Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Manoel de Oliveira Retrospective

The Harvard Film Archive has been on a particularly interesting run lately. I suppose they always have great programming - but last year and this, they seem to have had a lot of things and people I knew a little bit about, but not enough - it's been a chance to discover several filmmakers in some depth. Rivette and Tarr and Pedro Costa last year; this year, Jose Luis Guerin, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and now Manoel de Oliveira

I've seen some Oliveira in the past, 3-4 films - Party, I'm Going Home, Belle Toujours, etc. They were, I thought, handsome, well made art films, with some surrealist or theatrical twists, but that's about all. I knew he had a reputation for greatness, but thought it was mostly a result of his longevity - a 70 year career of fine work... This series has been a revelation. In fact, he is a fascinating, challenging, almost unique director - the films I had seen are his most conventional: he has made some far stranger works through the years. 

This is just a quick set of notes about the films I have seen: there is a lot to be said about them, but for now, things will have to stay fairly sketchy. There are a few more films in the series - I have more to look forward to.

Magic Mirror: 2005 film, about a young man who gets out of prison and starts working for a rich woman who is obsessed with religion, and longs to be visited by the virgin Mary; the ex-con hooks up with a forger turned piano tuner, and they hatch a scheme to fake the miracle... but what happens then.... actually, the whole film works, narratively, by promising a plot - a trip to the Holy Land? a backstory about a woman named Camille? an affair between the driver and the rich woman? the plot to fake the appearance of the Virgin? - which never quite materializes. Or is elided in the film, like the tour - which happens offscreen, then appears onscreen, as something from the past... It's a strange, stylized film, that starts slow and stiff, but slowly teaches you how to watch it, and gains in power throughout - this was the first film I saw during this program, and it was an excellent introduction to the odder side of Oliveira's career.

Aniki Bobo: His first feature film, from 1942 - a very charming film about kids in Oporto, centering on the romantic rivalry between Eduardo, athletic and boastful, and Carlitos, soulful and a bit put upon, for the love of little Teresinha. When Eduardo gets the upper hand, Carlitos steals a doll for the girl. He is haunted by guilt, though that doesn't stop him from giving it to her. Things take a turn the next day - the shop owner sees them and follows, they run, fight, and watch a train - oh no! a fall! (Not giving anything away - that's the first shot of the film, one of the boys falling toward the train tracks...) Anyway - it's been called a precursor to neo-realism, which is a fair comment. Even more than that, though, it looks like the missing link between Zero for Conduct and some of Ozu's kid films and Little Fugitive - the tone isn't quite as dire as those post-war Italian films... But the style and the method, shooting in the street with kids, basically, is definitely where that stuff is going. I don't know what actual connections there were among these films - but the style is very similar for all of them, as well as the interest in kids and their world. Very few adults figure here - the shop keeper, who is alternately indulgent and stern, and a ridiculous schoolteacher, basically. It's all kids. Anyway - it's very nicely done; there are some great shots - a kid climbing a crane and diving into the water; another kid running around on roof tops, not all the shots faked... very neat stuff.

Francisca: Massive slow art film about doomed love, one of many (4?) such films from Oliveira in the 70s. This one follows two men - one a writer (Camilo Castello Blanco, one of Portugal's great novelists), the other a romantic, a Byronist. The latter falls for the daughter of an Englishman - Francisca/Fanny. They elope, suffer; he's bored from the start, and a bit of a prick, and the writer also loves her, and interferes. There are letters - incriminating? he is suspicious of her, but he marries her anyway (by proxy - one of the many slyly funny moments in these films), but - we can guess where this is leading. She sickens and dies, he rants, then goes to confront her brother about her mystery. The brother offers nothing, and the lover dies, offscreen, so his friends can gossip about him over cognac. A very strange film: beautiful and lush, though the lushness is often (obviously) fake - painted backdrops, usually seen through doors and windows. (The most startling example of this is a shot of the sea: first we see the actual ocean through a window; then we cut back, and see the same window and scene, but now the seascape is a painting: Oliveira makes no effort to pretend otherwise, he emphasizes the artifice.) Actors pose and talk, often directly to the camera, sometimes as inner monologues, but sometimes when they should be talking to each other. Actors strike poses and remain still in some scenes - people dance or walk through scenes in odd disruptive ways. Whole scenes are repeated, shot from different angles. The speech is flat and uninflected, without emotion, with things conveyed conventionally - putting your head on your arm to indicate crying, etc. Stagy, though well beyond stagy. As abstract as Greenaway or Gertrud or Straub/Huillet, and like those films quite powerful, building in force throughout. And - like most of Oliveira's films - surprisingly funny, in a dark, understated way.

Doomed Love: good as Francisca is, Doomed Love is a masterpiece. It's a simple story - the unruly son of a provincial magistrate falls for the neighbor's daughter - but their fathers are enemies and forbid the match. When her father tries to marry her to a cousin, she rebels, and when he (her father) tries to force the issue, Simao (the boy) turns up and blood starts to flow. When he finally gets around to killing someone important, he is arrested (again - I'm not giving anything away - the film opens with the story of his arrest and transportation to India), and he and Teresa suffer in their separate confinements, until the title is fulfilled. Meanwhile, Simao is comforted by the daughter of a blacksmith his father once saved from the gallows: she is an angel, and suffers her fate with no hope of anything - her love is pure and selfless and doomed. Very long - almost 5 hours - in the same, strange style as Francisca - voiceover narration, non-emotive acting, flat line readings (like reading), occasional breaks in the representations - actors freezing in place, etc., more of the panted backgrounds, stylized sets and so on.... And gorgeous - gorgeous compositions and lighting, and some dazzling sequences: Teresa refusing to marry her cousin (she's shot reflected in a mirror while her father is in the shot directly - when she leaves the room, the camera retreats to keep her reflection in the shot, but never reveal her...); Teresa's introduction to the convent; the murder; and the ending, which definitely gives the title its due.... 

These films remind me of other films - Straub/Huillet, Greenaway sometimes, Rivette, late Dryer - but there really isn't a lot like them. Their mix of high melodrama and very high modernism... their aggressive anti-representationalism - all that inexpressive acting, the artificial sets and backgrounds, mixed, of course, with genuine natural vistas, deep, rich,colorful sets and costumes... their love of ritual and formalized movement: crimes and duels staged as tableaux; dances, dinners, etc., all formalized - like one scene in Doomed Love where the servants, preparing for a dance, come into a room to make it ready, going through it lighting candles, rolling up a carpet in formation - prefiguring the ritualized and formal dance that follows. Brilliant films.

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