Day for Night

"If one were to take one of his later films to a desert island, it would have to be La nuit américaine (1973), in which Truffaut succeeds gloriously in capturing the frenetic joy and frustration of making a film with a team of actors and technicians."

So said Peter Cowie when referring to François Truffaut's magnificent Day for Night (La nuit américaine); a film - much like Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) and Andrzej Wajda's Everything for Sale (1969) before it - about filmmaking itself. Whilst I believe Cowie is right in stating that if you were to become stranded on a desert island and had to take one of Truffaut's later films it would "have to be" Day for Night, I myself would go one further and say that if you were to take a film about making films then, again, it would have to be Day for Night, hands down.

In his annotation of Day for Night, Brian Hoyle pinpointed exactly why I would opt for Truffaut's Day for Night over the likes of 8½ and Les Mépris; it's tone is "far removed from the introspection and lofty artistic ambitions of Fellini's film in this mode and the cynicism and alienation of Godard's." Indeed, unlike Fellini and Godard's films - which focus more upon the struggles of the director (themselves) and some of the more negative aspects of film making, at times rarely focusing upon the actual art of filmmaking - Day for Night acts as Truffaut's love letter to cinema, reminding us that not only is he a director, auteur and critic, but also a cinéphile like you or me. Throughout the film Truffaut constantly pays tribute to his cinematic influences, heroes and contemporaries; whether it be through Ferrand's recurring dreams involving Citizen Kane (1941) or Ferrand's pile of books on directors, auteurs even, such as Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson and Godard.

Despite creating Day for Night over a decade after the peak of the Nouvelle Vague he helped instigate, Truffaut still manages to use the same sharp editing and freeze frames present in The 400 Blows (1959) and Jules et Jim (1962). Whilst one could talk endlessly about Truffaut's majestic composition and subtle touch through which he pulls back the curatin and reveals the magic of making cinema - the crane shots of crane shots, the cat and milk scene, the electric candle etc. - there was one particular recurring sequence I found even more interesting than most. More than once during the film we hear an uplifting piece of orchestral music set to Dziga Vertov style, Man with a Movie Camera-esque (1929) montages illustrating the mechanism of the camera as well as the film making and editing process, romanticising the entire notion of cinema and once more reminding us that this is Truffaut's love letter to the art of cinema; this is his Man with a Movie Camera, his 8½ and his Les Mépris all in one.

Fellini's 8½

In his book The Films of Federico Fellini, Peter Bondanella notes both the impact and the artistic and autobiographical nature of Fellini's 8½ (1963), by stating:

For many audiences, critics, and film historians, 8½ remains the benchmark film by Fellini, the work that justifies his statues as a master and continues to reward the spectator after numerous screenings... The films occupies an important role in the director's complete works, not only because of its obvious autobiographical links to Fellini's life but also because it focuses upon the very nature of artistic creation in the cinema.

It is true that whilst watching 8½ it is practically impossible for one not to notice the blatant parallels between our protagonist, Guido, and Fellini himself. Both are directors who are having difficulty expressing what they want to say - yet with 8½ Fellini somehow manages to say it all. Also, much like Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966), a lot of Fellini's 8½ is to do with the "very nature of artistic creation in the cinema" Bondanella speaks of. Whilst in the later and more radical Persona Bergman attempts to deconstruct cinema completely - making the viewer constantly aware that what they are viewing is a fictional construct - Fellini focuses on the struggle of the director - mirroring himself - by presenting us with the story of a man who, like Fellini, does not to what to say and, in doing so, manages to create what is undoubtedly a cinematic masterpiece which is somewhat ironically all about making films.

In his book Revolution! The Explosion of World Cinema in the 60s, Peter Cowie observes that "8½ could not have existed prioer to the New Wave, but all too few New Wave films aspired to the same level of intellectual surmise as Fellini's masterpiece." The same could be said about Bergman's Persona; however, unlike Persona, Fellini's 8½ was made during the early, formative years of the New Wave. It is evident that whilst the emergence of the New Wave allowed him to create such a film as 8½, Fellini manages to outdo those films which influenced him, allowing him to create this masterpiece which has gone on to influence countless other auteur's films - including Bergman's Persona.

Persona

In his essay 'Persona and the 1960s Art Cinema', Wheeler Winston Dixon writes of how, with Persona (1966), Ingmar Bergman "finally breaks free of the proscenium arch tradition" that was so prevalent in his earlier films - The Seventh Seal (1956) et al. - through his use of "elaborate optical effects", which make the audience constantly aware of Bergman's presence behind the camera, and that what they are watching is fictional; "a film, a construct, a world that Bergman has invented solely for cinematic consumption." From its opening shot of a projection lamp igniting, right through until the closing image of the same lamp switching off, Bergman's presence off screen heightens the already overwhelming sense of alienation present not only between the two central characters of Alma (Bibi Andersson) and Elisabet (Liv Ullmann), but also between these characters and the audience; it is difficult for the audience to interact when Bergman creates what Dixon referred to as a "spiritual and material darkness."

Having already influenced a new generation of filmmakers with his earlier works, such as The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (1957), it is evident that, in Persona, Bergman had himself become influenced by the new generation of auteurs which had emerged accross Europe; particularly the Nouvelle Vague. When watching Persona, one can clearly feel the influence of Jean-Luc Godard on Bergman as he takes his role as an auteur to a new extreme, incorporating Brecht's distancing effect into his editing in order to break down the fourth wall much in the same way Godard had in several of his early films such as À bout de souffle (1959), Une femme est une femme (1961), Le Mépris (1963) and Masculin féminin (1966). In turn, Bergman's Persona has itself gone on to influence numerous directors, such as Woody Allen, and its influence is still present in cinema to this day, with movies such as Fight Club (1999) referencing - practically plagiarising, one could argue - the subliminal shot of an erect penis present in the opening montage of Persona.

Last Year in Marienbad

Much like Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad (1961) is another prime example of cinematic beauty; a joy to behold both visually and aesthetically. Also like Werckmeister Harmonies, Last Year in Marienbad is a complex film; difficult to deconstruct since it is difficult to assert what actually happens - it is impossible to tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined, and by the end of the film nothing has been resolved. Whilst with my review of Werckmeister Harmonies I avoided discussing the symbolism and true meaning of the film in favour for its aesthetic qualities, in this review I intend to do the opposite in an attempt to gain a better understanding of what exactly Last Year in Marienbad is all about.

Having once stated "Make of it what you will... whatever you decide is right", Resnais allows his audience to apply practically any meaning they want to the film - something critic Pauline Kael somewhat scathingly referred to as "making a mess and asking others to clean it up" in her essay 'The Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties'. Kael continues to talk of how, by doing so, Resnais invited the audience and critics to "make fools of themselves" by fabricating theories such as Marienbad works as a sort of Rorschach test; you are to apply whatever meaning you want to it - a theory Kael disagrees with, since a Rorschach test is a blot onto which you project your own emotions, whereas Marienbad is a work of art.

However, one critic who does not make a 'fool' of himself whilst attempting to decipher Last Year in Marienbad is the influential Roger Ebert. In his review of the film, Ebert suggests that what we are witnessing is the creation of the character X's imagination:

Can it be that X is the artist--the author, the director? That when he speaks in the second person ("You asked me to come to your room...") he is speaking to his characters, creating their story? That first he has M fire a pistol, but that when he doesn't like that and changes his mind, M obediently reflects his desires? Isn't this how writers work? Creating characters out of thin air and then ordering them around?

An idea echoed even within the film, as the play which we see acted out at the start of the film reflects the plot and scenario of the film itself, perhaps reminding us that, like the play, Last Year in Marienbad is nothing more than a work of fiction.

Kieślowski's Dekalog

With A Short Film About Killing (1988), Krzysztof Kieślowski presents us with a bleak, harrowing account of one mans actions - namely murder - and the punishment he must face as a result; execution. One of the things which interested me most about the film was its opening credits, which act as a precursor for the events which are about to unfold. Indeed, the opening minute or so of the film could itself be considered 'an even shorter film about killing': first we see the carcass of a rat followed by a shot of a cat hanging whilst a group of young boys run away. The cat (representative of our protagonist, Jacek) presumably killed the rat (the taxi driver) before being hanged itself by a group of young boys (perhaps symbolising the wardens who execute Jacek, or perhaps the society from which he is removed).

It is easy to draw comparisons between our protagonist, Jacek, and the protagonist of Albert Camus' novel L'Étranger, Meursault; both are alienated from the societies they live within and neither have any clear motives for the murders they commit. However, through Kieślowski's cinematic techniques it is apparent that, unlike Meursault, Jacek's murder of the taxi driver may have been premeditated: Kieślowski's use of lens filters, which "turn Warsaw into the putrid hell of the mind of the future murderer", help heighten the tension and sense of alienation present during the scenes leading up to the murder in which we see Jacek contemplate his decision, wrapping the rope around his hands as he eats in the café.

Originally part five of his ten part interpretation of the Ten Commandments, Dekalog (1988), A Short Film About Killing is extremely stylistically different from Dekalog 6, which itself was released separately from the series as A Short Film About Love (1988). Despite their differences, due mainly to Kieślowski's use of different cinematographers, the two films still have certain subtle details in common. Kieślowski uses a remarkably similar shot in both films which helps illustrate the distance between our protagonists, Jacek and Tomek, from society and their object of desire respectively: Kieślowski places a physical barrier between Tomek and Magda in the form of the cashier's window in the post office, something we see repeated when Jacek talks to the cinema box office girl.

Whilst Jacek's motives remain unclear (did he want the driver's car in order to impress his female friend, or did he kill the driver simply because he could?) what is certain is Kieślowski's critique of capital punishment (still legal in Poland at the time), tackling the subject head on and perhaps acting as a catalyst for the abolition of the death penalty in Poland, raising awareness of the subject much in the same way Ken Loach's Cathy Come Home (1966) had raised awareness for homelessness in Britain. Kieślowski asks us what exactly those in authority will achieve through capital punishment; a sentiment echoed in Jacek's lawyer Piotr's statement "Since Cain, no punishment has proved to be an adequate remedy".

Werckmeister Harmonies

Having once stated in an interview "When we are making a movie... we only talk about concrete situations - where the camera is, what will be the first and the last shot. We never talk about art or God" it is difficult for a true cinéphile to know whether or not to believe Béla Tarr entirely. Indeed, it is nigh impossible to watch Tarr's seminal Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) without wondering what exactly is going on; what does the whale represent?; who is this mysterious 'prince'?; what will become of our protagonist János Valuska? In truth, none of this matters. Whilst I could write page after page discussing the potent political symbolism present within the film, the fact of the matter is that Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies is truly a masterpiece of modern cinema, regardless of whether or not there is any real meaning behind it.

In another interview, Tarr described the difference between 'cinema' and his own work by stating he hopes that he is "closer to like than cinema". This is exactly what Tarr achieves with Werckmeister Harmonies. Whilst the idea of a travelling circus - carrying with it the stuffed carcass of a whale - inciting such terror may seem unrealistic to some (particularly when taken out of the sociopolitical context of the film), it is within the subtlety (near lack) of Tarr's editing that the realism lies; every scene being shot majestically in real time, often only cutting when the film runs out - something Tarr has somewhat humorously, and somewhat perversely, referred to as 'Kodak censorship'.

Taken at face value, the cinematic technique witnessed in Werckmeister Harmonies is awe inspiring. The entire 145 minutes of the film are compiled of just 39 shots; an artistic achievement in itself, only outdone, perhaps, by Russian Ark (2002). However, whilst Russian Ark stands as a milestone in cinematic history (filmed entirely in one 96 minute take on high definition cameras with a cast of over two thousand; an achievement many may see as a challenge to better), Werckmeister Harmonies shall never be out done; Tarr brings so much more to the table. From its extraordinary opening scene to its incredibly elegant shades of black and white, Werckmeister Harmonies is beautiful; one can simply watch it and appreciate Tarr's composition regardless of any subversive meaning.