Perfectionist, my ass!

Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.

 

‘I’m getting a little weary of the “crazed perfectionist” tag.’ ~ Stanley Kubrick.

This is about KUBRICK’S MISTAKES. I like mistakes. As Lars Von Trier’s T-shirt said during the making of BREAKING THE WAVES, “Mistakes are good.” Only sensible thing he ever said.

“A director is someone who presides over accidents,” as Welles said.

And all the talk about Kubrick’s meticulousness, while it certainly describes a real phenomenon, can get rather predictable, can become a barrier to seeing the films. So this piece is about the OTHER Kubrick, the goofy bungler whose films are a collection of cock-ups and fumbles.

Yeah, right.

But let’s see what we can find. Evidence of errors in Kubrick’s work would point to a filmmaker willing to allow a bit of slippage as long as it’s in the service of creating an interesting scene.

EYES WIDE SHUT. Start at the end — because early stuff might look like youthful inexperience. This movie has a real beaut: during the bathroom scene early on, where Cruise treats a girl who has overdosed, Kubrick and the camera crew are reflected in a bathroom mirror on the far right of the frame. No mistaking it.

When David Wingrove saw the film with his partner Roland Man, Roland was incandescent at this aggravated howler: “They — had — over a year – to — shoot — it!” he hissed.

But by the time the film came to video and DVD, the offending edge action was gone, either masked out by the transfer to 4:3 framing, or removed by some digital jiggery-pokery by the Kubrick heirs. Yet they had been adamant that the film was “finished” at the time of SK’s death — if so, what business did they have tinkering subsequently? Either Kubrick somehow missed the offending material not only during filming, but all through post, or he decided it didn’t matter to him, or he had some plan to eliminate it but neglected to tell anyone: any way you cut it, this was an amusing Ed Woodian slip-up, and that just makes me like Stan more.

Kubrickians either love or are embarrassed by EWS, but what of FULL METAL JACKET? One correspondent to a film magazine pointed out that Kube’s careful reconstruction of Viet Nam in London’s docklands failed because the cloud patterns were all wrong, and they have a point — if what we’re after is complete realism. South East Asian skies, as seen for real in South East Asian films, look hazy and diffuse compared to those of Southern England.

The IMDb lists 59 mistakes in the film, mostly continuity but several factual and a few anachronisms. This kind of stuff can get pretty boring to enumerate, but I like the fact that Private Pyle shoots himself on different toilets according to different camera angles, and that there’s a crewmember in blue jeans lying in the rubble during a long steadicam shot going into battle.

Some continuity problems may stem from the delay in shooting during the training scenes: R. Lee Ermey caved in his rib cage crashing his motorcycle in Epping Forest and shooting was suspended until he’d recovered. So the fact that extras swap places while standing to attention, for instance, is not altogether surprising.

The numerous errors listed with firearms, such as full cartridges than should be empty, and guns firing without being cocked, mainly suggest that Kubrick was not so very concerned with technical accuracy in minor details, unless it helped his dramatic purpose — he would play fast and loose with authenticity when it made life easier, and during the “battlefield” of shooting there would be numerous minor screw-ups which were not worth re-shooting.

(PLATOON has only 29 mistakes listed, surprising when you consider how low the budget and short the schedule were, compared to FMJ, and also when you consider how many drugs Oliver Stone supposedly takes.)

Only idiots really care passionately about continuity mistakes (and blog about them). Kubrick was no idiot.

THE SHINING. I swear to God, when the camera crash-zooms in on the slain Scatman Crothers, he blinks.

Typo: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull bot.” There are LOTS of typos, and of course I’m being silly, they’re meant to be there.

When the phone rings in the kitchen (Jack’s got the job), Shelley Duvall moves smoothly to answer it as if she knew it was going to happen. It’s not quite a gaffe, but it suggests the downside to all those retakes: things can get a little too rehearsed-looking.

The really nice, suggestive one, is how the previous caretaker is named as Charles Grady when he’s first discussed, then Jack Nicholson calls him Delbert Grady when they meet, and Grady is fine with this. What’s going on? How does a filmmaker get a major character’s name wrong? It just adds to the weirdness, so I’d argue that it WORKS, but I don’t think it’s intentional.

Shadowplay: There are lots of camera shadows visible in Kubrick’s films, because he moves the camera a lot. I never used to notice camera shadows until I started making films, then I realised what a nightmare they are. In one shot on a student film, I edited, the crew put an actress’s wig on the camera, transforming a camera shadow into a character shadow.

BARRY LYNDON. A few minor anachronisms: the term “strychnine” is used, a Yellow Labrador appears (not bred until 1899). The intriguing one is the car driving through shot in the duel with Leonard Rossiter — I’ve never managed to see it, but more than one source insists it’s there. My T.V. is not that small, plus I’ve seen the film projected several times. But I’d love the rumours to be true.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Patrick Magee’s entire performance is one glorious misjudgement.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. During the Russian Leonard Rossiter blather on the space station, Kubrick is guilty of one of the most egregiously ugly shot changes ever. It’s just a slight jump in shot distance, but it’s really LOUSY film-making. It’s about the only thing of note. Oh, when Heywood Floyd is on the vidphone to his/Kubrick’s daughter, the phone-camera TILTS to keep her in frame as she wriggles about. Pretty clever phone!

DR. STRANGELOVE. My favourite here is Peter Bull, as the Russian ambassador, struggling to keep a straight face behind Sellers’ Strangelove monologue. People laughing is never funny, but people trying NOT to laugh is delicious torture.

I like how George C. Scott falls over in mid-spiel. It feels like it HAS to be either an accident (nobody would script that, it just wouldn’t be funny on the page) or, possibly, Scott goofing around to keep himself entertained during the countless retakes. It’s said that his rather extreme performance came about through boredom, and he was a trifle dismayed when Kubrick cut together the film using only the most exaggerated and grotesque takes. A lot of those re-takes appear to have been motivated by a DESIRE for something to go wrong, for something fascinating and unrepeatable to happen. Thus, Kubrick’s most famous directions: “Do something remarkable,” or, as he liked to quote Cocteau, “Astonish me.”

LOLITA. I like this one — the IMDb suggests that Kubes can be seen walking through frame right at the start, as Humbert enters Quilty’s house. It’s certainly a mistake, but it’s not SK onscreen: why would he be in front of the camera at the start of a take? It’s the clapper boy, running for cover. SOMEBODY made a mistake when editing the dissolve from the previous scene. When you edit rushes for a 48-frame dissolve, you simply cut in the centre of where the dissolve will be, then mark the timing of the dissolve with a chinagraph pencil (I learned old fashioned film cutting just before it died out), 24 frames on either side. Whoever cut this part made the cut right after the clapper boy left, instead of waiting another 24 frames. So even though he wouldn’t have been visible in the cutting copy, when the dissolve came back from the lab, there he is in all his inappropriate glory, disappearing from view exactly halfway through the mix. So either there was no money to recut, or Kubes didn’t notice, or BETTER, didn’t mind. (It’s very brief.)

(You can see the Clapper’s arm at bottom right here.)

SPARTACUS. A truck definitely DOES drive through this one! Plus Tony Curtis wearing a Rolex, and the full panoply of Hollywood anachronism and discontinuity.

PATHS OF GLORY. The IMDb lists four goofs, including another blinking corpse. One character says he’s unmarried at the start and talks about his wife at the end. This makes me pbscurely happy. A whirlwind engagement!

John Gavin is cast in the film, despite not being a very good actor.

THE KILLING. A few continuity and firearms goofs. Supposedly most of what the V.O. says is inaccurate because Kubes didn’t want a V.O. in the first place.

KILLER’S KISS. The warehouse fight. SK “crosses the line” repeatedly during the fight in the dummy warehouse. He does this deliberately in other films, jumping exactly 180º in odd ways in FULL METAL JACKET and THE SHINING, but here the effect is disruptive and confusing, all but ruining the film’s most promising sequence. A beginner’s mistake.

FEAR AND DESIRE. Too many screw-ups to list. I think Stan should have cast his hot wife, Toba, in it. That would have helped.

We could take the Malcolm McDowell view: “The human element will trip you up every time. If it wasn’t for that, he could make the perfect film,” which presupposes that the “perfection” aimed at is chimeric and the quest for it quixotic. But Kubrick was well aware of the problems. Steadicam operator Garrett Morris has said, “We would have long conversations about the elusive nature of perfection. After ten takes the thing falls off the wall because the tape holding it there peeled, entropy takes over, we’re all getting older…”

I prefer to think that the obsessive repetition was just what Kubrick always said it was: a desire to keep filming until something happened that was worth putting in a film. It’s not a futile quest for an unattainable ideal, just the desire to keep going until something wonderful occurs in front of the lens. Kubrick’s opinion of what’s wonderful may differ from yours, sometimes, but it’s perfectly commendable to strive for it, and to not care too much how many mistakes are made along the way.

Me and My Gal

The author and Jeanne Moreau, captured just instants before both were consumed by a MIGHTY COLUMN OF FLAME!

It’s quite a horrible picture of both of us, but I hope you’ll consider the difficult conditions under which it was taken — encroaching column of flame, death imminent, etc.

Quote of the Day: “It was moider!”

 

‘I decided that when I appeared before the Committee I would expose them as being the un-Americans. That’s the line I took. When I began to testify, I immediately said I had knowledge of un-American activities through mny research. I said, “Look, I have a list of synagogues that have been burned. I have a list of homes of blacks in the South and in the North that Ku Klux Klansmen have defaced. I want to give the Committee all of my research and my knowledge of these un-American activities.” They said, believe it or not, “We’re not interested in that.” I said, “Let’s make a note of that–you’re not interested in these un-American activities that I have knowledge of.” Then I defied the Committee, using every constitutional amendment there was to keep them from shutting me up, and showed that they had been in business around seventeen years, with the purpose of recommending legislation to Congress, and yet they had never in all those years proposed a single piece of legislation. I attacked them as being part of a conspiracy to impose censorship on American theater and film, because as soon as you tell people who they can’t and won’t hire, you also tell them what they can and can’t present. That was my line, and I got away with it.’

~ Lionel Stander, in Tender Comrades, a Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist, by Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle.

This book, a collection of fascinating interviews with prominent blacklistees (including directors Jules Dassin, Martin Ritt and John Berry), is the best I’ve read so far on the witch-hunt years, maybe tied with Only Victims, the published version of actor Robert Vaughn’s doctoral thesis, which is also a marvellously wise and impassioned account of the period — in his closing chapter Vaughn convincingly argues that American cinema’s development was seriously stunted by the climate of fear surrounding any kind of political discussion. 

(Somebody told me Vaughn has taken a swerve to the right in his political views more recently. I’d hate to think this was true.)

Euphoria #28

Ellen Jackson suggests this doozy:

As my nephew Calum would say, “I find it good.”

The obvious precursor for this “musical” moment of montage from Jeunet & Caro’s groundbreaking DELICATESSEN is the “Morning Song of Paris”number from Mamoulian’s LOVE ME TONIGHT, which builds up a symphony of sounds from the awakening denizens of the city. There’s even a hint of that film’s second number, “Isn’t it Romantic?” previously featured here in Cinema Euphoria: a tune is passed from person to person through the streets, like some kind of melodic disease. In J&C’s DELI montage, the accelerating rhythm of the bedsprings comes to influence the behaviour of everybody else in the building, just like the hypnotic ray I’m aiming at you RIGHT NOW.

I still think this is M. Jeunet’s best work. Although the constant sepia tone should become oppressive, somehow it doesn’t. Although the tone appears bleak, dark and cynical, there is room for sweetness and innocence, and the auteurs seem to really believe in it (the seeds of AMELIE are sown!).

 

As Colin McLaren pointed out to me at the time, it’s clear that the filmmakers “have never done a day’s work in their lives, so when thay have to give somebody a job, it’s some piece of nonsense,” — here, the brothers who manufacture moo-ing cylinders from home, the world’s most pointless cottage industry.

I was sort of intrigued by the fact that my parents just hated this film. They focussed a lot of attention on the question of “when is it set?” Which is, I guess, the kind of thing we worry about when we just don’t like the sensibility of a film. The answer, “a retro-fitted near-future,” didn’t occur to them as remotely possible, since it’s obviously the past, sometime. I wonder if there’s a vaguely generational thing there, and this kind of fantasy setting, removed from our own reality by jumping sideways in time, just isn’t on the mental maps of many people whose film consciousness was formed pre-sixties? Although if you’ve read a lot of sci-fi and comic books, you’ll probably be well primed whatever your age. My mum did read her brother’s “Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future”comics as a kid, but that cheery vision from the last days of the British Empire just isn’t going to provide a workable compass for Jeunet and Caro’s dystopian farce.

Quote of the Day: Mad about the boy

 

A riverside glade in the moonlight.

A romantic clinch, between Joan Fontaine (posh English wife) and Arturo de Cordova (saucy French pirate).

A very lush arrangement of Clair de Lune on the soundtrack.

Arturo: “If only you were a boy!”

FRENCHMAN’S CREEK (1944)

Script by Talbot Jennings from Daphne DuMaurier’s novel.

Directed by Mitchell Leisen.

(Arturo explains that if Joan were a boy she could come to sea with him, so she drags up and joins him on his white and gold pirate ship where the sailors rob the English, steal lots of women’s dresses and put them on, and kiss each other.)

David Chierichetti: “I feel that in FRENCHMAN’S CREEK you were so involved with the visual aspects of the color, the costumes and the sets, that you lost sight of the story values.”

Mitchell Leisen: “You tell me what the story values were in FRENCHMAN’S CREEK and I’ll answer that. She falls in love with a pirate, leaves her husband then comes back in time not to get caught. That’s all. It’s as dull as dishwater and it’s a lousy picture.”

It catches real fire in ONE SCENE — where Joan Fontaine has to defend herself against Basil Rathbone’s dastardly Lord Rockingham without any prospect of rescue. It’s pretty unusual to see a leading lady have to handle the bad guy all by herself, and the outcome is both convincing, grisy, and a touch camp (flattening Basil with a suit of armour is always going to seem SLIGHTLY hysterical).

The whole film, lacking in dramatic tension to a quite baffling degree, is half-rescued by its startling gayness: it’s as close to being actually OUT as it can get without taking that crucial extra step, impossible at the time, of actually BEING out.