Notes on Cinema – Steffen Silvis

Steffen Silvis is a valued member of the Fermat universe, having appeared in numerous performances (narrator in Mother Courage Alone) and readings (Acting Un-American).  He is a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at UW-Madison, has lectured in the UW Theatre and Dance departments, been a drama reviewer, theater historian and – always – an avid cinephile.  We asked to turn his musings on film into a blog on our web site and he readily agreed.  Keeping up with his output will be the challenge!

Sawdust and Tinsel

It was a treat to see Bergman’s “Sawdust and Tinsel” from 1953, as it grants the viewer a chance to see nascent ideas and images, many that will become Bergmanesque tropes, develop. Much leads to “Smiles of a Summer Night” two years later, and then to “The Seventh Seal” two years past “Smiles.” But it’s a grave mistake to take this early work as simply juvenilia. “Sawdust” certainly stands on its own as a thoughtful examination of aging, the grinding frustrations of love, and of the thin back slash that separates Art and Artifice. A beautiful film. (8/21)

Paracelsus

A bit creaky (based on a stage melodrama by Edgar Selwyn), but “Possessed” (1931) is beautifully directed by Clarence Brown with Cedric Gibbons’ best art deco art design. Crawford holds her own as the poor girl made mistress (Pre-Code, you know) and Gable is Gable. Visually splendid, but little else that’s memorable. (10.17.2020)

Disclosure

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Christine

“Fremdschämen” is one of those marvelously succinct German words that communicates much. The best stab in English might be “vicarious embarrassment,” the unease of seeing other people humiliate themselves or be unaware of their own inadequacies. I mention this by saying that I have never squirmed in fremdschämen waching a film more than with “Christine,” outside of Todd Solondz’s and Neil LaBute’s films (or Robert Altman’s great “Three Women”). “Christine” is a collection of unexamined lives on a collision course, and the performances are achingly, disturbingly good, particularly Rebecca Hall, who even developed an awkward gait for her character, one that always makes it seem that she’s in danger of toppling over, which, metaphorically, she is. Sometimes we don’t need a “good cry,” but a good cringe. This provide that. (9.11.2020)

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

The Man with Two Faces

Baron Prasil

I spent the night immersed in the fantastical landscapes of Karel Zeman, first with his “Baron Prášil,” the Czech’s version of Baron Munchausen, and then with the earlier, mesmerizing “Vynález zkázy” (“Deadly Invention”), a wild distillation of the Jules Verne corpus and one of the most brilliant amalgamations of live-action and animation I’ve seen. Disney, by comparison, is the amateur hour.

As hard as I tried, it was almost impossible to track down Zemen’s work when I lived in Prague, but now these remastered gems are back in circulation. There’s even a museum dedicated to Zeman that opened two years after I left Prague! However, in having impatiently waited to dive into Zeman’s work, I can now better appreciate his ties to other Czech artists, particularly the collages generated by the Czech Surrealists. But also there are connections that can be made with Adolf Hoffmeister and, especially, Kamil Lhoták (as well as overlapping with the Laterna magika theatre movement). It’s also clear that Zeman’s unique synthesizing of this work in turn inspired the Czech illustrator and cartoonist Adolf Born.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Some years ago after hosting John Berendt in Portland, I had dinner with him afterwards with my friend Evando Esteban . The event was a bizarre one with a presentation of eccentrics in the audience that even outdid Portland’s usual vaunted standards of weirdness. This gaggle of grotesques and human oddities swarmed around Berendt afterward, preening and yodeling, and it finally dawned on me that they were auditioning for him; that they had read his “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and thought themselves worthy of inclusion in some future work of his. Berendt remained polite, but was obviously exhausted, and he told us at dinner when the subject came up that this was standard practice. Everyone imagined themself to be a Lady Chablis. Evando said afterward that he found Berendt, whom we both liked, to be one of the saddest men he’d ever met, which has stayed with me.

You’ve Got Mail

Last night’s film. Neither the Pater nor I had ever seen “You’ve Got Mail.” The good news is that we will never have to watch this twaddle again. Utterly paint-by-number writing, with Meg Ryan at her most winsome and lachrymose. However, as a time-capsel, it’s rather interesting in its capturing of 1998. Imagine, corporate bookstores moving smaller booksellers toward penury. Yes, those behemoths of Borders (dead) and Barnes and Noble (on life support). The pre-Amazon world seems a century ago. That aspect was interesting. The rest? Not so much.

Fail Safe

Zoot Suit

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

Last night’s film was an old favorite that I haven’t seen in decades. As a slice of fantasy, “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” is rather sublime, with the prematurely dead Robert Montgomery having to make a go of it again back on earth in the bodies of other men. The normally dapper and debonair Montgomery expertly plays against type as the naif palooka, Joe Pendleton. But the two greatest supports for him are Edward Everett Horton’s inept soul-collector, Messenger 7013, and James Gleason’s crusty, avuncular Max Corkle, whose final moment in the film is one of Gleason’s finest moments as an actor (I dare you not to become slightly verklempt).

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky

Jan Kounen’s film, exploring the possible affair between Stravinsky and Chanel, was lavish in every since of the term. Certainly it is lush, but it is also unrushed, luxuriating in stillness and tableaux. It’s not so much a story as it is fragments from a photo album. It could almost be a silent film, as the voice is found inferior in communicating emotional states and trajectories when compared to the human face, especially to the eyes. The performances are excellent. I am a devout fan of Mads Mikkelsen, and his Stravinsky is a portrait of a torn man who wears the title of “genius” uneasily. The great discoveries for me were the French actress Anna Mouglalis, who has all of the elegance and intelligence of a young Anouk Aimée or Capucine as Chanel, and the Russian actress Elena Morozova, as the proud, long suffering and tubercular wife of Stravinsky, whose subtle performance is heartbreaking at times.

A Face in the Crowd, Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Last night the Pater and I rejected the TV’s plague tidings and settled on our own concocted, unofficial, miniature Patricia Neal Film Festival. Not having the magnificent “Hud” to hand, we settled in for Kazan’s “Face in the Crowd” and Blake Edwards’ attempt at Capote. “Face,” obviously, is the masterwork here, although one both my progenitor and me know well, although neither of us had seen it in some years. Well, it demands to be seen now in this era of frauds and credulous mobs. Andy Griffith is unnervingly good as the hayseed mountebank, more Hughey Long than Orange-atang. The supporting cast is perfect: Walter Matthau, Anthony Franciosa, Lee Remick, and with Neal putting in stellar work as the obliging lover who becomes vengeful fury. Budd Schulberg’s script, based on his own short story, “Your Arkansas Traveler,” crackles with wit and cracker-barrel folksnarl. Essential viewing.

Montparnasse 19

I don’t know why I never came across Jacques Becker before. His film, Montparnasse 19, is a lightly fictionalized account of the last years of Modigliani’s life. From the beginning in a stuffy Parisian boîte, where Modigliani’s work is contemptuously dismissed by a workingman, to the perfectly bleak conclusion, when the tortured artist’s death is to be turned into profitable PR, the film is luminous.

It started life as a film by Max Ophuls, who died suddenly in the early days of production, and so Becker took over. But for anyone familiar with Ophuls’ work, it seems as if Becker might have kept some of the dead master’s plans and ideas as, perhaps, a work of hommage (the film is dedicated to Ophuls).

The cast is first-rate: Lilli Palmer, the porcelain beauty of the young Anouk Aimée, the vulturine art dealer of Lino Ventura, Lila Kedrova, and, if you look quickly, an even younger Stéphane Audran. But as Modigliani, Gérard Philipe is magnificent, and in a performance that too closely made art mirror life: the 36-year-old Philipe was suffering from liver cancer, dying soon after filming, having lived only one year longer than the tragic young artist that he was portraying. Very much worth tracking down.

Barbara and Barbara

Mubi allows me to create the double-features of my dreams. Last night it was Barbara and Barbara. The first is Christian Petzold’s 2012 film starring his favorite actor collaborators, Nina Hoss (who really has become my favorite contemporary actress) and Ronald Zehrfeld, both of whom were superb in Petzold’s Phoenix, which I viewed two weeks ago. This Barbara could also stand alongside von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others as a parallel examination of life in East Germany in the waning decade of Communist rule. Hoss plays a doctor who, due to contacts she maintains with the West, has been briefly imprisoned, and then exiled out of Berlin to a provincial clinic somewhere near Rostock where she begins working (and falling in love) with the clinic’s head physician, played by Zehrfeld.

I will say nothing more for fear of ruining the suspense, however, I believe that Petzold is the contemporary master of the film ending, with both Phoenix and Barbara offering different kinds of punches to the emotions (and both with Hoss and Zehrfeld, although in very different situations). A really beautiful film.

The other Barbara is Mathieu Amalric’s 2017 meditation on the life of the famed postwar chanteuse Barbara, who survived the Holocaust to go on to become one of France’s most interesting singer/songwriters (she was also an associate of Jacques Brel, a relationship that becomes part of Amalric’s film).

Amalric’s conceit is that he himself (though named Yves) is making a biopic on Barbara starring the singer/actress Jeanne Balibar, who bears a haunting resemblance to Barbara. It is a film within a film, interspersed with actual documentary footage of Barbara, as well as snippets from the film she did with Brel, Franz (1971). The film becomes a hallucinogenic collage with the real and fictional Barbaras being impossible to separate, a conflation that drives those who knew the real Barbara to enter the film, trancelike, to relive some moment with Balibar’s fictional Barbara. The latter includes Amalric’s Yves, who throughout the film drops hints as to why he has become obsessed with Barbara (easily done, as I long ago fell under her spell, and post her song “Joyeux Noël” every December as my seasonal offering to friends).

As mesmerizing as Amalric’s film is, and it’s pretty splendid, he, unlike Petzold, never quite knows what to do with the endings of his films. As in his The Blue Room, which I saw last week, things just stop, and then the credits roll. With Petzold you return to his endings to both study their flawless construction, and to reexperience their emotional surprises and jolts. Amalric’s endings you return to only to see if you missed something. Unfortunately, you haven’t.

Ruminations:

I wrapped up a Sunday couch film festival with this excellent documentary on the great drag artiste and co-founder of the Cockettes, Rumi Missabu, whose life story is stranger than fiction. The film is mostly biographical, and so we follow Rumi from their Hollywood upbringing in a violent, dysfunctional family, to their YA days when they became boon companions and housemates with Cindy Williams, pre-Lavere and Shirley (and Williams is on hand to reminisce about her old friend). After a fateful mixture of a screening of Byron Mabe’s grindhouse classic She Freak and a heady tab of LSD, Missabu understood that their place was in San Francisco, and so decamped to Babylon to become an underground star.

Missabu’s life has, nevertheless, come with calamity (Missabu is interviewed extensively while they are battling terminal lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking to rival Bette Davis’), and yet Missabu radiates the type of joy that comes from having embraced life fully. Their good humor is present even from the hospital gurney, where Missabu laughs and shrugs off death as the inevitable end to the fun. Since 2000, Missabu was rediscovered by the New York art scene, and became a fixture there, creating elaborate performance pieces that they insisted be free to the public, in what a professor of Performance and Queer Studies called one of the most “radical acts a performer can stage in a capitalist society.” Missabu also, inadvertently, became the Cockettes’ archivist, and so the store of valuable photographs, posters and programs that they collected are, at the end of the film, being collated and catalogued by the New York Public Library. Also, as can be seen with their interaction with the next generations of underground artists, Missabu has become, in their own words, “Tran-Ma” to the kids. A great little doc.

Escapes:

How does one get to Blade Runner from Bonanza, Teri Garr, and Flipper? Through the astonishing life of Hampton Fancher, who, Zelig-like, managed to almost always be in the right place at the right time, and he’s still doing so in his 80s, living in a Bohemian section of Brooklyn. It’s an amazing riches to rags to riches story that almost seems like it has to be fantasy, but isn’t. Somehow, an American boy who hops a tramp steamer to Barcelona to become a famous flamenco dancer (and studies with some of the Spanish greats) winds up an in-demand character actor in American film and television before deciding, after a proper brow-beating from Barbara Hershey, to try his hand at a screen adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? This documentary on Fancher’s life by Michael Almereyda (and produced by Wes Anderson) is like a brilliant “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game, although this original “Bacon” connects Martin Milner to Marlon Brando, via Philip K. Dick, Klaus Kinski and Broderick Crawford. Unreal.

Fury of the Demon: 

Fury of the Demon (La rage du Démon) is a superb mockumentary that marries the “haunted screen” (to pilfer from Lotte Eisner) to the demoniacal. It is a grimly serious jape surrounding a “lost” film, La rage du Démon, which, in its handful of screenings over three centuries caused death and pandemonium (to pilfer from Milton) in crowded cinemas. It is a web spun on behalf of the fictitious cineaste/medium Victor Sicarius, who was like a late 19th century Joel-Peter Witkin, who finally moved closer to snuff films. But at the center of this web is the very real Georges Méliès, who, we are told, befriended and then ceremoniously dumped Sicarius as a friend, but only after Sicarius had taken advantage of Méliès’ studio/atelier.

Director Fabien Delage is as steeped in film lore as he is in the occult, and so this mash-up manages to be as entertaining as it is thought-provoking, for there really is something haunted about the screen. As Méliès serves as the prompt to Delage’s fiction, Fury of the Demon might be seen as the darker bookend to Brian Selznik’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo. Enjoyable.

Troop Zero:

Troop Zero never fully escapes from the clichés of its genre, the coming-of-age films of “weird” kids. It never quite achieves the comic panache of Little Miss Sunshine (its closest relative) nor does it mine the crushing angst of being a marginal kid, as in Todd Solandz’s excellent Welcome to the Dollhouse. Troop Zero is nakedly aimed at the “feel good,” which it succeeds at, although it could have been much more, especially considering that it was written by Lucy Alibar, half the screenwriting team for the brilliant Beasts of the Southern Wild.

Yet, Troop Zero carries some charm along with it, primarily in the performances, and how could you go fully wrong with Viola Davis and Allison Janney? And as the central child, our resident “weird girl,” McKenna Grace is delightful. The film also treats her best friend, the very feminine gay boy, Joseph (Charlie Shotwell), with great care and empathy, and the scenes where we see the close bond between the strange little girl and strange little boy are the film’s greatest strength. But as with the climactic talent show number in Little Miss Sunshine, a similar one–for its hilarious unexpectedness and inappropriateness– which punctuates Troop Zero manages to seem original in and of itself, and is the highlight of the film. In all, Troop Zero is innocuous fun to share with kids and young teens, but adults might crave something more.

The Lighthouse:

I need to dwell a spell on Robert Eggers’ work, as it appeals to me in so many different ways. As with the films of Ari Aster, Eggers’ is heralding either the rebirth of Paganism or is, on some level, warning against that birth. Perhaps the two themes are inextricably twinned. But that which has been submerged under the sickly and brutal Christian epoch is rising, and although I lack the regressive “faith” gene and have been spared a metaphysical bent, Paganism’s reestablishment and its white and dark manifestations are welcome to me, as the enemy of my enemy is my colleague. As Edmund White writes, “a system is humane to the degree that it is open to variety. Paganism is more humane than the monotheistic religions.” Marking the sloughing off of the ogre desert god, Eggers and Aster have been rifling through the myth kitty to construct their reemerging realms, and this rebirth is a gory business, but then Gaia, one senses, has had just about enough from malignant humanity. It’s time to unleash the elements.

Having finished off Christianity in his brooding, Hawthornean The Witch, Eggers turns back to the primordial birthing sea, where the old gods and deities linger and are summoned. The Lighthouse (and it is Promethean, this place) is primarily Water’s outpost, where nautical myths converge: Poseidon, Davy Jones, and merfolk. If Eggers channels Hawthorne in The Witch, here he’s adopted the rough poetry and cadences of Melville or the Eugene O’Neill of Fog and Ile. But the brute starkness of his cinematography is from the Bergman of Hour of the Wolf, with lashings of Hitchcock (the conclusion is as much Aeschylus as The Birds). The performances by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are lessons in the craft of acting (and when did Dafoe transmogrify into Walter Huston?). Make of it what you will. I make much from it.

My Man Godfrey and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Watched a ’30s’ double-bill with my father. Somehow the man had never seen My Man Godfrey, so at least he can go to his grave having accomplished that. What to say about both of these fine films other than that they certainly speak to the conditions we live under today. Mr. Smith, obviously, presents a portrait of an utterly corrupt Senate and political system playing lackey to corporate interests. We might also see one or two of the Left candidates for President in the Senate being less naive versions of Jefferson Smith.

As for Godfrey, after recently observing the amount and type of homelessness in Portland, the opening scenes still resonate, although the “forgotten men” in “Godfrey” are mostly long unemployed men, a few who took refuge in the bottle, but basically working stiffs who were trounced by the Depression. The current homeless situation, of course, isn’t among the classic “bums” and “winos” of yore and lore…the inmates of Jack London’s and Jim Tully’s novels…but the insane and meth-addled. They are not unshaven William Powells, who have a few lessons to teach the rich. Instead, they are damaged lives requiring proper state housing and therapy. Nonetheless, there is much, again, here with which to locate contemporary parallels.

Death Laid an Egg:

Giulio Questi’s Death Laid an Egg (1968) started out powerfully, hooking me in minutes, before the film laid its own egg. A “giallo” (thriller/slasher) set in the industrialized deathscape of a chicken factory farm, it skirts Buñelland to the point where I thought Questi would end the film with an hommage to Buñuel’s El Bruto, where the great Katy Juardo stood transfixed before a chicken. Sadly, that didn’t occur. Rather, the film just declined into entropy. Still, the first part is captivating, and the cast—Gina Lollobrigida, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Ewa Aulin—is as terrific as their grouping is eccentric. Some pleasures, but not enough, finally, although Bruno Maderna’s musical score is excellent.

Spoor:

In honor of Olga Tokarczuk’s Nobel Prize in Literature, I watched Agnieszka Holland’s film version of Tokarczuk’s 2009 novel, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (her title taken from William Blake), whch Holland, cleverly, reduced to Pokot or, in English, Spoor…the track and scent of an animal. It is at its base a murder mystery, as men in a Silesian valley on the borderlands between Poland and the Czech Republic begin dying in a brutal fashion, including a cold, Cartesian priest (and I relished his exit most). We know that they are being murdered for their part in the murder of nature. But is Nature itself the avenger? It’s been a while since I have seen a film so adamantly insisting on justice for animals, and Holland has creatures appearing in almost every frame corner, silently observing the carnage…or plotting it, perhaps. The soundscape is as much birdsong as strings, and it’s difficult not to take up this pagan call to revenge. Both novel and film are works of art for the Extinction Rebellion.

Los Angeles Plays Itself:

Thom Andersen’s meditation on his native city and its portrayal (perhaps betrayal) by Hollywood was well worth waiting for, as I had had it on my list of “Films to See” since its release in 2003. Los Angeles Plays Itself (the title a sly nod to Fred Halsted’s landmark gay porn film, L.A. Plays Itself from 1972) is a collage of images (from Laurel and Hardy to gay porn) that creates a psychogeographical drift through the city. Andersen is both angry at the short shrift his city has received at the hands of filmmakers and insightful in the ways one can read through many of the images to the concealed facts that the fiction buries. Having crossed it off my list, I have wound up adding a dozen more titles that Andersen introduced me to: Pushover (1954), The New Centurians (1972), Marlowe (1969), The Exiles (1961), Point Blank (1967). There were a few interesting omissions: Alan Rudolph’s Welcome to L.A. and the film version of Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays, although Andersen makes one casual crack about Didion, who I suspect he dislikes.

The Lodger

I haven’t seen John Brahm’s The Lodger since I was around 12, and it made an impression on me then primarily for Laird Cregar’s performance of Jack the Ripper and the shadowed, fog-sodden back alleys of London where the action occurs. However, the film is quite wonderful. I had forgotten that Jack’s murderous animus was activated by actresses (creatures who invariably drift into prostitution in this world once their charms have been exhausted on the stage).
So, the film is quite theatrical, with Oberon as his latest stage fixation, and Sanders as the suave gumshoe on Ripper’s trail. Also, Sir Cedrec Hardwicke and the great Sara Allgood are marvelous. Allgood’s final line in the film is devastating. Worth seeing, and it’s free currently on YouTube.

If I Were King:

A lazy Saturday, and a matinee, via YouTube, of a fairly delightful film. The conceit of If I Were King is that a desperate Louis XI (Basil Rathbone in a rare comic role) forces a boastful François Villon (Ronald Coleman) to take command of his armies while Paris is surrounded by the Burgundian army. The film has everything: romance, poetry, swashbuckling, and broad comedy. And the script is often delightfully witty, but then the screenplay was by Preston Sturges, who also translated Villon’s verse for the film. Perfect for a winter day.

Maya Dardel:

I would understand why people might hate Maya Dardel, as it’s a film that is as equally clever as it is frustrating. The central character is a famous, middle-aged poet, ruthlessly played by Lena Olin, who has decided to commit suicide but needs an executor for her estate. Toward that end she “auditions” young male poets, who she badgers and tortures psychologically. The film is filled with many wry references to contemporary literature and writing styles, which I found enjoyable, but might exhaust the patience of others. The script (by co-directors Zachary Cotler and Magdalena Zyzak) is not always crisp, and can occasionally slip into the precious. But when Colter and Zyzak hit their marks it’s electric. I suppose one’s level of investment depends on one’s commitment to feminism, for as monstrous as Maya the poet can be, she’s always driven by the remorseless anger of having been a woman, now an aging one, in a male-dominated world.

Closeness:

I cannot recommend more highly Kantemir Balagov’s 2017 film, Closeness (Теснота), which manages, within the scope of a family drama, to deal with the full-on death of the Soviet Union, the encroachment of Western capitalism, the rise of a toxic Islam in the Caucasus, and the further decimation of a Russian Jewish community. “Searing” is a critical cliche, but this film manages to be just that, with a brutal center that may have you skipping ahead a few moments, as Balagov uses some of the period snuff-propaganda generated from Koranically-addled Chechens to communicate what was hatching in the Yeltsin vacuum.

The performances are uniformly strong, especially in the embattled daughter and mother of, respectively, the astonishing Darya Zhovner (in her first film) and Olga Dragunova, who poignantly conjures defeat, bitterness and remorse with utterly devastating subtlety. Dragunova, whether directed, improvised, or pure happenstance, stumbles in one scene while moving toward her estranged son, which is such a genuinely human moment of vulnerability as to have had me in tears. You leave this film feeling you have a better understanding of the post-Soviet chaos and of the horrors brewing off stage that were going to overwhelm the world.

Return from the Ashes

In reading a draft of my friend Carol Siegal’s book on Jews and the cinema, I was suddenly reminded of a film I saw when I was a child with my parents one night on television, Return from the Ashes. The opening scene was shocking to little me, but I didn’t quite understand why Ingrid Thulin was like a zombie, nor did I understand the significance of her having a tattoo on her arm made of numbers. This flashback led me to hunt the film down again, finally (it’s on YouTube in installments), and I was surprised by how much I remembered of the film, though I must have been 7 or 8 when I watched it.
Is it any good? In places. It’s a melodrama, but an often effective one, and the performances, particularly from Maximilian Schell and Samantha Eggar, are terrific. But other than regained childhood memories, I kept thinking, “but I know this from somewhere else…” Indeed, I did: from the much superior 2014 German film, Phoenix, directed by Christian Petzold, and with a luminous performance by Nina Hoss, one of my favorite contemporary actors. Certainly, see Phoenix at all costs, but Return (scripted by Julius Epstein, no less, though it’s no Casablanca) has its moments and set-pieces.