Monthly Archives: October 2006

Of boredom and interestingness

In defense of interestingness.

A week ago I reported on Harry’s ironically titled ‘Boring Art Films’ blog-a-thon. Harry specifies ironically because he does not believe that the type of contemplative cinema he refers to is indeed boring. Others may find these films boring, we think they are interesting.

While my favourite director of contemplative cinema or essay films (as Doug Dilliman has called them) is probably Catherine Breillat, I want to take this opportunity to write about a category of films which are boring if viewed from a to z – films which may not be worth to spend the 90 to 120 minutes to watch them – but that are all the more interesting to read about. These are the kind of films I wrote about on my page anti-film. The introduction went as follows:

Anti-film is film that does not respect the rules of film. For example, Andy Warhol, who forces us to watch a sleeping man during five hours, Chris Marker, who makes a film out of filmed photographs, with no moving images and Guy Debord’s Howlings in Favor of de Sade which dispenses with images and narrative altogether. [Jul 2006]

Claiming the aesthetic value of the category anti-film is a further defense of my mini-essays in praise of secondary literature and in praise of the paratext, which takes a meta-approach to the arts stating that films that actually ought to be viewed, books that actually ought to be read are just as interesting to read about.

I mean if you take the title of the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before you Die seriously, you have to exclude the wealth of films which are extremely interesting but boring to watch in their entirety. That’s why I call my filmography 199 films you could read about before you die (2006), replacing the word should by could and see by read about.

Which brings me to my contribution to this blog-a-thon, the 1952 film Howlings in Favor of de Sade[Youtube] by Guy Debord (the man who published a book with a sandpaper cover so that it would destroy other books placed next to it):

Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howlings in Favor of de Sade) (1952) – Guy Debord
image sourced here.

Instead of using pictures, Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Howlings in Favor of de Sade) consists of black and white film leader in alternation for some 75 minutes. Debord’s voice is heard during the white sequences, while the black sections, often lasting minutes, are silent.

On April 9, 2002, Guy Debord’s films were screened in Paris in the Magic Cinema. Although I stated earlier that my purpose is to showcase films which I wouldn’t dream of seeing in their entirety, I would have been tempted to go to this screening (If I had lived in Paris and if I had known about the event). Not for the qualities of these films but from a tribal/sociological point of view: to see who attends this type of screenings.

Conjugal Love (1947) – Alberto Moravia

Conjugal Love (1947) – Alberto Moravia
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I just finished this short novel by Moravia, my second of his books, the first being The Voyeur, by which I had been impressed. It is to be re-published in English in 2007 and described thus:

Book Description
“A story of love, obsession, and betrayal from “the most important Italian creative writer [of the twentieth] century.”—The Times [London]

When Silvio, a rich Italian dilettante, and his beautiful wife agree to move to the country and forgo sex so that he will have the energy to write a successful novel, something is bound to go wrong: Silvio’s literary ambitions are far too big for his second-rate talent, and his wife Leda is a passionate woman. Antonio, the local barber who comes every morning to shave Silvio, sparks off this dangerously combustible situation when Leda accuses him of trying to molest her. Silvio obstinately refuses to dismiss him, and the quarrel and its shattering consequences put the couple’s love to the test.

Alberto Moravia earned his international reputation with frank, finely-observed stories of love and sex at all levels of society. In this new English translation of Conjugal Love, he explores an imperiled relationship with his customary unadorned style, psychological penetration, and narrative art.

Just as in The Voyeur the main theme of Conjugal Love is a wife unfaithful to her husband. In both cases the husband is the narrator. I identify the narrator with Moravia himself. In real life, Moravia’s wife was unfaithful to him with Klaus Kinski (Kinski Uncut: The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski). Instead of disliking or becoming angry at the unfaithfullness, the narrator gets a perverse pleasure from it reminiscent of candaulism.

Moravia is famous for another novel which bears the name Boredom. Now as you know boredom is a prerogative of the very rich. Poor people don’t have time to be bored, they have to work. In real life, Moravia was born into a wealthy family.

See also: adultery – marriage – Alberto Moravia – 1947 – 1900s literature – Italian literature

Other blogs

Yves Klein… Anthropométries de l’époque bleue (1960, Flash Video 02:27) and Yves Klein réalisant des peintures de feu (1961, Flash Video 09:04). From the Yves Klein Archives, 21, avenue du Maine 75015 Paris. –via GMTPlus9 (-15)

Conversational Reading reports on “Luc Sante writes a nice essay on H.P. Lovecraft.” and “Good point. (about classics in literature) ” —Conversational Reading by Scott Esposito

The Fly (1986) – David Cronenberg

The Fly (1986) – David Cronenberg
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A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong. A celebration of biological horror, body horror, metamorphoses and the theme of the beauty and the beast. One of David Cronenberg’s mainstream films.

See also: metamorphoses – David Cronenberg – 1986

The Bays Are Sere (1888) – Édouard Dujardin

The Bays Are Sere (1888) – Édouard Dujardin
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Edouard Dujardin’s “The Bays are Sere”, first published in 1887, was the first novel written entirely in interior monologue or stream of consciousness. For a long time its impact was dormant, until James Joyce read it in 1903 and subsequently revealed its influence upon him. As a result it was republished to great acclaim in 1924, after which Dujardin wrote “Interior Monologue”, an essay on the origin of this style and how he came to adopt it. This book was freely translated into English by Joyce’s friend Stuart Gilbert and published in 1938 as “We’ll To The Woods No More”. The present completely new translation is faithful to the original and reproduces all Dujardin’s innovations. “Interior Monologue” is translated here for the first time. Edouard Dujardin (1861-1947) was editor of the “Revue Wagerienne”, one of the most influential literary journals in Paris in the 1885. He was a poet and playwright who also wrote on the history of religion. –from the publisher

Édouard Dujardin (1861–1949) was one of the early pioneers of the literary technique stream of consciousness, exemplified in his 1888 novel Les lauriers sont coupés (which remains in print into the 21st century). —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89douard_Dujardin [Oct 2006]

See also: French literature – stream of consciousness – 1888

Metamorphoses

Unknown engraving of Heliades turning into trees

Metamorphoses of any kind have always interested me because of their uncanniness. I recently re-viewed The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) by Roger Corman in which a plant becomes a carnivore, and after it has eaten a number of people, the last buds of the plant open and reveal the faces of the people it has eaten. Voilà, man is crossed with a flower –> metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis is a frightening and intriguing concept which can take many forms: crosses between humans and plants, objects and humans, etc…

A particular variety of metamorphosis is people turning into furniture. So I found two stories in which humans transform into chairs: the French libertine novel Le Sopha, conte moral (1742) by Crébillon fils and Japanese short story The Human Chair (1925) by Edogawa Rampo. In both stories a man becomes a sofa, in the former quite literally so (by a curse), in the latter, a man hides in sofa to feel the persons who sit in him.

Das Gespensterbuch (1569) – Ludwig Lavater

In search of the roots of Tales of the Dead.

Das Gespensterbuch (1569) – Ludwig Lavater
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Image sourced here.

The fullest and most influential work on angels and ghosts in the sixteenth century was Das Gespensterbuch by Ludwig Lavater, first printed in Zurich in 1569. The work was quickly translated into German and then French, Spanish and Italian. The English translation appeared in 1572 with the title, Of Ghostes and Spirites walking by Nyght, and of strange noyses, crackes and sundry forewarninges.

In a conflicting account on Wikipedia, where Gespensterbuch redirects to Tales of the Dead, there is no reference to an anterior version of Gespensterbuch (and maybe there are no similarities, but just the title, I don’t know).

The collection had its origin in Gespensterbuch (lit. “ghost book”), a five-volume anthology of German language ghost stories. The original anthology was published in Leipzig between 1811 and 1815. The stories were compiled by Friedrich August Schulze (1770 – 1849), under the pen name Friedrich Laun, and Johann August Apel (September 17, 1771 – August 9, 1816).

The latter is the one that was used by Byron and company in 1816 to scare and inspire:

On the night of June 16, after Lord Byron, John Polidori and the Shelleys had read aloud from the Tales of the Dead, a collection of horror tales, Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Mary Shelley worked on a tale that would later evolve into Frankenstein. Byron wrote (and quickly abandoned) a fragment of a story, which Polidori used later as the basis for his own tale. [Aug 2006]

The Venus of Ille (1837) – Prosper Mérimée

In search of le fantastique in literature and pygmalionism

Cover of unidentified audio book

Prosper Mérimée is best known for writing the opera Carmen made famous by Bizet, which has also been adapted to film by Radley Metzger, is featured here with a short story/novella about a statue that comes to life, a fantastic story.

“The Venus of Ille” is about an old bronze statue unearthed in the town of Ille, in the French Pyrenees. It is unearthed in the yard of Monsieur de Peyrehorade, a “very learned antiquarian.” He is quite taken with it, and in fact thinks more about it than about the upcoming wedding of his son. The nameless narrator is visiting Peyrehorade simply to look at the ruins in the area, but on hearing about the statue he is intrigued. Before he gets a good look at the statue he sees two townies throw a stone at the statue (while it was being unearthed it fell on the leg of a workman and broke it) only to have the stone thrower cry out in pain and say that the statue threw the stone back at him. The narrator laughs this away, but on seeing the statue up close he isn’t so sanguine. The form and body are magnificent, but its face is…not so magnificent. —http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/vicv.html [Oct 20006]

The 1979 La Venere di Ille was made as part of a series of movies commissioned by the Italian TV station RaiDue focusing on the fantastic in 19th century literature. The texts were selected by the Italian author Italo Calvino. Mario Bava and his son Lamberto directed the film.

Excerpt

“Shortly afterwards, the door opened a second time, and some one came in who said, ‘Good evening, my little wife.’ Then the curtains were drawn back. She heard a stifled cry. The person who was in the bed beside her sat up apparently with extended arms. Then she turned her head and saw her husband, kneeling by the bed with his head on a level with the pillow, held close in the arms of a sort of greenish-colored giant. She says, and she repeated it to me twenty times, poor woman!- she says that she recognized- do you guess who?-the bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s statue. Since it has been here every one dreams about it. But to continue the poor lunatic’s story. At this sight she lost consciousness, and probably she had already lost her mind. She cannot tell how long she remained in this condition. Returned to her sense she saw the phantom, or the statue as she insists on calling it, lying immovable, the legs and lower part of the body on the bed, the bust and arms extended forward, and between the arms her husband, quite motionless. A cock crew. Then the statue left the bed, let fall the body, and went out. Mme. Alphonse rushed to the bell, and you know the rest.”

—http://frenital.byu.edu/merimee/works/TheVenusofIlle.html [Oct 2006]

Prosper Mérimée (September 28, 1803–September 23, 1870) was a French dramatist, historian, archaeologist, and short story writer. One of his stories was the basis of the opera Carmen. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosper_M%C3%A9rim%C3%A9e [Oct 2006]