Joris Ivens: 'The Spanish Earth' (1937)

The film footage alone makes The Spanish Earth (1937), Joris Ivens' 52 minute film shot during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a priceless work. Ivens (1898-1989) was assisted by film editor Helen van Dongen (1909-2006); both were Dutch.

The intent of this charged documentary was to garner American support for the Spanish Republic, then under violent assault by Nazi (Hitler and German) and fascist (Mussolini and Italian) forces fighting alongside Francisco Franco's Spanish rebels.

Several prominent American writers assisted with writing, narration and distribution. These included: Archibald Macleish (who became the Librarian of Congress in 1939), Lillian Hellman, John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles.

There are multiple versions of The Spanish Earth, each with a different narrator. I've only seen the one narrated by Orson Welles. Because Welles' voice was considered "too cultured" for the average American, Hemingway did another, gruffer version. In French, Jean Renoir delivered yet another variation. 

The script for the narration is so-so, and the music intrusive and horrid about 80% of the time, but overall the film is wild and absorbing.

The defenses of Madrid. Doors from blasted buildings are put to use as support for trenches and earthworks.

Battle for Madrid. Fierce fighting right inside the city. Similarly stark imagery will reappear in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) and Full Metal Jacket (1987) as "the Anthill" and Huế.

In 1937, the majority of the people of Barcelona and Madrid fought on the same side against fascism. It's sad to see, eighty years later and more than forty years after Franco's death, Catalonia and Madrid at loggerheads. But such is life.  

Today's Rune: Gateway. 

Jean Renoir: Nana (1926)

Jean Renoir's 1926 silent film Nana, based on Émile Zola's 1880 novel of the same name, takes place in the 1860s near the end of the the reign of Napoleon III. Nana has risen from a state of poverty to one of financial promise in the music hall, immediately (during a performance of The Blonde Venus) drawing a diverse set of men into her orbit. It's not long before all of them fall into "The Burning Ring of Fire," as the song goes. 

The key players in Nana are stellar, expressive in a way that silent films demand in order to hit their mark, particularly Catherine Hessling (Nana), Werner Krauss (Count Muffat) and Jean Angelo (Count de Vandeuvres).

Overall, Renoir's version of Nana is quite absorbing, which leads me to wonder about other stories of obsession that are also compelling. 

Do these endure because tales of awe-struck obsession are so human and recognizable through the centuries, or because these stories take things all the way to their conclusion, amped to the max, as it were?

I'm sure you can think of others and will gladly share, but here are some other obsession stories that pop to mind:

The Iliad (Homer, not Simpson)

David and Bathsheba

Paul on the Road to Damascus

The Quest for the Holy Grail

Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Voltaire, 1759)

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (Herman Melville, 1851) 

Carmen (Georges Bizet, 1875) 

Der Tod in Venedig / Death in Venice (Thomas Mann, 1912)

Un Amour de Swann /  Swann in Love (Marcel Proust, 1913) 

Zorba the Greek (Nikos Kazantzakis, 1946)

The Caine Mutiny (Herman Wouk, 1952)

Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor, 1952)

The Blue Max (Jack D. Hunter, 1964)

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo / The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)

Cross of Iron (Sam Peckinpah, 1977) 

Bill Maher and religion (ongoing)

True Detective (Nic Pizzolatto, HBO, 2014)

Joyce Carol Oates ("The three saddest words in the English language," Gore Vidal supposedly quipped).

Clearly, I'm obsessed, haha. What else you got out there?

Here's a little something by Jean Renoir's painterly father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Le Déjeuner des canotiers / Luncheon of the Boating Party (1881; original in The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC). See it in person, if you dare!

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Biographie eines Blicks / The Impassioned Eye

Heinz Bütler’s documentary Henri Cartier-Bresson: Biographie eines Blicks / The Impassioned Eye (2003; DVD 2006) takes a non-linear look at the 20th photographer-artist, who makes several "gimlet-eyed" quips. Judging from this film, Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004) was still mischievous right to the end. It'd be helpful to read at least a summary of his life before watching this, I think.

My notes follow. Most of the phrases come from Cartier-Bresson himself, as translated into English in the original.  

“What patience – that’s what you need. Actually it’s impatience.”

2^nd asst. to Jean Renoir – he showed up and gave Renoir some photos, asked for a job – and Renoir gave him one

Interaction of people with their surroundings

To be a good photographer you just to have live, then life will give you pictures . . .

You have to take pictures because it fills you with life . . .

That’s photography – you have to seize the moment . . . that’s the joy of taking pictures

People in settings

Music and outings, roaming, ever roaming

Simple observation – look

Another photographer says: “a single instant can reveal all the ambiguity of the visible"

Isabelle Huppert – a great photo has a musical feel to
it . . . it’s a little like theatre, in fact . . . I think he’s telling us about himself when he’s telling us about the world

Mexico, China, India, Harlem, Mississippi, civil rights

Arthur Miller: America is a place of extremes

There’s a natural geometry in what we see . . . You feel, you see, the surprised eye responds

Do you see the pigs? They’re interested in everything . . .

Isabelle: He was everywhere

Henri:  eye, mind and heart had to be aligned

Patterns – geometry is the foundation

On Calder: I liked him a lot . . . you couldn’t understand a word he was saying . . .

Isabelle: a moment of truth

Henri: Portraits are the most difficult. Everything is fleeting . . . (example of brief flashing smile on Coco Chanel’s face before she went hard as nails again)

Take care of your [camera] eye

Truman Capote

This moment that comes out of movement

Get close enough to feel something but [remain] detached enough not to get too involved

There’s no law – no rule

Reading Rimbaud as POW during WW2, perennially escaped prisoner in his psyche (and he did finally escape)

Someone notes: he had an innate feeling for politics and international events

Miller: fundamentally a tragic vision

You never know what you’re getting into

Drawing, other art forms into his 90s

Looks at a painting in a museum – he asks, what can you do after this? Get good and drunk

Martine Franck (1938-2012) – her legs attracted his camera eye, among other things

Surrealists, interaction over the years

Memory is so strange. Proust had a lot to say about that

Everything lives on . . .

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Luis Buñuel: The Young One / La joven (1960)

With Luis Buñuel's The Young One / La joven (1960), take Gilligan's Island (1964-1967) and mix it with In the Heat of the Night (1965 novel and 1967 movie); or maybe take To Kill a Mockingbird (1960 novel and 1962 movie) and blend it with Robinson Crusoe (1719 novel and 1954 Buñuel movie) . . . and that may give you some idea of this film, which is loosely based on "Travelin' Man," a 1957 Peter Matthiessen story.

Still mulling this one over. The main actors: Bernie Hamilton (some may know him as Captain Dobey from Starsky & Hutch), Zachary Scott, Key Meersman, Crahan Denton and Claudio Brook. 

The setting: a small island off the coast of segregated South Carolina. Ewie (Meersman) attends to a couple of shacks, a colony of bees, a flock of hens and a scrawny pet deer tied to a rail. Her boozing grandfather (Pee-Wee) has just died, leaving her with Miller, the island's gruff game warden and huntsman who almost immediately covets her. Traver (Hamilton), a clarinet player from the North, has arrived on the island by boat, fleeing a lynch mob. Jackson (Denton) arrives separately to inform Miller of some rich folks' plans to develop the island. That's quite a set up!  Conflict and action tumble forth through the scrim of race, gender, class and language.  An added kicker: both the principal men are American veterans of the WW2 Italian campaign. Add in a minister, the Reverend Mr. Fleetwood (Brook), and even a "golden key" baptism and presto, a compelling combination of mythology, primal energies and realism that may still make some people nervous fifty plus years later. 

Today's Rune: Signals.      

La Règle du jeu: The Rules of the Game

You don't have to know the rules in order to break them, but it helps. What clothes to wear? What shall we drive? What's the "speed limit" and how fast shall we drive? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Should we tip 20% after dining at home or only at a bar or non-fast food restaurant?  How do you know?

One of the joys of watching shows like Boardwalk Empire or Mad Men, or seeing a movie like Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu: The Rules of the Game (1939), is reflecting on differences and similarities across time, space and cultural "expectations."  

With whom shall we socialize? Where shall we live? How shall we live? What should we say to each other? How should we say it? How are you? How am I? May I help you? Can you help me? Enchanté!

Absorb it and then decide: what do I like? What will I change?  

How about you? 

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Paths of Glory

Jean Renoir, son of the painter, wounded veteran of the Great War, filmmaker best known for La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Règle du jeu / The Rules of the Game (1939). Incisive films about socio-economic class and manners, banned by thuggish governments -- a solid endorsement for free thinkers anywhere. Indeed, what oligarchy wants people thinking too hard about social illusions and class differences?


The Rules of the Game: what makeup to apply? What clothes to wear? What shall we drive? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? With whom shall we socialize? Where shall we live? What should we say to each other? How should we say it?


The dashing pilot as celebrity-hero during the Great Depression.

A birthday salute to Jean Renoir!

Fay Wray, hot and cool.

Today's Rune: Inititation.

Birthdays: Marco Polo, François de La Rochefoucauld, Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval, James Fenimore Cooper, Agatha Christie, Jean Renoir, Fay Wray, Margaret Lockwood (Day), Nipsey Russell, Jackie Cooper, Shohei Imamura, Julian Cannonball Adderley, Tommy Lee Jones, Oliver Stone, Hrant Dink, Kit Chan, Sophie Dahl.

Bon voyage!