GREED

By Stroheim

You can talk of Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed as a wreck, as potential unrealized, if you are inclined that is. 

To do that means to despair a commercial system that would let a 9 to 10 hour monster survive as 140 minutes of true sensation, as rare and as cinema incarnate. 

Greed is an adaptation, of Frank Norris’ McTeague: A Story of San Francisco but it is so inherently Von Stroheim’s, it belongs to him entirely from frame one, from frames that one could assemble, that have been assembled through publications like Weinberg’s The Complete Greed.

But let’s talk about the movie itself. A movie that could be easily considered one of if not the greatest film of all time, a masterpiece made like most masterpieces are, clumsily and through a series of someone’s mistakes. 

Greed is a model of a kind of psychological realism, shocking, visually jarring, that horrified viewers initially.

Stroheim did one thing that so few filmmakers have done, that is given the viewer no one to like.

Greed proposes that a movie should read and feel like the novel, it stands as what could have been the most accurate of adaptations, unabridged and in line with the realist’s text. 

Stroheim then couples this with his breathtaking visuals, his use of the medium to show the character’s inner states—on how they became more dependent or controlled by their greed, their desire, plummeting them into madness and isolationism. These characters become more and more like you and me, they stopped being characters and were humans, that’s unnerving, in fact that’s awful, that isn’t why we go to see movies. 

And that is exactly why Stroheim is the master. He did what Von Trier, Jorodowsky, Lynch, Corbucci, Dali and countless others strove to do, use surrealism to convey the realistic.

Stroheim is in my eyes, the great manipulator, he controlled not only the audience but the studio system in such a way, making his movies all encompassing and so much more than simple entertainment. 

Stroheim in his dedication to design saw his films butchered, unreleased or generally unrealized, that was his lesson.

After his falling out with Irving Thalberg at Universal over Merry Go Round he made his way over to Goldwyn’s and made a deal to adapt Frank Norris’ novel. He would write and direct it himself, the story of McTeague the dentist and his friend Marcus; setting up in San Francisco in the pursuit of gold. 

He meets Trina and marries her hastily, finds that she is stealing his money and kills her.

Then the men meet at Death Valley where at last they find their gold but it’s all for naught.

It’s a movie that from start to finish is about satisfying one’s selfish goals by any means and the price that one pays for doing this. The controlling grip of greed around the throat of man, the desire to strike it rich, between the conniving Trina and the ever dissolving friendship of McTeague and Marcus, it’s a story that would be tragic if these people could be sympathized or empathized with. 

And that’s the big sell, Stroheim shows us that people can be or just are bad, have faults, faults that are entirely overpowering and pull others down with them. 

Stroheim shot his movie in 1923. Goldwyn merged with Metro and Mayer, established in 1924. In turn, Stroheim found himself under the thumb of Irving Thalberg yet again. There was a dispute in which a full version of Greed was screened for audiences, cerebral or otherwise and those who were open minded to Stroheim’s vision still considered it very much overdone. From this a commercial cut of Greed was put together and released, a bastard version of its proper self. MGM did a great disservice to itself by tossing the cut material, standard practice yes but still. MGM was a movie studio that released movies to see a profit while Erich Von Stroheim was very much a mad genius who wanted to use his movie as a psychological barometer and companion piece to the source material. 

At the end of the day, although gutted, Greed is not only essential viewing for any fan of high cinema but is a great indicator of film and its future.

Stroheim never realized that the audience was afraid of the dark.

He wasn’t the man to comfort them.

TAXI DRIVER

BY Scorsese

I’ve written about Martin Scorsese’s 1976 picture Taxi Driver more than any single subject. I’ve written 3 essays, one I’m very proud of and countless articles and blog posts that mention it. Why, why am I so consumed from those black title cards, that glowing blood red font onward? Hermann’s score, so romantic and yet, so sinister, why do I feel the compulsion to whistle the tune now and then? 

Why do I hold Robert De Niro in such high regard? 

Or Harvey Keitel for that matter?

Too many questions, it’s because Taxi Driver is everything any storyteller, any man should strive to make with his own two hands. Along with a script, drawn from experience and life, written by the masterful Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver stands not only as a cinematic feat but as a national one. A young, hungry Martin Scorsese, a powerful Robert De Niro, an unproven Jodie Foster, the gorgeous Cybill Sheppard, the ever terrifying Harvey Keitel, the self-depreciating tone of Paul Schrader’s dialogue and carried by the sounds of the master, Bernard Hermann in his last and in my opinion, greatest feat, Taxi Driver tells a story about disorder in the heart of America, about the crumbling of the great city of New York in the mid seventies, a story about ugliness and the blurring of morality in a time seemingly without. 

Taxi Driver is a great idea in concept, a man can’t take the madness of city life anymore, the ugly streets, the crime, the self-centeredness of politicians and the so called good people so misguided, he takes on the role of a vigilante, a hero, trying to restore New York to its former glory one concealed pistol and date to the porno theatre at a time. 

Travis—it’s clear that he expects to be alone, he’s an insomniac, directionless after his  from the marines. Despite his solitary nature, Travis is searching for his dream woman (be it exploiting Betsy or being Iris’ savior). 

Travis doesn’t want these women in his life, he wants to envelop them, he wants them to belong to him, he want’s Iris to live a good life by his terms, he wants Betsy to listen to Kris Kristofferson with him and fall deeply in love with him despite his lack of tact, social skills or any desirable traits. 

When he interacts with these characters, he seemingly pushes them away, his clumsy date with Betsy to the porn theatre or when he’s tailing Iris, staring ominously at them. He wants to be with them but as a taxi driver and only a taxi driver, it is being alone that defines him. Taxi drivers have passengers sure but it’s through near anonymity and silence that they are defined. Travis is a non-person, he doesn't truly have interests, beliefs, ideals, and so his turn is more captivating because of this. 

The scene where Palentine and his buddies are sitting in the back of his cab asking Travis about his feelings on the city, on politics and Travis’ responses can be likened to shrugging and saying it is what it is. He’s salt, he’s dirt and yet in this Palentine finds a man who represents the needs of the new American. The new American doesn't know why they went to war, they don’t know why they can’t sleep and why they don’t read in their spare time. 

So Travis in turn, slighted by Betsy, by normalcy takes a different direction, one of rebellion, he chooses to attack the tarnished streets aggressively, on their terms. 

As time goes on his goals change, flippantly, he targets Palentine initially because he represents what, America? Betsy? Her ideals? It’s hard to say, but his madness is captivating, his target changes almost overnight from politics to the scum of the street, embodied by urban pimp Sport (Harvey Keitel). 

He chooses instead to try and liberate Iris (Jodie Foster), a child prostitute he meets and previously stalks because he feels it’s the right thing to do, he’s saving her. 

In a essay written by film analyst David Thomson, he likens Travis’ cleaning up the city and liberating Iris to him acting as a demented running mate to Palentine, that he’s trying to win the city, to do what Palentine cannot do. 

He is trying to best Palentine, Betsy’s false idol. In a petty and purely Travis move, he hopes to win Betsy back at first by eliminating Palentine as his “rival” and later, to defeat him politically. 

Taxi Driver can be analysed to hell and back and let me tell you, I’ll be first in line to do it, it’s a film you relive not review. 

Schrader and Scorsese have what now could be seen as a warped portrait of urban American when in fact their New York wasn’t too far off, Taxi Driver is the first American film to depict the modern city, noirishness and religious impulse/ideology so naturally, with such connection in mind. 

Akin to Bresson, it’s a story about one soul striving to save a city or in a more globalizing scale, to preserve the American dream. 

And to end so powerfully on the image of Travis, returned to the status quo, driving, lonelier than ever before, Hermann’s rueful saxophone playing throughout, street lights bathing the street.

An ending that defies convention, that stands as a testament to what noir could have done if censorship wasn't so rampant, a story telling reality first. 

Every time I view the film, something different emerges, I’m unsure of where it will take me this time. I’m unsure if I’ll make it back. 

I would like to dedicate this piece to Alex Withrow of And So It Begins, someone who loves this film as much, maybe more than I. I consider him as great an inspiration as any, and I consider him a good friend. 

It was his words of encouragement that lead to my writing this review and starting The New Cinema in the first place.

Thanks mate, good luck in LA. 

Check out Alex's much better blog at 

http://www.andsoitbeginsfilms.com/

A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF

CHARLES SWAN III

By Coppola (Roman)

A mess. That’s the simplest and most to the point way of describing Roman Coppola’s 2012 directorial effort. The co-writer and conceptualist of many of Wes Anderson’s films both long and short form took to once again stretching his own filmic muscles. Problem is, he doesn’t work them out too often, he’s soft around the middle and it shows here.

Where Coppola endeavours to shoot a film akin to his core collaborators’ work (Rushmore, The Darjeeling Ltd) He fails exceptionally and instead creates a hollow skeleton, a stereotypical take on how Wes Anderson films.

Roman Coppola has talent, not his father’s wealth of genius albeit withered nor his sister’s off kilter artsy take on popcorn cinema, no, his talent lies somewhere else. Roman Coppola is an adept screenwriter and boasts a very strong list of co-writing credits, he has a tight visual eye but out of the splendour that is nepotism, he found himself as a player in an industry simply because his dad made The Godfather.

But let’s talk about Charles Swan III, a film about a graphic designer but more so about a drunkard, sex hound misanthrope played aptly by Charlie Sheen who in the public’s consciousness is all three of these things. He’s faced a near death experience after crashing his car and suffering from a mild heart attack. Upon being rushed to the hospital and his condition being stabilized, Swan drifts in and out of a fever dream centering on the love of his life, Ivana (Kathryn Winnick)-who left him and in turn destroyed his life and his perception of reality. While this is transpiring, Swan is to design a cover for his friend and associate Kirby Star’s (Jason Schwartzman) newest comedy album. His advisor Saul (Bill Murray) fills him in about their wavering numbers and on how his marriage is also falling to pieces.

Swan’s estranged sister Izzy (Patricia Arquette), a semi-pro writer visits him and condemns his fixation with Ivana, telling him to move on. Swan, reluctant to do so and bogged down by paranoia and jealousy instead bugs some of Ivana’s luggage that she is to pick up at the mansion with the help of Kirby, to find out if she’s with someone new. All the while, Swan dives into a world of drinking and self-loathing for the remainder of the 87 minute runtime.

Coppola’s film should be a educational piece on substance versus style, what we have is a movie that coasts so heavily on its exceptional and outlandish art direction but happens to have a story that is as boring as watching paint drying and as funny as The Deer Hunter.

It’s a paint by numbers Wes Anderson film in the worst way, decidedly quirky and trying to appeal to a demographic that thinks they are in some sort of twee culture know, sipping their Pabst Blue Ribbon and checking Instagram.

I hate to keep likening this film to Anderson’s work, Anderson has done some exceptional work in the past and although I’m not the biggest fan of him, I respect the shit out of his vision. Coppola’s film is so transparently cribbing on the successes of Anderson, leaning on aesthetic alone, thinking that is the key to Anderson’s success, a series of beats. When in fact, Anderson’s film are strong because they work outside of beats and preconception, because his characters are non-traditional and are in turn very engaging to the viewer. When you turn something so outside of formula like Anderson’s filmic sensibilities into formula, you stunt what made that work so very engaging in the first place.

Don’t watch this movie, I recommend very little from Roman Coppola who has in proven he’s a man with some vision, an overactive imagination and an aptitude for writing scripts with people more talented than he is.  

SHAME

By McQueen

Actor Michael Fassbender’s expression says so much during the opening shot of Steve McQueen’s 2011 film Shame. Grief, a weight that he cannot shake, anger. His character, Brandon Sullivan’s climaxed; it took me a long time to realize this. Speculation sure but that’s what I take away from it, he’s disappointed in himself, he’s upset about the gratification he feels, his stare is vacant.

Within the first minutes of the film, director Steve McQueen gives us a masterful shot that is not only remarkable on its own but telling of what we can expect. The viewer is challenged further during the film’s most notable shot of actor Fassbender’s genitalia. A full frontal shot that is irksome for many, which is laughed about by others but stands not only as the film’s best talking point but as a remarkable shot. The close up on Sullivan’s member keeps the viewer from seeing his face, from seeing his pain. This anguish is explored to its utmost throughout the film proper.

The shot of his member, it’s hard to watch in many ways. I can see why The Hollywood Reporter would have a field day with it. When McQueen’s vision isn't methodical and tender in execution, it is abrasive. His debut feature Hunger is a fine example of this. McQueen gives the viewer something very difficult to watch to gauge the audience, he wants to bait viewers.

Many went to see Fassbender’s dick, what they got was the finest film of 2011. A film that was so shamefully overlooked by the world of cinema, Fassbender’s performance is so very draining to watch. I liken his work in Shame to De Niro’s in Raging Bull in which the actor becomes transparent, they become the character, they are so very absorbed in the role. While Raging Bull was very much a story of a figure of relative greatness plummeting into the abyss of the body, the mind and the soul, Shame foregoes the greatness. The reason Shame was so grossly overlooked was because it’s too fucking real for most people, hence the dick jokes. People are unnerved by a movie that is so very believable. There’s a Brandon Sullivan in our lives or in someone else’s, hell you may be Brandon Sullivan. It’s not necessarily about watching too much pornography or fucking incessantly. No, it’s that there is a normal upstanding gentleman who is doing these things, who is so very deviant, who cannot stop.

Shame is a painful movie, I knew how painful when I heard the final song of the score for the first time during Brandon’s deterioration. The clapping the composer employs, a sound that couldn't be anything else. The sound of a man masturbating, the sound of flesh rubbing hard on flesh over and over again clapping the inside of one’s thigh.

The only reaction I could muster was to cry, because I know how much it must hurt to be a character like Brandon Sullivan. I know a great deal of people must understand that kind of loneliness at one point or another. To fathom enduring that every day, a sexual hunger that cannot be sated  and a level of frustration that grows and grows with each passing day. When Brandon lectures his sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan) about sleeping with his boss, he’s not simply hypocritical, he’s self loathing and furthermore he’s in the same position his boss was in. His boss struck out with a woman that Brandon pursued and picked up, to be on the other side of that position, when you’re a man like Brandon, when sex is you reason to live and to breathe...

That`s conveyed in McQueen`s brilliantly shot scene of Brandon running, one of the finest tracking shots I've had the pleasure to ­­­­witness. Anger, tiredness, and the unresolved hangs heavy on Brandon.

BAZ LUHRMANN

I’m a big fan of a blog called ‘Surrender to the Void’, a film blog, like most I read. The writer does a segment called The Auteurs, where he focuses on the body of work of a director and on their technique. He recently did a post about Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann in congruence with his latest film, The Great Gatsby. The post was engaging, well written and covered Luhrmann’s work thoroughly and concisely. This isn’t what I plan to do.

I want to talk about excess and how Luhrmann embodies that. Born in the lap of luxury, living a priveliged life and taking this life of decadence, of wealth, of ballroom dancing and candelabras and applying it to his filmic style. His work is aggressively lavish, Gatsby being the greatest spectacle of all and in a lot of ways his work fails because of that lavishness that is his trademark. Fast cuts, costumes by MiuMiu and Prada, the prettiest actors and actresses in gowns and tuxes to be adored and fawned over. Gatsby is one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching, that said, so is Heaven’s Gate. A strong visual style does not equate to strong storytelling, for Luhrmann to clunkily tell F. Scott Fitzgereald’s enduring tale of unrequited love and timelessness in such a manner could be deemed as insulting. So little emphasis on the narrative, so much bombast in the visuals; Gatsby is a fucking mess. 

So was Romeo + Juliet and so was Moulin Rouge! But wow, what phenomenal filmmaking. He’s a director that I find very intriguing. He reminds me of another master of excess, Paul Verhoeven in that the screenplay exists merely as a framework for his vision to override. Not to say that their filmmaking style is anything close to similar. Baz can’t tell a story worth shit in this writer’s opinion but fuck, don’t ever change. I’ve never watched a Baz Luhrmann film without loving something about it. It’s filmmaking that shatters conventions and that gets away with it, and that receives ridiculous funding AND that usually walks away with a few awards and some money in the bank.

I really liked a lot of things about The Great Gatsby, and Romeo + Juliet, Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge, hell, even Australia, but I always feel myself at odds with myself. Unable to look at the gorgeousness that Luhrmann produces as anything more than fluff. 

M

M

By Lang

                       

One of the most memorable facts about this most memorable German film is not communicated by the film’s surface proper.  The fact that I refer to is curiously German and very relevant to M’s theme. When director Fritz Lang announced M’s production in 1930, its proposed title was Murderer Among Us. Immediately upon this announcement Lang received threatening letters, incomprehensible to him and was refused permission to make use of the film studio. Only when he glimpsed at a Nazi badge under the lapel of the studio official to whom he was protesting, did Lang solve this mystery. The Nazi party imagined that they would be compromised by the title of this film, this film about a actual child murderer!

When Lang agreed to change the title, he was free to use the studio without difficulty. And better for it, a title of such simplicity, an image of such magnitude all brought forth with a single letter. M, released in 1931 stands as one of Lang’s finest films, undoubtedly one of the finest films ever made. I would argue Lang’s masterpiece.

Political guilt has never been depicted in film this raw, this egregious, so psychologically persecuting. This guilt correlates to the German soul circa 1930; a soul bound by will, will to face sin, crime and yes, guilt. To carry the contest with them to an ultimate issue, one regardless of consequences.  In his breakdown before a court comprised by hounds of the underworld; Peter Lorre’s child killer , simply referred to in script as “M” is judged by eyes more than acquainted with guilt. Unflinching in their decision, the criminals have proven to be better hunters than the police. Lorre’s rendering of a man who is incapable of not committing evil as of not suffering from committing it. Lorre gives us a character who is so very sad, so sympathetic, a character who for all intensive purposes should not be. “M” has committed these atrocities, the systematic killing of children and has been captured, is being judged for these crimes and yet, in his breakdown, he grabs the audience. He grabs the audience that is not hardened by crime unlike the jury in Lang’s film, a jury that run the underworld and live in the unseen Germany, mobsters and beggars. Where use of melodrama and Lorre’s marvelous acting penetrates the heart of some audience members, it doesn't others. This is Lang’s greatest feat in M, dividing the audience. He deadlocks us, we hate the crimes that the murderer has committed, we fear men like him and pray for the children he would prey on. The film is deliberate in its grave rhythm, Lang makes us really soak up the killings. And yet, it is this moment that makes us consider it all; a man falling to his knees, talking of compulsion, of a magnetic need to kill.

By doing this, he makes M a conversation point, he makes M a piece of Germanic and cinema culture, he makes us ponder what drives men and women to commit acts of true evil and above all else; he sheds the idea of cartoonish villainy by having Lorre collapse, weeping and pleading in what can only be categorized as unbridled humanity. Where the ideals of Germany point to the will, it’s triumph and it’s resolve, Lorre shows that as a German that is all false. He is so instantly humanized that upon first viewing I found the scene baffling among a number of things.

I’m fixated on this scene more than anything else, simply because the film is a culmination to this underworld court case. Public alarm rises at a steady pace, feelings are wildly different but universal in theory.

Lang’s breathtaking pace, his depiction of 30’s Germany, M’s great successes throughout culminating in the film’s fantastic denouement. A filmic feat in a seemingly endless number of ways, M is visually engaging, Lang’s camera is slow and almost cautious, use of space is melodramatic, sound is almost muffled at times. The shot of the empty streets during the manhunt as different mobsters are converging on the killer’s location, the streets go from empty to teeming with violent masses. All the while, “M” is hiding in a storage closet, as we anticipate his capture, Lang puts him in the protagonist role, he makes the scene so very tense and plays with our perception. Where you should be rooting for the mob and the beggars, we find ourselves possibly fearing for “M”. “M” is very much a child killer, but he is a child killer in agony. This bid for empathy is so powerful and Lorre plays the role perfectly. After ‘M’ Lorre’s career was made.