Art movies

 I dipped into Pauline Kael's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang again recently, and came across the following quote in her review of Ingmar Bergman's film, Persona: 

It may be that an open puzzle movie like this one, which affects some people very profoundly, permits them to project into it so much of themselves that what they think the movie is about has very little to do with what happens on the screen. This kind of projection ˗ which we used to think of as the precritical responsiveness of the mass audience ˗ is now common in the educated audience. People can be heard saying that they ‘didn’t worry about whether it was good or bad,’ they ‘just let it happen to them.’ And if the educated audience is now coming around to the larger audience’s way of seeing movies, I would suggest that they are also being sold in the same way as the larger audience, that advertising and the appearance of critical consensus it gives to certain movies are what lead people to ‘let’ certain prestigious movies ‘happen to them,’ just as the larger audience lets an oversized musical spoof like Thoroughly Modern Millie happen to them. The idea is that ‘art’ should be experienced, not criticised. There seems to be little sense that critical faculties are involved in experience, and that if they are not involved, advertising determines what is accepted as art.

If what I understand Kael to be saying is correct, it means that much of what is claimed to be 'art' in movies, as in 'art house movies', is merely movies that are 'sold' that way. These movies can be obscure, strange, full of peculiar and unrelated incidents, sometimes badly filmed, and often have next to nothing in the way of a story. There was a great trend for these sorts of movies back in the sixties: Bergman brought the Swedish approach, Fellini and Antonioni the Italian one, and there were a bunch of awful French movies that made virtually no sense at all, such as those by Jean-Luc Godard. They were the 'new wave.' 

Some of these directors were masters of cinema-making, but not of story, and they brought oddball movies to the screen that were more about mood and emotion and possibility - or the lack of it. Great actors appeared in them, and sometimes must have wondered what on earth they were supposed to be acting. Certainly audiences must have often wondered what they were watching, but in the mood of the times it was considered trendy to make a great noise about these films often more because of who they were made by than for any other good reason. Viewing Bergman today, you can still get the impression of a great mind at work, though increasingly the films seem to be distant from us. Unlike many films that have endured, they lack the means to affect us emotionally. Watching Fellini's 'masterpiece', La Dolce Vita, we get to the point where we wonder if it's ever going to end, even though a lot of what goes on is very watchable. But there doesn't seem to be anything to really grasp in it, and this became increasingly the case with his movies. Antonioni's films always seemed to be saying something you couldn't hear. Godard's movies were strange radical things in their day, full of unexpected violence, yet even then they seemed to have no heart (Fellini at least had a heart), and Bergman's films can come across as cold (though in some of his earlier movies we can empathise with the characters more readily). 

Were these films great or were they sold to us as great? I think the moviemakers themselves were great artists, but they tackled things from a strange mental viewpoint. 

Two classics

In this current round of catching up with movies on DVD (courtesy of the Public Library's very reasonable prices) my wife and I watched Babette's Feast yesterday, and I watched Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St Francis this morning.   (We also watched the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, about which I'll write later, since it's quite a different kettle of fish to these other two movies.)

I've known about these two movies for a long time - the Rossellini since I was a teenager, I'd imagine - so it's good to catch up with them at last.  I feel a bit as though sometimes I'm trawling my way through the 1000 movies I should watch before I die, but that's not really the case.  Some movies just stick in the brain as being classics that it would be good to see at some point.

Federico Fellini had a hand in writing the script for the Rossellini movie, and I suspect there are scenes where his influence is quite strong, such as in the crazy bit where the simple brother, Fra Ginapro, decides to prepare fifteen days worth of food at once so that he can go preaching.  The slightly senile old grandfather who's joined the brothers helps him by throwing the wood for the fire into the pot where the food is cooking (as he's done in a lesser way earlier on).   Or the scene where Ginapro is allowed to go preaching, winds up in a camp of soldiers and their hangers-on who are holding siege outside some town, and meets the commander who spends most of his screen time encased in an absurd suit of armour that's still being built around him.  Interestingly enough, the man playing the commander is the only one in the film who was a professional actor, yet he comes across as though he was playing in some silent movie, with wide eyes, large gestures, the lot.  The rest of the cast are rank amateurs, drawn in part from the Monks of the Nocere Inferiore Monastery.  Brother Nazario Gerardi played St Francis, though he's not credited in the movie.  He brings a deep seriousness to the role, a great deal of warmth, some humour, and occasional exasperation at the incompetency of some of the other brothers. 


The movie is simply made in every respect - the only 'big' scene is at the siege camp, where there are a large number of extras, horses, wooden structures, and a fire destroying everything at the end.  Everything else is done in the open air, and the buildings that the brothers make early in the film are the simplest of constructions.  Much of their time is spent tramping through open countryside, with few roads or paths.  The opening scene has them spending a great deal of time in the pouring rain, and towards the end Francis and another brother are thrown into the wet mud - learning what happiness is in the process (!)


The script is based on the well-known stories of St Francis.  There are nearly 80 of these parable-like tales called The Little Flowers of St Francis but the movie uses less than ten.  However, in a very detailed review of this movie on epinions the writer points out that the reason Fra Ginapro takes such a prominent role in the film is because more than half the stories were based more on The Life of Father Ginapro rather than on the The Little Flowers of St Francis.


The film is episodic in the extreme, with little in the way of character arc or climax, or the usual techniques of storytelling.  The filmmakers rely on the spiritual strength of the stories being acted out by people who themselves have no airs and graces.  In fact, there are several scenes where the brothers are more like children than adults - one usually skips everywhere when the brothers are heading somewhere, and at the end they're told to spin round until dizzy in order to find out where God wants them to go.  It's a bit of a joke on Francis' part, I suspect, but none of them regard it as unusual.  Another scene is nothing more than Francis discovering a leper walking slowly past in the dark, his bell clinking as a warning.  The man's face is covered in sores, and Francis breaks into tears, and then follows the man, finally embracing him.  And then the man goes on his way - a little puzzled!


Babette's Feast is a different kettle of fish, yet presents its spirituality in as equally quiet a way, avoiding overt preaching (we never hear the Franciscans preach in the other movie either), and showing how a purposeful act of love can affect people deeply.   The film focuses on two sisters, the daughters of a strictly religious man who has formed his own little following in a tiny village in the Jutland region.  The daughters are both courted by young men at different times, but their father's gentle persuasion keeps them from accepting the men.   As the film opens we see them as old women.  Their father has died, and their servant Babette, (Stéphane Audran) a Frenchwoman who fled the civil unrest in France, has been with them fourteen years.  The little community of Christians has reduced in number, and is still squabbling, much to the sisters' dismay.  Babette, who was sent to the sisters by one of the men who'd come courting so long ago, wins 10,000 francs in the lottery and decides to blow the whole amount on an extraordinary French cuisine meal for the little community.  The ascetic community decides they can eat the food, but not approve of it, and that they won't speak any good about it.  But in spite of themselves they're won over by it, and begin to enjoy a freedom of the spirit, and a joy that they've never previously exhibited.  A general is also at the meal: he courted one of the sisters years ago.  Having had experience of life outside the confines of the village, he realises that the person doing the cooking is a chef of the highest order.   In fact, he gradually recognises the menu as being one he's experienced in Paris many years before, a meal that cost 10,000 francs for twelve customers.  His continual delight and surprise is wonderful, as is the held-back delight of the other people at the table.  They may hold their tongues but they can't contain their joy.  And an audience watching the movie won't be able to either. 


The film is beautifully photographed in soft, warm colours; even the mists and rains are filmed with an eye to their colours.  The interiors, houses sparse in furniture and fittings, are filmed in a fittingly cooler style - except the kitchen where Babette works, which is alive with colour.  She has two companions in there on the night of the feast: a boy from the village who does all the serving, and who manages to imbibe a little along the way, and finish off some of the leftovers, and the coachman who brought the former suitor (now a general) and his aged aunt.  This man not only benefits from being in the kitchen, but sees the feast being prepared.   His delight is a joy to see.  


The pure and joyful asceticism in the Francis movie, in its context, is an apt expression of love for others.  The humanity that overcomes misaligned asceticism in Babette is an equally apt expression of love for others.  There's the wonderful line spoken about Babette by one of the sisters when she realises how impoverished Babette's life has been with them for fourteen years: In Paradise you will be the great artist that God meant you to be. Ah, how you will delight the angels!  This is in response to Babette's heartfelt cry: Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me the chance to do my very best. 


This movie is superb, and original. 

La Dolce VIta

After watching the possibly-pseud, Babel, a couple of nights ago, seeing La Dolce Vita again after more than fifty years brought on similar misgivings. Is it really a classic? Does it say anything at all, apart from condemning paparazzi? Is there actually any acting in it, or were ninety percent of the cast merely playing themselves?
When I first watched it, in the enormous St James theatre here in Dunedin, the place was packed. A typical Saturday night out for most of the people in the audience. By the time the movie finished, the place was half empty. Fellini had managed to alienate most of his audience.
Nearly fifty years on, the film is highly regarded by anyone who writes about it, and Fellini’s name has entered the film history books as being one of the great film directors. There’s no doubt he was that. Quite apart from La Dolce Vita, he made increasingly detailed and visually-stunning movies that kept on hammering away at certain themes, particularly the loss of self in an existential society.
The films also became increasingly long: La Dolce Vita itself finally reaches its last scenes after some 160 minutes, and the rather overblown Satyricon, while only 128 minutes, seems endless.

So what are the plusses?
LDV boasts superb cinematography, with wonderful use of the wide screen, and a black and white view of the world that is a feast for the eye.
In spite of my remarks above about the acting, there are any number of fine performances in the film: Marcello Mastroianni holds it all together, while playing a character who’s losing his soul; Anouk Aimee is Maddalena, promiscuous to the core because she doesn’t know how else to live her life; Yvonne Furneaux is Emma, Marcello’s long-suffering girlfriend, who first appears just after having tried to kill herself because Marcello continually neglects her in favour of more seductive and powerful women; Alain Cuny is the world-weary philosopher who proves to have no inner life after all; Anita Ekberg plays herself pretty much, but does it wonderfully. There are hundreds of others, some of them given moments of high comedy, some given moments of drama, some playing people full of tosh, some playing people spouting arty nonsense, some playing dilettantes, some playing people whose lives consist of nothing but endless, tedious parties, where happiness is almost completely absent. And there’s the not-to-be-forgotten Annibale Ninchi, who plays Marcello’s father, seeming at first to be more virtuous than his son, but proving to be just as empty.
There is the directing. The details are endless: so many things thrown into the mix that it’s impossible to pick up all the clues as to what’s happening. The extraordinary moments: the famous Trevi fountain scene (or Ekberg’s calling to the wolves just before this); the procession of aristocrats first looking for a ghost and then walking in the dawn (‘I’ve never seen the dawn before’) like a procession of ghosts themselves; the trumpet-playing clown, Polidor, who calls a host of balloons to follow him, after playing a typically Felliniesque piece of melancholy (compare the trumpet playing in La Strada, for instance). And on and on. But beyond this is the putting together of a dozen or so sequences which are each as extraordinary as the other.
The script. Such an open-ended script as this can barely exist. Fellini prompts us to think in certain directions, but continually throws us off-course. He lets us empathise with Marcello one moment, and then loathe him the next. We are dropped into emotional relationships but given only the minimum of clues. We are handed hundreds of sharply-drawn characters, and left to wonder at who these people really are. (Only a handful of characters appear in more than one sequence.) And always, always, we’re asking ourselves: Why? Why does Marcello commit himself to this lifestyle? Why do so many of the people hate life? Why do the paparazzi invade people’s privacy with such disdain? Why do at least two of the main characters wear sunglasses at night? What is the anger underneath Marcello’s handsome exterior? How does he manage to include himself in so many different circles?

The cons. The film is too long. The final party scene, in which Marcello has apparently reached his nadir, adds little to the film, and merely makes us loathe him all the more. The sequence before this, with the aristocrats, comes at a point when the audience has been saturated with people. And though it includes an important scene, it seems to me to wander off course towards the end.
Still, if those were the only quibbles, the film would still remain an extraordinary achievement. As a work of art it has so many layers most viewers would never get to the bottom of them. As a work of filmmaking, it is superior still, even fifty years after it was made, to many other films that attempt something similar. And curiously, in spite of its age, it doesn’t appear dated. Apart from the odd piece of women’s fashion, and the styles of the cars, little has changed.

La Strada

Finally caught up with Fellini’s La Strada again after some 45 years or so. I remembered the story in outline, but had forgotten most of the detail. Guilietta Masina’s face had also stayed in the memory, but I’d forgotten what a superb performance Anthony Quinn gives in the movie. Because he’s such an unpleasant character, you tend to overlook just how much detail there is in his character. Richard Basehart is good, oddly cast in some ways, and has really only a couple of decent scenes in the movie. It’s hard to tell whether the Italian is his or is dubbed – in the version I’ve just watched the speech seemed just a bit out of sync. Quinn’s Italian is full in your face. Even though he was a Mexican by birth he does an extraordinary job of appearing to be fully Italian in every way.
Masina was probably too old for the part, but carries it off superbly, a full range of emotions often flitting across her face in a few seconds.
The movie is also significant for capturing a period in Italian history so well: I suspect there’s very little of this kind of Italy still in existence. Even given Fellini’s penchant for oddball moments the camera catches all manner of ordinary faces and mannerisms and scenes that have vanished. You almost wish Fellini had carried on along this line with his movies. Superb as the later, great movies are, they often show a freakish world, not one that’s true to the country. Perhaps it’s more that the films between La Strada and La Dolce Vita are mostly unknown to people outside Italy, and so we don’t see the transition.