segunda-feira, 30 de janeiro de 2006

All the same, probably because of Douchet's influence, in the cinema we only liked the 'classics'. And the worst of it is that I've still got this notion that there's more true modernity in a Walsh western than in a Robbe-Grillet film conundrum. All it comes down to is that I finally gave up the word 'classic' because there has probably never been a classic cinema (in my view there have been pioneers, moderns and mannerists) and put up the idea that if the cinema is the art of this century, a century is too little not to remain and go on being 'the present'.

S.D., "The Smuggler" - Interview with Serge Daney by Philippe Roger

quinta-feira, 26 de janeiro de 2006

É DESSE QUE EU GOSTO

(I Love Melvin)

Futura

Domingo, dia 5 às 01h30
Segunda, dia 6 às 03h30

Legendado

segunda-feira, 23 de janeiro de 2006

Comprei um VCR, provavelmente o último.

Assistir tudo o que gravei nesses últimos anos e ainda não vi.

quinta-feira, 19 de janeiro de 2006

terça-feira, 17 de janeiro de 2006

segunda-feira, 16 de janeiro de 2006

Revisado 29/03/2020

Início do fim:

ce que sin city fait dans les cahiers ? demande à emmanuel burdeau et à ses disciples, ces mecs peuvent te pondre 30 pages théoriques la dessus sans ciller. Il va sans dire que je ne partage pas leur point de vue :)

pour le top 10, oui il est louche. improbablissime.

sábado, 7 de janeiro de 2006

Séisme signé Antonioni

Reprise du «Désert rouge» (1964), qui a en son temps divisé la critique.

par Antoine de BAECQUE

Monica Vitti erre dans l'immensité de la plaine du Pô, où tout se noie dans la brume et la fumée, passe entre les usines de la banlieue industrielle de Ravenne, près d'une eau qui coule partout, longe les pylônes électriques ponctuant le paysage comme autant de potences modernes. Le Désert rouge, quarante ans après son lion d'or vénitien, est au panthéon antonionien. Et cela fait longtemps que les crises d'angoisse de Giuliana, sa tentative de suicide sans motif, sa confrontation folle au paysage désolé, ne nous choquent plus.

Quête désespérée. Le cinéma «moderne» est né de cette cuisse-là, qui de provocation s'est presque muée en cliché illustrant avec componction la pose de l'artiste mélancolique. Mais revoir le Désert rouge reste un choc. Parce que sa quête de sens apparaît toujours aussi désespérée : aucun geste démiurgique, aucun remède technologique ne peut ni la satisfaire ni même l'apaiser. On ne peut que regarder, médusé, un drame qui quitte la psychologie pour se faire entièrement plastique, absolument non résolu. Inconsolé et irréconcilié.

Se replonger dans cette palette de couleurs, ce bloc de matériaux, ce corpus d'humeurs, à la splendeur atonale et triste (Antonioni a tout fait pour «dévitaliser» ses images, atténuant le vif de l'herbe au chalumeau, repeignant les arbres en vert moins tendre), c'est aussi prendre la mesure d'une des polémiques les plus intenses de l'histoire du cinéma. Entre 1960 et 1964, de l'Avventura au Désert rouge, en passant par la Notte, l'Eclipse, Antonioni a bouleversé l'idée du film, composant l'oeuvre à partir de la perte plutôt que du gain : perte des repères, perte des sens, perte de signification. «J'ai repeint le visage de la réalité», confie-t-il à Godard qui fait imploser au même moment le déroulé des images par saturation.

Cette révolution passe mal, même dans la cinéphilie la plus aventurière. En France, si la revue Positif lui emboîte le pas, les Cahiers du cinéma se déchirent : autour d'Antonioni, la «bataille du moderne» est féroce. Les critiques phares du moment s'y répartissent entre classiques:­ Jean Douchet, pour qui Antonioni «c'est du cinéma pour happy few, pour ceux qui ne voient dans le cinéma qu'une annexe prétentieuse de la littérature», ou Louis Marcorelles y voyant un «excès de préciosité» ­ et modernes : André S. Labarthe qui lit dans le Désert... l'entrée du cinéma dans l'ère de la désorientation, «un âge enfin adulte, celui du spectateur», le film étant «un brouillon» que seules la perception et l'interprétation peuvent achever. Quant à François Weyergans, il y reconnaît le dédale mythique, labyrinthe de l'imagination, le film visant à composer un état plastique permettant de rendre compte du dérèglement du monde. Le film antonionien y devient cosa mentale, forme visuelle de l'analyse. Antonioni, c'est Lacan et le spectateur son patient.

Fracture moderne. Ce sont les seconds qui gagnent cette bataille du moderne, Jacques Rivette, leur chef de file, prenant le pouvoir aux Cahiers fin 1963. Et pour signifier ce triomphe, ils célèbrent le Désert rouge en offrant au film un festin de couvertures. En octobre 1964, l'opus d'Antonioni est en «une» du dernier numéro de la période classique d'une revue célèbre pour sa couverture jaune, et le mois d'après, le même film est en couverture du premier numéro d'une nouvelle formule relancée par Daniel Filipacchi, plus large, en couleurs, prolongé en pages intérieures par une rencontre Antonioni-Godard, «La nuit, l'éclipse, l'aurore». Le Désert rouge est le film qui révèle et réduit, dans le même temps, la fracture moderne du cinéma.

quinta-feira, 5 de janeiro de 2006

Hellman at Work

From: "hotlove666"
Subject: Hellman at Work


I just ran into Monte at Riteaid, and he invited me over to look at rushes from his new film - a 30-minute ghost story called "Stanley's Girlfriend," about a strange episode in the early life of Stanley Kubrick. It's part of an omnibus film produced by Dennis Bartok of the American Cinematheque, "Bottled Ashes," with other sections by Ken Russell, Joe Dante and 2 others. For complicated reasons, Monte goes back to Vancouver in the spring to shoot another episode that will only be on the DVD, about a family heirloom and the problems it causes thru the generations. A Hellman double, like the two westerns and Backdoor to Hell/Flight to Fury.

The footage is a pleasure to see even in rough form - lots of lovely compositions in depth, great natural(-looking) lighting, spare camera moves, all shot in 3 1/2 days on a set he only saw the day before he started shooting. I found out that he never replaces dialogue. He's sensitive to the aural qualities of performances, and he doesn't like what happens when you loop afterward. Being an editor he always knew he could use one actor's line from another take to sweeten a scene where another actor was at his best, etc., like a French director.

It's all unknown actors: Stanley (who is never called Kubrick, but obviously is), Stanley's girlfriend and a young writer named Leo that he befriends in 1957, when most of the film takes place. John Gavin plays Leo in the epilogue, set in 1999. Monte showed me his last close-up and said: "I told him not to act here. Isn't he wonderful?" There's also an historical "document" filmed in black and white in a graveyard, which is Monte Does Mario (although I suspect he was thinking of the beginning of Great Expectations, one of his favorite films). His new favorite director is Tsai Ming-liang - he has posters all over his office, and he's over the moon about The Wayward Cloud, which "has more things in it to offend everyone than Iguana!"

He has been picking shots on his laptop and mapping out a paper cut, so he should finish his rough cut in one day with the editor on Monday, leaving him four days to play around with some sequnces using superimpositions and montage. "Bottled Ashes" will have a lot of effects, which are being done by Bob Skotak, but they are going to try to have it ready for Cannes.

Holy Whore: Remembering Rainer Werner Fassbinder

"The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film."

"It isn't easy to accept that suffering can also be beautiful... it's difficult. It's something you can only understand if you dig deeply into yourself."

"...[H]omosexuals have been very self-pitying, and also most of them are dominated by a sense of shame, which the Jews haven’t had. The Jews have never been ashamed of being Jews, whereas homosexuals have been stupid enough to be ashamed of their homosexuality."

"All in all, I find that women behave just as despicably as men do, and I try to illustrate the reasons for this: namely, that we have been led astray by our upbringing and by the society we live in."

"Since I'm not a second Marx or Freud who can offer people alternatives, I have to let them keep their own wrong feelings. And I don't believe that melodramatic feelings are laughable—they should be taken absolutely seriously."

"I'm always having the feeling that I don't want to do it [make films] anymore at all, that I'd like to take a break for a year or so, and then, when the first week of that year is up, I can't endure it anymore after all...."

quarta-feira, 4 de janeiro de 2006

Rumblefish (Francis Ford Coppola)

Out of sorts with the adult world, the unrelenting Coppola concocts a tale of violence among Tulsa teenagers.

What’s good about Coppola is his awareness of writing himself into the History of the Cinema, and of those capital letters. What’s tiresome about Coppola is his awareness that the fast embittered prophet in him must negotiate hairpin bends within this very history of cinema. That’s why his most recent films are a bit doltish. That’s why they depress American critics (who tend to have a phobia about prophets - look at Welles). That’s why, in spite of everything, he interests us phenomenally (after all, it was Europe that took it into its head to write the History of Cinema).

Watching a Coppola film - Rumblefish more than all the others put together - is like encountering a new pinball machine. A Gottlieb or a new-look Bally (you hardly ever see any Williams any more) and putting an old ten-franc coin in the slot in a state of anxious excitement. How does this one work? Where are the bumpers, corridors, free spaces, targets, the captive or extra balls, the special? What sort of noise does it make? What’s the best way to win?

When you look at the display face of the pinball machine (let’s call the ‘old’ part of Coppola’s films their ‘display face’) you always see the same inscription. It’s more fun to compete means that the pleasure of playing with others lies in the competition. Well, Coppola’s films are always gang stories. Mafiosi, soldiers after that, teenagers after that. A game of skill means that you have to be shrewd and have total command of of film technique (and film memory). Now when you look under the glass of the pinball machine (let’s call the most modernist part of Coppola’s films the ‘glass’) you can easily see that this man has a need to test himself out by pursuing the movies in their most advanced form.

I say advanced as I would say decomposed if talking about a piece of meat. Twenty years on, Rumblefish is the equivalent of what Arthur Penn tried to do in his little-known film Mickey One (1964). The same kind of blandly angelic good looks in the hero (Warren Beatty then, Matt Dillon now), the same retro-style black and white, the same metaphysics of scores outstanding, the same cutesyness. Except that in twenty years the images and sounds of the American cinema, worked on by video, electronics, Europe and its idea of its future, are now able to come up with different dreams in the same bed (in the same film). Nowadays it’s an experience that can be bought. In 1964 it was Penn who was mannered. In 1984 it’s the audience of Rumblefish (an audience targeted by Coppola as younger and younger) which is naturally mannered. All of today’s directors with a bit of life in them (from the most laborious, like Beineix, to the most talented, like Ruiz) are heirs to this phenomenal corpse: the cinema. All big wheels in a sense, but rolling at breakneck speed towards ‘new images’. Auteurs, it’s true, but of somewhat comical prosthetic parts. The truth of the lie was yesterday. The powers of the false are for today. Signs of the times.

There was one important date in the history of the pinball machine (but a clever anthropologist would align it with the history of cinema); it was when it too started talking. ‘Play me again! implored the abject Xenon. ‘Bye-bye!’ the irritating Q’bert’s Quest simpers nowadays to the player who has just lost his stake. There’s nothing human about these voices, they no longer ‘adhere’ to the image, they accompany it.

Coppola is Xenon’s contemporary. His ‘style’ is a matter of displaying - conspicuously if possible - the stress on amplification to which he submits this or that detail (whether visual or in sound) so as to make it play a little solo, just like in jazz. This is what he started doing in One From the Heart. Something in between pointless showing off and last minute verification, the test and the check-up. So in Rumblefish there are solos - for images (Stephen Burum’s), words, music (Stewart Copeland’s the drummer from Police), for gestures, camera movements, for everything. Their only point is a pleasure like that of someone noisily revving up a very fine machine before riding out on it.

Some examples. The film’s American title cues its meaning, that’s to say that unless we leave the tribe we are doomed to hurl ourselves upon our own image and to gnaw it or destroy it; in French it has become Rusty James. Now these are the words most often heard in the film. The hero is continually called by his name, either in challenge or with affection, often in the way that a child is spoken to, to get it used to the idea that it has a name - its name, a name all of its own. This ‘Rusty James!’ uttered in Arkansas accents (the setting is Tulsa) is a way of drawing in the spectator, like the Xenon pinball machine’s ‘play me again’. There are many other examples of this art of amplification. The decision to film in black and white with the alibi of the Motorcycle Boy’s colourblindness. Or that long scene between the two brothers where the elder (the Boy in question) keeps on asking the younger just one question: Why? Why why? The other finally protests. And the scene continues getting stuck on this little word like a clot of blood. Or again those fight scenes choreographed like commercials, Adidas level, as if even now quoting from a film that we were supposed to know. Or the abrupt colour of the fighting fish (red, blue) in their poverty-stricken aquarium. Or the virtuosity of the camera movements, as if once he began using video to rehearse his films like ballets, Coppola was finally able to treat the camera with all the consideration owed to a character. This is how F. ‘Ford’ C painstakingly creates today’s mannerist cinema. This Italo-American is our Parmigianino or our Primaticcio. Everything he loses on the one hand - spontaneity, humour, inspiration - he gains on the other - inventiveness, melancholy, courage. Of course there’s often a desire to beg him (you’d have to shout very loud) to let his characters and his shots breathe, not to smother them - and us - beneath his overarching expertise, not to lose what often gives his films their charm (for example the whole Mark Twain-style episode in The Outsiders), not to want perpetually to control everything (because ‘everything’ is too much). Of course he is further away from the lyricism of Nicholas Ray or Sam Fuller (other analysts of group violence and its homosexual core) than from the frigid pyrotechnics of Otto Preminger. But all the same, he’s there.

For the mistake would be in imagining that Coppola makes do with tacking on a hypertrophied style to what are in the end hackneyed scenes. It isn’t quite true. The man possesses a vision of the world which is perfectly in keeping with the pandemonium he has in mind for the movies.

What’s the story of Rumblefish? An attractive and charismatic ex-gang leader known by the name of Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke) comes home to Tulsa now older (he is twenty-one!) after a trip to California. He joins his father, an out-of-work alcoholic lawyer (Dennis Hopper, who is terrific) and more especially his younger brother, Rusty James (Matt Dillon). While he has been away Rusty has tried to keep the gangs going and be one of their leaders. Rusty is wildly beautiful. Rusty totally looks up to his brother. But Rusty is betrayed by words; the fact is he’s not very smart. He doesn’t realise that no one believes any longer in this kind of heroism, nor does anyone believe in him as a leader. How is he to be made to realise this? Motorcycle Boy is in the fiendishly Coppalesque situation of someone who has touched bottom, found nothing there, and is reduced to sporting a dandyish demeanour of few words (he’s not just colour blind but half-deaf to boot!). So that his little brother can become a man (who knows?) he will have to resort to the complicated metaphor of the rumble fish. And this metaphor will be the death of him.

Clearly, Rumblefish is a story of disillusionment. Made flesh, the ideal disappoints. Idols have feet of clay. (Remember Kurz-Brando in Apocalypse Now). This is nothing unusual. A director who wants to rethink the cinema’s powers of illusion needs to believe that the world (the ‘real’ world) is already an illusion. That it consists of appearances, of celestial twinkles and earthly shams. The pretty, very innocently disneyesque scene where Rusty James has been knocked out and dreams he is dead and you see his levitating body turned into a soul in transit overflying a smoke-filled field of mourners, perhaps tells us the truth of Coppola’s cinema. The world in essence hardly exists. The director only manipulates its substance in order to extract a little of its soul.

Serge Daney

15 February 1984

terça-feira, 3 de janeiro de 2006

Arquivo do blog