Not So Much Lousy As Limiting

I often read that we should not compare and contrast ourselves with other people. This advice turns out to be not so much lousy as limiting, because comparisons and contrasts give us perspective on our abilities.

To that end, I think it makes good sense to contrast our methods and techniques with approaches used by skilled people. In 1907, Vaughan Williams asked if his instrumental textures were as clear as Ravel's; he knew the answer was, "Of course not," and so he became a student of the French composer. I ask myself if my similes and metaphors are as down-to-earth as John Webster's, realize the answer is No, and for that reason study his work.

The more specific these comparisons and contrasts, the better stand the odds for improvement. Even if we cannot salvage what we are, we might enhance what we do.

The Death of All Things Human

If Bergman began the 1960s with hints of private hells and the disintegration of one isolated family in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY, he soon made it clear that he was haunted by collapse in the world beyond individual skulls. In WINTER LIGHT, he showed the collapse of religion as it failed to confront modern dreads like nuclear war; in THE SILENCE, a collapse of communication as families and countries fell into pre-war chaos; in PERSONA, a similar collapse of language and identity in a world of Warsaw Ghetto genocides and burning Vietnamese monks.

By SHAME, Bergman was ready to confront the ultimate collapse of human solidarity and human meaning in the fire and ashes of modern warfare, and the result was a film bleak even by the standards of the 1960s, with a final sequence as ferociously grim as anything conjured up by SECONDS, THE BIRDS, THESE ARE THE DAMNED, or GOKE.

David Conenberg has referred to his own films as a way of rehearsing his own death. In the 1960s, Bergman seemed to rehearse the death of all things human. I respect the courage of his films, even as I fight the urge to hide from them.

A Shift in Expectation and Perspective

That was my reaction, too.

Thanks to the excellent blu ray from Kino Lorber, I've now seen another film by Douglas Sirk: THE TARNISHED ANGELS, from 1957.

Three years earlier, Sirk had filmed MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, not his first American film, but the one that made him a box-office king of melodramatic "women's pictures." I would call OBSESSION lousy: contrived in its plot, ridiculous in its characters, with a few small hints of directorial intelligence but with nothing else to redeem it.

Had this been my introduction to Sirk, it would have been enough to keep me away from his films for the rest of my life, but I was lucky to begin with ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS from 1955. It would have been easy enough to make a film better than MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, but Sirk went further: HEAVEN is just as much a "women's picture" in the storyline, but more honest in its emotions and more convincing in its plot (despite a last-minute injury that turns the heroine into a household nurse). The film also takes a steady aim at American conformity, and has a lot to say about the slow death of pursuing social status instead of personal feelings. Best of all, the film reveals a director with a striking cinematic ability. Sirk develops a stylization of colour and composition that reminds me of later films by David Lynch.

Lynch also came to mind when I saw WRITTEN ON THE WIND, from 1956. This film returns to melodrama, but retains the skill and purpose that had energized ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. Viewers who find Lynch over the top and over-stylized would have the same reaction to WIND, but I found its visual intensity compelling. Sirk was clearly a director of intelligence and power, even if that power served the needs of a story that some would call far-fetched.

These viewers might prefer THE TARNISHED ANGELS. With a storyline that tones down the melodrama, that offers a more subdued look at some down-to-earth characters, ANGELS feels more like a straightforward drama, but heightened, once again, by Sirk's visual intensity. The grim plot is punctuated by flying sequences that caught me off guard; one stunt effect, in particular, made my jaw drop. Sirk would have a been a superb director of action films; what he achieves here is undeniably impressive. All of this builds to an ending that could have been obvious, but works because it does not quite follow the paths I had predicted. This might not be an all-time classic of the cinema, but it is a good film that I can recommend.

Sirk I can also recommend. I understand the reasons for his cult reputation, and I could easily join that cult; I might even be halfway through the door. I can also understand why his films might not appeal to everyone, in the same ways that David Lynch films might not appeal: they are less reflections of reality than creations of an alternate, artistic reality, one that plays by different rules and lives by heightened standards of emotion, colour, texture, shadow. To step into the world of Sirk, viewers need a shift in expectation and perspective; if they can make that shift, they will find much to praise.

THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA, revisited

On a second viewing, this film becomes less elegiac and more sinister. The social norms that few of its people question begin to seem less like adaptations to a harsh reality, than like sadistic celebrations of cruelty sprung from resentment. This mood is reinforced by a small sub-plot, in which a thief and his entire family are condemned in the worst possible way; the mood of community vengeance feels almost like a carnival.

As the film becomes disturbing, it also remains overwhelmingly sad. The central characters are good people caught up in a horrible society, and they have no options for escape or personal revolt. Even worse, the protagonist accepts the standards of her culture as good, and sees her looming fate as a pious act of sacrifice for family and community. The final speech in the film reinforces the continuity of custom: for these people, no matter how painful it might be, their way of life is the only way.

All in all: a film that offers piercing sadness and gorgeous colours, a terrible subtext and a beautiful surface. We need films like this one, but they can be hard to watch even as they dazzle the eye.

Please... Let me hide in the room in the mirror

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When I first watched DEAD OF NIGHT in 1977, I considered it the best horror film I had ever seen. Watching it this year on the Kino blu ray, with a print unrestored and hardly pristine but still better-looking than I had hoped, I retained my respect for its acting, photography, script, direction, and music, but asked myself if it still frightened me.

The answer is no -- and yes.

As a traditional ghost story, its only filmic rival, in my opinion, would be Thorold Dickinson's THE QUEEN OF SPADES, but today I find its approach to the supernatural more interesting than frightening: certainly well-handled, but not something to make me nervous after midnight. Yet the brilliance of the film is that it sets up expectations for a standard ending, but then kicks away any sense of cosy familiarity by shifting from ghosts to the quicksand of mental illness.* Even the comic golf story -- brightly directed and genuinely funny, but rejected by many viewers for its lessening of tension -- now seems the perfect way to set up an audience for the disturbing final segment. "Isn't this fun?" the film seems to ask, before it punches you in the gut.

After the final segment, the conclusion remains, for me, the one example of its decade that crosses the line into genuine fear. The film that comes closest, Robert Wise and Val Lewton's THE BODY SNATCHER, has an unexpectedly ferocious final sequence, but still ends with a restoration, no matter how sombre, of normalcy. DEAD OF NIGHT offers no such return to the normal, but implies, instead, a night without end.

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* One aspect of the film that fascinated me on this viewing was the way it seems to reflect a development in the range of ghost stories, from simple tales of premonition and of the restless dead, to highly subjective, personal accounts of the mental trauma that a suspected ghost might cause (as in Le Fanu, Wharton, Henry James, and so on), to a disbelief in ghosts that makes them suitable for humour, and then to a kind of restoration of the ghost story, in which people can be haunted not by ghosts but by the malfunctioning of their own brains, to the point where not only a human mind but reality itself can begin to fall apart.

Sugar on the Bitter Pill

After 97 years, HÄXAN remains a discomforting, even angering film, because it refuses to find any consolation or smugness in its distinction between medieval sadism and the modern treatment of mental illness. Of course a psychiatric hospital is vastly more humane than a trial by the Inquisition, but as the film points out, conditions at a clinic often depend on how much money the patient has; the rich have better options than the poor. The film also makes clear that our supposedly enlightened modernity goes along with a persistence of magical thinking: people today are no less likely than those of the past to believe in supernatural powers for good or evil.

This "doubled" perspective gives the film an unsettling mood. For all of the astonishing imagery in the fantasy segments, HÄXAN takes a clear, sobering look at the everyday techniques and implements of a totalitarian society that murdered human beings for the sin of being human. Sequences of devils cavorting in midnight forests are balanced by close examinations of what a torture device can do to bones and flesh. Impressive shots of witches flying over medieval rooftops are matched by a detailed look at how the Inquisition functioned, and even worse, perpetuated itself, through lies and tricks, good cop and bad cop routines, forced confessions, and an absolute refusal to question its own brutality.

Even if we disregarded the implications of the film, we could appreciate HÄXAN merely for its technical achievement. From double exposures and what might be rear-projected backgrounds, to stop-motion animation, reverse photography, elaborate make-up and costumes for monsters and devils, the film seems to use every visual effect available in its day, all in the service of bringing to life the subjective world of medieval witchcraft. For many viewers, the imagination and detail of these fantasy sequences will become sugar on the bitter pill of HÄXAN's point.