Lovely, observant, exuberant, and illuminating video essay by Bianca Giacalone , in an experimental vein, that deploys Sontag´s work on Interpretation to attemtt to ‘reveal the sensuous surfaces’ of the film, and with an extended Creator´s Statement whose reading is an essential component of understanding and enjoying the viewing:
THE EROTICS OF 8 1/2
“To enter the theatre is to enter a woman, to surrender, happily, yet with a touch of fear and the excitement of anticipation to viscosity, liquidity, milkiness”[1] writes Sam Rohdie when describing what cinema represented for the great cineaste Federico Fellini.
“To film, to look, to see are erotic acts”[2] he reiterates.
What both the writer and the filmmaker mean by “erotic” does not relate though simply to the field of the sexual, even if the imaginary of the Italian director has often been particularly suggestive in that direction. The stance on erotics is more akin to the origin of the word Eros in Ancient Greece (especially the Platonic conception of it) and Susan Sontag’s theories as delineated in her essay Against Interpretation.
Eros, one of the many terms used to describe the concept of love, is the type of passionate love born out of attraction, out of the appreciation of beauty (particularly of a person). As written by Plato in his Symposium, eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth.
Loyal to the heritage of the Classics, Sontag aligns with that perspective and configures Erotics as an alternative method to modern hermeneutic interpretation, which instead reappropriates the value and power of the sensory experience of the work of art.
Fellini’s grandest, most imaginative, allusive and vivid work of art 8 1/2 is a visual quest for the hidden essence of things, for something higher and able to purify a sick spirit from the effects of a depraved modern lifestyle. Erotics are what move the film, what fuel its soul.
This video essay attempts to “reveal the sensuous surface”[3] of the film, by slowing down key moments of the film, enabling the viewer to unashamedly lust for their undeniably voluptuous formalism and calmly absorb their epiphanic and cathartic power.
Lo-fi hiphop music is used in the video to reconstruct the rhythm of selected scenes, in order to recreate their emotional effect and to immerse the viewer in the aesthetic experience of the film. This contemporary and now widely popular type of music, alternatively called “chillhop”, is indeed composed “specifically to activate neurone activity associated with focus, meditation and relaxation”[4] and has also been defined “[…] like music for daydreaming”[5]. The subtle analog feel also channels a tender sense of nostalgia, fitting with the sensibility of Fellini’s cinema and the themes analysed, while at the same time using its electronic elements to re-contextualise the film in a modern key.
The introductory section of the video essay serves the purpose of establishing how Fellini visually translates the sensorial experience of purity, luminosity and clarity in the film through the point of view of the main character Guido (Marcello Mastroianni), once again playing the director’s alter ego after the worldwide sensation La Dolce Vita (1960). Throughout the whole video we just briefly see Guido in order to align ourselves with his perspective and with his position as external observer in his own chaotic world (while being one of the very atoms that compose and cause that confusion).
Brian Eggert, in a Deep Focus review of the film, writes that “whenever Guido’s reality becomes too much to bear, he escapes into a memory or a fantasy that eases his current predicament”,[6] a situation parallel to the director’s in his real life.
As a matter of fact, in the scene chosen to explain this dynamic, the nauseating confusion of his reality is interrupted by a mystical vision: Claudia Cardinale, slowly floating towards him in a candid dress and offering him sacred curing water with a soft, loving smile, like a beneficial, soothing balm.
To watch 8 1/2 is to watch this vision, again and again, appearing out of nowhere like a reassuring magician inviting you to his circus, a beautiful stranger in a hotel lobby and the ghost of a loved one. Gasping for a second, getting teary-eyed all of a sudden and then breathing out, returning to reality. Most of the times, not logically understanding what has just been witnessed. As if our mind visualised a primordial safe space.
Consequently, the main body of the essay depicts these poetic moments, revealing a pattern that connects them all and helps the audience associate them with purity, beauty and truth.
The Director of Photography Gianni Di Venanzo and the Art Director Piero Gherardi dressed the film in a tailored black and white, a bold and voluntary choice in a period when the technique was at its last moments. In this way, “black and white becomes its own idea”[7] and consciously dramatises contrast.
The recurrent use of white cloths, veils and other items of clothing, so starkly luminous against brooding darkness and cluttered kaleidoscopic designs, makes Fellini’s thematic obsessions visually rhyme. Childhood, religion, women and death are beautifully connected in a white fluid dance. Sensual like the body of a beautiful woman, yet tender and reassuring like a child or an old cardinal being taken care of and wrapped in warm towels. Carnal and at the same time spiritual.
This simple trope, is something the director carried with him even in his works in colour, like in the 1962 The Temptation of Dr. Antonio (in which a billboard version of Anita Ekberg holds an inviting glass of milk, both sin and salvation), or most prominently in the baroque Juliet of the Spirits (1965), with its iconic finale in which Giulietta Masina accepts the benevolent presence of spirits in her life, walking out of the gates of her house and cage in a white dress against the vastity of florid woods, expressing an incomparable sense of freedom and liberation.
For how naive and unpretentious as a filmic choice this may appear, Fellini’s genius and virtuosity consists in showing how a white veil framing a woman’s face can express a multitude of meanings and yet exude always the same particular sense of melancholy (as we see in parallels between the characters of the wife and Claudia), charging the intensity of the medium to give the viewer “not a verbal idea but an emotional-packed visual experience”.[8]
To quote again Sontag, these images have a “pure, untranslatable, sensuous immediacy”.[9]
Magically, it appears that the purpose of her approach to art ultimately coincides with the resolution of the film: both converge on finding acceptance of the mystery and the magic at the basis of artistic intuition, acceptance of the non-rational, of the perceptible yet inexplicable.
We must not demand more from a work of art than its sensuous momentum, just as we must not question the irrational beauty in our lives. Peter Bondanella, writing about the “Celebration of Artistic Creativity” in 8 1/2, reinforces this vision. “Fellini’s cinema in general, and 8 1/2 in particular, argue that art has its own imperatives, that it communicates a very real kind of knowledge aesthetically (and therefore emotionally) rather than logically, and that this form of knowledge has its proper and rightful place in human culture”.[10]
The ending sequence of the video essay marks the realisation of self-acceptance, recreating the mystic moment in Guido’s mind as he imagines the “beautiful creatures” that populate his reality and fantasy, looking even more beautiful, purified in his mind. All the people Guido “wasn’t able to love” walk together towards the sea, without a real destination but all in harmony and sheer joy.
These images are beauty, truth and soul. They feel good. All a viewer has to do is take in their curative effect.
The video ends on Anouk Aimée, whose role in the film is Guido’s wife Luisa, as she bravely walks up to the camera showing the turmoil in her expression as she elaborates her feelings, processing her forgiveness for her husband and learning with him to accept the uncertainties of a life together, both with the joys and the pain it will bring.
“Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing itself, of things being what they are”.[11]
At the beginning and towards the end, two moments of the film are shown integral and with their original audio, not reconfigured through the use of music or editing. The first shows Guido sharing with his magician friend Maurice, a strange private thought expressed in the form of a silly phrase. “Asa Nisi Masa”, the magician assistant’s writes on the blackboard. “What does it mean?” Is the question we are left with before starting the analysis, with a tone of irony. By the end we get to see what the protagonist meant with his quirky expression, as a memory comes to life: a safe, happy childhood in the remote Italian countryside, sharing whispered jokes and tender kisses under warm white blankets.
The words come up again, through the mouth of a cousin, as a magic formula that will make everyone rich if said at the right hour. The catchy joke stands for something more: result of a word game similar to pig latin, its root is “anima”, the Italian word for soul, spirit, conscience, another wink at Fellini’s restless preoccupation with the illogical.
It is not a surprise that that thought lingers in Guido’s mind, since it represents what he yearns the most and what the film wants to achieve: a symbiosis with the magical, so strong in its ingenuity to wipe away any intellectual uncertainty. While he is asked constantly throughout the film, and not with the irreverent yet kind tone of Maurice, what his thoughts and ideas mean, to what ideologies and philosophies they adhere to, all Guido (and correspondently also Federico behind the real camera) wishes to express is “something simple and useful for everyone”, “one that can be seen and embodied on the screen but not easily explained by rational discourse”.[12]
Through the erotic process of watching 8 1/2, we learn “to see more, to hear more, to feel more”[13], to accept the unfathomable, the mysterious, the poetic and the beautiful. In film and in life.
That is the legacy that the magnificent Fellini has bestowed upon us, and it is imperative to cherish it now more than ever for the 100th Anniversary of his birth.
Grazie Maestro.
Bianca Giacalone
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bondanella, Peter (2002), The Films of Federico Fellini, Cambridge University Press Cambridge
Costello, Donald P. (1983), Fellini’s Road, University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, Indiana
Eggert, Brian (2015) THE DEFINITIVES: Appreciations and critical essays on great cinema – 8 1/2, Deep Focus Review, https://deepfocusreview.com/definitives/8-12/
Geduld, Carolyn (1978) Juliet of the Spirits: Guido’s Anima, in Federico Fellini: Essays in Criticism ed. by Peter Bondanella, Oxford University Press: Oxford
Hyman, Timothy (1978) 8 1/2 as an Anatomy of Melancholy, in Federico Fellini: Essays in Criticism ed. by Peter Bondanella, Oxford University Press: Oxford
Kezich, Tullio (2002) Federico Fellini: His Life and Work, translation by Minna Proctor (2006), I.B. Tauris: London and New York
Miller, D.A. (2008), 8 1/2, BFI Film Classics: London
Perry, Ted (1975) Filmguide to 8 1/2, Indiana University Press: Bloomington
Rohdie, Sam (2002), Fellini Lexicon, “(The) Eye”, p.54, BFI Publishing: London
Seppala, Timothy J. (2018) The science behind the ‘beats to study to’ craze
Sontag, Susan (1964), Against Interpretation, p.13, Penguin Classics: London
FILMOGRAPHY
La Dolce Vita (1960)
Boccaccio ’70 (1962), dir. Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Mario Monicelli, Luchino Visconti
8 1/2 (1963)
Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
[1] Rohdie, Sam (2002), Fellini Lexicon, “(The) Eye”, p.54, BFI Publishing: London
[2] Ibid.
[3] Sontag, Susan (1964), Against Interpretation, p.13, Penguin Classics: London
[4] Seppala, Timothy J. (2018) The science behind the ‘beats to study to’ craze
[5] Woods, Kevin in Seppala, Timothy J. (2018) The science behind the ‘beats to study to’ craze
[6] Eggert, Brian (2015) THE DEFINITIVES: Appreciations and critical essays on great cinema – 8 1/2, Deep Focus Review, https://deepfocusreview.com/definitives/8-12/
[7] Miller, D.A. (2008), 8 1/2, BFI Film Classics: London
[8] Bondanella, Peter (2002), The Films of Federico Fellini, Chapter 4 “8 1/2: The Celebration of Artistic Creativity”, p.114 Cambridge University Press Cambridge
[9] Sontag (1964), p.9
[10] Bondanella, Peter (2002) p.114
[11] Sontag (1964), p.13
[12] Bondanella (2002)
[13] Sontag (1964)
Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.
A prototypical screwball comedy, 1934’s Twentieth Century sees John Barrymore delightfully chewing the scenery as a pompous theatre impresario who discovers and makes a star of Carole Lombard’s lingerie model. Having separated after several successful years, the former power couple meet by chance on the luxury Twentieth Century train, and it all kicks off as schemes are put into action, conflict erupts, and some religious bloke keeps putting stickers that say “REPENT” on everything he sees.
Barrymore is sensational, sending theatrical types up and orating floridly and dramatically, while Lombard clashes with him spikily. We consider how well Twentieth Century fits into the screwball genre – the dialogue is snappy and witty, the situations farcical, the relationships barbed, although it’s less of an even two-hander than you might expect, the focus heavily on Barrymore. Mike argues that the chemistry between the couple doesn’t play as enjoyably as intended, and that the bits of business on the fringes, and the knowing weariness with which Barrymore’s two assistants handle their jobs, are where the real joy lies. And José effusively compares Barrymore’s ability to move between stage and screen to Laurence Olivier’s, another actor renowned as the greatest of his day, but who appeared fussy and busy on film.
While it’s no new discovery, Twentieth Century holding places in the National Film Registry and the history of film comedy, it’s a new one for us, and a corker.
With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.
A straight couple take over a gay book shop/sex shop as a business. They become the biggest distributors of gay porn in the country — Blueboy, Honcho, Mandate.They start distributing Matt Sterling films and hosting Jeff Stryker sign-ins. The shop becomes a community hub. They´re at the center of the 80s obscenity wars and get charged by the FBI. They´re also there offering support during the pandemic. And with all of that, the mother still has trouble accepting her gay son. Circus of Books is social history, very moving …. but …it certainly gives one a lot to think about. It´s on Netflix.
José Arroyo
Lovely video essay, which I think I only grasped after second viewing and after reading the Creator´s Statement (below), which does what it´s supposed to do, i.e. create a context for viewing. The video essay is an ambitious one which faces and surmounts two very difficult tasks: it cannot reproduce the experience of any of the films mentioned as some of those takes would be longer than the essay itself, and the cinema of Gaspar Noé and ‘Slow’ cinema seem on the surface incompatible. Original and intriguing work.
José Arroyo
PURPOSE
For this video essay, I wanted to explore Gaspar Noé’s ‘Climax’ in relation to Slow cinema. The interest in this argument stems from a desire to help audiences re-evaluate their perceptions of slow cinema and reframe their understanding of the medium. I find it to be an unfortunately neglected and unfairly criticised style of filmmaking and one that with a different perspective can be appreciated far more by audiences. My idea came from thinking that by bridging a connection between two seemingly opposing styles of cinematic language it would help in changing perceptions by offering an entirely new lens to the form. The particular reasoning behind the connection of Slow Cinema and Gaspar Noé is that whilst the two styles seemingly exist at opposing ends of a cinematic scale, I find both to be quintessentially underlined by a fundamental desire to work on creating an experientially based journey as opposed to typical narrative cinema. Furthermore, I believe the two work by delivering a unique empathetic quality, an empathy which demands the audience to share the characters’ emotional turmoil by creating a discomfort in the viewing experience. Whilst video essays on Slow Cinema are sparse, I found the pre-existing examples seem to aim at presenting their content to people who are already audiences of the genre. I felt that by including and analysing around Gaspar Noé, the video could aim at attracting new audiences rather than informing pre-existing ones.
Whilst Slow Cinema and Noe’s films obviously have attributes outside of these traits, I find these to be the two most compelling and perhaps important qualities of their work. However, I do find it necessary to state that this video essay is not categorising Climax as Slow Cinema. Whilst aware of the immense disparity between the two styles, the use of Climax as an example was certainly not to try and make a claim to reconsider Climax as Slow Cinema. It was rather to further an appreciation of Slow Cinema in an attempt to create a new and engaging comparison that would hopefully help bring new perspectives to audiences and perhaps new audiences to the genre. With this also comes the recognition of the various definitions of slow cinema and the vast difference in interpretations. This video essay does not want to disregard research, ideas and interpretations of purposes around slow cinema, whilst many fascinating ideas around the form exist, including discussions around relaxation, politics and society (issues that mostly do not exist in Noe’s work), whilst aware of these, I felt that the nuances of these arguments would have distracted from the purpose of the piece – an attempt to fuel an appreciation of slow cinema rather than extensively defining what is already a heavily contested form. Whilst I find a lot of the writing on slow cinema to be fascinating, extensive and informative, I find that to portray the argument for an appreciation and connection to Noé’s cinema, I had to often omit these complex nuances and work on explaining and offering an analysis through the perspective in which I find to be the fundamental viewing experience of these films.
CREATION
One of the key ideas around the creation of this piece was emphasising tone. Throughout the essay I wanted the structure and progression to, at least in some form, reflect slow cinema itself. Obviously, this becomes challenging when to truly experience the slowness of this cinema, each clip could have existed at the length of the essay itself. However, I found that by choosing clips with very little progression and still holding them with a fair length, it is very easy to imagine the progression of the clips. Therefore, whilst the cutting is far slower than most video essays and holds less material, I believe this was a necessity for the work, especially in highlighting the experience of slow cinema. Another important creative choice in terms of emphasising tone was the voice-over – whilst the somewhat subdued and slow voiceover often led to having to omit ideas or information, I found that it was important to instead reflect the quietude of stillness in slow cinema. The essay focuses on ideas of tone and emotion to try and replicate Slow Cinema. The aim of this was to create an immersion in the video itself and a reflection of the genre rather than to indulge copious and condensed information at the expense of style, experience or tone. This emphasis on tone was aimed at allowing the clips to merge into one another and for the similarities to be recognised by the viewer themselves. This idea of tonally reflecting slowness is alluded to further in lines which often repeat throughout, such as the concept of excess and minimalism, ideas around empathy and the denotation of ‘This is Slow Cinema.’ Whilst I worry that this may not achieve its desired outcome, my ambition was to subtly reflect what feels like the ongoing repetitive nature of Slow Cinema, whilst also using repetition as a device of my argument.
I also found it important to often let the films speak for themselves and to grab the audience’s attention in reflection on the narration. The narrations whole purpose is to aid an appreciation of Slow Cinema as opposed to merely reflecting my own. Therefore, by allowing moments of uninterrupted viewing, the audience is able to indulge in the artwork of the directors and their films, ultimately there is no better explanation of Slow Cinema than the films themselves. This idea of holding the shot is most prominent in the final clip’s long run time: by using a clip from Climax to ultimately conclude the piece after the proceeding clips of Slow Cinema, I wanted the argument to stand for itself. I felt the clip feels as if it could easily be another scene from a Slow Film. It also connects to many of the ideas I’d previously mentioned, and this is especially coordinated with the bridging of Debussy’s music which runs between. Although I briefly speak over the clip, I wanted many of the connections and ideas of the essay to be allowed for the viewer to interpret, understand and think about as the essay concludes within the stillness. Ultimately, the argument is not a definitive one but like the cinematic style, should offer room for contemplation.
Another important aspect in any video essay is the combination of self-analysis in addition to the use of relevant literature. Whilst various texts on slow cinema exist, there is little on the work of Noe or Climax and no writing on a connection between the forms. For the essay, I wanted to be able to use literature to contextualise and explain slow cinema, whilst producing my own analysis to build the connection between the two. I found that this mergence of literature and analysis allows for the video essay to both reflect my original thought but also an important definition and explanation on the form by experts in the field. I wanted the literature to spark an interest and understanding, whilst the analysis and connection to offer an original perspective.
In terms of the structure, I decided to both begin and end with various clips of slow cinema. I wanted to be able to show a variety of images from slow cinema to allow the viewer to have a wide understanding of its style and it’s variations, for this reason I made sure to not use the same director twice and also to create a varied exposure across many different directors, subjects and national cinemas. I wanted the opening scenes to be informative and show what slow cinema is, whilst the final scenes were aimed to reflect on the analysis and conclude the argument. By bookending the video essay with clips from slow cinema, I wanted to try and create an idea of progression in the understanding and appreciation of how the clips work. I also found that by inputting the analysis of Climax in between this, it simultaneously presents the clear disparity between the work, whilst hopefully allowing my argument to also work in persuading audiences into understanding how the disparity is not as vast as one may think. By doing this, the video essay has a clear narrative structure and I hope that this structure worked in allowing for a progression of the idea and allowed for audiences to leave with an enhanced understanding or appreciation of Slow Cinema.
Joe Humfrey
FILMOGRAPHY
Akin, Fatih, The Edge of Heaven (Germany: Anka Film, 2007)
Diaz, Lav, From What Is Before (Philippines: Sine Olivia Philipinas, 2014)
Tarr, Béla, The Turin Horse (Hungary: T. T. Filmműhely, 2011),
Weerasethakul, Apichatpong, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand: Kick the Machine, 2010)
Frammartino, Michelangelo, The Four Times (Italy: Invisible Film, 2010)
Noé, Gaspar, Climax (France: Wild Bunch, 2018)
Noé, Gaspar, Love (France: Wild Bunch, 2015)
Noé, Gaspar, Enter the Void (France: Wild Bunch, 2009)
Noé, Gaspar, Irreversible (France: Studio Canal, 2002)
Haneke, Michael, Hidden (France: France 3 Cinema, 2005)
Costa, Pedro, In Vanda’s Room (Portugal: Contracosta, 2000)
Akerman, Chantal, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (France: Paradise Films, 1975)
Tsai, Ming-liang, Vive L’Amour (Taiwan: Central Motion Pictures, 1994)
Hu Bo, An Elephant Sitting Still (China: Dongchun Films, 2018)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gronstad, Asbjorn, Film and the Ethical Imagination (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)
Jaffe, Ira, Slow Movies: Countering the Cinema of Action (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014)
Gibbs, John and Douglas Pye, The Long Take: Critical Approaches (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017)
Ann Doane, Mary The Emergence of Cinematic Time – Modernity, Contingency, the Archive (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002)
Song Hwee, Lim Tsai Ming-Liang and a Cinema of Slowness (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2014)
Agacinski, Sylviane, Time Passing: Modernity and Nostalgia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003)
Sinople, Taylor, ‘Stray Dogs Review’, The Focus Pull, October 14 2013 <http://www.thefocuspull.com/features/review-stray-dogs/>
[accessed 12 November 2019]
De Luca, Tiago, and Nuno Barradas Jorge, Slow Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015)
A lovely appreciation of Austin Powers by Tino Muchina that very cleverly adopts and reproduces its insouciant tone: Short, sassy, cheeky, smart and delightful:
Creator´s Statement:
I am interested in the conventions of cinema and the way the parody/spoof film subvert the tropes and codes of cinema and replicate them creating new meaning. The horror genre especially uses parody with repeated cinematic codes and indicators to portray what is ‘scary’, the Scary Movie films by the Wayans brothers especially succeeded in highlighting the repetitive nature of the genre but also shed light on the humour in these conventions and found a way to entice audiences into the spoof genre over a number of years. Jay Roach’s Austin Powers is famous in spoofing the early James Bond films as well as other films of its time and the recognisability of these intertextual references have rendered the film iconic even today; nearly two decades later. The way in which the film deals with the action/spy genre in a comedic yet celebratory nature is undoubtedly reason for its success.
Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged me (1999) is a comedy/parody written by Mike Myers; who also stars in the film as Austin Powers and as his nemesis Dr. Evil and insider spy Fat Bastard. The film has a wide range of intertextual references modelling it as a film that is in dialogue with the history of cinema but also as one that works with and against the codes and conventions of the film form. The story follows international spy Austin Powers as he returns to 1969 where Dr. Evil prepares to destroy the world with a laser on the moon and Powers’ task is to stop him and retrieve his mojo that has been stolen. As well as the obvious homage and spoofing of the James Bond franchise, I also find it to be a commentary and celebration of society and film history. Jim Jarmusch speaks of not “concealing your thievery” but instead celebrating it which is what I feel the film especially does in terms of its parody style but also in regards to the swinging 60’s. I will also explore the female spy figure, metafiction within the film and duplicates in the film versus the originals all surrounding the issues of imitation and mimicry versus that of homage and celebration.
One particular strength of the film is in the way the spoof form allows it to be self-reflective of cinema and the perhaps the worn-out forms in which it tells its stories. I am especially interested in reading Austin Powers as a postmodernist film as outlined by Linda Hutcheon’s theory as opposed to that of Frederic Jameson. Specifically, in that Hutcheon suggests that postmodernism works through parody to “both legitimize and subvert that which it parodies.” In this way, the way in which Austin Powers rather ridiculously makes light of the spy film genre and the events around the time at which the film was set can be read in this postmodernist way. In this way, it’s not within the films storyline that I find merit, I find the film especially succeeds in its humour at times and the way in which they can laugh at society and at cinema itself. The film is especially interesting in its use of duplicates throughout which can be read as being reflective of what the parody film is- the correlation between the original and the copy. The most obvious representation of this is in the cloning of Dr. Evil with Mini Mi, who have become iconic figures in popular culture today. Something can be said about the way the film especially focuses on duplicates in this way and can be highlighting the films own use of mimicry and the copying of other films and film styles.
The way in which the film is in dialogue with the history of cinema is ever present throughout. It effectively opens with a homage to Busby Berkeley’s ‘By a Waterfall number’ from the 1933 musical Footlight Parade. Images of Powers surrounded by synchronized swimmers are very playful yet effective in replicating that of Berkeley’s choreography. Further highlighted through the use of the bird’s eye view.
Familiar imagery such as this continues to be featured throughout the rest of the film. Perhaps the most famous, being that of Felicity Shagwell (Heather Graham) as she emerges from the sea in a direct mirroring of Ursula Andress’ Honey Rider in Dr No (1962). Indicative of the films spoof nature, it is at this point that the camera pans across to Austin Powers who is identically dressed in a provocative nature in the same white bikini set.
A particular interest of mine is the way the film represents the female spy figure, especially through their innate sexual interest in Austin Powers as though he’s irresistible. It is clear he is a heart throb which is ironic due to his appearance as he’s been deliberately made to look repulsive; especially by means of his dirty, brown and pronounced teeth, which are used as a visual gag throughout the film and his overtly hairy chest. The teeth also provoke this feeling of British-ness as it is a stereotype commonly associated with the British. This is indicative of the spoofing of male protagonist conventions. However, I am also interested in the girls overtly sexualised names suggestive of the spoofing of a number of the bond girl names. The three featured girls in the film named: Felicity Shagwell, Ivana Humpalot and Robin Swallows have perhaps taken inspiration from the girls of the James Bond franchise: Octopussy, Pussy Galore, Holly Goodhead and Xenia Onatopp.
Although aesthetically the film does not achieve much cinematically in the traditional sense in terms of cinematography and complexity of a film plot, for me, Austin Powers succeeds as a piece of art despite lacking these qualities. Its way of using the form of parody to twist conventions but also to provide a means by which audiences do not have to take the film seriously but can instead laugh at the irony of what is being presented is integral to entertainment and to cinema. “Parody is thus effective, paradoxically wearing the mask of that which is seeks to undermine.”- Linda Hutcheon. There are a multitude of films that the film refers to and the ways in which the film employs them implies a celebration of cinema and of the tropes we have become accustomed to.
Tino Muchina
Over the next ten days or so I shall be posting a wide range of video essays. The series begins with this superb work from Alex Hobbs
Mandy: The Film-Concert – Creator’s Statement
This video essay explores the use of music and sound in Mandy (2018) in order to gain a greater understanding of how modern film scoring and sound design can be used to extract and/or enhance a film’s deeper themes and meanings.
I was particularly drawn to the term ‘film-concert’ – originally coined by Laurent Jullier – after reading Emilio Audissino’s definition:
“the sound track embraces the viewer and occupies the frequency spectrum almost entirely; coming out from loudspeakers, the sound track plunges the audience into a sound atmosphere from which it is impossible to escape.”[1]
The idea of an immersive and overwhelming ‘aural experience’[2] intrigued me, and it seemed like the perfect way to approach a film as atmospheric and experiential as Mandy. Yet, upon further reading, I was surprised to see that Audissino was actually using the rise of the film-concert as an example of how contemporary film scores are lacking in complexity and originality. Although I agreed with his argument that “Film music is now more about designing soundscapes rather than composing music”,[3] I took issue with his overall attitude towards these developments, which seemed to be primarily based in a nostalgia for classical Hollywood. Additionally, his suggestion that film scores have to “cope with a thicker and louder texture of sound effects”[4] inherently implies that film music is artistically superior to other sound elements, something which I strongly disagreed with.
Consequently, even though my video essay is largely focused on the narrative themes within Mandy, I decided to begin the essay by framing it as a counter-argument to Audissino: a case study of a film-concert which utilises all elements of the soundtrack as a narrative tool. Hopefully, by starting with this context, the viewer will be encouraged to consider the wider implications of a collaborative approach to film music and sound design. This is partly why I put so much emphasis on the role of Jóhann Jóhannsson – who composed all of the original music for Mandy and spoke several times about how “this idea of a score being just an orchestra playing from notes is just very old fashioned.”[5]
I was also inspired by Phil Witmer’s article, in which he interprets Jóhannsson’s score as an expression of director Panos Cosmatos’s “anti-masculine mission”[6] at the heart of Mandy. In turn, I also chose to focus on the gender politics of the film’s narrative, which I then related to larger concepts within music theory and aspects of the sound mixing which Witmer did not cover. However, after watching other successful video essayists online such as ‘Lessons from the Screenplay’, ‘Nerdwriter’ and ‘Every Frame A Painting’, I knew that I wanted to keep my video essay as accessible and entertaining as possible. So, while I do approach the more technical aspects of music composition, I always try to pair these segments with a visual aid to keep the viewer engaged. Furthermore, although I did decide a voiceover was necessary in order to discuss my topic with the level of depth and detail I wanted, I have tried to avoid talking over a clip if I really want the viewer to listen to the sound design of a specific scene.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that I purposefully chose to structure my essay into four movements – reflecting the structure of a symphony – and named three of them after the different components of sonata form (exposition, development and recapitulation). Although this is primarily a stylistic choice, I do believe it brings a sense of cohesion to the essay by making its central purpose clear: to appreciate the role of sound and music in film.
[1] Emilio Audissino, John Williams’s film music: Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the return of the classical Hollywood music style, (Madison, Wisconsin; London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2014.), p. 197.
[2] Emilio Audissino, ‘John Williams and Contemporary Film Music’, in Coleman and Tillman (eds.), Contemporary film music: investigating cinema narratives and composition, p. 223.
[3] ibid.
[4] ibid, p. 224.
[5] Chris O’Falt, ‘Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Fight to Be Visionary, From His Film Scores to His Directorial Debut — Interview’, IndieWire, (12 February 2018) https://www.indiewire.com/2018/02/film-composer-johann-johannsson-interview-experimental-score-music-1201927641/, accessed 1 November 2019.
[6] Phil Witmer, ‘Nicolas Cage’s Slasher Freakout “Mandy” Makes Prog Rock Kick Ass’, Vice, (11 October 2018) https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/evwk84/nicolas-cages-slasher-freakout-mandy-makes-prog-rock-kick-ass, accessed 21 January 2020.
Merely trying to keep all the Burt gifs in one place:
Listen on the players above, on Apple Podcasts, or on Spotify.
A 62-minute-long, 1940 B-movie whose director you haven’t heard of and whose top-billed star has barely ten minutes of screen time, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Stranger on the Third Floor is nothing remarkable, but its reputation precedes it: Here we behold, if the legends are true, the first film noir.
José, a lover of noir, both likes and dislikes this line. On the one hand, it enjoyably disrupts what is already a fairly shaky narrative of noir beginning practically overnight in 1941; on the other, noir is a term that encompasses many visual styles, stories, character types, associated genres and influences, and artistic movements like this develop gradually, not immediately. But this taxonomic discussion says nothing of Stranger on the Third Floor‘s quality.
And for a good fifteen minutes or so, that quality is not promising, but the film explodes into life upon the protagonist’s descent into a hallucinatory nightmare brought on by guilt and fear. It’s José’s first time seeing the film, and immediately he proclaims its dream sequence as one of cinema’s greatest. And throughout the film, before, during and after this central visual treat, there is conveyed a vivid sense of the difficulties of life in Depression-era America, alongside a severe critique of the absurdity of a justice system that can be relied upon to offer nothing of the sort. All of which is to say nothing of Peter Lorre, who imbues his titular stranger with both understandable threat and surprising empathy.
So, Stranger on the Third Floor, The First Film Noir, is rather more than an historical curio. It embodies stylistic and thematic developments that were taking place in American cinema of its era, though the question of what counts as first is best left to those who think it’s even deserving of an answer, let alone possible to establish one. It’s a film that is on its own terms deserving of your attention, and in between its B-movie cheapness and clunkiness, offers something truly great.
With José Arroyo of First Impressions and Michael Glass of Writing About Film.
Last day: I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie poster a day for 10 days. The no explanation bit is annoying people so:
I grew up in Canada, which was then a colonised country, at least culturally. Most of the media we had access to was American with bits of British and French, all avidly consumed, thrown in. So animation, experimental cinema, documentary, often but not exclusively through the NFB, had a different level of importance to us. They offered spaces where different identities could be imagined, reflected, explored and artists could try out different means of expressing what seemed an overall national project, reflected in many guises: ‘Who and what are we? What is Here?’. So I wanted to reflect that in my list, and A Chairy Tale was my choice. I, and probably a whole generation of us, saw this at school. No poster. It wasn’t commercial. But a great collaboration of two great loves of mine, Norman McLaren and Claude Jutra, with Evelyn Lambert doing the stop-motion animation. The music features Ravi Shankar on sitar & Sri Chatur Lal on tabla. It can be seen below:
José Arroyo
Seeing The Devil´s Disciple and thinking that in the space of a decade or so Burt Lancaster essayed Shaw, Inge, Williams, Rattigan, Miller, Odets: All the major dramatists of his day. I can´t think of another major star who did that (and yes I know Brando did Shakespeare and Williams). On another note, Kirk Douglas is so much better in the film than Laurence Olivier, who acts 25 expressions for every word, and every word is given a different intonation.
Olivier ‘acts’:
Burt plays a saintly minister until he can’t take British oppression any more and is forced to take care of the action:
José Arroyo
Day 9:
I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie poster a day for 10 days. The no explanation bit is annoying people so:
I get older. Lubitsch films only get younger, wiser, more inventive, more understanding, more inclusive and funnier. Time and understanding have made depths from all its delightful surfaces. I love them all but have a few on pretty constant rotation: Lady Windermere´s Fan, To Be or Not To Be, The Shop Around the Corner, and todays choice, Trouble in Paradise. As I schlep around my flat from fridge to desk, stove to sofa, the peerless elegance, glamour and wit, the graceful skating over surfaces, the intelligence of Lubitsch become more welcome than ever. And anyone who hasn´t seen the scene where MIriam Hopkins and Herbert Marshall reveal what each has stolen from the other as a a form of flirtation, an indication of attraction and then a final declaration of love, each gag topping the other, is missing out on one of THE great moments in films history, I am single-minded in trying to convert people, but a particular failure since such enthusiasms breed resistance when all that is really needed is to see the films. But this might be the moment. What could be better in Covid Times than a little Lubitsch touch?
José Arroyo
Day 8:
I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie poster a day for 10 days. The no explanation bit is annoying people so: I loved British cinema in the 80s. The diversity: The Long Good Friday, A Private Function, Mona Lisa, The Merchant-Ivories, Dance with a Stranger, Brittania Hospital, The Greenways and Jarmans, the Bill Forsyths. And these of the top of my head. All were much discussed and remain memorable. My favourite of these was the run of films Stephen Frears had in the mid-80s: Launderette, Prick up Your Ears and my favourite of all: Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. I loved the interracial aspect, the visual inventiveness, the sexyness and cool embodied by Roland Gift, the social critique. Little did I know that it´s a film that inspired vitriol by the people I liked best in Britain….and for the moments in the film I liked best, e.g. the description of a Sunday (or was it a Saturday), holding hands with your loved one after a night of passion, walking through the Southbank, visiting a gallery, going to a movie and catching a lecture. My idea of a perfect Sunday. Who knew that would invoke all kinds of class hatred. That , if I remember correctly, it was Colin McCabe who gave the lecture in the film might have had something to do with it. But still. Anyway this raised all kinds of issues of cross-cultural analysis, what does one need to know? We understand knowing little can be a problem. But can it also be a problem to know too much?
José Arroyo
Michael Winner’s films are remarkable in that his camera placements always seems off. How he got to make so many is one of the great mysteries. Luckily you can’t go much wrong with close-ups of stars. This is from Scorpio, which also stars Alain Delon and Paul Scofield:
At the very opening of Trapeze, we see an aerial act on the trapeze, from a distance, then from below, and finally the acrobat lands, turns around and it’s …Burt Lancaster! Doing his own stunt! Its own thrilling moment of spectacle. No other special effect needed. We have not forgotten that extraordinary people doing extraordinary things with their bodies is graceful, beautiful, awe-inspiring, amazing, spectacular. Youtube is full of such moments from sports. But the movies seem to have forgotten. It’s not the thing being done (easily imaged through CGI) as it’s the demonstration that it is people doing those extraordinary things. This is one example:
I saw this as a teen at the Cinémathèque Québécoise. I was going through a Holden Cauldfield period where I thought everyone was a phony. And the biggest phonies were those who claimed this was a great movie. I think I half snorted, half-giggled my way through my first viewing, to the annoyance of my friends. They were talking about colour and screens and mirrors. I was, ´so stilted…and the deer!´. Learning to love and appreciate Sirk was my way of learning to see differently and learning different ways of seeing. The memory of that first experience has come in very handy when teaching the film subsequently. Laura Mulvey has written that one can map a whole history of Film Studies onto the history of the various approaches to Sirk: auteurist, Brechtian, Sociological, Feminist, Queer, etc. etc. and that is indeed the case. It´s now a film I never tire of watching…for the colours, and the mirrors, and the camera movement and the screens….and all what i then thought was ´phony´talk about it.
José Arroyo
Day 6:
I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie a day for 10 days. The no explanation bit is annoying people so: The Concordia Conservatoire ran a retrospective of Buñuel films in the early/mid 1980s. I remember packing a thermos and sandwiches because I wanted to see them all and one never knew then when one would get another chance. This experience taught me the value of seeng a director´s films in chronological order, one begins to notice styles that change and develop, one begins to recognise groupings of actors that seem to inhabit and characterise a particular director´s work, themes and approaches, in Buñuel the black corrosive humour, the attitudes to religion, the Surrealism not only of particular scenes but as an approach that envelops all his work. One begins to love even the weaker films, and seeing each becomes inhabiting the world of that particular narrative but also the world of Buñuel, a world within a world.. I could have chosen any of his films really. This one´s stayed with me because of the dummy and the leg, so wittily deployed later by Almodóvar in the opening scenes of Live Flesh.
I began playing the Ten Films in Ten Days game on Facebook. The instructions were: ‘I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie a day for 10 days. No explanation, no reviews, just the poster of the movie that greatly influenced my film-loving life.’ However, the no-explanation bit annoyed people so much that I decided to offer it, and since I am writing them, I thought I´d also share them here:
Day 5:
I was nominated by Andrew Grimes Griffin – One movie a day for 10 days. The no explanation bit is annoying people so: I saw this at the Montreal Film Festival when it came out and was completely delighted and shocked it came from Spain. I then went to the Toronto Film Festival and they had a mini retrospective of his work and I was so excited about that that I went to Madrid and interviewed Almodóvar at his flat. He was watching on replay the bit in Written on the Wind where MeryLee goes up the stairs and does that frenzied dancing no one who´s seen the film has forgotten. I annoyed him by mentioning I liked Gutierrez-Aragon´s films. The result was published in Descant, a literary magazine I think no longer exists. This then led to me doing an MA on Almodóvar and The Law of Desire with Thomas Elsaesser at UEA, in the midst of which I also remember going to Spain and with great difficulty getting all his early films from his production company to aid with my research. So this film is what led to an academic career, and the irony is that the schedules and finances of academic life, or at least mine, never permitted me to do that kind of research again, the being able to travel, interview, and then having a year of doing nothing but reading, seeing and writing. Voila.
José Arroyo