I must pre-empt today's music post to note the passing of Manoel de Oliveira. Oliveira has been one of the more reliably interesting directors on the international art scene for some time now - in the past 25 years or so, he has maintained a fairly steady output of work, almost a film a year, all generally playful art films, though in a number of different styles and tones. Big melodramas, precise character studies and chamber pieces, bits of surrealism - long films, short films - it has been a remarkable run of films. Before that, in te 70s and 80s, he made a smaller number of films, but some of them are stunning masterpieces - Doomed Love or Francisca - long, challenging adaptations of 19th century literature, done in a strange, almost unique style: beautiful, artificial, sometimes static and abstract as Straub and Huillet, but with the sweeping emotions of the grand novels they adapt, and surreal traces throughout - they are beautiful, strange and subtly very funny, and they tend to make other adaptations of 19th century literature seem drab in comparison. I've been taking a class in Russian culture, seeing lots of adaptations of great Russian lit or biographies of great Russians - The Idiot; Onegin; Tchaikovsky - they tend to be a bit disappointing. They try to find the artistic power of the novels, along with their emotional weight - so work in lots of arty flourishes, dream sequences and dutch angles and symbolisms - but none of it quite comes off. More or less handsome ad more or less well performed, but more or less routine... I have thought, more than once, how much these films needed to be made by someone like Manoel de Oliveira. No - more than that. I have thought, more than once while watching these films, how much I wish Oliveira had made a big Dostoevsky or Tolstoy adaptation. Not that he needed to - his work was plenty rich as it is, and makes me want to read Portuguese literature - but Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and Pushkin could have used an Oliveira adaptation.
I will miss him; miss the anticipation of new films, the effort of finding them sometimes, and the pleasure of seeing them on the screen when they do get shown. And I will miss knowing he is alive. As great as he is as a filmmaker, his own life and career might be even more astonishing. To think that the bulk of his career happened after the 1960s - after he turned 60 - and that he put together a strong 45 year career after turning 60 - it is astonishing. He began as a filmmaker in 1931, almost ruined his career in the 40s after making the fantastic Aniki Bobo - he ran afoul of the dictator Salazar, and could not make films at all until the end of the 50s and 60s, and only really got going in the 70s... And then was able to build and sustain a 45-50 year career, the career he might have had in the 30s and 40s with some luck and justice - it is as happy an ending as I can think of.
I've mentioned before that he is 5 years younger than Ozu - to think that the bulk of his careen started after Ozu's death, and has gone on to now - is astonishing. I will miss him.
Showing posts with label De Oliveira. Show all posts
Showing posts with label De Oliveira. Show all posts
Friday, April 03, 2015
Sunday, December 11, 2011
One Hundred Three and Counting
It is, again, the birthday of Manoel de Oliveira, 103, still working (another film in post-production, one after that in pre-production - I like the description on IMDB - "Three connected stories set in Brazil following a visit of devil to earth, a case of adultery and the delusions of an ornithologist." - sounds good!) And still working at a very high level. Look at these shots from Eccentricities of a Blonde Haired Girl - without trying to find anything special - you can't miss. Every moment of every film, I believe, is lovely to look at...
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Centennial
I have misssed a couple anniversaries already this week - (Pearl Harbor!? John Lennon's death) - so I don't want to miss this one: Manoel de Oliveira's birthday! 100 Years old and still at it, with what appears to be another film about doomed love in production.... (Thanks to Tativille for the reminder.) He's had an astonishing career and life - how many filmmakers' centennial's are celebrated with the filmmaker still around? let alone still working, and working steadily... And while he sometimes gets more attention for being the Oldest Living Filmmaker, he deserves more for being one of the best living filmmakers - I admit that his work can be a bit uneven, but everything I've seen has been intriguing, and at his best, he's among the best....
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Week in the Making
I've been lazy here lately - weird: three posts in three days last week, then... I've not been totally idle - poking around on another blog I started up with some of my old AOL cronies... setting up an RSS reader - as usual, years after everyone else started using them for all. It's an interesting way of reading blogs - I've been getting used to it. Thinking about how to make something of it: I like Harry Tuttle's Google shared page: maybe I should try something like that - here's a cut at it. I may experiment with that...
Somewhat more substantively, I have been following the discussion of auteurism at Girish's place. Reading along, composing replies and arguments, though I've only posted one so far. It's a vexed subject, as one of my english teachers used to say. It keeps coming up in film discussions, and when it does, I can never decide how much to dive in. There's a lot to be said about it - though most of it has been said somewhere already, and if I'm going to add my 2¢ I should do some due diligence and read up on the theorizing, and that fills me with dread... So, for now, I've stuck to offering generalities - Film is a Composite Art! Auteurism is best seen as a form of genre theory! I have not yet made the claim that auteurs don't make films, films make auteurs, but I might. While the auteur theory seems first to have been promoted to claim some of the prestige of literary authors for directors, I think it also served to undermine the idea of authorship - it made it more figurative; it conceived of authorship as something that emerges from the "text" as much as it precedes it. So - you might find a route from Truffaut to Barthes if you look for it....
Meanwhile, typing this, I'm listening to the recordings Charlie Parker made with the Dave Lambert singers: strange, strange stuff. Bird was certainly on top of his game, but the singing is almost surreal. Given the talent involved - Gil Evans arranging - boy... A quick google, though, comes up with this two part interview with Hal McKusick, a musician on the session.
And finally - I have seen films. Don't Touch the Axe - for some reason, renamed "The Duchess of Langeais" in English (probably to fool Americans into thinking it's a respectable literary adaptation and not a Jacques Rivette film.) Which is quite marvelous, if not up to the best Rivettes. It would have fit pretty well in the Oliveira series I've been attending - it is certainly a tale of doomed love. Though Rivette is a different kind of director than Oliveira: funnier, more knowing - the characters are older, and get into things willingly and consciously. Rivette certainly takes a different approach with his actors, giving Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu a good deal of freedom to fill the screen - they do, especially Balibar, who is perfectly magical on screen. Though Rivette is certainly capable of being as strange as Oliveira when he wants to be. Though usually hilarious at the same time - a scene of two drunken fops turning over 19th century cliches - "stunning" - "it's a drama" - is perfectly priceless....
Rivette, meanwhile, having reached the age of 80 without discernibly slowing his filmmaking output, is stalking Olveira from that angle too. I also saw Abraham's Valley last week, another Oliveira, from 15 years ago, when he was a fairly young 85. This is another literary adaptation, the life of a woman, married young to an older doctor, and who lives, too beautiful, too smart, too alive for her world (provincial Portugal, latter half of the 20th century) - shades of Madame Bovary, though perhaps not controlling. It's less a tale of doomed love than a melodrama of an unknown woman - though one who manages to insist on and get a fair amount of her own way, however limited this might be. Beautiful film, though somewhat domecticated compared to the 70s films - muc more naturalistic, though there is some direct address to the camera, and an impertinent cat.
Meanwhile, stcking with octogenarian directors, on DVD, I finally got around to watching Seijun Suzuki's Princess Raccoon. A fairy tale of doomed lovers and magic and evil christians (the Virgen Hag!) enacted in eye popping color on every imaginable variety of set... Here's a picture, far more informative than anything I could write:
And finally - another screenshot, from another wonderful DVD I watched - Douglas Fairbanks (auteur!) in the Black Pirate. Here he is in all his much-imitated glory:
Somewhat more substantively, I have been following the discussion of auteurism at Girish's place. Reading along, composing replies and arguments, though I've only posted one so far. It's a vexed subject, as one of my english teachers used to say. It keeps coming up in film discussions, and when it does, I can never decide how much to dive in. There's a lot to be said about it - though most of it has been said somewhere already, and if I'm going to add my 2¢ I should do some due diligence and read up on the theorizing, and that fills me with dread... So, for now, I've stuck to offering generalities - Film is a Composite Art! Auteurism is best seen as a form of genre theory! I have not yet made the claim that auteurs don't make films, films make auteurs, but I might. While the auteur theory seems first to have been promoted to claim some of the prestige of literary authors for directors, I think it also served to undermine the idea of authorship - it made it more figurative; it conceived of authorship as something that emerges from the "text" as much as it precedes it. So - you might find a route from Truffaut to Barthes if you look for it....
Meanwhile, typing this, I'm listening to the recordings Charlie Parker made with the Dave Lambert singers: strange, strange stuff. Bird was certainly on top of his game, but the singing is almost surreal. Given the talent involved - Gil Evans arranging - boy... A quick google, though, comes up with this two part interview with Hal McKusick, a musician on the session.
And finally - I have seen films. Don't Touch the Axe - for some reason, renamed "The Duchess of Langeais" in English (probably to fool Americans into thinking it's a respectable literary adaptation and not a Jacques Rivette film.) Which is quite marvelous, if not up to the best Rivettes. It would have fit pretty well in the Oliveira series I've been attending - it is certainly a tale of doomed love. Though Rivette is a different kind of director than Oliveira: funnier, more knowing - the characters are older, and get into things willingly and consciously. Rivette certainly takes a different approach with his actors, giving Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu a good deal of freedom to fill the screen - they do, especially Balibar, who is perfectly magical on screen. Though Rivette is certainly capable of being as strange as Oliveira when he wants to be. Though usually hilarious at the same time - a scene of two drunken fops turning over 19th century cliches - "stunning" - "it's a drama" - is perfectly priceless....
Rivette, meanwhile, having reached the age of 80 without discernibly slowing his filmmaking output, is stalking Olveira from that angle too. I also saw Abraham's Valley last week, another Oliveira, from 15 years ago, when he was a fairly young 85. This is another literary adaptation, the life of a woman, married young to an older doctor, and who lives, too beautiful, too smart, too alive for her world (provincial Portugal, latter half of the 20th century) - shades of Madame Bovary, though perhaps not controlling. It's less a tale of doomed love than a melodrama of an unknown woman - though one who manages to insist on and get a fair amount of her own way, however limited this might be. Beautiful film, though somewhat domecticated compared to the 70s films - muc more naturalistic, though there is some direct address to the camera, and an impertinent cat.
Meanwhile, stcking with octogenarian directors, on DVD, I finally got around to watching Seijun Suzuki's Princess Raccoon. A fairy tale of doomed lovers and magic and evil christians (the Virgen Hag!) enacted in eye popping color on every imaginable variety of set... Here's a picture, far more informative than anything I could write:
And finally - another screenshot, from another wonderful DVD I watched - Douglas Fairbanks (auteur!) in the Black Pirate. Here he is in all his much-imitated glory:
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.
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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