Partner Up

The final day — officially, anyhow — the Day of the Dead — of PROJECT FEAR. we have survived the efforts of our crazed cult leader to crash us out of the EU, like the Rasputin guy piloting the Siberian Express off a cliff in Sergio Martino’s HORROR EXPRESS. Instead, we’re lingering on a siding, waiting for the zombie cossacks to dismember our institutions. I did what I could.

First up, Tim Concannon turns his steely gaze — a braver man than I! — upon Val Guest’s AU PAIR GIRLS. Is this British soft-porn “romp” a European horror film? Tim argues YES. Go check it out.

(Also, you should hear his podcast. Amazingness! And a big influence on a certain other podcast.)

My friend Martin Allison wanted to contribute something but couldn’t decide what, so I sent him two random films. One was Bertolucci’s PARTNER, which I still haven’t watched but I knew that (a) it uses the Doppelganger theme, hence the uncanny is present and (b) Pierre Clémenti at one point does a Max Schreck impression. That was enough for me.

Martin’s “rant” as he called it is very interesting to me because his objections to the film are exactly those of Bertolucci himself, who felt he was too much under the Godardian influence and needed to break free from it, which was why he gave the Paris-based professor in THE CONFORMIST Godard’s phone number and then murdered the guy.

Here’s Martin:

On my first viewing I didn’t even realise this film was directed by Bertolucci, this in many ways sums up what you need to know.

To paraphrase Mr. Burns, at first glance this film feels like it was made by a bargain-basement-Godard.

The clear lifting of Godard’s visuals is very confusing. Considering how Godard’s films are so detached from emotion, character and plot – and therefore solely rely on images to relay arch themes in an obtuse way – copying this style without having a clear purpose is absurd.

Godard’s images are an attempt at embodying the platonic ideal, the image of something physical stands in for something metaphysical; an idea.

In a very strenuous and lazy summary; to Plato a bed was a representation of an idea, rather than a physical structure, therefore a painting of a bed was a representation of a representation.

What we have with Partner is an imitation of a representation of a representation.

Having a quick glance at the surprisingly high IMDB rating, it looks like any positive reviews have confused the merits of Bernardo Bertolucci with the merits of this film. The conceit shines through in any review above 5/10 saying something along the lines of “As an experiment, Partner is more of a success than a failure.” – the problem being it’s a film, not an experiment and must be judged accordingly.

The narrative (little that there is) concerns a guy who encounters a double of himself and then they have some obtuse and ponderous interactions where one stands at one end of the screen and the other stands at the other.

The film comes in a strange place in Bertolucci’s filmography – between thematically (and in many ways stylistically) similar Before the Revolution and The Conformist, which both deal with the idea of a character being seduced by an ideology, fascism to be specific.

We go from disconnected scene to scene, none of which actually slot together meaningfully.

It is curious as Bertolucci’s films before and after this one successfully work with meandering plots and non-chronological scene progression. Of course, with both of those films, there is a clear purpose to why they are structured as such – revealing information to the audience in a meaningful way, forming an arc to the films as a whole. Which can only strengthen my assumption that Godard was being ripped off, but without understanding
why his films were made that way.

A handful of his new wave films have fairly disconnected scenes, but manage to come together to form a whole (Vivre Sa Vie), whereas in Partner it feels like a lazy structural device, without any justification.

Two bizarre scenes I think worth mentioning are one in which our main character uses an artificial cobweb gun at this acting forum he appears at (there is a cool shot of cobwebs over small trees, fitting for this time of year).

And a scene in which a 60s campy euro-pop track with the word ‘Splash’ repeated over and over plays over the main character and a woman who took her bra off for some reason earlier in the film dancing around a washing machine and half-undressing, rolling around in the bubbles from the wash – before the protagonist strangles her. The problem here being I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be satire or sincere, either way it’s poorly realised, self-indulgent, confusing and embarrassing.

What bothers me about any positive reviews for the film on IMDB is that they have nothing to do with the film, as it simply isn’t very good and doesn’t work. Just because a good director was involved, it feels like there is an extra level of projection and open-mindedness granted to the film, an un-deservingly huge benefit of the doubt can be the only explanation for these ratings.

The film is loosely based on The Double by Dostoyevsky – but you wouldn’t know it.

There is an examination of the duality of man going on thematically, but it’s so on the nose I’m angered it’s been overlooked by all these apologists on IMDB, as it’s by no means subtle.

When did ‘experimental’ become a convenient way to excuse something that is bad, which just happens to have a more academic fan base?

Visually the film does have some interesting frames to offer up, as well as bright primary colour palettes similar to those found in Godard films.

A couple of scenes display enjoyable ideas – a parody of the Odessa steps from Potemkin and a scene where large piles of books move around (little carts underneath) spookily as our protagonist sits in place afraid.

I found a concise summary of this film on IMDB, as I doubt I can write one so well, read it for yourself.

From user ‘Darth-Chico’;
“Exuberance carries this film half way, after that it degenerates into an exercise in employing old art film clichés. Though he bases his movie on the Dostoyevsky story ‘The Double‘, Bertolucci apparently has no message, and no original way to present it. By the end this movie has dragged you through a tedium of stupidity and indulgence. This is the kind of
film that gives art movies a bad name. 4/10 “

Bad Cinephile

I did get a lot watched on Monday at Il Cinema Ritrovato.

On Sunday there had been a discussion about whether to try the 1917 CALIGULA, since it partially overlapped a later screening I wanted to see, and a friend who shall remain nameless suggested just watching a bit. “You don’t need to see how it turns out,” he suggested. To another friend who had an overlap at the opposite end, he suggested, “You don’t need to see the beginning. What are you going to miss? The horse? You won’t miss the horse.” “Are you suggesting,” I asked, “that we treat CALIGULA like an installation?” But that is sort of what Monday felt like.

(In the event, CALIGULA was sold out to enthusiastic orgiasts before we got back from lunch.)

The day began with two by William K. Howard and one by Tod Browning, at the Cinema Jolly, which meant I could just take my seat and soak up three pre-code super-productions in as many hours. THE TRIAL OF VIVIENNE WARE was zippy (Lilian Bond, in her plummiest accent: “I’m going to show him how a warm momma gets hot!” Zasu Pitts: “I like horses, in a nice way of course.”), with rapid-fire patter and frequent whip pans, used to transport us across town, across a room, of back into flashback and out again. TRANSATLANTIC combined swank melodrama and crime with spectacular sets and camera moves. OUTSIDE THE LAW, the second film Tod Browning made under that title, had a strong story but, being a 1930 Browning, lacked pace. “Tod the Plod,” Andrew Moor Charlie Cockey called him. But it did have the bottomless man illusion, and a guest freak in the form of John George from TRAIL OF THE OCTOPUS, in the role of Humpy the hunchback. I’m a John George completist so this made me happy. This is likely also the first film in which Edward G. Robinson says “See?” a lot, as a threat.

Then I went to THE TECHNICAL REFERENCE COLLECTION SHOW after lunch — we saw Technicolor reels from BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, THE JUNGLE BOOK, ROSEMARY’S BABY, THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY… quite a range. HERCULES AND THE SLAVE GIRLS featured the line “This day is dedicated to Uranus.” Reg Park didn’t look as pleased as you might hope. Each reel ended JUST as we were getting snared by the narrative, so it was a frustrating as well as beautiful experience.

But these extracts set me off on a regrettable pattern of incompletion. I went to a programme of Russian fragments and saw the surviving reel of KULISY EKRANI (BEHIND THE SCREEN) from 1917, which stars Ivan Mosjoukine, Russia’s top film star, in the challenging role of Ivan Mosjoukine, Russia’s top film star. But the fictional version has lost an arm. It was good to see a younger Ivan, though he looked older than in KEAN. Other than that, I couldn’t tell much.

I’ve been seeing the Helmut Kautner films religiously because Olaf Moller told me to, and he’s bigger than me. But the Mosjoukine fragment made me late for EPILOG – DAS GEHEIMNIS DER ORPLID and it was standing room only at the back. I stayed through the early subjective camera stuff, then the soft-titles disappeared just as Fritz Kortner showed up. I slipped away quietly —

— and into KEAN, where I wanted to see the new restorations tinting and toning, which was indeed lovely. But three hours of Mosjoukine seemed rather ambitious after five and a half hours in the dark, so I slipped silently off to TWO MONKS, the biggest challenge to wakefulness yet.

This early thirties Mexican melodrama has stunning sets, interesting camera moves and cutting, beautiful lighting and some Gothic horror hallucinations which are very striking, but it’s also slow to develop and tells a slightly dull story TWICE. So I did nod off a bit and found myself dreaming more exciting plot developments, which sadly were knocked out of my head by the real story when I awoke.

Then I dined with Neil McGlone and his lovely wife Justine, and hit the Piazza Maggiore, which proved to be ram-packed — no seats, so I sat on the warm stone and saw the prelude to Gance’s LA ROUE with Arthur Honegger’s newly discovered orchestral score played live for the first time in, what, ninety years? That was something. But it was another fragment. And I was too tired to watch more than ten mins of BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN afterwards.

A day in pieces. Leaving me feeling the same way, but happy.

Forbidden Divas: All That Glitters

David Melville (Wingrove) returns to our pages for the first of, hopefully, many posts this year ~

FORBIDDEN DIVAS

All That Glitters

In 1975, the veteran Hollywood director George Cukor flew to St Petersburg (or Leningrad, as it was then called) to start work on the first-ever coproduction between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. The Blue Bird (1976) was planned as a star-studded musical epic, adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck’s classic Symbolist fantasy of 1908. The cast included a roster of Hollywood legends (Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Ava Gardner) as well as star performers from the Bolshoi Ballet. The aim was to usher in a bold new era of bilateral cooperation and cinematic détente. As he toured the Lenfilm studio, Cukor said how proud he was to be filming on the same spot where Sergei Eisenstein had shot The Battleship Potemkin in 1925. “Indeed, Mr. Cukor,” his interpreter replied, “and with the same equipment too!”

From that moment, The Blue Bird was set to be one of the most fabled fiascos in the history of world cinema. The schedule overran, the budget overflowed, the Soviet and Western crews fell out and Elizabeth Taylor shut the whole production down for two weeks – as she suffered one of her legendary illnesses and flew to London for treatment in a private clinic. On its premiere, The Blue Bird was slated by critics and shunned by the public. Shunned, at least, in the relatively few places where the public had a chance to see it. In fact, it was barely released in the UK and most other Western countries. Its reception worldwide was less a liberal 70s vision of détente than a Reagan 80s wet dream of Mutual Assured Destruction. In its own glitzy way, The Blue Bird helped to usher in a new and very nasty era in world politics.

But forty years later – now that the nuclear fall-out has settled – perhaps it is time to sit down and watch the film itself. To the amazement of anyone who knows their film history, The Blue Bird is a delight. Less a conventional musical than a balletic fantasy in the style of late Michael Powell – Tales of Hoffman (1951), Oh… Rosalinda!! (1955) and Honeymoon (1959) all spring to mind – it stands poised precariously but irresistibly en pointe, in that limbo between High Camp and High Art. Its trio of Hollywood leading ladies – disarmingly but quite wisely, it turns out – make not the slightest effort to act. Instead, they parade about like Pantomime Dames in an array of sumptuous monstrosities designed by the legendary Edith Head. It was written on many a toilet cubicle wall that “Edith Head Gives Good Wardrobe.” I am still unsure how that would translate into Russian.

The story, if there is one, concerns two rather obnoxious children (Todd Lookinland and Patsy Kensit) on a quest of the mystical Blue Bird of Happiness. Given that they live in a remote hut in the depths of the Siberian taiga, one assumes that any place they look will be an improvement. Their guide on their journey is Light, embodied by Elizabeth Taylor in a series of sparkly chiffon gowns that seem to be borrowed from Billie Burke as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Sadly, the role lacks the dramatic complexity of Glinda. It seems to consist of beaming angelically through as many layers of gauze as cameraman Freddie (Doctor Zhivago) Young chose to put over his lens, as well as warbling one or two less-than-memorable songs. Did you know that Liz Taylor could sing? No? Well, that is because she could not.

Eager to stretch her thespian talents to the full, the enterprising Liz takes on three additional roles. The first is the children’s loving but sharp-tongued Mother, whom she plays a lot like Martha from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) – only with a strictly sanitised vocabulary. Next and by far the liveliest is a terrifying Witch; in truth, Liz is barely recognisable and seems to be having the time of her life. Apart, perhaps, from the day she spent off-screen touring the Imperial Jewellery Collection at the Hermitage Museum. (“They say that if you admire something, the Russians give it to you,” recalled the star. “Well, I admired and admired the Crown Jewels and nothing happened!”) The last role, Maternal Love, is basically Mother with a better dress and more make-up. Indeed, Liz allegedly spent $8000 of her own money on bringing her costumes for The Blue Bird up to scratch.

Of the magic realms where the children seek the Blue Bird, the most ominous is the Castle of Night. This is presided over by Jane Fonda as Night herself – draped from head to foot in black satin, sporting a cartwheel hat that is the size of a small galaxy. Luckily, she does not sing but is content to purr menacingly, much in the manner of Anita Pallenberg as the Black Queen in Barbarella (1967) – the film that remains, to my mind, Jane’s greatest and most iconic role. (She went on, alas, to win two Oscars. This was proof that her great days of stardom were behind her.) Guiding the children through her castle, she opens multiple doors, behind one of which we glimpse the horrors of War. Cue for a cavalcade of Teutonic Knights, Napoleonic grenadiers, Nazi storm-troopers and all those who have mistakenly attempted to invade Mother Russia. One can only wonder if Cukor and his beleaguered Anglo-American crew took this warning to heart.

Yet in the trinity of Hollywood divas, the briefest and most satisfying appearance comes from Ava Gardner. Her role is Luxury – an earthy but majestic good-time gal, seated on a white stallion and swathed in vibrant red. She takes an instant shine to the young boy and whisks him off to her palace, where a perpetual orgy is in full swing. Her guests include flamboyantly camp gay men, in suits of lilac and fuchsia silk. (In the dubbed Russian version, do they possibly translate her name as Western Decadence?) Once she gets home, Ava slips into a gown of scarlet and gold swirls, topped off with a spiky jewelled tiara. It bears an eerie resemblance to one of co-star Liz Taylor’s costumes from Boom! (1968). The boy gazes at her in rapt fascination and asks: “Which one of the luxuries are you?” With a splendidly lewd twinkle in her eye, Ava tells him: “That you’ll know once you grow a little bit older.” I take this as proof that he is destined to become a drag queen.

What an actual child might make of The Blue Bird is hard to say. It is by far the most outré piece of ‘family entertainment’ since The Wizard of Oz – but that film has been warping children’s minds for 75 years, until it has assumed the status of a classic. Is it not time we gave The Blue Bird a chance to do the same? It might even be advertised with an appropriate revolutionary slogan: “Camp film buffs of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your taste!”

David Melville