The other day I was walking with my friend John, complaining about all the work and education and money I have to put in to become a professor. He then asked me an obvious question: “Why teach? Why not make?” This is hardly the first time I have heard this…and normally I have a go-to response that can get a little cranky: “NOT EVERYONE WANTS TO MAKE FILMS! I AM A HISTORIAN, A SCHOLAR! LEAVE ME ALONE!” But for some reason on this day, I answered something unusual, and utterly sincere. I replied: “I couldn’t, if I wanted to. I don’t know enough yet.”
…and John scoffed at me, Miss “my world is cinema” Monica.
Let me make one thing clear: in that statement, I didn’t mean that I don’t know much about the technical aspects of films, which is true though. I know very little, enough to get by, and make myself simple films. I know I am about to piss off any of my film school friends when I say this: but those technical aspects are irrelevant as far as I am concerned…for this discussion at least. Jean-Luc Godard hardly understood the filmmaking lingo when he directed Breathless, and he ended up revolutionizing cinema.
Honestly, I am kind of a bitch to most production students: people who tell me they would rather make films than watch them, that they are artists. There is far too much unsaturated crap out there to me to give a flying fuck about most of cliché stories that come out, or the new people that schools are generating. I am looking for inspiration, please show me some.
I say my harsh words only because I feel that the emotions and reservations I have about my own potential in filmmaking should be felt by any person attempting to yield a camera.
Tangent over: back to me…
In spite of my cinephilia, my efforts to watch two films a day during the summer, all my theoretical essays, and my attempts at making actual shorts, I have no idea how to take that knowledge and apply it. What I still need to learn is why do certain films move me, and how? And that is a question that I am not certain I will ever be able to answer.
Is great filmmaking great storytelling? Beautiful imagery? Or something greater? I would say something greater: some of the best films I’ve ever seen have no narrative or simple mise-en-scenes.
If I am to become a filmmaker: what am I to make? What am I to say? A great filmmaker should have something to say in their films, something they want to show the world…but if I were to make films I want to show people a feeling. Why do I cry during the Cheek to Cheek number in Top Hat? Or feel utter joy as Antoine Doinel runs to the water at the end of The 400 Blows? And more importantly: how does someone create that moment themselves?
I am at a loss. And perhaps when I figure that out I will be able to pick up a camera and no longer call myself a scholar or essay writer, but a filmmaker. Perhaps my ideas and expectations are extreme. But I feel that anyone who is not striving to achieve this goal has no business pursuing a life making films.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
On Metropolis
I received this text from a friend back home about a week ago: “The Complete Metropolis is playing at a theater by my apartment. Should I see it?” My response: “Yes! It’s a big deal which cannot fully be explained via text message.”
I have always considered Metropolis Fritz Lang’s flawed masterpiece. It boasts a big game about ideology, the workers versus the city folk, yet it seems confused about what it is saying: its blatantly anti-communist and anti-fascist, and seems none too keen on capitalism either. What the heck does “the mediator between head and hands must be the heart” even mean? So in that respect, Metropolis for me is eye candy, mind-blowingly beautiful eye candy.
The story of how the footage was lost is infamous. Metropolis was Ufa Studio’s most expensive film to date and Lang went wildly over budget. At the film premiere when the full version was shown it was received disastrously. Thus it was shortened and cut to pieces, and the original version was thought to have been lost…until a few years ago when a print was found in the depths of an archive in Argentina. This is the stuff of legends.
I just finished taking a class all about Lang, so let’s just say me and Fritz know each other pretty well. In interviews Lang often refers to the shortened version as his version of the film. What a remarkable revelation: was Lang even happy with this elongated version, now toted as one of the biggest archival finds in history? This revelation suddenly brings up ideas about authorship and who this film belongs too.
Amongst the archival world, it is popular to try to update infamously cutup or altered films into their intended format. A great example is the reedited version of Touch of Evil that features an altered opening sequence with different sound and different titles. The basis for the scene changes come from a memo sent by Orson Welles over how the scene “should” look as he ranted to the studios, begging them not to touch his film. A professor of mine, Bill Simon, a renowned Welles scholar, once pointed out how ridiculous he felt the intentions of this definitive version were. I remember him proclaiming something like, “Welles never knew what he wanted, he may have wanted this one day but it was constantly changing his mind, if he’d been working on the film still who knows what he would have come up with, but I’m sure it would have been different from what’s in the memo.”
This example of Welles and Touch of Evil merely goes to show that these “definitive” “complete” versions of famously lost films may mean nothing: they may not be what the director wanted; we may be watching what the director intended to scrap or change or whatever. And that discredits the importance of their overall authorship authority.
Some directors are constantly updating their works, tweaking things and trying to make them “better.” (See the 80 versions of Blade Runner, and the CGI updated version of Star Wars). In these circumstances, I will say yes this is different from a group of historians, film lovers, and archivists altering a film in the name of a dead man: here the director is entitled to add updates; we can all agree that it is their films. Yet many would call the updates to Star Wars atrocities.
In both of these circumstances: this becomes a moral question. Do we make changes, make updates, or let history stand? The answer with all this helps make the directorial input irrelevant. Simply: which is better? The new version of Touch of Evil’s opening sequence is decidedly better…and so is the “complete” version of Metropolis. The addition of a few simple frames to sequences somehow made things pop more, and the greater character development, I greatly appreciated. So to answer my friend’s text, whether Lang liked it or not: go see The Complete Metropolis!
At the cinema, I am no longer thought; I am emotion.
Why do Frank Capra films make me feel so good inside? This is a question I have pondered since I was a child, though I may not have articulated the actual words at the time.
I sat today at Film Forum, paranoid that I was going to fall asleep during a double feature of Platinum Blonde and Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. Yet after nearly 4 hours of film preceded by a day of work and class, my eyes were glued to the screen, captivated with the same whimsy towards Capra’s work that I had when I was a child.
My best cinematic experiences are one where at first I feel compelled to think about the material I am watching, take notes, and ponder its ideologies, but then instead am stopped in my tracks entirely immersed in whatever is going on on screen. A few weeks ago I was greatly pondering this Godard quote “at the cinema, we do not think we are thought.” Truly great cinema, things I absolutely love and adore, for me, stop me from thinking. I am engulfed by a new world, one where I forget my problems and truly only feel the emotions of the characters. I cease to think, film is thought.
Returning to my experience with Capra, I think I saw Mr. Deeds for the first time when I was ten or so with my father around Christmas time when TCM did a Frank Capra day. I remember that day only because I watched 5 films by him back to back and then declared him to be my favorite director. I was so happy, and what a memory! My first favorite director, my first dabble into the realm of auteur ideology! I loved him because all his films carried a similar ideology, one that made me feel good inside. I liked that no matter what: good triumphed over evil and the nice guy always won. I was a little girl learning morality from 1930s social films. If only the world could be as black and white as in a Capra film: capitalism and money –bad, human relationships and hard work—good.
Now, as a 22 years old, I wonder why the films still have such a hold. I literally had not seen Mr. Deeds since that day as a prepubescent, so I think I went into the viewing with nearly a clean slate. What I am left with in my emotional reaction. Of course, I was captivated and involved in story, but things transcended for me into a moment of viewing that was pure emotion, and without anymore thought about the way the film progressed or was told or shot or all those cinema studies things.
There is always a moment in a Capra film where the evils of the world are trying to convict and persecute the film’s hero. In Mr. Deeds a group of lawyers try to get the hero declared insane because he is trying to give away his money to the impoverished. The moments set in a courtroom where the businessmen condemn him, for some reason I found excruciating to watch, not in a “this is bad cinema” way but in an “I felt so emotional and that the situation was so unjust” way. It’s silly to feel that enraged over a film, especially one discussing topic mostly relevant to the 1930s. I think that this scene exemplifies the emotional, absorptive power I have been trying to identity. When Mr. Deeds was found sane and the crowd rejoices and he gets the girl, I was so overcome with joy I wiped away tears (yes really). The good guy one, and everyone was happy. Perhaps, part of my reaction was the result of nostalgia but so much of it was the pure power of the filmic medium: I felt what the characters felt, what the frame presented, what the director intended…and I sat there in a state of pure feeling as if to declare: at the cinema, I am no longer thought; I am emotion.
I sat today at Film Forum, paranoid that I was going to fall asleep during a double feature of Platinum Blonde and Mr. Deeds Goes To Town. Yet after nearly 4 hours of film preceded by a day of work and class, my eyes were glued to the screen, captivated with the same whimsy towards Capra’s work that I had when I was a child.
My best cinematic experiences are one where at first I feel compelled to think about the material I am watching, take notes, and ponder its ideologies, but then instead am stopped in my tracks entirely immersed in whatever is going on on screen. A few weeks ago I was greatly pondering this Godard quote “at the cinema, we do not think we are thought.” Truly great cinema, things I absolutely love and adore, for me, stop me from thinking. I am engulfed by a new world, one where I forget my problems and truly only feel the emotions of the characters. I cease to think, film is thought.
Returning to my experience with Capra, I think I saw Mr. Deeds for the first time when I was ten or so with my father around Christmas time when TCM did a Frank Capra day. I remember that day only because I watched 5 films by him back to back and then declared him to be my favorite director. I was so happy, and what a memory! My first favorite director, my first dabble into the realm of auteur ideology! I loved him because all his films carried a similar ideology, one that made me feel good inside. I liked that no matter what: good triumphed over evil and the nice guy always won. I was a little girl learning morality from 1930s social films. If only the world could be as black and white as in a Capra film: capitalism and money –bad, human relationships and hard work—good.
Now, as a 22 years old, I wonder why the films still have such a hold. I literally had not seen Mr. Deeds since that day as a prepubescent, so I think I went into the viewing with nearly a clean slate. What I am left with in my emotional reaction. Of course, I was captivated and involved in story, but things transcended for me into a moment of viewing that was pure emotion, and without anymore thought about the way the film progressed or was told or shot or all those cinema studies things.
There is always a moment in a Capra film where the evils of the world are trying to convict and persecute the film’s hero. In Mr. Deeds a group of lawyers try to get the hero declared insane because he is trying to give away his money to the impoverished. The moments set in a courtroom where the businessmen condemn him, for some reason I found excruciating to watch, not in a “this is bad cinema” way but in an “I felt so emotional and that the situation was so unjust” way. It’s silly to feel that enraged over a film, especially one discussing topic mostly relevant to the 1930s. I think that this scene exemplifies the emotional, absorptive power I have been trying to identity. When Mr. Deeds was found sane and the crowd rejoices and he gets the girl, I was so overcome with joy I wiped away tears (yes really). The good guy one, and everyone was happy. Perhaps, part of my reaction was the result of nostalgia but so much of it was the pure power of the filmic medium: I felt what the characters felt, what the frame presented, what the director intended…and I sat there in a state of pure feeling as if to declare: at the cinema, I am no longer thought; I am emotion.
Statement of Purpose
Cinema is my world and my life. This blog is aimed as a means for discussing and pursuing those interests. As I begin to write I begin with a vow: no personal discussion just film, except when, as is often the case, film and real life are interchangeable. Andre Bazin once wrote, and Jean-Luc Godard quoted him in the opening of Le Mepris, that: “Cinema substitutes for our gaze, a world more in harmony with our desires.” This blog focuses on my life in that world, and all the intrigue it brings me. And with that I start…
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