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"Masterpiece"
is one of those words that is bandied about a little too much in our
culture (along with "Genius", another misused extravagance) and yet it
is the word I am going to use here. Another one might be
"underrated", or at least "underseen", but with Burnett that is
almost a given. If you look at Killer of Sheep,
it is almost an accidental masterpiece, a first film that went against
the odds to not only say something personal, but profound.
I do
not thinnk there is anything accidental about To Sleep With Anger. Burnett recieved a MacArthur Grant in 1988 and it allowed him to take the time to develop this script.
You watch the film and marvel because there is so many ways it
could have gone wrong-too much biblical weight, too much fokloric
archetyping, any number of things, and yet it does not. Harry
Mention (Danny Glover) is a character that comes out of the trickster
tradition of African American Folklore or even the "stranger" tradition
of Euro Art Film (like Teorema) but here he is human, vulnerable and upends the family not to upend their values but reaffirm them.
The way it is filmed is direct and clear, no stylistic self-consciousness
but an abundance of long shots and off screen space. Burnett has
a humility and respect for the characters that also comes through for
the audience: He trusts our eyes just as much as he loves his
characters (the same way Jean Renoir or Leo McCarey love theirs, clear
eyed and bemused), we witness things because he grants us them:
When we see brothers reconcile it is off hand and over the
shoulder-Burnett lets us see without violating their space or their
trust.
Enjoy the discussion, reachable through the title or the picture.
Ashes and Embers is a
particularly strong film that can also be hard to digest. I have
to admit I went into class with a little trepidation, because of all
the films I am showing,Ashes is in many ways the most confrontational,
but as usual my fears were unfounded and many in the class not only
found it to be a strong piece of work but also revelatory.
Anyone
expecting a "nicer" film after the end of Bush Mama, where Dorothy
exhorted her husband to tell his stories in a way that the common
man would understand, it is clear that Gerima does not mean it as a
dilution of his style. Building on the "subjective in the
objective" style of Bush Mama (where we get the view of the community
AND the view of one member of that community). The film
encompasses a lot of concerns and styles. It is rough around the
edges but with an emotional truthfulness and intensity that makes up
for it.
Unavailable on DVD, it can still be purchased from Sankofa.com on good old VHS.
My Brother’s Wedding taking a
more story oriented or generic structure and playing it like a blues-
personal and idiosyncratic. Burnett makes his form clear from the
opening when we see an older gentleman singing the traditional gospel
of “The Old Rugged Cross” acapella, the camera fades and comes back
upon him again now playing the harmonica. Is it the same
song? Why the fade? Burnett is defiantly and succinctly
setting up his structure: This is his song played for his
community in his own way.
We watched the 82-minute director’s
cut in class and I told everyone the ’83 cut was 2 ½ hours long.
I was surprised by my faulty memory: The cut is actually just a
little under two hours. It says a lot about the novelistic depth
and Renoir-like humanity of Burnett’s work that I “remembered with
advantages”, confusing the length for the depth of the film.
It
is important to remember these are not the same people as Killer of
Sheep (though Henry Saunders makes a cameo). His is a different
strata of Watts- more established, a little higher on the economic
ladder. It is not a group we see too often in movies.
Burnett
wants to show his whole community. Like the “Watts Tower” by
Simon Rodia, Burnett has built a piece of folk art that reflects back
on his community while standing proudly inside of it.
Finally
am having a chance to catch up and post some of our class discussions
again. My Brother's
Wedding is coming later today.
Bush Mama is a first film of
remarkable emotional intensity and anger. Gerima is a different
filmmaker than Burnett and the contrasts can be striking. Gerima
stuffs his film with all of the ideas and life he can, whether they are
cacophonous, disagreeing or messy. It is the film of someone who
wasn’t sure he would make another.
It is also remarkable to have a
filmmaker offer such a nuanced and sympathetic portrayal of
women.
Dorothy, the main character here, starts out the film in a
daze and ends it in defiance, yet you never doubt that Gerima is with
her in charting her emotional and political growth. The movie is
not only about this journey but the community that surrounds Dorothy
and it’s varying reactions to its insulation and absorption from the
Los Angeles around it (insulated from other social classes, absorbed
into the state system, whether that is welfare or jail).
The
discussion that I have uploaded here deals with the class grappling and
questioning Gerima’s distinctive worldview and artistry.
Is there another film that allows young men to cry like Killer of Sheep?
It is one of the questions that we delved into in our class
discussion of this American classic. You will also here us talk
about the very particular form of storytelling that Burnett uses from
his Southern roots to describe the urban poverty he depicts here.
The class was a little quiet after we screened the film and I
think part of it is attributable to the fact that the film puts you
into a type of trance, I remember still thinking about it, and gleaning
insights from it for weeks after I first saw it.
And
so our class comes to an end on a perverse note and film that would
make Powell proud. Released four years after the war, but set in
1943, The Small Back Room is viewed by many as Powell getting back to basics after the visual and narrative extravagances of Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes but this is a bit reductionist.
While the film is much more in the docudrama tradition of some of the first films we saw in the class (Contraband & One of Our Aircraft is Missing,
in which it shares the lack of a music score) when you start to watch
it, you realize it is just as perverse and baroque as his other films
of the period (take a look at that still above!)
Concerned with an
Alcholic munitions officer and his daily life the film works on a
series of narrative displacements and feminie tellers. In
many ways it is a postwar analysis of wartime masculinity and guilt.
Do I need to say it did not do well at the box office?
It is a fascinating, well made, and controlled film and one that the class brought many enlightening ideas for me to ponder.
Enjoy!
Is
it no mistake that one of the swooniest movie-movies to appear came out
almost exactly 50 years after the birth of cinema as well as the births
of certain a certain Mr. Powell and Monsieur Pressburger? Indeed
if you want a good summation of those fifty years and how the two
opposing sides-realism and fantasy can be stitched together to form a
filmic synethesia, this is the film.
If Brothers Lumiere and
Melies decided to work together it would probably have some of the
Peanut Butter cup flavor of what is on hand here.
We continue down our way through war time England with this, the first
Archers production and first film where Emeric Pressburger gets a clear
co-director credit. In class it was interesting to me that people
did not like this film as much as 49th Parallel.
While it is almost a direct remake of that film, the main
differance being that now it is the heroes who have crashed and not the
enemy, you would think it would lead people to identify more with these
protagonists. Yet, Powell goes out of his way to differ this
identification.
In his autobiography, Powell
talks about wanting to achieve a sense of naturalism within a "detached
narrative", but I would argue the narrative here isn't so much detached
as displaced.
It is a fascinating film and the
class, per usual, has insights and perspectives that I would not have
thought of and really opened up my thinking on the film, especially in
regards to Powell's use of women, and their maternal image, as the main
narrative engine.
It also has the benefit of a tremendously witty and low key script.
Ah, to be young and Canadian! The poster above makes the film
seem a lot more action packed, and lets say "collective", than it
actually is. What makes the film so fascinating is how it goes against
the grain of what a wartime thriller is supposed to be. Do we
follow then hunt for Nazis? No, we follow the Nazis as they
are
picked off one my one on their trip across Canada.
One of the best point that was brought up during the class was how much
we do or don't empathize with the Nazi leads of the film. The
point was made, and I think it is a valid one, that it doesn't really
occur during the film: We identify with them, but Powell
keeps us
at too much of a distance to actually empathize, let alone sympathize
with their travails.
The actual structure of the
film will also be expanded on in the next few we will be watching, a
picaresque journey that is at odds with a tightly plotted thriller.
If anything, Powell lets the pace slacken at several
instances,
cutting across our expectations of the genre.
But, what do you expect of a film that lets a bunch of weirdos,
oddballs, and marginalized citizens defeat the supreme Arayan Nazi
menace? That's my kind of propaganda picture!
Excellent first class with some great insights and observations from a
lot of people who are not me.
If you have seen the film, you will understand why the bondage pick
above is ever so kinky. War propaganda always goes down
easier
with some light bondage.
This was the second
collaboration between the team of Powell/Pressburger and Veidt/Hobson.
Powell was determined to bring more neutral countries into
the
war effort and it is reflected in the trajectory of Conrad Veidt's
character. But think also of how proto feminist Hobson is in
her
background, as a single mother, and proffession in spying.
What makes the film so interesting and entertaining is how lightly they
step over serious themes without getting bogged down in platitudes or
narrative slogging.
There is a version available on US dvd
from Kino.
Enjoy!
This is an odd one. Coming at
the tail end of the "commie scare films" (Woman on Pier 13, My Son John) Tourneur did this
as a favor to star Dana Andrews, who refused to star unless Tourneur
directed.
What makes this film fascinating to me is how little it has to do about
communism. Tourneur actually directed a proto pro-socialist
movie
during WWII, Days of
Glory,
as well as one of the last Hollywood films with a communist
hero in Berlin Express and his politics hd always been left leaning. Here the
communism
takes a backseat to a pretty scathing indictment of post war
consumerism and late period capitalism.
Now I
don't want to make to great of a case for this film. It is
cheap
and quick with a mis en scene that is scattered and unfocused.
There are a couple of "Tournean"moments under the title
credits
and during a nightmare sequence. In the discussion, we go
into
the particular reasons this might be the case and how it leads toan
alternate reading of the film. And
it is still a fascinating film that tells us quite a bit, if sometimes
inadvertently, about America in 1958.
Let me
share a good quote. French critic Jacques Lourcelles, who
praises
the movie, writes: "the true subject of the movie is fatigue, the wear
of the main character, and, through it, the wear of democracy itself"
The last western that Tourneur directed and it is a doozy.
Ths
film takes full advantage of the Technicolor and "Superscope"
widescreen format to bring to life a wonderfully complex script by the
undervalued Lesser Samuels (No
Way Out). In many ways this film takes us full
circle to Canyon Passage
as we see again the shifting loyalties and precarious civilization in a
small pre-Civil War Colorado town.
Tourneur's visual sense is fully developed here, we see him using
shadows and depth of field to create an atmosphere rich in evocations.
I find it interesting that Tourneur would twice decide to
film
stories that themed around the Civil War from the Confederate side and
he especially uses that here to shift the audiences loyalty and call
into question our role as spectators.
With
wonderful performances from Virginia Mayo, Ruth Roman, Raymond Burr,
and a particularly focused Robert Stack, this is a masterpiece of
Tourneur'slate period easily the equal of the better known Curse of the Demon.
If it possible to have a "most underrated" film in a filmography
littered with underrated gems, this might be it. A much more classical
western then the ones we have seen so far, this is also the one were it
is easier to see what Tourneur added to the material because the
material is so traditional.
We now skip ahead five years from our
previous film to 1955. McCrea asked Tourneur
to direct this as a personal favor, and it was the first Tourneur shot
in the Cinemascope format. McCrea had been wanting to tell this story
for awhile and later took the material again as a basis for his
television series, Wichita
Town.
Pauline Kael made a snide if truthful remark that the
suspense
from these films comes from seeing whether the aging McRea will be able
to mount his horse.
But lets not be that way. the film is a
tremendously
interesting look at the way capitalism tries to contain anarchy and
process it as consumerism and how quick that anarchy can overtake us.
It is an odd film also in that it doesn't concentrate on the basis for
the Wyatt Earp myth in Dodge City, but what happened before.
So
Earp should ostensensibly be a young man, yet he is played by the aging
McCrea, something that Tourneur chooses to flaunt in a way that
predates Ford's similar strategy in The
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It plays out like
a fever dream of a western.
As you will hear in the discussion there is one moment of violence
midway through the film that is shocking for it's subtlety and matter
of factness. I have also included a link to Jonathan
Rosenbaum's
excellent dissection of the film from The Chicago Reader.
As a little note of trivia, if you have
a chance to actually see
the film, look for Sam Peckinpah in an uncredited role as a bank teller
(a little in joke in that Peckinpah's family was one of the
richest in California).
