Deux de la Vague / Two in the Wave (2010)

The individual artist never -- or rarely -- works in a vacuum. Looking deeper behind every artist that can be documented, one discovers connections, people, ideas and milieux that shed light on individual artistic development and achievement. 

Emmanuel Laurent's documentary Deux de la Vague / Two in the Wave (2010) focuses on the rise and fall of the friendship and collaboration between two of the most heralded French New Wave / Nouvelle Vague filmmakers, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. I am enamored of the kinds of connections made in this film.

We see not only the Truffaut-Godard connection and its changes through time, but also catch a real glimpse of the entire history of cinema, which after all has only been around in earnest for about one hundred years -- much like electronically recorded music. With a leap of faith and a little imagination, one can conceive of the entire sweep of it all by "thin slicing" into this microcosm.  

Truffaut (1932-1984) and Godard (b. December 3, 1930 and still making movies at 83) both show an acute awareness of the history and language of cinema, while Godard also maintains a keen interest in -- and probing of -- history (especially everything that merges into the present).  

Between Truffaut and Godard, we see interaction with others of their nature, visionary filmmakers ranging from Fritz Lang and Jean Renoir to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, from Jean Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman and Nicholas Ray to Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. The evident network of creative connections is quite an eye-opener, and very pleasing to consider. In the words of David Bowie, "you are not alone."

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).        

Ernst Lubitsch: Design for Living / Sérénade à trois

In Design for Living (aka Sérénade à trois, 1933), Ernst Lubitsch, through the scrim of Ben Hecht's screenplay, rearranges Noel Coward's 1932 stage play of the same title. I haven't seen the stage version, but the film is highly entertaining and even in 2012 remains subversive in the realm of sexual politics. Such creative, unconventional ways of living are rarely depicted, though François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962), Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) and the HBO series Big Love (2005-2011) dare to explore similar themes.

Design for Living stars Miriam Hopkins (Gilda), Gary Cooper (George), Fredric March (Tom) and Edward Everett Horton (Max) -- all excellent. Gilda is the strongest character and has the best lines, such as: "It's true we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman." Ha! A true "Bohemian rhapsody."

 

Today's Rune: Strength.        

The Ray Bradbury Chronicles

The big push in my Ray Bradbury absorption came as "extra reading" during the year of Mrs. Barlow's Ninth Grade English class, with R is for Rocket, S is for Space and The Martian Chronicles, all of them from home. Before that, I devoured Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451 and The Ilustrated Man. With friends, there were repeat showings of the movie versions of the last two named books, and a final flourish in 1979: the TV mini-series broadcast of The Martian Chronicles, featuring Darren McGavin of The Night Stalker. I loved it all!

Having not reread any of the books nor rewatched any of the adaptations since the mini-series, they've all remained floating around in my psyche like phantoms, right back to the very first Bradbury book I picked up, Something Wicked This Way Comes. If all books were burned in the near future, these would all be good tales to pass on orally to the next two or three generations. 

The original order of publication hardly mattered to me at the time, but for what it's worth and out of sheer curiosity, I looked them up and found that it goes like this:

The  Martian Chronicles, 1950 (including stories first published in the 1940s).
The Illustrated Man (1951).
Fahrenheit 451 (1953).
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).
R is for Rocket (1962).
S is for Space (1966).
Fahrenheit 451 movie directed by François Truffaut, with Oskar Werner and Julie Christie (1966).   
The Illustrated Man movie directed by Jack Smight and starring Rod Steiger (1969).
Michael Anderson's The Martian Chronicles mini-series (1979) -- same director as for Logan's Run (1976 -- a good deal of it, by the way, filmed in Fort Worth, Texas).

Has Ray Bradbury (RIP) done anything similar for you over the years?

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

Jean-Luc Godard: Alphaville

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution, Jean-Luc Godard's black and white 1965 "science fiction" film -- really more of an alternate reality take on its own time and place -- considers a number of questions about the nature of social existence. Through Godard's idiosyncratic scrim, it seems as if there are elements and ideas shared with both Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle, 1962) and Herbert Marcuse (One-Dimensional Man, 1964): a lot about memory, desire, and the encroachment of technocracy. All three artists processed the world as they knew it at the time and looked forward, particularly in the grim wake of the Second World War and all of its attendant technology-magnified horrors via the Cold War and military-space-nuclear developments to that point. They were, I suspect, more sensitized to "external reality" than most of us are nearly fifty years later.

Since the 1960s, it would seem that human societies and their leaders have shown 1) more incompetence and 2) more resilience than any of them would have expected at the time. So far, somehow some way, we have collectively muddled through.

In a similar vein, François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 came out in 1966.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Lindsay Anderson: If. . .

If. . . is a film that came recommended by my sister Linda, and I first saw it as a teenager in the late 1970s. I loved Lindsay Anderson's work then and enjoyed it even more so recently after watching If. . . for a third time as a full-fledged adult.

If. . .  showcases a blistering take down of the British ruling classes in two phases: I) scrutiny of the hoary status quo -- symbolized as a public (private boarding) school -- by Mick Travis and his crew and II) an armed uprising.

Literalists would take this film as a blank check for going off the deep end, forming lunatic groups like the Weatherman, Baader-Meinhof and  Symbionese Liberation Army. Broader, deeper thinkers might eventually form a loose coalition group like WikiLeaks. More cautious (and perhaps saner) people might take from this film a valid, universally true portrait of how things work in modern society and go from there. 

Such a rebellious thematic approach, sometimes focusing only on phase I scrutiny and sometmes turning phase II into a more symbolic rebellion, can be traced directly from Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduite (1933) through François Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents Coups / The 400 Blows (1959), Anderson's If. . ., The Kinks Present Schoolboys in Disgrace (1976), The Sex Pistols (1975-1978), Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), Alan Parker's Pink Floyd The Wall (1982) and David Fincher's Fight Club (1999, based on the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel). And there are others, but not much yet in the 21st century. 














The whole cast of If..., led by Malcolm McDowell in his first role (as Mick Travis), is stellar. The mostly realistic school culture scenes alternate with surrealistic ones; some scenes are in black and white, others are in color. This was a point of much conversation by my sister Linda's "Neighborhood" bunch. I can see why.

Along the way through the film, there is some discussion of the First World War (yes!) and many telling visual details can be observed, like posters of Che Guevara (the iconic Alberto Korda shot), Chairman Mao and Charlotte Rampling. The eerily effective soundtrack (featuring Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin and some other flourishes) is the same kind in spirit Werner Herzog would utilize throughout the 1970s.  Everything works together seamlessly.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Nicolas Roeg: Cut-up and Stand Out

Performance (1968/1970) and The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), strange movies both, share at least two other things -- both were directed by Nicolas Roeg (the first with Donald Cammell, who later shot himself in the head) and both feature rock stars in central roles.

Like William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, these films employ a disorienting yet oddly comprehensible cut-up style.

Nicolas Roeg learned filmmaking by working with other directors. He was cinematographer, for instance, with François Truffaut on the set of Fahrenheit 451 (1966), the classic Ray Bradbury-based SF film about book burning vs. freedom of expression.

The Man Who Fell To Earth has David Bowie and Rip Torn going for it. Performance has James Fox, Mick Jagger and Anita Pallenberg going for it. Hence, both are worth checking out, at least for the daring. Deeply bizarre, to be sure, but no weirder than David Lynch, whose latest film INLAND EMPIRE (2006) is very slowly making the theatrical rounds.

Anita Pallenberg, friend of Marianne Faithfull and The Rolling Stones and all-around cool actor, fashion designer, and so on.

Today's Rune: Joy.

Ciao!

Catherine Deneuve's Way

In my book, Catherine Deneuve (October 22, 1943-) is the most stylish actor of either gender in the world. And she has quite a story.

For example, she had a sister (Françoise Dorléac, also an actor) who was killed in a car wreck in 1967.

Their father, Maurice Teynac (Dorléac) was an actor, too, but Catherine assumed her mother's (Renée Deneuve) last name.

Enter Roger Vadim, director of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1959) and other classics and a true lady's man. In his lucky time on earth, Vadim married, "dated"or lived with Annette Stroyberg (1936-2005), Brigitte Bardot (1934-), Jane “Barbarella” Fonda (1937-) -- and Catherine Deneuve. Several children came of these relationships, resulting in an unconventional and very extended family. Vadim later married Marie-Christine Barrault (1944-) of Cousin, Cousine (1975) and Stardust Memories (1980) fame; she stayed with him until his death.

Deneuve clearly enjoys the complicated life – with panache. After Vadim, she had a four-year love affair with the handsome Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996); they had a daughter (Chiara, 1972-) – despite his being married to Italian actor Flora Carabella (1926-1999), with whom he had another daughter. Things remained civil enough that both Deneuve and Carabella comforted Mastroianni at his deathbed.

To date, Deneuve has only been married once (to David Bailey, an Englishman), and that overlapped with Mastroianni. The seven year marriage ended in 1972 -- when Chiara was born.

As for Deneuve's highly influential movies, she’s made more than anyone can count, and with incredible charisma. She is still very much at the top of her game.

Just to sample a handful, I’ll mention some that immediately come to mind. There’s the vibrant Les Parapluies de Cherbourg/The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), one of maybe a dozen musicals that – because of Deneuve – I actually enjoy. (Usually, if a musical is hoisted upon me in a social situation, I have to avoid the temptation to reach for an air sickness bag). Her character in this film reminds me of Cybill Shepherd’s in The Last Picture Show (1971). They even resemble each other in their cousinly roles. Geneviève Emery, meet Jacy Farrow!

Deneuve, like Shepherd, has not been afraid to put herself out there. She is incredible in movies as diverse as Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour (1967), François Truffaut’s Le Dernier Métro/The Last Metro (1980), The Hunger (1983), and Indochine (1992).

I hope she will continue acting -- and living -- with such grace, beauty, style and strength until the day she dies. Vive La France! And most definitely, vive Catherine Deneuve!

Au revoir for today.