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Opening Shots: ‘Femme Fatale’

Jim Emerson

From Dennis Cozzalio, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule:

Brian De Palma’s exceedingly stimulating and sensational consideration of femme fatale iconography and the possibility of redemption within it begins with one of the director’s customarily brilliant, multilayered opening shots.

Under the black of the producers credits, familiar voices are heard. It’s Fred MacMurray. Fade up on a shot of an extreme close-up of a TV. It’s MacMurray, 525 broadcast lines blown up to big-screen size, in “Double Indemnity”. But a close examination of the image reveals a splash of color — something else is visible here, contrasting with the black-and-white images of Billy Wilder’s film. It’s a reflected image of a half-naked woman stretched out perpendicular across the TV screen. She is watching “Double Indemnity”, and we see her watching the movie in her reflection off the glass TV screen. “Double Indemnity” continues to play out, crosscutting between MacMurray and the original femme fatale, Barbara Stanwyck (as Phyllis Dietrichson).

The image of the young woman becomes clear, yet remains slightly ghostly, as the image in Wilder’s film darkens. MacMurray moves to close a window, when a shot rings out. Stanwyck has betrayed him with a bullet, and the title credit “Femme Fatale” pops on screen at the same time, as the ethereal image of the woman, reclining on her side, dispassionately watching the movie, lingers. (The title credit “A Film by Brian De Palma��? was earlier synchronized with Stanwyck’s first appearance on the TV.) Now De Palma’s camera begins to pull back. We see the cabinet of the TV, and we can now also observe that there are French subtitles superimposed on Wilder’s film. The image of the woman reflected in the TV seems even clearer now, as we continue to pull back, seeing her much more clearly in the flesh, gray tendrils rising from the cigarette she’s smoking while watching the TV. At this point there is double layering of the woman’s image, the reflection and the person being reflected, over the image of Stanwyck, who has taken a dominant position over her wounded lover as she confesses her machinations against him.

Poll: Andrew Sarris and Your Greatest Films of All Time

Jim Emerson

In his column about the revival of Max Ophuls’ “The Earrings of Madame de…,” the dean of American film critics, Andrew Sarris, proclaims Ophüls’ masterwork the greatest film of all time — edging out, as the headline puts it, “Welles, Renoir, Ford, Hitchcock, Chaplin, Buñuel, Mizoguchi.” [Please note: Dave Kehr points out that there is no umlaut in “Ophuls” — although that’s how it was (mis-)spelled in Sarris’s NY Observer piece.]

Writes Sarris:

If you’ve never seen this masterpiece, now is your chance—and even if you have, a second or third viewing is strongly recommended. If you don’t choose to take my word for the film’s sublimity, then heed the sagacious words of Dave Kehr instead: “Should the day ever come when movies are granted the same respect as the other arts, ‘The Earrings of Madame de …’ will instantly be recognized as one of the most beautiful things ever created by human hands.”

“Perfection,” proclaimed the late Pauline Kael, in one of her more perceptive pronouncements. And David Thomson delivers an eloquent encomium to Ophüls with a remarkably expansive entry in his much-honored “The New Biographical History of Film.”

Curiously, I’ve had a much harder time convincing my students in film class of the “greatness” of Ophüls and “Madame de…”. It may partly be a generation gap, and partly the youthful suspicion of romanticism in some of its less cynical guises. Then again, even among my contemporaries, I have become notorious over the years for my ecstatic—to the point of orgasmic—addiction to camera movement as an expression of the tyranny of time in the drama of human life. This predilection on my part may be something I picked up from the unified-visual-field theories of the late André Bazin.On a personal note: My favorite Ophuls (among the greatest films of all time in my book) is “Letter From an Unknown Woman” (though “Madame de…” is indeed surely one of the most exquisite things that has ever appeared on the planet; I treasure my laserdisc “print” and hope it will be on Region 1 DVD soon — along with all the other great Ophuls films that are already available in Region 2). I’d agree with Sarris on the Renoir (“Rules of the Game”), Ford (“The Searchers”), Hitchcock (“Vertigo”), Murnau (“Sunrise”) and, depending on what day of the week it is, the Welles (“The Magnificent Ambersons”). (On my 2002 Sight & Sound international critics’ poll ballot I chose both “Kane” and “Ambersons” in my top 10.) I wouldn’t have a Chaplin on my list, but “Modern Times” is tops in my book.

Though it’s only a matter of degree, my favorite Buñuel is probably “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” or “That Obscure Object of Desire” or “The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz” or “Nazarin” or “Simon of the Desert” or “The Exterminating Angel” or… — OK, I have way too many favorite Buñuels. And my favorite Mizoguchi would not be “Ugetsu,” which I’d put below “Sansho Dayu” and “The Life of Oharu.” I love Keaton’s “Our Hospitality,” “Sherlock, Jr.,” and “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” even more than “The General” — though I could probably make a case for ten Keatons as the greatest films of all time.

But if you had to choose from Sarris’s top ten, which would you consider The Greatest Film of All Time?

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I miss Robert Altman so much it hurts

Jim Emerson

I’ve been reading Mitchell Zuckoff’s “Robert Altman: The Oral Biography” before going to sleep each night, and it’s reminding me of how much he influenced my life — from the life-changing epiphany of “Nashville” in 1975 to the first time I met him in 1977 to the countless hours I’ve spent living with (and in) his films, writing about them, talking about them with people who knew him and knew his movies…

Reading this, from Julian Fellowes (Oscar-winning screenwriter for “Gosford Park”), made me feel the loss acutely once again — and kept me awake, wandering down memory-trails, for hours:

The standard thing in Hollywood is to direct the camera with a movement on the scene. The dog goes down the walk and the camera follows the dog, and it leads to the body. With Bob, the dog goes one way and the camera goes the other. He creates this illusion in the mind of the spectator that they are directing the camera. It becomes an autonomous being that is moving around the room. Because you are the viewer, you take responsibility for the image. You are given the impression that you are exploring this film.

“You take responsibility for the image.” Was there ever a director who offered his audience so much freedom, trust, responsibility (and everything that word implies)?

Of course, Altman’s camera did sometimes “follow the dog,” but more often than not both the dog and the frame would continue moving, allowing new elements to enter and exit so that you were fully aware of the world that extended beyond the edges of the frame. The frame wasn’t just a proscenium, but a permeable membrane through which life continually ebbed and flowed…

TIFF 08: The waiting-for-it-to-start post

Jim Emerson

Oh, I have plenty to write about. Some of it even about TIFF, which officially kicks off Thursday. But I have to get up early to get to the first press screenings Wednesday morning. They start, auspiciously, with the new Guy Ritchie film, “Rocknrolla,” at 9 am. (That’s 6 am real time.) So, that means I can sleep in at least until 9:30 or 10. On the other hand, it would be nice to cover some films that probably won’t get wider distribution. Ritchie sure fits that bill.

Meanwhile, Bloor Street looks like Gitmo (new construction!) and all Torontonians want to talk about is the governor of Alaska — either with great concern or great disdain. (The Canadians have been openly laughing at us, nervously, for eight years.)

The movies will surely offer a welcome respite from the horror-comedy of the world at large right now…

Nighty-night. Be seeing you.

Three kinds of violence: Zodiac, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

Jim Emerson

View image A figure in the shadows.

1. I have a competition in me.

I want no one else to succeed.

2. I hate most people….

I see the worst in people.

I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need.

3. I want to rule and never, ever explain myself.

I’ve built my hatreds up over the years, little by little.

Match the above comments to the character who speaks or writes them:

a) Anton Chigurh, “No Country for Old Men”

b) The Zodiac, “Zodiac”

c) Daniel Plainview, “There Will Be Blood”

(Answers at end of post.)

* * * *

NOTE: Spoilers lurk sinisterly below.

View image Daniel Plainview, “There Will Be Blood.”

Three of the most admired and fervently debated American films of the year move inexorably toward a climactic confrontation with a killer — or someone’s conception of a killer. Only Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” actually culminates in a eruption of savagery, while David Fincher’s “Zodiac” and Joel and Ethan Coen’s “No Country for Old Men” gradually steer their attention away from the assaults and into the psyches of the characters who are haunted by the brutality penetrating their lives.

View image Anton Chigurh, “No Country for Old Men.”

View image The Zodiac, “Zodiac” — or as close as we ever get to seeing him.

Much has been written about the violence in these movies, the darkness they find in the American landscape, and what some see as their bleak, fatalistic and/or nihilistic attitude. Does this somehow reflect the country’s moral ambivalence about being mired in two bloody, confusing guerrilla wars on the other side of the world? A sense of No Exit hopelessness that the Vietnam nightmare is recurring? Mainstream (or art house) torture porn that allows us to vicariously groove on — as we are simultaneously appalled by — the crimes at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? Dissatisfaction with the materialistic emphasis on the American Dream? A cynical exploitation of artfully staged killings for our (cathartic?) entertainment?

The popular press likes to talk about violence in movies with a superficiality that assumes all violence and all movies are the same, that blood is blood (and that gore and gunplay are automatically more sensational than depictions of beatings or other forms of physical and psychological abuse). But that Sunday feature-section approach ignores what it’s like to watch the movies themselves, and the diverse contexts in which they present acts of cruelty and lethality. To say that “Zodiac,” “NCFOM” and “TWBB” are all “violent films” tells you as much about them as saying they all use the color red.¹ I’d like to consider how the violence in these films conveys its own meaning, apart from any op-ed political parallels that can be drawn, however legitimately.

Condensed Fight Club in 2 min. 25 seconds

Jim Emerson

This is my condensed version of David Fincher‘s 1999 romantic comedy masterpiece, “Fight Club,” to accompany and expand on my personal/critical essay. Notice that only one punch is thrown. The violence is psychological, inner-directed and apocalyptic. That’s the idea. See for yourself. (Speaking of condensation: Did you know that you can make explosives from soap and condensed orange juice? Tyler Durden says so. But don’t talk about it.)

PLAY THIS MOVIE LOUD.

Spoilers abound.

Short film blog-a-thon

Jim Emerson

All week I’ve been meaning to link (and contribute) to the ‘Short Film Week’ Blog-a-thon co-hosted by Only the Cinema and Culture Snob (December 2 – 8). But I’m still recovering from the Pacific Northwest storm and flooding (long story) earlier in the week. There are many things I’d like to write about, but I probably won’t get to them until after the blog-a-thon is technically over. (For now, maybe I can recycle my Close-Up Blog-a-thon short movie [above] and my piece on the opening credits sequence for ‘Dexter’, which is a perfect little short on its own — not unlike Martin Scorsese’s “The Big Shave,” in certain provocative respects.)

View image Martin Scorsese’s “The Big Shave” (1967).

But the archive of articles will remain — and there’s some great stuff, including Matt Zoller Seitz on Chuck Jones’ classic Looney Tune, “What’s Opera, Doc?”; Joe Bowman at Fin de cinema on 20 breakthrough music videos (hey, they can be incredibly expressive and accomplished works); Jeffrey Hill at Liverputty on the Disney science film “Our Friend the Atom” (1957) [as a kid, I was fascinated by Frank Capra’s Bell Telephone film, “Hemo the Magnificent” (1957), about hemoglobin]; and more than I can even begin to mention. It’s a trove you’ll have fun digging through…

Opening Shots: Watchmen

Jim Emerson

In some editions, the opening shot begins on the cover of “Watchmen”: A black oval on a field of yellow with a drop of red liquid splashed on it. (“Bean juice?” “Human bean juice.”) The first “shot” proper (comic book, not movie — though the filmmakers find their own take on it) begins with the smiley in a sea of blood.

The “camera” pulls back from directly above the button. Carried by the flow, the smiley falls into the gutter as the blood pours down a drain. As the camera recedes further we see a man is washing away the stain with a hose. A pair of boots belonging to another, red-headed man carrying a “The End Is Near” sign wade right through the blood puddle and tracks red footprints down the sidewalk. From several stories up, we see a large delivery truck with a triangle on top. This will mean something, but we don’t know it yet.

For now, the triangle that most draws our attention are the converging lines of windows down the side of the building that has come into view on the right. The lines point directly to the splash of red.

(Click to enlarge frames below…)

The Dark Knight is Confused

Jim Emerson

(tip: Matt Rosen)

Famous propaganda

Jim Emerson

Title card from perhaps the most famous propaganda film of all time, Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will” (1935). Hitler and the Nazis were repeatedly elected to power during the 1930s, one piece of government at a time, before Der Fuhrer assumed full-fledged dictatorial rule.

Edward Bernays, the founder of modern public relations, on the ways in which power is maintained in a democracy (as opposed to the much cruder, more conspicuous and therefore more vulnerable power held by totalitarian rulers), in his hugely influential 1928 book, “Propaganda”:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country…. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society…. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons … who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.(Also quoted in Larry Beinert’s “Fog Facts.”)

Just a timely reminder about thinking critically in “every act of our daily lives”: Every movie you see, every story you read (fiction or nonfiction), is to some extent propaganda. It’s trying to sell you something — an idea, a philosophy, a version of events, a vision of reality. Just try to be aware. Even this is propaganda, but it’s true:

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity. — Wendell Phillips (1852), Speeches Before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society

So, what are some propaganda films you’ve seen recently, what do you think they were trying to sell, and how did they go about doing it? (And let’s hear it for “Snakes on a Plane” for at least succeeding in undermining the myth of “airport security” — which, we should all know by now, is but a flimsy facade designed to give us the illusion of being “safer,” even though we aren’t. Still, the odds against snakes or bombs or terrorists on a plane are pretty good, for reasons that have little to do with those increasingly lengthy security lines.)

100 Ways to Love a Cat: Way 34

Jim Emerson

Those who think this is funny (as I do) and those who think it is not funny probably do so for the very same reasons. Your take?

Bordwell & Thompson: Crix of the ’00s!

Jim Emerson

Matt Zoller Seitz (aka InsomniacDad) pays due tribute to to the “Critics of the ’00s”: David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, at IFC Blog.

Why? Well, because they’ve written some of the most influential and illuminating film books (and textbooks) of our age, educating a generation of up-and-coming moviemakers and moviegoers? Because their work, in print and on their essential blog (“Observations on film art”) is simultaneously rigorous and readable, scholarly and accessible? Because their enthusiasm for cinema is unparalleled? Because they look at film as film, examining the images themselves and not just treating the medium as pop-culture detritus or literature with pictures?

Well, yes, all of the above and more. MZS puts it most eloquently in his introduction:

Film criticism as we know it tends to fall into a handful of time-worn categories: an expression of one’s personality, politics and taste, with traces of social critique and memoir (Pauline Kael, James Agee); or a kind of performance art on the page, using individual films, actors or filmmakers as springboards for sustained riffs on art and life (Manny Farber); or a scholarly attempt to draw connections between films and film movements, rank filmmakers by aesthetic significance and put works in historical context (Andrew Sarris).

Best movie ad tag line ever?

Jim Emerson

OK, here comes another one — the third in my tests of web polling software. These are some of my favorite tag lines (and I’m sure there are lots more, which you can add in Comments). Help me test this one out — and let me know which of the three I’ve tried so far you like the best. Thanks.

View MicroPollWeb SurveyFree Web Polls

UPDATE (2/7/07): Be sure to check out the comments below for some more really terrific tag lines.

Can one bad shot ruin an entire movie?

Jim Emerson

UPDATED with more examples — and questions — after the jump.

Can one bad shot ruin a movie? I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head — I don’t think it happens very often — but I do believe it’s possible. I’m not among those who think the final shot of Hal Ashby’s “Being There” takes a marvelously sustained balancing act and kicks it to the ground. But I can understand how somebody might feel that way.

But how can just one bad decision — maybe on screen for just a second or two — deflate a full-length motion picture? Well, roughly the same way a pinprick in a balloon can, I guess. It can puncture the thin membrane that’s sustaining the thing. Without shape and purpose, there’s nothing to keep it aloft any longer.

Try thinking of a movie like a pop song. One misplaced note in the melody, one cheesy chord, one tacky lyric, one mispronounced word (“Yes, I hate the way he says ‘don’t diszgard me’ too,” Robert Christgau wrote of Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” in 1974, and I still remember him mentioning it 35 years later) can render the whole record unlistenable, depending on how sensitive you are to the particular offense.

Or think of a movie as a piece of architecture. A misplaced brick of the wrong color or texture, a sloppy corner, a window stuck in the wrong wall — could conceivably demolish the overall effect of an otherwise well-designed building. Leave out a stone, or put in one of the wrong size or shape or strength, and all or part of the structure could come crashing down.

Or think of a movie as your face. With one festering pimple right there. And it’s permanent. It doesn’t take up a lot of facial real estate, but it mars the visage so that it’s all anybody notices.

Superheroes. Seriously.

Jim Emerson

If I say that I’m not much of a fan of comic-book or superhero movies, it’s not because of the source material but because of the movies made from them. Comics fans haven’t been as ill-served by the movies as video gamers, but I’ve noticed that even some of the most fervent appreciations of “The Dark Knight” carry an undertone of defensiveness, almost as if surprised that the filmmakers would treat this “crusader in tights” material seriously, instead of as camp. (Let’s just not mistake “serious” for “dreary” or “pedantic.”)

“The Dark Knight” has been praised as “the best superhero ever made” — or even “the first great superhero movie,” but even if I thought those things were true, they sound like backhanded praise to me. How sad would it be if it took until 2008 for somebody to claim they’d seen “the first great horror movie” or “the first great comedy,” to name a couple other still-disreputable labels? As I’ve said, I don’t think “TDK” is an exceptionally strong or resonant movie, but it never occurred to me to think less of it because it’s about characters named Batman and the Joker.

The way I look at it, a metaphor is a metaphor. Batman or the Joker or Spider-Man can become cinematic metaphors as rich and evocative as Achilles or Nosferatu or Carrie or Jesus. Why not?

Odds and Ends Beginnings for 2007

Jim Emerson

View image Frances Bean Dog.

I’m back from break but hopelessly preoccupied because my eldest dog Frances had a couple lumps on her back foot and I had to take her in early this morning for a surgery/biopsy. This talk of “spindle cells” worries me tremendously, but Frances herself has shown no signs of feeling ill. Because I’m a terrible fretter, this has left a big cloud over the end of my year, and made me even more reluctant than usual to keep in touch with the people I care about. Because, basically, I get paralyzed with worry and just want to get into the fetal position until the uncertainty and apprehension is over. I know it’s idiotic. I went through the same thing worrying about Roger Ebert’s recovery last summer, and am so happy that he’s come through and working his way back (even doing occasional reviews when he can).

Plunging ahead into 2007…

Best News of the Year So Far: I was thrilled to see the byline of Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Times this morning as I was blearily trying to wake up before taking Frances to the vet. (It’s DARK at 6 a.m. in January in Seattle. Who knew?) Matt is the founder and editor of one of my favorite movie/TV blogs, The House Next Door. I do not miss the Links for the Day. And Matt himself is a terrific writer. His review of “Children of Men” is the best thing I’ve read about that film, conveying the excitement of watching it as well as the disappointment that it had nowhere to go. (Some thought the ending was brave and open-ended. To me it felt like a mushy sentimental cop-out — although there was that flashing red buoy light, perhaps [I hope] to remind us, as in the ending of Nicholas Ray’s “Bigger Than Life,” that this superficial resolution isn’t necessarily what it seems to be. I know, I know: How can this ending be considered overly tidy, pat or a form of commercial condescension when so much of the fate of Humankind itself is left at sea? Well, the movie is about particular characters, not the apocalyptic sci-fi world they live in; it’s a matter of foreground vs. background…)