned over for 24 hour swing-shift war production, MAYER assumed correctly that both the slow acceptance of blacks across America (southern states notwithstanding) as a visible work-force alongside whites in a patriotic war effort, with the blacks' earning of fantastic wages for the first time, added with their newly acquired lower bourgeois aspirations as a result of the feel of that coin in their pocket, that the negro market was primed to exploit.

Viewing L.A in some way a microcosm of a new race relations that would trickle over the more sophisticated MGM markets across the U.S., Louis B. suspected that he could catch that dollar from both white and black audiences, and also control over the new wave of highly talented Negroes who could pump fresh juice into the stale hokeyed musical output of MGM, as well as fill the emptied talent stable that had been vacated by white musical stars.

Yet this was not the first time that MGM had attempted to stage a black musical, nor the first to employ or groom African Americans for roles in their screen outputs. In 1929, they had pitched mucho coin behind King Vidor's 'HALLELUJAH'. They recouped costs but it didn't result in the expected box office boffo, (as in the vernacular of Variety), and the formula of all singin all jivin negroids was junked for the next decade or so. Another groundbreakin' movie in the nascent thirties which had attempted to give voice to the Negro spirit and experience, produced by a major studio with an all black cast was the flick' HEART OF DIXIE, but again both prints and box office returns are obscure.

HOLLYWOOD STEREOTYPING OF BLACK IDENTITY

Hollywood's depiction of the African American character and experience in the late twenties and early thirties however was generally derisive, vulgar and of the most appalling examples of stereotyping to say the least. White vaudevillians as interpreters of Negro song, humour and dance were preferred over the real thing. Citing for example WARNER BROTHERS' "JAZZ SINGER" the first talkie musical in 1927 which reduced the true heart of black minstrelsy to a charcoaled corked paleface AL JOLSON with an oedipal yiddish mammy complex.

In the Academy Award pantheon of racist cinematic schlovel, holding down the top tier would have to be the diuretic discharge of AMOS & ANDY, two white comedians, who bounced from the bakelite radio to marquee success in the dirty thirties. Mugging it as two crazee kiddult picaninnies, with the token axle grease smeared across their mooschs, they lampooned black customs, high-jacked the soul of the African American experience, milking the racial bias with a 'dis and demmed' disregard to an approving and condescending 'spook' audience.

One and all dartboard pin-up favourites of the NACCP.

Yet even black actors were recruited as burlesque acts of the Negro id. Presented as either slow, dim-witted, lazy, uppity or craftily-evil their stage names were monikers of derision, reducing their personalities to little more than rascally junk yard dogs. One readily recalls African American comedians such as Stepin' Fetchit and his screen nemesis Sleep 'n' Eat, who well could be regarded as two black heterosexual drag acts of negro characterizations, serving up and heating racial stereotype in a form of verbal self flagellation to the 'white massuhs' of movie land.

It appeared that white America could celebrate the syncopated sounds of the Negro fused jazz of Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday if it came out of bakelite radio, but would not suffer their glazed pupils having to look at a black face croonin' and moonin' from a movie screen. The Black actors themselves in the earlier epoch of Hollywood were were reduced to merely walk on as merely Aunt Jeminas or Uncle Toms spooning out hacksaw wisdom while spitting out melon seeds. One readily recalls tap dancer extraordinaire Bill Bojangles Robertson, reduced to the role of an Uncle Billie, an all smiling all dancing southern slave, obsequiously soft-shoeing turns with white moppet Shirley Temple in the LITTLEST REBEL. Or Hattie Mc'Daniel in GONE WITH THE WIND, playing Miss Scarlet O'Hara's maid in bugle-eyed sweaty disapproval. The Negro character was corralled in by a mason-dixon line of stereotypical casting, and though there were successful black actors, they were ostensibly playing to a plotted prejudice and caricature by white writers. Reinforcing the African American personality to a crass stereotyping of servile, stupid, chambermaids, shoe shinning jitterbuggin', green tea totin', crapshootin', gospel gabblin' jigaboos.

Seventy eight years after the end of the Civil War, and the abolition of slavery set by President Lincoln, Negro Emancipation had not yet reached Hollywood ! They were still bound in a celluloidal servitude, branded by black nitrate.
Three actors that did cross over, regardless of their on screen peonage as the docile servile class, are showcased in tonite's flick. EDDIE ROCHESTER ANDERSON who plays Little Joe in CABIN, was famous for playing a valet ! (what else ?) to the parsimonious and droll funny man Jack Benny. First appearing on syndicated radio and then onto the movies, he earned some serious fame and coin in the process. He also played UNCLE PETER in the aforementioned cinematic paean to Negro slavery and servitude, GONE WITH THE WIND, not yet four years before in '39.

Little Joe's diabolical soul seeker...LUCIUS or LUCIFER, was played by black theatrical legend and Broadway thespian REX INGRAM. Ironically INGRAM had appeared not yet five years earlier in another moderately successful black cast flick, finance by WARNER BROS studios called GREEN PASTURES, in 1936, where he played it white hat as God.

ETHEL WATERS, the ham-boned blues belter who stars in tonight's reeler as Petunia, Little Joe's wife had already conquered Hollywood single handedly. Already famous on her own terms with such Bluebird Victor hits as the lamentative yiddish blues of STORMY WEATHER, she dealt with the studios on her own terms. Appearing in the ZANUCK produced WARNER BROS flick "ON WITH THE SHOW" in '34, where she sang AM I BLUE. The sepia teared tune became a big crossover hit to white and coloured jukeboxes alike. Her 4 week stint at WB netted her 5,000 clams. An astronomical fee for a black actress, for anyone considering that twenty five percent of Americans were doling it at salvation soup kitchens, and WPA lines during this time of the Great Depression. AM I BLUE became ETHEL WATERS standard, most associated with her.

By the early thirties however there was a slow incorporation of black presence in the Movies. CENTRAL CASTING was a beneficent employer, and with a black brother in their front office, one CHARLES BUTLER who saw to it that 11,000 blacks were employed as extras, with the white studios feeding 90,000 buckeroonies into eager Negro hands in that singular year of the Great Crash, 1929.

The depression may have affected the black advance, for a short interim, but with the emergence of the first black agent in Hollywood, BEN CARTER, who shingled up with the white BEN LEVY agency in Hollywood Boulevard, he was able to, with that added 'spook' muscle, influence studio casting to consider more blacks in supporting roles, at the expense of other ethnic types. It was his singular voracious promotion and persistence that the American public grew used to seeing an African American face on screen.

Major studio flicks such as the aforementioned "GREEN PASTURES","SHOWBOAT", the Marx Brother's "DAY AT THE RACES","GONE WITH THE WIND" "IMITATION OF LIFE", and tonight's "CABIN IN THE SKY" featured a dynamic black presence, directly as a result of BEN CARTER'S single minded hucksterism. His influence in the casting these movies brought to the fore to the white eyeball, some of the new wave of educated and trained black actors we are to see tonight, like REX INGRAM, EDDIE 'ROCHESTER' ANDERSON and LOUISE BEAVERS. For that BEN CARTER was the patron saint of the black theatre going public. BEN CARTER was also behind the casting of the very extraordinary and controversial flick IMITATION OF LIFE, whose story line is of a coloured woman's daughter who passes for white, echoing the exact problem that the svelte honey toned star of tonight's feature LENA HORNE would face in her battle with Hollywood in the forties and fifties.

Movies imitate or pre-destinates an actor's life ? Indeed!

BLACK SEPARATIST HOLLYWOOD

There were other black auteurs in the Hollywood movie industry, but they simply conducted a separatist, or rather a parallel black celluloid universe to the white Jewish one that reigned. One studio that was a vigilante promoter of black experience was the MILLION DOLLAR PRODUCTION company. Created and headed up by a RALPH COOPER, a prodigious promoter of black talent in America who originally set up the infamous Wednesday Night black talent shows at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, where amongst many stars, he launched Billie Holiday, COOPER'S company's movie fare featured steamy sirens and pugnacious gangsters in raw plots, low production values, involving usually 30 set ups or more scenes a day, compared to the A budget MGM who would max out at ten. Usual budget costs at MDP never exceeded more than $ 15,000 a pix. COOPER signed the soubrette LENA HORNE (the star of tonight's CABIN) to a one movie contract deal, after seeing her wow audiences in the chorus line at the famed Harlem boite the COTTON CLUB in '36, paying for her ticket to come out west.

The movie DUKE IS TOPS, in which she starred, was neither a successful nor pleasant experience for Horne who was married with child at time. Still the reeler would launch her to a black community, and due to the subsequent success of MISS HORNE in CABIN IN THE SKY, the DUKE IS TOPS was re-launched to the blacks of Central avenue as "BRONZE VENUS", with LENA HORNE'S name above the title ! MDP went into nitrate oblivion shortly thereafter, but not without signing up another caramel copper toned canary, DOROTHY DANDRIDGE who too would follow LENA into the hallowed soundstages of MGM but to more tragic results.

THE PRODUCTION

MAYER, an erstwhile champion of civil rights himself, had arranged before CABIN IN THE SKY went into production, to meet with the Negro political league the NACCP, and it's president WALTER WHITE for script approval. CABIN IN THE SKY may be seen as the first politically correct black movie.

MGM also brought into employ on their lot, a black hairdresser by the name of HAZEL WASHINGTON for the studio's copper-toned signees, namely LENA HORNE and her successor DOROTHY DANDRIDGE.

MAYER also hired MAX FACTOR directly to create a new cosmetic colouring which would become known as "NEW EGYPTIAN" especially for LENA HORNE for special lighting considerations. The same make-up base incidentally would be attempted to be used on ELIZABETH TAYLOR no less in the flick CLEOPATRA.

In the musical department, LENA HORNE also had her old musical chaperone/unrequited ammorata and black tune-smith PHIL MOORE, who had helped created her vocal stylization when they worked together in '42 at hip L.A. boite, the Trocadero.

Yet, unfortunately even though the cast and crew had a progressive champion in the garrulous girth of its President LOUIS B., the negro battalion still had to deal with an excruciating inculcated white racism. On set, the other stars were met with derisive terminology by stage hands who insisted that they be filmed under "Nigger Lite" a device used by film technicians for shading/un-shading in the lighting process. The cast too were banned from the MGM commissary on the first day of shooting, being forbidden to eat with the white employees, by the white starched cafe managers. MAYER himself had the black cast eat with him in his private dining room on the lot every day of the production.

ON SET

The movie was produced by the celebrated ARTHUR FREED unit at MGM, directed by VINCENTE MINELLI, a former window dresser, and his artisan skill of framing scenes comes to light here. It was MINELLI'S first major directorial gig. A virgin double way. He was singin' the miscegenation blues himself, for he was also holding the old torcheroo for the lithesome LENA HORNE. The action on the sound-stage mirrored the tension off. Reel life and real life, fueled the showdown between the old black matron of Hollywood, the husky blues momma Ethel, versus the chilled sensuality of the blushing soubrette Lena, who represented the new Negress in Hollywood, svelte, sophisticated, European chichi'd.

ETHEL WATERS found herself battling MINELLI and his dusky ammorata over both the soul of her on screen beloved, and her beloved career. MINELLI playing biased referee and knowing his flame would get snowballed by the rambunctious blues mama WATERS advised HORNE to ..."Play it small honey chile', just be vulnerable and coquettish."

HORNE did some sweet conspiring of her own, even if it meant subtle self mutilation. Citing the case of the show stopping number "Honey in the Honeycomb", the tune was initially planned to be sung by ETHEL WATERS as a ballad, while her nemesis, MISS LENA would shimmy seductively during the number. However Miss Bronze Venus broke her ankle while spoofing some rare hoofin' and the roles were reversed. LENA got to glaze the saccharine jazz tune with her silky warble, and snare the spotlight, while WATERS was seconded to do her version after LENA had stolen both her chorus and her audience with her sassier version.

But HORNES' AND WATERS' heat wasn't over simply song sheets, but also rumoured the bed sheets. The big boned ETHEL, may well have swung it blue on the bandstand but hot rumour was that she could swang it lavender in the bunkhouse whenever she desired, and studio wags suspected her aggressive cater-waulings may well have been a lesbo come-on to her coquettish nemesis.

Miss Honeybee Horne finally scammed a scene all to herself, crooning a love lullaby while in the obligatory bath-scene. Unfortunately the HAYS OFFICE put a big red X over that episode. The mere thought of a black woman having a bath with white soap suds no less was anathema to the founding fathers of White America's moral rectitude! Incidentally MISS HORNE'S bella corpsa scene was lycanthropised into another movie short titled "Pete Smith's Studio Visit of 1946" without too much hub -a bub-a-bubble from the censors!!!

Standout features in CABIN include vaudeville hoofer BILL BAILEY doing the moonwalk, 42 years before Michael Jackson would claim it as his own, the Busby Berkeley choreographed olio scene "SHINE", and ETHEL WATERS classic rendition of her Academy Award nominated "HAPPINESS IS A THING CALLED JOE."

MGM junkies too might notice the tornado scene in CABIN looks mighty familiar. They're right, the footage was lifted out of the MGM vaults from the studio's 1937 classic Wizard of Oz. There was a war on and even the roaring lion LOUIS B was doin' it cheap with big time rationing on both costumes and celluloid.

AFTERMATH

The most ironic outcome to the political correctness of MGM to present the black experience in cinematic terms, without a condescending wink, was movie's final print itself was initially re-processed and released to general audiences as a sepia tint. To quote MINELLI in a a somewhat rueful admission from his biography "I Remember it Well", he stated, "The film was transformed. It seemed more magical. Sepia created a soft, velvety patina more flattering to the actors' skin tones, and our picture was released that way."

CABIN IN SKY made $578,000 dollars profit. MGM did not follow up with other 'all black' productions.
Ironically it was 20th CENTURY FOX who best exploited MINELLI'S BRONZE VENUS, when she was loaned out by MGM to ZANUCK'S sound stages to star in the lush cinematic blues classic STORMY WEATHER later that year of 1943.

The movie catapulted HORNE into mainstream consciousness, and she became forever linked with the HAROLD ARLEN classic "STORMY WEATHER BLUES". Her rival ETHEL WATERS whose name was once synonomous with this very blues paean in the thirties, lost out to her nemesis in the worst hurt of all, having to capitulate both her identity with that song, and her title as the Queen of the Blues to MISS HORNE with her honey jass lilt claimed it as her signature torch in jukeboxes and marquees all over America, as she still continues to do in this 21st century.

REX INGRAM, the Broadway thespian who played the LUCIFER / LUCIUS role, was arrested for violating the MANN ACT in 1949. Pleading guilty to the charge of transporting a white teenage girl across state lines for immoral purposes, he was sentenced to eighteen months jail. He served just ten months of his sentence, but the incident had a serious impact on his career forever after.

VINCENTE MINELLI'S "CABIN" became his calling card in the hallowed halls of MGM and he and his producer ARTHUR FREED, went on to create luminary celluloid pieces such as KISMET, MEET ME IN ST LOUIS, AMERICAN IN PARIS.

LENA HORNE is still alive, vainly trying to get her Bio-pic off the ground. So far it has indeed been Stormy Weather. With OPRAH WINFREY in the producer's seat since 2003, there have been a revolving door of BRONZE VENUS wanna bes, but MISS HORNE has nixed them all.
Originally mooted for the role of the forties diva was R'N' B pop shriller JANET JACKSON, who lost the part due to her infamous grope/mammary flash indiscretion at the American NFL Final with spook idol JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE. WHITNEY HUSTON too, in a vain attempt of a comeback was also eager to ink her monicker above the title, but LENA HORNE did not approve of a whacked out free basin cocaine junkie playin' da' Bronze Venus. It has now been rumored that ALICIA KEYS has met the Forties Jazz Diva tacit approval, and will play her in a 2010 production.

(C) JIMMY VARGAS 1947 / 2008

Cabin in the Sky - this week at Cinematheque

2008-08-25T23:18:00.006+10:00

This week at the Chauvel Cinematheque, see Vincente Minnelli's Cabin in the Sky, screening Saturday the 30th of August at 12noon and Monday the 1st of September at 6:30pm.

Cabin in the Sky USA/1943/B&W/88mins/16mm
Dir: Vincente Minnelli.
Cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong, Rex Ingram, Kenneth Spencer, Duke Ellington and his orchestra.

After being seriously injured in a barroom brawl, an idle gambling husband is reformed by a dream of his own death, with God and Satan battling for his soul. Minnelli's directorial debut, based on a Broadway musical, featured an all African-American cast. Although it falls prey to the stereotyping typical of the representation of black characters in popular culture at the time, Minnelli's sensitivity towards the material and the combined talent of the cast redeems the film. Despite its limited potential for distribution (few Southern theatres of 1943 would touch it), MGM still applied its A-plus production values to the film turning out sumptuous dreamlike sets and production numbers.

Screens with:

Oreos with Attitude USA/1990/Colour/27mins/16mm
Dir: Larry Carty.
Cast: Jackie Roberts, Keith Smith, Larry Maxwell.
This satire of racial stereotyping, produced by uber-indie producer Christine Vachon and director Todd Haynes, follows Janet and Richard, a black yuppie couple living in New York. After calculating that the risk of producing a dark-skinned baby is too great they decide to adopt a white child 'to promote racial harmony'. But it seems that little Jimmy has other ideas.

Gashlight - Pia Santaklaus on Gaslight

2008-08-21T06:35:00.018+10:00

Last week I watched GASLIGHT (1944) and though I arrived at the Chauvel a few minutes late, I don’t think I missed much of the start and had a very engrossing movie experience. I should like to offer a few comments.

GASLIGHT, despite its ‘happy’ ending, provided a melange of classic gothic story elements including Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Bronte, Robert Louis Stevenson and also shades of the Jack The Ripper legend.

In GASLIGHT, a beautiful newlywed woman Paula (played by Ingrid Bergman) fears she is going mad as strange occurances happen in her manor-home. She is unawares that her own husband is deliberately causing the strange happenings in order to drive her mad.

Charles Boyer plays her two-faced pianist husband Gregory Anton. He is ultimately caught out by a friendly, noble investigator with Scotland Yard connections (played by Joseph Cotton). Angela Lansbury plays Nancy the servant of the manor.

GASLIGHT was perhaps inspired by some of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe used themes of physical and emotional decomposition and premature burial… In GASLIGHT, Paula becomes paler and sicker and feels trapped within her house.

POE often said that one of the most tragic themes was that of a dying beautiful young female; a device he used over and over again as might be seen in such works as The Raven, Annabel Lee, Ligeia, Berenice, Morella and The Fall Of The House Of Usher.

Poe also drew parallels between the souls of buildings and their occupants. One’s house reflected one’s disposition... A sick house could only carry a sick body, a sick soul.

In GASLIGHT, the house itself, already a place of terror (the site of an earlier murder) becomes very much Paula’s crypt. She was in a sense buried alive as the husband would not let her leave the building. Her many-roomed ‘coffin’ makes for a very grim ‘life’.

The male protagonist is a dark romantic figure. To the outside world, husband Gregory Anton portrays the dashing gentleman but we also see another darker side to him. He displays a Jekyll and Hyde split personality.

The STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE (1886) was written by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story set in London is about a lawyer investigating strange happenings between his friend Dr Henry Jekyll and horrible Edward Hyde. GASLIGHT has a very similar theme in that an investigator (Joseph Cotten) exposes someone with a psychopathological bent.

The way in which Gregory Anton slips out of the house each night to do his dark deeds is vampiric in a sense, but moreso, another aspect of GASLIGHT seems to reflect the JACK THE RIPPER story.
The unidentified London serial killer JACK THE RIPPER (around 1888) victimised women. With his non-English accent, Gregory Anton may represent one of the many immigrants pouring into England during the mid 1800s. This influx of humanity led to overcrowding, massive poverty and crime from a very low class. The infamous Jack The Ripper may have been a product of the social upheaval. The case was followed and unsuccessfully investigated by Scotland Yard. (Scotland Yard also featuring in GASLIGHT, was founded in 1829 and was the headquarters of the service which policed much of London )

A further influence on GASLIGHT may have been JANE EYRE. JANE EYRE (1847) by Charlotte Bronte is one of the most influential English novels of all time.

JANE EYRE was orphaned as a baby. In GASLIGHT, Paula was ‘orphaned’ after her aunt/guardian/opera singer (Alice Alquist) was strangled to death in their London home at No. 9 Thornton Square.

Paula’s husband Gregory has a romantic Byronic aura like Edward Rochester in JANE EYRE, but he also gradually reveals a cold, cruel, self-serving disposition like Mr Brocklehurst, a neglectful, dishonest man in JANE EYRE.

Like Rochester (in JANE EYRE), Gregory seems quite taken with Paula and repeatedly keeps her in his controlling presence.

JANE EYRE includes shallow socialites also featuring in GASLIGHT.

In JANE EYRE, Rochester blames a servant for various strange occurences. It perplexes and amazes Jane, but for love’s sake she ignores the issue. A very similar situation arises in GASLIGHT.

In JANE EYRE one character (Adèle) is the illegitimate daughter of a French opera singer. In GASLIGHT, Paula’s guardian was an opera singer.

JANE EYRE features a strange old gypsy woman who insists on telling everyone's fortunes, roughly echoed in GASLIGHT in the character of the eccentric old nosey neighbour who insists on finding the truth.

The idea of being locked up in a house features heavily in JANE EYRE. The young Jane was locked up in an unused red chamber room, in which she panics thinking she saw a ghost and she remained in there till she got ill and passed out.

In JANE EYRE Jane hears eerie laughter coming from inside the manor house. In GASLIGHT, Paula hears strange noises coming from the house as well.

In JANE EYRE, Rochester cannot marry Jane because it is revealed that he is already married to another woman. Rochester bitterly explains that his wife is a violent madwoman whom he keeps imprisoned in the attic, where a servant (Grace Poole) looks after her. In GASLIGHT Paula gradually becomes like a madwoman imprisoned upstairs and relying on servants.

In JANE EYRE, the manorhouse ‘Thornfield’ ultimately lies blackened and in ruins. Jane learns that Rochester's mad wife set fire to the house and committed suicide by jumping from the roof. Though this is not the grim end in GASLIGHT, the movie is powerful as one might imagine something like this happening if Paula isn’t rescued in time by her male friend (played by Joseph Cotten).

GASLIGHT is a cleverly woven tale of innocence versus experience, naivety versus ruthlessness. The power of suggestion in this movie leaves a hypnotic effect.

Great choice Brett. Thanks

Pia Santaklaus

I have a question: Was Jack the Ripper ‘Jumping Jack Flash’? Like the song says “It’s a GAS GAS GAS”

The Spiral Staircase - this week at cinematheque

2008-08-19T07:45:00.004+10:00

SAT. 23/8/8 & MON. 25/8/8 HOLLYWOOD GOTHIC:

THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE

USA/1945/B&W/84mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Robert Siodmak. Cast: Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, Ethel Barrymore, Ken Smith, Rhonda Fleming.

A gothic melodrama set in a New England town in 1906 where a psychopathic killer is murdering young women he sees as "defectives". His next victim is to be Helen, a mute. According to Siodmak, the intention was to create "a sort of surrealist film which put the audience into a trance." Dorothy McGuire's playing as Helen was conceived as "a sort of ballet recovering some of the elements of silent cinema".

Screens with Suicide Squeeze USA/1986/B&W and Color/27mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Brady Lewis. A wry journey through the world of filmmaking, narrative and American culture. A private eye relates his tale over optically printed and staged scenes in the noir style, sequences of manipulated imagery including animation and high speed cinematography, a saxophone player and a class watching a film.

The Spiral Staircase Trailer

2008-08-19T07:44:00.003+10:00

Screens this week at Cinematheque

Rich Machine Live at Chauvel Cinematheque

2008-08-19T00:47:00.002+10:00

Gaslight Trailer

2008-08-18T09:16:00.002+10:00

Catch Gaslight this week at the the Chauvel Cinematheque.

Introduction to Susan Slept Here by Jimmy Vargas

2008-08-15T07:18:00.004+10:00

Tonight Cinematheque presents two laugh-a-rama classics from nineteen fifties Hollywood director FRANK TASHLIN. An auteur who conquered the double realms of cinema: the cartoon and the celluloid feature.

His metier was the creation of animated icons as near human archetypes and weapons of social satire, while reducing his flesh and bone actors to whorling tornados of thirty five mille gel cut-outs. TASHLIN'S style technique can be best described as Cinematicus Lycanthropis, as so perfectly exemplified in tonight's feature.

SUSAN SLEPT HERE..(1954)

A RKO RADIO PICTURES RELEASE.

Directed By FRANK TASHLIN.

Starring DICK POWELL & DEBBIE REYNOLDS.

THE PLOT

On Christmas Eve, Oscar-winning screenwriter MARK CHRISTOPHER (Dick Powell), lauded author of high-brow dramas, is frustratedly working on a script about juvenile delinquency. His pal, a LAPD flatfoot SAM HANLON (Herb Vigran) deposits teenage waif / juvenile delinquent, SUSAN LANDIS (Debbie Reynolds) on Mark's doorstep.

MARK on learning that the only option left to SUSAN is spending Christmas week in jail, on account of an pending assault charge after she decked a sailor, and also the fact of her being penniless means she will inevitably be charged with vagrancy, he makes like the swingin' samaritan and lets the runaway crash in his bachelor pad.

As a result of his viagratic verbal assignation with the milk-shake mademoiselle, MARK finds new purpose and zest-a-rama to his jaded Hollywood existence, but various denouements and dilemnas erupt when his fiancee, the marriage desperate Pasadena socialite ISABELLE ALEXANDER (Anne Francis), finds out about the tomboy runaway staying in his apartment.

SUSAN SLEPT HERE was directed by a FRANK TASHLIN, whose cinematic apprenticeship was originally served as a gagster for CHARLIE CHAPLIN, LAUREL AND HARDY among others at the HAL ROACH studios in the twenties and thirties, but he was more renowned to the American theatre going public as an innovative cartoon director of PORKY PIG Loony Toon loops for Warner Bros / Vitaphone, working under the Leon Schlesinger banner. In SUSAN SLEPT HERE he simply supplants the animated for human visceral, but still leaves the voice-track and plot distractions intact from a Merrie melodies reeler. Known for breaking down the theatrical fourth wall in his Warner's cartoons, with characters like Porky Pig giving witty asides to the camera audience, TASHLIN utilises the same device in SUSAN SLEPT HERE, with an Oscar statue opening the proceedings as narrator.

From a jaundiced post modern eye SUSAN SLEPT HERE could be dismissed as a dizzy drawing room soap opera. A standard 'meet cute' build-up so reminiscent of the standardized 30's and 40's screw-ball comedies.

It is mostly definitely not.

SSH is a social morality tale of fifties America, as whose subject matter that Francois Truffaut of the 'Cahiers du Cinema' would gleefully describe as the triumph of “Vulgar Moderne Americaine”. And it's this brazen bawdy epistle that TASHLIN would continue to pitch and pummel onto the American public, as director of "THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT", "ARTISTS & MODELS" “WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER and eight of JERRY LEWIS' subsequent solo pictures from the mid fifties into the sixties.

SUSAN SLEPT HERE burlesques romantic ideal, marriage as career move, the bartering of American female virtue for the sanctic attainment of a Westinghouse deep freeze Jello security, as well as taking the shovel to Hollywood's self obsession, psychiatry and fame.

The only thing that TASHLIN left out in the movie was a couple of reels of DICK POWELL crooning "You make me feel so Jung" to the bug eyed DEBBIE. Said footage is rumored to have actually existed.

SUSAN SLEPT HERE was a seminal cinematic foray itself leading the charge on social satire and the dismantling of sex taboos in the fifties. Other movies in its wake that glided through on its breezy wings, was SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955), THE MOON is BLUE (1957), and that desolate paean to the bartering and whoring of innocence LOLITA. (1962).

From the start of SUSAN SLEPT HERE it is not only the battle of virtue that the two are combating. With POWELL playing the roue Hollywood screenwriter, while the apparent surface style REYNOLDS alternatively pixies it up with a perky punky virgin / brazen career bride from okie sticks-ville, their mutual seduction / stand-off can be read to be more a representation of the continual class and moral warfare between Middle America's God, Little League and white bread values, as identified by REYNOLDS and their distrust of the Los Angeles' fast and loose 'my wife is your wife 'Sunday swap-a-rama' sensibility so typified by POWELL's caste.

REYNOLDS personas are many however. She may well be so regarded as a schizoids love child. In SSH she also can be viewed as the poster girl for the new fifties. A razor lipped minx, barbarically storming Hollywood at the fall of the old studio system of DICK POWELL, who with her bland blonde ambition was out to get fame and a limitless charge card, either in front of the camera, or as mogul's wife, peddling her virtue as the ticket, usually always claiming victory, and inevitably cold-decking and cuckolding her benefactor before he could claim his rewards.
Think "12 year old card shark with the googoo voice" as her rival in love, socialite ANNE FRANCIS most aptly pins her. REYNOLDS great skill, however in not over tipping her hand in this direction, keeping empathy with both her audience and her besotted older suitor.

With that set up intact, castration gags inevitably run a plenty. Most memorable is when REYNOLDS uses POWELL'S 'Oscar' as a nutcracker for some peanuts she's attempting to shell.
A joust to his phallic vulnerability, a precursor of female castration via marriage, not overlooking the 'nouvelle vague ' slattitude to Hollywood totems and traditions. Their bedroom negotiation card game too, is a sly saucy vignette in which would be best best described as, a reverse seduction.

TASHLIN also raids other cultural elitisims, going for the jugular of Jung and psycho analysis. Best exploited in Susans Dream Sequence. Using Freudian / Daliesque psycho furniture of vaginal tear mirrors, gilded bird cages as subliminal chastity belts, they serve as emblems of American 50's pentecostal repressed sexuality and addiction to it's own image. The Dream Sequence has TASHLIN de-constructing MGM fantasia, and transports, super-glueing it with ACME adhesive onto a Loony Toon sound-stage.

Visually, the vignette sparkles, glazing with a glorious gaudiness, and over saturated sacharina, that could well bring the viewer an unexpected diabetic attack. In this pivotal scene ,TASHLIN pillages Hollywood memory, cribbing scenes from American in Paris / Singin' in the Rain / The Bandwagon and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, recasting Gene Kelly as a benign sailor suited Sylvester the Cat ( in the guise of POWELL) and Cyd Charisse is given a schizophrene benzedrined make-over as a Tweetie Pyed DEBBIE REYNOLDS in a gilded cage with her nemesis ANNE FRANCIS, vamp pa-powin' it as a Marvel Comic inspired Spider Lady / Circe.

All this carried out on the wah-wah-wah-wah mistral of bawdy grind-house blues.

A little known insider story going around the hipper bars of Hollywood in the early fifties was that ALEX GOTTLIEB the writer of SUSAN SLEPT HERE had based his story on mogul HOWARD HUGHES and his peccadilloes with underage runaways (a polite term in the 40s and 50s for jail bait). Hughes' pimps Johnny Meyer and private cops would literally pick up suitable quails and bug eyed starlets from the Greyhound station on Los Angeles and Sixth, or the swanky cocktail bars of Hollywood Boulevard in the forties and fifties, to be canary caged, in various love shacks around Hollywood, until bidden to service his royal HH, in one night of gratuitous sexual homage. DICK POWELL of course played the HH role, his employment status in the movie declassed from producer to mere scriptwriter.

The DEBBIE REYNOLDS character was based on ingenue starlet TERRI MOORE and the plot twist centred around HUGHES and MOORES rumoured marriage in 1949 off the coast of Mexico. MISS MOORE was only nineteen years of age. HUGHES was forty four at the time. MISS MOORE received the rumored sum of 30 million dollars as a payoff hush-hush money from the Hughes estate in 1984.

HOWARD HUGHES' own studio RKO was the conglomerate that financed and released SUSAN SLEPT HERE in 1954. HUGHES himself never suspected that his coin was financing the slander and the cinematic mutiny happening on RKO sound stage 2 in late 1953. ALEX GOTTLIEB, the scriptwriter won the coveted WGAW the Writers Guild of America award, for best written American Comedy of 1954.

(C) JIMMY VARGAS 1947 / 2008

Lady of BurlIves, Label of Burlesque by Pia Santaklaus

2008-08-06T04:41:00.004+10:00

I really enjoyed and appreciated tonight’s Cinemateque screening. Thanks for the fine choices.

TAKE OFF (1972) the 10 minute film about a stripper who takes it all off, then literally ‘takes off’ like a rocket. Actually, to be more precise, she spins herself into the form of a space rock... perhaps this unintentionally symbolizes the meteoric rise of the feminine force as her cosmic connections surpass even her sexual powers.

Once everything came off; her clothes, panties, stockings, shoes, hair, legs, face, head, arms, torso and all, the voyeur is left with something universal.

One mustn’t forget that it was only about a decade earlier that the pill contributed to the female’s newfound strength as she could increasingly and more aggressively revisit and play the roles of the ancient Goddess. Here, woman becomes the rock again. Free at last!

THE STRIPPER (1960): This 1 minute long film may have inspired TAKE OFF. Certainly there is an overlap with the idea that the stripper can keep ‘taking off’ well-after all her clothes have been removed, as her various body parts are strewn across the floor in a pile along with her lingerie.

LADY OF BURLESQUE (1943) with Barbara Stanwyck is set in the 1930s, centering around some backstage murders in a burlesque theatre. Stanwyck plays ‘Dixie’ a portrait of the real-life, beautiful and intelligent fan- dancer, actress and writer ‘Gypsy Rose Lee’.

Burlesque was a louche and often sleazy male entertainment that was all the rage in the 1930s. The immoral skin performances had been gradually building up after WWI as many men had been to war leaving many women independent and poor. The women did what they could to survive; many found and enjoyed new freedoms; their ‘selfishness’ and happiness grew away from male controls. As the First World War closed, burlesque boomed.

With the approach of WWII, the burlesque fad began to fade considerably and so perhaps to create alternative income, the popular burlesque dancer of the 30s (Gypsy Rose Lee), wrote (co-wrote?) a murder mystery called ‘The G-String Murders’ (1941) on which LADY OF BURLESQUE is based.

This movie, made during the dark apocalyptic days of WWII, seems to be a kind of nostalgic trip back to a recent time when outrageous characters were spilling over each other in an overpopulated world where each hustled for a piece of the action, struggling to make an existence.

During the 1920s and 1930s, New York was a hotbed for Jewish (and other immigrants) gangsters heavily involved in racketeering, drug dealing, pimping, gambling and loan sharking. It was a period of rampant anti-Semitism in America which saw the rise of American Nazism.

It is said that over 2 million Jews were living in New York in the 1930s, making them the most populous group in the city. The force of such vast numbers created desperately-crowded ethnic neighbourhoods where competitive conditions drove criminal behaviour as individuals and gangs tried to ‘make good’. The vice market boomed during Prohibition as Jew, Irish, Italian and other immigrants benefited from bans on alcohol, gambling, prostitution and narcotics. Gangster culture flourished with pulps, movies and books often painting the gangsters as thugs (sometimes heroes) committed to acts of evil (sometimes righteousness) during crazy times of economic boom and crisis.

One can imagine the innocents, victims and outsiders crying and praying for help and release from the rampant violence. This no doubt led to the rise of the hero-messiah who might be called upon to clean up the wicked streets.

The Jewish experience in America was very mixed; for some, America was the land of golden opportunity, for many it was the opposite. Watching a movie like LADY OF BURLESQUE, one gets some idea of the raw energy, drive and struggle of the era. The crowded conditions were a fact of daily existence whether it was backstage, on the streets or in the home; privacy was a very scarce commodity. It seemed that everyone’s business was known. Gossip thrived. The popular Cole Porter song ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ (originally written in the 1930s) gives a sneak peak at the American human psyche of the times. The importance of having room to move was even acknowledged and appreciated in the stories of many fictional, new, super-beings, including Superman (1932 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), Doc Savage (1933 by Lester Dent) and Gladiator (1930 by Philip Wylie); each of these heroes had their own private retreat to go to when they needed escape from the packed city…even Batman (1939 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane) had a Bat Cave to run off to. Once the heroes entered their ‘Fortress of Solitude’, they could find the privacy they needed in order to discover themselves again.

(Note: Superheroes were first found mostly in pulp magazine and comic books of the 1930s. These characters often had two sides, the lost, mild, downtrodden public persona that tried to assimilate into society, and of course the powerful, private and hidden hero within that none should penetrate).

The language and dialogue in LADY OF BURLESQUE was fast, furious and funny; the in-jokes were sometimes hard to grasp; the sexy stage performances were entertaining, though I imagine 1940s audiences would have found them quite risqué; some of the costumes outrageous; one of the dancers presented a splendid cliché cute dumb blonde (I wonder if Marilyn Monroe had seen this performance when she later created her own blonde persona). Good entertainment.

Jimmy Vargas gave an extremely theatrical and appropriate introduction to the movie. He is a great talker; perhaps one of the most fascinating and enthusiastic people I’ve met in years. He made an immediate impression upon me. Jimmy’s voice, words, poise, dress and name ooze by-gone-American energy. His specific interests (1920s-1950s?) importantly cover a time and place that is gradually and sadly being forgotten and yet whilst conversing with him, I also discovered a very idiosyncratic thinker with some brave ideas, some of which I myself have often pondered. I see him carrying on traditions from a grittier time. He’d make a welcome spokesman and role-model for those seeking a glimpse into something revived and different.

My knowledge of that historical period has been mostly-undernourished thus-far, but my recent studies have coincidentally led me in that direction and pricked my attention to various details of that period.

I imagine Jimmy Vargas is an authority on many aspects of that era. I’m looking forward to checking out his website and learning a thing or two.

Cheers

Pia Santaklaus

Susan Slept Here - this week at cinematheque

2008-08-05T07:42:00.006+10:00

This week at Cinematheque catch the 1954 Frank Tashlin comedy Susan Slept Here starring Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds and Anne Francis.

A disillusioned Hollywood scriptwriter has a juvenile delinquent foisted upon him only to find himself reinvigorated and hustled into marriage. The sentimental aspects of the comedy are given some edge by Reynold's sexually emancipated tomboy, the often wryly Freudian dialogue, and the eroticism of the danced dream sequences.

Also on the program is Tashlin's 1943 Porky Pig's Feat. Porky Pig and Daffy Duck try to avoid paying their bill at 'The Broken Arms Hotel'. The manager has other ideas and is expressionistically transformed into a villain. Bugs Bunny makes an early appearance in one of the last black and white Looney Tunes.

Introduction to Lady of Burlesque by Jimmy Vargas

2008-07-30T10:41:00.010+10:00

I was very pleased to hook Jimmy Vargas as guest presenter for Monday night's screening of Lady of Burlesque. While a reading of the text below cannot hope to capture the screwball energy and enthusiasm of Jimmy's delivery, imagine an overcaffeinated carnival barker with the zeal of a holy ghost evangelist, and maybe, just maybe, you're getting close to the brilliance of Mrrrrr Jimmy Vee...

LADY OF BURLESQUE

LADY OF BURLESK aka STRIPTEASE LADY, a 1943 release by United Artists, directed by WILLIAM WELLMAN, starring that platinum blond with the soft boiled heart BARBRA STANWYCK.

A 101 definition of Burlesque would be, that it's inherently VAUDEVILLE WITH IT'S CLOTHES OFF. Even though its roots were begat in 16th century Italy, as a theater of dissent and satire, called the Commedia Dell'Arte, it is generally regarded as an American phenomenon. It's peak of popularity was from 1910, through the depression of the 30s into the early 60s, when it expired as an art form, under the angry wave of sex-ploitation, porno chic, and feminism. Only incidentally enjoying a new release and revival both here in Sydney and the U.S. in the past decade, gestating out of the punk and neo 50s rockabilly roots scene.

American Burlesque was an low theater hybrid in which the art of the Striptease was the axis on which it shimmied and swung. The stripteuse' act was built on the premise of tease, the hint of flesh, the daring deshabille of filmy garments, but never fulfilling the promise of complete nudity. The sizzle not the steak was it's mantra.

The female ecdysiast for the first time in the history of show business became the draw-card. The male performer, erstwhile known as the tit serenader, the banana ( comedian,) or candy butcher were brought in to service the strip as humorous bookends forever trying to corral the carnal power of the independent female, inevitably to bawdy results.

In relation to the legitimate American Theater of the time such as Broadway, the National Ballet and Opera, Burlesque was the tart sister that they sneeringly referred to as all " bow legs and low comedy". In actual fact, the plot axis of the movie LADY OF BURLESQUE is driven by that very class conceit and social prejudice. And it is this very polemic that moves the plot along to it's final violent retribution.

BARBRA STANWYCK, the LADY OF BURLESQUE in question came to the movie set with her own Burlesque and Hollywood legendary status intact. No Demi Moore was she. Before she hit Hollywood, STANWYCK worked as a chorine, hoofing it for a decade before the obligatory studio agent saw her backstage at the Orpheum in Los Angeles, upon where she was subsequently offered the standard seven year peonage with one of the Big Five. A marriage to Vaudeville soft shoer, radio sqwaubler and movie star FRANK FAY, cemented her Hollywood royalty, and showbiz diva status status.

STANWYCK had already done a burleycue movie role the year before in 1941, when she starred opposite another cool blond, GARY COOPER in BALL OF FIRE. The flick was a huge hit, catapulting STANWYCK into box office boffo acclaim. The movie LADY OF BURLESQUE in some way can be seen as a career sequel of sorts for STANWYCK.

This flick however is more vaudeville than raunchy burleycue. It must be viewed not as a three tone color love poem to burlesque, but a muted black 'n' white paean, with the hooche cooche bump and grind tempered to a couple of swivel hips and boop boop de woops. LOB is basically a chocolate box replica of the art form to fit into the parameters of zealous decency and high family values, so set by the American Catholic League and Hays office, the chief censors of the time. However STANWYCK, under the superb direction of WELLMAN, still seduces, and her terpsichoreal scenes breathe with an whistle-baiting earthy vivacity, not to mention an nostalgic bawdity, placing the cinema audience in the orchestra pit.

The hubba hubba opener of PLAY IT ON THE E-STRING DROP IT ON THE G-STRING, is a grand panoramic overture, in which your ears and eyes will steam at the sinuendo. If not a convert to the magic of burlesque, you will be at the end of this particular piece, kneeling to the insteps of STANWYCK, as a blubbering Fred Mc Murray ala Double Indemnity.

The movie itself, like the subject, possesses a salome-ayic deception however. The stripping of behind the scene production notes, reveal more veils and more veils.

STANWYCK stars as DIXIE DAISY, a burleycue queen with the fast lipper and the slow zipper.
Her character is modeled on GYPSY ROSE LEE, the original Queen of American Burlesque fin the 30s to the 40s, who was the only ecdysiast of her time to cross-over to national appeal.
The characterization is deliberate, for it is the book G STRING MURDERS aka STRIPTEASE MURDERS written by GYPSY on which the movie is based.

There is conjecture however that GYPSY herself used a ghost writer. The author attributed to this dime-store classic is CRAIG RICE who incidentally also masked her own real name of GEORGIANA RICE for reasons unknown. However the story G STRING MURDERS is so specific in its detail of burlesque tradition, superstitions and vernacular one can only assume that GYPSY did the dictating while CRAIG RICE may simply have finger danced with the Remington.

It is most ironic that the public and Hollywood at the time could totally accept BARBRA STANWYCK as a burlesque Queen, but not the original. Though GYPSY, herself was signed to 20th CENTURY FOX in the late 30's, the studio in fear of the Hays office and the pentecostal cinema going public would desert or boycott the theaters if they'd known a jezebelle stripper was appearing at their local Palace or Bijou. DARRYL ZANUCK of 20th Century forced GYPSY to only used her real name ROSE LOUISE HOVICK in her two poorly received celluloid outings.

GYPSY got even with Hollywood when she went on to create the Broadway show Gypsy, based on her own showgirl memoirs of the same name. She held principal rights to the theatrical production, and was able to sell back to the Hollywood the story of her gazeeka box life, rights plus percentages. Her estate is still pulling in serious coin from various productions ever since.

Also as a side note, Gypsy herself also dallied with Hollywood royalty as Barbra Stanwyck before her. Enjoying an affair with noir director OTTO PREMINGER of LAURA, and THE MOON IS BLUE fame. Ironically, too it was OTTO PREMINGER who broke the power of the Hayes office that had so stalled GYPSY's career, fifteen years later with his own MOON IS BLUE, a subject about the loss of virginity. The unusual coupling of PREMINGER and ROSE LEE produced no movies, but an heir son to their fascinating showbiz blood lines, whom they called ERIK LEE . He has since penned his own memoirs of burleycue life with mother, entitled GYPSY and ME, which incidentally has been optioned by HBO this year, mooted to star SIGOURNEY WEAVER as the original and greatest LADY OF BURLESQUE in her later post stripper years. Due for release in 2009.

© JIMMY VARGAS 1947 / 2008

Contact Jimmy Vargas at jimmy@jimmyvargas.com or check out his website on the "links of note" sidebar.

Machine 1: This week at Cinematheque

2008-07-28T14:51:00.009+10:00

Live music returns to the Chauvel Cinematheque this week with Machine 1, a multimedia extravaganza by Rich Machine; a small collective of Sydney artists and musicians led by percussion legend Richard D’Adonna.

The show includes short films, spoken word and performance and the music draws on elements of improv jazz, electronica, Latin rhythym, even Eastern philosophy. Rich’s own experimental films, collectively known as the Dream Dial Journeys, make extensive use of digital manipulation to create abstract, psychedelic patterns, and will screen with live musical accompaniment. Also on the bill are Bee Perusco’s performance art piece Homeless, Glenn Lockitch’s short film, Taxi and Popular Girl’s spoken word The Ghan.

Click to enlarge the flyer.

Lady of Burlesque - this week at the Chauvel Cinematheque

2008-07-22T12:14:00.012+10:00

Lady of Burlesque USA/1943/B&W/90mins/16mm/NFVLS Dir: William A. Wellman.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Michael O'Shea, J. Edward Bromberg, Charles Dingle, Frank Conroy.

Based on the novel The G-String Murders by the famed striptease artist Gypsy Lee Rose, this backstage mystery-comedy has Stanwyck as a burlesque queen who also arbitrates frequent disagreements between the chorus girls. This well mounted independent production by a veteran ex-Metro producer has an authentic backstage atmosphere and is directed at a fast pace by Wellman. It also attracted an Oscar nomination for the song, "Take it off the E-string, Play it on the G-string" performed by Stanwyck while dancing a 'strip' number.

Also on the program:

Take Off USA/1972/B&W/10mins/16mm/ NFVLS Dir: Gunvor Nelson. A feminist satire on striptease that confounds conventional voyeuristic expectations.

“A grim and funny cosmic satire.” June M. Gill, Film Quarterly

and

The Stripper USA/1960/1min/16mm/NFVLS Dir: Siew Hwa Beh.

Introduction to Black Sunday

2008-07-21T14:48:00.014+10:00

Hi everyone and welcome to this special World Youth Day screening of Mario Bava's 1960 gothic horror film, Black Sunday. Are there any pilgrims here today?.. No, it's probably just as well, because this film, like many of the best horror films, is a reminder of how the sins and evils of the past, in this case, the persecution of "witches", can come back to haunt the present.

I didn't program this film specifically as a response to the events of WYD. It was just one of those fortunate accidents that it happened to coincide with the Pope's visit to Australia and it only dawned on me earlier in the week that the film had some relevance, however tenuous, to the papal visit. I don't want to put the boot in too much, as I am a Catholic (lapsed) myself and have enjoyed seeing all the pilgrims about town. I even saw some singing nuns on the bus the other day and for a minuteI thought I was stuck in a 1970s disaster movie, but I did think it was a bit rich for the Pope to come all the way to Sydney just to preach about the perils of violence and sex in the media, especially considering the most violent film in recent memory is a film based on the crucifixion, and that collectors of erotica have long envied the Vatican collection, the largest collection of erotic art and literature in the world. With all the things wrong in this world, I think violence and sex on TV, in the movies, and on the internet are way down the list.

The star of today's film, Barbara Steele, is (like the Pope) a vehement critic of violence in the movies. Her role in this film made her a star, or at least a scream queen, and although she made a nice career and appeared in dozens of horror movies in Italy, the USA and Britain, Steele used to call the audience for her movies "sexually disturbed teenage boys." Talk about biting the hand that feeds you!

This psychopathologisation of the audience for horror movies goes back at least to the Universal horror movies of the 1930s, but it was 1960, the year that saw the release of Black Sunday, Psycho and Peeping Tom, that the idea of horror movie viewer as pervert began to get some traction in the public consciousness. The film that best dramatises this idea is Michael Powell's once-derided, now classic Peeping Tom. The film explicitly equates movie viewing and movie making with voyeurism and even murder. As the sixties progressed this idea crops up in the work of Susan Sontag in her famous essay On Photography, in Yoko Ono's avant-garde film Rape and in Laura Mulvey's seminal essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. This idea of the horror movie fan as psychopathic continues even today. The most recent example I can think of is the hit movie Scream, where the murderers are revealed to be the nerdy horror movie loving geeks. The teenage male murderers absorbed so many horror movie cliches they turned into one.

I haven't seen Black Sunday for over twenty years, so I'm not going to say much about it, except that there are several different versions of the movie. There's the Italian version, filmed in polyglot with the actors speaking in their native language and dubbed into Italian. There's the British version, which was revoiced by English actors and trimmed of its more violent excesses and then there's the version you are about to see, the American version, which was revoiced by American actors, again trimmed of some of the more grisly moments and rescored by the then popular composer Les Baxter. Although this is hardly the definitive version, no amount of censor trims or cheesy orchestral scoring can diminish the impact of Bava's eye for set design, lighting and cinematography or his ability to create a wonderfully spooky atmosphere. If you saw Barrie Pattison's recent lecture on the history of Italian popular cinema you would have seen the early Bava educational film, Geometry Lesson. Even in a staid educational film, Bava was able to weave his macabre magic.

If you like the film, I would recommend reading Tim Lucas' wonderful book on Mario Bava, All the Colors of the Dark. There is also a box set of his films available from Umbrella Entertainment in Australia. Enjoy the movie and hope to see you next week for Lady of Burlesque.

Introduction to Roger Corman: King of the B's

2008-07-19T22:29:00.016+10:00

Hi everyone and welcome to the Chauvel Cinematheque for this Roger Corman double feature. Roger Corman began his career as a director reknown for delivering fast, cheap B-movies for American International Pictures and his own company Filmgroup, before largely retiring from directing to establish New World Pictures and later New Horizons.

Corman is best known as a producer and mentor to what became known as the film school generation of American cinema. By equal parts accident and acumen, Corman became a sort of Godfather of the American independent cinema. The role call of talent Corman mentored is well known (Coppola, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, etc.), but it wasn’t until they escaped from Corman’s monsters/bikinis/rock 'n' roll aesthetic that they could make truly personal and interesting films.
First up today is a rare screening of Hollywood’s Wild Angel, a 1978 documentary that features extensive clips from Corman's films as well as testimonials from his many and various better known proteges, including a very wired looking Martin Scorsese.

Following this is the 1957 film, Rock All Night, directed by Corman, written by Charles B. Griffith and starring Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze and Mel Welles. This team together comprised a sort of ensemble behind Corman’s best films, The Little Shop of Horrors and Bucket of Blood.

Corman regular Dick Miller (above) was hardly leading man material, however his range as an actor made him a key figure in Corman's repertory. As adept at playing a tough guy as he was an ordinary schlub, his work with Corman made him a cult star. After this turn in Rock All Night, Miller was so impressed with his own performance, he took out a full page ad in trade paper Variety touting his acting chops, but outside of Corman’s films, his appearances were largely confined to bit parts in Joe Dante’s films, Gremlins, The Howling etc.

Jonathan Haze, who appears here as a thug, was also a versatile actor, and is best known for his role as the nebbish in Corman’s best known film Little Shop of Horrors. Mel Welles, who also appeared in Little Shop... as Haze’s boss and nemesis, Gravis Mushnik, here plays beatnik impressario Sir Bop, a part originally written by Griffith for his friend, jazz eccentric Lord Buckley, which accounts for the almost non-stop hep-talk. When Buckley became unavailable, Welles took on the part. Griffiths called Welles the most inventive actor he’d worked with – on a par with Jack Nicholson.

While Corman is widely praised for his abilities as a mentor and a producer, his skill as a director is his ability to keep the story moving and the action interesting. Apart from his knack for pacing and a bare-bones but effective visual style, his reputation as a director is largely based on the qualities that made him a great producer – his ability to put together an interesting cast and crew. The real genius behind his best films is neglected sidekick Charles B. Griffith, who wrote all of Corman’s best films – Little Shop of Horrors, Bucket of Blood, Creature from the Haunted Sea, Not of this Earth, It Conquered the World, and later The Trip, Wild Angels and Death Race 2000. The off-beat wit and jazzy dialogue of Griffith’s scripts combined with the verve of Corman's direction transcended the low budget limitations of these films and made them the classics they are today.

When Quentin Tarantino was asked who his favourite screenwiriter was, he replied without hesitation, Charles B. Griffith. The hip talk and jazz like perambulations of Griffith's work in Rock All Night and the other films I mentioned are echoed in Tarantino’s acclaimed work. In the famous Jack Rabbit Slims sequence in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino pays homage to his inspiration by having a poster for Rock All Night featured prominently in the background, while the title page of his screenplay for Kill Bill carries a dedication to Griffith.

Like many of Corman’s films, Rock All Night is a patchwork of ideas and even other films. Always on the lookout for the fastest and cheapest way to make a film, Corman often used footage from other people's movies, added some outtakes and/or reused scenes from his own back catalogue, then shot new footage to try and make sense of it all. This Frankensteinian approach, or sampling if you like, creates a marvellously disorientating and delirious effect on the viewer.

For Rock All Night, Corman bought an hour of musical footage of The Platters, who had just had a big hit with Only You, The Blockbusters and Norah Hayes. Needing some way to recontextualise the footage, Corman bought the remake rights to an Emmy award winning TV drama, The Little Guy, and had Griffith rewrite the script to acommodate the music footage. The results await you today in Rock All Night.

Introduction to Sex and Hygiene Program

2008-07-19T22:26:00.007+10:00

Hi everyone and welcome to the Chauvel Cinematheque for this program of short films entitled Sex and Hygiene. The six short films you are about to see are interesting not for their educational value but rather as a barometer for society’s attitudes towards sex and sex education. With the exception of of the first film, For Your Information, these films were shown to children and were part of a loose program of social engineering designed to foster healthy attitudes towards sex and hygiene.

I remember seeing my first sex education film as a 4th grader – a battered copy of Sexual Aspects of Puberty on a clattering 16mm projector at Denistone East public school. The film was shown outside of school hours and I was accompanied by my mother who after the film said warily, "Did you learn anything from the film?" I remember my reply was, "No, I already knew all that." Along with a terse, “If you’re going to do anything obscene, do it with the blinds down", from my father, this was the sum total of the sex education I ever received from my parents.

Years later, I found a copy of the film, and recognized it immediately due to the animated diagrams of the reproductive process. I even thought the film could possibly be the same copy. It was the first 16mm film I had ever seen and was to profoundly influence me – here I am today, still showing battered copies of 16mm sex education films.

I’ve programmed these films chronologically to give you a feel for the changing attitudes towards the subject – from the fear-mongering of the WW2 era For Your Information, intended for female recruits in the Canadian air force, to the enlightened view of the 1980s pro-condom film Condom Sense. There are a few missing links in this chain of chronology. Sex education films are highly sought after by film collectors and command huge prices on ebay and elsewhere when they are offered for sale. This program largely misses films from the 1960s and 1970s where the pendulum swung from the fear mongering right wing scare campaigns to the more enlightened view of the films from the period of the sexual revolution.

What’s interesting about these films is the way they reflect parental anxieties over sex education. This is particularly explicit in Human Reproduction, the second film I will screen today. Produced in 1947, this film sparked a controversy in America about the role of sex education in American public schools, a debate that is still (unbelievably) going on today. The information in the film is delivered in the usual animated diagrams with lecture format and is framed by sequences set in a 1940s suburban living room, where Mum, Dad and Little Johnny are discussing the arrival of a neighbour’s baby. This leads Little Johnny to the inevitable question of where babies come from, and with much nervous gulping and knowing glances to his wife, little Johnny’s father begins to talk on the subject and the film dissolves into the lecture w/diagrams format. The film is centred not so much on the facts of life, but on the anxieties Mum and Dad feel about presenting the facts of life to their children. These sequences are funny today because they reflect the nervousness around the subject.

You can view Human Reproduction here:

http://www.archive.org/details/HumanRep1947

Next up is How Billy Keeps Clean. Although not strictly a sex education film, this film is a good example of the hygiene film, a related genre of educational film shown to primary schoolers as a sort of warm-up for the full blown sex-ed film they would see later in high school. What makes these hygiene films compelling is the way they prime their audience to think about hygiene in the same way they will (hopefully) think about sex - not as a source of pleasure or intimacy but as a sort of battleground of desire, discipline and microbiology.

I am very excited about the prospect of screening the next film, Dance Little Children, a rarely seen 1961 educational film by cult director Herk Hervey, director of the B&W horror classic Carnival of Souls. In an earlier program I screened Hervey’s remarkable short film Leo Beuerman. I am obssessed with this filmmaker and hope to put together a two hour program of his industrial and educational films sometime in the future. In Dance Little Children, a film made for the Kansas Board of Health, a a Twist dance craze is the trigger for a syphillis epidemic in a small town. Produced as a narrative short film in gaudy colour, it is a unique little comic gem, and can be described as a suburban, film-noir, VD scare film.

The hard-hitting 1972 documentary film Vasectomy, unfortunately didn't arrive with the rest of the films and won't be screening. I guess you could say Vasectomy has had the chop!

The pro-condom film, Condom Sense, that closes the program, was produced in 1980 and is haunted by the spectre of the AIDS virus. Released just months before the first widespread reports of the virus, the film was rendered instantly obsolete. It's still worth seeing though as it encourages teenage boys to be more responsible for birth control and equates this responsibility with respect for women. The film doesn't moralise. Instead it works from the assumption that teenagers are having sex, and in stark contrast to the nervousness of the films of an earlier era, treats the subject with a light and humourous.

So I hope you learn something today. And if you know all this stuff already... remember to shut the blinds first.

Thank you.

The Other Italian Cinema: Black Sunday

2008-07-14T07:17:00.010+10:00

The Chauvel Cinematheque's mini season of popular Italian cinema concludes this week with a rare theatrical screening of Mario Bava's acclaimed gothic horror film from 1960, Black Sunday (La Maschera Del Demonio) starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson and Arturo Dominici.

Bava's first film as a director after a distinguished career as a cinematographer is a landmark of the horror film and the perfect foil for the World Youth Day celebrations, dealing as it does with the Catholic Church's historical oppression of women.

A 17th century witch and her lover are executed with a spiked devil's mask. Two centuries later they are revived and return to destroy her cursed family. The story verges on fable, while the images and prowling camera have the power of delicate nightmare with moments of rarely surpassed beauty and horror. Steele's double role as the virginal Katia and the sexual witch presents the only two options allowed for women in such religious imagery: Madonna and whore. The ending suggests the possibility of merger.

“One of the cinema’s preeminent examples of gothic horror.” Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness
“An elegant and disturbing film that discloses the strange beauty of horror.” David J. Hogan, Dark Romance

Screening with the film is Bruno Bozzeto's animated short, Self-Service, that satirises Prohibition and the madness of a petroleum-based economy.

Don't miss this timely and provocative intrusion of the past into the present - this week at cinematheque.

The Other Italian Cinema: Viva Italia

2008-07-14T06:47:00.004+10:00

A mini season of popular Italian cinema continues this week at the Chauvel Cinematheque with the Oscar nominated 1977 portmanteau comedy, Viva Italia (I Nuovi Mostri), starring Vittorio Gassman, Ugo Tognazzi, Ornella Muti and Alberto Sordi and directed by Mario Monicelli, Ettore Scola & Dino Risi.

An anthology of nine short sketch comedies on the theme of the human condition, this charming film touches on politics, religion, old age and love, and is a poignant view of society’s shortcomings. See the best acting, writing and directing talent the commedia all’Italiana has to offer - all in the one movie.

35mm print in Italian with English subtitles.

“A farewell to a fantastic era.” Imdb.com

Spring 2008 Program

2008-07-07T16:38:00.008+10:00

Click to enlarge the new program.

Page One...

Page Two...

Blogger VS Safari

2008-07-07T16:31:00.002+10:00

Apparently, blogger is not very compatible with the macintosh browser Safari. This is the reason all the recent posts look a bit weird. I guess I will have to switch to firefox to rectify the problem. Sorry if the posts are a bit dishevelled looking and hard to read, but the problem should be fixed soon.

Thanks,

Brett

A Response to Blood & Sandals: The Other Italian Cinema by Pia Santaklaus

2008-07-02T14:00:00.008+10:00

Hey Brett,

Thanks for an interesting presentation today, THE OTHER ITALIAN CINEMA.

Barrie Pattison brought in and presented a fine, diverse selection of films. I enjoyed the short ‘art’ film ‘The Geometry Lesson’ (early 50s?) of which little is known. In arty black and white, just looking at some of the fantastic shapes formed by manipulating 3 coordinates (x, y, z), I couldn’t help but imagine Salvador Dali had seen this exact film back then and it may have inspired some of the fantastic shapes in his own paintings of that period. Dali was a mad keen enthusiast of mathematics and physics.

I appreciate the selfless gusto and passion with which Barrie presents his stuff. Always interesting, he deserves a much larger audience. It’s pitiful how little nostalgia and care exists for so many old films. Such difficult-to-preserve disappearing treasures become victims of eternity; one wave follows the next and too much gets swept away in the tides of time.

Long live Cinemateque!

To me, Barrie’s like the proverbial old soldier who never dies even when he knows he’s defending a losing war.At least with presentations such as today, he wins battles along the way. Barrie Pattison champions the neglected, guards the overlooked and might be seen as a saint of the forgotten...his dedication and energy is admirable.

And again, thanks Brett for working well under pressure today. I imagine you had a very difficult job to do and with only a little preparation; it turned out well.

Pia

A Taste of The Three Men

2008-07-01T00:53:00.003+10:00

Never heard of The Three Men, the stars of this weeks feature Ask Me If I'm Happy? Here's a taste of their comic talents taken from one of their old TV shows.

The Other Italian Cinema: Man without a Memory

2008-06-30T10:08:00.012+10:00

For one night only, catch an ultra rare screening of a beautiful 35mm print of Duccio Tessari's 1975 giallo thriller, Man without a Memory (L’Uomo Senza Memoria) aka Puzzle.

This superior example of the giallo thriller features a labyrinthine plot about an amnesiac on the run. Cast includes Senta Berger, Umberto Orsini and Anita Strindberg. Music by Gianni Ferrio.

“A great example of the genre.” imdb.com

Man without a Memory screens Monday the 5th of July at 6:30 sharp.