1989: Say Anything

Say Anything (1989, Crowe) 8/10

Mike: "I don't know you very well, but I wanted to ask you- how did you get Diane Court?"
Lloyd: "I called her up"
Mike: "But how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you?"
Lloyd: "I'm Lloyd Dobler"
Mike: "This is great. This gives me hope. Thanks"

Diane Court (Ione Skye) is the valedictorian of her Seattle high school. Beautiful, intelligent and anxious, she is the girl whom everybody knows of, but nobody really knows. She has led a sheltered life living with her single-parent father (John Mahoney) and working in his retirement home. Her years of sacrificing vacations and friendships has paid off as she had won an esteemed scholarship to an English university. Yet, she is estranged from her peers. Her high school yearbook is littered with well-wishes and names of people who watched her from afar, but have never been accepted within her limited social circle, which consists solely of her resiliant father: working double duty as her parent, her confidant and best friend.

Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack) is her opposite: a sensitive soul who has worshipped Diane from a distance. He has few male friends and is adored by his female pals who see him as the perfect gentleman for any interested women: a man who is responsive, caring and warm-hearted. Yet, for Lloyd there is only Diane. She is his ideal woman: a rare combination of grace, elegance and intellect. Yet, she is unaware of his mere presence. After years of maintaining his guarded silence, Lloyd realizes this may be his last opportunity to tell Diane about his feelings. He goes out on a limb and succeeds were others believed he would fail.

Desperate to tell her his feelings and let her know him during her final weeks before she goes to England, Lloyd overextends his typical restrained boundaries: feeling it is better to have released his emotions, rather than have a lifetime of guilt and regret from not letting her know his true feelings. Unlike the proper and protected Diane, Lloyd lives in a world without direction. His only motives and ambitions in life before entering adulthood centers around Diane Court. To her father's dismay he is not an intellectual breadwinner, but a figure whose dreams of greatness will seemingly never amount to anything. Here Lloyd fits into the realm of classic cinematic dreamers such as Klaus Kinski's Brian Fitzgerald in Herzog's Fitzcarraldo and Tom Courtenay's character in Schlesinger's Billy Liar: tragic figures whose romanticized conceptions of their own abilities and the world around them is trod upon by others.

His female friends try to ward him away from Diane over fear of Lloyd being permanently hurt; while later on his macho male acquaintances fail to realize there is only ever going to be one Diane Court in his life and the altruistic Lloyd will never be able to recapture the feeling she emits into his soul with every single breath. Cameron Crowe's directorial debut Say Anything is one of the rare "teen" films to capture the pains of maturation and the essence of true first love. Regardless of whether Diane and Lloyd's relationship succeeds there will be only one Diane Court in Lloyd's life. He may have loved other women before and since, but she will always be placed on an untouchable pedestal in his heart. Male or female, young or old, in everybody's life there is a Diane Court: a figure gazed upon from afar and rarely confronted. Whenever he hears or speaks her name or passes by unnoticed, he remains enchanted with her and everything she stands for in his heart. Lloyd's decision to break through the walls of fear and self-doubt is rarely examined with such serious poignancy and attention to detail in a Hollywood film.

While both Diane and Lloyd come from displaced family units, their position toward family is starkly different: Diane cherishes her father and can talk about her deepest feelings with him; Lloyd's military parents are stationed in Germany and he lives with his single-parent sister and her child in a small apartment block. Diane's father tries to use her as a vehicle through which his own wishes and desires can be realized under the guise of paternal protection, while Lloyd's emotional outlet is in his quasi-maternal closely-knit female circle of friends who aspire to find their own Lloyd Dobler and guide his romantic life in a direction, which they would want their future boyfriends to undertake.

Under the watchful gaze of both sets of guardians, the relationship between Diane and Lloyd struggles to find its own niche: due to the external pressures of Diane's academic world and her father's expectations as well as Lloyd's struggle to become comfortable in the fulfillment of his romantic dream.

Given Crowe's own family background with a domineering parent, Say Anything resonates with an autobiographical lyricism rare for both a major Hollywood production and a debut film. Although Crowe's transcendence of the spirit of adolescense is perhaps better fulfilled in his later masterpiece Almost Famous, this early picture displays the fractured emotions and desires within adolescense with a craft rarely equalled in the past twenty years in Hollywood. If, the film has a downfall it is the over-emphasis in the dislocated sub-plot involving Diane's polished world falling apart amidst allegations of her father's tax evasion. While this element shows the falseness of her relationship with her father, it is given far too much time in the latter portion of the picture which could be utilized to explore the torn emotional state of Lloyd Dobler and his reactions.

While on the surface Say Anything is a classic Hollywood film about overcoming obstacles and realizing your wildest dreams; its combative interior themes of becoming comfortable with oneself and having others accept you for being yourself are perhaps the most endearing qualities to a wonderful debut film. Although everybody has a "Diane Court" in their life, Say Anything's emphasis on approaching fabled love with honesty, truth and an individual fierceness to preserve one's own personality as an outsider makes it often indelibly genuine, beautiful and ultimately for many heartbreaking.

* Say Anything is available from Fox Home Video

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1947: Black Narcissus

Black Narcissus (1947, Powell-Pressburger) 10/10

"I told you this was no place for a nunnery. There is something in the atmosphere that makes everything seem exaggerated." (Dean)

Atop a cliff in mountainous northern India eight thousand feet above sea level, there lies a small disused palace amongst the harsh rocky terrain called Mopu. With its jagged architecture and crumbling windswept exterior, this isolated former bordello of an Indian General seems an unlikely place for spiritual and cultural enlightenment. Yet, thanks to the gracious offering by the Europeanized General (Esmond Knight), the Order of the Servants of Mary, an Anglican convent in Calcutta have been offered the opportunity to transform this earlier house of sinful pleasure into a house of God: a place were Christ's work and imperial interaction will mould a nation of reluctant "savages" into a class of civilized citizens.

For Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) this mission is her first taste of real authority. Along with a carefully selected group of nuns including garden expert Philippa (Flora Robson), a talkative social butterfly Honey (Jenny Liard), a strong-willed women in Briony (Judith Furse) and the convent's hypochrondiac Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron), Sister Clodagh attempts to succeed were her Anglican brethern have failed in colonizing the mountain community for Britain's use. Yet, within a few months the calm and attentive young woman we meet in the stalid white convent offices in Calcutta is little more than a tattered relic of her former self: a mentally, emotionally and spiritually broken women whose faith in God and Empire have been permanently questioned.

At its onset, Black Narcissus appears to be little more than a triumphant vindication of British morals, western culture and institutionalized Christianity: elements on the wane for British audiences following the film's post-World War II release. In his often plagarized quote, film critic Geoff Andrew described Black Narcissus' depiction of India as a "state of mind" rather than a place: a notion which holds true throughout. What unfolds in Powell and Pressburger's adaptation of Rumer Godden's 1939 novel is less a structured film plot-driven film about spirituality and community and more a film about ideas and images; textures and tones; atmospheres and aromas as noted by the emphasis on Jack Cardiff's beautiful cinematography and Alfred Junge's jaw-dropping sets. Rather, than solidifying classical European-thinkng, the film is a harsh critique of the aforementioned ideas, as well as an examination of modern womanhood, sexuality and humanity's futile attempts to control nature. Brave subject matter for 1947.

With its colourful erotic frescos Mopu becomes the imperial battleground upon which the Sisters attempt to wage war on Eastern spiritualism, morals, ethics and sensuality in constrast to the bare plainess of their clothing and Calcutta office. Through education, healthcare and the addition of Christian monuments Sister Clodagh believes her subjects and environment can be altered to fit European norms. They are not an order based on pious meditation, but rather they claim to preach universal interaction and acceptance in the footsteps of Christ. Yet, their attempts to do this are undermined by both exterior and interior factors. Despite the promise of free education, the local population are not endeared to the nuns and are often paid by the General in order to learn European languages, mathematics and sciences. Their faith is placed not in the sisters, but in a local silent Holy Man who sits at the edge of the grounds in endless meditation. Only the Sisters' European medicine entices the citizens to straddle up the treacherous mountainside to Mopu, despite the Sisters' reluctance to dispense it to an uneducated population whom they hold in contempt.

With its constant wind and cool temperatures, the Sisters begin to feel the thin mountain air and purified water is affecting their senses, spoiling their slumber and causing them to become ill. Yet, the climate is not necessarily a source of their ills, but a catalyst for their hidden desires and feelings. In his lush cinematography Jack Cardiff utilzes shadows to repeatedly demonstrate the aura of foreboding darkness entering the hearts and minds of the nuns, which has been triggered by their isolated habitat. Throughout Black Narcissus, Sister Clodagh and her fellow nuns attempt to foster a spirit of female independence, which will allow them to prosper as servants of God and the community were their Anglican brethern previously failed after five months in solitude. The Sisters wish to confer with the citizens, maintain Mopu and continue God's work without the assistance of men including the General's agent, lusty British ex-pat Dean (David Farrar). The clash between masculinity and feminity is at the core of Black Narcissus .

As with Powell-Pressburger's other films, the female protagonists in Black Narcissus conform to one of two distinct classes of women: as either dependents or independents. In these films dependent female characters attempt to wield individual authority through repressing their sexual identity and feelings in order to fulfill their expected potential in prestigious roles. However, the dependents such as Sister Clodagh and Moira Shearer's character Vicky in The Red Shoes require the skills of utility and authority bestowed by their male counterparts in order to survive; the independents such as Sister Ruth or seventeen-year old Indian temptress Kanchi (Jean Simmons) or Catriona Potts in I Know Where I'm Going display a rigourous vitality and unorthodox approach to their gender roles, which unsettles dependent female characters such as Kerr's Sister Clodagh who see them as a threat and a danger to the symbolic order: yet who are undermined by their own inadequacies to cope with the situation at hand.

Yet, Dean is not the only man who inspires the women. Although they initially reject the General's nephew (Sabu) because of his gender into their education program, the Sisters are conversely smitten by him and his luxurious clothes, attentive charm and use of the manly aroma Black Narcissus, which he purchased at a London Army and Navy store. In contrast to the primal, macho and hyper-masculine Dean, the General's nephew is sensitive, intelligent and caring toward women: seeing them as equals, rather than future lovers. Despite his wealth and status, Sister Clodagh reacts angrily to the General's nephew's secret acquaintance with the erotically charged Kanchi whom the Sisters only accept at Dean's polite behest. It is the unwanted presence of men like Dean and the General's nephew which trigger romantic memories, colourful ideas and causes the order to lose sight of its Christian goals to in-fighting and sensual pleasures. Through veiled windows and brief interactions with Dean, the already fractious relationship between Sisters Ruth and Clodagh disintegrates as Sister Ruth becomes even more independent and attempts to take on a more important role. This is noted in her reception to saving a dying woman's life. With her blood-soaked clothes and joyous response, the imagery here seems to metaphorize a real sexual awakening in Sister Ruth, which undermines Clodagh's ability to control her. Additionally, Sister Philippa abandons her mandatory attempts to grow vegetables in favour of the sensual power of luminous wild flowers, while Sister Clodagh reminisces of her failed Irish romance, which thrust her into God's work in a faraway land despite her earlier admission that she would never leave Ireland. These psychological awakenings are critical in the film as they humanize the nuns from obedient servants to questionable disciples.

Ideas of time and space are integral to Black Narcissus and demonstrate the inability of humanity to repress its most basic desires and thoughts over an elongated period. In her misinterpretation of this questioning of faith as treachery rather than human nature, Clodagh loses control of the Order. The casual elements of institutionalized religion such as Dean's notion of Jesus being consumed as "daily bread" are scorned. Rather, than accept change Clodagh blames the changing emotions on the inhospitable weather and topography rather than the unearthing of repressed incontrollable human emotions: prescribing further hard labour rather than open communication as a cure for the ills of Mopu. As a result of her inability to no longer control others, the Order retreats away from the community; becoming less of a welcoming sanctuary and more a violent prison of the soul. With the slow eradication over time of the formal codes of conduct within the Order, raw emotion spills over and produces perhaps the film's most memorable sequence in which Sister Ruth abandons her yearly vows: and in the process becomes an almost anti-Christ figure in the eyes of Sister Clodagh with her seering eyes, daring dress and sultry red lipstick. This fantastic scene can be shown in stark contrast to the delicate naivety shown by Jean Simmons' Kanchi who understands her sexuality and allows her ideas to come to the surface rather than repressing them in the name of upholding traditional gender roles and cultural standards.

Although the sub-plots involving Kanchi and the General's Nephew are wastefully underdeveloped, they provide a solid counterpart to the stubborn European superiority complex which collapses on foreign soil. The failure of the Sisters to acclimatize to their surroundings demonstrates Powell-Pressburger's critique of traditional European society's inability to nurture independent citizens. In Black Narcissus, British imperialism retreats from the unknown to the sanctuary of traditional British values, due to the limitations placed on the possibilities for women and for non-European cultures within the colonial world. Unlike Kanchi or Sister Ruth, Sister Clodagh is unable to separate spiritual and emotional independence from one another. Additionally, she is unwilling to accept an interdependent community in which Europeans, Indians, men and women work together, nor does she equip herself and her colleagues with the tools to prosper in an inhospitable environment. In their abhorrant treatment of the native citizens and ideas of Anglo-European perfection, the nuns eliminate future participants such as Dean or the Nephew's General who could create a hybrid community in which the Holy Man and the Christian Sisters could harmoniously flourish. As a result, their already fractured relationships produce further tension and undermine both their Christian vows and their mission of peace and civility.

* Black Narcissus is available through Criterion

Other Powell and Pressburger Films Reviewed:
A Matter of Life and Death (1946) 8/10


Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1963: The Leopard

The Leopard (1963, Visconti) 10/10

"We were the leopards, the lions, those who will take our place will be jackals and sheep, and the whole lot of us- leopards, lions, jackals and sheep- will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth" (Prince Don Fabrizio Salina)

The Leopard is a film about the ascension of one class and the decension of another. Set in the mid-19th century, the film explores the uprooting of traditional Italian society as a result of the cultural and political movement of the Risorgmento (or resurgance). In the decades following the defeat of Napoleonic Europe, the age of empire was unknowingly on the wane. The liberation of communities from imperial forces and the rise of romanticism in fractured "nations" sparked desires for statehood and the unity of a people.

Alongside the German "nation", the Italian people were a group desperate to bring a political unity to their separate kingdoms and myriad of city-states which composed the Italian nation in order to create a single Italian state. This resurgance in Italian national identity after generations of foreign conquest had troubling consequences for tradtional Italian society. The country was split over the political identity of this new state as a constitutional monarchy, a confederation under the leadership of the Vatican or a democratic republic. It is within this historical context that The Leopard takes place in which the ancien riche and nouveau riche jostled for the leadership and power of this new Italian nation-state. The film's title is most likely taken from an Italian term "Gatopardismo" (the term awkwardly translates into English as Leopardism) when according to historian Tony Judt individuals change their political "spots" or affiliations in order to avoid conflict in changing political situations.

The Leopard is set around the activities of aging Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster) on the island of Sicily over a two year period. The Prince is an erudite scientific scholar, a man of logic who is prided around the island for his feats in the realm of astronomy. A commanding and intelligent patriarchal figure, the Prince's interior domestic life is opposite to his exterior regal status. The film's opening shots lead us to a grand country mansion located within the harsh Sicilian landscape: embodying the splendour and opulence the Prince manifests in his exterior life against the harsh terrain with its own political symbolism. Inside, the family are holding mass despite the cries of the servants who find a young soldier dead on their property. The revolution has hit home. Along with his priest, he decides to travel to a different home in order to protect it from the marauding soldiers of Garibaldi's republican Red Shirts who have landed in Sicily. The decision to bring along the priest is more a matter of protection, rather than spiritual advisement as throughout the film traditional institutional figures such as priests are showed great reverance and respect. While the rest of his family sob over the Prince's dangerous trip, he vents his disgust and anger to them. This early scene shows us a key facet to the Prince's personality in relationship to his family members.

He is a loner amongst them: an isolated figure who ignores his plain daughters and directionless son. He no longer engages in sexual activities with his wife Maria Stella (Rina Morrelli), but rather spends time with a lower class prostitute in the ghettos of Palermo. With his power and prestige, the Prince can even disregard the spiritual advice from the family's bumbling Catholic priest without much complaint. Whilst filling the air with blunt anti-clerical jokes and quips to his uptight clergyman, the two individuals whom the Prince is most direct and honest toward are his hunting partner Don Francisco Ciccio Tumeo (Serge Reggiani) and his politically agile nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon).

The first time we see Tancredi is in the reflection of a mirror while the Prince is shaving. In Tancredi, the Prince not only sees a younger version of himself, but the key to securing the family's future and prominent status in Sicilian society. His love for Tancredi is so strong that when his nephew rejects the Prince's shy and stubborn daughter Concetta (Lucilla Morlacchi) for a local middle-class Mayor's daughter Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), the Prince supports Tancredi against the wishes of his wife. Tancredi needs the financial security that the newly-bourgeois Mayor Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa) can provide in exchange for the false sense of privileged influence that only the old aristocratic nobility can offer as compensation. Furthermore, Tancredi is an opportunistic and free-spending individual who unlike the prince acts on impulse rather than calculated logic. With little faith in the abilities of his own son, the Prince places his trust, adoration and reputation in Tancredi who has joined Garibaldi's anti-aristocratic Republican Red Shirts under the pretense that "If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."

A key feature of The Leopard is in Mario Serandrei's smooth editing which allows the film to flow at a brisk pace and allows for the seemless transistions between the intimate and the operatic. Like the Prince's favoured astronomical sciences, Visconti's film utilizes a cyclical notion of history. Characters, words, actions and events are re-simulated in subtle disguises to address the changing nature of Italian society and the Prince's domestic life. This is notably seen through the actions of Tancredi, particularly when he is shown acquainting with the ever-changing Italian military, as they quickly move from being Garibaldi's impulsive anti-royalist guerilla forces to regimented pro-royalist anti-terror squads. The infusion of democratic ideals onto the Sicilian political landscape with a plebiscite regarding the annexation of Sicily to the Italian mainland is another key matter in demonstrating the modifications of class relationships and the influx of corrupt political schemes including bribery, rigged elections and the acquistion of tracts of land through backhand tactics.

[Spoilers in the the next two paragraphs]

The Leopard may be an Italian film, but it is a Sicilian epic. The island's harsh topography, inclimate geography and impoverished status is used to great effect throughout Visconti's intelligent epic. The loss of an independent Sicilian political identity is a key element to the picture, which is mostly felt on the shoulders of Lancaster's Prince. Despite his initial happiness with political unification as a means of securing his own future, the Prince becomes increasingly dismayed at the underhand approach and dirty tactics displayed by the local bourgeoisie, the military and the federal Italian politicians. The film can be viewed as one of two parts: the first in which Italian annexation is seen as a route to secure prosperity through Tancredi and the second in which the Prince realizes the utter failure of such an approach that has done little to protect his prominent status. As with other films in the period, The Leopard is equally a film about the conflicts between the old and the new. On a political level, this can be seen in the Prince's arguments with the bourgeoisie; on a domestic level it is through his fleeting faith in an increasingly bawdy and comtemptuous Tancredi and his realization of the defiencies of his own youthful progeny.

The film's celebrated ballroom sequence- beautifully shot by Giuseppe Rotunno- demonstrates the Prince's melancholic summarization of his choices were the generations of cross-breeding between select families and cousins has not resulted in a purified and noble class, but rather a slovenly and ignoble group of idle children who are either overtly wayward in their direction or stubbornly refuse to have any such as his own daughter Concetta who refuses the overtures of a Milanese Count (Terence Hill) due to her distaste for the urban north and her dwelling upon a lost love. Here the politically young rebuke the ideas of their elders without apology or reservations; while the youthful children dance and giggle only for their parents to attempt securing partnerships to save their fading status. Thus it is only through a last waltz with his beloved nephew's fiancee Angelica that the Prince realizes his own failures and triumphs: finding solace in angelic beauty.

Throughout the film Visconti rarely uses close-ups; preferring instead to utilize medium and long-shots to enhance the interior mood of the character against the architecture: a method utilized by both Antonioni in L'Avventura and Olmi in I, Fidanzati. The ballroom sequence is one of several sequences that uses the motif of multiple doorways being opened at once noting the opportunites and pathways for the characters to choose. Visconti's method, whether in elegant salons or dim alleys, to allow characters to fade out of view is another remarkable visual symbol designed to show the impermenant status of mortality and livelihood.

Unlike American epics of the period, Visconti allows Rotunno's camera to blend into the crowd as almost a third-party observer: gazing upon the characters in question from eye-level as by-passers naturally walk in-front of their field of view. The stunning cinematogrpahy ranges from the impressionistic influenced exterior imagery which evokes the cruel majestic status of nature, to the Baroque interior sequences which are ornately decorated, lavishly costumed and exqusitely detailed. The rich cinematography provides a deeper layering of the character's thoughts and feelings: aiding in the film's visual psychology.

Despite belonging to an ancient Italian aristocratic family himself, Visconti was an intellectual Marxist who preferred on paper the idea of egalitarianism. Thus, the director has a personal equation to the film's themes of a vanishing class, as well as the Prince's own struggle with balancing democracy and the retaining of his former privileged status. Visconti's use of locations and ability to allow characters, images and feelings to engage in a transition between detachment and intimacy is a rare feat in a historical epic. Nina Rota's score adds the atmospheric notions of melancholy and prestige in its richness. In one of his best roles Lancaster is strong and powerful as the tempermental, yet unenduring noble figure who labours to balance authority and change. Delon is magnificent as the Prince's spontaneous playboy nephew adding a degree of envy and ill-boding motivation to the character. Yet, the real star here is Cardinale: a gorgeous ball of steaming sex, who perfectly fits into the naive aura of her character as an individual who brightens weary hearts and stops the activities in the room with a single movement.

The Leopard is a brisk, scholarly and gorgeous historical epic. Shot with decadent care, the film manages to encompass the chameleon-like changes in tone set in motion by the events of the Risorgmento in mid-19th century Sicily. With a splendid cast, Visconti captures a moment in time that whilst predating the political changes of the late Sixties feels to be an ominent forecaster of the failure of such revolutionary ideas. The setting of Risorgmeneto Italy was utilized by Visconti in earlier pictures such as Senso and therefore it would have been interesting to see how similar Visconti would have made this film in 1968, rather than 1963. Such is its universal classicism and inquisitive political approach, it is unlikely he would have changed a single beautiful thing.
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* I would advise anybody who wishes to see The Leopard, but has no background in Modern European history to watch the fifteen minute historical context special feature on the second disc about the Risorgmento on the Criterion DVD prior to watching the film. It does not give away any spoilers and is a valuable aid for those without any knowledge of that period.

** The Leopard is available through Criterion

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1942: Sullivan's Travels

Sullivan's Travels (1942, Sturges) 7/10


John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) is your classic versatile Hollywood director: reliable, profitable and respectful. After shooting such "classics" as Ants in Your Plants of 1939 and Hey, Hey in the Hayloft, Sullivan has decided to move into the cinematic domain of Capra: creating social justice pictures to aid those in troubled times. Sullivan is the type of artist, which Andrew Sarris would expect and which Leni Riefenstahl would be bemused over: a Sarrisian auteur figure willing to imbue his own personal stamp on his projects and utilize his stature to raise political and social questions; unlike the self-proclaimed apolitical Riefenstahl who claims that art and politics act within their own separate spheres.

Preston Sturges' 1941 film Sullivan's Travels begins with a rip-roaring fight atop a train on a stormy night, which would not be unfamiliar in the work of Lang or Hitchcock. The two men continue to battle before falling off the train and into the river below as "The End" surfaces from the icy water. It's all metaphorically political in Sullivan's mind. It's capitalism versus communism in a futile brawl atop one of the Industrial Revolution's signature pieces. Yet, to the studio it is trouble. Serious pictures do not sell in mainstream America and could later cause trouble: a fact in retrospect to which Sturges was extremely perceptive given the trouble social justice pictures brought about for figures such as Dmytryk and Trumbo a decade later. But Sullivan is their star director and thus he decides to utilize his clout within the studio system to make the great American social picture to be entitled Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? Naturally, the studio are unamused and would prefer Sullivan to create a less-personal project in the form of Ants in Your Plants of 1941 instead.

Sullivan is convinced that through the power of images, he can change modern society for the better. He is a true idealist, the type who later on would have been called in front of HUAC and probably blacklisted. He undertakes a research project designed to find out the type of material he should utilize in Oh, Brother Where Art Thou? Thus, against the warnings of the studio and his assistants, he disguises himself as a tramp (a socially inclined reference to Chaplin's oeuvre) and traverses the American landscape in search of the hapless and the hopeless impoverished wastrels who have been abandoned by their nation. Yet, there is something oddly ironic about his journey. No matter how hard he tries to leave the confines of Hollywood, it never leaves him.

He is followed by an RV of press agents, chefs and reporters attempting to utilize his story as the greatest PR coup in history. When he does attempt to escape via hitchhiking, he always ends up back in LA. He meets an unnamed female simply known as "The Girl"- played brilliantly by the astoundingly gorgeous Veronica Lake:a poor studio's version of Lauren Bacall. She offers to aid Sullivan in his travels; yet she, like Sullivan, is bothered by their meager conditions and their inability to find viable source material. When they do encounter their future subjects and material they are aghast at the plight and conditions, which will later create Sullivan's sympathetic masterpiece. Trouble arises and Sullivan himself ends in the position of those whom he wishes to create a film about. Without his assistants and his money, Sullivan is just another man resigned to an inescapable fate.

Sturges' film is a sophisticated masterwork of satire: a superly directed and touching road film with a splendid cast and a personalized message on the state of American cinema. He follows the credits with a personal homage to clowns and to comedy and ends the film with a group of prisoners forgetting their troubles through laughter. Throughout the film, Sturges parodies the type of films Sullivan wants to emulate: films by Capra and Chaplin and works such as I Am A Fugitive on a Chain Gang, Grapes of Wrath and The Prisoner of Shark Island. There is even a scene in which Sullivan is watching a serious film in a rural theatre were very few members of the audience are actually concentrating on the film at hand. His message is clear. Although social justice films have their place, it is the belief of Sturges that comedy has a greater importance in the lives of individuals: that through comedy they can escape their internal and external problems and enjoy the silliness of life.

In order to demonstrate his thesis, Sturges utilizes almost every brand of comedy during the period including a sped-up slapstick car chase; sight-gags in paintings, Hollywood in-jokes and witty social critiques. His casting of honest everyman Joel McCrea perfectly extenuates Sullivan's desire to disappear into the masses and become the credulous face in the crowd. Yet, his approach belies that fact: pulling up in an expensive car to hitch a ride on a freight train; or using clothes and props from the studio to make himself appear more authentically downtrodden. The result is Hollywood's version of a bum. When Sullivan and "The Girl" encounter reality they are stunned by the horror of it, yet are pleased by the kindness of strangers such as the poor and isolated coffee shop owner who gives them food for nothing.


Thus, these stripped down, almost neorealist segments in the film are Sturges' own nod to the futility of Hollywood attempting to create a document of poverty through their expensive wardrobes, sets and art direction. Sullivan's own ability to escape Hollywood figuratively and mentally is a further example of this element. These assured and sensitive attempts at replicating such conditions onscreen throughout Sullivan's Travels provides further credence to Sturges' promotion of a supplementary relationship between comedy and social drama in Hollywood: which does not necessarily require that seriousness on screen be given more responsibility and acclaim than comedy, but rather that each form is recognized for its beneficial effects on the populace.

* Sullivan's Travels is released separately in a deluxe edition by Criterion and is included in a basic edition in Universal's Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1939: Young Mr. Lincoln

Young Mr. Lincoln (1939, Ford) 8/10

The cinema of John Ford is often the cinema of American mythography. Despite his Irish Catholic roots, there is perhaps no other director who has repeatedly attempted to capture the historical American essence on celluloid as much or as well as John Ford. Young Mr. Lincoln is a minor masterpiece of Ford's idyllic poems to American populist folk history and its sense of character. While Ford is best known for his Monument Valley westerns such as Stagecoach and The Searchers, Ford's filmography displays a variety of important (yet today often overlooked) historical (Young Mr. Lincoln/Prisoner of Shark Island/Drums Along the Mohawk) and contemporary (Last Hurrah/Grapes of Wrath) attempts to define the American spirit.

Young Mr. Lincoln is one of Ford's earliest forays into this historiographical era, which produced early highlight The Prisoner of Shark Island documenting the miscarriage of justice when Dr. Samuel Mudd (Warren Baxter) was incarcerated to the Shark Island penal colony for his supposed involvement in the Lincoln assassination: Curtiz' The Sea Hawk taken from Sabatini's book is a much more famous and frivolous example of a figure wrongly accused, which takes on a much more epic and lively form. Young Mr. Lincoln made three years after The Prisoner of Shark Island also examines democracy, justice, liberty and other American values during the fragmented pre-Civil War period. Much like his Drums Along the Mohawk made the same year (1939 also saw Ford direct Stagecoach) as Young Mr. Lincoln, Ford attempts to find the historiographical roots of Americana.


Young Mr. Lincoln is not a historical accurate account of the life and times of Abraham Lincoln, nor is it meant to be. Rather it is an examination of ideals and community built around the romanticized actions of Lincoln, who is considered to be one of the great American champions of these cultural standards. It is crucial for modern audiences to understand the historical period under which Ford's film was created in which the world was yet again on the verge of war and extremist ideals at either of the spectrum reigned unchecked. Thus, Ford's film becomes a gentle patriotic reminder to American audiences about the importance of maintaining an American identity and history in a turbulent era of revolution and totalitarianism. Critics such as Karl Williams have often referred to the picture as a "hagiographical" account of Lincoln's formative years rather than a complete biography: a film designed to swell the myths surrounding the cult of Lincoln giving the "Great Emancipator" an almost God-like status: made more pertinent by Fonda's assertions that the role was akin to playing Jesus. Yet, such critical voices tend to forget the timeframe under which the film was created, as well as the conditions under which films were made during the period. Any attempt to create a multi-faceted film about Lincoln's life would appear as blasphemous to censors and audiences alike. Allowing the spread of populism during such an ominous period outweighed the need for historical checks and balances.

Although a staunch social conservative, the ideals Ford stresses in the picture belong to classic liberalism: rejecting big government in favour of increased civil and economic liberties. These liberalist tendencies fit within the classic American perception of how a democratic society should operate. It is this ideological preference which has resulted in Ford's filmography being often misinterpreted and misunderstood. Whereas openly racist pictures such as Griffith's Birth of a Nation, although integral to any understanding of cinematic history at a technical level, continue to garner acclaim; Ford continues to be relegated based on his awkward and antiquated attempts at addressing racial or social issues: in a period which repeatedly failed to explore them publically and despite the social continuance of the populist ideals he explored. Thus typical Ford comedies such as Donovan's Reef have become neglected, as have Ford's more expansive attempts at addressing racism and sexism such as Fort Apache, Cheyenne Autumn, Sergeant Rutledge and Seven Women. Even The Searchers-today often the most lauded Ford film- strives to examine the source of racism, despite its rather hackneyed and hasty embrace between racist Ethan Edwards and his niece.


Young Mr. Lincoln is not a Ford picture designed to address these social problems, instead it focuses on the society that would establish and preserve the validity of such ethical choices until the Civil Rights movement in the late Sixties. An often barely recognizable and brilliant Henry Fonda transforms Lincoln from a mythical figure to a humble and hard-working lad who rides a mule because he cannot afford a stately horse. Ford's Lincoln is an idealist and a champion of American liberty, truth, education and justice. He aids a pioneer family in return for a collection of law books (Blackstone's Commentaries), which the illiterate clan have no use for and reads them in fascinated solitude by a river to decipher their spirit and definitions. The often repeated image of the river is part of Ford's sophisticated lens and becomes an important symbol for change, progress and the future.Throughout the film, Ford (as in many of his other films) examines the spirit and values of the American community through the participation in town festivals, sports, games, contests and parades. Here notions of fairness, tradition and vitality become sewed into Ford's American historical fabric.

Yet, the social workings of the film's first half give way to a more political and legal commentary on American society.The film's centerpiece trial continues Ford's mythographical look at Lincoln. The trial itself was not based on any case tried by Lincoln, but rather on a trial witnessed by screenwriter Lamar Trotti. Yet, it is the film's key moment, which creates the greatest insights into the characteristics of the Fordian Lincoln. The community fondness toward lynching the Clay brothers (suspects to a murder during a town festival) is akin to that in Fritz Lang's first American film, the superb anti-lynching drama Fury made three years prior and demonstrates Ford's desire to stress patriotic American democratic values: access to a fair trial, equal justice and liberty to the innocent.

The communal fury over the prospects of a trial and the denied calls for the suspects to be lynched demonstrates Ford's reassertion of democratic justice over vigilante justice in a time when Fascist thuggery and Orwellian pre-emptive trials were prevalent in Germany, Italy and Stalinist Russia. Lincoln's active participation in the trial and his effect on the community reinforce American values in a society, which is in danger of losing them to fear, blind justice, political coercion and irrational judgments. The thunderous cloud which represents the oncoming storm of the Civil War simultaneously stresses the future storm far away from American soil in Europe; yet also the possible danger lurking in the hinterlands of a corruption of American values, which can be avoided through following the disciplined example of Abraham Lincoln and his correlation to American ethical, social and moral codes.

* Young Mr Lincoln is available through Criterion

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1942: The Children Are Watching Us

The Children Are Watching Us (1942, de Sica) 8/10


The Children Are Watching Us was Vittorio De Sica's fifth film as a director, but more importantly it was a proto-neorealist melodrama, which laid the domestic groundwork for future neorealist classics such as Bicycle Thieves and Rome, Open City. Whereas neorealism deconstructed ideas about class and poverty through a Christian-Marxist lens, The Children are Watching Us still retains the sympathetic emotion-laden cinematic language and sentimental overtones of Fascist period Italian cinema, as well as the utilization of studio sets and actors. Yet, even though the film is situated around a crime of passion, the "crime" itself is not a state offence, but a moral and spiritual one.

Filmed in 1942, but only released in 1944 after Mussolini was defeated, the story taken from neorealist screenwriter Cesare Zavanetti's script tells the tale of young Prico (Luciano de Ambrosis): a Roman infant who awakes one morning to see that his bourgeois mother Nina (Isa Pola) has left town in the night with her on-and-off lover Roberto (Adriano Rimoldi) . Prico's father Andrea (Emilio Cigoli) a prosperous businessman is driven into a state of shock. Unable to parent his own son, he attempts to briefly whisk him away to his relatives in order to figure out the boy's future.

The child becomes an unwanted gift: a parcel re-directed from door to door in an attempt to find a suitable guardian. Nobody wants to assist the father or his son, rather they openly blame the child and his mother for the situation at hand. His aunt is unwilling to take him as it infers with her work and own romantic life; his grandmother leaves the boy malnourished and scorns his childlike behaviour as it interrupts her peaceful retirement; while his cousin Paolina allows him to run away in order for her to secretly rendezvous with a local barber.


In doing so Prico witnesses an unfiltered view of the world. De Sica makes a key artistic choice by making Prico the vehicle by which the social and domestic horrors of the world are decoded. Throughout the film, De Sica allows the boy's eyes to strip away all the pure moral fantasies of marriage, childhood and domesticity as propagandized by Mussolini's regime. Through it we see Prico repeatedly pushed away to interact alone in corners, while the adults gossip; allowing him to listen to uncensored adult material about recent sexual escapades, forbidden lovers and material interests.

Yet, Prico is not as complacent or unknowing an observer as the adult world appears to believe he is. Rather, he allows the information to seep into his heart: creating his own complex internal destruction and sadness: which notably springs to life in a feverish train ride reminiscent of the tornado scene in the Wizard of Oz. In an attempt to keep the boy docile, his mother and other relatives bribe him with empty promises of gifts, trips and affection in order for him to lock away their secret sexual trysts and nightly love affairs. He sees the destruction of his family unit: the melancholy hopelessness of his father and the unabashed adultery of his mother. In an especially powerful scene, the young boy witnesses his mother being attacked by her lover; only to later on in the film view the same couple continue their love affair at a middle-class holiday resort, while Prico's father is called back to Rome on business. Prico's response is stunning as he flees the resort and attempts to board a train back to Rome to be with his father. This scene culminates with the boy almost being hit by a speeding locomotive only to be chased away in tears by an unsympathetic railway attendant.

At times the film is as shocking today is it was over forty years ago. It's power is found in the fostering and the dissolving of individual relationships between the boy and his parents. Although Prico is at times too cute and angelic; Renzo Rossellini's score is repeatedly overly sweeping; and de Sica utilizes far too many tearful close-ups, this is an immensely powerful and wonderful film. The script and the film's more understated scenes carry the picture and surprisingly give it is greatest emotional impact. The restrained melodrama of the scene in which Prico's father attempts to learn about his wife's escapades utilizes close-ups in a touching and effective manner. Yet, nothing can prepare the audience for the film's devastating finale, which one must find difficult to comprehend how audiences in 1944 received the film's finale.

The Children are Watching Us is as pertinent now as it was sixty years ago. Although it contains some intensive emotional conditioning, the film never wavers from its attempt to demonstrate the worldliness of the child. The film's title recognizes that and warns adults to maintain a level of respect and dignity within the presence of children. De Sica's film attempts to show that while children may not understand the material spoken by adults, they can comprehend the consequences, which will envelope their little universe. As with De Sica's later Bicycle Thieves, the picture promotes the importance of strong moral examples and the creation of a relationship between parent and child that is not based upon material goods and vacant promises, but on a spiritual kinship fostered by an active interest in the child's life and in the world s/he is developed within.

* The Children Are Watching Us is available through Criterion

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.

1960: Virgin Spring

The Virgin Spring (1960, Bergman) 9/10

"If you always get your way, you'll give the devil such joy; saints will punish you," so tells pious Christian mother Mareta (Birgitta Valberg) to her spoiled, precocious daughter Karin (Birgitta Pettersson). It is almost noon and Karin has been asked by her father Töre (Max von Sydow) to continue the ceremonious custom that a virgin will offer candles to the local priest several miles away. Yet, she is sleeping in bed feigning sickness. The only "fever" she has recently succumb to was in her feverish and passionate dancing the night before at a local dance. Sleep and material goods are more a priority for Karin than spiritual development. When finally rustled from her slumber she negotiates the terms of preserving the tradition of delivering candles to her mother. Her terms are material and hardly spiritual. She will only go if she is allowed to wear her most lavish silk clothing: her mother and father capitulate to her wishes.

Karin's association to the spiritual is akin to other characters in Ingmar Bergman's 1960 film The Virgin Spring in that their pious selfless exteriors belie their jealous and sinful interiors. In the film's opening we are introduced to three characters: the pagan servant Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom); the pious mother and father; and a middle-aged maid Frida (Gudrun Brost) and a beggar (Allan Edwall). The first time we meet Ingeri, she is starting a fire and raising the thatched roof of the Töre household. Ingeri is pregnant with an out of wedlock child to a local farm-hand. She has been scorned by the Tore clan who continually praise their Christian values for allowing her back into the fold; although in reality she has been excommunicated from the religious atmosphere declaring "I have no name," and thus no Christian identity. Throughout the film she is dirty,unkempt and is lit minimally. Her first act is to pray to the Scandinavian God Odin for help, whilst in the background a morning cock crows on three separate occasions. Upstairs, Mareta and her husband pray diligently in their room for God's help before Mareta begins her cruel penance by burning her wrist on a candle.

In contrast Frida blesses God for aiding her and preventing her from stepping on a fleet of ducklings, whilst she and the beggar discuss the majestic Churches he has seen on his travels. Thus we see three interpretations of religiousity: pagan, ceremoniously Christian and active Christian. These are important to the picture as it is the latter active Christianity represented by the beggar and Frida which throughout the film is evidently more in line with Christ's teachings than the pomp and circumstance Mareta avows by.


Although the parents argue over her discipline, Karin's feigning of illness and lackadiscal approach to Christianity is not seen as overly problematic by the family. Rather they embrace and encourage it as Karin becomes the true head of the family laughing at her father's "anger" and augmenting her charm with empty promises. She wishes to take Ingeri along with her to send candles and messages, which allows Bergman to compare and contrast the two parties: one whose lack of faith is scorned; whilst the other is praised.

Throughout the ride Karin is brightly lit; whilst Ingeri appears sloven and dull. Karin seems to have an interest in lower class individuals as noted by her dancing at a local festival the night before with a man who is possibly the father of Ingeri's child. Yet, the virginal Karin professes she will be untouched until her wedding night despite her eagerness in Ingeri's eyes to use her sexuality to win her favours at the dances. Ingeri bluntly asks her what she will do "if a man puts you down behind a bush?" To which the naive and innocent Karin replies "I'll fight my way free."


As Karin rides to the Church the film takes on the virtues of an almost bizarre marital ceremony. Given away by her father earlier she rides down the aisle (the road) to the altar were with flowers in hand she meets the farm-hand, who continues to allow her on her way without any objections. Soon she arrives at the altar, which is not a the church but rather an open plain in the surrounding woods. The woods with their pagan accents have frightened Ingeri who stops at a pagan Bridgekeeper's cottage and leaves Karin alone to continue across to an uncharted area. Yet, when Karin meets three lusty herdsman she does not feel any fear from them. Instead she is charmed by their gaunt appearances and kindly offers to share her lunch with them.

Although this section reveals Karin's moments of Christian selflessness, she continually reminds them of her wealth, stature and class. Yet, the herdsmen are less interested in the food and more in her sexual offerings: raping her and cementing the foul marital ceremony, which began at her home. "The herdsmen three took her to wife/And then took from her her life" says the 13th century ballad upon which Bergman's film is an extended adaptation. The sacredness of the marriage is defouled by her rape in the web-like bushes (preceding Through a Glass Darkly in its spider imagery)and by their subsequent destruction of her candles and clothes. Yet, the entire time we notice Ingeri has watched from afar. Only she can stop the proceedings, but she fails to do so. Rather, she is torn between her lust to see Karin suffer and the humane idea to save her.

Time passes and the family begin to worry for Karin's life, yet they are visited by three strangers: two herdsmen and a young boy. The boy is frightened and ill: vomiting each meal offered to him. Frida and the priestly beggar comfort him, while the boy's own family secretly abuse him. Mareta's cermonial view of Christianity washes away and she desires to care for the boy. Yet, she soon discovers the realities of her daughter's disappearance. She summons her husband. His fondness of ritual and pagentry and his less serious approach toward Christianity may demonstrate the possiblity of his own pagan past to which fondness of purgation-infused customs have never lingered despite his conversion to Christianity.

Nykvist's beautiful cinematography comes alive when von Sydow wrestles a tree in a bare field: symbolic of his struggle between God and nature. He cleanses himself and prepares for battle. In the brief snippets of commentary I have listened to Birgitta Steene seems convinced of Bergman's own damning of the film and particular the notion of von Sydow's performance as a "parody" extracted from Bergman's tepid interpretation of Kurosawa's samurai heroes. Yet, I disagree with such a view as I believe his appearance and actions are intended. They remind us of the hyper-masculinity in the Greek and Roman Gods and their sense of retribution Töre bears on the exterior. They also allude to his fixation on paganistic ideals fused into an Old Testament interpretation of Christianity, which von Sydow will enact in front of Ingeri and his wife. Yet, he becomes a "parody" -to use Steene's terminology and definition of character- of the idealized warrior in his willing submission to his daughter's every passing fancy and earthly delight.


However, his actions do not provide closure or equilibrium for the savagery performed upon Karin. On the contrary they breed more guilt toward himself and further anger towards God as he cannot believe God will allow such actions to take place. The film's analysis of Old Testament Christianity is Bergman's route to deconstructing the false religious meanings in values such as "an eye for an eye." Retribution does not bring about contentment, but rather it arouses further questions. The moment in which the Virgin Spring erupts from the ground, the divine grants them an opportunity to atone for their sins. The boy becomes a modern Christ-like figure, as does Karin. Their defiled innocence becomes a rallying point: a call to action to begin anew through the symbolic cleansing of their sins, which results in the pseudo-baptism of all the central characters in Töre's home including Ingeri.

* Virgin Spring is available through Criterion

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.