The French New Wave

The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks
Edited by Peter Graham
Introduction by Ginette Vincendeau
Palgrave Macmillan, April 2009
ISBN: 9781844572823

A classic collection of writings, essential to an understanding of the Nouvelle Vague.

This is a revised and enlarged edition of Peter Graham’s The New Wave (1968) and, like the earlier book, it presents a number of key texts (there are a dozen or so here) relating to the Nouvelle Vague.  Ginette Vincendeau has contributed a full, lengthy and structured introduction, bringing the story of the influence, significance and response to Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and the rest bang up to date.

In a sense, the greatest legacy of the Nouvelle Vague today lies in the prodigious blossoming and prominent position of independent film, outside of the mainstream studios.  They introduced almost a punk ethos into the until-then rarified, expensive, cumbersome and complicated art of film-making.  And anyone who sets out to make films must grapple with the kind of problems that they themselves confronted.  They led the way.

The essays collected here date from 1948-1962 and exactly half originally appeared in Cahiers du cinema, ‘the most significant journal of the twentieth century’ according to Colin MacCabe; and who is to say that he is wrong?  It should not be thought, though, that all of these essays are positive or congratulatory or show the Nouvelle Vague in a radiantly unblemished light; Robert Benayoun’s ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes’, for instance, is scathing in the extreme about Godard and Truffaut’s supposed incoherence, incompetence and puerility.  There is balance to be found in the collection as a whole, that much is clear.

For me, the highlight of the book were the three essays by Luc Moullet, Raymond Borde and Georges Sadoul, each taking as its subject Godard’s seminal A bout de soufflé (some of the dialogue from the film lifted straight from Hammett’s The Glass Key notwithstanding).  Close on the heels of this trio, a couple of analytical, nuts-and-bolts type essays also stood out: Chabrol’s ‘Little Themes’ (contra grand narratives and big, ‘important’ ideas) and ‘The Evolution of Film Language’ by Bazin.  His essay (Bazin’s, that is) examined the way in which cinema has gradually differentiated itself from the experience of theatre, so that what happens on screen is radically different from what occurs on stage (of course, it is even more different today; Bazin was writing in 1958).

All in all, The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks is a classic collection of writings, essential to an understanding of the Nouvelle Vague and their cultural milieu.

The Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty
Music by Tchaikovsky
Birmingham Royal Ballet
The Lowry, 30 March 2010

A fine production of The Sleeping Beauty that is sure to awaken all of your senses.

Tchaikovsky’s seductive score draws you in, while the sumptuous sets and costumes enchant you still further.  As for the dancers, their feet must surely have wings: there can be no other explanation for their prowess.

The most breathtaking moment came when Nao Sakuma (a radiantly beautiful Princess Aurora) bent well forward on point, momentarily unsupported.  It seemed as though the laws of physics had been broken, or at any rate likewise momentarily suspended.  Indeed, perhaps the architects of the Large Hadron Collider should look here for the secret key to the origin of the universe.

The Sleeping Beauty is a ballet that all can enjoy, even the very young, and it is ideal for introducing children to this wonderful form of theatre.  And if you ignite their interest early they’ll soon want more of it.

Only the somnolent could fail to be invigorated by this splendid Birmingham Royal Ballet production.

The Sleeping Beauty is at The Lowry until 3 April and visits London later that month.  Details here.

Lion’s Den

Lion’s Den
Leonera
Directed by Pablo Trapero
Argentina & South Korea & Brazil, 2008
Cornerhouse, 28 March 2010

Tomas and Julia (Martina Gusman)

It was Marc C. Bernard who wrote that all historical subjects should be conceived and treated as though they were the topic of a gangster film.

So too one might say that subjects in general could be matched with other genres of film

Lion’s Den is an instance of such an approach working to perfection; it is a prison film that is essentially about the bond between mother and child.

Julia (a terrific performance by Martina Gusman) is pregnant when she is sent to prison for murder; the actual details of her crime are fuzzy and it is possible that she is innocent.  In prison she gives birth to a boy, Tomas, and is able to keep him for the time being, but she knows that when he is 4 he will be taken away from her.

In fact, Tomas is sent to live with his grandmother, the mother who had abandoned Julia when she was small.  Julia needs to escape from prison in order to be reunited with her small son, and perhaps also to save him from her own fate.

Lion’s Den is a brilliant prison film, fast-paced, gritty and well-crafted.  The story is told with real cinematic flair.

100 Film Noirs

100 Film Noirs
By Jim Hillier and Alastair Phillips
Palgrave Macmillan, May 2009
ISBN:9781844572168

This book surveys some 100 films, beginning in 1931 with Fritz Lang’s M and ending in 2005, the year that saw the release of Sin City and A History of Violence.

The vast majority date from 1940-1958 which, as the authors state in their introduction, is ‘generally regarded as the core period of noir production’.  At the end of the book, following sections devoted to references and further reading, the authors give a bare listing of another 100 films ‘which readers would probably find just as interesting as the 100 included in the book’.  If this was, in part, an attempt to dissuade reviewers from playing the game of ‘Why has film x been overlooked?’ it hasn’t quite succeeded.  But I’ll try to make it brief.

Let us begin then by saying that They Drive by Night (Arthur Woods, 1938) is not here, though Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night is. Another British absentee is the Manchester-set Hell is a City. Nor is space given to the film of David Goodis’ The Burglar (Paul Wendkos, 1957), another personal favourite, but it should be noted that Truffaut’s take on Down There, perhaps Goodis’ best novel, is here.  And there is no consideration of either The Big Clock or The Lost Weekend, two films starring Ray Milland… Yet enough of this whingeing.

For each of the 100 films actually selected, the authors provide a solid assessment of about 2-3 pages each.  They, the films that is, are all pretty much classics of the genre.  Though the writing here is not as personable and engaging and idiosyncratic as Barry Gifford’s in Out of the Past, reading the entries will certainly enhance your understanding and appreciation of the individual films and of the genre as a whole.

There are a number of photographs, black and white naturally, mostly stills but a few posters thrown in as well, and these add value to the text.

A good solid guide to film noir.

Lourdes

Lourdes
Directed by Jessica Hausner
Austria & France & Germany, 2009
Cornerhouse, 28 March 2010

One of those films – they are not necessarily French, though often are – where one gets the impression that the director is smarter or wiser or somehow more immune from tragedy than the characters on screen.

  Or feels or thinks that she or he is.  (Jessica Hausner wrote as well as directed Lourdes, incidentally.)

So here is how it goes: we follow a group of pilgrims, accompanied by a priest and nuns and carers, as they make their way to Lourdes to experience that place of miracles.

Some of the pilgrims are disabled and seeking a cure for their ailments – and, Lo, it seems that Christine (played by the excellent Sylvie Testud), a woman paralysed by multiple sclerosis, is suddenly able to walk and move her arms.  By no means is it clear, though, that this improvement will last.

If compelled to describe this film I’d say it was detached, sardonic, coldly observed, sour, gently (or rather slowly) excoriating with regard to human nature.  ‘Why me?’ is a question that each pilgrim asks him/herself and, when it seems as if one of their number has at last been cured, as though by a miracle, the question becomes ‘Why not me?’  Let us be in no doubt, the Grace of God is as mysterious in operation as the national lottery.

All told, a complex film if rather distanced.  But this is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact it is rather to be admired.  Jessica Hausner, the director and writer, has a keen eye above all for people’s resentment and hopes dashed.  She is on the side of those not chosen.  I’d gladly watch Lourdes again, certain that I’d discover new things in it.

Johnny Got His Gun

Johnny Got His Gun (DVD)
Directed by Dalton Trumbo
USA, 1971
Arrow Films, March 2010

With the release of this unique and brilliant film, an unnerving and excoriating journey awaits the intrepid viewer.

Trumbo wrote the novel, Johnny Got His Gun, at the close of the 1930s.  This inventive adaptation followed in 1971.  Quite a time difference.

Joe (Timothy Bottoms) had a normal life once, but it has become stunted through war and terrible injury.  He exists now through memory only, in a kind of hypnagogic coma, a dreamlike delirium.  That we see Joe as a soul in torment and are one with him is Trumbo’s triumph.

There are few films that will touch you as deeply as this one.  On viewing Johnny Got His Gun almost 40 years after its initial release, it more than stands up.  It is a harrowing film and an absolute one-off; it stands apart from virtually everything.

The DVD comes with several special features: the trailer of the film, an alternate scene, an interview with and documentary about Trumbo, the video of Metallica’s ‘One’, a song inspired by the film; and a booklet about Johnny Got His Gun written by Calum Waddell.

It is available now from Arrow Films.  Click here.

The Father of my Children

The Father of my Children
Le pere de mes enfants
Directed by Mia Hansen-Love
Germany & France, 2009
Cornerhouse, 26 March 2010

A quite beautiful film about art, business, love and family, and the working world’s bloody flux.

The pacing of the film is an important aspect of the tale told, and at the start it is frenetic. That ubiquitous device, the mobile phone, is all intrusive. It is the beast at our throat, an instrument of evil, the main conduit through which work and the world preys on family life.

At the film’s centre is the story of Gregoire (played by Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), a film producer who takes on too many commitments; and of death as a ‘cramped spilling of rash measures and miles’, in Laura Riding’s formulation.

For some reason the director (and Mia Hansen-Love wrote the screenplay as well, one should point out) favours shots where the camera is still and people constantly move into and then away from the frame, talking all the while. This is clearly intentional and it places a greater than normal burden on the viewer’s attention.

Two lines stand out as being especially significant. ‘I want you to decide to be happy,’ said by Gregoire to his eldest daughter (Clemence, played by Alice de Lencquesaing). And ‘There is no time,’ said again to Clemence, but this time by her mother. Meaning here, there is no time to honour the dead. We move on; the future awaits. With this, there is an end.

If there is a theme to the film, this is surely it: the seeming scarcity of time in modern life, the predatory nature of the distracting world, the lack of attention given to important things.

Daniel and Ana

Daniel and Ana 
Directed by Michel Franco
Mexico & Spain, 2009
Cornerhouse, 12 March 2010

Dario Yazbek Bernal and Marimar Vega

There are a handful of really quite shocking and disturbing scenes here, but rest well assured: this is a serious film on a serious subject.

Ostensibly, that subject is underground or clandestine pornography in Mexico and throughout Latin America, where apparently there is quite a vibrant market for this kind of stuff.

On another reading, though, Daniel and Ana is a study of how a victim of sexual abuse finally becomes an abuser.

In a Hollywood version of this film, one would expect the bad guys to be taken out big time.  The victims would become vigilantes and turn on them, achieving in the process some kind of cathartic release. Then they would be able to finally rebuild their lives, though naturally not before a tearful scene or two.  It would be absolute nonsense of course, but somehow satisfying.  The transgressors would be punished, paradise would be regained and restablished.

We get none of that here, mind.

Instead we are given a version of the truth that Auden expressed long ago: ‘Those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.’

The two leads, Dario Yazbek Bernal and Marimar Vega deliver fine performances, with Vega as Ana being quite outstanding.

Daniel and Ana is a powerful film, stark and unyielding, relentless in its fidelity to truth.

The Life and Times of Girl A & NQR by Scottish Dance Theatre

The Life and Times of Girl A & NQR
Scottish Dance Theatre
The Lowry, 23 March 2010

Naomi Murray and Joan Cleville in Scottish Dance Theatre's NQR

For this evening’s performance, Scottish Dance Theatre delivered a choice double-header.

The first offering involved a neat conceit: ‘The Life and Times of Girl A’ was a dance piece that pretended to be a film.  Solene Weinachter took the lead role, setting out the narrative with considerable panache; she held one’s attention completely.  And the final dance, with all the dancers moving as one, was mesmerising.  On one reading, Girl A’s story was about the intrusion of a dread reality in a romantic dream.

We then saw ‘NQR’, a piece that was quite different in character.  The title is an acronym of ‘Not Quite Right’, a formal medical term which is apparently used to describe unexplained difference. In it, dance occurred amidst a curious landscape of what seemed like luminous coffins, rectangular boxes in which we are perhaps all expected to fit.

Only the rarity of disabled and non-disabled dancers appearing on stage together leads one to remark that it occurred during the performance of this piece.  Clearly, it should happen regularly or as a matter of course.

Overall, an excellent evening of dance that was thought-provoking, immersive and effortlessly entertaining.  More please.

Scottish Dance Theatre is at The Lowry again tonight and touring throughout the UK until the end of May.  Details here.

La ventana

La ventana
(The Window)
Directed by Carlos Sorin
Argentina & Spain, 2008
Cornerhouse, 19 March 2010

How do we come to accept or even embrace our death?  Why does a man who is in fragile health, on the verge always of taking that final step, suddenly relinquish life?

Such questions are explored in La ventana, where we see a gentle loosening of the reins, a letting go, a drifting free.

Carlos Sorin wrote as well as directed it, incidentally, and it is one of those films where all of the action takes place in a single day.  But due perhaps to its gentle tempo there is no sense of immediate dramatic crisis, despite the small time frame. 

And the day takes on an unreal, dreamlike quality.  As though to say, ‘It is an illusion you were ever alive.  Surely you can see that you simply dreamed this life?’

At the end, certain details enchant still: the toy soldiers pulled from a piano that is being retuned; the relief of a debtor who has asked, with considerable apparent dignity, for a payment date to be extended; a sheaf of money found in a shoe.

Antonio Larreta gives a wonderful central performance as Antonio, an elderly writer, and the actor playing the piano tuner (Roberto Rovira, I think) also catches the eye.

An extremely fine film indeed.