{"id":31856,"date":"2015-08-03T12:56:46","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T17:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=31856"},"modified":"2020-06-14T08:51:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-14T13:51:54","slug":"watch-those-hands-or-burt-jean-luc-and-bill-come-to-cinephile-summer-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2015\/08\/03\/watch-those-hands-or-burt-jean-luc-and-bill-come-to-cinephile-summer-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch those hands; or, Burt, Jean-Luc, and Bill come to Cinephile Summer Camp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NV<\/a><\/p>\n

Nouvelle Vague<\/strong> (1990).<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

At this year\u2019s Summer Film Colleg<\/a>e in Antwerp, Peter Bosma pointed out that the event seems to be a unique mixture.<\/p>\n

Films are screened from morn to midnight: this time, 38 films across 6 days and two half-days.\u00a0But it\u2019s not exactly a film festival, as there are no new releases.<\/p>\n

\"Banner<\/a>So is it like Bologna\u2019s Cinema Ritrovato? Not exactly. While the shows included some restored titles (notably the Belgian Cinematek\u2019s pretty makeover of Pollyanna<\/em>, 1920), the films were mostly original prints with an occasional DCP.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the films cluster around two or three major themes. This year we had Late Godard (fourteen titles, counting episodes of Histoire(s) du cinema<\/em>) and the career of Burt Lancaster (eleven). In addition, there were nightly showcases called \u201cMasterworks in Context,\u201d which included one surprise film, title undisclosed. But\u00a0unike most movie marathons, the Summer Film College introduces\u00a0screenings with\u00a0lectures and discussions. This year there were fourteen sessions, each running about ninety minutes. These are serious, intensely informative talks\u2014very far from the usual brief introductions one gets at festivals or in art house warm-ups.<\/p>\n

So is it an educational enterprise? Definitely, but without assignments, tests, or grades. It\u2019s designed to serve Flemish-speaking professors and students, but also civilians who are just interested in a weeklong package of film and film talk. The event helps forge\u00a0a community of film appreciation.<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s often a guest filmmaker on hand, usually related to the main threads. This time it was Bill Forsyth, who directed\u00a0Burt in Local Hero<\/em>. That film was screened, along with Bill\u2019s wonderful Housekeeping<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So what would you call the College? I once called it Cinephile\u00a0Summer Camp, and that still seems accurate in evoking the sense of fun and camaraderie that pervade the place. We don\u2019t all get mosquito bites, but after a week you come to enjoy seeing familiar faces and talking with them about what they\u2019re seeing. Just as when you go to\u00a0summer camp, you get to stay up late. But at no summer camp I ever attended did we drink so much beer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

JLG\/SJ\/DB<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"JLG<\/a><\/p>\n

The principal speakers were Tom Paulus and Anke Brouwers, who covered Burt, and Steven Jacobs on Late Godard. The Masterworks in Context shows were introduced by several guest speakers, including Lisa Colpaert (excellent on I Walked with a Zombie<\/em>) and Vito Adriaensens (covering both Murder!<\/em> and Vampyr<\/em>). For Pollyanna<\/em>, Bruno Mestdagh of the Cinematek staff explained the process of restoration. I played utility infielder, offering one talk on Burt and three on JLG.<\/p>\n

How often do you get to see 35mm prints of Une femme mari\u00e9e, Passion, Je vous salue Marie, D\u00e9tective, JLG\/JLG, Eloge de l\u2019amour, <\/em>and Nouvelle Vague?<\/em> The Godard series, which ended with a 3D show of Adieu au langage<\/em>, was a high point of my summer viewing. Back home I had prepared by rewatching all Godard\u2019s features from Sauve qui peut (la vie)<\/em> onward, but my video homework didn\u2019t prepare me for the way the big screen amps up their prickly, seductive power.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t speak or read Dutch, so I missed many subtleties in Steven Jacobs\u2019 talks, but thanks to Power Point I could figure out the main points. Few lecturers can pack so much information and ideas into ninety minutes.<\/p>\n

We had no way of knowing how familiar the audience was with Godard, early or middle or late, so Steven started with an orienting talk on JLG’s pre-1980 work (above). He swiftly reviewed key aspects of Godard\u2019s New Wave period, traced his shift toward \u201ca critical cinema\u201d between 1967-1969, and explored the move into his Marxist phase. Along the way, he stressed the way cultural developments like auteur theory, Pop Art, Maoism, Brechtian theatre, and semiotics shaped Godard\u2019s films. Particularly acute was his discussion of the \u201cone image after another\u201d sequence in Ici et ailleurs<\/em> (1975). In all, the talk was an ideal prelude to Une femme mari\u00e9e<\/em>, which pointed up so many motifs of the later work: the focus on the couple, the emphasis on media-based images, and the persisting shadow of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

Steven is an art historian at University of Ghent; he earlier appeared on this blog<\/a> as co-author of the imaginative book The Dark Galleries<\/a><\/em>. After tracing Godard\u2019s return to mainstream cinema and his move to Rolle, Switzerland, Steven focused on that splendid example of JLG the painter, Passion<\/em>. Steven has written eloquently on the film in his Framing Pictures<\/em>,<\/a> and here he widened his focus to discuss its relation to other films centered on the tableau vivant, like Pasolini\u2019s La Ricotta<\/em> and Ruiz\u2019s Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Burt<\/a><\/p>\n

You\u2019d expect that Steven would have a field day with Histoire(s) du cinema<\/em>, and he did. Unlike most Godardophiles, I\u2019m not wild about this series of video essays. I can\u2019t take them as serious studies in film history, and too often I sense\u00a0he\u2019s just playing around. (Enough with the stroboscopic flashes, okay?) But Steven obliged me to rethink them by showing how they fit into the Postmodern art scene, especially the video art movement after\u00a0the 1970s. He pointed out the central importance of the Hitchcock episode and the series\u2019 constant concern with the Holocaust, often in dialogue with Shoah<\/em>. Citing Godard\u2019s claim that video taught him to see cinema in a new way, Steven suggests that the format also created a tenor of paradoxical melancholy. It\u2019s as if JLG\u2019s experiments with this new technology drove him to celebrate the death of the cinema he knew.<\/p>\n

My three talks on Late Godard tried to ask something that I didn\u2019t find many traces of in the literature. What are these films doing with (or against) narrative? I think that the focus on JLG as \u201cfilm essayist\u201d has sometimes obscured the fact that he has long insisted that he needs stories. Yet he seems to have no interest in the craft of storytelling as we understand it. He avoids dense exposition, careful foreshadowing, well-timed revelations, and cumulative climaxes. He tends to spoil the narrative expectations he sets up.<\/p>\n

As a result, his plots\u2014for his films have them\u2014are distressingly opaque. Exactly what happens in a Late JLG film is often difficult to determine. I\u2019m always surprised when discussions of these late films provide capsule plot summaries, for the very difficulty of arriving at these should claim our attention. As just one instance, many critics seeing Adieu au langage<\/em> for the first time thought the film centered on one couple. It centers on two.<\/a> But the fact of that mistake ought to interest us enormously: What in the film\u2019s presentation made it difficult to follow the basic situation? Are there strategies Godard follows in creating his apparently willful obscurity?<\/p>\n

Godard\u2019s unique strategies of storytelling are carried down into felicities of visual and verbal style. Again, I think that critics haven\u2019t sufficiently acknowledged just how strange and opaque the surfaces of these movies are. For one thing, characters are unidentifiable from scene to scene, thanks to camera setups that cut off their faces, wrap them in shadow, or leave them offscreen altogether.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve touched on these matters earlier (here<\/a> and here<\/a>), but just as a quick example, consider this shot from the opening of Nouvelle Vague<\/em>. It\u00a0has to be one of the most oblique introductions to a protagonist we can find in cinema.<\/p>\n

Corporate owner Elena Torlato Favrini strides out of her mansion past her chauffeur while taking a transatlantic call. Any other director would favor us with a close view of her, perhaps tracking as she cuts a swath through her entourage. Instead we get a shot framing her chauffeur climbing out of their Mercedes.<\/p>\n

\"Car<\/a><\/p>\n

As he crosses in front of the car, we hear her on her cellphone. She can be glimpsed fleetingly in the background, through\u00a0the car window.<\/p>\n

\"Car<\/a><\/p>\n

She approaches us, becoming briefly visible as she passes the car, but when she stops, she\u2019s decapitated. We don\u2019t get anything like a good look at her, and the locked-down camera refuses to reframe her. Instead, the framing emphasizes\u00a0her slipping on her gloves.<\/p>\n

\"Car<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Car<\/a><\/p>\n

The gesture ties into other imagery in the film. A little before this shot, there\u2019s an isolated shot that establishes hands as a major motif in the film. But we should also notice that this fairly abstract shot also presents the gesture of Elena slipping on a glove. Or rather, it almost<\/em> presents it, as the shot is abruptly chopped off just as the gesture begins.<\/p>\n

\"Nouvelle<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Nouvelle<\/a><\/p>\n

So slipping on the glove, started in an earlier shot, is finished at the Mercedes. But just as important, the visual idea of a hand gesture broken by a cut resurfaces at the climax. When Richard Lennox helps Elena out of the water, the action is also incomplete. Only five frames show him grabbing her arm before a cut interrupts the action.<\/p>\n

\"She<\/a><\/p>\n

Another filmmaker would have held the image on that triumphant grip, but Godard denies us this little burst of satisfaction. Of the five frames in this bit of the shot, there is\u00a0just one\u00a0frame showing Richard\u2019s hand seizing her. Godard again spoils a solid narrative effect. But he does narrative in his own way, with the broken-off gestures counterpointed by the hands that do meet at other points in the film.<\/p>\n

Every scene in\u00a0Nouvelle Vague<\/em>, and most scenes in Late JLG, seem to me to be built on one or more fine-grained pictorial and auditory ideas like these. Those ideas can seem perverse, as in the chauffeur scene: why let us see his face but play down Elena\u2019s? He\u2019s not a major character; we don\u2019t even learn his name until the film’s final moments. Unhappily, this peculiar instant of comparison is lessened\u00a0in the 1.66 version of the film available on DVD. That image suppresses the driver’s\u00a0face no less than Elena’s, losing Godard\u2019s peculiar version of \u201cgradation of emphasis.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\"car<\/a><\/p>\n

All the more reason to try to see these films in their full-frame glory, as I\u2019ve argued before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BL (Beautiful Loser)\/AB\/TP<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"CC<\/a><\/p>\n

Criss Cross<\/strong> (1949).<\/em><\/p>\n

With big tousled hair, unadulterated sinew, and teeth gleaming like a Pontiac grille, Burt Lancaster came to fame in the late 1940s. He belonged to a new cohort of actors quite different from the 1930s Debonairs (William Powell, Melvyn Douglas, Cary Grant) and the Bashful Boys (Cooper, Fonda, Stewart). Yet the new lads were also at variance with the rugged Ordinary Joes (Cagney, Bogart, Tracy, Gable).<\/p>\n

\"Mitchum<\/a>For one thing, Lancaster, Victor Mature, Robert Ryan, Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, and Charlton Heston were brawny\u2014monsters, in a way. They often took off their shirts. One publicity still for River of No Return<\/em> shows Mitchum more unclothed than Monroe. Three of them played prizefighters, and Mitchum, himself a boxer, had the broken nose of a brawler.<\/p>\n

Of the group, Burt\u00a0had probably the strongest A-list career overall. He fostered a great variety of projects. Who else of his generation appeared in films by Visconti and Malle? What other unflinching liberal was prepared\u00a0to play a US general bent on a coup (Seven Days in May<\/em>) or a conspirator behind\u00a0the Kennedy assassination (Executive Action<\/em>) or an obstinate officer fighting in Vietnam (Go Tell the Spartans<\/em>)? He portrayed a renegade officer demanding the revelation of the brutal policy behind the Vietnam War (Twilight\u2019s Last Gleaming<\/em>). His closest rival and frequent costar Kirk Douglas didn\u2019t enjoy such a vigorous and prestigious twilight. Only Brando kept beating him to the prize: Burt wanted to play the lead in Streetcar Named Desire<\/em> and The Godfather<\/em>. Unpredictably, he wanted as well to play the gay prisoner in Kiss of the Spider Woman<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I had had only slight interest in Burt as a star before this edition of the Summer School. But listening to the talks, seeing the films, and preparing my contribution made me realize how extraordinary an actor he was, and how important in Hollywood postwar history. Burt was well-served by the fine\u00a0lectures offered by Tom Paulus and Anke Brouwers.<\/p>\n

\"Anke<\/a><\/p>\n

Anke provided an in-depth survey of how Burt and the Brawny Gang brought to a new level the culture of male athleticism\u2014on display in Fairbanks and Valentino, developed further in the body-building craze of the 1930s, and culminating in what one 1954 magazine article called Hollywood\u2019s \u201cAge of the Chest.\u201d She brought in forgotten pin-up boys like Guy Madison and pointed out how Burt and his peers paved the way for Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis. Anke went on to specify Burt\u2019s beefcake persona, established in The Flame and the Arrow<\/em> (1950) and locked into place in The Crimson Pirate<\/em> (1952), which we saw. In her followup talk next day, she surveyed Burt\u2019s place in the industry. He was one of the few stars to supervise a successful independent production company, Hecht Hill Lancaster (earlier, Norma Productions and Hecht Lancaster).<\/p>\n

Tom moved on to consider Burt\u2019s star charisma. He traced how Burt adjusted his authoritative image to different roles\u2014the con man, the confident leader, the embittered idealist. Tom was especially good at\u00a0analyzing Burt\u2019s acting technique, tying it to particular trends in theatre and film of the time and pointing up the physicality of his performance of specific, precise tasks. Given the standard situation of rigging a bomb, he contrasted Burt\u2019s meticulous finger work in The Train<\/em>\u00a0(1964) with that of Kirk going through the motions in The Heroes of Telemark<\/em>. Tom even spared some time for Burt\u2019s diction\u2014a quality that really popped out when we watched\u00a0Elmer Gantry<\/em>\u00a0(1960).<\/p>\n

In a later lecture, Tom surveyed \u201cLate Burt,\u201d and his relation to political cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. He followed that with a revealing account of Burt\u2019s relation to the trend of \u201cMexican Westerns\u201d launched in the 1950s. Another arc in Burt\u2019s career: from Vera Cruz<\/em> (1954) to Ulzana\u2019s Raid<\/em> (1972), with The Professionals<\/em> (1966) in between. That we saw in another gorgeous print.<\/p>\n

I could go on a lot more about Tom and Anke\u2019s lectures, but I don\u2019t want to give away too much. The talks contained so much original research and discerning analysis of both the films and trends within film history that I\u2019m hoping Tom and Anke will lay these ideas out at book length. Part \u201cstar study,\u201d part film criticism, part industry history, their lectures were exhilarating.<\/p>\n

My own contribution was minimal, a talk on First-Phase Burt. The Brawny guys were well-suited to the trend toward\u00a0hard-boiled movies, those crime pictures we later decided to call \u201cnoirs.\u201d Those weren\u2019t usually suitable for older players (though there were\u00a0some makeovers, such as Dick Powell and Fred MacMurray). To fill these roles\u00a0came Alan Ladd, Glenn Ford, Dana Andrews, and Richard Widmark, along with the beefcakes. At the same time, \u201cindependent\u201d producers within the studios began contracting their own new talent and loaning it out. Burt was signed by Hal Wallis at Paramount, who also had Kirk Douglas, Wendell Corey, and Lizabeth Scott in his stable. Films like Desert Fury<\/em> (1947) and Sorry, Wrong Number<\/em> (1948) were Wallis package projects.<\/p>\n

Hired straight from the stage with no film experience, Burt debuted as the Swede in The Killers<\/em> (1946), on loanout to Mark Hellinger at Universal International. Burt\u00a0benefited from a galvanizing entrance. Lying on a bed in the dark, refusing to flee the hitmen on his trail, Burt is a shadowed, curiously languid\u00a0torso in a tight undershirt.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_30\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Only after a beat do we see something else: massive hands rubbing a weary head. Soon that head is revealed.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_31\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"screenshot_32\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As the killers burst in, the whole image comes together.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_28\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Has a Hollywood beginner ever been given such a gift as this opening?<\/p>\n

With this onscreen wattage, it\u2019s all the more striking that this young discovery is curiously absent from his early films. He\u2019s onscreen for only a third of The Killers<\/em>\u2019 running time, and not even half of Brute Force<\/em> (1947) and Sorry, Wrong Number<\/em>. The film Wallis wanted to be his debut, Desert Fury<\/em> (1947), gives him only twenty-three minutes out of ninety, and in the second male lead at that. All My Sons<\/em> (1948) puts him in an ensemble drama. \u00a0I Walk Alone<\/em> (1948), the Norma production\u00a0Kiss the Blood Off My Hands<\/em> (1948), and another Universal project, Criss Cross<\/em> (1949) start to make him a proper, central protagonist. By then, he is ready to become the star attraction of the swashbuckling films.<\/p>\n

Moreover, in his early phase, he mostly plays losers. Not the brightest guy in the room, he\u2019s easily suckered by a femme fatale in The Killers<\/em> and Criss Cross<\/em>. He makes amateurish mistakes at crime (Sorry, Wrong Number<\/em>) and, coming out of prison, he is the last to realize the rackets have\u00a0gone corporate (I Walk Alone<\/em>). At the start of Kiss the Blood<\/em> he punches a man too hard and kills him. He’s caught and whipped and imprisoned, and when he comes out he stumbles back into crime again. He’s shrewd enough to set up a prison break in Brute Force<\/em>, but so doggedly determined is he to reunite with his girl on the outside that he launches a suicidal bloodbath.<\/p>\n

When he finally catches on to his fate, we get expressions ranging from stupefaction to anguish (The Killers<\/em>, Criss Cross<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_01\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"CC4<\/a><\/p>\n

He even cries (All My Sons, Kiss the Blood<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Kiss<\/a><\/p>\n

Loser or winner, when he is onscreen, he has the outlandish physical presence of the born star. Most obvious is a physique\u00a0(Kiss the Blood, Brute Force<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"Kiss<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Brut<\/a><\/p>\n

Even his back, featured with a prominence we get with few other actors, is straining against a drenched prison uniform\u00a0(Brute Force<\/em>) or a tailored suit (Criss Cross<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"Brut<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"CC<\/a><\/p>\n

The face was a cameraman\u2019s dream; it could be craggy or somber, thoughtful or tormented (The Killers, Brute Force x2, Criss Cross<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_27\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Brut<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Brut<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"CC2<\/a><\/p>\n

He can be stiff-armed and zombielike coming out of prison in Kiss the Blood<\/em>, but he can also gamely cock his elbows, ready to spring, like Cagney and Cary Grant (I Walk Alone<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"Kiss<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"I<\/a><\/p>\n

The enormous hands, which look likely to crush a skull (Criss Cross<\/em>) or rip apart a phone cord (Sorry, Wrong Number<\/em>), could be surprisingly delicate, tentatively touching his girlfriend\u2019s wheelchair or laying down plans like playing cards (Brute Force<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"CC1<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Sorry<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Brut<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"Brut<\/a><\/p>\n

In The Killers<\/em> he makes skillful use of those hands, pocketing his busted one or spreading out the scarf given him by the treacherous Kitty.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_40\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"killers<\/a><\/p>\n

Easily taken in by Kitty\u2019s plan, he seems to have a qualm when his gripping embrace relaxes and the fingers splay in hesitation.<\/p>\n

\"screenshot_57\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\"screenshot_59\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This sort of handwork would become crucial, as Tom pointed out, to Burt\u2019s performance style, particularly in The Birdman of Alcatraz<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d never looked in eyes as chilling as Lancaster\u2019s,\u201d Norman Mailer once said. You can see what he meant.<\/p>\n

\"Brut<\/a><\/p>\n

Again, though, the actor is in control. Some years back<\/a> I wrote that eyes by themselves aren\u2019t very expressive: the eyelids, eyebrows, and mouth tell us more. I still think that’s right, but Burt manages to convey the sense of the beast at bay with remarkable control of just the eyeballs. He seems to be looking for an escape hatch without moving his head an inch.<\/p>\n