Frankly Reviewd

 

نقد و معرفي كتاب صادقانه بگم عزيزم: نگاهي دوباره به بربادرفته در ماهنامه سينمايي 24

A Chat With Laura Groves

I met Laura Groves in the last year's London International Women Film Festival, known as Bird's Eye View. There, Laura and her band, Blue Roses, accompanied the silent Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde with their electronic sound.

At the time, I wrote for Iranian Film Monthly about her imaginative work which was loaded with care for the meaning of every single image, and delivered a feminine sensibility throughout the film. Despite a personal dislike for electronic music for the silent cinema, and various forms of experimentation with the silent films, I was stunned by the brilliance of the Groves’s music and the way it contributed to the film. Her instrumentation was a combination of keyboards, synthesizers, guitar, piano, violin and innovative use of percussions. She even sang for two scenes.

What Laura Groves had achieved in Dr. Jekyll was interesting enough to persuade me to learn more about her work, so two weeks after the screening, I met her again, this time in the bar of the NFT.

Film Journals#1: Brighton Film Review

Brighton Film Review was the house journal of the film society of the University of Sussex in the late 1960s up to the early 1970s. It later became Monogram, and published in London. Students bought the journal for its listing of screenings and TV broadcasts of the classic and important contemporary films, and writers such as Thomas Elsaesser were "smuggling" their lengthy articles in the publication about their favorite filmmakers. 

"The convenient provincialism of a seaside university gave us the cover to argue, for instance, in favor our cinephile obsessions, while nonetheless keeping a watchful eye on what Screen and other film magazines were doing," writes Elsaesser about his role in the publication. He also says that unlike Movie and Cahier, Brighton was putting less emphasis on auteurist themes, rather than a stylist reading: "we tried to be informative and broadminded enough not to scare off our readers, but we nonetheless hoped that our expository manner carried a polemical edge that London would take note of (it did)."

Tonino Guerra (1920 - 2012)

«میكل‌آنجلو، هرازگاه، دوباره با هم نشسته بر قایقی روی آمودریای لغزان می‌رانیم، در حالی‌که با دندان‌هایمان تخمه‌های سیاه آفتاب‌گردان می‌شکنیم؛ در محاصره طناب‌ها و چلیک‌های روغن، و بقچه‌ای که زن کولی در مقابل موتوری صورتی می‌پیچد. در آن حال ملوانان با چوب‌های بلندشان قایقمان را از خوردن به کناره‌های شنی ساحل حفظ می‌کنند. ما در یک سوی قایق نشسته‌ایم و نمی‌دانیم ما را به کجا خواهد برد. به روبانِ آب در رود زُل می‌زنیم که در فاصله‌ای دور ناپدید می‌شود، در ابهام مهی رنگ پریده، که تو را به این فکر می‌اندازد، که سفر در فرارا به پایان خواهد رسید.» تونینو گوئرا

تونينو گوئرا، فیلمنامه‌نویس بزرگ ایتالیایی امروز درگذشت.

Impressions of Edinburgh

Edinburgh, June 2011. Photo © Ehsan Khoshbakht

Click to enlarge

Dietrich, Fur, Feather and Camp

مقالۀ زير در ادامۀ مقالاتي است كه دربارۀ نقش لباس در سينما در اين جا منتشر شده است. نمونۀ قبلي مربوط به جون كرافورد در فيلم‌هاي دهه 1940 او بود و اين يكي دربارۀ رابطۀ جوزف [يوزف] فون اشترنبرگ و ستاره و همدم او، مارلن ديتريش، در فيلم‌هاي مشتركشان است. مقاله پيش رويتان توسط كتايون يوسفي از دو منبع مختلف گردآوري و ترجمه شده است. انتخاب تصاوير هم از اوست.

ديتريش، پَر، پوست و كَمْپ

ریموند دورنیات در مقاله «شش فیلم جوزف فون اشترنبرگ» به شاعرانگی و رابطۀ مقولۀ لباس با روان آدمی در فیلم‌های حاصل از همکاری جوزف فون اشترنبرگ و مارلنه دیتریش اشاره می‌کند. این درحالی است که پیش از آن اگر هم توجهی به این موضوع از جانب منتقدان شده بود، چیزی جز انتقاد تند نبود. هرمان وینبرگ وسواس دیوانه‌وار اشترنبرگ در مورد لباس را نوعی «جنون» خوانده بود؛ برخی منتقدانش انگ بی‌سلیقگی به او زدند؛ برخی او را براي تبدیل دیتریش به «فاحشۀ پارامونت» متهم کردند. اما اگر با توجه به این سوژه خاص مروری کلی به مجموعۀ این هفت فیلم داشته باشیم، به وجود نوعی کدگذاری از طریق لباس پي مي‌بريم. دیدن عکس‌هایی که در ادامه می‌آید، متقاعدمان می‌کند که لباس‌های دیتریش در این فیلم‌ها هم بخشی از طرح کلی‌ای بودند که اشترنبرگ در سر داشت و بنابراین بی‌راه نیست که آن‌ را بخشی از امضای او بدانیم. عکس‌ها نشان می‌دهند که لباس بازیگر چگونه می‌تواند در رساندن معنا، اطلاعات یا احساسات سهیم باشد و بخشی از طرح روایی و تماتیک فیلم شود. طراح لباس در هر هفت مورد، تراویس بنتُن، طراح لباس استودیوی پارامونت است که نمی‌توان نقشش در شکل‌گیری سبک بصریِ این فیلم‌ها را نادیده گرفت.

Miracles of Ordet

The Cinema of Carl Dreyer (1971) is the title of a still worthy and illuminating book on the cinema of Dreyer, by Tom Milne (1926-2005). Milne, who has undeservedly remained unknown outside Britain, was a writer for Sight & Sound, the Monthly Film Bulletin, The Observer and The Times. His writings on film show an incredibly clear mind and a very functional method of putting his thoughts on paper. Milne's directness in his text about Dreyer can only be compared to the purism of the filmmaker himself. He writes about Ordet:

"[The] opening sequence roots the film firmly in reality with its shots of the farmstead and its naturalistic picture of a household reluctantly awakening in the middle of the night; but the sense of dépaysement is as total and as disruptive as it was in Vampyr. Partly, naturally, thus occasioned by Johannes's madness, but even more by the sense of void that surrounds this limbo of darkness where sheep bleat but none are seen, where there is no the sign of human habitation, where in fact nothing seems to exist outside this little enclave of humanity living in a country of the mind. This is simply an impression, of course, but it is furthered during the course of the film by the oblique sense of confinement, of limitation, that Dreyer convoys in all his exterior scenes.

No sense of landscape or the seasons, no sense of community life. It is as though Dreyer were illuminating the curious semi-symbolic scene where Johannes suddenly lights a pair of candles and places them in the window - Inger quietly replaces them on the dresser since it is broad daylight - "That my light may brighten the darkness.

With Ordet, one also believes completely in the reality of this family, their love for each other, their roots in the land they live in; but at the same time those roots disappear into a strange soil which is beyond reality so that the miracle of Inger's rebirth is both less and more than a miracle."

Interestingly, Milne disapproves Johannes character in Ordet. As for the cultural differences that lead to various interpretation of the story, I have to say, as someone who discovered Ordet in his teens, and urged other friends (from Iran) to see it, I don't remember anybody explaining Johannes's character as unconvincing. To my amazement, most of the spectators, at least those whom I've talked to, see Johannes as a modern time saint, even before the miracle occurs in the film. That could be something related to the different modes of reception (UK and Iran, in this case), but when Mr Milne calls Johannes "the weakest part of the film," that sounds more like an intellectual disagreement, and a big one.

It is true than unlike the Munk's play, or reportedly, the first cinematic adaptation of the play in 1944 by Gustaf Molander (which I haven't seen), Johannes is decentralized in Dreyer's drama. But I strongly believe it is this marginal character who defines the inner momentum of the film. If the landscape or dialogues are melancholic, mysterious, and in my view, deliberately dream-like, it is as if film's been narrated from the point of view of Johannes. Isn't he the character who Dreyer feels closest to? Since the presence of sacrificial and powerful earthly women is so overwhelming, it is hard to reach a certain conclusion.

Johannes remains an enigma, throughout the films, after seeing the film, and almost in all the theoretical analysis I've read about Ordet. The way Johannes behaves, explains how the film and its mise-en-scène should be constructed.

*  *  *

Ordet, thank heavens, has a extended run at NFT. (check out the screenings on BFI site) If you haven't seen Ordet yet, catch up with one of this screenings. If you've seen it previously, but only on DVD, you need to study the faces of the farmer family on big screen. Those sad eyes of Johannes should be as big as a Vilhelm Hammershoi painting to be "seen" properly.

18 Mar (18:00 & 20:30)/19 Mar (17:50 & 20:20) /20 Mar (18:10 & 20:45)/21 Mar (18:00 & 20:30)/22 Mar (18:00 & 20:30)/23 Mar (18:00 & 20:30) 

Antonioniesque NFT

National Film Theatre as though revisited by Antonioni in color. March 2012. Photography by Reza Hakimi.

"How dare you come from the BFI and use our typewriters?!" - Angry Henri Langlois to Richard Roud, using Cinematheque Francaise's typewriter.

Jack, Me Boy!

A letter from Raoul Walsh to John Ford (click to enlarge)

Sketch to the Screen: And God Created Woman

Et Dieu... créa la femme (Roger Vadim, 1956). Production design by Jean André