Sergeant York (Hawks, 1941) and Gentleman’s Agreement (Kazan, 1947)

Not my favorite Howard Hawks film, 1941′s Sergeant York treads some familiar ground stylistically for the director.  Based on a true story, this is Hawks at his most saccharine and also, maybe even as much as in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, his most musical.  Gary Cooper plays the eponymous York, a rural farmer who becomes an unlikely war hero despite espousing pacifist beliefs.

At first glance, York is like a lot of other Hawks films.  It’s male-centric, favors medium shots, and the narrative moves in a traditionally structured, classic Hollywood-kinda-way.  It features an awesomely staged, sometimes surprisingly violent war sequence, and Hawks’ best bar fight since A Girl in Every Port.

The score mentioned above is one thing that sets it apart from other Hawks work immediately surrounding (His Girl Friday, Ball of Fire) and well before and after.  The music is omnipresent.  It’s everywhere, probably covering a good 70% of the film.  For my money, Hawks uses music best as music intro to a scene or character, and then as a little punctuation and/or as an out to a scene.  In York music underscores nearly everything, at times covering entire scenes.  It’s an unwelcome deviation.  What is it about the jingoist wartime film that sees more conducive to music than either comedies bookending this picture, or later noirs, dramas, etc?  It’s as though Hawks sees nationalistic pride as needing (deserving?) that extra layer of aural spirit.

Sprinkled throughout York are a few shots that struck me as particularly anomalous in Hawks’ strategy.  Here are two:

 

That first wide shot (where the camera is actually slowly craning forward) feels pulled from a Western with its emphasis on landscape and silhouettes that seem to blend in with nature.  It’s appropriate for the scene (York tries to reconcile religious and nationalistic beliefs), but it also feels too theatrical and stereotypically beautiful for a shot from a Hawks film.  The second – a shallow-focus 2-shot featuring York in a tight close-up – really separates itself from the otherwise laxness of the Hawks medium-shot.

That said, there are plenty of other Hawks-isms throughout.  Repetition in the large scale narrative, for example.  York, pre-war, wins a turkey hunt by fooling the ducking birds with his own turkey call:

Later, York lures two Germans out via the same strategy.  Hawks shoots it in a similar way, mirroring the wooden barrier with the sandbagged bunker, and even framing York in a 3/4 medium close-up in both (though he’s appropriately closer in the wartime shot):

York tells his wartime buddies how to shoot turkeys.  He uses bullets to demonstrate that it’s smartest to shoot those in back first, so the ones in front aren’t aware what’s coming.  That way you can take down the whole lot:

Then in wartime, guess what?  The same situation presents itself as York is face-to-face with a row of Germans, whom he picks off one-by-one, from back to front:

It’s moments like this that are pretty genius in Hawks, and not just because of the repetition.  What really makes these work, is that both scenes – the set-up scene (York hunting turkeys) and the pay-off scene (York hunting Germans) – are integrated into the narrative and, at the time of their presence, serve a story purpose.  The set-up scene doesn’t only exist to make the pay-off work.  It exists to advance the story otherwise (York needs to win the turkey hunt to win some land to get the girl he loves, etc).

But it’s not just larger scale repetition that Hawks uses.  In York there’s a nice moment towards the end of small-scale, camera repetition.  York receives a medal from the French:

Hawks then cuts to an ECU of the medal and dollies back to reveal York being kissed on both cheeks (somewhat flustered):

Hawks moves to York’s interaction with the British.  Again, after establishing the two men in medium-wide shot he cuts into the ECU and dollies out, this time revealing the men in firm handshake:

And lastly, Hawks goes to York’s medal from the Americans.  As opposed to the scene with the French and British, Hawks here starts in close-up, a slight indicator of preference:

Also like the other two he cuts to an ECU of the medal and dollies back, revealing York exuberantly shaking the general’s hand:

It’s not only that the repetition here creates a tempo that implies the regularity of these events, it’s also that Hawks gives a bit of insight into York’s backwater naivete in the process.  He’s uncomfortable with the French, rigorous with the British, and at ease at home with the Americans.

Gentleman’s Agreement

Speaking of saccharine, Elia Kazan’s Gentleman’s Agreement comes this close to being another Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at times.  It also comes incredibly close to not providing expected romantic, heterosexual closure – this would have been a beautifully orchestrated surprise moment – but then veers back to the norm in the last 90 seconds.

Still, despite being somewhat self-righteous and preachy, Gentleman’s Agreement is ahead of its time, and, like The Best Years of Our Lives the year before it, shows a somewhat jaded (in this case indirect) war outcome that differs from that post-war malaise so frequently cited as a driving factor behind film noir.

Gregory Peck plays Phil Green, a reporter who poses as Jewish to uncover anti-Semitism in New York.  Though the logline might indicate a takedown of the newspaper industry it’s not the case.  The good parts of Gentleman’s Agreement expose some of the grey areas and hidden prejudices in society and prove far more interesting than the overtly racist moments that also pervade the film.  At the forefront is Green’s relationship and potential marriage to Kathy Lacy (Dorothy McGuire) who says she’s supportive, but might be thinking otherwise…

Within Kazan’s filmography, Gentleman’s Agreement seems to me to fit best stylistically with Panic in the Streets (1950), though I’ve never seen Boomerang! (1947).  It’s a classy picture, and not quite reaching the grittier, looser levels that Kazan hits in later post-HUAC, method, and/or Brando films.

Here’s a really small, pretty inconsequential blocking moment that I liked early in the film.  Green is with his mother (Anne Revere) and his son Tommy (a young Dean Stockwell!).  They start in a medium 3-shot with Tommy’s back to camera:

As the conversation progresses, Tommy wanders to the background and is just visible through the two adults:

This particular blocking moment is a good example of why I love staging, and why some actors can carry a scene more than others.  Peck takes a step back as he’s departing.  It’s a really small action, but it’s so natural.  A lesser actor would just turn and walk away.  Peck kind of drifts off.  We can see his reluctance to leave his son in this small movement.  It also allows Tommy to turn towards him and be re-engaged in the scene.

Kazan ends the scene with a good example of a small button.  In this case, that button – the definition of which can be pretty malleable depending on the context – is motion.  Rather than hard cut from Mrs. Green and Tommy in a standing position-

Kazan waits for them to walk away, blocking their movement in part with extras, diverting the attendant’s attention with another extra (frame left, below).  This motion away from frame is classic closure and provides momentum that carries over into the next scene, which is Green applying for the job that will ultimately take up the meat of the film.

Sapphire (Dearden, 1959)

Basil Dearden’s The League of Gentlemen is almost devoid of social commentary.  That’s not a bad thing.  It’s a comedy heist thriller, and if it’s making note of anything otherwise it’s perhaps that the army lets it’s cast-offs drift aimlessly (and into a life of crime) rather than helping them out.  Dearden’s 1959 film Sapphire is the opposite.  Ostensibly a police thriller, the film is probably best categorized as a racial drama first.

For 1959 this is a remarkable film and one that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as other “social problem” films from the 50s (I’m looking at you, Stanley Kramer).  Some of the nuance has faded with time, and a bit of it is on the nose, but Dearden, writers Janet Green and Lukas Heller, and lead actor Nigel Patrick (playing Superintendent Robert Hazard here) show a remarkable amount of restraint.  One thing I really love about Patrick’s character is how easy it would be to have him as an indignant, righteous character.  Dearden and Patrick get it just right.  Patrick’s Hazard is instead a subtle man just doing his job.  It’s a fantastic performance.

The main gist of Sapphire: a woman (Sapphire) is found dead.  She’s a black woman passing as white.  Hazard and Inspector Learoyd (Michael Craig) begin an investigation that unveils a whole lot of racism in London.  It’s pretty amazing how quickly any film about racism can get the blood boiling.  Some of the more obtuse characters in the film make me want to vocalize the same things that Hazard most likely holds back.

One of the early sequences of the film proves to be a pretty good example of Dearden’s visual strategy.  Dearden starts by finding Hazard (what a great name) in a medium-wide shot as he enters the crime scene.  Hazard nears the camera, coming into medium close-up as Dearden pans with him:

Dearden continues his pan, Hazard hits his mark, and we land in a 3-shot.   That’s Learoyd in the middle:

Hazard walks past to inspect the body and the pan continues.  Dearden then cuts to a low angle 3-shot:

Here’s the visual strategy: simple opening frames with a fairly mobile camera, but not one that calls attention to itself, that strives to land in a well-framed 3-shot that plays heavily on background and foreground.  This is all over Sapphire.  Here are a few random frames from later that demonstrate that similar ending position:

Even that last one, not exactly a 3-shot, employs the same basic idea.  This is pretty different from The League of Gentlemen, which couldn’t fundamentally rely on the 3-shot largely because of how huge of a cast it employed.  Here, the 3-shot seems to be appropriate (mostly: 2 investigators and one suspect; also: classic who’s caught in the middle/crossfire).

SPOILER HERE:

The end of the film, as with many that take the label of police procedural, mystery, or thriller, ends with a ‘gangs all here’ scene where the killer is revealed.  In this case, that killer is Mildred Harris (Yvonne Mitchell), a white woman, sister of Sapphire’s boyfriend, and racist.  Mildred’s character is great throughout Sapphire.  She shows a really dark side and then in subsequent scenes is portrayed as a loving mother kissing her two perfect twin children goodnight.

Dearden shoots her confession in close-up with a very slow, small dolly-in:

It’s a good scene and a good performance.  It should be noted that Sapphire’s brother, Dr. Robbins (Earl Cameron), very clearly a black man, is also present in the room at this time.  Here’s what’s interesting.  Mildred concludes her confession.  Where does Dearden go?  Not to Robbins expressing his rage and/or relief at having found the culprit.  Not to Hazard finally having got his ‘man.’  No, Dearden cuts to three reaction shots:

This is Mildred’s family, all showing the pain of hearing her confession.  It’s an odd decision.  The emphasis of this, by these edits, is placed so squarely on the break-up and hurt of the family, rather than on the grief of the relative.  In fact, Robbins doesn’t really get his moment until we’re outside the room and Mildred has been taken away.

This is all great proof of how one cut can shift the tone.  Had Dearden cut directly to Robbins things would read entirely differently.  The mood of this scene would move from (somewhat bewildering) pain to either anger or abatement.  Instead, we’re suddenly thrust into the midst of the family of the killer and he whose – to this point, of course – life has been most directly impacted is sort of shifted to the side.

The League of Gentlemen (Dearden, 1960)

No, this isn’t Sean Connery’s last fiasco of a film.  The League of Gentlemen is a superb heist-comedy from the UK and director Basil Dearden in 1960.  Prior to this one, I was really only familiar with Dearden from Victim and his entry in Dead of Night.  He struck me as a capable director with an oddball filmography.  Time to re-evaluate.  The League of Gentlemen is fantastic and influential.

Not quite the same style as Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers, Dearden’s film is a bit drier and more of a straight-up robbery thriller; kind of like a British The Dirty Dozen.  The laughs here are sardonic under-the-breath one-liners.  Future directors Bryan Forbes (on the left below) and Richard Attenborough (center in the dark sweater) round out a cast that includes Powell and Pressburger regular Roger Livesy (the older gentleman in black frame right) and epic-film-regular (Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai) Jack Hawkins (next to Attenborough with arms crossed):

The structure of The League of Gentlemen is what is at first remarkable.  It’s so simple.  Forbes wrote it.  He of one of my alltime favorite films, Seance on a Wet Afternoon.  The three acts are ostensibly divided into three, longish events.  Act I is a long set-up where we meet the large cast of former army men that Hawkins’ Hyde plans to assemble.  Act II is basically a dry-run for Act III.  The crew rob a military base of weapons in a hoax involving fake colonels, electricians and IRA members.  Act III is the robbery itself.  Unlike other films that would have the inevitable falling out, the irreplaceable man needing replacement, the mid-Act II complication, etc, The League of Gentlemen simply relies on the chemistry of the group, Dearden’s uncomplicated but solid direction (lots of dolly-ins for emphasis and to end a scene, usually in a close-up on Hawkins), and the fact that the exact method of ending thievery is kept largely murky.

Here’s a brief look at that very stylish robbery.  This is 1960.  It’s not quite Melville’s style, which is a little too cool, and it’s not quite anything out of late-era noirs, which prefer grit and double-crosses to lengthy sequences.  If this scene has a predecessor perhaps it’s the celebrated heist from Rififi in 1955.  The smoke-screen and gas-mask combination is gorgeous.  How many filmmakers in the 1990s up until current day have emulated this feeling?

The robbery is mostly wordless, relies heavily on Dearden’s excellent shot selection to lay everything out clearly, and, despite a quick car complication towards the end, is more interested in process than suspense.

The funny thing about The League of Gentlemen is that there actually is what would normally be a mid-Act II twist, it’s just moved to the end, when Hyde’s old war buddy – and lush – Bunny (Robert Coote) shows up:

This is just the type of character who might appear around the 50-60 minute mark in another film to throw a wrench into the operation somehow.  I’d wager that if (unfortunately that should read “when”) this film is remade, there will be a substantial rewrite that either moves Bunny to earlier in the film, or adds some other element to make the move from Act II to Act III bumpier.  As it is, Bunny is comic relief whose presence is momentary suspense (who’s that knocking at my door?), but ultimately contributes very little to the ending that comes to pass.

Prime Cut (Ritchie, 1972)

Is it possible that Lee Marvin is underrated?  In the history of American cinematic cool-tough guys it’s the Bogarts, Deans, Brandos, and McQueens of the world that get the glory.  Lee Marvin-

-is Nick Devlin, who’s as cool a customer as Marvin’s characters in classics like The Dirty Dozen and Point Blank.  He’s sent to Kansas City from Chicago to get mob money owed by Mary Ann-

Yes, that’s Gene Hackman as a maniacal butcher (literally, in both senses).  When all is said and done Prime Cut is a great film, and it’s not even one of Hackman’s best.  Top five Hackman performances for me would have to be The French Connection, Night Moves, Scarecrow, The Conversation, and Unforgiven.  What a career.

Prime Cut features Sissy Spacek pre-Badlands and Carrie in a performance that nearly outdoes both of those as Poppy, the girl whom Nick saves from captivity.

It feels like director Michael Ritchie gets a real kick out of setting what would normally be a big city narrative in the open fields of the midwest.  One of the best sequences of the film comes towards the end.  Nick and company ride towards a final showdown:

A storm brews in the distance ominously, and those dark clouds play out as backdrop for a fantastic (long) shootout in a sunflower field.  You can get the feel from some of these shots how much Ritchie loves his location:

It’s the opposite of what a back-alley city shootout or chase scene might be.  Here Ritchie frames openness, and even when there are obstructions (the last shot above), the soft yellow in the foreground really mitigates anything that could equate to the hard asphalt of the Windy City.  This really reminds me of the end of another great mob/revenge film that I wrote on recently, the original Get Carter, in that location makes a scene sing more than it otherwise would.

From good ends to good beginnings.  The opening montage of the meat factory is a thing of beauty.  It’s kind of like the anti-Killer of Sheep.

Here the shots are sterile, cold, automatic, and controlled (as opposed to Charles Burnett’s great film where the factory is dreamlike and glowing).  This montage – of which only a small fraction is represented here – is great not only for its varied imagery and character introduction (that’s Weenie (Gregory Walcott), Mary Ann’s brother), but also for a fun plot point.  That shoe on the conveyor belt?  Not an accident.  They’re killing more than cows here.

Prime Cut is a pretty funny film – sometimes outlandishly so – and that hotdog that Weenie is holding is part of the comedy.  Consider this ending fight between Nick and Weenie.  Nick drops Weenie off a ledge-

-and Ritchie cuts to an overhead shot, where he then zooms into the hand-

It’s not a knife…but a hotdog.  This is a meat factory-lifer.

Now, Voyager (Rapper, 1942)

One of the ultimate early weepies, Now, Voyager is classic melodrama that sees Hal B. Wallis with two big pictures in 1942 (alongside, of course, Casablanca).  My guess is that Paul Henreid and Claude Rains were both under contract with Warner Bros., because they appear in both films.

Here, Henreid is Jerry Durrance who meets Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) on a cruise and falls for her.  It’s Charlotte who’s the main character of Now, Voyager though, and director Irving Rapper charts her evolution from psychologically fragile spinster-

-to desirable woman.  Yes, that’s Davis under a lot of makeup.

I was lucky enough to get to a screening of Far From Heaven followed by a Q&A with Todd Haynes last night.  In addition to Haynes coming off as really intelligent and affable he dropped a few gems to the audience.  One was in response to a question of his melodramatic blueprint.  After explaining how he got to Sirk via Fassbinder, Haynes said that, in his estimation, the lead character of your classic 1940s and 1950s melodrama doesn’t really grow by the end.  They actually, he said, end up smaller than how they started.  There’s no finger-wagging or life lesson that they come to terms with [my words here].

I like that idea a lot, and it’s entirely applicable to Now, Voyager, which also fits squarely into the melodrama category by wearing its emotions on its sleeves and by preferring big emotional moments to small character development.

There are two such good moments worth looking at, both of which also include some nice classic blocking by Rapper.  Here’s the first.  Vale and fiance Elliot Livingston (John Loder) begin to see their relationship crumble.  Rapper starts in a simple wide 2-shot, cutting to shot-reverse:

Aside from the classy sets, one thing I noticed a lot in Rapper’s wide-shots here is that he prefers to leave a lot of headroom to emphasize the decor.  See that first shot above.  Vale and Livingston are pushed lower in the frame to really get the vertical lines of those windows prominently in frame.

Rapper cuts behind Livingston as Vale stands and approaches him-

-cut to get Livingston’s reaction shot-

-and then to a new setup as Vale walks away and to the desk.

Rapper’s blocking reflects the little tug of war going on here.  Vale is trying to get out of a trip with Livingston.  She’s realized she doesn’t love him.  As she turns and he stands, he starts to realize the same thing:

Livingston walks closer to her and finally they’re together, on the same plane, and still.  It’s the moment when both admit that the relationship isn’t working:

Rapper’s blocking here not only plays up the aforementioned tug of war, but also falls squarely into a melodramatic style of blocking and not just plot.  Were this another classic director at the time (think Hawks, Wyler, etc), or were this not as much of a sob story as Now, Voyager is, Vale’s movements would probably involve fewer dramatic flourishes (that back turn by the desk, for example).  It’s kind of like a small chase scene.

The narrative melodrama comes in how quickly, and actually tearlessly, both parties accept the dissolution of their engagement.  In the way many melodramas are unintentionally funny, this moment is as well.  No wedding?  Okay.  Let’s call it a day.

Here’s another great moment.  Charlotte goes to see her domineering mother (Gladys Cooper).  Rapper here starts with a crane shot that backs up as Charlotte walks into the room.  Look at that second shot below.  Again, Rapper favors a lot of headroom in the wide 2-shot.  This time, instead of the windows, it’s the verticals of the curtains, bedposts and doors.  He’s emphasizing the height of the space, i.e. the size of the space, i.e. the wealth:

The great thing about that crane shot?  When we get the reverse shot, we can see that it’s an impossible crane shot.  The window is too close to the mother and that flower.  It’d be impossible to actually move the camera back that far – the limitations and manipulation of the set are revealed:

Rapper goes into shot-reverse, with the latter being a dolly into Charlotte’s mother as she gets angry upon hearing about the broken engagement:

Here’s your melodrama.  Charlotte leaves and the camera pushes in after her (look at the curtain and flower to get a good feel for how the camera moves):

And at that exact moment, her mother has a heart attack:

In a span of about 10 minutes Charlotte breaks up with Livingston and her mother dies.  There are little repercussions seen for either.  In fact, the narrative moves swiftly past both events to move onto yet another dramatic, and in this case, fortuitous moment.  The dramatic camera movements here – the crane as Charlotte enters, the push into her mother, the dolly after Charlotte as she enters – would be antithetical to some other classic directors of the time, but mirrors the sweeping scope of the film, the histrionic movements and plot developments, and the opulence of the entire production.

The Visitors (Kazan, 1972) and Like Someone in Love (Kiarostami, 2013)

Elia Kazan still couldn’t get out of his HUAC shadow in 1972.  His disturbing, Straw Dogs-like film The Visitors puts a whistle-blower at the center of its anti-war narrative.

Bill Schmidt (a young James Woods) is a passive man living with his girlfriend Martha (Patricia Joyce) and her war vet father Harry (Patrick McVey).  When two of Bill’s former soldier buddies come to visit him, tensions quickly go on the rise.

It’s not hard to find similarities between The Visitors and On the Waterfront, or even Panic in the Streets or A Face in the Crowd.  Kazan frequently deals with acquiescent lead characters forced to confront a past and/or to “name names.”  In this case, Bill’s past interactions with Mike (Steve Railsback) and Tony (Chico Martinez) landed the latter two in military prison.

There are plenty of problems with The Visitors.  For one, Martha is a complex, albeit weak and unfairly fickle character.  Her flirtations with Mike can be seen as revenge on her overly subservient boyfriend and his inability to deal with any kind of violent reality, but given that said flirtations occur after Bill has revealed his difficult, though semi-heroic past to her, she seems simply cowardly and revenge-seeking.  It’s not that Bill and Martha’s relationship isn’t fleshed out enough.  It is.  It’s that Martha’s actions seem less like a plea for real human closeness and more like an unnecessary slap in the face that makes her less sympathetic and weakens the ending.

Kazan lays the symbolism on thick.  Harry, Mike and Tony are mans-men.  They like shooting guns, watching football, drinking, and eating steak.  Bill, on the other hand, prefers to watch idly as the three men kill the neighbors dog, and to make snide comments on the sporting event, hardly touch his whiskey, and give Harry the knife to carve the steak.  It’s a good parallel but a bit overdone.  By the time several long sequences of the above are done…we get it.

Still, The Visitors is effective, if for no other reason, because the ending is telegraphed, harrowing, and inevitable.  It’s also difficult to watch, and there’s no room for reprieve.  Kazan’s thesis seems to be that war kills everything – not just those that die in battle.  It kills the human spirit entirely.

There’s one slightly heavy-handed but still strong crosscut that I really dug in The Visitors.  You’ll notice the production value in the stills below.  This is a low budget film, before James Woods was a name, shot on 16mm film in mundane (sometimes picturesque) locations.  It’s pretty interesting to see this within Kazan’s oeuvre considering that it’s bookended by The Arrangment with household names Kirk Douglas and Faye Dunaway, and followed by the extravagant The Last Tycoon which reads like a laundry list of stars young and old: De Niro, Mitchum, Nicholson, Curtis, Moreau, Milland.

Here’s that crosscut, which starts with Harry, Mike and Tony standing over a dead dog as Bill watches:

Bill goes inside, and the crosscut continues as the three men drag the dog over to the neighbors’ house:

It’s not revelatory, but I like the simplicity of this.  Inside is shot tightly while outside is huge and allowed to breathe.  It puts Bill’s character in more of a box and gives the intruders freedom.  It also further separates the men from the boy.

Kazan favors a lot of repeat frames in The Visitors.  One such example:

Reminiscent of a famous shot from The Graduate, the director prefers his interlopers to loom in the foreground, occupying much of the frame, and making those intruded upon look and feel quite small.

These types of shots are echoed in others like this one-

Where Martha and Mike sit in the foreground looking into a crib (or through prison bars), while Bill hovers harmlessly in the background, physically between Martha and Mike, but not as enough of a presence to actually push them apart.

Like Someone in Love

Abbas Kiarostami has been on a true roll of late.  His film Like Someone in Love picks up where his masterful Certified Copy let off.  It doesn’t tread a ton of new ground, but it’s still playful and really fun to watch.

You can read my formal review of the film HERE.

It’s tough to talk about Like Someone in Love without giving too much away, so my comments will be brief, a bit rambling, and rely mostly on the link.

This is a film that seems to be “about” themes, rather than any strict narrative.  For me it’s about obsessive, unrequited love, the consequences therein, and the point-of-view.

As evidence of the former: Watanabe (Tadashi Okuno) is obsessed with Akiko (Rin Takanashi); he even starts shunning his job on account of her.  The nosy neighbor is obsessed with Watanabe though she never had the chance to be with him.  Akiko is obsessed with her grandmother (Kaneko Kubota), whom she platonically pines for.  She’s also obsessed with the safety she finds in Watanabe, though those two might be the same thing.  Akiko’s fiance Noriaki (the really excellent Ryo Kase) is overwhelmingly obsessed with Akiko.

This is reflected in the constant references to paintings, lookalikes and copies.  People resemble each other.  Akiko says “people always tell me I look like someone,”  Then she looks like the painting and (maybe) like Watanabe’s wife and daughter; her fiance mistakes him for her grandfather; the neighbor mistakes her for his granddaughter.  It’s obsession with an image and with something that is seemingly unattainable.

Kiarostami leaves much hidden in Like Someone in Love and he does so largely by the use of off-screen sound.  We frequently don’t see the action transpiring but are forced to witness it aurally and make a judgment, which is often altered when we are granted visual access.  The point-of-view factors prominently in here as well.

The first shot of the film is an extended POV, and one the source of which (whose eyes we are looking through) takes some time to reveal.  Later that neighbor spends much time watching through her kitchen curtains.  Watanabe watches (or doesn’t watch) Akiko undress, and then later watches Noriaki as the latter waits for Akiko outside of the school.

All of these strategies result in a film that feels beautifully ambiguous and always hinting at some hidden motivation or something deeper than which is ultimately on-screen. A lot of this is due to the strong performances and compelling characters as well.

Mademoiselle (Richardson, 1966)

Mademoiselle is one of the best films I’ve seen in the past few months and that includes all those that I’ve blogged about and those that I still haven’t (new ones like Like Someone in Love, Trance, The Place Beyond the Pines and Stoker, and older films like Black Moon, The Pajama Game, A Bay of Blood, and Reds).

For one, it features Jeanne Moreau, who is so strangely bewitching, and so able to inhabit any role.  She’s one of the all-time greats, and deserves all the recognition she’s gotten.

The film reminds me of Losey’s masterpiece The Servant in its look at power relationships, sexuality, and subservience.  Moreau is the title character, a chaste, strict school teacher in a small French village who is actually the one causing a series of recent disasters.  The villagers, however, prefer to place the blame on a foreigner, the Italian logger Manou (Ettore Manni).

There are two immediately striking cinematographic elements of Mademoiselle.  The first is the gorgeous black and white contrasty look as shot by David Watkin.  It’s really stunning, and no wonder that Watkin would go on to shoot films like Out of Africa and Chariots of Fire.  The second is that the film is composed entirely of static shots.  It’s a strategy I’ve seen before (Tsai Ming Liang always comes to mind), but I’ve rarely seen it as successfully done as here.  The film is so well-composed and blocked that it doesn’t feel static, which is a hard feat to pull off.

A lot of times when we see a film that relies on the static camera, that film prefers primarily wide shots.  While there are stunning wides here, Richardson and Watkin don’t shy away from close-ups.  Consider this excellent introduction of Moreau:

These close-ups add a false movement to the static frames, as though we’re panning along Moreau’s body instead of cutting from shot-to-shot.  It’s also just a visually perfect intro: we get her put together accoutrements before we see what the violent action is (opening a dam to cause a flood).  That’s storytelling.

That’s not to say that there aren’t scenes that are dominated by wide-shots.  Here are two of my favorites:

The first shot there is a great way to shoot Moreau’s small apartment, pushing her into that corner rather than panning with her.  And the other is a Rashomon-like wide (although any shot in woods with the sun glinting is automatically Rashomon if its post-1950) that really takes advantage of negative space and those great oak vertical lines.

Other sections of the film use the series of shots to really expressive ends.  Here’s another fantastic moment from the film.  Manou and Mademoiselle square off in a wide-shot:

Rather than play it out in the wide, or show their burgeoning “relationship” via traditional means, Richardson cuts to a close-up of Manou chopping into a nearby tree-

-then to a medium-wide low angle, looking up the tree as birds fly away-

-and then finally to a close-up as Manou aggressively kisses Mademoiselle’s neck and she allows it:

It’s such a perfectly conceived set of shots, where the chopping and birds act as emotional and motion stand-ins for the tensions arising between the two.  The time cut (Manou magically moving closer to Mademoiselle) also doesn’t feel as abrupt because the shots that bridge his movement – axe and birds – are so filled with motion.

There are some daring structural ideas in Mademoiselle as well.  Here’s one.  Manou and Mademoiselle are together in the woods.  Manou shows her a snake he’s caught and brings it towards her:

This happens at about the 52 minute mark of the film.  Richardson then cuts away to a recollection of the first time Mademoiselle saw Manou in the woods.  Suddenly from there we’re transported to her classroom, and things progress forwardly as though this encounter in the woods is finished.

Towards the end of the classroom scene Richardson cuts to Mademoiselle in a profile close-up as she tells a story.  She turns towards camera and he dissolves…

…to Mademoiselle preparing in the mirror.  Something we’ve seen her do before:

The next series of shots is a close-up Mademoiselle as she lights a piece of paper and brings the flame close to camera, followed by a dissolve to a burning house in the distance:

The significance is clear.  Richardson has just used another time jump to show that she has perpetrated yet another crime.  But here’s what I like best about this (long) sequence.  It’s now around the 1:08:00 mark of the film, and now Richardson cuts back to the woods from 16 minutes ago, showing Manou put the snake onto Mademoiselle’s wrist:

It’s a nice play with time, confusing the structure, making us do some work, but probably most importantly, giving us an insight into the relationship between violence and sexuality – as though everything between the two shots of the snake were the thoughts running through Mademoiselle’s head in those short seconds.