Tick Tock

TIME WITHOUT PITY continues my exploration of the work of Joseph Losey – pith helmet on, machete in hand.

The plot — Michael Redgrave is an alcoholic novelist newly emerged from a sanatorium to discover his son convicted of murder and due to be executed. Armed only with an unshakable faith in his boy’s innocence, Redgrave attempts to redeem his dissolute life and failed parenthood by finding some “tangible evidence” to save the son from execution.

The script is faintly derived from Emlyn Williams’ play Someone Waiting, but screenwriter Ben Barzman  (a fellow blacklistee of Losey) has completely exploded the plot and reassembled it in a radical new shape: Williams’ play takes place entirely AFTER the son’s execution. Despite completely remodelling the narrative trajectory, Barzman retains most of Williams’ characters, and some of the clues by which the murder is cunningly solved, including a very unusual alibi.

The film boldly begins by revealing the true killer, in a starkly lit murder scene that certainly catches the attention, with Tristram Carey’s clamorous score blasting at us, swaying lights and looming shadows, a sexy victim, and the bulbous form of Leo “Number Two” McKern. Nevertheless, I felt it may have been a mistake to discard any mystery at this early point. It’s true that Leo McKern turning out to be the killer would be unlikely to surprise anyone, but perhaps a solution might have been to recast the part with someone softer and rewrite the character to make him less of a shouty caricature of capitalist vulgarity. Without someone as blazingly guilty as McKern, naturally shifty performers like Paul Daneman and Ann Todd would have moved into prime suspect mode. But then we wouldn’t have McKern, which would be kind of a shame.

As Redgrave begins to investigate, Losey lets rips with some mirror-maze visuals and allows us to see just how pathetic a figure the hero is. This really works. Not only is the man faced with a horrific deadline (like THE BIG NIGHT, this film compresses its narrative into a tight frame), but he’s hopelessly ill-equipped, both physically and psychologically, to tackle the task in hand. All he has going for him is utter desperation.

Redgrave is the perfect man for the job — in his youth, the kind of light comedian Britain abounded in, as demonstrated in Hitchcock’s THE LADY VANISHES, by middle age Redgrave was our finest neurotic, able to make weakness of any kind both sympathetic and compelling. He’s perfectly fitted to this role, and makes one wish the film were about, say, 15% better to bring it up to his superb level. 

Guest stars! Peter Cushing as an expository plot function; Joan Plowright as a showgirl (!); Renee Houston as a drunken Scotswoman surrounded by clocks. Houston, a recent discovery of ours, brings a welcome touch of music hall grotesquerie to any film. Here she’s in full harridan mode, with Bride of Frankenstein hair, but brings enough nuance to her role to justify the excessive symbolism of her cacophonously ticking, ringing and chiming flat. Hefting a clock, she slurs:

“One of the little pleasures in life, Mr. Gage, I can now give myself: just to hear it ring, and know you don’t have to go anywhere.”

Good scenes like the above, and each of Redgrave’s painful visits to his son (each starting with calm and reconciliation, degenerating into despair and recrimination, driving home more fully each time what a failure our hero is), are somewhat let down by bad ones. A visit to the offices of an MP campaigning against the death penalty allows for some dramatically redundant and boring speechifying, delivering points which should be illustrated dramatically by the plot. (But is that a frivolous Dirk Bogarde cameo, or just some cut-price Dirkalike?)

Losey’s artsier moments are enjoyable, but his more restrained ones are excellent too. Tracking from a wide shot into an over-the-shoulder, moving his actors out of frame to have them rediscovered by the camera seconds later, he choreographs the film with economy and elegance, with impactful cutting and subtly emphatic framing. British producers hoping for a bit of Hollywood dynamism from their blacklisted Americans got their money’s worth from Losey.

Not to spoil the end, but of course Redgrave must stake his own life to save his son’s — here there’s evidence of censorship and mucking about, with unlikely carelessness with guns and lip-flap from a major character, who presumably said something politically or morally questionable (the more you look at censorship practice the more it always seems to have a political point to limit thought). But the main thrust of the conclusion is excellent, even if the details are weakened — it confirms Lars Von Trier’s verdict on capital punishment: a very bad thing, but excellent for drama.

(But before you ask — I LOATHE Von Trier’s DANCER IN THE DARK.)

Quote of the Day: Miss Lonelyhearts

The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (are-you-in-trouble? — Do-you-need-advice? — Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. On it a prayer had been printed by Shrike, the feature editor.

“Soul of Miss L, glorify me.

Body of Miss L, nourish me

Blood of Miss L, intoxicate me.

Tears of Miss L, wash me.

Oh good Miss L, excuse my plea,

And hide me in your heart,

And defend me from mine enemies.

Help me, Miss L, help me, help me.

In saecula saeculorum. Amen.”

Although the deadline was less than a quarter of an hour away, he was still working on his leader. He had gone as far as: “Life is worth while, for it is full of dreams and peace, gentleness and ecstasy, and faith that burns like a clear white flame on a grim dark altar.” But he found it impossible to continue. The letters were no longer funny. He could not go on finding the same joke funny thirty times a day for months  on end. And on most days he received more than thirty letters, all of them alike, stamped from the dough of suffering with a heart-shaped cookie knife.

~ from Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West.

I love that Rod Serling leap into the metaphor zone at the end there — purple and fully extended.  

Images from THE LOVED ONE and REAR WINDOW.

Things I read off the screen in “They Drive By Night”

This is the 1938 British movie THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT, not the 1940 Raoul Walsh one with the same title. Walsh’s film is a searing drama about truck drivers. Woods’ film is a crime thriller that isn’t really about truck drivers at all, which is maybe part of the trouble with it.

Lots to read in this movie! Maybe that’s what they mean by British cinema being in thrall to the literary tradition. Nearly every plot point gets reported in the papers and then shown in print onscreen. Also, the busy studio-based world of the film, a very convincing and atmospheric creation, is alive with advertising, signage and print of all kinds. In one exciting scene the hero flees past a shop selling “everything”, plastered with product names and so busy that the human eye goes spastic trying to take it all in.

Newly released from prison, good-hearted crook Emlyn Williams goes to see a friend who runs a SNACK BAR.

Many are the ads for Player’s Cigarettes in this film! I won’t reproduce them all or you will be hypnotised into craving the Smooth Smoke Doctors Recommend, and I don’t want that on my conscience. The items offered by CHARLIE’S include TEAS, you will note. For a hard-boiled crime drama, this film shows quite a lot of tea being drunk. It’s an odd effect.

Graham Greene praised TDBN, saying it was “on a level with the French cinema” — Greene was a great fan of PEPE LE MOKO – which rather misses the point. What it’s blatantly trying to do is mimic American levels of pace, vigor and aggression. The dialogue is a weird mixture of British (girls = judies) and U.S. slang. The plot races along with casual abandon, driven by outrageous coincidence and a hunger for action, but moving in loosely structured fits and starts. Greene wouldn’t have minded the coincidence — check how, in Gun For Sale (filmed as THIS GUN FOR HIRE) the fugitive assassin hero happens to get on a train with the girlfriend of the detective leading the hunt! The man chiefly responsible for TDBN’s coincidences is film editor Derek Twist, who rescued Michael Powell’s THE EDGE OF THE WORLD in the cutting room, and adapted this script.

DIGRESSION — Powell & Pressburger gave Twist his directorial break on END OF THE RIVER, a jungle drama with Sabu. In his highly readable 2-volume autohagiography, Powell blames Twist for the uninspired result, “making the Amazon basin dull”. But my friend Lawrie Knight, who was manning the communications centre back at Rank’s Denham Studios, told me that in fact Twist got sick after a few days and it was Powell himself who took over direction of the film. “And he ruined it. It was supposed to be about the slow pace of life on the river contrasted with the speed of city life, and Mickey directed the whole thing like a train.” Cinematographer Christopher Challis observed in his witty autobio, Are They Really So Awful?, that you couldn’t see the rain forest except by flying over it, so it proved surprisingly unphotogenic.

TRY OUR HOT \__/  \__/ THEY’R GRAND. Hot pictographs! My, that DOES sound grand. Instants later, our hero has stumbled upon an old flame, lying strangled, and goes “on the lam.”

I like everything about the above image. The ad for Woodbines proves the makers’ aren’t totally in Player’s pocket. The tiny sign saying “BLACK CAT” makes it for me, and the nuns. Emlyn Williams is an unlikely hero — he’s Welsh, playing working class, unhandsome, vaguely effete, and cast as a tough hero called “Shorty”. But he’s rather good. He has the advantage of unexpectedness. But British cinema didn’t know what to do with him. Like Robert Newton, he was tried as a male lead and found wanting. Just as Hollywood found a role for Newton (saying “Arrr!” a lot), so it was a Hollywood filmmaker who first saw Williams’ true potential — Josef Von Sternberg cast him in his abortive epic I, CLAUDIUS, as Caligula, a man so decadent he was “maybe even a little sissy, but not too much.”

NEWS THEATRE. That is such an exciting concept – a tiny tiny cinema devoted to newsreels. Next door to a shop selling “TOBACCOS”, so you can go in and smoke and make the projector beam stand out nicely.

Hiding out, suspected of a crime he — for once – didn’t commit, jailbird Williams is upset to find the feature attraction is all about MURDERERS. Is the “No. 17″ a homage to the Hitchcock film of the same name? Williams, a talented writer, helped script the original THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH for Hitchcock. He’s also the author of a horrifying but moving and brilliant true crime book, Beyond Belief, dealing with the “moors murderers” Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. Follow the link to see the iconic mugshot of Myra, which caused John Waters to remark, “She’s going to do an extra twenty years just because she didn’t get her roots done that week.”

But Williams’ greatest contribution to cinema is his play, Night Must Fall, which has been filmed twice. Williams wrote the part of the psychopathic Danny for himself to play, and he seems perfect for it. In movies, the role provided great opportunities for both Robert Montgomery and Albert Finney, who gave contrasting performances of great detail and intensity. Well worth a look — but I wish there was a third version starring the creator of the role.

“You come out of the movies and the world’s changed,” complains Steve Martin in PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. Emlyn finds this especially true: not only is it raining (a proper British downpour which will last for the next two reels) but he’s now officially wanted for murder. Bummer.

Grabbing a bus out of London — the conductor is “Billy Hartnell”, future film star (BRIGHTON ROCK) and TV’s first Dr. Who — our Emlyn winds up at the first of the film’s several Transport Cafes, where CAMP COFFEE is on offer but the long distance drivers inexplicably prefer tea. It was at “greasy spoons” like this that Anthony “Puffin” Asquith, top film director and son of the prime minister, would moonlight, helping out in the kitchen in order to pick up truckers. Emlyn is himself picked up by a trucker, and after numerous adventures, ends up — at another cafe.

Along the way there’s an altercation with what should be some “Truck Stop Dames”, but since this is England, we have to call them “Lorry Girls”, which doesn’t sound right, somehow.

The big attraction at WALLY’S CAFE is the TEAS again:

British tea-drinkers are strongly advised not only to DRINK, but also to ENJOY their MAZAWATTEE TEAS. You have to remind them or they’ll forget, you know. The film now gets on with the lorry-based action, fifteen minutes of it, after which it moves on, having justified its title to its own satisfaction. Winning over a dubious trucker, bumping into an old friend who’s a dance-hall hostess and friend of the murder victim, and escaping from police, Emlyn makes the headlines again — stick with me, this is ABOUT TO GET WEIRD.

I question the “glamour girl” part slightly, but not as much as I question the other “top stories” — MERMAID WEEPS and DON’T SUCK YOUR PEN! Remember, this is 1938. Europe is poised on the brink of war. And the paper devotes its front page to a penny-ante murder story, a sobbing water nymph, and advice on what to not suck. BIZARRE. Oh wait, it’s the Daily Mirror, that explains it.

These aren’t quite as good, but HANDBOOK TO GUIDE VOLUNTEERS and RADIO JERKS FINANCE HITCH are still pretty interesting. This is a completely unnecessary newspaper montage anyway, recapping the action we’ve just seen, and introducing headlines we’ll get to see later.

Now the plot swerves into PIEGES / LURED territory, with Emlyn’s lady friend attempting to ID the real killer from among the clients at the PALAIS DE DANSE where she works. It suddenly becomes clear that the movie could have usefully omitted Emlyn altogether and made her the hero. The pretentious French of PALAIS DE DANSE was a British tradition — nearly all dance halls were known as “the palais“, it seems.

In an American movie the professional dance partners would be prostitutes, disguised for the sake of the Production Code. And I guess they are here, too. Some of them sound pretty POSH though. Now the film tips its hand, revealing the TRUE KILLER — Ernest Thesiger. Yes, red-blooded, testosterone-fuelled Ernest Thesiger is strangling dance hall girls with silk stockings and then going home, slipping into his housecoat and leering at hardcore pornography:

PARIS NIGHTS. Disgusting! The film devotes the rest of its running time, apart from the matter of rounding off the plot, to Ernest’s reading material. Apart from the odd house number (Ernest resides at No. 3), we only get to read what Ernest has read. His literary sloppy seconds, as it were.

MODERN DANCE AND THE DANCER, and THE STOCKING PARADE. It’s beyond depravity! Ernest plays Walter Hoover, a retired schoolmaster and pub bore who lectures the local drunks on the niceties of psychopathology, explaining how the killer derives a thrill from wielding power over life and death. “You do give things a queer twist!” remarks a regular. Maybe because the psychobabble is, for once, coming not from a pipe-smoking Lew Ayres type prof, but from an actual murderer, it’s surprisingly reasonable.

Thrillingly, the flick affords us not one but TWO glimpses of Ernest’s library, where he keeps his many leather-bound volumes. The room no doubt smells of rich mahogany. And semen.

SEX IN RELATION TO SOCIETY sounds hilariously dry and vague, but SOCIAL CONTROL OF SEX EXPRESSION is the real winner. Havelock Ellis was a real author, wasn’t he? (He was — I just read up on him, and he’s bloody fascinating. Click on his name.) So these aren’t mock-ups, but perhaps items from the Sinister Library of Derek Twist. “You do give things a queer Twist!” But there’s more to come:

CROOKED PERSONALITIES IN CHILD HOOD AND AFTER — well, that “AFTER” certainly covers everything. TWENTY HUMAN MONSTERS sounds like a damn fine read, likewise THE THRILL OF EVIL, but it’s SEX IN PRISON that makes me choke on my Mazawattee Tea. That’s so frank I can’t believe they even included it. Is it the novelisation of William Dieterle’s SEX IN CHAINS, I wonder?

And this is from Ernest’s scrapbook of murder, hidden behind the porn. BEDROOM MYSTERY is a fine, fine headline. Unfortunately, since Ernest has clipped out and saved all the bits relating to his crimes, he’s failed to preserve the advice DON’T SUCK YOUR PEN! Perhaps this will be his downfall.

Now the film continues to become derailed and unstuck, as the climax hinges on whether Emlyn can lick Ernest in a fight. IN A FIGHT — get your minds out of the gutter. Since we’ve already seen Em knock Er for six with a single mighty chop, there’s not much suspense in this. Ernest is a fey cat-loving schoolteacher(”Come here, my subtle one,” he coos at a kitty) while Emlyn may be a shorty but he’s a hardened crim. “Ernest Thesiger could be overpowered by his own kittens,” remarks Fiona. Emlyn beats them to it, and the film’s glossolalia serves up one final message: 

Screen Direction

My favourite bit of Hitchcock’s I CONFESS — these signposts, right at the start. (Hitchcock was at pains to assure Truffaut that they are a genuine feature of the Quebec streets…but WHY?)

I have to watch this again. I remember liking Monty Clift, but I nearly always do. The rest is a bit of a blur. Typically there are pleasures in a minor Hitchcock which one forgets and then discovers afresh upon reacquaintance. This makes most of his lesser films shine out on repeat viewing.

Double or nothing

“I got a great idea! Two movies in one — like an old double feature, get it? And make it in the old style, and even have trailers in between ‘em!”

No. It’s not the misbegotten GRINDHOUSE, it’s the misbegotten MOVIE MOVIE (1978), an earlier attempt to create a faux-double feature experience, directed by Stanley Donen from a script by the great Larry Gelbart and the less-renowned Sheldon Keller. The flick consists of two parody ’30s Warner Bros type stories, a crime/boxing melodrama and a backstage musical. Harvey Weinstein, if he’d remembered or even heard of this one, might have had second thoughts about commissioning a two-parter from his wunderkinds Tarantino and Rodriguez. Like it’s 21st century equiv, this film sank without trace.

I stumbled across a cheap copy of this on VHS and thought I’d give it a go. It represents Donen’s last stab at directing musical numbers in a feature film, numbers choreographed by Michael Kidd (who also appears) so it seemed it would be of some kind of interest.

It was, but mainly in a sad way. The first section of the film, a boxing yarn, has some moderate funniness, mostly in the form of strange verbal non sequiteurs meant to imitate the clunky writing of a weak ’30s melodrama. “I saw what I saw! It’s a wonder my eyes didn’t throw up!” cries a pretty young Harry Hamlin. His presence made me feel about 17% more gay than usual. This section is shot in luminous black-and-white, very flattering to HH, and helpful to the period feel. Unfortunately, Donen has no idea how to direct period pastiche, as becomes clear by the way he begins nearly every scene by ZOOMING OUT from a detail. I know he wasn’t directing in the ’30s, but he must have noticed that the zoom wasn’t a common piece of kit when he got going in the late ’40s, surely?

Anne Reinking is around to dance one number — not very ’30s but fun, and introduced by Donen himself, and act in a pleasingly plebeian Warner Bros dame kind of a way. Asides from that, miscasting reins.

George C Scott is the star of both movies. He’s very funny in STRANGELOVE but here he’s too heavy and too SLOW. It feels like a rehearsal for a Warners Film, before they got things up to speed. Art Carney drags his heels too. Rather oddly, Eli Wallach is more suited to this period, and actually makes underplaying work.

Part 2 begins, and is massively underwritten. Did Gelbart wrote the first half only? Of did the pair just run out of jokes? If the musical is supposed to be amusing through the sheer gusto of the players, its out of luck. Worse, Donen assassinates the supposedly Busby Berkeley-esque numbers by zooming in and out like he’s rehearsing for VAMPYROS LESBOS. Abandoning the silvery monochrome of part one, this has to make do with a vague attempt at period colour. The real work is done by Jack Fisk’s production design and, as we know from his turn as “the man in the planet” in David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD, Fisk can work wonders.

I presume the inspiring demon here is Mel Brooks, who’d recently shown that parody could be very successful, and that a black-and-white film could be very successful. MOVIE MOVIE proves the opposite by hiring the wrong people and giving them the wrong guidance. Only pride could have kept Donen from hiring the likes of Madeleine Kahn, so instead we get a Kahn-like broadway diva played by… Trish Van Devere.

This was the problem faced by anybody hoping to employ George C Scott in the ’70s. He would tend to bring his lovely wife along. Somebody (John Simon?) said she was “never more tha n a smiling hole in the air” and while that’s unkind, it hits on something inescapable. Far from being a terrible actress, TVD simply lacks the force of personality to make an impression next to someone like GCS. Where he has great presence, she has great absence. It’s unfair, but there it is.

I was curious (wary, but curious) about MOVIE MOVIE because of the great time I’d had recently with IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER, a Donen-Kelly movie from 1955 — 23 years, and a projillion centuries, before MOVIE MOVIE. Apart from the amazing song-and-dance numbers and the breathtaking vituperative bitterness of the narrative, what wowed me there was the long take style. The whole movie is master shots! No coverage, no protection, Donen and Kelly apply the same aesthetic to every scene that they apply to the rigorously planned dance routines. The editor would have had little to do but cut off the clapperboards.

This kind of filmmaking is rare in the commercial cinema because all it takes is one little flaw in one little shot and the scene is unusable without reshooting. But on an old-style studio film with a decent budget and schedule, the expense of reshooting is minimal, since everybody’s on contract anyway. Might as well make them work.

The only other film that springs to mind, apart from experiments like Hitchcock’s ROPE, to commit itself fully to master shots, is THE GENERAL by Buster Keaton. Keaton’s other work is very rigorous too, but in THE GENERAL you literally can’t remove a single shot without collapsing the scene it’s part of, and you certainly can’t remove a scene without damaging the beautiful symmetry of the story structure. It’s like a maginificent house of cards. And again, since everybody was on contract all year, reshoots were not too onerous. Of course, if you’re going to collapse a burning bridge with a steam train on it you might want to cover that with a spare camera or two, but apart from that, there’s an awesome economy to the filming of massive spectacle.

Which brings us back to MOVIE MOVIE, which is all coverage. No one shot feels like it had to end up in the final cut, every decision has been postponed until the edit. Which is what happens when a filmmaker loses their courage. What needs to be said in Donen’s favour is that when he lost that courage, he lost more of it than most filmmakers ever have.

Bass relief

CARMEN JONES. 

The start of the Bass-Preminger collaboration…

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM.

Title sequences by Saul Bass. It’s interesting that Otto Preminger, something of a control freak one might think, was happy to basically hand over the openings of his movies to somebody else to direct. I mean, no doubt Bass and Preminger discussed these sequences intensively. But they still smack of untrammelled creativity, so it would be astonishing to me if Otto interfered much after the concept was agreed.

But then, Otto was also able to collaborate effectively with some great composers, and of course there again the filmmaker must entrust a large part of the movie to somebody else, somebody who cannot be directed in quite the same way as an actor or cinematographer…

SAINT JOAN. Impressive how Bass’s hip work merges so well with the period flavour.

BONJOUR TRISTESSE.

ANATOMY OF A MURDER. A classic.

EXODUS. “Otto, let my people go!”

ADVISE AND CONSENT.

“When the Saul Bass credits conclude with the dome of the Capitol lifting to reveal Preminger’s name, the limitations of the whole enterprise are already apparent.” ~ Jonathan Rosenbaum.

THE CARDINAL. Again, simple but stunning due to the careful design of action and lettering together.

IN HARM’S WAY. Just the placement of the words over the image is beautiful, it makes it inexplicable why so many title sequences don’t seem to bother with composition at all.

BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING. Probably my favourite late Preminger, of those I’ve been able to see in decent form. The best ever Olivier film performance, and a superb turn from Noel Coward.

THE HUMAN FACTOR.

Preminger, a useful combination of artist and huckster, undoubtably borrowed from Hitchcock’s zesty promotional gimmickry, pushing himself forward as a personality, as a bigger star than those in his films, and even narrating his own movie trailers in a lugubrious fashion (Hitch was way better at that though). But Preminger was the first to use the iconic Saul Bass as titles designer (unity was achieved by having Bass design ALL the publicity material as well).

Fallen on her feet

 

I just read this fine piece on DAISY KENYON by Zach Gallagher Campbell, Dan Sallitt and Damien Bona, and then this nice review by Glenn Erickson, which alleges that Preminger’s 1945 noir FALLEN ANGEL, embodying his long-take, fluid style, has only ten shots in its first fifteen minutes. I was actually surprised, because I know the opening fairly well, I’ve studied it and taught it, but I’ve never counted the shots. It had seemed to me that while Preminger does sometimes go for pretty long takes, what’s most impressive is the way he makes the shots WORK HARD for him, with the camera moving for several different reasons at once. I don’t think the sheer bravado of his his shot duration compares to Ophuls’ monster sequence-shots, but the shots are complex and intricate in other ways. So I was tempted to go back to the scene, not to check the shot-count was correct, because I’m sure it is, but to analyse more closely how and why Preminger moves the camera, something which had distracted me from the actual length of the takes.

I think there are FIVE MAIN REASONS for a director to move the camera in narrative cinema. When I’m working with Scott Ward, a fine cinematographer, we often talk about the camera’s MOTIVATION for moving, in exactly the same way you’d discuss an actor’s motivation for doing something. A director might want to achieve a particular visual effect, but unless a lucid motivation can be devised for the actor or the camera’s action, the result will be phony. So, the FIVE MOTIVATIONS are:

1) Following a moving subject. This seems like the most basic and crude reason of all for camera movement, but it can be tackled in the most subtle and curious ways. It also includes moments where the camera might move COUNTER to the subject, but still in reaction to its movement. When Mifune backs away from his turncoat army in THRONE OF BLOOD, the camera moves FORWARD, following a parallel line but in the opposite direction. A shot that had been looking past Mifune at his men, taking in his POV, is now flipped so that we’re looking AT Mifune from an angle approximating the POV of his men — the camera has changed sides, and now Mifune’s REALLY in trouble.

2) Giving us the POV of a moving character. Again, this seems simple enough, but it’s the essence of much of Hitchcock’s direction, forcing us into the character’s position (but for another view, see Mr. Sallitt again). Taking this to the kind of extreme that Hitchcock rather disapproved of, we get DePalma’s endless subjective stalkercam shots. I’d love to see BDP confronted with Hitchcock’s pooh-poohing of this kind of technique in the Hitchcock-Truffaut interview book. No doubt he’d have an answer, but I’d like to hear what it is.

3) Exploring space. Most common in establishing shots, this use of the moving camera allows the audience to explore the scene in three dimensions. As a scene develops, narrative concerns often force this type of action to a halt, so that the audience can focus more on developing plot points. I’ve always had a suspicion that the Italian cinema has more of an investment in this kind of movement than any other, beginning with CABIRIA and the like, where the camera movement was a necessary device to allow the viewer to take in the size of the sets. Griffith adapted this for the tracking elevator shots of INTOLERANCE — crudely put, the shot’s purpose is to show of the scenery, but this has dramatic values too.

4) Telling the story. The camera can become authorial, prowling around IN SEARCH OF CLUES, as in the opening of REAR WINDOW. Hitchcock’s camera here becomes a curious observer, a character in its own right, gliding from object to object, gathering information that helps to bring us up to speed with the in media res narrative.

5) What am I forgetting? There’s always one… ah yes, the psychological tracking shot. A character thinks, and the camera moves towards them (usually), and their thought seems to acquire real importance. An early example of this might be Jannings reading his letter of dismissal in THE LAST LAUGH. The first Hollywood instance I can think of is in HAND ACROSS THE TABLE. Fred MacMurray smokes pensively and broods, and Mitchell Leisen pushes the camera towards him. Nothing is motivating this camera movement save THOUGHT ITSELF.

There are all sorts of other purposes behind camera movement, but I think of these as side-benefits. They may be incredibly important (adding excitement and animation, increasing audience identification) but they are not sufficient in themselves to actually get the camera moving. As Aki Kaurismaki once facetiously said, the camera’s a big heavy thing, and if you’ve been drinking the night before it’s going to take quite a lot of effort to get that thing moving. Also, I think a director who swings the camera about JUST to “create excitement” is likely to be a dumb filmmaker. See Michael Bay.

So, by way of that massive discursion, we return to the opening of FALLEN ANGEL.

SHOT 1. As the titles end, we find ourselves on a bus, looking at the driver’s back. Noticing something behind us, the driver parks the bus and gets up, passing the camera, which pans after him and follows him down the aisle (Motivation 1). The driver and camera both stop standing over Dana Andrews. The driver then shakes Andrews awake and tells him his ticket “ran out at the last stop”, at which point Preminger restarts the camera movement to get closer to Andrews and let us see his face (Motivation 4). This not only “establishes” the protagonist’s face, it also imparts some special significance to him. It’s some kind of a “hero shot”, you could say. Andrews then stands, forcing the camera back Motivation 1 again) and leaves frame, having retrieved his coat and bag from the luggage rack.

The first cut:

SHOT 2 shows Andrews leaving the bus, and it’s a real beauty. Starting wide and high, we start to close in on Dana, fine fellow that he is, as the bus drives off screen right — that is the sideways bus movement triggers a forwards camera movement, towards Andrews, a weird abstract combination of Motivation 1 and 3 and 4 with maybe even a touch of 5 (I did say Preminger was fluid). Worse yet for my neat distinctions, Andrews, having paused for another heroic photo op, turns and heads off, and now we’re following him in a clear case of Motivation 1, until we reach the town signpost and he pauses to look at it — the camera has now framed Andrews and the sign, in something that could be read as Motivation 2 (POV) at one remove, or Motivation 4 (the authorial move, feeding us geographical info), but which was clearly just Motivation 1 at the time we were actually moving.

SHOT 3. Dissolve to a seaside diner.

 

Andrews walks into shot, forcing a pan, and we start tracking after him, nearing the door of the establishment. Opening the door, Dana gives us a nicely framed little scene at the counter, and we pick up a line of dialogue from proprietor Pop (Percy Kilbride). The frame has transformed into a sort of over-the-shoulder view, which is cut off as Andrews carries on inside and closes the door in our face, forcing a cut.

SHOT 4. So far the film has been nothing but sequence shots, each scene a single take, but now comes a very complex scene of narrative set-up, character introductions and interaction, so the cutting hots up, understandably. The first shot of the scene shows Andrews finishing the shutting of the door, and follows him to the counter where we get another, closer OTS shot on the discussion between Pop and Charles Bickford’s detective. Here we learn there’s a missing person report being filed.

SHOT 5. The first stationary shot of the film — Looking past Bickford and his cop pal at Pop. It establishes Pop’s appearance more clearly, and allows us to momentarily forget Dana, who has been set up as witness to all this but can now by sidelined.

SHOT 6 is a reverse favouring Bickford, but it swiftly develops beyond that. The cop exits and we pan with him to the door, where we find ugly old Bruce Cabot, seen in passing as Andrews entered, who now walks to the counter, necessitating a pan back the way we came. This is all Motivation 1, but it’s made satisfying and complex by the way we lose one subject and find another in a nicely choreographed fashion. Now we’re back on Bickford, who gets some dialogue that establishes him as something of a blowhard, then Cabot walks off, necessitating a Motivation 1 pan, which discovers Andrews again — the Motivation 1 has served the purpose of an authorial move, only more discretely. Andrews orders coffee.

(Pause while Cairns goes and makes some too.)

Mmm, coffee.

Now, that shot on Andrews (still the versatile shot 6) becomes an over-the-shoulder when Pop steps in to take his order, which then allows us to cut to -

SHOT 7, a reverse on Pop, over Dana A’s shoulder (note: this is a different set-up to the previous Pop-shot, which was at the other end of the counter). Now we get a hairy moment — as Pop obligingly walks off to fix coffee and a burger for Andrews, his movement is meant to pull the camera off to one side to end up on a shot looking past Andrews at Bickford. I’m not 100% certain if this is Motivation 1 or Motivation 2, as Andrews shifts his attention to Bickford at the same time. It’s a nice move, but the ambiguity isn’t too helpful: maybe it would have been better to let Pop walk off then have Andrews’ shifting in his chair motivate the reframing?

Jingle! Someone’s at the door.

SHOT 8 and Holy Wow! It’s Linda “What I got don’t need beads” Darnell. A beautiful entrance, and then we follow her to a seat, the camera pivoting around Andrews’ back to keep her in view as she removes her feet. Linda is the former missing person, now the returning prodigal, with sore feet. Cut to:

SHOT 9. Preminger’s desire to make each shot complex and multi-functional becomes almost EXCESSIVE — rather than just have Bickford enter Darnell’s frame, he cuts to a medium-closeup expressive of lust and authority, pulling away from Bickford as he advances right at us, and slipping round the side into a sleazy two-shot. Just as we can’t bear looking at this a second longer, Pop’s voice is heard OS, motivating a cut to –

SHOT 10. Pop practically drops his tray when he sees Linda, ruining a perfectly good medium close shot almost immediately but pulling us into a really useful group shot that situates Andrews as outsider/observer. Linda steals his burger. Preminger reframes slightly after Bickford leaves, almost unnoticed (his sexual menace ignored by the contemptuous L Darnell) and D Andrews swaps seats to get his damn coffee. Then Andrews swivels on his bar-stool to frankly eavesdrop, and Preminger eases in on Linda as she stuffs her face with processed meat (Mmm, processed meat), a camera movement that simulates Andrews’ narrowing focus of attention (Motivation 2 crossed with 5, kind of). When Andrews gets up, the shot pulls back again, a straightforward Motivation 1 reframing. When Linda forces Andrews to break his last banknote paying for the coffee (this is where her unpleasantness of a character assumes strangely ALLURING proportions) the camera pulls back a tiny bit with NO MOTIVATION AT ALL, save a sort of abstract Motivation 1 response to  Pop’s exit, and we don’t seem to mind a bit, discovering only at the end of the move that this pull-back allows Pop to be seen as he works the cash register in the background.

Dana exits.

Appearing in only three shots, Linda Darnell has neatly pocketed the whole movie, which will struggle to stay on its feet when she departs around the two-thirds mark. Meanwhile, Preminger has shown how comfortable he is moving the camera with more than one motivation, frequently creating subtle dramatic emphases while appearing simply to be following characters around…

Oh, I buzzed forward to the ten-minute mark, and I find Mr. Erickson’s shot-count slightly off — there are eighteen shots up to then by my reckoning, not counting the credits sequence which eats up the first of those ten minutes. But the general point is quite correct: Otto milks his shots until they squeak.

Fever Dream Double-Features

 

I’ve previously sung the praises of the New-York Ghost, a fine and free periodical to which I occasionally contribute my word sculptures. This week saw the annual film special explode all over us like John Cassavetes at the end of THE FURY, under the guest editorship of B. Kite, but cheeky gremlins prevented the appearance of this fine material by Christoph Hubert. I’ve never met the man, but Hubert is known to Mr. Kite as “The Austrian Cairns,” and fears have been expressed that if we should ever come face to face Space-Time would implode, or something. My doppelganger’s suppressed meisterwerk is here appended for your amazement and edification, and to encourage y’all to check out the Ghost.

FEVER-DREAM DOUBLE FEATURES

As befits the year, I’ve seen lots of great works from all corners of film history (most mindblowing masterwork almost unheard of - Niemandsland, from 1931, by Victor Trivas, who as The Head, a quickly ordered, and weakly dubbed, cheap DVD of his last film Die Nackte und der Satan proved, is overripe for rediscovery). But three times the movie experience was so outstanding it instantly conjured an out-of-mind conjunction with other films. These were my fever-dream double features of the year:

Cuban Story (Victor Pahlen, 1959) - also known as The Truth About Fidel Castro Revolution, a haphazard, poverty-row kind-of-documentary on the fall of Batista, kind of narrated by „firsthand witness” Errol Flynn (who was around to shoot an introduction, but obviously not to dub his alleged voice-over, which sounds slightly British - and radiates an intriguing sense of erosion of authenticity onto the entire enterprise). Screams for a double bill with its ideological and aesthetic opposite: Mikhail Kalatazov’s excessive Soy Cuba.

Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, 1954) - especially after the Peter Jackson juggernaut it was nice to discover they once did make intriguing films about the little people, plus this is clearly the ultimate expression of Minnelli’s aesthetic credo, gaudy studio schizophrenia and all. What is most unexpected about it, though, is when it turns out good ol’ Luis Bunuel clearly just stole its nightmarish New York nightclub finale for his Simon of the Desert. Makes for instructive comparison.

Mondo Topless (Russ Meyer, 1966). First five minutes are a (literally, thanks to Mr. Auteur) screaming tour of San Francisco, jumping on any sexual pun possible. Then Russ gives us a crazed series of girl shaking booty with even more crazed voice-over (both by him and the subjects), plus shots of transistor radios to diegetically justify the music. A masterpiece already, then, not least because of Meyer’s montage mannerisms, which are always at least as inspired as anything by his contempo Godard. But (despite a few detours to Europe, thank you readily available archive material) as an exploration of San Francisco this is even better - as good as contemporary maverick filmmaker James Benning’s experimental studies of the American landscape, but more lively. And, I swear, it includes that shot of the bay and the bridge, so a pairing with Vertigo should make this the apex of obsessive double features. Better yet, make it a fever trauma triple feature and screen Mondo Topless once before and after the Hitchcock for more intense (in every sense) scrutiny, after all it’s only half as long.

— Christoph Huber

If C.H. doesn’t mind, I’d like to run with the Fever Dream Double Feature idea in future, and welcome submissions from Shadowplayers everywhere.

“I have a competition in me…”

I had three thrilling entries for the Shadowplay First Freaky Friday Free Prize Give-away Spectacular.

Question (1): I asked, of Cary Grant’s character name in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, ‘If the “O” in “Roger O Thornhill” didn’t stand for “Nothing,” what would it stand for?’

First to write in was David Ehrenstein, with the topical “Obama”. That sounds pretty nice — Roger Obama Thornhill. It also sounds kind of like an INSTRUCTION. My first thought is that the “O” would STILL stand for nothing.

(BUT — apparently Obama voted in favour of banning cluster-bombs and land mines, while Hilary voted against. It’s only one issue, I know, but when there’s so little useful information and distinction between the candidates…)

Alex Livingston volunteered that the “O” didn’t stand for anything because it’s really a zero. But I think that gag’s already intended by the movie, so I can’t accept it. On the other hand, it suggests that Alex really needs a copy of this film.

Blake Buesnel suggests “Orville”, like the Wright brother, and cites Thornhill’s affinity, if we can call it that, with prop aeroplanes. It’s a good answer, and shows both film knowledge and lateral thinking.

Question (2): ‘If you met a stranger on a train, what would you ask him? Say he came from Peoria, Illinois, what then? Suppose he had a magic pencil?’

Now Alex comes into his own:

“if i met a stranger from peoria, illinois on a train, i would probably ask him to use his magic pencil to draw a new set of tracks to divert the train from crashing into the downtown chicago railway station. then i would ask to borrow the pencil to dig out my liver, which i would send to roger thornhill. he could staple the liver to his meaningless “o” and this would give him an acceptable middle name”

A question (2) answer which morphs into a question (1) answer with all the graceful  ease of Robert Patrick. Outstanding, if grisly.

Blake counters with:

“If i met a stranger from Peoria, Illinois on a train, i would ask her (think of a sharp-witted, blond) to tell me a little bit about her hometown of Peoria. After a minute, I’d ask her about that dreadful fire that took the high school library. She’d agree at the unfortunate nature of the accident. I’d agree and add that it was especially unfortunate, because Peoria lost it’s greatest treasure in the most bizarre occurrence the town had seen in years: an imaginary library being swallowed up by a fictitious 3 alarm fire. Having been found out, I’d reassure her I was just being keen, as my job as an insurance investigator allows me to be, and her secret, whatever it is, is safe with me.”

 

While performing a sex change on the stranger, Blake manages to evoke Eva Maria Saint in NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and also Fred MacMurray’s train-based activities in DOUBLE INDEMNITY.

The judge’s decision is final, but confusing. I say that EVERYBODY has won. The two prizes will be divided among the three of you, in a manner of my choosing. I’ll be in touch to consult with you all on this.

*

Incidentally, the CORRECT answer to (1) is “Ordinary”, as in Wilfred “Ordinary” Smith from STAGE FRIGHT.

Euphoria #50: Cherry Ripe

 

We have reached Euphoria 50! Fifty examples of cinematic joy have been assembled, reaching a kind of critical mass. Things should now start getting better in the world — politics, the environment, men’s fashions, the selection of biscuits at your local ScotMid.

EVERYTHING. 

BAFTA-winning screenwriter and comedy turn Colin McLaren nominated THIS:

‘I’ve plumped for the seance scene from NIGHT OF THE DEMON (52 minutes in), or simply the rendition of CHERRY RIPE, as preceded by the line ‘Oh very well Maggie’. There’s Aleister Crowley’s mum beckoning us to join in. An insight into how Obsolete People keep warm.’

Our writer, Charles Bennett, wrote numerous Hitchcock films in the ’30s, and this scene shows a familiar Hitchcockian puckishness. The silly, matronly mother of the villain seems reminiscent of Bruno’s dear mom in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, actually.

Jacques Tourneur is one my favourite Hollywood directors (his dadwas no slouch either). He did stunning work on OUT OF THE PAST, a classic noir, and his Val Lewton suspensers are justly renowned. N/COTD follows in their shadowy footsteps…

This is Bennett’s comedy relief scene, and how odd it is! Gruff skeptic Dana Andrews dismisses the spiritualist as a fraud, but shouldn’t he at least be impressed by how incredibly good he is? Sense is not being made.

Wikipedia tells me something I don’t know:

‘The Song in Literature
The song Cherry Ripe is a recurring theme in John Buchan’s WWI spy novel Mr Standfast (1919). It identifies Mary Lamington, a young intelligence officer, who fall in love and vice versa with the hero of the novel general Richard Hannay.’

The Buchan reference is relevant due to Bennett’s work adapting THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS for Hitch. OK, it’s a slender thread of connection, and doesn’t actually mean anything, but what do you want on a cold Saturday night?

Oh, I’ve included the little post-seance moment so we can glimpse the splendid Niall McGinnis as Julian Karswell, our Aleister Crowley substitute.

More connections: Athene Seyler (superbname!) who plays Mrs. Karswell, turned up this very evening in the stunning QUEEN OF SPADES, with Anton Walbrook, which we were screening here at Shadowplay Heights – on a DVD which was a gift from a lady named Hitchcock. And Fiona just wafted by with a bowl of ripe cherries, which she intends to devour in bed.

It’s all unfolding like a dream!

More on Tourneur, I should think, soon.

(and a full report on QUEEN OF SPADES)