In Private Fears in Public Places (2006), once again Alain Resnais’ representation of architecture and space is marvelous. With exception of the opening shot, there is no outdoor scene in this film and the whole thing is happening in the beautiful flats, bars, and offices.
He suggests a new conception of space, at least in its cinematic terms, that lies in transparency and mobility of film spaces. His spaces are like a musical’s from late 1940s, open spaces divided with light and colors. There is no wall, and even no roof (there are shots from top of the flats, the same method Scorsese employed in Taxi Driver’s final scene), and in this “open” approach he finds the ability to connect the mental state of his character to the spaces and the overall mood of the film.
For me, the most striking moment appears in the first sequence of the film when Nicole (Laura Morante) notifies the real-estate broker (Andre Dussollier) about the strange way the owner has separated the apartment. And Resnais shows us the archaic ceiling that is cut in two by a narrow line of concrete. He suggests that we live in different houses but sometimes it seems we live in a house divided between us and the people that we know (or not know) and this crisscrossing lives, is the key theme of Private Fears in Public Places.
The use of cinemascope intensifies the presence of carefully designed interior spaces. According to Rosenbaum, this is only the third time Resnais has shot in scope, after his two most abstract and formally dazzling works, Le chant du Styrène (an industrial short film that was a source of inspiration for my own documentary about a batching plant ) and Last Year at Marienbad.
He shows sympathy with the pop culture and merges it -- in an obscure way -- to the most classics concepts of the art – like the inhabitants classic paintings on the walls.
It’s not strange that Jonathan Rosenbaum calls him “the last of the great Hollywood studio directors.” Because his language of filmmaking, in this case from architectural point of view, is more closer to classic masters of dream factory that to the contemporary directors or even the generation of modernists that he belongs to.
The dazzling opening shot, the only outdoor shot of the picture.
The Black Cat (1934) was a film directed by then-unknown émigré filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer in Universal Studios.
The titles say the source of the picture is the Edgar Allan Poe story, but "it is not a story you can dramatize," said Ulmer frankly. So he moves freely with the new ideas about the plot, characters and their relations.
An important source of inspiration for Ulmer was a true story he had heard while working on The Golem (1920). "Doumond was a French fortress the Germans had shelled to pieces during World War I; there were some survivors who didn't come out for years," explained Ulmer in a 1970 interview with Peter Bogdanovich. "And the commander was a strange Euripides figure who went crazy three years later, when he was brought back to Paris, because he had walked on that mountain of bodies."
The shooting was done in two weeks and the budget was at a third of what the studio had spent on the other hits like Dracula (1931) or Frankenstein (1931).
Since this was the first screen pairing of Karloff and Lugosi, the confrontation of two horror masters is one of the key elements of the picture that Ulmer emphasizes it, beautifully.
A masterpiece of construction, build upon the ruins of the masterpiece of deconstruction, the masterpiece of murder.”
This is one the most memorable lines in history of motion pictures and it would be heard from the lips of the living example of “masterpiece of deconstruction”, no one but Bela Lugosi, referring to the architectural work of his enemy Poelzig, in The Black Cat.
“This is a very interesting house you have here Poelzig, has an atmosphere, kind of…” says the trapped guest of the house, Peter Alison, but he couldn’t find the right words to sum up his feelings. The creeping master of the house, Poelzig, complete him with a line that could be read as Edgar Ulmer’s statement about the modern architecture in his great “masterpiece of construction,” The Black Cat:
“…It is indeed hard to describe. It's as hard to describe as life, or death. It may be the atmosphere of death.”
Who is Poelzig and how a B director, like Ulmer, could present such a precise cinematic view of the modern world?
Hans Poelzig (1869-1936) was a German architect. In the early 1920s he was a respected professor of architecture in Berlin. His first designs show the influence of late classicism, Gothic style, regional traditions, art nouveau and American's new office building methods. As a member of the avant-garde architectural society Der Ring, Poelzig played a prominent role in the battle over the introduction of modern architecture in the 1920s.
He designed his masterpiece, Berlin's Große Schauspielhaus theatre interior design for Germany's most celebrated stage director Max Reinhardt, in 1919.
Poelzig's work developed through Expressionism and the New Objectivity in the mid-1920s before arriving at a more conventional, economical style.
He died on 14 June 1936 shortly before his planned emigration to Turkey.
One of the most important stages of his life was designing the vast architectural set for the 1920 UFA film production of The Golem. In the meantime and during the production Ulmer, a set designer, was introduced to the master architect by working under his guidance. Quickly Poelzig became Ulmer’s mentor, and when he found a chance to direct his first notable film in U. S., he returned the favor by naming the architect-villain character “Hjalmar Poelzig.”
This film shows clearly that Ulmer, via real Poelzig, was well aware of the Gothic art's abrupt impact on the audience/spectator, and he was a genius in uniting this kind of imagery with the composure of modern architecture. Most of the time there is a tense interaction between the architecture and the way Ulmer uses his camera. The Gothic compositions have been used as an assault to the cleanness of the modern interiors and the simplicity of concrete walls. In opposite, the simple compositions utilize for the most expressionistic scenes, like near-the-end satanic ceremony. It seems like the image and architecture are always balancing the brutality of the actions with the icy feeling of the atmosphere.
In Black Cat a modern building is replaced by the old Gothic castle with replete of strange decorative things and dusty furniture. There is no sign of cobwebs, candle sticks or creaky doors. Instead of those 19-century horror elements we see modern furniture and a house that really belongs to the new age. But the horrors are almost the same and the wonder is how Ulmer turns modern spaces to another source of abomination. The optimism of the first modern architecture movement has gone from the images and the devilish nature of gods and monsters (a favorite expressionist's theme) has conquered the space.
Recently I was revisiting The Mask of Fu Manchu -another satanic role for Karloff - and I was moved by the modern\minimalist design of the torture chambers and the similarity between this decors and Black Cat’s. But the work of Ulmer is more stylized in every way. He has stylized even the most ordinary moments of the film. His compositions are restless, and they deliver this feeling to audiences, too.
Poelzig's masterpiece, Große Schauspielhaus
Gothic compositions as an assault to the modern spaces
simple compositions for the most expressionistic scene
راهنماي مطالب مجلۀ فيلم، كه معمولاً در اندازۀ يك كتاب حجيم است و فهرست تمام مطالب 396 شمارۀ مجله در آن وجود دارد منتشر شده است. معمولاً در اين شماره هاي ويژه در كنار بخش اصلي به روي يك موضوع ديگر نيز تمركز مي شود. موضوع اين شماره "پوستر" است.
من در اين شمارۀ ويژه مقالۀ بلندي دربارۀ "پوستر فيلم ها" دارم كه با نمونه هاي زيادي از شاهكارهاي پوسترسازي مصور شده است. در اين مقاله، تاريخچۀ پوسترها، مشخصات آن، نمونه ها و مكاتب و پوسترهاي مورد علاقه ام را معرفي كرده ام.
My new work, a very long essay on history and aesthetics of movie posters (in Farsi), has been published in the latest special edition of FILM magazine.You can order here.
Picture Above : a Persian newspaper ad for Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of life.
Textures
excellent use of CinemaScope 
like a musical from 1940s 
spaces divided with light and colors 
There is no wall 
Transparency of transforming spaces 
The archaic ceiling: cut in half 
