Review - Notes for a Film About Jazz (1965)

This all-too-brief account of the 1965 Bologna International Jazz Festival succeeds on dual levels; as a straightforward document of the supremely hip groups who assembled and their performances, but also as testament to the singular, unifying power of music. As framed by director Gianni Amico, the multinational gathering is transformed into a utopian bubble in which the racial and cultural differences of the invitees, even their linguistic barriers, are transcended by sheer enthusiasm for the music being played. Amico stealthily captures a number of genuinely warm moments, in rehearsals and during downtime, that bolster this benevolent vision. Saxmen with no more than a handful of common words between them compare instruments, a group goes over their setlist by singing the themes instead of naming songs, and a pair of scat singers, a black man and a white woman, harmonize together, beaming like old friends. At the center of this love-fest, fittingly, is zen-like trumpeter Don Cherry, whose then-newly formed quintet features sidemen from Italy, Argentina, France and Germany. Like an embodiment of the festival's spirit, Cherry is goofy, effusive, seemingly color-blind, and quite often, awestruck by the music. Amico, too, is reverent, fixing his camera on the soloists for long, uninterrupted shots of fiery playing. It's in these performance scenes (and in an incongruously solemn exchange with pianist Mal Waldron that touches on Black Muslims and the assassination of Malcolm X) that the pathos intrinsically at the heart of jazz shows through. The seriousness is offset by a grinning Ted Curson, who extols the festival's atmosphere of amiability and acceptance in an interview given while visiting a carnival with his bandmates. Moving from the ferris wheel to the shooting gallery to the go-carts, the young trumpet-player seems to have forgotten the troubles at home, even if only for a short time.

Review - China Is Near (1967)

Marco Bellocchio's second film, the follow-up to his wholly original dysfunctional family tale 'Fists in the Pocket,' is another polemic against the provincial Italian bourgeois society the director obviously knows so well. More political in nature than his first effort (and far more comedic in tone), it concerns three siblings of aristocratic lineage who dwell in a stuffy mansion filled with leather-bound books, moth-eaten finery and at least one tribute bestowed by a deceased Pope. The eldest brother Vittorio (portrayed with magnificent bluster by Glauco Mauri) is the picture of effete, impotent intellectualism, inanely spouting verse to dazzle his secretary Giovanna, then pathetically pawing at her when she ignores his advances. Sister Elena (to the mortification of Vittorio) mainly busies herself by bedding men from town then refusing to marry any of them for fear of losing her elite status, while youngest brother Camillo is a Catholic church acolyte by day and a Maoist radical by night. Because of his patina of respectability, the utterly unqualified Vittorio is chosen to run for office as the head of the local Socialist chapter, exasperating party hopeful Carlo, who happens to be Giovanna's lover, and who is hired by the candidate to help orchestrate his campaign. The working-class couple are corrupted, gradually transforming into conniving social climbers and pairing off with the brother and sister with designs to marry into their wealth. Meanwhile, the overzealous Camillo does everything he can to disrupt his brother's election efforts, going as far as to sic a pack of dogs on him as he delivers a speech, and planting a bomb in the Socialists' headquarters.

Of a pair with Bernardo Bertolucci's 'Before the Revolution,' another study of conflicted Italian bourgeoisie in the years leading up to the upheavals of 1968, Bellocchio's sardonic satire is patently autobiographical, drawing on the filmmaker's rural upbringing and leftist affiliations. Also, like Bertolucci's film it's less concerned with the resolution of the plot than with the novelistic recreation of a stifling milieu, filled with empty societal rituals, religious ineptitude, sexual frustration and an overhanging pall of political unrest that implicates members of every class, and forces them into conflict. The loose, episodic narrative is tiresome for stretches as one waits for familial intrigues to unfold, but several farcical scenes keep it going, almost all of which center on Vittorio; he harangues his pious old aunts at dinner for not voting for him, is fallen upon and beaten by toothless proletariat at his first public appearance, and gleefully bounces a ball like a child. There's also the bumbling exploits of Camillo and his sorry communist cell, whose immature ideologies, absurd seriousness and petty vandalisms (painting the film's title on a wall) recall Godard's 'La Chinoise' in small, subplot scale. Visually, Bellocchio retains the uncontrived look of his debut, to which cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli adds an appropriately decadent sheen. Composer Ennio Morricone contributes a brisk, almost martial theme.

Review - Notes Towards an African Orestes (1970)

In 1969, fresh from reimagining the Greek myth of Medea, Pier Paolo Pasolini traveled to East Africa in search of his next adaptation. His audacious project: a radical reworking of Aeschylus' Oresteia set in modern-day Africa that would draw parallels between ancient Greece's inchoate democracy and the newly emergent, post-colonial African state. That film was never made, for reasons revealed in this intriguing cinematic journal that follows Pasolini as he scouts for locations, rhapsodizes about the exotic landscape, and doggedly pursues his black Orestes. The director's concept, not surprisingly, is paradoxical. Grounded in antiquated notions of the African continent but set in it's protean contemporary reality, based on ancient tragedy but suffused with a particularly ephemeral brand of Western Marxism, the elements of the proposed film never quite align. Still, he treks on, photographing the beautiful faces and vistas of Uganda and Tanzania in an attempt to convince the viewer (and possibly himself) that his venture will not collapse under the weight of it's inherent fallacies.

For his part, Pasolini comes off as intelligent and loquacious, brimming with a childlike quixotism. Despite the touchy subject matter, he's never offensive, even in a scene when he debates a group of African students studying in Rome who politely, but firmly disagree with his ideas. It's a later scene, however, that best demonstrates why the project ultimately failed. In an experimental aside, Pasolini orchestrates a run through of a dramatic episode in the style of free-jazz opera, a format he briefly considers. A very hip trio led by a shrieking Gato Barbieri on saxophone bash away as two tone-deaf singers comically howl their lines. Separately, (and in the hands of more capable vocalists,) the musical and operatic interpretations might have succeeded, but mashed together they're almost intolerable. "No, no," Cassandra wails, warning Agamemnon of his grave fate if he continues. Pasolini was wise to heed.

Review - From the Clouds to the Resistance (1979)

As with their earlier feature 'History Lessons,' Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's 'From the Clouds to the Resistance' is made up of historical and modern set pieces that are juxtaposed to reveal unseen truths. Unlike the former film, in which the sequences are intermixed, here they are split into two neat halves. The first part comprises six dialogues between Greek mythological figures, each concerning humanity's disillusionment with the gods. Mankind is weary of the neglect, the cruel and arbitrary intervention, and the senseless sacrifices, and it is implied that that weariness may turn to revolutionary anger. The second part, set in contemporary Italy, depicts a man's homecoming after fleeing the fascists during the Second World War. Upon returning decades later, he finds his home and it's people irrevocably changed by the traumas of armed resistance.

The segments, though seemingly unrelated, serve to illuminate one another. The mythical conflict between man and god is infused with strands of Marxist ideology, with major parallels drawn to the class struggle. The efforts of the Italian partisans, on the other hand, acquire the weight and solemnity of legend, and take on a primal urgency; their fight is an ancient fight against tyranny, as old as the rule of the gods. The filmmakers are careful to highlight that no solution is perfect, not even that of the communist partisans, but they seem to imply that the battle is still worth waging. Viewed as a whole, 'From the Clouds' demonstrates the trickle-down trajectory of historical discourse. Not unlike the terraced hills prominently featured in the film's rural Italian setting, the combined events of our history feed and shape our current circumstances, in turn influencing our beliefs and how we, in our flawed, human way, take up the good fight.

Notes on... Fortini/Cani (1976)

[This is the first of four films that I'll see at the Museum of Modern Art's Straub-Hulliet retrospective in May. Perhaps foolishly, I plan to write a little about each of them]

First and foremost, Jean-Marie Straub and the late Danièle Huillet were interpreters. Every one of the filmmaking duo's works was an adaptation of some sort - of a novel, play, poem, opera or, in the case of 'Fortini/Cani,' personally-charged political essay. Their 1976 cinematic meditation takes as its basis the writings of Franco Fortini, an Italian Jewish intellectual whose 'Dogs of Sinai' is a sweeping assessment of the political landscape following the Six Day War. Fortini points a finger at all culpable parties, condemning the Israelis who vilified and slaughtered Arabs, Italian communists who promoted the conflict and interested foreign powers who secretly provided military support. He equates them to Italians during World War II, namely the anti-Semitic Fascists and those craven enough to pretend the Nazis were entirely to blame once that war had ended. The dogs of Sinai, he metaphorizes, are not dogs but the various men who flock behind strong but ethically corrupt nations, eager for a spot at the foot of the bed.

To adapt these writings would occur to very few filmmakers, as they contain no intrinsic imagery, much less a straightforward story to follow. Fortini blurs the line between personal and political, constructing (or reconstructing) a flat historiographical plane that reconciles wars and upheavals with intimate reminiscences. He dedicates as much time to anecdotes of his youth, his relationship with his father and his internal struggles with his Jewishness as he does to untangling and refuting the fallacies of the New Left. In the hands of Straub-Huillet, this is less a predicament than a plenitude of resources, of memories, events and, most significantly, words to form their own objet d'art.

Those words, read by Fortini in monotone (with the slightest undertone of bile), are paired with long takes of rural Italy. Renato Berta's roaming camera captures the countryside in panoramic pans; windblown trees, empty fields, superficially peaceful landscapes. The viewer is likely unaware that the locale is Marzabotto, the small town where hundreds of citizens were slaughtered by Nazi soldiers in September of 1944 for harboring partisans. Still, in the rift between image and text, the atrocity is suggested, as is their attempted erasure. Fortini appears on screen, stern, eyes downcast as if reading a eulogy. His chilling accounts reveal the invisible history of Marzabotto, of his country.

The narrator recounts his conflicted childhood, specifically his relationship with his father, a Florentine Jew and banker who was ostracized, beat and arrested by the Fascists because of his persuasion. His story is juxtaposed with shots of commercial Florence, business carrying on as usual. When Fortini recalls his misguided conversion to Catholicism as an adolescent, we are shown a solemn service at a Jewish temple from a telling distance, the droning chants at odds with his monologue. The associative choices of scenery, though initially confounding, are far from arbitrary. They illuminate the author's jaundiced views, and combine with them to constitute a new and distinct statement. The 360 degree pans are also meaningful, unifying Fortini's elliptical discourse with the physical spaces they refer to, in a motion as expansive as his poetical prose.

By no means do the notoriously cryptic filmmakers spell anything out for the viewer. Patently against elucidation as a matter of principle, Straub-Huillet employ many of their usual obfuscatory tactics. When I saw this film at the Museum of Modern Art as part of their complete retrospective, significant stretches of speech were not subtitled. This was no oversight, as the duo supervised all of their translations, keeping only the dialogue they thought was absolutely vital. When excerpts of Fortini's incendiary print articles are shown late in the film, the downward pan (and the corresponding subtitles) move a touch too fast to comfortably process. The length and repetitiveness of this scene, along with a few others, will undoubtedly frustrate some, as will the jarring cuts that practically clip off dialogue. Most crucially, little to no background information is given. Without the bare minimum of context, most viewers will find 'Fortini/Cani' a trying experience. Indeed, multiple paying customers walked out during the show at MoMA. Those who stayed were forced to work harder than perhaps they'd ever worked before, not just to understand the film but to endure it. Personally, I was riveted. The experience was not a pleasurable one, but considering the subject matter, should it have been? That this work concerning so many ordeals is an ordeal in itself is a testament to its efficacy.