Innocence and Malice

*

"When from behind the board-fence he unties the shoe-strings of the policeman who is seeking him, one knows, of course, that he is doing it on purpose, but one is less sure of his intention when he steps on the gouty foot of the man who is persecuting his sweetheart. His innocence and his malice go hand in hand, and by means of his malice he reveals his innocence. When he arrives late at his master's house and submits his poor body to the kick that does not come; when, from his bed, he rattles his wash-basin and drags his shoes about the floor to make his master think that he is getting up, a divine joy fills us, for he is avenging us all, those who have passed and those who are yet to come. Through his resignation and through his vitality he is the conqueror of fate and of despotism. What does death matter, or trouble? He brings laughter through his suffering. The gods flee in all directions."

-Elie Faure, "The Art of Charlie Chaplin", Art of Cineplastics, 1923.

*Double bill tonight of BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING and LE TESTAMENT DU DR. CORDELIER at LACMA (thank you Ian Birnie and Mathieu Fournet).*

popular front

shot in the back

A recent work by former Minister of Culture of the Black Panther Party, the great Emory Douglas. On the murder of Oscar Grant III, mentioned below. Like Straub's Joachim Gatti, a picture of a picture in the world.

Joachim Gatti (2009)

*

Joachim Gatti (2009), a recent video by Jean-Marie Straub, is available for viewing online at the beautiful REVUE LEUCOTHÉA.

In July 2009 the young French filmmaker Joachim Gatti was seriously injured by the police during a peaceful demonstration in Montreuil. A flash ball bullet hit him in the face and ruptured one of his eyes.

A translation of the video's text:

(voice of Straub)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote:

Only the dangers of society as a whole trouble the philosopher's tranquil sleep and tear him from his bed. Someone can slit his counterpart's throat with impunity under his window; He only has to put his hands over his ears and argue with himself a little to prevent nature, which revolts within him, from identifying him with the one who is being assassinated. Savage man does not have this admirable talent, and for want of wisdom and reason he is always seen heedlessly yielding to the first sentiment of humanity. In uprisings and street fights the populace assembles and the prudent man distances himself: the dregs of the people, the women of the markets, separate the combatants and prevent honest people from slitting each other's throats.

And I Straub, I say to you that it is the police, the police armed by Capital,
who kill.

***

Il n'y a plus que les dangers de la société toute entière | qui troublent le sommeil tranquille du philosophe et qui l'arrachent de son lit. | On peut impunément égorger son semblable sous sa fenêtre; il n'a qu'à mettre ses mains sur ses oreilles | et s'argumenter un peu pour empêcher la nature qui se révolte en lui | de l'identifier avec celui qu'on assassine. | L'homme sauvage n'a point cet admirable talent; | et faute de sagesse et de raison, | on le voit toujours se livrer étourdiment au premier sentiment de l'humanité. | Dans les émeutes, dans les querelles des rues, | la populace s'assemble, l'homme prudent s'éloigne : | c'est la canaille, ce sont les femmes des halles, | qui séparent les combattants | et qui empêchent les honnêtes gens de s'entr'égorger. |
Et moi Straub je vous dis que c'est la police armée par le Capital, c'est elle || qui tue.

***

The Jean-Jacques Rousseau text is from Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (Première partie) (1754). ~ Discourse on the Origins and Foundation of Inequality (First Part).

The English translation above is a combination of those of Louis-George Schwartz (readable here along with a short introduction to Joachim Gatti by Nicole Brenez: "History has not been told, socialism has not yet existed, capitalist terror reigns, the imperatives are pressing....") and Roger D. and Judith R. Masters (Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses. St. Martins Press. New York. 1964).

The still-frame from the video above is cropped a great deal; this in one last effort to respect the wish of Joachim Gatti not to have his picture posted on the internet.

***

The vanity of reason, with all its turning heads, about which Rousseau speaks here was, I believe, made into a painful film -- The Rules of the Game (among others by Renoir) -- and verbalized by Renoir in its most famous line: "The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has his reasons."

The "force of natural pity" I know well (not well enough) from the incident of police brutality I witnessed and wrote about here, now four years ago; it was an uncontrollable tensing and sprint toward the beating, not away; but I was stricken with reason at that moment (outnumbered, outgunned, unorganized, ineffective...), and given a pit in the stomach that doesn't go away...

Perhaps a purely physical manifestation of "natural pity" was filmed once: In Vigo's L'Atalante, Michel Simon cuts his hand with a navaja, lifts the wound to his mouth and Dita Parlo...

***

Rest in Peace Oscar Grant III, shot in the back while unarmed, cuffed and detained by Bay Area (BART) transit police in January 2009. The murder was caught on video, none of the police involved have been convicted.

Michel S., LA CHIENNE (by Jean Louis Schefer)

Legrand / Michel Simon

No kind of assurance is ever added to the image, no finishing touch to give a pluperfect image of solidity; indeed, what is added is the anxiety of the human voice (and perhaps the suspicion that it can signify). From the voice I retain certain qualities -- smooth or rough -- or its extraordinary composition, astonishingly produced by Michel Simon in La Chienne (Renoir, '31), and I hear behind it, behind its memory, nothing but a feeble burbling, an incoherence, something like the bankrupt monologue of a lover's protestation. The voices in this film -- Simon's and Janie Marèze's -- are neither real nor copied; they are simply the truth of a given scene. Marèze's voice is stereotyped (it is "stamped" upon the historical representation of a social class, attached to the irony of the characters who choose it, to the irony of a "type"): Simon's voice is not of a particular class; it is an invention and a mixture which begins to constitute the sonorous volume of the character. It is laid naked in that conversation scene, in the impossible confidences that precede the murder: the vocal tissue brings in only the "culture" which precisely allows him to appear as an imbecile in the place where he lives. In this I can hear the birth of the joker's tone which is always a strain in this actor's voice, the foundation he exploits -- the strange bleating tone of an old woman through which some emotion is always transferred, along with the proper distancing of the voice from the role itself, from its utterances, and from the actor's body: this is the whistle and the toothy sound which characterizes the actor's place of origin, the "accent" of Genevan Protestants. The tissue and composition of this voice play in the character (Legrand) as the nostalgia of a place where he does not belong -- the distance of the bleating voice and the raised accent suddenly lend him the air of a mental case. Like listening to opera, I hear only the feeble strain of what this voice signifies, what protestation it makes across the totally instrumental singing which, at the height of its artifice, cannot disguise the blinding truth of the body, of that sudden apparition of the visible man, trembling like a wet dog.

(excerpt from L'homme ordinaire du cinéma. JL Schefer. 1980. Translated by Paul Smith)

Lulu / Janie Marèze

Dédé "et rien de plus!" / Georges Flamant

— I want to show you a picture. You can see a truck driver. He's been blind for six months. But he doesn't want to be unemployed. So he drives through the streets and the child...

— That would make a nice film. He tells him turn right and.......Was a film made about this?

— No.

(Gespräch mit Godard ~ Conversation with Godard [A. Kluge, 2001], can be seen here)

COBBLER, STICK TO YOUR LAST; I AM A FILMMAKER AND WILL DIE ONE.

-Dreyer, 1964

free free...

Brecht at HUAC Hearings, 1947. Songs from DIE MUTTER and KUHLE WAMPE recited by members of the standing committee of the House of Un-American Activities, and corrected by Brecht. -- Extracts from KUHLE WAMPE (Dudow/Brecht, '32) and A KING IN NEW YORK (Chaplin, '57).

Teatro Francesco di Bartolo - Buti

thanks to Mr. P.C.

A volunteered footnote...

...to Straub in 6 Bagatelas (and elsewhere), when he cites Buñuel on those filmmakers who give the illusion that we live in the "BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS":

FILM: BOOK 1 , ed. Robert Hughes (New York, Evergreen/Grove Press, 1959)

Chapter:
THE SITUATION OF THE SERIOUS FILMMAKER:
THE FILMMAKER & THE AUDIENCE: Replies to a Questionnaire

THE QUESTIONS:

1. What specific difficulties have you experienced which have been caused by interpretations of the "audience" by producers, distributors, censors, etc.? (E.g., Flaherty's re Elephant Boy; Vigo's re L'Atalante and Zéro; Eisenstein's re Ivan; Rossellini's re The Miracle.)

2. What do you consider one of the most encouraging developments in film in recent years?

3. What do you consider one of the most discouraging developments?

4. What film or films would you make if you were free from the non-artistic limitations of sponsorship, censorship, etc.?

Luis Buñuel

1. Except during my first three films, all made before 1932, and produced with absolute independence -- Un Chien Andalou, L'Age d'Or -- I have always felt the pressure more or less heavily exerted by the producer. But one might deduce from your questions that the producers and distributors are to blame by their special interpretation of public taste for the limitations imposed on the filmmaker. In my opinion, the real responsibility for the spiritual stagnation of cinema lies with the amorphous mass, routinary and conformist, that makes up the audience. The producer limits himself merely to throwing to the beasts the food they demand of him. A businessman neither better nor worse than the others of his time, the producer has no scruples. He is capable of leaping from one ideological plane to another, even if the systems are morally and artistically antagonistic, so long as he is guaranteed prestige and economic success. For the moment it is impossible to foresee any moral elevation of human society. For this reason there does not appear even a glimmer of the spiritual improvement of the audience. One might even predict the contrary. Filmmakers will continue dragging the heavy chains of servility put upon them by the industry and the producers, who, as faithful representatives of the public, will continue their tyrannical repression of the artists' freedom.

2 & 3. To my way of thinking there is not one indication in the film production of recent years, either "capitalist" or "communist," that encourages any hope of the spiritual improvement of cinema -- unless it be in its technical aspect, where the progress of both is unquestionable.

4. If it were possible for me, I would make films which, apart from entertaining the audience, would convey to them the absolute certainty that they DO NOT LIVE IN THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS. And in doing this I believe that my intentions would be highly constructive. Movies today, including the so-called neo-realist, are dedicated to a task contrary to this. How is it possible to hope for an improvement in the audience and consequently in the producers when every day we are told in these films, even in the most insipid comedies, that our social institutions, our concepts of Country, Religion, Love, etc., etc., are, while perhaps imperfect, UNIQUE AND NECESSARY? The true "opium of the audience" is conformity; and the entire, gigantic film world is dedicated to the propagation of this comfortable feeling, wrapped though it is at times in the insidious disguise of art.

[Mexico City]

Mizoguchi Kenji

Jisei (death poem)

Already autumn chill is here—
Quickly with my studio comrades
Joyously I long to work

thank you Richard Modiano. Ganbattekudasai...

Peter Nestler, Straub and Huillet: Film, Painting, Seasons

.....played at Kino Arsenal.

--ZEIT

(TIME, Peter Nestler, 1992)

--IL RITORNO DE FIGLIO PRODIGO - UMILIATI

(THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON - HUMILIATION, Straub and Huillet, 2003)

Kino Arsenal's notes:

IL RITORNO DEL FIGLIO PRODIGO – UMILIATI is a continuation of OPERAI, CONTADINI (WORKERS, PEASANTS), the film narrating winter in green summer images. Similar to the relation of SCHWARZE SüNDE (BLACK SIN) to the preceding film TOD DES EMPEDOKLES (THE DEATH OF EMPEDOCLES), an even deeper and darker awareness arises – "from resignation to extreme affirmation" (Jacques Rancière).

The title and content of Peter Nestler's ZEIT (1992) attain a new meaning after VERTEIDIGUNG DER ZEIT (2007) dealing with the work of befriended colleagues. ZEIT consists of "seven Hungarian painters and sculptors presenting their work. They have worked hard all their lives as farmers, in the factory or as textile workers. It picks up on themes of their youth, themes that are very important to them." What UMILIATI and ZEIT also have in common is the preciseness and circuitousness with which they depict the post-socialist (sic) present.

After the "fin" at the end of QUEI LORO INCONTRI (the last five dialogs of Pavese's book Dialogues with Leuco), Jean-Marie Straub shot two new films, each after one of the dialogues: Two men remember a woman – LE GENOU D'ARTEMIDE (2008), two women a man (Odysseus) – LE STREGHE (2007–09). In ITINÉRAIRE DE JEAN BRICARD (2008), the Loire, black-and-white, in winter.

Nestler's TOD UND TEUFEL (2009) again visualizes the abyss one faces when confused emancipation that has become stuck (also when creating images) turns into fascism. The screening of DÜRFEN SIE WIEDERKOMMEN? ÜBER NEOFASCHISTISCHE TENDENZEN IN WESTDEUTSCHLAND (1971) on the photographer and Africa explorer Graf Eric von Rosen will be attended by the socialist political scientist Wolfgang Abendroth, among others. Guests: Peter and Zsóka Nestler. (Stefan Hayn)

"Truly doing movie criticism"

As part of the FILMVERMITTELNDE FILM Project Tag Gallagher has been interviewed about his video criticism, the why and the how of it.

"And the clearer my own ideas are, the fewer words I need. On paper, three paragraphs might make a point. On video, three words are better."

In addition to insights into his current video practice and the atmosphere in which it's done , Tag, who has always worked with the image, gives a wonderful little history of the use of frame-enlargements in printed articles.

At the end of the interview an invaluable filmography of Tag's is included. One wishes that dvd source information were also included, i.e. which commercial dvds include Tag's videos as "extras"; nevertheless, with the proper titles and dates one can usually locate them by searching online. And failing that, Tag is imminently approachable, via his website.

What is the translation of Filmvermittelnde film? Film mediating films? For now, it's clear that this is an extremely well mounted project by Volker Pantenburg, Stefan Pethke, and Michael Baute ( et al.) through the Vienna Filmmuseum (et al.) that thoroughly documents and explores film films, movies about movies. There are dossiers in German on Harun Farocki, Gustav Deutsch, Jean Douchet, Alain Bergala, pedagogical series, movies about movies on DVD (e.g. Janet Bergstrom on Murnau's 4 DEVILS, Jean-Pierre Gorin on PIERROT LE FOU, Bernard Eisenschitz on THEY LIVE BY NIGHT, etc) -- among others.

Stills:

1 from Tag's DREAMING OF JEANNIE (2003, on Ford's STAGECOACH), -- just as he begins a complex polemical aside (his videos are capable of that in addition to "three words are better") against Nick Browne's dead letter theories about Ford's camera and the spectator. Tag deploys superimpositions, moving repetitions, inventories of society in Ford, and camera position/axis graphs in his case against Browne's "Spectator-In-The-Text" (1975), showing that Ford gifts empathetic distance with the characters rather than (what Browne's text, through a questionable version of "suture" theory, assumes is) a submitting of the viewer to passive identification via a manipulative camera . This is part of a long standing debate about how the way-station scene in STAGECOACH works; Gilberto Perez also threw in his bit in a page-long footnote in The Material Ghost.

1 from Alain Bergala's movie about movies and Marseilles D’ANGELE A TONI (1998, FROM ANGELE TO TONI). "In 1934, two films, important in cinema history, were shot almost simultaneously around Marseilles : Angèle, the first feature film of the renowned young French author Marcel Pagnol; Toni, shot by Jean Renoir in Martigues at Pagnol’s invitation. Toni, which can be considered as the forerunner of the neo-realism movement. Both films were closed: based on the art of dialogue, love for direct sound, small-scale cinema with a taste for liberty during the shooting, and a familiy-like crew...Yet, they drew two diverging lines in the history of cinema: from Angèle to Toni, you step from Pagnol to Renoir, from a traditional vision of the Provence to a more contemporary vision of an area changed by industry, from Pagnol’s dramatic narration to Renoir’s documentary realism."

"3. In the packet of press materials that LM sent me last May is one still of Les contrebandières showing Brigitte (Françoise Vatel) scaling a bolder over a waterfall that is possibly the grubbiest I’ve ever seen — even grubbier than what the film looks like. Most people would call it “Substandard,” and they’d be right. This is the unfettered register that LM’s films occupy, breathe, and thrive in, a happy legion of the damned. Not even the $22 million spent on making Friedkin’s Sorceror look as impoverished and boring and artfully godforsaken and xenophobically unpleasant as possible could buy that sort of freedom and enlightenment."

--from Jonathan Rosenbaum's long unavailable, now available piece from 1977 **À la recherche de Luc Moullet: 25 Propositions**

a distant trumpet...

"MY CASE*: Straub complains. This time he complains that Heiner Müller who, upon meeting (the Straubs) in Berlin, lets fly something like 'it's good that people like you continue to exist!' A sentence where I, too, have heard the candid desire of death underlying it and to which one should be able to reply: 'Yes, I know I absolutely cannot count on you."

(Serge Daney in "Journal de l'an présent", TRAFIC, No. 3, été 1992.)

Interviewer: They say you are a marginal filmmaker?

Straub: Who?

Interviewer: A certain press, certain people...

Straub: Those are the ones who have an interest in supressing us, namely the industry pimps and, I was going to say, the whores who work for them, but that would be unfair to the whores. There's no reason to put a yellow star on certain filmmakers. Okay, so we have a yellow star. It's more interesting to check why. That means all journalists are whores and all producers are pimps. Well, almost everyone! (…) What does it take for a film to be marginal? The fact that it is left on the sidelines! From the moment a film enters the circuit, it stops being marginal. If it has the least sucess, you stop talking about marginalization! You then have the family blessing! Some racists labels are much more polished.

(Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet. Lisboa: Cinemateca Portuguesa, 1998.)

*Notre combat by Jean Douchet *

(translated by Craig Keller HERE)