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You Freud, Me Jane?

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Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren in Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964)

Sometimes it takes years, even decades, for a great film to be recognized. Such is the case with Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie, which confused and rattled the critics of the period. According to the New York Times, “an inexplicably amateurish script.” The L.A. Times was no more accepting: “As a story it seems naggingly improbable and, as drama, a nightmare from which the spectator constantly pulls away, struggling to wake up in a less disordered universe. No question, though, that it is at least fitfully effective“

Fitfully effective? How about ahead of its time. Both the Sean Connery character (Mark Rutland) and the Tippi Hedren character (Marnie Edgar) are obsessed in different ways. Marnie is a thief who cannot bear to be touched by men. Mark, on the other hand, is obsessed with using the tools of popular psychology to “cure” Marnie. In a way, both characters are equally out of it.

What escaped the 1960s critics was that Marnie was a strikingly beautiful film, perhaps the most beautiful color film ever produced. From the moment we see Marnie from the rear wearing a black wig walking down a train station platform with a yellow bag full of money under her arms, we are hooked. At least, I was.

Even the obvious fakery that Hitchcock seems to throw at us seems to actually add to the story in this instance. When Mark drives Marnie to her mother’s Baltimore row house, we see an obviously painted backdrop of an ocean freighter at the end of the block. In the foreground, several little girls are skipping rope while singing:

Mother, Mother, I am ill
Call for the doctor over the hill.
In came the doctor,
In came the nurse,
In came the lady with the alligator purse.

In the end, Mark and Marnie drive off and take a left just before the painted backdrop, where moments ago it seemed there was no exit.

Ars Est Celare Artem

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Japanese Film Director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963)

It was Horace in his “Ars Poetica” who wrote ars est celare artem, meaning that true art conceals the means by which it is achieved.

The film medium has an unusually rich variety of tools that can be used in movies, including zooms in and out, pans, wipes, tracking and dolly shots, tilts, and crane shots. And these do not include the complex technically-assisted tools such as are involved in computer generated imagery (CGI).

In Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock created a stunning visual effect by combining zooming out with tracking in. Some directors like Sergei Eisenstein, Max Ophuls, Jean-Luc Godard, and Andrey Tarkovsky have used the language of film in new and exciting ways.

Just as there are writers like Ernest Hemingway who employ a simple style. There are others, such as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Georges Perec who used all the bells and whistles of literature to achieve their aims.

If there is an equivalent to the Hemingway style in film, I would have to say it is in the films of Yasujiro Ozu. In the dozen or so films I have seen, I remember only one camera movement, a slight pan in his Tokyo Story (1953), in which we follow an elderly couple as they walk alongside a wall at a seaside resort. With Ozu, there is, for the most part, only a succession of simple shots, most frequently at the level of a Japanese person seated on a tatami mat.

Intercut with these shots are others that are almost like stills. In the sound pictures, the music wells up, and the audience is meant to absorb what has just happened. This is referred to in Japanese as mono no aware. literally: the pathos of things. There is, for instance, this recurring shot in Floating Weeds (1959):

As one American writer put it in The Other Journal:

When I reflect on Japanese cinema, I find that one of the things that continually draws me back to it is a sort of gentle melancholy and pensive longing. Granted, this isn’t true of all Japanese films — I don’t know if you’d find it much in violent yakuza films or over-the-top kaiju films — but the ones that have stuck with me over the years are typified by this emotion and seem to contain it in large amounts.

There’s a Japanese phrase that sums up this feeling I’m describing: “mono no aware.” Roughly translated into English, it means “the sadness of things”. It’s not sadness in the sense of depression or angst, but rather, it refers to an awareness of the fragility of existence, of the transient and bittersweet nature of life, which, I’ve found, can make for incredibly beautiful and poignant cinema.

That feeling is present in all the Ozu films I have seen, which is why I regard him as one of the greatest of all film artists and perhaps the preeminent artist in the Japanese cinema.

Floating Weeds

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Rieko Yagumo and Yoshiko Tsubouchi in Story of Floating Weeds (1934)

Over the last two days, I have had the good fortune to see two great films by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, one the remake of the other. Although the technology to make sound films existed in Japan, Ozu deliberately made only silent films until 1936.

His A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) is about a traveling Kabuki player troupe that visits a small town. On a previous visit to that same town, the head of the troupe, played by Takashi Sakamoto, had an affair with a local woman who ran a small restaurant/bar and had a son by her. In the intervening years, he sent money for his education and begged the mother to say that he was the boy’s uncle instead of his “deceased” father.

Sakamoto loves spending time with his son, and that arouses the envy of Rieko Yagumo, his mistress on the road. She bribes her fellow actress Yoshiko Tsubouchi to seduce the boy, but they fall in love with each other. Furious, Sakamoto dissolves the acting troupe.

Like all of his films, A Story of Floating Weeds shows a group of people at odds with one another coming together in the end with an enhanced respect and gentleness.

It is no surprise that Ozu remade the film in 1959 as Floating Weeds. It is the same basic story, but with sound and color.

The Same Two Roles a Quarter Century Later

I actually prefer the original silent 1934 version. It was a better story and had better actors (even though the 1959 version had Machiko Kyo in the role of the mistress in the troupe). It was so good, in fact, that I plan to buy the recent Criterion release of both versions on DVD.

Yasujiro Ozu was one of the five or ten greatest film directors who ever lived. Over the years, I have seen over a dozen of his films, and there was not a clinker in the bunch. Even John Ford, Jean Renoir, and Carl Dreyer made some stinkers. But not Ozu. The world lost a magnificent artist when he died in Tokyo in 1963. I plan on discussing his film style in a later post this week.

Selfie With Barbie

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Yours Truly with Barbie

Who is that skeptical-looking muckenfuss with lovely Barbie? Oh, that’s me. I must have been making that sour face because both Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig were unfairly denied Oscars for their part in making what, to my mind, is the best film of 2023. Why should I be surprised? Awards, particularly in show biz, reflect the petty hatreds of professionals. Rarely have I agreed wholeheartedly with the Academy’s choices.

Now that I am on my way with Barbie to the Real World, I’d better check my bright yellow inline roller blades and my rad duds for making the scene on Venice Beach.

I guess I loved Barbie because it was so refreshing to see a purely feminine viewpoint unmarred by crass mansplaining. Mattel actively participated in the film even though its 100& white male Board of Directors in the film is actually pretty evenly split between six men and five women.

Barbie and Ken on Venice Beach

What struck me is that both Barbie and Ken were totally naive and un-selfconscious about their roles. It was like the story of Pinocchio, with both characters striving to become real people, or at least contented to be themselves. I felt for Ken and his attempt to set up the patriarchy in Barbieland, to be renamed Kenland. The Barbies ultimately win, but then the Kens accept their second-string status.

In a way, it was a pity to see the Mojo Dojo Casa House disinfected and returned to Barbie. Some, like Bill Maher, see the film as ultimately a man-hating product. I did not.

Spear and Magic Helmet

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Elmer Fudd in Warner Brothers’ “What’s Opera Doc?”

It was, to my mind, the greatest short cartoon ever made. In 1957, Warner Brothers released a Wagner opera parody (of Die Walküre, no less) featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. You can see it, with commentary, by clicking on:

I have written before about my suspicion that the United States has (d)evolved from a Bugs Bunny nation to an Elmer Fudd nation. Always immaculately garbed in hunting clothes, or in the case of this film spear and magic helme, Fudd nonetheless doesn’t know what he wants. He says he wants to kill the wabbit. But he also, in his strange incel way, loves the wabbit. And Bugs knows it and takes advantage of him.

Of course, in this film Bugs dies. His last line as he is carried off by Elmer is something to the effect that operas always end sadly.

Elmer Carries Off the Body of His Doomed Love/Hate Object

When Elmer first encounters Bugs in the film, he is poking his spear into a rabbit hole shouting “Kill the Wabbit!” while Bugs, standing off to the side, munches on a carrot. Only after a few moments does Elmer realize that Bugs is taunting him. He erupts in rage and uses his magic helmet to conjure up a storm. Whereupon Bugs as Brunhilda rides down a hill from a Greek temple lounging on the back of a fat white horse.

Naturally, Elmer falls immediately in love with Bugs/Brunhilda and his golden braided wig. They dance a pas de deux until—horrors!—Bugs/Brunhilda’s wig falls to the ground. Enraged again, he uses his magic helmet to whip up a storm that kills the object of his hate/love. Remorse follows as Elmer exits carrying the limp Bugs.

The film was directed by Chuck Jones, one of my favorite animators.

Eh, What’s Up, Doc?

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I Yearn for the America That Had Bugs Bunny as Its Hero

I love watching old cartoons from Warner Brothers and the Fleischer Brothers. They spoke of a wisecracking America that doesn’t exist any more. It was good to be represented by such originals as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Alas, now we are more represented by a fearful Elmer Fudd. Oh, he has guns galore, but he always loses in the end.

Bugs is like one of the trickster gods of many cultures around the world, including those of some North American Indian peoples. Take the Norse trickster god Loki, for example:

In Norse mythology, Loki is known as a trickster. He is described in the Prose Edda as a “contriver of fraud.” Although he doesn’t appear often in the Eddas, he is generally described as a member of the family of Odin. His job was mostly to make trouble for other gods, men, and the rest of the world. Loki was constantly meddling in the affairs of others, mostly for his own amusement.

Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd

I find my early cartoon heroes such as Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Betty Boop, and even Speedy Gonzales are representative of a country that is comfortable in its own skin. Unlike Elmer Fudd, who always takes the trouble to dress like a bold hunter, but who, in the end, is chicken-hearted.

And I’ll best anything that Elmer has a red MAGA hat in his closet!

Favorite Films: Orphée (1950)

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Jean Marais as Orpheus in Jean Cocteau’s Orphée

This is a film I have loved for upwards of sixty years, ever since I first saw it screened by the Dartmouth Film Society. It is the only film I have ever seen that makes a stab at showing us what happens after death—without looking totally silly.

The story is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus the poet and his wife Eurydice, variously mentioned by such authors as Plato, Plutarch, Apollonius of Rhodes, and others. Eurydice dies, and Orpheus, while still alive, goes to the Underworld to get her back. The gods agree, but with the condition that he must never look upon her face again. If he did, her spirit would be instantly wafted back to the Underworld.

Jean Cocteau places the tale in postwar France and adds some interesting touches. Death is personified as “The Princess.” Played by the lovely and elegant Maria Casares, who falls madly in love with Orpheus. Among hr assistants are François Périer as Heurtebise and Édouard Dermit as Cégeste. One enters the underworld by walking through a mirror wearing special rubber gloves, which convert the mirrors to a waterlike substance. The ruins of Saint Cyr Military Academy serve as the Underworld, where Orpheus and Heurtebise go to negotiate with a tribunal in a grimy meeting room.

The Last Shot: The Princess and Heurtebise Go to Meet Their Fate

I have seen Orfée at least a dozen times, and each time was as magical and striking as the first viewing. Along with the same director’s La Belle et la Bête (1946), it is one of the glories of the French cinema, indeed of world cinema.

The Babes of Star Trek

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Diana Ewing as Droxine in “The Cloud Minders” Episode of Star Trek

Every once in a while I kick off my shoes and re-watch one of the original episodes of Star Trek. I am always amazed at how many really beautiful women show up in the series. I can only speculate that Gene Roddenberry must have been an incredible lech, but with good taste. I have already written about Marta the green Orion from the “Whom Gods Destroy” episode, played by Yvonne Craig.

Diana Ewing played the lean and strikingly beautiful blonde Droxine in “The Cloud Minders” episode from the same year (1969). She is one of the epicene Stratos cloud dwellers who live lives of idle pleasure while the Troglytes [sic] below mine zenite, which clouds their thinking.

Whereas Marta had a thing for James T. Kirk, Droxine was more interested in the tall Vulcan, Spock. Unlike Marta, Droxine is still alive at the end of her episode. But alas, the Starship Enterprise never returned to Stratos later in the series.

Spending Summer in Middle Earth

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The Main Characters from Sir Peter Jackson’s Film Version

I have decided that I will have a J. R. R. Tolkien summer during which I will re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy and undertake to read The Silmarillion for the first time. And I will see all three films in Sir Peter Jackson’s masterful film version. (I own all three films on DVD). I have already had the same book/film experience last year with The Hobbit.

Less than half an hour ago, I completed my re-reading of The Fellowship of the Ring, probably my favorite novel of the three, because all nine major characters are interacting with one another during much of the length of the story.

It seems that Tolkien’s trilogy never grows old. I cannot but think that it is one of the great literary accomplishments of the Twentieth Century. It is fantasy, but with an eye cocked at the growth of fascism in Europe during the 1930s and its harvest as the Second World War. I wonder if someone even half so good as Tolkien will chronicle our own uneasy times.

A Visit to Asteroid City

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A Strange Film Set Near the California-Nevada Border in the 1950s

Yesterday afternoon, I went to see a matinee performance of Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City (2023). I had seen his earlier The French Dispatch (2021), which did the same for France as Asteroid City did for the 1950s American desert.

Is it a great film? Not exactly, but I think it is definitely worth seeing. Wes Anderson has, rattling around somewhere in his head, a great film; and I believe it will eventually be made.

Picture a group of Junior Stargazers and their parents descending on a nowhere town in the Mohave Desert. With a cast that includes Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Margaret Robie, Steve Carell, and some very talented juvenile actors, the film ranged from riveting to “What the …?”

During the Junior Stargazers awards ceremony, a space alien kidnaps a meteor that was on display and later returns it with various inventory markings. The military proceeds to put Asteroid City on lockdown, with no one able to leave or arrive—until the alien makes his second appearance.

One of Two Nuclear Tests That Occur During the Course of the Film

The most striking thing about the film is its visual style. It all looks like desert postcards of the period. except for a connecting story of a writer and a group of play actors which is not only shot in black and white, but in Academa 4:3 ratio, whereas most of the film is in color and wide screen. In fact, the weakest part of the film is this connecting story.

I remember when I first saw The French Dispatch on TV at my brother’s house. At first, I didn’t know what to make of it. Some of it I loved, some I thought deplorable.

No matter, just hold your nose during the bad parts and enjoy the scenes set in Asteroid City.