May 68 Seeks Its Own Level (And Finds It)

Daniel Riccuito of The Chiseler asked me to post this, so I have. My thoughts are below.

MAY 68 SEEKS ITS OWN LEVEL (AND FINDS IT)

On May 18, 1968, Jean-Luc Godard valiantly tore the screen at the Cannes Film Festival, therein saving cinema momentarily from collaborationism. If the atrocities in Vietnam would not go unanswered, however, cinephiles of the variety Godard called “assholes” with much justice have since sprung out of their coma and into a full on state of lethargy; embracing state power with big, wet, sloppy kisses.

Film, as they say, is a racket, and like all rackets, it feels that it must side with Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Has any hub of this larger Industrial Majesty — whether Cineaste, Criterion, MUBI or Sight & Sound — called for a ceasefire? They each responded to middle-class progressivism by reshuffling their respective canons for Inclusivity’s sake, without disturbing the bottom line of billionaires, but internalizing the Holocaust’s ethical lessons — well, that would be expecting too much from movie fetishists weeping over Night and Fog. Naturally, they remain dry-eyed and decorous as the Holy Land starves the children of Palestine. 

Cinephiles may as well be IDF bullets. 

Their institutions have reduced Palestinians to nothing.

Why has free speech been so triggering to academic administrators? Twitchy, undemocratic responses at Columbia and other strife-torn universities — a twisted combination of police crackdowns and campus shutdowns — seem wildly disproportionate even on this occasion. Young people, students, are being suspended and arrested for attempting to disrupt support for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. 

The question obtains, just how illegal is the speech these students are using? 

During his own long lost student days, Juan Gonzalez helped organize the famous Columbia uprising of 1968. He reminds us now that he and his fellow suspendees were still granted hearings. A simple due process (“or the rudiments of it”) preceded any disciplinary action taken by the school. Rumors of anti-Semitism have thus far squelched meaningful debate between Mr. Gonzalez’s activist heirs — Jews prominent among them— and our mainstream press. Where are the investigations, both internal to the relevant academic institutions in this dispute and, more broadly, among legacy media outlets satisfied with innuendo? 

Our commentators have leaned, and leaned hard, into the inevitable and swift condemnation surrounding any speech opposing American Imperium. 

69% of Israel’s imported weapons come from the United States. One phone call from President Joe Biden would end the Holy Land’s stated goal to further destroy Palestinian life. Virtually in his sleep, he could apply the diplomatic brakes to the creation and continual maintenance of famine in Gaza, which persists amidst Israel’s relentless attacks against — well, again, the destruction has been all but absolute — nigh every hospital, university, bakery and refugee camp. Casualties include anonymous hundreds discovered in mass graves, scenes reminiscent of that earlier, un-televised genocide.

Jewish students, it must be repeated here, represent a major force against an unbearable status quo — and why the hell aren’t we all joining them?

The activist Florence Reece’s 1931 anthem essentially asked the same question: “Which side are you on?” Reece was rallying support for oppressed Americans, striking mine workers in Harlan County, Kentucky. Those of us who care about the indigenous population of historical Palestine are asking for justice, which requires that we pick a side — and if Academe’s choice is clearly wrong, then we are in no way compelled to follow its chronically sick example.

Jean Luc Godard’s symbolic act — call it a “stunt” if you prefer — was part of a larger revolutionary context, whose constituencies included students, teachers, factory workers and (some) cinephiles on the Left. 

Let us hope that Sight & Sound will finally see Gaza, hear the Genocide and call for a ceasefire. 

by Daniel Riccuito and Tom Sutpen

I don’t agree with everything above, starting with the premises that Cannes should have shut down and that Godard, Truffaut et al were engaged in a good-faith political protest, about whether the May ’68 protests were primarily about Vietnam, about whether the cancellation of Cannes achieved anything except the silencing of international voices.

“Cinephiles might as well be IDF bullets.” This strikes me as foolish — if we cinephiles had any actual power in this situation it might make metaphorical sense. But we do have the power to speak and we should exercise it. I felt bad about not writing anything about Gaza, just carrying on the usual merry dance. But I think whatever we say should be not only passionate but accurate. I think Jonathan Glazer’s well-meaning Oscar speech partially disabled itself by the clumsy, inaccurate use of the word “refute” and the poor syntax of the sentence, which enabled Howard Jacobson in The New Statesman to ask “Is Glazer refuting his Jewishness full stop, or refuting his Jewishness being hijacked to justify an occupation?” The question doesn’t legitimately arise because Glazer didn’t use a full stop, the sentence went on and the refuting part was obviously a dependent clause, but as the word refute was the wrong word to use and the sentence was poorly constructed (should have been “We […] reject the hijacking of our Jewishness and the Holocaust” not “We […] refute our Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked” which is a passive sentence, FFS.) In fairness Jacobson goes on to give Glazer “the benefit of every doubt” but of course there isn’t any doubt about what Glazer meant. He just said it badly. I like that he tried to say something, though.

Anyway, I’ll say more in the comments section as required. If you look upon Shadowplay as a refuge from this issue, apologies, but I don’t think there should really be any reliable refuges from this issue.

The Longest Gay

The Sunday Intertitle: Inciting Incident

I’ve been putting off THE COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG, the final stop in our Chaplin odyssey, as Tony Williams has noticed, for three reasons.

1. I’ve written about it before.
2. I didn’t really like it.
3. When you get close to the end of a long journey, you like to pause, lest it be over too soon.

But here goes.

There’s an undeniable frisson as the Universal logo appears to a shiver of strings in the very recognizably emotive Chaplin manner. And part of what makes it exciting is the sense of bold anachronism — THIS music, in THIS era? I would like the film to carry on this timey-wimey discordance, and I suppose in a sense it does, as the Chaplin camera style has not greatly advanced since the 1910s.

Carrying on that sense of temporal overlay, we get an intertitle… can it really be called an intertitle when it appears at the beginning? I’m going to vote yes, because again, it’s appreciably olde-worlde in form. It LOOKS like a title from the silent era, even if it’s in a wider screen ratio. It also seems to imply that this film is set in the past, which it needs to be if it’s about refugees from two world wars.

Chaplin apparently came up with his story in the ‘thirties, as a vehicle for Paulette Goddard. And by referring to BOTH world wars he’s both admitting that ancient origin and trying to bring the thing up to date a bit. The more logical thing would be to pick a single world war and stick to it. Anyway, is this a period movie? Is Hong Kong really crowded with refugees twenty-two years after WWII ended? Wouldn’t they be residents by now?

The music has segued into stereotyped Chinese stuff, Hollywood-style, and the film opens with what looks to be second-unit or even stock footage. (Like that other late-career oddity EYES WIDE SHUT, the film is marked by its aging director’s reluctance to GO ANYWHERE.)

There’s more camera movement in this scenic/city stuff than we’ll get in the whole rest of the movie, I suspect. Still, we get fairly seamlessly out of a smoothish handheld shot “trucking” past neon signs, to a tilt down from a sign that says DANCING to the front of this particular dance hall, where a sign promises the chance to DANCE with a COUNTESS. Then we dolly in, and this is ASTONISHINGLY WOBBLY. I never knew it was possible to get a British camera crew to dolly so badly. There seems absolutely no reason for it to be so inept. Chaplin evidently didn’t want to lay tracks, but there’s no reason not to (apart from time, of course).

A sailor looks at the sign and goes in. We could possibly have dollied after him, but Chaplin simply cuts to a reverse angle indoors. Both this shot and the previous have a flat, planimetric approach redolent of silent days. Get used to it.

The conceit that every dame in the joint is a phony countess is mildly amusing, and Chaplin attempts to back it up with a montage of pleasant-looking gals:

This falls way short of where it needs to land. It could be an array of stunning exotic beauties, or an array of characterful hoydens, a la CABARET. Central Casting has come up with some moderately attractive English roses, the very thing the moment does not call for.

This place is not exactly bustling, either. There’s no Sternbergian sleaze or lushness, no cigarette smoke or occluding beads or streamers, nothing at all to add visual interest, and the heads are all framed centrally to make cropping for television simpler.

The promised DANCING begins, decorously, and the titles play:

Fewer mentions of Chaplin than usual — no music credit, and we abruptly fade out after Patrick Cargill’s card. (Last time I watched this it had a full title sequence here, what gives?)

Fade up on a grainy dockside.

Sidney Chaplin walks on the deck of this liner. Goes inside. Very big interior, one of the few times the movie looks expansive.

SC enters a room where Marlon Brando, our leading man, is rehearsing a speech about world peace, like he was a beauty queen. Sid goes to the nearest porthole and looks through binoculars. “Would you believe it, Hong Kong. By golly I can see a Chinaman there.” So we’re off to a flying start.

It’s not very surprising that a film from 1967 with a director who’s 78 should do a racism within the first four minutes, but it’s not exactly encouraging either. Sid now makes a speech about the poor taste displayed by the poor, which is an attempt at Wildean wit, not the worst dialogue ever, but rather heartless coming from the Little Tramp. It isn’t clearly positioned in such a way as to set up an attitude that will be challenged. But maybe it will be.

We learn that Brando, as “Ogden Meres” (sp?) is the son of the world’s richest oil man, and then we learn it all over again, to make sure. Something about the name “Ogden” indicates a writer trying too hard, just as “Wendell Armbruster III” in Wilder’s AVANTI! signals too heavily its American Abroad status.

Brando seems to have gone into this film with high hopes, explaining in interviews that his previous comedies had been none too hot, but that with Chaplin in charge all that would change. It’s uncertain when disillusion set in, but Brando claimed Chaplin was a sadist and he was appalled by the way he treated Sid. Sid, for his part, said he felt his dad was just trying to help him. Brando himself wasn’t entirely devoid of cruelty.

We’ve also been told that Brando liked to test his directors, giving two takes of a scene on day one, one where he put in the effort and one where he just walked through. If the director printed the wrong take, Brando would give up trying.

The thing is, though BEDTIME STORY is not a distinguished film, it is EXTREMELY funny in places and Brando is extremely funny in it, paired with David Niven, not an obvious match. Would that some of that fire ignited here.

Chaplin is not bent on exploiting the new license of the screen, but Sidney’s throwaway suggestion for alternative pursuits to politics — “Murder, arson, rape” — does step outside the bounds of cinematic discourse as it was known in Chaplin’s heyday. To modern ears, it also calls to mind Sidney’s namesake and uncle, the cannibal rapist Sydney Chaplin, but the less said of him the better.

Ogden’s secretary Crawford comes in with a wire. He thwaps the document lightly with his fingertips, as Shakespearean messengers are wont to do with their scrolls. It’s a ham gesture of the kind no real person ever indulges in, and Bill Nagy doesn’t seem like the kind of actor to do it off his own bat. I suspect he’s following his director’s instructions.

Patrick Cargill enters next, and one immediately gets the sense that this is an experienced farceur. Cargill is more of a comedy straight man, though, where perhaps if you have Brando as lead you might want, I dunno, more of an Eric Blore type? Just spitballing. But Cargill does certainly imply, by his presence, a certain humorous professionalism which we will need.

Then Oliver Johnston from A KING IN NEW YORK comes in — this scene is all about old guys coming through doors — and he’s another Cargill, an actor who can be relied on to amplify somebody else’s funny business, if only somebody else was doing something funny. I know, it’s early yet, Chaplin is quite entitled to merely set up his story and get the people in at this stage.

Some mild farce business — mistaken identity, then mistaken intentions. Brando is trying to get rid of Johnston on the assumption that he’s a bore, but Johnston is proposing a highstepping night on the two with Sophia Loren and a couple of her countess pals. the door opens again and in they come, to a burst of romance music wafting through from another era.

Each “countess” gets an inartistic closeup. Cameraman Arthur Ibbetson, who hasn’t shot a really convincing film since Bryan Forbes’ WHISTLE DOWN THE WIND, punches in from the same camera position by changing lens, even though angling around to suggest the Brando viewpoint would be eminently justifiable.

On the social media platform known as Twitter, George Joseph Gilbert PriscilaMariaVeronica White pondered whether the Pinewood sets for this film were recycled for DOCTOR IN TROUBLE (1970), an of Awful British Comedian film where the comedians are Leslie Phillips (another fine farceur) and Harry Secombe. Both ocean liner comedies feature Angela Scougal, Scoular, of whom more later. But the sets are not the same. They just FEEL the same.

The implication is that COUNTESS is an Awful British Comedian film in which the Awful British Comedian stays offscreen, plonked in the director’s chair. With its flat Pinewood look, Margaret Rutherford guest spot (she provided previous support for Norman Wisdom and Frankie Howerd), and half-hearted farce plotting, ACFHK does indeed sit adjacent to that subgenre, even if it was conceived in Hollywood in the 1930s, or maybe on Chaplin’s far east holiday to Singaopore.

There is some business with champagne, and somebody turns the romantic Russian music off — the first indication we’ve had that this score is dietetic, issuing from Brando’s hi-fi rather than being dropped onto the soundtrack from on high. It’s rather distracting.

Ballroom. Good view out the window, not as fake as one expects here. Don Ashton’s production design is not stunning but it is proficient. He did BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, not a small job. And Chaplin is moving the camera a little.

A pity Chaplin didn’t take Oliver Johnston’s role. It might not have helped much, but there would have been clear interest in him sharing the screen with Brando and Loren. Instead we just get a tantalising cameo.

Ollie tells us that the countesses are genuine and “their parents escaped to Shanghai during the Russian Revolution.” Which means this MUST be a period movie, and in fact it can’t even be happening after WWII, as that intertitle claimed. Or else Sophia’s parents escaped to Shanghai as infants, then met, married and had her when they grew up.

Sophia’s gorgeous co-countesses cannot act. AT ALL. And yet they are given lines, unnecessary lines, in which we learn for the third time that Marlon is a big oil man.

And we’re ten minutes in!

A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG stars Doctor Moreau; Filumena Marturano; Neville; Neville Chamberlain; Melanie Daniels; Harry, Scrooge’s Nephew; Ambassadore Jaume; Madame Arcati; Ruby; Opal; Midnight; Mavis Winkle; Diana Smallwood; Vivian Darkbloom; Zoot/Dingo; and Lord Helpus.

TO BE CONTINUED