Greetings!

Here’s a transcript of a recent email exchange (between myself, Jamie Popowich and Angela Szczepaniak) concerning Derek Cianfrance’s much-hyped Blue Valentine–starring Michelle Williams, Ryan Gosling and the demented gender dynamics of our society.

Comments and retorts would be much appreciated!

=====Jamie (in response to a link I put up on Facebook to the film’s  theme song–”You and Me” (by Penny and the Quarters)

Dave-O,

I was sent a rumour that you enjoyed this vile piece of saddo. Please tell it not be true. This is the anti-Minnie et Moskowitz. Valentine is a heavy handed, Hollywood version of what popcorn eaters believe a failed relationship should look like. I did laugh loudly at two scenes 1) when the wrestler puts Michelle Williams in a Boston crab after sexual completion and 2) when the dad says “Did you lock the door. Dean, let me in. I don’t have my oxygen tank.”

Please, for the corpse of Cassavetes, look into your soul and realize that every moment of happiness is shattered by Thor’s mighty hammer in this movie. Relationships are hard, getting old is difficult, but you know what, in the middle of all that is happiness and jokes, and some satisfaction with the struggles. Peter Falk running after his children on the beach in Women Under the Influence, Moskowitz cutting his beard, we all have moments that let us rise above our present circumstances. Blue wants you to believe all is shit or will be shit or is in the midst of shit.

Ask yourself, when the only understanding people in a movie are an abortionist and his nurse is there any truth here, or any enjoyment or are we witness to a director’s “serious” turn, with raw, pure emotions, a director who should be taken seriously because he’s willing to film sex as it should really be! No, we are in for an after school special for adults, with some shots of tits.

Fight the injustice!

======Dave

ah yes!

I agree that this isn’t on the Cassavetes level! On the other hand–in some ways, I think this film does a braver thing by giving us two utter saps as protagonists (and by refusing to give us that comforting sense that there is something at all “right” about the Cassavetian craziness transacted between them). I agree that this is not how my relationships have failed. However, I think there are a lot marriages like this. Most people live in a far bleaker world than we do, and the film captured that (and the double-edged romanticism they use to get by in it) in a way that I didn’t expect it to!

=====Angela

what i find so awful about the film is the film itself–i don’t even think it’s worth debating what the film argues and how successful or interesting it is at achieving those aims…. it’s about on the level of a first-year creative writing workshop script–one of those students who strives to “be real” and “tell it like it is” and “gives it his all.” oh, and to “write what he knows.”

=====Dave

oh for sure! but I think that’s what people are responding to in it–it is defiantly amateurish, employing stock scenarios, characters and dialog all the way through… but that kind of works to its advantage, ’cause it frees the film from even trying to account for the psychological processes underlying these attitudes… Ultimately, I think it was the internet comments that sold me on it (the response critic hangover is hard to shake!)… there are hundreds of people out there who believe this is a true account of their romantic fortunes, and there’s something about that collective earnestness that appeals to me!

=====Angela

it does not work to its advantage! just because people are saps… well, that’s no excuse for tolerating (worse, celebrating) bad art. so-called “psychological depth” would be just as awful, and not what i would substitute. invention and intelligence in writing isn’t the same as the pretense to depth. i see no difference between this film’s cliches and the ones in “the time traveler’s wife” or “speed” or “speed 2,” etc.

=====Dave

ah but I’ve got a much softer spot for the saps I think… there’s something quite disturbingly affecting about them embracing a film which tells them that their sentimental attachment to gender roles makes them utterly unfit to even participate in a relationship!

(the preceding sentiments have been brought to you by deep immersion in Paradise Reaganed)

=====Angela

oh and didn’t the film attempt to provide psychological depth? michelle williams never learned to have a good relationship because her parents had a bad relationship…. wasn’t that the psychological explanation to account for her inability to connect, etc? isn’t that what all the shoulder hunching over meatloaf was about?

=====Dave:

re: meatloaf–you’re right, I guess that’s what that was for, but it’s so rote that I think it just passes for stock environment! Or take the scene with the mover and the old man and his fuckin’ military accoutrements, for example–that is prime cinematic “art naif”

=====Angela:

Hope you’ll give my film podcast series a try!

Also: I expect to get back to my King Vidor posts (in written form, here on Anagramsci) within a month or so, once I get through a large pile of freelance stuff that must be done!

Hope you’re all enjoying 2011 so far!

Dave

Also–I put up one last preview chapter of “Paradise Reaganed”, ’cause I think it speaks volumes about where the rest of the novel might be headed. Hope you’ll take a gander at the “Gutterberg Bible” section.

that’s it for now!

thanks for being here.

Dave

Show notes/images HERE!

iTunes feed HERE! (leave a review!)

that’s all for now!

Dave

I’ll be covering the entire runs of Dr. Strange (beginning with Ditko) and Cerebus, along with anything else that I get a yen to discuss (studio era movies, novels, poetry, Neil the Horse comics).

Hope you’ll give it a listen!

Dave

My first attempt at a podcast–it’s primitive, but heartfelt… and features the launch of, hopefully, my Audio Gramsci Cerebus series!

thanks!

Dave

In 1933, as it must to all directors (well, maybe not all),  the Foreign Legion film came to William Dieterle. Like Six Hours To Live, The Devil’s in Love was made at Fox, rather than at the director’s 1930s home studio, Warner Brothers, where, I must agree with Andrew Sarris, he sometimes came across as a second-string Michael Curtiz (although, even during that period, he did manage to slip in a few wonderfully distinctive pieces-i.e. The Last Flight, Jewel Robbery, Scarlet Dawn, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Great O’Malley, Another Dawn, Juarez … Fog Over Frisco, on the other hand, while justly celebrated for its technical bravura, does seem like ersatz Curtiz–although I’ve only seen it once… I’ll post on it when I revisit it)

Anyway–the Fox Dieterles provide about as clear a forecast of the brilliant period that stretches from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to The Turning Point (1952) as any aficionado could want! Devil, in fact, plays like a trial run for 1937′s Another Dawn–a pretty amazing snatch of “orientalist” romance starring Kay Francis and Errol Flynn (among other things, the two films share a no-win love triangle between three very likable characters, a European imperialist millieu AND Herbert Mundin in pretty much exactly the same role–scoundrel/affectionate sidekick).

The story is completely wack, but it is perfectly concocted to liberate the director’s expressionistic genie. To wit: have you ever seen an image that more perfectly evokes a court-martial death sentence than the above shot?

Forget “love”–Victor Jory is in trouble! Framed for murder by one of J. Carrol Naish’s patented weakling/bastards (although a much more sympathetic specimen of the type than he often played):

As always in a Dieterle film, arbitrary authority is the only “evil.” In this case, the real devil of the piece (although he shows no signs of being in love) is a sadistic base commander who treats his servant (Naish) so badly that you are cheering for the guy, until you realize that the craven fellow plans to exact his revenge by pinning the justifiable homicide upon the outpost’s resident humanist, doctor Victor Jory–who is basically the liberal saint of Dieterle’s Muni/Kay Francis (as Florence Nightingale)/Robinson biopic cycle, transplanted from the history books into the more wonderfully manured garden of melodrama.

All of this happens within a few minutes of the title credits! Before you’re two sips into your coffee (you all drink coffee with your avi files, don’t you?), prosecutor Bela Lugosi is bearing down upon our noble protagonist with the irrefutable evidence that the doctor and the sadistic major were sworn enemies (with diametrically opposed views of the West’s proper role in Africa).

Luckily, Jory’s best friend, played by apparent Dieterle favourite David Manners (who has been steadily rising in my estimation for years–to the point where I actually love his jokey scenes with the amazing Helen Chandler in Browning’s Dracula) is a captain who knows when to subvert military discipline, and he quickly engineers the doctor’s escape.

After that, we get about 40 minutes of Jory hiding in plain sight in a city close to the base, where he becomes known as the “Consul of the Damned,” thanks to his untiring medical efforts on behalf of the region’s sickly underclass. Along the way, he meets two women, both of whom prove to be wonderful human beings… One of them, a fellow crusader at the local Christian mission, captures Jory’s heart (but when does he become a devil, the viewer wonders?). This comes as no surprise, since she is played by the eye-poppingly young Loretta Young.

But of course there are problems. She’s engaged. To Manners. It was inevitable. But it’s great! And, as always with Dieterle, the film doesn’t just tell you the characters are in love–it makes you believe it, and even need it. Only Borzage does this as well.

I won’t say any more, except that, of course, events do conspire to bring all of the principals into close proximity–and Jory does get pretty scarily demonic in this scene (when he confronts Naish with his suspicions about the latter’s role in the opening shenanigans):

Amazing stuff!

Bonjour les amis!

Dave

Why So Crawfordian?

I finally sat down with Otto Preminger’s Daisy Kenyon this weekend–and man, was it good! I don’t know why I was surprised–none of the director’s Fox noir stuff has ever failed to thrill me–but, somehow, I had low expectations for this one. Part of it, undoubtedly, was caused by the lingering effects of overexposure to Leslie Halliwell‘s obtuse worldview as a child (stay tuned for a weekly-series type thing: The Halliwell Hate-on! You can play too!). But an even more nagging doubt was rooted in the fear that Joan Crawford and Otto Preminger might do grievous harm to one another…

The region 1 DVD contains some excellent supplementary materials, including a commentary track by Foster Hirsch that addresses exactly this concern. The genial scholar takes pains to point out the ways in which the director works to keep Joan’s very un-Premingerian emotionalism under wraps (notably by giving her lots of bits of physical business to tie her to his meticulously blocked scenes and keep her fury from taking flight), and there’s definitely some merit in these observations. Of course, the question then becomes, why cast Joan Crawford if you want a “cooler” star? (like Preminger perennial Gene Tierney) The answer, of course, is that Daisy Kenyon wouldn’t work with Gene Tierney. Not, at least, as well as the film that we do have.

Ya see, the (to quote Jimmy Stewart in The Philadelphia Story) blank unholy surprise about DK is that, while Preminger does get a tremendously civilized performance out of Crawford for most of the film’s running time, he also lets her go nova at exactly the right time. Look at that image above. Is Norma Shearer in her headlights? Baby Jane? An alien invasion force?

Nah…

She’s just… “clearing her head.” (with a little help from a quasi-intentional “death-roll” right off the interstate)

And it’s so right–a fitting climax to a genuinely nerve-wracking tale of emotional undecidability (the Bermuda of romantic triangles!) Hirsch–who wrote a biography of Preminger–disagrees here, arguing that the scene’s not quite the tour-de-force that it needs to be, precisely because this kind of grand gesture sticks in the director’s craw(ford)

In a sense, he’s absolutely right–this is not the canonical Preminger’s cup of tea. On the other hand, I don’t see any evidence of that on the screen. As far as I’m concerned, the sequence works amazingly well. This may be one of those instances in which the psychological pieties of auteurist interpretation have played havoc with a critic’s perceptions. Then again, perhaps my determination NOT to toe the auteurist line is leading me down the garden path (and right into a ditch)?

You be the judge, dear reader/viewer!

But enough of that! The main thing I wanted to examine here is the age old question of “what’s in a noir”? (this would have provided the material for Juliet’s next set of musings, if Romeo–never much of cinephile–hadn’t interrupted her)

Here again, Daisy Kenyon now seems invaluable–if only because Fox slipped it into their Fox Noir series of DVDs.

Of course the noiristas on the IMDB (and, I’m certain, elsewhere) are out for blood! The studios are polluting the pure black stream of cinspiration with their endless attempts to capitalize on bleak nostalgia. Is every shadowy film of the late 1940s a noir?

No. Of course not. Or, then again, just maybe: “yes.”

It seems to me that some of these people are getting a little more caught up in the details of the plot than is good for them. As we know, “noir” is not a genre (genres are consciously produced by studios–while “film noir” is a concept imposed retroactively by scholars), and thus has no business being defined that way. Or anyway, that’s how I feel about it. Noir, to me, is pretty much all cinematography. A way of looking at filmed events that took a firm grip on many Hollywood filmmakers during an extremely horrifying time in human history (all times are horrifying, of course, but some of them are more self-consciously so than others)

To wit–noir is this:

Isn’t it?

Look at those faces (I dare ya! You can’t SEE them!) Look at that mailbox–or is it a coffin?

That’s a noir scene.

And then again–it’s just a run-of-the-mill date between two bewildered people. (there are hundreds of sequences like this–set in cities and small towns that all have exactly the same ratio of bricks to leaves to desperation–in the movies of the 1940s… one of my favourites is in Dieterle’s I’ll Be Seeing You–which I’m due to re-watch very soon) But isn’t that the point of noir? It’s not that crime and vice are rampant–that’s not a new thing in films in the 1940s–it’s that life has become perilously close to meaningless for a larger number of Americans than it ever had been before (AND that, in true existentialist–or should I say Transcendentalist, which is sort of the same thing–fashion, Hollywood quickly found its way to the beauty in that meaninglessness…)

Anyway, given that (possibly idiosyncratic) construction of film noir, Daisy Kenyon qualifies as a paragon of the style. This is a story of almost exclusively “nice people,” desperate to live well and treat each other properly, who nevertheless fail to reap the expected rewards of such behaviour. (i.e. the amazing scene in which the newly coupled Fonda and Crawford admit that they are using each other–mutuality is the one thing that no one has a prayer of achieving in this film) Some of the scenes in the script–especially the many three-way chats between the principles–might “read-through” like Noel Coward set pieces; but the characters, despite the Cowardlike (Cowardly?) situations–are, I repeat, genuinely admirable–not formula philanderers/madcaps disconnected from the plebes.

Yes, Dana Andrews is playing a rich adulterer, but he’s an intelligent, friendly, idealistic (fighting for the rights of a California Nisei dispossessed of his farm during the War) and loving (with his kids–who are being abused behind his back by his wife) adulterer…The actor is a revelation here. I mean, he’s always good, but he didn’t usually get a chance to spread out emotionally this way–and he nails every single opportunity that he’s given in this one. Fonda is a (slightly) less hysterical version of his The Long Night self here (although, if you, like me–and, undoubtedly, many moviegoers in 1947–watch DK with the Litvak film in your memory banks, you can’t help expecting him to go off any minute, especially once he starts doing things like following her to movie theatres and waking up in crazed, nightmarish cold sweats–and it seems to me that Preminger makes perfect use of that metatextual element to sustain tension). But he’s also fun and quite charming at times–there’s a (still shadow-laden–about 90% of the movie takes place in the dark) moment at a nightclub when he tells Crawford “I think I’ll kiss your neck” that’s really quite disarming. Meanwhile, Joan anchors the film with her determinedly sensible performance, serving, strangely enough, as the audience surrogate as she takes the measure of these complex men. Hirsch is right when he argues that they have by far the more interesting roles–although I think he underestimates the value of Crawford’s car ride, the existence of which trumps all of the “civilized” stuff that has preceded it (and that will follow). In going off the road, besieged by the imagined sound of would-be lovers on the telephone, she conveys the real psychological cost of the loss of faith in the possibility that any of the choices we have to make here on earth (symbolized by the various romantic configurations offered by the plot) can really take us anywhere we want to go.

good night friends!

Dave

]]> http://anagramsci.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/the-my-noirity-report-a-ghost-entry-from-blogs-past-more-king-vidor-soon/feed/ 0 anagramsci crawford2 vlcsnap-5412287 http://anagramsci.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/acid-free-flashbacks-strange-adventures-180-sept-1965/ http://anagramsci.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/acid-free-flashbacks-strange-adventures-180-sept-1965/#comments Sun, 29 Aug 2010 02:57:27 +0000 anagramsci http://anagramsci.wordpress.com/?p=1358 ]]> So I’ve been listening to a lot of comics podcasts lately. Maybe it’s because I’ve been working on a novel set within the comics fan/creator vortex… maybe it’s just because these microphone-slingers are having so much damned fun with the material… whatever the reason, I could use some of what they’re having!

For the record, here are some of the people I’m talking about. Go and listen to them right now!

Tom Vs the Flash (covering Barry Allen’s Fast Times in Central City)

Super Future Friends (a chronological look at the Legion, beginning with Adventure #247)

From Crisis to Crisis (Superman from 1986 to 2006)

Amazing Spider-Man Classics (from the bite until they bite the bullet)

Tales of the Justice Society of America (they’re into All-Star Squadron–a lifelong favourite of mine)

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll ever be a podcaster. Lord knows I love to talk–but recording and editing? There’s no way. Also, I hear it costs money. I don’t have money. Do you have money? Can I have some of it?

So I think I’ll do the next best thing. Grab a fistful of half-assedly preserved newsprint (with any luck, an entertaining one) whenever the mood strikes and make with the fun!

We’ll call it prosecasting.

This is where it starts–Strange Adventures #180 [Origin & 1st app. Animal Man]!

If you’ve read my scribblings elsewhere, you’ll know that I have a long history with this character… but…

We’ll see…

We begin with the essentials

Title: “I Was the Man With the Animal Powers”

Script: Dave Wood (who?)

Pencils: Anagramsci favourite Carmine Infantino

Inker: George Roussos

Colors: No Man Can Say

Letters: Stan Starkman

Query: Can gorillas actually do this?

The cover says yes. My gut says no.

Clearly, however, a “gorilla sock” is doing something to this amazing Infantinophant on the splash page!

Who is this man? How did he wind up in this predicament? What ails this poor elephant’s mind?

All I know is, I hope it ends in a hug…

Page 2: The man’s name is Buddy Baker. He’s just your basic guy who can’t quite work up the nerve to propose to his girlfriend (Ellen), and takes out his frustrations on our friends the animals (with a gun and bro named Roger). One day, while out scouring for things to kill, Buddy is laid low by an origin blast! We are now 4 panels into the story! On the 5th panel, a tiger slinks toward the poor defenseless man.

Miraculously, he finds that he’s more than up to the challenge of defending himself. In fact, he’s THE MAN WHO APPROPRIATES ANIMAL POWERS!

Buddy adjusts to his new condition as only a silver age hero can! Get in the ring motherfuckers!

He gives the animal kingdom a taste of its own medicine:

The Tiger!

The Gorilla!

That elephant (named “Bimbo”, apparently)!

A child-eating fuckin’ Sea Lion!

Bobby’s fine, don’t worry…

Buddy Baker mans up to this menagerie of evil (actually just a group of frightened zoo animals, freed when their train went off the rails)

But he’s not done!

Apparently there’s a weird “Hulk” on the loose, a Xemnu-the-Titan-looking-guy who ALSO got animal powers from the blast. This is my favourite part of the story. Who the fuck is this creature? An alien? A mutated animal? No explanation is offered. Apparently, he’s just your basic heartland yeti, crazed by animal powers. Perhaps he too has been working up the nerve to propose to his hulk-mate?

Buddy can’t overpower him, because the “hulk” absorbed more radiation (making him the Man-or-whatever With MORE Animal Powers). Luckily, our hero has it all over the hulk in the brains department. Having reasoned things out with the remarkable, some might say pathological, lucidity of an anthology freak, he knows what his next move must be! The man who had begun his tale by worrying about his rodent-like romantic powers saves the day by scaring the hulk off a cliff with “mouse fear powers”!

You don’t have to take my word for it–here’s the proof:

Oh good job, Buddy–you fucking maniac. I’m glad I met Grant Morrison’s version of you first. Oh yeah, then he proposes to Ellen (we 1980s kids know THAT)–and faints!

But there’s more to this issue!

Palisades Park!

Environmentalism!

The goddamned “G.I. Joe Club”!

Don’t join!

A “Kat” who wants you to build cars (and get “cooled”? that doesn’t sound healthy)

And there was even more for your 12 cents that fine September!

A text page detailing the “Strange But True” saga of a six-schooner pile-up which occurred off the coast of Australia in 1829. Apparently, every crew member and passenger aboard these ships survived and the entire group was rescued within a few days. The affair reaches a satisfactorily “strange” conclusion when it is discovered that a sailor from Yorkshire and his long-lost old mother are huddled together amongst the survivors. Had fate engineered this oddly beneficent multiple disaster solely to unite their little family?

I guess so.

And then there’s the “back-up story”–”One Monster, Coming Up” (penciled and inked, apparently, by George Roussos). This one tells the tale of a bunch of “wildcatters” who get way more than they bargained for when they try drilling for oil on consecrated “Injun” ground… Disgraceful… I can summarize this one in one crazed cross-sectional panel:

Awesome.

After a lot of rampaging, they finally get the thing under control (with the help of some fancy magic relics–and a lot of golden “Indian treasure”).

Do these fuckers learn their lesson?

In a wink: No.

good night friends!

see you next time (probably with more King Vidor posts… but I’m also hoping to do some posting on the immortal 1973 Super Friends! series… I’m talking about the one with Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog. Accept no pointy-eared substitutes!)

Dave

]]> http://anagramsci.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/acid-free-flashbacks-strange-adventures-180-sept-1965/feed/ 0 anagramsci strangeadventures180_00fc strangeadventures180_00fc strangeadventures180_02 tiger strangeadventures180_05 elephant sea lion strangeadventures180_14 strangeadventures180_03 strangeadventures180_19 palisades park environmentalism gi joe club KAT AMT coming up treasure