The Devil, Probably (1977) – Robert Bresson

In search of favorite films

The Devil, Probably (1977) – Robert Bresson
[Amazon.com]

Dennis Cooper’s favorite film, he said recently, and posted on Bresson here and here.

But there was no mellowing for Bresson: his last two films, The Devil Probably and L’Argent, are among his blackest works, the former probably the most borderline-nihilistic teen film ever made.  —girish

See also: Robert Bresson – 1977 – French cinema

Introducing Mr. Dante Fontana

Mr. Dante Fontana is a regular contributor to PCL Linkdump but has his own blog Visual Guidance LTD here.

Recent (mostly Youtube) posts have included. Don’t forget to check Les Rita Mitsouko – Marcia Baila and kleenex / liliput – die matrosen.

Le Monstre (1903) – Georges Méliès

Via gmtplus9:

Georges Méliès… Le Monstre (The Monster, 1903, .mpg video 02:55). “…Set against an exotic backdrop of pyramids, the Nile, and a great the Sphinx, Georges Méliès’ The Monster (Le Monstre) seems, at first glance, to be a typical Méliès magic film in which a bearded magician demonstrates a series of tricks with an animated skeleton in front of a single well-dressed spectator. The effects are similar to those used in Méliès films ranging from The Vanishing Lady (1896) to The Infernal Cauldron (1903), and in many ways this is a rare instance of a Méliès film in which the magic tricks are actually upstaged by the elaborate scenic backdrop.” From Georges Méliès Digital Video Files.

The Valley (1989) – Burroughs/Haring

Via American author Dennis Cooper’s blog, comes:

“”The Valley” is a group of etchings by Keith Haring with text by William S. Burroughs. The portfolio consists of sixteen etchings drawn by the artist in April of 1989, in his New York studio. ” –Dennis Cooper

“There is no way in or out of the Valley, which is ringed by sheer cliffs with an overhanging ledge. How did the people of the Valley get in there in the first place? No one remembers. They have been there for many years. Children have been born, grown up and died in the valley, but not many children. Food is scarce. A stream runs through the Valley, and they have dammed up a large pond to raise fish. There is an area along the stream where they raise corn. Sometimes they will kill birds, a few lizards and snakes. So most children must be killed at birth. Just an allotted number to continue the line.” –William Burroughs

The installments can be found here, here and here.

Tip of the hat to Georges Bataille.

Update:

From the Dennis Cooper website:

“Dennis Cooper, God help him, is a born writer” – William Burroughs

“In another country or another era, Dennis Cooper’s books would be circulated in secret, explosive samizdat editions that friends and fans would pass around and savor like forbidden absinthe… This is high risk literature”
– The New York Times

Underground

Parent: underground – philosophy of place – culture

By medium: underground film – underground literature – underground press – underground music

“Ideas enter our above-ground culture through the underground. I suppose that is the kind of function that the underground plays, such as it is. That it is where the dreams of our culture can ferment and strange notions can play themselves out unrestricted. And sooner or later those ideas will percolate through into the broad mass awareness of the broad mass of the populace. Occulture, you know, that seems to be perhaps the last revolutionary bastion.” — Alan Moore

Related: alternative – banned – censorship – clandestine – controversial – counterculture – crime – cult – drugs – economy – forbidden – grotto – hidden – illegal – illicit – independent – a glossary of the non-mainstream – overground – prohibition – resistance – secret – subculture – subversive – taboo – transgressive – underworld – The Velvet Underground

Contrast: mainstream

Underground mining station, image sourced here.

A basement or cellar is an architectural construction that is completely or almost below ground in a building. It may be located below the ground floor.

The mainstream comes to you, but you have to go to the underground. – Frank Zappa


Interconnected underground stems are called rhizomes

Bibliography: Lipstick Traces, a Secret History of 20th Century (1989) – Greil Marcus – Outsiders as innovators (1998) – Tyler Cowen – Notes from Underground (1864) – Fyodor Dostoevsky

James Cain (1892 – 1977)

Lifespan: 1892 – 1977

Related: hardboiled – crime fiction – 1900s literature – American literature

Jealous Woman (1950) – James M. Cain
Corgi Edition published 1966
Image sourced here.
See also: jealousy

The seminal American writer in the noir fiction mode was James M. Cain—regarded as the third major figure of the early hardboiled scene, he debuted as a crime novelist in 1934, right between Hammett and Chandler.

The Parallax View (2006) Slavoj Žižek

The Parallax View (2006) – Slavoj Žižek
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Via Subject-barred comes this illustrated version of Fredric Jameson‘s review of Slavoj Žižek‘s latest book The Parallax View. The review was first published in the London Review of Books here.

Excerpt:

“As every schoolchild knows by now, a new book by Zizek is supposed to include, in no special order, discussions of Hegel, Marx and Kant; various pre- and post-socialist anecdotes and reflections; notes on Kafka as well as on mass-cultural writers like Stephen King or Patricia Highsmith; references to opera (Wagner, Mozart); jokes from the Marx Brothers; outbursts of obscenity, scatological as well as sexual; interventions in the history of philosophy, from Spinoza and Kierkegaard to Kripke and Dennett; analyses of Hitchcock films and other Hollywood products; references to current events; disquisitions on obscure points of Lacanian doctrine; polemics with various contemporary theorists (Derrida, Deleuze); comparative theology; and, most recently, reports on cognitive philosophy and neuroscientific ‘advances’. These are lined up in what Eisenstein liked to call ‘a montage of attractions’, a kind of theoretical variety show, in which a series of ‘numbers’ succeed each other and hold the audience in rapt fascination.”