Friday, February 20, 2009

Modern Dancers

I have mentioned that I am taking classes this spring; there are two, on German films and another on the history of drama. I should probably try to find something else to blog about (and stop using it as an excuse not to write anything), but this week provided an uncanny overlap, too interesting to ignore. The film class covered Mabuse the Gambler, Fritz Lang, 1922. The drama class covered Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, 1592. The two resonate with one another in many ways.

The odds are good that Mabuse draws on Faust, fairly explicitly. Lots of films do, especially German films. Here, the influence is less the idea of selling your soul to the devil for power than the character of Faust, updated in Mabuse himself - the slippery identity, the conjuring tricks, the illusions, the acting - as well as the power, attained through manipulation of others, and usually employed to manipulate others. There are, as well, elements of the divided self implied by Faust, and the idea of gaining power by sacrificing individuality - Lang's film plays out as if Mabuse is both Faust and his own Mephistopheles. He manipulates technology, clocks and railroads and all the rest, and those tools become the source of his power, much as Mephistopheles is the source of Faust's power. And - the source of his destruction...

But the element that linked the two works for me was more the way both Faust and Mabuse are figures of their times - and specifically, figures of modernity. I mean modernity in a broad sense - in the sense of a whole new way of living, a new conception of the world and man replacing existing ideas. Faustus is a figure of a changing time. The late 16th century was a time of profound change - it's the beginning of the modern world, really. The world changed in the 16th century - I mean that literally: the world doubled in size after 1492, and the subsequent century kept expanding it, changing everything there was to change about the world. And - the dominant cultural institution of Europe also changed, utterly, in the 16th century, with the Reformation. And that led to a remapping of the world. And to new forms of government, new ideas about the state. And all this is in addition to the almost equally profound changes of the Renaissance: the birth of humanism, of capitalism, everything that happened in the 15th century. All these changes to the world changed what it meant to be human: changes how the individual interacted with society, how people defined themselves, everything. All reflected in the play....

All of which is equally true of the early 20th century, when things changed as profoundly in half the time... During the 19th century broadly, and especially the stretch from 1875 to 1925 (say), the world, again, completely changed. Political and social and cultural changes turned the world on its ear - though the real stunner was the technological changes. It's hard to really do justice to how much changed in that period. To consider how utterly differently we relate to thew world in 1925 than 1875 (more or less). The age of exploration may have doubled the size of the known world - but the technological changes of the late 19th century changed the perceptual, experiential sense of the world even more radically. The relationship between time and space were changed (an idea I'm borrowing from Tom Gunning) - space could be eliminated; space became a function of time. By 1900 it was possible to cross vast distances in short periods of time (steam ships and trains, then cars, then airplanes...). It was possible to send messages to someone on the other side of the world, in a second. Possible to talk to them. To hear their voice, to see their picture.

All these things are reflected in Faustus and Mabuse. Marlowe's play is full of travel, Faustus traveling around the world, flying up to the heavens to study the stars, wandering around Europe; it reflects facts of the 16th century - the appearance of new foods in Europe (the scene of the duchess asking for fresh grapes, which Mephistopheles fetches from around the world reminds me of the scene in Blackadder where Sir Walter Raleigh presents Queen Elizabeth with a potato.) Political schisms and religious controversies. Even the appearance of professional theater - Faustus by the end seems more like a theatrical entrepreneur than a magician, putting on shows for the nobility... It's also a story about a man who gives up all the traditional signs of identity - family, home, state, religion - in search of power, knowledge, and his own self. He is a performer - and his identity becomes a performance...

Which is also true of Mabuse. He's a gambler and an actor - the film starts with Mabuse looking at a deck of cards with his various disguises on them (like an actors' head shots.) But he's also a figure of the media - he manipulates information, directly, indirectly (in the opening stack fixing scheme especially.) He's a master of modern technology - the phone and the railroad and clocks and stock tickers - and he is presented, in that opening sequence, especially, as a master of time itself. Everything timed to the second... He's the master of the gaze, as well - a hypnotist, which Lang presents with some fascinating editing and framing of sequences - he uses hypnosis to win at the tables, not cheating at cards: manipulating, again, the game from outside, but in. He works, somewhat surprisingly, within the systems of the modern world - he exploits the railroad timetables; he uses the fact that people trust the newspapers; he takes advantage of the timing of the closing bell at the stock market. He takes advantage of the importance of maintaining the game, when he's gambling - he depends on keeping the game going, on the idea of people paying their debts, he uses all the well learned politesse of civilized life...

And they both come to highly symbolic ends: Faustus alone begging for another hour, another minute, only to be torn to pieces by devils... and Mabuse trapped in one of his own hideouts by a machine he made to keep his minions from stealing; powerless, because the men trapped with him are all blind, and his hypnotic powers are useless; surrounded by piles of his worthless counterfeit money, and then surrounded by ghosts - no longer able to control the illusions... (all that copped from Gunning's comments on the film, more or less...) Alone and mad, both of them.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

A Week Later...

(Pablo the Penguin, in the Galapagos.)

More than a week. I have no excuse - or not much of an excuse. Classes, the German film class I mentioned before, and a Drama class - they aren't really a reason not to blog, they haven't been all that time consuming so far.

I can't blame my film-going. At least last week end brought a couple fine movies to town: The Class was a treat, a worthy winner at Cannes last year. It's hard to say much about it - it's a self-contained and self-sufficient kind of film. It says what it shows and shows what it says - anything you can say about it is in the film. And Truffaut's The Wild Child has been rereleased, to continue the pedagogical theme. I hadn't seen it before... I am not a huge Truffaut fan, but this was hugely satisfying, on par with his best (400 Blows, Shoot the Piano Player, I'd say) - lean and spare and beautiful, great work.

ON video - there's the Three Cabelleros, under consideration at the Film of the Month Club - a strange, somewhat uneven hodge podge of propaganda, travelogue, animation, that builds to some rather extravagant surrealism, and filthy jokes featuring Donald Duck.... I did watch Rio Bravo - I haven't seen it in ages, and it's nice to be reminded what a fine work it is. Character over story, you bet... The German film class bracketed Nosferatu and Mabuse the Gambler (Part 1) - we'll see if I can muster anything on those in the future- not this week, apparently...

And out in the world? Pitchers and catchers are reporting - the world is a happy place. The sporting news has not been happy - another superstar disgraced - that's Bud Selig at that last link, saying A-Rod "shamed the game." No word if he said that in a Claude Rains voice, but it's certainly a piece of performance art. Steroids saved the game in the 90s, saved it in spite of people like Selig, saved Selig - it's good they're cleaning it up, but when anyone in authority in the game says they are shocked or shamed by the dopers, you know they are lieing. I'll take the cheaters over the liars any day.

But I don't care. Bud Selig can't reduce my happiness in the game - he's been trying for years to ruin it, and hasn't done it yet. This is too wonderful a time of year to care....

ANyway - let's wrap up with some remembrances. Today is the 200th birthday of both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. Both widely celebrated on the web. Jacqueline Lynch has a nice post up about one of the stranger moments in classic American cinema - the Abraham number in Holiday Inn. A fairly late blackface routine in American film, and one presented almost guiltily, and cut in the middle with a neat chorus by Louise Beavers. It's strange - off-putting now, with signs that the filmmakers shared the discomfort, the sense that this was not right... anyway - a nice essay...

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Bad News

Bad bit of news tonight - Lux Interior of the Cramps, has died. I saw them, only once though, back in the late 80s - quite a show. The band did their thing, a girl in the crowd took off her clothes and was passed around on people's shoulders - a fine time was had by all. That's getting to be quite a while ago now - 20 years maybe? Lord! I was feeling a happier nostalgia earlier this week - with the rerelease of the first Volcano Suns record - another band that knew how to make music to party to.... this sort of brings it down.

Anyway - very sad news. The Cramps were great fun, Lux a very cool frontman. Here they are, Lux fully clothed, doing Goo Goo Muck...

Monday, February 02, 2009

Weekend Film Watching

Time to check back in here. I'll start with bloggage: a new month starts on the Film of the Month Club - this month, looking at Disney's WWII Latin America propaganda cartoon, Three Cabelleros. Oddly enough, I look forward to this more than usual - I remember it, seeing a picture of Donald and the Parrot from the film in some book I had, maybe a Disney encyclopedia of some sort, maybe the articles about South America. Something about it must have made an impression on me, since I remember the picture but not the book. Anyway - here's hoping for a lively discussion... The next couple days I'll be at classes - tomorrow, my German film class: which reminds me that at the other monthly film discussion group, Jonathan Lapper will be leading a discussion of The Tin Drum from February 16 on.

Meanwhile - it was an interesting weekend. Started badly: my neighbors were making noise half the night Friday, putting me in a poor state of mind; it was a particularly lousy weekend for new movies - in the end, absolutely nothing lured me out of the house. But I did leave the house for the rep theaters, and was richly rewarded. A Paul Schrader double feature, with Schrader in attendance: he was quite inspiring. Funny, sometimes insightful and informative (he had a tendency to circle the questions, but it didn't matter, because he usually ended up telling interesting stories anyway), but always entertaining. He talked about religious symbolism (in Light Sleeper), saying he wanted images that weren't obvious - not like "fucking Darren Aronofsky" putting a "tattoo of Jesus on his fucking back." - "You have to cover your tracks!" He turned a confusing, awkward comment about Pickpocket from the crowd into a reiteration of his love for the film. He talked about making a "Marxist" film for Universal, in Blue Collar - and about fitting films' politics to the logic of the characters. It was a good night.

The films are pretty good as well. Light Sleeper is an odd concoction: a midlife crisis film - Schrader said he was looking for a way to write about middle age without falling into the usual cliches, when he had a dream about a drug dealer, growing old - that became the film. Willem Dafoe plays the dealer - Susan Sarandon his boss, who's going legit (cosmetics) - Dana Delany his old girlfriend, in their stoned days... bad things happen, redemption is sought... It's a nicely made film, though Schrader's style is relatively unexceptional - but he knows how to tell a story. He talked quite a bit about the music, by Michael Been of the Call - about his idea to have a suite of songs expressing the thoughts of the character, about wanting to use Dylan songs, but having Dylan not give him the ones he needed. Been's music almost works - it might have, except it's done in a very irritating late 80s/early 90s pop style that dates it worse than any of the costumes... Still - a good piece of work.

Blue Collar, on the other hand, is easily the best Schrader film I have seen - Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto are autoworkers, the first two family men with money troubles, the third an ex-con - they all have troubles, money, lack of respect at work, from the company or the union - they decide to rob the union shop. And that sets off a string of events that - change everything. It's first rate: the cast is extraordinary - Keitel and Kotto are always fine, and here, Pryor is astonishing - moving from his fast-talking persona to dead serious, thoughtful, fearful, defiant - just great. Schrader develops the characters, avoids demonizing or sanitizing - people do good and bad things for good and bad reasons, we never stop sympathizing with them, even when we know they are doing wrong. The film itself is, indeed, Marxist - a condemnation of the system, the corruption in the system itself, not in the particular people or institutions - a condemnation of the means of keeping people in place. Really, a genuinely great film.

Finally - staying home and firing up the DVD player - I watched Husbands and Wives. Which I was rather startled to discover (given my other recent Woody Allen experiences) is a pretty good film. It's the most satisfying Woody Allen film I've seen since Zelig, I'll say that. The story is - Woody and MIa Farrow play Gabe and Judy, married 10 years; their friends Jack and Sally (played by Sydney Pollack and Judy Davis) split up at thebeginning, precipitating a bit of a crisis for Gabe and Judy. He's soon flirting with a clever 20 year old writer; she passively pursues a co-worker; Jack screws his aerobics instructor and Sally goes after Michael, the same man Judy pines for. The film cycles among all these people and stories, and sometimes goes further, acting out bits of Gabe's novel, jumping into flashbacks for any of the characters - and framing the whole thing with a series of interviews with the characters. This gets at why I like this film - it is quite stylistically audacious. Allen uses handheld cameras, jump cuts, and all the twisty time structures, things like the mock interviews... It's interesting to look at, which is not often the case with Woody Allen films - and more than that, it serves the story. for all its fictiveness, it is, like a lot of his work, very essayistic - examining moral and personal issues almost abstractly: acting them out. Here - the links to Gabe's novel are underlined by the style - the film (with its look, with its narrative jumps, the flashbacks and forwards and fantasy sequences and so on) feels distinctly written. Ed Howard's comments on the film note that it's one of Allen's few nods to Godard - I think that's right, not just in the look, but in the way it is made like a novel, with a particularly willful first person narrator. Though it's an odd first person, with its multiple points of view, its shifting sympathies - it's quite dialogic. It is, in the end, very satisfying - it lives up to the claims Allen's fans make about his films.