04/02/2013 - 10/02/2013
Histoire(s) du cinéma [Jean-Luc
Godard, 1988-1998]: The myriad of
meanings suggested by the title establish the often complex and incessantly
multi-layered nature of Godard's epic, audio-visual essay, which gestures,
through bracketed plural, to both the "histories of cinema" and the
"stories of cinema", but should really be approached with a full
acknowledgement of the bilingual pun that renders it, more precisely, as 'His
Story of Cinema.' Through the
progression of these ten films, Godard wrestles with the concept of cinema; its
meaning as a historical point of reference and its stature as a dead (or dying)
art. It's also an attempt to analyse,
pre-Cousins, the "story of film", not as a conventional documentary,
or even as a film about the history of the medium, but looking at cinema, as an
idea, as if it were a genuine narrative arc; a history defined not by events,
but by characters, stories and emotions.
For Godard, the history of film is the story of film itself; where the "men
who made the movies" (Thalberg, Welles, Hughes, the Lumière's) were not just
businessmen or technicians with an idea to exploit, but adventurers, gangsters,
lovers or prisoners of the (he)art.
Their story of film is a love story, but it's also a tragedy, a
psychodrama and an autobiography, existing all at once. To explore the story of the history of film,
Godard assembles sounds and images in an almost stream of consciousness
approach - full of diversions, similes, tangents and associations - that, if
properly reconstructed, becomes a
narrative; a story from beginning to end. Though full of bold pronouncements - the
majority of which are sure to prove contentious - Godard always returns to the
image of himself, alone in his seclusion; reinforcing the personal aspect of
both the work and the man himself; this maker of films, haunted by images; like the exiled Prospero with
his books.
On the Beat [Robert Asher,
1962]: Plainly speaking, this is the best
of Norman Wisdom's early 'Pitkin' comedies, as it finds the perfect balance
between the kind of intensely physical slapstick that the actor had already
showcased in the back-to-back brilliance of Trouble in Store (1953) and One
Good Turn (1954), alongside the heart and soul of a great story, full of warmth
and imagination. The best of Wisdom's
films play to the social limitations of the performer, presenting his character
as the butt of the joke; the lovable loser "who generally means well",
but always gets it wrong. Here, his hope
and longing to become a celebrated policeman like his father before him propels
the narrative and gives purpose to the extended set-pieces, the madcap plot and
the 'Walter Mitty' like fantasy sequences that establish the character as
something of a hopeless dreamer. For me,
this aspect of the character infused the comedy with a delicate sadness; where
the shortcomings of 'Pitkin', and the inevitable humiliation of the character via
his continual attempts to receive recognition amongst his detractors and peers,
only makes his ambition all the more endearing.
For co-writer Wisdom, On the Beat is a definite tour-de-force, not only demonstrating
the best of his 'Pitkin' persona, but also creating an opportunity to adopt a
very different kind of physical caricature; the flamboyant stylist Giulio
Napolitani, the film's unconventional villain.
Anti-Clock [Jane Arden & Jack
Bond, 1979]: If Jean-Luc Godard remade
Alphaville (1965) in the style of Numéro
deux (1975) the end result might look something like this. In fostering such a comparison, I don't mean
to diminish the work of Arden and Bond, or to suggest that their film is in
some way derivative of the experiments of a greater "auteur", but
simply attempting to provide a context for this strange and often impenetrable
work. An excursion into the realms of
post-modern science-fiction, presented as an ongoing video deconstruction of the
notion of "truth" in relation to recorded memory, Anti-Clock is both
a fascinating continuation of the themes explored in the earlier Arden/Bond
collaborations - the cold and clinical Separation (1968) and the surreal and
disturbing The Other Side of the Underneath (1972) - and a mesmerizing example
of a director using the cinematic form to create an interrogation of its
subject, where the shots and cuts not only suggest meaning but also
implication; insinuations to the true nature of the central character,
suggested via the juxtaposition of images, sounds and ideas. Subtitled
'A Time Stop In The Life Of Joseph Sapha', Anti-Clock is essentially an
investigation into repressed memory, regression, Oedipal anxiety and the now
more prevalent than ever notion of the world as a complicated system of
audio-visual surveillance. Like The
Other Side of the Underneath, psychoanalysis
is used as a facilitator, in which these fragments of memory, viewed as a
montage of recorded images on a bank of television monitors, create the 'impression'
of a story; its past, present and future.
From Beyond [Stuart Gordon,
1986]: A work of atmospheric hokum from
the often reliable Stuart Gordon, who as ever manages to transcend the
low-budget aspect of his work to create something alive with invention, ambience
and imagination. As with his
breakthrough film, the cult-horror Re-Animator (1985), the gallant mix of both
"lowbrow" and "highbrow" influences won't be to everyone's
tastes, with the gestures towards the stories of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert
Louis Stevenson often jarring against the Roger Corman meets William Castle
emphasis on gothic horror and repulsive special effects. There are several sequences in the film that push
tastelessness to new levels, but as with the best of Lucio Fulci, it's the
vivid, dreamlike quality of the film (and its often startling images) that leave
the greatest impression. The idea of
portals between worlds is suggestive of the idea of dreams and dream-states -
both in keeping with the themes of corruption and insanity - as well as the
more interesting representation of the "viewer", transported via the
use of this device into another dimension; a mirror to our own relationship (as
an audience) with the film itself. It's perhaps
worth seeing just for the dazzling use of colour - which reminded me of the
Bava of Kill, Baby, Kill (1966) or a less adventurous (but no less
intoxicating) take on Argento's masterpiece Inferno (1980) - and for the third-act
decent into the realms of pure 'Cronenbergian' "body-horror."
