Showing posts with label Claude Chabrol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Claude Chabrol. Show all posts

Saturday 10 September 2011

When It's Sleepy Time Down Paris


The desire to make films about cities goes back to the early years of the medium, that is if we don’t call most of the early films, "city films" or films that are simply picturing the cities at the end of nineteenth century. Nevertheless this interest reached its climax in the glorious years of 1930s (in terms of quantity, aesthetics, and its influence on fiction film), with significant names like Walter Ruttmann, Alberto Cavalcanti, Djiga Vertov, and Jean Vigo. This dominant tendency continued in feature films of talking era. Different filmmakers from different countries tried to use the city as an always present expression of the inner feelings of their citizens. Cities turned into metaphorical signs for depicting a world in transition. From that point it was hard to separate different styles and genres and schools of filmmaking, from their peculiar way of gazing at the city. Film noir, beside many pictorial and thematic elements, was a certain way of framing the city in a bleak, existential narrative. Neorealism was another way of telling the story of the city, as a character that has the most interaction with ordinary people. Cinema became a city in optical motion, a motion more sublime than what one can see behind a traffic light or a busy street corner.

Ironically, one of the key moments in the history of modern cinema, the French New Wave, in a sense, was like returning to the roots of cinema, especially when representing the cities were concerned. Looking at Godard, Rohmer, and Rivette, it is not strange at all that the closest thing in cinema to the Lumiere brothers films was the urban dramas of the New Wave. In late 1950s France, the best new films were a magnificent combination of technique of avant-garde (which goes back to the cinema of Cavalcanti and L’Herbier), with the elements of the 1930s cine poems/city symphonies, implying a more poetic approach to the city (specially in Truffaut it reminds us of the mesmerizing beauty of films like Paris qui mort).



In New Wave, the camera found itself again in the heart of Paris, representing a strong and lively vision of the city of love and death. Despite all efforts in making films out on the streets, and appearance of many “sidewalk films” (a sister of road movies!), Barbet Schroder, being 24 at the time, considered it insufficient and started the production of Paris Vu Par (also known as Six in Paris); a film in 6 episodes by 6 directors (respectively) Jean Douchet, Jean Rouch, Jean-Daniel Pollet, Eric Romer, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol. Each episode has an average length of 15 minutes, shot with low weight camera and without score. Except for Stephane Audran in an episode directed by Chabrol, there is no famous actor among the cast.

Many critics have considered, and wrote that Paris vu par is a love letter to the directors' favorite city. I can be in agreement with this opinion, if we only have these directors earlier films in mind, but here, their perspective is somehow different, and even contradictory to the established image of Paris of vitality and emotion. Unlike the praiseful depicting of Paris in the late 1950s, this film is a satiric analysis of the role of the city in the lives of typical characters of French New Wave films; a conscious and realist look at the Paris at the crossroad of urban changes. A city that now belongs more to bureaucrats than to common people. These six takes on Paris are at best a mockery of the image of a city that is supposed to be always awake (two years before that, remember fictional Paris of Billy Wilder in Irma la douce which questions the very idea of "Paris that never sleeps").



Different images of Paris, in different forms of art, have very little in common. Thus cinematic Paris could be as diverse as Paris of literature (think of the contrast between Zola and Henry Miller) or Paris of paintings. Beside all those clichés of gay and joyous Paris of lovers and artists, we have seen the savagery of intellectual Paris of Les Cousins (1959) and in its almost Sci-Fi mood of Rivette’s Paris nous appartient (1960) we face a cold and cruel city of outcasts and aliens.

But the most interesting disobedience from cliches in Paris vu par is while in the other films by the same directors the city is filmed in the manner of an urbanologist, with many layers and levels of intensity that the actors and their milieu manifest through their travels, here, in a film directly about Paris, many activities take place inside shabby apartments. Barbara Mennel points out that how in New Wave we find the city, or more precisely the neighborhood (which this film is about them), "as the setting for affective relationships substituting for conventional indoor/family structures of both French and American classical cinema: coffee-houses, bars, movie theaters, and the street become home to main characters." (Cities and Cinema, p. 67) But Paris of this film is slightly different in how we see the city in a film. Like any other modern form of narrative, pieces we do not see are as crucial as the fragments shown by directors.

* * *


First segment, fifteen minutes long, is directed by Jean Douchet (born in 1929), and it is about Saint-Germain-des-Prés and that is probably Douchet's only important picture. His other short films, none of them longer than 20 minutes, are hardly shown outside France. He was one of the critics in Cahier Du Cinema circle who had a key role in introducing Hitchcock, Minnelli and Mizoguchi as “auteur” (in the 1960s he came to Iran and had an interview about Hitchcock, with Iranian’s version of Cahier du cinema, Setaré-e-cinema). Except cameos in some films of his comrades such as A bout de souffle, Les 400 coups, Celine et Julie and La Maman et la putain, he spent most of his life in Cinémathèque, showing films that were followed by debates. He repeated that Monday morning ritual for decades. It worth mentioning that he was so obsessed with Hitchcock’s women that made the documentary Femmes chez Hitchcock (1997) about them.

This episode carries some implications that the French concept of life and art is not comprehensible for Americans. In other words, it can be read as "why American cinema earned high praise from French critics in spite of its long period of ignorance in its own country." In 1989 Alain Resnais made a feature film, I want to Go Home about this "misunderstanding", and showed the irony that is hidden in French discovering American art and artist. His focus was mainly on what is lost in translation. For Douche, the key to this misunderstanding is American's inability to take part in a gamified life (I learned about 'gamified' from an interactive fiction designer friend, and I think the French sees life as a complicated interactive fiction - the matter of playing, deciding and taking routes). In the story, an American girl in Paris, Katherine (Barbara Wilkind), meets Raymond in Café de Flore who says his father is an ambassador in Mexico. After a short relationship Raymond leaves her with this pretext that he’s going to Mexico to join the father. But on the following day Katherine realizes that Raymond has lied to her, and that he is a model who poses nude for painters and it is Jean, his friend, whose father is an ambassador. Her attempt to get close to Jean doesn't work either, and finally while both French boys have their new friends, she finds herself alone and abandoned. The French people of this film, with their trivial viciousness are more aware of themselves than the American girl with her timid honesty. It becomes almost impossible for Katherine to grasp the culture that surrounds her. Exactly like few people in America knew why Howard Hawks was important, back in 1960s.



Gare du Nord, directed by Jean Rouch, is probably the best episode of the six, and one of the ten films selected by Cahier staff as the best films of the year. Rouch discusses the impact of city on the emotions of the citizens and its crucial role in their destinies. The family life of Jean-Pierre and Odile in a noisy district with the cranes and machines working in construction site, cannot be pleasant, and Rouch try to capture it with his constantly moving camera of Cinéma vérité. The director uses two strategies: first, excluding the prologue and epilogue that do not last more than a minute, he shoot the whole episode in one shot (the shot starts in their apartment and ends in the street - although it seems that in the darkness of the elevator there is a cut, but even in this case, the duration of last shot is 10 minutes); and second, the narrative changes unexpectedly from a quasi-documentary to a Guy de Maupassant/O’Henry like fiction. While eating breakfast the woman talks about her wish, which is visiting Tehran! But she has to bear the indifferent face of Jean-Pierre. She leaves the home in anger and meets a man in the street who seems to be a nuisance. He claims that he will kill himself if she does not pay attention to him and while we are laughing at this old trick, he unexpectedly throws himself on the railroad and gets killed.


The Cinéma vérité style creates an unavoidable attachment to the subject, here Odile. So when the man throw himself out on the rails, it is as shocking for us as Odile, and again Rouch plays with the idea of deception in vérité, and vérité of the fiction. When she comes down to the street, the film is nothing but a bitter parody of Paris of passionate lovers. But we, like Odile, can't relive these fairy tales, simply because we are "too aware of Cinéma vérité" style to believe such nonsense. Cinema, the the audience's awareness of the medium, kills the ideal image of the city.

But why Odile’s greatest wish is traveling to Tehran? Barbet Schroder, the producer of the film and actor playing the role of Jean-Pierre in this segment was born in Tehran, 1941. He played an important role in French New Wave and produced many of the Rohmer's and Rivette’s works, and also he played a part in some films (like La boulangère de Monceau, 1963). [In addition to this indirect participation in French New Wave with Barbet Schroder, Iran made an appearance in a short film by Agnes Varda, Plaisir d'amour en Iran, 1976. Through narrating the love between an Iranian man and a French woman in Isfahan, Varda attributes some sort of feminine quality to the architecture of this city.]



The third episode is directed by the obscure director of French New Wave, Jean-Daniel Pollet (1936-2004). He made his first film, Pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse... [As long as one is intoxicated], 1958, in the cafe houses of Paris. Despite the fact that none of his pictures achieved any notable success, he has his own cult of admirers inside and outside France. Living in pain and agony for 15 years as a result of an accident in 1989, he died in 2004 and his last film, Jour après jour [Day after day], 2006, which is a collection of pictures from his life, was finished after his death by Jean-Paul Fargier.

Pollet in Rue Saint-Denis displays a 15 minute long conversation between a shy and unattractive dishwasher (played by Claude Melki) and a prostitute in a room. They eat pasta, read newspaper, tell vapid jokes and talk nonsense. Melki with his serenity (who, as Jonathan Rosenbaum noted, bears some resemblance to Harry Langdon) reminds us of the world of Jean Renoir, where you can enter a shabby flat of a prostitute, feel empathy and develop a sense of understating and compassion.



Rohmer in Place de l'Etoile, besides teasing Hitchcock, focuses on the decline of the Haussmannian Paris. In the prologue, we hear Rohmer's own words that only tourists or old soldiers of World War visits Arc de Triomphe. Then the camera turns from the glorious centre of the square to an alley in its surroundings and tells the story of a well-mannered salesman (Jean-Michel Rouziere) who thinks that he has accidentally killed a tramp in the street. Rohmer connects the Hitchcockian theme of guilt and doubt to the annoying changes in the cityscape. There is always something going on in the streets and a construction company is "deconstructing" the archetypal image of Paris.



Next episode in Montparnasse-Levallois, is directed by Godard. Godard mentions the name of Albert Maysles, the great American documentarist, in the title as a contributor which can be regarded as an evidence of Godards's shift towards Cinéma vérité. This also shows his belief in the crucial role of the cameraman in films. In other words this short episode was the debut of such an attitude that established in his subsequent reporting style and Dziga Vertov cinema group in the second phase of his career. He implies that every film is a collaboration between a director (who sees things in head), and a cameraman (who sees those things in their physical form).

The storyline is similar to Une femme est une femme [A Woman Is a Woman, 1961]. Monika (Joanna Shimkus) writes two letters to both of her lovers. But she thinks that she has made a mistake and sent one lover's letter to another, so she goes to see them and explain every thing, but both of them throw her out of their homes. At the end she understands that she had sent the letters correctly, a funny  Maupassantian twist. The girl, again, is an American and like the first segment we witness her failure to make her way through a different culture. The significance of Godard’s episode lies in marking a shifting point in his career; when he is emphasizing on two styles and two approaches in filmmaking with the help of Maysles. One of the lovers is an artist who makes sculptures from welding old metal pieces (Godard?) and the other is a mechanic who assembles the parts of the automobiles (Maysles?), both working with similar tools in a similar mise-en-scene. The allegorical presence of artist and mechanic leads two a comparison between two way of observation and representation that deeply effects Godard's filmmaking, at least for a decade.



It's easy to be tempted to interpret Chabrol's La Muette, the last episode in the film, as a parody of himself. The story concerns the youngest son of a bourgeois family (Chabrol as the husband and Stephane Audran as the wife) who shuts his ears to the constant quarrels between them and continues experiencing the whole surrounding environment in absolute silence.

Making episodic films has been a lost cause since 1950s. Even films made by all-star directors (which always has been a favorite of Italian high profile producers) have faced a certain degree of critical discontent. But against all odds, Paris Vu Par has remained as a remarkable urban and cinematic document, especially because of its disenchantment with the mythical city of Paris.


I must thank Linda Saxod, for many things.

When It's Sleepy Time Down Paris [Farsi]


پـاريـس خـفـتـه، و گـهـگـاه بـيـدار

ساخت فيلم‌هايي دربارۀ شهرها از آغاز سينما وجود داشته و اوج آن – چه از نظر كثرت چه كمال زيبايي شناسي و چه دايرۀ نفوذ – هم چنان به روزهاي باشكوه دهۀ 1930 و نام‌هايي چون والتر روتمان، آلبرتو كاوالكانتي، زيگا ورتوف و ژان ويگو باز مي گردد. اين موج هيچ‌گاه متوقف نشد و در سينماي ناطق و داستاني هر فيلم‌ساز به نوبۀ خود سعي در ارائه ديدگاهي متمايز به شهر داشت. يكي از دوران‌هاي سينمايي كه در آن بازگشت دوبارۀ دوربين به دل شهرهاي حقيقي ممكن شد، روزهاي موج نوي سينماي فرانسه بود. در حالي كه در فيلم‌هاي رومر، تروفو، گدار و ريوت تصويري قدرتمند و زنده از پاريس وجود داشت، باربت شرودر اين تفاسير را ناكافي دانسته و در حالي كه 24 سال بيشتر نداشت دست به تهيه پاريس از نگاهِ... (با نام انگليسي شش تا در پاريس) زد، فيلمي در شش اپيزود به كارگرداني (به ترتيب) ژان دوشه، ژان روش، ژان دنيل پوله، اريك رومر، ژان لوك گدار و كلود شابرول. طول متوسط هر اپيزود 15 دقيقه است و فيلم با دوربين‌هاي سبك 16 ميلي‌متري فيلم‌برداري شده است، موسيقي‌ها انتخابي است و منهاي اپيزود شابرول با حضور استفان اودران تقريباً هيچ بازيگر مشهوري در فيلم وجود ندارد.


بسياري تصور كرده – و حتي اين را نوشته‌اند – كه اين فيلم، نامۀ سينمايي عاشقانه‌اي به شهر مورد علاقۀ موج نويي‌هاست. بر خلاف بسياري از لحظاتي كه در فيلم‌هاي ديگر اين فيلم‌سازان پاريس هم چون موجودي زنده مورد ستايش و پرستش قرار مي‌گيرد، اين فيلم نگاهي تند و توأم با انتقاد از پاريس 1965 دارد و بيش از همه نوعي تحليل هجوآميز از نقش شهر در زندگي آدم‌ها و آثار فيلم‌سازان است. هجو تصوير كليشه‌اي «شهري كه هرگز نمي خوابد» يا شهر عشق و روشنفكري به نوعي دست انداختن تصويري است كه به كليشه‌اي مرسوم در سينماي فرانسه – و بيشتر از همه در فيلم‌هاي از همه جا بي‌خبر غيرفرانسوي – بدل شده بود. اگرچه ما باز هم تصويري منحصربفرد از پاريس را در فيلم‌هاي ديگري ديده بوديم. شابرول قبل از همه در پسرعموها (1959) شقاوت اين شهر را به نمايش گذاشته بود و ژاك ريوت در پاريس از آن ماست (1960)، پاريس را شهري سرد و دست نيافتني و صاحب دنيايي زيرزميني – هم چون شيكاگوي دهۀ 1920 به اضافۀ زباني سينمايي كه به فيلم هاي علمي و تخيلي نزديك مي‌شد – نشان داده بود.
اپيزود اول توسط ژان دوشه (متولد 1929) كارگرداني شده است. پانزده دقيقۀ او دربارۀ سن ژرمن دوپره (Saint-Germain-des-Prés) شايد تنها دقايق سينمايي مهم دوشه باشد و بقيه فيلم‌هاي كوتاه او، با زمان حداكثر 20 دقيقه، به ندرت خارج از فرانسه ديده شده‌اند. اين منتقد كهنه كار كايه دوسينما كه هيچكاك ومينلي و ميزوگوچي را به سينمادوستان فرانسوي، و از آن طريق به تمام دنيا، معرفي كرد و جز حضوري كوتاه و از سر دوستي در فيلم‌هايي مانند از نفس افتاده، چهارصدضربه، سلين و ژولي و مادر و بدكاره ترجيح داد كه عمرش را وقف زنان هيچكاك بكند (و حاصل آن مستندي به همين نام - زنان هيچكاك- است) و يا صبح‌هاي دوشنبه در سينماتك به دانشجويان فيلم نشان داده و بعد از اكران با آن‌ها به گفتگو بنشيند.


 دوشه تصويري كنايي از عدم درك آمريكايي‌ها از مفهوم فرانسوي هنر و زندگي ارائه مي‌دهد كه مي‌تواند كنايه‌اي به سال‌ها بي‌توجهي و عدم درك آمريكايي‌ها از چرايي ستايش سينماي خودشان توسط منتقدان فرانسوي باشد. كليد اصلي اين عدم درك در اعتقاد نداشتن و شريك نشدن در «بازي و نقش» و «دروغ و فريب» در زندگي است كه با داستان يك دختر آمريكايي در پاريس روايت مي شود. كاترين (باربارا ويلكين) در محلّۀ هنرمندان و كافه‌روها با ريموند آشنا مي‌شود. ريموند به او مي‌گويد پدرش در مكزيك سفير است. بعد از يك رابطۀ كوتاه، پسر به بهانۀ رفتن به مكزيك او را كنار مي‌گذارد اما دختر روز بعد مي فهمد كه صاحب آپارتماني كه در آن جا بوده و پسرِ واقعيِ سفير نه ريموندِ آس و پاس، بلكه دوست او ژان بوده است و ريموند فقط آدم بيكاري است كه مدل برهنه آتليه‌هاي نقاشي مي‌شود. تلاش دختر براي درك ژان نيز ناكام مي‌ماند و در حالي كه گيج و آشفته تنها مانده هر كدام از آقايان فرانسوي يك دوستي جديد و زندگي جديد را به هيچ درنگي آغاز كرده‌اند. كاترين قادر به درك فرهنگي كه احاطه اش كرده نيست. به نظر مي‌رسد فرانسوي‌هاي فيلم در بدجنسي‌ها و دوز و كلك‌هاي كوچكشان از هماهنگي و يك صدايي بيشتري برخوردارند تا آمريكايي‌ها با حسن نيت‌هاي كوته‌بينانه و ترديدهاي دردسرسازشان.


ژان روش با اپيزود گاردنور (Gare du Nord) - بهترين اپيزود فيلم و جزو ده فيلم برگزيدۀ سال مجلۀ كايه- به تأثير شهر بر عواطف ساكنان آن و نقش سرنوشت‌ساز آن در شكل دادن به سرنوشت آن‌ها اشاره مي‌كند. شكي نيست كه در محلۀ پرسروصدا و مملو از جرثقيل‌ها و پروژه‌هاي ساختماني زندگي زناشويي اوديل و ژان پير سرانجامي ندارد و شكي نيست كه با سبك سينماوريته و دوربين سمج و بي‌تاب روش دست يافتن به چنين نتيجه‌اي سخت نيست، بنابراين او اين اپيزود را با دو ترفند بي‌نظير اعتلا مي‌بخشد: اول اين كه تقريباً تمام اپيزود را (منهاي مقدمه و موخره چند ثانيه‌اي) در يك نما مي‌گيرد، اپيزودي كه از داخل يك آپارتمان شروع شده و به خيابان ختم مي‌شود (اگر چه تصور مي‌كنم در آسانسور و در ضمن انتقال از آپارتمان به خيابان يك كات در تاريكي رخ داده است كه باز هم چيزي از ارزش فيلم نمي‌كاهد و حتي در اين حال ده دقيقه تمام در يك نما گرفته شده است) و دوم اين كه داستان به شكلي غيرمنتظره از شبه مستندي جامعه شناسانه به روايتي گي دوموپاسان/اٌهِنري وار تغيير لحن مي‌دهد. وقتي آرزوهاي زن كه در مكالمات سادۀ سر صبحانه (بالاترين آرزوي او سفر به تهران است!) با واكنش سرد مرد روبرو مي‌شود، او با قهر خانه را ترك مي‌كند و در خيابان تصادفاً با مردي روبرو مي‌شود كه تصور مي‌كنيم مزاحمي بيش نيست. او به اوديل مي‌گويد كه اگر به او توجه نكند خودش را خواهد كشت، در حالي كه ما هم چون اوديل در دلمان به اين ترفند قديمي وناكارآمد مي‌خنديم، مرد كه جواب منفي گرفته از بالاي پل خود را به پايين انداخته و روي خطوط راه آهن جان مي‌دهد. ما هم چون اوديل از شوك و احساس گناه برجاي خود خشك مي‌شويم. ما هم در آن دم به اهميت «بازي» و «فريب» در دنياي سينما ايمان كامل نداشته‌ايم، وگرنه بايد حتي اگر شده براي يك لحظه به نيّت حقيقي مرد ايمان مي‌آورديم. سرنوشت آدم‌هايي كه حتي از يك خيابان مشترك مي‌گذرند خيلي بيشتر از حد تصور به يكديگر وابسته است. روش كليشۀ عشق در خيابان را دست مي‌اندازد، اما در عين حال به شكلي تكان‌دهنده و با لحن يك مستندساز آن را مجدداً احضار كرده و به كار مي‌گيرد. در اپيزودِ روش، شهر، زندگي و مرگ مانند خطوط راه آهن انتهاي فيلم در يك ديگر فرو رفته و از هم در مي‌گذرند و به قلمروي‌هاي ديگر پا مي‌گذارند.


اما چرا بزرگ ترين آرزوي اوديل سفر به تِغان (تهران) است؟ براي اين كه تهيه كنندۀ فيلم و بازيگر نقش ژان پير در اين اپيزود باربت شرودر متولد 1941 تهران است، يكي از مهم‌ترين چهره‌هاي موج نوي سينماي فرانسه كه فيلم‌هاي زيادي از اريك رومر و ژاك ريوت را تهيه كرده و هر جا كه نياز به يك بازيگر خوش قيافه اما سرد مزاج بوده خودش هم جلوي دوربين آمده است (دختر نان فروشي مونسيو رومر،1963). بد نيست اشاره كنم كه ايران علاوه بر سهم غير مستقيمش در موج نوي سينماي فرانسه با باربت شرودر يك نقش مستقيم هم دارد، و آن فيلم كوتاه آنيس واردا به نام لذت عشق در ايران (1976) است كه در اصفهان ساخته شده و در آن واردا از خلال عشق ميان يك مرد ايراني و زني فرانسوي، معماري اصفهان را واجد كيفيتي زنانه معرفي مي كند. (اين فيلم همراه با فيلم هاي كوتاه ديگر واردا و با مقدمه خود او بر هر فيلم به روي DVD درآمده است).
اپيزود سوم را كارگردان در سايه ماندۀ موج نو ژان دنيل پوله (2004-1936) كارگرداني كرده كه اولين فيلمش را در 1958 در كافه‌هاي پاريس ساخت كه عنوانش آن دم، مستي... است. او تا زمان مرگش كه بر اثر صدمات يك سانحۀ تصادف در 1989 بود و براي 15 سال او را در درد و بي قراري نگه داشته بود چندين فيلم ساخته كه هيچ كدام شهرتي به هم نزده‌اند، اما او دوست‌داران خودش را در داخل خود فرانسه و خارج از آن دارد. آخرين فيلمش، روز به روز (2006)، مجموعه عكس‌هايي است ساده از زندگي خودش كه با مرگش ناتمام مانده و ديگران آن را به اتمام رسانده‌اند.


در اپيزود خيابان سن دني (Rue Saint-Denis) او ظرف‌شوي خجالتي و بي بهره از قيافه و طنز و زبان، كه نقشش را كلود مِلكي بازي مي كند، با يك ورپريدۀ خياباني در يك اتاق قرار مي‌دهد و آن‌ها براي پانزده دقيقه پاستا مي‌خورند، روزنامه مي‌خوانند و حرف‌هاي بي سروته مي‌زنند و جوك‌هاي بي‌مزه تعريف مي‌كنند. در انتها احساس مي‌كنيم بين زن خياباني و ملكي نوعي هم‌دلي، ترحم و حتي دوستي ايجاد شده است. مِلكي كه به گفتۀ جاناتان روزنبام حالتي شبيه به هري لنگدون دارد با متانتش هم زن و هم ما را وادار مي‌كند كه او و زندگي محقرش را به رسميت بشناسيم. ما كه هم چون زن سرسري به آپارتمان يك اتاقه و فكسني او دعوت شده‌ايم در ربع ساعت اين توانايي را پيدا مي‌كنيم تا هم چون فيلمي از رنوار اين موجود و زندگي‌اش را به رسميت شناخته و حتي با او هم‌دل شويم.


رومر در Place de l'Etoile هم با هيچكاك شوخي مي‌كند و هم بيش از همه به نقش ناخوشايند شهري كه به گفتۀ خودش در آن زمان «در شرف ويراني» است اشاره مي‌كند، نگاه او فاقد شاعرانگي يا رومانتي‌سيزم توريستي فيلم‌هايي هم چون دوستت دارم پاريس (2006) است، او در مقدمۀ مستندوار فيلم مي‌گويد كه رفتن به دروازۀ آزادي فقط كار توريست‌ها و پيرمردهايي است كه هم‌سنگر سابق هم در جنگ جهاني بوده‌اند. پس از آن او نگاهش را از مركز باشكوه اين ميدان به حاشيۀ آن و يك خيابان فرعي برمي‌گرداند و داستان فروشندۀ موقر لباس مردانه‌اي (ژان ميشل روزيه)را روايت مي‌كند كه تصور مي‌كند باعث مرگ مردي مست در خيابان شده است. رومر به خرابي‌ها و نوسازي‌هاي افراطي پاريس با انتقاد نگاه مي‌كند و عوض شدن مسير هميشگي بين محل كار و خانه فروشنده را بهانه‌اي براي يك كمدي سبك قرار مي‌دهد.
سپس اپيزود گدار سر مي‌رسد كه مربوط به Montparnasse-Levallois است و گدار در عنوان‌بندي آن آلبرت مِي‌زلز، مستندساز بزرگ آمريكايي، را در كارگرداني با خود سهيم دانسته است. اين حركت هم نشانه گرايش تدريجي گدار به سينماوريته بود كه رو به اواخر دهۀ 1960 به اوج رسيد و دوران تازه و پر جدلي را در كارنامۀ او آغاز كرد و هم حاكي از نكته‌اي گداري كه هميشه بخش مهمي از تأليف را در نزد كسي مي‌داند كه دوربين را در اختيار دارد و نگاه او/دوربين در سرنوشت فيلم نقشي اساسي پيدا خواهد كرد. به نوعي اين ديدگاه نيز كه بعدها در فيلم سازي گروهي و گرايش‌هاي ورتوفي و سبك گزارشي دوران دوم فيلم‌سازي‌اش متبلور شده با اپيزود كوتاه و سادۀ اين فيلم آغاز مي‌شود.


ايدۀ فيلم براي كساني كه يك زن يك زن است (1961) را ديده‌اند كاملاً آشناست، و در آن جا داستان را از زبان ژان پل بلموندوشنيده‌اند: مونيكا (جوانا شيمكس) دو مرد را دوست دارد، دو نامه براي آن ها مي‌نويسد، اما فكر مي‌كند نامه‌ها را اشتباهي پست كرده است بنابراين براي توضيح ماجرا به سراغ خود مردان رفته و اين ديدارها نتيجه‌اي جز بيرون انداخته شدنش از خانۀ هر دو ندارد. در انتها مي‌فهمد كه نامه‌ها را درست پست كرده بوده و فقط شيرين زباني كار دستش داده است. باز هم دختر، يك آمريكايي است (در اصل يك كانادايي) و شباهت آن با اپيزود دوشه در عدم درك آمريكايي‌ها از اين فرهنگ و تلاش كودكانه و شكست خورده‌شان براي بهره برداري از آن بر كسي پوشيده نيست. اما آن چه در اپيزود گدار فراموش نشدني است مقايسه‌اي ميان دو دورۀ فيلم سازي او، دو سبك و حتي مقايسۀ ميان خودش و آلبرت مي‌زلز است. يكي از دو مرد هنرمندي است كه با جوش دادن قطعات زائد و دورريختني فلزات پيكره‌سازي مي‌كند و نفر دوم مكانيكي است كه تكه‌ها و قطعات ماشين‌ها را سرهم مي‌كند. هر دو در ميزانسن‌هاي مشابه -  و حتي شخصيت‌ها و ابزار كار مشابه – صاحب جديتي متوقف ناشدني در كارشان به نظر مي‌رسند. گدار هر دو را داراي يك هدف نشان مي‌دهد، در يك سو خود او يا گذشته‌اش، هنرمندي با آثاري آبستره، و سينمايي تلفيقي و در عين حال بسيار اصيل، و در سوي ديگر كسي كه حاصل كارگاه او آثاري واقعي (مانند اتوموبيل‌ها) است قرار دارد كه خود او نه سازنده آن‌ها بلكه در تلاش براي بهبود مكانيزم‌هايي است كه ماشين‌ها با آن كار مي‌كنند. گدار مانند مرد اول – يك مجسمه ساز - مصالح اوليه را به شكلي تصادفي روي زمين ريخته و از مايلز خواسته تا با دوربين خيره‌اش اين مصالح را بازنگري كند. استعاره مكانيك و آرتيست براي مقايسه موج نو و سينما وريته و نشان دادن جهت گيري تازه گدار فوق العاده است. 


و بلاخره اپيزود آخر، La Muette ، كه ساختۀ شابرول است سر مي‌رسد. شابرول خودش و سينمايش را در اين اپيزود دست مي‌اندازد. او خانواده‌اي بورژوا (خودش شوهر است و استفان اودران همسر) را نشان مي دهد كه درگيري‌‌هاي دائمي‌شان پسر كوچك خانواده را وادار مي‌كند پنبه در گوشش گذاشته و در سكوت كامل با خانه و شهر روبرو شود. با آن كه وقت زيادي براي پروراندن يك تراژدي خيانت و حسادت دركارنبوده شابرول فيلم را به مدل هميشگي با يك مرگ تمام مي‌كند كه جز لبخندي بر لب تماشاگر عايدي ديگري ندارد.


در پاريس از نگاهِ مي‌توانيم تفاوت ميان موج نويي‌ها را در زمان كليدي و حساس دگرگوني و واگرايي ببينيم. هر كدام از آن‌ها از نيمۀ دوم دهۀ 1960 به يك سو رفته و چنان از مبدأ نخستشان دور شدند كه گويي هرگز در يك مسير مشترك نبوده‌اند. از طرفي مي‌بينيم كه حتي بهترين فيلم‌هاي اپيزوديك سينما نيز شانس چنداني براي جلب توجه ندارند و تناقض‌هاي ذاتي اين مجموعه‌هاي كنارهم قرار گرفته در نهايت اغتشاشي ظريف و پس زننده به فيلم مي‌دهد. ساخت فيلم‌هاي اپيزوديك هنوز متوقف نشده و در واقع اين سير «عدم موفقيت» هم چنان ادامه دارد، اما پاريس از نگاهِ يك سند سينمايي و شهري قابل توجه باقي مانده است، به خصوص وقتي به نقش آن در افسون‌زدايي از شهري افسانه‌اي توجّه نشان دهيم. اما به هر حال پاريس هم‌چنان جزو معدود مكان‌هايي در كرۀ خاكي است كه براي هر نوع سبك و زبان سينمايي، از فانتزي‌هاي محض و آينده‌نگرانه تا كمدي‌هاي رئاليستي، يك پس زمينۀ بي‌نقص به نظر مي‌رسد. شهري كه هم به اميل زولا و هم ايرما خوشگله، لذتي يكسان و سهمي يكسان از زندگي مي‌دهد.

Monday 13 September 2010

Claude Chabrol and the Evolution of the Thriller

Claude Chabrol (1930 - 2010)

Two weeks after honoring Claude Chabrol in my column at Film Monthly (titled The truth is a Guillotine – Chabrol at his 80), he is gone. During last couple of months I watched and rewatched many of his films, especially his lesser known 1970s works. For me, his childhood village, Sardent, which is the setting of some of his films, became a perfect landscape for reflecting the frenzy and macabre in human nature despite the beauty and calmness of his surroundings.

First Chabrol film I saw, around 10 years ago, was his first feature Le beau Serge (1958), the first film out of the Cahiers circle and the winner of Prix Jean-Vigo, a stunning debut. My favorite Chabrol films? Anything with Stéphane Audran and that includes Les Biches (1968), La Femme infidèle (1969), Le Boucher (1970) and La Rupture (1970), especially
Rupture that is one of the most horrifying films I’ve ever seen, a story of a simple divorce which turns into a web of crime, political corruption, child molesting and paranoia.

In his oeuvre the biggest enemy, the most vicious bad guy and the elusive killer is nothing but bourgeoisie itself, the thing that Chabrol admires and hates with all his heart. I don’t remember any other director – maybe with exception of Bunuel in his latter days – so obsessed with the subject and so profound in juxtaposing this very theme with some of the most popular narrative forms in motion picture history.

Back to Chabrol the film critic, I’m going to share segments of one of my recent reads, Chabrol’s 1955 Christmas article for Cahiers du Cinema about the Thriller films: Evolution du film policier. It is translated by Liz Heron.


* * *
Evolution of the Thriller
Claude Chabrol

"Success creates the fashion, which in turn shapes the genre. What corresponded to the vogue for the detective story between the two wars, in American cinema - with many poor imitations elsewhere - was the creation of a genre which rapidly gave way, predictably, to mediocrity and slovenly formulae.

The attempts at adapting the novels of Dashiell Hammett only succeeded in reducing the hero of The Thin Man to the proportions of a series detective who persisted, tireder, sadder, and more monotonous, until around the end of the war. Thus the state of the thriller genre - of all the thriller genres - was far from brilliant in 1940. The mystery story either visibly stood still or became impossible to transfer to the screen. Prohibition had long since been forgiven by whiskey lovers, and the crime syndicate had not yet reached the public eye. The films were turning into baleful police stories, definitively condemned to tiny budgets and even smaller talents.


It was then that an unexpected rediscovery of Dashiell Hammett, the appearance of the first Chandlers and a favorable climate, suddenly gave the tough guy genre its aristocratic credentials, and opened the doors of the studios to it once and for all. The trend in these films, from Raoul Walsh's High Sierra and John Huston's Maltese Falcon onwards, continued to grow until 1948. The notion of the series underwent important modifications: if it was still a matter of exploiting a lucrative vein according to pre-established recipes, nevertheless each work was distinguishable from the others, in the best cases, by its tone or style. And if the same character appeared in several films one had to put it down to chance, or locate it in identical literary sources: no idiocy made it obligatory to identify the Marlowe of Murder My Sweet with the Marlowe of The Lady in the Lake. Many of these films were of high quality and often exceeded one's expectations of their directors. There are two reasons for this: the subjects of these films were the work of talented writers, all of them specialists in the genre, like Chandler, Burnett, Jay Dratler or Leo Rosten; and the filmmakers had settled for a standard mise en scene that worked extremely well and was rich in visual effects, perfectly suited to a genre in which refinement seemed inappropriate.

The Lady in the Lake

Misfortune willed that the genre in question should carry within it the seeds of its own destruction. Built as it was on the elements of shock and surprise, it could only offer even the most imaginative of scriptwriters and the most conscientious of directors a very limited number of dramatic situations which, by force of repetition, ended up no longer producing either shock or surprise. If the film noir thriller - and with it the novel - managed to last eight years, it was thanks to the precise combination of two elements that were at first external: suspense and reportage. There, too, the dice were loaded. Suspense, in introducing a new and infinitely dangerous instrument - anticipation - could only ring the changes on a very small number of situations, and covered up the problem without resolving it. As for reportage, its multiple possibilities were stifled by the very nature of the genre, which could only preserve its most superficial features and quickly let it become dull and boring. Thus locked in the prison of its own construction, the thriller could only go round in circles, like a trapped bird unable to find a way out of its cage. Robert Montgomery's gratuitous attempts at subjective camera shots in The Lady in the Lake, the time-disorientation in Sam Wood's Ivy, Robert Florey's childish and grotesque avant-gardism in his amnesiac's story, The Beast with Five Fingers, all sounded the death knell. One day Ben Hecht gave it the finishing touch, producing, from a tenth-rate novel by Eleazar Lipsky, an admirable script which was a supreme example of all the features of the detective story genre combined. As if to illustrate perfectly both the strength and the weakness of such a conception, it was Henry Hathaway, a skilled technician without an ounce of personality (author of the highest expression of the genre: the first half of Dark Corner), who made Kiss of Death, swansong of a formula, end of a recipe and the bottom of a gold mine, which at once blew up in the faces of the tycoons who had made their money but were now in trouble.


There's no question in these films of renovating a genre, either by extending its boundaries or intellectualizing it in some way. In fact there's no question of renovation at all, simply of expression, through the telling of a not too confusing tale. Aren't the best criteria of an authentic work most often its complete lack of self-consciousness and its unquestionable necessity? So there's nothing to restrict a preference for the freshness and intelligence of that almost impenetrable imbroglio, Out of the Past, directed by Jacques Tourneur and scripted clumsily, and utterly sincerely, by Geoffrey Homes, rather than for Dark Passage, with its skillful construction, its judicious use of the camera in its first half, and its amusing surreal ending. But what makes the first of the two films more sincere than the other, you may ask. The very fact of its clumsiness! A film's total assimilation within a genre often means nothing more than its complete submission to it; to make a thriller, the essential and only prerequisite is that it be conceived as such and, by corollary, that it be constituted exclusively of the elements of the thriller. It is the genre that reigns over inspiration, which it holds back and locks into strict rules. Therefore it clearly takes exceptional talent to remain oneself in such a strange enterprise (that's the miracle of The Big Sleep), or else it takes inspiration, aspirations, and a vision of the world which are naturally in accordance with the laws of the genre (Laura is yet another miracle; and in a certain sense Lang and Hitchcock too).


There is no doubt that the superiority of The Big Sleep derives in part from the quite functional perfection achieved by director and scriptwriters; the plot of the film is a model of the thriller equation, with three unknowns (the blackmailer, the murderer, the avenger), so simple and so subtle that at first all is beyond comprehension; in fact, on a second viewing there is nothing easier than the unraveling of this film. The only difference between the viewer and the Marlowe-Bogart character is that the latter works it all out and understands the first time round. And so it seems this film only resembles the others in so far as it towers above them; but deep roots and firm connections link it to the body of Hawks's work. It is not just accidental that here the private eye is more intelligent and sharper than we are, and more directly than anywhere else confronted with the brutal strength of his adversaries. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, The Big Sleep is closer to Scarface, The Thing and even Monkey Business than to Robert Montgomery's The Lady in the Lake. It is no less true that here the function subordinates the creation, surpassed by it of course, but definitively, since the Hawksian treatment of the tough guy theme cannot be repeated without in its turn creating a dull and sterile cliché.


Things take a rather different shape in Otto Preminger's Laura. In this film the pure thriller element is entirely subordinate to a predetermined narrative style which in some way transmutes it. The film's inspiration, a Vera Caspary novel, is a classic detective story, or rather neo-classic – in other words based on a less stereotyped kind of realism. At any rate it is a flawless testimony to the inadequacies of a thoroughly worn-out formula.
It is at the level of the characters that the displacement operates: the authors (Preminger and Jay Dratler) push them to their inevitable paroxysm, thus creating characters who are intrinsically fascinating, for whom the course they follow becomes the only possible one. Everything happens as if the characters had been created before the plot (it usually happens the other way round, of course), as if they themselves were constructing the plot, transposing it on to a level to which it never aspired.
To accentuate this impression, Preminger thought up a new narrative technique (which moreover gave his film great historical importance): long sequences shot from a crane, following the key characters in each scene in their every move, so that these characters, immutably fixed in the frame (usually in close-up or in two-shot), see the world around them evolving and changing in accordance with their actions. Here was the proof that a thriller can also be beautiful and profound, that it is a question of style and conviction. Vera Caspary had written a detective story. Preminger filmed a story of characters who meant something to him. None the less Laura’s still far from exemplary, since its success postulates a pre-existing detective story plot that fits in with the film-maker's purpose, or, more exactly, demands of the film-maker a vision that can be integrated into a given thriller theme. There again it is the director who takes the initiative and adapts to the genre. And the result, which one cannot deny is admirable, is worth infinitely more than the principle, which is no more than a half-measure.


There is clearly an objection possible here: all the films I've mentioned - and I've made a deliberate selection - are outstanding primarily because they set themselves miles apart from the genre, attached to it only by tenuous links that have nothing to do with their qualities. Isn't it then a little dishonest to see the future of the thriller only in the dilution of the detective story element within the films, since you only have to take things to their paradoxical conclusion to conceive of an ideal future in the suppression of this element altogether?

In reality what seems like a dilution is in fact nothing less than enrichment. All these auteurs have one thing in common: they no longer regard crime or any other thriller element as simply a dramatic situation that can lend itself to a range of more or less skillful variations, but see it in ontological (as with Ray, Losey or Dassin) or metaphysical (Welles, Lang or Hitchcock) terms.
It is really a matter of valorizing a theme, just as Proust tried to do with time. In the realm of the cinema this can be done at the level of mise en scene, as with Preminger, or at the level of work done on the script with a certain kind of mise en scene (Hitchcock or Welles). It can also be done, dare I say it, independently, in the working out of the script.



Be that as it may, through the successes and the failures, evolution cannot be denied. Nobody, I think, would lament the passing of films like After the Thin Man, or more recent films like Murder My Sweet, on seeing new films like In a Lonely Place or The Prowler. For those who remain unconvinced of the rigour of my argument I have kept an ace up my sleeve. Better than pages of analysis, there is one film that can testify to the new truth. Enter the thriller of tomorrow, freed from everything and especially from itself, illuminating with its overpowering sunlights the depths of the unspeakable. It has chosen to create itself out of the worst material to be found, the most deplorable, the most nauseous product of a genre in a state of putrefaction: a Mickey Spillane story. Robert Aldrich and A. I. Bezzerides have taken this threadbare and lacklustre fabric and splendidly rewoven it into rich patterns of the most enigmatic arabesques.

Kiss Me Deadly

In Kiss Me Deadly the usual theme of the detective series of old is handled off-screen, and only taken up again in a whisper for the sake of the foolish: what it's really about is something more serious - images of Death, Fear, Love and Terror pass by in succession. Yet nothing is left out: the tough detective whose name we know so well, the diminutive and worthless gangsters, the cops, the pretty girls in bathing suits, the platinum blonde murderess. Who would recognize them, and without embarrassment, these sinister friends of former times, now unmasked and cut down to size?"