Great Cinematographers, Part 12: Ted Tetzlaff

One of the more underrated cinematographers of Hollywood’s golden age was Ted Tetzlaff (1903-1995). He spent twenty years as a DP, then moving on to directorial work on such films as Johnny Allegro (1949), The Window (1949) and The White Tower (1950). He’s not as widely recognized as some of his contemporaries, but he contributed his keen eye for visuals to many films that I love.

Easy Living (1937, dir. Mitchell Leisen) – My favorite scene in this screwball comedy is from 4:55 to 8:00 in the clip, a lovely little moment between Jean Arthur and Ray Milland. All of the surfaces stand out, from the glittery sparkle of Arthur’s fairy-princess gown and shoes to the gleaming glasses on the table.

The More the Merrier (1943, dir. George Stevens) – Ah, the glorious date when Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea share some passionate kisses. It is a beautifully lit scene, helped out by its terrific actors and that great dress that Arthur is wearing.

Notorious (1946, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) – The camerawork is as dizzying as the story, perhaps best exemplified by Tetzlaff’s crucial crane shot of Ingrid Bergman during this party scene, a perfect example of moving from the general to the specific. In one take we move from a sweeping overview of the setting and the many people populating it to one particular hand holding one special item. It’s too bad that this was Tetzlaff’s final work as a cinematographer, but he certainly went out on a high note.

Great Cinematographers, Part 11: Raoul Coutard

After an eight-month hiatus I am happy to resume my series on notable cinematographers with the legendary Raoul Coutard (b. 1924). Most famous for his work with Jean-Luc Godard, the French cameraman also photographed films by Pierre Schoendoerffer, François Truffaut, Jacques Demy, Raoul Lévy, Tony Richardson, Costa-Gavras, Édouard Molinaro, Christine Pascal, Nagisa Ôshima and Philippe Garrel.

Breathless (1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard) – Before Godard, most audiences would have thought that jump cuts were mistakes in the way the film was cut. Besides the editing, the cinematography plays an intriguing role in this scene: Coutard’s camera is focused on the back and sides of Jean Seberg’s head. This is a stylistic choice that Godard would later use in the opening scene of Vivre Sa Vie (1962), introducing us to the back of Anna Karina’s head before we see her face.

Lola (1961, dir. Jacques Demy) – Demy’s debut feature film looks wonderful on the big screen thanks to its luminous cinematography. Coutard captured light and shadow so beautifully. In this scene, in which a young girl spends a brief amount of time with an American sailor, there’s a terrific slow-motion sequence.

A Woman Is a Woman (1961, dir. Jean-Luc Godard) – Godard’s deconstruction of the American movie musical uses sound in a unique way, incorporating music in places where you expect a song to start and then removing the music when characters actually do sing. Fittingly, the story was filmed in vibrant and sometimes unusual colors. Here Anna Karina sings at her strip club workplace, the camera showing the mostly empty room from her viewpoint and bathing her in eerie blue and purple spotlights. Coutard played with color by maintaining a fun and engaging style.

Milestone: Machiko Kyô Turns 90

Today is the 90th birthday of Machiko Kyô, an actress who worked with many great directors of Japanese classics during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. She is one of the last remaining stars of the period besides Setsuko Hara (b. 1920), neither of whom ever married. One could view them as two sides of the same coin, contemporaries who exhibited two very different manifestations of femininity. If Hara lived up to her moniker as “The Eternal Virgin,” then Kyô represented the side of women that explored sexuality, a new kind of star in the Golden Age of Japanese cinema.

As noted by this photo and quote, taken from resources at Berkeley’s PFA Library & Film Study Center, Kyô was unique in her appeal to moviegoers on a more bold aesthetic level. She could play traditional, subservient female roles, but she could also be a sex symbol for the new, modern era. I don’t know how much control she had over her own image, but I hope she considered it liberating to break out of the stereotypical, repressive ideals for and of Japanese women.

Kyô’s most famous film, Rashomon (1950), was an international breakthrough for director Akira Kurosawa. Kyô plays one of only two female characters, the center of a deadly triangle completed by the legendary Toshirô Mifune and Masayuki Mori. Kurosawa’s innovative method of storytelling allows several versions of the same narrative to unfold, showing the possibilities and moral implications of Kyô’s character as the innocent victim of rape or as a willing, sexually available woman who has no problem committing murder.

Kyô shows her range as an actress, displaying each iteration of the character with total believability. Her work stands out in a film that won an Honorary Academy Award as the “most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951” (the competitive category was later established for the 1957 ceremony) and which was also nominated for art direction/set decoration (in a black-and-white film).

In 1953 Kyô starred in three well-regarded films: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu, Mikio Naruse’s Older Brother, Younger Sister and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell. Ugetsu received an Oscar nomination for costume design (in a black-and-white film), while Gate of Hell won both an Oscar for the costume design (in a color film) and an Honorary Award for best foreign film. All three filmmakers ranked among the highest-praised of Japan’s auteurs. Ugetsu (pictured) is a chillingly unforgettable ghost story, in which the spectral Kyô seduces a married man (Masayuki Mori of Rashomon fame), undoing his entire life.

Kyô had another important collaboration with Kenji Mizoguchi in 1956 when they made the provocative drama Street of Shame. (In between the two films, Kyô also starred in Mizoguchi’s colorful historical drama Princess Yang Kwei-fei in 1955.) Street of Shame was the noted director’s swan song, released only five months before his death from leukemia. The main characters are all prostitutes who struggle to maintain their complicated personal lives while also dealing with the social and legal ramifications of their chosen careers. It is surprising when we meet “Mickey,” a nearly unrecognizable Machiko Kyô as a Westernized girl with a ponytail, American-style makeup, jewelry, a low-cut top and formfitting plaid pants. She dances along to Western-style music and she speaks frankly of her body as “well-proportioned.” The character is cold to her colleagues, shrugging at others’ misfortunes with little more than a blank stare and a snap of her chewing gum. Further demonstrating Mickey’s sense of sexual liberation, she is seen in a short, lacy black slip and, quite daringly, even displays her naked backside (though I suppose that could have been a body double). Mickey is no shrinking violet.

Later in the film we finally see the mask come off when Mickey’s father visits. Mizoguchi waited until this scene to show close-ups of Kyô, who finally resembles the actress we’re used to seeing. Up to this point in the film, the narrative is watchable but not always gripping; here, Kyô demands the audience’s full attention. As we learn the reasons for Mickey’s descent into juvenile delinquency and prostitution, we see an emotionality to the character that we had no idea was hiding beneath the surface.

By the end of the film, Mickey has once again donned her usual attire. Because of the revealing earlier scene with her father, however, we understand her motivations and we feel compassion for her. She is trying her best to survive in a difficult world.

Later that year, Kyô appeared in her only American production, the comedy The Teahouse of the August Moon. For her performance as a geisha named – what else? – Lotus Blossom, she received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical, a prestigious achievement for a Japanese actress. As per usual in Hollywood, though, a Caucasian actor (Marlon Brando) was cast in the role of an Asian man.

Another of Kyô’s acclaimed films is Odd Obsession (1959), directed by Kon Ichikawa. The drama won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Again Kyô shows her ability to manipulate her physical appearance.

Taking a major stylistic turn from the previously mentioned directors, Kyô made her first and only film with Yasujirô Ozu, Floating Weeds (1959). Although I have not yet had the pleasure of watching it, it looks like another beautiful example of how Ozu viewed interpersonal relationships in Japanese society.

Even in the mid-sixties, Kyô continued to take risks in film. Hiroshi Teshigahara, known as one of Japan’s more avant-garde filmmakers, directed her in The Face of Another (1966). Kyô has a substantial supporting role as the wife of Tatsuya Nakadai’s facially disfigured protagonist. Unlike in Street of Shame, when Nakadai pulls the covers off of Kyô in one scene, there is no doubt that that is her unclothed body. I presume that her toplessness would have been shocking at the time, although Teshigahara certainly was not shy about female nudity, which was prevalent in his earlier film Woman in the Dunes (1964).

Machiko Kyô retired from the movie world thirty years ago, but her place in film history is secure. I have read that she continues to take part in theatrical productions, which I hope is a rewarding continuation of her experience with acting.

Actors You Should Know: Florence Bates

You may not know the name of Florence Bates (1888-1954), but she was certainly recognizable among the endless numbers of great character actors from Hollywood’s golden age. Bates, born Florence Rabe in San Antonio, Texas, earned a degree in Mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. After deciding to study law, she passed the bar exam and became Texas’s first female attorney in 1914. Besides being a lawyer, she also co-owned her family’s antique store, used her Spanish-speaking skills in a career as a radio commentator and later opened a bakery in Los Angeles. The name “Florence Bates” was in honor of the actress’s first theatrical role, portraying Miss Bates in a mid-1930s staging of Jane Austen’s Emma at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Here are but a few of this wonderful entertainer’s notable roles:

Mrs. Van Hopper in Rebecca (1940) – Joan Fontaine’s snobby employer at the beginning of the film, always haughtily commenting on her young charge’s gauche actions. Bates plays a character you love to hate.

Mrs. Edna Craig in Heaven Can Wait (1943) – uncredited, but memorable nonetheless. She pops up early in the film (and is quickly dispatched), having barged in on Don Ameche’s meeting with “His Excellency” (the devil, played by Laird Cregar). Bates makes the most of her minimal screen time, flirting with Ameche and showing him her legs.

Madame Dilyovska in On the Town (1949) – Vera-Ellen’s ballet teacher (“Keep prrracticing, prrracticing!”), secretly chugging liquor while her pupil twists and turns. Dilyovska is responsible for forcing Vera-Ellen into a side job as a burlesque dancer, a complication for the heroine and her hero (Gene Kelly).

Bates made many more film and TV appearances between 1937 and 1956, including The Mask of Dimitrios, Saratoga Trunk, San Antonio (how fitting!), The Diary of a Chambermaid (Renoir, not Buñuel), Cluny Brown, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, I Remember Mama, Portrait of Jennie, A Letter to Three Wives, Lullaby of Broadway, the “I Love Lucy” episode “Pioneer Women” and the 1952 version of Les Miserables. The next time you see an American film from the 1940s or 50s, keep an eye out for Florence Bates.

Keith Moon, Part 2

Last night I saw The Kids Are Alright, Jeff Stein’s documentary about The Who, for the first time since I was fourteen or fifteen years old. It’s a movie that had made a huge impact on me, probably as important to my growth as the first time I listened to the album Tommy, sitting on the floor next to the hi-fi as the four sides of vinyl spun. The film chronicles the band as a whole, but on celluloid as onstage, it’s Keith Moon’s show all the way.

I guess the question that every Who fan must ask him/herself is how to view Keith. Do you see only the wild man on the drums, smashing them to bits and establishing himself as the greatest stickman in rock history? How far do you peer behind the facade, looking at the fatal addictions, the inescapable insecurity, the death of Neil Boland, the tumultuous marriage with a record of domestic violence? How do you reconcile the early glory days – the endearingly irrepressible, highly extroverted moppet of a young man with the biggest brown eyes you’ve ever seen – with the reality of his life?

You could look to documents, like Keith’s grade school report card (“tries to get by by putting on an act; retarded artistically, idiotic in other respects”), this Sony ad or a postcard sent to his soon-to-be wife, for answers and insight. But I don’t know if there is an answer. One of the absolute truths of rock & roll is that you have to take the bad with the good, hanging on for the ride no matter what happens. Sometimes there’s no happy ending and all you can do is cherish the better memories. I don’t suppose I’ve reached a new conclusion, but it’s just something I’ve been thinking about.

Filmmaker Firsts: Atom Egoyan

#4: The Sweet Hereafter (1997) – dir. Atom Egoyan

This film is not one for all audiences, but if you are willing to try it, you will experience one of Russell Banks’ typically powerful stories. Egoyan’s adaptation of the 1991 Banks novel concerns the aftermath of a tragedy that claims the lives of most of a small town’s schoolchildren. A lawyer is left to pick up the pieces and attempt to get justice for the families while he simultaneously deals with his own troubled daughter. To make matters more complex, the film has a fluid sense of time, slipping back and forth between 1995 (when the accident occurred) and 1997 (long after the lawyer’s dealings with the town, when he is on his way to meet his daughter). Instead of having a typical sense of past/present/future, everything seems to be happening at the same time, the events being recalled instantly rather than having a feeling of far-off memories.

The Sweet Hereafter is a story of innocence lost and of the ways that people try to comprehend “life before” and “life after” a major event changes their lives. It is also a story of secret lives hidden below the surface and the ways that a persona can be split in two to cope with certain inexplicable situations.

The film is about more than just dealing with tragedy; it is about the dynamics between parents and children. Violence, abuse and the specter of death can take many forms in family life, not just in public cases affecting large groups of people. The film is about dealing with loss, dealing with new (perhaps unhappy) beginnings and whether or not some things can ever be forgotten or forgiven.

The tale of the Pied Piper is woven into the narrative, taking on many meanings depending on which part of the plot or subtext you analyze. The poem lends an element of allegory to the proceedings, making the film an even more haunting and disturbing tale than it already is. Egoyan’s decisions on how to structure the film, including the editing by Susan Shipton, make the movie all the more heart-rending, much more so than if the story had been told in linear, chronological order.

Above all the film is worth seeing for its skilled actors. Ian Holm, long one of cinema’s most underrated actors, gives a bravura performance as the lawyer trying to win money for the families of the deceased and injured. Even without dialogue, his eyes express so much. Other highlights among the cast are Sarah Polley as the lone child survivor, Tom McCamus as her father, Gabrielle Rose as the bus driver, Bruce Greenwood, Arsinée Khanjian and Albert Watson as three parents of the children killed and Stephanie Morgenstern as a former friend of Holm’s daughter. The scenes involving Holm’s daughter have some unfortunate overacting on her part (nepotism in the casting: she’s played by Caerthan Banks, daughter of Russell), but otherwise the ensemble is pretty solid. I ask you to give this movie a try.

Filmmaker Firsts: Manoel de Oliveira

#3: A Talking Picture (2003) – dir. Manoel de Oliveira

World-famous as the “oldest active filmmaker” around, Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira (b. 1908) directed this feature when he was 94 years old. His output has earned him nominations and awards at the famous film festivals in Berlin, Cannes and Venice. Now age 105, Oliveira continues to be prolific, with his most recent effort, Gebo and the Shadow (2012), nominated for Best Film at the Portuguese Golden Globes and with other projects currently in development.

True to its title, A Talking Picture is comprised mostly of dialogue rather than action. The first half of the film is essentially a travelogue, in which the main characters Rosa Maria (Leonor Silveira) and her daughter Maria Joana (Filipa de Almeida) visit many historical sites in Europe. A history professor who teaches at the University of Lisbon, Rosa Maria is pleased to finally see the places she has studied in person and to share the experience with young Maria Joana.

The traditional uses of plot and momentum are forgone in order to focus on the oral tradition of storytelling and remembrance of history. This can be tiresome since the scenes on both the cruise ship and in the different countries rely on a repetitive formula, although some of the visuals by cinematographer Emmanuel Machuel are quite nice.

Halfway through the film, at the 45-minute mark, focus is shifted to the captain of the cruise ship, played by John Malkovich, who has a dinner party with three distinguished guests of honor played by Catherine Deneuve, Irene Papas and Stefania Sandrelli. Although the characters converse in four different languages, they are always able to understand one another. In a scene lasting twenty minutes, the discussion between these characters covers history, philosophy, politics and the dynamics between men and women. Malkovich is annoying, but his three companions are lovely, especially when Papas sings a quiet but stirring Greek melody for the entire dining hall. Sandrelli also has a touching moment when she tells Silveira with a sad smile that she is envious of her motherhood (all three older women at Malkovich’s table are childless).

While I do not care for the ending (including Oliveira’s decision on the final shot), I must admit that the film makes some interesting points about culture, tradition and the increasing violence of modern society. I would prefer an Oliveira film with more of a real storyline, though.

Don’t Quit Your Night Job

The lure of prose has drawn actors, directors, singers, comedians, models and various other kinds of artists to try their hands at writing fiction. Everyone from Mary Pickford (The Demi-Widow) to Gene Wilder (My French Whore) to Molly Ringwald (When It Happens to You) has attempted to become a successful scribe. Whether or not these wannabe wordsmiths triumph is another matter entirely.

I recently finished Pete Townshend’s short story collection, Horse’s Neck (1985). In spite of a preface which claims that each tale in the book explores Townshend’s “struggle to discover what beauty really is,” it would seem that the “struggle” fought by the former Who guitarist was still ongoing at the time of publication. The stories are mostly rather depressing anecdotes about failed marriages, failed love affairs, failed careers, etc., all surrounded by alcohol-fueled stumbles between waking and dreaming. Half the time the writing is of a staccato, Hemingway-knockoff style, while the other half of the time Townshend is most concerned with proving that his vocabulary is bigger than your vocabulary. Let it never be said that Pete Townshend was shy with similes either. My personal favorites are “…and lovers would blend smoothly like butter and flour cooking in a roux” and “that night he danced like Martha Graham on the lavatory, his legs spread.” Exciting. Adverbs get some attention too: “Her lips shone and glittered, her teeth sparkled moistly.” Instead of echoing the protagonist’s sense of lust for this young woman, the idea of moist teeth just sounds like an unfortunate dental condition.

(What a classy comment from England’s Times.)

The trickiest part is whether to believe in the usual authorial fallacy – that the work is autobiographical – or to read the works as fiction. One piece, “Pancho and the Baron,” is quite obviously about the deaths of Keith Moon and The Who’s manager, Kit Lambert. The facts behind that story are enough to make you question the levels of veracity and memoir in all of the stories. One story in particular, “A Death in the Day Of,” is the only good story precisely because it might be true, inspired not only by the loss of Townshend’s rock & roll lifestyle but also by his 1983 appointment as an acquisitions editor at publishing company Faber and Faber.

Mind you, I don’t judge creativity too harshly if it has a purpose. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the point of Townshend’s stories was, though. A number of them revolve around obsessions with horses, culminating in the somewhat bizarre sexual content of the last two stories. Example: “The horse is beautiful. Its mane is flowing and clean, its coat brushed and smooth. Its eyelashes are long and curved. The horse is now before me, it bares its teeth and its tongue flicks out…” I’ll stop myself there. (Also, there’s a story where the main character’s object of attraction is a foal. Is that equine pedophilia? Is that actually a thing?) What’s especially hard to believe about how bad these stories are is the knowledge of how beautiful and affecting Townshend’s lyrics could be. How is it that a guy who could pen “Sunrise,” “Go to the Mirror!” and “Love, Reign o’er Me,” among dozens of other great tunes, couldn’t string non-musical sentences together? Even the “About the Author” section is problematic, indulging in some revisionist history by stating that “in 1984 Townshend left The Who to concentrate on his solo career, publishing, and writing.” The truth, of course, is that the band fell apart after years of difficulties, not to mention Townshend’s alcohol and drug addictions.

Pete Townshend is not the only artist-turned-author deserving of such a critique. When I read James Franco’s short story collection, Palo Alto (2010), right after it was published, I was pretty disappointed. Three of the stories – “Lockheed,” “American History,” “I Could Kill Someone” – showed promise, but otherwise the product was a pretentious series of musings. I like that Franco engages in so many different types of media interaction, but he should stay away from writing books and stick to reading them in one of his eight billion college classes. It doesn’t appear to matter, though, since Gia Coppola, granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, has made her directorial debut with a cinematic adaptation of Palo Alto, due in theaters this May. As long as producers are willing to provide money, projects are bound to happen anyway, regardless of what the source material’s critics say.

Indelible Film Images: Marty

Marty (1955) – dir. Delbert Mann

Starring: Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair, Esther Minciotti, Joe Mantell, Jerry Paris, Karen Steele, Augusta Ciolli, Frank Sutton, Robin Morse, Alan Wells

Cinematography: Joseph LaShelle

RIP Vera Chytilová

Vera Chytilová (1929-2014), a director at the forefront of the Czech New Wave in the 1960s, has passed away at the age of 85. Her most well-known and well-regarded feature film, Daisies (1966), was shown in retrospective at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the summer of 2012. Chytilová was also known for her films Something Different (1963), the omnibus Pearls of the Deep (1966), Fruit of Paradise (1970), Panelstory (1980), Wolf’s Hole (1987), A Hoof Here, a Hoof There (1989), The Inheritance (1993), Traps (1998), Flights and Falls (2000) and Expulsion from Paradise (2001), among others.

As I have written about before, there are so few women directors compared to the number of men, something which I hope will change with time. Vera Chytilová has secured her place in film history, but there is a lot of room left for more female voices in cinema, especially those who are as interested in exploring the avant-garde as Chytilová was.