Dangerous Visions

2005-03-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

Am marking this afternoon, and have rather a hefty pile. So, I have broken off from it to consider the central ideas behind a group of films that have been on my mind recently. The question: what was the nugget/germ in each screenwriter's head when they constructed their films on paper?

The Evil Dead (1982) Sam Raimi

Raimi was 19 when he made this full-on movie. I think the central idea was to make the Citizen Kane of gore movies. As Steve King would say, its mission is to "gross-out" the audience. It is relentless, and resonates with Raimi's enthusiasm.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) Quentin Tarantino

The idea in Tarantino's mind was the bungled-heist genre. Kubrick's The Killing. Tarantino experiments with a flashback narrative structure that he similarly toys with in Jackie Brown. Tarantino is a natural writer. Again, the finished film is full of crackling, perhaps pent-up energy. On first viewing, it blows the mind (less so in repeated viewings.)

Last House on the Left (1972) Wes Craven

The central idea: to meditate on the destructive, banal and tragic consequences of violence, by depicting a pornography of violence. The plot is beautiful in its sharp simplicity.

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) John McNaughton

The title is exactly what this film is. Of all the movies listed here, this is arguably the most difficult to watch. Its violence is shot matter-of-factly, with human beings being disposed of by Henry, as one might casually dispatch bags of trash. The script stares at Henry without any attempt to contextualise or offer moral judgement. The film is exactly what is says on the tin.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) Dan Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez

Easy peasy: the essence of this film is in the digital video camera, which meant that the film could be shot cheaply and briskly. It's a fabulous and profitable idea. I don't find the film remotely scary, but it's a concise and deceptively-accomplished piece of filmmaking.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) Tobe Hooper

The original and best. What was the central idea? Was it a bizarre satire of the American family? Was it an Ed Gein-obsessed mangle of visceral horror? Hooper wanted to terrify his audience with an energy and relentlessness never seen before. The story is a blood-red ten little indians, with the teenagers getting bumped off in increasingly horrible ways. The final scene of torture is the film's raison d'etre. Utterly brilliant and again, deceptively accomplished cutting.

Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero

This is a remake of Rio Bravo (1959). Carpenter remade the same story as Assault on Precinct 13 eight years later. The principal idea in Romero and Russo's minds, was to shoot a cheap film that would make lashings of money. They chose the horror genre accordingly and set out to push boundaries. All the films in this list, in one way or another, seek to do something differently, and to push boundaries.

Saw (2004) James Wan

The idea here is to have a serial killer who never actually kills anyone. It's a fabulous idea that is worked out through copious flashbacks and a restricted central location. The final act of Dr Lawrence Gordon crosses a line, and makes this (for my money), the best horror film from the last twenty years.

All these films are either by first-time directors, or early works.

Student Gaffes: A Compendium

2005-03-03T14:25:00.000-08:00

I was looking through my papers recently, and came upon the following document. It's a selection of actual metaphors taken from real student work - though not my students' work.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

The door had been forced, as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion of Family Fortunes.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a tumble dryer.

She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the centre.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left York at 6:36 p.m. travelling at 55 mph, the other from Peterborough at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the full stop after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

The thunder was ominous sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play.

The red brick wall was the colour of a brick-red crayon.

Even in his last years, Grandpa had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a student on 31p-a-pint night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

Her artistic sense was exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter."

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

It came down the stairs looking very much like something no one had ever seen before.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Glenda Jackson MP in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Robin Cook MP, Leader of the House of Commons, in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the suspension of Keith Vaz MP.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint.

The dandelion swayed in the gentle breeze like an oscillating electric fan set on medium.

It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a dustcart reversing.

She was as easy as the Daily Star crossword.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature British beef.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

Cult Films A-Z #1

2005-03-02T18:53:00.000-08:00

My understanding of "cult cinema", focuses on films which may not have been popular on their first issue, but which have developed devoted and even obsessive followings over the years. Perhaps they are flawed or unorthodox in one way or another – for instance, the ill-formed oddball offspring of auteurs (Marnie), or maybe they are low-budget flicks which have developed a large, if genre-related, following (the early works of John Carpenter). Perhaps certain films are so weird that only a devoted few could fall in love with them (Eraserhead). The following selection, to be developed over the next few days, are as follows:

ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976) John Carpenter

This remake of Night of the Living Dead (via Rio Bravo) showed that Carpenter had a talent for suspense and razor-sharp editing. It was also jam-packed with Howard Hawks homages... The 2005 remake, though excellent, cannot compete with Carpenter’s original and best.

BADLANDS (1973) Terrence Malick

This movie has dated mildly through the years and its effect has faded as a result. But it’s still a deeply-engaging study of a nonchalant psychopath who is also an extremely nice guy. Martin Sheen gets the first of his three greatest roles (the second and third being Apocalypse Now, and his performance on stage in 1986’s The Normal Heart – the only stage play that has actually reduced me to tears.)

BLOW-UP (1966) Antonioni

The DVD of this 1966 UK/Italian enigma, is superb. The film fits neatly into a clutch of strange-but-beautiful films produced in the 1960s, such as Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Bergman’s Persona (1966). Sixties icon David Hemmings (recently-deceased) plays Thomas, a fashion photographer who is in Maryon Wilson Park one day, when he inadvertently (it seems) captures evidence of a murder with his black and white stills camera. Has he seen a corpse or hasn’t he? The sequence in which he "blows up" key frames of the film roll (in an obsessive quest to squeeze as much "evidence" from the snaps as possible), is almost a cinematic depiction of Barthes’ structuralist method in essays such as ‘The Photographic Image’. The enigmatic quality in the film seems to have emanated as much from budgetary restrictions as from anything else, but the finished film is beautiful to look at and has a fantastic Herbie Hancock soundtrack. The film’s locations can be visited in Charlton, south-east London. I have been to M W Park many times, and Blow Up-philes are always to be found lurking there, no doubt mulling over the exact placements of Antonioni’s camera...

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) James Whale

In the early 1980s, there was a season of BBC2 "Horror Double Bills", featuring a long list of the old Universal horror classics. Dracula; The Invisible Man; The Mummy; The Wolf Man; these were great, if slightly creaky black and white classics, no longer remotely scary, but stuffed with lashings of mood and atmosphere. For my money, James Whale’s sequel to his original 1933 Frankenstein, is the best of the batch. It is packed with quirkery and surrealism - imagery that burns itself into the retina. The movie is stolen by Ernest Thesiger's turn as Dr Pretorius, who is at once Machiavellian and witty. The sets are larger than in the first film, and Boris Karloff's Creature retains its dignity and tragedy. It's got nothing to do with Mary Shelley's novel, but no matter: this is a fascinating and original horror film in its own right.

CASABLANCA (1943) Michael Curtiz

In my judgement, this is a contender for the greatest film ever made. It certainly nails Citizen Kane for that (arguably unnecessary) accolade. It perhaps does not correspond to the definition of "cult" above, because it is one of the most popular films ever made, in addition to being one of the best, but there is something about it - something delightful - which draws audiences to it again and again. It has that cultish quality of motivating people to return to it repeatedly. It has not been out of distribution since 1943. It is deeply romantic, deeply tragic and deeply cool. The cast (Bogart, Bergman, Lorre, Greenstreet, Henreid and others), is perfect. It was a propaganda film in its own era, but sixty two years on, it has transcended those politics and is recognised as an object of perfection (which has a certain irony, because its production was confused). The script is infinitely quotable, and story-guru Robert McKee uses it as a central example in his 1999 book. Pulp-fiction writer David Goodis built a whole crime/noir genre around the film's three act structure (incorporating the flashback in successive novels), using the idea of a post-war dissipated Rick as a central character. The film has been very influential, and the recent Warners reissue of the DVD is an essential purchase.

Relationship's End

2005-03-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

My relationship crashed and burned three weeks ago. It lasted two years, yet when the end came, the termination was unexpected but swift. She woke up one Saturday morning, took a final look around the apartment, then decided there and then that she’d had enough.

I couldn’t surmise whether she’d had enough of me, or of London itself. “You can take the girl out of the Midlands, but you cannot take Midlands out of the girl.” This statement, I can report, was palpably true of her.

On the face of it, she’d grown sick of London. Underneath it all, I suspect that there was a growing impatience with me, not because of anything I’d said or done, but because we were fundamentally different people. I, for instance, revel in movies and books and music. She did not. Indeed, her first witticism on seeing my books stacked in my room, was to suggest that they needed binning in a black bin liner, in order to tidy the room of “clutter”. She liked to get out and about, whilst I would come in from work exhausted and in need of a gin and tonic. She worked at small part-time jobs and returned home full of energy; I staggered in depleted. She did not drink. It was a split waiting to happen.

The biggest surprise now is my wholesale lack of feeling about this change of circumstances in my life. There was a time in the past when such a thing would have reduced me to a nervous, grief-stricken wreck. When the relationship with Sally ended, for instance, I was sad for weeks, mulling over the happy times of the relationship and ruing the fact that they would not be revisited.

This time around, however, I have a liberating sense of indifference.

This indifference is not a slur on K or on anything about her. There was not a malicious bone in her body, and if it could be argued that the speed (and lack of warning) of her departure was thoughtless, it must also be pointed out that any hurt she caused was by error rather than by design.

Furthermore, that hurt lasted about three days. As the sense of aloneness in the flat revealed itself to me, I had one sleepless night, followed by a growing awareness that my grief was more for the disappointment felt by my daughter, than for any sense of loss in myself. Indeed, a week later, I felt a sense of ecstasy spreading throughout my body, because I knew that I had my space back. My flat was now my own, and I could run it how I wanted, rather than having it regulated by the demands of… this other person.

Three weeks on from the relationship’s end, the prognosis is excellent. C seems to have recovered from the initial shock of the news, and is once again singing and laughing on the way to school. (This, it has to be said, is largely the result of my own management of the immediate crisis: cinema trips and hastily-organised family visits, designed to fill the emotional gap.) I too am happy. I am happy in a self-contained sense, free from gnawing anxiety in my own company, and free from the nagging need for a relationship. I am content simply to spend my free time with my daughter – playing board games, acting as a governor at her school, and working at my job. I rarely sit spider-like on the internet, and I’m reading more.

Perhaps now would be a well-chosen moment to start writing – properly, I mean, and not just blogging. We shall see.

Assault on Precinct 13 (2005)

2005-02-09T21:42:00.001-08:00

The remake of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 holds its own against Carpenter's original, though I say this with a few reservations. The 1976 low budget cult classic was a nigh-on impossible act to follow, and director Jean-Francois Richet does an extremely competent job. The action has been moved from LA to Detroit, and the hot California sunshine has been replaced by claustrophobic snow storms. The transposition works. Racial roles have been swapped around too: the black cop and white killer in Carpenter's film, have been changed to white cop Ethan Hawke and elite gangster Larry Fishburne - surely the coolest actor working in Hollywood today. The action in this movie has been cranked-up like an over-wrought engine (this movie is loud!) and once all the characters have been established and the busload of criminals has been housed in the Precinct 13 cells, there is barely a pause for breathing space. It's hugely entertaining, but the problem is that the memory of the original film persists throughout. Carpenter's film was so damned cool, and the pouting and sexual politics of Wilson and Leigh were so cornily 1970s, that it’s hard to recreate that kind of magic in a 2005 remake. The denouement of the relationship between Hawke and Fishburne is vaguely disappointing too (compared to the satisfying parting respect between Wilson and Bishop in 1976), and one can't help but suspect that Richet is leaving his two lead characters open for a sequel.

Formula 1 Countdown

2005-02-08T10:42:00.000-08:00

The new season begins in four weeks time, and for confirmed petrol-heads like me, it's time to make the annual trip to the Glenmorangie store and prepare for the resumption of circuit action. If last year was a relatively tedious set of processions, livened up (occasionally) by the odd surprise win, the signs are that 2005 will be somewhat more intriguing. Winter testing suggests that if Toyota, BAR and Sauber are having a few teething troubles with the new-spec cars, the likes of Williams and McLaren seem to be much closer to Ferrari, suggesting that we might have the first glimmerings of competition this year. One can but hope, anyway. My suspicion is that Schumacher will win his sixth championship in a row (and eighth overall), but that individual races will have more spice. As ever, the pleasure of this sport is in seeing how the soap opera unfolds.

The Australian Grand Prix takes place on 6th March, and as always, it will be an optimistic event, full of excitement at the start of a new season. There will be some changes from previous years: Jaguar Racing no longer exists, because it was bought by the Red Bull drinks company during the winter and now has a completely new management, look and driver line-up. Downforce, tyre and engine regulations have been modified, ostensibly to cut F1 costs, so the cars (and the stresses upon them) will be different in Melbourne. Engines must now last for two race weekends, for example, and tyres must last one weekend, meaning that tyres and power units need to be stronger and more durable. Qualifying will now follow the format of last year's Japanese Grand Prix, wherein final qualifying will take place on a Sunday morning, rather than on Saturday afternoon. This means that race spectators will have a whole day of intense action, rather than two days of spread-out events. I don't know what implications this will have for terrestrial TV race coverage (many stations will balk at giving over the bulk of a day to coverage), but I'm expecting a single programme on ITV - beginning with qualifying, then pre-race build-up, then the race itself. I'll be fascinated to see how this works.

And of course, driver line-ups will be dramatically different in 2005. M Schumacher and Barrichello remain at Ferrari, but it's all-change at Williams, where Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld will now pilot the cars. This is a potentially very exciting partnership. Juan Pablo Montoya will join Raikonnen at McLaren, and this (on paper) ferocious pairing, has generated a lot of discussion in the press and on the internet. The new McLaren looks very nippy out of the box, so I am praying that we can see some aggressive on-track fighting this year.

Jenson Button remains at BAR (after his attempted defection to Williams was ruled illegal by the Contract Recognitions Board before Christmas), but his old pal David Coulthard is now at Red Bull. Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli now partner at Toyota, and Jacques Villeneuve re-enters the sport with Sauber. It's all looking very exciting and very positive, and despite a year of disillusionment in 2004, I will be up in the middle of the night to watch the first race of the season live. In fact, I cannot wait...

Inspection Time

2005-02-07T15:49:00.000-08:00

It's three years since the last college inspection - a time when, after a week of anxiety and obsessive paper-chasing, my department got a "2", one mark away from "excellent".

The next inspection is due in November. It's a long way away, but the pre-inspection tension is starting to whip-up in certain quarters. The next inspection will not be so forgiving as the last, apparently. The attention to small details will be more acute. Other colleges have been grilled by the inspectors in recent months, followed by slews of redundancies. There is anxiety leading up to November, therefore, that we have to do very well in the inspection in order to avert dire potential consequences.

The trouble is, the rhetoric of inspection-speak does not make logical sense. On the one hand, we have to enrol as many students on to the courses as we have targeted, so that we have "bums on seats" and the courses can run economically. On the other, we are under huge pressure to get 80% of our students through their exams with grade "C" or above. This is a laudable target, but utterly cloud-cuckoo. No college in the country has ever achieved such a high pass-rate, without having very small class sizes and the most gifted students. My college is inner-city, and many of the students come from extremely disadvantaged backgrounds. If they move from grade "E" to a grade "D", they have achieved a great deal. The instance of someone leaping from an "E" to a "C" is possible, but rare. The process of teaching is intense and committed, but student progress tends to be gradual rather than dramatic.

The demand and expectation of uniformly high grades, therefore, has a touch of the emperor's new clothes about it: it is unachievable in the current circumstances, yet it is put forward by the remote senior management as a reasonable target. Which, frankly, it isn't.

Film Studies: 2

2005-02-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

One key reason for studying film is to examine meaning and response. How are meanings communicated in films and how do people respond to those meanings? We can differentiate between two categories of viewer: the audience (the group of people watching a film in a cinema) and the individual, known as "the spectator".

There are three assumptions of film spectatorship theory:

1. Spectatorship happens in a traditional, mainstream cinema situation.

2. When an individual becomes engrossed in a film screening, the rest of the audience in a sense ceases to exist.

3. Spectatorship study examines the responses to films which are popular – for example, mainstream Hollywood cinema.

How Did the Mainstream Commercial Film, and Spectatorship, Develop Together?

Film grammar evolved in a very short space of time – between approximately 1895 and 1917. By 1917, many of the conventions that we now take for granted in filmic storytelling had been established, even if films made then look relatively static by the standards of the twenty-first century.

In the very earliest narrative films, the camera did not move, but allowed performers to move before it. This was because of technical limitations, but it also related to the filmmakers’ assumptions about where the audience would be sitting: "in the middle of the stalls of a proscenium arch theatre".

This is one of the reasons why many films of this early period are difficult to follow today: they did not contain close-ups, tracking shots, zooms or any of the other technical devices which today help a spectator to follow the key events of a narrative.

Early films viewed today tend to look alienatingly objective: there are no point-of-view shots which would help to draw the spectator into an emotional involvement with the action on screen, or to direct the spectator’s "look".

As film grammar developed, the spectator began to get drawn in to film narratives by a succession of developments relating to camera movement, mise en scene and editing:

· increased camera movements

· more variety in the use of close, medium and long shots

· greater attention to mise en scene

· manipulation of spectator response through editing – for instance, parallel editing, montage and editing to emphasise the points of view of the characters on screen.

Spectatorship and "The Look"

Early filmmakers, in developing film grammar on an ad hoc basis, knew that they had to evolve strategies to control the "look" of the spectator; in other words, they needed to ensure that spectators "looked" at the particular part of the film frame intended by the filmmaker. Filmmakers also decided that they wanted the act of looking in the cinema to be similar to the act of looking in real life. They wanted to ensure greater spectator pleasure when looking.

Increased camera movements, more variety in the use of close, medium and long shots, greater attention to mise en scene, and the manipulation of spectator response through editing, were strategies that early filmmakers developed to control the "look" of the spectator.

As such strategies were honed, one very important "effect" was created: a spectator could be drawn into the world of the film and its characters (interpellation). This could be achieved through use of editing and point-of-view shots.

Why Did Film Form Develop in the Way It Did?

Why did the early filmmakers develop film narrative in the way they did? Why did they pick a particular set of solutions to the problem of conveying meaning through film, and, more specifically, to the problem of controlling the viewer’s look?

One way of answering these closely related questions, is to say that the early filmmakers simply used their common sense. They needed to make their films more intelligible to the spectator, so they chose the simplest, most obvious ways of achieving this.

A slightly more sociological view, is to suggest that rather than being entirely "natural", the new methods of controlling the spectator’s look were more ideological. In other words, the early films increasingly reflected a western-male view of the world, and early filmmakers realised (either consciously or unconsciously) that film was a manipulative medium with enormous power to control representation and response.

This second point can be developed with reference to a specific example – the 1958 film, Vertigo, directed by one of the masters of controlling the "look", Alfred Hitchcock.

The concept of "ideology" is closely associated with the relationship of people, artefacts (and so forth) to the dominant culture, values and (particularly importantly) the economic system of a particular society. The culture, values and economic power base of communist China, for example, are markedly different from those of the UK. A society’s mainstream art more often than not reflects and even reinforces the dominant culture, values and economic assumptions of that society. In dictatorships, art (including cinematic art) is often appropriated by the state, to create propaganda. The Nazis were very adept at using the cinema in the 1930s and early 1940s to reinforce negative images of the Jewish race.

Mainstream Hollywood cinema has not been created within a political dictatorship, but it still, arguably, reflects a particular set of values and assumptions (related to the particular era of individual films’ productions) of American society. Hitchcock’s Vertigo offers a powerful example of this.

VERTIGO DVD: Chapter 28, 102 minutes and eight seconds

Scotty Ferguson (James Stewart) has just lost Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak), the woman he fell in love with earlier in the film. In fact, he developed an emotional obsession with her – a form of "amour fou", or mad love. He has recently spotted Judy (Kim Novak again – nudge nudge) – a girl who looks strikingly similar to Madeleine, on a San Francisco street. He has befriended her, and they are now dating. As we enter the film early in the 103rd minute, Scotty is buying her a pink carnation. She has said she likes another colour, but Scotty has made another choice, and she accepts it. Then, Scotty says the following line:

"There we are. Now we’ll get this, and then we’ll buy you those clothes."

Up to now, Judy has not only been smiling, but she has been staring at Scotty very intensely and dotingly. But now, a look of anxiety spreads across her face as Scotty pins the carnation to her lapel. She says:

"Scotty, you don’t have to do this."

She is referring to his desire to buy her clothes.

Scotty ignores her, and taking her arm, he steers her towards Ransohoffs, the famous San Francisco clothes store.

Hitchcock then cuts to a shot of them walking into the store, but by this time, they are no longer arm in arm; Judy’s body language looks distinctly pensive and uncomfortable.

Hitchcock now dissolves to a medium-long shot of the inside of the store. It’s a useful shot, because it shows not only the full store interior (complete with ceiling), but it frames Judy and Scotty sitting with a shop assistant, as a model parades up and down in the dress that Scotty is thinking of buying for Judy. But Scotty doesn’t look happy at all; as the model struts before him, he says:

"No. It’s not it. Nothing like it."

It’s worth listening to the dialogue in full for a few seconds of screen time:

Scotty: "Look. I just want an ordinary simple grey suit."

Judy: "I liked that one Scotty."

Scotty: "No, no, it’s not right."

Shop assistant: "The gentleman seems to know what he wants. Alright, we’ll find it."

This conversation has taken place as Hitchcock has held a medium close-up of Judy’s anxiety-stricken face. Then, he cuts to the following dialogue:

Judy: "Scotty, what are you doing?"

Scotty: "I’m trying to buy you a suit..."

Judy: "But – I loved the second one she wore…And this one – it’s beautiful."

Scotty: "No, no – none of them are right."

It is becoming increasingly clear that Scotty has a clear, even driven view, about what clothes he wants Judy to wear.

Shop assistant: "Oh I think I know the suit you mean – We had it some time ago. Let me go and see; we may still have that model."

Judy: "You’re looking for the suit that she wore, for me…You want me to be dressed like her…"

Scotty: "I just want you to look nice; I know the kind of suit that would look well on you…"

Judy: "No – no! I won’t do it!"

At this point, Hitchcock has Judy flounce off and stand in the corner of the store with her hands behind her back, rather like a sulking, petulant child. It is clear now that Hitchcock wants the spectator to be on Scotty's side, perceiving Judy's behaviour negatively, even though from the point of view of 2005, it's Scotty who is behaving inappropriately.

Scotty: "Judy – Judy, it can’t make that much difference to you, I want to see what you’ll look like."

Judy: "No, I don’t want any clothes, I don’t want anything, I want to get out of here."

Scotty: "Judy, do this for me!"

Shop assistant: "Here we are."

Scotty: "Yes that’s it."

Shop assistant: "I thought so."

Judy: "I don’t like it."

Scotty: "We’ll take it. Will the thing fit?"

Shop assistant: "It might need some slight alterations, but it’s madam’s size…We’ll have one for you to try on in a moment."

Scotty: "How long will the alterations take? May we have it by tonight?

Shop assistant: "Well, if it’s absolutely necessary…"

Scotty: "Yes it is…"

When I saw Vertigo at the NFT in 1984, shortly after it was reissued for the first time since the 1960s, the audience laughed uncomfortably at this scene. I think that there were probably several reasons for this.

Firstly, the scene is, by its very nature, uncomfortable to watch. It features a man indulging his obsession with an apparently dead woman, by attempting to dress up a lookalike "replacement" who is clearly not happy about being used in this fashion. (This is definitely not a depiction of necrophilia, as some commentators have suggested.)

Secondly, Hitchcock, as an auteur, is indulging one of his obsessions (if we are to believe the writer Donald Spoto, in his book on Hitch, written in the early 80s): he is putting his blonde female leading character through a process of humiliation, in the same way he did with Madeleine Carroll and Grace Kelly in the past, and the way he would do with Tippi Hedren in the future.

But thirdly, and most importantly, I think that my particular audience laughed, because the sexual-political messages that exist unchallenged in this scene, were much more obvious in 1984 than they would have been to the original audiences of 1958 and 1959. Scotty’s line "it can’t make that much difference to you" is particularly revealing: Judy does not call Scotty a "male chauvinist pig" for saying this, but instead, seems to respond to it as a reasonable, rational argument.

Of course, the position of women in pre-women’s lib, 1950s western culture, was completely different to what it is today. That line of dialogue – repeated in a slight variation later in the film, when Scotty is trying to change Judy’s hair – gives modern audiences a clear sense of the perception of women in the 1950s, and the whole of Vertigo reflects (and arguably reinforces) this perception. Its depiction of women is thus closely related to the dominant ideology of 1950s America. True, Judy is shown to be uncomfortable with Scotty’s treatment of her in the scene discussed here, but the point is that she lets him change her, without any significant resistance. She does not put up a convincing fight, but accepts what is happening to her – and acceptance is a form of reinforcement. In not challenging Scotty’s view of women, she is allowing that view to flourish.

It is useful to think of the evolution of film form, and consequently of spectatorship, in the light of the concept of hegemony. This is defined by critic Patrick Phillips as follows:

"A set of ideas, attitudes and practices becomes so dominant that we forget they are rooted in choice and the exercise of power. They appear to be "common sense" because they are so ingrained, any alternative seems potentially "odd" or threatening by comparison. Hegemony is the ideological made invisible. In relation to the development of cinema, it can be seen how Hollywood developed hegemonic status and power. The Hollywood form of genre-based narrative realist film is considered a "common-sense" use of the medium. Other forms of cinema, by comparison, are more or less "odd"…" (Phillips p.135, Nelmes)

This concept unites the concept of the "natural" development of film form on the one hand, and the ideological perspective on the other; ideological decisions can come to seem "natural" if they stick around long enough.

Film Form, Spectatorship, Film History and Theory

In the early days of film, cinemas were frequented by predominantly working-class audiences. There was an "anarchy" of film response: spectators were free to take from the movies what meanings they liked, because of the relatively static camera set-ups (giving audiences a choice of what to "look" at) and audiences tended to be noisy and talkative, due to the silent nature of the films. If filmmakers wanted to interest more middle-class people in their products, strategies needed to be evolved to tighten and contain film response. As film form evolved to manage spectatorship more successfully, so audiences began to be socialised into viewing films in silence.

In spite of (or because of) these working-class roots, cultural theory has had a generally negative view of the spectators of films. For instance, the Frankfurt School of the 1930s suggested that Hollywood films were the "opium of the people", which brainwashed the populace into accepting dominant norms, values and culture blindly. Cinema reinforced the conventional; it didn’t inspire people to think and view the world in new ways.

In classical film theory, the cinema is a system of communication, holding the viewer (and the "look" of the viewer) in place (with specific camera angles, for example) called cinema apparatus. The effect of this apparatus is to interpellate the spectator; in other words, the spectator is the subject of the cinema apparatus’s invisible processes. The spectator is placed within the film he or she is watching (or sutured), and in this state is more vulnerable and receptive to the ideological messages of the film. The spectator in this model is thus predominantly passive.

Can any of these ideas be challenged? An overall challenge could be that individual spectators display a variety of different responses to films; a viewer’s socialisation and life experiences could predispose him/her to a particular reading of a film, so that the number of readings of a film are as numerous as the number of people in the audience.

Cultural studies has provided alternative strategies for analysing how spectators respond to films – via the concepts of the preferred, oppositional and negotiated readings of film texts.

Preferred: the viewer interprets the film pretty much how the filmmaker intended.

Oppositional: the viewer actively rejects the ideas and depictions contained in the film.

Negotiated: there is "give and take" between the viewer and the film. One may hate the violence in a film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, for example, but one may (through one’s awareness of the conventions of horror cinema) accept it in the film’s particular context.

The negotiated response to a film requires film literacy – an awareness of the conventions of certain genres, for example. But it is perhaps the most common spectator response to a film...

Aging Sporty Male Syndrome

2005-02-06T09:51:00.000-08:00

One of the curious things about getting older, is for certain species of male who have never been remotely interested in sport before, to become unaccountably obsessed with it by the age of forty. I find that I am fitting into this curious mould even though I am a year away from my fortieth birthday.

When I was a teenager in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was not remotely interested in sport. I played a few games of squash when I was sixteen, but that died a death when I left school. School was probably the thing that killed my interest in sport: I was always the last kid to be picked for school teams, and I was always picked grudgingly, because I was the last one left. Thus, when I was able to leave school, I was also able to escape sport.

Over the years, I would look at the Embassy World Snooker and Wimbledon when they wheeled round annually, but I did not take part in any sports. Football was anathema to me: I hated the idea of playing it, and it stultified me when it was on the television. I was delighted when most of it was bought up by Sky.

Then, in 1994, I was at my father’s house, and he was tuned to the San Marino Grand Prix. I was as indifferent to grand prix racing as I was to any other sport, but my interest was suddenly pricked when I saw a car spearing off the circuit and into a concrete wall, sending shards of carbon fibre into the path of a charging Michael Schumacher. I looked at the aftermath of the shunt with horror, as it became increasingly clear that the driver was not going to survive. Roland Ratzenberger had died in Saturday practice, and now I had seen the death of Ayrton Senna. I was appalled that the race was allowed to continue (I had no idea at the time of the leviathan-style, relentless forward-thrust of Formula 1), but as the laps unfolded, I became fascinated by it. I suspect that my initial interest was more macabre than anything else (would I see anyone else get killed?), but as I watched the rest of the season to its end without missing a single race, I got caught up in the duels and mutual loathing between Schumacher and Damon Hill, and I became hooked, even getting up in the middle of the night to see the Adelaide showdown between them live. This sealed my fascination, because the race was a cracker, and contained the now notorious “coming together” at the chicane, putting Hill out of the race and leaving Schumacher world champion – his first of seven. When the PlayStation appeared, I was sufficiently adolescent enough to buy the first F1 racing games and drive the circuits myself – virtually, of course…

In 1998, even more sinister signs of aging manifested themselves. My friend Ray invited me to play a game of cricket with the college team. I baulked at this idea, but I agreed to play. I can’t recall how the first game went; I seem to remember attempting to bowl and giving away a runs-tally in double figures. My embarrassment was overwhelming, but I plugged away in successive games that summer, and developed a reasonable talent as a batsman (I shied away from bowing, knowing that my crapness at it was beyond redemption.)

I have stepped back from the game in recent years, largely because I have been overweight, and running between wickets was causing me agonising pain – but I am toying with the idea of touring with the college this summer, because I have lost some of the blubber.

About a month ago, Ray got back in touch with me and invited me to play… golf. I had not picked up a club since the early 80s, when my father coaxed me out on to a Berkshire golf course. My swing was reasonably good back then, but after that solitary experience, my interest had refused to be fired and I did not bother to play again.

Playing with Ray a month ago was a revelation. I was still able to hit a ball, and despite an appalling shot rate, I managed to par one hole. This was suitably inspiring for me to return to Bromley the following week to play again. Again, I parred a hole. (The other holes were complete shit, of course, but the par was enough of a taste of the game to draw me back). I have been playing every weekend since, and if I a do not appear to be getting any better at the game, I suppose the walks are doing me some sort of good. I am playing two hours from now. Most telling of all, I have started watching golf on the TV – something I never thought I would succumb to, and the most revealing symptom of the aging-male syndrome that Ray and I are palpably exhibiting.

Film Studies: 1

2005-02-05T07:51:00.000-08:00

When we go to the cinema and see a popular feature film, what is taking place? What was the nature of this experience?

There is something fascinating about the relationship between the film on the big screen, and its viewer. Part of the charm of that relationship is this: that the events on the screen are often things that one would not see in reality, in everyday life. When we look at Bogart and Bergman kissing in Casablanca (1942), we are observing something that it would be rather awkward to spy on in real life: two other people sharing an extremely intimate moment. From a Hitchcockian point of view, we all become voyeurs when we sit quietly in a theatre and view such scenes.

But there is something else happening between the film on the screen and its viewer – something that cinema has in common with literature. Critic Allan Rowe writes:

"What occurs is a process of "suspension of disbelief" whereby we accept temporarily the reality of what appears in front of us, while having the capacity to switch off this belief at a moment’s notice, if someone talks to us or the celluloid breaks."

This kind of "illusory reality" in mainstream Hollywood films - the dominant western filmic form - is created by a variety of different techniques, involving the use of the camera, sound and lighting. These techniques are not written in proverbial stone, but are actually a set of conventions, developed since the creation of the medium. These conventions, furthermore, are part of the communication process that takes place between the filmmaker and the audience. We, as members of the audience, have grown up with and learned the same conventions, and we can thus feel extremely uncomfortable, even betrayed, if those conventions are broken.

Here is an example of how a mainstream film sets up its fictional world and draws the audience in.

DON SIEGEL's DIRTY HARRY (1971)

Dirty Harry begins with the enigmatic image of a golden San Francisco police badge, below which is a declaration: "In tribute to the police officers of San Francisco who gave their lives in the line of duty." The declaration seems to be part of a marble monument to the dead police officers, but it also implies that Siegel’s film is dedicated to the men.

The camera zooms in on the declaration, then tilts up to a close shot of the golden badge and stops. Almost immediately, a close-up of the list of dead officers is double-exposed on top of the badge, so that the two images can be seen simultaneously. As the first shot of the badge is held steady, the second camera reads down the lists of dead officers in a series of dissolves, saving the audience the time and trouble of reading the whole list, but (through the montage), managing to communicate to the viewer the sheer volume of names.

Meanwhile, on the soundtrack, there is a gentle, vaguely haunting mixture of sounds, including what seems like the chime of a church bell.

This section concludes with the fading away of the lists, and with the original shot zooming slowly towards the golden star, until it is in extreme close-up. This then dissolves into another shot, much more dramatic than anything we’ve seen in the preceding forty-five seconds: the extreme-close-up of the barrel of a rifle, encased in a silencer.

This dissolve to the rifle is fascinating, because it represents Siegel’s move from the world of documentary (the shots of an actual memorial that exists in San Francisco, connoting the film’s very real urban location, and positioning the film both politically and morally), to the fictional: the beautifully staged shot of the rifle, from a highly subjective and disturbing angle.

The soundtrack changes too with this visual transition, from the earlier, abstract sound patterns, to the much more sinister Lalo Shiffrin musical score.

Siegel then cuts to a subjective shot from the point of view of the rifleman, through his sights. (We do not think this is at all odd; a lifetime of film-going has made this narrative convention very familiar to us indeed, and we don’t question it.)

Through these sights, we see a young girl dressed in a golden bathing costume walk from left to right round the edge of an open air swimming pool. (Perhaps through this colour coding, we are invited to make a connection between the golden star and the girl’s status as a forthcoming victim of crime.) As she dives in, Siegel creates a match-on-action cut, shot from the gunman’s perspective (though this time not through his sites); this is a shot through a zoom lens that, once it has appeared on the screen, starts to pull back slowly from the swimming pool to reveal that the pool is situated on top of a tall building – perhaps a hotel or an apartment block.

Siegel continues to zoom out (with great coolness and slowness), until the gunman has appeared at the bottom left half of the widescreen frame.

Siegel cuts back to the subjective close shot of the rifle’s silenced barrel.

He cuts back to the shot through the sights, as the gunman watches the girl swimming.

After holding these shots for maximum suspense, the kill comes very quickly and violently: Siegel cuts to a close-up of the gunman’s trigger finger as he squeezes off the single, fatal shot.

As the round hits the girl, Siegel cuts back to her, but not through the sights of the killer’s weapon, nor through the zoom lens; Siegel has this time opted to place the camera at the side of the pool, and not from the killer’s perspective. (The narrative perspective here thus becomes more omniscient than first person – a transition of narrative perspective that is much easier to make work in cinema than in literature.)

Siegel cuts to a slightly wider angle of the girl – before the opening credits begin to roll.

One minute and forty five seconds of screen time have elapsed.

What happens in this credits sequence is fascinating, and succeeds brilliantly in drawing the audience straight into the heart of the narrative. The first thing we see is a shot of Clint Eastwood opening the door near the rooftop swimming pool, just as his name is super-imposed on the screen. Eastwood’s screen persona is riddled with connotations, and an early-Seventies audience, recently made aware of such films as The Good the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and Where Eagles Dare (1969), would have been expecting a great deal of action in this movie on the strength of Eastwood’s past roles. Eastwood’s very presence means that Siegel has already got a wealth of audience expectations to draw on as he constructs the narrative of the film. Siegel even has Eastwood pause in medium shot, right in front of the camera, so that viewers can truly gauge his appearance: his eyes are hidden by dark glasses (cool), and he has a steely, serious look on his face (tough, no nonsense), similar to the one he perfected in the Sergio Leone westerns.

Of course – this wealth of audience expectation carries with it a great deal of responsibility for the director, for "letting the audience down" on this score would run the risk of alienating it.

As Shiffrin’s music kicks in on the soundtrack, Eastwood walks coolly over to the body of the girl, which has recently been fished out of the pool by the police.

The fact that he isn’t prevented from being on the murder scene by the various police officers also in the shot, makes it very clear to the audience what his role is: he is a police officer too, and the fact that he is not in police uniform suggests that he is an officer of high rank.

As he kneels down to inspect the body, Siegel cuts to a beautifully composed shot, which encapsulates not only Eastwood and a colleague checking the girl’s body in medium shot, but also the building from which the killer did the shooting, in the background in the middle of the frame.

Eastwood looks down at the corpse, then slowly, his head moves up to take in the building towering over them; his eyes seems to trace the trajectory of the bullet, and though no words have been uttered on the soundtrack, the audience knows exactly what Eastwood’s character is thinking.

(Looked at from another perspective, this shot is perhaps problematic from the point of view of realism. Eastwood’s gaze goes immediately to the building where the sniper took the shot. This could be interpreted as a spectacularly good guess, making Eastwood look like a form of superman...)

From this point, to the conclusion of the credits sequence, Eastwood is shown making his way (at a leisurely pace) to the summit of the tall building where, he has deduced correctly, the killer fired the fatal shot.

At the end of the sequence, he finds himself in the sniper’s nest. On his way there, we have been left in no doubt at all by Siegel as to the film’s San Francisco location; once on the high rooftop, on the approach to the sniper’s lair, Siegel offers expansive wide shots of the Frisco skyline, in which tell-tale landmarks, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Coit Tower, stand out conspicuously.

As Eastwood takes up the position formerly occupied by the sniper, Siegel has a shot from his point of view, focusing on the swimming pool (which now has blood clouding the water); this echoes the previous shots in the scene from this angle, and confirms (perhaps unconsciously) in the viewer’s mind that Eastwood has come to the correct location.

As if to nail this conclusion home, Siegel has Eastwood find two things - the spent cartridge from the sniper’s single bullet at his feet, and then a note wrapped around a TV aerial on the roof, spelling out the killer’s demands. The credits sequence ends with a single line of dialogue – the word "Jesus", expressed in Eastwood’s famous laconic style.

The audience is now in no doubt as to what this movie will be "about", because the whole drama and action of the film has been laid out in this first five minutes and twenty-eight seconds of screen time. It is clear where the action will take place, what the main drama and source of conflict will be, and the audience is wholly comfortable with this, because it is also now in a familiar genre, with codes and conventions that have been learned over a lifetime by both the filmmaker and audience. Even if certain elements of the film are extreme at times, Siegel is never in danger of breaking the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because after having set up certain expectations in the audience during the opening credits sequence, he does not fall short of those expectations, or betray the audience’s trust during the rest of the film.

Dirty Harry is a relatively recent film, in the scheme of cinema’s 105 year history. Audiences can look at the film today, and "read" it with the same proficiency as the original audiences in the early 1970s.

To get a sense of how sophisticated we have become in our reading of films, however, it’s interesting to compare a film from the Primitive Mode of Representation (1895-1905, when very early cinematic conventions were being developed) with one from the Institutional Mode of Representation (1915-the present day, during which period narrative conventions have certainly been developed and honed, but not really changed) – Dirty Harry, for example.

Films from the Primitive Mode of Representation did not have the sophistication we now associate with narrative films. If the cameras in Scorsese’s Goodfellas (1990) or in Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) are exhilaratingly active and mobile, the shots in the films of George Melies, for example, are extremely static, and draw more from the theatre than from cinema. In the early movies of Edison and Melies, the camera is positioned where the stalls in the theatre would be, and the perspective tends not to change throughout the relatively short movies. The very earliest films are, arguably, more difficult to follow for audiences today, than films from the Institutional Mode of Representation. This is because the early films did not follow the kinds of conventions of film grammar developed later – close-up and tracking shots, for instance. The kinds of devices used at the beginning of Dirty Harry had not been developed in the days of Edison and Melies.

What follows is a description of how films make their meanings.

MISE EN SCENE

This term refers to the visual elements that make up a specific shot. The concept of mise en scene has developed in relation to the notion of film authorship – specifically, the idea of a filmmaker constructing the meaning of the film he or she is creating. In classical Hollywood cinema, the term refers also to the director’s control over what happens on the set and what is recorded by the camera.

The concept of mise en scene has come to encompass a variety of different elements prior to photography (setting, props, costume, performance and movement) and during photography (lighting, camera and camera movement and sound.)

Setting

During the days of the studio system in Hollywood, many films were shot in the studio, where all elements in front of the camera could be controlled and chosen. This included the use of artificial sets, rather than "real" locations. Many films of course, such as westerns, used spectacular open air locations; John Ford’s consistent use of Monument Valley comes immediately to mind.

Consider the significance of the settings of the following films:

For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965) – the wild west; big and uncontrolled open spaces, versus the containment of saloon bars and small towns.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946) – Los Angeles shot in black and white, predominantly at night. Foggy city streets; dark houses increasingly hidden in shadows as the film progresses: the essence of film noir.

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962) – a large house in Hollywood, which becomes a pressure cooker of hate for Betty Davis and Joan Crawford (both in the story and in reality.)

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948) – a single apartment set of superlative artificiality, in which Hitchcock (almost) pulls-off his ten-minute take experiment.

Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock 1954) – once again a single set, this time the wheelchair-bound James Stewart’s apartment. The sense of claustrophobia generated by the tight confines of the set is the key here. Experiment a total success, this time around.

Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) – a future depiction of dystopic Los Angeles. Ask: to what extent does the setting of this film affect the other elements, such as the story? Is there an imbalance or not?

Think also of the influence of German Expressionism (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, for example) on the decors of Hollywood films, such as James Whale’s fascinating Bride of Frankenstein in the late 1930s.

The sheer artificiality of certain settings is often a very interesting aspect of mise en scene. The work of William Cameron Menzies (Gone with the Wind [1939] and Invaders from Mars [1953]) is particularly striking in this context. Gone with the Wind takes place in a Deep South that no one has visited in reality, but in a wondrously colourful twilight zone or fantasy land that ravishes the eye. Every shot in the film could be framed. Hollywood musicals from the MGM stable specialised in creating similarly rich fantasies, which were supported by elaborately artificial sets. Director Martin Scorsese was so inspired by this kind of approach to art direction, that he tried to recreate the William Cameron Menzies "look" at the beginning of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More (1974). Three years later, he made his own contribution to the musical genre with New York, New York – a film that attempted to blend the artificial sets of the classic MGM period, with the gritty realism of Robert De Niro’s acting style, made famous by such films as Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980). The results were controversial, but it was nevertheless a fascinating and post-modern revisit to the musical genre.

Finally, think of the later films of Stanley Kubrick – especially 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Shining (1980) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Kubrick hated working on location, preferring the much more controllable environments of the British studio back lots and sound stages where he consistently worked. Whole dissertations could (and probably have been) written about the pristine, visually ravishing sets which appear in all these films and which make them so distinctive.

Props

Props are definers of, and provide the iconography for, genre. Props dress a set to make it look "real", but they can have their own particular significance in individual films. Hitchcock was famous for his "McGuffins", for instance: props which hardly ever appeared in the story (the micro-film in North by Northwest, for instance, or Mrs Thorwald’s wedding ring in Rear Window), but which were important narrative devices to drive the story along.

Props can be used to "anchor" characters to a specific index of meanings. Think of the characters in Scorsese’s Goodfellas. They come from a particular culture and social background, and Scorsese sprinkles the entire movie with props that relate to that culture. These props are often food references to Italy. The film is almost a piece of sociological analysis of Italian-American Mafia eating habits. Scorsese goes out of his way, often inserting close-ups, to show his audience the minutiae of Italian food preparation. There is even an amusing prison sequence, in which the prisoners eat fresh bread and prepare a superb Italian meal with ingredients smuggled from the outside. Such scenes are handled though use of specific food props – meat balls, for example, which Ray Liotta fashions from raw mince in quick close shots. These are props which have all manner of connotations, and which set these characters in their specific context.

Costume

Costumes are, of course, props, but they are closely linked to characters. Different kinds of clothes have different character meanings. There is a famous scene in Goodfellas, in which the young Henry Hill arrives on his mother’s doorstep dressed in a shiny new suit. His mother exclaims: "My god, you look like a gangster!" She is correct of course, but her comment also exemplifies the power of specific costumes to signify specific character roles. Good cowboys dressed in white, and bad cowboys dressed in black, are a crude further example of this.

Think also of the power of costumes in films like Some Like It Hot (1959), Tootsie (1982) and Mrs Doubtfire (1993). The clothing of the central male characters in these films conflicts with their actual gender roles, and this feeling of mismatch offers great potential for humour – richly exploited by directors Wilder, Pollack and Columbus.

Performance and movement

I am interested in two particular issues under this heading. The first is body language, - the various movements an actor can use to create certain meanings; and the second is the baggage that a star brings to a role. (See Clint Eastwood earlier.)

Body movements can be used to connote all manner of things. Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Rain Man (1989) is achieved almost solely through what the actor does with his body (his walk and his facial expressions in particular.) Tom Hanks uses similar methodology in Forrest Gump (1995).

Perhaps the most striking example of body language in a film, however, is Stanley Kubrick’s use of Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980). When this film was first released, Kubrick was soundly criticised for letting Nicholson "go over the top". There are scenes in this movie which rely very heavily on the ability of Nicholson to use his face to convey a whole range of emotions. The scenes with Lloyd the barman, and the sequence involving Mr Grady in the pristine washroom are memorable examples of this.

In his book Stanley Kubrick Directs (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999 edition), Alexander Walker discusses Nicholson at length:

"Nicholson keeps one looking – what will he do next? – casting and recasting his expressive face and body language to fit the emotional and physical requirements of the moment. Small tics of mouth, eyes, or brows enlarge, become seismic shifts of attitude as Torrance slides from teeth-gritting frustration (at his wife’s ingenuous chatter about the ease of creative writing) to the fury of a murder under the influence of his supernatural controllers." (p.298)

Despite the huge sets that characterise the film, Nicholson is never dwarfed by them. It’s as if his command of his body language can fill the entire sound stage satisfactorily.

Hollywood stars, meanwhile, bring their own store of connotations to mise en scene. Think of the "baggage" brought to their films by the following male actors:

John Wayne
James Stewart
Gary Cooper
Clark Gable
Spencer Tracy
James Cagney
Orson Welles
From more recent years:
Clint Eastwood
Tom Hanks
Dustin Hoffman
Robert Redford
Paul Newman
Robert De Niro
Al Pacino

The very presence of any of these actors in films has set up myriad expectations in audiences. Whenever those expectations have not been met (for instance, Clint Eastwood in more passive mode), the films have done less well than expected at the box office.

Million Dollar Baby

2005-01-30T09:46:00.000-08:00

I saw Million Dollar Baby in the week. I'd read David Thomson's piece in the Independent, lauding the movie, and it whetted my appetite: Thomson hinted that it was a return to old fashioned movie values, in which narrative and story replaced the more conventional Hollywood surface sheen. He said precious-little else, not wanting to lace his article with spoilers, but he dropped in a tantalising hint: that at the screening he went to, the audience came out silently - and weeping. Something had moved them, and I was curious what.

Well, the movie is certainly an effective piece of filmmaking. It's about an ageing boxing trainer (Clint Eastwood) who succumbs to Hillary Swank's insistence that he train her up. The movie follows the arc of their relationship, and it's not giving too much away to say that he has a measure of success with her in the ring.

The movie did not make me cry, however. In fact, in the last thirty minutes, it had me continually looking at my watch, wondering whether of not director Eastwood had forgotten how to end a movie. It became exasperating: the film would arrive at an excellent moment to end, and would fade to black; but instead of rolling credits, another scene would begin. The narrative economy of Eastwood's earlier films seemed to have been replaced by elephantitus. Twenty minutes could have been removed from the film without damaging it. Swank's performance, irritatingly, was clearly a bid for Oscar glory, but it lacked the three-dimensionality of, say, Charlize Theron's turn in last year's Monster. She was watchable, but in the last third of the movie, Eastwood peeled onions over her character rather too clumsily.

Go and see it, anyway. You'll not be disappointed. Avoid reading reviews and avoid spoilers; see it in a state of ignorance, and it will have the best chance of suturing you in.

Musings on Great Horror Movies #1

2005-01-30T05:40:00.000-08:00

What makes a great horror movie?

It is certainly easy to make a very bad one. Stephen King has noted that one can go through an entire lifetime hunting for the gems, and uncover perhaps a handful in all that time.
Great horror films tend to say something about the times which spawn them. Wes Craven's LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, for example, is a movie about the Vietnam war, even though the war is not mentioned once by any of the characters. Violence drips from every frame, and the psychosis of 1972 (as the idealism and economic harmony of the 1960s burned away in the early 1970s), is palpable. DEEP THROAT was released in 1972. In its incubation period, LAST HOUSE was going to contain hardcore sex. Instead, Craven settled for grizzly rhetoric, and he created a horror classic perhaps even in spite of himself.

The great horror films tend to traumatise, shock and delight on the first viewing. Back in 1983, my father bought a VHS player, and one of the first films we rented was Tobe Hooper's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE. The film was so horrifying to me, that I had to switch the tape off. I tried the film again in 1984, and managed to watch it to the end. The final twenty minutes of torture left a bitter taste in the mouth, and I had uneasy nightmares for weeks after I'd seen it. In 1985, the pernicious Video Recordings Act took the film off the shelves, and the next time I saw the film was in 1998, with my friend Andrew Hill, on the big screen in central London. After the passage of over ten years, I was able to see that the first third of the film is expositional, predictable and, frankly, a bit dull. But the remainder of the film retained its power, and of course I loved its humour - something I'd entirely missed in the early 80s. When I bought my first DVD player, TEXAS CHAINSAW was the first disc I bought. It is a film that will always be in my collection, whatever format pertains. It does what all horror films should do: it grabs the viewer by the short and curlies and feeds him/her through a grinder of torture. It is uncompromising. It is psychotic. The director is clearly prepared to do anything…

I had the same feeling with SAW, late last year. James Wan did a fabulous job with that movie. As Cary Elwes inflicts on himself his terrible destiny, Wan consciously crosses over a line of extremity. Like all great horrors, the audience is confronted with the awareness that "Oh my god - this film is going to step over the line" - McKee's concept of "the negation of the negation". Just as things cannot get any worse for the characters, something unimaginably horrible happens. At the end of SAW, I found myself clapping and cheering the presence of a new gem. I have heard people criticise the film - not least, for Elwes' acting. This hideously misses the point. SAW rubs the audience's nose in extremes of physical horror, and Wan thus earns his place alongside Hitchcock, Argento, Romero, Craven, Hooper, Friedkin, Kubrick, Raimi, Carpenter…

A word about John Carpenter. In 1982, I saw HALLOWEEN for the first time. It didn't particularly scare me, but it was the first time I understood the concept of "cinematic". Michael Myers is a tame "bogeyman" by the standards of Leatherface and Krug, but the central character of HALLOWEEN is the steadicam camera. Carpenter's steadicam cruises through corridors and peers in through curtained windows. The movement of the camera, in concert with the distinctive soundtrack, is inherently spooky.

Kubrick would borrow many of Carpenter's moves for THE SHINING - that beautiful, enigmatic but unscary movie. The low-budget nature of HALLOWEEN helped it; concision and artistry and the deeply cinematic, emerged from economy.

When Universal gave Carpenter his first big budget, he created THE THING, which has the most extraordinary visual effects ever created. As I sat in the Reading Odeon on the film's first run, and watched the dog's head turn inside out, I had to re-evaluate my expectations for the rest of the film, indeed for the rest of cinema. I'd never seen anything like it before. I sat transfixed with amazement and delight.

A great horror film - one of the few gems of a lifetime…

First Post

2005-01-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I invited an excellent ex-student round to the flat to spend a bit of social time. It was a Saturday evening and quite balmy, and I'd earlier made the mistake of purchasing a range of fine red wines, which I proceeded to begin drinking in advance of her arrival. Of course, by the time she arrived with her partner, I was quite insensible, and I spent the evening muttering all manner of slurry nonsense to them - none of which I can remember. Quite understandably, my student was not very impressed with my behaviour, and I wrote a profuse apology via email. But one good thing came out of the experience: in addition to the wine, I'd also bought some sea bass (which in my stupour, I'd neglected to cook). As a peace-offering, she sent me the following recipe, which I heartily recommend:

STEAMED FISH WITH GINGER & SPRING ONION

Salmon or Turbot could be substituted.

Ingredients:

1 sea bass/trout/grey mullet 1 ½ lb/675g – cleaned and gutted
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp sesame oil
2-3 spring onions cut in half lengthways
2 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp Chinese rice wine/dry sherry
1 tbsp fresh ginger, cut into fine slivers
2 tbsp vegetable oil
finely shredded spring onions to garnish

Method:

Score the fish down to the bone (diagonal cuts) on both sides. Rub fish inside and out with sesame oil and salt. Sprinkle spring onions over heatproof platter. Place fish on platter. Blend soy, rice wine/sherry, and ginger shreds – pour over fish. Place platter on very hot steamer (or inside a wok on a rack) and steam under cover for 12-15 mins. Heat the vegetable oil until hot. Remove platter from the steamer, place shredded onions on top of the fish and pour over the hot oil. Serve with steamed rice and stir fried vegetables or noodles and vegetables (e.g. Pak Choi fried in garlic and soya sauce and then plain boiled noodles tossed in sesame oil/light salad dressing).