My Man Godfrey (1936)

It’s very easy to tell when a film was made in 1930’s Hollywood.  Stylistically the lighting is very flat, the camera movement is limited, mainly photographed in long or medium shots to give the feeling of a play, and the characters are dressed in the latest fashions, so sheik for their time that today they stand out.  Also these films, less so as the decade went on, contain searing social commentary.  This is an adequate distillation of My Man Godfrey, a beloved screwball comedy more in the tradition of drama, though the characters are oddballs and the women speak at a mile a minute.

Godfrey is a “forgotten man”, one of the homeless living in New York Dump 32.  One night a group of society people come to him asking for his help for their scavenger hunt.  You see, the two women need a forgotten man to come back to a posh hotel for them to win the game.  As Irene Bullock, played by Carole Lombard, notes, one does not win a prize but merely the honor of winning.  Godfrey ruthlessly turns down Irene’s sister Cornelia, someone whose very name describes her witchy snobbery, but he helps out the friendlier and perhaps more naive Irene.  He wins her the game and she feels so indebted to him that she gives him the job of the Bullock family’s new butler.

The high jinks or at least the narrative takes off from here, but My Man Godfrey is seldom laugh-out-loud funny.  Most of the comedy comes from how out of touch the Bullock women are, and there are some genuine laughs.  But the film feels more like a depression-era fable, about a spoilt heir (spoiler—Godfrey) giving up wealth to communicate with the downtrodden, finding with those who struggle a kinship and honesty.  It is easy to see why when looking, say, at Irene’s mother Angelica; she keeps a protégé called Carlo who is nothing more than a freeloader, accepting insults from Mr. Bullock as long as he does not have to work for money.  In fact the very word causes him pain.  Angelica, or Mrs. Bullock, is a daffy, clueless woman who does not take into consideration how much money their family wastes, or that her husband constantly tries to mention his business troubles.  This talk upsets poor Carlo.

I will again admit to a bias against comedies.  I simply prefer dramas, but the screwball genre is interesting.  My textbook example is His Girl Friday, which is one of my favorite films.  That film is wall to wall laughs, and it gave me the impression that screwball comedies are farce and quick gags.  An online search regarding the genre informed me that it really is indefinable.  I like “Sex comedy without the sex”, as defined by critic Andrew Sarris.  The few screwball comedies I remember involve courtship, usually the woman directly vying for the love of the handsome, befuddled man.  They are innocent fun steeped in the moral traditions of another era.  In fact, at one point My Man Godfrey played more like an early 1900s piece than a more modern and less moralistic 1930s.  The 1930s of course were a very controversial time for American film, with censorship becoming a reality by 1934.  That the film is less comedic is not a fault of the picture.  As far as it goes in screwball territory it succeeds, but the film is about the carelessness of the idle rich.

William Powell’s Godfrey seems most out of place in a screwball comedy.  I think it is his character that blurs the lines of genre.  He is world-weary and so sure of himself.  He minds the social hierarchy and is careful to remain distant but compliant with the at-odds Bullock sisters.  Irene loves him and Cornelia is after revenge for his initial snub.  Godfrey, as he says to an old friend, was not equipped to handle struggle in life.  His rich upbringing left him child-like.  The adult world disillusioned him.  The film feels at times something like a Frank Capra film, or Make Way for Tomorrow, with its biting sociopolitical observations.  I have to say Godfrey’s character distracted me a bit.  Not only is he never meant to be funny, his character seems above the film, as if he merely watches the Bullocks and judges them.  This is in fact what Godfrey does, but as such he belongs in another film.  Cary Grant never played a screwball character like this.  He was often the male lead and he was always as sharp and odd as the women he was up against—Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russle and Irene Dunne.  The fault is not Carole Lombard who is very good here; nor is it actor William Powell, but Godfrey’s.

There is nothing wrong with the film.  I suppose I liked it.  It held my attention totally from the fascinating opening titles sequence, but I must admit I was underwhelmed.  The story was not exactly predictable but the scenarios and resolution were not surprising.  That didn’t bother me, though.  What saves the film is the talent.  Carole Lombard does some of her finer work here, maybe because her character is more interesting than some of her other roles.  Irene is a girl who knows what she wants and can’t accept or understand why her feelings can’t be met by others, in this case Godfrey.  She is so good that I think a great compliment to her is that I recognized where Lucille Ball got her comic persona.  Alice Brady plays Mrs. Bullock and steals the show.

Perhaps I need to devour more screwball comedies in order to appreciate My Man Godfrey more.  I haven’t seen enough even for my own liking.  I don’t know if it’s necessary because I did have a reaction to the picture, a lukewarm one, but because the film exists in a time and genre that makes it an historical piece of work—a definitive 1930s screwball comedy—a wider understanding of the niche genre might broaden its appeal.

My Man Godfrey (1936)

Director: Gregory La Cava

Writers: Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind
Original novel by Eric Hatch

Stars: William Powell, Carole Lombard and Alice Brady

USA

In English

Runtime: 94 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028010/

 

My Man Godfrey is available for free viewing at The Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/MyManGodfrey1936

Passion of Joan of Arc, The (1928, Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, La)

Depending on the day I might name another film, but I always return to The Passion of Joan of Arc as probably the most powerful film I have ever seen.  Its images are unbearable to watch and its story horrifying and breathtaking.  It is that rare film that I would label an art film.  But let that not dissuade potential first-time viewers.  Passion is an experience unlike any other.  It jolts complacent viewers out of their haze and forces us to actively witness the persecution of Joan of Arc by the men of her own faith, men of the same institution that would canonize her in 1920.

Joan’s trial and imprisonment lasted nearly a month, immediately followed by a regular trial which lasted 2 months.  Joan constantly faced her accusers and must have spent hundreds of hours alone in her cell, a hell I am not strong enough to handle.  Dreyer has condensed the trial, or at least the dramatic and cinematic structure of his film creates a vacuum where it feels as if Joan’s suffering lasted mere hours.  Dreyer was right to do this.  In changing what we know of reality, he creates a most palpable experience of Joan’s ordeal, and we feel more readily her enormous suffering.

This is not a religious film.  It is not propaganda.  The story might be significant to Christianity but it is also important to history.  It is a document of a woman who believed and of the institution threatened by her power, heretics and hypocrites all.  Dreyer does not argue that God exists.  His characters all have their faith, but it is the will and nearsightedness of man that interests the director.  Joan is never beyond human means, the clerics who judge her the same.  The notion of holiness is non-existent.  Prayers are never answered and religious symbolism is absent.  Even a shadow of a cross is meant only to ease Joan’s nerves.  The film does not infuse its images with a higher meaning.  This creates an authenticity missing in traditionally religious films.  The film is always about convictions.  Even when Joan is paraded outdoors and we see her many compatriots clamoring for her release, these people believe in the abilities of this woman, not directly in a higher power.  This gives the film a wider appeal and enhances the experience because a true work of art must be objective, otherwise its appreciation will always be marred by its bias.  Dreyer is less preoccupied in converting his audience and more interested in documenting for himself an important personal point.

Why do her judges cry when she recants her forced confession, sealing her death?  Have they found someone with true faith?  Do they despair at ending a life?  Are they ashamed?  Of themselves or of their actions?  Joan is in a state of grace.  I cannot recognize someone in this position but Joan’s serine expressions in the face of torture make me believe she is.  A monk asks her, when trying to recant her recantation, of her great victory, implying it will die with her.  Joan knows her martyrdom will bring about the victory God spoke to her of.  Her death will prove to her wrongdoers the truth of her convictions.

The film feels as if it were somehow never intended to be viewed by a movie audience.  The way it is put together neglects, for example, clarity in visual storytelling—continuity, establishing shots, establishing for the audience where characters are in relation to each other and the room—Dreyer is not interested in such concerns.

Dreyer originally intended the film open without credits.  Imagine what that would be like in a theater, where we sit down and the film begins for us.  When the lights darken, history opens up on the screen.  The experience wouldn’t work on home video.  It must have a jarring effect, and I must side with the director when he argued that audiences must be stripped of all clues of artifice.  Credits tell us we are seeing a play.  Dreyer’s original intentions, ignored throughout the years, would begin the film exactly as it should and as it continues throughout: jolting the viewers.  There is only one point-of-view shot, only one moment when the film functions as traditional cinema.  Joan looks on the floor and we see that she sees the shadow of a cross created by the window panes.  The rest of the film is filled with images that lack continuity.  Characters constantly look at each other and each new shot shows something different from the view point of who-knows-where.  Every shot creates a disorienting effect.  There’s an almost abstract shot as Joan is burning.  The soldiers guarding the judges are preparing for retaliation.  Maces are dropped to them from the windows of the towers, and this shot swings back and forth like a pendulum, ticking down to Joan’s ultimate victory.  Often times the images suggest characters are literally on top of each other: Joan looks at the top edge of the frame and we then see a shot of a judge who is facing Joan.  We know they are looking at each other but the images defy our understanding of cinematic language.

There is a shot close to the end of the film that reminds me a lot of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.  It’s of a man without legs wheeling himself around on a cart.  A similar image exists in Potemkin on the Odessa steps.  I am struck by the documentary-like qualities such images of human deformation have in our times.  We in the civilized world cannot imagine anybody disabled to such a degree.  We are away from wars, and in our society we’ve become so jaded that we turn the other way at the suffering of the homeless or, more surprising, strangers on the streets.  These images, we’d like to believe, are fake, but Dreyer uses grim reality to recreate a grim tale.  There’s an equally disturbing shot of Joan’s arm being bled.  Apparently it is a real arm being pricked and real blood pulsing out.  Because films today are all artificial, truth belongs to another time.  While the film itself is an artifact these images make the film feel like war footage shot during Joan’s time.  Another image I link with these is the horrifying shots of Joan’s burning body.  The flames are so thick, but there looks as if a real face is in the fire.  I swear I can see a nose with flames shooting off it.  I know, at least I have to believe, that Dreyer did not burn a human being, not even a corpse, but the authenticity of the whole experience made me question what was actually burnt during the making of the film.

Why make a film like this?  It feels reactionary, like a battle cry from the director against the religious persecution of the innocent and against the banality of artistic convention.  Passion defies it, giving its audience the visceral experience of its subject matter.  It does something no other film is capable of.  It demands attention and holds us spellbound until the final, bleak images of Joan’s death.

At the center of The Passion of Joan of Arc is a remarkable performance by Renee Falconetti.  I hope I can express myself better than others who simply state that it is the greatest performance ever recorded on film.  I don’t deny this, only find that the phrase itself is not enough to describe Falconetti as Joan and it shortchanges her brilliant accomplishments.  First I must say that she never appeared in another film.  Roger Ebert correctly argues that because history is not saturated with her face that in this role she has become eternal.  Ingrid Bergman in the same role is Ingrid Bergman.  Falconetti’s haggard appearance, her masculine or rather unglamorously feminine face, has become the image of Joan of Arc for all time.  On her face is written the real account of the ordeal as if we’ve been given a photograph, from a time before such alchemy, of Joan.  Falconetti delivers what seems contradictory to the medium of silent film—a naturalistic performance.

Look at the very best of silent cinema.  To compensate for a lack of booming voice, actors usually chewed the scenery to make their points.  They became larger than life.  Falconetti at first is very expressive with her eyes.  When she is first questioned, her eyes are wide, almost as if entranced by God.  As I saw this recently for maybe then 8^th time, I noted that in her first scene she is slightly artificial.  I can think of two reasons why: perhaps in Falconetti’s reading of the events, she believes that Joan would be proud and vital, that she would stand up boldly to her accusers.  It’s an appropriate tactic.  I think the reality might be a bit different, and it is my second assumption: the film was shot in chronological order, and I think the strain by the strident Dreyer forced Falconetti to give the performance she gives, but this also undermines her efforts, but I think it’s practical to consider this.

Very quickly any notion of artifice is gone.  There are some shots where only the slight turn of Falconetti’s head is enough to convey Joan’s plight.  Her performance is truly unique.

I saw the film recently at Harvard, an archival print taken from the Cinematheque Francaise’s 1980s restoration.  It featured no musical accompaniment.  I viewed the film exactly as Dreyer would have wanted.  The Criterion DVD features the silent soundtrack, but also offers Richard Einhorn’s fantastic musical piece “Voices of Light”, a project inspired by the film.  I love Einhorn’s score.  I’ve seen the film several times with it.  I even listen to it on my iPod, but my viewing at Harvard was the first time I saw the movie silent.  It has a special quality without music.  Einhorn’s music dictates a certain pace to the images, and often drives the film.  Without music I was able to focus on the images.  I found myself involved in the movie in ways I never was before.  Without my secondary sense at play, my eyes studied the screen, and everything I needed to know was shown to me to great effect.  The film does not need music, let alone dialogue or sound effects.  Words don’t matter.  Faces tell all.  The sounds of the cracking fire during the burning exist in the frame.  Hearing them actually will not help at all.  Silence is the perfect accompaniment to the film.  It is most powerful.

Most movies don’t seem to matter anymore after seeing The Passion of Joan of Arc.  Perhaps this is because few films of its kind have actually been made.  It is proof that elegant cinematography and precise editing do not qualify a film as art.  This way of thinking links cinema closer to painting.  The cinema is more rugged, less formal than that.  What makes The Passion of Joan of Arc a work of art rivaling the works of da Vinci is the absolute visceral experience the film is to sit through—the passion with which the story is told.  We are disoriented by Dreyer’s imagery and cannot escape it.  It is such a powerful experience that the image of Renee Falconetti as Saint Joan will be with me until the end of my life.

Passion of Joan of Arc, The (1928)

(a.k.a. Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, La)

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Writers: Carl Theodore Dreyer, Joseph Delteil

Stars: Renee Falconetti, Eugene Silvain and Andre Berley

France

Silent with French intertitles

Runtime: 82 minutes (at 24 fps)

Purchase Criterion's excellent DVD of The Passion of Joan of Arc at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Passion-Joan-Criterion-Collection-Spine/dp/0780022343/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1303831607&sr=1-1

(be sure to listen to the audio commentary for a comprehensive audio essay on the film by scholar Casper Tybjerg)

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019254/

Au hazard Balthazar (1966)

Au hasard Balthazar is the kind of film that gives art films a bad rap.  It is stoic and remote; none of the characters can express themselves and the only redeeming quality of the film is that Balthazar is an attractive donkey.  The film chronicles Balthazar’s life, from his young days to death, and we bear witness to the many cruelties inflicted upon him.  The concept is fantastic: examining life through the lifespan of an animal, but the execution is dull—painfully dull and pretentious.

I guess the main human character is called Marie.  As a girl she was friends, or even soul mates, with the son of the first owner of Balthazar, named Jacques.  When the owner’s daughter dies that summer, the family leaves, and Marie and her Father, caretaker of the land, are left to themselves.  Balthazar’s talents as a fieldworker are rendered useless with modern technology and he’s passed around several members of the community.  He carries bread to neighbors, guided by a mean young man named Gérard who becomes the villain of the story.  It is primarily in his scenes where the film displays a surprising lack of story development.  For one thing, every “villain” is always portrayed as a villain.  They’re never human.  Gérard rapes the grown up Marie.  This part I could relate to.  Marie, waiting for the boy who loved her long ago, the one who has disappeared, now accepts her fate with this loser.  It made sense because of her family background.  Her father is a proud, repressed man who turns down every opportunity for prosperity.  Someone takes his daughter’s virginity and the girl is so oppressed that she initially mistakes his rape as a form of love.

However, in addition Gérard harasses a drunkard throughout the film; he trashes a bar, steals, and is rude to everybody, including Marie.  I know people like this exist, but the film never allows him any other facets to his character.  He is always just bad.  Marie, after becoming a prostitute and destroying her family’s reputation, has her outlook on life changed.  She is dead on the inside, and when Jacques returns, she agrees to marry him after confessing her past sins.  Gérard and his cronies strip her naked and beat her.  Her father and new fiancée catch the men who abuse her but they don’t react to them.  They just stare into the window as Marie cries while the men get away.  In real life I would think their initial reaction is anger and they would want to kill these guys before even checking if Marie was okay.  But Au hasard Balthazar never plays fair.  It prefers to stylize its characters’ emotions to create a pseudo-artsy mood.  Another example: when her husband is about to die, Marie’s mother prays to God not to take him away.  Her words or rather her diction lacks any sincerity.  She’s just saying lines.  If the villains fare badly in Au hasard Balthazar, the bystanders are clueless, and the innocent are naïve and brain-dead.

Another thing that bugged me: I had to struggle to understand the relationships between the characters in the film.  They seldom speak, even more rarely do they speak to each other.  They don’t address one another by name or relation.  I didn’t know until the end that the old woman was Marie’s mother.  She’s so cold and distant in her earlier scenes that I figured her for the maid.  Only when she prays for her husband’s life did I understand.  My feeling constantly was that Bresson needed to lighten up.

Ingmar Bergman is one of the few artistic filmmakers.  He’s not really remembered today outside film circles.  In both “The Simpsons” and “Animaniacs”, two terrific satirical cartoons from the 90s, the most famous image from Persona—Liv Ullmann in extreme close-up in the foreground, Bibi Andersson facing her screen position in the background—has been parodied.  In both of the parodies, the characters speak in a fashion similar to the characters in Balthazar.  This really sums up the mainstream’s impressions of art films.  The reality is that Bergman was a very passionate writer / director.  Persona, and in particular the described scene, has so much humanity and sadness and the stoic mood generalized on it is the result of bad art films like this one.

I have to admit that this is the first Robert Bresson film I’ve seen.  My first few Godard films led to my initial negative opinion of the director, but as I discovered more of his work I gained new insights into JLG, and now I find Godard’s work fascinating, if still uneven.  Perhaps the same will happen with Bresson.  I will say though I was not impressed with Au hasard Balthazar.

I have something cruel to confess.  About halfway through the film when it became embarrassingly obvious that the donkey was going to eventually die, I kept waiting for Balthazar to kick the bucket.  Yes, the animal was cute and I didn’t like seeing him abused, but I was more depressed that I was watching a boring movie rather than at anything that was happening on the screen.  It felt like the movie would never end.  Then, in the final shots when Balthazar closes his eyes and finds his way to the ground, I was kind of struck, more so because an animal was dying than because of the journey the film took me on.

One final complaint, something I never understood.  Why were Gérard and his buddies always borrowing or stealing Balthazar?  It made no sense logically.  A heavy, slow donkey isn’t really the best animal to assist in a robbery.  Perhaps Gérard’s actions were meant to be symbolic.  I didn’t have the patience with this film to care.

Au hasard Balthazar (1966)

Director: Robert Bresson

Writer: Robert Bresson

Stars: Anne Wiazemsky, Walter Green and Francois Lafarge

France

In French

Runtime: 95 minutes

Purchase Criterion's terrific DVD of Au hasard Balthazar on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Au-Hasard-Balthazar-Criterion-Collection/dp/B00092ZLEY/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1302555289&sr=1-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060138/

Village of the Damned, The (1960)

With intelligence, articulation, a lot of faith in the viewer’s suspension of disbelief and with great regard for our enjoyment, Hollywood at one time made terrific horror films.  Monster pictures in the 30s, suspenseful noirs in the 40s, and science fiction in the 50s; the industry has a great tradition that has given way to mindless violence and gore.  What is easiest and above all cheapest now passes for entertainment.  The Village of the Damned is the kind of film that Hollywood has forgotten.

For five hours, the quaint English community of Midwich inexplicably falls asleep.  Months later, the Midwich women all give birth to normal looking blonde children with striking eyes.  They develop much faster than normal children, and their stare causes strange reactions from adults.  George Sanders plays Gordon Zellaby, father of one of these children.  He is one of the first to link the blackout to the great amount of pregnancies, some of them apparently unexplainable, and Gordon develops a great scientific interest in these children.  They seem to be able to read people’s thoughts and have a great instinct for survival.  Before long, they alienate the townsfolk, and when the efforts of their survival result in death, the town is desperate to take action but powerless of affect it.

What struck me immediately was the mood the film creates.  Due credit to director Wolf Rilla: without a note of music, we see the people of Midwich collapse.  The fluid camera acts as our guide, and what is created is a sad visual poem.  Then the clock strikes, and continues to strike throughout the main titles. 

There is such a sense of dread and uncertainty as to the nature of these children, probably because the material is so closely related to real life.  Women could probably give a fairer viewpoint, but the idea of being impregnated with another thing’s child is very creepy.  It speaks to issues like rape or in vitro fertilization.  In fact the two issues are combined.  Is it possible to love this foreign child inside of you?  I would very much like to hear some responses to this scenario.  I don’t have one; it’s not that I can’t sympathize with being pregnant.  I just don’t know how I would react if there was the possibility that the life growing inside of me wasn’t my own.  Maybe no one can.  We’ve heard of mistakes with in vitro where the wrong sperm is inserted.  I find it odd that the film can look ahead and consider topical contemporary issues.  But that, in a more general sense, is the function of science fiction.  It isn’t spaceships shooting at each other.  The genre is a parallel of everyday life.

The writing is in a superb Hollywood tradition.  Tight story construction never allows the material to sag.  The dialogue is at a high level of intelligence, and the characters pause and consider their options.  No one is eager to make the wrong choice, and this thoughtfulness is refreshing in a sci-fi horror flick.  This is not to say that the film is heavy and depressing.  It’s very enjoyable.  It is suspenseful and campy and really has an unsettling effect.  The one fantastic element is introduced into an environment similar to our own.  Scientists and military officials gather to hear all possibilities of the phenomenon.  The film never makes it exactly clear what has happened or who or what these children are.  One scientist suggests evolution; Sanders’ character believes it is the transference of energy, possibly from outer space.  Any explanation would be ludicrous but the characters know that; they know there is no accounting for the sleeping state the village found itself in.  The film realizes that the unknown is scariest.

To contrast horror of the past and present, in the film the children manipulate a man into shooting himself in the face with a shotgun.  We’ve, for some abnormal reason, seen many shotguns to the face in movies.  In a modern film, the impact of the scene would rely on seeing the buckshot disintegrate the man’s face.  Such a visual can only repulse, and any talentless hack can nauseate an audience.  In The Village of the Damned the mood of the film heightens the tension; cross-cutting between the bystanders’ horrified faces and the threatening eyes of the children, with the objective shots of the man with the shotgun guiding the narrative.  He slowly places the gun under his chin, and we see his finger find the trigger.  It is pulled.  We see only the cold faces of the children, and then the human reaction.  It brings a true feeling of sadness and loss that further contributes to the atmosphere of the film.

George Sanders is one of the great character actors.  He is probably best remembered for his Oscar winning role in All About Eve, but lovers of classic films will recognize him in everything from Hitchcock’s Rebecca to Hangover Square.  I found reviewing his credits on the Internet Movie Database immensely enjoyable.  He’s like an old friend to us movie buffs, always willing to give his best and steal the show.  His role in Rebecca is immortal proof of that.  Here he is the lead.  I’m often impressed with so called supporting actors who land a leading role.  Their personality can carry a film, but, as is the case with The Village of the Damned, so much of what was special from a Sanders performance is missing.  He has to play the straight man guiding us through the picture, and his asides and wit are rushed here if they are present at all.  I have nothing to complain about though.  I love looking at George Sanders on the screen but he has had meatier roles in other films.  This speaks more to the way films used to be written than to Sander’s talents.  Leading roles today take on too much baggage, probably in proportion to the salary of the star.  The more money they get the longer they stay on screen—‘let’s get our money’s worth’ is most likely the idea.  Writers could before create wonderful parts to anchor the leads, and this allowed actors to create a niche to showcase their work.

The one complaint I have is a trend popular in many low-budget film and TV work of the era.  When a character is thinking something and the tension of the scene depends on this thought, and even though the audience has been told what the character has to remember, instead of relying on the visual of the actor struggling, a voiceover is tacked on to remind us.  I find this distracts from the drama.  We’re intelligent enough to recall the character’s thought from the previous scene.  In the film’s defense, if this is the only problem I could find then the film is a terrific success.

And so it is.  Every now and then (mostly now) I crave a great little horror film.  We have so few that actually work.  The Village of the Damned is a refreshingly taut and fun film.  Great science fiction, rivaling The Twilight Zone, and terrific storytelling create an aura of inescapable fear for a small town with everything to lose.

Village of the Damned, The (1960)

Director: Wolf Rilla

Writer: Stirling Silliphant

Stars: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley and Martin Stephens

UK / USA

In English

Runtime: 77 minutes

The Village of the Damned is available on a double feature DVD.  Visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Village-Damned-Children-George-Sanders/dp/B00027JYMG

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054443/

Night and Fog (1955, Nuit et brouillard)

No matter how many times you hear the expression this movie will change your life, it is a rare moment when it does.  Night and Fog did for me, not in a truly life-altering way, but it made me recognize the documentary genre as a powerful form of film.  I would watch documentaries (which I have always enjoyed doing) but never bothered with a film’s technique, impact or aesthetic value.  As far as I thought, in order for a movie to move me, the situations, the emotions, all had to be larger than life.  Then I saw Night and Fog.

It’s not a big movie.  Most people have never heard of it, but I saw it at a store and picked it up.  After completing its short running time, I was stunned—numbed is probably more accurate.  My only cinematic journeys into the Holocaust were narrative dramas like Schindler’s List, a movie I’ve never enjoyed because of its sentimental and overtly emotional approach to the subject matter.  I don’t particularly dislike weepy films (if that is indeed the correct term) but the emotions films like Schindler’s List spark go against my feelings about the Holocaust, and the effects of war in general.  The Holocaust is the darkest memory of the 20^th Century, and I don’t look at it with soft, tangible feelings.  It’s depressing to think anyone or group could get away with what the Nazis did.  It doesn’t speak well of mankind.  When I saw Night and Fog, finally—finally—I had seen the Holocaust film that hit the right tone.  The film does not ask us to feel any which way about the Holocaust.  It is matter-of-fact, unsentimental and powerful.

As far as technique, I’d say director Alain Resnais didn’t have to do too much to stir his audience.  The images he shows would be enough to shock and sicken anyone.  Of particular note are the very first image of a dead man, his eyes wide and staring right into camera; the shot of a human foot being burnt with phosphorous; and the various images of dead bodies being bulldozed like broken concrete.  Resnais's approach to the film, his style, accents the atrocities in meaningful, though not intrusive, ways.  The film, you could say, is sort of a flashback.  We open with some color photography of an isolated industrial setting, beautiful in its way.  The camera glides and shots dissolve into other shots.  It is all peaceful and serene.  We are then told through a restrained Narrator that this was the site of a concentration camp.  While the scenery hasn’t changed, our own feelings of such a place turn the shots ugly; much like the nature of a person changes the image of them in our minds.  We then see the past, the Holocaust; black and white stills and archival footage mostly shot by the Nazis for unmade propaganda films.  It’s sort of like the inverse of The Wizard of Oz, except the “fantasy,” the Holocaust footage, is real.  The beauty of the present—the color photography with its dreamlike maneuvering through space, seems to be of another time and place.  What Resnais is saying, the way I interpret it, is that man is a cruel animal capable of committing these acts, and that we should always be conscious of the fact.

I don’t remember if I had this reaction while watching the film on DVD by myself, but when I watched Night and Fog on the big screen with an audience, I couldn’t help myself but I had to shield my eyes from the final shots of the Holocaust footage: a montage of truly horrible images—mountains made of human hair for example.  I could not take it.  I think the reason is this: I felt responsible—not “I” as an individual but as a human being.  Inaction leads to the inevitable.  No other film has affected me in the same way as Night and Fog.  With this film, I realized how effective documentaries can be and it toppled for me this bigoted notion that they pale in comparison to narrative films.  I concede that documentaries have the ability to move audiences in ways dramatic pictures never can, perhaps because fiction hasn’t really happened.  Night and Fog is our history.  It is not just a superb example of modern art, this shit (there is no more appropriate word) actually happened.

I can’t truly say I love this film or even enjoy it.  I can’t understand how someone can enjoy it the same way you can a Hitchcock thriller or even a Bergman chamber drama.  I appreciate the film as a powerful indictment of the Holocaust, an unforgettable and haunting event in world history, and as a work of art.  Whenever I watch it, I’m spellbound by the visuals and the ideas, the beauty and the horror.  Alain Resnais was never coupled into the French New Wave.  Like the great Agnes Varda, he began making films a decade before but he contributed some of the defining New Wave films.  Night and Fog, made in 1955, is a perfect example of what a New Wave picture would mean: a nonconformist, idiosyncratic, adult masterpiece that withstands the test of time in that, as Resnais suggests, its topic is timeless.

Night and Fog (1955)

(a.k.a. Nuit et brouillard)

Director: Alain Resnais

Writer: Jean Cayrol, Chris Marker (Script Editor)

Stars: Michel Bouquet (Narrator)

France

In French

Runtime: 32 minutes

To purchase Night and Fog on DVD from The Criterion Collection, visit Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Fog-Collection-Michel-Bouquet/dp/B000093NQZ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300565425&sr=8-1

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048434/