Category Archives: world cinema classics

Egon Schiele, Jane Birkin and Brian Eno, or a cult item if there ever was one

Egon Schiele Excess & Punishment

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

From the film “Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung” (1981) starring Mathieu Carrière, Jane Birkin and Christine Kaufmann with an original score by Brian Eno. A cult item if there ever was one. Dedicated to Rafaela for her appreciation of sensualism and Esotika for his appreciation of European cinema.

For those of you with prurient interests (wink, wink), scrub to 3:00 and various subsequent points in time you will have to find for yourself.

Eno’s score is mesmerizing and blissful.

From my wiki:

Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung, also known as Excess and Punishment(English) and Egon Schiele, enfer et passion (French) is a 1980 film based on the life of the Austrian artist Egon Schiele. It stars Mathieu Carriere as Schiele with Jane Birkin as his artist muse Wally and Christine Kaufmann as his wife Edith and Christina Van Eyck as her sister. The film is essentially a depiction of obsession and its constituents of sex, alcohol and uncontrolled emotions. Set in Austria during the Great War Schiele is depicted as the agent of social change leading to destruction of those he loves and ultimately of himself.

The film is an international co-production with actors of German, French, Dutch and English origin. It was directed by Herbert Vesely and produced by Dieter Geissler and Robert Hess. The cinematography is by Rudolf Blahacek and the haunting music is by Brian Eno. The English language version of the film is entitled Egon Schiele Excess & Punishment.

Death by bisection or dismemberment (excluding decapitation)

The final frontier in cinephilia is silent cinema.

I just discovered Ménilmontant.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoO2hLUMgG0&]

Opening scene of Ménilmontant (no intertitles, a flurry of quick close-up shots depicting an axe murder)

Ménilmontant (1926) is a silent film by Russian film director Dimitri Kirsanoff. His best-known work, it takes its name from the Paris neighborhood of the same name. The film is a silent, but does not contain any intertitles. It begins with a flurry of quick close-up shots depicting the axe murder (see death by bisection or dismemberment (excluding decapitation)) of the parents of the protagonists, two girls. As young women, they are portrayed by Nadia Sibirskaïa, Kirsanoff’s first wife, and Yolande Beaulieu; their mutual love interest is played by Guy Belmont. The film uses many other techniques that were relatively new at the time, including double exposure.

Joseph Losey @100

Joseph Losey @100

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaVXuBW1Y2s]

Famous seduction scene (with dripping water faucet and many Pinter pauses) of The Servant

Joseph Losey was an American theatre and film director (1909 – 1984). One-time student of Bertolt Brecht, his best-known film is The Servant (1963).

The Servant stars Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, and James Fox and was adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter (the first of his three collaborations with Losey, the others are Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1970)) from the novel of the same name by Robin Maugham. It is a tightly woven psychological drama that focuses on the relationships between the four central characters. The intricacies of class, servitude, ennui, role reversal and Pyrrhic victory are examined and exploded.

Each of the collaborations with Harold Pinter examined aspects of the British class system in their reflection of the master-servant relationship.

Outside of The Servant, I’ve seen The Go-Between (1970), The Prowler (1951) and Galileo (1975).

On my wishlist are:

RIP Ann Savage (1921 – 2008)

RIP American actress Ann Savage at age 87, best-known for her iconic bad girl role in Detour.

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

Ann Savage discusses Detour

Ann Savage (1921 – 2008) is mainly remembered as the cigarette-puffing femme fatale in Detour (1945) and other Hollywood B-movies and film noirs of the 1940s.

When it became public domain, Detour was often run on syndicated television and several versions were released on VHS home video. Although made on a small budget and containing only rudimentary sets and camera work, the film has garnered substantial praise through the years and is held in high regard. Director Wim Wenders called her work in Detour “at least 15 years ahead of its time”. The film’s ending is notable as an exemplum of involuntary manslaughter.

Ann most recently earned rave reviews in all media for her stunning performance as Canadian director Guy Maddin‘s mother in his most acclaimed film My Winnipeg (2008).

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde, it might have been Italy but it wasn't

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde

I’ve always been weary of the genre mix of comedy and horror, but that is probably because of my dislike of the Scream franchise.

Yesterday, I find this[1] intertitle and I thought it was hilarious.

A word on intertitles

Since silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen intertitles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the cinema audience. The title writer became a key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Intertitles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) often became graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action of the film or enhanced its atmosphere.

In the silent film era, films were as much a literary as a filmic medium. I’m quite sure you could ‘watch’ the film by reading the intertitles.

Coming back to Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde, I find the humour in sentences such as “England in the 19th century was not all that it might have been — It might have been Italy but wasn’t,” and “We squirm under the tumult of Good and Evil ever — warring within us, yet were Science to separate them, Bad would flourish. Crime run riot — even Saxophone players would be tolerated,”[3] quite refreshing for 1925, when this film was released. We sometimes think that Monty Python started this kind of absurd humor, but clearly that is a mistake. To my knowledge the earliest modern instance of this kind of humor is Alfred Jarry‘s Ubu Roi, and going further back in the history of derision there is Rabelais and even before that there is the Facetiae by Poggio.

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde is World Cinema Classic #73.

P. S. Another fave intertitle is this one[2] from Caligari, used to dramatic effect in that film.

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde

The time is short, you die at dawn

Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde, it might have been Italy but it wasn't

RIP French film producer Christian Fechner

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxCSQY4zskg]

La Fille sur le pont

best knife-throwing-act scene ever, testimony to a strange kind of eroticism.

French film producer Christian Fechner died today. He was 64. He produced a great number of films but is best-remembered for L’Aile ou la Cuisse, Camille Claudel, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Élisa, and La Fille sur le pont.

That last film, with its English title Girl on a Bridge was directed by Patrice Leconte and was featured on this blog two years ago[1]. The film is superb, it is now World Cinema Classic #72.

My inner werewolf

The Howling (1981) – Joe Dante [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

I woke up yesterday night bathing in sweat. I get up. I look outside, full moon. That explains. My inner werewolf was trying to get out.

So I give you Joe Dante‘s The Howling, IMNHO the best werewolf film since WWII. Dante was an alumnus of Roger Corman, for whom I have an excessively soft spot. The film is WCC #71.

World Cinema Classic #70

In search of nonspace and unthought thoughts.

Sans Soleil

Sans Soleil

In search of nonspace and unthought thoughts.

I’ve been mulling over French director Chris Marker‘s Sans Soleil for four days now. The key scene for me was the shooting of the giraffe, which gave its origins away as far as genre-theoretics are concerned.

The key phrase was perhaps the “salute to all unposted letters,” but is safe to say that the film is brilliantly written throughout.

I saw the film at MuHKA on last Saturday, introduced by a Belgian scholar (who?). He stated that the film was unclassifiable, because the “film essay is not a genre but a small category”. However, in my opinion, the film fits the mondo film category, and functions as a highbrow counterpart to Mondo Cane. The film also begs a viewing of the masterwork Blood of the Beasts. But Sans Soleil is a different film altogether. It is a philosophical film that raises questions of medium specificity, multimedia, memory and authenticity.

I have a feeling that Sans Soleil can be invoked to clarify Gilles Deleuze‘s any-space-whatever (see B. C. Holmes – “The Deleuzian Memory of Sans Soleil” [1]), but to prove that would need some more studying of Gilles Deleuze on film.

My tongue would penetrate her eyelids

Claude Nicolas Ledoux has the best public domain eye. The best in the non-public domain area is the eye from Bunuel's An Andalusian Dog.

Claude Nicolas Ledoux has the best public domain eye.

The best in the non-public domain area is the eye from Bunuel’s An Andalusian Dog.

French blog Au carrefour étrange has a post on ocular eroticism.

Story of the Eye invariably comes to mind, but to our subject at hand:

I quote from Au carrefour étrange[1] who quotes from La vie sexuelle de Robinson Crusoe:

« J’ai connu une femme dont j’embrassais l’œil en introduisant ma langue entre ses paupières et son orgasme alors était intarissable » (Michel Gall. p.89)
« I once knew a woman whose eyes I kissed and my tongue would penetrate her eyelids, she would then climax to the point of exhaustion» (Michel Gall. p.89)

I love books or films which start with the sexual life of….

La vie sexuelle de Robinson Crusoe

Examples in this category include The Sexual Life of Catherine M., The Sexual life of the Belgians, The Sexual Life of the Savages and now this The Sexual life of Robinson Crusoe.

Emmanuel Pierrat has called The Sexual life of Robinson Crusoe a small masterpiece. It is not available in an English translation.

Digression:

Here the An Andalusian Dog eye, just before being slashed, with the beautiful Argentinian tango in the background.

I’ve posted the razor scene before, it’s about the last place online where you can still see the still and the film[3]

Here is the tango scene with a nice colorized pre-razor still of the film.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P17OAI5M4tI]

Un Chien Andalou (1929) – Luis Buñuel [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Un Chien Andalou is World Cinema Classic @69

Dream sequences in literature and film

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2eVb4CC4XU]

Dream sequence in La Prisonnière (1968) by Henri-Georges Clouzot

I love dream sequences in film. Every Disney film has nearly one. Always psychedelic. Film as a medium is particularly well-suited to impart dream visions, much better than previous visionary literature, which required more narrative realism.

An interesting juxtaposition here is Dante‘s Divine Comedy compared to its first film adaptation[1].

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA3NRe5kgak]

L’Inferno

The Divine Comedy exemplifies the conventions of dream-vision literature, though Dante specifically says that his Comedy is not a dream vision.

I guess what this post comes down to is the boring but somehow unavoidably attractive “literature vs. cinema” debate I’ve been engaging in.

The debate is boring when you limit it to either/or, but of interest if you view it from its technical angle, with fiction at the center, and medium-specificity at its perifery.

Notions such as unfilmability provide the best entry point.

But that notion I was not thinking about when going to bed last night. I thought about cinematic effects in literature, a notion first put forward to my knowledge by Lotte H. Eisner in The Haunted Screen.

She writes:

“Romantic authors such as Novalis or Jean Paul, while anticipating the Expressionist notions of visual delirium and of a continual state of effervescence, also seem almost to have foreseen the cinema’s consecutive sequences of images. In the eyes of Schlegel in Lucinde, the loved one’s features become indistinct: ‘very rapidly the outlines changed, returned to their original form, then metamorphosed anew until they disappeared entirely from my exalted eyes.’ And the Jean Paul of the Flegeljahre says: ‘The invisible world wished, like chaos, to give birth to all things together; the flowers became trees, then changed into columns of cloud; and at the tops of the columns flowers and faces grew. In Novalis‘s novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen there are even superimpositions.”

Der letzte Mann

Example of a superimposition in The Last Laugh (1924) – Murnau

She concludes:

“It is reasonable to argue that the German cinema is a development of German Romanticism, and that modern technique [cinematography] merely lends visible form to Romantic fancies.”

La Prisonnière is World Cinema Classic #67, L’Inferno #68.