sullivan's travels (w&d preston sturges)

A film about filmmaking. A film about filmmaking when the world is at war. What is the lodestar the filmmaker should follow? A dissertation on the state of the nation? Or escapist entertainment?

Sullivan is a successful Hollywood director who makes crowd-pleasing comedies. But his social conscience is nagging him. He wants to learn how the other half live. So he sets off to roam the country as a tramp, albeit in the company of the charming Veronica Lake. His journey is meticulously plotted, moving from broad comedy towards a suggestion of social realism, with a  twist at the end which would make any script doctor happy. At one point, at his lowest ebb, Sullivan is a prisoner who attends a prison cinema screening in a church. The screening is of a Disney cartoon, which everyone in the audience finds riotously funny. This scene, smartly meta, offers a précis of the film’s premise. Sullivan laughs and realises that cinema as entertainment possesses a healing value which social realism, he believes, never will.

There’s a couple of points about this scene: firstly it takes place in a black southern baptist church. According to Wiki, Walter White, the Secretary of the NAACP, wrote to Sturges: “I want to thank you for the church sequence in Sullivan's Travels.  I was in Hollywood recently and am to return there soon for conferences with production heads, writers, directors, and actors and actresses in an effort to induce broader and more decent picturization of the Negro instead of limiting him to menial or comic roles. The sequence in Sullivan's Travels is a step in that direction… “ So one way the film impacted was counter to the film’s eventual thesis. The other point is that Sturges originally wanted to use Chaplin instead of Disney, but couldn’t get the rights. Of course, Chaplin spent his life negotiating the same balance between entertainment and social realism, and perhaps his films triumphed as a result of their amalgamation of the two: stories about tramps that made people laugh.

Because some of the most telling scenes in Sullivan’s Travels are when Sullivan and Lake visit the marginal, impoverished world of down-and-outs, giving them some kind of representation. We’re only a few steps away from Rossellini’s neo-realism. Film always has to tread a line between entertainment and politics, laughter and the cruel realities the artform emerges from. Sullivan’s Travels does as good a job as anything you’ll see at exploring these contradictions, even if the stated resolution doesn’t exactly reflect the reasons for the film’s effectiveness. 

dengue boy (michel nieva, tr. rahul bery)

Dengue Boy belongs to that fin-de-siècle genre, the video game novel. I don’t get to read that many of them, but it reminded me of Pelevin, and I imagine William Gibson, (who I’ve never read). The virtual reality novel, where characters plug into worlds within worlds. Neva makes an explicit reference to Borges towards the end of the book, (The Aleph), suggesting a larger genealogy to the genre, and perhaps it might also be said to reference back to Huxley, Swift, More, etcetera. The invention of imaginary parallel worlds has always been the stuff of fiction. The technological gizmos of high capitalism only serve to garnish another layer of accessibility to these worlds.

Neva’s dystopian text is set in a futuristic climate-warmed hothouse world where concepts like cold are a thing of the past, only existing in expensive reproductions for obscenely wealthy tourists who travel to an ice-free Antarctica for a taste of something they have heard of in folk tales. The world is afflicted by giant mutant mosquitos which are capable of laying waste to everything in their path, spreading disease, death and destruction in their wake. These diseases are then monetised, as the bio-industry produces profitable vaccines to counter them. The reference to Covid 19 is implicit. In amongst the catastrophe porn, Neva invents a new sub-genre of mosquito splatter-gore. That the novel is Argentine is perhaps surprising, with its playful reimagining of Argentine geography post the rise in seal-levels which has liquidated Buenos Aires and the coast. Above and beyond the politics, the mash-up of ideas and excess seems to echo the trajectory of contemporary Argentina and its current Dengue Boy president. 

magnolia (w&d pt anderson)

Cine Universitario has a healthy, youthful turnout on a Friday night. I guess I’m the oldest member of the audience. They seem to drink it all in, PTA’s grandiose, operatic epic, which swoons through the course of a single night. There’s more than one reference to opera in the film - Stanley even sings opera at one point. The whole film is underscored to an extreme degree, as though the director is suggesting he is not so much writing a film as composing one. I read a Wikipedia quote of Anderson’s saying that looking back on the film he would have cut twenty minutes, which isn’t such a ridiculous suggestion but also seems irrelevant. The movie could be an hour shorter or twelve hours longer. Certainly some storylines could have been teased out more - Donny’s and Phil’s to name but two. But this isn’t so much the film of an LA night as the symphony: the characters are instruments who have their solos, but are part of a wider whole, one that can mess with the logic of time; (whilst Claudia cleans her apartment waiting to open up for the cop, half a dozen storylines are running ahead, but it doesn’t matter, within the geometry of action, all that matters is that she will open the door); with the logic of chance, as the bookending narrator declares, laying cards on the table; all of this without in any way jeopardising the coherence of the music of the film. Anderson even does this with the score, willing to lay music over music, music over dialogue, noise on noise, the parts constantly subsumed to the whole. It is indeed operatic, exhausting, but also moving, portentously moving, perhaps, Yankee style, but moving nonetheless. And as the credits rolled and the final Mann song played, the youthful audience, as though in an opera house, burst into spontaneous applause. 

jumping jack flash (kieron pim)

This is a biography of David Litvinoff, a figure from sixties London who moved between the worlds of rock and roll, crime and cinema. He moved in the same circles as the Kray Brothers and the Stones, to name but two of his extensive web of connections. He was a friend of Donald Cammell and, the book asserts, the hidden animus of Performance. Events in that film directly echo incidents within Litvinoff’s own life. His face was slashed at one point in Earl’s Court as a punishment/ warning from the Kray twins for betraying them. All of which is fascinating, and Pim’s account of the interweaving of the criminal world and the rock world is comprehensive. However, there comes a point when the reader starts to realise that Litvinoff, whilst a larger-than-life personality, might not be quita as interesting as he or the book believe. Pim threads his personal fascination with LItvinoff and their shared Jewish heritage through the book. He travels to Australia, hangs out with Eric Clapton and minor aristocracy, as he seeks to get to the nub of his subject’s mystery. The B-narrative is why the author is so fascinated with Litvinoff, and there were moments in the second half of the book when this reader wishes that the author had gone further into exploring his own personal obsession. 

the mastermind (w&d kelly reichardt)

This is going to be a shaggy dog story, I thought to myself, as the fetching titles unwound. A nod to those seventies crime caper movies, all fixed camera long shots, revealing details that might or might not be crucial for the story, demanding the viewer’s attention. The eminently likeable Josh O’Connor planning a heist, with more and more obstacles thrown up, just as the script gurus would have recommended. No point making a heist movie without speed bumps. As things continue to unravel for O’Connor, who carries on being likeable, O’Connor can’t help being likeable even if he’s robbing old ladies, the movie seems to have two possible directions: a happy ending as he succeeds in somehow reconciling with his family or a tragic denouement where he ends up estranged from them forever. Reichardt subverts this dialectic by coming up with a third outcome, what I would term the Bergman-ending, when you just drop out of the story altogether before engaging with that irascible third act. This could also be termed the Shaggy-Dog-Story ending, which I don’t recall the script doctors ever promoting, but has its advantages. Reichardt has frequently sought a way to ovoid the straitjacket of narrative conventions. In The Mastermind, with its portentous title, perhaps there is a sly critique of this idea of perfection, the notion of the perfect crime/ the perfect script/ the perfect film. 

armand v (dag solstad, tr steven t. murray)

Solstad’s novel has the beguiling premise of being an assemblage of footnotes towards the novel he might have written. Might have written in so far as - there might be a novel which exits but will never be read to which these footnotes belong, or the novel might just have existed in his imagination (in which case could it be said to exist or not?). This playful premise would seem to open the door for non-linearity, deviations, Mornington Crescent. Which it does, to an extent, even if a surprisingly coherent narrative emerges of a man who studied the sciences, then got married, had a child, became a diplomat, separated, married again (this is less clear), had a son who as a young man chose to join the army, against type and his father’s wishes,  and then suffered an accident meaning the father has to take care of the son in spite of their distanced relationship. As this storyline suggests, there is a determined narrative running through the novel, even if it is only told partially, with gaps. The novel also cleaves to that other shibboleth, character, with Armand, the diplomat, emerging as a strong, complex protagonist. All of which left this reader hankering after more disconnect than the novel provides, perhaps. It’s a staccato read, as some sequences of footnotes arrive in a rush and other footnotes are extended over several pages, including a brilliant account of Armand perceiving the head of a US ambassador as a pig’s head, in the gents of a gilded London venue. This is worth the price of entrance alone, albeit there is the lingering sense that Solstad is sketching out an idea which might have produced a more radical book than it does. 

manas (w&d. marianna brennand, w. carolina benevides, camila agustini)

Manas tells the story of a Tielle, a 13 year old girl growing up in the Amzonian state of Para. She lives in a house which can only be accessed by river, with her mum, her sister, two brothers and her dad. Her older sister ran away to Rio several years ago. The reason for her flight soon becomes obvious: Tielle’s dad is a child abuser who tells his pregnant wife he wants Tielle to sleep in his bed, having cut the cord of her hammock. Tielle is fast forwarded towards adulthood with dramatically predictable results. Manas is well filmed and acted and the script rolls along effectively. Its exotic location is part of the film’s appeal, which given this is a film about child abuse might seem paradoxical. It’s notable to see the names of the Dardennes brothers in the credits, along with Salles. There are clear echoes of the Dardennes’ themes and aesthetic (roving hand-held camera) but despite Jamilli Correa’s compelling performance, there’s a formulaic element to events which undercuts the urgency of the message. 

the children (carolina sanin, tr nick caistor)

In keeping with the style mentioned with regard to the last Colombian novel read, The Children employs a discourse which meanders as much as it flows, and is peppered with detours and dead ends. The story of Laura, a woman from Bogota who has a private rental income but nevertheless, to keep herself busy, works as an occasional cleaning woman. One day a boy appears outside her house and her life changes, as she first sends him to social services after taking him in, then seeks to locate him within the bureaucratic maze of the social services, then finds him, starts to take him out and about and ends up adopting him. However, the statement of the bald facts does no justice to the circuitous nature of the novel, which adopts a disinterested observational tone, as though the writer is a scientist looking at strange amoeba as they misshape and reform under the gaze of her microscope. 

the silence (w&d bergman)

The third in a Bergman trilogy.

Spanish dwarf troupe - tick

Kid out of tin drum - tick

Psychological warfare - tick

Adorable elderly hotel worker - tick

Language games - tick

Playfulness - tick

Female sexuality - tick

Imposing female characters - tick

Mystery - tick

Plot clarity - cross

Narrative ‘development’ - cross

The last two are perhaps the most intriguing. This is a film that takes place over the course of little more than twenty four hours. (The three Bergman films I have seen this week have a carefully composed and restricted timeframe). The film starts and ends on a train, but at no point do we know where the boy and his mother are going. ‘Home’ apparently, but what home is or means is never clear. The boy’s father is alive but we don’t know if he’s going to be there. We don’t know why they, and the woman’s dying translator sister, left home in the first place. We know the women want things - not to die, to connect physically with someone - but we don’t know why one is at death’s door and the other is picking up a stray man whose language she can’t speak. A tank dawdles down a nighttime street and we don’t know whether it belongs to the good guys or the bad guys. There’s a transcendent absence of clarity. And yet this film is one of the most remarkable, engaging films you will ever see. It’s a dream state, a child’s eye view, a lacuna, a pause in the earth’s turning. Which is also what going to the cinema is.

Things I love about Bergman: you never quite know what to expect with his films. In spite of his reputation there is no model. Each film has an idiosyncratic flavour. All those years ago, when the Electric was still a fleapit, I was taken to watch a double bill. Time of the Wolf and Le Mepris. I didn’t value Bergman then. Godard seemed more sexy. I was wrong about that, probably, and it took many years for me to start to separate the films from the myth about the films. Claro, they contain darkness, they contain their stuff of the human spirit, but they also contain such light, such perfect shading, such nuance. 

winter light (w&d bergman)

What might peak “Bergman” look like? The name is placed in inverted commas under the assumption that the idea of the auteur supersedes the reality. “Bergman” is bleak, despairing, nordic, snowy. Not all Bergman films share these qualities. Some are more “Bergman” than others. Winter Light is in this sense quintessentially “Bergman”. It opens with a ten to fifteen minute sequence of a church service, unadorned, save for the way the camera picks out the few faces in the congregation, who we assume might be characters we will later follow. Some are, some are not. Not to give too much away, what follows is despair, random suicide, emotional violence, snow, cold, and some kind of doomed human resilience. It is, perhaps, peak “Bergman”, as austere as one could hope for, a few hours stripped back to a kind of desperate pointlessness, religion that fails to console, lives that are endured rather than enjoyed. I have to confess to enjoying it, noting that the scene where the priest tells his would-be paramour how much he hates her, and she reciprocates, is a scene where the bleakness spills over into a kind of warped, gothic humour, completely undercut by what immediately follows. 

through a glass darkly (w&d bergman)

Bergman’s film goes through all the gears, from the mundane to the extraordinary. A chamber piece, four characters on an idyllic Swedish island, it gives little sign of the coming storm in the opening act. A novelist father returns from time in Switzerland to visit his two children, Minus, (17) and Karin who is married to Max von Sydow’s down-to-earth Martin. There are petty family resentments, and they entertain him with a twee medieval drama about seductive death as a maiden. However, gradually deeper tensions begin to emerge, on the part of both children. Karin is sick, with an incurable illness, but she is also going mad. She hears things in a deserted room. She’s convinced god is there. She rejects her husband sexually, but in the room on her own she seems to be possessed of a sexualised psychosis. When the father leaves, this erupts in to a full-blown psychotic episode. Scratch the surface, and under the veneer of civilised society there lurk uncontrollable forces, waiting to take over your sanity. Strangely, the room where Karin goes to see her abusive god reminded me of Mariana Enriquez’s haunted houses, with rooms where the spirits hide. What seems so extraordinary here is the way Bergman constructs a completely convincing and attractive normality, only to render it asunder in the final act. Harriet Andersson gives an astonishing performance: another aspect of Bergman’s talent was his ability to push actors to completely credible extremes. There are other elements which are faultless: the sound design is brilliant, and the use of a static camera acting as witness whilst a character enters then leaves the room, (which Haneke later adopted), affords a tension-building voyeuristic element, long before surveillance cameras had become a thing/ trope.  

bone ash sky (katerina cosgrove)

The shadow of Palestine hangs over Cosgrove’s novel. It connects two massacres, the Armenian genocide and the Sabra and Shatila killings in Lebanon in 1982. The novel traces the forced flight of a family from Ottoman Armenia in 1916, following three generations who eventually make Beirut their home. The key narrative hook is told from the POV of Anoush, the third generation, whose grandparents were Armenian and whose father was a falangist allied to the Israeli invaders who participated in the 1982 massacre. There might be said to be a twin thesis to the book. On the one hand, with echoes of Elias Khoury, there is the logic of generational angst meaning that violence is hard-wired into people’s DNA, and history will continue to throw up more and more instances of inhuman brutality. On the other hand, the novel reaches for an optimistic, multi-faith final act, as Anoush succeeds in transcending religious difference in a cosmopolitan city which has, for now, achieved the same thing. The events of the past two years, (and I write these words on the 7th of October), would sadly seem to lend more credence to Cosgrove’s first thesis. 

szyfry (d. wojciech j. has, w. andrzej kijowski)

The Code, which would be its English title, is constructed around the visit of Tadeusz back to Krakow to find out what happened to his son, who disappeared in the Second World War, presumed dead. The film oscillates between long dialogue scenes and visually poetic flashback scenes from the war. Tadeusz finds himself embroiled in family problems with his other son, Maciek. Whilst the narrative at times felt confusing, it’s intriguing to see another Polish director seeking to come to terms with the legacy of the Second World War and the holocaust. Has approaches this in a manner which feels tangential: it’s part of Tadeusz’ story, without being in any way central to it. It feels more like, as he seeks to unearth the truth, other truths emerge. One curious aspect of the film is the way in which Tadeusz, who has lived in England for many years, seems free to come and go as he pleases. The iron curtain appears to be wide open.