Agnes Varda made a charming film The Little Story of Gwen from French Britanny portrait for her friend Gwen who is now the head programmer of the American Cinematheque in LA but who at one time was an emigre to Los Angeles. As is her wont, Varda took the simplest of subjects and went back and forward in time to make it personal, but universal: a young woman on the rebound, searches, and then finds, a new journey for her life. Varda's voice over is typically understated, drawing connections between the girl on the bicycle (what could be more French and non-LA) and every girl. See the full short film at American Cinemathique.
Last year in Marienbad reminds of surreality of life
This image of Delphine Seyrig in Alain Resnais’ surrealist classic film Last Year at Marienbad reminded me of the way we are living now: is it a dream or is it real? As we pass each other in landscapes maintaining social distancing , averting our eyes, afraid to breathe each other’s air, we wonder if we have inadvertently stumbled into a parallel world. Only on the front lines of hospitals or in countless claustrophobic sickrooms does the reality come painfully into view.
Bonjour Tristesse
Bonjour Tristesse was closely based on the 1954 number one best-selling coming-of-age novel by 18-year-old Francoise Sagan. Despite being dismissed by most critics, the book had been a sensation for its young author with her diary-like tale of a daughter desperate to keep her father for herself and her preternaturally louche way of looking at the world. When the film version appeared in 1958, its critical reception was similarly negative. “A bomb” said Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, but over time, it has garnered a cachet for its lush Technicolor scenes on the Riviera and its iconic performances by David Niven, Jean Seberg and Deborah Kerr. Today this image reminds me of an older woman reminding a younger one to "Social Distance"!
Seberg and Belmondo in Breathless, hiding away like the elephants
This image of Jean Seberg and Jean Paul Belmondo from Breathless is more than iconic: for me, when I first saw it in Paris, it was the image of everything I wanted to be and do--she was an American girl and her name was Patricia! Michel (Belmondo) has sneaked into her hotel room/apartment to hide out from the flics, and though at first she's resentful, his charm and powers of persuasion win the day. She says she wants to "hide away like the elephants" do and they get under the covers....and I thought that is exactly how I feel now, the bed luring me back as the only real port in the Covid storm. If you haven't by some miracle seen Breathless, now is a great time to watch it, on Criterion.
Will Rogers: a populist hero who transitioned from vaudeville to punditry
Will Rogers was a real cowboy, then a vaudeville star, then a national pundit with a radio show. He was a writer, a philanthropist and friend to world leaders. He had a terrific sense of humor and was self effacing. He said things like, " You can't say civilization don't advance ... in every war they kill you in a new way."
It's not always the case that stars who transition from show business end up on the right side of things as we well know. Always, he is my hero for having donated his land and homestead to the state of California thereby creating one of the most magnificent state parks. I want to pay homage to him today for being a lifeline to open lands during these restrictive times,to his spirit of good fellowship and for caring about the little guy.
My Brilliant Friend: The Story of New Name
There is one very bright spot to get you through the next weeks. HBO begins the second part of it’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, the second book which deals with Lenu and Lila as they face marriage to young men they don’t love and a growing schism between their lives. Sometimes everything comes together in a production with just perfect synchronicity. The acting, directing, production and costume design (Oh those hand knit sweaters!) is at an extremely high yet unobtrusive level. Lila (Gaia Girace)is still the radiant supernova, lighting up the screen every time she appears, her thin, angry, posture a shield for her deep feelings of longing and insecurity. Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) is still the quiet, shy, studious observer who watches slowly as the man she loves Nino drifts inexorably—like everyone else—into Lila’s orbit. If you haven’t seen Part 1 binge that first. Of course if you haven’t read the novels, do that even earlier. This is the virtual trip to Italy none of us can now take.
Deja vu all over again in Washington
Do you need an antidote to the White House of today? I just finished binging all seven seasons of the The West Wing. Yes, it scooped up many weeks, but boy was it worth it. As the impeachment, the campaigns, our policies foreign and domestic played out, there was the prescient series—that I had never really seen-- which eerily mirrored the mess of our time. Aaron Sorkin presented us with an insider view culled from real insiders like DeeDee Myers, Clinton’s press rep. I found myself smiling, crying, and impressed by the consistency of the writing and acting even if the signature ‘walking and talking’ made me want to strap Fitbits to the cast. If only.
The mysteries behind Man Ray's Les Mysteres Du Chateau de De
In 1929 artist, photographer,filmmaker extraordinaire Man Ray was invited by one of his ardent patrons, the Vicomte de Noailles, and his infamous wife and partner in outlandishness, Marie-Laure, to their Robert Mallet-Stevens designed chateau in Hyeres, in the South of France, to shoot the house and its varying, dynamic collections as well as “make some of shots of his guests disporting themselves in the gymnasium and swimming pool,” according to Man Ray. As with many Surrealists who favored automatic writing, Man Ray favored a kind of automatic filmmaking. He looked upon film as another tool in his poetic, playful bag of tricks innovated with light but he had grown disenchanted as reality in the form of sound had begun to impose itself on the medium: improvisation was his preferred metier. Nevertheless, the Vicomte assured the artist that the film would be a documentary for their private viewing pleasure only, so Man Ray made an exception for the wealthy and generous man. Reminded of a Mallarme poem, “A throw of the Dice can Never do Away with Chance”, Man Ray decided to make, ‘chance’ the theme of the film. He brought with him two pairs of dice and six pairs of silk stockings which he intended to “pull over the heads of any persons that appeared in the film to help create mystery and anonymity.” Things being what they were at the Chateau, that is to say, already capricious with the beau mode in attendance, the film did not follow a neatly proscribed narrative.
Man Ray began shooting when he left Paris. Two men throw the dice, and leave for the south, arriving at the angular chateau—which is as much a character as anyone in the film. A couple throws the dice and decides to stay, then just as enigmatically to leave after another toss. Man Ray captured the right angles of the Mallet-Stevens modernist house, the painting archives, and eventually the frolicking guests shrouded in stockings and striped bathing suits as if in a phantasm. (Indoor gyms and exercise were all the rage in the late twenties; somehow the late nights and flamboyance had found a counterweight). The Vicomtesse appears in an underwater sequence with oranges in the glass-covered pool, a surreal Esther Williams; a stocking almost actually choked the Vicomte.
Les Mysteres du Chateau de De film also contains negative images akin to his signature Rayographs. This film was his last complete film. (By way of reference, the same year, Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou was released).
The Gagosian Gallery in San Francisco has a very engaging show with good quality prints of Les Mysteres and two other films and numerous objets and stills drawn from the films as well as a short history of the house, now the Villa Noailles, an artists retreat. In a time when most films are literal-minded, these instead make the viewer a participant who is obliged to connect the dots—and the dice.
MAN RAY
Film Still from Le mystère du Château du Dé, 1929
Gelatin silver print
11 13/16 x 14 9/16 inches
30 x 37 cm
© May Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris 2019
Image courtesy Gagosian Gallery
Little Women for Adults
Little Women’s time shifts make it a narrative challenge at the outset but if you are patient with filmmaker Greta Gerwig, the characters of Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy become rich and rewarding individuals each grappling with the pleasures and pains of being young females. This new version breaks the fourth wall and has many of the hallmarks of auto fiction. For me Little Women was less about wanting to be Jo-although I did aspire to make my mark culturally and as a young woman (at the time as a performer)-and more about wanting a sister and the wholly different warm energy of lots of close females. I hope this G rated film will still find its way to adults who will find much to dig into. Oscars? I don’t know. But now , yes, finally I do want to be Jo, finding a way to write the things closest to my heart without fear of commercial validation.
Queen and Slim is newest wave Bonnie and Clyde
How to describe the film Queen and Slim? Somehow Get Out meets Bonnie and Clyde doesn't do this black-is-beautiful-love-on-the-run-from-the-law story by tv writer Lena Waithe directed by music video director Melina Matsoukas, justice. A traffic stop gone wrong places the couple (Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner Smith) in the close confines of a series of vehicles that turns their Tinder first date into a crescendo of vulnerability and true love. Commenting on the many wrongful deaths of black citizens while simultaneously showcasing an unusually vibrant and eccentric couple is a hat trick which the creative team pulls off in style and substance. Where this will fall in awards season is less important than that it is a female-driven release from a major studio--a rare exception in content and talent.
Long Live Woodstock!
PBS #AmericanExperience takes on Woodstock on August 6, and you’re smiling the whole time. The original Woodstock film was a totem in my life as it represented not only the music and the generation but home when I was living far away. Now, they have gathered up the founders (notably missing Michael Lang’s voice) and dived back into the late sixties, a time of terrible troubles (Vietnam, assassination) but also a time of #rebellion and change. The music is there but not the focal point. This time it’s the hundreds of thousands of people who attended and the town that took them in. Every generation needs to see this film, (and the original too), a testament to a very different time. #WavyGravy forever!
Photo courtesy of Elliott Landy
The Souvenir, a tragic story of passionate, blinding first love from Joanna Hogg
I join the chorus of amateurs of The Souvenir, Joanna Hoggs auto-movie--with Tilda Swinton looking like the Queen and her daughter Honor—an unusually fresh faced ingenue—about the first love relationship of a young woman and her elegant junkie boyfriend. The film, purportedly a thinly disguised memoir of Hogg's relationship with an older, brilliant man who seduces her through Fragonard along with the sex she clearly adores, really takes off when a friend of his asks Julie at dinner, "how does it work?"—meaning, how does an innocent like you get it on with a heroin addict?? Of course until then, besides taking the track marks on his arm for a wound that won't heal, Julie is ignorant of his addictive proclivities, as are we (unless we study the spoiler reviews), and even then it's a shock. The film ends up being a torture to watch as she repeatedly supports his habit and dissolute lifestyle. I wanted to knock her upside the head. But, I also was jealous. To be so blindly in love is something achievable only very early in one's life.