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I first caught Luis Buñuel's Una mujer sin amor / A Woman Without Love (1952) at the Temple University Cinematheque on the fifth floor at 1619 Walnut -- and loved it. Now, about twenty years later, I just watched it again and still love it! A Woman Without Love is a straight up drama delving into family, gender, social relations and economics. More simply, it's a good story.
The basis for Una mujer sin amor is Guy de Maupassant's 1888 novel Pierre et Jean, but the setting has been transferred to 20th century Mexico during two stable periods after the Revolution. Key characters include:
Rosario Jiménez de Montero (Rosario Granados) - from a poor family, married for stability, with one young son at the start of the film (Carlitos). She is the title character.
Julio Mistral (Tito Junco) - forester and engineer, a cross between Clark Gable and Nicolas Cage.
Don Carlos Montero -- husband of Rosario, fond of money, tamales, booze, cigars and keeping up appearances.
Carlos (Joaquin Cordero) and Miguel (Xavier Loyá), the grown sons as doctors.
Rita (Eva Calvo), a nurse who likes Carlos.
Luisa Asúnsolo (Elda Peralta), a nutritionist-doctor wooed by both adult sons.
In A Woman Without Love, there are neither heroes nor villains, just people within the given social system dealing with expectations -- and the unexpected.
Don Carlos, Rosario's husband, begins as an authoritarian martinet and a control freak, but softens over time. Early on, he locks Carlito (little Carlos) in his room for apparently being disrespectful:
"Isolation and hunger are the best remedies for rebels. If it was used more often there would be fewer revolutionaries."
When Carlitos escapes, Don Carlos can't believe it: "He ran away? Impossible, How could he run away if I locked him in?" (The reverse of another Buñuelian trope -- people not being able to escape, despite there being no obvious external constraints).
Rosario and Julio are drawn to each other through circumstances created by Don Carlos. Buñuel inserts an interesting aside commentary at one point, when they are in the woods where he works.
Rosario: "It must be marvelous living here."
Julio: "Yes, especially for me since I love the solitude and the mountains. In these woods everything is pure until men and machines arrive -- They destroy everything."
Godard's Film Socialisme (2010): funhouse, kaleidoscope, house of horrors. Beauty, ugliness. The better angels of our nature, the lesser demons of our nature. Literature and petroleum products. Art and war. A voyage on the Costa Concordia before it sinks.
"Money is a public good."
"Like water?"
"Exactly."
Egyptian hieroglyphs, jarring noises. Patti Smith with guitar. William S. Burroughs. “Casablanca, Algeria, Cairo.” Digital shambolic. David Lynch: INLAND EMPIRE (2006). Patterns. Questions. Suggestions. Palestine.
“I turned away so as not to see.”
Culture bank, watches, gold. Today, past, future. Crisp. Documentary quality. A slice of Robert Altman. “You will have friends.”
"Quo Vadis, Europa – Where are you going, Europe?"
“We look at ourselves in wars like in a mirror.”
“It takes guts to think . . . You have to love yourself enough not to harm your neighbor. . .”
"When you hear your own voice, where does it come from?"
Werner Herzog, Luis Buñuel. A llama, a burro, a petrol pump, a woman reading Balzac: Illusions perdues /Lost Illusions (1837-1843).
“I’m going back down south.”
“If you make fun of Balzac, I’ll kill you.”
To be or to have? Erich Fromm (1976).
A long line, a suggestion box.
"Today’s August 4, right?"
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of Night / Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932).
1789, August 4.
Saint Just ‘89.
Tactile, sinks, kitchens, washing up.
Florine and Lucien.
TEXT.
"Liberate and federate our humanity."
"On neither the sun, nor death, can we look fixedly." François de La Rochefoucauld.
Steps of Odessa – Battleship Potempkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
Eye of the camera, ears.
Man with a Movie Camera / Человек с киноаппаратом (Dziga Vertov aka David Kaufman, Elizaveta Svilova, Mikhail Abramovich Kaufman, 1929).
Hellas, Greece: Cassandra.
Brion Gysin, cut-up.
Space-time-puzzle.
"When the law isn’t just, justice precedes law."
Today's Rune: Harvest.
Film Socialisme / Socialisme (2010), Jean-Luc Godard's latest movie, is out on DVD. Like most Godard films, love it or hate it. I'm in the former camp and quite happy to see Godard in strong form. I think he played a little prank on some early English language reviewers with "Navajo English" subtitles (which you can choose to see on the DVD version, too, if you wish). The Navajo version cuts out nuance, leaving lines that read as if transcribed from Kraftwerk's "Computer World" (1981): "Business, Numbers, Money, People / Computer World . . ."
The film is jarring but thoughtful, expansive and -- believe it or not -- sweet.
P.S. No worries for Godard fans. Intercuts, intertitles and Interzone -- they're all there.
Today's Rune: Joy.
A strange scene with the caption, Solothurner: Pfaffen-Jagd! (Library of Congress, 1847). Clearly some kind of religious strife, or mockery. Solothurn is a canton in Switzerland, mostly German speaking and then mostly Catholic. How about Pfaffen-Jagd? Literally, "parson hunt!"
Here's a closeup. A parson-priest-pope, Wizard or Mr. Death directs cannon fire to the right. Demons from Hell, Banshees or flying monkeys seem to be either harrassing the fleeing column of parsons, or driving them on. What the Hell, what the Heck?
Here, a Demon seems to have latched on to one of the parsons, while to the far right, a non-religious (or Protestant) blasts air at the rear of the column using bellows; above, a bomb bursts in air. A village seems to float off to the upper right.
An artifact of the Sonderbund War of 1847. Yes, the Swiss, too, were then fighting each other over canton and region vs. national power, the place of religion at all levels, conservativism vs. liberalism, and all the rest. The Liberals and Radicals won and in 1848, the Jesuit Order was forced into exile from all of Switzerland -- until the 1970s.
Today's Rune: Partnership.
Democracy is as tumultuous as human nature. It's not like it's ever been otherwise, contrary to those who imagine some placid golden age in the past. Always this: part circus, part zoo, part sport, part woo. Grab on to the latest technology and blow some hot air. However, in the grand scheme of things, when people are not shooting or stabbing each other in droves, it's a pretty good day. Above: BALLOON ASCENSION TO THE PRESIDENTIAL CHAIR (Library of Congress, 1844).
#2. Questioning a Candidate. (Library of Congress, 1848). General Zachary Taylor: "Ax my ____! Do you think I sit here to answer your dithering questions?" To the right, an Office Seeker quips, "A still tongue makes a wise head." The crusty general won the 1848 election and became the twelfth US President, but died after sixteen months in office. Hence the expression, Be careful what you wish for . . .
The Telegraphic Candidates (Library of Congress, 1848). Zachary Taylor, astride an early locomotive: "Why Fill, my boy, we must be on the wrong track . . ." Above, Lewis Cass vaults along a telegraph line into the White House, proclaiming: "I seek the people's eternal happiness!"
Today's Rune: Strength.
For Super Bowl 2012, I checked out three bottles of Zeppelin Bier. They were all tasty going down. According to the company website: "Zeppelin beer is a naturally cloudy and unfiltered cellar beer speciality with finest ingredients from the Lake Constance region in Germany" brewed "in accordance with" the 1516 German purity law. Brauerei Leibinger, Ravensburg, Germany. So Schmeckt Geschichte = Thus History Tastes = This Is How History Tastes. If you like beer that has taste and oomph, I heartily recommend giving it a try.
Today's Rune: The Self.
Robinson Crusoe, Luis Buñuel's 1954 color movie version of Daniel Defoe's 1719 novel, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe . . ., breathes new life into a story that many people already know too much about. By once again forcing the protagonist out of his world and into the new -- on a semi-isolated island -- the reader/moviegoer is forced to think afresh about things like survival, culture, civilization, technology and spirit. In addition to highlighting these things, Buñuel, using his technique of move-a-bit-and-then-suddenly-stop (sometimes with effective zooming involved) camera work, takes time to consider animals, insects, foliage, water, bread, fire, tobacco and booze. Social relationships are investigated, between human, dog, cat and bird, for instance, and of course between Robinson Crusoe and the man he names "Friday" because, well, it's Friday when they first run into each other.
Buñuel's Robinson Crusoe is certainly interesting and the film is a fun one. In one of my favorite scenes, Robinson is delirious with fever and hallucinates his father's presence while desperately thirsty. The elder Crusoe pours water over a pig while speaking of family and God -- among other things. It's a truly weird mix of comedy and existentially-minded surrealism. I wish there was more of this! Under the circumstances of production at the time, however, Buñuel could only fit in so much. The majority of the film is "normal:" not exactly realistic, but moving in that direction.
Today's Rune: Partnership. Congrats to the NY Giants & Happy Birthday, Mr. Burroughs. Finally, a salute to Daniel Defoe, who was about sixty years old when The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe . . . , his *first* novel, came out.
