Two Or Three Things He Knows About Her
A WOMAN IS A WOMAN
There is a whole clump of Godard films all clustered in the early '60s that are easy to mix up. Does A WOMAN IS A WOMAN come before or after A MARRIED WOMAN? And where are they in relation to BANDE A PART?
But there is a very good reason for this confusability. All the films are about women. Godard meditates on them, films them "being," satirizes them, and sends them to the moon. In fact, though Ingmar Bergman is considered conventionally to be the greatest director of women, you could argue that Godard shows a greater understanding of — indeed, really even more interest in — women. Mostly he photographed one, his wife, Anna Karina, who won a special award for her appearance in this feature film, Godard's third.
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The plot is simple, a mere sketch. Angela (Karina) works in a bizarre strip club (unlike any you have ever been in), and wants her have a kid. Her boyfriend Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy) is opposed. Meanwhile, one Alfred Lubitsch (Jean-Paul Belmondo), Emile's buddy, is interested in her. She even sleeps with him one afternoon. When Emile later that same day decides that yes in fact he does want to have a child, they face a problem, since she may already have been impregnated by Alfred. Emile comes up with an elegant solution, which leads to the film's punch line, a complex pun that doesn't translate too well.
It's all a big shaggy dog story engineered to get to that blackout-preceding pun. It's sketch comedy, but of an artless kind that wouldn't impress the writers at SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. But while getting to that punch line Godard fills his film with music, movie quotes, jokes, documentary footage of Paris in 1961, and salutes to his favorite directors. The songs, however, are for the most part mere snippets, frustrating the viewer until finally he plays one (by Charles Aznavour) but uninterrupted, with nothing else, just jump cuts on Karina as she listens, the complete opposite of customary movie practice. It's the music cue as non-sequitur.
There is so much music in this film that you expect the cast to break into singing. But they don't. It's a musical without songs, where the lilting voices of the stars speaking French is the "song." It's almost as if Godard were doing a parody of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG — except that Demy's movie came out three years later.
You can see why Tarantino loves Godard. The director throws in everything. He tries to alienate you. Yet he can't squelch the movie's inherent charm. And the characters just talk and talk, doing little else. There is a 20-minute stretch where Emile and Angela converse in their apartment in what has become Godard's signature, like dance scenes are for Bertolucci. The camera dances around them like a third character absorbed in their "inconsequential" chat (I wonder what Tarantino thinks of the endless navel-gazing of THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE). The Criterion release of A WOMAN IS A WOMAN has led to inevitable dismissal of the film (which after all did win an award for its exuberance at Cannes that year) as amateur stuff, as if the willful amateurishness can ever be separated from Godard's mastery. But in fact it is entrancing, lovely, and very funny.
Criterion offers up A WOMAN IS A WOMAN in a stunning color widescreen transfer (2.35:1, enhanced) with an audible Dolby Digital mono track. As is typical of Criterion, the English subtitles are optional.
There are fewer treats on this disc than on Criterion's previous BANDE A PART. No yak track here, or interviews (as on that previous disc), or in-joke annotations. But there are a few extras, including Godard's 19 minute short film from 1957, CHARLOTTE ET VERONIQUE OU TOUS LES GARCONS S'APPELLENT PATRICK, with writing credits to Eric Rohmer, and which, in its tale of a guy trying to pick up a woman, seems to anticipate both Rohmer's and Godard's oeuvres. There is also a 13-minute news story about Karina made for French television in 1966, and which includes others talking about her, such as cult singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Finally, there is a stills gallery, a promotional audio recording, and a 24-page booklet featuring an essay by J. Hoberman, excerpts from two interviews with Godard about the making of the film, chapter titles, transfer info, and credits. The disc comes in a white keep-case and hit the street, Tuesday, June 22nd, retailing at $29.95.
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Rome, Open City
MAMA ROMA
What is the responsibility of filmmakers to accurately represent their culture? Any sincere artist will be driven to create works of art in part by a desire to reflect the society that shaped him, perhaps even to protest the circumstances that threaten the very creativity that motivates him, circumstances that are, after all, mutable. Morally, the artist is obliged to capture reality, even if his method of doing so is filtered trough the prism of his unique sensibility.
Hollywood has clearly abrogated that responsibility. Film after mindless film rolls down the Tinsel Town assembly line, big, loud and busy, yet ultimately empty, mere bread and circuses for the masses who need to be distracted from the shenanigans engaged in by their masters in government and business. We need to be more critical of movies. We accept too easily Official Cinema's presentation of the world, with its hopeless clichés and the reality-excluding tyranny of its commercial narratives.
One wonders what Woody Allen thought if perchance while channel surfing he stumbled upon the TV movie made about his break up with Mia Farrow. In that film he could hear dialogue never uttered played in scenes that never occurred in places that look nothing like the abodes of his real life. Yet still it was broadcast to the nation, where these imaginary moments could take on the aspect of reality, of documentary actuality, which is how the many simple minded view television.
Obviously, one doesn't want imagination legislated out of existence for the sake of strict conformity to agreed upon facts. Instead, it would be nice to live in a country where personal responsibility were a value taught in school and honored by fellow citizens. And despite its hazards, some artists do feel a commitment to representing reality. A John Cassavetes, someone who strives to capture the truth of contemporary life within a unique cinematic style that provides the very means of saying something new, though a rarity, can exist, though even he has to find a way to survive as a director outside mainstream money markets.
In this cultural climate, any film by Pier Paolo Pasolini is a salutary experience. Pasolini was the prolific poet, political columnist, novelist, filmmaker and theorist who was murdered in 1975 at the height of his fame and controversy, and MAMMA ROMA was his second feature, made in 1962 and until a few years ago unreleased in the U.S.
Partially a nightmare vision showing the suffocation of mother love, MAMMA ROMA relates the efforts of a woman (Anna Magnani) nicknamed Mamma Roma, to create a better life for her son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo). A former prostitute, she is free of her recently married pimp Carmine (Franco Citti), and has moved to Guidonia, a suburb of Rome, where she operates a fruit stand. Her son, left back in the village to be raised by relatives, is now brought to the big city, where he falls in with a gang of bored toughs, and is ushered into the realm of sexual expression by Bruna (Silvana Corsini), the neighborhood tramp.
There are several interesting levels to MAMMA ROMA. On the surface it is a family melodrama about how the past catches up with you. On a deeper level, it is a criticism of neorealism, the sui generis film style founded by Roberto Rossellini in the post World War II years and embraced by several other Italian directors in the '50s. Mamma Roma offers an alternative, formed from the actual experiences of the people that Pasolini portrays, while enriching the material with allusions to paintings and other imagery. On a third level it is a critique of the lower classes, who, in Pasolini's view, adopt the mindset of their masters and buy into the capitalist imperative rather then breaking away to form a new society, one free of the restrictions imposed by self-interested governments and organized religions. And finally, it is a cruiser's fantasy, with Pasolini dwelling on the animal beauty of the cruel young men he puts at the center of the story.
As a critique of neorealism, MAMMA ROMA is daring. First, he cast Magnani as his central character, whose nickname reminds the viewer of ROMA, CITTÀ APERTA, the first international neorealism hit, and the film that brought Magnani to world attention. But he also cast in a small role Lamberto Maggiorani, the lead in Vittorio de Sica's stagier neorealism classic THE BICYCLE THIEF. Here, he plays a hospital patient who is (yet again) robbed. As Maurizio Viano notes in A CERTAIN REALISM: MAKING USE OF PASOLINI'S FILM THEORY AND PRACTICE (University of California Press, 372 pages, $18, ISBN 0.520.07855.1), Pasolini's critique of THE BICYCLE THIEF "strips the mask off the universal, monocentric perspective from which neorealists saw reality."
Pasolini was taking a risk, because neorealism was a major Italian export, and because Magnani was a difficult actress. According to David Schwartz's richly detailed biography PASOLINI REQUIEM (Vintage, 788 pages, $18, ISBN 0.679.73349.3) there were numerous problems on the set of this film. One of the leads was arrested, and Magnani, who originally promised to temper her typical her typical tendency to interfere with a production, eventually began to feud with Pasolini. But she wasn't just dealing with any old hack.
Unlike most filmmakers, Pasolini had a fully thought out aesthetic, and also unlike his colleagues, he had a complex and sophisticated political stance. A communist at war with the sexual repression and the artistic conformity of his party, he also raged against the cunning destructiveness of consumerism. Pasolini was an early explorer of semiology and deconstruction, and unlike anyone else, incorporated his insights into his movies. Though his political beliefs and disgust with contemporary society caused him eventually to flee cinematically into the past, where in adaptations of the DECAMERON and the CANTERBURY TALES, he blended classics with commercials for Marxism and ended up creating international box office hits, he still fiercely held to his beliefs about the nature of the good society and what types of films best serve it.
Thus Pasolini structures his film to suit his own needs, rather than to follow some linearity imposed by conventions of the "well-made” film, as Naomi Greene illustrates in PIER PAOLO PASOLINI: CINEMA AS HERESY (Princeton University Press, 250 pages, $14.95, ISBN 0.691.00034.4). Pasolini will "stall" his narrative to offer visual prose poems in honor of the natural beauty of his beloved youths, until the middle of the movie begins to feel like the set of a Bruce Weber shoot.
Yet these passages, too, have a point. We are watching the vital Ettore sink into apathy; we are watching his zombification by irresistible social forces. And many things are left unsaid. For example, how does Ettore feel about Bruna capriciously acquiescing in a gang rape by his supposed buddies? We aren't told. But rather than seeming like a mistake in the script, this absence comes across as an example of Pasolini's respect for the intelligence of his audience.
Also Pasolini uses the excessive, theatrical Magnani, a pool of bubbling magma, to support his thesis. Her loud, gravelly voice, her mouth so cavernous that it looks as if a pre-game football team is about to exit from it, support his critique of the artificiality of the lower classes seeking to act the role of capitalist. When, at the end, she tries to kill herself and is held back by her neighbors, she looks out her apartment window and sees the oppressive citadel of the unhelpful church (also another Rossellini quote) and the towers of the modern urban landscape. Seeking to enter those temples of consumerism, something she can never, in Pasolini's view, really do, she ends up being her own victimizer.
The Criterion Collection gives us MAMMA ROMA in a solid widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced) with good Dolby Digital 1.0 audio. It's a two-disc set, and the extras on the second disc include three interviews (coming to 24 minutes) with Bernardo Bertolucci (who got his start working for Pasolini on ACCATTONE), Tonino Delli Colli, and biographer Enzo Siciliano. There is also a documentary, PIER PAOLO PASOLINI (58 minutes), and the interesting 1963 short film, LA RICOTTA, starring Orson Welles as a director trying to make a movie about the Passion of the Christ (!). There's also a poster gallery and the original theatrical trailer.
Included in the package is a 32-page booklet with essays by Siciliano, critic Gary Indiana, and interview excerpts, plus chapter titles, transfer information, and credits. The discs come is a dual-DVD keep-case for $39.95, and the set hit the street June 22.
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Shakes the Claus
BAD(DER SANTA: UNRATED WIDESCREEN EDITION
For a fine Xmas egg nog, take the Coen Brothers, mix in Terry Zwigoff, add a dash of Billy Bob Thornton, and you have BAD SANTA, the movie that fills the gap between SHAKES THE CLOWN and the mainstreaming of Bill Murray. Murray really should have played the part of Willie, a safecracker who, in league with a professional elf named Marcus (Tony Cox), goes from mall to mall doing Santa before robbing the complex on Christmas Eve. Something gets in the way of this year's plan, however: a lonely boy (Brett Kelly) victimized by bullies and who lives with his grandmother (Cloris Leachman) while daddy is in prison. Willie falls in with him, and with a local half-Jewish bartender (the lovely Nicole Kidman clone Lauren Graham) with a Santa fetish.
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Though the film kinda goes weakened at the end, offering up a happy ending, until then it is the textbook example of what we all want to be — someone who speaks his mind and damn the consequences. Willie is early Bill Murray from STRIPES, MEATBALLS, and GHOSTBUSTERS, blended with a more extreme form of the Crumbian Seymour from GHOST WORLD, after he has gotten out of therapy and escaped his mother. The dance in BAD SANTA is between going to far (in the Farrelly sense) and still not losing your market share. This disc of BAD SANTA is supposed to have about eight minutes of new "raw" footage (the theatrical version is released simultaneously), but frankly I couldn't tell what was new. It certainly didn't seem any dirtier.
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This Buena Vista release of Dimension's BAD SANTA offers a nice if occasionally misty widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced) with DD 5.1 audio which helps make the holiday tunes in the score delightful. Extras include three deleted or alternative scenes (one with the great Sarah Silverman as a Santa school instructor), a gag reel, outtakes, a misleading promotional making of, and trailers for other BV releases. BAD SANTA hit the street on June 22nd, and retails for $29.99.
Hair of the Dog
BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER
The worst thing about Hunter S. Thompson is his fan base. The second the word "chickenshit" emerges from his lips they double over in gasp inducing laughter. They howl over every outrage he commits. And yet I'm guessing that for the most part they are people who don't understand him, who might share his interest in pot but not his interest in guns and sports (he started out as a sportswriter, the most conservative branch of journalism). He is loved by people who don't truly understand him the way Jack Kerouac is loved (by people he would hate in real life) and David Lynch is admired.
Otherwise Thompson is great, and he is on display and in fine fettle in Wayne Ewing's fascinating BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER, which follows the author around for a few crucial years in his life during the making of the film version of FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. This disc overlaps nicely with Criterion's two-disc set of that film (it even includes footage of the same events on the set when Thompson visited). BREAKFAST takes place in the late '90s, when Thompson is contesting an arrest for drunk driving (an amusing subplot in the film), dropping in on pre-production of FEAR AND LOATHING when it was still an Alex Cox film, attending a 25th anniversary celebration of FEAR AND LOATHING ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL, signing copies of his collected letters, and being honored in his home town by, among others, Johnny Depp, Thompson's son, and Roxanne Pulitzer (he wrote about her divorce case in ROLLING STONE).
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Many people traipse through the movie, from John Cusack to George McGovern, but the single most entertaining scene is a script conference at Thompson's Owl Farm with Alex Cox and co-screenwriter Tod Davies (a woman). Ewing (who is one of Thompson's acolytes and has worked with him for years, the way Zwigoff knew Crumb intimately for his film), truly becomes a fly on the wall, as the participants speak their mind without inhibition. It's real cinema verite, so to speak. Thompson objects to the end of the script (which he hasn't read, or pretends not to have read) when the film resorts to animation to have his character deposited back in Los Angeles on a cartoon title wave. The discussion escalates but both the writer and the director hold their own. To Thompson's pointing out that cartoons seem inappropriate, Cox rightly notes that his books are famous for the Steadman drawings in them. Thompson gets furious. At the end of the scene they walk out of the house, the film, and the project (it was directed by Terry Gilliam). Thompson then leaves a message on the machine of VEGAS's producer, telling her if it is war she wants it's war she is gonna get (and he used to date her).
BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER comes in a video-looking full frame transfer (1.33:1). The DD stereo sound is audible, but there are also subtitles — for Thompson alone (!).
There are also some pretty good extras on the disc. First off is an audio commentary track with, at first, both Thompson and Ewing, and then with Ewing alone. The director is calm and insightful and is careful not to attribute motivations to people whose minds he can't read while offering viable interpretations of what is going on. He is especially good during the Cox fight. It's one of the best yak tracks I've heard.
The rest of the extras appear to be deleted scenes, though as far as I can tell the film has never been formally theatrically "released" aside from some festival screenings, which is usually the reason scenes are deleted in the first place. Among them are an except from his novel SCREWJACK read by P.J. O'Rourke and Don Johnson, O'Rourke interviewing Thompson on gonzo journalism and what really happened to Oscar Acosta, the real life model for the lawyer friend in VEGAS, and a few other scenes. All in all it is a surprisingly good account of Thompson, although at the end of it you begin to wonder when he has time to write.
BREAKFAST WITH HUNTER is available exclusively through the Web site BreakfastWithHunter.com and retails for $29.95 plus shipping and handling.
NEXT TIME: Some SPIDERMANs, THE SNAKE PIT, RENO 911, CSI: MIAMI and more!
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