Fanck Goodness
OK, OK, here are some snowy images from Arnold Fanck’s THE HOLY MOUNTAIN. It really is a most gorgeous film. Although the “mountain film” genre was some kind of a favourite in 30s Germany, I struggle to find any really sinister ideology in it. The worst you could say is that it favours male friendship over heterosexual love. The love of nature does feed into the whole Hitler Youth cult, but is actually pretty innocuous by itself.
Luis Trenker is the principle male object of beauty on display, his face as rugged as The Dreadful North Face of the Santos where he eventually risks death. Or if, rugged manliness isn’t your thing, the film also offers, in defiance of logic and history, Ron Mael from Sparks –
But the scenic splendour is the whole show, magnificently captured by Fanck’s team of cameramen. Not only the big scenic shots with tiny posed figures for scale (all arranged without the aid of walkie-talkies!), but the details and inserts too.
Hey, remember how Werner Herzog made a mountain film, SCREAM OF STONE? Remember how it stank? Actually, Herzog’s recovery from that prolonged period of seeming irrelevant and washed-up is arguably as remarkable as Polanski’s. Herzog had the advantage of his documentary career, which never declined as much as his feature-film reputation, but his documentaries now loom much larger in his legend than they originally did.
Fanck was a documentarist too, which shows in his foregrounding of the scenic and his insistence on reality in the mountaineering stuff. Also in how all this is more significant than plot, which is minimized so each photographic opportunity can be fully exploited for the greatest viable duration. He’s rather good at keeping the balance.
With Herzog, it generally comes out in the freakish “reality” of what he’s filming, whether it be the boat going up the hill, the dwarfism of his entire cast, or Christian Bayle losing lots of weight (again).
What with Christmas on the way and all –
December 19, 2011 at 3:22 pm
When was Polanski “washed-up”? jamais de la vie !
December 19, 2011 at 7:27 pm
I would say that between Pirates and The Ninth Gate, it was starting to look as if his powers were greatly depleted. All the films made in that period have merits, and Bitter Moon may be a disguised masterpiece, but The Pianist was a genuine comeback for him, reputation-wise.
December 20, 2011 at 1:25 am
My book will be out in the Fall 0f 2012. Pirates is a botch — a bloated remake of The Fat and the Lean. But The Ninth Gate is BRILLIANT! And so is Bitter Moon (in which Mrs. Polanski does a tango so sensual as to almost move me to “Change Teams.”)
The Pianist has a number of things in it directly fro Polanski’s life.
His best film to date, however, is The Ghost Writer
December 20, 2011 at 2:40 am
Frantic and Death and the Maiden struck me as comparatively weak. Still with good bits. The Ninth Gate is full of interest but doesn’t seem to be about anything interesting — the emptiness could be interesting but never seems to play that way for me.
Find the sex stuff in Bitter Moon mostly hilarious rather than erotic (it’s intended as both), but Mrs P is great in it.
I dig how, in Polanski’s films, a distant piano always sounds in stairwells. And in The Pianist, it becomes a major plot point. It had been waiting offstage for decades.
December 20, 2011 at 4:25 pm
I agree totally with Davd E about THE NINTH GATE, which I find more coherent and involving than the Perez Reverte novel it’s based on, The Dumas Club. Why did Polanski ditch all those ‘Three Musketeers’ references? Because they didn’t work in the first place.
Besides, part of it is filmed in my all-time-favourite place on earth – Sintra, in the mountains above Lisbon. And if the Devil is after Johnny Depp, well, that’s just one more proof of His Satanic Majesty’s admirable taste.
As for BITTER MOON, I was in a packed cinema in London when the whole audience burst into spontaneous applause at that same sensual tango scene that David E alludes to – when Madame Polanski and the even-more-lovely Kristin Scott Thomas ditch their tedious menfolk and get it on together.
There’s no such episode in the Pascal Bruckner novel, and the film is all the better for it. Can’t say anything about PIRATES, as I’ve never managed to sit through it!
December 20, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Thank you Mr. Wingrove. Bitter Moon is based on a novel by Pascal Bruckner but it’s actually a lot closer to Pierre Louys’ “Le femme et le pantin.” I trust y’all know the movie adpatations of that one.
December 20, 2011 at 6:18 pm
Baroncelli, Sternberg, Duvivier, Bunuel. We’re overdue for another, by my count. Interesting how it gave rise to not only multiple versions but two terrific alternative titles.
Pirates needs to be watched on a good widescreen copy. Even then it’s deplorable, but visually something of a treat.
I’d agree that Polanski’s film of The Dumas Club hangs together better than the book, but I don’t find anything at its heart. The jokes and cinematic tricks are enjoyable, but it’s a rather linear plod to a pointless ending — what’s it FOR? Maybe there’s a key that would unlock it for me, but I haven’t encountered it.