Megalopolis (2024)

megalopolis (2024)

Megalopolis is a cinematic atom bomb. It vaporizes everything in its wake, all thoughts and feelings, all the architecture of an art form so carefully and meticulously constructed and preserved over the decades and centuries reduced to rubble in an instant. As the fireball expands it burns the shadows of the moments and memories back into the concrete and the brick facades for all to see, and then destroys those too, and with them, the memento of what they used to mean. As the soviet nuclear satellite crashes in pieces down to the planet Earth, and coincidentally directly onto our setting of New Rome, its flashes of light cast shadows of the population larger than life onto the buildings surrounding them, the old edifices that box them in, keeping them trapped in the yesterday when they should be in the here and now, building the forever (right?). The shadows last only an instant and then vanish, too brief for us to see whether they are cowering in fear, dancing in celebration or screaming in terror, and really it doesn’t matter what they’re doing, their existence in that instant contributes to the tapestry that defines their civilization. The power of an image is that we can glean 1,000 words with each of them, and Coppola here gives us not only 24 per second, but sometimes 72, or who knows how many in some of the film’s denser moments of montage. Megalopolis hungers for the pursuit of truth that can only be arrived at intuitively. As the film progresses, we watch Coppola begin to construct a series of pre-fab scenarios, much like the familiar building blocks and patterns of the construction of a civilization, the kitsch remnants of meaning are all that remain in the city of New Rome. Designs, styles, gestures, thoughts, identities, personalities that have been reified and revived and recycled over and again until they also become shadows, brief reminders that quickly vanish.

Whether 2,000 years ago, today, or 3,000 years from now, the patterns governing human life cycles remain the same, and it’s Coppola’s Brechtian intent to snap us out of all of them. Each time a pre-fab scenario seems as though it were going to reach its pre-ordained conclusion, Coppola detonates it in grand fashion, exposing the framework, the falsity of the moment, and rendering all who would create the same inert in their cowardice. Sequences transpose from other films verbatim only to be upended in increasingly theatrical rocks of the boat, at times jarring us out of complacency by comedy or vulgarity or a visual fantasy. An early scene lifted from The Red Shoes is bafflingly devoid of setup or payoff, fourth wall breaks and ludicrous deliveries abound and the scene collapses in on itself like a dying star. The same thing happens to the subsequent scenes, the movie itself and the society it depicts. Driver’s Cesar steals the spotlight from the city’s mayor Cicero in a copy/paste of Hamlet. His words are of little importance when compared to his ability to hold the crowd’s attention. In a world of lightning fast information, only the familiar pattern can be recognized or acknowledged at that velocity, as Macluhan pointed out before Dementia 13 had even hit the screens. The person in the electronic age is surrounded by data points moving at the speed of light, the unfamiliar simply will not register. Hoffman, in one of his brief appearances, muses “I don’t mind the lightning but the thunder scares the shit out of me”. Coppola here gives cinema the push it needs to allow it to catch up to the other forms of lightning fast information flow. Nothing concrete and unmoving can withstand the electronic age, and so Driver now fashions structures that move right along with the ages, the fixed is no more, only the fluid can move forward into the next epoch. Fluidity is at the center of Megalopolis, a film where the rules of time itself can be bent and broken when our orator so chooses. No character stands still, from Labeouf’s gender-swapping to Plaza’s allegiances. The would-be sabotage by Esposito’s Cicero is rendered impotent by his daughter’s reminder that endless copies can be made of anything, there is no original in Megalopolis. The population’s most basic concerns for survival fall on deaf or opportunistic ears as the men their cries are directed toward either can’t hear anything but the sound of their own voice, or want to use them for their own ends. Necessities for the working class are the blank canvas for self-expression, or pawns in a game of dominance, for the ruling class. Civilization, touted as a failed rotting branch of a tree that needs pruning, in a film where only the elite have a voice and move within a small circle of familiar faces, the faces of the masses are never seen, barely glimpsed, as the crowd roars when coaxed by the actions of the exceptional.

Bread and circuses are engaged in with increasingly outlandish visuals and a pop performance with a ukulele. The pop star multiplies and is undone by her artifice. Coppola understands well the effigy of celebrity, of persona, and the person underneath; here he lights his own on fire and lets it burn to the ground in cinematic baptism. This is a film for the psilocybin generation, the psychonaut quest for a new form of fire, that renders the ego’s games of power relations trivial and bombastic as they overflow with the dripping soap of melodrama. As the film barrels toward its final act, the psychedelic visuals take over, the film splits into three screens which flicker and multiply and mirror in one eruption where Lang and Murnau meet Tik Tok in a collision 100 years in the making. Coppola in every way embodying the spirit of the silent filmmaker, filling the screen with visions that speak to the fantastic, the subliminal, the language of the mind’s subconscious as the next in a bloodline stretching back through Godard, to Resnais, to Vertov. With Megalopolis, he joins a different cinematic lineage, and a different conversation about the medium. With Megalopolis I’d felt the cinema of vérité and narrative dissolve into passé before my eyes, its rich textural images speaking to us by vision alone, and a resurgence of a language of pictogram with camera-as-paintbrush on a blank canvas. To dramatize and give life to our dreams and our imaginings is as old as civilization itself, and Coppola here has honored the tradition by speaking to the now in the only language it understands, a maximalist nuclear reaction at the speed of light.

9

Cruel Story of Youth 1960

CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (1960)

Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth is an impassioned tragedy; a tale of the point in a life cycle where all emotion becomes heightened, tomorrow seems it'll never arrive and the moment is all that exists. A time to fight and fuck and lie, cheat, steal, drink, smoke, drive fast, talk tough and wear cool sunglasses. To the youth of the picture, without foresight, and regarding their elders as though they had a disease they're trying not to catch, the central young couple speeds forward like jet planes always about to run out of gas, always looking for a place to land. When they hide, they hide within one another. When they feel bold again, they lash out at one another. Their romance is barely a romance at all, they each ignite in the other that which allows them to be rebellious, they enable each other, and add legitimacy to, their respective bucking of authority figures in their lives. The pillars of family and responsibility in Japan are in a state of destruction here. Makoto's family unit is made up of a father who is an impotent shadow of his former self, and a bitter sister who refuses to get too involved. Kiyoshi seems to keep no family at all, save for the much older woman/mother figure that he sleeps with throughout. In the rough world of dimly lit liquor rooms outside of town, where a racket seems the only way of getting some dough, their story takes form. There is no end to the pain they can inflict on those closest to them, and this power to inflict pain and to steal and to be callous to the pain inflicted on others seems to be the most powerful and mature that one can be. To deny their own fragility, and to 'out' others around them as being, in fact, fragile, drives the interaction. 

First, Oshima highlights cross-generational victimization, soon moving on to inter-generational victimization. The dark difference that seems to take shape between the two is the secretive and therefore relatively shameless nature of the inter-generational (Makoto, here, immediately returns for more, expecting a different outcome), shame only enters into the equation when elders are involved in some way. The youth strive to find a place without supervision where they can engage in any activity they choose (in fact they don't seem to care much internally what the activity is), somewhere hidden, after hours and in the dark where their actions linger in limbo, no hint of consequence as long as an authority figure doesn't find out. Consequences in the dark places are dolled out through physical punishment, the arbiter still being the authority figure of the boss who only emerges from his back room when playing judge and jury to the youths altercations. Makoto's eventual transgression from this comes in the dissolving of her adversarial cross-generational thinking, she begins to lose loyalty to Kiyoshi as his cold shoulder increases (the breaking point being his demands that she get an abortion), eventually her ability to victimize breaks down as well and she sleeps with an older man. Overall, Oshima's film tracks a chain of cause and effect that occurs in society when poison begins to seep in. The acerbic relations begin in small scale and grow outward. Oshima flips the 'children are our hope' mentality of older generations on its head when painting the picture of bleak disappointment that the youth, as well as their elders, truly believe awaits over the horizon. This is how a society devoid of hope functions and Oshima pulls no punches when detailing this dark portrait. This finally reaches its apex in a sequence just after Makoto's abortion where she and Kiyoshi hide in the dark of the recovery room. After hours, Makoto's sister and her former lover, who just performed the abortion, confess the hopelessness of life and aging to one another within earshot of the two youths. Kiyoshi goes dead behind the eyes and feeds himself with an apple, mindlessly chewing on and on, perhaps to drown out the truth he is afraid of hearing outside the door. With Cruel Story of Youth, Oshima finds a new tactile cinema, even his framing pushes his characters to the sides of his frames, he is not focusing on his characters, but rather focusing on the space between them, what sets them apart. In many framings, he is focusing on what separates them from the life all around them. 

Oshima creates a cinema of disconnection, but also of frenetic energy, also of hidden places. The strange rate of his celluloid causes the characters to move with a bizarre, yet pleasing motion. His film seems to glow orange, indoor lighting and sunsets we never see, but only see the light of the setting sun reflected on the characters. The sun is setting all around them in the land of the rising sun and we never catch a glimpse, though we can see it written on their faces. This perfect union and visual and thematic cues provides much of the strength of Cruel Story of Youth, it is a wholly imagined and executed endeavor. As its characters keep the world around them at bay, so are we kept at bay as viewers, never allowed to enter past a certain point, never allowed to indulge. The film tempts us forward and then turns away, never connecting. Oshima crafts a memorable look at estranged people with estranged eroticism and, though not the best depiction of this that he would find in his career, it is one of his better efforts.

8 

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)

Without a doubt the greatest film of its kind; Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia is an epic in every sense of the word, and yet personal enough to illuminate our central character psychologically and philosophically. Keeping the focus squarely on a small group of recurring faces so as not to allow the film to become mired in the magnitude of its subject matter, Lean allows the intimacy of his plot to shine through while the film’s elaborate set pieces and crowds of extras play as garnish. What will a man endure just to prove to himself that he can? Nothing so arouses Lawrence’s mettle as being told that his Bedouin guide is taking it easy on him with his water allowance, “I will drink when you drink”, he concludes. So goes the character’s behavior for much of the first half of the film, rising to meet each moment he’s told that no man could possibly endure in the face of certain death. His new countrymen retort to him each time that was will come to pass cannot be altered, ‘it is written’ after all, to which Lawrence scoffs that nothing is written. It is this mixture of admiration and scorn, of a deep feeling of superiority toward a people and an even deeper need to be accepted and cherished by them that makes up Lean’s approximation of the colonial mindset. To be loved by his new compatriots is not nearly enough for Lawrence, he must be revered beyond all comprehensible imagination, he must be as a genius God who sees deeper than any man into all that exists around him, leading a lost flock toward what they truly desire, not merely what they profess to desire, not merely what they believe in their hearts that they desire, but what he, and he alone, in his divine powers of perception knows that they truly want below the surface of their own cognition, what their soul thirsts for that their mind cannot Is it freedom? Is it dominion? Is it a bed with sheets and a glass of lemonade?

Lean initially shows us his Lawrence as an odd duck; out of step with, and openly shrugged off by, his peers among the ranks of the British military. He’s unable to gain the equilibrium required for assimilation with the other men in even the most basic situation, making a display of his exceptionalism by quenching fire with his bare hand and naked willpower. Here is a man who can either be above his fellow man, or below, but never to blend in nicely with any group, let alone become truly ‘one of them’. Lean’s film is essentially simplistic in its broad view and deeply complicated and world-weary in its fine grain textures. In all, Lawrence is about the self; the prison our identity can become, the shedding of that self when we transcend, alone, into a distant world. It’s about the hubris associated with ego loss, suddenly our morality, our sense of what’s rational, even our sanity is all is called into question. What Lean does so well is to take this man at the center, a man who’s forgotten all reason, and stage him always under the watchful gaze of men for whom life can never be forgotten. The eyes of a world that does not forget, a sober world of realities and cold fact, watches closely and judiciously as this man, shedding his every learned hinderance, marches blindly into madness, away from his own mind. Lean also wisely places his audience firmly in the middle, we can see the world and we can sympathize with Lawrence, we can understand his motives, but we cannot forget that reality exists, just as it always did; the billiard room with the good old boys sipping whiskey doesn’t simply vanish just because we’ve left town, it only washes away in our mind. The human spirit unleashed to face its most savage impulses, its lust for greatness, Lawrence exemplifies the God complex and the crushing defeat of being brought back down to Earth by remembering his mortality. We can transform, but the world does not transform with us. Lawrence is the outsider who can be above men or beneath them, but never feel kinship. Lean shows us a Lawrence who wishes to be above his own body, playing with a flame with his bare hands, riding the whirlwind, “the trick is not minding that it hurts”. Nothing, not nationality nor race nor rank, holds any meaning for him now, as he plunges ahead toward authorship of himself and the world around him. He becomes a will, and that will is a purpose unto itself. Ultimately, Lean shows us the fate of all who would attempt to outrun themselves, an eventual day of reckoning when the two sides of Lawrence come crashing down. Faisal, in a den of wolves, relaxing at the sight of a friend and greeting him as he’s come to be known to his people, ‘Awrence’,and suddenly changing his posture when he sees the man’s aura has changed; “or is it Major Lawrence?”. The question we can only grasp at is, which is the Lawrence at the surface of things and which is the Lawrence under the surface? At which point have we exposed the real Lawrence? The clumsy man being shouted out of the room by his superior officers? The insubordinate man defying rank to speak to Faisal of his aims? The headstrong man galloping across the desert after saving Gasim? The triumphant man atop his slain dragon of the locomotive or conquered cities? The deranged man sick with bloodlust as he grips the dagger with shaking hands? The broken man, whipped and defeated, turning back to Cairo in shame? He is all of them and none of them, he is like all who live in modern times, somehow an ever-unfolding contradiction in a natural state of hypocrisy. Like the American newspaper man who comes to use him to sell a war and winds up chastising him from his moral soapbox. In the desert he had finally met men who weren’t hypocrites, who weren’t a contradiction. His remark to the newspaper man reveals all when asked about the desert, he replies “It’s clean”.

The choice to show us the uneventful death of the man who became a force not even a world super power, who carved up the map of the globe as though it were a game of strategy, would dare tame is the key that makes the picture work. The man who stood defiant as a dying Turkish soldier fired at him from feet away was ultimately undone, not by battle, but by leisure, as a pair of Sunday bicycle riders strayed into the wrong lane on a country road. For Allenby, who never stopped practicing his fishing cast even in a conquered city, it would have been unthinkable, but for Lawrence, whose soul was claimed by the desert, there was no escape. Like Gasim, whose death was written and delayed by the will of Lawrence, so too was it written for Lawrence himself. He found the ease of leading men to plunder and profit, but the impossibility of leading in peacetime. The war had taken Lawrence in so many circles it had become impossible to discern where he came in at all, and who he was when he did. Lean balances all of this by never letting us forget the man who will inherit the leadership when the fighting concludes, Allenby, Faisal and Dryden stroll comfortably in the wings for the entirety of the picture and sit down to negotiate the peace when all is said and done. Lawrence, drained of all direction, witnessing the curtain of politics fall over his clean land, does the only thing he can do; he leaves for home. Sitting blankly in the Jeep, Lean gives us one final reminder of what awaits him when he gets there, and in that instant, reminds us of where all the paths of glory ultimately lead us.

10

Maestro (2023)

MAESTRO (2023)

In Maestro, and in the life of Leonard Bernstein, Bradley Cooper finds his opus. An effervescent orchestration of style, mood and era, the film is as much a biography of Bernstein as it is a cinematic mix tape of styles and tones of the middle decades of the twentieth century. What begins as a fast-talking New York picture about two twenty-somethings attacking their careers in the performing arts head on, slowly melts away into a solitary and existential drift through life, death and the pursuit of creation. Bernstein sits, chain smoking as always, in a casual interview being recorded by an author in. the late 1960’s, remarking at his societal malaise, feeling like everything around him is somehow heading for disaster or degradation. What starts out with all the knockout energy and triple-decker dialogue of a Hawks or Sturges screwball comedy slowly evolves before our eyes into a sorrowful dirge for the beloved in our life, the pain of our unions with our pursuits and the people around us, our devotion to the field we’ve found success in. The young artist creates because he’s bursting at the seams, the elder artist finds vitality in the ritual. Cooper highlights the schizophrenia, as Bernstein puts it, in another interview for television in the 50’s, of the artist who works alone, crafting and composing in a completely introverted private world, only to turn around and become a performer, an extrovert of the highest order, becoming a spectacular image of oneself on an elevated stage before the crowd. Cooper’s direction floats us above the fray, never becoming heavy, indulging in each time period for brief observational snapshots, observing rather than analyzing and the film is better for it.

Art and artists look for freedom and expression at all costs, ignoring the self-destruction and following the impulses that guide them along. When pressed about any of this, Bernstein simply dances over top of the questioning, his words become a jazz of half-thought notions and fleeting appeals toward the logic of the listener, yet there is no logic when it comes to the visceral act of life. The film’s sparse action sequences of a dance number and the scenes of Bernstein conducting are few but the specter of Bernstein’s music is layered wall-to-wall in swells of orchestral throughout. The character of Bernstein rarely speaks deeply outside of the interview sequences and instead dances throughout the crowd with aloof flirtation toward party guests, friends and lovers. The inner struggle of the artist at work is only hinted at, the deep feeling toward his compatriots is laughed and shrugged away as easily as his ambivalence toward his own achievements. The complexity is never on display, though seen in glimpses of his difficulty communicating his inner life to his children, a cocaine-fueled phone call to his daughter and so on. Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre is somehow more in tune with his feelings than he is, putting into words that which Leonard cannot. The irony of Montealegre’s orchestration of their personal lives is not lost in any encounter. Both performers, Mulligan as the actress, director, mother and matriarch, Cooper as the composer, conductor and father, playing the child when it suits him, making light of a Snoopy doll on the day of Manhattan’s Thanksgiving parade as Mulligan confronts him over the inadequacies of their marriage and partnership. Bernstein, never refusing an impulse be it creative or otherwise, taking a lover as and when he chooses with an innocence that belies its destructive power. Montealegre’s only reproach toward this is to chastise him for becoming ‘sloppy’ with indiscretion, never for infidelity, and Bernstein genuinely displays a detached perplexity that any of this would get under her skin. Her role as wife becomes that of accomplice and confidant toward his affairs. The victory of our maestro here, Cooper as director, is to play it all before an unflinching camera, rarely cutting from Bernstein or Montealegre in their scenes, as though the other players in the room didn’t matter. Moments are allowed to play out, the camera lingers on the married couple’s Thanksgiving argument long after most directors would cut away. The frenetic interplay of the opening scenes simply dissolves into stark examination.

Montealegre’s death is lingered on, Bernstein’s death is never shown. She bears the suffering of the two, while Bernstein is rarely shown to experience consequence. In a way, our window into the life of the conductor begins when the two meet, and we do not stay long after her passing, only to witness Bernstein in a final display of gratification as the old man instructs a new student and then subsequently begins a new affair in a discotheque. The unwed Bernstein is only seen in brief bookends of this scene and the opening of his first appearance at Carnegie Hall. As the opening quote from Bernstein illuminates, the film looks for the ‘tension between the contradictory answers’ to find its meaning. Ultimately we find an ode to the power of performance to bring the inner to the outer, both in content of Bernstein’s compositions and in form of Mulligan and Cooper’s emotive acts before the camera, giving voice to the thoughts unspoken behind the eyes. The film finds its true climax in the moment just following Bernstein’s performance of Mahler at the Ely Cathedral. In a drained but elated state, to the applause of those gathered, he is reunited with Montealegre, the brief instant of emotional catharsis is all that is needed to see the bond of two which outside eyes can’t comprehend. Cooper has fashioned a steady and relentless drive through a private symphony that only our two leads can really hear.

8

Teorema 1968

TEOREMA (1968)

Pasolini’s confession, his act of reconciliation before almighty God, is Teorema. Here he strips naked in the desert of the bourgeoisie and shouts toward the heavens, not in repentance, but in rapture. On his altar he lays down scripture and politics, lust and longing, art and artist and prays that his sacrifice will be enough to purify the act of the sacrifice itself. The bourgeois family, the owners of a factory, are brought to vivid life out of their stupor of dead, secluded comfort by the appearance of a house guest who neither speaks nor guides, but rather awakens and provokes their inner flame to grow into a raging fire. For some their appetites erupt, as that of starvation in a desert, and for others they enter into a time of intense fasting and denial of their bodies altogether. Stamp’s stranger is an undeniable transformative force for each and every one of them, here elevated beyond melodrama, beyond comedy, beyond camp or tragedy, into a level of prismatic simultaneity. We pity them, empathize for them, laugh at them, laugh at ourselves; Pasolini’s power here is to destroy our entire notion of regarding the narrative with any consequence and cause a rift as dissociative within his audience as Stamp’s character causes in the lives of the onscreen family. This apparition, the personified hand of the divine, reaches out and contorts their self-image to the breaking point, each instantly becoming drawn to him and shattering their previous world with uncontrollable desire.

When mere mortals hear the voice whispering from the empyrean, it shocks them beyond measure. Pasolini here presents that the working class are able to more easily deal with this, paying it homage and gathering for miracles, yet the capitalists who cannot recognize this for what it is need to be shaken with a much more rigorous and clear method. Stamp’s Adonis merely smiles and stares blankly and coolly at the human mess of tangled emotional webs and insecurities he sees in front of him. Their only answer to this light shining upon them is, of course, to make love to it, the ego offering the body to it as the greatest of submissions. Pasolini’s first devilish gag is repeated over and over and is somehow more effective each time, the same as the visitor’s departure and subsequent distraught reaction from each of our players is equally repetitive while becoming more satisfying and comedic with each passing instance of agony that the family displays. Anne Wiazemsky as the daughter departs our world and the movie altogether when her body freezes in place, trapping her in a waking coma. So overcome by her memory, her preoccupation with the past, she simply ceases to continue in time itself. The son, confounded by his encounter, suddenly can no longer relate to people and becomes an acerbic painter, railing against political ideals and attempting to perform on planes of creativity where no other human being can join him. Pasolini is the same here, creating on a level where no one else could possibly grasp or even portend to criticize because no one is on this particular wavelength. What good is it to argue and discuss when the work simply comes from a place so removed from mundane functioning that it no longer resembles reality in any actionable form? The family’s servant becomes an instrument of the divine unto herself, performing miracles and levitating up toward the heavens. In the end, she returns to the Earth itself to salt the ground with her tears. The owner of the factory, who instigates the flash forward that opens the film by giving away the means of production to the workers, sheds his worldly possessions and joins with the desert that God has led them into. Silvana Mangano as the mother continues to pursue the feeling that was awakened within her to debatable results. The various incidents of fallout from the encounter with the apparition are somehow more harrowing than the encounter itself, the lost flock cut off from the divine hand now roam the Earth looking to recapture the glory of their encounter, never finding it.

Pasolini has captured the feeling of eros and inspiration entirely, a sudden connection with a force from beyond the Earthly plane that feels an elation and then the subsequent crash of the mortal being when the inspiration ceases. Teorema in and of itself is an act of such inspiration, crashing to the Earth with the force of a man shouting toward the barren landscape, reaching out for the fleeting memory of the transformation, wanting to stay always in the feeling of transformative ecstasy. That our director is able to achieve this much without the use of words and merely imagery that holds the power of its symbols on its sleeve is equally impressive. In the end our director leaves every element entirely open-ended, are the characters searching for their lost inspiration? Are they repenting for what they’ve done? Was the act of becoming seduced by Stamp’s visitor repentant in and of itself? Pasolini does well to never state or answer, laughing at the idea of an answer, we are shown the cinematic vision and left to ponder the experience. Morricone plays jazz amidst the uses of Mozart, Pasolini does the same. Stamp reads an excerpt of Rimbaud describing the cosmic effect of a star that only returns to Earth so often, we feel its effects and then it’s gone. The brief agony and ecstasy of Teorema leaves our orbit and its effect remains.

10

A Lesson in Love 1954

A LESSON IN LOVE (1954)

Bergman’s lesson holds the three phases of love in a man’s life: the wife, the daughter and the mistress. A Lesson in Love is a perfect farce, succeeding in lampooning all of our deep desires and regrets in love, the relations we hold, the relations we held, and the ones we never should have given up. As the film progresses, we see our lead in various remembrances of the women in his life. Bergman holds the reveal of his wife for late in the picture’s runtime and only after we have seen her introduced unbeknownst to us as the conquest of prize between two competing males. Much in the same way did their relationship form and evolve, and as they go in so do they go out. The wife returns to her former lover and our good doctor moves into conquests of patients and admirers. Bergman’s penchant for the chamber is in full effect in the film’s structure as we’re whisked form one chamber to another be it the doctor’s office quarters or the car he departs in to the train car. In one-on-one scenarios with the women of his world he encounters challenges of the heart as those around him go through their own dilemmas. It is Bergman’s narrative unfolding that provide the comedy and the effectiveness here, as we are slowly introduced to each scenario we are given a deeper picture, and the deeper we see the more amusing it all becomes until the film’s final moments when all farce is realized. In A Lesson in Love, Bergman does well to place us amongst the dance of love, our two lovers locked in eternal devotion, and the only ones in the film who do so.

The wry wit of Bergman’s execution here is the true centerpiece of the film, the movements of parry and joust on the part of our central couple and the unsatisfied desires of the lustful they encounter in life, at work, on the train. For our lesson in love, we see love as a complete devotion of the soul for some, others as sport, something to bet money on the conquest and victory of. The grandiosity of Bergman’s play here is the complete nature of the relationship he presents. The lovers are obsessed with one another after all these years, preoccupied by the other, entranced by the other and yet their physical ties to the other wear thin. They desire more, some new excitement in love, all the while realizing that a vacation from the relationship could result in disaster, yet pursing the impulse anyhow. In their questioning of love itself and who to spend life with, they bite at one another in a series of quarrels and dialogues that are at once the delicious culmination of so much pent up romance in the characterization. How much of our lesson in love is chemical? As Nix, the daughter of our main character expresses dissatisfaction and anger toward a friend whom she regards as against her. We later find out that the extent of the betrayal is only that the friend has gone through puberty faster and earlier than Nix and is now worried only about showing her skin and attracting a man. In a nod to the complexity of the human desire to not be shut out, Nix expresses her desires to become a man as a response. This is where Bergman’s film hits its stride, as we see that the people involved simply do not want to lose their connections in life, and when they do, they resort either backward to old connections or onward to whatever new face comes their way.

Bergman’s comedy of emotion is light and life-affirming, it is gorgeous in its intimacy and devilish in its comedy. Bergman’s visuals eventually give way to a dreamscape, our lovers in flashback wandering the woods near his parents house sharing a cigarette that she is in charge of, perhaps these were woods he played in as a boy, and now they are committing their life to one another all over again in them. Love as a series of renewals, of rebirths and moments that reactivate the lust one felt when all was new. How is it that we can be loyal, possessive and absolutely devoted to one while in their arms, and moments later, out of sight, they have vanished from our thoughts as we pursue another? The ebb and flow of life, as we reach old age, and on into the necessary trivial white lies of keeping a relationship intact. Could it be that the short-term desires of men and women can oft overlap and yet it’s the long-term desires that always come to odds? Bergman takes us through a journey that is as comedic as it is poignant and filled with an incredible assortment of moments that connect with an audience. It is made up almost entirely of these moments, and the screenplay speaks to the joys and jealousies of our trysts. One of the most effective films of his early career, A Lesson in Love sets the stage for what’s to come, and brings us a welcome dose of comedy in Bergman’s career. As husband and wife play cat and mouse, we are amused, and when the film unites them, we find an affirmation of the necessity of life’s partners in all their ups and downs.

8

The Third Man 1949

THE THIRD MAN (1949)

A world in pieces, all trust is lost, nothing seems certain and nothing is safe from vanishing right before your eyes. War-torn Vienna at the end of the 1940's, and all seems temporary, survival day by day. Genre perfection is a difficult thing to measure; a flavor you've become so accustomed to that you only know it when you taste it. The Third Man takes aim and hits the mark. It lives in such a moment as all post-war thrillers, in the ruins of the old world with characters who've seen and felt too much, the darker things, and struggle to hold on to their last shreds of optimism. The Third Man leads us on that journey, from a murky and illogical world of suspicion for every one and every thing, back into balance, and of course, renewed trust for society and citizenship. The road-weary and battle-hardened civilian makes peace with authority all over again, while his best friend takes the road toward profiteering on the black market. Above all, like the best of genre, it's aware of itself and aware of the audience, doing its best to confound and surprise both from the first frame to the last. The Third Man is the best of pulp and the best of film noir, dark truths about our world minus the hand-wringing, sober but not somber. This is where the genre truly excels, a world that's seen the bleak reality of human suffering brought on by human lust for conquest for so long it's gone punchy. Characters feel powerless to change the world, they just strike up a cigarette and do the best they can. The deeper Joseph Cotton's Holly Martins is pulled in by this whirlpool of intrigue, the more the situation starts to unravel, the more he starts to unravel and the whole world seems to turn right-side-up by the end of it. 

It's a funny fascination in The Third Man, image versus reality in a lot of ways. In our greatest imagination our friends are noble, our own lives are romantic and the good guys get the happily ever after. Martins plays the role of the American cowboy suddenly thrust into a different kind of wild west (Eastern Europe), but still behaving by the ideals of the novels he writes. He drinks and stands up to the law men, he lives out on his own limb and saves the girl. No one in this town has any patience for the lone ranger though, they've all survived the way they know how in this Hell, and an outsider can't understand. It doesn't dissuade Martins from his inquest, he rides through the town sans steed and does what the comical American character always does, gets to the bottom of the mystery regardless of what anyone around him cautions him against. To Martins' credit, he discovers the foul play and solves the mystery, although by the time he does he realizes the gray areas, the complexity, that plague the world today and nothing is as simple as the cowboy might have hoped for. Reed frames the whole affair with a casual and wry sense of wit, a sort of aloof cynicism fully befitting of the times. We should do well and be thankful to live in interesting times, after all, terrible as they may be. What does peace and comfort get you, anyway? The cuckoo clock, as Welles puts it, in the film's most summative and poignant bit of dialogue. The Third Man relishes the dark and dangerous and smiles at death with a refreshing candor. In this struggle for survival, forgery is the name of the game, and playing cat and mouse with the untrusted authorities is not only a citizen's price for survival, but a duty, a way of life. Martins seems to side with this at first, but his conscious (and a very real death threat) get the better of him. Not so for Alida Valli's Anna, in the world of The Third Man there are different worlds and those worlds cannot connect. Perhaps Martins finally realizes that Anna and Harry have gone through transgressions that he has not, and his world is still sided more with the authorities. Perhaps, as one untouched by the conflict of World War II on his own doorstep, Martins realizes that he can never understand. Lime aims more to behave as the world he sees around him, not from any internal drive, to behave as governments behave. After all, if the governments of the world have seen fit to treat human life as dispensable, why should he not behave under the same logic? The world around him has changed the game of human existence and so he proceeds forward with the same mindset. As the curtain falls and the final chase is on, it's Martins who pulls the final trigger and no one else. Again, a changed man in a changed game, the values of friendship and brotherhood no longer taking precedence as they had at the film's outset. If nothing else, The Third Man speaks of our ability to see things in a new light, to compromise our own principles when push comes to shove, how simple everything had seemed to Martins when he first arrived. 

In a world turned on its head, no one is quite sure how to behave. The Third Man communicates it all, the darkness, with an ever-knowing grin and a chuckle. Perhaps it says the most about its era that all of this death and destruction, all of the people so sure of their righteous ways, play as humorous in this new era. The war had changed more than just the landscape, had laid waste to more than just monuments, it had forever changed the minds and the souls of all men who came under its fire. Even those who were indirectly affected by its destruction would be corrupted by its lingering presence. The world, in the midst of rebuilding, would never truly return to the way it was before it all, and that much was clear. The Third Man stands as a reminder that when all else fails, there's nothing left to do but throw your hands up. Martins' resignation to sell out his friend in favor of idealism is punctuated only by Anna's cold shoulder. In this world there are no good guys, just people, each operating under a different set of rules. They struggle to survive and the only thing that truly lingers is the spirit of the times. Under different times, and different circumstances, perhaps they could have been very different toward one another, a different presence in each other's lives, but our lives cannot be separated from our era, nor can our actions. We can only hope to survive beyond the times and into the next epoch. Maybe then we'll understand and be understood. 

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The Long Goodbye 1973

THE LONG GOODBYE (1973)

Altman's period of genre deconstruction in the early 70's is responsible for some of cinema's greatest films, not least of which is his foray into noir with The Long Goodbye. The film is a cinematic cousin of The Big Sleep due to its Chandler source material, main character and screenwriter, Leigh Brackett, though the thirty year gap can make them feel like distant relations. Altman's tour through the American mythos had crossed through military pictures and the Korean war, to westerns and now to the pulp detective pictures. Still a couple of years shy of summarizing it all in his magnum opus, Nashville, The Long Goodbye still sees the passage of time and time's tides' erosions on American life, here from the vantage point of the present (Mash and McCabe were both period). The displaced noir archetype of Marlowe, (once the cool, envied loner) is now seen as an outcast, described as a "loser" even by his closest friends in the less ruggedly-individualist 70's settings. Without dames and their military fathers' staunch upbringings to serve as an antithesis of, Marlowe floats amongst  a calm and consumerist world of groceries and bungalows, each of his counterparts that he passes by, tucked in their own private worlds no longer need a private eye, hell, Marlow can be a hero just by picking up some late night brownie mix for his star child, yoga-loving nudist neighbors. Films and classic stars have become the legend, forgotten by most and relegated to impressions on the local booth operator. The tides of time continue to flow in and out of shore. 

Tough guys have taken on a new role in the world. Whereas Sterling Hayden's brutish alcoholic Hemingway-type writer carries old world strength, he is easily subdued by a doctor who knows his psychological triggers. Physical strength means little when one can bypass engaging in combat and cut to the inner weakness normally shielded by his addiction. Marlowe, in this tale, is unable to command any situation at all, rather being caught up in the flow and tossed around like a rag doll from one scenario to another. Much in the same way, cigarette smoking takes on a resignation. Keep calm, light up, and wait for the fallout from whatever life is throwing at you. In the new America, Marlowe is but a relic and slips by trying to do right by his and getting slapped, punched or stabbed at every turn. The film's core lie in its differences of thought with all previous iterations of the character, here Marlowe isn't womanizing so much as subdued himself, happy with a home-cooked meal from a woman rather than her phone number and indeed we never witness him sleeping with anyone nor hinting at it. He stands up in jester-like fashion to any mode of authority, society plays as a joke. While he's busy eluding the consequences of most situations through his aloof attitude and inability to take part in the psychological gameplay, we still witness his utter inability to transcend his circumstances. He has no drink of choice, why would he? When questioned by Hayden's character on his preferences he simply replies in 70's male fashion 'well, I'm drinking what you're drinking', agreeable is the MO of the times. Only when his pillars of loyalty and friendship are completely shaken do we witness Marlowe going on the violent offensive. The signature of all of it is Altman's wandering and restless camera that seems discontent with simply telling us the tale, though the better judgement of Altman continually drags us back to the narrative, back into the norms of the new society. His camera wishes to be free, like Marlowe, and roams the landscape of his mis en scene while searching for small moments, the ethereal elements, the waves, the reflections in the windows. The males are confused, unhappy, playing machismo games with one another while the women, free and empowered in principle, seem lost. In reality they are subjugated and unhappy as well, though the men are barely at ease with their retained dominance, instead choosing to lash out at the women based on some perceived lack of power where there is none. It's a changing world and the only antidote is not to act, to remain an observer and take it all in, and head out for the right brand of cat food at 3am every now and again. Was the world so different in under three decades? Sure. An energized and strengthened populace with American exceptionalism and individualism as its base had conquered the threats of the known world, fast forward and malaise had set in, Marlowe is treated like a child wandering about, his profession as laughable as the authority figures he scoffs at earlier in the film. When finally the mystery surrounding Terry Lennox is resolved, it's Marlowe who delivers the final blow to the archetype. Altman's final moments condemn all that is trusting and innocent in the modern American psyche, you'll lose everything, you'll even lose the cat. 

The pillars crumble as the populace shrugs and lights up another Marlboro. Is it that we're too busy burying our heads in the sand and reliving the 'cool' of the past to possibly save the present? The old world, and the old America are destined to wind up like Hayden; cast out to a harsh sea of their own volition in the middle of the night, a logical suicide, goodbye new world. The past lives on only as an imitation by a youth who lives it vicariously. We can no more imagine it than we can recreate it, a world adrift on its own waves of tuned-out, tuned-in brownie mix. Marlowe's neighbors got it alright, they don't go out and the world doesn't get in, no matter how much it stares. It's like Marlowe says when he exits the lock-up early on in the picture, right? 'They'll bring you here, but they don't much care how you get home after'. Tough to hold it together in a world that only cares about using you for its purposes and then drops you immediately after. Altman had touched the pulse of the times, kept his cool, and given it back to use as a mirror of the world he was living in, or maybe just a reflection in a pane of glass. The tide rolled out with The Long Goodbye, and all Marlowe could do was watch. He didn't even wave. 

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Scarlet Street 1945

SCARLET STREET (1945)

Scarlet Street is Fritz Lang's masterpiece of tragedy. Here he dives deep into the pit of the soul and surfaces with a picture that details all of life's deadly sins with razor sharp accuracy. A film of timeless power, Scarlet Street drives relentlessly toward its closing moments all the while detailing an entirely different story, it's only when we see what lies deep in the core of our characters, things we tried willfully to disregard, that the brilliance of Lang's movements is made clear. Populated by no character who isn't vile in one way or another, the film shows us a different kind of underworld than most noir, it's the underbelly of society who retains the civility and appearances of upstanding quality, and deep within their mind retains another person altogether. Cold and ruthless in their sluggish and insecure ways, the characters on display in Scarlet Street are all cowards by one stretch or another and in their cowardice they find malice and in their malice, find their undoing. Never before or after has such a portrait been painted in such vivid life, much of it owed to Lang's unflinching construction, as the film spirals nearer and nearer to its conclusion he does not allow us to look away, never breaking from the mental anguish and experience, never interrupting the skewed view of a deranged mind with anything more than equally expressionistic visuals. Lang's mastery of noir stylistically add all the flourishes needed, but his narrative edge sharpens as it cuts through the film's runtime. The picture only gains power as it travels forward. The perfect orchestration of one incredible mental terror to the next brings the portrait to life and in Lang's hands it never rests for a moment. One of the masterpieces of the Noir era, Scarlet Street is a potent blend of tragedy and desperation.

It is perhaps the desperation felt by all in the film for something outside of themselves that they are emulating that makes it the deeply troubling film that it is. All in the film have an ideal before them they are looking to embody, the life of another that they wish to copy in some way, and Lang brings us deeply into the whirlpool of our folly.   Lang lays out a tale of our exterior and interior self, the logical and the desire unbound. Edward G Robinson's character is the epitome of the lust and longing in equal measure, but it may be Joan Bennett's who captures the tragic tale most completely. As Lang drives us onward into the darkness, we're blind-sided by the seemingly sweet and simple tale he's been spinning all along. It's this rug-pull moment that keeps us on our toes through the picture's conclusion, which continues to defy expectation and move us to worlds beyond where we've been in intense subjectivity. This is the film's more shocking aspect in many ways that we are pulled deeper into the subconscious of the already Freudian depths of Robinson's experience. As the lighting becomes more abstract, our images presented become more vividly dream-like during the film's progression, is there anything more sinister than that flashing light in the window of Robinson's new flat? The images he paints are flat and dream-like as well, which keeps being referenced as a lack of 'perspective' on his part, Lang makes the film seemingly dive into this motif, lacking any kind of perspective outside of the skewed mind of our character. Dan Duryea provides the perfect foil to all of Robinson's traits in this love triangle, he fills the girlish mind of Bennett and holds the key to her heart, but for all of his animal charms and smooth talking he's a huckster con artist in a cast full of characters conning one another. Lang's expert navigation of the lies and liars is Scarlet Street's most outstanding narrative balancing act, keeping everyone in this skewed world in a proper light, never succumbing to easy or stock characterizations. It's the seemingly simple tale told with an expert touch that separates the film from much of noir and even Lang's other work. Similar to its companion piece (with the same cast) The Woman in the Window, Lang's exploration of cinema as a dream world with dream logic is the perfect fit for the dark and brooding noir era. Those long, looming shadows set against the harsh interiors in Lang's world of visual poetry, the spaces in the cramped apartments seeming to swallow up our characters, and the breath of fresh air that is Bennett's new apartment as she takes in the luxurious balconies and terraces. Lang brings us down a dark path and in style. 

Scarlet Street is grade A film noir and for an era known for its dark storytelling, Lang goes to depths not normally hit. A deep place in the mind where nightmares live, a nightmare taken from a fantasy of selfish liars. Lang does his best to side step taking in the direction of a moral tale and focuses us solely on the internal experience of what Robinson is experiencing, and the film builds perfectly toward its conclusion. Love and desperation, passion driving the world's best creations and worst crimes, Lang shows us the dark and the light, and brings us there with a trio of great performers. All of them are, in their way artists, the art of Bennett and Duryea just happens to be conning people (and themselves). Lang's Scarlet Street is the stuff black & white dreams are made of. 

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Cleopatra 1934

CLEOPATRA (1934)

DeMille brings the best of 1930's high society and pre-code cinematic lust to his tale of the queen of Egypt. Colbert is a dazzling Cleopatra and the spectacle of the ancient empires is brought to full awareness. Poetry is the language of the Gods, and the poetic dialogue further serves to draw us into its web of subdued eroticism. The showpieces reserved for large-scale Hollywood musicals of the time are in full force here as royal courts and the regal unfurling of entertainment harkens to a time of antiquity. Legions of men and women at the behest of the royal leadership, a republic that shuns the very idea of royalty and a queen who bewitched even the mightiest rulers. Here we see the strength of classic Hollywood in all of its glory, and there are few better representations. It is a personal drama, and farcical in the same breath, but with the elaborate sets, costumes and parades of extras it becomes a kingdom unto itself, with DeMille as benevolent ruler. Colbert becomes the cold female, using her sexuality to save her people again and again, finally entangling her duties with personal affection and epic drama is born. The film's immersive ability is ultimately its greatest strength as we are transported to the days of old by way of Hollywood trope, but the lyrical speech of our players brings us out of the present and deeply into the ancient world, not to mention the awe-inspiring choreography of background players and sets, fire and dancing. 

When a republic begins to look for conquest outside its borders, ruin waits. This is briefly touched upon as Caesar states his goals early in the film as bringing corn to the unemployed of Rome. The more powerful the empire becomes the more it must put strain, not on its populace, for they may rise up, but on those it will conquer. Colbert, as Cleopatra, plays the perfect, desperate ruler who will use any scheme to save her own life against this unbeatable power as well as allow Egypt to endure. She, as temptress, makes a formidable heroine for our story, but the romance on display is far from stock melodrama. The cinema crafted by DeMille is not outside of the highest spectacle filmmaking, rather, it defines it. There is something to the creation and the mastery of a genre, especially one that, in essence, defined what Hollywood means for a century afterward. This should not look over the film's strengths, it is transportive. We see the ancient cities in all of their glory and dazzle at the special effects and sweeping performances that made it so. In the deep, dark moments of the film we are drawn away, into the past. Like many have attempted and few have achieved, DeMille's depiction truly feels ancient and his romance truly feels romantic. The levity with which he presents it are the film's greatest strengths as Colbert makes full use of her comedic prowess during scenes of wooing the leaders of Rome into her hand. To attest to Cleopatra as anything more or less than a feeling would be giving it too much credit, though it crafts its emotional state and then lingers there for the entirety of the runtime. It is a tale of manipulation, of survival and of eventual succumbing to human desires and a fall. The empires of man and the populace of such empires live and die at the whim of their rulers, all men and women devote their entire lives to the passions of these less-than-worthy royals. There is little judgement passed in the film, rather a resignation that this is the world of the past, and this is the ways in which our ancestors lived. It is a peaceful and benign viewpoint. Instead we are treated to Colbert's comedic enchantments as she pulls the men into her will and the kingdoms of the world follow suit. The inclusion of all of the legendary, Shakespearean tropes of Caesar are welcome, and the drama never lifts. This is classic Hollywood filmmaking at its finest. 

The film never elevates itself beyond the spectacle to effect, the work done is airtight and yet never elating, in this way it is not an intoxicating cinematic experience, but an applaudable blockbuster. Like any film that lives by its ethereal elements alone, all the costume, fire and wine and parades and battles serve to give its flavor. It is a film of good taste and a delicious film to behold. Colbert is the only true standout performance and why should she not be, all other actors are but fodder for the queen. DeMille provides large and lengthy scenes for us to get lost in and that is the true strength of the picture, to become lost in its ancient world for a time. The film is kept at a high level of emotion and visual majesty throughout, and paced at a level that defines the Hollywood epic. The film's attentive theatrics provide the spine of the work as well as give us many moments to dig deeper, the more other-worldly elements are the true gems of this adventure. DeMille crafts something unique and impressive which the sands of time cannot diminish. Cleopatra is the reigning queen of the 1930's Hollywood spectacle. 

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The Searchers 1956

THE SEARCHERS (1956)

In a short list of films that can be called perfect, John Ford's The Searchers stands tall near the top. A picture of such unabashed poetry that it could only be crafted by someone who'd spit at the word 'poet'. The Searchers balances its twin worlds with ease. When our characters are out in the wild sands and snows of the American frontier, they carry with them the warm glow of home, the family unit. When inside the home, they carry with them the world-weary and weathered faces of life in untamed country. The savage brutality of frontier life isn't really ever depicted in any tangible way, rather we see it in the characters' faces, we see it in each hard look, each grizzled glance. We see and recognize these people are no strangers to death. This is the most phenomenal aspect of Ford's direction here, his revelations. Each major beat is communicated to us by reaction. Early in the picture when the homestead, which has since been our only world in the film, is surrounded, attack is imminent, Ford does not reveal the attackers, but Lucy's scream as the camera dollies forward says it all. Ethan verbalizes the approach when asked about the state of Lucy's body upon discovery, he angrily growls "what do you want me to do, draw you a picture? Spell it out?". Men hungry for vengeance have had too many savage experiences, men like Ethan have seen too much, been dehumanized. Ford posits, men hungry for the gory details of depravity simply have seen too little of it. Ford, a veteran of the second world war, naturally makes noble the hard men who roam, and plays up the essential naïveté of the men who stay home. He does not cast this judgement lightly, nor even cast much judgement at all at the end of the day, though it is present. The subtlety by which Ford conveys Ethan's contradictions is admirable in its simplicity. Early in the film, Comanche are referenced as savages (by one such naive young character) in several offhand remarks, namely that they killed the cattle "not for food" as well as their penchant for taking scalps, making trophies of white women. By the finale, Ethan has engaged in both, senselessly killing buffalo in a rage, and later emerging from Scar's tent clutching the scalp of a chief who, in fact, Ethan only found dead at the hands of another man. 

Ethan as enigmatic figure, a character of contradiction, commands much of Ford's attention. Time ages us, can make us bitter and angry depending on what we've spent time doing and what it's done to us. When the south lost the war, Ethan keeps his oath "to the confederate states of America", doesn't show face at the surrender because he doesn't believe in them. When Debbie and Lucy go missing it is impossible to discern whether Ethan deeply cares or simply feels fulfilled at the prospect of another cause to get behind, another reason to fight, another enemy. When presented initially with "half-breed", Marty, Ethan makes it clear he doesn't see the boy as kin, but when the two ride together as men for 5 years, Ethan finds himself divorcing from the idea that the now tainted Debbie is kin and sees Martin as surrogate son, even bequeathing all of his worldly possessions to him. Loyalties, whether they be to cause or kin or lover or tribe or cavalry, all are given their time in The Searchers; all are tested. Another of the great strengths that Ford imbues here is the confirmation that within men there exists multiple uniforms of loyalty. Ward Bond's Sam must constantly clarify whether he is speaking as Reverend Clayton or Captain Clayton. Perhaps it's this very notion of things vested that The Searchers deconstructs best. Each of our characters seems endlessly caught up in the series of groups, each at odds with the other. Ethan can speak freely of his deeds to Reverend Clayton, but plays hard ball when speaking to Captain Clayton. Life is simple for the characters who do not roam, because they lead only one life and never need to question it. For those who leave bed and board, they find only life's endless complexities of belief systems, uniforms and labels, hatred towards the 'others' and a questioning of their own foundational belief systems. Ethan has been demoralized, no longer seeing the difference between right and wrong by any measure of creed or law, seeing all in accordance with custom. Ford's camera tells us all that we would ever need to know that isn't written on our performers' faces. For the first act, it barely leaves the home, instead showing us the outside world through doorways, even when characters like Marty enter from outside, or Brad and Lucy are caught kissing out back, the camera is still indoors. Ford later recurs this any time there is safety or home invoked. Structurally, Ford continues to diverge the two worlds, as the film reaches its poetic and dramatic apex it is instantly followed by its most comedic with the wedding sequence. Here, all dramatic and brutal tensions of the preceding scenes are broken as the home becomes once again illuminated as a place of dancing, camaraderie and shaking hands after a fist fight with no bitin' or gougin'. The Searchers displays such mastery of genre as to simultaneously become the epitome of the western as well as consistently step out of the genre without any break in narrative and thematic flow. The pieces of the puzzle to converge at the wedding sequence have been just as carefully laid as the pieces that converge for the film's true climax. In fact, The Searchers final act seems to be a series of climactic moments, each strong enough to carry a picture on their own, but here given to us in rapid succession. 

The Searchers stands as the great, oft imitated and never surpassed, Hollywood western. It has all of the intoxicating appeal of Ford's earlier work in the genre but holds within itself a deep existential yearning for answers to the questions of its history. This is the defining element that separates it from the rest and places it in the pantheon of great American films. With The Searchers, Ford pieces together the imagery and touchstones of a national identity, usually so ingrained in the gloss that they go unnoticed, and brings them to the forefront. At the end of the day The Searchers deals squarely with identity, what is within our sense of self and what is outside of it, apart from ourselves. The Searchers does not have heroes and villains, The Searchers has human beings caught in a world they did not create, struggling to make their way in it. Perhaps the real face of the film is Debbie. Beginning as a young settler girl in a blue dress, ending as a Comanche woman in pink, her face painted, her hair tied off. The image we are left with is Ethan, still roaming, still inhibited, unable to enter the home of a new family that he doesn't consider himself kin to, walking off toward the horizon in search of another cause, forced to wander forever between the winds. All true, but the true statement by Ford as The Searches closes may actually be found in Debbie. As one who has lived two lives already in her short life, she now crosses the threshold of a third. In some ways she is coming home, in others she has lost her home, twice. How truthful was she being when she told Martin "these are my people"? How hesitant she looks before stepping inside. She, like Ethan, now roams.

10

Alphaville 1965

ALPHAVILLE (1965)

 Godard supposes much for the future of the human race with Alphaville; that we will begin to trust machine senses and logic more than our own, that we will find art, poetry and language, even emotion itself obsolete in the face of new capabilities that our inventions afford us. Alphaville is tongue in cheek, filled with brazen hyperbole and recklessly blunt eyes turned toward human progress, and at the same time its exaggeration begins to look more and more accurate, its fears seem more and more realized, its cares become more our own cares, or do they become less? Is it a sign of Godard’s valid prediction if we find the film more relevant or less relevant? Does it mean we’ve overcome his fears or succumbed to them? Godard’s major fear seems to be that we will embrace, and grow accustomed to, our inability to be complete people without attachment to our technology. We think we can travel at 100 mph; we cannot, not without our cars. We think we can fly from city to city; not so, not without our airplanes. Great thinkers in history have always espoused philosophies of non-attachment and yet, as we move forward in humanity, we find that the prominent minds in our own societies espouse that we should become more attached, that we should become more assimilated with our devices; half man and half machine entities that rely on circuitry and mainframes to help us think at levels and paces that we have not yet begun to dream of. Will these levels bring us depth? Will the knowledge bring us wisdom? Will true love and the poets who spoke of it seem useless to us? Will we exterminate those who do not want to join our utopia of ultra-logic?

Godard’s version of Lemmy Caution is a hybrid of poet and secret agent, with a little more emphasis on the secret agent. By the film’s conclusion, he is anything but philosophical about the possible benefits of Alphaville’s highly controlled society, where words are wiped out by the day and their meanings destroyed until we are left with nothing but utilitarian basics. This new dark age that Godard sees us entering will one day need to be met with a renaissance of its own, where humanity and its spirit are reinvigorated to emerge once again, and he displays it with bold fashion in the film’s final action sequence. Alphaville is by its turns crushingly oppressive with its sections of Alpha 60’s view on reality and society, only later do we leave the cold and calculated brutality of its world and enter the lyrical reality of the visual poem that Godard has laid out for us. Though the thematic elements do get a bit muddled in these segments as we are shown Lemmy Caution’s world as one of brutality while espousing love, Godard of course means to see love triumph, eradicating Alphaville’s mathematical reality and censorship in favor of human expression. Godard embraces the last of his period of pulp, save for Pierrot le Fou’s reverence for comic books, Alphaville sees him at his most hard-boiled. Structurally the flick moves from a controlled rigidity to an opened human mind, to a short circuit. The film’s art direction, or rather lack thereof, is of prime interest here. Godard utilizes Paris as it is and somehow we are completely transported to the alternate reality of Alphaville. His use of the era’s most available high technology to prop the adventure, and the low tech use of closeups on neon signs, the light positioned behind a fan to represent Alpha 60 and his moving array of microphones. The grotesque voice of Alpha 60 announces the future of civilization like a prophet. No beauty, no humanity, no ability to express complex thought, only to relate complicated concepts and findings, Alpha 60 is the ideal machine for a world without hope, just sedate existence.

Godard’s fears for the future have continued on throughout his career, we especially see the lamentation of his prophecy made manifest in his work of the 2010’s. Goodbye to Language, in every way shows the same societal degradation that appears as a strengthening and progress. Alphaville questions the pillars of modern western society, as many of his films of the era did but in a profoundly different area of focus. If we are to become all consuming buyers and sellers whose entire lives are for sale, all at the behest of a thinking machine that performs the role of deity, the master mind behind it all, then Lemmy Caution’s reactions are as that of an organically grown man from outside of this controlled hyper-civility, the human spirit unbound. As those who weep are shot down and drowned, as those who hide evidence of human emotion under a mattress and are encouraged to commit suicide fade away, we are left with the fleeting feelings of the world of love and natural thought process we once knew; a thought process working hand and hand between a unified bodily system of mind, body spirit, the heart. As Alphaville’s most memorable moment, the thought police descend on our heroes as they utter illegal missives of what they feel. They enter a cinematic dreamscape far from the rest of the film. Godard would have been kind to allow the film to live in this place for longer, but that is for another film. For this film, we are in the throes of a society that would bulldoze the human being under its necessity for central planning, grand men who stand above all, commanding the mass. We find brief glimpses of beauty and we relish them.

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