Deren and Brakhage Bending Reality

At first I pretty much just figured experimental was solely synonymous with weird as hell. While it is usually the case, I think the term makes more sense to me now as taking film to its limits and experimenting with what can be done with it and how it can be used as an artistic medium.

Time and space dont have to work the same in films because like everything else, they can be controlled and changed and altered. Deren talks about how while all fim is a reflection of reality in some fashion (because it is dependent on it), it is really only form of reality which can be altered and toyed with creatively by the director. In her films, she experiments with disregarding the rules of regular reality to create abstract and strange images which are figuritive and symbolistic, as opposed to other traditional films where the audiences expectations of reality are met and the meaning is easy to find in the dialouge and such,

Brakhage also discusses the world that the camera see. My favorite part of the reading was where he says, "To search for human visual realities, man must, as in all other homo motivation, transcend the original physical restrictions and inherit worlds of eyes." He is saying give up all your other senses and preconceived notions of what reality is like and use your eyes to absorb everything that film has to offer. To me this resonated best with Moth Light because I really tried to shed everything I thought I knew and really just drink in everything that was happening to my eyes. I sort of just like went into empty mind/meditation mode, and I felt alot from that film in a way my brain cant quite explain. I mean its interesting to think about how he made the film and this is an important piece of what was produced, I think the best part of the film is what happens to your eyes when you just stop concentrating and focusing and just accept what he is trying to show you.

The most interesting part of these films in my opinion is the struggle for power and control over the film. Obviously, these films are controlled by the directors and makers in every way. They take the time to fix and make sure they are showing you exactly what they want to show you and have complete control over what you see in the film. These films in particular are in the hands of the directors because they have ever taken control away from rules like gravity, time, and what is posssible and impossible and substitute whatever else they want in order to make creative points. However, by doing all of this, I feel like there is alot of control in the hands of the audience in how they interpret the films and how they let the images soak into their brains.

Fellini more catholic then Catholicism itself

I almost forgot to do this posting! Glad I got it in! So without further ado, I will answer the questions Professor McRae emailed to us.

"How do you think that Fellini is using Catholicism in this movie? Based on the question the reading rasies, do you think he is the ultimate Catholic, or the ultimate decadent?"

I think that Fellini is in truth the ultimate Catholic, though it is hard to see this at first. As the reading points out, Fellini clearly prescribes to a decadent and fun lifestyle and doesnt adhere to the strict rules of Catholicism. However, I think he is the ultimate Catholic for two reasons. The first being that "La Dolce Vita" was a hyper-realistic portrayal of Rome at the time. The film isnt a light and fluffy fiction out of hollywood at all, but is designed to capture the truth of the time and place it is discussing and show what the sweet life is really like, and what life in general is like. I found it funny that the church and Italian government were offended by the film and called it offensive, because Fellini wasnt doing a rude charicature, but painting a real picture of them, so by saying it is disgusting and offensive shows just how disgusting and offensive they really were. This window into Rome that Fellini creates shows how the Catholic church and traditional systems may be flawed. I think it is saintly of Fellini to show the truth of the situation in neither a super positive or negative light, but a realistic one, and allows people to decide if the world he displays is good or bad for themselves. The other reason I see Fellini as the ultimate catholic is from a really cool and beautiful quote from him in the reading, ""beyond sea and sky, through terrible suffering, perhaps, or the relief of
tears, God can be glimpsed - his love and his grace, not so much as a matter
of theological faith, but as a profound need of the spirit."
This is spot on, I think at least, and shows how Fellini is more catholic then most people because he thinks and makes his own conclusions about faith and God. He doesnt just pretend to listen to what the church demands of him as others seem to do when they follow blindly.

"We've talked a lot about surrealism and hyper-realism, and other ways that filmmakers so far have depicted reality in their films. Given that Fellini began his career as one of the Italian neo-realists, what images of 'reality' do you see in this movie, and how does Fellini seem to be using them?"
The issues and insecurities Marcello faces, the way the aristocracy behaves, the way all the men seem to suffer from dilemmas in being a good and mature parent and spouse while not wanting to lose their "freedom"; these are just a few of the elements which stood out to me as being very realisitic. O, and another would be the media and the paparazzis constantly being heartless a-holes who attack everyone relentlessly and are constantly nagging for the scoop. Like when they are trying to tell Steiner's wife about the tragedy and the photographers just wont leave her alone or have any respect for the situation at all. It really tore at me, and that is just one example.

Stuck in a piece of the Unexplainable (Last year in Marienbad)

So in class we discussed the reading alot and dealt with alot of different perspectives relating to this movie being a Cartesian fantasy or some other sort of dreamworld or mental hell/prison. This certainly makes alot of sense when looking at the movie because it helps deal with all the crazy stuff happening and lack of a real narrative to the story (no one is sure what, if anything, actually happened or who these characters are if they really even exist).

I saw the whole thing from a slightly different angle, and I dont know if its better or worse or if it helps make any sense of the movie at all, but this is how I like to think of the film. To me, the whole movie seemed like a poem or a painting which we have delved into with a camera.

In poetry, you often get descriptions of situations that arent really narratives, but we hardly even notice the lack of things like the lack of character names, plot, or anything else like that because it is a different medium for expressing oneself. I got the feeling that this was getting inside the head of a person who only exists as a piece of poetic fiction; he has no name, his love has no name, there is no world beyond there immediate surroundings, the other characters are there but are completely negligable, dialouge is constantly repeated and recycled and images switch and change and morph suddenly and jarringly. We accept alot of missing details in poetry and just enjoy the emotions or message that the poet is trying to get across. So to me this felt like a poem about a man trying to rekindle his old loves passion and take her away from her husband(maybe husband, some relation at the very least) and she refuses to accept him or remember him at all. The people we see on the screen, X and A and M, are not really people, they are merely the shadows of some poet or other artist when he was writing or creating. Their names dont matter because they are designed for people to sort of see themselves in their places when they are reading and feel what the poet was feeling . And like if the poet wrote the poem with the characters using only the most formal of languages then wouldnt it make sense that this is the only way the people in the movie can speak? I feel like viewing it this way makes all the illogical little weird things we see on the screen a little easier to accept and enjoy.

Does any of that make sense to anyone else? I feel like this is a good idea but I'm not expressing it very clearly at all. I just thought it was intersesting the way people suspend their typical notions of storytelling when they read a poem and yet have a much harder time doing so for movies because it seems very strange to do so. When we forget about the way we normally watch movies and try to see what the director is doing as more of a form of poetry then the paradoxes and weird things we see become easier to imagine as devices for creating a piece of art than telling a linear narrative story.

Please take this idea and run with it, I really hope that this makes sense for somebody else. There are probably very strong arguments against this line of thinking and I after doind the reading I really think the idea of it being a dream of some sort makes alot more sense. This is just an idea I had while I was trying to figure this movie out. As a side note, I enjoyed this movie and would love to watch it again to try and figure out all the aspects and layers that I am sure I am missing. Thanks, let me know what you guys think of this take on the film (if it makes any sense at all),

Orpheus accepting Death

When we watched Orpheus in class, I thought it was kinda meh. Good not great... Weird reverse rubber glove shots? huh???
After the reading and the class discussion though, I saw many more viewpoints and sort of understood what the point of the movie was a little better. The thing that really interested me in the reading was the whole idea of poets/homosexuals having like this sixth sense for hidden symbols and signals and such. I really saw that in the movie alot and felt like Orpheus was special because he was a poet and being a poet means that he sees the world differently and more aware of the strange symbols everywhere. Going along with this, I really loved Orpheus' line when he is defining what a poet is..."someone who writes who isnt a writer..." I was just like, YEA, nailed it! I felt like that line caught the contrast and irony of the contradictory nature of this film. It just sounded like something Cocteau would say about artists and poets, where it doesnt really make sense and yet you know almost what he means in a cool and sorta cryptic way.

One point that came up in the class discussion that got me thinking was the point about Orpheus' falling in love with death meaning some brush with suicidal tendencies. I thought this was really wierd though because to me just the opposite seems true. Orpheus isnt topping himself because his life sucks, but is rather sort of learning to accept and be comfortable with the idea of death rather than hating and fearing it and trying to escape it or wish it was a dream. In the beginning, his life is in shambles after meeting his Death because he is scared of what ever is happening to/around him. By the end though, he has learned that Death is not something to be feared but rather something to embrace and accept. Once he has done this, he is able to live happily and go on living with Eurydice. This also plays into the contradictory and ironic, because when he runs from death he cant escape it, but when he loves and understands death he is free.

I could be wrong though, thats just what that topic got me thinking about.
What do you guys think?

Independent Lady??

In the movie Laura, the thing which draws all of the characters to Laura is her strength and independence. The article we read from Slant magazine discusses each of the men's individual attractions, however all of their views are unified by the importance of her role as an independent and strong woman who is talented, intelligent and sophisticated. We get views of her from other characters which show her as bold and happy and able to control things and get to the top of her field. So, while we think that she is dead, Larua has this aura of power about her that is felt deeply in the visuals of the film. The best example of this that I noticed was summed up really well in the "No place for a Woman: The Family in Film Noir", which is the portrait of her in her apartment which is so powerful and at the center of nearly all the shots while they are in the apartment. The portrait is just so huge and lifelike and displays this character that is being built up to be this incredible and perfect woman that everyone idolizes.
BUT, once she "comes back from the dead," we get to see that Laura isn't really quite so powerful and independent after all. This is when the fact that she is just this blank slate to which all the male characters affix their imaginings of the perfect woman comes to light. She is the opposite of a femme fatale. She wants to lose her current life and take up a domesticated life in a relationship with McPherson. Shots of her do not make her look strong, bold and in control, but rather as indesiscive and kinda mousy in my opinion.

The Third Man: Fiendish Irony and Orson Welles being too charming to hate

The reason I loved the film The Third Man is undoubtedly the amount of intense irony that occurs everywhere; in the story and dialogue, in the setting, in the music, and especially in the oblique camera angles and strange shots that are so compelling and make the movie so much more than just the lines of the actors. (Not to say that the actors aren't interesting or compelling, Orson Welles is the man!)

Generally, I have thought that it was a good thing that movies try and draw you totally into the story and really make you forget that you are watching a movie. The Third Man, however, really sort of makes a point of distancing viewers from the story in a lot of ways and pulling them out to say, "WTF? Thats really weird...Why are they doing that?"
The camera angles, for example, are just so off and angular that its really pretty much impossible to miss. I think that the odd camera work helps and adds to the story because it adds to the chaotic sense of confusion and isolation in the characters like Holly. We understand his lack of knowledge of the city, his not being able to understand what is being said half the time, and so these odd angles help to add to this weird confusing atmosphere that surrounds this character. The irony here, of course, is that generally to get a better and more in depth view of a character, you would naturally want a more straight and clear view of that characters experiences. In this however, Holly's experiences are confused and confusing, so a confusing angle is an ingenious way to sort of simultaneously deepen the audiences view of the characters and distance them from the film in odd way.

The setting that we enter would be one that I would expect to be well run and a pinnacle of the victors of World War II. Ironically, the reality is a ruined, chaotic world where terrible people like Harry Lime manipulate everything and exploit the weakened people of Europe and there isnt much the police can do to make justice a reality. Winning the war did not lead to a golden age(ish) for Europe like it did in America. The entire continent was destroyed. I hadnt really grasped this fact entirely and so I really found this chaotic setting of the beautiful city of Vienna to be an interesting eye opener

In the article "The Revenant of Vienna," they talk alot about Dracula and entering his "shadow world," which I found really interesting in relation to this movie in alot of ways. First of all, it plays directly into one of the major themes of the visual aspect of the film which is shadows and contrasts. The shadows are SOOOO important for making this gothic and dark feeling in alot of the scenes. Shadows even play a noticeable role in the plot of the film, with the shadowy figure of Harry Lime finally being revealed for example when Holly is shouting for the spy to come out of the shadows, or the huge shadows that he and other characters cast on the city and sewer walls of Vienna. Again, this is ironic because usually in movies, the things we want to pay attention to are the things where light falls, where we can see all the details. In this, emphasis is placed on the lack of light, on the lack of knowledge of what is really there, and on the confusion from not having the truth.

The article also talks about how Holly's arrival into the city of Vienna is alot like his arrival into this shadow realm, which I found interesting because before if you had asked me what the shadow world of the movie was I would say the Soviet section of the city. After all, this is where Harry Lime resides in the movie, its the place they are trying to keep Anna from (since she'll likely be imprisoned or killed), and I always thought that the Soviets are just generally supposed to be the bad guys in movies like this. It is not, however, just the Soviet sector that Lime lurks in and has power, and the "good guys" that arent on the Russian side of town arent really all that good in the end. So the better conclusion in my opinion is that the entire city is like a chaotic shadow realm.