Monday, January 16, 2017
016 - The Last Metro, 1980, France. Dir. Francois Truffaut.
When I was a child we had a book by Corrie Ten Boom called The Hiding Place.
It was about a family who hid Jews from the Nazis during World War Two.
Later I discovered a book called The Diary of Anne Frank, or Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. It was a diary kept by a girl who was herself a Jew kept in hiding by one of those families.
We grew up during the Cold War.
We imagined what it would be like to be taken over by Communists and to find places to hide. I would build places in my mind, buildings with hidden rooms, secret doors, private passageways, closets behind closets, basements under basements.
If you have seen The Fault in Our Stars (2014), then you have seen the two young protagonists go to the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
If you have seen Inglourious Basterds (2009), then you have shivered as Christoph Waltz as Nazi Col. Hans Landa sits in a farmhouse talking threateningly as a Jewish family hides beneath the floorboards.
If you have seen Black Book (2006), then you have fled with Rachel Stein, played by Carice van Houten, as she flees her hiding place to pose as a singer in occupied Netherlands.
Whether it was Nazi-occupied Europe or the Communist Soviet Union, we understood the emotional power behind the idea of hiding from tyranny.
I am an actor. I enjoy movies about the theatre. Life behind the curtain.
Watch Being Julia (2004), starring Annette Bening and Jeremy Irons. It is excellent.
Watch the farce Noises Off (1992), with Michael Caine, Carol Burnett, Denholm Elliott, John Ritter, and Christopher Reeve. It is hilarious.
Watch the Oscar favorites, the classics All About Eve (1950) and the instant classic Birdman (2014).
What if you put these two kinds of stories together?
A movie about a hiding place set in a theatre.
That says it all.
That is the premise of The Last Metro, a film by the greatest director to have come out of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), Francois Truffaut.
It also stars the two greatest international stars to have come out of France, Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu.
We have already seen some of France's great stars--Yves Montand in The Wages of Fear, and Jean-Paul Belmondo and Emmanuelle Riva in Leon Morin, Priest. We have also been introduced to New Wave darling Anna Karina. Now we meet these two.
With this movie, we are in great hands.
Under Nazi-occupied Paris, a theatre hires actor Bernard Granger (Gerard Depardieu) to join their company. The theatre's owner, Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent) has gone into hiding. The public is told he has fled to South America. His wife Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve) now runs the theatre, and they are mounting their next play. Their artistic director, Jean-Loup Cottins (Jean Poiret), runs rehearsals. Cast and crew do their work under the pressures of occupation, as theatre critic Daxiat (Jean-Louis Richard) shows suspicion about Steiner's whereabouts.
Steiner is hiding in the basement.
He will rig an unused air duct so that he can hear the rehearsals from below and give acting notes to his wife at night, when she sneaks down to be with him. She will pass the notes to Cottins, and he will give them out at rehearsals, with no one but Marion knowing that her husband is present and providing the notes.
The theatre critic is so savvy that when he attends the play's opening night, he knows that it cannot be the directorial work of Cottins but rather shows the strong hand of the great Steiner.
Imagine that premise. The critic knows his trade, and the artistic style of the play may be what gives Steiner away.
Intrigue.
Granger may be involved in the Resistance and secretly rigging theatre props as explosives to smuggle out to attack the Nazis.
The costume girl is also Jewish.
Marion goes to local Nazi headquarters to make an appeal.
Daxiat appeals to Cottins to try to take over the theatre.
They will try to raid the basement--during a performance!
The tensions continue to mount.
Meanwhile, a love triangle develops, as Marion is spending all her time during the day with her costar as her husband is going mad with his secret incarceration.
How will all this turn out?
The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Nestor Almendros, who had a triumphant career. In addition to the many films he shot for New Wave directors Francois Truffaut and Eric Rohmer, he also filmed movies such as Kramer vs. Kramer, The Blue Lagoon, Sophie's Choice, Places in the Heart, and Billy Bathgate.
It won ten Cesars, the French Oscar, for Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Music, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Editing, and Best Sound. Watch it and see if you agree with their assessments.
The Last Metro refers to the curfew placed on Paris. During the Winter, the citizens would go to the theatre to stay warm. After the show, they had be sure to catch the last metro home in order not to break the curfew. The consequences were not to be desired.
Art holds up a mirror to nature.
It also inspires hope in the midst of struggle.
In this film, it provides the means of survival.
Monday, January 16, 2017
Sunday, January 15, 2017
015 - Sans Soleil, 1983, France; Dir. Chris Marker
Sunday, January 15, 2017
015 - Sans Soleil, 1983, France. Dir. Chris Marker.
Do you take videos when you go on vacation?
Did your dad do it when you were a kid? On Super 8mm film or VHS-C or Video8 or DVC or some other medium?
Now you use your phone. Or a DSLR or a mirrorless camera.
Sans Soleil is a travel documentary, or more properly, a travel essay film, focused on Africa and Japan, tied together with philosophical ideas told in voice-over.
It is a meditation on memory. It is bright and colorful. It is cultural and political. It is thoughtful and rambling. It is detached and non-judgmental. It is stream-of-conscious. It is engaging.
Chris Marker travelled everywhere. And he filmed everything he saw. On 16mm color film, using a Beaulieu R16.
He thought about it, edited it, and recorded his thoughts about it--here in a fictional format, in the guise of a woman's reading of the letters sent back to her by a travelling cinematographer.
The travelling cinematographer is named Sandor Krasna, but it is really Chris Marker himself.
The letters the woman is reading are really the script Chris Marker wrote.
The film comes in four versions: French, Japanese, German, and English. We get the English version, and our narrator is Alexandra Stewart, a French actress who appears in at least one other movie we will see this year.
She also appeared in a movie called Under the Cherry Moon, directed by the musical sensation Prince. Purple Rain was directed by Albert Magnoli, but Prince directed 3 Chains o' Gold, "Rasberry Beret," Diamonds and Pearls, Get Off, and Sign 'o' the Times, in addition to Under the Cherry Moon.
Chris Marker begins with an image of three girls in Iceland, and the man in the letter tells the woman that he begins with an image of three girls in Iceland. Then he cuts to black, and the man in the letter tells the woman that he cuts to black.
This meta, self-referential opening resembles Orson Welles's meditation F for Fake released in 1973, ten years before Sans Soleil. And the 2002 Spike Jonze feature film Adaptation.
Then the images take off.
We go to different places, mainly Tokyo and Okinawa in Japan, and Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in Africa. We also go to San Francisco, to Paris, and to that beginning and the ending in Iceland.
We see parades, rituals, dances, markets, commuters, warfare, shrines, cats, owls, emus, giraffes, video games, kamikaze pilots, cities, islands, deserts.
There is a parade with people wearing wild, horned masks on their heads, like a Brazilian Carnival in Africa.
There is a commuter train with the commuters asleep, each lying awkwardly across the seats.
There is an animatronic of JFK in a Tokyo shopping mall, with a recording saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Meanwhile, a song plays, in the style of the Andrews Sisters with the lyrics "Ask not what your country can do for you . . ."
The purpose of the JFK animatronic is to sell men's fashion.
Treasures from the Vatican are on tour and on display. On the top floor of a shopping building.
There is a shrine to cats, the maneki nekos, and a shrine to copulation, with giant organs and with taxidermied animals in positions. Including monkeys.
There is an imagined sequence of nightmares, with shots of sleeping commuters interspersed with clips from Japanese horror movies.
There are comparisons between Japan and Africa. Animism priests dropping paper scraps in Japan, and animism priests dropping paper scraps in Africa. A man with a clothed monkey in Africa, and a man with a clothed monkey in Japan.
He shows a ritual performed by a people group he says will die out. They are in Japan but not Japanese. He believes they are the last generation and that the ritual will disappear forever. He implies that he has rescued it for posterity in the nick of time.
We see an African leader placing a medal around the neck of one of his generals. We are told that the leader was killed the next year and that the medal recipient took over power--because he resented not being given a greater promotion.
We see a giraffe hunted and shot, spewing blood and falling.
Some of the images are graphic, some are beautiful, and many, as Marker calls them, mundane.
They juxtapose Japan's ancient traditions with modern technology.
At one point we move to San Francisco, and Krasna, as the woman reads, has been touring the locations that had appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo.
We see footage of James Stewart and Kim Novak. We see the same locations from the movie and from Krasna's footage: the streets, the hotel, the mission, the tower, and the sequoia.
Remember yesterday when we discussed La Jetee. We mentioned that the man who time-travelled went with his girlfriend to a sequoia. Yes, it is this one, and Marker refers to La Jetee in this movie, at this moment.
This film is fascinating and worth watching. It is stream-of-consciousness. The narration can be academic, thoughtful, insightful, propagandistic, or pretentious, but it does not necessarily matter. You may watch the film listening intently to the narration and trying to understand it, or you may watch the film with yourself in stream-of-consciousness, like reading poetry or looking at a painting or listening to classical music, and allow your thoughts to go where they may. Or you may ignore the narration altogether and watch the images. Or you may play it as background.
Marker had a political agenda. But he downplays it in such a way that it does not matter.
In the end the images are beautiful, or mesmerizing when they are not beautiful, or odd when they are not mesmerizing, but always interesting.
Do you take videos when you go on vacation?
What if you put them together.
What if you make a film like this film from your own travels. What if you travel to make your film.
Look for real people doing real things. Look for the mundane, the routine, and also the unusual.
Tell the story. In a thousand words. Or one picture. Or a thousand pictures.
Worth a million words.
015 - Sans Soleil, 1983, France. Dir. Chris Marker.
Do you take videos when you go on vacation?
Did your dad do it when you were a kid? On Super 8mm film or VHS-C or Video8 or DVC or some other medium?
Now you use your phone. Or a DSLR or a mirrorless camera.
Sans Soleil is a travel documentary, or more properly, a travel essay film, focused on Africa and Japan, tied together with philosophical ideas told in voice-over.
It is a meditation on memory. It is bright and colorful. It is cultural and political. It is thoughtful and rambling. It is detached and non-judgmental. It is stream-of-conscious. It is engaging.
Chris Marker travelled everywhere. And he filmed everything he saw. On 16mm color film, using a Beaulieu R16.
He thought about it, edited it, and recorded his thoughts about it--here in a fictional format, in the guise of a woman's reading of the letters sent back to her by a travelling cinematographer.
The travelling cinematographer is named Sandor Krasna, but it is really Chris Marker himself.
The letters the woman is reading are really the script Chris Marker wrote.
The film comes in four versions: French, Japanese, German, and English. We get the English version, and our narrator is Alexandra Stewart, a French actress who appears in at least one other movie we will see this year.
She also appeared in a movie called Under the Cherry Moon, directed by the musical sensation Prince. Purple Rain was directed by Albert Magnoli, but Prince directed 3 Chains o' Gold, "Rasberry Beret," Diamonds and Pearls, Get Off, and Sign 'o' the Times, in addition to Under the Cherry Moon.
Chris Marker begins with an image of three girls in Iceland, and the man in the letter tells the woman that he begins with an image of three girls in Iceland. Then he cuts to black, and the man in the letter tells the woman that he cuts to black.
This meta, self-referential opening resembles Orson Welles's meditation F for Fake released in 1973, ten years before Sans Soleil. And the 2002 Spike Jonze feature film Adaptation.
Then the images take off.
We go to different places, mainly Tokyo and Okinawa in Japan, and Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in Africa. We also go to San Francisco, to Paris, and to that beginning and the ending in Iceland.
We see parades, rituals, dances, markets, commuters, warfare, shrines, cats, owls, emus, giraffes, video games, kamikaze pilots, cities, islands, deserts.
There is a parade with people wearing wild, horned masks on their heads, like a Brazilian Carnival in Africa.
There is a commuter train with the commuters asleep, each lying awkwardly across the seats.
There is an animatronic of JFK in a Tokyo shopping mall, with a recording saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." Meanwhile, a song plays, in the style of the Andrews Sisters with the lyrics "Ask not what your country can do for you . . ."
The purpose of the JFK animatronic is to sell men's fashion.
Treasures from the Vatican are on tour and on display. On the top floor of a shopping building.
There is a shrine to cats, the maneki nekos, and a shrine to copulation, with giant organs and with taxidermied animals in positions. Including monkeys.
There is an imagined sequence of nightmares, with shots of sleeping commuters interspersed with clips from Japanese horror movies.
There are comparisons between Japan and Africa. Animism priests dropping paper scraps in Japan, and animism priests dropping paper scraps in Africa. A man with a clothed monkey in Africa, and a man with a clothed monkey in Japan.
He shows a ritual performed by a people group he says will die out. They are in Japan but not Japanese. He believes they are the last generation and that the ritual will disappear forever. He implies that he has rescued it for posterity in the nick of time.
We see an African leader placing a medal around the neck of one of his generals. We are told that the leader was killed the next year and that the medal recipient took over power--because he resented not being given a greater promotion.
We see a giraffe hunted and shot, spewing blood and falling.
Some of the images are graphic, some are beautiful, and many, as Marker calls them, mundane.
They juxtapose Japan's ancient traditions with modern technology.
At one point we move to San Francisco, and Krasna, as the woman reads, has been touring the locations that had appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock movie Vertigo.
We see footage of James Stewart and Kim Novak. We see the same locations from the movie and from Krasna's footage: the streets, the hotel, the mission, the tower, and the sequoia.
Remember yesterday when we discussed La Jetee. We mentioned that the man who time-travelled went with his girlfriend to a sequoia. Yes, it is this one, and Marker refers to La Jetee in this movie, at this moment.
This film is fascinating and worth watching. It is stream-of-consciousness. The narration can be academic, thoughtful, insightful, propagandistic, or pretentious, but it does not necessarily matter. You may watch the film listening intently to the narration and trying to understand it, or you may watch the film with yourself in stream-of-consciousness, like reading poetry or looking at a painting or listening to classical music, and allow your thoughts to go where they may. Or you may ignore the narration altogether and watch the images. Or you may play it as background.
Marker had a political agenda. But he downplays it in such a way that it does not matter.
In the end the images are beautiful, or mesmerizing when they are not beautiful, or odd when they are not mesmerizing, but always interesting.
Do you take videos when you go on vacation?
What if you put them together.
What if you make a film like this film from your own travels. What if you travel to make your film.
Look for real people doing real things. Look for the mundane, the routine, and also the unusual.
Tell the story. In a thousand words. Or one picture. Or a thousand pictures.
Worth a million words.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
014 - La Jetee, 1963, France; Dir. Chris Marker.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
014 - La Jetee, 1963, France. Dir. Chris Marker.
Have you ever been haunted by a memory?
What is your earliest memory that has stayed with you the longest?
Do you have any images of childhood that continue to influence you today.
Have you ever had deja vu?
You are in a place, in a moment, and suddenly it seems as though you have been there before, in that moment. The layout of the room, the objects, the people, the things people say and the order in which they say them. You have experienced it before.
"The memory of a twice-lived fragment of time."
What if the deja vu, the experience in the present, were a memory from the past?
Could a memory from your past be an image from your future?
Let us meet a man who has had this happen to him.
He is a little boy, and his parents take him to the airport to watch the planes take off and land. He is happy.
La Jetee means the jetty, and it is translated as pier. It refers to the rooftop deck of the airport terminal, in this case in the city of Orly in France.
Imagine an airport terminal, that long strip of building where the planes pull up and park on each side, and the travelers embark and disembark through portable hallway bridges called jetways.
Now imagine that the rooftop had been constructed as one long deck available for visitors to walk out on and watch the planes.
Like a jetty. Or a pier. Only instead of going out into the water, it goes out into the tarmac. This is how it used to be.
The boy on the pier sees two things. One is a beautiful woman. The other is a man die.
That moment on that day remains with him, as you can imagine. He will remember the woman's face for the rest of his life.
Years pass. He grows up. The world goes to war. World War 3. Paris is destroyed.
Some survivors become leaders. Others become victims. They live underground in the catacombs, as the surface is filled with deadly radioactivity.
The leaders begin to conduct experiments to save society. They need someone to travel through time to rescue the present. If a man could go to the future, he could retrieve a power plant strong enough to put all human industry in motion again
They select our man. His memory from childhood makes his brain strong enough to withstand the rigors of time travel. He does not know, however, that they will be sending him to the future. They must lure him first, by sending him to the pleasant places of the past.
He wants to meet the woman.
They conduct experiments. Time travel is not easy.
On the 10th day he begins to see images.
On the 16th day he arrives at the pier at Orly. He sees different women. He tries to find the one.
On the 30th day he finds her. He is sure she is the one. But while he is discovering the world around him, she disappears.
The experimenters send him back. He finds her again. She responds like a dream. "He says something. She doesn't mind. She answers."
They begin to spend time together. They go on walks. They go to gardens. They look at a sequoia tree. They go to museums. They go to one particular museum. They develop trust. They fall in love.
The experimenters continue to send him back and he continues to meet her. She takes it as natural that he appears and disappears out of what is to her the future. She calls him her ghost. He never knows whether he is acting completely freely or whether he is being driven, whether he is fully experiencing it or whether it is a dream.
Eventually he returns to the present, to the laboratory, and he realizes that the experimenters were sending him to the past to practice and develop their ability to time travel, and that his real mission is to go to the future to retrieve the power plant.
He does so, but now he is being chased, chased through time, chased by men who want to kill him.
He brings back the power plant. The present is saved. He asks to go back to the time at Orly with the woman, where he will feel safe and happy and loved.
He does.
He arrives on the pier. He sees her. He runs to her. But he also sees the man who has been chasing him and he realizes that he cannot escape time.
He remembers the memory of his childhood, of seeing the beautiful woman and of seeing a man die.
Now he knows who the man is that he saw die when he was a child.
Watch the movie and find out whom.
La Jetee is 27 minutes long, and it is a slide show.
A slide show.
The word movies is short for moving pictures. This is a series of still pictures. Is it a movie? Or is it a set of stills?
A stillie.
Chris Marker was in the middle of filming a travel documentary when he had this idea. It came to him all at once. He took a camera and some people and went and shot still pictures and pieced them together into a montage that tells this story.
Criterion calls it, "One of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made."
It influenced the plot of Terry Gilliam's film 12 Monkeys.
It influenced David Bowie's music video "Jump They Say."
If you have ever watched a movie and used the phrase dystopian future to describe it, then it may have been influenced by this film.
Chris Marker himself tells the story of making a montage when he was a child, using a device known as a Patheorama, a story told by a series of stills.
He showed it to his friend. His friend criticized him. "Movies are supposed to move, stupid. Nobody can do a movie with still images."
Chris says, "Thirty years passed. Then I made La Jetee."
The rest is history.
See you at the stills.
014 - La Jetee, 1963, France. Dir. Chris Marker.
Have you ever been haunted by a memory?
What is your earliest memory that has stayed with you the longest?
Do you have any images of childhood that continue to influence you today.
Have you ever had deja vu?
You are in a place, in a moment, and suddenly it seems as though you have been there before, in that moment. The layout of the room, the objects, the people, the things people say and the order in which they say them. You have experienced it before.
"The memory of a twice-lived fragment of time."
What if the deja vu, the experience in the present, were a memory from the past?
Could a memory from your past be an image from your future?
Let us meet a man who has had this happen to him.
He is a little boy, and his parents take him to the airport to watch the planes take off and land. He is happy.
La Jetee means the jetty, and it is translated as pier. It refers to the rooftop deck of the airport terminal, in this case in the city of Orly in France.
Imagine an airport terminal, that long strip of building where the planes pull up and park on each side, and the travelers embark and disembark through portable hallway bridges called jetways.
Now imagine that the rooftop had been constructed as one long deck available for visitors to walk out on and watch the planes.
Like a jetty. Or a pier. Only instead of going out into the water, it goes out into the tarmac. This is how it used to be.
The boy on the pier sees two things. One is a beautiful woman. The other is a man die.
That moment on that day remains with him, as you can imagine. He will remember the woman's face for the rest of his life.
Years pass. He grows up. The world goes to war. World War 3. Paris is destroyed.
Some survivors become leaders. Others become victims. They live underground in the catacombs, as the surface is filled with deadly radioactivity.
The leaders begin to conduct experiments to save society. They need someone to travel through time to rescue the present. If a man could go to the future, he could retrieve a power plant strong enough to put all human industry in motion again
They select our man. His memory from childhood makes his brain strong enough to withstand the rigors of time travel. He does not know, however, that they will be sending him to the future. They must lure him first, by sending him to the pleasant places of the past.
He wants to meet the woman.
They conduct experiments. Time travel is not easy.
On the 10th day he begins to see images.
On the 16th day he arrives at the pier at Orly. He sees different women. He tries to find the one.
On the 30th day he finds her. He is sure she is the one. But while he is discovering the world around him, she disappears.
The experimenters send him back. He finds her again. She responds like a dream. "He says something. She doesn't mind. She answers."
They begin to spend time together. They go on walks. They go to gardens. They look at a sequoia tree. They go to museums. They go to one particular museum. They develop trust. They fall in love.
The experimenters continue to send him back and he continues to meet her. She takes it as natural that he appears and disappears out of what is to her the future. She calls him her ghost. He never knows whether he is acting completely freely or whether he is being driven, whether he is fully experiencing it or whether it is a dream.
Eventually he returns to the present, to the laboratory, and he realizes that the experimenters were sending him to the past to practice and develop their ability to time travel, and that his real mission is to go to the future to retrieve the power plant.
He does so, but now he is being chased, chased through time, chased by men who want to kill him.
He brings back the power plant. The present is saved. He asks to go back to the time at Orly with the woman, where he will feel safe and happy and loved.
He does.
He arrives on the pier. He sees her. He runs to her. But he also sees the man who has been chasing him and he realizes that he cannot escape time.
He remembers the memory of his childhood, of seeing the beautiful woman and of seeing a man die.
Now he knows who the man is that he saw die when he was a child.
Watch the movie and find out whom.
La Jetee is 27 minutes long, and it is a slide show.
A slide show.
The word movies is short for moving pictures. This is a series of still pictures. Is it a movie? Or is it a set of stills?
A stillie.
Chris Marker was in the middle of filming a travel documentary when he had this idea. It came to him all at once. He took a camera and some people and went and shot still pictures and pieced them together into a montage that tells this story.
Criterion calls it, "One of the most influential, radical science-fiction films ever made."
It influenced the plot of Terry Gilliam's film 12 Monkeys.
It influenced David Bowie's music video "Jump They Say."
If you have ever watched a movie and used the phrase dystopian future to describe it, then it may have been influenced by this film.
Chris Marker himself tells the story of making a montage when he was a child, using a device known as a Patheorama, a story told by a series of stills.
He showed it to his friend. His friend criticized him. "Movies are supposed to move, stupid. Nobody can do a movie with still images."
Chris says, "Thirty years passed. Then I made La Jetee."
The rest is history.
See you at the stills.
Friday, January 13, 2017
013 - Vivre Sa Vie (To Live Her Life), 1962, France; Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Friday, January 13, 2017
013 - Vivre Sa Vie (To Live Her Life), 1962, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Is she a lady or a tramp?
That is the question Raoul asks about Nana. Raoul is the guy standing by the pinball machine at the bistro. (The sign says bistro. They translate it café.) He is a pimp. He wants to test Nana to see if she qualifies for employment.
The test is to insult her. If she gets angry, she is a tramp. If she smiles, she is a lady. Raoul approaches Nana at the booth. He insults her. She smiles. She is a lady.
This qualifies her for employment.
Welcome to the French New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague. Memorize this phrase.
The movement consisted of a group of young film critics who loved cinema and were driven by enthusiasm and new ideals. Five of them changed jobs, from critic to filmmaker, and made an impact on filmmaking worldwide.
When the New Wave was new, it was exciting. Directors came out with new movies, and people went to see them. They talked about them. Film felt fresh, original, daring.
One of the five men was Jean-Luc Godard. He was the most experimental, and he is still alive. His counterparts were Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. A few others joined the group or are considered a part of the French New Wave, but these five constitute the original group.
This film, Vivre Sa Vie, literally means "To Live Her Life." It was shown in America as "Her Life to Live" or "My Life to Live." It is about a woman who chooses her life, but those choices take her in a declining direction. She leaves her husband and child to become an actress. She talks to men about taking pictures for her. She struggles to survive. She cannot pay her rent. She turns to prostitution. It does not turn out well for her in the end.
Godard shoots in the style for which he will become known--by placing the camera in unusual positions, backlighting the actors (placing their faces in shadow), cutting in unusual places, featuring cinema within cinema, and including in-jokes.
Godard divides the film into twelve chapters, which he calls tableaux. Each begins with a title. His real-life wife, Anna Karina, plays the aspiring actress Nana Kleinfrankenheim. (Say that name ten times fast!) Nana sells records.
Nana sells records!
Remember our first movie, People on Sunday from Germany, 1930. Brigitte sold records. Now here in Vivre Sa Vie, from France, 1962, Nana sells records. Popular culture is important in these films, and music is integral. At one point a man enters the bistro and starts a record in the jukebox. In real life he was the man singing the song. At another point Nana starts a record in a jukebox and dances around a pool table. The music is exhilarating. Her dancing is energetic.
Nana also goes to the movies. She sees The Passion of Joan of Arc, the 1928 film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. (In a few weeks we will see it too!) Godard features a beautiful profile shot of a few people sitting in the theater with the light spilling on their faces. We see Joan of Arc's eyes and her tears, and we hear her voice as she prepares to die. Is this foreshadowing?
We begin the film by looking at Anna directly as the credits role. She stares into the camera. We see her head-on. We see her in profile. Is it a headshot, a model shot, a mug shot, a trick shot?
When the credits finish the story begins, and we watch Nana and her husband in the bistro, from behind, staring at the backs of their heads. In other conversations throughout the film we will watch people from different angles, including the backs of their heads.
This is a great film for cinema enthusiasts and film school students. It experiments with the mechanics of filmmaking, as Godard frequently did.
However, it does have its limitations. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, and we do not see the eyes of the characters, then we are limited as to how much we can see into their souls.
Throughout the film we want to know more about Nana. What motivates her? What drives her? We want to empathize with her, care about her. But we are given little information.
Why does she leave her husband and child? Does she really want to be an actress? How does she feel about this new profession she has chosen?
Where is the character development?
At one point the film turns into a documentary on prostitution. As Raoul drives her to her new job a voice-over explains the profession with details and specifics. At another point Nana enters a restaurant and has an intellectual conversation with real-life philosopher. Next she has a literary conversation about "Edgar Poe" with a man who may be her new boyfriend. All of these things are academic, in the head.
Where is the heart?
While Godard's mechanics seemed fresh and daring in 1962, they serve as a distraction today. A gimmick.
The goal is to create fully developed characters and to tell great stories.
Jean-Luc Godard is an important filmmaker, but this film is not for everyone.
013 - Vivre Sa Vie (To Live Her Life), 1962, France. Dir. Jean-Luc Godard.
Is she a lady or a tramp?
That is the question Raoul asks about Nana. Raoul is the guy standing by the pinball machine at the bistro. (The sign says bistro. They translate it café.) He is a pimp. He wants to test Nana to see if she qualifies for employment.
The test is to insult her. If she gets angry, she is a tramp. If she smiles, she is a lady. Raoul approaches Nana at the booth. He insults her. She smiles. She is a lady.
This qualifies her for employment.
Welcome to the French New Wave, or Nouvelle Vague. Memorize this phrase.
The movement consisted of a group of young film critics who loved cinema and were driven by enthusiasm and new ideals. Five of them changed jobs, from critic to filmmaker, and made an impact on filmmaking worldwide.
When the New Wave was new, it was exciting. Directors came out with new movies, and people went to see them. They talked about them. Film felt fresh, original, daring.
One of the five men was Jean-Luc Godard. He was the most experimental, and he is still alive. His counterparts were Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, and Jacques Rivette. A few others joined the group or are considered a part of the French New Wave, but these five constitute the original group.
This film, Vivre Sa Vie, literally means "To Live Her Life." It was shown in America as "Her Life to Live" or "My Life to Live." It is about a woman who chooses her life, but those choices take her in a declining direction. She leaves her husband and child to become an actress. She talks to men about taking pictures for her. She struggles to survive. She cannot pay her rent. She turns to prostitution. It does not turn out well for her in the end.
Godard shoots in the style for which he will become known--by placing the camera in unusual positions, backlighting the actors (placing their faces in shadow), cutting in unusual places, featuring cinema within cinema, and including in-jokes.
Godard divides the film into twelve chapters, which he calls tableaux. Each begins with a title. His real-life wife, Anna Karina, plays the aspiring actress Nana Kleinfrankenheim. (Say that name ten times fast!) Nana sells records.
Nana sells records!
Remember our first movie, People on Sunday from Germany, 1930. Brigitte sold records. Now here in Vivre Sa Vie, from France, 1962, Nana sells records. Popular culture is important in these films, and music is integral. At one point a man enters the bistro and starts a record in the jukebox. In real life he was the man singing the song. At another point Nana starts a record in a jukebox and dances around a pool table. The music is exhilarating. Her dancing is energetic.
Nana also goes to the movies. She sees The Passion of Joan of Arc, the 1928 film by Carl Theodor Dreyer. (In a few weeks we will see it too!) Godard features a beautiful profile shot of a few people sitting in the theater with the light spilling on their faces. We see Joan of Arc's eyes and her tears, and we hear her voice as she prepares to die. Is this foreshadowing?
We begin the film by looking at Anna directly as the credits role. She stares into the camera. We see her head-on. We see her in profile. Is it a headshot, a model shot, a mug shot, a trick shot?
When the credits finish the story begins, and we watch Nana and her husband in the bistro, from behind, staring at the backs of their heads. In other conversations throughout the film we will watch people from different angles, including the backs of their heads.
This is a great film for cinema enthusiasts and film school students. It experiments with the mechanics of filmmaking, as Godard frequently did.
However, it does have its limitations. If the eyes are the windows of the soul, and we do not see the eyes of the characters, then we are limited as to how much we can see into their souls.
Throughout the film we want to know more about Nana. What motivates her? What drives her? We want to empathize with her, care about her. But we are given little information.
Why does she leave her husband and child? Does she really want to be an actress? How does she feel about this new profession she has chosen?
Where is the character development?
At one point the film turns into a documentary on prostitution. As Raoul drives her to her new job a voice-over explains the profession with details and specifics. At another point Nana enters a restaurant and has an intellectual conversation with real-life philosopher. Next she has a literary conversation about "Edgar Poe" with a man who may be her new boyfriend. All of these things are academic, in the head.
Where is the heart?
While Godard's mechanics seemed fresh and daring in 1962, they serve as a distraction today. A gimmick.
The goal is to create fully developed characters and to tell great stories.
Jean-Luc Godard is an important filmmaker, but this film is not for everyone.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
012 - Leon Morin, Priest, 1961, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
012 - Leon Morin, Priest, 1961, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.
This movie is special.
It is about an atheist woman in an intellectual relationship with a Catholic priest.
She goes to Mass to play a joke on him. He asks for her confession and she states, "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
He does not flinch.
He engages her, and they begin a dialectical conversation that will last for years.
He respects her, values her, challenges her.
She falls in love with him.
He does not flinch.
The War ends. Their lives change. Her life changes.
Does she convert?
Watch and see.
Jean-Pierre Melville was the great French director just before the generation of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). He was known for gritty crime dramas, but he also made films about the French resistance during World War 2. He had lived it.
Jean-Paul Belmondo, who plays the priest, was a hot movie star and the last person the public would have expected to play the role of the chaste intellectual priest. It was on his shoulders that the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) had come into existence, with Jean-Luc Godard's explosive movie Breathless. He was the bad boy.
But he is an actor, and like all great actors, he enjoyed playing different parts, exploring different personalities, becoming different people. He loved the challenge of transforming himself for this role.
Emmanuelle Riva had burst on the scene in Hiroshima Mon Amour, a French film made in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bomb. In that film she played a French actress falling in love with a Japanese man. Juicy. The good news is we will be watching it later this year.
In this movie she plays the role with which you may find parallels in Anne Bancroft in 84 Charing Cross Road--the smart woman, a widow with a young daughter, working through what is important to her in a long-term conversation, debate, correspondence with a man. Leon Morin and Barny (her character name) develop a great friendship, and it outlasts the war and their own personal challenges.
What makes this movie special are the players, the script, and the overarching presence of the German occupation during World War 2.
Earlier I referred to Revanche as a film for adults, not only in its graphic portrayal of the subject matter, but also in its exploration of the matters of the soul.
Leon Morin, Priest is also a film for adults, not only in its treatment of desire and its use of the setting, but also in its exploration of the matters of the soul.
As for desire, our lady Barny has two forbidden desires, first for a female coworker and second for the priest. She works through them sincerely. She introduces other women to the priest and they fall for him too, one openly trying to seduce him. As for the setting, genocide is happening around them. People's family members are disappearing. When they are liberated, it is an American soldier, one of the "good guys," who attempts to violate her. And as for the matters of the soul, questions of doubt and faith are addressed openly and without flinching.
Jean-Pierre Melville, the director, was an atheist. Yet he respected the source material enough (Beatrix Beck's novel) to play it straight. The result is that the film allows the subject matter room to breathe. The characters discuss theology frankly and freely, and work through it. The viewer can engage in the conversation and think through it as well.
Art holds up a mirror to nature. Theology is in the deepest part of our nature. Do we believe in God? How do we respond to the forces of guilt and grace, sin and forgiveness, fear and love? How do we deal with death, loneliness, carnal desire, and emotional attachment in a world of racism, genocide, and war?
The film does not answer these questions.
It tells a story.
You get to work through it.
Or simply enjoy the journey.
012 - Leon Morin, Priest, 1961, France. Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville.
This movie is special.
It is about an atheist woman in an intellectual relationship with a Catholic priest.
She goes to Mass to play a joke on him. He asks for her confession and she states, "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
He does not flinch.
He engages her, and they begin a dialectical conversation that will last for years.
He respects her, values her, challenges her.
She falls in love with him.
He does not flinch.
The War ends. Their lives change. Her life changes.
Does she convert?
Watch and see.
Jean-Pierre Melville was the great French director just before the generation of the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave). He was known for gritty crime dramas, but he also made films about the French resistance during World War 2. He had lived it.
Jean-Paul Belmondo, who plays the priest, was a hot movie star and the last person the public would have expected to play the role of the chaste intellectual priest. It was on his shoulders that the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) had come into existence, with Jean-Luc Godard's explosive movie Breathless. He was the bad boy.
But he is an actor, and like all great actors, he enjoyed playing different parts, exploring different personalities, becoming different people. He loved the challenge of transforming himself for this role.
Emmanuelle Riva had burst on the scene in Hiroshima Mon Amour, a French film made in Japan in the immediate aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bomb. In that film she played a French actress falling in love with a Japanese man. Juicy. The good news is we will be watching it later this year.
In this movie she plays the role with which you may find parallels in Anne Bancroft in 84 Charing Cross Road--the smart woman, a widow with a young daughter, working through what is important to her in a long-term conversation, debate, correspondence with a man. Leon Morin and Barny (her character name) develop a great friendship, and it outlasts the war and their own personal challenges.
What makes this movie special are the players, the script, and the overarching presence of the German occupation during World War 2.
Earlier I referred to Revanche as a film for adults, not only in its graphic portrayal of the subject matter, but also in its exploration of the matters of the soul.
Leon Morin, Priest is also a film for adults, not only in its treatment of desire and its use of the setting, but also in its exploration of the matters of the soul.
As for desire, our lady Barny has two forbidden desires, first for a female coworker and second for the priest. She works through them sincerely. She introduces other women to the priest and they fall for him too, one openly trying to seduce him. As for the setting, genocide is happening around them. People's family members are disappearing. When they are liberated, it is an American soldier, one of the "good guys," who attempts to violate her. And as for the matters of the soul, questions of doubt and faith are addressed openly and without flinching.
Jean-Pierre Melville, the director, was an atheist. Yet he respected the source material enough (Beatrix Beck's novel) to play it straight. The result is that the film allows the subject matter room to breathe. The characters discuss theology frankly and freely, and work through it. The viewer can engage in the conversation and think through it as well.
Art holds up a mirror to nature. Theology is in the deepest part of our nature. Do we believe in God? How do we respond to the forces of guilt and grace, sin and forgiveness, fear and love? How do we deal with death, loneliness, carnal desire, and emotional attachment in a world of racism, genocide, and war?
The film does not answer these questions.
It tells a story.
You get to work through it.
Or simply enjoy the journey.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
011 - Parade, 1974, France; Dir. Jacques Tati.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
011 - Parade, 1974, France. Dir. Jacques Tati.
Do you have a favorite artist from when you were younger, whom you still love to see perform today?
What if you could watch The Rolling Stones perform "Start Me Up," the Eagles perform "Hotel California," or U2 sing their entire Joshua Tree album live in concert this year. Willie Nelson is still on the road singing "On the Road Again." Bob Hope first sang "Thanks for the Memory" in 1938, and he was still singing it in 1990.
When Jacques Tati aired the television variety show Parade in 1974 featuring his performing of acts that had put him on the map in the 1930s, it was special.
He had played tennis and ridden horses in real life.
He had an act where he mimed playing tennis and riding horses.
This act catapulted him to stardom in the French music halls and opened the doors for him to be a filmmaker. Now at the end of his career, he is bringing it back to the people.
Parade is a filmed variety show, with a circus, in an intimate venue. It feels as though perhaps we are getting a taste of the music hall, taken back to the 1930s but with 1970s characters. It includes miming, juggling, magic tricks, acrobatics, donkeys, a classical band, a rock band, dancing, audience participation, and children. It also showcases Jacques Tati, performing for his fans again, for new ones the first time, and generously sharing with his fellow performers and audience.
It begins with audience members lining up outside. Two of them, a young man and woman, pick up orange traffic cones and put them on their heads, instantly transforming themselves into clowns. People take their seats. They are dressed in the hippie clothing of the time, vibrant with color, like clowns in the audience, creating a backdrop suitable for the show.
The show itself is fun, light-hearted, innocent, and full of energy.
Tati is himself, not Francois from Jour de Fete, not M. Hulot from everything else, but Tati, as if he is everyone's Uncle Tati. You could call him Mon Oncle Tati.
The performers play off of one another in creative ways. A hockey team watches the classical brass band and then spontaneously begins tumbling over the piano--which turns out not to be the piano but a tumbling horse. The hockey team turns out to be the acrobats who will return throughout the show dressed as various people.
One magician shows a trick. The second one tops it. A man in the audience stands up and does even better.
Some painters begin juggling their paint brushes, and it turns into an impressively accomplished juggling act. A woman juggles three brushes. A man walks up behind her and joins her, reaching to the left, reaching to the right, back and forth, sharing the brushes with her. Then he steps in front of her, taking over the brushes. Then she steps in front of him. The two rotate positions without the objects ever changing their arc. The woman backs up. She comes forward between his legs and stands up. They keep it going. Then he backs up. He runs forward and jumps over her head, landing in front of her, keeping the objects going. Throughout the act, the objects keep rotating in the air in the same fashion, as the man and woman move back and forth with one another, working together in tandem, with no hint of tension or difficulty. They just keep it going effortlessly.
Then a man stands on top of another and the woman stands on top of the two men. They all juggle paint brushes seamlessly at the three levels of height. Magically, paint begins to appear on the wall behind them as if their juggling paintbrushes are painting the wall.
How about this one: two men are playing musical instruments. They play a few measures and get to a pause and one of them shouts, "Hey!" The other one looks at him disapprovingly. Everyone laughs. They play a few more measures and get to a pause. The second one looks over disapprovingly in anticipation but the first one says nothing. So they start again. Then the first one shouts, "Hey!" It is so simple, so childlike, so silly, and yet it is carried off with such finesse that you cannot help but laugh.
Here, try it yourself.
Da da da da da da da da da, da da da da da da da da da. Hey! (Glance.)
Da da da da da da da da da, da da da da da da da da da. (Glance.) Hey!
Another funny act is when a woman brings a donkey into a ring and asks the audience who would like to volunteer to ride it. Various people try, but the donkey is irascible and knocks them over in humorous ways. A middle-aged man stands up in the audience, wanting to take a turn. His wife grabs him and makes him sit back down. He tries again. She stops him. Finally, he breaks free from her and runs on stage. The donkey starts to kick him, and he flees in fear. He trips over the ring and falls on his face. The audience laughs. He goes to his seat and misses, landing on the concrete step beside his wife. The audience laughs.
Another donkey comes out, this one even harder to ride. More people try. A child approaches and runs back. The man in the audience tries again. His wife tries harder to stop him, this time chasing him halfway down the steps. He makes it into the ring and onto the donkey, and the donkey drags him around the ring like a rag doll. Everyone laughs. Clearly he is a plant, a staged performer pretending to be an audience member, but it is carried off with such believability that you either do not realize it or do not care. They sell it, and it feels real.
Jacques Tati's miming is exceptional.
When he plays tennis as they did in the 1930s, he dresses up a little bit, and he affects the posture and physicality that you believe you have seen your whole life--either in old pictures or old movies. He transforms himself.
When he plays soccer, he is the goal keeper, and you can see him growing bored when the play is at the other end of the field, trying to stay engaged. Suddenly the ball comes and he perks up. He makes a save and puts it back into play. This goes on for a bit until he is scored upon. Suddenly, he is morose and feigns injury, limping off the field.
When he rides a horse, he portrays the horse from the waist down and the rider from the waist up. This is why critics would call him the human centaur. He affects different steps of the horse as well.
When the rock band starts playing, Jacques Tati comes out and dances. He has not choreographed it. He is just having a good time.
At the end of the show everyone has exited except two children. Their individual parents remain in the seats watching them as they play with the objects on stage, one painting, one blowing the trumpet. They speak to the innocence and generosity that Tati has placed in his work.
There is an underlying sadness that comes from his personal life, but we will leave that for another time.
Tati has given the world something unique. This show is a fitting tribute to cap a life of wide-eyed wonder-filled artistry.
Hey!
011 - Parade, 1974, France. Dir. Jacques Tati.
Do you have a favorite artist from when you were younger, whom you still love to see perform today?
What if you could watch The Rolling Stones perform "Start Me Up," the Eagles perform "Hotel California," or U2 sing their entire Joshua Tree album live in concert this year. Willie Nelson is still on the road singing "On the Road Again." Bob Hope first sang "Thanks for the Memory" in 1938, and he was still singing it in 1990.
When Jacques Tati aired the television variety show Parade in 1974 featuring his performing of acts that had put him on the map in the 1930s, it was special.
He had played tennis and ridden horses in real life.
He had an act where he mimed playing tennis and riding horses.
This act catapulted him to stardom in the French music halls and opened the doors for him to be a filmmaker. Now at the end of his career, he is bringing it back to the people.
Parade is a filmed variety show, with a circus, in an intimate venue. It feels as though perhaps we are getting a taste of the music hall, taken back to the 1930s but with 1970s characters. It includes miming, juggling, magic tricks, acrobatics, donkeys, a classical band, a rock band, dancing, audience participation, and children. It also showcases Jacques Tati, performing for his fans again, for new ones the first time, and generously sharing with his fellow performers and audience.
It begins with audience members lining up outside. Two of them, a young man and woman, pick up orange traffic cones and put them on their heads, instantly transforming themselves into clowns. People take their seats. They are dressed in the hippie clothing of the time, vibrant with color, like clowns in the audience, creating a backdrop suitable for the show.
The show itself is fun, light-hearted, innocent, and full of energy.
Tati is himself, not Francois from Jour de Fete, not M. Hulot from everything else, but Tati, as if he is everyone's Uncle Tati. You could call him Mon Oncle Tati.
The performers play off of one another in creative ways. A hockey team watches the classical brass band and then spontaneously begins tumbling over the piano--which turns out not to be the piano but a tumbling horse. The hockey team turns out to be the acrobats who will return throughout the show dressed as various people.
One magician shows a trick. The second one tops it. A man in the audience stands up and does even better.
Some painters begin juggling their paint brushes, and it turns into an impressively accomplished juggling act. A woman juggles three brushes. A man walks up behind her and joins her, reaching to the left, reaching to the right, back and forth, sharing the brushes with her. Then he steps in front of her, taking over the brushes. Then she steps in front of him. The two rotate positions without the objects ever changing their arc. The woman backs up. She comes forward between his legs and stands up. They keep it going. Then he backs up. He runs forward and jumps over her head, landing in front of her, keeping the objects going. Throughout the act, the objects keep rotating in the air in the same fashion, as the man and woman move back and forth with one another, working together in tandem, with no hint of tension or difficulty. They just keep it going effortlessly.
Then a man stands on top of another and the woman stands on top of the two men. They all juggle paint brushes seamlessly at the three levels of height. Magically, paint begins to appear on the wall behind them as if their juggling paintbrushes are painting the wall.
How about this one: two men are playing musical instruments. They play a few measures and get to a pause and one of them shouts, "Hey!" The other one looks at him disapprovingly. Everyone laughs. They play a few more measures and get to a pause. The second one looks over disapprovingly in anticipation but the first one says nothing. So they start again. Then the first one shouts, "Hey!" It is so simple, so childlike, so silly, and yet it is carried off with such finesse that you cannot help but laugh.
Here, try it yourself.
Da da da da da da da da da, da da da da da da da da da. Hey! (Glance.)
Da da da da da da da da da, da da da da da da da da da. (Glance.) Hey!
Another funny act is when a woman brings a donkey into a ring and asks the audience who would like to volunteer to ride it. Various people try, but the donkey is irascible and knocks them over in humorous ways. A middle-aged man stands up in the audience, wanting to take a turn. His wife grabs him and makes him sit back down. He tries again. She stops him. Finally, he breaks free from her and runs on stage. The donkey starts to kick him, and he flees in fear. He trips over the ring and falls on his face. The audience laughs. He goes to his seat and misses, landing on the concrete step beside his wife. The audience laughs.
Another donkey comes out, this one even harder to ride. More people try. A child approaches and runs back. The man in the audience tries again. His wife tries harder to stop him, this time chasing him halfway down the steps. He makes it into the ring and onto the donkey, and the donkey drags him around the ring like a rag doll. Everyone laughs. Clearly he is a plant, a staged performer pretending to be an audience member, but it is carried off with such believability that you either do not realize it or do not care. They sell it, and it feels real.
Jacques Tati's miming is exceptional.
When he plays tennis as they did in the 1930s, he dresses up a little bit, and he affects the posture and physicality that you believe you have seen your whole life--either in old pictures or old movies. He transforms himself.
When he plays soccer, he is the goal keeper, and you can see him growing bored when the play is at the other end of the field, trying to stay engaged. Suddenly the ball comes and he perks up. He makes a save and puts it back into play. This goes on for a bit until he is scored upon. Suddenly, he is morose and feigns injury, limping off the field.
When he rides a horse, he portrays the horse from the waist down and the rider from the waist up. This is why critics would call him the human centaur. He affects different steps of the horse as well.
When the rock band starts playing, Jacques Tati comes out and dances. He has not choreographed it. He is just having a good time.
At the end of the show everyone has exited except two children. Their individual parents remain in the seats watching them as they play with the objects on stage, one painting, one blowing the trumpet. They speak to the innocence and generosity that Tati has placed in his work.
There is an underlying sadness that comes from his personal life, but we will leave that for another time.
Tati has given the world something unique. This show is a fitting tribute to cap a life of wide-eyed wonder-filled artistry.
Hey!
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
010 - Trafic, 1971, France; Dir. Jacques Tati.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
010 - Trafic, 1971, France. Dir. Jacques Tati.
Have you ever read Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse?
What I hear people say most often about it is, "When are they ever going to get to the lighthouse?"
Throughout the novel they try to make it there. They keep delaying. By the end of the novel, ten years later, they finally set out for the lighthouse. Meanwhile, Lily completes her painting and feels content.
Jacques Tati's movie Trafic could be called To the Car Show. When are they ever going to get there? Only instead of philosophical musings they have physical bumblings along the way.
In some ways Trafic is my favorite Jacques Tati movie. Yes, PlayTime is bigger, longer, more brilliant, and with more set pieces and sight gags. And the sequence in the restaurant The Royal Garden is fantastic. PlayTime is a tour de force. But Trafic has a story. And characters. And something else I will tell you about in a minute.
Did I just say a Jacques Tati movie has a story?
Imagine that. A beginning, middle, and end.
Of course in some ways they all do.
In Jour de Fete the carnival comes to town. Funny things happen to the postman. He sees a movie that inspires him, which makes him more bumbling, and more funny things happen to him.
In Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, he goes to the beach. Funny things happen. He goes home.
In Mon Oncle, M. Hulot looks out for his nephew while M. and Mme. Arpel try to impress people with their futuristic, plastic house. Funny things happen.
In PlayTime, some American women come to Paris. Funny things happen. They go home.
In Trafic, they try to make it to the car show. Funny things happen. They arrive too late.
Yes, this is all terribly reductive. Tati is a brilliant filmmaker who fills his work with nuanced observations and poignant commentary. All his films are imaginative and clever and thoughtful, and they deepen with repeated viewing. The more you watch them, the smarter he is. Each time you see a Tati movie, you notice gags you had not seen before, and you marvel at his wit.
But Trafic for me takes on the quality of a fable.
Have you ever read John Steinbeck's The Pearl? How about Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea?
Somebody spends the entire story getting something only to lose it in the end.
Trafic is not so serious, and it has a happy ending, but it has that same deterministic feel about it that they are simply not going to make it to the car show no matter what they do, as though the powers of fate itself are now involved. But though they do not get what they aim for, they get something else in the end.
Chaplin's Modern Times begins with The Tramp working at an imaginary factory, making widgets, all very fictional and all designed to provide Chaplin with his sight gags. Tati's film Trafic also begins at a factory, but a real one, where they are mass-producing cars on an assembly line.
Trafic's lighthouse is an automobile show in Amsterdam. Our man M. Hulot has designed a state-of-the-art entry, the futuristic Camping Car.
M. Hulot works for ALTRA, designing cars. ALTRA puts his Camping Car into their truck to take it to the car show. Hulot goes in the truck with its driver. Everything that could go wrong does.
First, the truck will not start. The truck driver finally starts it by placing a crank in the radiator and turning it the way you have seen antique cars started on television. Then, the truck has a flat tire. Then, the truck runs out of gas. Then, something goes wrong with the clutch. Then, the police take them in because their papers are not in order. Then, the truck crashes into a red Volkswagen and causes a multi-car pile-up. Then, they spend the night at a mechanic's house who can fix the wrecked truck.
Will we ever make it to the car show?
M. Hulot, the truck driver, and their publicist, a woman named Maria (who drives alongside them in a bright yellow roadster), share their adventures together as they try to make it to the car show.
Maria is a fully developed character. She is the publicist for ALTRA. She speaks French; she speaks English. She drives a roadster; she has a dog. She is pretty; she is a working professional. She is aggressive; she is funny. We see her barging in on a pair of operators and grabbing their telephone so that she can make a phone call. We see her rebuffing the advances of a Dutchman, in English. We see her hanging out with M. Hulot, the truck driver, and the mechanic like one of the guys. We see her loving her dog. This is an oasis in a Tati movie--a fully developed, fully human, character.
The longest set piece takes place at the second mechanic's place, in Holland. They spend the night at an old BP gas station with a garage. The driver stays in the garage. Maria sleeps in a houseboat on the canal across the street. The mechanic stays in his house with his wife.
As with all Jacques Tati movies, funny things happen. Visual puns. Gadgets. Physical comedy. The pacing is easy. The tone is sweet. The film belies a hint of underlying cynicism.
The Camping Car itself is well designed, and an entire set piece is devoted to opening all of its gadgets and accessories. When the police impound it, they require the gang to open everything and demonstrate it. There is a table and chairs, a coffee heater, cigarette lighter, soap, a barbecue grill, a shower, a tent, hot water, etc. It is an impressive display of creativity even after half a century of development in RV technology. Tati would have made for a clever engineer at the Winnebago corporation.
There is a moment in Trafic that struck me as unique in cinema. I do not recall ever having seen it in a film before.
While the gang is at the mechanic's place, waiting for him to fix their truck, the television is on inside, and they are watching the moon landing.
Everyone is rounded up to come inside and see. The atmosphere grows quiet, reverent. We are outside, looking through the window, looking at the television through the window inside the room, watching the American astronaut walking on the moon. We see the real footage. We hear the real audio. They, and we, are in awe. Someone speaks a single word.
"Unbelievable."
In all of his work, Tati has been commenting on the tensions between technology and humanity. He has portrayed technology as a threat to human relations. And yet here, in this moment, man at his most technological is at his most human. It is not scripted. It is not fiction. It is real. A human being is walking on the moon. At his technological peak man has found the holy. The film stops. And watches. And reflects.
So do we.
Now here is the other thing about the film I said I would bring up in a minute.
Romance.
If you have seen Charlie Chaplin, you know that he was an unabashed romantic. In each of his films his character The Tramp is in love. He spends the entire film trying to win the girl's heart. He is genuine, sincere, and kind. Yet he is unnoticed and often fails--until the end when he finally wins her. It tugs at the heartstrings. You cheer for him. You want him to win. And with his films Chaplin left the legacy of the Hollywood ending we discussed yesterday. The fairy tale.
People may feign to criticize the Hollywood ending, but it is what they want. And it is why it works. The movies are a place of make believe. Dreams. Longing. Possibility. Imagination.
Why can't life be happy? What if it were? Let us create that world. And live in it.
It is more than merely holding up a mirror to nature. It is holding up a magic mirror.
In all of Tati's films, M. Hulot has been single--polite, gracious, innocent, and sexless. In Mon Oncle, a girl flirted with him but he never noticed her. In PlayTime he started to hint at something more. He buys a gift for one of the American tourist girls, but he never talks to her, and he has to send the gift through another person. She opens it on the bus in the round-about and is touched, but she will never see him again. It is sweet, and it is passing.
But here in Trafic something more happens. In Trafic, M. Hulot and Maria have spent the entire film together, but as business associates with no hint of anything between them. When they arrive at the car show to find that it is over, they leave together. They say goodbye. He opens his black umbrella. He goes down the steps to the subway.
But suddenly, as if fate itself is moving the other direction, a crowd of people, all carrying black umbrellas, come out of the subway and march him back up the steps with them. Which one is he? Which is his umbrella? It is a funny moment.
It also hints at a popular film that had come out in France a few years before--The Umbrellas of Cherbourg--a musical in which they sing throughout, not songs but the entire script!, a movie that made a star of Catherine Deneuve, a film known for its iconic overhead shot of multiple multi-colored umbrellas.
Here the umbrellas are all black, and they multiply as Hulot comes back up the steps, out of the subway, and back to Maria. The two enter the parking lot together and into the mass of humanity, in straight lines and right angles, blending in so that we no longer know which ones they are, everyone looking for his car.
At the end of Modern Times, Charlot and the girl walk off into the sunset.
At the end of Trafic, Hulot and the girl walk off into the rain.
And Hulot leaves cinema forever. No longer single but with someone.
And they all live happily ever after.
010 - Trafic, 1971, France. Dir. Jacques Tati.
Have you ever read Virginia Woolf's novel To the Lighthouse?
What I hear people say most often about it is, "When are they ever going to get to the lighthouse?"
Throughout the novel they try to make it there. They keep delaying. By the end of the novel, ten years later, they finally set out for the lighthouse. Meanwhile, Lily completes her painting and feels content.
Jacques Tati's movie Trafic could be called To the Car Show. When are they ever going to get there? Only instead of philosophical musings they have physical bumblings along the way.
In some ways Trafic is my favorite Jacques Tati movie. Yes, PlayTime is bigger, longer, more brilliant, and with more set pieces and sight gags. And the sequence in the restaurant The Royal Garden is fantastic. PlayTime is a tour de force. But Trafic has a story. And characters. And something else I will tell you about in a minute.
Did I just say a Jacques Tati movie has a story?
Imagine that. A beginning, middle, and end.
Of course in some ways they all do.
In Jour de Fete the carnival comes to town. Funny things happen to the postman. He sees a movie that inspires him, which makes him more bumbling, and more funny things happen to him.
In Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, he goes to the beach. Funny things happen. He goes home.
In Mon Oncle, M. Hulot looks out for his nephew while M. and Mme. Arpel try to impress people with their futuristic, plastic house. Funny things happen.
In PlayTime, some American women come to Paris. Funny things happen. They go home.
In Trafic, they try to make it to the car show. Funny things happen. They arrive too late.
Yes, this is all terribly reductive. Tati is a brilliant filmmaker who fills his work with nuanced observations and poignant commentary. All his films are imaginative and clever and thoughtful, and they deepen with repeated viewing. The more you watch them, the smarter he is. Each time you see a Tati movie, you notice gags you had not seen before, and you marvel at his wit.
But Trafic for me takes on the quality of a fable.
Have you ever read John Steinbeck's The Pearl? How about Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea?
Somebody spends the entire story getting something only to lose it in the end.
Trafic is not so serious, and it has a happy ending, but it has that same deterministic feel about it that they are simply not going to make it to the car show no matter what they do, as though the powers of fate itself are now involved. But though they do not get what they aim for, they get something else in the end.
Chaplin's Modern Times begins with The Tramp working at an imaginary factory, making widgets, all very fictional and all designed to provide Chaplin with his sight gags. Tati's film Trafic also begins at a factory, but a real one, where they are mass-producing cars on an assembly line.
Trafic's lighthouse is an automobile show in Amsterdam. Our man M. Hulot has designed a state-of-the-art entry, the futuristic Camping Car.
M. Hulot works for ALTRA, designing cars. ALTRA puts his Camping Car into their truck to take it to the car show. Hulot goes in the truck with its driver. Everything that could go wrong does.
First, the truck will not start. The truck driver finally starts it by placing a crank in the radiator and turning it the way you have seen antique cars started on television. Then, the truck has a flat tire. Then, the truck runs out of gas. Then, something goes wrong with the clutch. Then, the police take them in because their papers are not in order. Then, the truck crashes into a red Volkswagen and causes a multi-car pile-up. Then, they spend the night at a mechanic's house who can fix the wrecked truck.
Will we ever make it to the car show?
M. Hulot, the truck driver, and their publicist, a woman named Maria (who drives alongside them in a bright yellow roadster), share their adventures together as they try to make it to the car show.
Maria is a fully developed character. She is the publicist for ALTRA. She speaks French; she speaks English. She drives a roadster; she has a dog. She is pretty; she is a working professional. She is aggressive; she is funny. We see her barging in on a pair of operators and grabbing their telephone so that she can make a phone call. We see her rebuffing the advances of a Dutchman, in English. We see her hanging out with M. Hulot, the truck driver, and the mechanic like one of the guys. We see her loving her dog. This is an oasis in a Tati movie--a fully developed, fully human, character.
The longest set piece takes place at the second mechanic's place, in Holland. They spend the night at an old BP gas station with a garage. The driver stays in the garage. Maria sleeps in a houseboat on the canal across the street. The mechanic stays in his house with his wife.
As with all Jacques Tati movies, funny things happen. Visual puns. Gadgets. Physical comedy. The pacing is easy. The tone is sweet. The film belies a hint of underlying cynicism.
The Camping Car itself is well designed, and an entire set piece is devoted to opening all of its gadgets and accessories. When the police impound it, they require the gang to open everything and demonstrate it. There is a table and chairs, a coffee heater, cigarette lighter, soap, a barbecue grill, a shower, a tent, hot water, etc. It is an impressive display of creativity even after half a century of development in RV technology. Tati would have made for a clever engineer at the Winnebago corporation.
There is a moment in Trafic that struck me as unique in cinema. I do not recall ever having seen it in a film before.
While the gang is at the mechanic's place, waiting for him to fix their truck, the television is on inside, and they are watching the moon landing.
Everyone is rounded up to come inside and see. The atmosphere grows quiet, reverent. We are outside, looking through the window, looking at the television through the window inside the room, watching the American astronaut walking on the moon. We see the real footage. We hear the real audio. They, and we, are in awe. Someone speaks a single word.
"Unbelievable."
In all of his work, Tati has been commenting on the tensions between technology and humanity. He has portrayed technology as a threat to human relations. And yet here, in this moment, man at his most technological is at his most human. It is not scripted. It is not fiction. It is real. A human being is walking on the moon. At his technological peak man has found the holy. The film stops. And watches. And reflects.
So do we.
Now here is the other thing about the film I said I would bring up in a minute.
Romance.
If you have seen Charlie Chaplin, you know that he was an unabashed romantic. In each of his films his character The Tramp is in love. He spends the entire film trying to win the girl's heart. He is genuine, sincere, and kind. Yet he is unnoticed and often fails--until the end when he finally wins her. It tugs at the heartstrings. You cheer for him. You want him to win. And with his films Chaplin left the legacy of the Hollywood ending we discussed yesterday. The fairy tale.
People may feign to criticize the Hollywood ending, but it is what they want. And it is why it works. The movies are a place of make believe. Dreams. Longing. Possibility. Imagination.
Why can't life be happy? What if it were? Let us create that world. And live in it.
It is more than merely holding up a mirror to nature. It is holding up a magic mirror.
In all of Tati's films, M. Hulot has been single--polite, gracious, innocent, and sexless. In Mon Oncle, a girl flirted with him but he never noticed her. In PlayTime he started to hint at something more. He buys a gift for one of the American tourist girls, but he never talks to her, and he has to send the gift through another person. She opens it on the bus in the round-about and is touched, but she will never see him again. It is sweet, and it is passing.
But here in Trafic something more happens. In Trafic, M. Hulot and Maria have spent the entire film together, but as business associates with no hint of anything between them. When they arrive at the car show to find that it is over, they leave together. They say goodbye. He opens his black umbrella. He goes down the steps to the subway.
But suddenly, as if fate itself is moving the other direction, a crowd of people, all carrying black umbrellas, come out of the subway and march him back up the steps with them. Which one is he? Which is his umbrella? It is a funny moment.
It also hints at a popular film that had come out in France a few years before--The Umbrellas of Cherbourg--a musical in which they sing throughout, not songs but the entire script!, a movie that made a star of Catherine Deneuve, a film known for its iconic overhead shot of multiple multi-colored umbrellas.
Here the umbrellas are all black, and they multiply as Hulot comes back up the steps, out of the subway, and back to Maria. The two enter the parking lot together and into the mass of humanity, in straight lines and right angles, blending in so that we no longer know which ones they are, everyone looking for his car.
At the end of Modern Times, Charlot and the girl walk off into the sunset.
At the end of Trafic, Hulot and the girl walk off into the rain.
And Hulot leaves cinema forever. No longer single but with someone.
And they all live happily ever after.
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