Claude Chabrol and the Evolution of the Thriller

Claude Chabrol (1930 - 2010)

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

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

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

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

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Evolution of the Thriller
Claude Chabrol

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

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


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

The Lady in the Lake

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Kiss Me Deadly

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

Bazin on Bogart: The Immanence of Death

Each time he began a sentence he revealed a wayward set of teeth. The set of his jaw irresistibly evoked the rictus of a spirited cadaver, the final expression of a melancholy man who would fade away with a smile. That is indeed the smile of death.

Segments from André Bazin's enlightening piece on Humphrey Bogart, written at the time of actor's passing for Cahiers du Cinema. This is translated by Phillip Drummond for an anthology of Cahiers articles, published in 4 volumes by Harvard University Press, 1985.

Who does not mourn this month for Humphrey Bogart, who died at fifty six of stomach cancer and half a million whiskeys? The passing of James Dean principally affected members of the female sex below the age of twenty; Bogey's affects their parents or at least their elder brothers, and above all it is men who mourn. Beguiling rather than attractive, Bogey delighted the women in his films; no fear of him leaving millions of widows, like Valentino or James Dean; for the spectator he seems to me to have been more the hero with whom one identifies than the hero one loves. The popularity of Bogart is virile. Women may miss him, but I know of men who would weep for him were not the unseemliness of emotion written all over this tough guy's tomb. No flowers, no wreaths.

Much has already been written about Bogart, his persona and his myth. But none put it better, perhaps, than Robert Lachenay more than a year ago, from whom I cannot help but quote the following prophetic lines: “Each time he began a sentence he revealed a wayward set of teeth. The set of his jaw irresistibly evoked the rictus of a spirited cadaver, the final expression of a melancholy man who would fade away with a smile. That is indeed the smile of death.”

It now seems clear indeed that none more so than Bogart, if I may speak thus, epitomized the immanence of death, its imminence as well. Not so much, moreover, of that which one gives or receives as of the corpse on reprieve which is within each of us. And if his death touches us so closely, so intimately, it is because the raison d'etre of his existence was in some sense to survive. Thus in his case death's victory is twofold, since it is victorious less over life than over resistance to dying.

I will perhaps make myself better understood by contrasting his character with that of Gabin (to whom one could compare him in so many ways). Both men are heroes of modern cinematographic tragedy, but with Gabin (I am of course speaking of the Gabin of Le Jour se lève and Pépé le Moko) death is, after all, at the end of the adventure, implacably awaiting its appointment. The fate of Gabin is precisely to be duped by life. But Bogart is man defined by fate. When he enters the film it is already the pale dawn of the following day; absurdly victorious from the macabre combat with the angel, his face marked by what he has seen and his bearing heavy with all he knows, having ten times triumphed over his own death he will doubtless survive for us a further time.

Not the least admirable feature of the character of Bogart is that he improved, became sharper, as he progressively wasted away. This tough guy never dazzled on the screen by dint of physical force or acrobatic agility. He was neither a Gary Cooper nor a Douglas Fairbanks! His successes as a gangster or as a detective are due first to his ability to take a punch, then to his perspicacity. The effectiveness of his punch testifies less to his strength than to his sense of repartee. He places it welt true, but above all at the right moment. He strikes little, but always when his opponent is wrong-footed. And then there is the revolver which becomes in his hands an almost intellectual weapon, the argument that dumbfounds.

Bogart is, without doubt, typically the actor/myth of the war and post-war period. There is some secret harmony in the coincidence of these events: the end of the pre-war period, the arrival of a certain novelistic style in cinematographic écriture, and, through Bogart, the triumph of interiorization and of ambiguity. One can in any case easily see in what respect Bogart differs from those pre-war heroes for whom Gary Cooper might be the prototype: handsome, strong, noble, expressing much more the optimism and efficiency of a civilization than its anxiety. Even the gangsters are the conquering and active type, Western heroes who have gone astray, the negative version of industrious audacity. In this period only perhaps George Raft shows signs of that introversion, a source of ambiguity which the hero of The Big Sleep will exploit to a sublime degree. In Key Largo Bogart overcomes Edward G. Robinson, the last of the pre-war gangsters; with this victory something of American literature probably makes its way into Hollywood. Not through the deceptive intermediary of the scenarios but through the human style of the character. Bogart is perhaps, in the cinema, the first illustration of “the age of the American novel.”

The special ambiguity of the roles which first brought Bogart success in the noir crime film is thus to be found again in his filmography. Moral contradictions meet as much within the roles as in the paradoxical permanence of the character caught between two apparently incompatible occupations.

But is not this precisely the proof that our sympathy went out, beyond even the imaginary biographies and moral virtues or their absence, to some profounder wisdom, to a certain way of accepting the human condition which may be shared by the rogue and by the honorable man, by the failure as well as by the hero. The Bogart man is not defined by his accidental respect, or his contempt, for bourgeois virtues, by his courage or his cowardice, but above all by this existential maturity which gradually transforms life into a stubborn irony at the expense of death.

Cowboy, Wonderland, History and Myth

اين مقاله در شماره ويژه ژانر وسترن (292) در ماهنامه فيلم چاپ شده است. ترجمه آن (به احتمال زياد) كار نياز ساغري است و يا ياسمن صوفي. اصل مقاله از كتابِ «فيلم‌هاي وسترن در سيري تاريخي» مي‌آيد كه انيستتوي فيلم آمريكا آن را چاپ كرده و ويراستارش جنت واكر است.

افسانه و تاريخ ِ وسترن به روايت رابرت آلتمن

ويليام جي سيمون و لوييس اسپنس

آليس در ميان خنده و گريه گفت: «اگر واقعي نبودم، قادر به گريه كردن نيز نبودم».

توديلي‌دام با حالتي حق‌به‌جانب حرف او را قطع كرد و گفت: «باورت كه نمي‌شود آن اشك‌ها واقعي‌اند؟»

از ميان آينه، لوييس كارول

بوفالوبيل و سرخ‌پوستان يا درس‌هاي تاريخي سيتينگ بول [گاو نشسته] را رابرت آلتمن به مناسبت دويستمين سالگرد استقلال آمريكا ساخت و با نمايشش در چهارم ژوئيۀ 1976، وسترن را از نظر اسطورۀ ملي و يك قالب سرگرمي‌تجاري بررسي كرد. پل نيومن بازيگر نقش ويليام اف. كودي شكارچي مشهور گاوميش وحشي آمريكايي، پيشاهنگ روابط با سرخ‌پوست‌ها و در زمان وقوع داستان، ستارۀ نمايشي از عمليات گاوچراني بود كه با عنوان «غرب وحشي بوفالوبيل»، نمايش‌هاي گاوچراني سيرك‌گونه‌اي در نقاط مختلف آمريكا اجرا مي‌كرد و در عين حال شريك مالي اين برنامه‌ها هم بود. درواقع فيلم آلتمن فرآيند اسطوره‌سازي و بازسازي تاريخ وسترن را شرح مي‌دهد و بيان مي‌كند كه روند پديد آمدن قهرمان وسترن چه‌گونه بنا نهاده شد و با لحني طنزآميز اقتدار اخلاقي قهرمان وسترن را مورد پرسش قرار مي‌دهد و نتايج اعمال او را بر زندگي بوميان آمريكايي نشان مي‌دهد.

بوفالوبيل و سرخ‌پوستان حكايت تمدن، پيشرفت، اعمال قهرمانانه و پيروزي از يك طرف و ظلم و سركوب، راندن، حذف و شكست دادن از سوي ديگر است. وقايع فيلم بين 1885 تا 1890 (زماني كه «گاو نشسته» در نمايش‌هاي بوفالوبيل به او پيوست و سپس در استندينگ راك كشته شد)، كشتار wounded knee و با فاصلۀ كمي‌پس از آن، پايان جنگ براي استيلا بر جمعيت بوميان آمريكايي مي‌گذرد. در 1922 يوجين منلاو رودس، يك كابوي اهل نيومكزيكو و نويسندۀ داستان‌هاي وسترن، كودي را متهم كرد كه با تهيۀ نمايش‌هاي خود مسئول به‌وجود آوردن دركي غلط از كابوي‌ها و غرب آمريكاست. همان‌طور كه يكي از شخصيت‌هاي فيلم آلتمن مي‌گويد: «آن‌ها مي‌خواستند دنيا را در قالب مفاهيم خود بگنجانند». در نخستين سكانس فيلم، حتي پيش از اين‌كه اولين تصوير ديده شود، صداي بيدارباش سوارنظام به‌گوش مي‌رسد و سپس دوباره اين صدا شنيده مي‌شود و اولين تصوير پرچم آمريكاست كه بر فراز قلعه‌اي در غرب آمريكا در اهتزاز است. وقتي دوربين به بالا تيلت مي‌كند، كوه‌هاي پربرف را مي‌بينيم و نام تهيه‌كنندگان فيلم (دينو دلارنتيس و ديويد ساسكايند) با حروفي كه برنامه‌هاي نمايش قرن نوزدهم را تبليغ مي‌كرده‌اند، بر پرده ظاهر مي‌شود. صداي شيپور، پرچم، كوهستان و باد علامت‌دهندۀ قلعه‌اي است كه در مرز قلمرو سفيدپوستان قرار دارد و سواره‌نظامي‌دارد كه به نام ملت آمريكا در آن‌جا حاضر هستند.

پس از سه صداي شيپور، دوربين روي كوهستان پن مي‌كند و اين عنوان بر پرده ظاهر مي‌شود: «اقدام منحصربه‌فرد و دليرانۀ رابرت آلتمن در پرداختي غيرقابل‌تقليد». طنز آگاهانۀ اين عنوان نشانۀ تضاد حالت نمايشي آن با پرداخت متعارف فيلم‌هاي وسترن است (استفاده از اين كلمات درواقع يادآور پوسترهاي خود بوفالوبيل است). صدايي مردانه داستان را به‌روايتي ديگر بازگو مي‌كند: «اما اين يك بازنگري واقع‌گرايانه از وقايعي‌ست كه مرزهاي غربي آمريكا را پديد آورد». صداي راوي كه خبر از برنامۀ جدي تاريخي مي‌دهد، در تضاد با لحن عنوان‌بندي ابتداي كار به‌نظر مي‌رسد. او مي‌گويد: «اتفاقات واقعي كه قهرمانان آن زنان و مردان گشايندۀ مرزهاي آمريكا بوده‌اند». بلافاصله پس از آن‌كه راوي مشتاقانه به ستايش «استقراريافتگان گمنام» مي‌پردازد، دوربين عقب مي‌رود تا يك خانوادۀ مرزنشين را نشان دهد كه خارج كلبۀ خود به كار مشغولند و بعد درحالي‌كه راوي اشاره مي‌كند اين استقراريافتگان بايد با «خوي وحشي‌گري انسان» مبارزه كنند، گروهي از سرخ‌پوست‌ها را مي‌بينيم كه به اين خانواده حمله مي‌كنند و يك زن جوان سفيدپوست را مي‌دزدند. راوي ظاهراً با لحن مقتدرانه‌اي دربارۀ قصد و مفاهيم فيلم سخن مي‌گويد، اما صداي گرفتۀ او و لحن اغراق‌آميزش كه انگار قصد يك سخنراني مطنطن دارد، فاقد آن اقتدار است. به‌نظر مي‌رسد كه موقعيت كلامي‌اين فرد با خصوصيات خود آلتمن ــ كه در عنوان‌بندي طنزآميز ابتداي فيلم وجود دارد ــ در تضاد است. به‌زودي مي‌فهميم كه اين صداي كهنه سربازي از دستۀ اسطوره‌سازان است و اين امر قطعاً قابل‌اعتماد بودن و اقتدار صدايش را از او خواهد گرفت.

هنگام حملۀ سرخ‌پوست‌ها كه صداي فرياد و شور و غوغا برپاست، موسيقي جديدي نواخته مي‌شود كه يادآور موسيقي سيرك‌هاست. نام بازيگران بر پرده حالت طنز‌آميزي دارد، اسم شخصيت‌هاي فيلم در برابر نام بازيگران ظاهر نمي‌شود، بلكه هويت نمايشي آن‌ها ذكر مي‌گردد (مثلاً بازيگر زن، تهيه‌كننده، مسئول تبليغات، افسانه‌ساز و...). حالت سرراست بيان تاريخي ماجرا، با طنز موجود در موسيقي و شيوۀ خاص نوشتن فهرست بازيگران كم‌بها جلوه داده مي‌شود. اين بي‌ارزش ساختن وقتي بيش‌تر گسترش مي‌يابد كه صداي نامشخصي مي‌گويد:‌ «كار را متوقف كنيد» و دوباره بلافاصله صدايي ادامه مي‌دهد: «از نو شروع كنيد، يك، دو، سه...». در اين لحظه برخورد استقراريافتگان و سرخ‌پوست‌ها متوقف مي‌شود و متوجه مي‌شويم اين يك صحنۀ تمريني بوده و دوربين عقب مي‌رود و ما پشت صحنۀ اين فعاليت‌ها را مي‌بينيم. آيا اين پشت صحنۀ نمايش غرب وحشي است يا پشت صحنۀ فيلمي‌كه دربارۀ غرب وحشي ساخته مي‌شود؟

پيش از اين‌كه شخصيت اصلي فيلم را ببينيم، دو نفر ادعا مي‌كنند كه او را خلق كرده‌اند، كشف كرده‌اند و نام بوفالوبيل را بر او نهاده‌اند. نوع بيان اين افسانه ما را بر آن مي‌دارد كه در صحت ادعاي هردو ترديد كنيم. پيش از ديدن بازيگري كه نقش بوفالوبيل را بازي مي‌كند، افراد مختلفي دربارۀ او صحبت مي‌كنند و نظرهاي متعددي پيرامون او وجود دارد. وقتي بالاخره بوفالوبيل «واقعي» را سيزده دقيقه پس از شروع فيلم مي‌بينيم، صدايي او را معرفي مي‌كند: «ويليام اف. كودي: بوفالوبيل».

تصاوير بوفالوبيل در غرب وحشي همه‌جا هست و همواره او را مي‌بينيم كه خود را با تصاويرش مقايسه مي‌كند و بعضي اوقات هم مي‌بينيم كه ژستي گرفته (انگار مي‌خواهند تمثالي از او بسازند)، دستي را روي شانه گذاشته و به افق مي‌نگرد؛ به‌نظر مي‌رسد كه او محور افسانۀ خويش است. هنگام فعاليت‌هاي پشت صحنه (تمرين‌ها، مذاكرات مربوط به قراردادها...)، بيل به طرز موفقيت‌آميزي نقش قهرمانانۀ خود را ايفا مي‌كند، اما به‌هر صورت گاهي اين ژست‌ها و نمايش‌ها در تضاد با حالت خودخواهانه و كم‌تر نجيبانۀ شخصيت واقعي اوست (براي مثال بيل قرار است با آني اوكلي و دو بومي‌آمريكايي ــ «گاو نشسته» و مترجمش ويليام هلسي ــ عكس دسته‌جمعي بگيرد. وقتي قرار مي‌شود آن دو مرد كنار آني اوكلي قرار بگيرند، مي‌گويد: «طرفداران من از اين حالت خوششان نمي‌آيد»). او توصيه مي‌كند كه به سرخ‌پوست‌ها اسب كندروتري بدهند، از قناري دوستش مي‌ترسد و وقتي براي تعقيب «گاو نشسته» رهبري يك دسته را برعهده دارد، قادر به پيدا كردن وي نيست. روي صحنه و پشت صحنه لباس تمام‌عيار وسترن پوشيده، اما در حالت آزاد لباس‌هاي نامرتبي به‌تن دارد. پل نيومن كه در نقش بوفالوبيل ظاهر مي‌شود، از نقش خود به‌اندازۀ كافي فاصله مي‌گيرد تا هماهنگ با برنامۀ اصلي فيلم، بعد طنزآلودي براي نقش بسازد.

افزودن ند بانت‌لاين، نويسندۀ داستان‌هاي يك‌پولي، به فهرست بازيگراني كه شخصيت بوفالوبيل را كشف كردند و رونق بخشيدند، وسيلۀ ديگري براي نشان دادن واقعيت‌هاي اين شخصيت است. بانت‌لاين كه در عنوان‌بندي «افسانه‌ساز» ناميده مي‌شود، نقش آگاهي‌دهنده را دارد و مرتباً به شخصيت‌هاي فيلم و تماشاگران، سرشت واقعي بوفالوبيل را يادآور مي‌شود: «هيچ فرد عادي نمي‌توانست چنين بينشي داشته باشد كه اعتقادات و شهامت‌هاي نداشته‌اي را به خود اختصاص دهد و متوجه شود كه چه سود عظيمي ‌با دروغ گفتن عايدش مي‌شود.»

ساختار اسطوره‌سازي و رمزگشايي شخصيت‌هاي اسطوره‌اي در اين فيلم، نشان‌دهندۀ ميزان ناسازگاري و تضاد موجود در طرح حقايق، داستان و تصوير در قلب يك سرگرمي‌است. مهم‌ترين راهبرد فيلم در انتقاد و به چالش گرفتن اقتدار بوفالوبيل به‌عنوان قهرمان وسترن، مقايسۀ دائمي‌او با «گاو نشسته» است. مقايسۀ آن‌ها در سطوح گوناگوني صورت مي‌گيرد. براي مثال، ظاهري كه با معيارهاي ستاره بودن جور دربيايد در وجود «گاو نشسته» نيست. او لاغراندام است و براي ايام بازنشستگي به طبيعت پناه برده است. وقتي براي اولين‌بار به محل نمايش غرب وحشي مي‌آيد، تمام گروه نمايشي (بجز آني اوكلي و ند بانت‌لاين كه از قبل او را مي‌شناخته‌اند) سخن‌گوي او را به خاطر قامت درشتش با وي اشتباه مي‌گيرند. «گاو نشسته» نه‌تنها با قامت يك ستاره همخواني ندارد، بلكه از اين‌كه مثل يك ستاره رفتار كند پرهيز مي‌كند. وقتي بيل مي‌خواهد «گاو نشسته» دوباره نقش خود را در نبرد «ليتل بيگ هورن» بازي كند، او اصرار دارد كه فقط يك نمايش سواركاري اجرا كند و رقص سرخ‌پوستي انجام دهد. اين سردرگمي ‌از نظر تاريخي، نمايشي و توهم و زندگي واقعي، بر داستان‌سرايي اثر مي‌گذارد. مسألۀ بيل با هويت خود به بيگانگي وي از تصوير مربوط است (كمي‌شبيه آليس كه فكر مي‌كند براي كريسمس براي بايد پاهاي خودش يك جفت چكمه بفرستد).

در آخرين صحنۀ نمايش، بوفالوبيل با «گاو نشسته» خواهد جنگيد. ويليام هلسي در نقش «گاو نشسته» با لباس رزم ظاهر مي‌شود (سينۀ برهنه، كلاه رزم و بدن نقاشي‌شده)، پرده به عقب مي‌رود و بوفالوبيل با لبخندي ظاهر مي‌شود و موسيقي آشناي نمايش «غرب وحشي» به‌گوش مي‌رسد. با كنار رفتن پرده قله‌هاي «واقعي» ارغواني كوه‌ها را مي‌بينيم كه كنار نقاشي دكور پس‌زمينه‌اي از كوهستان ايجاد كرده است. با صداي طبل، دو جنگجو در برابر هم قرار مي‌گيرند. از اسب فرود مي‌آيند و مبارزۀ كوتاهي با يكديگر دارند. هلسي خنجري در دست دارد و بيل سلاحي ندارد. بيل به‌راحتي هلسي را زمين مي‌زند و با تشويق تماشاگران خنجر را از دست رئيس سرخ‌پوست‌ها مي‌آورد و كلاه او را به هوا پرت مي‌كند. با اين نمايش، سرخ‌پوست قابل‌احترام، عاقل، مغرور، شريف و اخلاق‌گرا ناپديد مي‌شود. دوربين نماي درشتي از بيل مي‌گيرد كه در چشمانش شادي و وحشت قابل‌مشاهده است. صحنۀ بعدي لانگ‌شاتي از تمام پشت صحنۀ نمايش «غرب وحشي» است و بعد نوشته‌هاي پايان فيلم ظاهر مي‌شود.

به‌عبارتي مي‌توان اين صحنه را تجلي اميال بوفالوبيل دانست. آخرين مقاومت ژنرال كاستر در نمايش «غرب وحشي» توسط بوفالوبيل تحقق يافته؛ بيل در نقش كاستر و هلسي در نقش «گاو نشسته». به يكي شدن شخصيت بوفالوبيل و كاستر در اوايل فيلم از طريق مشابهت در آرايش، لباس، ريش و كلاه‌گيس بلند اشاره مي‌شود كه سعي كرده گاو نشسته را قانع كند كه در «نمايش كاستر» او نقش بازي كند. «گاو نشسته» نمي‌پذيرد و مي‌گويد: «داستان آن‌گونه كه او مي‌خواهد بازگو كند، اتفاق نيفتاده است».

شايد اگر به صحنۀ آخر از ديدگاه نمادين نگاه كنيم، نتيجۀ بهتري به‌دست آيد؛ بيانيه‌اي بسيار مهم و طنزآميز درمورد سرشت ارائۀ مسائل تاريخي ــ نژادي در اسطوره‌سازي وسترن. ريچارد اسلاتلين آخرين مقاومت كاستر را يكي از نمادهاي اصلي مرزگشايي اسطورۀ وسترن مي‌داند. اهميت آن به اين دليل است كه چون كاستر در اين جنگ كشته شده و سواره‌نظام او توسط سرخ‌پوست‌هاي قبيلۀ سو نابود شدند، اسطورۀ كاستر جايگاه ويژه‌اي يافته است. همان‌طور كه ريچارد وايت مي‌گويد: «نمايش‌هاي بوفالوبيل، نمايش‌گر تجاوز سرخ‌پوست‌ها و قرباني شدن سفيدپوست‌هاست كه كاملاً با نظرهاي مورخان امروزي مغاير است». اگر وسترن كلاسيك هاليوودي دنياي روايت همگون و اصيلي را بنا مي‌كند، فيلم آلتمن ابهام، تضاد و تعارض ايجاد مي‌كند تا سنت‌شكني كند. او از طنز به‌ عنوان راهبردي انتقادي براي آگاهي بخشيدن و رازگشايي عوامل اصلي و تمثيل‌هاي ژانر استفاده مي‌كند. بي‌احترامي‌به مرده كه «گاو نشسته» آن را «تاريخ» مي‌نامد، به صورت نمايشي براي آينده درآمده و باعث اين سردرگمي‌شده كه «درسي» كه گرفته مي‌شود و عنوان دوم فيلم نيز هست، درسي‌ست از «گاو نشسته» يا براي او.

Godard's Reverse Statements

Yesterday, Jonathan Rosenbaum, frustrated from immature and even idiotic reaction to Godard’s new film, Film Socialisme, wrote in his site:

“Most striking for me in the current fracas has been the exhuming of an offensive statement Godard made to the American press 40 years ago, expressing his hope that the three astronauts on Apollo 13 would die in outer space — a statement now used simply as a way of dismissing anything Godard might possibly do or say today. Having just recently seen Film Socialisme myself, without any subtitles and with only fitful comprehension of the dialogue, I was impressed not only by the film’s singularly fresh, daring, and often beautiful employments of sound and image, but also by its tenderness towards virtually all the contemporary characters and figures in the film (including the many animals) —a virtue I don’t find in the least bit present in For Ever Mozart. I guess it’s also worth noting that Film Socialisme tries to say something about the contemporary world, Europe in particular, an impertinence that isn’t shared by such harmless, good-natured fare as Inglourious Basterds. But none of the film’s tenderness towards its own characters can be said to be extended towards the preferences, habits, expectations, or overall well-being of the mainstream reviewers at Cannes — which I suppose makes everyone else potential members of a coterie of insiders.”

I remember in another occasion, a documentary about Slavoj Žižek, I saw a picture of comrade Stalin hanging on the wall of Zizek home’s entrance hall, “to insult visitors”. Though I don’t trust his exhibitionist philosophy, but I trust him, when later he tells to the interviewer that he has written more than anybody else about the horrors of Stalinism for humanity and democracy, and by hanging this picture, he’s just addressing something “reversely”. I don’t know the context of Godard’s unacceptable and foolish comment, but I’m sure all those critics who are using this against Godard are not aware of it, too. Let’s not forget the heritage – and sometime the courage – of this reverse statements in history of French culture and just remember the other outrageous statements which were expressed, only to provoke the listeners about the catastrophic consequences of giving up to the dominant ideology and media. When Louis Aragon, another French intellectual, expressed his hatred for French army, on the verge of a war, and said “I throw up on you, from head to the feet,” (needless to say, it caused a riot at the time) from his own view, he was addressing the disastrous situation with a surrealist attitude which is not very pleasant for those who have used to lies and sweet talk.

I’m not defending Godard, but I try to not forget his cultural background and what he has done for us with one of the most comprehensive body of works in 20th century. Unfortunately, in his reckless statement he has wished the death of astronauts, but in reality, and in his works, he has saved thousands.

--Ehsan Khoshbakht

Leopard: Death, Dung, Decay

"Where Visconti poured most of his talent and feeling was into his stunning decors, particularly those embellishing his climactically anticlimactic ballroom sequence, where history executes an ironic quadrille with death, dung, decay, and disgust to the mocking strains of a hitherto undiscovered Verdi waltz." -- Andrew Sarris

An Aesthetic Participation in History: Bazin on La Terra Trema

In La Terra Trema, Visconti aimed at and unquestionably achieved a paradoxical synthesis of realism and aestheticism. Visconti has not had recourse to the effects one can produce from the juxtaposition of images. Each image here contains a meaning of its own which it expresses fully. This is the reason why it is difficult to see more than a tenuous relation between La Terra Trema and the Soviet cinema of the second half of the twenties, to which montage was essential. We may add now that it is not by means of symbolism in the imagery either that meaning manifests itself here, I mean, the symbolism to which Eisenstein resort.

The aesthetic peculiar to the image here is always plastic; it avoids any inclination to the epic. As staggeringly beautiful as the fishing fleet may be when it leaves the harbor, it is still just the village fleet, not, as in Potemkin, the enthusiasm and the support of the people of Odessa who send out the fishing boats loaded with food for the rebels. But, one may ask, where is art to take refuge if the realism one is proposing is so ascetic? Everywhere else. In the quality of the photography, especially. Our compatriot Aldo, who before his work on this film did nothing of real note and was known only as a studio cameraman, has here created a profoundly original style of image, unequaled anywhere (as far as I know) but in the short films which are being made in Sweden by Arne Sucksdorff.

The images of La Terra Trema achieve what is at once a paradox and tour de force in integrating the aesthetic realism of films like Citizen Kane with the documentary realism. If this is not, strictly speaking, the first time depth of focus has been used outside the studio, it is at least the first time it has been used as consciously and as systematically as it is here out of doors, in the rain and even in the dead of night, as well as indoors in the real-life settings of the fishermen's homes. I canot linger over the technical tour de force which this represents, but I would like to emphasize that depth of focus has naturally led Visconti (as it led Welles ) not only to reject montage but, in some literal sense, to invent a new kind of shooting script. His shots (if one is justified in retaining the term) are unusually long, some lasting three or four minutes. In each, as one might expect, several actions are going on simultaneously. Visconti also seems to have wanted, in some systematic sense, to base the construction of his image on the event itself. If a fisherman rolls a cigarette, he spares us nothing: we see the whole operation; it will not be reduced to its dramatic or symbolic meaning, as is usual with montage. The shots are often fixed frame, so people and things may enter the frame and take up position; but Visconti is also in the habit of using a special kind of panning shot which moves very slowly over a very wide arc: this is the only camera movement which he allows himself, for he excludes all tracking shots and, of course, every unusual camera angle.

The unlikely sobriety of this structure is possible only because of the remarkable plastic balance maintained a balance which only a photograph could absolutely render here. But above and beyond the merits of its purely formal properties, the image reveals an intimate knowledge of the subject matter on the part of the filmmakers. Visconti is worthy of the novelty of his triumph. Despite the poverty or even because of the simple "ordinariness" of this household of fishermen, an extraordinary kind of poetry, at once intimate and social,emanates from it.

In La Terra Trema, the actor, sometimes on camera for several minutes at a time, speaks, moves, and acts with complete naturalness, one might even say, with unimaginable grace. Visconti is from the theater. He has known how to communicate to the nonprofessionals of La Terra Trema something more than naturalness, namely that stylization of gesture that is the crowning achievement of an actor's profession. If festival juries were not what they are, the Venice festival prize for best acting should have gone to the fishermen of La Terra Trema.

In the world of cinema, it is not necessary that everyone approve every film, provided that what prompts the public's incomprehension can be compensated for by the other things. In other words, the aesthetic of La Terra Trema must be applicable to dramatic ends if it is to be of service in the evolution of cinema.

One has to take into account too, and this is even more disturbing, in view of what one has the right to expect from Visconti himself, a dangerous inclination to aestheticism. This great aristocrat, an artist to the tips of his fingers, is a Communist, too, do I dare say a synthetic one?

La Terra Trema lacks inner fire. One is reminded of the great Renaissance painters who, without having to do violence to themselves, were able to paint such fine religious frescoes in spite of their deep indifference to Christianity. I am not passing judgment on the sincerity of Visconti's communism. But what is sincerity? Obviously, at issue is not some paternalistic feeling for the proletariat. Paternalism is a bourgeois phenomenon, and Visconti is an aristocrat. What is at issue is, maybe, an aesthetic participation in history.

-- Andre Bazin (Esprit, 1948)

For Love of the Movies

نقد فيلم در دنياي امروز: سرانجام همه به خانه‌هایمان می‌رویم

جرالد پیِری، منتقد فعلی روزنامۀ بوستون فینیکس، شاید سازندۀ نخستین فیلم تاریخ سینما دربارۀ نقد باشد. اگر بخواهیم دقیق‌تر بگوییم فیلم او دربارۀ بحران انتقاد فیلم در آمریکای امروز و نگاهی به روزهای اقتدار آن در دهۀ 1960 و 1970 است با عنوان به عشق سینما: داستان نقد فیلم در آمریکا (2009).

ساخت فیلم چیزی نزدیک به هشت سال طول کشیده است. معنایش این نیست که او "هشت سال را صرف ساختن فیلم کرده"، بلکه وقفه‌های متعدد این پروژه را به درازا کشیده است. شاید این وقفه فرصت خوبی برای پیری بوده تا نزول نگران کنندۀ انتقاد فیلم در جهان را با دقت بیشتری نظاره کند، نزولی سرسام گرفته که در آن وبلاگ‌ها و سایت‌های عموماً حقیر اینترنتی – با مطالب درجۀ هشت‌شان – جای نقد چاپ شده در مطبوعات را گرفته‌اند. حالا هر کسی منتقد است و نیازی هم به ارائۀ مدرکی برای اثبات ادعاهایش ندارد. مطمئناً در جهانی با این همه آدم سرگردان، هر کدام از این آقایان و خانم‌ها می‌توانند چند خواننده/مشتری ثابت نیز برای خودشان دست و پا کنند و ورودشان به حلقۀ منتقدان را جشن بگیرند.

در این دنیای نقد اینترنتی نه نیازی به سبک نگارش هست و نه ظرایف زبان و سواد. وقتی می‌توانید از نماهای فیلم عکس گرفته و فریم موردنظر را با یک یادداشت آبکی در زیر آن به عنوان "تحلیل فیلم" غالب کنید دیگر نیازی به پیچیدگی‌های زبان برای القای پیچیدگی‌های سینماتیک نیست. موازین و مرزها در حال محو شدند، در حالی که هیچ چیز تازه‌ای جای آن ها را پر نمی کند.

روزنامه های آمریکایی فضای مربوط به نقد فیلم را کاهش داده‌اند و ترجیح داده تا این وظیفه در محیط مجازی اینترنت انجام شود. آوانگاردیست‌هایی مانند جاناتان روزنبام تقریباً تمام توان خود را روی اینترنت گذاشته اند. او دیرزمانی است که از "شیکاگو ریدر" کناره گیری کرده و تمام مطالب چهل سال اخیر و نوشته های تازه‌اش، گشاده دستانه در سایت شخصی‌اش منتشر می شوند. تردیدی نیست که نفوذ و تأثیر آن بسیار بیشتر از ستون‌های "شیکاگو"ست.

در ایران از آن جا که این مسأله، یعنی انتقاد فیلم، هرگز چندان جدی نبوده– به خصوص وقتی به تأثیر آن بر عامۀ سینماروها برسیم – سنجش میزان تنزل دشوار خواهد بود. اما اگر رابطۀ سینمادوستان و خوره های فیلم را با دنیای انتقاد فیلم مبنای قضاوت قرار دهیم نتیجه گیری به چیزی جز اسف بار ختم نخواهد شد. مسأله تنها "میدان دادن به جوانان" نیست (که تصور می کنم هنوز در دستۀ آنها قرار دارم)، هیچ کس دربارۀ مخاطرات و نتایح احتمالی دور از انتظار چنین میدان دادنی تردید ندارد، ریسکی که به هر حال باید پذیرفته شود (و بازهم باید بگوییم مجلۀ فیلم غالباً این ریسک را پذیرفته؛ من اولین مقاله ام را برای فیلم در 20 سالگی نوشتم، این "اولین" مقاله چیزی نزدیک به 20 صفحه را اشغال کرده بود!) چه چیزی در این میان تغییر کرده است؟ آیا این تغییرات در دنیای سینما رخ داده یا عارضه‌ای است که تاریخ فرهنگ به آن دچار شده است؟

شاید پاسخ سؤال بالا را در همین‌جا بتوان داد. اما پیش از آن به یک منتقد غیر سینمایی نیز اشاره می‌کنم تا رسیدن به پاسخ آسان‌تر شود. اندکی پیش گری گیدینز، منتقد و سردبیر سابقِ کایه‌دو‌سینمای دنیای موسیقی جاز، "داون بیت" – که البته نقدهای سینمایی مشهوری نیز دارد و نقدهای چاپ شده در کتابچۀ چند دی وی دی کرایتریون (از برگمان) را نوشته است – در پاسخ این سؤالم که در این روزها در کجا و برای چه کسی می‌توان دربارۀ موسیقی جاز نوشت، گفت که ستون‌های ثابت روز به روز کم‌تر می شوند و ما رفتن به خانه‌هایمان و کار روی کتاب‌ها را ترجیح می دهیم.

جرالد پیری، که مانند خیلی از منتقدان قدیمی بازنشستگی را به هر کار دیگری ترجیح داده است، بخش های زیادی از به عشق سینما... را به دعواهای تاریخی اندرو ساریس و پالین کیل بر سر کارگردان‌های مورد علاقه‌شان و تئوری مولف اختصاص داده است. به گفتۀ پیری «آنها چنان می‌جنگیدند که گویی بر سر تمامیت ارزی دو کشور منازعه دارند.»

و برای یادآوری دوبارۀ این که هیچ‌کس نمی‌تواند منتقد محبوب همه باشد باید شرح این واقعه را هم زبان پیری بشنویم که در جلسۀ نمایش خصوص فیلم برای پیر ریسیان او در وسط فیلم بلند شد و رفت چرا که پیری از وینسنت کَنبی – منتقد نیویورک تایمز – تعریف کرده بود، اما به نظر ریسیان، کنبی احمقی بیش نبود.

Girls in the Night (1953)

Girls in the Night
Universal, 88 mins, Black & White

Director: Jack Arnold
Screenplay: Ray Buffum
Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie
Editing: Paul Weatherwax
Art Direction: Robert F. Boyle and Alexander Golitzen
Cast: Joyce Holden, Glenda Farrell, Harvey Lembeck, Patricia Hardy.

Unless I am mistaken, Jack Arnold was unknown here before the appearance of It! Come from Outer Space, which hardly incited one to wish to learn more about its author, and Girls in the Night, which belies that first unfavorable impression. Let us leave aside the first film (science fiction in polaroid relief [3-D] and black and white, no less!) and get right to Girls in the Night, which leaves us in an intermediary state between surprise and delight.
It's a story of a few young boys and girls who live on New York's East Side and who hope to escape from that miserable neighborhood. Through the author's tenderness for his youngsters (and without sentimentality), through the incredible violence of the fight scenes, through the dynamism of the whole, the beauty of the relationships among the characters, the tone of this film swings between Becker's Rendez-vous de Juillet (1949) and Nicholas Ray's Knock on Any Door (1949). Each scene, whether it is the first (the very lively election of Miss 43rd Avenue in a neighborhood movie theater), the last (a very carefully controlled chase), or yet a prodigious dance scene in a sleazy club, makes us think that it was the one that the author treated the most lovingly; the directing of the actors (all newcomers) is perfect. Jaclynne Greene and Don Gordon make such a convincing pair of rascals that when, after the word END that follows closely after their death, they get up to greet us with a smile, we don't fail to feel that a great weight has been lifted from our shoulders.

 -- François Truffaut, Cahiers du Cinéma, February 1954

Truffaut and the Criterion of Gloria Grahame

One of the missing points in current scene of film criticism is explaining the methods in which a critic uses or the courage and knowledge of expanding a piece into a personal observation of cinema and society; using films as a pretext for explicating a critic’s criteria or even turning it into a personal manifesto in which one’s critical concerns are laid out. Though each written text reflects writer’s personal view to the subject, sometimes we need to go beyond that and address directly about why we think in a peculiar way, beside the film we are dealing with. As a critic, cin inema or any other art, Once in a while it’s necessary to reveal the structure of our thoughts and make way for reader to grasp the mechanism of our observation, rather than the object of the observation. One of the best examples of this approach is evident in French film criticism of 1950s , written by future Nouvelle Vague filmmakers . Here is an exemplary piece on Sudden Fear, a film noir directed by Norman Miller and starring Joan Crawford, written by Francois Truffaut in a discursive style and lot of personal statements:

"Sometimes they make films in the streets of Paris. A few extras are there, more gapers, but no stars. You spot an assistant. You explain to him that you are not who he thinks you are. You directed a public debate at the Ciné-Club de Chamalières in Puy-de-Dôme on pure cinema before at least eighty people, and there is nothing you don't know about the theme of failure in John Huston or about the misogyny of American cinema. Supposing this first or second assistant hears you out, you ask him the ritual question, "What are you filming?" To which he replies-what could he reply?"We're filming a linking shot." And that's French cinema: three hundred linking shots end to end, one hundred ten times a year.

Sudden Fear

If Aurenche and Bost were adapting Le Voyage au bout de la nuit (Journey to the End of the Night), they would cut sentences, even words. what would remain? A few thousand suspension points; that is, rare angles, unusual lighting, cleverly centered. The notion of a shot in France has become concern for clothing, which means following fashion. Everything happens to the right and to the left, off the screen.

This preamble, in order to introduce a film that is completely different. An American film. David Miller is the director of Sudden Fear. He made Love Happy (1950) and Our Very Own (1950). Before that he assisted in Why We Fight. While respectable, nothing in his recent career led us to suspect that David Miller would give us the most brilliant "Hitchcock style" known in France.

Outside of two very short but fairly unpleasing sequences (a dream and a planning sequence in pictures), there is not a shot in this film that isn't necessary to its dramatic progression. Not a shot, either, that isn't fascinating and doesn't make us think it is a masterpiece of filmmaking.

If the audience laughs when it isn't suitable to do so, I take that as a sign of daring, of finish. The public has lost the habit of intensity. Twenty years of adaptations that are guilty of excessive timidity have gotten the public accustomed to golden insignificance. Filming Balzac has become impossible. Put into pictures, Grandet's deathbed agony reaching for the crucifix would cause gales of laughter in the same people who swoon with admiration when a legless cripple hurtles down a street at fifty kilometers an hour.

The "in" public, the public of the Ciné-Clubs, is hardly any different. Although they may allow Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne (no doubt because of Diderot and Cocteau), they are ready to burst out laughing at all of Abel Gance's films. What Ciné-Club has shown Nicholas Ray's They Live by Night or Robert Wise's Born to Kill the most "Bressonian" of the American films? As for the films, films of psychological anguish, laughter is a form of revenge of the spectator on the auteur of the story, which he is ashamed to have believed in. Yes, twenty years of fake great subjects, twenty years of Adorable Creatures and Return to Life.

Gloria Grahame

The Sudden Fear's casting: it is permissible to have forgotten Crossfire (1947; Dir. Edward Dmytryk), but not a young blond woman who was better than an intelligent extra. As a prostitute, she danced in a courtyard. Even professional critics noticed the dancer; it was Gloria Grahame, whom we saw again in Merton of the Movies (1947; Dir. Robert Alton) playing opposite Red Skelton. Then Gloria Grahame became Mrs. Nicholas Ray and made In a lonely place, with Humphrey Bogart as costar, under the direction of Nicholas Ray himself. Gloria is no longer Mrs. Ray, as far as we know, and is filming Man on a tightrope in Germany under the direction of Elia Kazan. We will see her again even sooner in Cecil B. DeMille's Greatest Show on Earth. It seems that of all the American stars Gloria Grahame is the only one who is also a person. She keeps from one film to the next certain physical tics that are so many acting inventions and that can only be vainly expected from French actresses. It took all the genius of Renoir, Bresson, Leenhardt, and Cocteau to make Mila Parely, Maria Casarès, Renée Devillers, and Edwige Feuillère appear to have any genius. That and the bill for American cinema, often perfect right down to "Series Z" films, upset the hierarchy that could not be the same in our country where the only things that count are ambitious screenplays and the producer's quote. In reality there are no directors of actors in France, except those four names whose praises can never be sung enough: Renoir, Bresson, Leenhardt, and Cocteau. Gloria Grahame's acting is all in correspondences between cheeks and looks. You can't analyze it, but you can observe it. Let us make ours the definition by Jean Georges Auriol: "cinema is the art of doing pretty things to pretty women," and let us wager that as he wrote that, he was thinking more of Jean Harlow than of Lisette Lanvin.


Jack Palance has been known to us since Elia Kazan's good film, Panic in the Streets. His character here is that of a young man with unusually fine physical qualities and who, by his exceptional charm, acquires the favors of women whose experience with men has made them less demanding and, at the same time, more so.

Joan Crawford? A question of taste. She takes her place in a category that I label rather crudely the "Raimu/Magnani tradition." But if it's really true that we owe the existence of this film to her as a co-producer.

Each follows his own path. The one that Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame have chosen will lead them to death. Joan Crawford's path is also the San Francisco street that seven years of American cinema from The Lady from Shanghai to They Live by Night have made familiar to us. An ingenious screenplay with a fine strictness, a set more than respectable, the face of Gloria Grahame and that street of Frisco whose slope is so steep, the prestige of a cinema that proves to us every week that it is the greatest in the world."


[Truffaut's article from The Early Film Criticism of François Truffaut, translation by Wheeler W. Dixon]

Tuna Clipper (1949)

Tuna Clipper: Roddy McDowall and Elena Verdugo

Tuna Clipper
Director: William Beaudine
writer: Scott Darling
Music: Edward J. Kay
Cinematography: William A. Sickner
Art Direction: Dave Milton
Cast: Roddy McDowall, Elena Verdugo, Roland Winters, Peter Mamakos, Rick Vallin.

"Here is a little film from Monogram, [shot in 12 days] that modest company that said "no" to the crisis and decided to double the number of its productions.* A scenario whose charm lies in its modesty and honesty: a captivating tuna fishing expedition. William Beaudine's mise-en-scène is completely creditable, as we would have liked it to be for the same director's Charlie Chan. We are drawn by the one-and-only female actor with the promising bodice; no, generous; or rather, willing, I would say; that bodice is still well behaved, friendly also, and sort of hospitable, promised to the most deserving one, the nicest one. Let us recall together the name of this delicate personage: Elena Verdugo."

-- François Truffaut, Cahiers du Cinema, December 1953

*Truffaut here refers to the cutback in Hollywood production in the early 1950s due to the inroads of the early days of television.

Robin Wood (1931-2009)

هفته پيش رابين وود، منتقد فيلم انگليسي، كه در ايران او را براي آثار تحليلي مشهورش دربارۀ فيلم‌هاي هيچكاك مي‌شناسند، در 78 سالگي در تورنتوي كانادا درگذشت. او كتاب‌هاي مهم ديگري هم دربارۀ اينگمار برگمان، آرتور پن و بت ابدي‌اش، هوارد هاكس نوشته بود كه اين آخري را شايد بيشتر از هر آدم ديگري در دنياي سينماي دوست داشت و يادمان باشد خود وود هم بيشتر از هر انگلوساكسون ديگري در شناساندن هاكس به بيننده غربي سال‌هاي 1960 و 1970 كمك كرد.

او يكي از مهم‌ترين مدافعان تئوري مولف – خارج از فرانسه – بود لي در سال‌هاي آخر و با اعلام اين‌ كه "گِـي" است بيشتر گرايش‌هايي فرويدي و ماركسيستي در نقد فيلم نشان مي‌داد.

اما وود، دو روز پيش از مرگش، در حالي‌كه به سختي بيمار بوده آخرين "تاپ تن" عمرش را به دوستش تام لوري، ديكته كرده و لوري بعد از مرگ وود اين فهرست ده تايي از فيلم‌هاي عمر وود را براي جاناتان روزنبام فرستاده تا در سايتش منتشر كند. اصل فهرست – كه البته هيچ توضيحي ندارد – در سايت روزنبام وجود دارد و اين هم براي خوانندگان فارسي:

1 به طور طبيعي در ردۀ اول ريوبراوو قرار دارد.

2 نمي‌توانم بخوابم (كلر دني، 1994) يا اين كه نمي‌توانم تنها بخوابم (تساي مين ليانگ، 2006). معلوم نيست منظورش كدام يكي بوده، رزنبام مي‌گويد احتمالاً فيلم دني.

3 سانشوي مباشر

4 داستان توكيو

5 خانواده راگلز از ردگپ يا Make Way for Tomorrow (لئو مك‌كري، 1937) كه فيلم آخر را قرار است كرايتريون روي دي‌وي‌دي منتشر كند و به زودي درباره آن همين‌جا يا در مجله فيلم چيزي خواهم نوشت.

6 Code Unknown ساخته ميشائيل هانكه، 2000

7 لحظه بي‌پروا يا نامه‌هاي زن ناشناس هر دو ساخته مكس افولس

8 فرشته صورت پره‌مينجر (رزنبام ميگويد از اين انتخاب متعجب شده – من اضافه مي‌كنيم همه ما در آخر عمر به طرف فيلم‌‌نوار خواهيم رفت!)

9 هفت سامورايي

10 قاعدۀ بازي يا جنايت آقاي لانژ براي حفظ كرسي ژان رنوار

فهرست تمام شد و منتظر نباشيد كه در آن هيچكاك ببينيد. چرا؟ اي‌كاش وود قبل از رفتن به خواب بزرگ يادداشت كوچكي در اين مورد ديكته مي‌كرد.

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