| Agency =/= Power: "Baby Face" (1933) |
[13 Jul 2009|09:39am] |
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The question must be asked: if Lily Powers does not actually have any power, what does she have? The woman certainly has something, and that's a fact.
I would posit that what Lily Powers has is not power, but agency. She does not even, as I'd once thought to say, have control; control is something held by persons who make the rules and enforce them. Lily is not in that position. Lily does not even have free will; her actions are predicated on her need and vulnerability, both of which arise because of the system in which she lives. That system wasn't invented by Lily, and it certainly wasn't created for her benefit or the benefit of any other woman.
Agency is a tricky thing. Lily Powers' decisions could have so easily gone wrong; we're shown a world in which she somehow escapes disaster with each new lover, somehow becomes wealthier and more successful with each daring grab she makes for autonomy and material security. We aren't shown how easily any one of her lovers could have cast her off, denounced her, and reduced her to penury. We're also not shown how easily any of them could have beaten, raped, or even killed her, practically without consequences: rich men in a patriarchal society can get away with harming "loose" women like Lily Powers. This does not, to me, sound like power, or even like temporary control. Lily always balances on the edge of ruin, even if that isn't spelled out for us by the film; she has to work like crazy just to stay ahead of disaster.
Lily is certainly a unique character. Her drive and intelligence, combined with the philosophical education offered by her only male friend, sharpened her wits and kept her spirit from being utterly submerged by her father's brutality. It is that good fortune which allows Lily to stay on her feet, eyes peeled for disaster and the next big windfall. Don't confuse that with power. Although brilliant and tough, Lily Powers occupies an extremely vulnerable position. The writers, wittingly or not, hint as much in her alliance with Chico, her companion and maid (that cringe-worthy dynamic, too, deserves its own essay); Lily refuses to abandon Chico to the poverty and abuse she herself is fleeing, and the only time we see Lily back-talk one of her keepers is when he insists she fire Chico and hire a more refined servant.
There are shades of Mae West here, an alliance of "fallen" white woman with black women as a way of saying...what? Maybe that's too big for me to parse here as well; it's an incredibly problematic trope and there's enough in it to fill a book. I can tell you one thing--the only adult in "Baby Face" more vulnerable than a loose white woman is a poor black woman, and the fact that they're thrown together in this film is a signal of how tenuous Lily's position really is.
The writers, and no doubt the directors and producers and the gaffers and everyone down to the script girl, want the viewer to believe that Lily Powers is in charge of her life. They no doubt believe it themselves. The movie, unless read carefully and critically, presents us with a character who has full autonomy and control of her situation. It's easy to be lulled by Lily Powers' obvious strong points and her rather unlikely successes into thinking that her situation wasn't that dangerous, wasn't that bad. I posit that an unspoken goal of "Baby Face" is just that: pretending that patriarchy isn't so bad, that it's really a big dumb softy and that a smart woman, a pretty woman, can twist it around her little finger and get everything she needs.
That, friends and neighbors, will be the subject of the next essay.
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| "Empowerment" and Survival in "Baby Face" (1933) |
[04 Jul 2009|04:19pm] |
A feminist blogger I'm fond of refers to femininity as "survival skills." I think that's something I knew before I heard her say it, but she has a way of crystallizing concepts for me at the perfect moment, when I most need to hear them. See, so-called "empowered" women in film have been on my mind a lot lately, specifically Mae West (Mae is always on my mind, let's be honest), but also Barbara Stanwyck. I watched "Baby Face" again today, and it made me sadder than ever before. The filmmakers, I'm sure, thought the movie was all about power: to be specific, Lily Powers' (ha!) power. And given the way our culture rolls, I'm sure audiences in 1933 and since have thought the same thing. It's easy to be swept along on the suggestion that Lily Powers is a badass who goes where she wants and gets what she wants because she's somehow magically risen above oppression (oppression which, we're told, isn't really so bad to begin with--but that's for another post).
But see, really, it's not about her power at all. She doesn't have any power, because the men around her have it all. Lily Powers has the incredible brass nerve to use her beauty and intelligence to play those men in order to avoid being raped, beaten, or cheated by them--but that's not the same as power.
What is power?
Power means not needing to connive or manipulate. It means that you're never thrust into a situation where physical danger, or deprivation of basic physical or emotional needs is imminent. It means your dad doesn't pimp you out to his bar's customers, or to the sleazy mobster offering "protection" for his speakeasy. It means that you can go to a company and get a good job without having to screw the guy in Personnel. It means that you get promoted because you're hardworking and intelligent, not because you slept with your boss and then played his boss (and, in turn, his boss!) for a sap. It means all that stuff and more.
It doesn't mean all the crap Lily Powers had to do, and had to put up with, in order to survive. And if Lily Powers did better than survive--if she did more than live hand-to-mouth--well, that doesn't change anything. We all want to do more than live hand-to-mouth. None of the men around Lily Powers were suffering any financial deprivation, and they didn't have to fuck their way up the ladder to get the good stuff in life. No, they were recognized on their skills. And their penii, of course.
No. Femininity is not power. It's a fucking survival skill.
You know what, too--we are shown through the whole movie that Lily is really smart. She's uneducated, but she's not an idiot. She's really brilliant, and she does work hard; we get clues that she also educates herself as she goes along. She just also knows that none of her intelligence and hard work will get her anywhere unless she also puts out. Let's face it--we are shown repeatedly, also, that the men around her will take what they want from her eventually anyway, if she doesn't give it up. So she does the cunning thing, and engages in sex willingly--at a time and in a way that will benefit her.
Christ, it's fuckin' terrifying. It's like all the ugliness and horror and misogyny of our stinkin' society laid bare, but we're given it as if it's a funny story about a powerful woman. "This is the kind of devastation women can wreak!" the movie tells us. "You empowerfulated women are the real rulers of society!" you can practically hear the Hearty Male Studio Staff say, while congratulating themselves on the cash money they're gonna make off this hot little flick, and the booze and hookers they're gonna buy with the profits.
Oh boy.
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| Tell me what your wife was like |
[24 Apr 2009|07:26pm] |
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I think this may be the only time I've seen "The Big Heat" all the way through from beginning to end. It was certainly the first time I'd watched it intentionally, actually seeking the movie out and getting it from the library's shelves. I watched it hot on the heels of "Detour," which I'd never seen, and which I might have something to say about as well.
There's a lot to impress a viewer of "The Big Heat": good acting, good dialogue, great plot. Hard to know how much of that belongs to Lang, since he had so much less power during his American years, but it is hard to imagine Lang turning out a bad movie, even in Hollywood.
Every time I watch a movie, the film looks different to me depending on what's on my mind. This time, I was fascinated by the relationship between Bannion and his wife. This is the only time the acting, really the characterization, became stilted and uncomfortable for me, which is a shame because I think the relationship we're shown is unique among movies of the time--well, of the ones I've seen, anyway, which isn't so many after all. There's a lot of give-and-take between the two that makes it clear that Mrs. Bannion is no doormat 50s housewife, although her lines are sometimes at odds with the actress's mannerisms, as if two very different ideas of womanhood were struggling with each other. (It's possible this is just a problem with bad acting, too.) There's a lot of passion between Mr. and Mrs. Bannion as well, a startling amount; I've seen pre-marriage passion in these 40s and 50s movies, but never a married couple quite so red-blooded as the Bannions. Although we don't see the Bannions' bedroom, this is one married couple that wouldn't sleep in twin beds.* There's a lot to unpack in this portrayal of marriage, and wifehood; those are complicated onions, lots of layers. Think you have it figured out, and then find out there's another way of looking at it: for instance, one could imagine Mrs. Bannion as an equal partner (as much as the time would have allowed), but then one remembers that proper wives were supposed to be nurses, baby-makers, maids, conversation partners, and sex-kittens...so is this characterization so ground-shaking after all? I'll never get to hear what Lang and the writers thought about this, so I guess I'll have to try to unpack it myself, over successive viewings.
Lee Marvin is extremely impressive as villain Vince Stone. A more hideous brute I've never seen, and not two-dimensional, either. Great work. Debby...what a troubling character. I feel that we're supposed to alternately like her and loathe her, which is hardly fair; the character herself only exists in terms of how others attach themselves to her or treat her, until the very end, when Bannion's resistance to her charms and Stone's brutality force her to make independent decisions. Or do they? Doesn't Debby make the decisions she does because she feels that her life is no longer worth anything--which is because of what Stone did to her? Is it really that simple? And why is it that the "floozy" must die? Must all women die in this picture, in order for good to be restored? Must Debby, a "fast woman," be mutilated just like another "fast woman" earlier in the film in order for moral normalcy to return? Is this really the world we want to live in?
Debby dies hearing about a proper woman, a model wife--Katie Bannion--and even extolling Mrs. Bannion's virtues herself. Even in death, even after her courage and sacrifice, she's still really a non-person because of her womanhood and lack of wifeliness. She's completely marginal to mainstream society, completely beneath their, and our, notice. When a bar-girl was murdered earlier in the film, someone noted, "Nobody cares about what happens to these girls." And it's true! It's true today, too, even. Nobody cares about what happens to a certain type of woman, and poor Debby, did anybody even thank her for what she did? Or are we supposed to see it as her paying back some kind of debt--payment for her offensive existence, payment for no longer being beautiful? Is that why nobody thanks her? Is that why, when she lays dying from gunshot wounds, covering her mutilated face lest somebody think her ugly, Bannion goes on and on about a "good" woman rather than telling Debbie that he's grateful? Why was this written this way? I'd like to know.
"The Big Heat" provokes more questions than it gives answers, but unlike Lang's earlier films, this may be due less to the skill of the director and screenwriter (in Germany, Lang wrote almost exclusively with his wife) than it is to conflicting ideas about good and bad, men and women in the culture of the time. It is an excellent movie, occasionally awkward but generally smooth and intense. It shows humans at their best and at their worst, and sometimes at their most pathetic. It is, in that sense, a very good Fritz Lang film.
*Did anybody ever actually do this in real life?
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| Some day I'll go gorilla-hunting--and I won't miss! |
[08 Feb 2009|10:31pm] |
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I first watched "My Man Godfrey" a couple of years ago on the recommendation of a co-worker. He wouldn't let the subject drop until he saw me leaving our place of employment (the library, that is) with the disc in hand. It was the only copy in the metropolitan library system, and although I normally run screaming from anything with the Madacy name on it, I was up against the wall as to choice.
The movie's ridiculous humor and biting criticism of the idle rich came through just fine despite the disappointing quality of the print. The audio was washed-out and the images lacked their original grey-toned subtlety, having largely been reduced to bright patches and dark shadows. Well, maybe it wasn't as bad as all that--what I'm describing, visually anyway, sounds more like the condition of some of the early Arbuckle & Keaton shorts--but nevertheless it was pretty bad.
Criterion, of course, has done the movie up right; another local library received Criterion's restored edition of the film just last Friday and things being what they are, I was there with my hand out to take it home with me. The audio is crisp and the images are beautifully modulated all along the visual scale, just as they must have been originally. There are occasional moments where the condition of the source print is betrayed--William Powell appears to have a slight aura during some scenes towards the end of the film--but the film is finally as beautiful as it is intellectually-stimulating. It's a smart movie, after all; after seeing it again, I'm beginning to think that screwball comedy is a smart genre. My experience with the genre includes all of three movies--three? maybe two--so I don't have much of an opinion about it so far, you see.
Wait, is Preston Sturges' work considered screwball comedy? Four, then. Four movies. And Sturges' work was very smart indeed.
Point is, watch "My Man Godfrey" if you haven't before; if you have, and were stuck with one of the shabbier versions available, track down the Criterion edition and watch it. It's refreshing to see such a great movie looking and sounding more like itself, and the film's contrasts of the desperate poor and the idle rich are, sadly, as apt now as they were in 1936.
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| Books and movies |
[31 Dec 2008|11:03am] |
"Andre Bazin once wrote that Chaplin is not sentimental, he just seems sentimental to literary people because in a book he would be sentimental."
--From America in the Movies by Michael Wood, p. 6
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| An accurate enough statement |
[03 Dec 2008|09:46pm] |
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"In Fritz Lang's movies it's...hard to win."
--Peter Bogdanovich, from the commentary on "Fury"
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| A joke is different from a pratfall |
[14 Nov 2008|08:47pm] |
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Which is why, when listening to a reading of "Impossible to Tell" (it may be around on the internet somewhere, it is worth listening to), I can only empathize deeply with some of it--with, say, the part about the little boy cutting capers to keep his mother from killing himself, and a few flashes here and there. This is not to say it is not a wonderful poem, but that part of what is described in it--"the rude, full-scale joke," one of my favorite literary phrases incidentally--is not part of my experience. The verbal joke, the joke with the punchline, the joke told by a teller to an audience, is not something I enjoy. For me, it doesn't transcend the "drunken taxicabs of absolute reality" (another literary favorite) like a beautiful pratfall does, or like the way non-joke-oriented verbal comedy can if it's very, very good. The Marx Brothers combined the physical joke (the pratfall, metaphorically speaking) with that open-ended verbal comedy and the effect for me is euphoric. Similarly, the great madcap comedies of the 30s and 40s employed some physical comedy with rapid-fire back-and-forth humor and it fills me with glee. I like the exchanges between the characters; I like their interrelation, their, well, their conversation, which is on so many levels besides speech.
And that is where Pinsky leaves me puzzled, because he clearly experiences joke-telling--the kind where a man walks into a bar stands before an audience and tells his humorous story, a closed story with a punchline, an ending--as a conversation much in the same way. He compares it to the rounds of haiku that Basho would exchange with his friends and students. It is a beautiful metaphor that I am unable to understand emotionally, but which to Mr. Pinsky resonates very deeply. Thus is the diversity of human experience. I can only speak with authority about my world, where a joke is different from a pratfall; about how when Buster Keaton hurls grit upon the tracks only to have his train race away from him, I experience it as part of a conversation we are having together, or as part of the great human conversation which one is sometimes privileged to hear clearly and with great feeling.
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| Not even Clark Wilson can save us now |
[16 Jun 2007|10:07am] |
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Yesterday I saw the long-awaited summer CAPA Classic Movie Series schedule at the library and snatched up a copy. Every summer they hand-pick around 20 movies from the 20s to, increasingly, the 80s, and show them in the historic Ohio Theater downtown. Each year's lone silent offering is especially popular, and usually features live accompaniment on the theater organ.
This year will see the return of the annual Marx Bros. movie ("A Night at the Opera" this summer), as well as "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," "Rope," a few regrettable films from the 80s, and Mae West's best motion picture, the fabulous and completely enjoyable "She Done Him Wrong." (It could be argued that the schedule, which also features "North by Northwest," contains a surfeit of Cary Grant, but let that pass.) Before noting any of these excellent offerings, my eyes rushed first to find out which silent would be shown. I saw Keaton's face in the teaser image; would it be "Go West"? "College"? Could it be, oh God oh God, "Sherlock, Jr."?
It is "Spite Marriage."
"Spite Marriage" cleaned up at the box office—that's the hell of those MGM-era Keaton flicks, they raked in the dough and only encouraged that god-damn Louis B. Mayer in his misuse of Keaton's skills and of the man himself--but is decidedly the least favorite and weakest of Keaton's silents. He had lost all creative control to his handlers at the studio; drink had begun to noticeably wear at his reflexes, his physique, and his features. It may seem out-of-hand that I criticize this movie without having watched it, but I tell you, that is just how bad it is: the rumor of its badness is so widespread, it is spoken of so bitterly, that perhaps only "What? No Beer?" is detested more among Keaton's body of work.
Actually, it is not that people say it is so bad. It is that you can tell, when watching it, that Keaton's creative life is at an end. His first movie for MGM, "The Cameraman," while not as good as his independent features is still truly a Keaton film. He wrested control of it from studio executives by doing a great deal of the filming on his own, and although his character is already the pathetic "Elmer" of the later MGM movies, he still manages to hold himself with dignity. By "Spite Marriage," only his second movie for MGM, he was no longer himself. The Keaton we love was dead.
The CAPA directors could not have chosen a worse film to showcase the silent era or Buster Keaton. Neophytes to both will come away thinking the era had little to offer, and will wonder why anyone cares about this Keaton guy. For those of us who know, it will be like going to a funeral. I'll go, to support CAPA's screenings of silent films and out of love for Keaton—but CAPA, you done him wrong.
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| Chaplin in "The Great Dictator" |
[01 Jun 2007|08:43am] |
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Having watched this movie a number of times, one would think there's nothing more I can glean from it other than sheer entertainment. Nevertheless, I am continually impressed by Mr. Chaplin's performance in "The Great Dictator." He had already revealed himself to be a great actor in "City Lights" (arguably he had always demonstrated this talent, but comic acting is often treated dismissively by critics and filmgoers); in that film, he showed himself capable of great subtlety and expressiveness in his face and movements. In "The Great Dictator," Chaplin surpasses himself in skill.
"The Great Dictator" brings us Chaplin as two very different characters; what is remarkable is that at no point could the viewer mistake the two for each other. Their only physical difference is costume, and at one point in the movie, even that difference has been eliminated. Even then, one could never mistake the Jewish barber for Adenoid Hynkel.
I've seen "Modern Times" referred to as the last of Chaplin's "Tramp" pictures, but the Jewish barber seems to be, if not the Tramp, then his long-lost cousin. He has the same gentleness, the same whimsy, the same courtesy. He doesn't have quite the swagger of the Tramp, who carried himself like a little emperor, but the barber does have an innate sense of his own dignity; when that dignity is violated, he will fight. The barber walks like the Tramp, too, that characteristic Chaplin walk described by Terry Pratchett as "walking like his boots are full of water."
It's Chaplin as Hynkel who really keeps me riveted. Badness does that; people are, as a rule, fascinated by it. Maybe there's a romance to wickedness that appeals, or just the simple pleasure of seeing an imaginary situation where someone is getting away with things we'd never dare to do. Watching "The Great Dictator" last night, what I really wondered about was how Chaplin's performance manages to frighten me so. I too am fascinated by film wickedness; I might cheer when the monster is destroyed, so to speak, but like most of the audience I'm secretly rooting for him. Badness is fun. But is Adenoid Hynkel bad?
I contemplated these things while I watched. Chaplin's performance as Hynkel caused me considerable disquiet, but I also found myself laughing. What kind of laughter was this? Was it like my laughter at the barber, or at the Tramp? No: there was no warmth in my laughter at Hynkel's antics. I did not love him, although I enjoyed seeing him behave foolishly. When I laughed, though, I laughed almost in spite of myself. The barber is warm and silly, despite his fierce streak. He's loveable, just like the Tramp, and I empathized with him. In the ghetto, when the stormtroopers lynched him, I could feel the noose tightening around my own neck. If Adenoid Hynkel was lynched, I could only watch with grim satisfaction.
That, then, is the triumph of Chaplin's performance: that he was able to put aside a screen persona he'd used for over twenty years, and which excited instant affection in millions around the world, to don a character who was cold to the very core. Adenoid Hynkel isn't bad; Adenoid Hynkel is evil. Wickedness may amuse, but real evil never can. The audience's laughter towards the dictator is at him, not with him; it is the laughter of fear.
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| "If you were really great and powerful, you'd keep your promises!" |
[03 Dec 2006|11:09pm] |
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What's striking about Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" is how much courage she has--for others. She can't stand to watch idly while someone weak is being picked on! She stands up to Miss Gulch, she stands up to the Lion, and she even scolds the Wizard himself for frightening her friends. I have just watched the movie again after several years and I reckon that it's the first time I noticed that, but I am sure that it is why I liked her all along.
It is difficult to hide one's tears from one's roommates without even a handkerchief, though. My cuffs are all damp now.
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| And I've watched "Metropolis" yet again! |
[04 Oct 2006|10:03pm] |
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Some real famous guy called "Metropolis" the silliest movie he'd ever seen. And I reckon that in part I know why; the bit I might agree with him on is the class-politics stuff, where the movie essentially seems to conclude that a stratified and rigid class-structure is just peachy-dandy as long as the top alpha dogs are kindly. Now that don't make much sense in the real world, does it?
But there's other stuff he might have been mocking, like the futuristic elements--which to them, in the 20s, probably did seem silly, although we know now that so much of that film has in fact come to pass--or the allegory and symbolism, including leitmotifs even in the actors' gestures. There are folks who think that's silly, and I guess all I can say about them is that everyone has the right to be wrong sometimes.
Anyway, after a half-dozen viewings (months ago) I realized that as a class-struggle movie it is interesting and perceptive and angry, but stops far from the mark as far as solutions go. Or perhaps it's a cynical film when it comes to class, and doesn't see that there's ever a chance for real equality, so that a kindly overlord is the best we can ever hope for. Who knows. I wouldn't put that past Fritz and Thea, no. Pity it took me so long to figure out why the logic was irritating me, but eventually I did.
Well I watched it again today and thought: what if this movie isn't about class at all? What if it's about exactly what it says on the tin, that the mediator between head and hands must be the heart? What if, instead of the spiritual stuff being a framework and a language for Fritz and Thea to talk about class, the class story is instead a framework for a story about compassion?
...Which would explain why it rings true emotionally, but the logic is off-kilter. Yes. What if there were multiple ways to view it, multiple stories being told simultaneously?
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| Old slow-thinker |
[10 Jun 2006|11:42pm] |
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It's hard to watch "Sherlock, Jr." with fresh eyes every time. So much of its effectiveness depends on surprise. It always pleases, but I regret that I can't watch it again for the first time.
Tonight I watched it for the first time in many months, though, and as usual was delighted. And I noticed something new, too: how naturalistic much of the acting is and how Keaton shows us his character's thought process. It's done so nonchalantly that one hardly realizes one's been manipulated into thinking along with Keaton, but that's exactly what happens.
Example: Keaton's character goes to the drugstore, sees the fancy three-dollar box of candy (having sneered contemptuously at the one-dollar box), and fails in his attempts to negotiate the price down to the two dollars he actually has in his pocket. Returning to his work, he continues sweeping only to find another dollar. Instead of grabbing it and running, he looks at it, then pulls his money out of his pocket again and carefully counts it, then adds the new dollar. Three dollars! He has three dollars! Only then does he grab his coat out of the ticket-box and start once more towards the drugstore.
Folks who've seen the movie will know whether or not he gets there--at least with those three dollars. You don't know? Shame on you. Go watch the movie!
The effect of all this is to slow the movie's pace, which is not such a bad idea. Once Keaton does act, he acts fast. Slowing the action down at moments gives us viewers a little rest before the next burst of activity. And it delights us with contrast: slow thinking, quick acting. As generations of audiences will attest, Keaton's tortoise mind is stolid, but ultimately no less agile than his body.
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| "Well, I remember Dylan anyway. He's got two ears, right?" |
[28 Jan 2006|10:29am] |
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The Washington Post writes about The Great Zucchini: After the peekaboo age, but before the age of such sophisticated understanding, dwells the preschooler. His sense of humor is more than infantile but less than truly perceptive. He comprehends irony but not sarcasm. He lacks knowledge but not feeling. The central fact of his world -- and the central terror to be overcome -- is his own powerlessness. This is where the Great Zucchini works his magic.
The Great Zucchini actually does magic tricks, but they are mostly dime-store novelty gags -- false thumbs to hide a handkerchief, magic dust that turns water to gel -- accompanied by sleight of hand so primitive your average 8-year-old would suss it out in an instant. That's one reason he has fashioned himself a specialist in ages 2 to 6. He behaves like no adult in these preschoolers' world, making himself the dimwitted victim of every gag. He thinks a banana is a telephone, and answers it. He can't find the birthday boy when the birthday boy is standing right behind him. Every kid in the room is smarter than the Great Zucchini; he gives them that power over their anxieties.
...
"The whole thing has snowballed into levels of craziness, and it's just embarrassing to be a part of it. I would never tell my father about this. He grew up in Arkansas during the Depression. It would physically cause him pain to know what I spent on a child's party, for some guy to put a diaper on his head."
What's indisputable is that the kids love the guy with the diaper on his head. They talk about him all the time. They repeat his dumb jokes. They recognize him on the street. They see him at their playmates' parties, and ask for him at theirs. "The Great Zucchini," said my friend's husband, who deals professionally with Washington's power elite, "is the most famous person my children know." The kids loved Keaton, too.
Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) chaptal for the link.
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| Terrible danger |
[16 Jan 2006|09:00am] |
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There is a superficial sort of laughter. Bob Hope, for example, was not really a humourist. He was a comedian with very thin stuff, never mentioning anything troubling. I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somehow. These men are too sweet to survive in this world and are in terrible danger all the time. They could be so easily killed. Kurt Vonnegut, courtesy of maetang, from this article.
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| A hasty and ill-thought assessment |
[16 Dec 2005|10:52pm] |
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Harold Lloyd makes benches and tables.
Charlie Chaplin makes paintings.
Buster Keaton makes teapots.
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| "He'll never forget our hospitality." |
[20 Mar 2005|10:50am] |
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"Our Hospitality" is a little movie, easy to forget in the grand scheme of Keaton's work, but like its twin, "Sherlock, Jr." and its older cousin, "The General," it is a work of art. Unlike some of Buster's other movies, it is a real knee-slapper, with gags coming one after the other, ingenious, deeply funny, and relevant to the storyline. The stunts are superlative, Buster winds up in the water repeatedly, and there is, of course, a train. It is an extremely Keaton Keaton picture.
"Sherlock, Jr." has trains and drenchings too, in plenty, and dangerous and amazing gags. It had been some time since I'd seen it, and my friend had never seen it at all and was curious, so we watched it, last night, after the end of "Our Hospitality." It still seems a wonderful clockwork toy, a slight thing, but subtle and full of beauty. It is so difficult to restrain myself when watching it with another person; there is so much to notice, so much to enjoy about it. Such as: Buster clearly loves doors, windows, and mirrors--portals of all types; he loves trains, water, cars, danger. Love is baffling. Dressing up exquisitely is a pleasure and its own reward. Movies are dreams, and like dreams, they are permeable, but to take part in the story properly one must understand the rules.
He was no Fritz Lang or Murnau, but he liked a good camera shot and enjoyed making scenes visually pleasing--he would probably have just said that he "knew what looked good"--and he's head and shoulders above Chaplin in this. Without investing the time or energy into such matters that his "artist" counterparts did, he went to great lengths to manipulate where the viewer looked and to keep the scene exciting and energetic. Unusual camera angles, action along the diagonal, primitive masking techniques: he used all of these in "Sherlock, Jr." and played with them throughout his silent career. In "The Goat," we have a wide-screen shot, masked top and bottom, of a breadline, and it makes the gag funnier. In "Sherlock, Jr." Buster is seen from above and behind selecting a pool cue, his face visible in a tilted mirror above the cue rack. Little things, beautiful details, make his movies rich.
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| Some personal thoughts on this blog's namesake movie |
[18 Oct 2004|11:51am] |
Working. Always &%^$ working.
A day where you cry a lot is not necessarily a bad day. I've drunk some tea and watched "Sherlock, Jr." because I felt heartsick. People think "heartsick" means you feel bad over a specific thing, or that you're depressed, or something like that. Sometimes it just means you're feeling very low and sort of empty, perhaps a little used or used-up. I needed to add something back in; I watched "Sherlock, Jr." I guess "The General" was Keaton's masterpiece, I don't feel inclined to argue with that, but, well, my feelings about "Sherlock, Jr." are both strong and admiring.
The action takes place in a "white atmosphere."* Everything about the movie is pure and filled with light. It is utterly simple and utterly complex. It's like some magnificent toy.
Keaton didn't seem to play with his makeup all the time like Chaplin did, but he does have unusual makeup in this movie. He's done up paler than anyone else, and I don't know how to explain it, but more of his face seems visible than usual (which of course makes no sense). In still shots his features look almost normal, but in the film itself his lips and eyebrows and lashes are hardly painted; there's a suggestion of them, like faint pencil lines, with his great dark eyes speaking out of his white face. A paper man, enacting a sublime daydream. It's Keaton before he got tired. "Sherlock, Jr." radiates a crazy shining innocence no matter how many times I watch it.
I don't tend to watch it much, though. I keep it for when I have guests who've never seen it, or for when I need it most, like today.
People talk about early art filmmakers and all that, but Keaton was a real innovator with cameras, effects, composition. He did things we take for granted today. I wonder just how much others took from him without admitting it, or even without realizing it. After all, he was just a comedian. Nobody thought he was making art, least of all him.
Watch "Sherlock, Jr." and be filled with wonder.
A class page on Sherlock, Jr. and other Keaton works
* D.H. Lawrence?
(Originally posted in laughingrat on 10/16/04)
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[26 Feb 2004|12:39pm] |
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Been a while since I updated, but there really are fish swimming below the carp-pool's surface. Honestly. Until I produce anything of substance, though, here's a Zen koan that reminded me of Keaton: Speech is blasphemy, silence a lie. Above speech and silence there is a way out.
--I-tuan, one of Nan-ch'uan's great disciples (The Golden Age of Zen 250, 322 n.13)
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[27 Jan 2004|04:54pm] |
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It's always risky to speculate about people you don't know, especially artists, actors--celebrities of any stripe, really. But watching clips of Keaton's later MGM movies and hearing eyewitness interviews about the things he was made to endure while working there, I can only think of him in terms of a wild animal. No animal is really itself when in captivity--not even the ones we consider completely tame. Caged and tossed into the zoo that was the studio system, Keaton gamely kept trying to work within tighter and uglier constraints, and like any wild animal he suffered for it. The scrawny lions and ragged bears of the old-time travelling circus excited the pity of onlookers, but unfortunately there is no SPCA for artists.
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| endless, endless notes (WIP) |
[21 Jan 2004|02:52pm] |
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In re: the Lamb vs. the Tiger, for instance, I'd have to say that roughly speaking, Keaton is a Lamb, and Charlie a Tiger. More specifically, Charlie's a Tiger who wants to be a Lamb, and wants the world to be a place safe for Lambs--an Innocent world. I'm stealing Blake's terminology here, and really this relates to something I will be talking about in my home blog, but I don't see the point of bringing Keaton and Chaplin into that series of thoughts.
I'm trying to keep personal lives out of it and keep it strictly business, since on-screen personae and business personae are all we really ever have access to, when celebrities are involved.
There's such an innocence in Keaton's movies, a real trust in the System, too (by BK's own admission), although Keaton's characters blithely step outside established reality whenever it's necessary for them to do so. But as I've said before, the Tramp is always--happy or sad--like a half-tamed animal, not really understanding or valuing the demands society makes of him. Chaplin's films are so political, too; there's no denying that as an artist he fully understood (and thus rejected) the System, and that his Tramp--his lamblike wolf--is maybe more an instrument of his art rather than a reflection of his personality.
The associations each one's art carries are, of course, more complicated than this current assessment implies. I still think that, despite BK's assertion to the contrary, the Tramp and Keaton's Lamb are brothers. Cousins, anyway. Both, sometimes without intending to, point out the fallacies and flaws in what the rest of us consider "absolute reality." Both yearn for a kind of success which runs against the grain of respectable society: a success which is built on personal joy rather than the sorrow of others. Neither character has the least bit of real aggressiveness or meanness in him, for the most part, and neither of them would want to hurt anyone to get ahead--not unless they really deserved it, of course. A girl, a home, enough food to eat, safety from the absolutely confusing and often violent world outside--that's what they both want.
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