Re: Jacques Tourneur
Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 2:16 am
Anne of the Indies
Jacques Tourneur's Anne of the Indies is an excellent film, and one of the rare Hollywood films from before the '60s that deals with sexual roles in a frank and surprisingly intelligent way - certainly far more so than you'd expect a mid-budget swashbuckler to handle such themes. At the heart of the film is the Tourneurian contradictory conflict of the masculine and feminine traits of the title character's personality. Jean Peters is excellent in the role of Anne Providence, the notorious pirate captain whose gender is known only by her crew and a few close "friends". The role isn't an easy one, since the viewer's feelings about the character shift drastically from minute to minute in the film. She does many horrible things to many people, especially Pierre and his wife, and yet we want to like her. I even pitied her. Peters balances her appearance in the film pretty brilliantly as well. From scene to scene, depending on what her character's actions and feelings are, she is able to look strikingly beautiful or downright (for lack of a better term) butch. When one considers what Jean Peters actually looks like, this is quite a feat. On top of all of this, Peters is able to convincingly slide between sober and drunk throughout the picture, with several in-betweens.
Tourneur works his usual magic with lighting and composition, and there are several very nice shots in the picture, though in typical Tourneur fashion they never call attention to themselves. My favorite comes in a fade-in in a rowdy bar, where we see a roomful of crying pirates while on the soundtrack we hear a mournful song being sung in a high tenor. The camera pans over the crowd until it ends up on the source of the singing: a bald, dirty pirate flanked by two whores. It's the funniest moment in the film, and a really perfect shot in a lot of ways.
Tourneur is quoted in a French interview a few years before he died as saying "I always did what I wanted. I never turned down a script." He didn't acknowledge the contradictory nature of this statement, which really lies at the heart of his unique cinema. If it's true that Tourneur only filmed the scripts he was given (which seems to be the case with all of his films except Stars in My Crown), then it's astounding that his films are linked with so many oddball touches that you simply don't find in similar B-genre films by other filmmakers. While Anne isn't the typical passive Tourneurian hero, Herbert Marshall's Dr. Jameson is one in a long line of objective onlookers in the films of Tourneur. Usually, the characters are artists - the minstrel in The Flame and the Arrow, Hi Linnet in Canyon Passage, Sir Lancelot in I Walked With a Zombie, and others - and in Anne of the Indies the doctor has a brilliant, unusual soliloquy about the power of the written word. In this short aside alone there are at least three other Tourneur touches:
-The power of the written word crops up again in Appointment in Honduras and Night of the Zombie as well as other Tourneur films; it is a minor theme in Anne of the Indies, making reappearances with the ransom note and the treasure map.
-Lighting: the entire scene convincingly appears to be lit with only the few torches located on-screen. It creates flickering shadows, as well as orange and red lighting that are sort of beautiful.
-Strange, poetic dialogue appears in the most unusual places in Tourneur's pictures, and this is an excellent example. Dr. Jameson (a drunk, so his name is a bit of a joke, I suppose) says: "There's a magic in books...books have sunk the mightiest ships, destroyed armies, even brought down empires!" Dialogue like this crops up again and again in the most unlikely places in Tourneur's films. I'd argue that the script of Canyon Passage is the most full of brilliant non sequiturs, but they can be found throughout Tourneur's work, in virtually every film in fact. For one of the most unusual and out of place look to The Flame and the Arrow, where a criminal who likes to do things with his feet says of his group: "We're civilized and the art of civilization is doing natural things in an unnatural way." How strange it is that these kinds of weird one-liners pop up in scripts where they would not seem to belong, and yet in Tourneur's world they are commonplace.
The film's turning point comes about thirty minutes in, when Anne decides against her better judgment to try on a dress that was taken as booty and serves as the film's symbol for femininity. For this scene and this scene only, Anne fully embraces her womanhood, rather than hiding it. Up to this point and often after it, Anne makes an effort to hide her breasts. This is another very nice touch from Jean Peters, as I noticed her often pulling her vest inward and draping her wardrobe more than usual. The scene is also a turning point in that most everything that came before it was jovial and lighthearted (more along the lines of The Flame and the Arrow) and after it the tone of the film darkens significantly. This darkening of tone actually happens immediately, as Blackbeard cuts the scene short.
The swashbuckler genre didn't create many great films. In fact, I can't name one. Anne of the Indies is probably the best I've seen, and it's a testament to Jacques Tourneur's abilities that he makes the film so excellent while staying within the confines of the genre.
Jacques Tourneur's Anne of the Indies is an excellent film, and one of the rare Hollywood films from before the '60s that deals with sexual roles in a frank and surprisingly intelligent way - certainly far more so than you'd expect a mid-budget swashbuckler to handle such themes. At the heart of the film is the Tourneurian contradictory conflict of the masculine and feminine traits of the title character's personality. Jean Peters is excellent in the role of Anne Providence, the notorious pirate captain whose gender is known only by her crew and a few close "friends". The role isn't an easy one, since the viewer's feelings about the character shift drastically from minute to minute in the film. She does many horrible things to many people, especially Pierre and his wife, and yet we want to like her. I even pitied her. Peters balances her appearance in the film pretty brilliantly as well. From scene to scene, depending on what her character's actions and feelings are, she is able to look strikingly beautiful or downright (for lack of a better term) butch. When one considers what Jean Peters actually looks like, this is quite a feat. On top of all of this, Peters is able to convincingly slide between sober and drunk throughout the picture, with several in-betweens.
Tourneur works his usual magic with lighting and composition, and there are several very nice shots in the picture, though in typical Tourneur fashion they never call attention to themselves. My favorite comes in a fade-in in a rowdy bar, where we see a roomful of crying pirates while on the soundtrack we hear a mournful song being sung in a high tenor. The camera pans over the crowd until it ends up on the source of the singing: a bald, dirty pirate flanked by two whores. It's the funniest moment in the film, and a really perfect shot in a lot of ways.
Tourneur is quoted in a French interview a few years before he died as saying "I always did what I wanted. I never turned down a script." He didn't acknowledge the contradictory nature of this statement, which really lies at the heart of his unique cinema. If it's true that Tourneur only filmed the scripts he was given (which seems to be the case with all of his films except Stars in My Crown), then it's astounding that his films are linked with so many oddball touches that you simply don't find in similar B-genre films by other filmmakers. While Anne isn't the typical passive Tourneurian hero, Herbert Marshall's Dr. Jameson is one in a long line of objective onlookers in the films of Tourneur. Usually, the characters are artists - the minstrel in The Flame and the Arrow, Hi Linnet in Canyon Passage, Sir Lancelot in I Walked With a Zombie, and others - and in Anne of the Indies the doctor has a brilliant, unusual soliloquy about the power of the written word. In this short aside alone there are at least three other Tourneur touches:
-The power of the written word crops up again in Appointment in Honduras and Night of the Zombie as well as other Tourneur films; it is a minor theme in Anne of the Indies, making reappearances with the ransom note and the treasure map.
-Lighting: the entire scene convincingly appears to be lit with only the few torches located on-screen. It creates flickering shadows, as well as orange and red lighting that are sort of beautiful.
-Strange, poetic dialogue appears in the most unusual places in Tourneur's pictures, and this is an excellent example. Dr. Jameson (a drunk, so his name is a bit of a joke, I suppose) says: "There's a magic in books...books have sunk the mightiest ships, destroyed armies, even brought down empires!" Dialogue like this crops up again and again in the most unlikely places in Tourneur's films. I'd argue that the script of Canyon Passage is the most full of brilliant non sequiturs, but they can be found throughout Tourneur's work, in virtually every film in fact. For one of the most unusual and out of place look to The Flame and the Arrow, where a criminal who likes to do things with his feet says of his group: "We're civilized and the art of civilization is doing natural things in an unnatural way." How strange it is that these kinds of weird one-liners pop up in scripts where they would not seem to belong, and yet in Tourneur's world they are commonplace.
The film's turning point comes about thirty minutes in, when Anne decides against her better judgment to try on a dress that was taken as booty and serves as the film's symbol for femininity. For this scene and this scene only, Anne fully embraces her womanhood, rather than hiding it. Up to this point and often after it, Anne makes an effort to hide her breasts. This is another very nice touch from Jean Peters, as I noticed her often pulling her vest inward and draping her wardrobe more than usual. The scene is also a turning point in that most everything that came before it was jovial and lighthearted (more along the lines of The Flame and the Arrow) and after it the tone of the film darkens significantly. This darkening of tone actually happens immediately, as Blackbeard cuts the scene short.
The swashbuckler genre didn't create many great films. In fact, I can't name one. Anne of the Indies is probably the best I've seen, and it's a testament to Jacques Tourneur's abilities that he makes the film so excellent while staying within the confines of the genre.