Notes on... The Piano (1993)

Jane Campion's 1993 film 'The Piano' is, for the most part, just what it appears to be: a big, rigid, slavishly realized period drama of the sort that were popular in the 90's. Women wear bonnets and gaze wistfully out of windows, men intercept love letters from their wives to other men, and quarreling parties topple into the mud, ruining their finery. Still, it contains some interesting wrinkles. Holly Hunter's mute, disempowered Ada starts out as the victim of voyeuristic coercion at the hands of a man, played by Harvey Keitel, but surprisingly ends up as the sexual aggressor when they begin a physical relationship. It's a rare instance of female sexual reclamation, even rarer when you consider her double-outsider status (as a single-mother and disabled person). There are also the figures of the Maori people, natives of New Zealand, who shadow the white protagonists; they serve as cheap comic relief early on, but end up providing an endearing cultural counterpoint, as uninhibited and grounded as the European characters are repressed and puritanical. In terms of more traditional criteria, the acting is uniformly strong. Hunter is otherworldly in the central role, Sam Neil is at his hangdog best as the cuckolded husband, as relatable as he is contemptible, and Keitel, as usual for this period, is magnetically intense and totally naked. Anna Paquin, as a young girl biding her time while her mother has her assignations, may be the best of them all. She dances, she sings poorly, she reinvents her life story, she inadvertently betrays her mother. In other words, she is just like a real child.

Notes on... Muhammed Ali, The Greatest (1974)

In the wake of Muhammed Ali's passing earlier this year, many of the films that immortalized the boxer's legacy in and out of the ring have been revisited, in print and on the repertory circuit. Leon Gast's polished Oscar-winner 'When We Were Kings' an account of Ali's 1974 title bout with George Foreman in Zaire, reappeared at movie-houses across the country, as did Bill Siegel's illuminating 'The Trials of Muhammad Ali,' focused on the fighter's legal travails at the end of the 1960's. Some lesser known titles have wisely been reevaluated (William Greaves' gritty, unembellished 'The Fighters,' reassessed by Richard Brody), while other, more questionable works have remained obscure (Tom Gries' hokey hagiography 'The Greatest,' featuring among many other missteps, James Earl Jones portraying Malcolm X).

Worthy of a fresh look but excluded from recent conversation is William Klein's 'Muhammed Ali, The Greatest.' Likely due to a confusing release history (its first section was put out as a standalone feature with a different title in 1969), as well as an emerging distaste among American audiences and critics for Klein's blatantly anti-U.S. stripe, his artful documentary was and is still rarely shown. It's a shame, as it is a sharply realized portrait of the complex fighter, one that is far more ingenious in conception than any of the aforementioned titles. The film boasts two rather bold formalistic innovations, the most striking of which is a bipartite narrative structure. Its first half, shot in 1964 in black and white, chronicles Ali's quest for the heavyweight championship, trailing him as he trains, whips up media frenzy and upsets the fearsome Sonny Liston twice. The young Ali, then still going by his birth name of Cassius Clay, is pompous yet introspective, confident of his greatness but increasingly aware of the glass ceiling he will inevitably crash into as a black athlete in the stifling racial climate of 60's America. Klein then jumps ahead to 1974 in full color, to the "Rumble in the Jungle" fight with Foreman, where a slightly ripened, but no less flamboyant or dominant Ali regains the title in another shocker.

The elision of the intervening decade - in which Clay joined the Nation of Islam, became Ali, refused to serve in Vietnam, and lost his public and professional stature - exemplifies the filmmaker's oblique storytelling slant. Rather than have one of his subjects speak his views on the state of racial affairs in 1964, Klein shows the stakes. He contrasts ghoulish, cigar-smoking stakeholders conferring about boxers as if they were livestock (distorted with the director's signature fish-eye lens) with stoic undercard fighters, grimly awaiting a grueling punishment that will likely be their moment in the sun. In Lewiston, Maine, the site of the second contest with Liston, the radicalization effect is not discussed but acted out by a group of black teenagers performing a psychodrama at the behest of a white teacher. It begins as a playful recreation of an pre-fight press conference (one student plays a cocky, shirtless Ali, another a journalist) and ends with spirited calls for black power and equality. Ten years later in Africa, the earthy, inspirational image of Ali is juxtaposed with the false magnanimity and authoritarian ubiquity of Zairean President Mobutu, who one cannot help but liken to the parasitic American fight promotors shown earlier. The strong insinuation is that no matter the color of their skin, a champion of the people will always run counter to the oppressor, and ultimately upstage him.

The most audacious of Klein's allusive tactics (and the second of the stylistic contrivances that distinguish his film) is the omission of any footage from the three featured fights. Usage was likely was not allowed due to copyright issues, but the director uses the restriction to his advantage, eschewing the ready-made climax of the title bout. He imaginatively fills in the gaps where the fight would have been shown, with iconic still photographs, flickering ringside montage that imitates flashbulbs but obscures the melee, even boastful, morning-after recollections from the fighter himself. More than a creative way of reframing the traditional sports documentary that demands action, Klein shifts focus to the profound depths of Muhammed Ali as a man, struggling against particularly difficult odds and times. The effect makes the viewer wonder if the film's title refers to Ali's pugilistic prowess, or something else altogether.

Notes on... L'été (1968)

[This is the first entry in a four-part post on Marcel Hanoun's 'Les Saisons' tetralogy]

To the dismay of the already initiated, the remarkably original filmmaker Marcel Hanoun (1929-2012) remains almost completely unknown, even to the average so-called "film buff." A contemporary and sometimes-collaborator of the French New Wave, his debut 'Un Simple Histoire' (1959) won the Eurovision prize at Cannes, the follow-up 'Le Huitième Jour' (1960) starred Emmanuelle Riva of 'Hiroshima Mon Amour' fame, and 'L'authentique Procès de Carl-Emmanuel Jung' (1966) was partially funded by Jean-Luc Godard, and featured a cameo from Jean Eustache. Even with the support and regard of his voguish peers, his films had little traction with audiences or critics, and by 1968 he had all but vanished into obscurity. At present, the name Marcel Hanoun is much more likely to draw blank stares than wide-eyed admiration. Almost single-handedly leading the charge to rectify this gross undervaluation is Re:Voir, Paris-based distributor and purveyor of experimental cinema, which is promptly releasing his texts (in French), as well as his notoriously hard to find features. After a first-rate 'Carl-Emmanuel Jung' DVD in 2015, this April they issued a veritable holy grail: his 'Les Saisons' tetralogy in a four-disc set, restored and subtitled in English. Made between 1968 to 1972, the films contained within constitute the director's greatest artistic achievements, and they expound a filmic philosophy on par with the brightest cinematic minds of his generation. One can only hope that that the angelic example of Re:Voir is followed by other distributors. Even on a small scale, more home releases from his extensive filmography will lead to more critical attention, and inevitably, an improved standing for Hanoun among forward-thinking filmmakers of the 60's, 70's and beyond.

The first entry in Hanoun's film cycle based on the seasons, 'L'été' (1968) follows a woman (Graziella Buci, in her only acting role) who escapes to a friend's farmhouse in Normandy from Paris following the events of May '68. Craving a break from the political turmoil, she stays there alone for a number of days, debating whether she should reunite with a lover, Jean-Luc, with whom she took part in the demonstrations. She idles her time away, listening to music, reading, exploring the surrounding countryside and corresponding with a pen-pal abroad. Like Rimbaud's Season in Hell, her Summer sojourn is a sort of limbo; trapped between the aura of failed revolution in the city, the fleetingness of her idyllic interlude and an unforeseeable future, she clings increasingly to idea of the messianic Jean-Luc, who may or may not be coming to rescue her.

'L'été' can be interpreted in a number of ways, all critical to understanding the artistic trajectory of Hanoun in this period. From a political viewpoint, it can be seen as the director's rather poetic statement on the aftermath of May '68. As his colleague Jean Eustache would poignantly recall some years later in his elegiac masterwork 'La Maman et la Putain' (1973), the time following the occupation of Paris by students and workers (and the successful, albeit brief ousting of de Gaulle) was one of great disillusionment, a collective come-down for the men and women in the street when they realized that the social structures they had shaken so were not going to topple. Unlike Eustache, whose temporal distance from the events allowed for more thoughtful reflection (as well as a measure of self-deprecating humor that leavened the melancholic mood), Hanoun made his film a scant three months later, in August. Enough time had passed that protesters could perceivably see the fault in their naive logic, but their ideological defeat was still quite fresh. Accordingly, the female protagonist's reaction to the encroachment of current affairs on her getaway (represented by images of protest graffiti in Paris, radio reportage of the Soviet reaction to the Prague Spring and mentions of armed struggles in Vietnam and Biafra) is not galvanization, but weariness, and a curious detachment from the ongoings. The rural, almost-utopian backdrop of her idyll (suggestive of a farming cooperative) does little to comfort her either, and when her lover (functioning as a sort of revolutionary savior) fails to appear, she realizes that her peace of mind lies in a deeper introspection.

Similarly, with 'L'été' and his seasons tetralogy, Hanoun's art would turn inward, transitioning from the social and political to issues more personal and philosophical in nature. Much like his protagonist, he would abandon the more popular themes in pursuit of an artistic ideal, and an original style would emerge. His first feature 'Un Simple Histoire' was a tale of a single mother desperately searching for a job that drew notably from Italian neo-realism, 'Le Huitième Jour,' a kitchen-sink style social drama and 'L'authentique Procès de Carl-Emmanuel Jung,' a wordy, Brechtian dissertation on the Nazi horror (made in a style eerily prescient of Straub-Huillet). Thematically, 'L'été' sees this sort of topical concern replaced by meditation and self-absorption, and stylistically, it announces the director's newly-matured methodology. Hanoun's works would subsequently center on thinly-veiled autobiographical characters who grapple with the nature of art, specifically the cinema. They do so by means of cerebral dialogue, but also through pious contemplation of the high-arts, particularly European paintings, religious iconography and classical music. Indeed, when the unnamed woman exalts her latest musical discovery (Bach's Ich Habe Genug cantata) in a letter, it's almost as if she were suggesting it as a viable alternative to politics, religion, and other systems of belief.

'L'été' also introduces Hanoun's completely singular editing style, an audio-visual patchwork that characterizes and unifies the four Season films. Like a musical fugue (a comparison the director would plainly make at the beginning of 'L'hiver'), motifs are woven throughout the cinematic composition, reappearing often and in varied forms. The image that dominates this film is that of the face. The mysterious countenance of the lead actress is shown from every imaginable angle, close up and mid-range, in motion and in still photographs. Similar to Bresson (who he was favorably compared to by Godard in his review of 'Un Simple Histoire'), Hanoun's fascination with faces is almost purely aesthetic, likely derived from his own work as a photographer. Other recurring visual elements include the protagonist's nude body displayed in various poses, repetitious running shots, and bucolic nature scenes. As he does with images, snippets of dialogue, sounds and music are removed from their diegetic context and repeated, overlain in an intricate, almost mathematical design that suggests fine filigree or an orchestral arrangement, even more so when punctuated by the measured, but brisk cuts. The rhythmic quality of the editing, seemingly at odds with the non-action Hanoun trains his camera on, produces a hypnotic effect that works independently of the narrative. The mastery of montage is the director's first step towards a cinema that is, through its inherent poetry and rigour, an end in itself.

Like the titular season, 'L'été' is brief but eventful, filled with intimations of endings and beginnings. For Hanoun, it marked the end of his devotion to the puerile political causes of May '68 (a creative and intellectual dead-end, he felt), as well as the beginning of a meaningful, very personal cinematic dialectic, the culmination of which would be his defining works. In between these revelations, as is expected in the Summer months, is a fair amount of soul searching, much biding of time, and more than a little ambivalence about it all.

Notes on... The Short Films of Wim Wenders, 1967-1982

Despite the restoration of almost all of Wim Wenders' early works in 2015 and a recent spate of retrospectives across the globe, as I write this in June of 2016, most of the director's short films are not available commercially. Only two are purchasable or otherwise legally viewable: 'Same Player Shoots Again' (1967) and 'Silver City Revisited' (1969). These became available just days ago, as bonus features on Criterion's essential Road Trilogy box set. I had the pleasure of seeing all of the shorts discussed here at the Burns Film Center in March, where they played only once, on a Sunday morning to an audience of about a dozen curious spectators. As Wenders continues to grow in estimation (and transition from aging wunderkind to full-fledged cinematic icon in his own right), it's increasingly important that we revisit his earliest filmic exercises, which as it turned out, presciently plotted his career and many of its motifs.

The earliest extant short from Wenders' film school days in Munich, 'Same Player Shoots Again' is the sort of subversive formal experiment that aspiring filmmakers at similar institutions lined up to make in the 1960's. It's a deconstructionist take on a gangster film that plays very loosely with genre tropes; seedy hotel rooms, phone booths, a tough bleeding in the back seat of an American car, the central image of a wounded man trudging along a street holding a rifle. This conventional imagery (the cinematic language of B-movies) is divorced from familiar context and scrambled in an attempt to disrupt the predictable ritual of filmgoing. The looping of the gunman scene may confound and frustrate, but it also forces the viewer to think about what they're seeing, rather than settling in for another gangster story. Something can certainly be inferred from the armed figure, who, with his long, military-style coat and assault rifle, evokes a Nazi solider as much as an archetypal criminal. By denying any exposition or context for this image, Wenders may implicitly offer a commentary on the psyche of the young, post-war German cinéaste; while weaned on genre films, they had no interest in replicating formulae, and were even less interested in rehashing the national trauma. Subtly hidden in ‘Same Player’ are two winking allusions to Jean-Luc Godard, who Wenders idolized (and "interviewed" for his 1982 short documentary 'Room 666'). The pinball theme (the main sequence is shown five times and tinted a different color each time, a reference to the multicolored balls allotted to a pinball player; also, the title) recalls the ever-present arcade machines in 60’s Godard, particularly ‘Vivre Sa Vie.’ Another of the French director's oft-utilized images accompanies the "Tilt' screen that functions as the end credit as well: the Coca-Cola logo.

'Silver City Revisited,' while just as experimental as 'Same Player,' offers more in the way of insight into the director's headspace. Made while studying at Munich in 1968, it's a series of static, three-minutes shots, run back to back with no camera movement or deviation. The images, mostly street scenes, function like a photo album or set of post cards, documenting the director's stay in the southern German city. Wenders, whose work is generally defined by an insatiable wanderlust, is surprisingly still and present, and his vignettes effectively capture the poetry and melancholic beauty of the cityscape. Trees blow in the breeze, sun glints off of steel edifices and traffic lazily flows. The most obvious precursor would be the contemplative "pillow shots" of Yasujiro Ozu (Wenders was an avowed fanatic, dedicating 1985's 'Tokyo-Ga' to the Japanese director), but the urban art of Edward Hopper is also echoed in the architectural use of composition and the scarcity of human figures. (Wenders would draw inspiration from the painter's work for the look of 1977's 'The American Friend' and recreate Hopper's 'Morning Sun' in the 1982 short 'Reverse Angle,' covered below.) Across the ocean and of the same era, contemporaries like Jonas Mekas and Michael Snow were making films that were superficially similar, but the more one watches Wenders' exercise, the less comparable it is to the lyrical home movies of the former, or the rigorous structuralism of the latter. More traditional in its reference points, 'Silver City' is more akin to the actualités of the Lumière brothers, and still photography (which the director would practice for the duration of his career, publishing multiple collections). It would be Wenders' last purely formal experiment, and with his next short he moved onto firmer narrative ground, and for good.

1968's 'Police Film' is noteworthy for two reasons. First, it constitutes perhaps the only overtly political statement of the director's entire career. Shot during that tumultuous summer, when student demonstrations erupted into riots across the globe, it is a direct criticism (albeit a silly one) of Munich police and their surreptitious psychological tactics. Wenders was heavily involved in student activism, so such a statement is not surprising. What's surprising, and what strikes the viewer most when watching the comical short is how shamelessly it imitates the style of Jean-Luc Godard. From its rambling, whispered narration and subversion of Disney comics to its grotesque view of modern architecture and fashionable leftist politics, even in its very format (the Godardian faux-documentary, epitomized by 1967's '2 or 3 Things I Know About Her'), there is no doubt who's work it's modeled after. 'Same Player' slyly paid homage, but this is unequivocal pastiche. Wenders' countryman Rainer Werner Fassbinder committed a similar plagiarism with his 1966 short 'Das kleine Chaos', but at the very least some of his incipient cinematic philosophy comes across. Little of the Wenders' thoughtful character is evident in 'Police Film,' making it the least memorable entry of his student period.

Visually and thematically, 'Alabama (2000 Light Years From Home)' picks up where 'Same Player' left off. It's another gangster story, this time containing a sequence of events that is fairly easy to follow: A trench-coated man enters a bar full of scruffy bohemians and accepts a mission to assassinate a figure that is never seen. He is shown driving to his destination, then back to the bar, apparently wounded. He slumps into the darkened establishment, where all of the patrons have been massacred, and puts a song on the jukebox. The camera then cuts back to the car as the man flees the city, fading to black before revealing his fate. What the short lacks in exposition, it makes up for with its unique use of music, which is playing in some form in every scene. The soundtrack (diegetic and non-diegetic) fills in the narrative gaps, providing emotional cues and even clues as to what's happening on screen. John Coltrane's ominous Alabama accompanies the street scenes where the man arrives at the bar, a portent of the events to come. Upon entering the first time, the lazy blues of The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix plays, denoting an unsuspecting calm, while in the second scene, after everything has gone awry, the man selects another song by Hendrix on the jukebox, his raucous take of All Along the Watchtower. "There must be some kind of way outta here... the hour's getting late," he sings, the lyrics seeming to register with the man as he realizes that he must soon make his escape. Here, music is not a secondary consideration, subservient to the visuals or the story; it is equally as important as the other two components. In fact, it precipitates the images, evidenced by the film's title (a compound of song titles, of the Coltrane composition and another by The Rolling Stones). The importance of music to Wenders, as a creative catalyst, subject and cinematic tool, cannot be understated. He would go on to become a musical authority among directors, curating a number of noteworthy soundtracks, shooting several successful documentaries on musicians and setting some of his most memorable scenes around and during musical performances. 'Alabama' marks several firsts for the filmmaker. It was his first time working with cinematographer Robby Müller, who would lend his polished aesthetic and unique pallet to most of Wenders' films through the late 80's. Also, the clientele that loiters in the bar is the first significant look at contemporary Germans. They're just the sort of characters - misfits, hippies and artists - that weren't being depicted in national cinema before the advent of the New German Film, and that would populate the director's early 70's works (personified by actor Rüdiger Vogler). Lastly, the final shot is the first of many long takes from a moving car that Wenders would utilize throughout his career. A progression of the tableaux of 'Silver City,' he would expand upon the traveling shot in his next short, and it would later become a distinctive feature of his road movies.

'3 American LPs,' Wenders penultimate student exercise, is the director's first "filmed diary," as he would later refer to this sub-category of works that would include 'Reverse Angle' (covered below), 'Tokyo-Ga,' 'Notebook on Cities and Clothes' and (to an extent) 'Lightning Over Water.' Shot on grainy 16mm, it follows as he and an unseen companion (first time co-writer Peter Handke) drive from one unnamed German city to another, listening to songs and conversing about their love of American music as they go. The first segment takes place in a high-rise where one of the narrators peruses a record collection, a solemn redheaded woman smokes a cigarette on the terrace, and Van Morrison's 'Slim Slow Slider' plays. Next, Creedence Clearwater Revival's 'Lody' accompanies travel shots (taken from the car window) as the pair move from one city en route to another. Finally, after arriving at their destination, there is a final driving shot, a slow creep at dusk scored by Harvey Mandel's instrumental version of 'Wade In The Water.' Wenders is briefly glimpsed driving the car in the crepuscular light just before the credits appear. As simple as it seems, this film is loaded with hints as to where his career would go and how far it would range. It anticipates his diary films, which would all be narrated in the first-person, poetically shot (so as to avoid qualifying as pure documentary) and have an ostensible subject (though their true subject, as with a written diary, is inevitably the author). '3 American LPs' may also be considered his first road movie. Granted, he and Handke are not invented characters, but the central predicament is the same as in those narrative films: the reconciliation of one's actual surroundings (drab post-war Germany) with an idealized, almost fantastical place they wish to reach (America, the land of Hollywood and rock and roll). Lastly, this film represents the earliest union of Wenders' inseparable, twin obsessions, music and the open road, which would constitute a sort of dual philosophy for the director (introspection via art/outward searching), and characterize his entire body of work. Handke would go on to co-write Wenders' first feature, 1972's 'The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick' (his first traditional road-movie, adapted from Handke's novel), as well as 1975's 'Wrong Move' and the 1987 masterpiece 'Wings of Desire.' Wenders completed one more film while in Munich, his 1970 full-length thesis 'Summer in the City' (named after a song by The Lovin' Spoonful and dedicated to another American band, The Fugs). He would return very sparingly to the short film format in the years to come, doing so mostly for television.

Some thirteen years after '3 American LPs,' Wenders would pick up the thread of the diary film again with 'Reverse Angle: NYC March '82.' He shot it in New York while completing post-production for 'Hammett,' his disastrous Hollywood debut, which was finished, then allegedly taken over and reshot by producer Francis Ford Coppola. The frustrations experienced by the filmmaker, his estrangement as a European director working in America and many other impressions are documented in this intimate, free-form film. Wenders wanders the city, taking in the carnivalesque sites and musing philosophically, in a style that recalls the less-political works of Chris Marker, particularly 'Sans Soleil.' As he would in a proper journal, he arbitrarily rattles off his current interests: Edward Hopper's New York portraits, reading Emmanuel Bove's Mes Amis on the subway, the music of burgeoning no-wave band The Del-Byzanteens. It seems it's all he can do to ward himself from an increasingly volatile situation. Wenders would use the diary film quite effectively as a stopgap between features in the 1980's, either as a diversion during a difficult period ('Reverse Angle') or while he made preparations to mount a large production ('Notebook on Cities and Clothes,' shot while orchestrating 'Until the End of the World'). In the 1990's, he transitioned to making smaller features and more traditional documentaries, a balance he maintains to this day. Though 'Reverse Angle' appears to have little in common with the student projects in the late 60's, when viewed alongside those shorts, it further illustrates the director's clearly defined themes and singular narrative voice.

Notes on... History Lessons (1972)

If the notoriously bewildering filmmaking tandem of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet had a patron saint, it would undoubtedly be Bertolt Brecht. Like the pair, the German playwright's career was informed by staunch Marxist beliefs and a devotion to the avant-garde as a means for social change. He also introduced to the dramatic vernacular the "estrangement effect," a term so befitting the filmmaking style of Straub-Huillet that it could title a monograph on their collected works. According to this principle, rather than striving for an empathetic viewer-subject relationship, dramatists should actively work to subvert narrative norms that lull audiences into complacency. To increase the likeliness that they will intelligently consider what they're witnessing, viewers must routinely be shocked, jostled, and knocked off balance. This concept can be said to underpin all of the Straub-Huillet films, most of all 'History Lessons,' their adaptation of Brecht's only novel, The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar.

Like an even sparer reduction of Rosselini's 'Socrates,' this unconventional biopic recounts the life of the founder of the Roman Empire through long scenes of unembellished dialogue. In a series of blatantly staged tableaux, an unnamed man in modern dress interviews costumed historical figures who knew or encountered Caesar. Photographed rigidly against bucolic backdrops, the blank faced actors pose like mannequins and recite their dialogue in harsh-sounding German. As if the staginess of these scenes wasn't perplexing enough, they're intercut with long, static, in-car shots of the modern interlocutor driving around present-day Rome, seemingly without destination or urgency. Viewers familiar with Brecht's epic theatre (or the Straub-Hulliet oeuvre) may know what to make of it all, but most will be left scratching their heads, or worse, nodding off from the lack of action. Indeed, estrangement is in full effect.

Still, through these awkward retellings of key episodes, the filmmakers do succeed in conceiving of a more concrete, modern Julius Caesar. Neither magisterial statesman nor imposing military commander, their version is something much more novel, a proto-capitalist in an imperial age. He did not enslave and execute out of ruthlessness, but to gain economic advantage, and through instinct and opportunism built the most powerful empire of his day. The anachronistic modern figure on his trail functions as a link to our present-day world. When juxtaposed with the dialogue scenes, his excursions through the streets of Rome are imbued with a fresh significance: choked with cars, commerce and milling crowds, the city is transformed into a monument to Caesar's machinations. Such are the suggestive powers of Straub and Hulliet. Much more than a demythologization (or didactic exercise as the title suggests), this unorthodox work compels us to consider what really spurs a man to seize power, and strongly implies that the world we inhabit today is still shaped by men of that ilk. By not showing the audience what it expects to see, they evoke the very notion they wish to impart, and without a single ideological statement, they politicize the viewer. It's more than a neat trick; it's the result of a finely tuned method that the pair, like seasoned dramaturges, employed year after year, film after film.

Notes on... Not Reconciled (1965)

'Not Reconciled,' Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's first feature film (Straub is credited as director, Huillet as writer and actor), is something of an early-career anomaly. While it establishes the pair as adapters of thematically weighty, highbrow works, and hints at the abstruse dialogue and Brechtian disruptions they would later be known for, the feel of the film is uncharacteristically light and animated. In a way, it was the pair's "New Wave" film, a riff on the aesthetically revolutionary motifs and techniques of fellow countrymen like Godard and Truffaut. Appropriated by Straub-Huillet, the elliptical editing and subjective realism of early 60's French film achieved a far different impact, one that would continue to reverberate well after they moved on to their classical style.

Based on a 1959 novel by Heinrich Böll, 'Not Reconciled' tells the fragmented tale of the Faehmel family, focusing on three generations and how they took part in and were effected by the events of the Second World War. Heinrich Faehmel, accomplished pre-war architect is the father of Robert and grandfather of Joseph, both trained in architecture as well. Through flashbacks, we see how Robert falls in with a group of war-dissenters, is exiled from Germany, then conscripted into the Nazi ranks and tasked with demolishing buildings, including an abbey designed by his father. On Heinrich's 80th birthday, there's a reconciliation, an unexpected act of violence perpetrated by the family matriarch, and a glimmer of hope in the form of Joseph, who it seems will elude the guilt and trauma of the Third Reich. The intricate, intergenerational narrative moves freely and quickly between past and present, creating a disorienting, dreamlike tone that is no accident. Just as Arthur Penn adapted dynamic New Wave editing and sequencing to bring a sense of existentialist paranoia to 'Mickey One' the same year, Straub-Huillet use these methods to engender a feeling of moral confusion and inconsequence. Like a nightmare shared by an entire nation, the ethical morass of World War 2 and the ensuing ambivalence is a dream state that the fated characters have fallen into.

A few seconds into the film, while shooting billiards, Robert essentially asks the audience "what would you like to know?" As the camera pans down to the spiraling balls, we're zipped to a sports field where young boys are playing, one of them a school-aged Robert whose story we are about to witness. It's straightforward enough in this instance, but this sort of leap through time without warning or elucidation happens throughout 'Not Reconciled.' Related to, but practically distinct from the jump-cut (which skipped the formalities, so to speak, by cutting out old-fashioned transitions), these warp-cuts accomplish quite a bit more. They help to create a discombobulated feel that mirrors the moral disarray of the characters. As they are mostly jumps in time, they also obscure the lines between past and present, highlighting the interconnectedness of generations and allowing for the reexamination and re-contextualization of past transgressions. The disjointed narrative itself is a hallmark of the New Wave, specifically the works of Alain Resnais. Straub-Huillet also populate their film with inexpressive actors, not to capture some truthful essence or prosaic charm as with Godard's non-actors, but to characterize the ambiguous nature of the Faehmel family, and by extension, post-war Germany.

Earlier this year, the Museum of Modern Art (who screened this film as part of their complete Straub-Huillet retrospective) hosted an enlightening series called Germany 66 that focused on the watershed year in which the New German Cinema took form. What surprises me most about Straub and Huilliet's debut is not its stylishness or lively pacing when compared to their later works, but how neatly it would have fit into the slate at MoMA beside first features from Volker Schlöndorff and Alexander Kluge. Right alongside the new class of native filmmakers (and ahead of quite a few of them), the French duo diagnosed the national ills of their adopted country, and the results are revelatory. Like the finest entries in the Young German Film, they grappled with the demons of the Nazi horror, incorporated the richness of German literature, and helped mend the seemingly irreparable rift in the nation's cinematic lineage. That Straub-Huillet found their way to the vanguard of this movement should not come as a surprise. The itinerant filmmakers came to these insights as they always did, through their profound understanding of the arts, and what those arts communicate about their creators.

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.

Notes on... Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947)

'Record of a Tenement Gentleman,' Yasujiro Ozu's first film following the Second World War, is a transitional work in many ways. When he made his previous film, the tender 1942 father-son drama 'There Was a Father,' the world was a drastically different place. Ozu had recently returned from conscription in the Japanese Army, from fighting a still winnable war. He was almost certainly ready to resume his prolific work rate, having churned out some three dozen comedies and dramas of varying quality with legendary efficiency. However, by 1947, the war had ended in the most heinous way possible, and the director was forced to reexamine not just his process, but also the role his films would play in consoling a bereaved nation and world at large.

'Tenement Gentleman' sees Ozu employing a fairly novel device, for him at least, the humanistic allegory. While his previous films were rife with "lessons," they primarily dealt with either familial issues or peculiarities of Japanese society. Here, the characters and their tribulations take on a more universal significance. The widow Otane (Chôko Iida) eking out a lonely existence epitomizes war widows and childless mothers worldwide, and the orphaned boy, the innocence and humanity inevitably lost by a generation following so much armed conflict. The story of the hardened old woman won over by a stoic foundling is a plea to viewers to change their selfish and distrustful outlook, the only way to collectively overcome the traumas of war.

Ozu's depiction of landscapes evolved as well. It had been, for the most part, realistic in prior films, only deviating for aesthetic effect (the film noir of 'This Night's Wife'), but the mise en scène in 'Tenement Gentleman' borders on expressionistic. When woman and child leave their village to search for the boy's father, wreckage and garbage line the completely empty streets. She doesn't attempt to ditch the boy in a crowded area, but on a desolate beach, devoid of life, dunes redolent of the desert or the moon. Alternately, when the issue of abandoned boys is broached by one character, Ozu cuts to a small army of orphans, milling around as is waiting for their cue. The maudlin soundtrack evokes Hollywood melodramas as well. Though not overdone, the filmmaker was obviously using more overt means to convey a broader message than he was used to.

Still, these embellishments are subtle, and Ozu employs many of his characteristic devices and themes. An engrossing scene depicting a peep show performance at dinner (not as raunchy as it sounds) recalls the reverent observance of the geisha ceremony in 'What Did the Lady Forget?' The difference between this film and prior efforts lies in this scene; the song is presented not just as a custom that unites generations, or as symbol of a near-obsolescent way of life that should be cherished, but as a curative ritual, a sacrament. Somewhere between his perfunctory early films and the near-perfect austerity of his late work, Ozu expanded his scope beyond topics endemic to Japan, and realized that he could do much more than offer commentary. Films could heal, not with outlandish scenarios or emotional pandering, but through communion with the arts and the ennoblement of the everyday. 'Tenement Gentleman' is an important step in the evolution of a spiritually purifying cinema.