Zoo in the head

Film notes: Gilda

Charles Vidor, 1946.

1. Rita. Ree-ta. The tip of the tongue stumbling down the palate, two steps at a time, struggling to get its trousers off. Her first scene: what people talk about is the entrance, her head rearing into the shot, face framed by that hair. Notice the moment after that: Ballin, her husband, has called "Are you decent?" Gilda spots Johnny Farrell, and half pouts, showing her lower teeth. You hear her say: "I'm decent." You see her saying: "I'm filthy."

2. Noir. This film ticks most of the boxes - femme fatale, cynical/romantic hero, infidelity, amour fou, crime, bad luck, bad Freudianism. But noir is a look as well as a mood: the shadows need to crowd the actors. It's too well lit.

3. Ever noticed how monogamous noir is? Even if there's more than one woman available, the hero never has any choice.

4. The McGuffin. Tungsten! Corner the market in tungsten and you can rule the world! What's that about?

5. The real plot: Glenn Ford is offered Rita Hayworth on a plate and he says no. What's that about? Maybe if Rita was a little less ludicrously desirable the film would make sense. The sexiest scene isn't her strip-tease to "Put the Blame on Mame" – how can something so public be sexy? – but her intimate dance with Ford. She breathes at him: "I could help you get in practice again. Dancing, I mean." You can feel her breath on your own ear.

Travis Bickle, thou shouldst be living at this hour

On Tuesday, the Curzon Soho cinema held a speed-dating event in combination with a screening of Shame, a film - so one hears - in which sex is depicted exclusively in a context of anomie, humiliation and self-loathing. (Does sex happen in any other context? you ask. Or I ask, anyway.) Peter Bradshaw, in the Guardian, describes the film's idea of a date as "an uncomfortably real transcription of a supposedly romantic evening: another long, static camera shot. It starts with stilted conversation, ends with a spark, but is followed by a catastrophic tryst in which there is nothing but emotional degradation."

The reason I know about the Curzon event is that a friend of mine was invited along to it; she made her excuses - she'd already seen it - and left.

I suppose there are worse date movies: inordinately long films, films about the Shoah (Claud Lanzmann's Shoah itself, all nine-and-a-half hours of it, may be the greatest bad-date movie), and films involving sexual violence or perversion (Irréversible, Cronenberg's Dead Ringers). It's interesting to note that Hollywood has already come up with some suggestions: in Annie Hall Woody Allen tries to drag Diane Keaton to Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity; and there's the best bad date-movie scene of all. It leaves me feeling I need to scrub myself down with Milton:

 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, meh

A new film of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is due to be released in September: starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley, with Colin Firth, John Hurt, Ciaran Hinds, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy, directed by Tomas Alfredson  (Let the Right One In) - how could it go wrong?

Here's how:

Right, so, you'll have noticed that's the trailer for Captain America: The First Avenger rather than Tinker, Tailor... The key moment comes around 1:51, when the Red Skull informs Steve Rogers that "Captain, we are much alike."

 Now here's the trailer for the new Tinker, Tailor:

If you're in a rush, it's at 0:51: Oldman, as Smiley, telling someone (Karla, perhaps) "We are not so very different, you and I."

Compare this:

Or compare Belloq, the wicked Frenchman in Raiders of the Lost Ark, telling Indiana Jones, "You and I are very much alike. Archeology is our religion, yet we have both fallen from the pure faith. Our methods have not differed as much as you pretend. I am but a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me..."

There is a usefulish discussion at tvtropes. This isn't the worst of the new Tinker, Tailor's sins, though: you'll notice that elsewhere in the trailer somebody takes the trouble to say that "Things aren't always what they seem", which I would guess is something they point out to you quite early on at spy school.

You can keep your fancy foreign cocktails. I'll stick with my Guinness:

Gold digging

I probably ought to mention that I'm one of the participants in a book seminar over at CrookedTimber, an honour I owe to the remarkable Maria Farrell. We're responding to Glen David Gold's Sunnyside, a book about which I had mixed, or rather chaotic, feelings: it takes in, among other things, American intervention in the Russian civil war, the birth and puppyhood of Rin-Tin-Tin, and Charlie Chaplin's rise to global celebrity. No argument about the brilliance of the parts; it's the whole I have my reservations about. My piece concentrated on Chaplin, a phenomenon who these days seems to be almost always underestimated and condescended to; Glen has understood more about his place in modern culture than most critics have. This was months ago, by the way: now, after almost a year with my whippet, I'd probably have more to say on the many dogs the book contains.

After all this time I'm unsure how well my bit stands up: I'm darn certain that the response to my turmoil Glen has written is more thoughtful and graceful than it merited. My fellow participants (seminarians?) are Stuart Evers and Adam McGovern, with CrookedTimber's John Holbo butting in unofficially: Maria introduces it all here. It might be helpful to look at Chaplin's film Sunnyside - one of his strangest and best - starting here; while you're at it, you may as well try A Dog's Life.

"This is the saddest story I have ever heard."

Much comment has been aroused by this entry at the Internet Movie Database:

On the now overflowing Anne Sellors messageboards, a poignant comment has been left by toothpastelaser under the heading "anne sellors is my aunt STOP THE LIES!!":

Usually I dont post on IMDB with the many trolls perverts and indy film makers but this is getting out of hand. Anne Sellors AKA woman who urinates herself (just a CHARACTOR!!!) is my aunt and I cant bear to see some of the posts from here and 4 chans that school freinds have forwarded me on AIM. please STOP the following ridiculous rumors about auntie anne:

1, anne sellors is STILL ALIVE

2 - the role was to be titled differently or she would have chosen another I AM SURE

2a she does not urinate herself and never has, those pointing to the fact the title is 'urinates' and not 'urinated' need to GROW UP!! stop laying semantics

3/ NO she was not in anything else and esepcially NONE of the others I have seen mentioned eg emaneulle 2000, death race remake, LOTR deleted scene or vo for monkey island, those pictures are PHOTO SHOPS

Needles to say I havent mentioned any of this to her yet. I HOPE I wont have to. Find someone else to talk about please. BTW Thanks guys this has really lowered my opinnion of humanity nice job. The internet needs to be regulated asap

Does the equation of trolls and perverts with indy film-makers suggest this is a deadpan gag, or is that just what people think about indy film-makers?

Albert Camus: "Every achievement is a servitude. It drives us to a higher achievement." (Notebooks, iv: 1942)

Waiting for Godard

via @BFI's photostream on Twitpic, with this explanation:

In 1968, an excited audience awaited the arrival of Jean-Luc Godard, who had been invited to open a series of John Player Lectures at the National Film Theatre. Instead, they received this telegram.

100 members of the audience accepted the offer to have their money returned, while the remainder stayed for a screening of Godard's Vivre sa vie.

At the New Republic David Thomson marks the 50th anniversary of À bout de souffle with some scepticism about Godard:

There is a temptation to see Breathless (or A Bout de Souffle) as the epitome of the New Wave. In this reading, it was the emblematic film for a group of young critics and cineastes who had longed to make films themselves and who suddenly found the chance. But if you want the right emblem, you’d be better off going to Truffaut (with Les 400 Coups or Tirez sur la Pianiste). Truffaut loved movies, story-telling, people, and actors. What was always special about Godard was the reticence he felt for all those institutions, an edginess or hostility, a doubt that was always mounting. No wonder, then, that by 1963 he had made a picture (about moviemaking) called Contempt.

Here's an appalling confession: I've never seen Breathless. But I have seen Contempt - Le mépris - at the Rio in Dalston just a couple of weeks ago; Thomson pins down some of what I disliked about it. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I disagreed with it: it struck me as an argument as much as a story, and there were bits of it that I adored - Jack Palance's swaggering, unselfconsciously monoglot American producer; Fritz Lang playing a wise, fatherly but rather down-at-heel version of himself; the prematurely post-industrial charm of Cinecittà; Brigitte Bardot's bottom. But it struck me as morbid with cynicism.

And what are we to make of that telegram: cynicism replaced with what's naive enthusiasm for the perceptiveness and articulacy of the poor. From a man of what Thomson calls a "malign sensibility" - well, it takes my breath away.

Fucking Sex and the fucking City, fucking TWO

Jimmy Choo stilettos broken, Dior bustier stained and smelling of stale sweat, mascara smeared and inappropriately bright lipstick slashed across its botox-bloated face, Philip Treacy turban askew, but the franchise staggers on. It makes me cross. This review by Lindy West is astonishingly good. One commenter says: "We should form a new republic with this review as our constitution."

TRUE FACT: I used to know Jimmy Choo. Me and the missus went out with him for Chinese meals sometimes, but he always got anxious about me eating too fast.

(500) Days of Psycho

Marc Webb's semi-comic anti-romance (500) Days of Summer recut as a stalker thriller, and quite neatly.

You can take this, if you like, as a comment on the fine line between cute romantic obsession and stalking. It's also a comment on a particular style of acting and a particular style of living - it works so well largely because Joseph Gordon-Levitt is so affectless, because the difference between the hipster too cool to show his feelings and the psychopath who doesn't have any feelings isn't always visible.

Conclusion: we should lock up all hipsters in hospitals for the criminally insane.

(via @iambags on Twitter.)

Obligatory pandamonium joke

While we're looking at videos, here's LCD Soundsystem directed by Spike Jonze:

The comments below are interesting; the most perceptive commentator is Insanaman, who writes "look at all those pandas. How does one even get that many pandas? This isn't china. Go home you silly pandas. you are hooligans."

Must read

My reviews of all 13 of this week's new releases are to be found by trawling around the Independent website; but they were written in a kind of order, and will make slightly more sense if you read them in print, in the newly re-designed paper.

Abridged version, to help you sort out your Friday night: Dogtooth - very grim, very clever Greek comedy; Date Night - Tina Fey, Steve Carell, slick commercial fun; The Joneses - slick commercial-but-would-like-to-be-satirical fun; Life During Wartime - Todd Solondz; La Danse - lengthy, absorbing ballet documentary. Everything else: varying degrees of ouch.