Noir Jazz Cover Art

Film Noir + Jazz Cover Art
from
Take The "A" Train

High Society Stairs

One Hour with You (1932)/Direction: Ernst Lubitsch /Art Direction: Hans Dreier

Harriet Craig (1950)/D: Vincent Sherman/A.D.:Walter Holscher

5th Ave Girl (1939)/D: Gregory La Cava/A.D.: Van Nest Polglase

Trains & Stations: La Strada (1954)

جاده فدريكو فليني

من قطارم، فيلم ها ايستگاه ^*

در سالي كه جاده ساخته شد، روسليني اعلام كرد كه «گذشته‌ها گذشته و بر فراز ويرانه‌ها آبادي‌ها ساخته شده‌اند، حالا بايد داستان آن‌ها را گفت، در حالي كه هر كس رئاليزم شخصي خودش را خواهد داشت.» و چنين بود كه جاده به عنوان يكي اولين تلاش‌هاي سينماي ايتاليا براي گريز از قالب‌هاي آشناي اجتماعي‌اش شناخته شد. زبان سينمايي فليني كه تا آن زمان بارها نشانه‌هايي از گسست از آرمان‌هاي اجتماعي (و نه سياسي) چپ در آن به چشم مي‌خورد با اين فيلم منتقدان ايتاليايي را ، كه بيشترشان قلمي به تيزي شمشير داشته و صريحاً خود را ماركسيست مي‌دانستند، ابتدا مبهوت و سپس خشمگين كرد.

فليني جاده را كاتالوگي از تمام مضامين رمزآميز سينمايش خوانده است. درست مثل جنبشي كه هم‌زمان در ادبيات پس از جنگ ايتاليا آغاز شد كه آن را مي‌توان يكي از ريشه هاي اصلي دوران گسست از نئوراليزم نيز دانست. در رمان‌هايي مانند "در سيسيل" (اليو ويتوريوني،1941)، "ماه و آتش" (چزاره پاوزه،1951)، "مسيح در ابولي توقف كرد" (كارلو لِوي،1945)، "راهي به لانۀ عنكبوتان" (ايتالو كالوينو،1947) واقعيت‌هاي اجتماعي با زباني نمادين يا خيالين طرح مي‌شدند، ديدگاه‌ها بسيار سوبژكتيو و شيوه‌هاي روايي چنان عجيب بودند كه گاه از فرط پيچيدگي غيرقابل اعتماد به نظر مي‌رسيدند. خلاصۀ كلام، آنها در عين واقعي بودن به هيچ رو زير خانوادۀ بزرگ رئاليزم (يا همزاد سينمايي‌اش، نئوراليزم) جا نمي‌گرفتند و حتي با آن در ستيز بودند.

با جادۀ فليني علاقۀ ديرينۀ ايتاليايي ها به طرح مسائلي حياتي و بنيادين با زباني شاعرانه محقق شد. زباني زنده و گرم و طنزآميز كه مانند شيوه‌هاي روايي سيال رمان‌هايي كه از آن ها نام برديم به حكايتي سخت گزنده از تنهايي و جداافتادگي بدل مي‌شود، شرحي غم‌بار و هم‌دلانه از زندگي آدم‌هايي مطرود كه هيچ‌گاه وقار و آرامش روحاني‌اش را از دست نمي‌دهد.

يكي از مهم‌ترين نشانه‌هاي اين رنسانس سينمايي، تغيير ديدگاه روايي از شخصيت‌هاي مرد به زن و به‌همين ترتيب جايگزين شدن نگاهي ظريف و جستجوگر در دنياي مدرن با نگاه مردانه‌اي بود كه در تلاش براي امرار معاش خانواده در بيغوله‌هاي پس از جنگ دست و پا مي‌زد. چنين بود كه دورۀ جوليتا ماسينا براي فليني ( و به موازات آن دورۀ اينگريد برگمن براي روسليني) آغاز شد.

فليني را وارث بلافصل ارزش هاي فرانسيسكني هم چون عشق به هم‌نوع، رضا و تحمل رنج خوانده اند. اگر چنين باشد گمان نمي كنم در تاريخ سينما، هيچ شخصيتي به اندازۀ جوليتا ماسينا در فيلم‌هاي فليني چنين لبريز از عشق به انسان‌ها باشد. فليني مي‌گويد: «جلسومينا هم كمي خل و هم كمي قديس است»، چرا كه در سينماي او آن دو همواره مكمل يكديگر بوده‌اند. همان گونه كه پيتر بوندانلا ("فيلم‌هاي فليني"، انتشارات كمبريج) مي‌گويد، شخصيت‌هاي جاده پيش‌تر از اين كه نمونه‌هاي واقعي يا شخصيت‌هايي خاص با روان‌شناسي ويژۀ خودشان باشند، سه تيپ آشناي "كمدي-دل-آرته" ايتاليايي‌اند. نكته مهم اين جاست كه چگونه يكي از الگوهاي نمايشي كهن و عاميانۀ ايتاليا مي‌تواند به زباني مدرن و نفس‌گير براي وصف پيچيده‌ترين احوال انسان بدل شود.

جاده فيلمي است با دو دنياي شگرف، يكي دنيايي كه فليني، فيلم‌بردار او، گروه درخشان بازيگران و موسيقي شوريدۀ روتا تصوير كرده و يكي دنيايي وراي آن كه از هر نما و از هر اشارۀ فليني زنده مي‌شود. فليني سينما را كه بازپرداخت هنرمندانۀ واقعيت قلمداد مي‌شود را هم بهانه‌اي براي بازسازي واقعيت شخصي‌اش مي‌كند و هم وسيله‌اي براي اشاره به چيزي متعال، وراي صورت‌ها و مناظر، اما بر آمده از يكايك آن‌ها. چنين است كه دانۀ شن در جاده، هم يك دانۀ شن و آفريده شده براي مقصودي مشخص و هم اشاره‌اي به بي‌كرانگي هستي است و مناظر فليني هم ستايشي شاعرانه از زيبايي‌هاي بديهي دنيايند و هم نشانه‌هايي از رحمت.

*نقل از فليني.

Claude Chabrol and the Evolution of the Thriller

Claude Chabrol (1930 - 2010)

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

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

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

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

* * *
Evolution of the Thriller
Claude Chabrol

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

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


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

The Lady in the Lake

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Kiss Me Deadly

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

Wild Strawberries (1957)

انگار همین دیروز بود: درباره توت فرنگي‌هاي وحشي

روزی اینگمار برگمان رو به لیو اولمان گفت: «انگار همین دیروز بود که با با برادرم پابرهنه در باغ بازی می‌کردیم.» او در ادامه اضافه کرد که «ته دلم احساس ترس می‌کنم». این ترس نطفۀ اصلی شکل‌گیری توت فرنگی‌های وحشی شد.

برگمان در تابستان 1957 و بعد از کارگردانی اولین فیلم تلویزیونی‌اش، آقای اسلیمان می‌آید، سر از بیمارستان درآورد. به گفتۀ پزشک روانکارو (که بر خلاف تصور همه، برگمان تنها یک بار در تمام عمرش به سراغ او رفته) بیش از گرفتاری‌های فیزیکی یا مشکلی جدی در سلامتش مشکل او عصبی بود. در این دوران به چهل سالگی‌اش پا گذاشته و رابطه‌اش با بیبی اندرسون به بن‌بست رسیده بود. اگر از دیدی برگمانی، «بحران» کامل و هجوم افکاری مهارناپذیر دربارۀ معنای زندگی و مرگ اجتناب ناپذیر بود، فیلم از دل این بحران بیرون آمد و بر خلاف بسیاری از آثار برگمان که به نمایش درد اکتفاء می‌کنند، توت فرنگی‌ها به جستجوی پاسخ و تسکین درد می‌رود.

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برگمان کمی پیش از بستری شدن در سفری مشابه سفر ایزاک با اتوموبیل به مناطقی که کودکی‌اش را در آن‌ها گذرانده، اما برای سال‌ها از آن بی‌خبر بود، سر زد. فیلم‌نامه روی تخت بیمارستان و در حالی نوشته شد که او هنوز کسی را برای نقش ایزاک بورگ در ذهن نداشت.

انتخاب ویکتور شوستروم یکی از آن ایده‌های دیوانه‌واری بود که در آخرین لحظه به سراغ او آمد و در کمال حیرت پاسخ شوستروم نیز مثبت بود. فیلم‌برداری از جولای تا اگوست 1957 ادامه پیدا کرد، در حالی که به گفتۀ گونار فیشر هرگز از این که شوستروم تا روز بعد هم زنده بماند اطمینان نداشتند. این مخاطرۀ بزرگ برای برگمان که تابش نور خورشید و سایۀ برگ‌ها را بر صورت شوستروم دیده بود، ارزش پافشاری را داشت.

ویکتور شوستروم هم پای برگمان در تألیف فیلم نقش دارد، نه به این خاطر که احیاناً این کارگردان بزرگ سینمای صامت درس‌هایی به برگمان در سر صحنۀ این فیلم داده باشد (با وجود این که سکانس کابوس اوایل فیلم ملهم از کالسکۀ شبح اوست)، برعکس او تقریباً الکلی و در آستانۀ هشتاد سالگی چنان بی‌حوصله بود که می‌توانست هر لحظه ساخت فیلم را به کام برگمان و بقیۀ گروه تلخ کند. چنین بود که سفر ایزاک در فیلم با سه نسل دیگر به انعکاسی از سرسختی این پیرمرد تنها در دنیای واقعی بدل شد. گویی همان‌طور که گروه در سفری مشابه لوکیشن‌هایی که زمانی برگمان کودکی‌اش را در آنها گذرانده بود، وارسی می‌کردند، شوسترم نیز واقعاً به زندگی پرتلاطم خود می‌اندیشید. این زندگی اندکی پس از اتمام فیلم‌برداری به پایان رسید. برگمان مطمئن نبود که شوستروم هرگز فیلم تمام شده را دیده، یا به زبانی دیگر در واقعیت نیز به مراسم دکترای افتخاری خود رسیده باشد.

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شوستروم که زمانی زیباترین مرد سینمای سوئد خوانده می‌شد در توت فرنگی‌ها گسترۀ وسیعی از حالات را در اختیار دوربین گونار فیشر و کلوزآپ‌های تکان‌دهندۀ فیلم می‌گذارد. نتیجۀ تغییرات نور بر صورت او اعجاب آور است: او زمانی چون یخ سرد و چون سنگ سخت به نظر می‌رسد و زمانی دیگر پیرمردی مهربان؛ گاه در تمام اجزای صورتش وحشتي بی‌پایان از مرگ و تنهایی دیده می‌شود و گاه آرامشی معنوی و اطمینانی دلگرم کننده؛ او توامان الگویی از شفقت و سنگدلی است. در انتها ایزاک هم نشانه‌ای از زندگی (همچون معنایی که توت فرنگی وحشی در فرهنگ سوئدی دارد) و هم تصویرگر مردی با وسوسۀ دائمی مرگ.

با شوستروم، برگمان به یکی از پیچیده‌ترین شخصیت‌های سینمایی‌اش دست پیدا کرده، در حالی که این شخصیت پیچیده منجر به خلق یکی از ساده‌ترین و بزرگ‌ترین فیلم‌های برگمان شده است. اگر چاپلین با شخصیت ولگردش در فیلم کارگردان دیگری بازی می‌کرد - حتی اگر این کارگردان فرانک کاپرا بود - آیا ما جرأت می‌کردیم فیلم نهایی را فقط اثر کاپرا بدانیم؟ چنین است که توت فرنگی‌های وحشی نیز یعنی برگمان و شوستروم.

Dailies#12: Guns, Onions and Politicians

خب يك وسترن سرراست ديگر هم به آخرش رسيد. اين يكي هفت‌تيركش سريع (1965) بود كه شايد كليشه‌اي‌ترين اسم ممكن براي يك وسترن باشد و البته اين ساخته سيدني سالكو واقعاً هم چيزي نبود جز روي هم سوار كردن كليشه‌ها براي نقش دادن به يكي از وسترنرهاي محبوب دهه 1950 و قهرمان جنگ، آدي مورفي، در روزهاي زوالش. كليشه‌ها از اين قرار بودند:

الف) وسترنر بدنام به زادگاهش بر مي‌گردد تا ملك پدرش را پس بگيرد. ب) متهم به قتل مي‌شود، در صورتي كه فقط از خودش دفاع كرده. پ) مشتي راهزن را به دنبال خودش به شهر مي‌كشد و البته خودش هم از پس آن‌ها برمي‌آيد. ج) كلانتر كشته مي‌شود و او براي دفاع از مردم ستاره حلبي را به سينه مي‌زند. چ) زن آرام موطلايي كه معلمه شهر است در موقع خطر تفنگ برداشته و جان قهرمان را نجات مي‌دهد. د) آدم‌هاي بد مي‌ميرند. آدم‌هاي خنثي مي‌ميرند. آدم‌هاي خوبِ پير مي‌ميرند. آدم‌هاي خيلي كوتاه يا خيلي لاغر يا مردّد هم مي‌ميرند. آرتيسته و دختره زنده مي‌مانند.

با اين وجود تماشاي دوباره و چندباره و هزارباره اين كليشه‌ها همچنان خوشايند است براي اين‌كه وسترن هم‌چنان دراماتيك‌ترين ِ ژانرهاي سينمايي است.

دوستي ادعا مي كرد كه هر وسترني تماشايي است. اين ادعا درست بود و هست، تا زماني كه بعضي وسترن‌هاي اسپاگتي به پست آدم نخورد. اين اتفاق و شكسته شدن حرمت ژانر براي من با فيلمي به نام اشك پياز (1976) افتاد كه در تلويزيون ايران ديدم و در آن قهرمان كابوي، فرانكو نرو، سلاحي مخرب دارد كه همانا پياز است. نحوه استفاده او از اين سلاح متنوع است، گهگاه با زدن آن - مثل سنگ - به سر آدم بدها آن‌ها را نابود مي‌كند، گهگاه اشكشان را با ريز كردن آن در مي‌آورد (كه در اين حال سالادي چيزي هم در انتظار است) و از همه تكان دهنده‌تر، اين وسترنر خسته، با زدن آروغ و بوي متعاقبش در فضا دشمنان را فراري مي‌دهد. به اين صورت است كه مرزهاي هنر وسترن گشوده مي‌شوند، لااقل از نظر بويايي.

كارگردان اين پياز آقاي انزو جي كاستلاري است، يكي از خدايان تارانتيونو كه فيلم آخر اين مولف بلندمرتبه آمريكايي، حرامزاده‌ها، به كاستلاري و زبان سينمايي فصيحش تقديم شده و حتي نقشي هم در فيلم برعهده گرفته است. تارانتينو كه نشان داده توانايي نامحدودي در كشف دوباره تاريخ سينما دارد بايد يك دنباله‌اي چيزي بر پياز بسازد، مثلاً بادمجان كه در آن قهرمانان او با بادمجان مغز هم را متلاشي كنند يا از طرف گنده‌اش آن را وارد دهان فاشيست‌ها بكنند كه بتواند خفگي‌اي چيزي ايجاد كنند و به عمر آدم‌هاي غيرضروري در اين دنيا پايان دهند.

امروز به جز اشك پياز ياد فيلم ديگري هم بودم كه در بچگي در سينما ديدم به اسم تهران 43 (1981) كه حتي همان موقع و با سليقه آسان‌پسند و همه چيزپذير كودكي، فيلم ابلهانه‌اي بود. آلن دلون در آن بازي مي‌كرد و تركيب دلون و اسم تهران خيلي گول زننده بود. مربوط به تلاشي فانتزي براي ترور چرچيل، استالين و روزولت در كنفرانس 1943 متفقين در تهران بود كه عكسي كه همين جا مي‌بينيد از همان واقعه گرفته شد و ايواني كه حضرات در آن لميده‌اند بايد مربوط به ساختمان سفارت شوروي باشد. عكس عجيبي است.

Frame-Building: Under the Roofs of Paris

Sous les toits de Paris (René Clair, 1930)/Camera: Georges Périnal, Georges Raulet/Set: Lazare Meerson

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Notes on Cinecittà

“Cinecittà is a symbolic and beautiful fortress: outside is Hell, while inside its walls fairy tales are told, sometimes sour, sometimes sweet, sometimes funny.” -Marcello Mastroianni

1

Luigi Freddi (1895-1977), an Italian journalist-turned-politician, had an obsession with modernism as much as he had with the movies. He was one the key thinkers in Benito Mussolini's fascist regime, as long as art was concerned. Freddi meticulously researched the United States and numerous European film capitals to find for the studio the most modern architectural designs and technology available.

Luigi Freddi

His greatest innovation by far, however, was coordinating the construction and establishment of La Città del Cinema, or Cinecittà, where officially opened by Mussolini on 28 April 1937. It contained on its vast property the most technologically advanced facilities needed for filmmaking: sets, costumes, editing and dubbing facilities, sound stages, and the possibility of constructing ample exterior sets. Although its primarily concern was modernizing the industry and centralizing the means of production, the promotional campaign concentrated instead on its impending role in glorifying the Italian empire through diffusion of its cultural production. Financed by state money, it nevertheless remained under private ownership until 1939, when the state assumed total control of its administration. Cinecittà gradually became the center of the film industry: between April 1937 and July 1943, approximately 300 full-length feature films (over two-thirds of total production) were in some part made or produced on its premises. [1]

2

The planning and construction of Cinecittà on the outskirts of Rome after 1934 was a project that had just as much to do with Rome’s emergence as a center of filmmaking as it did with the city’s rapidly solidified position as hub of an emerging national political and cultural economy. Cinecittà was also integral to a new map and network that was extending Rome’s purview; for instance, Cinecittà’s construction on Rome’s outskirts was a concrete part of new programs for reclaiming the land around Rome. In this regard, Cinecittà pertained to a program of planning and constructing “model” cities in the provinces and of redesigning Italian cities (and the “ancient city”), making them more suited to the national space of distribution. [1] But still this question remains unanswered that a film studio could be model for a real city? In context of Italian cinema we can trace back the skeptical answer in Antonioni's L'avventura (1960). Claudia and Sandro's search for their lost friend leads them to a ghost town outside of Catanisetta. Composed in cubic geometries, with simplified classical forms like a set from Cinecittà or any other film studios. Empty towns in nightmare sequences always remind me of the nature of a film studio. Yet, The L'avventura town, build in Mussolini's era, is nothing but a unrealizable fantasy of community and a relic of dangerous dreams. While Sandro, who is a architect, wonders why such a well-built place was never occupied, Claudia remarks on a similar town in the distance - or is it, as Sandro interrupts, a cemetery?

L'avventura

3

Cinecittà, in a wry twist of fate, like Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, one of the premier European film schools, which Mussolini also instigated, became hotbeds of freethinking cinéastes that as soon as fascism fell, stopped shooting at the studio and moved out on the streets and riverbanks of Italy, used amateur actors, and that was the birth of neorealism. Yet, their landmark cinema may have ironically owed its life to the talent collected in the institutions engendered by Mussolini’s blind ambition. Many of important future directors and scriptwriters worked at Cinecittà or on Vittorio Mussolini’s journal Cinema, including Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Lattuada Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Giuseppe De Santis, and Luchino Visconti.

4

“Cinecittà a ‘mythic zone,’ the core of my film-loving dreams.” -Dario Argento

In 1937 only 32 films were produced in Italy and Hollywood studios enjoyed nearly three-fourths of the Italian market, compared with only 13 percent for Italian productions. The increased production was not enough to saturate the demand of the Italian market. But in 1938, when American films were refused distribution as a result of Fascist government’s institution of a monopoly for the distribution of foreign films, the market was all for Italian cienma and Cinecittà. With this trade barriers against Hollywood films, by 1942, the number of Italian films produced increased to 117 with Italian production accounting for over 50 percent of the domestic market.

Add captionQuattro passi fra le nuvole (Alessandro Blasetti, 1942)

But Cinecittà always was borrowing many from Hollywood, especially its standard genres. And despite this inner connection with American studio system there was big differences between finished projects. For instance, whereas the American war movies of the early 1940s are optimistic and end up with their heroes triumphing over adversity, nearly all Italian versions turn out badly; pilots are killed or maimed for life; submarines cannot surface; guns jam. In Cinecittà , only three of more than twenty propaganda war films had a happy ending; two are ‘colonial films’ in which natives, naturally, are slaughtered, the third celebrates the heroism of the Spanish nationalists in Toledo.

Why did strict censors not ban sad stories suggesting to Italians that they had virtually lost the war? "We are faced again with the inconsistency of the Fascist regime, so fussy over little things that it would make a director change two words in his script, but unaware of how devastating the depiction of defeat could be," suggests Pierre Sorlin. [3]

Thanks to the spirit of the nation, the fascist regime’s demands did not equal those of the Nazi government on the German film industry or Soviet demands on Russian filmmakers. On the whole, the regime only encouraged Italian directors to make films that depicted Italian life in a positive light. [2]

5

“I am happy to work in Cinecittà and what I appreciate most of this magnificent studio is the technical and labor staff. For three months I felt I was at home...” -Jean Renoir

In 1943, Italy surrendered and the Germans took over the country. They looted Cinecittà, and the film production facilities were moved to temporary accommodation in Venice. Over the next two years, Cinecittà was subjected to Allied bombing. Following the war, between 1945 and 1947, the studios of Cinecittà found a new use as a displaced persons' camp.

Cinecittà recovered slowly. By reaching 1950s Hollywood producers were attracted to Italy as a location by American tax loopholes for producing films abroad. The technical expertise of Italian set designers attracted big budget Hollywood productions to the Cinecittà studios in Rome renowned for the artistic abilities of Italian set designers and wardrobe technicians. This influx of activity known as “Hollywood on the Tiber” allowed many Italian technicians an opportunity to gain the experience and expertise essential to the boom in Italian film production in the 1960s. Big budget Hollywood studio productions — Ben Hur (1959) and Cleopatra (1963) or co-productions such as El Cid (1961) —were filmed partly in Rome’s Cinecittà studios with the active participation of Italian designers and assistant directors. For example, Sergio Leone co-directed the peplum disaster film and Italian box office hit Sodom and Gomorra (1962) with Robert Aldrich, but obviously uncredited. This tradition of reliance on Italian craftsmanship has continued sporadically and would reappear decades later when actor/director Mel Gibson came to Rome to enrich his film The Passion of the Christ (2004), a film shot largely in Cinecittà, or when Martin Scorsese picked the studio for his Gangs of New York.

Docks of New York set from Gangs of New York, made at Cinecittà

"I’ve always felt that Cinecittà has a special magic because of all the great films that have been made there. For the many years that I had been thinking about Gangs of New York, I always imagined it would be created with an aspect of the Italian artistry that I saw and experienced in Italian films when I was growing up,” remarked Martin Scorsese when he transferred his unit to Italy to create a New York in Cinecittà.

Today, Cinecittà is suffering from what any other studio or film idustry is suffering from, but as Martha Nochimson points out, " if Cinecittà has survived war, censorship, and fire*. Why not globalization, too? "

*A 2007 fire destroyed 3,000 square meters of Cinecittà sets (out of a total of 400,000 square meters).

References:
[1] Re-viewing fascism, Italian cinema, 1922–1943/edited by Jacqueline Reich and Piero Garofalo.
[2] A new guide to Italian cinema / Carlo Celli and Marga Cottino-Jones
[3] Italian National Cinema 1896–1996/ Pierre Sorlin.
[4] The Cinecittà Pentimento Effect: A Firsthand Account / Martha P. Nochimson

Dailies#11: Always Goodbye

داستان قديمي مادر و بچه ناخوانده كه بچه‌اش را به خانواده‌اي ثروتمند مي‌دهد و بعد از چند سالي فيلش ياد هندوستان مي‌كند - يا در قواعد ملودرام به اصطلاح دلش براي فرزندش تنگ مي‌شود - داستاني كليشه‌اي است، اما مثل هميشه مهم اين است كه چطور به كار گرفته شود:

الف) اگر مادر باربارا استنويك باشد به جاي درآوردن اشك تماشاگر و كشاندن فيلم به شبه‌ژانر «كلينكس»، سعي مي‌كند پدرخوانده فرزندش را اغوا كند، اين مي‌شود خرق عادت ژانري. پس يك امتياز به نفع هميشه خداحافظ ساخته سيدني لنفيلد.

ب) براي اين كه حق به حق‌دار برسد هميشه بايد آدم‌هاي بد يا آدم‌هايي كه حقوق‌شان ‌اهميتي كم‌‌تر دارد وجود داشته باشند تا كسي كه حق واقعي‌اش است شي‌ء يا فرد مورد نظر را بقاپد. در چنين احوالي فيلم مجبور است بعضي انسان‌ها را احمق و بعضي را خودخواه نشان بدهد تا بتواند آن‌ها را از بازي اخلاقي‌اش حذف و قهرمان را پيروز كند. با اين كه در دنياي واقعي احمق و خودخواه فراوان است، روي پرده، و به‌خصوص در ملودرام، اين جنايت است كه سياهي و سفيدي خالص نشان داده شود، چراكه چنين چيزي وجود ندارد، پس يك امتياز منفي براي هميشه خداحافظ.

ج) اگر بازيگري صدا داشته باشد، همه چيز دارد و اين درباره صداي زيبا و شخصيت نجيب اين آكتور عالي انگليسي، هربرت مارشال صدق مي‌كند. يك امتياز به‌‌خاطر مارشال.

د) وقتي سانسور به هاليوود آمد مجبوري آغاز فيلم را به اين شكل بگذاري كه باربارا جلوي محضر ازدواج منتظر شوهر آينده‌اش است كه او در راه تصادف مي‌كند و باربارا را با يك كودك ك در آينده نزديك متولد خواهد شد تنها مي‌گذارد. قبل از 1934 اين حرف‌ها نبود و باربارا لازم نبود جلوي محضر منتظر كسي بماند. امتياز منفي كه البته تقصير زمانه بوده است.

ه) سزار رومر آكتور خوبي است و ويكتور ميچر در خلق شخصيت داك هاليدي در كلمنتاين عزيزم از او الهام كوچكي گرفته كه بازيگر نسخه اول بود، اما لنفيلد نقش ژيگولوي اروپايي را در حد يك كاريكاتور بي‌سليقه براي رومرو تدارك ديده و اين‌هم يك منفي ديگر.

ساعت بيست دقيقه بعد از نيمه شب شد و براي ديدن يك فيلم از استودوي يونيورسال از پشت ميز بلند خواهم شد. هميشه خداحافظ در 1938 در استوديوهاي فاكس قرن بيستم ساخته شده بود.

Noir Inc.

My friends and colleagues, the Czar of film noir, Eddie Muller, and Alan K. Rode discuss their mission of rescuing film noir heritage of American cinema in a recent TCM short.