CALIGARI AND OTHER DREAMS

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1919) is a beginning and an end in itself.  It is generally regarded as the first example of German expressionism – that manifestation of the tortured Germanic soul emerging in the aftermath of WWI.  Characteristics of the movement include weird, twisted sets, heavy use of shadows, extreme camera angles, highly externalized acting and macabre story elements.  All of these ingredients were utilized to accentuate the psychological aspects of the character’s inner worlds as opposed to the world as it is usually perceived. 

CALIGARI, directed by Robert Wiene, tells the chipper tale of a carnival hypnotist (Werner Krauss) and the somnambulist, Cesare (Conrad Veidt) who does his murderous bidding.  Everything – and I mean everything – is played to the hilt.  The filmmakers even went so far as to paint shadows on the already deformed sets designed by Hermann Warm, Walter Rohrig and Walter Reiman.  And what sets they are…jagged, twisted angles, contorted as if in some madman’s dream or delusion.  Settings where only hellish deeds can take place.  And indeed they do… 

CALIGARI was the beginning of the movement but also a bit of a cul-de-sac, for its abstractions were far more extreme (and psychologically disorienting) than those of any of the films that followed it.  All of the above traits of expressionism had their fullest realization in CALIGARI.  It is as if the movement burned itself out with the first film, the subsequent entries having far less imagination or guts.  The village settings of THE GOLEM (1920) were oppressive but they had their roots in traditional production design, as did those of NOSFERATU (1922).  To find a German film as daring as CALIGARI we must travel to the era of post expressionism, the kammerspiel or “intimate drama”, and experience THE LAST LAUGH (1924) which, like Wiene’s film, was written by Carl Mayer.  Mayer’s contribution to THE LAST LAUGH was unique in screenwriting history in that he developed a detailed shooting guide, complete with precise instructions on camera placement and movement-instructions which were followed religiously by the director F.W. Murnau.  The imagination employed was often astounding and Mayer’s efforts make the film the greatest of all post expressionist German works.  Though many of them were stylish and enormously entertaining, no such creativity was to be found in the expressionist films made in the wake of CALIGARI.  NOSFERATU is creepy beyond belief, probably the most powerful of the children of Caligari, but Murnau’s film is based on a famous novel (DRACULA).  This work of literature is arguably the greatest reason for the film’s success, even considering the magnificently ghoulish persona of Max Schreck, whose performance as the vampire is an unsurpassed treat. 

Of course this and many of the expressionist films played with techniques and themes introduced in CALIGARI.  Arthur Robison made an entire film on the subject of shadows, called appropriately enough WARNING SHADOWS.  This film of 1923 is about a jealous husband’s obsessions, revealed through the paranoid interpretations of shadows.  WAXWORKS (1924), directed by Paul Leni, takes us once again, into the world of the carnival side-show, as a poet concocts tales of intrigue surrounding such waxen figures as “Jack the Ripper”.  Fascinating and inventive stuff to be sure, but not the envelope pushing one might expect after CALIGARI. 

Despite its shortcomings as a movement, expressionism had a great influence on future filmmakers, especially Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles.  Welles especially took glee in distorting his images, not so much with nightmarish sets but with wide-angle lenses and bizarre camera angles.  As for more modern films, there are touches of Germanic influence in films as varied as Tim Burton’s BATMAN (1989) and Scorsese’s and Paul Schrader’s TAXI DRIVER (1976), both psychologically dark and disturbing as well as visually flamboyant movies. 

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the early expressionist films is that they were an expression of the fears and anxieties of the German citizen of the time.  These fears quite possibly led to the rise of the Nazis.  Like Dr. Caligari, Hitler was a hypnotist and the German people were his Cesare – a nation of sleepwalkers carrying out the nasty business of a maniac.  In a few short years the horrors of expressionism had become a reality.

TOUCH OF EVIL AND THE RADICAL MR.WELLES

Orson Welles was always a radical.  From his days with the Mercury Theater to his stint writing editorials for The New York Post in the mid 1940s, Welles espoused a love for Bolshevism and a desire to promote the personage of Joseph Stalin.  Yet along with such political naiveté came some of the greatest cinematic works of the last century.  For Welles was also an artistic radical, stretching tortuously the conventions of film art and creating a new way to look at movies and movie making.  At the same time it should be pointed out, he never actually invented anything.  He was not the first to use wide-angle lenses, nor was he the first to shoot from extremely low camera positions (making it necessary to build sets with ceilings).  Neither was he the pioneer in overlapping dialogue, or deep focus photography.  He was, however, the director who brought all these tricks and more to their fullest expression and prominence in films such as CITIZEN KANE (1941) and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942).  Nevertheless, he had the Hollywood power brokers  wondering, “What is it with this guy?”  They would ask this question more and more as Welles’s career continued and after KANE they would rarely let him complete his films as he desired.  Some of these pictures like AMBERSONS, would be re-edited by the bosses, and almost mutilated in the process.  He was a genius, quite obviously, but a mad one thought the studio heads, who never appreciated what he was trying to accomplish.  Eventually he would be relegated to grade “B” studios, like Republic, where he would be forced to work with impossibly low budgets.  But this was the magical Orson Welles, and he was destined to create more masterpieces.  One of these films would become known as the “greatest “B” picture ever made”. 

TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) represented an ever-increasing strangeness in Welles’s films.  The camera angles were more extreme, the wide-angle lenses shorter than ever, the tracking and crane shots were longer and more elaborate than anything he had ever attempted in the past.  Even the acting was enhanced with a level of freakiness unmatched before or since.  This maddening, twisted film involves a Mexican Detective named Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston!) and his beautiful American wife, Susy (Janet Leigh).  While honeymooning in Mexico, they witness the assassination of American oil tycoon Rudy Linnaker and his much younger girlfriend.  Los Robles is the mother of all sleazy border towns and the American side is just as putrid.  Throughout the film we are never quite certain on which side of the border the action is taking place.  This is the intent of the filmmakers.  We know the bomb was placed in Linnaker’s car on the Mexican side and that he and his hotsy totsy girlfriend blow up just across the border in the United States.  Vargas and his new bride are crossing the border on foot when the car explodes.  This much is certain.  From there on, the exact geography of the film gets rather dicey. 

Bloated, corrupt, racist American Cop Hank Quinlan (Welles, in a spectacularly pungent performance), frames a young Mexican man for the double murders, but Vargas is on to him.  With the help of Mexican gangster Joe Grande (Akim Tamiroff) Quinlan implicates Susy in a drug crime to get Vargas off his back.  He doesn’t stop there-he can’t.  Quinlan’s massive girth is like a boulder rolling downhill.  His tragic life is set to crash and burn, as his crimes escalate: To cover up his destructive actions against Susy, he strangles Grande. 

All of this creates a sense of vertigo in the audience as the characters cross borders; national, sexual (the interracial couple, the “rape” of Susy by Grande’s thug nephews) and moral.  Welles comments visually on this crossing over by constantly having his actors cross in front of one another, in a constant battle to invade each other’s space, literally “up-staging” their co-stars, as critic James Naremore has observed.  This is especially noticable in scenes involving the Grandes, and in a wild one with Dennis Weaver as “The nightman”.

There are other fascinating characters in the film, and the way they are dissected and set against each other by the director is fascinating as well.  Naremore has also pointed out that  in contrast to Suzy is the character of Tanya (Marlene Dietrich).  The two are a perfect Madonna/whore combination:The young, blond, impossibly sweet wife and the older, dark, worldly prostitute and ex lover of Qunlan.

The set pieces are astounding: The renowned crane shot that begins the film, as we travel along with Linnaker’s car and the Vargas’s as they approach the border and the awaited explosion.  This is a scene impossible to explain in the space alloted, and almost as difficult to forget.  Also nerve shattering is the throttling of Grande in a dingy fleapit motel.  The gargantuan cop brutally murders the tiny, now pathetic man as Henry Mancini”s theme plays on a far off radio and a neon light flashes outside. 

To heighten the frenzied atmosphere of these and other scenes, Welles forces perspective by utilizing an 18.5 mm lense.  (KANE, was shot with a comparatively normal 25 mm lense, though this too was deemed extreme at the time).  These lenses exaggerate the actor’s movements toward and away from the camera and distort the image.  At times it seems the performers and settings are wrapped around a beach ball. 

These radical techniques are always in service to Welles’s left-wing politics.  “Hank Quinlan is the incarnation of everything I fight against, politically and morally”.  He believed this character represented the fascism that was constantly lurking on America’s doorstep.  The fascism he decried while celebrating Stalin.  Of course, Welles kept quiet about “Uncle Joe” once the enormity of the Soviet dictator’s crimes was revealed.  Inhuman. Sadistic.  In many ways Joseph Stalin was just like Hank Quinlan.

CREDITS: Written and directed by Orson Welles.  Based on the novel BADGE OF EVIL by Whit Masterson.  Director of Photography: Russell Metty.  Music by Henry Mancini.  With Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Akim Tamiroff, Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Calleia, Ray Collins, Dennis Weaver. 

RELATED ARTICLES FEATURED ON THIS BLOG: THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (1925), RENÉ CLAIR’S A NOUS LA LIBERTÉ (1931), NOAM CHOMSKY AND POWER, DISSENT AND RACISM, PETER BROOK’S PRODUCTION OF MARAT/SADE (1966).

THE BAT WHISPERS (1930)

Artistically, the early sound period was a stagnant one for the Hollywood studios.  Where as filmmakers of the silent era had achieved a great deal of cinematic mobility, directors and crews of the late 1920’s were virtually handcuffed by the new sound technology.  Cameras had to be housed in large boxes, tiny rooms actually, to prevent the sounds of their noisy mechanisms from being recorded by the microphones.  This had the effect of nailing the cameras to the floor.  Another detriment to the new medium of talkies was the unfortunate fact that audiences of the time wanted one thing in their films: Talk.  Of course, that novelty would eventually wear off, but a director named Roland West would not wait to restore mobility to the cinema.  He would not take the easy way out and demanded so much more of his crew.  As the sound period progressed and quieter cameras were introduced, inventive directors like West were able to free cameras from their “ice boxes” and develop a more sophisticated shooting style.  Though most films of 1930 were still fairly primitive, West’s film of that year, THE BAT WHISPERS, is absolutely goofy with camera tracking and craning.  In fact the camera’s constant movement from the outside of buildings in through the windows and doorways etc., is a precursor to shots in CITIZEN KANE (1941).  Of course the West film, with its comic book type story of a master criminal who dons the disguise of a bat, is certainly not up to Orson Welles standards, and all the camera acrobatics grow tiresome, though it can be argued that such probing perfectly compliments a mystery story about the search for a criminal’s identity.  The search in question takes place in and around a creepy old mansion owned by an old lady, Mrs. van Gorder, and her niece, Dale (Una Merkel).  Also present are Dale’s boyfriend (a cashier from a bank that has just been robbed), a frightened maid, who provides a particularly annoying brand of comedy relief and a sinister doctor (Gustav von Seyffertitz), as well as several others.  It seems there is a large sum of money (the booty from the robbery) in a hidden room that has attracted the avarice of everyone.  Where is this room?  Who is “The Bat”?  Is he lurking around?  Detective Anderson (Chester Morris), is nowhere near the truth.  “The Bat” is the center of attention as a killer is on the loose (This is an “old dark house” thriller, after all).

All of this (particularly the characters of the maid and doctor) is so much of another era, that we must watch the film with a sense of the comedic and dramatic conventions of the time.  This stuff must have wowed ’em in 1930. 

Even the hoariest scenes are handled with great panache.  The most impressive shot comes when Detective Anderson, in hot pursuit, leaps over a railing and runs through a courtyard, the camera following him all the way. But do these unusual touches ultimately save a film ravaged by time?  No, but if not for Roland West, a man with a unique artistic vision, the film would not even be remembered today, and I would not bother to write a review of THE BAT WHISPERS.  

CREDITS: Written and directed by Roland West. Photography by Ray June and Robert Planck.  Starring Chester Morris, Una Merkel, Grayce Hampton, Maude Eburne, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Chance Ward, Spencer Charters, William Bakewell. Originally released in Magnifilm, an early wide screen process.

SCORSESE X 4

Martin Scorsese hasn’t made anything worth watching since THE KING OF COMEDY (1983), so I thought it would be interesting to examine some of his early works.  SCORSESE X 4 is a neat collection made up of four shorts, three of them from the 1960s.  WHAT’S A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU DOING IN A PLACE LIKE THIS?  (1963) made while Scorsese was still in college, is a wild (wonderfully so) film influenced heavily by the French “New Wave”.  The fractured psyche of the obsessed writer at the film’s center, is depicted with crazy freeze frames and jump cuts and the picture looks a little like the BEATLE’S movies that followed in the mid 60s, but is considerably dark in tone.  Scorsese himself describes it as “pure paranoia”.  This is not to imply that the film isn’t frequently hilarious, and Zeph Michaelis is a tickle in the lead. 

Scorsese is in much more familiar territory with IT”S NOT JUST YOU, MURRAY! (1964).  The film documents a gangster’s rise to power and is co-written by Mardik Martin, a frequent Scorsese collaborator.  Murray, played by Ira Rubin, is equated in a strange way with movie directors.  The film ends with characters from his past and present dancing around an outdoor circus ring, a la EIGHT AND A HALF.  It is made abundantly clear that Murray the thug, is not all that different from Fellini’s Guido Anselmi.  Weird, but funny. 

Even weirder is THE BIG SHAVE (1967) starring Peter Bernuth.  In this truly bizarre anti Vietnam war allegory, Bernuth, representing America’s young, strong “best and brightest” enters an all white bathroom (perhaps an affirmation of JFK’s goofy pronouncement that Vietnam was a “white man’s war against the indians”).  He carefully spreads shaving cream (more whiteness) on his ivory (still more) skin and begins the big shave.  Accompanied by the song I CAN”T GET STARTED the man in the bathroom mirror slowly begins to slash his face as he shaves.  Without so much as causing himself to flinch, his blood splatters in the sink (we now realize how repulsive PSYCHO would be if it had been made in color), and on the faucet.  Soon it culminates in a self-destructive slashing of the throat with the blood dripping down over his young, shirtless, muscular chest.  THE BIG SHAVE is easily one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen and though some may not agree with its political statement about the self mutilating nature of the war, it is undeniably amazing that such a powerful statement could be made in six minutes. 

At forty-five minutes, the documentary ITALIANAMERICAN (1974) is the longest film in the collection.  It is also the least interesting, though this portrait of Scorsese’s parents introduces us to a truly delightful woman.  Catherine Scorsese, as seen in the film,  is an amazingly sweet, engaging character who as an added treat looks exactly like the Martin Scorsese of 2010 in drag.

APRIL SHOWERS (2009) @indieflix

When it rains it pours, and in April 1999 it rained hard at Jefferson High School.  The fictional stand in for Colorado’s Columbine High and the infamous tragedy that befell its students, faculty and their families is the subject, with a few alterations, of APRIL SHOWERS (2009) by Andrew  Robinson.  Because the scenes surrounding the massacre have such a fierce intensity (and they accost us almost from the beginning of the film) it is easy to praise the picture almost without taking a breath.  But when we do come up for air, we make some observations that color our interpretation of the viewing experience. 

There  are some sound problems, particularly in scenes taking place in a kitchen and on a middle class home’s staircase.  Sound, of course, is the bane of the low-budget filmmaker’s existence but Robinson and his crew do well with their resources overall.  Another problem with the film is an over ripe quality to some of the more melodramatic sequences.  There is the moment in a convenience store  where one student, plagued by guilt over his actions the day of the shooting, almost wigs out in a paranoid breakdown.  It is to say the least, a bit much.  Still other scenes, such as the same student’s suicide, seem terribly contrived.  Nevertheless, it is obvious that this is a pretty good film. 

This version of events, as told by director-writer Robinson, an actual Columbine survivor, focuses mainly on the relationship between Sean (Kelly Blatz) and April (Ellen Woglom).  It is Sean’s realization that April is one of those killed in the attack that provides most of the drama, and some scenes have a surreal quality for which Robinson deserves kudos.  Ironically, in a film with a few sound problems, the use of sound elsewhere is exemplary.  In the frantic moments after the assault, Robinson and his sound designer Craig Polding, have the sounds fade in and out, creating a touch reminiscent of the boxing scenes from RAGING BULL (1980).  It is as though the characters are losing contact with the outside world.  Near the end of the film is another fine touch – this time a visual one.  Sean leaves the church following April’s funeral, photographed in long shot.  The cars are frozen in the middle of the street as if they have all been abandoned-a superb visual metaphor for Sean’s world coming to a stand still. 

The performances are just adequate, but Tom Arnold in a small roll as a beloved teacher, makes a moving impression.  Aaron Platt’s cinematography is at its best capturing images such as the sunset behind the crosses erected in memory of the dead, and elsewhere creates lasting memories. 

APRIL SHOWERS has been given the deluxe distribution treatment by indieflix, meaning it is not only available on the company’s website, but also can be found in video stores and other outlets and has been distributed to theatres.

Directors And Their Screenwriters

The relationships between directors and their screenwriters are often complicated.  Ranging from the contempt of Alfred Hitchcock, who often refered to his writers as “stooges”, to the more respectful attitude of Arthur Hiller, who once said, “I get on my knees to a good writer.” 

Film, of course, is a collaborative art and debate over which creative artist is most responsible for a film’s quality has been on going since the dawn of cinema.  Out of dozens of people involved in the production of any film, the field of contenders was whittled down to the director and the screenwriter.  Those siding with the former argued that the director is the main contributor to pictorial design in a medium that is, after all, visual.  The supporters of the latter maintained that the writer was most responsible for a film’s themes, which are found in plot, character development etc.  The belief that the director was the principal creator of a film production was given greater impetus in the 50’s with the introduction of the “auteur theory” as presented by the critics of the French film magazine “Cahiers du Cinema.”  The theory’s tenets, first formulated by Francois Truffaut, himself destined for superstar director status, stated that certain directors had not only an overwhelming technique as displayed in their mise-en scène, but were most responsible for their film’s overall qualities, including development of theme.  The theory has its detractors, especially among screenwriters and other creative artists involved in film.  An industry wag once suggested that those who believed in the “auteur theory” were partaking in the art of making the screenwriter, cinematographer, production designer, editor and countless others disappear. 

Among the most prominent of the above implied magicians was Alfred Hitchcock.  One of his most frequent collaborators was John Michael Hayes who in the 1950’s scripted some of Hitchcock’s most famous and successful films, including REAR WINDOW (1954) and TO CATCH A THIEF (1955).  A good example of Hitchcock’s dismissive attitude can be found in an incident where Hayes proudly showed the director a ceramic statuette he had won for writing REAR WINDOW.  “They make toilet bowls out of the same thing,” was Hitchcock’s crude response to the Edgar Allan Poe award. 

Despite such attitudes, several directors have forged relationships with writers that are very different.  Even though he became one of the most respected directors in Hollywood history, Billy Wilder always considered himself primarily a screenwriter.  Unusual in an industry and town that, to put it mildly, always looked down on writers.  Wilder began a writing partnership with Charles Brackett in the 1930’s and within a few years was directing such Wilder/Brackett screenplays as THE LOST WEEKEND (1945) and the terrifyingly cynical SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950, with D.M. Marshman).  The latter was a bitter story of a defeated Hollywood screenwriter.  He later began writing with I.A.L. Diamond, directing their works SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) and THE APARTMENT(1960) among others.  The partnership lasted untill the 1980’s.  Perhaps because he continued as a writer, Wilder never took on airs as the great director.  After all, the films he directed were always distinguished by their smart dialogue and characterizations-hallmarks of good screenplays-and not by anything inherent in Wilder’s mise-en scène.  Wilder poked fun at the film world’s attitude toward writers with his gently mocking tombstone epitaph, “I’m a writer.  But then nobody’s perfect.” A joke, of course, but also a clever reminder of the final line from SOME LIKE IT HOT, one of Wilder’s and Diamond’s greatest achievements. 

In 1976 Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader made TAXI DRIVER , the most important of their frequent collaborations.  A close examination reveals Schrader as the primary creative force behind the film.  Scorsese’s camera pyrotechnics are impressive, but it is a piece driven by character and shocking acts of violence, and Schrader wrote the whole thing with a gun next to his typewriter.  Of course, much of the film is improvised by the cast, which adds yet another dimension to the idea of film as a meeting of minds. 

There are frequent examples of usually terrible directors clicking with a talented writer and providing audiences with an unusually good film.  Such a lucky fellow was Brian de Palma with THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987).  David Mamet was responsible for the script. 

Ironically, the French, who gave birth to the “auteur theory”, also placed a premium on dialogue writers like Henri Jeanson.  Also of note is the major role writers played in one of the most important movements in French film history.  Jacques Prévert working with director Marcel Carné created films like PORT OF SHADOWS (1938) and DAYBREAK (1939), both bolstered by Prévert’s poetic voice.  The latter about a murderer cornered in his attic by police, was a masterpiece of the school of “poetic realism.”   The movement was characterized by romanticism tempered by a profound pessimism about the human condition, but with a deeply felt optimism about the power of film art.

Other famous and fruitful director/writer collaborations through the years include purveyors of sophisticated sex comedies Ernst Lubitsch and Samson Raphaelson (THE MERRY WIDOW, TROUBLE IN PARADISE), grand experts of social satire Frank Capra and Robert Riskin (YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, MEET JOHN DOE), western masters John Ford and Frank Nugent (FORT APACHE, THE SEARCHERS), legendary Italians Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli (NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, EIGHT AND A HALF), and latter day British masters Danny Boyle and John Hodge (SHALLOW GRAVE, TRAINSPOTTING).