Category Archives: film

Contact with a beast must not be kept secret at confession

Twenty three years ago, the French film The Beast premiered in France.

Sirpa Lane in
The Beast (La bête) (1975) – Walerian Borowczyk [Amazon.com] [UK]

La Bête (Eng: The Beast) is a 1975 film written and directed by Walerian Borowczyk, starring Sirpa Lane, based on Lokis, a story by Prosper Mérimée. The film (originally conceived in 1972 as a film on its own, but then in 1974 as the fifth story in Contes immoraux) belonged to his later work, which was seen by many as a decline in the director’s career after Dzieje grzechu, except in France, where it was hailed by nobrow critics such as Ado Kyrou.

Here is some shaky Youtube footage:

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV0xScJuYXc]

The music consists of harpsichord pieces by Domenico Scarlatti.

Music in Borowczyk films usually draws from the high art canon of classical music, for example, he uses Mendelssohn in The Story of Sin, Handel in Goto, Island of Love and Domenico Scarlatti in La Bête.

Incidentally, the term “classical music” did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to “canonize” the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to “classical music” recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1836.

With regards to the title quote and the strange vocabulary of eroticism, Tim Lucas [1] gives the top 10 dialog lines from Massimo Dallamano‘s Venus in Furs (starring Laura Antonelli).

At ten is “I must resign myself to being normal.”

Manny Farber (1917 -2008)

Manny Farber is dead, reports the film blog Elusive Lucidity[1].

Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies (1971) – Manny Farber [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Manny Farber (1917, Douglas, Arizona, United States –August 17, 2008) was an American painter and early nobrow film critic. He taught at the University of California San Diego alongside Raymond Durgnat, Jean-Pierre Gorin and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

His film criticism has appeared during stints at The New Republic (late 1940s), Time (1949), The Nation (1949-54), New Leader (1958-59), Cavalier (1966), Artforum (1967-71). He has also contributed to Commentary, Film Culture, Film Comment, and City Magazine. He contributed art criticism to The New Republic and The Nation during the 1940s through 1950s.

His 1957 essay “Underground films: a bit of male truth” coined the term underground film.

In his essay “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” originally published in 1962, he eloquently championed B film and under-appreciated auteurs and coined several terms, such as termite art and monsterpieces.

Postwar film critics and theorists of his stature have included Parker Tyler, Edgar Morin, Amos Vogel, Ado Kyrou and Raymond Durgnat while his closest ally in music criticism was the untimely departed Lester Bangs.

Most of Farber’s film writing has been collected in Negative Space: Manny Farber on the Movies (depicted above).

Genre scenes, trompe-l’œils and occasional dashes of eroticism

La Toilette intime by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Passer_payez_detail1 by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Slurping_Oysters_1825 by Louis-Léopold Boilly

L'effet_du_mélodrame by Louis-Léopold Boilly

Via Suzanna of Wurzeltod [1] comes the work of French painter Léopold Boilly, whose work ranges from genre scenes to trompe-l’œils and occasional dashes of eroticism.

Before production of the Sade biopic Quills[2] began, costume designer Jacqueline West gave Kate Winslet a copy of Boilly’s “Woman Ironing”[3] to give her a feel for the character, which Winslet said greatly influenced her performance.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYaiyvJJcWw&]

YouTube mashup of Quills (set to Nine Inch Nails “Closer“)

The sadly defunct arts blog Lemateurdart has one more Boilly [5] and Jahsonic previously on Quills[6][7].

Quills is WCC #59. Toilette intime[4] is IoEA #33.

Man of a thousand prefaces dies

Francis Lacassin dies, reports De Papieren Man.

Edith Scob, at her father’s masked ball in Judex (Franju, 1963), sourced here[2]

Francis Lacassin, (November 18 1931 in Saint-Jean-de-Valériscle (Gard), France – August 12, 2008, Paris), was a French journalist, publisher, writer, screenwriter and essayist.

From 1964 onwards he contributed to the literary magazine Bizarre, published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert. He wrote on fantastic literature and detective fiction for Magazine Littéraire, and contributed to l’Express and Point.

He was also the literary advisor for Christian Bourgois‘s 10/18 series.

Connoisseur of popular culture, he was instrumental in giving comic books (already more respectfully known as bandes dessinées in France), its respectability as the ninth art and was a contributor to the film magazine Midi Minuit Fantastique and a co-screenwriter to Franju‘s Judex.

He prepared and prefaced a great many reference works, author profiles or series, most notably at Éditions Robert Laffont where he supervised the series « Bouquins » since 1982 including Eugène Sue, Gustave Le Rouge, Maurice Leblanc, Fantômas, Lovecraft and Jack London.

He was nicknamed the “man of a thousand prefaces”.

Happy birthday Mr. Roeg

Nicolas Roeg turns 80 today. He made his best creative work before 1986. Castaway was his last great film and he made several world cinema classics.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wScqqTJqYc]

White of the Eye by Donald Cammell

Instead of focusing on Roeg’s own output, I’d like you to have this[1] clip from White of the Eye by Roeg’s brother in arms Donald Cammell (Performance, (1968), Demon Seed (1977), White Of The Eye (1987) and Wild Side (1999)).

I haven’t seen White but based on the YouTube footage and Cammell’s genius I declare it WCC #57. It looks like a slasher film, it is a slasher film, but most of all, it is a Cammell film.

P. S. the clip above was posted by YouTube user Truegore[2], who hosts some other interesting clips such as Viy[3]. Viy is WCC #58.

Possibilities of Michel

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrxtoKAvtWI&]

Trailer to Possibility of an Island

On September 10 France will get the chance to see Michel Houellebecq‘s own film adaptation of The Possibility of an Island[1]. It was rumored that Rem Koolhaas would design the decors, but in the end he did not, I believe. Fernando Arrabal was prominently present at the film’s recording.

Houellebecq is a contemporary French writer and everyone’s current cult favourite.

He has his detractors however … he was disparagingly compared to Thomas Bernhard by a friend “with infallible judgement” of litblogger Stephen Mitchelmore in 2005[2] and English novelist Will Self, commonly called the French counterpart (see equivalents and synchronicity) of Houellebecq, described his equivalent as “just a little guy who can’t get enough sex” (The Trouble with Michel).

I’ve yet to read Bernhard and Self. Since I haven’t read The Possibility of an Island, I’ll try to catch the film, but … after seeing Eichinger’s botched adaptation of The Elementary Particles … I fear for the worst. The only film adaptation of Houellebecq I can vouch for is Extension du domaine de la lutte by Philippe Harel. That was an excellent film. From the trailer of Possibility, I can only say that the film feels like another Jahsonic fave: Christophe Honoré‘s 2004 My Mother, probably due to the shared Ibiza scenery.

Staying with French literature, Anglophone litblog A journey round my skull celebrates Maurice Blanchot‘s “The Madness of the Day“. [3][ notes].

Post scriptum: I didn’t publish yesterday‘s notes. If you wish to follow my daily note-taking, visit my bliki.

Previously at Jahsonic: Carnivalesque damsels

Stanley Kubrick @ 80

Stanley Kubrick would have been 80 today if he hadn’t died in 1999, aged 70. So today marks the 10th anniversary of his death.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBT__4ldjAs&]

The dark tower monolith scene, sound: Requiem by György Ligeti

I’ve previously mentioned[1] my disenchantment with Kubrick and “modernist film” in general (an exception needs to be made for its deviant siblings). His work is of course incontournable, as the French say, but 2001 is one of the most boring films I’ve ever seen and only comes close in tediousness to Citizen Kane.

Nevertheless, as all flawed products, 2001 has one or two redeeming elements:

Olivier Mourgue Djinn chairs [2]
Its soundtrack

2001′s soundtrack did much to introduce the modern classical composer György Ligeti to a wider public, using extracts from his Requiem (the Kyrie), Atmosphères, Lux Aeterna and (in an altered form) Aventures (though without his permission).

The dark tower monolith scene, again scored by Ligeti [3]

To conclude: a good YouTumentary the significance of 2001[4] by Collective Learning by Rob Ager

Humid reveries in white smocks

Sadism in the Movies (1965) – George de Coulteray [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Belgian-born/New York-based canonical nobrow writer Luc Sante has a blog called Pinakothek [1]. There is a funny post called “Vile Smut”[2], in which he reviews Sadism in the Movies by George de Coulteray, and comments on a chart[3] reproduced in Lo Duca‘s L’Érotisme au cinéma [4] (J.-J. Pauvert, 1957)

“Take this chart, for example, which is worthy of Edward Tufte‘s books:”

The movies are (1) The Blue Angel, (2) Ecstasy, (3) Tabu, (4) The Lady from Shanghai, (5) Notorious, (6) Bitter Rice, (7) Manon, (8) Los Olvidados, (9) Miss Julie, and (10) One Summer of Happiness. No, I’d never heard of that last one, either. Don’t you wish you could nonchalantly illustrate your humid reveries with charts so rigorously white-smocked? I certainly do.”

I’ve mentioned Luc Sante here [5], when I wrote about Guy Bourdin. Luc Sante has compiled a monograph on Bourdin: Exhibit A: Guy Bourdin (2001).

Encore: various book covers from L’Érotisme au cinéma series by Jean-Marie Lo Duca.

Cult fiction item #8

I watched the 1999 film adaptation of Breakfast of Champions yesterday evening. I decided to check this film – after having read the delightful novel in Spain a week ago – because I considered the novel unfilmable. Unfilmable because of the book’s tone, which hovers perfectly between the surreal and the very mundane. Unfilmable also because it is an illustrated novel (with crude illustrations by Vonnegut himself, the anus illustration at the beginning sets the tone) and because the novel features many matter-of-fact explanations (what is a cow?, what is earth?, etc.).

The film was written and directed by minor American director Alan Rudolph and stars Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Nick Nolte and Barbara Hershey. The film was widely panned by critics. It is indeed painful to watch.

Some feebly redeeming elements include the score by Martin Denny, revisiting Barbara Hershey, Glenne Headly in lingerie and the over-the-top cross-dressing scene by Nick Nolte towards the end.

The only way to adapt this unfilmable novel would have been to add at least a third person omniscient voice-over, instead of trying to hide its novelish antecedents.

This [1] unidentified excerpt – from a Vonnegut documentary I presume – is exactly what I have in mind.

Breakfast of Champions (the novel) is cult fiction item #8.

Erotická revue

The Erotická revue[1] was an arts journal launched by Czech surrealist Jindřich Štyrský in 1930. It is also the name of the blog of American author Evie Byrne [2].

From Evie Byrne’s blog come:

Pompeii bedroom fresco

Work by Sarah Goodridge

Emmanuel de Ghendt (1738-1815), Midday Heat, an engraving after Baudouin

Speaking of Czech surrealism, I just found some Svankmajer clips at YouTube. Some of his best work: Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), which shows Arcimboldo-like heads gradually reducing each other to bland copies (“exhaustive discussion”[3]); a clay man and woman who dissolve into one another sexually, then quarrel and reduce themselves to a frenzied, boiling pulp (“passionate discourse”[4]); and two elderly clay heads who extrude various objects on their tongues (toothbrush and toothpaste; shoe and shoelaces, etc.) and use them in every possible combination, sane or otherwise (“factual conversation”[5]). Follow the links to see more of Jahsonic fave Svankmajer.

Last minute, it’s Trevor Brown day[6] over at Dennis Cooper‘s blog.