VOLUME 07 - NUMBER 04 - WINTER 1971-72

WINTER 4IJ974IJ -72 S4IJ.5D FILM COMMIENT Wilder · Kubrick · Demy · Lubitsch ·Cocteau Stanley Kauffmann· Andrew Sarris' Stephen Farber· Graham Petrie

three\"original\" ····••••• American auteurs ·• whose films ·••••• .listed are ······•••••••• available only from Films • Incorporated ·•• ·• ·•• ·•• ·: The films of Stanley Kubrick :•• \"exploits the giddinessof middle-brow audiences on the satiric level of Mad magazine\" ... Andrew Sarris ..........................................•:..2.0.0.1.: .S.p.a.c.e..O.d.y.s.s.e.y...L.o.l.it.a................. • ·•••••••••• The films of Robert Aldrich ·• ·•• \"style notable for its violence even in genres that : ·subsist on violence\" .. . Andrew Sarris•• Too Late the Hero • The Killing of Sister George. • The films of Billy Wilder The Legend of lylah Clare • The Dirty Dozen. : \" penchant for caricature ...\" Andrew Sarris Flight of the Phoenix • Hush, Hush, Sweet: Charlotte • Sodom and Gomorrah • The Angry : The Seven Year Itch • Sabrina • Stalag 17 • Hills. The Big Leaguer • Ace in the Hole. Sunset Boulevard Send for your free catalog describing these films: Nelle Watts, Films Incorporated: 1144 Wilmette Avenue, Wilmette, III. 60091 when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

STAFF VOLUME 7 NUMBER 4 ed itor WINTER 1971-72 RI CHARD CORLISS CONTENTS assistant editor MELINDA WARD JOURNALS: Paris / Los Angeles page 2 graphic designer MARTHA LEHTOLA THE FILMS OF BILLY WILDER by Stephen Farber manag ing editor page 8 AUSTIN LAMONT THE TESTAMENT OF JEAN COCTEAU advertising manager by George Amberg NAOMI WEISS page 23 correspondents WHERE HAVE ALL THE POWERS GONE? Paris JONATHAN ROSENBAUM by Stanley Kauffmann page 28 Los Ang eles JIM KITSES KUBRICK assistants interviewed by Gene Phillips researc h MAR Y CORLISS page 30 desi gn LINDA MAN CINI PARANOIA IN HOLLYWOOD subscriptions MAR Y MURPH Y by Paul Jensen page 36 ed itorial board JOSEPH L. ANDERSON , Director JACQUES DEM Y by Graham Petrie Film Program , Ohio University page 46 Athens, Ohio LUBITSCH IN THE THIRTIES JAMES A. BEVERIDGE , Director by Andrew Sarris Programme in Film , York University page 54 Toronto, Ontario THE SEARCH FOR LOST FILMS an interview with David Shepard HOWARD SUBER , Chairman , Critical Studies page 58 Motion Pictures / Television Division , UCLA Los Angeles , California FILM FAVORITES Elliott Sirkin on ALICE ADAMS Th e opini ons ex pressed in FILM COMMENT page 66 are those of the ind ividual au thors and do not Gary Carey on HAPPINESS necessarily represent the opinions page 70 of the editor, staff or publisher. CRITICS FIL M COMM ENT. volume 7 number 4. winter 1971-72. Robin Wood price $1.50. FILM COMMENT is published quarterly by Foster Hirsch by Film Com ment Publishing Corporation . page 74 Copyright ' 1971 Film Comment Publishing Corporation . BOOK REVIEWS This publication is ful ly protected by domestic and international page 76 copyright. It is forbidden to duplicate any part of this publication LETTERS in any way without prior wri tten perm ission for the publishers. page 81 Second class postage paid at Boston , Massachusetts. Subscription rates in the United States: CLASSIFIED $6 for four numbers. $12 for eight numbers: page 88 elsewhere $7 for four numbers, $14 for eight numbers. payable in US fu nds only. New subscribers please include yo ur occupation and zip code. Subscriptio n and back issue correspondence: FI LM COMMEN T 100 Walnut Place . Brookline . Massachusetts 02146. Ed ito rial correspondence: FILM COMM ENT 214 East 11th Street. New York NY 10003. Back vo lumes of FILM COMM ENT have been reprinted by Johnson Reprint Corpora tion . 111 FiNh Aven ue . New York NY 10003. Mic rofil m editions are available from University Microfilms Ann Arbor Michigan 48106. Pl ease wri te to these companies for complete sales in for mation. Type set by Rocheste r Monotype Composition Company. Wrightson Typographers and Machine CompOSition Company. Printed in USA by Printing Di vi sion , Avco Corpo ration . National newsstand distribution : B DeBoer. 188 High Street. Nutley NJ 07110 . International distribution : Worldwide Media Service, 386 Park Avenue South . New York NY 10016. Library of Congress card number: 76 -498 . on the cover: Gloria Swanson in SUNSET BOULEVARD. photo: Museum of Modern Art / Film Stills Archive. p

Jonathan Rosenbaum Jim Kitses ..JOURNAL..JOURNAL PARIS L.A. All five of Jacques Tati 's films have musical back- The MPAA's Code and Rating Board system has grounds of such surpassing unsubtlety that they are been making news this past summer . It seems that insipid even by Muzak standards; processions of cute early in 1970 a program of internships was introduced kids, dogs, and middle-class nonentities that are not so by Jack Valenti to allow for two young people to join much mildly parodied (on the surface) as embraced the rating staff for a one-year stint. None of the eight and advertised; the kind of comic ambiance that usually fulltime board members is under thirty, and Eugene attracts either a Saturday afternoon family crowd or Dougherty, until recently Code Administrator, actually no one at all. Of the four that I have· seen , two (MON goes back to Hays Office days. Young blood was clearly ONCLE and TRAFFIC) repeatedly grate on my nerves , and called for , if only on a token level. Estelle Changas one (LES VANCANCES DE MONSIEUR HULOT) , after several and Steve Farber, LA-based film critics and former viewings , has come to seem like an enduring classic. UCLA film school graduate students, got the jobs and For the other, PLAYTIME , I would gladly trade the collec- evidently spent a frustrating year incredulously listen- tive works of Fellini , Bergman , and all but the best of ing to discussions of nipples, pubic hair and four letter Godard . words. The workings of the rating board-its pro- cedures , criteria and actual power-have been cloaked Four years after its opening in Paris , PLAYTIME re- in total secrecy from its inception. However, Changas mains, at this writing , unseen and virtually unknown and Farber have laid the system bare with a splendid in the states. The European reception has generally article, full of valuable information and persuasive been so cold that distributors are probably afraid to argument, in the Los Angeles Sunday Times of go near it. To speak even of its existence here is to August 8th. conjure up a ghost: unquestionably Tati's most expen- sive and ambitious film-requiring , according to Tele- Changas and Farber stress that the ratings, origi- Cine, \" ten years of reflection, three years of preparation nally devised to extend filmmakers ' freedom and supply and shooting ,\" and filmed in 70 mm and stereophonic parents with information, have instead become a sound-it already seems destined to share the fate of repressive tool. The system of assigning ratings has extravagant commercial failures of the silent era like become increasingly tough , especially with regard to INTOLERANCE , GREED , and SUNRISE. Certainly it is no less the R category (no one under 17 admitted without audacious than any of these in what it sets out to do, parent or guardian), the percentage of R movies going or in what it requires from an audience. up from 25% in 1969 to 43% in 1970. Kids have been barred from movies like WOODSTOCK , TAKING OFF, Perhaps the true anomaly of Tati's career is not so STOLEN KISSES. Beyond this, however, and incredible much the commercial failure of PLAYTIME as the relative to behold, the rating board has actually become in- success enjoyed by the others, particularly LES volved in censoring both scripts and completed films. VACANCES. Eschewing the speed , momentum and ath- Since studios naturally seek the less restricted rating, letic virtuosity of the Sennett-Keaton-Chaplin school, they often submit scripts prior to shooting to see where and most of the Pavlovian audience-conditioning that they stand. Members of the board evidently send back this school excels in to elicit laughs , Tati usually re- detailed letters specifying items to be depleted if the quires something of the contemplative awareness that movie is to get the desired rating. Alternatively, when we bring to a film by Bresson or Ozu. the finished film is screened, last-minute cuts can be suggested (often by a single board member-no A simple indication of Tati 's difference can be ob- principle of consensus operates) to lift the film one served in a typically bizarre shot from LES VACANCES: category . As Changas and Farber point out: \"A few in the left foreground , a waiter slices meat, while in last-minute cuts cannot really transform an adult film the right background, a series of vacationing guests into one suitable for general audiences, but they can enter the dining room at regularly spaced intervals, damage a film's artistic integrity.\" Yet this power \" to through a squeaking door. Compositionally, this shot- ' correct' a film by editing out 'objectionable ' items \" is like so many others in the film-is a kind of audiovisual exercised by the board on one out of every three movies juggling act, with each slice of the knife echoed by screened. Films \"improved\" by this process include the sound of the door opening and closing, and each slice of meat \"rhymed\" with another entering guest. ALICE ' S RESTAURANT, HOMER , A NEW LEAF , LITTLE BIG MAN , But rather than attempt a symmetrical balance between these elements, Tati times and spaces the entrances and PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW. and slices with the playful rhythmic displacements of With reference to the Vadim film , Changas and continued on page 4 continued on page 86 2 WINTER 1971-72

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PARIS a piano solo by Thelonius Monk. Just as Monk will run changes to the same setting at dusk, then at night. a short melodic phrase through a long series of minor The final shot of the film , accompanied by triumphant variations , often changing its plastic shape by the delay music, is of Orly seen from a distance, surrounded by of a single beat, the addition of a note, or a slight a myriad of glittering lights. reshuffling of the melodic sequence, Tati likes to create similarly suspenseful guessing-games with his own Scarcely discernible in the above summary is the audience. Thus the gag equation of guests with slices multitude of events and the relationships between them of meat, which for any conventional comic director that animate PLAYTIME , especially in its second half-a would be the content of the scene, becomes for Tati richness of detail and design that over a dozen viewings an occasion for playful formal variations . Keaton , one have failed to exhaust. Cahiers du Cinema reports that suspects, would have made the point once and moved the elaborately detailed script runs to 500 pages, and on to something else , but Tati is so interested in the the remarkable thing about that figure is how short ways this game can be played that, for some spectators, it is , considering the amount that happens over 137 the equation is never precisely stated at all. minutes .' In PLAYTIME , the resources of wide screen and Ten years before the release of PLAYTIME, Godard stereophonic sound permit Tati to extend this preoc- had the wit to call Tati the father of French neo-realism, cupation to the point where it becomes not merely a and however odd this formulation may seem at first, means for articulating gags, but a complex vision of it is easy enough to see what he meant: like Rossellini, the world. Fellini and De Sica in their early films , Tati's focus is trained on the epiphanies of everyday life . As he has A group of female American tourists arrive at Orly himself pointed out in several interviews, the basic airport, take a bus into Paris, and spend the day there. principle behind his humor is observation. But a fun- \" Paris \" is a complex of glass-and-steel skycrapers , all damental aspect of his observed epiphanies is that they virtually interchangeable with Orly, each other, and- usually occur in a virtual vacuum of normality, a uni- judging from the evidence of several travel post- verse where generally \" nothing\" happens. It is even ers-with foreign capitals throughout the world. The possible to regard his gags as punctuation for a \"text\" nostalgic sights of Paris and elsewhere (Eiffel Tower, composed of empty space and uneventful moments-a Concorde, Taj Mahal) are glimpsed only as fleeting peculiarly Zen-like attitude , reflected in the shot from reflections on the glass surfaces. As the Americans LES VACANCES described above, where comedy equals and other tourists roam the streets, and ramble through not so much the gags themselves as the mere possibility an international exhibition of commercial gadgets, their that they might occur.' \" The 70 mm format, \" Tati has path is occasionally crossed by M. Hulot, who is wan- said , \" corresponds to the dimensions of the contem- dering through several buildings in search of a M. porary world ,\" and a statement of his in 1958 is partic- Giffard (we never learn precisely why). Occasionally ularly revealing about his didactic aims: ''I'd eventually we see Giffard searching for Hulot, confused by several like to make a film without a central character, with \" false \" Hulots (people resembling Hulot at a distance) nothing but the people I observe and pass on the street, or by reflections of Hulot on the panes; at one point, and prove to them .. . that the comic effect belongs running toward a \" false \" Hulot, he runs smack into to everyone.\" a glass door, injuring his nose .. . As dusk falls , busi- ness executives get into their cars, buses leave, and To \"prove\" this, Tati has to teach us a new way the lights of the city turn on . We see Giffard , his nose of looking, and like any true education , this must begin bandaged , out on a walk with his dog. Purely by chance , with a dismantling of what we think we already know. he runs into Hulot in front of the Royal Garden, an During the first hour of PLAYTIME , when all of the char- expensive restaurant that is preparing to open . acters are wandering about helplessly, the spectator's eyes are forced to share some of this condition-a The next hour of the film chronicles the opening sense of dislocation in which one has only the vaguest night of the restaurant, from the arrival of the first notion of where one is , and even less of an idea where customers until dawn . The opening is a bit premature, one is going : the archetypal situation of the tourist. and as the night wears on we witness a growing deteri- Looking around restlessly is nearly all that one can oration of the Royal Garden: the glass door at the do, and one looks around in the hope of being led-into entrance is shattered , the heating system runs haywire , a story , a character, a setting , an idea , into anything some of the decor comes loose, the electricity shorts. that will hold the attention and assume some sort of Parallel with this coming apart of the establishment is the continuity. Ordinarily, one would expect to be led by coming together of nearly every character in the film, Hulot, but this is precisely where Tati has betrayed his as a roomful of strangers slowly turns into a commu- Saturday afternoon audience . Hardly more than an nity of acquaintances. Hulot is brought to the restaurant extra himself in a film of extras , Hulot can lead us by an old army pal he runs into, who works there as nowhere because he is lost himself. Lost to us a great a doorman ; he dances with a girl in the tourist group, deal of the time, when he is missing from the screen-a and later re-encounters a German salesman from the fact underscored by all the \" false \" Hulots, who keep gadget exhibition. Gradually, the scene turns into a confusing us-and the least helpful of all possible boisterous party, presided over by a loud , free-spending American; when the electricity shorts and the dance guides whenever he is on. band leaves, the girl is enlisted to play the piano . . . In The sheer logistics of this alienation are effected the morning, most of the people leave the restaurant to have breakfast at Le Drugstore a block away . After- by a combination of strategies: all of the action is filmed wards, Hulot hurriedly buys a going-away present for in long shot, much of it is densely populated , and a the girl; unable to deliver it himself, he asks a younger great deal of it is simultaneous . But where Tati departs man-a \" false\" Hulot-to give it to her before she most radically from the conventions of classic cinema boards the bus. As the bus leaves, the girl opens her continued on page 6 package and finds a bouquet of plastic flowers. Outside, we see the flowers visually echoed by the streetlamps 1 When PLAYTIME opened in Paris , its running time was 15 minutes on the highway leading to Orly. The scene abruptly longer; in mid-February , 1968 , Tati cut t Me film himself down to its present length , a move regretted by many who saw the longer version. Cf. Cahiers du Cinema # 199, which contains a 25-page tribute to the film, including an extensive interview with Tati. 2 In the same issue of Cahiers just cited , Noel Burch has several useful things to say about Tati's \"refused\" gags. 4 WINTER 1971-72

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PARIS JOURNAL continued from page 4 through your bookseller or is in his multiplication of focal points. Refusing , INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS throughout much of the film , to specify what we are Bloomington, Indiana 47401 to look at and listen to, he forces us to choose. Portrait of a Director The first shot of PLAYTIME, like the last, confronts Satyaiit Ray us with a faceless building; Tati cuts to an interior, and by Marie Seton several minutes pass before we realize that we 're in An authoritative account of the career of the innovative Indian film director who , rejecting an airport. The inhabitants of an endless stretch of the traditional paths of Indian cinema, won wo rld-wide recognition for Pather Panchali waiting room are as plainly dumbfounded by their sur- and the series of brilliant films that followed. The author's close working contact with Ray roundings as we are: a passing nurse suggests a hospi- enables her to illuminate his methods as musician, scenarist, and director. tal , a strutting military man makes us think of a govern- 256 pages $8 .95 ment center. Four Screenplays When we arrive at the Royal Garden , however, we by Carl Theodor Dreyer know exactly where we are. Significantly, Tati 's recon- Translated by Oliver Stallybrass struction of our sense of place begins to occur at the \"Original scripts by the late Danish director. Attractively illustrated, they reveal Dreyer's construction site of a restaurant that is hastily preparing literary style and convey the mystic mood and intense moral commitment of Scandinavian to open while it is still being built. By sharing the spec- film making. \" -Action tacle of the restaurant's frantic preparations, Hulot and 296 pages cloth $12.00 paper $3 .95 Giffard finally succeed in finding one another, which they have been trying to do for most of the film's running time. As a plot development, this meeting is trivial and anticlimactic, since we never learn why they wanted to find each other in the first place. But structurally it is crucial , for it signals the dozens of meetings that are about to take place in and around the Royal Garden , the gradual assembly of all the characters into an integral community-a process that is accompanied and even encouraged by the restaurant's disintegration . Thus it announces a total inversion of the film 's first half. Half- way through the film, the buildings have triumphed over all of the characters, defeating every visible desire. The remaining hour shows the people taking over again , JII III reclaiming , instinctively, what is rightfully theirs. Viewed purely as a virtuoso piece of mise-en-scene, this hour is one of the most staggering accomplish- ments on film . Without resorting to a single ellipsis, CINEMA ONE SERIES Tati per!?uasively delineates an evening in its entirety, and makes its development a continual movement to- wards celebration . The social cohesion that forms be- fore our eyes is brought about so gradually , through Godard a wealth of so many individual details, that our experi- by Richard Roud 176 pages cloth $5 .95 paper $2 .25 ence of it is both logical and sublime ; all the wandering Billy Wilder strands of the film are brought together and weaved by Axel Madsen 168 pages cloth $5.95 paper $1.95 into a rich tapestry of possibilities. Unlike our freedom Signs and Meaning in the Cinema of choice in the film's first half, when our gazes are by Peter Wollen 168 pages cloth $5.95 paper $1 .95 circumscribed by the mazes the architecture leads us Buster Keaton through and the ambiguities their glass reflects, our by David Robinson 200 pages cloth $5.95 paper $1 .95 vision encompasses a Breughel-like universe of jostling Pasolini on Pasolini humanity, and our uncertainties about where to look by Oswald Stack 176 pages cloth $5 .95 paper $2.95 for future gags (which are proliferating everywhere) Horizons West become occasions for surprised delight. Suddenly, we Studies in Authorship in the Western Film by Jim Kitses 176 pages find ourselves players rather than victims of the direc- cloth $5 .95 paper $2 .95 tor's master game, and our eyes roam the room like Mamoulian by Tom Milne 176 pages excited partygoers. By focusing on so many different cloth $5.95 paper $2 .95 people at once, Tati eventually persuades us to join Hollywood Cameramen Sources of Light them . by Charles Higham 176 pages cloth $5 .95 paper $2 .25 Perhaps this is why , when the tourists depart on their bus, he can succeed gloriously with a poetic conceit that darker times would have deemed unthink- able: turning early morning Paris traffic into a circus of carouseling cars and festive flags. \"Paris nous ap- partient, \" one is tempted to say, robbing Jacques Ri- vette's title of its essential irony. The plastic flowers that echo the streetlamps epitomize the reconciliation of people and places; they are Tati's parting gift to his audience. And to my way of thinking, anyone who can convince me that plastic flowers are beautiful must be a magic ian. 11111111 when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT 6 WINTER 1971-72

THE FIlM Starring Orson Wells, Michelangelo Antonioni, Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, and D. W. Griffith The Film Focus Series is an exploration of the most eventful and influential films and the men who directed them, through criticism, history, biography, and analysis of technique. Each volume lavishly illustrated and available in both cloth and paper: Cloth $5.95; paper $2.45 FOCUS ON CITIZEN KANE FOCUS ON CHAPLIN FOCUS ON HITCHCOCK Edited by Ronald Gottesman Edited by Donald W. McCaffrey Edited by Albert J . LaValley A \" well-rounded sampling of opinions.\" An examination of the comedian's devel- A behind-the-scenes look at the private -Publis hers' Weekly opment as an actor and director from his life and work of the man who has spent one-reel beginning with Mack Sennett his life in the exquisite pleasure of mak- \" A fascinating compendium .\" to Limelight. ing people scream . -ANDREW SARRIS.The Village Vo ice FOCUS ON BLOW-UP FOCUS ON D. W. GRIFFITH FOCUS ON BI RTH OF A NATION Edited by Roy Huss Edited by Harry M. Geduld Edited by Fred Silva Probing the many controversies raging The words of Griffith himself,his actress- Reviews, essays, and commentary which over this often misunderstood film here wife Linda Arvidson ,and such film-makers testify to Griffith 's technical genius and are reviews, essays, interpretations, and and critics as Erich von Stroheim, Jay clarify both sides of the controversy that criticism by Arthur Knight,Andrew Sarris, Leyda and A.Nicholas Vardac in a \" highly nearly banned the film in many cities. Stanley Kaufmann , and others. informative\" (Publishers' Weekly) book. At your bookseller SPECTRUM ~BOOKS PRENTICE-HALL. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 07632 when writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

THE FLMS OFStephen Farber

BILLY WILDER A fter more than forty years working in the Put it this way. Mr. Wilder tells us we are all fools movies, Billy Wilder may finally be awarded and rogues. That is cynical. He sugarcoats this with the title of auteur. In Andrew Sarris ' original laughs and miraculous conversions in which he Pantheon , he ranked very low-in that most de- himself does not believe. That is more cynical spised category , \" Less than Meets the Eye .\" Sarris and many of the other cultists seem to have warmed yet . .. But whereas cynicism undisguised is a bitter to Wilder recently. Among the auteur critics the reviews of THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES pill that has curative value, cynicism cynically su- were surprisingly enthusiastic. Or maybe not so garcoated, and so thickly as to nullify the medica- surprising : Sarris and Company have a weakness tion , has no therapeutic, moral, or artistic validity! for the films of old men. Wilder is 65 now, and Wilder himself has declared many times that he SHERLOCK HOLMES is in a mellow , autumnal mood, makes films with appeal for large audiences. He unusual for Wilder, who has always been noted explained his dilemma: \" The question is whether for his cynicism and astringency. Other aging, you have a right to get people into the theater, and once-maligned directors, like Elia Kazan and David they expect a cocktail and they get a shot of acid . Lean , have been treated more respectfully in the People don't want to hear that they stink. \" 3 last couple of years; the old-fashioned qualities of their recent films have been taken as signs of a new Wilder's tendency to caricature is one way of maturity. diluting the acid. But even at its most frivolous, this caricature cannot help exposing Wilder's misan- The irony in the late \" discovery\" of Wilder is that thropic temperament. In THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH a he is one of the few American directors whose films comic strip psychiatrist arrives early for an appoint- consistently reveal a distinctive, highly personal ment and explains impassively, \" My 3:00 patient point of view. For one thing , Wilder is a writ- jumped out of the window during his session , and er-director who has regularly been in control of his I've been 15 minutes ahead of schedule ever since.\" projects from the script stage on . Among the films Only a cynic could toss off a joke like that with such produced during the assembly line years of Holly- casual good humor, but in this case the character wood , Wilder's stand out because it is not necessary is so broadly overplayed that we don't have to take to perform conjuring tricks to identify his personality. the satire on psychoanalysis seriously. Here is a different kind of cynical joke: The heroine of A Some people, of course , find his personality all FOREIGN AFFAIR reports sadly at one point that her too obtrusive. Wilder's work , like the work of most Iowa hometown had the lowest crime rate in the of his contemporaries , is compromised ; in his case , country until a boy took a blowtorch to his grand- though , the compromises have been condemned mother and the rest of his family. We may laugh with unusual severity. The common critical view of at that line , but part of the laughter sticks in our Wilder-much too simple a view, I believe-is that he is a cynic who repeatedly tempers the harshness Top row, left to right : Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in SOME of his vision in deference to the box office . Accord- LIKE IT HOT; Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell in THE SEVEN YEAR ing to Sarris, \"Billy Wilder is too cynical to believe ITCH; Audrey Hepburn in SABRINA ; Barbara Stanwyck, Fred Mac- even his own cynicism .'\" John Simon elaborates: Murray and Edward G. Rob inson in DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Bottom : Gloria Swanson and William Holden in SUNSET BOULEVARD. [Photos: DOUBLE INDEMNITY MemoryShop.others : Cinemabilia.] FILM COMMENT 9

throats. The cool, brutal attack on the deceptive commitment seems to be to the cynical attitude cleanl iness of the golden American farmlands in- expressed through the first three-fourths of these criminates the \" folks \" in the audience . In dealing films; the morally uplifting conclusions are played , with Wilder, it is important to distinguish between almost invariably, without conviction . It may well be such abrasive, disturbing black satire and more that the rigid Production Code imposed some of comfortable sick jokes-gag lines that reveal a cyni- these compromises. But to agree with John Simon cal frame of mind without effectively or intelligently that because of these failures , Wilder must be la- satirizing anything. belled \" a filmmaker with false or no morality,\" is to put the matter too simply. The more one considers Wilder's eleventh hour conversions are even more Wilder's films, the more apparent it becomes that troublesome compromises . In DOUBLE INDEMNITY the the confusions and contradictions in his work are ruthless, scheming heroine shoots the hero once, not always simple compromises, and th ey are mo- and then drops her gun , for the first time in her tivated by something more than a worship of the life halted by a genuine pang of love . In SUNSET bo x office. Wilder's sensibility is far more complex BOULEVARD the weak , cyn ical , opportunistic than most people have been willing to grant. For scriptwriter Joe Gillis performs a last honorable a famous cynic he has surprisingly ambivalent feel- gesture-he calls his girlfriend to Norma Desmond 's ings about innocence and corruption . mansion , tells her of his sordid liaison with the older woman , sends her back to her honest fiance, and Born in 1906 in Vienna , Wilder first worked walks out on Norma, taking only the clothes he came as a sports reporter there , them moved to in . ACE IN THE HOLE 'S megalomaniac newspaperman Berlin and got a job as crime reporter for Tatum , after the death of the man in the cave , Na chtausgabe, one of the city 's largest newspapers. experiences a surprising revulsion from what he has It has been noted that his technique as a filmmaker done, a complete change of heart. The opportun- resembles that of a crime reporter. He is drawn , with ist-schlemiel of THE APARTMENT suddenly Liecides tabloid reporter's instinct, to expose-the dilemma that he can no longer contribute to office immorality; of the alcoholic, the corruptions of postwar Berlin, he turns in his key to the executive washroom and the psychopathic reality behind Hollywood's glam- rushes home in time for a final clinch with the orous facade, the callousness of the press, mal- heroine. The equally corrupt hero of THE FORTUNE practices in big business and law. But Wilder's ex- COOKIE blows the insurance fraud concocted by his poses are not composed with journalistic ob jectivity: brother-in-law when he cannot resist rising from his as Douglas McVay has observed , Wilder's \" key pic- wheelchair to strike the racist detective who has tures evince a Germanic predilection for misery and been maligning his black frier,d . misdeed , tinged by 'the fascination of the abomina- tion .' It is this hint of fascination which separates Certainly such conversions are possible. But him from the disinterested Mervyn LeRoy tradition Wilder is rarely successful at dramat i ~ing them. His of crusading Hollywood journalism , aimed simply to denounce and reform .'\" And this is why Wilder's Tom Ewell and films are so much more lively-and morally ambigu- Marilyn Monroe ous-than the portentous \" social problem \" film that has been Hollywood 's curse over the years . THE in THE SEVEN LOST WEEKEND is Wilder 's only film that fits into the YEAR ITCH. Mervyn Le Roy tradition-a rather dated , academic dissection of a weighty problem ; even here, though , [ph o to : Cinemabiliaj Ray Milland 's undeniable charm adds a measure of complexity to the moral tract. Wilder is not ordinarily committed to message moviemaking ; he wants to reveal the rottenness hidden beneath the placid surface of contemporary society, but he is clearly tantalized by the rottenness if it is on a daring enough scale. At the same time, Wilder's films are skeptical about the value of exposure even when the corrup- tion to be exposed is truly deplorable . Wilder has something of the muckraker in him , but it may not be going too far to see a measure of self-irony in the harsh portrait of the investigator figures who populate his films . In A FOREIGN AFFAIR Wilder re- serves more of his scorn for investig.ating Congress- woman Frost than for the corrupt American army in Berlin . Her priggishness is even less excusable than the army's decadence. In THE FORTUNE COOKIE the private detective hired by the insurance com- pany to uncover Whiplash Willie's fraud is the most 10 WINTER 1971 -72

repulsive character in the film , far slimier than shy- ers and photographers and bystanders-\" the kind ster Willie himself. It is the detective, with his bug- of crowd that turns out for the opening of one of ging devices and hidden cameras, poking genially those new supermarkets\" -swarm over the scene into the most intimate activities and conversations, of a tragedy, unconcerned about anything more who represents to Wilder the most frightful possibil- than cheap sensations, unwilling to attempt com- ities of our age. passion for Norma Desmond or what her baroque world represents. Hedda Hopper, playing herself Even when the investigators are, on the surface, with vile relish , and obviously quite unaware of how more sympathetic characters , there is a disturbing Wilder was using her, epitomizes the most ghastly undercurrent of criticism . Edward G. Robinson 's qualities of the hard-boiled American . Keyes in DOUBLE INDEMNITY would seem to be the very model of an investigator-completely honest, The critique is extended even further in ACE IN dedicated , intelligent, compassionate . Yet when he THE HOLE. The reporter Chuck Tatum , another ex- tells Walter Neff that he lost the one woman he loved treme representative of Wilder's hard-boiled Ameri- because he could not help searching into her past can , deliberately delays the rescue of Leo Minosa, and digging up some compromising experiences, prolongs his suffering-and eventually causes his we see that this man , for all of his integrity, or death-in the effort to secure a better story. Yet even because of it, is doomed to complete isolation . All here Wilder reserves his most searing contempt for of Wilder's investigators-Charles Laughton 's de- the crowd of sensation-seekers who gather round fense attorney in WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION , the cave. His images of the anonymous Americans Maurice Chevalier 's private detective in LOVE IN THE who set up a ferris wheel in the disaster area, suck AFTERNOON-are solitary figures . And the main im- ice cream cones, buy mementoes, sing ditties, and pulse behind THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES take tours around the cave where a man is fighting is to examine the mythical detective from a more for his life, visualize the unfeeling American mob skeptical and disillusioned point of view. at its most frightening . Because of his merciless attack on the audience , ACE IN THE HOLE was one In his introduction to a retrospective of of Wilder's biggest box office flops, and it discour- Wilder 's films at the Museum of Modern Art aged him from anything so bitter or personal for in 1964, Curator Richard Griffith called many years. The reason Wilder hates the mob more Wilder '· the most precise , indeed relentless , chron- than he hates Tatum is that the mob , completely icler of the postwar American scene , in shade as torpid and stupid , merely feeds impassively, raven- well as light, the motion pictures have produced .\" ously on disaster, while Tatum , monster that he is, In LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON Ariane tries to fathom the creates the disaster. Wilder's distinction between cool American playboy : \" They ' re strange people , genuine, aggressive evil and lethargy is one that Americans. When they ' re very young they have their has appealed to other modern artists; like them teeth straightened, their tonsils taken out, vitamins Wilder prefers a towering figure of evil to the docile, pumped into them. They ' re mechan ized , dehuman- insect-like herd of average Americans. The demonic ized. \" Wilder himself has said , \" We are a nation Tatum has, at least, energy, audacity, true madness. of hecklers, the most hard-boiled, undisciplined people in the world. First our heroes smack their To say that Wilder is an angry critic of American girls' faces with grapefruit, then they kick mothers hecklers is only part of the truth . Wilder is always in wheelchairs downstairs and now they slap their drawn to the hard-boiled , brash , vulgar quality of his lady loves with wet towels . How much farther can Americans as long as they have the requisite energy we go?\" s This perversion of feeling. is the most and style. Hedda Hopper may be a hard-boiled striking quality of his Americans . DOUBLE INDEMNITY heckler, but so is James Cagney 's Coca Cola genius has some of the best dialogue in American movies ; in ONE TWO THREE-and Cagney 's exuberance over- the wisecracks Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson whelms Wilder , as it overwhelms all the other char- exchange are more than just clever lines-they cap- acters in the film . Marilyn Monroe, in THE SEVEN YEAR ture the mechanical , hard-edged quality of mating ITCH and SOME LIKE IT HOT, represents American rituals in America (this 25 years before CARNAL vulgarity carried to an extreme , yet Wilder finds her KNOWLEDGE) . Love is indistinguishable from money, irresistible . The character she plays in THE SEVEN and wooing is a form of gamesmanship. In the script YEAR ITCH , an \" actress \" in toothpaste commercials , here is the way Walter describes the beginn ing of says earnestly to the hero , \" Every time I show my his relationship with Phyllis: \" She liked me. I could teeth on television more people see me than ever feel that. The way you feel when the cards are falling saw Sarah Bernhardt. It's something to think about, right for you , with a nice little pile of blue and yellow isn't it?\" It is indeed something to think about; that chips in the middle of the table .\" line crystallizes Wilder's disenchanted vision of Wilder is especially pitiless in chronicling the today's world , dominated by Americans with \" kiss- cruelties of the American mob . In a bar the hero ing sweet\" toothpaste grins , who haven 't the slight- of THE LOST WEEKEND is caught trying to steal a girl 's est shred of culture or refinement of elegance. But purse to get money for a drink; as he slinks outside , another director would be more bitter about that embarrassed and miserable, the people sing after recognition . Wilder cannot suppress a sneaking him , \" Somebody stole my purse, somebody stole sense of wonder at Monroe's blissful obliviousness my purse.\" At the end of SUNSET BOULEVARD report- to the possibility of a more graceful way of life. Monroe's best performances are in Wilder's films because he simultaneously mocks and adores her FILM COMMENT 11

peculiarly American qualities of crude, wide-eyed , Crosby, flashily dressed , wearing earmuffs, crashes thoroughly innocent rambunctiousness and sexin- through a window and into the elegant Viennese ess. ballroom where the nobility are waltzing . His brazen entry onto the dance floor, flaunting his bad man- Jack Lemmon is her male counterpart-the ners gleefully, is a classic Wilderian image of the shnook par excellence, pushy, gross, completely innocent American bursting in on cultivated aristo- guileless and sincere-and he has been Wilder's fa- crats and appropriating all delicacy of feeling to his vorite actor in recent years. The teaming of Lemmon own hardsell approach . Wilder hates him and loves and Monroe in SOME LIKE IT HOT-the two great big him. As the Emperor tells him later, \" You Americans dumb innocents, throwing themselves at life with are Simpler, you are stronger. Ultimately the world verve and abandon-produced Wilder's best come- will be yours.\" And Crosby responds , without blink- dy, and one of the best film comedies since the ing an eyebrow , with ferocious vehemence , \" You Second World War. If DOUBLE INDEMNITY and ACE bet it will. \" The Emperor may have grace and gentil- IN THE HOLE are hate letters to America , SOME LIKE ity , but Crosby has an astounding vitality-like IT HOT is Wilder's tribute to American naivete. The Cagney 's in ONE TWO THREE-that Wilder cannot details are frozen in a comic-mythical mosaic of help but acknovJledge. nineteen-twenties high style-a world of gangsters and bathing beauties, girls who carry flasks of gin The encounter of American and European in their garters, yachtsmen who dance the tango in Wilder 's films is only a specific version with a flower between their teeth. Although the film of the more general drama that obsesses is in black and white and modest in scope , it seems him-the confrontation of innocence and experi- one of the fullest recreations of the twenties because ence . The nature of innocence is one of his most it has such obvious affection for the American past. perSistent subjects . NINOTCHKA, HOLD BACK THE The sense of outrageous daring is what draws DAWN , A FOREIGN AFFAIR , LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON , KISS Wilder to the period ; he understands how that quali- ME STUPID , THE FORTUNE COOKIE , even ONE TWO THREE ty of recklessness can be coarsened , but in SOME and IRMA LA DOUCE in their farcical way , are stories LIKE IT HOT he treats American vulgarity with sympa- of disillusionment, loss of innocence. In the more thy and respect. He discovers the exuberance and serious films the innocents are doomed . Leo in ACE innocence that underlie the brutality he despises in IN THE HOLE dies a victim of a monstrous hoax, contemporary Americans. believing to the end in the good faith of newspa- perman Tatum . Norma Desmond , the silent film star Several of Wi lder's films-NINOTCHKA, HOLD BACK isolated from the wisecracking new Hollywood fac- THE DAWN , THE EMPEROR WALTZ , A FOREIGN AFFAIR , tory, is carted off to the madhouse because she LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON , ONE TWO THREE-concern cannot reconcile herself to life in a world of pettiness the confrontation between Americans and Europe- and compromise. ans . Wilder has been interested in the American Wilder does not believe that innocence can sur- ambassador abroad-Bing Crosby's traveling vic- vive unscathed. He does not believe that faith and trola salesman in the court of Franz Joseph (THE trust are a reasonable basis for human relationships. EMPEROR WALTZ) , Jean Arthur 's fanatical reforming His films chronicle the corruption of innocents, the Congresswoman in postwar Berlin (A FOREIGN fall from purity. But considering Wilder's reputation AFFAIR) , Gary Cooper's Pepsi Cola playboy hiring as a cynic , we would expect more ruthless mockery gypsies for his amours at the Ritz (LOVE IN THE of the innocents. Instead they are treated with affec- AFTERNOON) , Cagney 's Coca Cola magnate (ONE TWO tion , even admiration . Wilder's ambivalence toward THREE) . All of them are hard , aggressive , smacking innocence is particularly obvious in A FOREIGN of egotism and self-righteousness, completely with- AFFAIR , not one of his very best movies, but one out tenderness , but driven by resilient, irrepressible of his most provocative and revealing , and I would energy. The opening shot of THE EMPEROR WALTz-other- wise a very silly movie-is unforgettable: Bing 12 WINTER 1971-72

Left : Pamela Tiffen , Horst Buchho lz and Ja mes Cagney in ON E. TWO, THREE . Right : Fred MacM urray and Edwa rd G. Robi nso n in DOU B L E INDE MNITY. [left photo : Cinemabilia ; rig ht : Memory Shop ) like to discuss it in more detail. It contains , in micro- trade cigarettes for stockings at the Brandenburg cosm , most of his important themes, and it suggests the complexity of his temperament mo re obviously Gate, buy German girls with candy bars. Our hero than some of his better-known films. Captain Pringle cynically sells the birthday cake that The premise of A FOREIGN AFFAIR is striking for a 1948 movie: A group of Congressmen , including the Congresswoman has brought him from his a puritanical Clare Booth Luce-like Congresswoman from Iowa (Jean Arthur), arrive in postwar Berlin sweetheart in Iowa to a hungry German woman , in (the film includes real footage of the bombed-out city) to investigate the morale of American troops return for a mattress for his mistress. The Berlin that stationed there. The Congresswoman soon learns that the troops are indeed trading on the black Congresswoman Frost comes to investigate is desti- market and \" fraternizing \" with German women , and she finds a former Nazi grande dame (Marlene Die- tute and completely disillusioned . It is defined bril- trich) now singing in a sleazy nightclub for the en- tertainment of the troops. Rumor has it that the liantly in Frederick Hollander 'S three nightclub singer is the mistress of an American officer. The Congresswoman becomes obsessed with discover- songs for Dietrich , which imply the war-weary, dis- ing him ; she wants to make an example of him , and use him to illustrate her charges of decadence within enchanted mood of a devastated Europe . As Die- the Army. The Captain from Iowa (John Lund) whom she chooses to help her with her investigation turns trich sings in the superbly cynical \" Black Market,\" out to be the very officer protecting the German woman . the Germans pay the price of defeat: They barter The movie was attacked violently at the time of with the Americans as they must, \" K rations for its release for its tastelessness in dealing with a serious subject-a charge that has often been lev- compassion chewing gum for kisses .. . I'm elled at Wilder's work. Herbert G. Luft, objecting to Wilder's denigration of America , looked back on selling out , take all I've got-ambitions , convictions A FOREIGN AFFAIR as one of his most corrupt films: Yet the film itself is not completely cynical about The camera focus on a pile of rubble was not ex actly postwar Berlin . Given the desperation of the envi- a fitting place for wholesome comedy. There are ronment, A FOREIGN AFFAIR records the endurance of emotion , of romance . When Pringle comes to vis it the ruins of Berlin, but not one word to explain why Erika (Dietrich) , cheerfully wh istling \" Isn 't It Ro- the city had to be utterly destroyed . .. The Nazis mantic?\" as he approaches a ravaged ruin of a are seen as double-crossers, yet drawn with much house, the disparity between the desolate setting charm and noblesse, living in an atmosphere of and the soldier 's buoyancy gives the scene an origi- nal flavor ; the tart mi xture of moods-savage irony comparative ease, with a romantic facade covering and genuine romanticism-is arresting . And there up a decade of mass murders . . . Our occupation are sim ilar images later-another soldier carrying flowers to his lady love as he bounces along through forces appear undisciplined and ill-behaved. 6 the ruins, a German girl wheeling a baby carriage Twenty years later these words sound like a rec- with two American flags defiantly announcing the nationality of the father. ommendation ; one of the most daring , refreshing , and commendable things about A FOREIGN AFFAIR By ig noring the realities of life in Berlin , it is is that it complicates the c1earcut moral distinctions Congresswoman Frost who seems anti-human . of World War II movies and presents ex-Nazis as Wilder mocks her more than he mocks the frater- human beings and American soldiers as corrupt nizing Americans or the world-weary Germans. For opportunists. The Gis we see are quite willing to they are only trying to make the most of a bad capitalize on the desperation of the Germans; they situation . They may be cynical , corrupt, ruthless, but they have, at least, recognized the nature of their world , and they have flO illusions (as Dietrich sings, her illusions, \" slightly used , second hand ,\" are for sale), no false assumptions of moral superi- ority. Congresswoman Frost has come to Berlin to \" fumigate with all the insecticides we have at our disposal. \" She is a grotesque caricature of the cru- sading American abroad-in glasses and braids , at one moment Singing \" Iowa\" with fists clenched- FILM COMMENT 13

Marlene Dietri ch self-preservation her only instinct, but then evilly in A FOREIGN AFFAIR . scheming in the next, lying to the Congresswoman that Pringle constantly mocked her homely Iowa [photo : Cinemabilia) looks. She is finally shipped off to a labor camp at the end of the film , but we are left in some doubt and she represents our ambassadors at their most as to her future when she throws a seductive wink sanctimonious. If the film goes so far as to make at the guards who are to see to her imprisonment. ex-Nazis sympathetic , that is to highlight-with Wilder cannot quite abandon such a bewitching stinging irony-the ugliness of the self-righteous character to her fate without a hint of a possible American . The gradual erosion of the Congress- reprieve. woman 's rigorous , life-denying moral standards is the substance of the film. What happens to Congresswoman Frost is even less convincing. As Pringle begins to fall in love with When she expresses outrage that the mistress her, she begins to thaw a little. She buys a sexy of former Nazi leaders is thriving in postwar Berl in , evening dress on the black market, gets drunk at Captain Pringle asks coolly, \" Should we shave her Erika 's nightclub , is arrested during the police raid head?\" And in the film 's most eloquent scene Prin- of the club and even lets Erika bribe a guard so gle attacks her for expecting him to \" stand on what that she will not have to face the newspapers. At used to be a corner of what used to be a street, this point Erika takes her home and tells her the with an open sample case of assorted freedoms .\" truth about her relationship with Pringle . It is the During the war, he tells her angrily, the soldiers final blow . The Congresswoman is no longer an couldn't perform enough miracles to please the iron-chested ambassador; she has become a heart- inexorable judges at home, but now that the war broken woman . As Erika says, pointedly, \" Four is over , the same judges want the soldiers whom hours ago you were in a position to have him court they pushed into hysteria to turn completely absti- martialled and me sent to a labor camp. Now you're nent. The film 's criticism of American moralizing one of us.\" The Congresswoman gives up her in- is bolder and more intelligent than in most films vestigation and is about to return to Washington today. when a happy reconciliation solves all problems. It is at this point-about halfway through the We can understand and respect what Wilder is film-that it begins to change direction and get into attempting here-an insistence that the Congress- serious trouble. Pringle pretends to fall in love with woman take part in the corruption around her before the Congresswoman in order to take her mind off she can become fully human-but he hasn 't brought her investigation and hustle her quickly back to it off. The Congresswoman 's transformation is too Washington so that he can return to his fraulein superficial. The examples of her corruption (buying in peace . But inex plicably , as the game is being the dress on the black market, or keeping her iden- played quite cynically , he really begins to fall in love tity a secret when she is arrested) are such mild with her. The characterizations fall apart. After pre- transgreSSions that we can't feel she has gained senting Erika with great-if precarious-charm and a very startling new insight into herself or the world eroticism , Wilder seems to adopt the Congresswom- of second-hand illusions. And although the last an 's harsh moral judgment of her depravity. She scene - in which she aggressively chases Pringle is openly sympathetic in one scene , ex plaining with around the deserted nightclub, in an exact reversal unusual honesty how the horror of war has made of their roles earlier in the film-is a clever effort to make the happy ending less facile, it's not believ- ab le; it's an ingenious bit of mechanical comic busi- ness, but it has no dramatic or emotional validity. We haven 't been convinced that anyone as puritan- ical as the Congresswoman could become quite so abandoned , quite so casual about chasing a man who has been living with a former Nazi. A less cyni- cal director than Wilder would have rigged the end- ing somewhat differently-the emphasis would have been on Pringle repenting his dissolution and em- bracing American wholesomeness. Wilder puts his emphasis on the Congresswoman repenting her goodness and purity. He complicates the conven- tional happy ending by demanding that the virtuous American become more corrupt and wanton before she can win the hero . Perhaps Jean Arthur simply cannot bring off that kind of transformation . Or perhaps her caricature is too rigid to begin with; it's inconceivable that anyone could fall in love with her unless her change of heart were more like lobot- omy. Wilder is really torn both ways-committed to the relevance and even humanity of a cynical view of 14 WINTER 1971 -72

the world , and yet intrigued, charmed in spite of Jean Arthur himself, by innocence as aggressive as the Con - arrives in Berlin gresswoman 's. Wilder is rather like his hero Pringle , with the corrupt, disillusioned , attractively selfish in A FOREIGN AFFAIR . and amoral Dietrich waiting in one bedroom , and the fiercely, self-righteously pure and artless Arthur [pho to : Cin emab ilia ] waiting , with fists clenched , in the other . In this particular film there wouldn 't seem to be much of a contest. But the fact that Wilder tries to manufac- ture one suggests that he finds the single-minded honesty of the innocent American irresistibly com- pelling. There is nothing human or appealing about her in A FOREIGN AFFAIR-and this is a major flaw , for it makes the love story outrageous and even slightly unpleasant-but Wilder 's interest in the character sheds light on a recurring ambivalence in his work. W ith Audrey Hepburn in SABRINA and LOVE FOREIGN AFFAIR ; Sabrina and the much -married IN THE AFTERNOON Wilder was able to David Larrabee; Ariane and one of the most no- present the appeal of innocence with more torious playboys of the Western world in LOVE IN conviction . And even Olivia de Havilland in HOLD THE AFTERNOON ; the office patsy and the mistress BACK THE DAWN creates a believable portrait of in- of a married man in THE APARTMENT; the uncorrupted nocence . HOLD BACK THE DAWN , directed by Mitchell policeman and the prostitute in IRMA LA DOUCE. Leisen from a Wilder-Brackett script, has a very Wilderian situation : A Continental gigolo has left Not many filmmakers would have imagined a Europe at the outbreak of the war and has come comic conclusion to the bizarre situation in LOVE to Mexico on his way to America . But he finds that IN THE AFTERNOON-a teenage girl living happily ever the immigration quotas prevent him from entering after with a 50-year-old millionaire who has col- the United States. The only solution is to marry an lected women for a generation . In fact , the happy American woman , and he sets out to trap an in- ending is not convincing , and Wilder glosses much nocent, gullible schoolteacher who has come to too quickly over the perversities that would have Mexico for a day. He marries her, declares his undy- to ex ist in any such relationship . But he does believe ing love, and ships her home to make the necessary strongly in the mutual attraction of innocent and arrangements, all the while planning to get a quick roue. The innocents in Wilder's films are never at- divorce as soon as he is in America . He spends his tracted to other innocents, always to people who wedding night with an old girlfriend from Europe. have been married or have had eventful se xual Eventually, as in A FOREIGN AFFAIR , he does begin pasts ; surely this is Wilder's comment on the impos- to fall sincerely in love with the schoolteacher when sibility of innocence's survival and the irresistible pull of corruption . But there is a pull in the other he takes her on a Mexican honeymoon ; soon after- direction too-the most worldly characters hanker wards, she learns of his plot. At this moment she for the virgins. Wilder helplessly confesses that for surprises us. She lies for him to the immigration all the weary cynics of his disillusioned world , the official so that he will be able to enter the United appeal of innocence (which may be partly an urge States, and she admits ruefully that it was her own to corrupt that innocence) is indestructible. vanity that persuaded her a man she had only known a day might be in love with her. Wilder taunts the There are some interesting psychological impli- character for her naivete, but he also appreciates cations to Wilder's persistent pairing of innocents her strength and dignity in facing an ugly betrayal ; and roues. Freud's famous paper, \" A Special Type in this case , under Leisen 's sensitive direction , the of Choice of Object Made by Men,\" explained this familiar Wilder innocent really comes to life. sort of love relationship, the \" iove of a harlot\" which always demands an \" injured third party \" -as an The clearest indication of Wilder's conflicting attempt to fulfill the oedipal fantasy , in which the feelings about innocence is the nature of love in innocent child wins the experienced , tainted mother his films. There are never, in Wilder , two completely from the father . When an innocent woman is attract- innocent lovers. Even when he deals with teenagers, ed to an experienced man , the oedipal drama is from in ONE TWO THREE , he is careful to establish that the daughter's perspective instead of the son 's. And Scarlett has been engaged several times before she it is striking how often Wilder's films actually deal marries Otto. The most common romantic situation in a Wilder film is one character, usually virgin , attracted to another character who is anything but virgin; the prim encyclopedist and the nightclub singer in BALL OF FIRE ; the gigolo and the school- teacher in HOLD BACK THE DAWN , the Congress- woman and the fraternizing American officer in A FILM COMMENT 15

with a relationship of young man or woman and fantasy that holds the woman responsible for the aged lover. Perhaps there is a simple autobio- breaking of sexual taboos ; somehow she is always graphical explanation: On first coming to Berlin from guilty-even when she is innocent.) Vienna , Wilder reports, \" I danced as a gigolo for awhile in the Eden Hotel , and at the Adlon I served It is impossible to ignore how often Wilder deals as a teatime partner for lonely old ladies .'\" The hero with secretly oedipal relationships , and it may not of HOLD BACK THE DAWN worked in an almost identical be surprising that homosexuality plays a furtive role situation before the war forced him to leave Europe. in a number of his films . Psychoanalysis argues that The relationship of Joe Gillis and Norma Desmond when the only heterosexual relationsh ip desired is in SUNSET BOULEVARD is Wilder's most famous study incestuous, the whole idea of heterosexuality be- of the relationship of a young man and an older comes threatening . There is a distrust of love , often woman . But it has not been observed that in WITNESS of women in Wilder's films that leads to a withdrawal FOR THE PROSECUTION the relationship of the young into idealized homoerotic experiences. The all-male fortune-hunter, Tyrone Power, to Mrs. French , the barracks camaraderie of STALAG 17 would be an wealthy widow whom he eventually murders , is an obvious example, the transvestitism of SOME LIKE IT almost identical, cut-rate version of the same para- HOT just as obvious in a somewhat different way. sitic oedipal relationship-again motivated by greed Wilder eliminated the explicit homosexuality that and pity , again taking place in a house filled with motivated Don Birnam's alcoholism in the novel of mementoes of another era (in WITNESS FOR THE THE LOST WEEKEND , but some people have felt that PROSECUTION the \" lovers \" listen to Gilbert and Sulli- in the film the close , tense relationship of Don and van records together) , again ending in violence . his brother Wick still has homoerotic overtones. The reiationship of Neff and Keyes, the two insurance Several other films examine the relationships of investigators in DOUBLE INDEMNITY , certainly has. young women to older men . In THE MAJOR AND THE Keyes has rejected women , and in the course of MINOR , a sort of antecedent of LOLITA, Ginger Rogers the film Neff too comes to see the treachery of is only impersonating a twelve-year-old girl , but the women ; at the end the flickerings of tenderness intense relationship that develops between her and between them-as Keyes lights Neff's cigarette-are Ray Milland is a comically disguised version of a the only moments of warmth in the film . (\"The guy quite real and ex plosive psychological situation. you wanted was too close-right across the desk, \" Milland tells her at one point that when he was Neff tells Keyes. \" Closer than that, \" Keyes replies .) twelve he danced with his 40-year-old dancing At the end of THE FORTUNE COOKIE the homosexual teacher, kissed her on the lips, and fainted : \" Seems overtones seem quite blatant, though they were I' m always off schedule 20 or 30 years .\" Phyllis probably not intentional. Having recognized his wife Dietrichson in DOUBLE INDEMNITY is married to a man for the unsalvageable bitch that she is, the hero goes almost twice her age. Sabrina is in love with an older out to search for the wronged Negro football player man , and eventually marries his brother, who is at the empty Cleveland stadium . He finds him de- several years older yet ; in 1954 a pairing of spondent but is able to cheer him up with a show Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn could not of affection , and then the two of them begin playing help but seem a pairing of father and daughter. And touch football , two adolescent boys, safe from the this is true , too , of the relationship between Hepburn destructiveness of women , manhandling each other and Gary Cooper in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON . I could with awkward love pats. even stretch my point by noting that it is only after the hero of IRMA LA DOUCE has disguised himself When Wilder announced that he was planning as the 50-year-old Lord X that he is able to impreg- a film called THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, nate Irma. it sounded like an interesting vehicle to express some of his major obsessions. Wilder himself called But even where the relationships are between two Holmes a misogynist, and noted that there was people of the same age, they are relationships be- something curious about the relationship of Holmes tween playboys, prostitutes, promiscuous (or mar- and Watson . The first third of SHERLOCK HOLMES toys ried) men or women on the one hand , and characters with these questions; the narrator speculates about who are relatively innocent or unattached ; in Freu- Holmes' attitude toward women, and in the episode dian terms , such a relationship is always a euphe- with the Russian ballerina the possibility of homo- mism for an oedipal relationship . Since these rela- sexuality is explicitly raised . When Holmes \" con- tionships are taboo in Wilder 's society , it is not fesses \" his homosexuality to the ballerina, it is pre- suprising that many of them end in death, or, in sumably meant as a joke, but an uneasy, ambiguous the comic films, with some form of catastrophe that joke that-for both Holmes and Watson-seems a precedes the reconciliation . Ninotchka, Congress- little close for comfort. Unfortunately, the film then woman Frost, Ariane in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON en- moves off in other directions; the bulk of it concerns dure a great deal of suffering before they win their just another one of Holmes' professional cases- men . The heroine of HOLD BACK THE DAWN even though one that he failed to solve. The title is mis- suffers a near-fatal automobile accident after learn- leading; the film isn't really about Holmes' private ing that she has been married to a gigolo. Sabrina life at all. Wilder is too fascinated with Holmes' and the heroine of THE APARTMENT attempt suicide famous powers of deduction to abandon the detec- before they are eligible for marital bliss. (In all these tive 's public image. In any case he backs way from films the naive, well-meaning woman is the one who the more disturbing aspects of the story he had suffers-the reflection of a rather misogynistic male hoped to tell. 16 WINTER 1971-72

Wilder's characters are denied the standard Frau von Hoffmannstahl is an unlikely one . Holmes, Hollywood version of love. In his films other a cynic and a misogynist, is thoroughly suspicious motives stir the characters with a force love of women . The German woman is only playing at cannot begin to match-alcoholism in THE LOST romantic vulnerability for her own diabolical pur- WEEKEND , greed in DOUBLE INDEMNITY and THE FOR- poses. Yet the two develop a gen uine, reticent af- TUNE COOKIE , power in ACE IN THE HOLE , fame in fection for each other that is curiously touching . SUNSET BOULEVARD , family reputation in SABRINA. On ce again , real feeling grows out of deception and These are the motives that stimulate people into distrust. Perhaps the fact that both lovers are so action-and also , interestingly enough , to fall in disenchanted gives Wilder an unusual sympathy for love . In other movies love is the characters ' ultimate them ; in any case this is one of his most success- goal , the end toward which all other efforts lead . ful-because most subtle-dramatizations of the In Wilder 's disenchanted films love is the means to transformation of an exploitative relationship into a something else . There is almost always another romantic one. incentive for beginning a \" love\" relationship. The heroes of Wilder's films are the great de- In THE LOST WEEKEND Don meets Helen at an ceivers . He is fascinated by a good performance. opera performance because she, by mistake, has His best comedies-MIDNIGHT (in which Claudette picked up his coat check , and there is a bottle of Colbert, a down-and-out singer, impersonates a liquor in the coat pocket. When they begin talking , countess to help a man win back his wife) , SOME she invites him to a party, and he goes with her, LIKE IT HOT, ONE TWO THREE-are all concerned with not because his heart is pounding mysteriously, but outrageous impersonations. So are THE MAJOR AND because it is a cocktail party and he has accidentally THE MINOR , FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO , DOUBLE INDEMNITY , broken his last bottle. In A FOREJGN AFFAIR Captain ACE IN THE HOLE , WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION , LOVE Pringle pursues the Congresswoman in order to IN THE AFTERNOON , IRMA LA DOUCE , KISS ME STUPID , save his name, to insure that she will halt her search THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES . And the for the officer disgracing the army. The gigolo woos bolder the deception , the more Wilder likes it. He and marries the schoolteacher in HOLD BACK THE cannot help presenting the heel-heroes of ACE IN DAWN because he is living in a slum of a border THE HOLE and THE FORTUNE COOKIE more sympa- town and is desperate for American citizenship. The thetically than the people gulled by their schemes. elder brother Larrabee begins his courtship of Sa- Chuck Tatum's scheme is, after all , on a grand scale , brina to divert her from marrying his younger brother and brilliantly executed ; he turns a routine accident and thus ruining the family name. Frau von Hoff- into a \" human interest\" suspense saga that draws mannstahl's dalliance with Sherlock Holmes is a publicity and crowds from allover the nation. necessary part of her espionage plot. In DOUBLE Whiplash Willie in THE FORTUNE COOKIE is almost as INDEMNITY and THE FORTUNE COOKIE love has become audacious. Taking on a professional football team indistinguishable from greed. Phyllis Dietrichson and the city of Cleveland and almost making his shrewdly feigns love for Walter Neff so that he will phony claim stick is a creative achievement of real become the necessary partner in her scheme to substance. Another director would condemn the murder her husband and inherit the insurance dishonesty and heartlessness of it all ; Wilder pays money; later she uses the same tactics on her step- tribute to the imagination behind the swindle. daughter's boyfriend Nino . In THE FORTUNE COOKIE Whiplash Willie tries to persuade Hinckle to go along ACE IN THE HOLE , though , goes further than the with the insurance fraud by arguing that the fortune other films, because more than any of them , it does is sure to bring his ex-wife back to him ; Hinckle consider the limitations of deception even while agrees , and apparently finds nothing unnatural in admiring the ingenuity of Tatum's hoax. This is why his brother-in-Iaw's confusion of money and love. it seems Wilder's angriest and most complex film . It is undeniably exciting to see someone concoct Yet this feigned love almost always turns into real a brilliant plot and fool most of the world ; part of love-Captain Pringle really falls in love with the icy us wants to see Tatum succeed. But when the Congresswoman , gigolo falls in love with school- scheme is at the expense of a man 's life, we are tea c her. Even in DOUBLE INDEMNITY, Phyllis hesitates caught up short; the exhilaration of the grand de- for a fatal instant before she can pull the trigger ception suddenly turns sour. Tatum's guilt feelings on her lover. Deception seems to be the only way may not be entirely believable in the film, but our own mixed response-fascination at the game, yet to real feeling ; a Wilder character rarely arrives at horror at the player's casualness about the stakes involved-proves that Wilder has been successful love except by first pretending it. It is usually said in conducting his most effective critique of the only of Wilder that the blossoming of make-believe into way of life he admires. The film implicates us. real love in his films is his concession to the box office. But more is involved. Wilder is declaring his Deception , of course , is· only another word for faith: Only a recognition of your own vulnerability art . It is the artfulness in the schemes of Tatum , and the deceptions practiced by people around you Phyllis Dietrichson , Whiplash Willie that clearly ar- is a reasonable foundation for affection or emotion. rests Wilder's attention . John Simon attacks the Deception is, in some twisted way , the one truthful, irresponsibility of Wilder 's famous line in ONE TWO respectable act in the Wilder universe. THREE , \" Look at it this way , kid : any world that can produce the Taj Mahal , William Shakespeare, and Perhaps this can help to explain why THE PRIVATE striped toothpaste, can 't be all bad ,\" by arguing: LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES seems uncharacteristically mellow and romantic. The attraction of Holmes and FILM COMMENT 17

\" Now , it is all right to laugh at striped toothpaste , them to parody themselves; for example, Dean Mar- or us, or even Shakespeare , provided there is some- tin 's ferocious portrait of the lecherous, drunken where , at least by implication, something that one nightclub singer in KISS ME STUPID intrigues us be- does not laugh at. \"· I would suggest that there is cause it is so close to Martin 's own image. THE SEVEN something in Wilder 's films-art , imagination, bril- YEAR ITCH even contains direct visual parodies of liant deception. Not the great humanist virtues, per- other films-like FROM HERE TO ETERNITY and VIVA haps, but there are plenty of respectable precedents ZAPATA-and was praised by the French for its cine- for Wilder's pOint of view . matic self-consciousness. In his consideration of art and the comple x rela- It is SUNSET BOULEVARD , of course , where this tionship of art to reality , Wilder was , as in so many playfulness becomes most elaborate, and most sig- other areas, ahead of his time. Recent films like nificant. The film is fiction, but with uncanny resem- PERSONA have astonished people by acknowledging blances to reality. Gloria Swanson (herself a great the fact that they are movies. But Wilder's script silent star) plays Norma Desmond, a silent film for HOLD BACK THE DAWN made the same acknowl- queen fallen into oblivion, waiting to make her edgment in 1941 . At the start of the film the hero , comeback . She lives in a decaying mansion stuffed Charles Boyer, enters Paramount studios, finds a with photographs of herself taken 20 or 30 years director on the lot (who is played by Mitchell Leisen , earlier; the pictures are pictures of Miss Swanson the actual director of HOLD BACK THE DAWN) and in her own heyday . When Norma shows an old film proceeds to try to sell him the story, which he claims on her private projector , the film is QUEEN KELLY , is true , that is then unfolded for us to see . Leisen which starred Gloria Swanson. The director of QUEEN buys the idea for $500 , which Boyer needs to insure KELLY was Erich von Stroheim , who , in SUNSET BOU- a happy ending to his \" real \" story-life redeemed LEVARD , plays Norma 's butler, former husband and by art and money. In the conte xt of such a director, Max von Mayerling. This seemed a cruel thoroughly traditional film , this device may not seem joke-Stroheim 's own directorial career had ended innovative, but it reveals Wilder's desire to play on long before . Late in the film Norma pays a visit to the confusion between film and reality . In-jokes and Paramount to see Cecil B. DeMille, who plays himself in-references to other movies abound in Wilder's at work on SAMSON AND DELILAH. It was DeMille who work . When the heroine of THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR directed Swanson in her first film . DeMille tells is asked to say something in Swedish , she says , Norma that Hollywood has changed ; knowing what \" I vant to be alone. \" Wilder can sometimes get good we do of SAMSON AND DELILAH , or indeed of any of performances out of limited actors by persuading DeMille 's films , the remark takes on special irony. Jean Arthur in A FOREIGN AFFAIR. [Photo : Memory Shop .] 18 WINTER 1971-72

And it is ironic , too , that DeMille, whose films have scriptwriters, and what producer Fred Clark calls become the hallmark of New Hollywood vulgarity the Message Kids, has lost the imagination , the and meretriciousness, gives one of the most re- nobility , the flavor of th e baroque . Norma is strained and touching performances in SUNSET BOU- deranged , but she makes every moment count as LEVARD. The relationship between reality and fiction part of a final, exquisite Grand Guignol performance. in the film is multi-layered and comple x. Even when she relaxes, she acts. To liven up one evening with Joe, she does imitations of a Sennett The old Hollywood, though demented, has a bathing beauty and of Chaplin , both charming and heroic quality. As James Agee wrote , \" The lost witty, testaments to her unvanquishable impulse to people are given splendour, recklessness, an aura create . of awe; the contemporaries, by comparison , are small, smart, safe-playing , incapable of any kind of Some people have objected of SUNSET BOULEVARD grandeur, good or bad .'\" When Joe Gillis says , on that we do not understand Norma Desmond 's great recognizing her, \" You ' re Norma Desmond . You anguish from the inside . True , but that is because were in pictures. You used to be very big ,\" she every particle of her energy is aimed at triumphing answers defiantly, with what has become one of the over that anguish , even as she falls into madness- most famous lines in movies , \" I am big , it's the clinging to a lifelong habit of stylizing , abstracting , pictures that got small. \" Everything in Norma Des- chiseling emotion into art. SUNSET BOULEVARD is mond 's world is on the grand scale , even if night- Wilder's tribute to art and his study of its excesses. marishly distorted . The details are Gothic-the leop- For Norma Desmond 's posturing has become so ard-skin automobile, the formal burial of a pet chim- exaggerated , so hysterical , so desperate a struggle panzee, the wind whistling through the pipes of the against age and compromise that it has lost its organ as the butler plays in his white kid gloves. contact with genuine emotion . Her non-stop per- Norma has silent stars , \" the Waxworks ,\" as Joe calls formance is art utterly d ivorced from life , beautiful them , over for bridge-Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nill- still in its way , but destructive now, obsessive , psy- son , H. B. Warner, frozen , as it were , out of time , their chotic . It is too baroque , too brittle , and finally it faces revaged , deathlike masks, but bearing the crashes the whole world down on top of her: Having purity and dignity of an art before it became an committed murder, with the news cameras and re- industry. Otherwise, the mansion is desolate now, porters waiting , she comes down her staircase doing Norma and Joe dance alone on the giant marble a grotesque version of Salome's dance for what she floor where Valentino danced once. The new Holly- thinks is DeMille 's camera . The artist has not sur- wood , composed of Hedda Hopper, second-rate rendered , but she has entered a no-man 's-land Gloria Swanson and William Holden in SUNSET BOULEVARD. [photo : Cinemabifia ) FILM COMMENT 19

Kirk Douglas in ACE IN THE HOLE. [photos : Museum of Modern Art! Film Stills Arc hive] where she can no longer touch or be touched by and more convoluted than most of his films, but not reality. Wilder bitterly observes her demise and honors her silently, eloquently, grimly. unrepresentative. I have already referred to the If Norma Desmond carries her performance to shots in A FOREIGN AFFAIR of soldiers with flowers an insane extreme , in most of Wilder 's other films the performance breaks down at one moment or jogging through the ruins of Berlin ; only Wilder another . But when this happens, in DOUBLE INDEM- NITY or ACE IN THE HOLE , say , it is not fully convincing . would flaunt decadence with so much wry humor Wilder may want to question the relevance of per- forman c e, but his celebration of performance is and genuine elan . He has an eye for the startlingly always stronger than his criticism . His belief in art, in performance , involves an implicit recognition of vulgar: Marilyn Monroe with the cord of her fan the valuelessness of experience, the irrelevance of faith in the ordinary abstractions-love , heroism , wrapped around her hip and caught in the doorway religi on, social reform-that people depend on to survive . Wilder 's faith is in dishonesty; he believes of her apartment; a sexually frustrated Tom Ewell in the exuberance to be found in choosing your role and playing it to perfection. His herqes are his liars, struggling with a bottle of milk between his legs his cheats, but he has a rueful , nostalgic affection for the foolish innocents who do not yet know the (good dirty jokes both); a group of drunken, strolling way of the world. gypsies playing for a millionnaire as he takes a V isually Wilder's films are not dazzling . He considers himself primarily a writer, who steambath ; Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, padded became a director and then producer in o rder to protect his scripts . He has stated many and wigged , swinging brazenly along a railroad times that he believes in simple , unadorned camera movements: \" You will not find in my pictures any platform on their way to join the ladies' band ; a phony camera moves or fancy setups .. . I like to believe that movement can be achieved eloquently, German sexpot dancing lasciviously on a tabletop elegantly, economically and logically without shoot- ing from a hole in the ground , without hanging the to the delight of three tipsy Russian commissars. camera from the chandelier and without the camera dolly dancing a polka.\" He has also confessed tnat It is Wilder's delight in the outrageous that is the he cannot deal with large open spaces; he has never done a Western or a war movie. (FIVE GRAVES TO most distinguishing visual characteristic of his films. CAIRO and STALAG 17 both take place far from the front.) He pays great attention to authenticity in his In spite of Wilder's cynicism , there is ,a rather as- interiors , and his art directors, Hans Dreier in his early films, Alexandre Trauner recently, are key tonishing exuberance in the imagery of his films , contributors to his films. But he skimps on exteriors. an exuberance in the power of art that is films so Even the Parisian films , LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON and IRMA LA DOUCE , take little advantage of their setting. often celebrate, It would not be quite accurate, though, to call Wilder's chief gift to the American film is intelli- Wilder's style realistic . There is almost always a touch of flamboyance in the filmic details. SUNSET gence, and therefore a more coherent set of inter- BOULEVARD is the most obviously baroque in style , ests-and confusions-than can be found in the careers of most American directors, even those with greater visual imagination , He is responsible for at least four truly memorable American films- DOUBLE INDEMNITY , SUNSET BOULEVARD , ACE IN THE HOLE , SOME LIKE IT HOT- and even his most routine projects are intermittently redeemed by flashes of his distinctive sour wit. Wilder's films are blemished by the com- promises so common in the Hollywood movies of his period , but they contain a very uncommon un- derstanding of some of the disturbing extremes of American ingenuity. 111111111 ' '' The American Cinema,\" Film Culture , XX VIII (Spring 1963), 34. ' '' Someting for Everyone,\" Acid Test (New York , 1963), p. 29 . ' Quoted in Richard Lemon , \" 'Well , Nobody's Perfect ... ' \" Saturda y Evening Post, December 17, 1966. ' '' The Eye of a Cyn ic ,\" Films and Filming, January 1960, p. 21 . ' Quoted in Philip K. Scheuer, \" A Conversation with Billy Wilder,\" Los Angeles Times, August 20, 1950. ''' A Matter of Decaden ce,\" Quarterly of Film , Radio , and TeleviSion, Fall 1952, p. 62 . ' '' An Interview with Billy Wilder, \" Playboy, X (June 1963), 59 . ' Simon , p. 22 . ' Agee on Film , Volume One (New York , 1958), p. 413 . \" \" An Interview with Billy Wilder,\" Playboy, X (June 1963), 68 . 20 WINTER 1971-72

Left : Tamara Toumanova and Robert Stephens in THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. Right : Tony Curtis , Jack Lemmon , Marilyn Monroe and the girls in the band in SOME LIKE IT HOT. [left photo : United Artists; right: Museum of Modern Art! Film Stills Archive] BILLY WILDER FILMOGRAPHY 1935 LOTTERY LOVER. director William Thiele ; screen- Film Scripts in Germany play Wilder and Franz Schulz. 1929 1937 MENSCH EN AM SONNTAG (PEOPLE ON SUNDAY) . CHAMPAGNE WALTZ. director A . Edward Suther- director Robert Siodmak; screenplay Wilder. land; screenplay Don Hartman and Frank Butler 1930 from a story by Wilder and H. S. Kraft. SEITENSPRUNGE. director Stefan Szekely; screen- 1938 play Ludwig Biro, B. E. Luthge and Karl Noti from BLUE BEARD'S EIGHTH WIFE. director Ernst Lu- a story by Wilder. bitsch ; screenplay Wilder and Charles Brackett. 1931 1939 DER FALSCHE EHEMANN. director Johannes MIDNIGHT. director Mitchell Leisen ; screenplay Guter; screenplay Wilder and Paul Franck. EMIL Wilder and Brackett. WHAT A LIFE! director Jay UNO DIE DETEKTIVE (EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES). Theodore Reed; screenplay Wilder and Brackett director Gerhard Lamprecht; screenplay Wilder. from Clifford Goldsmith 's play about Henry Aldrich . IHRE HOHEIT BEFIEHLT. director Hanns Schwarz ; NINOTCHKA. director Ernst Lubitsch ; screenplay screenplay Wilder, Robert Liebmann and Paul Wilder, Brackett and Walter Reisch. Franck . DER MANN, DER SEINEN MORDER 1940 SUCHT. director Robert Siodmak; screenplay RHYTHM ON THE RIVER. director Victor Schert- Wilder, Ludwig Hirschfeld and Kurt Siodmak. zinger; screenplay Dwight Taylor from a story by 1932 Wilder and Jacques Thery. ARISE MY LOVE. direc- DAS BLAUE VON HIMMEL. director Viktor Janson; tor Mitchell Leisen ; screenplay Wilder and Brackett. screenplay Wilder and Max Kolpe. EIN BLONDER 1941 TRAUM. director Paul Martin; screenplay Wilder and BALL OF FIRE. director Howard Hawks ; screenplay Walter Reisch. ES WAR EINMAL EIN WALTZER. Wilder and Brackett from a story by Wilder and director Viktor Janson ; screenplay Wilder. SCAM- Thomas Monroe. HOLD BACK THE DAWN. director POLO, EIN KIND DER STRASSE. director Hans Mitchell Leisen ; screenplay Wilder and Brackett from Steinhoff; screenplay Wilder and Max Kolpe. a story by Ketti Frings. 1933 1948 MADAME WUNSCHT KEINE KINDER. director Hans A SONG IS BORN. director Howard Hawks; musical Steinhoff; screenplay Wilder and Max Kolpe . WAS remake of BALL OF FIRE , with Wilder advising. FRAUEN TRAUMEN. director Giza von Bolvary; screenplay Wilder and Franz Schulz. Films Directed in France 1933 Film Scripts in France MAUVAISE GRAINE (WEEDS). directors Wilder and 1933 Alexandre Esway; screenplay Wilder. ADORABLE. director William Dieterle; screenplay Wilder and Paul Franck. Films Directed in America 1942 Film Scripts in America THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR. Paramount; screen- 1934 play Wilder and Brackett; f(.Om a play by Edward ONE EXCITING ADVENTURE. director Ernst L. Childs Carpenter and a story by Fannie Kilbourne; Frank; screenplay William Hurlbutand Samuel Ornitz cinematography Leo Tover; cast Ginger Rogers, Ray from a story by Wilder and Franz Schulz. MUSIC Milland , Rita Johnson , Robert Benchley. IN THE AIR. director Joe May; screenplay Wilder Distributed in 16mm by United World . and Howard I. Young . 1943 FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO. Paramount; screenplay Wilder and Brackett; from a play by Lajos Biro; FILM COMMENT 21

cinematography John Seitz; cast Franchot Tone, screenplay Wilder and Wendell Mayes; adaptation Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff, Erich von Stroheim. Charles Lederer; from the book by Charles A. lind- Distributed in 16mm by United World . bergh ; cinematography Robert Bu rks and J. Peverell 1944 Morley; aerial photography Thomas Tutwiler; cast DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Paramount; screenplay James Stewart, Murray Hamilton , Patricia Smith, Wilder and Raymond Chandler; from a novel by Marc Connelly. LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON. Allied James M. Cain ; cinematography John Seitz; cast Artists ; screenplay Wilder and I. A. L. Diamond; from Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. a novel by Claude Anet; cinematography William Robinson. Mellor; cast Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Distributed in 16mm by United World . Chevalier, John McGiver. 1945 WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION. United Artists; THE LOST WEEKEND. Paramount; screenplay screenplay Wilder and Harry Kurnitz; adaptation Wilder and Brackett; from a novel by Charles R. Jackson ; cinematography John Seitz; cast Ray Mil- Larry Marcus; from a play and novel by Agatha land, Jane Wyman , Howard da Silva. Distributed in 16mm by Contemporary Films / Christie; cinematography Russell Harlan ; cast McGraw Hill and by United World. Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich , 1948 Elsa Lanchester. THE EMPEROR WALTZ. Paramount; screenplay Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16. Wilder and Brackett; cinematography George 1959 Barnes; cast Bing Crosby, Joan Fontaine, Roland SOME LIKE IT HOT. United Artists; screenplayWilder Culver, Lucile Watson. and I. A. L. Diamond ; from a story by R. Thoeren and Distributed in 16mm by United World. M. Logan; cinematography Charles Lang; cast Mari- A FOREIGN AFFAIR. Paramount; screenplay Wilder, lyn Monroe , Tony Curtis , Jack Lemmon , Joe E. Brackett, Richard L. Breen ; adaptation Robert Brown , George Raft, Pat O'Brien. Harari ; original story David Shaw; cinematography Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16. Charles B. Lang Jr. ; cast Jean Arthur, John Lund , 1960 Marlene Dietrich . THE APARTMENT. United Artists ; screenplay Wilder Distributed in 16mm by United World . and I. A. L. Diamond ; cinematography Joseph La- 1950 Shelle; cast Jack Lemmon , Shirley MacLaine, Fred SUNSET BOULEVARD. Paramoul1t; screenplay MacMurray, Ray Walston . Wilder, Brackett and D. M. Marshman Jr. ; cinematog- Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16. raphy John F. Seitz; cast William Holden, Gloria 1961 Swanson , Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson . ONE , TWO, THREE. United Artists ; screenplay Wilder Distributed in 16mm by Films , Inc . and Diamond; from a play by Ferenc Molnar; cine- 1951 matography Daniel Fapp; cast James Cagney, Horst ACE IN THE HOLE (retitled THE BIG CARNIVAL). Para- Buchholz, Pamela Tiffin , Arlene Francis, Lilo Pulver, mount; screenplay Wilder, Lesser Samuel and Red Buttons. Walter Newman ; cinematography Charles B. Lang ; Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16. cast Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling , Bob Arthur, Porter 1963 Hall. IRMA LA DOUCE. United Artists ; screenplay Wilder Distributed in 16mm by Films, Inc . and Diamond ; from a play by Alexandre Breffort; 1953 cinematography Joseph LaShelle; cast Jack Lem- STALAG 17. Paramount; screenplay Wilder and mon, Shirley Mac Laine, Lou Jacobi, Hope Holiday. Edwin Blum ; from the play by Donald Bevan and Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16. Edmund Trschinski ; cinematography Ernest Laszlo; 1964 cast William Holden, Don Taylor, Otto Preminger. KISS ME, STUPID. United Artists ; screenplay Wilder Distributed in 16mm by Films , Inc. and Diamond ; from a play by Anna Bonacci; cine- 1954 matography Joseph LaShelle; cast Dean Martin , Kim SABRINA. Paramount; screenplay Wilder , Samuel Novak, Ray Walston, Felicia Farr. Taylor and Ernest Lehman; from a play by Taylor , Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16 . cinematography Charles Lang ; cast Audrey Hep- 1966 burn , Humphrey Bogart, William Holden. THE FORTUNE COOKIE. United Artists ; screenplay Distributed in 16mm by Films, Inc. Wilder and Diamond; cinematography Joseph La- 1955 Shelle; Cast Jack Lemmon , Walter Matthau , Ron THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH. Fox ; screenplay Wilder Rich , Judi West. and George Axelrod ; from the play by Axelrod; cine- Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16. matography Milton Krasner; cast Marilyn Monroe, 1970 Tom Ewell , Evelyn Keyes, Sonny Tufts. THE PPlIVATE UFE OF SH£PlLOCK HO'LMES. Unit- Distributed in 16mm by Films , Inc . ed Artists; screenplay Wilder and Diamond ; based 1957 upon the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS. Warner Brothers ; Doyle: cinematography Christopher Challis; cast Robert Stephens, Colin Blakely, Genevieve Page, Stanley Holloway. 22 WINTER 1971-72

The of restament JEAN COCTEAU by George Amberg Professor Amberg was, until shortly before his tion for snobs and intimates, however conspicu- death last July, Chairman of the Department of ously he may seem to convey this appearance. He Cinema Studies at New York University, first in the is facetious, but not frivolous. Though unadmitted, THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS has far greater ambitions country to offer a Phd. degree in that subject. NYU and implications than its modest format indicates. has established a scholarship fund in Professor And in this resides its particular significance . Amberg's memory to which friends and former stu- Beginning with an explicit title and a brief clip from dents are invited to contribute. Please address do- the original ORPHEUS, showing the transgressor's nations or inquiries to Ted Perry, Department of ordeal, THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS is unmistakably Cinema Studies, New York University, 65 South a sequel to ORPHEUS , relying to a fault on familiarity Building, New York , N. Y. 10012. with the earlier film . Cocteau emphasizes the lineage further by reviving previously established charac- Jean Cocteau's last film , THE TESTAMENT OF ters , such as the Princess, Cegeste and Heurtebise , ORPHEUS, is the final version of the three variations as well as by quoting liberally from ORPHEUS. What on the Orphic theme that originated with BLOOD OF motivated him to conclude a definitive treatment of A POET and culminated in ORPHEUS . A film of qualified the subject with a lightly improvised epilogue is merit, it may be generally described as a minor film largely conjecture. Not altogether useless conjec- of major significance. Whatever its artistic virtues ture, though , since the film has often been dis- or shortcomings, its primary interest derives from paraged as an inconsequential postscript to a sub- stantial work, which is underestimating its impor- athe fact that it is a film clM. Therefore, in contrast tance. Also , the question has been raised what yet another version could conceivably add to the ac- with BLOOD OF A POET, it is not enigmatic and capable complished achievement of ORPHEUS? Considering of different interpretations, but rather as unequivo- the complex problems entailed in the production of cally informative as a curriculum vitae, its illusionis- even a modest film, Cocteau ·must have had com- tic trimmings notwithstanding. Although it may seem pelling reasons for undertaking it at all. Perhaps, dense and cryptic at first glance, Cocteau leaves as a septuagenarian, he felt the desire to leave a no room for dubious exegeses. If proof were need- lasting legacy to his personal friends as well as his ed , beyond the clues so generously furnished in the considerable following and , at the same time , to bid film proper , the picture captions in the book edition farewell to his favorite dramatic characters. This can hardly be misread . As is his wont, Cocteau is would account for the film's mellow sentiment; it anxious to have his creation fully comprehended , would account for the innumerable private refer- but only on condition that he be assured to control ences and inferences that crowd the film and mystify the interpreter's view as firmly as he did in his pre- vious films . It would be a hasty mistake to accuse the author of merely providing an exclusive exhibi- FILM COMMENT 23

THE TESTAMENT the uninitiated ; it would account for his personal ally, it proposes neither a new method nor a new OF ORPHEUS screen presence as well as for the fleeting appear- aesthetic but Simply reaffirms them once again. ance of a large number of people without logical What makes it especially puzzling is that Cocteau Claudin e Ozer . function in the story ; it would account for the several wrote it in 1961 , after he had completed TESTAMENT little episodes without any relation whatever with the and was admittedly determined \" to abandon the (p h o tos : Mu seum o f action . In spite of this arbitrary method , however, metier of cineaste. \" Why does the poet, from the Modern Art! TESTAMENT is too deliberate and lucid a work to vantage point of his advanced age, make the claim be dismissed as an old man 's self-indulgent gratifi- of novelty for his last work rather than for ORPHEUS Film Stills Archive) cation-as many critics chose to do. Wanting or the prototype of the poetic film and the model of capri c ious though it may be , TE STAMENT is neither an \" organization of actions? \" Why does the creator pointless nor irrational and , least of all , senile. To of BLOOD OF A POET consider this retrospective and the extent that th is contro versial film fails , as it nostalgic treatment of his favorite subject a first ultimately does , it is for nobler reasons than preten- attempt, whereas it is so ob viously intended to be tiousness , incompetence or declining power , as has the la'st and final one? Why does he disregard THE been unkindly suggested by a number of notable ETERNAL RETURN and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, two critics. films that are respectively visual embodiments of the poetic myth and the poetic fable rather than \" stories It is not my intention to defend TESTAMENT against accompanied by language? \" If TESTAMENT is taken adverse criticism , but to rescue it from the dismal as lightly as it appears or pretends to be, these fate of oblivion to which unfavorable response has questions are confounding . There is good reason already condemned it. For it is not only one of the to believe , though , that Cocteau is guilty of a canny great confessional documents of our time but prob- deception in that this seemingly slender work actu- ably the most original and audacious. The question ally masks a confessional document of great per- remains, however, whether it has a chance to survive sonal import. on its inherent merit, with the answer depending on the position one adopts toward the film as pri- TESTAMENT is ostensibly nothing but a candid and marily a work of art or a poet's self-portrait. Of informal autobiography, composed of loosely con- course , it is both at once , with the aesthetic and nected incidents literally referring to the author's the private, the subjective and the objective so inti- past, his work, his friends and associates, as well mately intermingled that the poet himself got caught as to things and places remembered. He wants his in the trap of ambivalences . In the Preface to the readers and viewers to believe that he produced book edition of THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS , Cocteau the film as an unpremeditated venture, \" without remarks that the film is \" possibly the first attempt expecting anything else from it but the deep plea- of a transmutation of verbs into actions; of an orga- sure derived from making it. \" The material facts seem nization of actions in the place of an organization to confirm it: the film was made all' improvisto in of words, in a poem ; of a syntax of images instead a short time , on 'conveniently available locations, of a story accompanied by language.\" While this with the voluntary cooperation of close friends, and statement defines Cocteau's cinema poetics gener- with himself in the multiple functions of author, direc- tor and protagonist. For somebody used to working and suffering under the rigors and pressures of the commercial studios , as he so graphically describes in the Diary of a Film, producing under such favor- able conditions must indeed have given him great pleasure and satisfa ction. The ease and candor he professes, however, only thinly disguise the urgency of his true endeavor, which is to establish the au- thentic public image by which he hopes to be re- membered. That , essentially, is the legacy contained in this cinematic treatment , its \" resurrectional \" message and purpose , which is furthermore con- firmed by the \" phenixological\" poem that precedes the printed scenario . Cocteau might well have pro- claimed, with Camus' Caligula, \" I do not have to make a work of art ; I live it. \" Only , in this case, it implies less hubris than total self-obsession . Aware that his time is running out, Cocteau is not leaving his posthumous fame to chance and circumstances ; he is \" making sure the world ac- cords him the proper rites,\" to borrow a fortunate phrase from Neil Oxen handler. Only in the technical sense was Cocteau in control of the production . By force of habit and compulsion , maybe in spite of himself, it materialized as a monumental narcissistic apotheosis of its creator's life-long preoccupation with himself, the poet, Orpheus. For Cocteau 's fore- most endeavor is to create or recreate his life as 24 WINTER 1971-72

a poet, even as his foremost concern is metaphor- before , in BLOOD OF A POET , a title on the screen THE TESTAMENT ically to transcend his death by elevating it into the read: \" The surprises of photography, or how I per- OF ORPHEUS realm of myth . Orpheus represents mythological mitted myself to be caught in a trap by my own film .\" immortality. At the same time, the poet also fears Jean Marai s. the \" deadly ennui of immortality,\" the closing word s There would be no doubt in Cocteau 's own mind of BLOOD Or: A POET , spoken in the author's own that TESTAMENT is a poetic film , by the same token voice. An ironical reflection on the stylized posthu- as BLOOD OF A POET , which he claimed to be \" com- mous image that remains immutably fi xed . pletely indifferent to what the world considers poet- ic.\" Cocteau , it must be remembered , conceived of In 1932, Cocteau delivered an address in which poetry not so much as a medium of spontaneous he opens up new vistas of the poetic cinema : \" With or intuitive ex pression than as of a means of reveal- the film , death is killed , literature is killed , poetry ing \" the design and detail of images emerging from is made to live a direct life . Imagine what the cinema the profound night of the human body.\" They are of the future might be.\" At this point , it is important called upon to represent at once internal and exter- to appreciate that TESTAMENT is not a poetic film in nal reality, neither of which admits or recognizes any conventional sense, its subject notwithstanding . its limitations. These poetic images, the poet insists, More accurately, it amounts almost to a lecture- \" have no recourse to either dreams or symbols\"; demonstration, with the poet candidly explaining rather, they represent different stages of con- what it means to be a poet , why he is perennially sciousness , an assumption the poet would presum - on trial and \" condemned to live, \" why he is fated ably refute . It is evident again that poetry , for Coc- to die \" invisibly\" as well as assured to be resurrect- teau , is functional and instrumental. TESTAMENT , like ed . Even more specifically , TESTAMENT tells us not BLOOD OF A POET thirty years previously , provides only what it means to be a poet but what it means \" a vehicle for poetry which mayor may not serve to be the poet Jean Cocteau . As a source of infor- its pu rpose.\" This reservation exonerates the poet mation , the film is probably more self-revealing than conveniently of all poetic conventions and obliga- any other of his literary or cinematic works , and quite tions, allowing him ample leeway for alternating possibly beyond its author's actual intentions. While freely between extremes : exact realism or pure fan- portraying the poet Cocteau , the film author Coc- tasy , direct representation or allegorical transfor- teau refrains , even more rigorously than in ORPHEUS , mation . \" Still, this contempt for the rules does not from dwelling on lyrical mood or evocative imagery. go without a contempt for the danger that excites No sooner has he created a poetic atmosphere , or a great many souls. \" Surely the poet is aware that established a fictional illusion , than he destroys or he is skating on perilously thin premises . There is subverts it. There is a striking instance of this peril- evidently a special significance to the fact that many ous legerdemain when Cegeste reminds the poet of the key statements in the Preface to TESTAMENT that, although he appeared originally as the charac- are virtually literal repetitions of those made in the ter \" Cegeste \" in another Cocteau film (ORPHEUS) , Preface to BLOOD OF A POET. For the two films are \" this is no longer film . It is life .\" Nothing could be not only thematically related ; they also pursue similar more characteristic for Cocteau 's delight in artistic ends. But while premises and objectives are iden- tight-rope walking , as he would say, \" without a safety net.\" The method is far from new. The sur- realists were most adept in the technique of confus- ing , disorienting and shocking the spectator by means of violently disrupting the aesthetic illusion . Pirandello and Genet, too , made virtuoso use of it. If Pirandello created characters in search of an author, Cocteau may be said to have created an author in search of a character. And of Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre observes that \" in his plays every character must play the role of a character who plays a role.\" Although an effective artistic device, it aims recklessly, if not desperately , at the juncture where the creator risks to annihilate the very raison d 'etre of his creation , a practice that has become familiar in the Theatre of the Absurd. Cocteau 's own method , much like Genet's, consists in ex posing one illusion as a deception while simultaneously authen- ticating another, equally artificial one. He resembles a prestidigitator pretending to reveal his trick in order to divert the spectator's attention from the decisive one he wants to bring off. In ORPHEUS , the realistic and illusory spheres are clearly separated , each one representing its own valid realm of exis- tence ; in TESTAMENT , they are so ine xtricably inter- woven that the poet loses control and , consequently, the viewer loses his rational bearings. Cocteau was well aware of skirting danger. Already many years FILM COMMENT 25

tical , the ex ecution is radically dissimilar. It is not tions in this respect , for he forestalls them by re- a facile play of words, but relevant to the nature marking that this film is \"realistic to the extent that of the works, to suggest that Cocteau 's description realism means to depict faithfully the events of a of BLOOD OF A POET , as \" a realistic documentary of universe that belongs to each artist individually and unreal events ,\" may be reversed to read an unreal- that has not the slightest connection with what one istic documentary of real events for TESTAMENT . The customarily considers reality.\" A film being what it distinctive quality of BLOOD OF A POET resided in the is , however, screen events have considerably more discovery of visual equ ivalents for traditional verbal than a slight connection with conventional real ity. poetry . It unwinds on the screen \" like a band of In fact it is precisely the concreteness of the moving allegories .\" The unique quality of TESTAMENT is nei- image that has lured the poet and novelist into ther cine-poetry nor, certainly, its consciously ma- making films time and again . Actually, it is also the nipulated artistry (which tends to be precious), but concreteness-the \"physical reality \" in Kracauer's its implicit self-revelation which is genuine-in fact definition-that defeats Cocteau 's attempt to portray intense and an xious. The tone of levity , the puns his own metaphor himself. Failing to realize that his and jokes, are camouflage. Actually, the lightweight living presence would be more immediately \" real \" \" vehicle \" carries an inordinately heavy load of and authentic than his artfully enacted death and meanings. resurrection , he breaks inadvertently the magic spell he has so expertly cast, disspelling what Claude Cocteau has often protested against symbolic Mauriac has called \" the magic born of a machine.\" exegeses of his films. \" As for symbols it [BLOOD OF A POET] is adverse to them and replaces them with Cocteau submits that \" THE TESTAMENT OF OR- actions or allegories of these actions about which PHEUS is nothing but a machine to fabricate mean- the spectator may symbolize , if he is so inclined .\" ings [significations] .\" Does he mean to suggest that This is avoiding the issue , which remains ambiguous nothing is to be taken literally, in fact that nothing and unresolved. A comparative examination of Coc- is what it seems to be? If so , it would follow that teau's poems, and even of his prose fiction , demon- Cocteau does not signify Cocteau , or Picasso not strates that it is primarily a cinematic problem , due Picasso, which is patently absurd and surely not to the inescapable literalness of the photographic what the author has in mind. The assumption is, image . In ORPHEUS , the author succeeded so per- of course , that he is in complete control of the fectly in resolving this critical problem because the machine, hence also of the meanings he intends screenplay is the adaptation of the stage play. How- to fabricate. TESTAMENT proves his thesis wrong . As ever freely transposed , it benefits by a preestab- an artist, a maker of images, Cocteau rel ies on the lished dramatic gestalt. In TESTAMENT it is virtually fact that every image , including his own , is other impossible to distinguish between symbols, allegor- than the original to which it refers. And yet, while ies and metaphors because of their constant in- every object is physically changed when trans- teraction . There is , however, the unmistakable sym- formed from one mode of existence into another, bol of the Hibiscus flower which the poet carries it becomes not automatically endowed with tran- through the whole film , which he calls the film 's scendent meaning , or indeed any meaning. This is \" true star\" and which , lest we still miss the meaning , Cocteau 's error and the origin of a critical ambiguity Cegeste points out is made \" of the poet 's blood.\" in the film's concept. Minerva, the Idol, the Sphinx One wonders whether to find it trite or touching, function on one level of meaning ; the Princess and although there is no mistaking the significant identity Heurtebise on another; Cegeste on yet another; between the object and its bearer, between the Oedipus intrudes from the dramatic stage; Picasso actual physical being and its ritualistic enactment. and Aznavou r are private visitors , while Cocteau As is so often the case , and consistent with Coc- himself remains altogether himself. The result is not teau 's stated principles , his treatment is rather too a new poetic order but confusion and disorientation. literal and explicit to be called symbolic. His pictorial By juggling at random the identities of people and style , in spite of its imagination and elaboration , is places, real or fictional , the author deprives them essentially descriptive. For instance, when Cocteau actually of any consistent mode of existence in encounters himself in one of TESTAMENT 'S key epi- either reality or fiction . One may be interested in sodes, he observes uneasily that the other self pre- seeing Picasso for a moment, but one cannot help tends not to see him, while his companion com - feeling that he is in the wrong place . This allows ments that \" he probably goes whence you came the conjecture that the wide-spread resentment and you go whence he comes .\" He is seeking him- against Cocteau 's excessive use of personal friends self, finding himself and disavowing himself all at and private allusions is not so much due to the fact once in one brief scene which is both admirably that they are relevant or intelligible to the initiated suggestive and thoroughly cinematic . At this instant only, as to the fact that they are not integrated into it becomes evident that the film itself, the tangible a viable and coherent fictional universe. They are image on the screen , is the point of encounter, of arbitrary elements in a loosely woven pattern of the meeting or the clash of illusion with illusion as personal associations. Why they appear or vanish, well as of illusion with reality . It is noteworthy that what precisely motivates them to do one thing rather the encounter does not occur in either a conceptual than another, seems only subject to the unfathom- or a metaphYSical point , as it might in verbal poetry , able will or whim of their creator. but in a concrete point in time and space . Cocteau may have anticipated some uncomfortable ques- We should be wary, though , of judging anything in TESTAMENT as arbitrary or irrelevant, since the 26 WINTER 1971-72

THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS Phillipe Juzau. Jean Cocteau and Daniel Moosmann. object and intent of the work are not lost out of THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS 1959, Films Around the World Inc., 79 minutes. Cocteau 's sight for one single instant. Every person , Distributed in 16mm by Contemporary Films / McGraw-HilI. director Jean Cocteau ; producer Jean every sentence, every incident. every image serves Thuiller; screenplay Jean Cocteau ; photography Roland Pontoizeau. the one eventual purpose of shaping the poet's portrait, annihilated in the temporal world in order to be resurrected in the \"intemporal.\" In Cocteau On Film , he confesses that \" a film , whatever it may be, is always its director's portrait. \" That this portrait CAST is not a metaphorical term for personal style, but Jean Cocteau The Poet a likeness of its creator, is affirmed in TESTAMENT . Jean-Pierre Leaud The Schoolboy As Cocteau attempts to draw the Hibiscus flower, Nicole Courcel The Young Mother it keeps assuming the traits of his own face . Cegeste Franc;:oise Christophe The Nurse advises, \"Don't insist, a painter makes always his Henry Cremieux The Professor own portrait. You will not succeed in painting this Daniel Gelin The Intern flower. \" Whereupon the angry artist crushes the Philippe Juzua First Man-Horse flower under his foot. However, recalling that the Daniel Mossmann Second Man-Horse Hibiscus flower represents the artist's blood, he will Alice Sapritche A Gypsy have to restore it in order to attain immortality. As Marie-Josephe Yoyotte A Gypsy a symbolic action, it could hardly be more obviously Edouard Dermit Cegestius \"symbolic,\" yet, bythesametoken, more literally illus- Maitre Henry Torres The Master of Ceremonies trative . The saving grace from banality in this se- Michele Comte The Little Girl quence is not its \"phenixological\" purport, for which Maria Casares The Princess we have to take the artist's word , but the visual Franc;:ois Perier Heurtebise impact of the resurrection ritual. It is fitting to quote a Madame Alec WeisweilierThe Confused Lady statement from BLOOD OF THE POET in this connection : Philippe Gustave \"I shall not conceal from you the fact that I have Guy Dute First Man-Dog used tricks to make poetry visible and audible.\" In J .-C . Petit Second Man-Dog spite of this assertion , however, it is not so much Alice Heyliger Isolde poetry he makes visible as himself. His posthumous Michele Lemoig First Lover concern is blatantly evident. Lest there remain any Gerard Chatelain Second Lover doubt whatever, he even makes us, and his personal Yul Brynner The Court Usher friends, witness his death and resurrection . He Claudine Oger Minerva states, and elaborately stages, what Yeats put sim- Jacqueline Picasso ply: \"The tree must die before it can be made into Lucia Bose a cross.\" All the evidence points to one inescapable Pablo Picasso conclusion : if everything we witness and observe Luis-Miguel Dominguin contributesto the emerging self-portrait, the meaning Charles Aznavour of TESTAMENT becomes unequivocally clear. It fits Serge Lifar the words of Jean Genet-\" a true image born of Jean Marais Oedipus a false spectaCle.\" 11111111 Brigitte Morissan Antigone FILM COMMENT 27

Where Have knows that Antonioni is in trouble-for me, the Single All the greatest worry of the decade. Some people know, and some will even admit. that Truffaut is steadily Powers Gone iI declining . (Compare THE WILD CHILD with Peter Handke's play Kaspar, on the same theme, and see a note by the difference between callow homily and deep the- atrical art.) Everyone knows that Fellini has to invent Stanley Kauffmann projects because his inner resources have run out, that Resnais has apparently evaporated . Kurosawa Stanley Kauffmann reviews films for The New was silent for five years after RED BEARD (a wonder- Republic. His most recent book, Figures of Light: fully executed fourth-rate script) and has only just Film Criticism and Comment, was published by made a new film-extremely disappointing . De Harper & Row earlier this year and by Harper Torch- Broca 's bubbles have turned to lead. Polanski and books this winter. Success have become one of the great love affairs of the century. Wicki got flabby and withdrew. When 1960, if you stretch it a few months either way , you line up all these individual matters and look was quite a year. It saw the arrival from abroad of along the edge, you discern a boundary line. The Godard 's BREATHLESS , Truffaut's THE FOUR HUNDRED end of an era seems to have been defined. BLOWS , Resnais 's HIROSH.lMA , MON AMOUR , De Broca 's THE LOVE GAME , Antonioni 's L'AVVENTURA , Fellini 's Obviously, films are being made abroad . Variety LA DOLCE VITA , De Sica 's TWO WOMEN , Wicki 's THE assures us that Italy is bo\"oming again and has the BRIDGE , Ray 's THE WORLD OF APU , Kurosawa 's IKIRU , numbers to prove it. And , good heavens, there 's and Bergman 's THE VIRGIN SPRING . However you rank a long list of \" interesting \" German directors who them one with another, the number of memorable are interesting everywhere except on screen. Also , films is astonishing , and it's only a time-slice of what there are a number of genuine exceptions to the was a continual flow in the early Si xties . But a list above. Ray keeps working (but never gets imported of memorable foreign films for the past year would any more, so, for us, he doesn 't exist). Buriuel has be very short: Rohmer's CLAIRE 'S Kt'lEE , Bresson 's in fact made two of his best films-sIMoN OF THE UNE FEMME DOUCE , Bertucell i' s RAMPARTS OF CLAY- DESERT and THE MILKY WAY-in the last few years. and , possibly , for auld lang syne , Fellini 's THE Bresson keeps working with flawless integrity, CLOWNS . The drop in a decade is tremendous . though not often at the level of DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST. Some good new directors have appeared : Or put it this way . In 1964 I got a foundation grant Troell in Sweden , the aforementioned Rohmer in to visit film people abroad , and I had a hard time France, Makavejev in Yugoslavia, Bellocchio in Italy, keeping my list short enough to be feasible . I saw Jancso in Hungary (for me, the most stimulating new some of the people listed above and many others- talent of the Sixties). But to detail their names, and among them , Olm i, Germi , Polanski , Duvivier, and possibly some others, doesn 't rebuild the explosive Dreyer. In 1971 I got another grant to go to three feeling of the early Sixties. A wonderful flood countries-principally on theater business but I seemed to be engulfing us. Now it isn't. The hy- wanted to see film people , too . In Germany and perestheticisms of Bertolucci and latter-day Pasolini France I had to scratch very hard to think of the and Zeffirelli and Russell are no compensation-only names of a few working directors I really wanted a kind of gluttonous wallowing as film moves (per- to talk with (and as it happened , they weren 't avail- manently) from black-and-white into color. able) . In England I couldn 't think of any, who were working or preparing work. I lunched with one of The pickings are thin . Or bloated , thus only the best and best-informed English film critics and seemingly non-thin . And there's an irony. Just as told her my problem ; and she couldn 't suggest any- publishers really begin to pour out film books, after one. (Although we both retched a bit about the decades of drought, just as colleges begin to blos- incessant activity of Ken Russell. ) som with film courses , just as films begin to be intellectually \" in\" on some other ground than re- I think it's possible to see now, much more neatly membering Bette Davis dialogue at parties, the prin- than in most historical period-marking , that the Six- cipal impetus for all this-the effect of the best ties were a fairly well-defined era in the history of foreign films in the last decade-has very perceptibly foreign films-an era that began , flourished , and diminished . declined almost within a decade. That's my first point. to draw attention to the shape of the period What happened? First. what made the flood in itself: I haven 't seen it mentioned elsewhere , as a the first place? Speculations differ from country to group phenomenon. Everyone knows what's hap- country . In France a generation of directors-Carne, pened to Godard (though his post-WEEKEND films Clair, Duvivier-virtually withered during the Second have a kind of pathos for me, out of a sincerity that War; a new generation , which had been deprived I didn 't always feel in him previously) . Everyone of films (especially American ones) during the war, gobbled them up in the late Forties and early Fifties, and by the late Fifties was fired up . In Italy some of the prewar generation survived the war-De Sica, Blasetti, Soldati-and some of the survivors helped the postwar wave of neorealism ; by the t.ime that wave was spent. a new group of men had matured who were ready to extend film into territories that 28 WINTER 1971-72

had been opened up by painting and literature and a stop-temporary, I certainly hope-to Richard Les- drama . In Japan , where previous filmmaking might ter's work. as well have been on the moon , the so-called breakthrough of Japanese film after the triumph of Further, American producers and , distributors RASHOMON at Venice in 1951 consisted chiefly of the began to invest in the burgeoning foreign film , and breakthrough of Kurosawa . (The US has been rela- thus changed cultural balances . A Swiss film (to be tively untouched by Ozu or Mizoguchi or any other hypothetical) used to be made for Switzerland , and Japanese director.) Kurosawa was primed by the if it was good , it appealed to the rest of the world war and was galvanized by immediate postwar tran- as a good Swiss film . But with American money sitions in his country . involved , an explicit appeal to the American money ket, to the world market, became a consideration ; Why did the flood falter? The influence of the and the result was a film that was not purely Swiss, Second War, as jet-propellant or hatchery, wore out. not very good , and not very marketable. Over and And there was another strong reason , a pressing over again in recent years I have heard foreign universal problem for many contemporary artists: directors say that American investment was forcing the problem of material. It's no longer easy for the them to make quasi-American pictures. Even allow- artist who deals with characters and with life- ing for the cop-out aspects of this complaint, there simulation in some form-the novelist, the dramatist, has to be some truth in it. the filmmaker-to have an extensive career, as in past centuries he had . The feelings of relevance and I can't make an airtight case for the Rise and of grip on the world that sustained Ibsen and Strind- Fall of the Si xties . I can 't \" cover \" the career of every berg and Zola and Shaw are harder to come by. foreign director of consequence who has been The ability to fabricate-synthesis in the best working through the decade. I'm trying to describe sense-that sustained Dickens and Lope de Vega a feeling-one that, I think, many will recognize-that and Griffith and Chaplin is harder to rely on , for a peak has been passed , well passed . serious artists , in an age of increasingly subjective art, where the degree of \"confessional \" pertinence But there 's a happy last reel for the story-a has become almost a touchstone of truth . If the artist legacy from the past decade. It's quite clear that limits himself to personal experience, or the per- foreign films of the Si xties have had a strong and sonal transfigured , he can find years of his life used beneficial effect on American filmmaking. For one up in one film-in one sequence! thing , there have simply been a great many more foreign films available here. The 1969 Film Daily Year Bresson is an exception to the problem of materi- Book says that in 1946 only 20 % of US releases al: he is one of the few deeply religious men in were foreign pictures ; in 1968 that figure had risen filmmaking and his cosmos is ordered , or is invitingly to 60 %. And the quality and scope of the best foreign mysterious. Bunuel is , at least temporarily , an ex- films of the past decade have done a great deal ception because he has embraced again the faith to the new, largely college-bred generation of US that started his career-surrealism . Bergman is an directors. exception ; as I've said elsewhere , I think that his concurrent theater career has played a psychic role It's a remarkable reversal. We all know how much in spurring his film career-roughly put , nine foreign filmmakers owe to America, and have owed , months' work each year on other men 's work builds ever since Griffith . Bergman and Germi , to name up impulses in him to do three month 's work entirely only two , venerate John Ford ; Kurosawa has ac- on his own . Visconti , though active , is not an excep- knowledged his debt to George Stevens; and that's tion ; apart from THE STRANGER , I think his work in only a sample. Now the flow of influence has come the past decade has been of surpassing unimpor- the other way. tance. (He, too , works in the theater , of cou rse , but I don 't suggest the psychic tensions of Bergman We can see it, blatant and ridiculous , in the imita- as a formula that applies to every director with two tion of 8% in the Tucker-Mazursky ALE X IN WONDER- careers .) LAND. But we can see the helpful influence of foreign directors in the work of such varyingly valuable Another reason for the faltering of the flood was American newcomers of the Si xties as Mike Nichols , money . Generally speaking , as these men were ac- Dennis Hopper, Bob Rafelson , Sam Peckinpah (who claimed , more was invested in their films (Godard the might be said to be John Ford after a trip abroad) , great exception here), more was expected of them Peter Fonda, Barbara Loden , Brian de Palma, and in \" production values \" and at the bo x office . But Frank D. Gilroy (whose DESPERATE CHARACTERS pre- their work , by its nature, couldn 't attract bigger sumably would not have existed without Bergman). audiences, so they found themselves making bo x- The best of these directors, at their best, have not office flops . By no means had all their previous work reached anything like the heights of the best for- been hits, but now the flops were even more marked , eigners of the Si xties . Still , each of them has done and it became more difficult for them to get financ- something of value; and each of them has had his ing , even on their previous modest level. The history tecbn ical , linguistic , cultural being formed in part of the French New Wave is a record of swift over-ex- by the fore ign films of the Si xties . pansion and disaster, financially. Poor box-office showings, according to report, have been at least I miss the persistent excitement about foreign part of the reason for the small output of Lindsay films in the early Sixties. But what's happening in Anderson , Ermanno Olmi (rescued by Italian TV) , US films is, from time to time , encouraging . Eventu - and-until recently-Kurosawa. Flops have also put ally , maybe, it will help to re-seed the foreign film , just as the power of US film started practically ev- erything . Anyway, whether it does or not, the old order certainly changeth , over there and over here. FILM COMMENT 29

interviewed by Gene Phillips Gene Phillips teaches English and Film at Loyola as a \" Richard III-type character.\" Like his fellow University in Chicago. His article on John Schle- creatures, Alex has been deprived of moral choice singer and interview with Ken Russell appeared in by the State and thus has become a \" clockwork previous issues of FILM COMMENT. He has com- orange\"-something that appears human but is only mechanical. pleted a book on the films of Graham Greene that When asked why he thought the major film com- will be published by Columbia University Press in panies had decided to extend wide artistic freedom 1972. to directors like himself, Kubrick replied , \"The invul- nerability of the majors was based on their consist- Few American directors have been able to work ent success with virtually anything they made. When within the studio system of the American film in- they stopped making money they began to appreci- dustry with the independence that Stanley Kubrick ate the importance of people who could make good has achieved . With a canon of eight films so far, films.\" Kubrick was one of the directors they turned spread out over seventeen years, Kubrick has to , and when they did, it was after he had learned steadily built a reputation as a filmmaker of interna- the business of filmmaking from the ground up and tional importance. He has gained full artistic control was ready to answer the call. over his films, guiding the production of each of them from the earliest stages o·f planning and script- Born in the Bronx on 26 July 1928 , Kubrick ing through the final snap of the editor's shears, began selling pictures to Look magazine while he in a way that it was once thought only a foreign was still a student at Taft High School and joined director like Fellini or Bergman could do. Thus when the staff after graduation . He eventually got interest- I met him in London he had just completed the script ed in filmmaking and turned out two documentary for his latest film , based on Anthony Burgess's fu- shorts for RKO: DAY OF THE FIGHT (1950) , about boxer turistic novel, A Clockwork Orange, and was begin- Walter Cartier, and FLYING PADRE (1951) which he ning the pre-production planning of the film. remembers as dealing with \"a priest in New Mexico who flew to his isolated parishes in a Piper Cub. \" Reviews of the novel have called it, among other things, \"a nightmarish fantasy of a future England He was then able to secure financing for two where the hoodlums take over after dark. \" One of low-budget features which he says today were \" cru- these hoodlums is Alex, whom Kubrick describes cial in helping me to learn my craft,\" but which he 30 WINTER 1971-72

would otherwise prefer to forget. He made both films by ordering his men to carry out a suicidal charge. almost singlehandedly; he was his own cameraman , When they falter, he orders other troops to fire into sound man , and editor as well as director. The first the trenches on their own comrades. Colonel Dax of these , FEAR AND DESIRE (1953) , dealt with a futile (Kirk Douglas) must then stand by while three sol- military patrol during an unnamed war. Kubrick was diers are picked almost at random from the ranks pleasantly surprised when the film garnered some to be cou rtmartialed and executed for desertion of rather good reviews and played the art house circuit. duty. Peter Cowie has written that Kubrick uses his With KILLER 'S KISS (1955) it was back to bo xing and camera in the film \" unflinchingly , like a weapon , the story of the failure of a fighter to rise above darting into close-up to capture the indignation on his slum background . By all accounts (Kubrick him- an officer's face , advancing relentlessly at eye level self will not say much about either of his first two towards the stakes against which the condemned features) Kubrick managed to inject some life into men will be shot, or sweeping across the slopes this routine story with some exciting footage that to describe the wholesale slaughter of a division.\" included two key fight scenes , one in the ring and one in a mannequin factory at the climax of the The movie is filled with visual and verbal irony. movie. \" It was a profitable film for United Artists ,\" In the scene in which the condemned men await he comments , \" though it was mostly released as execution , one of them complains that the cock- a second feature.\" roach which he sees on the wall of their cell will be alive after he is dead . One of his comrades Then , in 1955 , through a mutual friend Kubrick smashes the cockroach with his fist, saying , \" Now met James Harris, an aspiring producer, and to- you ' re one up on him .\" To Kubrick 's great credit , gether they made THE KILLING . Based on Lionel the film ends on a note of hope and humanity. Dax White's novel Clean Break, Kubrick 's tightly con- watches his men join in the singing of a song about structed script follows the preparations of a group love in wartime led by a timid German girl prisoner. of small-time crooks to rob a race track. The robbery (The role was played by a German actress, known is photographed in great detail with all of its split- as Suzanne Christian , whose real name was Su- second timing (imitated recently in the 1969 Jim zanne Christiane Harlan . She is now Mrs. Stanley Brown vehicle , THE SPLIT , in an uninspired way that Kubrick.) makes one appreciate THE KILLING all the more) . But the film 's real merit lies in the ensemble acting which Douglas gave one of his best performances in Kubrick elicited from a group of capable Hollywood the film , as did Adophe Menjou as Dax 's superior supporting players who rarely got a real chance to officer who firmly believes that he must go through act. \" The budget was larger than the earlier films- with the courtmartial despite his personal feelings $320 ,000 ,\" Kubrick notes . \" This time we could af- in the matter. The story has been told that during ford good actors such as Sterling Hayden .\" the shooting of the film in a Munich studio Menjou became impatient with Kubrick 's desire for several Hayden played the tough organizer of the caper; takes of a scene and got angry with him . \" No such Jay C. Flippen was the cynical older member of the incident occurred on the set of PATHS OF GLORY,\" group; Elisha Cook , Jr., the timid husband who Kubrick remarks, but adds that the story could hopes to impress his voluptuous wife (Marie Wind- rightly be told about Charles Laughton , who gave sor) with stolen money since presumably he cannot Kubrick a lot of trouble during the making of his otherwise give her satisfaction . They helped Kubrick next film , SPARTACUS (1960) , a spectacle about slav- create the brutal atmosphere of the film which builds ery in pre-Christian Rome. to the sardonic conclusion when Hayden 's suitcase blows open just as he is about to board a plane But Kubrick 's biggest problem on SPARTACUS was and the stolen money flutters all over the windy star-producer Kirk Douglas. \" SPARTACUS is the only film over which I did not have absolute control ,\" aairfield la TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE . says Kubrick . \" Anthony Mann began the picture and filmed the first sequence, but his disagreements with THE KILLING not only turned a modest profit but Kirk made him decide to leave after the first week prompted the now legendary remark of Time maga- of shooting . The film came after two years in which zine that Kubrick \" has shown more imagination with I had not directed a picture. When Kirk offered me dialogue and camera than Hollywood has seen the job of directing SPARTACUS , I thought that I might since the obstreperous Orson Welles went riding be able to make something of it if the script could out of town .\" Kubrick then acquired the rights to be changed . But my experience proved that if it is Humphrey Cobb 's 1935 novel The Paths of Glory, not explicitly stipulated in the contract that your which he had read in high school , and set about decisions will be respected , there 's a very good writing a script. But no major studio was interested chance that they won 't be. The script could have in financing the film . \" Not because it was an anti-war been improved in the course of shooting , but it film ,\" he points out ; \" they just didn 't like it. \" Then wasn 't. Kirk was producer . He and Dalton Trumbo Kirk Douglas agreed to star in the film and United the scriptwriter and Edward Lewis the executive Artists backed the project with $935 ,000 . producer had it their way with the script and the casting .\" Despite the flood of anti-war films in recent years , PATHS OF GLORY (1957) is still considered one of the Despite the problems that beset the making of most uncompromising examples of the genre. The the film , SPARTACUS turned out to be one of the better ghastly irresponsibility of officers toward their men spear-and-sandal epics, and Peter Ustinov eventu- is climaxed by the behavior of a French colonel ally won an Academy Award for his performance (George Macready), who hopes to gain a promotion FILM COMMENT 31

FEAR AND DESIRE. in the film; but Kubrick does not remember SPAR- TACUS with any great pride . He is therefore not happy Paul Mazursky and that critics tend to place LOLITA (1962) only a notch Frank Sil ve ra. above SPARTACUS when listing his major films in [Museum of order of quality. I agree with Pauline Kael , who Modern Art! writes , \" The surprise of LOLITA is how enjoyable it is: it 's the first new American comedy since those Fi lm Stills ArchiveJ. great days in the forties when Preston Sturges re- created comedy with verbal slapstick . LOLITA is black THE KILLIN G. slapstick and at times it's so far out that you gasp as you laugh .\" St erl i ng Hayden . [Museum of While Peter Sellers and James Mason have been Modern Art! praised for their strong performances as Quilty and Humbert, Sue Lyon has been criticized as being too Fi lm S tills Archive J. old for the part of the nymphet. \" She was actually justthe right age,\" Kubrick said recently. \" Lolita was THE PATHS twelve-and-a-half in the book ; Sue Lyon was thir- OF GLORY. teen . I think some people had a mental picture of a nine-year-old . I would fault myself in one area of On left , the film , however; because of all the pressure over Adolphe Menjou. the Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency at the time, I wasn't able to give any weight LOLITA. at all to the erotic aspect of Humbert's relationship with Lolita ; and because his se x ual obsession was Sue Lyo n and only barely hinted at, it was assumed too quickly James Mason. that Humbert was in love. Whereas in the novel this comes as a discovery at the end , when she is no 32 WINTER 1971-72 longer a nymphet but a dowdy, pregnant suburban housewife ; and it's this encounter, and the sudden realization of his love , that is one of the most poi- gnant elements of the story.\" Of course if the film were being made today, both the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures (which has replaced the Legion of Decency) and the Motion Picture Code Administration would probably give Kubrick no trouble with the film , since the freedom of the screen has advanced consider- ably in the last decade. Nevertheless , even in the film as it stands Kubrick managed to suggest some- thing of the e' otic qual ity of Humbert's relationship to Lolita from the very beginning . The first image of the film is Humbert's hand reaching across the big screen to caress Lolita 's foot as he begins to paint her toenails, thus indicating the humiliating and subservient nature of his infatuation for Lolita. For those who appreciate the black humor of LOLITA , it is not hard to see that it was just a short step from that film to Kubrick 's masterpiece in that genre , DR. STRANGELOVE , OR : HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORR YING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964). He had origi- nally plan ned the film as a serious adaptation of Peter George 's Red Alert, which is concerned with the mad General Jack D. Ripper (Sterl ing Hayden) and his decision to order a group of B-52 bombers to launch an attack inside Russia . But gradually Kubrick 's attitude toward the material changed : \" My idea of doing it as a nightmare comedy came in the early weeks of working on the screenplay. I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully , one had to keep leaving things out of it which were either absurd or parado x- ical , in order to keep it from being funny ; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question .\" Kubrick kept revising the script right through the

shooting period : \" During shooting many substantial THE PATHS OF GLOR Y. Kirk Douglas. changes were made in the script, sometimes to- LOLITA. Sue Lyo n. gether with the cast during improvisations. Some of the best dialogue was created by Peter Sellers himself.\" Sellers played not only the title role of the eccentric scientist , but also the U.S. President and a British officer who fails to dissuade General Ripper from his set purpose. The theme that emerges from the finished film is the plight of fallible man putting himself at the mercy of his infallible machines of destruction . Dr. Strangelove himself is Kubrick 's vision of man 's final capitulation to the machine : he is more a robot than a human being , his mechanical arm spontaneously saluting Hitler (his former employer), his mechanical hand at one point trying to strangle the flesh and blood that is still left in him . In the end a single U.S. plane reaches its Russian target and the film ends with a series of blinding explosions, while on the sound track we hear a popular ditty which Ku- brick resurrected from World War II , \" We ' ll meet again , don 't know where, don 't know when . . . \" (Kubrick told me that he used the original World War II recording by Vera Lynn , and that the film not only brought the song back to popularity but Miss Lynn as well.) Kubrick further explored his dark vision of man in a mechanistic age in 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) . In ex plaining how the original idea for the film came to him , he says, \" Most astronomers and other sci- entists interested in the whole question are strongly convinced that the universe is crawling with life ; much of it, since the numbers are so staggering , equal to us in intelligence , or superior , simply be- cause human intelligence has existed for so rela- tively short a period .\" He got in touch with Arthur C. Clarke, whose science fiction short story , The Sentinel, Kubrick thought could be made the basis of a screenplay , and the rest is motion picture his- tory . They first turned the short story into a novel in order to develop com pletely the potentialities of the story and then turned that into a script. MGM bought their package and financed the film for $6 million , a budget which after four years of work on the film eventually rose to $10 million. 2001 opened to indifferent and even hostile reviews , which subsequent critical opinion has completely overwhelmed , and went on to win a large audience that has earned the film $16 million to date with no end in sight , since 2001 has gone into a full-scale rerelease . 2001 begins with the dawn of civilization in which an ape man learns to use a bone as a weapon in order to destroy one of his colleagues, and thus ironically takes a step toward humanity. As the vic- torious ape man throws his weapon spiralling into the air , there is a dissolve to a space ship going through space in the year 2001. \" It's simply an observable fact ,\" Kubrick has commented , \" that all of man 's technology grew out of his discovery of the tool-weapon . There's no doubt that there 's a deep emotional relationship between man and his machine-weapons, which are his children. The ma- chine is beginning to assert itself in a very profound way, even attracting affection and obsession .\" FILM COMMENT 33

Still , Kubrick believes, man must strive to gain mastery over himself and not just over his machines: \" Somebody said man is the missing link between primitive apes and civilized human beings. You might say that that is inherent in the story of 2001 too . We are semi-civilized , capable of cooperation and affection , but needing some sort of transfigura- tion into a higher form of life. Since the means to obliterate life on earth exist, it will take more than just careful planning and reasonable cooperation to avoid some eventual catastrophic event. The problem exists as long as the potential ex ists, and the problem is essentially a moral one and a spiritual one .\" Hence the film ends with Bowman , the only sur- vivor of the mission , being reborn as \" an enhanced being , a star child , an angel , a superman , if you like,\" says Kubrick , \" returning to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man 's evolutionary des- tiny .\" Kubrick feels that \" the God concept is at the heart of the film \" since if any of the superior beings that inhabit the universe beyond earth were to mani- fest itself to a man , the latter would immediately assume it was God or an emissary of God . When an artifact of these extraterrestial intelligences does appear in the film , it is represented as a black mono- lithic slab since Kubrick thought it better not to try to be too specific in depicting these beings . \" You have to leave something to the audience 's imagina- tion ,\" he explains. The over-all implications of the film seem to suggest a more optimistic tinge to Kubrick 's view of life than had been previously detected in his work , for here he presents man 's creative encounters with the universe and his unfathomed potential for the DR. STRANGELOVE. Peter Sellers as the President of the United States. future , as was pointed out in a joint citation which [Museum of Mo dern Art/Film Stills Arc hive] . the film received from the National Catholic Office DR . STRANGE LOVE . Peter Sell ers in the title role . for Motion Pictures and the Protestant Broadcasting and Film Commission . It will be interesting to see if the same optimism will be found in his next film , A CLOCKWORK ORANGE , for if in 2001 the machine was becoming human , in the latter film Kubrick shows man becoming a machine. But ultimately CLOCKWORK only reiterates in darker terms the warn- ing of STRANGELOVE and 2001 that man must retain his humanity if he is to survive in a mechanized world . After his current project Kubrick plans to step back into the past with a historical film about Napo- leon . He now avoids films about the present be- cause he feels that a film can achieve a much more objective perspective about events and situations that are not contemporary. He wants to continue to do films that will stimulate his audience to think about serious human problems as his films from PATHS OF GLORY onward have done . With the success of 2001 now assured , Kubrick can go on making films the way he wants to , proving in the future as he has in the past that he values the artistic freedom which he has worked so hard to win and has used so well. 11111111 34 WINTER 1971-72

STANLEY KUBRICK FILMOGRAPHY 1953 On the set of 2001 , left to right , FEAR AND DESIRE. Joseph Burnstyn , Inc .; sc reen- Stanley Kubri ck, Kier Dullea and Gary Lo ckwo od . play Howard O. Sackler; producer Kubrick ; cine- matography Kubrick ; editor Kubrick; cast Frank Sil- A CLOCKWORK ORANGE . Mal colm McDowell vera, Kenneth Harp, Paul Mazursky. and Warren Clarke. [photo : Warner Bro thers] 1955 KILLER 'S KISS. Un ited Artists; screenplay Kubrick ; producer Kubrick and Morris Bousel ; cinemato- graphy Kubrick; editor Kubrick; cast Frank Silvera, Jamie Smith , Irene Kane, Jerry Jarret. Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16. 1956 THE KILLING. United Artists; screenplay Kubrick ; from the no vel, \" Clean Break \" by Lionel White ; additional dialogue Jim Thompson ; cinematography Lucien Ballard ; cast Sterling Hayden , Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards, Jay C. Flippen . Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16 . 1957 PATHS OF GLORY. United Artists; screenplay Ku- brick, Calder Willingham , Jim Thompson ; from the novel by Humphrey Cobb; cinematography George Krause; cast Kirt Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready, Wayne Morris. Distributed in 16mm by United Artists 16 . 1960 SPARTACUS. Universal-International ; screenplay Dalton Trumbo ; from the novel by Howard Fast; cinematography Russell Metty ; cast Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Tony Curtis, Charles Laughton , Peter Ustinov, John Gavin , Nina Foch , John Ireland. Distributed in 16mm by United World . 1962 LOLITA. MGM ; screenplay Vladimir Nabokov; from the novel by Nabokov; cinematography Oswald Morris; cast James Mason , Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon . 1964 DR . STRANGE LOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB. Colum- bia; screenplay Kubrick , Terry Southern and Peter George ; from the novel , \" Red Alert \" by Peter George; cinematography Gilbert Taylor; cast Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden , Keenan Wynn . Distributed in 16mm by Columbia Cinematheque. 1968 2001 : A SPACE ODYSSEY. MGM ; screenplay Ku- brick and Arthur C. Clarke; cinematography Geof- frey Unsworth ; production design Tony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernie Archer; cast Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood . 1971 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Warners; screenplay Kubrick; from the novel by Anthony Burgess; cast Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, Clive Francis, James Marcus. FILM COMMENT 35

THE WASHINGTON approach , in which problems and solu- tions were perfectly simple: man 's nature was es- RETURN OF sentially good and , by implication , if there were enough jobs to go around and the villains were DR. CALIGARI removed , everyone would be happy. Ever greater Simplifications were encouraged during the propa- Paranoia in Hollywood ganda-drenched war years of the early Forties. by Paul Jensen While the post-War era, struggling within the Production Code and Legion of Decency, was artis- The films of post-World War II America , at least tically disappointing , the films made then can at least until the unprecedented freedom of the Sixties, are be defended as revealing certain contemporary often considered completely dehydrated by that concerns , less in the handling of specific problems era's inhibitions. Hollywood successfully churned or the development of new plot-lines than through out link after link of an endless entertainment sau- the cumulative effect of certain familiar genre sage stuffed with standardized plots and styles . And. stories, especially mysteries and science-fiction . it's easy to appreciate this attitude after viewing They can also be viewed as transitional steps toward endless reels of predictable melodramas, soap a subjective, psychological, \" modern\" portrait of a operas, war stories, and musicals. people , place , and period. In their obsession with pessimism, guilt, and helplessness, these post-War A sense of the meager, shallow quality of most films evoke more than anything else the German movies made during the McCarthy and Eisenhower Expressionist films of the Twenties-a relationship eras is aggravated by knowledge of the blacklist and strengthened by the presence in Hollywood of Fritz its stifling effect on unusual or controversial sub- Lang , E.A . Dupont, Robert Siodmak, Otto Preminger jects. The statements, even the mere presence, of and other Teutonic directors. the victims of this silence have created an assump- tion of lost potential and a feeling that, If Things Neorealism was thriving in Italy after the war, and Had Been Different, we would have had a Niagara American films also felt an impulse toward a greater of uncompromising social statements and profound sense of reality. However, the result in America was character analyses. slightly different, and one of the reasons was the contrasting economic states of the two countries. In the late Thirties, social consciousness meant Italian films centered on the poverty and destruction what Abraham Polonsky had described in a Film Culture interview as \"a sentimental attitude toward the goodness of man, and getting together and working things out right, and getting rid of injus- tice. \" This is the Frank Capra-MR . SMITH GOES

caused by the war; when the economic situation began with the return to business and industrial finally improved , characters like those in the films normalcy at the war's end , and developed through of Antonioni and Fellini became more affluent, but the Fifties into the present-day counter-reaction of still remained dissatisfied-they simply had time now \" dropping out\" of a mechanized, depersonalized to consider man's psychological uncertainties in- society . In 1956, the year of the \" pod people ,\" Peter stead of worrying about where the next plate of spa- Viereck wrote that \" the American problem is not ghetti was coming from. merely surrender of the personality but a compla- cent kind of surrender, a voluntary cultural America , on the other hand , was untouched phy- thought-control more insidious than the coercive sically and relatively undamaged economically, so political kind .\" the shift in subject matter that would later occur in Italy got an early start here . Inevitably, this step This was a generalized , social conspiracy-fear, upward brought new problems along with the bene- but others existed . Many were solely in the minds fits . Instead of being content with what they had of lunatic-fringe groups; a few had wider followings gained, people tried to get more. A taste of even and more substantial justifications. All , though , in- better living through expense accounts produced volved a fear of being secretly plotted against, and a frustration at not being able to live quite that well of being deprived of identity, individuality, and in- all the time. The opportunity provided by mass pro- dependency by some outside, infiltrating force. duction for more people to have more of what used to be reserved for the rich carried with it the menace Richard Hofstadter has written about \"the devil of standardization . Everyone was expected to want, theory of American politics \" -the need to pin re- and to buy, the same things-and so what he had sponsibility for all the country's problems on some was just like everyone else's. Consumer research convenient \" devil ;\" \" scapegoat\" might be a better and advertising gave buyers the feeling of being word . Post-war America's scapegoats included manipulated (even subliminally), especially when Catholics (\"As we enter the postwar world , without what they can buy exists only in a narrow range any doubt the greatest enemy of freedom and liberty of variation . that the world has to face today is the Roman Cath- olic system \") Zionists (an attempt \" to form a super Conformity soon became a major specter, haunt- state which will directly or indirectly control the ing those intellectuals who prided themselves on destinies, the morals, the liberties, and the finances being individuals rather than statistics, on having of this nation \") and Blacks( \" The Negro is quietly arm- enough refinement, selectivity, and independence ing himself. We want 15 ,000 ,000 members in the that they would bypass the blandishments of the United States, and everyone of them with a good Book-of-the-Month Club and that vulgar little liv- gun and plenty of ammunition-ready to fight when ing-room picture-box. In Hollywood , these people it starts \") . Even those arch-devils, the American were usually writers and their feelings and fears Communists, were looking for scapegoats: \" We inevitably colored their works. Consumer conformity Communists believe that monopoly capital is trying to establish a military coup d 'etat.\" Thus each group felt paranoid about another, and each was sure that those in power were under the enemy 's control. During the war it had been easy to identify the enemy -slanty eyes , funny guttural accents-but now, at home, there was no sure way of recognizing him ,

and so it was necessary to resort to circumstantial with the bomb. For over a decade the possibility, evidence and guilt by association. even imminence, of self-annihilation haunted the country . In a lecture at Harvard in 1953, Elmer Davis Since Communism did offer a genuine political said , \" In the middle of the 20th Century the principal threat, the movement against it received the greatest questions in dispute among Western intellectuals official support, and this too had an effect on the seem to be whether the West can be saved , and many liberal-thinkers in Hollywood . According to if it is worth saving .\" (But We Were Born Free, 207) Abraham Polonsky, the \" artists of that time, espe- A slightly more encouraging bit of discouragement cially the writers of that time-were more signifi- was voiced a few years later by Peter Viereck . In cantly left en masse in Hollywood than later, and The Unadjusted Man, he wrote: \" Every conceivable even before. \" Therefore, the interest the House society of man will always be indefensible, innately Un-American Activities Committee showed in Holly- unjust .. . We must build what society we can out wood , starting with the first investigation in 1947, of what clay we have: the clay of decay, the clay created a traumatic stir in the movie capital. A single of frailty and constant unpredictable blunder ... Hu- issue of Photoplay (September, 1948) contained two manity is willful, wanton , unpredictable.\" contrasting statements no doubt inspired by this situation : Leo McCarey said , \" The threatening and The spectre of total self-destruction appeared , dangerous evil of Communism strives to alienate us both metaphorically and undisguised, in various from our faith in God, and ultimately in ourselves films . WHITE HEAT (1949), a gangster melodrama, ... The United States was founded on a belief ended with James Cagney standing astride a huge in God the Creator. When we reject this principle spherical gas tank shouting that he was finally on of Americanism we lay ourselves open to any and the \" top of the world , ma,\" only to have it explode all subversive influences which would rob us of our under him and engulf him in flames. Equally apoca- most treasured heritage.\" Elsewhere, Humphrey lyptic explosions end 20 ,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA Bogart argued in favor of expressing his personal (1954; destruction of the island and the submarine) political opinions. \" That is the constitutional right and KISS ME DEADLY (1955; destruction of the beach of American citizens past 21 . I, for one , propose house, evidently with the \" hero \" and heroine still to keep right on exercising it and nobody's going inside). Dozens of Big Bugs (THEM ,1954; TARANTULA, to stop me. \" 1955), prehistoric monsters (THE BEAST FROM 20 ,000 FATHOMS , 1953), and menaces from outer space (THE The resulting informal blacklist probably started THING, 1951 ; THE WAR OF THE WORLDS , 1953; even many filmmakers thinking about a vigilante ap- WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE , 1951) posed further threats proach to judgment and punishment, and produced to earth life, usually after being mutated, awakened, a tarnishing of the idea of law and order, a blurring or frightened by our atomic testing and the radiation of distinctions between good and bad , and a sense it caused . of helplessness based on what could happen to someone on the wrong side of those controlling the Other stories were more specific-and more blacklist. Thus, a presumed conspiracy such as preachy. These were the post-atomic war films like Communism produced fear, which in turn caused FIVE (1951) ON THE BEACH (1959) and THE WORLD , a kind of counter-conspiracy, which produced fur- THE FLESH, AND THE DEVIL (1959) . Most were meant ther fear , and it is impossible to say how many fully as warnings of what \" might happen if,\" but even or semi-innocent people were caught in the crossfire more explicit were those in which superior emis- and engulfed by the backlashing blob. saries from outer space (or in the case of Captain Nemo , from undersea) lecture us on our bad habits A LTHOUGH THERE WERE FEW -outright and evil, destructive natures (THE DAY THE EARTH political films made during the period from STOOD STILL , 1951; THE SPACE CHILDREN , 1958). approximately 1945 to 1959, an unusual number of entertainment movies did deal with in- Even when these apocalyptic pictures end with vasion , terrorism , infiltration, disguise, \"posses- some people still alive and compatible, the view sion ,\" helplessness, uncertainty, and vigilantism . of mankind is still bleak and disillusioned . Humans Characters were constantly haunted by the Past, are evidently incapable of coexistence, and we have and all sorts of guilt turned up on the screen: self- only survived thus far because our weapons were guilt, assumed guilt, generalized guilt, uncertainty not powerful enough to destroy ourselves. This out- of guilt, guilt by association, and mistaken guilt look is depicted in our tendency to attack aliens based on circumstantial evidence. Individuals were immediately on their arrival , in a kind of conditioned forever on the run , trying to escape from pursuers response. They are, after all , different from us- associated with the past or their own misdeeds. and therefore threatening to normalcy and stability. Sometimes this shooting from the hip is justified , The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki created when they intend to invade and conquer the earth considerable self-consciousness and guilt. The fact (EARTH VS THE FLYING SAUCERS, 1956); here, sponta- that the war had been a just one seemed contra- neous fear of the unusual is encouraged . Usually, dicted by the nature and effect of this weapon though , the aliens mean no harm , are here simply (Could such an eschatological means actually be to repair their space ships , and it is we who are justified by the desired , and obtained, end?) Develop- automatically violent (IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE , ing from this was a fear of what could be done 1953). In THE 27TH DAY (1957) , the enemy Alien whose 38 WINTER 1971-72

race plans to settle here confidently waits for us Ashton to the old lady who still lives there . The to destroy ourselves. \" Your entire history is one of house, a tangible reflection of the past, surrounds self-destruction ... We cannot hope for disas- and affects the old woman and her young descend- ter-we merely expect it.\" One of the earthlings, a ant Tina (Susan Hayward), who live there. Tina is scientist, echoes this accusation : \" The human race \"haunted \" by the older woman 's younger self, and spent more time destroying itself than in any other periodically sheds her own identity to slip into the endeavor! \" Yet the film reveals its transitional state other woman 's past. Only at the end , when the lady by rejecting its own disillusionment; at the end , the and her house die together in flames , is Tina finally weapon provided by the Alien destroys only people set free to be herself in the present. of bad will and leaves the good alive-as though such a clear-cut distinction could actually be made. There are many variations to this fascination with And on the evidence of this film, America contains incidents and acquaintances from the past that re- very few bad people. turn to haunt men now established in their lives and work . THE SENATOR WAS INDISCREET (1947) is a com- The normal earth man 's suspicion and rejection edy about a diary that disturbs because of what it of visitors from outer space are not very different can reveal about the past ; in ALL MY SONS (1948) , from his reaction to earthly aliens , as shown in various the father's unsavory business dealings during the films about outsiders being treated harshly by a war disillusion his family ; DREAMBOAT (1952) has a homogeneous group. War brides encountered this college professor become embarrassed at the TV treatment , be they Italian (TERESA, 1951) or Japa- showings of silent movies he had made years before. nese (JAPANESE WAR BRIDE , 1952) , and so did unwed These films do not make intended statements about mothers (NOT WANTED , 1949), Negroes (PINKY , 1949), a social or psycholo.gical mood , but they do reveal Jews (GENTLEMAN 'S AGREEMENT , 1949), Indians a general and consistent theme. (BROKEN ARROW , 1950), and boys with green hair (THE BOY WITH GREEN HAIR , 1948). Amnesia was a staple plot device in the Forties because it combined interest in the forgotten past During the middle and late Forties, films also with an intangible sense of guilt; the main character became obsessive about the effect of the Past on could now join the others in thinking that he actually the Present. REBECCA (1940) provided an early model did kill (or marry, or betray) that friend ten years for many subsequent pictures , with its heroine ago. So the amnesiac acts as a kind of detective , haunted by the personality and memory of a de- investigating his own past and trying to piece to- ceased character, and with its emphasis on a gether his own identity. Films that follow this pat- gloomy, atmospheric house permeated by the tern include STREET OF CHANCE (1942) , IDENTITY UN- \" spirit\" of the dead person . The situation became KNOWN (1945) , CRACK-UP (1946) , SOMEWHERE IN THE a standard one in 1944, thanks to the success of NIGHT (1946) , LOST HONEYMOON (1947) , and THE LAURA , which was about a detective obsessed by CROOKED WAY (1949). E.A . DuPont's THE SCARF the supposedly dead title character . In THE UNINVITED (1951) is especially striking in its resemblance to (1944) , and its follow-up THE UNSEEN (1945) , female THE CABINET OF DR . CALIGARI. A confused man (John characters are haunted by dead women , and al- Ireland) escapes from an asylum-prison , unable to though these actually are \"ghost\" stories, their at- remember his act against society and unsure of mosphere is the same as that in LAURA or REBECCA ; whether or not he really is crazy. \" Alii want to know it's just that in this case the obsession is given a is whether I did what they claim I did l \" It turns out supernatural origin . Other such films include THE that in fact he is not guilty, whereas Emlyn Williams , SECRET HEART (1946), PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (1948) , and his friend and the prison psychiatrist , is the murderer THE LADY POSSESSED (1952) . Even the non-gothic and had used him as a fall guy . (The German silent, A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1948) is partly in this WARNING SHADOWS , also has a parallel film , INVASION tradition , with the three women of the title envying U.S.A ., a 1952 Red scare picture in which a mysteri- and admiring the film 's never-seen narrator, the ous individual hypnotizes a group of people and manipulative Addie Ross. A related series of films then shows them what will happen to them and to center around ruthless, domineering , and fascinat- the country unless they change their beliefs and ing women , usually played by Joan Crawford their actions.) (MILDRED PIERCE , 1945; DAISY KENYON , 1947; HARRIET CRAIG , 1950). During the late Forties, psychiatrists-and other figures of authority-turned out to be crazier than Just as the unseen but haunting lady 's image is those in their care . As someone says to the psychia- generally preserved in a painting , her personality-or trist in THE SCARF , \" You're not a doctor, doctor- a family 's heritage-is embodied in a large old yUll're a patient! \" FEAR IN THE NIGHT (1947) and house. This allows the director-photographer-art WHIRLPOOL (1949) continue this similarity to CALIGARI , director to develop an atmospheric decor integral with plots about normal people hypnotized into to the film 's story, which was done for such other- committing murder. wise dissimilar films as PINKY (1949), MY FORBIDDEN PAST (1951) , and CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE (1944) . Thus , in BRUTE FORCE (1947) the prison inmates are a pleasant bunch of guys, incarcerated for THE LOST MOMENT (1947) is a fine, unusual illus- excusable or understandable offenses, whereas the tration of this. A publisher (Robert Cummings) rents prison doctor is an alcoholic , the warden is a weak- a room in an old Venetian villa, hoping to discover ling, and the head guard a sadistic , powe~- mad dicta- the love letters written long before by poet Jeffrey tor intentionally reminiscent of Hitler. At one point, FILM COMMENT 39

someone says to the head guard , \" You ' re worse THE RUN (1950), SHADOW ON THE WALL (1950), WITNESS than the worst inmates of this prison-you ' re the TO MURDER (1954) , DANGEROUS MISSION (1954) , and psychopath here, not they! \" As social comment, JOHNNY ROCCO (1958) . (This situation echoes Fritz BRUTE FORCE is unconvincing , but it succeeds quite Lang 's M and , appropriately , similar stories like HE well with its image of Life as a Prison , and death WALKED BY NIGHT [1948] caused M to be remade in the only means of escape; and there are enough 1951 .) points of reference in the dialogue and situations that, in this case, it must have been intended . Prison Another, much larger, category consists of indi- films in general provided a neatly constricted view viduals who are suspected , accused , and sometimes of society and thus were common, as were bo xing even imprisoned for something they didn't do, and films , which depicted life as a struggle , usually with who must redeem themselves by finding the real the fighter enmeshed in corruption , and possessed culprit. (Somehow the burden of proof always seems by others , as in BODY AND SOUL (1947). to be on the accused , rather than the accuser .) Such characters decide either to help the authorities or Although guilt was the subject of many films , it to gain their own revenge , by punishing the killer was misleading almost as often , with the hero actu- of a relative, clearing the reputation of a friend , or ally innocent. In this way , the straightforward moral proving that he himself has been rehabilitated . 1947 standards of the time-as enforced by the Produc- saw the first influ x of these stories, and they con- tion Code and the Legion-were given lip service, tinued in one form or another for about ten years , and audiences could be confident that they would approximately the decade devoted to blacklisting not be alienated by their heroes . In BEYON 0 GLORY activities and the resulting attempts to clear reputa- (1948), Alan Ladd is a war hero who feels responsible tions. for a friend 's death in battle ; it is finally revealed , as might be guessed , that he had been knocked All of these situations were common in Westerns, unconscious before the incident occurred , and so but that genre was especially partial to stories em- is not really at fault. AN ACT OF MURDER (1948) deals phasizing the idea that a man can 't trust the authori- with a judge who plans the mercy killing of his ties and so must catch the killer, and often punish painfully dying wife ; again , the main character is him , on his own . Thus the quest is for vigilante taken off the hook at the end , when he learns that revenge rather than true justice, even though the she gave herself an overdose of medicine. men involved are Randolph Scott (SEVEN MEN FROM NOW , 1956) or Gregory Peck (THE BRAVADOS , 1958). A few exceptions allow the main character to be These stories, even the modern ones, tend to have guilty , and then make him the passive quarry in a the real murderer confess to his pursuer, and then manhunt. In DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) , murderer be shot in an escape attempt. Westerns usually Fred MacMurray is forced to watch as his associate assumed that, one way or another, everything would Edward G. Robinson investigates , and gets closer be cleared up as the hero proved his own inno- and closer to the truth . THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW cence . In LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE (1951) , for exam- (1944) has Robinson change sides, and this time ple , the future is assured when a minister reports, he watches as his friend Raymond Massey uncovers \" Lisa was still alive when I reached her-it's all clear clue after clue that pOints to him. In a later and more now.\" typical variation (THE BIG CLOCK , 1948), an innocent reporter is assigned to solve a murder, only to dis- Especially significant are those Westerns about cover that each piece of circumstantial evidence reluctant, peace-loving men who are eventually knots a web of guilt around himself. convinced that the only way to solve a problem is by using si x-gu ns . In EL PASO (1949) , lawyer John Edward G. Robinson (WOMAN IN THE WINDOW) and Payne resorts to shooting instead of cross examina- Ray Milland (BIG CLOCK) play characters living nor- tion ; in FORT WORTH (1951) , Randolph Scott tries mal , satisfactory lives , yet in one weak moment they to edit a newspaper, but is forced to use gu ns to give in to temptation , and this starts a chain reaction get rid of outlaws ; in THE PEACEMAKER (1956) and of events that th reatens to engu If and destroy THE PERSUADER (1957) , clergymen take up arms them-a situation parallel to that in Karl Grune 's THE against criminals after discarding impractical scru- STREET (Germany , 1923). William Powell , in TAKE ONE ples. (Similarly, the minister who tries to reason with FALSE STEP (1949) and even in MR . PEABODY AND THE the enemy in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS is destroyed-A MERMAID (1948) , runs into the same problem , as do Lesson To Us All.) Orson Welles (THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, 1947), Dick Powell (PITFALL , 1948), and Joan Bennett (THE RECK- The taunting and terrorizing that citizen Fred LESS MOMENT, 1949). These films warn against stray- MacMurray suffers, and eventually fights against, in ing from the straight and narrow path , from the AT GUNPOINT (1953) has its modern counterparts in normal , conventional patterns of life ; deviation and several \" hostage\" films, including THE DESPERATE involvement-a single moment off guard-mean that HOURS (1955) and THE NIGHT HOLDS TERROR (1955) . the world or fate may destroy you. These involve escaped criminals or kidnappers, but in other movies teenage gangs do the terrorizing Without even being directly involved , one can still (THE WILD ONE , 1954; MOTORCYCLE GANG , 1957; PARTY become contaminated by association with a crime, CRASHERS , 1958). Thus , contemporary moral and as in the case of an unexpected witness sought by psychological frustrations had considerable effect both police and criminals. This frightened character on the su bject matter of films . Since this was often usually tries to dodge responsibility and danger by unconscious, cinematic style and narrative structure fleeing , in films like THE WINDOW (1949), WOMAN ON were altered in related ways . 40 WINTER 1971-72

S UBJECTIVITY IN FILMS is generally asso- person , so the hero could comment on people and ciated with the recent work of Fellini and events in his own hard-boiled terms ; these interior Antonioni , but that aspect of today 's film- comments don 't lend themselves to dialogue making has its roots in the Forties , as early as CITI- scenes, since the character would want to keep ZEN KANE (1941). In 1933, Preston Stu rges devel- them to himself, so the solution was to have him oped an intricate flashback structure called \" narra- narrate the film. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941) avoided tage \" for THE POWER AND THE GLOR Y, but at that time this device , and it wasn ' t until DOUBLE INDEMNITY its influence was minimal. When Herman J . Mankie- (1944) that the trend actually began . INDEMNITY wicz adapted \" narratage \" for his KANE script , other begins at the end , with the dying Fred MacMurray writers and directors were finally ready to notice it, Sitting in his office , dictating a detailed narrative to and the device of beginning a picture with the final his pursuer, and as he talks we are taken back to scene and allowing at least one character to narrate \"how it all began\" and progress to the end / beginning. the events leading up to it became standard proce- dure almost immediately. MURDER MY SWEET ( 1944) also sets up a narration situation , and SUNSET BOULEVARD ( 1950) carries it This style gave the scriptwriter something ap- proaching the novelist's freedom to reveal his char- to an appealingly cynical extreme with William Hol- acters ' thoughts and reactions . It was an indication den 's corpse , floating in a swimming pool , heard that filmmakers desired greater depth and maturity telling the story. This tendency to start at the end , in their product ; but the method was an artificial , and then show how it came about, affects the kind pseudo-literary one that allowed the verbalization of suspense aroused ; there is rarely any question of everything the actors and director should have of what will happen to the main character. Instead, made clear visually . It was a tentative try for a new we see his progression to a seemingly predeter- style appropriate to the times , and KANE illustrated mined end-a fatalism typical of such German Gold- at the outset how well it could be used . Then simpli- en Age films as SIEGFRIED , VARIETY and THE LAST fication set in . LAUGH . In KANE , one man , a reporter , investigates a death Unlike HARPER (1966) , who operates in an on- that occurs at the film 's start. He talks to people location , open-air California , the Philip Marlowe in who knew the deceased , in an attempt to recon- MURDER MY SWEET enters a \"subterranean \" world struct his life and to understand the man , using his beneath the surface of the city, a world rarely seen last statement ( \" Rosebud \" ) as a clue. A surprising by most citizens . For him , danger lies in every number of later films are, perhaps unconsciously, corner, wherever he cannot see or reach-and the modelled on this structure. heavy blackness of shadows accurately depicts this psychological reality. Here, the director distorts ex- THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS (1944) , for example , starts ternal truth in order to present more accurately an with the death of Dimitrios and follows the inquiry inner truth , either his own or a character 's. After of a fascinated mystery writer (Peter Lorre) into the strikingly nightmarish opening of THE KILLERS , portions of his life, presented in flashbacks narrated with the Swede passively lying in his darkened room by those who knew him . In adapting Hemingway 's waiting for his assassins, the style becomes less story THE KILLERS (1946) , Anthony Veiller ended up baroque and more \" realistic.\" Also, once the mun- doing the same thing. The original story is told in dane investigation begins , visual narrative is sacri- the picture's first few minutes, with the Swede mur- ficed for an excess of talk and explanation . dered for unknown reasons. An insurance inves- tigator (Edmond O'Brien) then tries to find out why, CROSSFIRE , too , opens with a dynamically han- using the Swede's last words (\"Once I did some- dled murder among shadows, but this time the at- thing wrong \") as his only clue , and the Swede 's mosphere is maintained through the nocturnal in- life is pieced together via flashbacks narrated by vestigation. Despite its set-piece monologues about those who knew him . tolerance, which are disconcertingly preachy, the film captures a broad , non-specific sense of ali-per- CROSSFIRE (1947) , a mystery dealing with anti- vasive danger and fear . This is especially true of Semitism , also starts with a violent killing , and then the scene in which Mitch , the suspected murderer, alternates between the present investigation of po- wakes up after sleeping off a drunk, and doesn 't lice detective Finlay and the flashback memories recognize the apartment where he is. Nor can he of those involved . THE SNAKE PIT (1948) is quite a recall where he has been or what he has done. He different story , presented as a mentally disturbed is still groggy from sleep when a man enters , iden- woman 's case history, combined with some social tifies himself as the husband of the girl who lives comment about an overcrowded mental institution. there-then declares that he has just lied . He makes But it too fits the formula : there is a kind of death- statement after statement, following each with an the sick girl cannot remember anything about her admission that he has just lied . Finally, all the already prior life-which is investigated by a staff psychia- disoriented Mitch can say in answer to the man 's trist, who understands the events causing her illness questions is, \" I don't know .\" The scene perfectly through the flashback memories of the girl and her expresses the uncertainty and helplessness felt by husband. the character. All of these films are variations on the idea of This subtle, Pinteresque subjectivity was less a detective story , so it is not coincidental that private common than the attempts at external objectivity. eye films flourished during this time . Most tough Yet even the latter captured some of the same feel- private detective novels were written in the first ing of helplessness, and semi-expressionistically FILM COMMENT 41

allowed inner evil to be revealed through objects, appropriate style for expressing this reaction . despite their surface realism. Examples include the Gangster films changed in accordance with these grimy, sweaty, strangely unpredictable environ- ments of KISS ME DEADLY (1955) and , especially , new discoveries. Racketeers in the Thirties embod- Welles ' TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) . ied American upward-mobility, with poor immigrants rising to the top through determination and strength , The emphasis on this unpleasant atmosphere can the little guy making good through free enterprise. be seen by looking over any set of reviews from In the Forties , the prototypes were psychotics who 1947-48. Typical is Photoplay 's description of DEAD enjoyed killing for hire , such as Alan Ladd 's cruel , RECKONING (1947) as \" not for the squeamish .. . full unfeeling professional murderer in THIS GUN FOR HIRE of savage action , crackling talk, casual love-mak- (1942), and Richard Wid mark's cackling , funtime ing.\" The same issue then makes a point of noting murderer of old ladies in wheelchairs in KISS OF that Frank Capra 's super-nice production IT 'S A DEATH (1947). Similar sadists turned up again and WONDERFUL LIFE ( 1947) \" leaves a good taste in the again in crime films and westerns of the Fifties , mouth ,\" as though this were something as unusual usually personified by the lewd grins of Lee Van Cleef as it was admirable. or Lee Marvin or Jack Elam. Rarely, however, were these men \" ex plained \" -they simply ex isted as ab- Mitch 's inability to distinguish between truth and normal Forces of Evil that could only be destroyed falsehood in that scene from CROSSFIRE typifies with great difficulty, embodiments of all that might another manifestation of \" subjectivity\" that goes go haywire in the human mind . This kind of charac- back to KANE and derives in part from a growing ter evokes the \" Caligari figure \" in German silents , public awareness of psychology, psychiatry and the or the pestilential Evil of NOSFERATU . contradictions of the human mind . One of the points of KANE is that it is impossible to encapsulate the When an attempt is made to explain such aberra- title character, since to each acquaintance he was tions , the Medical Realism used is as unconvincing a different person . Therefore , an attempt to discover as artificial settings and back projection . The prob- Truth by joining together the many fragments that lem is one of over-Simplification , usually with a cli- make up a man 's life is doomed to at least partial mactic instant-analysis and sometimes even an in- failure . The private detective similarly tries to piece stant-cure . WHITE HEAT (1949) is an ex ception , not together bits of conversation and memory-some of because its psychology is particularly subtle , but which may, or may not, be consciously, or uncon- because the audience is kept from laughing at the sciously , falsified. Although the Truth is always elu- mother-fixated killer by the force of Cagney's acting , sive and unexpected , and usually disillusioning, the the no-nonsense drive of Raoul Walsh 's direction , private eye manages to find it out and expose the and the amoral intensity of the film 's violence . The real killer , just as Welles eventually shows the au- disappointing revelations at the end of SPELLBOUND dience-but not the investigator-the significance of (1945), THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1946) , and SECRET \" Rosebud .\" In CROSSFIRE , the murderer is identified , BEYOND THE DOOR (1948) are less significant than explained , and neatly eliminated; yet the patholog- everything that leads up to them . For most of their ical liar remains an integral part of the world , and length these films work hard at creating an atmo- the oppressive atmosphere of unattached hatred is sphere of unknown terror, of menace that can strike not dispelled . These films maintain a balance be- at any time from any source. The main character twee n yo u-can ' t-bel ieve-wh at-anyon e-te lis-yo u is usually physically or psychologically helpless, and (paranoia) an d th e-truth-will-set-you-free-if-on Iy-you so the whole world becomes potentially hostile and can-find-it (catharsis) though they still lean toward threatening. This is true for characters who are blind the latte r. In both THE SNAKE PIT and SPELLBOUND , (MAN IN THE DARK , 1953), confined to a wheelchair the protagonist is cured upon discovering facts from (REAR WINDOW , 1954), in a sickbed (SORRY WRONG the past that had caused the illness . But it is only NUMBER , 1948), or mute (THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE). a short step from this in-between state to the greater, unsolveable ambiguities of RASHOMON and Harold As George Brent tells the heroine in SPIRAL Pinter. STAIR CASE , \" Don 't trust anyone! \" This advice is espe- cially appropriate since Brent turns out to be the The complexities and contradictions of Truth and psychotic who tries to kill her. The inability to believe human personality seemed to obsess many film- and trust anyone, not even a person you know well makers during this period . Popular acceptance of and see every day, was manifested again and again Freudian psychology was reflected in dozens of films during the Forties and Fifties. Especially common during the Forties, and the fact that psychodrama were stories about a woman who discovers that her so easily metamorphized into movie melodrama was husband is really a madman plotting to kill her, or more than just a concession to mass taste. It was to drive her insane. SUSPICION (1941), GASLIGHT a shock to realize that man was not, after all , master (1944) , and DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944) anticipated the of his fate, but simply a bundle of conditioned re- trend , followed by UNDERCURRENT (1946) , THE TWO sponses predetermined by childhood experiences. MRS . CARROLLS (1947) , LOVE FROM A STRANGER Added to this is the conclusion that maniacs are (1947), SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (1948) , SLEEP MY not readily identified ; in fact, they often look and LOVE (1948) , CAUGHT (1949) , CAUSE FOR ALARM act like everyone else. All of this inspired doubt (1951) , SUDDEN FEAR (1952) , and others . Significant about one's friends and acquaintances-what neu- variations include THE CONSPIRATOR (1950), in which rosis or psychosis might lurk beneath that seemingly the woman discovers that her husband Robert Tay- normal surface? In a way , melodrama was the most lor is really a Red spy, and I MARRIED A MONSTER 42 WINTER 1971 -72

FROM OUTER SPACE (1958) , which puts the same story about twins and schizophrenics, always with one into a science-fiction conte xt. of the pair Good and the other the embodiment of Evil. In THE DARK MIRROR (1946) a psych iatrist finds The approach to these \" double life \" films , in it difficult to tell which Olivia de Havilland is the evil which a seemingly nice husband turns out to be one , and in the romantic soap opera A STOLEN LIFE quite another person under the surface, was not (1946), Bette Davis poses as her accidentally killed , usually one of scientific interest, or even of sympa- not-so-nice twin . thetic understanding; fear was the major emotion evoked , with the unexplored territory of the mind The filmic conception of actual schizophrenia is inspiring a dread of the Unknown. So it is not summed up in the titles of two films about women surprising that horror films in the Forties became with split personalities : BEWITCHED (1945) and POS- oriented around the mind . Eerie feelings and occur- SESSED (1947) . The subject was still of interest in rences that earlier would have been given a super- 1957, but the films made then (LIZZIE ; THE THREE natural origin are now explained as delusions and FACES OF EVE) were closer to objective case histories other tricks of the mind. For example, the ghostly than fear-inspiring horror films , though they did corpse of Cabman Gray in the frightening clima x approach the subject with a degree of journalistic of THE BODY SNATCHER (1945) is simply a figment of the persecuted Dr. MacFarlane 's imagination . awe . Another variation was the reincarnation story, Clearly, the admonition about not trusting anyone extends to , \" Don 't even trust yourself,\" with the inspired by the Bridey Murphy case and seen in THE human brain considered an unknown force with SEARCH FOR BRIDEY MURPHY (1956) , I'VE LIVED BEFORE infinite powers and possibilities that can influence (1956) , BACK FROM THE DEAD (1957) , and THE UNDEAD man without his even knowing it. The disembodied (1957). Hitchcock's VERTIGO (1958) was the best- head that introduces Universal 's Inner Sanctum made, most atmospheric evocation of this other- mysteries (1943-'45) summed this up in its comments worldliness , but it was weakened by a cop-out ex- about the mind: \" It destroys, distorts, creates mon- planation. A slightly different kind of possession sters-commits murder. Yes, even you , without occurs in the second version (1953) of Ku rt Siod- knowing , can commit murder! \" mak's novel DONOVAN 'S BRAIN , and the most mys- tically Germanic one, emphasizing the scientist's T HE FRANKENSTEIN FILMS first tried giving loss of his own body and existence to the powerful the Monster a new brain in 1941 (GHOST OF will of a \" dead\" businessman . Without imitators is FRANKENSTEIN) ; as a result he suffered an A DOUBLE LIFE (1948) , in which Ronald Colman identity crisis . By 1944 (HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN) , this plays an actor who confuses the role of Othello with device had degenerated into the absurdities of de- his real life. Related to these dual-identity films are mented cross-pollination , with a mad doctor plan- those involving plastic surgery , like DARK PASSAGE ning to put th e brains of two of his enemies in the (1947) and THE SECOND FACE (1950) , dealing with bodies of the wolf man and the Monster, despite changes in external , and sometimes internal , identity. his having promised the wolf man 's body to his own hunchbacked assistant. In HOUSE OF DRACULA Very often in westerns brothers or pals ended (1945), a doctor discovers the pseudo-scientific up on opposite sides of the law, and the \" good \" cause of lycanthropy: it seems that Larry Talbot's one had to realize that his onetime friend was really skull presses on his brain in such a way that when an enemy. Other films involving confused identity he thinks he's going to turn into a wolf, he actually had a character pose as someone whom he resem- grows hair and growls. The powers of the mind know bles (HOLLOW TRIUMPH, 1948) or who was killed in no bounds! Significantly, one of the few series char- the war (THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL , 1951). In acters created in horror films of the Forties was Larry PARDON MY PAST (1945) , Fred MacMurray's resem- Talbot, who alternated in a Jekyll-Hyde manner be- blance to a notorious playboy results in his incurring tween normal and violent identities. the other man 's debts and enemies. A character is hired to impersonate a miSSing rich man in THIS SIDE To find an earlier trend in which characters had OF THE LAW (1950) , and in THE MAN WITH MY FACE dual identities, one must go back to the German (1951) a businessman discovers that someone else silents , and their fascination with an individual and has \" taken over\" his life. Even adventure his shadow or mirror reflection , as in the various storieS-THE BRIGAND and THE PRISONER OF ZENDA versions of THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE ; similar are THE (both 1952)-contained this device. HANDS OF ORLAC , and the disguises in DR . MABUSE , DER SPIELER and SPIONE . In 1941 , a new such trend These are all examples of characters whose was activated by the remake of DR . JEKYLL AND MR . identities are confused or disguised, usually for their HYDE , with the emphasis on psychological rather own personal purposes . By the Fifties, though , fear than phYSical differences. Horror-mystery films of this had developed into a more elaborate para- about Jack the Ripper murderers were especially noia, with large-scale secret plotting involved. As popular in 1944-45 (THE LODGER ; HANGOVER SQUARE ; in the German silent films , it seems as though a THE BRIGHTON STRANGLER) , just as Jack had ap- Dr. Mabuse has agents planted everywhere, observ- peared in two earlier German pictures , WAXWORKS ing and manipulating others. Infiltration of this sort and PANDORA 'S BOX . was sometimes treated as a menace , and some- times the only way to expose criminals with respect- It is only a small step from Jekyll-Hyde to films able fronts is to use their own unscru pulous methods , like having an agent pose as a gang member, make friends , and then betray them . This, for example, FILM COMMENT 43

is what Cary Grant has Ingrid Bergman do to ex pose CONFIDENTIAL (1957) , and THE CASE AGAINST BROOKLYN Claude Ra ins in NOTORIOUS ( 1946), and what Ed- (1958) . mond O ' Brien does to eliminate James Cagney in WHITE HEAT . Fritz Lang 's THE BIG HEAT (1953) was the best of these. Here, a police detective continues to A typ ic al unspectacular infiltration film is ILLEGAL investigate a supposed suioide despite orders to ENTR Y (1'9 49) , about the work of the Immigration stop , and as he gathers evidence he realizes that Servic e in track ing down ruthless smugglers of a much larger problem is involved , and that even al iens . When Howard Duff is asked to make friends his superiors are supporting it through willing inac- with a girl who is involved , in order to gather infor- tion. It is basically a case of one man against an mation , he replies that that approach is \" hitting a all-pervasive \"conspiracy\" headed by a single, little low.\" A government official replies , \" When powerful Mabuse-like leader. More typical , but also people are being murdered , we can throwaway the powerfully presented , was Phil Karlson 's THE PHENIX rule book.\" Ironically, the hero usually ends up CITY STORY (1955). Supposedly based on fact , it had using the same methods as his enemy and becoming its first quarter devoted to interviews with the people as ruthl ess as those he is out to eliminate , a point involved ; its second quarter set up the situation in made in Welles ' TOUCH OF EVIL . Most of these films , the fictional re-creation ; and the last half was a though , refuse to acknowledge that the hero is strong , though not particularly visual or subtle, dose tainted by his activities , since his goal is Good and of justice-outraged melodrama. It ends with hero the enemy 's is Evil. Richard Kiley finally getting on the phone to some outside,uncontaminated territory and asking for help. In westerns , the rule book is also thrown away- i.e. disregarding self-respect , the rights of others, Several science-fiction / horror films had similar and the possibility of being wrong about some- conceptions, only with the \" conspiracy\" and \" con- one-a situation acceptable in a story set during an tamination \" originating from outer space. The films era that predates \" civilized \" law. Often a lone man retain , though , the situation of one man against a (Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Rory Calhoun) takes society composed of people who look like his reli- it upon himself to clean up a town which is usually able friends , but who have been \" taken over\" by the so corrupt that the upright citizens and officials are invaders. Infiltration through gaining possession of either on the payroll or too scared to complain. So men 's minds is what the Cold War was supposedly the hero is placed in conflict with the repre- all about , this science-fiction variation is more dis- sentatives of Law and Justice; since they have be- tant from reality than the criminal conspiracy, but come corrupt , it is up to him to set things straight. it is possibly more effective in crystalizing and con- In most of these movies it is perfectly clear that one veying the semi-supernatural view of the menace side is go o d and one is evil , but the fact remains that was held , and the crippling fear and paranoia that o ne man decides for himself that everyone else it caused . is wrong , and then vio lently implements that deci- sion . Most of the time these men must be viewed This approach includes INVADERS FROM MARS as \" suppo rting \" the approach of Red baiters , yet (1953) , IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953) , and I the same situations can also be used (in HIGH NOON , MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958), but for example) as a statement in favor of the individual INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) remains the who sticks by his bel iefs and sense of what is right, best example , as people 's bodies and minds are though he must do so alone-i. e. the \" unfriendly possessed by \" pods\" from outer space. Only close witness .\" This interchangeability makes it even friends and relatives sense that someone , who in clearer how ambiguous things had become, since every respect appears to be the right person , is really both sides-the blacklisters and the blacklisted- a pod person . Eventually,Dr.Bennell can trust no one, were doing what they considered right. The morality since even his friends have been taken over and in these movies was usually clear-cut ; even so , it converted. Except for a girlfriend , he is totally alone is not always easy to deduce what the filmmaker against this conspiracy or epidemic that has spread would have said in a HUAC committee room . through the town , and against his former friends who try to force conformity on him. The fears here The majority of modern stories deali ng with these are the same ones felt in most of the films already situations involved organized crime-with infiltration, mentioned: that of losing self-identity, individuality, inability to be sure who your friends are, and one the quality of feeling and emotion that makes one man against a wide-ranging conspiracy. The 1950- \" human ,\" and that of never being able to know '51 Kefauver hearings investigating crime in Ameri- what's going on inside another person and whether ca-televised across the country-provided consid- he might attack or betray you. Like the hero of THE erable impetus for th is kind of storyline. There were PHENIX CITY STORY, Dr. Bennell finally manages to numerous exposes of big-city syndicates in which make contact with an outside area still uncontami- an individual fights a seemingly hopeless battle nated . Related films include PANIC IN THE STREETS against corruption that controls everyone to whom (1950) , THE KILLER THAT STALKED NEW YORK (1950) , he turns for help. Often the titles of these pictures and NO PLACE TO HIDE (1956) , all involving hunts for had the name of a city followed by the word \" Con- individuals who unknowingly carry disease germs fidential \" or \" Story \": KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL that could infect an entire city . (1952), LAS VEGAS STORY (1952), UNDERWORLD STORY (1950), NEW ORLEANS UNCENSORED (1955) , NEW YORK INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS takes a contrast- CONFIDENTIAL (1955) , CHICAGO SYNDICATE (1955) , IN- ing position to that of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL SIDE DETROIT (1955), HOUSTON STORY (1956) , CHICAGO (1951), which is solidly in favor of Authority. Klaatu 's final speech about his planet's solution to war 44 WINTER 1971-72

sounds suspiciously like one lof the townspeople ti o n and our culture and warn us that if we dare to trying to convince Dr. Bennell to view their lack of emotion as a virtue. Klaatu 's people have created retrieve them , we will be hit with the full recrimination robots with absolute and irrevocable power over their creators in case s of aggression ; this super po- of the blacklist-or whatever of their deadly punitive lice force (the United Nations?) , unswayed by human feel ings , is able to decide objectively who the ag - measures they can devise. \" In other words , Dr. gressor is and to destroy him . As Klaatu puts it, man would be giving up no freedom except that to act Mabuse-the \" devil\" -livesl irresponsibly. But he would also be giving a ma- chine-the objective \" scientific \" mind-the sole right John Howard Lawson has his own Mabuse- to decide what is an irresponsible act. Thus DA Y advocates the loss of self-determination and the paranoia, ex pressed in Film in the Battle o f Idea s. right to be a flawed human being that INVASION rejects. \" The Wall Street monopolists ... have appointed One of the reasons why INVASION is memorable themselves the 'saviors of Western Civilization ' and why it continues to remain pertinent is that , rather than taking a partisan stand on a specific, which means, in less guarded language, total war ' temporary issue, it deals with fear on a broader, more subjective level. Because of this, one can see against the majority of the world 's population . In several different viewpoints in the situation of the hero. Dr. Bennell is probably meant as an individu- order to undertake this insane task , all oppOSition alist seeking to avoid the enforced conformity of his society: the unfriendly w itness resisting HUACian within the United States must be crushed.\" He sees thought-control. However, the conspiracy to gain thought control is equally real to a HUAC supporter, insidious subversion , via film propaganda, as part who sees Communists as coldly calculating c reatures without human emotion and controlled by an outside of \" an aggressive plan for the United States to force . The \" pods\" could also be members of a crimi- nal syndicate-or the henchmen of Dr. Mabuse. Not control the world by military force after the end of surprisingly, Daniel Mainwaring wrote the scripts of both INVASION and THE PHENI X CITY STOR Y. ( Don Sie- World War 11. \" As a result , he criticizes FUR Y (1936) gel , who directed INVASION, has only said that the pods remind him of movie producers .) and THE WELL (1951) for depi c ting \" the violence of Actually, INVASION captures the so c ial mood , human nature\" and the \" emotional instability\" of without pretentions, much better than do more direct films . So , one is tempted to think that the mobs, hence of the Masses, because this denigrates failure of the more activist screenwriters to work on major projects during these years is not necessarily the Masses and casts doubt on the inherent whole- the great loss to the medium that they and their partisans make it seem . someness of the People. As his book progresses, The prior credits of men like John Howard Law- Lawson sounds less like a Si xt ies Marx ist and more son or Nedrick Young are not especially impressive (ALGIERS , 1938; ACTION IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC , 1943; like a Thirties Sicilian named Capra. JOE PALOOKA IN THE KNOCKOUT , 1947; RUSTY LEADS THE WAY , 1948). Certainly the much-mentioned Certain other blacklisted filmmakers offer more BLOCKADE (1938) has only one virtue : that it tried against considerable pressure to say something thoughtful comments. Dalton Trumbo concluded , about the Spanish Civil War while that war was going on . Otherw ise , this \" inspirational \" film is sentimen- about the blacklist era, that \" it will do no good to talized and sometimes just silly in its attempt to ideal- ize the noble peasant observed at his noble labor search for villains or heroes or saints or devils be- in the beautiful noble soil from which he seems inseparable-a landscape which evokes a back- cause there were none, there were only victims. ground of choral singing right out of the Mormon Tabernacle. Some suffered less than others, some grew and As late as 1961 Nedri c k Young naively rejected some diminished , but in the final tally we were all \" modern \" writers for doubting man's Goodness. He criticized them for \" concluding that the evolution victims . .. none of us-right, left or center-emerged of man is the basic corrupter , that our social night- mares are endemic to the beast within us.\" Young from that lo ng nightmare without sin .\" spoke of \" the enemy,\" meaning the \" monopolists,\" \" the powerful ones\" who \" swallow up our press, Joseph Losey, currently the most successful of invade our magazines, obscure our poetries, reduce our novels, destroy our theatre, humiliate our tradi- these still-active men , said in 1964, about his recent films: \" They are not self-satisfied . They don 't tell anybody what to do about anything . I'm not interest- ed in that anymore . .. Artists who call for state- ments and solutions are the people who are apt to abdicate thinking . What I like to do is to make films or to produce plays or to direct plays that provoke thought, that do not permit an audience to get away w ith simply accepting a readymad e, capsule statement .. . I have no ready-made statements, no ready-made answers, no easy identifications.\" Lo- sey and some of his colleagues have moved out of the transitional stage of the post-War period , and are able to make films dealing with the real c omplex- ities and depths of human nature and society. They are attempting to discard the strict distinction be- tween Good people and Bad people that was still attached to films in the postwar period . From con- tradictory characters they have moved to complex ones; from characters who seem Good but are really Evil they have moved to characters who are simulta- neously \" good\" and \" evil \"; from an initial, tentative acknowledgment that it is hard to find out the truth about people, they have begun to dramatize people w ith opposite or undiscoverable truths ; from a ,hesi- tant attribution of this quality to abnormal , melodra- matic situations they have developed an acceptance of it in everyday individuals. These tenacious sur- vivors of America 's paranoid post-War adoles- cence have travelled a long road that may soon lead to a healthy artistic maturity. mllill FILM COMMENT 45

Jacques DemLrv.,- ~YInterviewed Graham Petrie Graham Petrie teaches English and Film at McMas- sound like any other filmmaker, and turning instead ter University in Ontario . He wrote The Cinema of to the things which make him unique. Francois Truffaut published by A . S. Barnes. He has written film criticism for Film Quarterly and fiction At any given moment the accepted report of an for Encounter and Playboy and is currently comple- event is of greater importance than the event, for ting a novel. what we think about and act upon is the symbolic report and not the concrete event itself. The meaning of a book is given , in the first in- -William M. Ivins, Prints and Visual stance, not so much by its ideas as by a systematic Communications and unexpected variation of the modes of language, of narrative, or of existing literary forms. Ivins' book examines the process by which the technological inadequacy of the means of visual -M . Merleau-Ponty , The Primacy of Perception reproduction (especially of paintings and prints), from the Renaissance to the mid-nineteenth century, Although Merleau-Ponty's observation can be helped condition the Western eye to accept a limited applied to painting and filmmaking , as well as litera- and false notion of \" beauty\" that was finally des- ture, traditional film criticism has tended to follow troyed by, among other things , the invention of the pattern of traditional literary criticism in its con- photography, with its apparent ability to reproduce cern to discover the \" ideas \" behind a work of art. exactly and truthfully what was set before it. The The auteur theory, for example, whatever its other twentieth century filmmaker has inherited a medium advantages , has generally contented itself with an that can recreate the \" concrete event\" more ac- examination of the thematic material ' present in a curately than any which preceded it; if he sees filmmaker's work and with the assumption that, once himself consciously as an artist , he will want to turn a satisfactory continuity has been established there, mere \" visual reporting \" into \" visual expression\" the director's greatness can be taken as proved . and manipulate the innumerable opportunities open Jacques Demy's films have suffered more than most to him in the ways in which a scene can be shot from this limitation: a critic searching for serious and the processed film rearranged . Later, the film- thematic substance can easily find them trivial and maker became aware that the camera itself was not lightweight, while defenders of Demy usually argue as objective as it had seemed, that the \" concrete that, despite the glitter and apparent frivolity of the event\" was altered simply by the fact of being pho- surface , serious moral ideas are waiting to be un- tographed . The camera sets an artificial frame covered once this has been thrown aside. The ob- around the subject and distorts size , distance and session with establishing a solid \" content\" for the spatial perspective; more than this, each viewer films seems to have affected even Demy himself, creates for himself a different version of the screen image , responding to , and perhaps literally seeing DEMY: I don 't like labels that classify you and such things as color and depth in a totally different file you away as a little 'romantic .' Perhaps LOLA way from his neighbor. was romantic, but LES PARAPLUIES DE CHERBOURG Despite all the evidence, both technical and psy- is not a romantic film. It's a very realistic film. It's chological, that the camera never conveys to the about a young love affair that is broken up by the viewer exactly what he would see if he were looking at the photographed object; despite the realization Algerian War. The people are very realistic and have that we have simply replaced one convention of plenty of problems and in the end their life is des- seeing by another, the tendency of film criticism is troyed as a result of the Algerian War. It's a very to argue for visual (as well as psychological) realism as the chief characteristic of cinema as an art. As cruel film and a very realistic one; when they find has been often enough pointed out, the dichotomy between the \" illusory\" and the \"reporting\" attri- each other again at the end there 's nothing possible butes of film were realized as early as Melies and for them any longer, their lives are quite different, Lumiere. For the greater part of the history of the they 've gone different ways. And so because their feature film , however, most filmmakers accepted a formula that presented characters and situations is music and color and it 's a charming film , a poetic one . .. It might be worthwhile leaving aside for the moment those elements which can be torn out of Demy's films and re-arranged to make him look and 46 WINTER 1971-72

which could be taken as \" real ,\" yet were created narrow pink ones . In one scene th e mother is set by means of the illusionary devices-black-and- against th is background dressed in a robe w ith white film , sound effects, studio sets, back projec- green , pink and white stripes , and Genevieve is seen tion , camera angles and movement, trick pho- later in a dress that reverses the pattern of the tography, changes of focus and lens, background wallpaper of her bedroom-green flowers on a pin k music and editing-inherent to the cinema as a background as against pink flowers on a green whole and so much taken for granted that critics background . The mother is dressed almost invari- seldom bothered to make more than the most per- ably in pink or at least with some pink or rose- functory comments on them . Few seem to have paid colored accessory, such as the shawl she wears much attention to the parado x that the \" real \" world when Roland comes to have dinner with them . The and the \" real \" people they were writing about were green baize table in the shop allows Demy to set based so solidly and smoothly on deception. up some nice color harmonies between that, the mother's pin k suit, and the green-and-pink back- At th e present moment, however, this kind of ground . Genevieve is often dressed in pink too , most unawareness is no longer poss ibl e. Filmmakers have noticeably in the scene of her quarrel over Guy with begun to stress either that what they are creating her mother, where the latter wears this time an is totally artificial by its very nature ( Pasolini 's \" poetic antagonistic red . The tender, sexual colors create , cinema \") and that the characters and events are not just an atmosphere , but a closed environment to be judged in that light, or , that the people they within which the mother and daughter move and are showing are real people living their normal lives into which they blend , and which the former wishes in front of the camera , and that a basic minimum to keep totally under her control. or substructure of technical activity has to be ac- cepted simply in order to get th em on film . In the The outside world which threatens this harmony latter category would be film s as diverse as the is presented in more violent , clashing colors-the ag it-prop of Godard in SEE YOU AT MAO [BRITISH various shades of red for the dancehall , the garage SOUNDS], the mi xture of personal and political con- in which Guy works , and the bar in which he picks cerns in William Klein ' s ELDRIDGE CLEAVER , BLACK up the prostitute (\" You can call me Jenny\" ). Jenny's PANTHER , and Warhol 's interest in people just being room is purple , the cafe in which Guy meets Made- themselves in front of the c amera . leine after his aunt's death is orange , the wall of the alleyway outside his aunt's flat is a rather sickly Demy has expressed great admiration for Warhol olive-green and in the scene in which Guy and in particular and American Underground film in Genevieve walk home before their first night to- general: \" Because they are a kind of negation of gether, this color is held in frame along with a back- cinema-yet positive. A new way of filming , of di- ground poster in stark red and yellow , injecting a recting , a new language, and new ideas.\" Perverse- disturbing and perhaps forebod ing visual note into ly, perhaps , his own most recent film PEAU D 'ANE , the aural and physical harmony of the rest of the made in 1970 after the visit to America which he shot. Guy 's bedroom , however, is in a blue that says opened his eyes to a whole new complex of complements better the soft colors of Genevieve's social , political and aesthetic ideas, is probably his own world , and the jeweler's shop in which the two most artificial and \" unreal \" to date. women meet Roland , the suitor favored by the S0J11C (',olc.,.·s LOLA. Alan Scott. PETRIE: Have you any theories about the use of color in films? DE MY : No , I'm not interested in that. I don 't like theories , I believe firmly in impulse . It 's true that ea c h color expresses something, but that is uncon- scious. I know, for example, that for LES PARAPLUIES I wanted the umbrella shop, which is run by a woman , to be in very tender colors, rather sex ual, rose colored, purplish-blue, violet. I wanted to con- vey a partic ular universe, but I don 't think that's really important. PETRIE : Do you plan the colors of a film in ad- vance? DEMY: Certainly. Each detail, because I like that. I'm very fond of painting and I think that cinematic representation is also pictorial, in the sense that you offer a picture to the spectator and this should be something worth looking at, and you can always shape it for him. So I like to con cern myself with each detail, for that reason . The wallpaper of the umbrella shop is designed in broad rose-colored vertical stripes divided by narrower green ones. The wallpaper of the living- room of the flat Genevieve and her mother live in reverses this-broad green stripes interspersed with FILM COMMENT 47

mother, is decorated in an acceptable pink . touch anything. I filmed what was there, I filmed The world of LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT , the reality. On the other hand, with LES PARAPLUIES , I modified everything, I transformed it all. In MODEL however, is harmonious throughout. Demy uses a SHOP I didn 't want to change anything. Another thing very wide color spectrum , in which blue, rose , yel- was that I didn 't have much money to make the low, lilac and orange predominate, but the shades film and so I had to be content with what I had he employs are almost invariably soft, pastel ones already. And the reality seemed far finer than any- (the chief exception being the deliberately vulgar thing I could have invented myself. puce of the dresses Delphine and So lange wear for their dance routine at the fair). He makes no attempt MODEL SHOP is dominated by shriekingly vulgar whatever at a naturalistic use 'of color : in every purples, mauves, bright pinks and dark blues, oc- scene, whether indoors or outdoors, costumes and casionally combined with bright yellows and greens. decor blend and harmonize in perfectly balanced The effect, as Demy himself said of the visual impact of Sunset Boulevard , is like a slap in the face. The patterns. This at times involves changing the \" real \" film makes sustained and systematic use of visual world , and the walls and shutters of the houses that ugliness to create an environment and mood that surround the central square, for example, are paint- make any verbal explanation of the central charac- ed in the soft blues and pinks , lilacs and yellows , ter's behavior superfluous ; in this it modifies a cen- needed to counterpoint the brighter shades of these tral linguistic code of the cinema that insists on colors worn by the dancers. In street scenes away prettiness at almost all costs. There is no escape from the square, the same sort of thing happens: in one dance sequence , a little stall painted yellow f~r George from the visual chaos and h.arshness and blue is kept in view at the right- hand side of the frame, and a cluster of balloons, blue, yellow, around him and even if Demy did not create any green and orange hangs outside it. These colors particular scenic effects for this film , the· relent- are picked up everywhere in the dancers , dressed lessness with which combinations of Hie basic color mainly in green , orange and blue , and in the yellow pattern follow George around is certainly no ac- and rose of the two sisters moving through the cident. He wakes in a room in which every major crowd . The cumulative effect is not just that of a item of the decor-blanket, poster on the wall , a world in which the color correspondences of the statuette of an owl , a wigstand-employ the motifs clothes worn by the characters gives a clue to their of purple , pink and blue . He dresses in purple T-shirt · actual or future relationships (the lilac dress of So- and trousers , and his girl appears in a robe that is lange and the pink sh irt and mauve jacket of Andy); a hideous efflorescence of purple, blue, pink, yellow more than this, the whole visual world seems ready and green. (\" hideous \" in terms of \"good taste \" , but to adapt or respond to the characters themselves-a vastly exhilarating for the artist and ultimately com- yellow-colored house is seen on the screen and then pulsive for the audience). She then proceeds to Delphine moves into frame , dressed in yellow ; in admire herself in a purple-fram~d mirror with a pur- the long-shots of the sisters ' performance at the fair ple towel hanging near it. (Gloria is also dressed it can be seen that most of the audience is clothed in purple on her two later appearances .) Driving in shades of dark red and dark pink that match their through town in his car he picks up a hitch-hiker dresses. Throughout the film the two girls wear whose purse is decorated in pink , blue and yellow, colors that emphasize sensuality, naturalness, and this combination turns up again in the poster spontaneity-daffodil-yellow , rose , lilac ':' on the wall of the first friend he visits and in the car owned by the friends who run an underground PETRIE : In LES DEMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT you newspaper. Purple or mauve appear in the decor use very gentle, harmonizing colors ; in MODEL SHOP of the friend 's house (the wall) , the cafe (the juke- the colors are very violent. Why is this? box), parts of the interior and exterior of the model shop itself and the bedspread and pillowcases of DEMY : Because it corresponded to my vision of the room he is taken to on his first visit and the wallpaper and cushions of his second ; it dominates America, which is a gaudy, baroque vision, where what we are shown of Lola's apartment, appearing in the bedstead, alarm clock , and lampshade of her the whole idea of taste, this [French] good taste bedroom and in her purple and green telephone . Pink is similarly pervasive in all these settings , and that has been instilled into us like a vaccine, doesn 't much of the interior of the model shop is a garish red. exist. American bad taste took me by storm, I loved it. I say \" bad taste, \" but that's wrong, one shouldn 't PEAU D'ANE returns to the method of the earlier talk about \" bad taste, \" it 's more an absence of taste, films with a deliberately artificial and imposed color scheme. Demy says he wanted the film to be very it's ideas thrown together in a complete muddle and \" classical \" in its structure , and this effect is achieved to a large extent by the very formal pat- you take what you want out of it. So this debauch terning of the colors . On the one hand is the Blue of colors took hold of my imagination when I arrived Kingdom of the fairly tale, where lilac, purple, blue in the United States, and I wanted to recreate this. and yellow are almost universal-in sheets, furniture, clothing , parrot and even the skin color of the ser- PETRIE : Did you find all these things as they vants (blue); on the other is the Red Kingdom , where were, or did you paint some of them specially? scarlet, red and orange predominate-in sheets, furniture, clothing , and the color of horses and DEMY: No, I made it like a documentary, I didn 't \" It is always wise , when talking about colors in a film , to take into acc ount that , even with highly-sensit ive modern fi lm stoc k , it IS still possibl e for sh ades to vary or even c hange acco rding to differen ces in lighting from shot to shot, o r, if the c ame ra moves . so as to bring one c olor into a different iuxtapos ition with another, even in the sam e shot. Deteriorat io n in print quality c an also cause c olor values to alter alarmingly . My co mm ents are made o n the basis of viewing s of good prints o f the films and for LE S DEM OI SELLES, w ith oc casional , and skeptical , referenc e to the color reprodu c- tions in the sc ript of the film published by Solar. 48 WINTER 1971-72