1960s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[knives]

They're kind of a unique case, which I suppose I could see either way. I think I'm leaning toward calling them eligible as a single film? Is anyone passionate one way or the other?

Yeah, it strikes as them being interconnected yet disconnected in a way that forgoes usual acceptance of such thoughts which I guess is the point. I'd probably be more comfortable with them as separate entities though it is hard to say anything in absolute with them.

[swo17]

I should mention that I haven't actually seen Blue yet. (As luck would have it, Netflix just shipped it to me today.) I was operating on the assumption that the two films had always been envisioned as a complementary pair (like the egg yolk vs. the egg white), as opposed to one of them being a sequel. But if everyone wants them to count as two separate films, I'm fine with that.

[domino harvey]

They're not sequels, they're complimentary with differing aims-- Blue is the political version, and distinct from Yellow in both footage and intent

[knives]

What do you mean by political version? Both seem awfully political to me with Yellow even having the Dr. King interview.

[zedz]

Well, the established rule is that two linked films like this count as a single entity. Three or more need to be voted for separately.

For the record, I prefer Blue, but they're clearly two sides of a single coin, two outputs of a single project.

[domino harvey]

If we didn't count Kill Bill as one film, how can we count this?

[swo17]

We did count Kill Bill as one film though.

Well, the established rule is that two linked films like this count as a single entity. Three or more need to be voted for separately.

I read the distinction in the inherited rules more as one of single multi-part films vs. sequels, trilogies, etc., so as to count something like Die Nibelungen or Bernard's 3-part Les Miserables as a single film but not, say, Gremlins 1 and 2. I Am Curious certainly doesn't fit into the latter category, but I don't know that it fits neatly into the first either, as the second film in this case is not a continuation of the first but rather a re-envisioning of it. Which is why I said that I could see it either way.

[domino harvey]

Then I got robbed of a vote in the 2000s list! But okay, if that's the case, then yes, one film

[zedz]

Yeah, I think it's much simpler to stick with the existing twofer rule, for better or worse, rather than have to litigate the nature of the relationship between every pair of films.

When I was collating the lists, the only time this became a big issue was with Ivan the Terrible, but that was compounded by the two parts being released in different decades and David Hare being a passionate supporter of Part Two and a passionate detractor of Part One.

EDIT: I hope David doesn't mind me 'spilling the beans' like that, but I think he's on record with both those opinions!

[swo17]

Alright, I give up. It counts as one film.

[zedz]

Film (Alan Schneider, 1965) – Film (MK2) – One of the great, liberating things about experimental film is how there are so many ways to get there. An experimental filmmaker can start out in documentary, in commercials, in animation, in industry filmmaking; they can be diversifying fine artists, dancers, photographers or actors; they can work in IMAX, in 8mm, with “two photos, music and a moviola”, or they can forsake the camera altogether. This film steps in from the stage, with theatre director Schneider faithfully filming Samuel Beckett’s film script, but it’s a purely cinematic work that can only work as a film. It’s also a one-of-a-kind collaboration with two axioms of cinema: Buster Keaton and Vigo’s cameraman Boris Kaufman, both of whom are performing at the height of their abilities in a marvellously eccentric pas de deux. Like a lot of Beckett’s work, it’s equal parts unnerving and funny, and incorporates one of the best conceptual gags the medium has yet devised, though it’s one that has probably been destroyed many a time by projectionists who weren’t sufficiently clued up.

[matrixschmatrix]

One of the interesting footnotes to film, per David Kalat, is that Beckett originally had Harry Langdon in mind for Keaton's role- there's a certain unity with the screen character of Langdon in the film as it exists, I think.

[zedz]

There are various stories about the casting (Zero Mostel often gets the nod), so I don't know what the real story is, except that Keaton surely wasn't the first choice, or else everybody would be falling over themselves to claim the credit for that idea! Whoever it was going to be, it needed to be somebody with that level of total physical presence and control.

[zedz]

Three from the invaluable Treasures IV box:

Go! Go! Go! (Marie Menken, 1964) – Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film 1947-1986 (Image) – Menken scurries through New York at great speed. There’s an obvious kinship here to Mekas, but the mere fact that the acceleration is more regular and the framing more stable makes the film read completely differently. It’s cooler and less impressionistic, and harkens back to the trick films of early cinema (a point of reference made overt when Menken lingers on a building site). There’s a number of great sequences, most notably a surreal bridal dance in a garden, but the real star is New York, and Menken’s breathless portrait does it proud.

7362 (Pat O’Neill, 1967) – Seven Three Six Two (Lookout Mountain), also on Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film 1947-1986 (Image) – A virtuoso performance on optical printer. O’Neill Rorschachs blown-out footage of industrial machinery to create muscular abstract gestures, increasingly complex in their colourways and superimposition, and all cocooned in a suffocating electronic score. Images surface and subside – iron butterflies, death’s heads, erotic congresses – and gradually the humanized mechanisms evolve into mechanized humanity. A complete tour-de-force.

Peyote Queen (Storm De Hirsch, 1965) – Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film 1947-1986 (Image) – Which must make this a tour-de-hirsch. One of the slighter pleasures on the mighty Treasures IV set, this pleasantly kaleidoscopic combination of scratch film and photographed light-play is almost entirely beholden to Len Lye, even down to the music (though the two contrasting pieces are derived from two different decades of Lye’s evolution). It’s pretty rough and ready compared to the craft and finesse of the master, but it’s so energetic you can’t deny it.

[Gregory]

One of the interesting footnotes to film, per David Kalat, is that Beckett originally had Harry Langdon in mind for Keaton's role- there's a certain unity with the screen character of Langdon in the film as it exists, I think.

Here is the director's account, from the Faber and Faber book about Film (which a friend I met via this forum kindly gave me):

From the beginning, in keeping with Sam's feeling that the film should possess a slightly stylized comic reality akin to that of a silent movie, we thought in terms of Chaplin or Zero Mostel for 0. Chaplin, as we expected, was totally inaccessible; Mostel, unavailable. We hit upon Jackie MacGowran, a favorite of both Beckett and me. Jackie is a delicious comedian and had been an inveterate performer of Beckett's plays in England and Ireland; he understood and felt with the material without an extra word of explanation. Luckily, Jackie had just been acclaimed in the small but juicy role of the Highwayman in Tom Jones so that he was suddenly "saleable." ... Then ... Jackie got a feature film which made his summer availability dangerously tight. ...

With the rest of us suffering various degrees of panic, Sam reacted to all developments with characteristic resilience and understanding. During a transatlantic call one day (as I remember) he shattered our desperation over the sudden casting crisis by calmly suggesting Buster Keaton. Was Buster still alive and well? (He was.) How would he react to acting in Beckett material? (He'd been offered the part of Lucky in the original American Godot some years back, and had turned it down.) Would this turn out to be a Keaton film rather than a Beckett film? (Sam wasn't worrying about that.)

Off went the script to Keaton, followed a few days later by the director's first voyage to Hollywood—to woo Buster. It was a weird experierrce. Late one hot night, I arrived at Keaton's house, in a remote section of Los Angeles, to discover that I seemed to have interrupted a fourhanded poker game. Apologizing, I was told that the poker game was imaginary (with long-since departed Irving Thalberg, Nicholas Schenk, and somebody else), had been going on since 1927, and Thalberg owed Keaton over two million dollars (imaginary, I hoped). We went on from there, when I suddenly realized that everything in the room harked back to circa 1927 or earlier. Keaton had read the script and was not sure what could be done to fix it up. His general attitude was that we were all, Beckett included, nuts. But he needed the money, a handsome sum for less than three weeks' work, and would do it. Yes, he remembered the Godot business, but he didn't understand that one either.

Keaton made no effort to disguise his general bafflement. The script was not only unclear, he admitted, it wasn't funny. Here he suggested some special business with his walk, or perhaps that bit where he could keep sharpening a pencil and it would get smaller and smaller. I said that we didn't normally pad Beckett's material. Then he told me, confidentially, that he had made a lot of movies in his time and didn't see how this one could possibly play for more than four minutes. He had timed it. Even if we stretched that cat and dog business, which wasn't too bad. He'd be glad—for a fee—to supply some ideas. From 1927.

One the way home I worried considerably about Keaton; but, like Everest, he was there and, with Sam's encouragement, we had to have him.

[matrixschmatrix]

Well, that's certainly uncharitable to Keaton, though interesting. I'll have to dig up the Kalat reference.

[zedz]

I actually like the image of Keaton we get from that story. The material is worlds away from his experience, but he's still open to it and acting like a total professional (I love that he'd timed the routine). And of course, he nails what the film needs.

The "from 1927" dig reflects worse on Schneider than it does on Keaton. You get the impression that he wasn't that closely acquainted with Keaton's achievements (and that Beckett was).

[Gregory]

Since I excerpted that, I should point out that, judging from the rest of the piece, it seems like Schneider had several initial doubts, including a lack of rapport between Beckett and Keaton, but was totally won over during production. A little later in the writing, he heaps all the highest praise on Buster and the experience of working with him. For fans of Film (doubtlessly all of us!) this book is worth getting hold of. And gradually becoming scarcer and likely never to be in print again. In addition to the script, stills, and this essay, it also has a lot of swell notes, diagrams, and production photos.

[YnEoS]

Started working my way through the Pasolini DVDs from Masters of Cinema, my only previous viewings of his work being Mama Roma and Salo.

Accattone - I thought this was a really incredible debut feature. I was pretty much completely involved with the story from the start, and didn't really expect the film to test my allegiance to Accattone so harshly. I thought it really captured a lot of interesting types of interactions and relationships between a number of different types of people. Particularly watching how Accattone attached himself to different groups and exploited them or was exploited in different ways. Very likely to make my list though the competition in this decade will be tight.

The Gospel According to Mathew - I didn't find this quite as engaging throughout as Accattone, but overall it was a really strong film, moreso til the end for me. I though Pasolinis playful approach to different filming styles was very effective for the material and gave the content room to breathe on its own. I think the religious debates Christ engaged in were what really hooked me into the film eventually. I'd like to say I'll include this one on my list, but it might fall by the wayside. I'm quite glad to have watched it none the less.

Really excited to see what else Pasolini did in this decade.

[knives]

I hope you watch the Palenstine doc on the Mathew disc which is easily the better film.

[YnEoS]

I'll make a point to watch it on my next round of Pasolini viewings.

[swo17]

I apparently rate Il Vangelo higher than knives, but yes, the doc on the same disc is essential--very moving and a crucial key (along with writings in the MoC booklet) to understanding what drew Pasolini to this material in the first place.

[knives]

I think they're both great actually, but I do find Il Vangelo less compelling then some of Pasolini's other works this decade. His later stuff like Hawks and Sparrows and Porcile is where he is at his best for me though.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Teorema will my highest placed Pasolini film, but he really does make a case for being one of the finest directors of the decade.

[knives]

Though collectively Japan easily wins the race. Even just limiting to Oshima, Imamura, and Suzuki you have more great films than nearly any other national cinema this decade.