From Sketch to the Screen#2

Images of the day
From Sketch to the Screen
Marcel Carné's "Hôtel du Nord"
From MUBI

Roy Ward Baker (1916-2010)

One of my greatest cinematic experiences as a 10 year old boy was watching Roy Ward Baker's A Night to Remember (1958) on TV. Those days there wasn no way to watch old films in Iran and the only chance was waiting for a Friday afternoon movie, always worn-out copies and heavily censored, just to have a taste of what supposed to be Classic Films. A Night to Remember is still best imaginable titanic story. Better than German 1943 propaganda film. and definitely better than billion dollar kitsch of James Cameron (I haven't seen Jean Negulesco's 1953 version). Later on, I saw Don't Bother to Knock (1952) and it revealed that Baker has an assured ability to impose a distinctive style in almost any genre.

Roy Ward Baker was born in London on 19 December 1916, he entered the film industry in 1933 with Gainsborough and followed the classic industry career path, working his way up from tea-boy to runner and eventually assistant director. During the Second World War he worked with the Army Kinematograph Unit where he met the writer and producer Eric Ambler who was to give him his first feature credit as director on The October Man (1947) [which I'm impatiently waiting to see]. This striking debut established many of the qualities which were to distinguish Baker’s best work. The film’s complex, noirish plot is taughtly controlled, the visual style is lean but atmospheric and there is a detailed sense of both place and time. Baker also draws an unusually ambiguous performance from John Mills as the psychologically troubled central character who is accused of murder.

The October Man

The success of his Second World War submarine drama Morning Departure (1950) was to take him briefly to Hollywood. He directed 3 film noirs there, one of them a classic: Don't Bother to Knock about Richard Widmark meeting a beautiful and innocent, but deadly Marilyn Monroe. He even made a noir in 3D with a collaboration with cinematographer Lucien Ballard. The film is called Inferno (1953) about ruthless Robert Ryan who is left for dead in the desert by scheming wife and her lover.

Inferno

He returned to Britain in 1955 and quickly re-established himself as a consistently reliable director of mainstream fare. Many people agree that Baker's most memorable output during 1950s is A Night to Remember. From the early 1960s Baker began to work on television and directed a number of episodes for some of the most popular and influential adventure series of the period, including The Avengers and The Saint. He also began the forays into the horror genre which were to become the distinctive feature of his later cinema work. His first assignment for Hammer was the third – and most ambitious – in the Quatermass series, Quatermass and the Pit (1967). Making full use of its eerie setting in the London underground, the film combines elements of science fiction and the occult, building to a startling conclusion as ‘the devil’ rises into the sky over London. Further horror films were to follow, making him a key figure in Britain’s Gothic film tradition. Baker returned for the last time to the horror genre with The Monster Club (1980), which I watched recently, and it's a satirical repetition of other Baker horror films, set in a punk rock club (don't forget the date of production!)

Don't Bother to Knock

Baker spent the last active years of his career in television. When he died at the age of 93, "Shifts in critical taste have seen his reputation change radically from that of efficient studio craftsman to near cult status as a genre stylist," as Robert Shail summarizes Baker's career in Critical Guide of British Film Directors.

In Memory of Arthur Penn (1922-2010)

Three shots from Micky One (1965), directed by Arthur Penn, cinematography by Ghislain Cloquet

يادداشتي كه به مناسبت مرگ آرتور پن نوشته‌ام را در شماره آينده (آبان) ماهنامه فيلم بخوانيد. به اضافه يادداشتي درباره ميكي وان در همان شماره و در صفحه بازخواني‌ها.

Rediscovering "Zoo in Budapest" (1933)

If I’ve learned one great lesson from Andrew Sarris about American films, that would be the perpetuality of their 1930s cinema; that discoveries never ends and there are always more to see and more to read.


And Zoo in Budapest is one of those forgotten pieces of filmmaking that every little bit of it now belongs to the dusty backroom of non-official history of motion pictures; a minor masterpiece with a quaint European accent and a poetic narrative about returning to the instinctive life, when America was drowning in the worst days of great depression.

This was Jesse L. Lasky's first production for Fox. His first choice for directing was James Cruze but he was busy with Tars and Feathers, which was released as Sailor, Be Good!, thus Lasky signed Rowland V. Lee (1891-1975). Lee, a modest professional of the golden age, rewrote the script (adapted from a book by Melville Baker and John Kirkland), and maybe it was his touch that changed the fate of the picture. Whereas most writer-directors of early talking period tended to dialogue-based mise-en-scene, he created a film with a haunting imagery that makes dialogue completely gratuitous.

Rowland V. Lee

The story focus on three refugees who find themselves trapped in a zoo overnight. One is Eve, an orphan girl (played by the borrowed Warner Bros. star, Loretta Young) trying to escape the orphanage before she is bonded out to someone, the second Zani, an employee and friend and play-fellow of the beasts of the cages (played by Gene Raymond, a newcomer with only one or two pictures in his career at that time), whose habit of stealing and burning fur coats from the visitors has often gotten him in trouble with the law and finally made him a fugitive, and the third a young boy who escapes from his nanny so he can ride the elephant at the zoo. Zani and girl fall in love and soon the small boy joins them in their hideout. Soon after, a search party organizes to capture Zani, Eve and the boy. The vicious zookeeper Heinie discovers them; he draws the authorities' attention to their hideout. Zani saves Eve from an attack by Heinie. More scuffles ensue and cause many dangerous animals to escape their cages. Zani redeems himself by saving a young child from a hungry tiger.

The story, meticulously, takes place in less than 24 hours and almost entirely in a zoo. By implementing the classical unities, Lee creates a tense drama that before reaching its predictable happy end, impressively maneuvers in the territory of surrealism and fairy tale.

Always a Sternbergian sense

Lee's dense compositions and sense of overcrowded space, and also the way he treats sexuality, can only be compared to those of Josef Von Sternberg. There is a spellbinding scene when Loretta Young gets undressed behind the grass, while birds are watching her and the river is flowing in the background. This scene only could be understood completely by a viewer who is acquainted with Sternbergian concept of love and sexuality; something unearthly and very physical at the same time, destructive and primitively beautiful and elusively indefinable.

I won’t have any objection if a great credit be given to Zoo’s cinematographer, Lee Garmes, who was also in charge of photography in many of Sternberg’s masterpieces (Morocco, Dishonored and Shanghai Express which he won an Oscar for). Garmes' black and white photography is magically luminous (this master work really deserved to be shown at Los Angeles International Film Exposition as a part of the "tribute to the art of cinematography”, March 28 April 9, 1974).

Simultaneously, Lee’s soft expressionistic attitude emphasizes the simple storyline, and even gives a sense of complexity to the events, starting from a fast-tempo tour of the zoo (according to the documents, 311 animals and birds were rented!) and ending with the beasts’ riot.


The zoo is like a Grand Hotel or Rick’s café, a miniature of the world, but an allegorical language is more evident here. There is a constant cinematic comparison between humans and animals, and the character in between, the half human-half beast Zani. First time that we saw Heinie, there is an intercut between him and a jackal; it takes only less than a second to understand he is the heavy of the film and the rascal of this zoo. In this scene he throws his cigarette at a tiger in the cage. Lee simply uses this very Kantian idea that who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. Half a century later, Emir Kusturica filled the screen with the same reliance to the world of inhuman and in Underground the zoo became a representation of instinctive life that being outside of it means war, death and destruction.

Zoo in Budapest: Animal's grand hotel!

S. M. Eisenstein's Strike

At first, Lee’s typology of humans and animals looks like an Eisensteinian categorization of social classes, but soon he goes beyond the social commentary and creates a fairytale-like atmosphere. And In this fairy tale there is direct interaction between the world of human/known and beast/unknown, while he shows us, beastly side of human and manlike side of animals. The last sequence, a riot in the zoo, is like red revolutions by animals. Whilst the human hasn’t understand the necessity of a radical change, it is the beast’s revolution that shows other members of the community (in this case, zoo) who they are and what’s their real position in a society that is too much addicted to being only an “observer”.


One of the most amazing finales in history of cinema comes when animals get loose and run free. Incredible shots of mad creatures, ravings and roars and tigers on the back of elephants! More than usual beast- exhibition of the Hollywood safari films, it’s a surrealistic painting in motion, with an apocalyptic underline, victory of absolute chaos and defeat of human order and his dying morals.

The film was ignored at the time of first screening ("…this slant is but vaguely suggested and is never worked out satisfactorily", Said Variety). Lee is technically in the same league with those who dared to move heavy cameras and get rid of ball and chain of sound recording system. Zoo in Budapest thematically is the child of depression era, it has all escapist elements plus all social issues that you are expecting from a serious drama or an awakening gangster picture of the 1930s. It is also a great example of rising the German taste in Hollywood, and not necessarily among the émigré directors. Cinema of 1930s because of all kinds of technical and aesthetic inventions was a period of unpredictability and experimentation , and this film, once again reminds us of how thirties is still full of surprises and undiscovered territories.

-- Ehsan Khoshbakht

Director: Rowland V. Lee
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Editor: Harold D. Schuster
Art Director: William S. Darling
Cast: Loretta Young, Gene Raymond, O. P. Heggie, Wally Albright, Paul Fix, Murray Kinnell, Ruth Warren, Roy Stewart, Frances Rich, Niles Welch, Lucille Ward.
Production Dates: 9 Jan--early Feb 1933
Release Date: 28 Apr 1933; Black and White; 82 or 85; Fox Film Corp.

Poetics of Space#4

Photos by Duane Michals (born 1932)

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.