Morocco

Thoughts on the film by Josef von Sternberg

I wasn't as taken with Morocco (1930) as I was by the later collaboration between actor Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg, the masterful Shanghai Express (1932).

While essentially similar in their themes, tones and intentions, Shanghai Express seemed to have a lot more going on beneath the surface; not merely connecting its melodrama to ideas of war, displacement, clashes of culture, and the self-reflexive relationship between the train journey that defines the narrative and the conventions of the narrative cinema itself, but having those elements become a part of the psychology of its characters. The themes, the backdrop of civil war, the divided country, the clashes between people, weren't simply plot devices, they were an external expression or projection of the internal, elemental dramas that the characters faced.

By contrast, Morocco seems far more straightforward. While one could argue that the titular setting, the backdrop of the Rif War and the surrounding issues of colonialism and white/western exploitation, fulfil a similar function as the Shanghai setting of that later work, I felt there was a much greater disconnect here between these elements and the more conventional melodrama that rests at the heart of the film.

Morocco [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

While Shanghai Express felt mysterious – its band of characters, some sinister, others played for comic relief, keeping the development of the plot compelling through their dialogues and interactions – Morocco feels locked into the relationship between its three central characters; the narrowed scope creating a more stifling and hermetic atmosphere that for me was never entirely engaging.

Adapted from the play "Amy Jolly" by the writer Benno Vigny, Morocco feels comparatively more theatrical than Shanghai Express. In keeping with its origins and ambitions, the film plays with themes of performance, voyeurism, objectification and the role of the characters as individuals hiding behind masks, uniforms and personae, while keeping the drama contained to specific, single locations that facilitate easy introductions, providing a place for several characters to meet at once.

The nightclub at the start of the film is a good example of this. As well as explicitly connecting the film and Dietrich's role to the actor's first collaboration with von Sternberg, The Blue Angel (1930), the initial setting becomes a self-contained world; a microcosm, much like the fantasy Morocco that the filmmakers evoke, that becomes the center stage for this drama to be enacted.

The Blue Angel [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

Morocco [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

The theatricality of the film, its "staginess" or artificiality, isn't necessarily a criticism. Many great films have drawn on theatrical limitation to powerful effect, from Peter Brook's adaptation of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (1967) to films like Rope (1948) by Alfred Hitchcock, Twelve Angry Men (1957) by Sidney Lumet and Dogville (2003) by Lars von Trier, among others. However, Morocco is so stiffly mannered and bluntly expositional in its emotional entanglements, that the staginess becomes a barrier to engaging with the emotions of the film.

The effect is almost Brechtian; jarring the audience out of the film's romantic or dramatic reverie, creating a distancing effect that is most likely unintentional. Rather than depict a functioning human being, the characters become embodiments of specific roles, professions, or personifications of class. In short, they have a symbolic function, representing ideas rather than presenting fully rounded characters. Their dialogue tells us what these individuals are thinking at all times, announcing emotions in blunt, declarative statements, not like human beings, but like actors in a play.

In this aspect of the film's construction I was reminded of one of my favourite filmmakers, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder would effectively remake von Sternberg's earlier, aforementioned The Blue Angel, with one of his final works, Lola (1981), but it was in seeing Morocco that I realized where much of Fassbinder's later aesthetic was born.

Finding elements of von Sternberg's work in everything from Despair (1978) to Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) and through to his final film Querelle (1982), the influence was undoubtable. The same complex system of blocking, the moving camera, the mirror symbolism and its resultant themes of projection and self-reflection, are consistent between the two filmmakers' works. Similarly, the instances of characters confined and imprisoned by set-design, illustrating the way these same characters have been ensnared by a world and its responsibilities, creating a further shorthand for themes of possession, desire and objectification.

Lola [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981]:

Querelle [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982]:

Fassbinder's work, particularly from the middle-to-later period of his short career, stands as superior to a film like Morocco, able to go deeper into the same themes of sadness, disenchantment and the cruelties of exploitation and pity that human beings are capable of, without being constrained by the necessary and unambiguous morality that films of Morocco's period were expected to promote. Regardless, we should respect the influence and the legacy that von Sternberg's work clearly had on Fassbinder's greater films.

Despite my muted response to Morocco, at least in comparison to other related works, there is still much to admire about the film. Two aspects of its characterization and direction stand out as incredibly progressive. These elements transcend the weaker aspects of the film and elevate it as both an important and historically significant work within the context of still topical discussions on sexuality and genderfluidity in the contemporary cinema.

In an early introduction to Dietrich's character, the disillusioned nightclub singer Mademoiselle Amy Jolly, the actor appears dressed in a man's tuxedo. Challenging notions of femininity verses masculinity, Dietrich commands the stage as she performs a musical number, directly provoking the mostly male audience that gather in the nightclub, and in turn, gathered within the cinema. As the sequence progresses, she even kisses another woman; a bold gesture in the context of 1930s Hollywood cinema, and one that would have been rendered unthinkable after the implementation of the Hays Code a few years later.

Morocco [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

As a sequence, it remains a key moment in the history of film; one that might have been the focus of this entire essay had it not been endlessly written about and discussed by writers and critics far more insightful and significant than me.

The use of the costume and what it represents, along with the lesbian kiss, say so much about ideas of gender, sexuality, identity as a performative role, and the imbalance of power that exists between men and women. In donning the clothes conventionally thought of as male, Dietrich's character takes on traits that are now identified as being related to notions of hyper-masculinity, or male privilege, exerting a sexual dominance and control over another woman in an unwanted and aggressive way. At the same time, she presents an image that is at once defiantly feminist while remaining still outside of the conventions of gender, presenting the initial image of a woman that is both confident and in control.

While the stylized Moroccan setting, created on a Hollywood soundstage, is inauthentic and perhaps insensitive in its reduction of a living culture and its people to a level of props and glamorized exotica, these other aspects of the film still feel progressive and ahead of their time.

Through the Looking Glass

Thoughts on a film: Petria's Wreath (1980)

PART II: WINDOWS

To see the memory of a life through a window-frame is a presentation inherently cinematic. It plays into the natural association of the window as something to be looked through; a window not just looking out into the wider world from the perspective of the inhabitant within, but a window looking in on a new world from the contrasting perspective of the attentive voyeur. A private world full of characters and stories that are different but also recognisably the same.

The most obvious example of this - one that I've returned to several times in the context of the blog - is the Alfred Hitchcock directed masterpiece Rear Window (1954). Here, the central character, bound as he is by injury, finds himself cast as the aforementioned voyeur; his window-space becoming a surrogate for the cinema screen; each adjacent room and apartment presenting a new scene, story or, apropos to television, a "channel." Actuality is transformed here by the subjective gaze into a murder-mystery of the character's own conception.

Rear Window [Alfred Hitchcock, 1954]:

However, a window, if lit correctly, can also become a mirror. It reflects the thing in front of it; giving us the image not just of the small (or great) drama occurring on the other side of the screen, but the reflected image of the observer projected upon its gleaming surface. An example of this can be found in the Fassbinder film, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), where the long-suffering character Marlene watches with a resigned desperation as the object of her affection is seduced by a love that isn't her.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972]:

Here the window - which both reveals and obscures the act itself (as well as further representing the idea of objectification as a symptom of romantic desire, even obsession) - is also a reflection of everything Marlene wants but is unable to achieve. Her emptiness - or position as someone outside of the conventional parameters of an equal partnership - is represented by the imprisoning blinds and the dead space that seems to overwhelm the right-hand side of the composition, creating an even greater reflection (or projection) of the character's distance and isolation.

The fact that she, in her separation, is the one literally behind the glass, shows how Marlene herself is objectified by her own submissiveness. The window, in this presentation, is less a portal to another world than an emotional or psychological barrier; something that keeps the character from connecting to the pleasures and sensations of life itself.

The same aesthetic ideology once again refers back to Hitchcock. The scene in Vertigo (1958), in which the well meaning but painfully naive character Midge - the would-be romantic foil to the film's obsessive anti-hero Scottie Ferguson - sees herself alone and dejected following an attempt to impress her disinterested protagonist, and becomes - for only a brief moment - a sad reflection in the window pane of a studio apartment.

Vertigo [Alfred Hitchcock, 1958]:

In this small moment, the character is finally confronted with the reality of how the protagonist sees her; effectively invisible, transparent and incomplete. Like an insect trapped behind a pane of glass in a museum - to be viewed by the curious as an example of something no longer living - this Midge (the name alone analogous to that of an actual bug; a "pest") is barely visible, opaque, indecipherable; a phantom lady hovering lonesome-like over the city. This backdrop itself mocks the character with a vision of life, vibrancy and adventure, which, given the particular context, seems forever out of reach.

These windows become mirrors to their respective characters conception of "the self"; reflecting a self-image that is all too painful to embrace. However, they also provide a mirror for the viewing audience, who project on to them, Rear Window-like, their own impressions of a story; one based on their own subjective point of view.  Do I, as the viewer, see the pain and frustration of these characters because that's what the filmmakers intended, or do I project such feelings onto the images because of my own experiences and beliefs. As ever, it's a bit of both.

The use of the window in Petria's Wreath represents a combination of the three points of view expressed herein. At the most immediate level, the window is a portal; a means of looking back on something that occurred many decades ago from the perspective of the present day. It's also a part of the self-reflexive aspect of the film; specifically in how the scene is framed by the appearance of a photographer, who captures the old woman's image and then, through old-fashioned editing techniques, transformers her into a younger self. In this sense the photographer could be seen as an on-screen avatar for Karanović himself, creating, through the portrait of Petria, the story we're about to see.

The composition of the earlier image - Petria posed for the photographer - is interesting in this respect. If we think of the presentation of the window as a frame within a frame, then it creates the impression of a kind of diptych. On one side a portrait of the photographer, camera on tripod, lining up a shot; on the other side, the photographer's subject; the young woman, solemn and composed. Playing around with the dimensions of the frame, this right-hand side - the portrait of Petria - suddenly becomes a prelude to the film in miniature.

Petria's Wreath [Srđan Karanović, 1980]:

Detail - "Petria's Portrait" [edited by the author]:

While the rest of the film will soon settle into a more conventional narrative, as we follow the journey of this young woman through a series of emotional hardships - such as marriage, children, war and revolution; all seen against a backdrop of significant moments in the history of Yugoslavia during the pre and post-war periods - it is this one image that seems to evoke the very essence of what the film is about. The reflection of the past as a still vivid memory; a life recalled by a character who becomes, through the presentation of this memory, like a living embodiment or personification of the country, its struggles, histories and ideals.

In presentation, it's an act of turning the character into an icon. Something that becomes much clearer during the subsequent credit sequence, in which the image of the elderly Petria, as captured by the photographer in this first scene, is made youthful; another example of Karanović using the appearance of images to suggest a passage through time. It will also act as a self-aware acknowledgement of the filmmaker's own role in the creation of this story, as the depiction of cameras and photography become an important part of documenting the story we're about to see.

Like the emphasis on the objects and mementos that defined the elderly Petria's house in the first part of this sequences, the significance of the portrait is about memory; about how certain objects, passed down through the generations, hold stories and emotions that speak to the ghosts of the past. I'd like to talk more about the portrait and its self-reflexive role in the film at a later date, but for now let's consider this moment, viewed through the kitchen window, and how it pre-establishes a lot of these ideas relating to the window as shorthand for cinema, about the objectification of a character as personification of a particular time, place or state-of-being, and what it suggests about the relationship between the viewer and the viewed.

Key Films #24

Our Daily Bread [Mani Kaul, 1970]: 

 

In the opening sequence, the dutiful wife Balo, the protagonist of the film, waits patiently at a bus stop for the arrival of her husband, the impetuous Sucha Singh.  The man - a municipal bus driver - spends his weeks in the city, returning home only on the weekends, before he's off again; moving from town to town, betwixt worlds.  Each day, his bus passes the main road close to Balo's village.  The woman - his faithful wife - makes the gruelling trek to greet him.  Waiting, with a lunch pail in hand in the hope that his bus might stop to pick up a passenger, is more than an obligation.  It's a daily ritual.  A way for this woman to maintain some semblance of a relationship, or to lessen the loneliness that this life of servitude and routine has forced upon her.  To make matters worse, the chatter of the local gossip seems to imply infidelity.  Could Sucha Singh have a second wife in the city; one that he spends his weeks with?  For Balo, the possibility of this is devastating.  Kaul communicates the feeling of intense sadness by isolating the character within the frame; creating "interior" moments, where time seems to slow to a crawl; where her loneliness becomes unbearable.  Later, as if to add to the film's wounded tone, the filmmaker evokes suicide.  The body of a young woman is pulled from the river, but the fragmented narrative leaves us uncertain of victim's true identity.  If this is Balo, then how does she return to reconcile in the film's final act?

 

The editing of the film is both vague and indefinite.  Characters drift in and out of the narrative; scenes seem to reoccur, until we realise that it's just the repetition of days.  Jump cuts are used to disrupt time; creating the feeling of hours passing in minutes, the time slipping away.  The film breaks continuity, making the progression of the narrative difficult to follow.  In several sequences, the action seems to be presented as if a memory, or as if we're witnessing the life of one character through the eyes of another.  As with Duvidha (1973), a later work by the same director, the film seems critical of the way women are treated by the culture.  The loneliness of these women, left to tend to the running of the house and its endless list of chores while the husband goes off to work and to socialise, is central to both films.  This social commentary is beautifully realised, but it is on a level of pure filmmaking that Our Daily Bread truly transcends.  The 'Bressonian' approach of the actors, both mannered and withdrawn, is subtly affecting, while the quality of its cinematography recalls Dreyer and his masterpiece Ordet (1955).  The purity of the image, where the brightness of a summer's day obliterates all detail, suffused as it is by a holy glow, is staggering.  The scenes throughout, tranquil and pastoral in presentation, establish the loneliness of this world, the isolation of it.  The unearthly, almost ghostly aspect, which comes to define the life of its character, is captured within every static frame.

 

 

Light Sleeper [Paul Schrader, 1992]:

 

The territory, as defined by the film's title sequence, is immediately recognisable.  An open road, leading nowhere.  An endless stretch into the black hell of an infernal city; the city of the damned.  The fog of a film noir street scene shrouds the air like a storm cloud, obscuring everything; making the journey both formless and indistinct.  The car moves at a sombre crawl through these lonely streets, its headlights blazing, garbage lining road.  In the backseat, high-class drug dealer John LeTour is the condemned man; his face full of anguish and pity; numb to the experience.  The song on the soundtrack communicates his thoughts through verse, establishing a recurrent leitmotif, where the music becomes a way of expressing the thoughts too painful to be spoken or felt.  "And it feels..." the lyrics lament, "...like the world's on fire."  Through the iconography, or through the presentation of the character, this could be Taxi Driver (1976) or the later scenes of American Gigolo (1980) - that same loneliness, the late night despair - but it isn't.  Nonetheless, it's classic Schrader.  Another dark night of the soul; another God's lonely man, still searching for redemption.  The title alone establishing the restless nature of this protagonist; his purgatory-like existence as a lost spirit, hovering, in limbo, between life and death.

 

From the outset, LeTour is being introduced as the archetypical Schrader character.  An outsider, defined by his job, his adopted "role."  Like Travis in Taxi Driver, or Julian in American Gigolo, his life has become a series of appointments, encounters, but on a strictly professional level.  His time away from the job seems empty and meaningless; his barren apartment, where he sits, shirtless, writing his thoughts in a journal ("fill one up, throw it out, start another one" he muses) reflects the emptiness of this existence; the life without passion or memory.  It is this feeling of intense loneliness that defines the film.  The loss and longing, which finds its most moving expression in the relationship between LeTour and his former lover, Marianne.  They meet, by chance, after an absence of several years.  She's cleaned up, got herself straight.  There's a tension there.  He loves her.  She loves him too.  But she recognises that he's still a link to that world; that past life of violence and addiction.  They spend the night together, but in the morning she leaves.  The look on LeTour's face - bathed in the neon-green glow of an adjacent street sign - is devastating in its vulnerability as he is denied the only reflection of hope that made life for him worth living.

 

Like so many characters in Schrader's work, LeTour is seeking salvation through self-destruction.  He knows that the path he has chosen to walk is a dangerous one, but he embraces it, regardless.  Even when his better judgement tries to steer him clear, tries to wake him up to the inevitable violence that awaits him at the end of this lonesome road - this phantom ride - he's compelled to continue.  Like Taxi Driver, this is a bleak work - a film about the worst kind of loneliness; the loneliness that hits us in a room full of people when we realise that inability to connect - but with the redemption of American Gigolo; the hope for absolution.  The appearance of Dafoe as LeTour gives the film its emotion; its wailing heart.  The way Schrader uses Dafoe, making the most of those stern features - at first hard and threatening, but then punctured by a sadness, both honest and true - recalls the way Scorsese had used him in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988); finding something of the martyr in his fall from grace.  The final scene, which brings us back to American Gigolo via the Bresson of Pickpocket (1959), presents LeTour almost as a saintly figure; his supplier, Ann, becoming Mary Magdalene, as he kisses her hand for forgiveness.  It's the final perfect expression of what Schrader himself once referred to as the transcendental style.

 

 

Querelle [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982]:

 

How to describe a work like Querelle?  As a 'haunted' film?  A 'violent' film?  A film submersed in the feelings of pain and self-pity?  A film where powerful emotions, like anger, bitterness, shame and regret, find expression in every facet of the film; from the use of colour, to the language, to the use of space?  The world of the film - this seedy port; this dream of Brest created on a stifling soundstage - presents a world of brutality and suffering.  A world where men and women, looking for an escape, lose themselves in squalid bars or smoky bordellos; disappearing into the mire of indulgence via the various backstreets and passageways that run through the town, like veins through the body.  The port of 'Querelle', at least in Fassbinder's mind, is like an elaborate fantasy.  A Burroughsian 'Interzone', alive with the desires and the compulsions of its shiftless characters, corrupt and uncontrolled.  The entire film, bathed as it is in a yellow-green light or the glow of an artificial sun, suggests this corruption - this sickness - on a visual level.  The moral decay of the characters, as a corporal thing - the port, with its vaginal canals and its obviously phallic lighthouses - turns the harbour itself into a living being (like a body with a broken heart), but it's also the decay of the mind, as much as the body, that overwhelms the thing.  The loneliness, the desire and the desperation of these characters, creating an illness or obsession that is manifest in every aspect of the work.

 

A film where the colour suggests the psychological deterioration of its characters, while the use of space seems to trap them, crushing the spirit, or ensnaring them in the pain of their own desires.  The walls, closing in, the streets leading nowhere; the fortifications, like giant erections trailing testicular mounds, remind the characters at every turn of their own physicality, or the physicality of their particular obsessions; their lust and indignation.  Through this, the entire experience of the film is like being trapped within the mind of a character suffering through his own nightmare of guilt and grief; trying to make sense of it through projection, or dramatisation.  So a 'confessional' film, perhaps?  An admission of remorse or culpability for the way these character are exploited or misused, but not necessarily from the protagonists - the titular Querelle (the violent sailor who arrives in Brest to reconcile with his brother, Robert) or Lieutenant Seblon (whose sexual repression and urge to possess Querelle gives subtext to this narrative of corruption) - but from Fassbinder himself.  One could argue that his Querelle is not simply an adaptation of Genet's novel, but perhaps an attempt by Fassbinder to reconcile his own feelings of remorse following the suicide of his abused lover Armin Meier in 1978 or the subsequent death of his former lover El Hedi ben Salem in a French prison in 1982.  In this respect, the film is a painful and wounded acknowledgement of the way obsession and desire - that need to possess - can destroy lives, or the dream of life, as it does for the characters of Querelle.

Key Films #16

Angelus [Lech Majewski, 2000]:

 

It's difficult to adequately define the experience of the film; this work, which in many ways goes beyond the more commonly accepted conventions of genre, creating instead a loose narrative of sketches in which elements of comedy and fantasy, satirical allegory and scathing social critique are all brought together to create a statement on cultural identity, religious hysteria and the power of 'faith', in all of its various permutations, to persist; to persevere.  As much as I would like to describe, in-depth, the meaning(s) of the film and how brilliantly Majewski and his co-writers expose the tyranny and hypocrisy of these characters and the absurdity of their respective situations, too much of the greater political and social commentary - which provides a context for the film throughout - is beyond my reach.  In particular, the actual historical foundation of the film, which relates to certain specific periods of Polish heritage, from the formation of the country (or at least from the period beginning with the integration of the three former partitioning powers into a cohesive national state), through to the invasion of the country during the Second World War, the rise of communism and finally moving towards the eventual democratic rule of the current Third Polish Republic.

My reaction to the film was very much similar to my reactions to two other films that I recently saw; Wanda Gościmińska: A Textile Worker (1975) and ABC Book/The Primer (1976) both directed by Wojciech Wiszniewski.  These two films also approach both the history and cultural identity of Poland in the last half of the 20th century from a rather eccentric, somewhat sardonic perspective, and both are similarly difficult to describe, in any critical capacity, without possessing a further appreciation of the socio-political context that informs both the narrative and its critique.  However, even with some of the more specific references being lost in translation, the style of the film - the actual direction of it - is unforgettable.  There are hints of Derek Jarman in the mix of the modern and the antiquated, in the presence of art in every frame, and in the stylised 'tableau vivant' approach to composition, which frequently recalls the spectre of actual paintings and their ability to provide a commentary, through symbolism, that is consistent with the stylisation of the film itself.  The humour, which is also imperative to the film's point of view, is reminiscent of Roy Andersson, especially in the presentation of the central characters and in the almost Buñuelian lampoon of contemporary domesticity, which adds to the film's intelligent and often startling burlesque.

Larisa [Elem Klimov, 1980]:

 

A tribute to a woman who no longer exists, except in images, both moving and still.  The voice of this woman - conjured, phantom-like, from haunted recordings that suggest the continuation of a life when only the traces remain - speaks, in clear terms, about the difficulties faced by the individual, and of her own influences and ideological struggles, as both an artist and a woman, to remain true to her own creative ambitions and intent.  The film - in short, a kind of memorial piece, assembled by her husband as a response to his own state of tearful mourning - is a celebration of the talent of this young woman (only forty at the time of her death), and in essence becomes a declaration of love, from one artist to another.  It is a celebration as well as a lament that attempts, through the combination of sound and image, to honour the spirit of this woman, the filmmaker Larisa Shepitko, but also to present, through images edited from her own films, the sadness felt, not just by her husband - director Elem Klimov - but by her friends and associates left broken in the wake of her death.  In the gallery of sad and hopeless faces, or in the scenes of pure anguish found in Shepitko's own films - amongst them Krylya (1966) and The Ascent (1976) - Klimov is able to express, movingly, but without sentimentality, an outpouring of his own grief and admiration and the tragedy of his (and our) loss.

The presentation of the film suggests, through the use of its running commentary, both aural and visual, the strength of this woman, as expressed in her own words, but also her enthusiasm and commitment to making films with a passion and integrity that was distinct and entirely her own.  In conversation with Klimov, the voice of Shepitko outlines her conception of a "ladies' cinema", in opposition to the more dominant "male cinema", and free of its persistent influence.  As a hypothesis, this is both fascinating and inspirational, but the real power of the film is found, not in these snippets of conversation, but in the actual ability to show, through the arrangement of the images - as literal "recorded memories" - the journey of a life.  Beginning with a wordless montage of photographs of Shepitko - from birth to death, or near enough - the film progresses through the success and achievements of her professional career, beyond the last attempts to film an adaptation of Valentin Rasputin's novel Farewell to Matyora, and eventually reaching a kind of conclusion at the site of the accident that claimed her life.  The film ends with the very last piece of footage ever directed by Shepitko.  An image, described by Klimov himself as "an eternal tree, the symbol of perseverance and dignity, the symbol of faith in the endless continuation of what we call life."  A final elegy, suggestive of the lasting influence of this woman, as stoical and enduring as the tree itself.

The Niklashausen Journey [Rainer Werner Fassbinder & Michael Fengler, 1970]:

 

Like the earlier film, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970), The Niklashausen Journey is co-credited to Fassbinder and his occasional producer Michael Fengler.  Some of Fassbinder's closest collaborators, amongst them the actress Hanna Schygulla, have since claimed that the true "author" of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? was in fact Fengler, and that Fassbinder's name was only added to the production to help secure the film's release.  With this in mind, it becomes even more difficult to ascertain the true authorship of a film as extraordinary as The Niklashausen Journey, which, as a work, is thematically unlike any other film that Fassbinder is best remembered for, and yet, at the same time, is a film very much reminiscent, in both its approach and technique, of some of the director's most significant and identifiable works.  While the earlier Fassbinder/Fengler collaboration had employed a loose cinéma vérité approach of drab colours, hand-held camera and harsh (seemingly) natural light, the look and feel of The Niklashausen Journey is comparatively much closer to the style of subsequent Fassbinder films, such as Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) and Fear Eats the Soul (1974).  In those films as well as here, there is a similar use of bold primary colours, lengthy tracking shots and the rigorous composition of actors within the frame, each expressive of that early Fassbinder style as it was developing through Love is Colder Than Death (1969) to The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972).

This approach is also consistent with Fassbinder's early adoration for the work of Jean-Luc Godard, with the influence of films like Week End (1967) and One Plus One (also known as Sympathy for the Devil, 1968) conspicuous in both the film's aggressive political dissertation and in the genuinely confrontational design.  Like the Godard of the late 1960s and early 1970s, The Niklashausen Journey is a loud, seemingly rambling and chaotic film, full of didactic sermonising, agitprop sloganeering and a propensity for pure provocation.  As such, it is often disregarded from the general discussion of Fassbinder's career, which to me seems a bit of a shame.  Although less powerful than the work he would eventually direct after swapping the influence of Godard for the influence of Sirk, The Niklashausen Journey is a no less a fascinating portrait of a specific time and place.  A portrait obfuscated by allegory and a loose theatrical evocation that recalls the Straub-Huillet of the analogous Othon (1970), but still redolent of the political situation as it existed in Germany at the time the film was produced.  As such, it now seems of specific interest, not just for the confident and imaginative direction of Fassbinder & Fengler, but for the historical context that it provides.

Key Films #15

A Talking Picture [Manoel de Oliveira, 2003]:

The film is titled A Talking Picture, and as a description, or as a prelude to the thing we're about to see, it doesn't mislead.  The dialogues throughout are lengthy and invigorating, relevant to the film's main journey into the past as a reflection of the present - into this idea of communication - but also naturalistic; drawing the audience into the story of these two characters and the people they meet along the way, while also managing to make a broader, more allegorical point on the development of our shared histories in the context of the no less violent struggles - both moral and political - of our own contemporary existence.  Seen through the eyes of a mother and her daughter (who literally cross thousands of years of civilisation on a journey to reunite with their respective husband and father) the film becomes a kind of a loose travelogue, where each port of call, from Lisbon to Goa, presents an opportunity to explore the various historical sites, from the ruins of Pompeii beneath the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, to the mighty pyramids of Giza, where the interactions between these modern-day characters in the presence of these fallen civilisations, create a dramatic statement in keeping with the main emphasis on the progression of history as a shared experience; something that is already a part of history; some echo of the past reflecting on the modern age. 

The central journey from Lisbon to India recalls that of the famed Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, but the route - traversing the Mediterranean and making stops in France, Italy, Greece, Egypt and eventually Turkey - brings to mind a similar progression from Jean-Luc Godard's more recent work, Film Socialisme (2010).  Like that particular film, the presence of the ocean liner becomes a microcosm of Europe in the 21st century, where the dialogues between business woman Catherine Deneuve, model and fashion designer Stefania Sandrelli, stage actress and singer Irene Papas and the ship's captain John Malkovich, allows Oliveira to discuss the idea of nationalism (or colonialism) in the age of the European Union, as well as the struggle to retain a cultural identity in light of the growing homogenisation of western culture, as it flourishes (or did) under the rule of capitalism, in a very direct and unguarded approach.  These dinner table conversations punctuate the more charming and leisurely sequences shared by the mother and daughter, where the sense of history - of these places and their stories - is overwhelming, both emotionally and cinematically.  The end of the film, which I won't spoil, takes this idea of the past as a mirror to the present in an entirely different direction.  The logical but no less shocking conclusion that all this talk of conflict has been leading to.  An impression that civilisations every bit as cultured and enlightened as our own, rose and fell in the blink of an eye.

Gods of the Plague [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1970]:

The film's overwhelmingly bleak, almost-existential title, Gods of the Plague, is explained in the subtitles of the film's theatrical-trailer, which when not giving away the entire plot, states, via on-screen text: "Criminals are our modern day Gods.  Capitalism our Plague."  From this, the ideological implications of the title establish, in a figurative sense, the allure of the gangster as a modern-day Robin Hood.  It also illustrates, on a more deconstructive level, the role that the film-noir, as a sub-genre, plays in its ability to offer commentary and critique on the state of the world through an exaggerated fatalism, personal detachment and occasional undercurrent of stylised melodrama.  Fassbinder, like his early idols of the French New Wave, looks at American genre cinema and sees the political context that motivates these stories of crime and misdemeanour.  As such, he dispenses with the more conventional or contrived emphasis on things like the heist, the job, the "plot", and instead focuses on the displaced characters - the "underclass" - and the various economic hardships that make the criminal transgressions of these protagonists necessary, if not actually worthwhile. 

The socio-political or socio-economic ideas aren't explored as thoroughly here as they are in later works, such as Fox and his Friends (1975) or The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971), but they do still provide some context (or perhaps even a justification) for the cruel and pitiless world that these characters find themselves drawn into.  In terms of its approach, Gods of the Plague is both a continuation and a refinement of the experiments of Love is Colder Than Death (1969), incorporating many of the same influences - specifically Hollywood noir of the '40s and '50s and the early films of Jean-Luc Godard - alongside Fassbinder's growing interest in a kind of ironic melodrama, as typified by the films of Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk.  While Love is Colder than Death was notable for its contemplative pace, long takes, extended pauses and a general feeling of emptiness and introspection, Gods of the Plague seems somewhat more focused in its plotting and in the development of its characters.  As such, it is perhaps the greatest of Fassbinder's early films and one that points the way towards the style and tone of the director's later, more celebrated works.

 

Cosmopolis [David Cronenberg, 2012]:

Beneath the slow crawl of the opening credits, an abstract, Jackson Pollock-esque image of spattered paint takes form; suggesting from the outset the influence of the conceptual, the nonfigurative, on this narrative of meetings and encounters; where the motivations of characters or the progression of certain scenes seem almost elusive; more of a series of starts and stops, like the journey itself, which play to their own natural rhythm; like jazz; the words replacing the music.  This image - this invocation of Pollock - in its appearance at least suggests the same chaos and disorder as the riots and protests that unfurl like living theatre through the cinemascope-like frame of the limousine's stretched windshield; the texture of the paint itself, spattered and streaked in lines and drops of green, black and grey on a canvas that has the shade of decaying flesh, looks to me like the mess of a city; the scrawl of a black metropolis where anarchy and remonstration flow like the veins through a body; reaching out; destroying everything from within.  If this painting - this facsimile of Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) - is a mirror to the character's own conflicted state-of-mind, then the use of Mark Rothko's work during the closing credits suggests some sense of closure or resignation.  A blank state, calm and serene; more a mood or a state of being that is eventually achieved by the central character at the end of this long passage into (self) discovery.  No longer conflicted, just free. 

It's all open to interpretation, but I took the film to be a critique of the current generation.  A generation that has profiteered from the internet, from social-networking; a generation that is affluent, upwardly mobile, secure but insular; ultimately self-involved.  It is a portrait of a generation that has achieved great wealth and privilege by doing very little and is now, collectively, bored with everything.  Life for these people has become hermetic, detached; a series of appointments, everything a transaction, everything for sale.  The limousine that cuts a path through the crowded streets is not only a garrison from the outside world (a symbol of wealth and status, as well as anonymity) but also an extension of who this character is.  The gradual deterioration of the car as it is attacked by revellers and protestors, becomes an on-screen representation of the character's own psychological deterioration, as the world outside the car - outside his own influence and control - becomes a protest against an uncertain future; one that threatens to upend the influence of capitalism, destroying the dangerous thread that creates balance; that keeps us in place.  Like many characters in Cronenberg's work, there is a sense of someone embracing their own destruction.  The form of the film, static and stilted - creating a feeling of inertia, of time standing still - communicates the boredom of a man who longs for revolution - for death! - just to create some kind of change to the stagnant social order.

Key Films #14

Excalibur [John Boorman, 1981]:

The forest - an exterior lit like an interior - becomes a character in its own right. By day, the trees and foliage shimmer in shades of emerald.  At dusk, an ochre-hued fog enshrouds the trees like slumbering giants, becoming the gatekeepers to another world.  At dawn, the violent flare of an artificial sun casts its crimson glow off the glistening armour of a pale and wounded knight.  The forest, like most of the locations used throughout the film, is a place of magic and miracle; an iridescent kingdom of shadows and light.  While the storytelling is somewhat straightforward in its reiteration of this fabled tale, Boorman's film is nonetheless successful in its grandeur and its decadence.  In its imagery - which is vivid and unforgettable in the pure spectacle of colour and movement - but also in its scale.  The Arthurian legend has been told countless times, both in film and other media, but no other filmmaker has successfully captured the magic and the wonder of these stories with the same vibrant and flamboyant approach that Boorman achieves here.  His Excalibur is, at its purest, an epic of theatrical design and Wagnerian excess. 

This spirited and poetic film captures the true power and majesty of the silent cinema, but with all the sound and fury of that post-70s indulgence. As an experience, the film strikes a continual chord whenever I see it, transporting me, to another time, another place; leaving me captivated by its plot and larger-than-life characterisations, or thrilled by its vision.  In terms of the filmmaking craft Excalibur is without a doubt a work of great passion and imagination, and a great testament to the unsung talent of John Boorman, a true visionary, and one of the cinema's most misjudged and maligned auteurs.

The Phantom Heart [Philippe Garrel, 1996]:

A scene we've seen before.  The two protagonists - a married couple - attempt reconciliation, but they know, as well as we, that the situation, for them, is hopeless.  The scene in question occurs quite early in the film and establishes something of a consistent tone; a feeling of desperation or distance; the sense of something reaching an untimely if no less inevitable end.  As ever, the dissolution of a relationship presents the end of something, but also a new beginning.  The chance to move on, to start afresh, to find similar expressions in the arms of another; to avoid the same failures and faults; to ask ourselves, without sarcasm or pity, 'where do we go from here?'  This is a question that Garrel has returned to in several of his films, from L'enfant secret (1979) and Liberté, la nuit (1983), to She Spent So Many Hours Under the Sun Lamps (1985) and The Birth of Love (1993).  In all these films, his characters are trying to reconcile the experiences of the past with the responsibilities of the present; to make sense of where their lives are heading; to learn from their mistakes. 

In The Phantom Heart, the question is once again suggested by the story of these characters - the husband and his wife - and their relationships with the various figures that drift, phantom-like, not just through the remnants of their past experiences, emotions or shared ideas, but through the traces of a dream.  The dichotomy presented here, between the tangible reality of divorce, middle-age, doubt, fragility and responsibility, and the hopes and desires reflected in the tortured affairs, the creative success and the financial security that comes with it, propels the film; gives context to that lingering feeling of emptiness and futility that punctuates every interaction, no matter how positive or genial it might seem.  Like all Garrel's films, there is something almost impossibly hermetic about its structure, its tone and the use of locations.  A personal quality that borders on the autobiographical, in which these characters, their actions and dilemmas, and the personal spaces that define them, seem to be as relevant and significant to our understanding of the material as the emotions depicted on-screen.

 

 

Love is Colder Than Death [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1969]:

The title, Love is Colder than Death, plays beautifully to the violence of the film and also to the influence of film-noir as a facilitator for existential longing, brutality and despair.  As a piece of spoken text, it has the sound of something delivered by Robert Mitchum in Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947), or by Humphrey Bogart in Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950).  A five word expression that resonates with a sense of longing for unfulfilled romantic desire, full of allusions or suggestions to scenes, situations, characters and dilemmas that would occur and reoccur throughout Fassbinder's later career.  Specifically, through films such as The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and His Friends (1975) and In a Year with 13 Moons (1978); stories where the general brutality of relationships or the duplicitous nature of human beings when pushed into hopeless situations, make death, by comparison, seem like a relief. 

For the characters in Fassbinder's work, love is colder than death, and in this film the attitude is expressed through a fractured, languorous study of petty gangsters struggling to exist in a word rapidly closing in on them.  The sense of fatalism explicit in the title is therefore perfectly suited to the form of the film, which draws heavily on the second-hand references to American crime pictures of the 1940s and '50s, where the overwhelming cynicism of characters or the general loveless nature of the underworld environment breeds a particular kind of person.  One that lives each moment as if it were their last; where relationships burn hard and fast; and where the sense of place - as in 'a lonely place', or in 'a place to call home' - is forever out of reach.