8 1/2 Revisited

A friend of mine recently said, "Fellini's La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 bridge the gap between Italian neorealism and the Swingin' 60s."

My own view is that Fellini's early films were superb, and that he peaked with 8 1/2.  After that he discovered color, and with the exception of Amarcord, made one visual extravaganza after another in which there is hardly a single character to care about or a story to get involved in.  (I haven't seen Fellini's Cadanova, so that might be another exception.)  Some of the later films, like And the Ship Sailed On, are indeed boring; so much so that it took excruciating effort to sit through them to the end.  (But I admit that a minor film like Intervista is charming.)

But last night I watched 8 1/2 again, and it was just as captivating as ever.  I had no trouble discerning the dream and fantasy sequences from the "real" ones.  What struck me most strongly this time was the film's great humor.  The scene of Guido's fantasy harem is hilarious, and Mastroianni is brilliant.   Bear in mind that while shooting the film, Fellini had a signed pasted to the bottom of the camera which said THIS IS A COMEDY.

I don't agree with some of the critics that it's self-indulgent to make a film about a film director.  Remember that in 1963 it had hardly ever been done; now, with all the imitations of 8 1/2, it's commonplace.  And I don't agree that the ending is a cop-out.  It's actually brutally honest.  Guido finally accepts himself as he is, and has no intention to change.  A far cry from all the phony transformations and happy endings that conclude most films.   But Fellini managed to end the film on an upbeat note, by having everyone accept him as well in yet another fantasy, holding hands as they dance in a circle to circus music.  Julius Novick frequently said that every comedy ends in a celebration.

Some critics fail to remember that though the film has strong autobiographical elements, Guido is not Fellini.  After all, Guido never finishes his film; Fellini did.

In her review, Pauline Kael says that it's not believable that a producer would hold up a film while its director gets over his director's-block.  Talk about a spoilsport.

But the film feels liberating, one of Kael's favorite words of praise.  I suspect she was put off by the film's view of women.   But again, it's an honest portrait of a successful Italian man's attitude in 1963.

Guido says, "I have nothing to say, but I want to say it anyway."  He's still a neorealist filmmaker, who thinks about film has to have a message, to "say" something.  Fellini knows that a great film offers a compelling experience.

In short, a masterpiece, and a great experience.

Summer Film Roundup, Part 1: Alienation High & Low

In a quasi-passive revolt against the mindlessness of so many summer movie "blockbusters," I chose to forego the comfort of air-conditioned movie theaters and instead watch old, classic, sometimes obscure films in the comfort of my air-conditioned home.  My 48-inch HD TV and sofa provided a perfect escape from the heat and hype.  I offer these brief reviews as encouragement for you to do likewise this autumn.  (Though the fall usually does yield new films of real quality, seeming to drop from the sky like dead leaves, enlivening the landscape with their bright colors.)  No doubt you've seen some of these films before; here's a chance to consider them yet again, and perhaps watch them once more with a new perspective.

The Projectionist (1971)

What better counterintuitive way to begin this series of reviews of films watched  at home on TV than one about  a projectionist?  Made at the height of the nostalgia craze of the early Seventies, writer/director Harry Hurwitz's 1971 vehicle for the talents of Chuck McCann is strictly amateur night.  (Unfortunately the film is an hour and 28 minutes.)  The story alternates between drab color sequences of McCann's depressing life as a projectionist at a theater in seedy pre-Disneyfied Times Square and his black-and-white fantasies of being a 1940s movie-serial superhero. The fantasy sequences are presumably meant to be funny, but regrettably they are not.  Hurwitz has speeded these scenes up and intercut them with clips from classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane, which has the unfortunate effect of making you remember what really good films look like.  And the sight of the overweight McCann in superhero tights is not a pleasant one. Eventually the film clips overwhelm the story and for long periods even McCann disappears from them, leaving us with a hodgepodge of rapid intercutting between John Wayne westerns, Flash Gordon serials, and Nazi and Ku Klux Klan footage. If the film is trying to make a satiric point about Hollywood or America, it's crude and undeveloped.  And one shot of Hitler making a histrionic speech dubbed over with JFK saying "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" is downright offensive.  The fantasy scenes with McCann imagining a romance with a pretty girl plays like a bad student film production of Marty.  But if the film was cut down to a half hour, it would be a pretty good senior student film project.

The one shining light in this mess is the film debut of Rodney Dangerfield, playing the tight-assed theater manager. His few scenes are hilarious. He is the boss from hell that everyone has had at some point in their lives. If The Projectionist had featured more of Dangerfield and less of McCann, it might really have been something.  But as it stands, you sort of wish the film would break and the projectionist shut down the screening well before the actual end.

Interestingly, most of the reviews of the film praise Dangerfield for doing a straight, non-comedic role so well.  And yet I thought Dangerfield was extremely funny precisely because he plays it straight. He's such an obsessive anal retentive theater manager, treating the projectionist and ushers and old guy at the candy counter as if they're his troops and he's Patton.  The scene when Dangerfield tells  McCann that he has to pay for the box of lemon drops  the kindly counter man gave him for free  is  possibly the best scene in the film.  Dangerfield has all his trademark nervous tics but does them here in a realistic, low-key manner, which makes his character more believable and funny.  Nobody else seemed to see his role as comedic except me.

I admit that the film has a certain charm. There's a likeable quality to it despite the amateur quality, or maybe because of it. Those old enough to fondly remember Chuck McCann's old  TV show on New York station WPIX  will  enjoy seeing him  in a full-length feature. But there are too many long sections that just don't work.

Today The Projectionist is considered  a cult film, but apparently every low-budget 1970s movie that doesn't fit into a niche and was not successful in its time is automatically classified as a cult film. Or, as TCM likes to call them, "underground cinema."

Rather sad to note that both the director and the leading lady died in their 50s. 

The Michelangelo who paints with a camera...

La Notte (1961)

After a truly unforgivable delay of many years, I finally saw the middle film of Michelangelo Antonioni's celebrated trilogy.  La Notte (The Night) comes between L'Avventura (1960) and L'Eclisse (1962), and if not the most impressive of the three, it's probably the most intellectually accessible. The film is notable for its astonishing black-and-white photography of Marcello Mastroiani and Jeanne Moreau living in the ultra-modern section of 1961 Naples, with lots of great jazz on the soundtrack. Pauline Kael famously dismissed Antonioni's films as "Come-as-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe parties," and in fact there is a very long party at the center of the film, probably the best film of a party I've ever seen, and yes, many of the characters do indeed have sick souls.  There will always be those  who  bristle  at  works of art  which examine the spiritual emptiness of the wealthy and privileged.  Nonetheless, La Notte seductively brings you, if not into, at least close to their troubled inner lives through a masterful use of architecture and external surroundings. Not a fun movie in the conventional sense, but I would call it a must-see, whether you have a sick soul or not.

Red Desert (1964)

Michelangelo Antonioni and his  actress wife Monica Vitti  are reunited for the penultimate time in Red Desert, perhaps the only film about the ugliness of post-industrial landscapes that's ravishing to look at.  (A told me he of a  beautiful film about an industrial wasteland inherently preposterous, or words to that effect.  But seeing is believing, and this film should be seen  if not believed.)  It features one of the most sophisticated use of color in any film up to that time, employing a highly deliberate color scheme reminiscent of Mark Rothko paintings (Antonioni was himself a painter and a great admirer of Rothko). Unlike Fellini in Juliette of the Spirits and subsequent films, Antonioni was not completely corrupted by color.  But  as some critics noted, color is virtually the star of the film. That's unfortunate for the actors and story, both of which could use more meat on the bone (or fewer brushstrokes from the palette, to employ a more apt metaphor).  Richard Harris, dubbed into Italian, is a brilliant actor forced into an inhibited role.  As for Monica Vitti, the John Simon rule about actors (google it) tends to apply here, since John Simon himself said she resembles Barbra Streisand wandering around an industrial hell.  He accurately points out that the character played by Rita Renoir (no relation to Jean and Auguste) is the sexiest actress in the film. No wonder -- she was France's number one stripper in the 1950s.  The film is basically a melancholy look at how industrialism disfigures the landscape, but Antonioni can help making even industrial desolation look beautiful.  (Yet the most gorgeous scene in the film is the one with a young girl swimming and bathing on an island off the coast of Sardinia.)  Andrew Sarris amusingly titled his review "Antoniennui," and you may have trouble keeping your eyes open to the very end. Probably better to fast forward the film and stop at random, because every shot looks like a perfectly composed painting.  Methinks Stanley Kubrick had Red Desert in mind when he was making his superior Barry Lyndon.

Heaven forbid we search for messages in the three films under review, but if there is one that unites all three, it's that you don't have to be an upper-class European to be alienated.  Alienation, like so much of modern life, has been democratized.  It's now available to the common man. And woman.

Exceptional? Or "Indispensable"?

(Painting: "Spirit of America," Norman Rockwell, 1979)

On Friday afternoon, CNN reported that, during his press conference at the White House earlier that day, President Obama declared that America is "indispensable" to the world in such crises as the current ones in the Middle East because "we're willing to plunge in and try where other countries don't bother trying." 

This may come as something of a surprise to those who remember Obama's view of "American exceptionalism" as something he, well, took exception to; who remember him saying at the NATO summit in France last year that "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism," and other occasions when he seemed to play down or dismiss the "myth of American exceptionalism.  Certainly many liberals, leftists, and Obama supporters have voiced the same disbelief in a uniquely American exceptionalism, and in fact many essays on the pervasiveness of this "myth" have been penned by fierce critics of the idea, who worry that it breeds chauvinism and an attitude that "America doesn't have to play by the same rules" as other nations. So Obama's recent comments may cause some to wonder: Is there a difference between being "indispensable" and being "exceptional'? Is the former word just a softer, more  utilitarian way of expressing the latter?  Is "indispensable" simply a more down-to-earth sounding notion, conjuring up a vision of an America ready to roll up its sleeves and help the world (but only when called-upon), while "exceptional" implies an almost metaphysical sense of entitlement?  Perhaps Obama has been reading James Flexner's 1994 biography of our first president, Washington: The Indispensable Man.  (If being indispensable was good enough for Washington, it must be good enough for America.)   You can be sure the White House speechwriters have mulled this over during more than one brainstorming session.

Actually, Friday wasn't the first time Obama moved away from his previous skepticism about the idea of American exceptionalism. In the video clip above, taken during Obama's speech to the graduating class at West Point in May, he pointedly said, ""America must always lead on the world stage. If we don't, no one else will" And in the final debate of the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama stated "America remains the one indispensable nation, and the world needs a strong America." Needless to say, Obama also told the West Pointers that military action is not always necessary or wise, that we must "act with restraint," and that collective action is preferable to America going it alone; and he added after his debate remark about America's strength the admittedly self-serving comment "and it is stronger now than when I came into office." But Obama has been saying this sort of thing for some time now.  Is it pure politics, a convenient way to wave the flag to get re-elected in 2012 or to get fellow Democrats elected in 2014?  Or has he really come to appreciate that there's something America brings to the table that no other nation does, that it is indeed, exceptional -- or "indispensable,"  If so, it would be a major leap in Obama's thinking -- exceptionalism suggests far more than merely being indispensable ("Jim is an indispensable part of our corporate team.")  Has Obama become -- shut the barn doors, Mabel -- a neoconservative?  Or is his rhetoric, as is the way of politics, a mixture of both?  Skeptics should rightly remain skeptical -- especially of political language.  Time for us all to reread George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language."  For the time being, our president has designated America as indispensable, but not inherently exceptional.  At least the Greeks -- not the ancients, but the modern ones -- will be relieved.

In any event, I have no doubt that the debate about American exceptionalism will continue for a long time, not least among those who believe that America is exceptional for its wickedness, not its goodness. I suspect that you, gentle reader, lean towards one or the other. For myself, I'll paraphrase a line from Pauline Kael's famous essay on Orson Welles: "In a less confused world, its glory would be greater than its guilt.