La Règle de Jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)

“You forget she belongs to society; the rules are strict”

Introduction

The only film that has featured consistently in the Top 10 of the Sight & Sound poll since 1952 is La Règle de Jeu. Translated as The Rules of the Game, this film has an air of authority. Personally, the film could be seen as a perfunctory inclusion in the poll – critics assuming a Top 10 simply wouldn’t be complete without Renoir. Against that, the film explores an interesting social-context and holds a controversial edge as it pre-dated World War II, highlighting the attitudes prevalent in France in 1939. Considering how much I adore the socio-economic themes in The Dark Knight trilogy – and thoroughly enjoy researching the time-period a film is released within, this is a film I am happy to get my teeth into. Prior to production of the film, Jean Renoir himself described the film as “An exact description of the bourgeoisie of our time”. Just what I like – and hate – in equal measure.

Upstairs and Downstairs

Adapted loosely from Alfred de Musset’s ‘Les Caprices de Marianne’, La Règle de Jeu begins as pilot André Jurieux (Roland Toutain) completes an epic flight – which, upon finishing, realises that the woman he loves, Christine (Nora Gregor … reminding me of Kristin Scott Thomas), is not waiting to greet him. The story soon turns into a social gathering, whereby we are introduced to a broad range of characters, with a small group of interlinking stories that cross boundaries of class and social etiquette. Philip Kemp summarises it perfectly in the liner notes for the release:

“André Jurieux… loves Christine, wife of the Marquis de la Chesnaye (Marcel Dalio). La Chesnaye, for his part, is having a covert affair with socialite Geneviève (Mila Parély). Chesnaye’s gamekeeper, Schumacher (Gaston Modot), is violently jealous of his wife Lisette (Paulette Dubost), Christine’s maid, whom he suspects is dallying with poacher-turned valet Marceau (Julien Carette)”

Interestingly, Renoir himself portrays one character in Octave, a friend of all, who seems to always be the one man attempting to balance and bring order to the complex lives of the various characters – but deep down holds his own candle for Christine. This is a film that stylistically has influenced films including Gosford Park and, despite my own disinterest in the series, Tim Robey writes that it could even be described as “Downton Abbey for film snobs”. But it is this fascinating social-order which, on the one hand remains interesting as a context, but on the other connects to the politics of the time and arguably, the elitism of the upper-class today.

Standing in a doorway

Technically, the film is marvellous. As a private drama, the camera lingers often in the scene – it roams around, almost following someone. If regularly lurks in the doorways and hallways as if we are personally at the gathering leaning on the door-frame, viewing the event. In one marvellous sequence we join the group on a hunt, whereby rabbits and pheasants are shot. Initially, Octave discusses with Jurieux his increasing frustration with Christine – before we view animals at peace, centre frame, enjoying the woodland. As expected, sticks are beaten; horns are blown; the upper-class waits with their rifles. Initially camera-shots are calm and peaceful, but soon the editing picks up in pace. We cut from running rabbits, the camera frantically trying to capture their movement; cut-to a man shooting his rifle, and another man shooting his own gun; cut-to a rabbit’s death and a pheasant flapping helplessly before being mercilessly killed. One rabbit wreaths in pain after the camera has tracked him, before suddenly grinding to a halt and lingering on the death of this poor animal. Seconds later the group talk and laugh about the death of a hunter whose gun exploded on his thigh. So flippant is the idea of death.

“Everything in it – not just the relationships, but also every character’s presumption of their place in the scheme of things – is wobbling on a precipice.” -Tim Robey

Suffice to say the film ends in tragedy. The one character that has spent the entire film attempting to break past the boundaries of social class is the one character that loses his life in the closing act - Richard Pẽna writes how his sacrifice is to ensure that “a corrupt social order can remain intact”. Barry Norman manages to aptly describe the group – indeed the entire sect of society Renoir depicts as “… a decadent society which is already destroying itself” with a subtext that casts a “critical and mocking eye on the state of France and its destructive class system as world war threatened”. The true tragedy was the events that took place in Europe shortly afterwards.

Unsuccessful

On the film’s original release it was panned by the French government and a commercial disaster. Prior to its initial release, it was chopped up and reconfigured to an 88-minute run-time – only to be banned completely. It was only in 1956 before reels of footage was found and reconfigured – to become a 113-minute film, revealed at the Venice Film Festival in 1959 – did it become the classic we know today. It’s also worth noting how the first poll in Sight & Sound was conducted in 1952 … so I question the standard of the print viewed by critics who voted for the film, seven years before the viewing in Venice.

But it is clear that this film is hailed by critics due to the multiple layers that Renoir weaves throughout. It captures a specific area of society over a short period of time – and yet it also presents France, as a country, in a way that was so poignant that it became highly controversial. It is a film that subtly manages to present an important, crucial time-period in a manner that realises how flexible film truly is. When a critic strikes parallels in the deep subtext of a film; when a critic believes they can see through the playfulness of a blockbuster to reveal a deeper meaning that highlights the attitude of the film director. This is a film that clearly demonstrates how cinema should aspire to present bigger, profound and epic issues - and the scale of the story is no limitation.

8 ½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

"I thought my ideas were so clear. I wanted to make an honest film. No lies whatsoever."

Introduction

Last week I watched Eyes Wide Shut for the first time. I had no idea whether I would enjoy it or not – I knew it was a long film with polar-opposite opinions for and against the film. But I adored it. I loved the topic it explored – lust within a marriage and the animalistic urges men, and women, feel. Who else explores such issues with such bold strokes and clarity. Woody Allen is exceptionally open about sexuality and marriage and, upon reading about 8 ½, it appears Fellini explored the same topics with equal bravado and surety.

8 ½ manages to capture a specific moment in Fellini’s life as he had completed his eighth film and was stuck considering what he would create for his ninth feature. Jean-Michel Frodon summarises the film by stating that it is “about an artist having to make a work, about a man having to deal with women, about a human having to face life and death” – it tackles the bigger issues of life. It tackles it with humour and surrealism. And I thought Eyes Wide Shut was profound. My first viewing of 8 ½ was during an Italian Cinema season at the BFI – the subtitles combined with the white-sets, a stylistic attribute of Fellini, made it difficult to read. But the scenes and composition of each shot were poetic – almost sonnets for each sequence and scene. It is no wonder that Rob Marshall believed Nine would be successful, as he broke down each scene and sequence into a song-number. The adjustment to the title (probably for copywright purposes) from 8 ½ to Nine highlights all that was wrong with the adaptation – ensuring a definitive title; turning the difficult-to-alphabetise title to an easily-placed-under-the-letter-N – all reek of simplifying something that is made to be complex and ambiguous – making something real that should remain dreamlike.

Following Guido - and following Fellini...

Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) is trapped. He is trapped inside his own car – a machine he bought and controlled the direction of. The car suffocates him and consumes him. This car is filling up with smoke and the surrounding crowd looks into the car as it sits, stuck, in a traffic jam. Guido is a film-director of Science-Fiction - a genre that is complete fantasy - and is struggling to get inspiration for his next film. Like Federico Fellini himself, it is his ninth film that he is having difficulty making. He is stuck in limbo between his eighth and ninth film and he desperately seeks inspiration from the world and those around him. He mixes imagination with reality. We move between his set and his dreams; his conversations through to circus and parades; his childhood or, at least, how he imagines his childhood was. He believes he needs to do this – and we know he needs to find inspiration from somewhere, or else even we have difficulty in knowing how the situation will be resolved.

These are themes and ideas which, to some extent, Fellini has looked at before. Mastroianni acting as Fellini, channelling his innermost feelings in La Dolce Vita. Life as a circus akin to La Strada. But there is something more personal at work here – something that every creator understands, and Mar Diestro-Dopido clearly describes in Sight & Sound: “ a faith in finding a kind of purity”.

Inspiration and Self-Reference

A commentary on Art and Creativity is always a tough balance - though something that many other writers and directors have tackled since. In recent years, filmmaker and writer Charlie Kaufman clearly displays an unease and frustration in his craft as depicted in Adaptation (as a writer) and Synecdoche, New York (as writer/director). Only recently, I wrote about Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Coppola's The Conversation as both attempt to deeply analyse through repetition and action, the nature, and purpose, of their respective skills; photography and surveillance respectively. As noted, Woody Allen seems to regularly approach the subject in his own films so it is no wonder that Allen cites filmmakers Fellini and Antonioni as inspirations to his own work.

Akin to The Searchers, maybe it is the context of its release that is 'genius'. For the time, there was nothing so dreamlike and sexy in cinema – the song number ‘Italiano’ in Nine demonstrates the fashionable, iconic style 8 ½ captured. But alongside the stylishness of the film, 8½ also made cinema more reflective of the auteur – and therefore the director himself. In the director’s poll, Fellini was the most voted-for director, clearly establishing his films as directly influential on filmmakers today. Mark Romanek, Atom Egoyen and Michael Apted all citing 8 ½ as one of the greatest films of all-time. Can we see Fellini’s influence on One Hour Photo – a film portraying a man relentlessly capturing photos and moments in other people’s lives? Can we see it in the 7up series when we watch an episode capturing ordinary people’s lives every seven years? 8 ½ manages to depict a sense of self-analysis that many films have failed to deliver – turning cinema into a window into the directors, and filmmakers heart.

Timeless Rite of Passage

Often, you read about a director choosing to watch a specific film before they embark on production. The nature, themes and execution of 8 ½ is of such a high calibre that turning to Fellini, time and time again, would not be a bad idea for filmmakers today. Even the dreamlike quality of the film lends itself well to the though-process required when considering concepts for filmmaking - indeed, dreams are more complicated than paintings and music alone. Cinema is the art form which closely resembles dreams - and that, I imagine, is what gives the film such credability.

Frodon additionally dictates that 8 ½ effectively demonstrates “Cinema’s march towards modernity”, and this type of self-referential, directorically-controlled, post-modern type of filmmaking is something that was equally ahead of its time. Only a few years ago, critics would claim Inception was Christopher Nolan's 8 ½. I assume that this is because it was so important to Nolan - and was a film which he had been desperate to make for decades. To think that a filmmakers 8 ½ is a film which is deeply personal and incredibly important speaks louder about the films credability than my short essay.

John Ford was quiet about the meaning to his films; Fellini is brutally honest and open about his. This is for interpretation - but it is open-ended. The interpretation says something about you as a viewer – and crucially, it says something about you as an artist.

*I originally wrote a post on this film way back in April 2010 and developed the review significantly. Those writers may be interested in seeing the development of my writing and use of research which I have since adopted. The original post can be found by clicking here

Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

"This Experimental Work Aims at Creating a Truly International Absolute Language of Cinema"

Introduction

In many discussions regarding the Sight and Sound 'Top 10', it was a fair point that films such as Birth of a Nation, Sherlock Jr and Battleship Potemkin were not included in the Top 10 itself. Cineastes would explain how you couldn’t ignore D.W. Griffiths technical skill and Buster Keaton’s wit. You cannot dismiss the use of editing within Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. In all cases, until I saw Man with a Movie Camera, I would happily argue that they all showed innovative techniques that paved the way for the future, thus establishing a higher position. But in terms of the vast quantity of techniques and the purposeful sense of experimentaion, Man with a Movie Camera surpasses them all. Technically, this film experiments in every possible way. This is a film which, if you hold any interest in filmmaking, you can appreciate what Dziga Vertov is trying to do. In the opening credits, he admits that the film does not include a ‘scenario’ nor ‘characters’; but what the film does include is huge, concerted effort to capture the love, joy and passion of filmmaking. This is clearly what prompted critics to celebrate its importance to cinema.

'Building the Revolution' by Popova

Russian Constructivism

In terms of context, the film clearly explores the politics of the time. The film holds itself to a Marxist ideology and celebrates the hard-labour necessary of a Russian citizen. Though there is no ‘story’, the film depicts the expected day-to-day life of a citizen from waking in the morning, through the work-practices, commute to work and overview of the city itself. We see the city empty as very few people roam the streets – and the cameraman (directors brother Mikhail Kaufman), on his own, travelling. As the film progresses, the streets get busier and we see the various feats accomplished by man. Look at the wondrous plane take off whilst the trams happily take employees to and from their place of work.

But through the context of industrial and commercial enterprises- whether it be men in the mines or women at the cashier – the visual connection is clear. Akin to the posters created by the Stenberg brothers for the film itself, the shots are composed to evoke the Russian Constructivist movement, as shown by Popova and Rodchenko; artists recently celebrated at the Tate Modern in London. Sharp diagonal lines cut across many sequences – as factories are shown on a slant and steely faces, covered in soot, work tirelessly. This is a strong film - confident and bold in its goals.

Perspective

But, to a modern eye, this perspective is limited – and the glue that holds the film together is through the ‘character’ of the filmmaker. Viewing the film in 2012, you realise that Vertov must be filming another cameraman who is, in turn, creating their own film. The sense of control and perspective is integral to the loose ‘plot’ that you could create surrounding the film. We, the audience, are viewing someone’s perspective of a regime and city that, clearly, they deem exceptional and celebratory. But, akin to the barrage of inversed-filmmaking that we have seen recently (dreams within dreams in Inception; a sense of observing, obsessing and execution of oneself in Looper) - it seems filmmakers clearly enjoy the ‘meta’ level of filmmaking in this modern age; characters and stories are almost self-aware. Man with a Movie Camera is, as a documentary, recording and reflecting on itself through the film. As it explores the various filmmaking techniques, you cannot help but wonder whether the film is almost acknowledging the manipulative nature of filmmaking, and therefore its relevance to todays cinema is even more pronounced.

In addition to this sense of self-awareness, Man with a Movie Camera also shows the cameraman as a voyeur. He watches a woman sleep; the eye roams across the body, highlighting curves and creases. The same masculine-eye seems present later on too as we see a woman remove her stockings and bra – before, shortly after, showing a curvaceous woman rowing and then a different woman on a horse-riding machine. A day at the beach reveals topless women applying mud to themselves. Another technique of filmmaking as he, directly and indirectly, references sexuality and the lustful eye.

Music Video of the 20’s?

There is no apology for this manipulation; it surely is a documentary ‘documenting’ Moscow, Odessa and Kiev. But sequences that show the creation of cigarette boxes are simply fascinating in their organisation and composition. The sequences, edited together flawlessly by Vertov’s wife Elizaveta Svilova, are akin to a dance-music video as the pulsating percussion (from the soundtrack provided by the Alloy Orchestra in 1995, taken from Vertov’s notes) adds rhythm, urgency and pace to a sequence that, alongside a slower soundtrack (‘In The Nursery’ has a provided a soundtrack with less pace, but feels more ‘reflective’),would simply not give such a strong sense of importance to the assembly-line. This truly is the complete opposite to the depiction of the assembly-line in Modern Times. Vertov shows us how effective hard-labour is – and the necessity of it - opposed to Chaplin's criticism of hard-labour.

This is a masterpiece, and when I first began the film I was wary. I knew very little of this film – let alone my lack of knowledge regarding Soviet Cinema. I didn’t know how I would approach the film – would it drag? Could I truly appreciate the context? But honestly, at only 70-minutes long, you would have to be incredibly impatient to struggle during a viewing. Vertov employs such a broad range of camera manoeuvres and styles that every shot is an art piece unto itself - and a cinematic art piece at that. He shows static-shots, photographs, before showing the practical-editing that bring the film-reels to life. We see split shots that distort and change how a building is percieved. We see a plane, pre-figuring the use of widescreen - whilst we will then see the view when looking through two trams, making the focus become exceptionally slim and difficult to see.

I will end with a reference to a brief overview written by Russian-Film academic Josephine Woll: "A glourious tribute to everything that movie-making can be". To think that a film - an experiment no less - can be so influential, inspirational and important speaks for itself. One sequence attempts to imitate the movement of the eye - cutting between an eye/pair of eyes moving and the camera moving up and around in imitation. It doesn't work - and proves that cinema is not simply imitating the eye; it delves much deeper, and the multitude of techniques Vertov uses emphasises how much deeper film could go ... and indeed it did.

A-Z #44: Citizen Kane

You can pick up hundreds of DVD's for a round-pound each - it doesn't matter. Its never about quantity, its about quality. A-Z is my way of going through my collection, from A-Z, and understanding why I own the films ... or you can tell me why I should sell 'em

#44 - Citizen Kane 

Why did I buy it?

C'mon - this is The greatest film of all-time. This is according to Sight & Sound, Cahiers du cinéma 100 films, Kinovedcheskie Russia Top 10, Romanian Critics Top 10, Time Out Magazine Greatest Films and Roger Ebert claims it as "the greatest movie ever made". It was also the double-disc edition which I found for £4 in Oxfam - this included an incredible documentary hosted by Barry Norman as to why it is deemed so good.

Why do I still own it?

 

I have watched it multiple times and it truly is a masterpiece. In terms of what is fascinating about watching it now - Orson Welles performance as Kane during multiple different points in his life, the story that is hinged on what the term 'rosebud' means - this 'revelation' is as important (if not moreso) that Luke finding out who his Dad is in The Empire Strikes Back.

 

On top of this, this film combined multiple cinematic elements which, nowadays, is taken for granted. Deep-focus, special effects, impossible zoom-in's and obscure camera-angles all feature in this film. If this was the only film in your collection, you would be content (Obviously, you would really need to visit the shop soon and  buy more DVD's).

Maybe everyone is wrong - and it is crap... therefore it should be sold. What do you think? Do you rate Citizen Kane so high?

Remember - you can always email The Simon and Jo Film Show directly using this email: simonandjoshow@gmail.com

We are also on Twitter  and Facebook.

The Simon and Jo Show Podcast: 12/12/2010

The discussion consists of a deeper-delve into Jo's trip to The Brighton Film Festival, The German Film Festival (in London) while second 'part' discusses the recent Top 10 Film lists for 2009 from Empire and Sight and Sound.

With aspirations to vamp up the podcasts intro-pages I have decided to add to this description the music used. To make it more difficult for myself, I have decided to start this on a week whereby we use more than one soundtrack to celebrate the Top 10 films of 2009 ... as decided by Sight and Sound and Empire.

In order of their appearance, we have used music from the soundtrack of Up!, Treeless Mountain, Let the Right One In, Moon and Un Prophet.