Haynes’ Pandemonium Carnival

 

My head is an incredible jumble! I feel like I have been melted down by the Button Moulder.

I start lecturing again tomorrow (and we’ll see how I keep this blog going once THAT happens) so I started preparing my first lecture, on Jack Clayton. I love THE INNOCENTS especially and THE PUMPKIN EATER and am pretty wild about most of the others, and I’ve never done a talk about him so it seemed like fun. I was looking at THE GREAT GATSBY (featuring the infant Absolute Beginner Patsy Kensit) again, trying to choose extracts, and I got sucked into it and suddenly realised I’d better stop and go and see I’M NOT THERE, as had been my plan for the day.

Off to the Cameo!* This is a legendary Edinburgh art-house/fleapit. My parents saw THE RUNNING JUMPING STANDING STILL FILM along with THE SEVEN SAMURAI here (an unlikely pairing). It used to be run by a wild entrepreneur and showman called Jim Poole, who would turn the heating up for desert films, and other feats of William Castle-style Sensurround legerdemain. Yet I can’t see any obvious reason why, for this film, the auditorium was freezing cold and smelled of wee. These sensations disappeared as the film began though, returning with renewed intensity as the end credits rolled (to the sound of “Like a Rolling Stone”) and I realised I’d been in a state of sensory suspension for the whole film, absorbing only what the film’s makers delivered to me through my ears and eyes. 

I don’t feel equal to delivering any kind of useful thoughts on this film just yet, which is a Phantasmagoric Cavort through various aspects of Bob Dylan’s life and art, because a) it’s pretty complex and b) I don’t know much about Dylan and c) I have managed to amplify the rather weird state the film induced in me by way of artistic overload:

On the bus home, I had the gated drums of Siouxie and the Banshee’s Peekaboo and the lovely Charlotte Gainsbourg singing to me on my Nano, while I read a little memoir by Ralph Richardson (favourite role: Peer Gynt) and the illuminations of the Balmoral Hotel and Edinburgh Castle glowed, and I thanked my lucky stars again for living in the city where W.C. Fields first tasted whiskey.

Then home, lighting a fire and finishing off THE GREAT GATSBY, which has marvellous people and moments, even if it doesn’t entirely grip. Fitzgerald is referenced in Haynes’ film, but I thought on the whole that SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, a marvellous film made by Clayton and partially unmade by the suits at Disneycorps, is closer to Haynes’ film, which has a definite flavour of the Fellini-esque about it. EIGHT AND A HALF is the big stylistic cue for the Cate Blanchett scenes, but then this circus flavour invades the Richard Gere sequence, supplanting most traces of Peckinpah (though the presence of Kris Kristofferson as narrator provides another reminder of PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID). I guess the blend of Americana and the carnivalesque is what brought Clayton’s film to mind.

You can probably expect more on the neglected Clayton, and hopefully some more ordered thoughts on Haynes’ film, which I kind of loved, soon. Or soon-ish.

ONE thought: Cate Blanchett has rightly had much favourable attention for her work here, but I think she has an advantage over her co-stars because drag is pretty well always interesting. Not that she isn’t remarkable. But I want to say that Marcus Carl Franklin as “Woodie Guthrie” is also a true Star — when he’s on it’s like someone pierced the celluloid and let a VERY BRIGHT LIGHT shine through.

*One very nice thing about this picture house is that there’s generally one of my students or ex-students working there. This time it was Clair. Hello, if you’re reading this!

Euphoria #11: “Pier Paolo Pasollliiiiiniiii!”

 

11 entries in and still going strong! How much euphoria IS there in film history? Finite or otherwise? Will we still be here a million years hence, trying to find a less-miserable bit from SALO or THE PIANO TEACHER to stand as our latest entry?

No signs of running dry yet: regular Shadowplayer and filmmaker Chris “Dovzhenko” Bourton, nee “Chainsaw Massacre”,  suggests a rather different Pasolini flick, HAWKS AND SPARROWS, specifically the opening credits (it’s the first title sequence we’ve had nominated as euphoric). You will smile your face off when you see:

Chris says: Yeah, the sung credits are sublime (and what I’m recommending). “Pier Paolo Pasooollliiiiiniiiii”

Music by the renowned Ennio Morricone, who also scored another of Chris’ near-choices, ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. Maybe we’ll have that crane shot later on.

The most remarkable thing about this sequence is of course the fact that the credits are rendered IN SONG. As striking as this is, it is not unique, for the closing creds of Otto “Mr Freeze” Preminger’s SKIDOO are also sung. Let the great man explain:

‘…it is very frustrating for a director, when he has credits at the end, to see the audience walk out. They walk out because (let’s be honest) the public is interested only in who played the parts, the stars and the actors, and perhaps the director and the writer. But then the technicians, who wants to know who was the chief electrician except the chief electrician himself, who likes to read his name, and his family who wants to read his name? I was sitting in my office one day with a composer, who is a very talented young man, and had all this list of names before me, and I felt very bad about it. I said to him, “How would it be if we wrote a song with these names?” He started to “ad lib” right there, and we did it. Then a young, new designer worded the titles for me visually, and it turned out very well, I think. Nobody leaves. I say “stop”, freeze the frame, and then it becomes quite an amusing ending.’

~ from The Cinema of Otto Premingerby Gerald Pratley.

(Read more about the fascinating SKIDOO at Tim Lucas’ Video Watchblog.)

Pasolini did it in ‘66, Preminger in ‘68. Has anybody done it since, and if not, why not?

Precursors: Orson Welles’ spoken credits (nobody walks out during the end titles of THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS either), and HELP! which has the Beatles humming along with the score, and George Harrison reciting his sole songwriting credit.

The Prophecy

While this poor chap is catching 40 winks in Murnau’s THE HAUNTED CASTLE…

…who should turn up but Graf Orlok, the bald vampire from NOSFERATU, two films too early? (This is all we see of him, but I’d know that hand anywhere!) What’s he doing here?

Friedrich Murnau is perhaps the greatest exponent of prophetic cinema, and his life and death have some mysterious corners worthy of exploration…

One thing that has struck me in the past is how, in the magic carpet ride from FAUST (insert obligatory reference to Murnau’s WWI experience as a pilot HERE), the landscapes traversed resemble those, initially from earlier Murnaus, like these, which echo NOSFERATU:

 

But later, the lanscapes seem to emerge from films Murnau was YET TO MAKE!

The cornfields in CITY GIRL have the same aura of white gold as these, viewed in FAUST…

The frothing streams of TABU are pre-echoed by this miniature landscape, from FAUST again.

Could it be that the other vistas in this amazing sequence are environments drawn from the films Murnau WOULD HAVE MADE, had he not died so abruptly?

(These faustscapes, by the way, are among the Impossible Places I would most like to visit, along with the worlds of Hayao Miyazaki and the strangely glazed countryside flown over after the Tunnels of Light sequence in 2001. My bags are packed.)

Ironically, some of these shots were taken here in Scotland. I am ALREADY THERE!

THE DEATH OF MURNAU

Murnau’s death mask, illegally photographed by the author.

The rather good documentary that accompanies Masters of Cinema’s new DVD of NOSFERATU focuses on production company Prana Film’s intention to make films on mystic and supernatural themes, since the company founder was something of a sorcerer himself. But the documentary draws a blank when it ponders the question of whether Murnau himself believed in occult forces.

The enigma can be simply cleared up by referring to Lotte Eisner’s definitive study of Murnau:

In 1931, Murnau, she tells us, hadn’t visited his mother in Germany for some time, so he made plans to go and consulted a fortune-teller, “as was his habit.”

“You will arrive at your mother’s on April 5th, but in a different manner than you expect,” intoned the psychic, perhaps adding, “Wooo-oo-oooo-oo!” (My speculation.)

Rose Kearin, Murnau’s secretary, had some kind of bad feeling about this trip and urged Murnau not to take a plane to catch the boat. So Murnau hired a car and Filipino driver to get about on the continent, and another car, a Rolls, to take him to the boat. Murnau objected to the Rolls’ chauffeur, “But how ugly he is!” and insisted that his own driver should take the wheel. The journey began, with Murnau, the two drivers, Ned Marin, who managed the company that did the post-synching on Murnau’s last film, and a German shepherd dog called Pal.

Here we must discount the version narrated by Kenneth Anger in his entertaining smear-fest Hollywood Babylon. Ie. Murnau did not cause the car to crash by fellating the driver. My adaptation of Sherlock Holmes’ famous dictum runs, “Once we have eliminated whatever entertaining myth Kenneth Anger is peddling, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” 

As the Rolls sped along at top speed, a lorry came in the opposite direction, and the pulchritudinous chauffeur lost control. The car left the road and hurtled down a bank. Murnau, who’d been dozing, awakens to find himself in a vehicle plunging nightmarishly into the void. At this point — classic example of a guy who’s seen too many movies — he throws himself out of the car. Rolling at high speed he cracks his head on a fencepost and fractures his skull. Death follows rapidly.

Everybody in the car is fine. Even the fucking dog is fine.

Murnau’s body arrives in a box at his mother’s on April 5th, as predicted. Woooo-oo…

Murnau’s death mask sits on Greta Garbo’s desk in Hollywood for years.

A young Persian gardener said to his Prince:

‘Save me! I met Death in the garden this morning, and he gave me a threatening look. I wish that tonight, by some miracle, I might be far away, in Ispahan.’

The Prince lent him his swiftest horse.

That afternoon, as he was walking in the garden, the Prince came face to face with Death. ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘did you give my gardener a threatening look this morning?’

‘It was not a threatening look,’ replied Death. ‘It was an expression of surprise. For I saw him here this morning, and I knew that I would take him in Ispahan tonight.’

~ Jean Cocteau, The Look of Death.