Great Dictator, The (1940)

The Great Dictator begins with a note telling us that any resemblance between Hynkel the Dictator and the Jewish Barber is purely coincidental. Is this supposed to be a joke, or is it Charlie Chaplin’s way of separating his comic persona from Adolf Hitler? Chaplin, a world recognized celebrity since the nineteen-teens, was arguably the most popular man in the world when Hitler took power in Germany in 1933. It is said the dictator crafted his mustache after Chapin’s Little Tramp to feed off of the comedian’s popularity. Was it also a coincidence that Chaplin retired his Tramp persona in 1936’s Modern Times?

Charlie Chaplin’s most daring film takes place in a fictionalized version of Germany called Tomainia. In a prologue set in 1918, years before Adenoid Hynkel takes power, a bewildered Jewish Barber is thrown into WWI and suffers a severe injury that keeps him in hospital until WWII. Chaplin plays the Barber and, of course, the dictator, giving credence to the fact that the opening note may be a lighthearted wink to the audience who, in 1940, would recognize Chaplin anywhere. But The Great Dictator is an unusual comedy, something more sinister for it satirizes one of the darkest memories of world history. The Barber escapes, eager to return to his beloved shop just as the Tomainian storm troopers begin severe persecution of the ghettos. The Barber meets Hannah, a Jewish girl, who assists in fending off the storm troopers. This is one of the many scenes that are laugh out funny but exist with an undercurrent of dread, panic, and sickness because the true events, 70 years later, fueled further by modern examples of bigotry, are no less painful. Perhaps because WWII exists so vividly in motion images the horrors will never fade.

The Great Dictator contrasts the experiences of Hynkel and the Barber during changing times; for the dictator, changes towards perfection; for the Barber, a disintegration of everything he understands.

The film’s most famous scenes give us a stark contrast to both of Chaplin’s characters, and stand as perhaps the greatest examples of Chaplin’s dedication to rehearsal and perfectionism—in short, to his craft. The first is the chilling, beautiful and bizarre dance Hynkel performs with a feather-light globe of the world. His Ministry of the Interior, Garbitsch, informs him that with their new plans Hynkel will become Emperor of the World, a thought that sends the ruthless dictator up the wall, literally. He dances to the music of Wagner, incidentally Hitler’s favorite composer. It is the opening to his Lohengrin, a light, airy but pretentious piece of music. Chaplin’s moves are narcissistic and bold, graceful but futile. In trying to juggle the world, cradle it, domineer it, Hynkel pops his globe and is left with a deflated, impotent piece of rubber. The Jewish Barber then shaves a man to Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5. Here Chaplin’s Barber is a cousin to his famous Tramp. The Barber lathers the man’s face, takes his blade, sharpens it, and with perfectly precise motions hits every note of Brahms’ innocent, frenetic music.

It is interesting that with all of Hynkel’s ambition, his contribution to the world ends with a deflated balloon—a waste for someone who, like Hitler, had the brilliance to muster the masses for a common goal. The simple Barber, with the mere shaving of a man, enriches the world with his craft. The choice of music, too, shows Chaplin as a Renaissance Man and as someone who, despite preferring silent films, was keen on using every element of sound to make his point: Hynkel is marked with heavy, pretentious music, the Barber with humane culture.

Chaplin’s craft belongs to an era of silent film comedy. In both sequences, silent except for the music, we can witness the skill and precision of Chaplin’s art. He was not improvisational as many might hope; someone who could simply step in front of a camera and command it. He rehearsed. The choreography, the timing to the music, is such that we know that music was prerecorded, and that Chaplin would go from beginning to end mastering every gesture, would perfect difficult tasks like spinning a ball on his fingertip, scaling a tabletop with grace, and memorizing not only the music, but the particular performance of the music so that his impact is striking. This is not something that can be achieved in post production. Like Fred Astaire, Chaplin is seen often in medium or long shot, and the camera simply stays on him and we see his performance with minimal cuts, and in the case of the shaving sequence, arguably more awe-inspiring, one continuous shot. Among other things it allows us to lament the loss of great talent when we view our contemporary movie comedians. Chaplin understood that moviemaking was not spontaneous but the result of dedication, obsession, and doing and doing again.

It is difficult to look at the realities of the Nazi’s activities, but Hitler himself, someone who was so serious and seemed to lack humility, is prone to satire. It is one of the purposes of art to critique the world, and the powerful who control it, and to create for the public a better world. Chaplin does all this, and that he managed to create his epic in 1940, in Hollywood, after a war and great depression, with political tensions high and politicians eager to prosecute anyone who would contradict their ideology, is a testament to his popularity and socio-political awareness. He often resembles Hitler perfectly, no more so than when wearing the double-cross trench coat, and his inflections and diction when speaking his Tomainian gibberish remind me of Hitler’s great speeches in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. That Chaplin is a great comedian only helps him further, but the scenes with the Jewish Barber in the Ghettos were not so funny. Yes they were, but I felt sick watching them. We know what went on there, what would happen if the Nazis arrested anyone for any reason, where they’d end up. I don’t think it was inappropriate for Chaplin to make this film. The subject should not be off limits. My great admiration from the director stems from the fact that his films are often sad. They’re filled with pathos and meaning and have relevance to our society. In The Great Dictator, there are numerous scenes of the people hiding in the Ghettos, afraid and angry. I could imagine the real life scenarios like this, and unlike in Chaplin’s film things would not turn out so well.

Much has been made of the film’s controversial ending. It was Chaplin’s Jewish Barber’s speech to the soldiers of Tomainia that got him a file at the FBI; the Barber, mistaken for Hinkel, is to make a speech about the recent invasion of Osterlich. While facing the podium, unlike Hinkel whose words were so brutish that they’d bend the microphones, the Barber pleads for peace, preaches against greed and intolerance, and offers all those listening an opportunity for change. This speech, some 6 minutes long, is a stark difference to the rest of the picture. I think it’s a great ending, something that caps Chaplin’s political satire and offers hope where in real life at that time there seemed very little.

I will say no more to add to these discussions. I’d rather examine the film’s beginning. I don’t think it works. It’s not funny and feels like a separate piece to the rest of the film. We see the Barber fighting in WWI, how he becomes injured. In fact this prologue serves the narrative later as here he befriends a soldier who will become prominent in Hinkel’s Tomainia, but the sequence feels more like a one-reeler Chaplin might have made early in his career. And indeed did make in the 1920s. The comedy is broad and general, the effects small and unprofessional, and it throws off the structure of the film. It also seems remarkably unprofessional, as if it was an afterthought thrown in after the rest of the picture was cut together. We don’t see Hinkel’s rise to power, and seeing the Barber’s, I feel, gets the film off to a slow start.

There is a reason Chaplin is considered the greatest screen comedian of the 20^th Century. His films stood for something more than broad physical comedy. They have touching stories, and his images often contained gaiety and gravitas. With The Great Dictator, a boldly political work, he risked offending the dictators of the world when instead he could have made a film about Napoleon. At the time, many of Hitler’s “great” military accomplishments were still ahead of him, and the US had not officially entered the war, and Chaplin, sensing as much of the world probably did, what was about to happen, decided to do something about it.

Great Dictator, The (1940)

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Writer: Charlie Chaplin

Stars: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, and Jack Oakie

USA

In English

Runtime: 124 minutes

IMDB link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032553/

Times of Harvey Milk, The (1984)

I had never heard of Harvey Milk before seeing the documentary made by Robert Epstein. Milk took up a cause similar to other socio-political leaders who dared to challenge so-called moral convention by introducing to a wide audience a different way of life. People like Martin Luther King. Both Milk and King have had effects on the course of American history and indeed have inspired millions of people around the world. Why then did I not hear of the name Harvey Milk until I was 22?

Milk was America’s first openly gay elected official. San Francisco mayor George Moscone had divided up the city into districts allowing for neighbors at large to vote for more personal representatives, people the people could feel would do more for them. Milk was elected as City Councilman for District 5, the Castro area where an ever growing gay population was finally winning recognition and civil rights. But with the election of a gay man to public office taking the issue of homosexuality out of hushed whispers and screaming it loud inside newspapers, conservatives began proposing legislation to deny and in some cases strip Americans of their rights. While there was reason to celebrate Milk’s victory and the victory of gay people across the nation, communities in America were passing laws against gay people. The Briggs Initiative was proposed as Prop 6, a law that would fire all gay teachers from public schools in California. The reasoning behind this was that gays who want to live openly could more easily prey upon children.

The Times of Harvey Milk, created out of masterfully used archival footage and straight-forward, honest talking heads, shows a segment of a debate between Milk and Senator Briggs, cultivator of the initiative. Milk correctly points out that most pedophiles are straight males, and Briggs, apparently unfamiliar with this info gathered by several sources including the FBI, offers his reasoning for removing gays, in his estimation 5% of the population: if gay teachers were fired, than there is a 5% less chance that children would be sexually assaulted. This reasoning gets a laugh out of Harvey. Why not go ahead and remove the 95% of heterosexual teachers to totally protect the children? The thinking is ludicrous, and Prop 6 lost by a wide margin.

I think the documentary genre is suffering now more than ever. Most would disagree, and statistics would show me up: documentaries show in major art-house theaters, and in rare but evident cases they play in multiplexes across the nation. They make money, and the genre is quite popular with young film buffs... to an extent. I think it’s still a specialized genre or form of filmmaking, but when I say that documentaries are suffering I’m talking about the art of the medium. This is why The Times of Harvey Milk works so well. Most modern documentaries feel, look and sound like reality shows. They have a central character, often the filmmaker, taking up a task and accomplishing it with a camera in tow. They usually provide narration explaining what’s happening on screen. Often the interview segments are cut together so that the subjects form complete but superficial thoughts through the splicing together of many sound bites, and wall-to-wall music is laid in to I guess keep the audience awake, and this music is poorly chosen and repetitive.

The Times of Harvey Milk is relatively quiet, eloquently photographed, and it features subjects with insights and personalities, and the filmmaker brings them out fully formed characters. And director / editor Epstein lets these people speak. Some of them break down when talking of Harvey’s death and San Francisco’s reaction. Epstein isn’t a cheat; he doesn’t go for extreme close-ups of their eyes or their hands fiddling with a handkerchief, or even worse out of focus shots of completely uninvolving objects around the room. He lets us watch their faces, see the rage and pain of Harvey’s death, the joys that accompanied his many accomplishments, and their fondness for the man. And again they all speak so brilliantly. A labor union leader who admits to before having known Harvey having somewhat anti-gay tendencies goes through a complete story arc. He reveals that because of his association with Harvey through their like-minded political views he is in favor of gay rights.

I hate to be personal beyond my opinion, but with documentaries like The Times of Harvey Milk it seems impossible to disassociate myself from the story I have seen. I came out around the time I first saw the documentary in a college class... maybe a year earlier. It’s been so long I can’t remember now. When I was watching the film I couldn’t believe that this man, Harvey Milk, who accomplished a lot in a short career, has, since his death, been ignored by the mainstream media. He is certainly not forgotten; not in San Francisco where he was assassinated by a colleague: a statue has been erected of him. And indeed Milk’s name is not buried under the rubble of history. The problem is people have to search for him, unlike other leaders or influential persons who’ve charged their constituencies and extended themselves beyond them—history and the American population have exalted these men as exemplary, have named days after them, and their life’s work is taught in history books. But not Harvey Milk’s. Why?

The documentary is asking this question but in a larger context: if Milk were straight, would his murderer have served only 5 ½ years in prison? Would or should he have not instead been serving life?

Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were killed by Dan White, elected to office at the same time as Milk, and he is made the antagonist of the film. White is an interesting character: an idealist whose spirit is crushed by an ever-changing and degrading society, at least this was the defense’s position. White sunk into the City Hall with a loaded gun and extra bullets after resigning his position and then later wanting to recant his resignation. It is against the law for White to regain his job, and when Moscone supposedly told White he would not be reinstated White shot him, and then shot him again. He did the same to Harvey Milk: shot him to the ground, shot him three more times in the head, and then delivering one final execution shot at point blank range. It is clear who the murderer was, but the jury, supposedly a jury of straight white conservatives, a true group of Dan White’s peers, found him guilty of manslaughter, a crime that sentenced him to 8 years in prison. He was paroled after 5 ½.

The aftermath of Harvey’s death is quite spectacular: thousands took to the streets for a candlelight vigil beginning on Castro Street, where Harvey Milk lived, and it spread several blocks to City Hall. The aftermath of the jury verdict was quite different. A mob stormed City Hall, fought with police and set cars. One image I found striking was a protestor holding a sign, “Avenge Harvey Milk”. I was angry that Milk’s death meant nothing to those jurors and the millions they represent then and now in the United States, but despite it all I was depressed that this was the reaction. This violence was not what Harvey Milk campaigned for. A close friend of his says this in the documentary. And it depressed me because ultimately, at least in the short term, Harvey Milk had lost. His death inspired violence, and I was further discouraged to learn that Dan White committed suicide in 1985, a year after the documentary was released. When I first saw this film in class, many of the students felt that justice was finally served. Not I; the final chapter in this story was simply another death. What a waste.

I began this essay by referring to Harvey Milk in a more formal way by calling him “Milk”. When revising it, I noticed that half-way through I began calling him Harvey. I promise that this was unintentional. The film, I think, breaks down barriers between you or me and its subject. We get to know who Harvey Milk was, his kindnesses and tenacity, both terrific qualities in friends and public officials. We grow to love this guy through archival footage, and more importantly by how he had shaped the lives of everyone the filmmakers chose to speak with.

Why then is Harvey Milk still a relatively unknown figure? Why don’t we have a national Harvey Milk Day? Are there no politicians, gay or straight, with the balls to support such an honor? Would committing political suicide not be worth honoring the life of one man who died for making the world better for others?

Times of Harvey Milk, The (1984)

Director: Rob Epstein

Writers: Judith Coburn, Rob Epstein & Carter Wilson

Stars: Harvey Fierstein (Narrator)

USA

In English

Runtime: 90 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088275/

Revanche (2008)

Revanche is a film about biding time. The English translation is “revenge”, a rather abrasive title, but here is a film with a bank robbery, a murder and spying, where no one takes revenge. It is a story of intelligent people, not movie characters, and certainly not characters we’ve seen in typical genre pieces.

The inciting incident, that moment in storytelling that sets the plot in motion, takes place maybe 30 minutes into the film. This is the bank robbery and accidental death of the robber’s girlfriend. Before this, we’re introduced to five characters whose simple and jarring lives are fascinating as character studies, and who involve us immediately once the tragedy occurs. Alex is an ex-con working at a strip club. His Ukrainian girlfriend, Tamara, is a stripper and street hooker, and her boss has ambitions of using her to service high-class cliental in an exclusive apartment complex. This happens in Vienna, Austria, and outside in the country a quite police officer, Robert, and his loving wife mean no one any harm. Susanne and Robert suffered a miscarriage, and she frequently visits the house of Hausner, an elderly man looking after his farm. The film is guided by chance, and it is that Hausner is Alex’s grandfather. In an ordinary movie this would be contrived, but in Revanche, where time passes slowly and is filled with detail and the beauty of detail, this character that joins together two families that would otherwise never meet, is part of the meditation on the passing of time.

To save his love from a hellish life, Alex decides he will rob a bank. Tamara insists on staying in the car, even though she cannot drive and will have no part in the robbery. Also, Alex’s gun isn’t loaded. That’s important because Alex isn’t a bad guy. He was in prison for stealing, a crime no doubt but one that violates property and not human life. It is another robbery that leads to Tamara’s death: Alex’s easy getaway is interrupted by Robert, who is held at gunpoint until the cat gets away, and takes two shots at the tires. Tamara is accidentally killed.

The film is well made. That is an understatement. Director Götz Spielmann understands that his daring narrative depends on fleshing out the lives, the personalities, and the habits of his characters. When Alex takes refuge at his Grandfather’s farm, unaware that his too friendly neighbor is married to the man who killed his girlfriend, he chops wood for the old man. We all know either through experience or stories how wood is chopped. But through the course of Alex’s time in the country, hiding out and later planning on killing the cop once he discovers the connection, we examine through the action of the story how firewood is cut. First logs of wood are wheel-barrowed into the large farm with the giant saw. The saw is electrically powered; the logs are placed on a large cot connected to the side of the saw, and all Alex has to do is guide the cot up, and the saw slices the log. Two or three cuts get an entire log.

Then comes the manual labor. Alex chops the small logs into fours, into the firewood that will heat his Grandfather’s house in the winter.

Of course in a movie wood chopping isn’t in itself interesting. The act serves many functions: through Alex’s determination and exertion we know that he’s constantly thinking about Tamara. He watches every time Susanne comes to the farm looking for Grandfather Hausner. When Susanne happens upon Alex, their cold talk suggests a lot about their personalities. That director Spielmann uses the action of wood chopping not exactly as “business” but to express emotion, impotence, and as a visual representation of Alex’s methodical waiting is the mark of a fastidious filmmaker and an acute human observer.

Of course the characters surprise us in ways that are so rewarding. I don’t want to go into detail because the little revelations and nuances build to a rewarding experience and, as a viewer, not knowing how movie characters will react to their circumstances, being unable to predict things even after seeing hundreds of by-the-numbers thrillers, is very rare and so special. I’ll instead focus on the actors. There are great, natural performances from all five leads. Johannes Krisch as Alex and Ursula Strauss as Susanne are especially fascinating, or at least their characters’ relationship was very moving, unexpected, and kind of shitty, but in an understandable way. Krisch isn’t Brad Pitt or George Clooney, possible leads for an American version of this story; Krisch is handsome but ordinary. He has love handles and is losing his hair, and Strauss is attractive but not a debutant. These are real people who could pass unnoticed on the streets. As movie stars there’s nothing remarkable about them, but that is why they’re so effective. Johannes Thanheiser as the Grandfather is also brilliant, stubborn and old and unwilling to leave his farm for his own health. He plays his accordion, serenades a shrine to his dead wife, and goes to church every Sunday. This character is so moving in his tradition, and the film uses him as an anchor for its ideas and atmosphere. He waits, he observes, and so does the film.

The cop character, Robert, is also fascinating. He faces what might be considered a Kieslowskian dilemma: by chance, his being there after the robbery, aiming for a tire and shooting a woman, his remorse and psychological breakdown as a result of his actions, speak volumes about the mentality, fears, and humility of police officers. How do they feel when they shoot someone? Even if it’s a criminal, as human beings it must be ugly to kill a person. Most movie killers don’t care. Guns are fired and it’s as normal as stepping on chewing gum. I don’t want to constantly compare Revanche to other, lesser movies because it’s great on its own, but intelligent movies are so hard to come by these days.

The opening shot, indicative of disturbance—calm water shattered by something being thrown in—is mysterious and almost forgettable as a standard elliptical opening scene until it is answered late in the picture. What is thrown in is a gun, and the reason why is beautiful, so expressive of human understanding, relations, and forgiveness, and in a movie with no music, no shouting, no hysteria, it creates the perfect atmosphere for a film that leaves us with so much to think about.

Revanche (2008)

Director: Gotz Spielmann

Writer: Gotz Spielmann

Stars: Johannes Krisch, Ursula Strauss and Johannes Thanheiser

Austria

In German and Russian

Runtime: 121 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173745/

23rd Psalm Branch: Parts I & II (1967 & 1978)

Experimental cinema is a niche not many of us venture into. Some more or less narrative films have been experimental in their handling of story sequence or the audacity of their imagery. We have numerous examples of this type of experimental film, but the genre as it has been parodied by and large finds its roots in filmmakers like Maya Deren and of course Stan Brakhage. His 23^rd Psalm Branch is, as cinema, anti-cinematic, and as experimental work, a perfect example. Perhaps my difficulty in trying to understand 23^rd Psalm Branch comes from my tradition with narrative films. I was looking for a story, and in fact was trying to create one in the images I saw, but this film works against convention, and this is refreshing and paradoxically makes the film difficult.

The film is in two parts, made at different times (1967 and 1978), and is completely silent. The director’s approach to his craft, wildly original and chemically and physically complicated, was partly created by distorting the actual film stock he used, in this case 8mm, by scratching, burning, or painting on it, creating visuals without photographic light. This is a style that, for many, will have its limits, and indeed I find it to be self-indulgent and defiantly confusing, but in the case of 23^rd Psalm Branch, Brakhage takes old war footage and fuses it with his technique. The first part is an artistic rendering of WWII, and psychological terrain that leads to the horrors of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. In some cases it seemed I was looking in on the membrane of society; some shots look like microscopic footage of blood flowing through veins, some looked like the surface of the brain, and the ever flickering, ever changing kaleidoscopic vision was a perfect manifestation of a world using destruction to solve its problems. The second part tires in Brakhage’s mind to recreate Vienna, Austria, the birth country of Adolf Hitler, but I found this shorted part of the film more erratic and less representative of any motivation. It seemed to me, in both parts, Brakhage might have been comparing the horror and violence of war outside the United States to the relative tranquility that, up until September 2001, defined American civilian living. Both parts have moments of peace, of quiet, and seem to represent the American dream, but we are given allusions to the Nazis, their great architecture, the philosopher Nietzsche, who Hitler admired. The films, apparently part of a 31 piece project spanning several years, were made during and after the Vietnam War, and I think Brakhage is arguing for humility and common sense over the nature of war, and warning his audience, those who are manipulated and indifferent to it, that we support war by being silent.

The film’s title is taken from Psalm 23 of the King James Bible, and is quoted here:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

In this passage, quoted exactly but not in the poem-structure it is generally seen in, God is said to be our shepherd, leading us down a path of goodness and mercy where we will dwell in heaven along with our enemies, who will be seated beside us. Is the film a search by its director to find God or at least meaning in war? Or is it a warning against using religion as an excuse to execute war?

It is obvious Brakhage borrows the title from the Bible, but the film’s full title, 23^rd Psalm Branch, recalls in equal measure a typical war movie from Hollywood’s silver age. 23^rd Psalm Branch could have been a B-grade Ronald Regan picture or a Sam Fuller effort, and indeed the film shows us images of war; some startling, some familiar, including the familiar and often revisited visage of Adolf Hitler. But Brakhage crafts less a history of WWII but lays down visually the mentality of war on human beings. In quoting this Bible passage, is Brakhage forgiving his enemies, putting his faith in God that the life we lead is merely His will, or is he being less direct with his spiritual curiosity and asking why in war we go so far? Or is he saying nothing, offering us a jolt to our senses in an effort to get us asking these questions ourselves? I’m not familiar with Brakhage having only seen a handful of his work, but if I would to danger a guess, I’d say the latter. Truth be told, I found very little meaning in the film. It worked as an experiment but it did not engage me. But I think I am being too traditional and cannot fault the film for what it is.

In my self-conscious attempt to view the movie, one that went off relatively well (I was wide awake for the whole picture despite silent one hour running time), I was trying hard to link images together with ideas, trying always to stay ahead of the picture. I stayed with it, and often was impressed by the beauty of Brakhage’s colors and rhythms, but I am a very literal person. I find my patience for extremely non-narrative films to be low, but again this is my fault and not the film’s. I need to better acquaint myself with the director’s work, and thanks to Criterion’s 56-film primer, I can get but a taste of the director’s vast 350 picture career. I will say I am eager to see more, and have, but a vast project like 23^rd Psalm Branch is a more difficult challenge than a 2 minute piece on Chinese characters, the director’s last work, made in 2003. I guess in a way my problem with these kinds of films is that they require less effort from the viewer; we only need to sit back and look, let the images pass over our retinas, and then afterwards, when the lights come up, should we think about what we’ve seen. This is why I think the film is anti-cinematic. The images come so fast and contorted that they’re more like sensations, and their impressions, if felt at all, are realized when every single image has been received. But maybe in saying anti-cinematic I really mean defiantly non-linear, devoid of plot or character, basically going against everything I’ve ever thought a film could be.

In a sense Brakhage continually tried to redefine what cinema is. His enthusiasm is overwhelming but I can’t say he succeeded in making excellent movies. He made experiments, fascinating, original experiments, but average viewers will not care. I consider myself well cultured in film but I cannot rank any of Brakhage’s work among the great works of documentary and fiction film. That is not to say he wasn’t a great artist, or that my opinion will not change over time, but to be completely honest a great deal of his work feels like an endurance test. To pass the test doesn’t make you a greater cineophile, but someone who enjoys experimental films.

Two recommendations about Brakhage’s movies: most are silent, and I know most people when watching silent movies often add their own soundtracks via iPods or MP3s. I am begging people to view his work without any sounds. All I had playing was the hum of my Blu-ray player and that was enough. Music tends to dictate the pace of the images, and while I can’t promise myself this, I hope to view every silent movie from now on without a score, unless the score was devised or approved by the director. My second, and maybe more important recommendation, is to view his films on the biggest screen you can find. IMAX might be perfect. Because they are so visual and impressionable nothing else should invade our eyes, including the vast black of the dark theater, or the black bars on widescreen televisions.

Brakhage does not need to be recommended or warned against. Chances are if you’ve heard the name, buried somewhere under film history, you know what you’re looking for.

23rd Psalm Branch: Parts I & II (1967 & 1978)

Director: Stan Brakhage

USA

Silent

Part I runtime: 48 minutes (18 fps)

Part II runtime: 30 minutes (18 fps)

The total running time for both parts, on Criterion's Blu-ray and DVD, is 63 minutes.

IMDB links:

Part I:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278885/

Part II:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278886/

Stolen Kisses (1968, Baisers volés)

It is said that the average person will change professions several times in his life. There may be many reasons for change, but it is sad when one’s own character prevents him from charting a course and sticking to it. Antoine Doinel, the hero of The 400 Blows, has not quite grown up. Let me rephrase that: Antoine and his environment are changing at different speeds. When once Antoine’s insolence was charming, as an adult it is clear he may never find his way. But is that as sad as I think? In between his gigs as a soldier, a concierge, a detective, a stock boy in a shoe store and a television repair man (I think I’ve got them all) there is always love, sweet, impulsive love. In this regard Antoine will never age.

François Truffaut’s major preoccupation was romantic longing. We see it in every one of his pictures: Two English Girls and A Woman Next Door are both about obsession; in The Bride Wore Black love manifests itself as revenge for a lost love; Fahrenheit 451 details the love of books, and The 400 Blows was the love of childhood, of cinema, of friendship and liberty, all also themes in Truffaut’s work. In Stolen Kisses his themes clash in ways the director might never had hoped for. In the summer of ‘68, France experienced a revolution begun by students fed up with poor conditions in state-run universities. Riots and demonstrations (often one and the same) shut down industries; unions joined in the students’ struggles, and when the government appointed a new director for The Cinematheque Francais, ousting founder Henri Langlois, filmmakers joined in.

Langlois was one of the two most important people in Truffaut’s upbringing, along with Andre Bazin, film theorist and co-founder of Cashiers du cinema, the underground film magazine that Truffaut wrote for as a critic. Langlois, apart from single handedly preserving films that otherwise would no longer exist, gave Truffaut the opportunity to see films that no longer circulated in popular movie houses, and through Langlois, Truffaut and the entire Cashiers crowd gained their excessive love and knowledge of the history of their craft. Truffaut was so upset over Henri Langlois’ firing that he formed the Cinema Defense Foundation, an organization determined to give control of the Cinematheque back to its founder. The director supposedly made phone calls for donations in between takes on the set of Stolen Kisses.

For all of it though the film is mostly apolitical. If one does not research the topic it wouldn’t make a lick of difference when watching the film. Sure Truffaut opens the film with a shot unrelated to the story, the sad image of the French Cinematheque closed to the public (and he also dedicates the film to Langlois), but he does not address any riots, in fact completely ignores the plight of the students, a cause he championed in his private life. The reason for this is simple: he was not a political filmmaker, though it makes the words of Jean-Luc Godard at the 1968 Cannes Festival both ironic and searing, accusing himself and all filmmakers presenting that year that they were behind the times since no film detailed contemporary France, the struggle between the students and the extreme right-wing government. Is this a fault of Truffaut’s or merely something that proves him as a true auteur? I’m inclined towards the latter since I myself detest politics in films. Truffaut was more interested in the arts and humanity, in love and romance and friendship. Life should not stop because of political upheaval, instead this upheaval is a part of our lives, and we should live and rally against the opposition.

In this regard, Stolen Kisses as a movie is not one of Truffaut’s best pictures. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, but it is too improvisational; that is there exists a free-wielding structure that can be great in another movie but here it left me... not bored but ambivalent towards the screen. I hope that makes sense. Watching it in action the film moves as briskly as anything Truffaut made and it’s filled with beautiful, touching moments, but it lacked the earnestness of The 400 Blows, the film that gave us Antoine Doinel. Maybe I shouldn’t be comparing the two films. They are quite different.

Here Antoine is becoming a man. He (like Truffaut did) receives a dishonorable discharge after volunteering for the service. The man dismissing him wonders why he volunteered; speculates it was to impress a woman, but we soon learn the truth: Antoine read a book about the service and his experiences in the army merely did not match it. This is the problem with Antoine as he gets older. I may be biased since personally I’m not prone to risky, hasty decisions, but the older he gets the less “cute” his misadventures seem. He doesn’t seem to understand that the years will go by whether or not his romantic fantasies are indulged, and in trying to live as he thinks he should he is forgetting to live. But that is not right—this is my own attitude talking. Antoine lives an exciting, experience-laden life. His many professions allow him to sample a whole universe set up by tradition and necessity. He is constantly working, obviously, making enough money to keep an apartment (and certainly doing better than an old school friend he meets on the streets who rummages through trash—perhaps a dig at the government for failing its youth).

Jean-Pierre Léaud reprises the famous role. This man was a conduit of the New Wave. I get the feeling that we, the audience, have never known the true Léaud. Truffaut used him to express his own flighty moods and Godard used him as an anarchic symbol, another extension of someone else, and through it all Léaud let himself be shaped. He is a true chameleon, a divisive actor whose improvisation style never seems to be wrong. He always fits his films, even when he stands out. I can admit though to finding him pretentious sometimes, though seldom with Truffaut. Throughout the Doinel films he doesn’t shape an arch for the character. He simply performs the role as Truffaut wrote it, experiencing life as Antoine has in Truffaut’s script. This relaxed attitude towards his craft (and least that’s how it appears to me) is fascinating, and proves that movie acting is about having spirit and knowing lines, and very little complexity.

Stolen Kisses is Léaud and Truffaut’s lighthearted take on the growing adventures of Antoine Doinel. He is no longer the lost kid we first knew. He is a young man, making his way in the world and constantly lost in it through a free-wielding spirit in search of love. I along with millions of people since 1959 have adopted Antoine as a friend, a son, a spiritual partner, and care about him deeply. I guess ultimately I found Stolen Kisses somewhat melancholic; that Antoine cannot keep a job and moves with the wind does not speak well for his future endeavors.

Stolen Kisses (1968)

(a.k.a. Baisers volés)

Director: Francois Truffaut

Writers: Francois Truffaut, Claude de Givray

Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claude Jade and Delphine Seyring

France

In French

Runtime: 90 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062695/

Antoine and Colette (1962, Antoine et Colette)

There is a perverse pleasure in falling love, in watching someone you’re attracted to from afar, forever inching yourself closer, anxious and scared of if or when you’ll say something. And when you finally do, you’re intimidated and excited. There is also a love for the cinema, a love possibly more infectious, without limits, for young love is seldom ever permanent, and almost always sours.

Antoine Doinel returns in a short film François Truffaut made as part of the omnibus picture, Love at 20. Doinel’s segment, Antoine and Colette, shows what might be the hero of The 400 Blows’ first romance, one that begins as we might expect from the once troubled teen. He and his friend René are at a youth concert, and Antoine sees a beautiful modern girl sitting with a girlfriend. He watches her, is as absorbed in her looks as the listeners are to their classical music. He follows her out but does not engage. He sees her again three times that week, and finally on their fifth encounter, he speaks to her.

Truffaut is the most infectious and loveable director I’ve yet discovered. He crafts intimate tales of amour, stories that range from innocent, to obsessive, perverse, and comical. In Antoine and Colette he mixes all his elements into one of his most pleasurable experiences. While a short and therefore better equipped to be tidy and fluid, there is a sharp earnestness to the director’s storytelling, sometimes relying on an off-screen narrator to simplify narrative montages (telling us Colette sees Antoine as a friend) and swift, unexpected but incredibly honest changes in his characters’ character and actions. For example, Antoine soon takes an apartment across the street from Colette’s. For a moment, if that, it seems cute and innocent, but it really is a creepy thing for anyone to do; to pack up and live next to the person you’re courting. It is obsessive, insecure behavior, in line with the upbringing we’ve seen of Antoine in The 400 Blows. The perverse nature is Colette’s rejection of Antoine, leading him on, maybe unintentionally, and confirming what he seems to understand during a after dinner soirée at Colette’s parents’ request. Colette brings her new love in, embarrassing her mother and crushing Antoine. This love does not end well, but throughout it all we feel the energy of Truffaut, that untouchable magic he infuses his movies with.

This bittersweet tale gets its lighter moments in Truffaut’s storytelling. For example, Antoine works at a record manufacturer. Why? No reason; it is an interesting and appropriate profession for a young man of Paris in the 1960s. There is a fabulous short scene showing Antoine pressing his first record, a gift he later makes to Colette. This is so charming, so carefree, and a gimmick unique to the cinema. I believe in most other mediums such a progression of narrative would seem cheeky, but it works here. Or, for another whimsical twist, try Antoine and Colette’s parents’ relationship. Love is not always sexual. Affection can exist for someone whom you feel in sympathy with, someone whose look moves you in profound ways. The narrator says that the parents “adopt” Antoine as Colette becomes scarce to them all. To change the focus of the story from the young couple to the young man and the parents is a sweet twist, one I loved to see considering how uninterested we know Antoine’s parents were. The final shot is quite rewarding, the odd family sitting down to watch television.

So Antoine has found love, a love more fundamental. He has gained parents, and with that the dignity of having two people to rely on. This is the second chapter in a series of films starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel, and like the whole of Truffaut’s work, these films are pure pleasure—whimsical and spontaneous living creatures. They remind me of why the cinema is my true love.

Antoine and Colette (1962)
(a.k.a. Antoine et Colette)
Director: Francois Truffaut
Writer: Francois Truffaut
Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Marie-France Pisier, Rosy Varte and Patrick Auffay
France
In French
Runtime: 31 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1180329/

Criterion has released Antoine and Colette only as part of their terrific collection, "The Adventures of Antoine Doinel." It shares the same disc as The 400 Blows, but remember while Criterion has issued several different editions of The 400 Blows, including a Blu-ray, the edition available in the box set is the only one containing the short film. Antoine and Colette was released with another Truffaut short, Les mistons, by Fox Lorber a decade ago, probably with sub par image quality, but the disc is easily affordable via the Amazon links below:

400 Blows, The (1959, Quatre cent coups, Les)

Watching The 400 Blows for the second time I remembered things from my adolescence that I had long forgotten. These were not dramatic, life altering episodes but rather personal moments that add up to create an impression of life. This is what cinema can aspire to. Art is reproduction, it is not life. All it can hope to do is create impressions, and François Truffaut’s first and probably best feature film creates a terrain of childhood that we have all traveled, even if we’ve experienced it differently than young Antoine Doinel. After all, we are on some level lost children on a beach, returning to the elements in search of our freedom and place in the world.

I did not have the wild adolescence of Antoine Doinel. I never stole money from my parents, never skipped school. I was raised to be docile, to observe, and was made (either by my insecurities or by instruction) to please others when asked, and I could still relate to and sympathize with the misunderstood and grossly underappreciated Antoine, never believed by his parents, abused through indifference by them, a scapegoat for teachers, and even betrayed by in his friends in moments when the blame for a class prank falls directly on the boy’s shoulders. It is no wonder Antoine cannot conform to society. He’s a bright kid who remains loyal, who never rats out his friends or his cheating mother and who always is under pressure of being caught. For what? His lying of course—Doinel is not a perfect kid—but society has set it up so that he is always the villain. His is punished for his precocious nature; that he wants to understand and finds it difficult, that face-value is meaningless to him, that he has seen too much arguing between his parents and knows so much that someone so young, in their developmental stages, shouldn’t know will curtail his innocence.

But for all the ugliness and cruelty Antoine experiences there is always Truffaut. I often forget just how great a filmmaker he was. I’ve seen all of his movies, many of them have left indelible impressions on me, but for some reason I always recall many others directors as favorites before remembering Truffaut. His films contain a magic called joy. There is always a zeal for life, a craving never satiated though always pursued, that gives his work a momentum and passion that can only be truly appreciated when actively watching his films. They are hypnotic. They are experiences offering glimpses of life as it should be, as it should feel, and these impressions are among the greatest works of art of the latter half of the 20^th Century. The 400 Blows may be his masterpiece, but Small Change (or Pocket Money, its UK title) is the other work of his that I truly think is just great. In both films one can see a motif that permeates much of the director’s work: his love of children, their unbiased look at a world that has fashioned itself on antiquation. The 400 Blows is a more tragic film, made at a time in Truffaut’s life when one can argue that as an artist and as a human being he was coming into his own. Small Change was made many years later, when the director had children of his own and we can guess having gained insight into his parents, his teachers, his world that were before too close to be obtained.

An aspect of the film I loved so and was grateful to have experienced vicariously was the close friendship Antoine shared with his schoolmate René. I did not have friends as a child, never learned how to make them being the younger brother and youngest of all my cousins. I was always with them as a baby, and when they entered school and made their own friends I was lost. Here I could experience a close, apparently life-long friendship (René is based on Truffaut’s best friend) that is as strong as any emotional bond ever described in a movie. These kids, so small and so cute, are there for each other. When Antoine repeatedly runs away from home René at first sneaks him into his uncle’s abandoned factory then into an obscure room in his spacious and beautiful apartment. He brings Antoine food and travels by bike to pay a visit when Antoine is sent to reform school. They skip school together and stand up for each other. When Antoine is expelled, René gets himself suspended to stick it to the teacher. There are beautiful moments like this throughout the picture and for me to describe them here is a waste. My words could never do justice to the atmosphere of Truffaut’s moving images.

But one more point on a similar subject. I loved the sense of childhood Truffaut created in the film. There’s one shot filled with humor and honesty and brilliance as a gym teacher takes Antoine’s classroom on a jog through Paris. Little by little patches of children run off, and thanks to one continuous overhead shot we follow the aloof teacher as his line of children gets smaller and smaller. Such an energizing image is indicative of the playfulness and inventiveness of The 400 Blows.

This is a very important film. Its greatness aside, historically cinema after 1959 might have been entirely different if Truffaut and his New Wave colleagues had not tried new things with the medium. A movie like this, of its reach, would not have been possible in a more structured filmmaking environment like France in the 50s, or Hollywood throughout the Golden and Silver Ages. The 400 Blows derives its power from it spontaneous and crude cinematic qualities, the honesty of its writer’s story and Truffaut’s love of being alive, indulging in his passion for freedom and the movies. The dichotomy is that without the past The 400 Blows could not have been made. We see that in Doinel’s love of Balzac and his stealing of a still of Harriet Andersson in Summer with Monika. How great must it have been to be young and in love with cinema in the 1960s. The passions involved in making movies, arguments even revolutions being made in defense of one’s heroes and the conviction that movie goers wanted something more than cheap entertainment is something that we likely will never have again. We do have though the physical films still, and these are enough to inspire us still, but I’m afraid something has been lost.

I hope I’ve done the film right by my words. I have related as best I can my immediate reaction to this marvelous picture, but I know I have not given a clear statement about what the movie is about. This is in part intentional. The 400 Blows and indeed many of the more adventurous New Wave films were radically different from traditional filmmaking, their storytelling raw and style crudely cool. The story is told through a series of events, one building upon another in a chapter-like way. There are no big story twists; a melodramatic event like Antoine seeing his mother kissing another man is treated as just a troubling fact of life that is best kept secret, partly to keep peace and also for leverage if the need would arise. These are the insights Truffaut has, and it is what makes all of his films and especially The 400 Blows so painfully beautiful.

Above all though, the film allows us to recall our own childhoods, and what can be more beautiful or painful than that?

400 Blows, The (1959)

(a.k.a. Quatre cent coups, Les)

Director: Francois Truffaut

Writers: Francois Truffaut and Marcel Moussy

Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Remy and Patrick Auffay

France

In French

Runtime: 99 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053198/

Wild Strawberries (1957, Smultronstället)

Wild Strawberries is about an aged doctor, Isak Borg, traveling to receive an honorary degree.  He is accompanied by his daughter-in-law, and during their car trip Isak recalls episodes from his past.  Convention would assume the Professor is experiencing his memory due to the acute awareness of his own death, but Ingmar Bergman’s film is more celebratory of life and its creatures’ follies.  Isak isn’t remembering because he is dying.  He remembers because he is alive, and self-doubt is not reserved for the young.

A lifetime achievement award seems to summon the end of one’s life, especially for those who have devoted all their passions to their work.  Alfred Hitchcock, when receiving the honor from the American Film Institute, thanked his audience and proclaimed, “I think I will go on.”  Sadly he didn’t, but Isak Borg will go as stubbornly as his still living elderly mother, going strong at 96.  To understand the deeper truth to Bergman’s film, it helps to have an understanding of the director through his film work to see how his perspective changed with age, and in particular the transition period Bergman found himself in during Wild Strawberries.  Bergman had made 16 movies before Wild Strawberries, and his cinematic counterpart had been actor Birger Malmsten, a handsome but gouache Swedish lead.  In their films together, Malmsten portrayed an insecure, repressed young man wandering to find his way.  His romances were messy and dangerous, and life was not kind.  If Bergman never intended to make Malmsten his alter ego, the scripts the director was writing were certainly self-possessed.  Isak Borg, in the context of Bergman’s heroes, is very telling of a director who for the first time was receiving great international praise for his work.  Gone is the stubbornness and childish defiance of Malmsten’s characters.  Isak has achieved something.  Bergman had too, and their fears are that their accomplishments are meaningless; that they were frauds fooling at times even themselves; and the fear of being exposed as empty.  Insecurities are not limited to the youth who are finding their way.  Bergman was growing as an artist, but the fears any professional has, at least in Bergman’s case, did haunt him well into middle age.  Lifetime recognition proclaims to others but most chillingly to the recipient that they’ve achieved all they can in their profession.

We remember the past not as our former selves but as the people we are the moment we are remembering.  “Flashbacks” as narrative devices are actually active moments in a film, existing in the present.  This is one of Wild Strawberries’ biggest accomplishments.  Isak can remember the past, his eccentric extended family, the wild strawberry bushes on their property, with the insight of so many years’ experience.  We all would do things differently if we could.  Even without regrets; if we’re lucky, time gives us experience that allows us to become our selves.  There is no one age where we truly understand who we are and the story isn’t written until the later years.  That does not mean death.  There is a beautiful moment at the climax (though that word might be inaccurate given the unique qualities of Bergman’s narrative structures) when Isak is taken to see his parents during the film’s final fantasy flashback sequence.  He sees them from across a pond, and the expression on Victor Sjöström’s face is one of great serenity.  He is not crying or gushing of happiness.  What I’ve always been impressed with is Bergman’s lack of sentimentality; not because I dislike emotion.  On the contrary, Bergman’s approach allows him to be honest, and instead of tears Isak Borg looks at his parents with fondness and understanding.  Having lived a life of his own, sharing probably in similar emotional experiences as his parents, he can understand them and appreciate them as human beings.

Convention would, after the Professor’s final flashback, tucked in bed and ready for sleep, allow Isak to die.  In Hollywood storytelling that would tie things up, package the story, and give us a sense of resolution.  Such endings are so pessimistic because life goes on, even for the elderly.  Isak, I believe, undergoes some very profound and subtle changes that allow him to grow at his old age.  It’s great that Bergman will allow his character the dignity to experience at least one more day with this new perspective.

The youth in the film is very special.  They oddly are liberated from doubt.  They are carefree and hopeful.  Bibi Andersson, one of Bergman’s many brilliant leading ladies, plays a duel-role: Sara, Isak’s cousin in the flashbacks, the woman he loved and wanted to marry, and Sara, a hitchhiker going with two male friends to Italy.  Let’s talk about the modern-day Sara.  Her biggest woe is deciding which of her boyfriends she really likes.  There’s Viktor, a theologian, and Anders, a doctor.  Their fights over God give the film its biggest laugh.  They box over God’s existence, and when they return defeated to Sara, she asks, “Does God exist?”  Andersson is especially sweet, and her scenes give the film much of its beauty.  Sara of the past is theatrical, possessing the neurosis apt of a formal, hierarchal society.  In the modern world of the film, the elderly retreat into themselves: Isak, of course; his mother, and Miss Agda, Isak’s housekeeper and comic combatant.  Isak’s son and daughter-in-law are repeating the mistakes of the past, but the new youth is hope for the future.

Isak and Marianne, his daughter-in-law; their relationship I found intriguing.  Maybe because it is so unusual to see this family relation depicted in fiction, but it is poignant that Isak discovers much about his own son through the conversations with Marianne.  Evald, the son, is a stranger to Isak and yet he hates his elderly father.  Isak is surprised by this, but he accepts it.  Maybe his son’s feelings are understandable to him.  The two opposing characters, Isak and Marianne, traveling in a car, might make the film seem like a buddy picture, but Wild Strawberries lacks the required and implausible confessions and revelations seen in the genre.  Instead these characters experience growth unparalleled in most films.  By depicting moments—conversations, glances, experiences not directly related to plot (the visit to Isak’s mother, for example) Bergman, as he nearly always does, gives us people more than characters.

The film is a bridge between Bergman’s past and future work.  He has the formal structure and the theatrical rhythm typical of his early film.  Bergman came from the theatre, and he continued to write his films like plays, and many of his published screenplays are indeed in play form.  His cinematographer during the 1950s, Gunnar Fisher, achieves his most delicate work in Wild Strawberries, a more naturalistic view of the world that looks ahead to Bergman’s work with the masterful Sven Nykvist.  Bergman’s screenplay and scenario is more typical of the chamber dramas that define his 60s and 70s output.  Isak Borg will make way for the weak, mawkish male figures in films like Persona, Shame, and Scenes from a Marriage.  As Bergman’s success increased, his insecurities did too, but it is easy to imagine the director at peace towards the end of his own life—a journey we can imagine as frightful and full as Isak Borg’s.  His last films are proof of this; Fanny and Alexander and Saraband are rich in their human qualities.  Sorrow still exists but the director had realized that the poor parts of life are eclipsed by the joys, and he was talented enough to make these beautiful moments as profound and rich as the heavy drama.  These films show the great Bergman characters accepting peace where they find it, and where the past has made room for it.

Wild Strawberries (1957)

(a.k.a. Smultronstället)

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Writer: Ingmar Bergman

Stars: Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin and Gunnar Bjornstrand

Sweden

In Swedish

Runtime: 91 minutes

IMDB link:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050986/

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