Gone to Earth (1950, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

Three years removed from Black Narcissus, but no less libidinal, Gone to Earth finds The Archers further plumbing the depths of repressed sexuality, exchanging religious vows for the jejune fumblings of adolescence. Where Narcissus considered the internal struggle between orientation and obligation, Gone examines the external influence of male desire on female maturation, specifically the preceding pursuit and subsequent ensnarement of betrothal. Though the subtext and sweep of conflicting emotions bear the benchmarks of high drama, the execution exhibits nuance and serenity, trading the promise of Heaven for the terrestrial pleasures of a rapturous embrace and the sublime shadow cast by setting cerulean skies.

Guided by this tussle between the temporal and spiritual, Hazel Woodus (Jennifer Jones) acts as a creature of contrast, her virginal modesty concealing a bohemian sense of wonder and motherly devotion. At the heart of her naive superstition and philotherianism is a detachment from both town and country, expressed by barefoot frolicing and the willful disruption of the foxhunt, each antisocial measure lionized by the camera’s tender, close-up gaze and derided by Shropshire’s old guard.

Though her tongue is as rough-hewn as her garments, a ripening sensuality peeks out from beneath the juvenile exterior, drawing the ire of aging locals and the lustful eye of a cunning horseman (David Farrar), who exploits her credulity in the name of sexual conquest. Caught between torrential rainfall and the might of the horseman’s grasp, Hazel wrestles between her virtue and the beckoning of womanhood, forfeiting chastity to the tenderness of his lips, much like the crimson fox succumbs to the fangs of the virile hound.

This carnal metaphor shared between Hazel and the docile Reynard is evoked by a duo of muted, rhyming images, filmed from above at a protective distance, delicately illuminating purity in the face of danger and corruption. Though the soft pastel hue of each portrait suggests a starry-eyed, masculine sentimentality for maidenhood, the camera never sneers at or pities its subjects, it simply exalts their incorruptibility and lack of experience.

Our brazen hunter and the meek town parson are as captivated by the notion of an immaculate, and ultimately unattainable, ingénue as the camera, though the pious Edward Marston (Cyril Cusack) primarily seeks a reflection of his own sanctimony over a partner for an intimate tryst. Hearing the cherubic pitch of Hazel’s voice and spying the hypnotic sway of her xanthous Sunday gown, Marston proposes marriage as an extension of his ecclesiastical vows, stowing her away for safekeeping and domesticating her to a life of Christian practicality and celibacy.

The structure of wedlock provides her with comfort, but lacks catharsis, and her feral nature and penchant for defiance lure her back into the clutches of the trailing huntsman, who shadows her every move like a maleficent phantasm. Photographed before the cautionary yellow of the setting sun and at a craven kneel, his towering figure is given a framing as resonant as any in The Searchers, observed at a distance and bordered by red drapery, shot to symbolically restrict him from penetrating her inhibitive homestead.

Yet, abstinence cannot sate biological necessity and the passionate consummation shared by Hazel and the foxhunter commences with the brute force of a stomped boot. As the heel of his shoe smothers her bouquet of red flowers into the dusty earth, the viewer is impelled to accept Hazel as an autonomous adult over an idealized vision of a virginal Madonna. Edward ultimately shares this realization as he examines her womanly frame enrobed in radiant red, the air of experience exposing the unequitable nature of male projection and embodying the impermanence of youth. It’s a moment of harsh veracity surrounded by illusory beauty, savoring fidelity without sacrificing the swoon of cinematic romance.

Gone to Earth (British Lion Films, 1950)
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Written by Mary Webb (novel), Michael Powell (screenplay) and Emeric Pressburger (screenplay)
Photographed by Christopher Challis

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Black Narcissus (1947, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

Illustrating the cold war between innocence and experience in both form and content, Black Narcissus plays the aphrodisiac of the exotic against the rigor of monasticism, employing scintillating color and humid climes as emblems of repressed sexuality. Within each febrile hot flash and distrait daydream, it erects sensualists from cloistered servants, simultaneously enticing the viewer through expansive shots of cesious skies and the beguiling whisper of mountain breezes. Through gentle inference and aesthetic clarity, the mise en scène temporarily conjures a narcotic ambience, ultimately pulling the rug out from under its placid tone at the behest of the unchained subconscious. This deviation into the macabre forces human emotion to its periphery, summoning suspense from isolation and unmasking disillusionment as a fate worse than unfulfilled fantasy.

Harboring pride and the ghost of the past under her habit, Abbess Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) shepherds her sistren to a West Bengali palace, endeavoring to soften her reticent demeanor and bring medicine to the mountain-bound natives. The locus of her calling is steeped in metaphor, dangling at the precipice of a menacing crag, foreshadowing the moral tightrope walk between piety and desire that will cloud the judgment of our protagonist and her equally doubtful devotees.

Clodagh’s temptation is personified by Mr. Dean (David Farrar), a British expatriate who bears little regard for community standards, treating his position as factotum as an excuse for sexual insinuation and unrepentant drunkenness. His open disdain for purity and hypocrisy dredges up uncertainty amongst the order, culminating in brazen criticisms of Clodagh, which inspire dissention and suspicion of our “stiff-necked, obstinate” leading lady.

The altitude and wind furthur stir discord and malaise, titillating the flesh and nape of each neck of the chaste flock, reawakening their artistic and erotic urges. Clodagh even beholds the reflection of her past sexual experience in Dean’s piercing stare, the robust tones of the score accompanying the mild zephyr to inspire a full-bodied swoon, matched only by the breathing pigmentation of the local garb and immense scope of Jack Cardiff’s photography.  

The liberal application of color implies experience and receptivity from the opening shot, exhibiting conflict between the virginal blue sky and the venereal pink hue of the meticulously-stitched Himalayan garments. Cardiff manages to soften the ornate costuming and overarching Technicolor canvas, creating an airy uniformity that evokes the texture of a dream. He contrasts the ebullient Eastern shades through the vacant white of Clodagh’s habit, using the draped sides of her veil to obscure her facial expressions in chastened shadow.

Breaking free from the constraints of these spectral gowns, the sultry Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) grapples with the anachronism of her divine vows, gleaning inspiration from the untamed, slinking gestures of the orphaned Kanchi (Jean Simmons) and perfumed scent of a neophyte general (Sabu). Feigning disgust at the emotional outpouring shared between this jejune couple, Ruth opts to shelter her passion for Mr. Dean beneath the shade of sleep-deprived eyes and reveries of a mounting fever, lashing out at Clodagh in response to the prioress’ lack of libidinal flame.

Their corresponding struggles burn brighter than either woman could fathom and Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger use the indistinguishable visages of both actresses to express a shared detachment. While Ruth suffers from unfulfilled lust, Clodagh’s sorrow swells in her memory, coaxed to the surface by Dean’s chauvinism and the academic thirst of the young nobleman. One haunting transition finds Clodagh drifting during communal prayer to a night of caroling with a bygone love, the camera focusing in on her hands as she tenderly caresses a bejeweled gift by lantern light. As her mind wanders back to her upland prison, she extinguishes her recollection like the candle cradled between her fingers, remaining imprisoned beneath the gloaming of the crucifix and the inflexibility of obligation.

The mounting innuendo and anguish shared between our anchoresses stimulates a panoptic, dreadful aura, climaxing in fleshly rebellion and sanguinary stratagem. In the aftermath of Ruth’s laicization and Mr. Dean’s spurning of her advances, the clammy and make-up smeared libertine, lit only at the eyes, lunges at a panic-stricken Clodagh, hurtling over the bluff and into the afterlife on a gust of unrestrained fury. At the heart of this duel fought over intellectual chastity, The Archers uncovered the tragedy of human desire in bondage, utilizing the foreboding of distance and allure of the unknown to embody earthly desolation and regret.

Black Narcissus (Universal Pictures, 1947)
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Written by Rumer Godden (novel), Michael Powell (screenplay) and Emeric Pressburger (screenplay)
Photographed by Jack Cardiff

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One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

Deprived of the operatic spectacle that accentuated their post-war work, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing finds Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in a state of artistic puberty, developing their skill set before taking the intellectual leap into aesthetics. Nascent attempts at exploiting oblique camera angles and meticulously-shot excerpts of aerial photography bear a precision that would blossom into a fanciful future, but stern duty makes for anemic drama, leaving an honest patriotic endeavor to stagnate beneath the slow progression of narrative diligence.

Hints of Expressionism surface beneath the formality of reenactment, particularly in the narrow quarters of a Royal Air Force bomber, but The Archers’ efforts to limit character development and the melodrama of emotional familiarity are thwarted by the intentions of diplomatic financiers, who ushered the picture into production as a sign of solidarity between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The resulting collaboration separates creative differences into autonomous vignettes: the first and superior portion examining an unsuccessful British airstrike and the second taking inventory of Dutch cultural idiosyncrasies amidst the flying regiment’s ground-level escape.

Powell and Pressburger are far more comfortable in the “beehive” than the lowlands, milking tension from the murky glow of a cramped cockpit and ominous bird’s-eye visions of the theater of operations, cloaking each distant windmill in caliginous shade. The only illumination discernible on screen billows forth from flame-engulfed structures and fiery bursts of gunfire, which obscure the field of view and lunge towards the aircraft’s wings like wrathful schools of flying fish.

The ethereal grandeur of the lighting and miniature set design evoke Fritz Lang’s future worlds at a great distance, forcing the eye to squint at vast alien ruins and stirring the imagination despite the humbleness of their creation. The inability to determine each piece’s origin (cardboard or concrete?) speaks volumes about the team’s consummate craftsmanship and nary a shot passes without a recurring symbol, often aligning the repetitive motion of clocks and gauges to the dehumanization of military protocol.

Sadly, this subtextual language dissipates after the plane runs aground, leaving the film to coast on a cocktail of dry colloquy and Dutch courtesy. When not trading in fish out of water cliché or cross-dressing farce, the script leans heavily on clerical humor of both kinds, mocking Der Kommandant through coded pipe organ anthem and an endless stream of forged bicycle permits. Though it may seem wise to inject levity into a picture preoccupied with strafing strategy, the imbalance between halves forfeits the danger and virtuosity of the opening raid, thrusting a schmaltzy climax on a sober audience.

One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (British National Films Ltd., 1942)
Written and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Photographed by Ronald Neame

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Night of the Creeps (1986, Fred Dekker)

Feasting on the remains of the American postwar horror canon, 80’s filmmakers employed their overindulgent viewing habits as inspiration for genre reinvention, creating works that bow in reverence to their paranoid cultural ancestry and function as a litmus test for the dedicated few. Though constructing an entire cinematic school from a catalog of annotations sounds unambitious on paper, artists like John Landis and Joe Dante found marrow in the bones of their ancestors, updating the Saturday Matinee structure to incorporate social critique and sanguinary special effects.

Finding humor beneath shock cinema’s solemn stare, Fred Dekker mutated Atomic Age innocence and 70’s cynicism into the butt of the joke, peppering Night of the Creeps with references so deeply ingrained in the cult lexicon that they border on condensation symbol. Unlike his aforementioned kindred spirits, Dekker is far more concerned with playing a visual game of trivia than striking civic or aesthetic poses, allowing his encyclopedic knowledge of tropes and talent to distract from the crux of his divergent narrative threads. Thankfully, his directorial eye absorbed far more than the closing credits, apprehending an ability to coax out claustrophobic atmosphere and the piquancy of the comic medium, salvaging this endearing merger of camp and coming-of-age comedy from the dustbin of vapid homage.

Taking the viewer back to the splendid source of his cinematic muse (1959, to be exact), Dekker shoots a prologue in flat black-and-white, hammering home the primary clichés of the era through dewy-eyed romance and the sway of poodle skirts. He raises the stakes on mid-century schlock by incorporating two antagonists, preserving the prerequisite flying saucer and pairing it with the contemporary slasher, allowing the juxtaposition to define the boundaries of dark fantasy. Though the tonal disparity provoked by these paragons hampers Dekker’s intended conviviality, the visual bill of fare in the introduction and main narrative are ethereal and economical, conjuring shadow and starlight from unremarkable venues and obvious sound stages, transforming empty corridors and cryogenic chambers into hollow, sinister chasms.

Carrying the established adversaries from the commencement into the meat of the motion picture feels both sentimental and satirical, embracing the anodyne nature of nostalgia while dragging it through the mud of modern superficiality. Yet, this marriage of the sincere and sarcastic doesn’t feel deceptive, it simply capitalizes on deviation in the name of farce, reveling in the absurdity of a baby-boomer “corpsical” inseminating Pledge Week pranksters with cranium-splitting alien slugs.

Like most splatstick films, the sentiment is jocular, but the presentation is lurid, continuing Dekker’s passion for contrasting mood and bearing the influence of David Cronenberg’s biological terrors, replete with salivating, penetrative gastropods. The effects team’s ability to realize these repellent creations is splendidly squirm-inducing and moments of animatronic finesse bristle beneath the effortless glide of Robert C. New’s camera, which moves through the set with the fluidity of Sam Raimi’s infamous “Vas-O-Cam.”

Ingenuity aside, these technical triumphs never gel with the scant fragments of expository dialogue, leaving face-to-face interactions hanging in the air without symphonic or directorial accompaniment. The only performer capable of understanding the cadence necessary for the artistically exaggerated is Tom Atkins, lending his chain-smoking detective a tacky catchphrase (“Thrill me!”) and a pair of skeletons in the closet straight Out of the Past. His youthful peers rarely fare as well, confusing volume for candor and struggling to playing the right notes in a juggle between the solemn and the snide, landing each line with the nuance of a Summer stock amateur.

Despite having an atonal cast at loggerheads with an overly eclectic script, Fred Dekker manages to invoke chaos in the final reel, toppling a busload of infected frat boys onto a sorority row lawn and snickering endlessly as carnality and formality clash in the hallowed halls of academia. I’d be remiss to deny the pleasure of this concluding maelstrom, but believe the next generation of horror fanatics improved upon Dekker’s amiable cinematic identity crisis (see Dead Alive and Shaun of the Dead), capitalizing on the merger of the grotesque and goofy without sacrificing wit and substance.

Night of the Creeps (TriStar Pictures, 1986)
Written and Directed by Fred Dekker
Photographed by Robert C. New

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The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966, Alan Rafkin)

Emerging in the wake of The Kennedy Assassination, Vietnam War, and Psycho’s candid unmasking of mental illness, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken’s unbridled exuberance plays like an act of protest, treating escapism as the remedy for cultural disillusion and the lingering spectre of death as fodder for benign hijinks. By encapsulating the idealism of Norman Rockwell’s Americana and the sumptuous textures of Technicolor processing, Alan Rafkin and Don Knotts lend resonance to the triviality of spook houses and small-town scuttlebutt, revitalizing art as a movement of emotion instead of a reflection of moment.

Seizing its stride and temper from its titular “chicken,” Ghost manifests an environment to mirror Luther Heggs’ (Knotts) agitation, surrounding him with busybodies and adversaries, all keen on keeping him “keyed up” and quivery. In the spare moments between their playful jibes and passed casseroles, the neighborhood coterie spin yarns about the haunted Simmons Mansion, dubbing it a “murder house” in suspect and scandalous recollections, igniting spasms in Luther’s wiry frame.

Strung out on nervous excitement and the warm glances of the assertive Alma (Joan Staley), Luther steels himself for an overnight investigation of the scene of the crime, glimpsing journalistic success and romantic affection in return for an evening’s worth of valor. Though this bravery garners municipal honor and the admiration of resident parapsychologists, his prose borders on the libelous, forcing him and his managing editor into a trial and media circus as absurd as his exploratory escapades.

The farcical nature of the proceedings, born of superstition and vexatious litigation, imparts an artful excess onto the set design, extracting the slapstick from Don Knotts’ bulging eyes and trembling limbs by way of cobwebbed chambers and raucous tribunals. Though overwrought and openly nostalgic, the juxtaposition of the colloquial and contemporary are never insincere, mining laughs from the ostentatious without stumbling into late-century cynicism.

Costuming and characterization reflect these innocuous eccentricities as well, utilizing the floral prints and extravagant Gainsborough hats of the “Psychic Occult Society of Rachel” as an external manifestation of their religious peculiarities. Thankfully, their caprice and devotion to Luther are never more than an amusing idiosyncrasy, resulting in an unexpectedly progressive and ethical representation of Spiritualism.

Acting as shaman for this band of armchair mediums, Don Knotts’ benevolent daydreamer functions as an optimistic response to Budd Schulberg’s A Face in the Crowd, fluttering like a light-drunk moth before the iniquity of fame and malice that so enchants the disingenuous Lonesome Rhodes. By employing his rubber-band physicality as a reflection of mortality and modesty, Knotts manages to conjure a wellspring of sentiment and humor from our childish fears and pipe dreams, transforming cowardice and aspiration into unifying qualities.

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (Universal Pictures, 1966)
Directed by Alan Rafkin
Written by James Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum
Photographed by William Margulies

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948, Charles T. Barton)

Establishing the trend of cinema as an amalgamation of intellectual properties, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein pits the eponymous comedy duo against an army of Universal’s Monsters, striking a balance between slapstick and shock in the name of fan service and financial gain. Though its conception smacks of crass commercialism, the finished product proves to be an elaborate and loving tribute, espousing the evocative shadow and ambience of Gothic horror as the perfect antecedent to giddy humor. Its existence proves that art can flourish in a profit-focused industry, free from the obstruction of voluntary poverty and creative pretense.

Transporting Transylvania to coastal Florida, this pointedly absurd scenario finds Dracula (Bela Lugosi) fleeing Europe with Frankenstein’s monster in tow, seeking refuge with a mad doctor capable of harnessing enough electricity to revive the sleeping giant. Wisecrackers Bud Abbott and Lou Costello stumble into the middle of this fiendish plot while slaving away as baggage handlers, grumbling about the length of their shifts (they “belong to two unions”) and inserting bits of their vaudeville routine into a botched coffin delivery, police investigation and moonlight manhunt.

Much of their shtick derives from Costello’s all-consuming fear, summoned forth by the glare of wax mannequins and supernatural motion of a rogue candelabra. Abbott primarily surveys the madness in an annoyed state of disbelief, leaving Costello to an endless parade of pratfalls, double takes and yipped exclamations, ultimately resulting in casualty and damaged product. This physicality is complemented by the limberness of the pair’s wordplay, which utilizes the English language’s bounty of homonyms as fodder for a series of jocular misunderstandings, best employed in an amusing sequence that transforms Costello from lummox to lothario, much to Abbott’s chagrin.  

The physical transformation of the cast of creatures is just as rousing, applied through seamless animation and skillful editing, allowing Bela Lugosi to take flight and Lon Chaney Jr. to shed his clothing and sprout voluminous fur. Sadly, Chaney’s Wolf Man is as plagued by his nocturnal persona as he was in the source material, never permitted to be as vivid or terrifying as his confident cultural counterparts, leaving a majority of the malevolence to Lugosi’s loose-jointed Count.

Despite top billing, Frankenstein’s monster (Glenn Strange) is also treated as an afterthought, sequestered to subterranean chambers and strapped to operating tables during pivotal moments. Lacking the yearning and sensitivity of Boris Karloff’s portrayal, Strange posits his monster into puzzled and vacant poses, awakening only at the behest of Dracula’s commanding presence. His casting is the only glaring oversight in an otherwise satisfying matinee effort, populated with laughs and scares in equal measure and the wisdom to trust a paying audience.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Universal Pictures, 1948)
Directed by Charles T. Barton
Written by Robert Lees, Frederic I. Rinaldo and John Grant
Photographed by Charles Van Enger

Dr. Caligari (1989, Stephen Sayadian)

Bearing only the faintest connection to Robert Wiene’s magnum opus, Dr. Caligari shifts gender and mode of transgression to a more seductive milieu, treating the bones of the original as framing for a contemporary burlesque. The design favors the sharp angles and exaggerated scenery of its expressionistic forefather, but employs manipulated sound to enhance its sparse imagery, manifesting a dreamlike, entrancing aura, awash in moist, pastel paint and carnal, Californian excess. The style is self-referential, but the rendition is provocative and surreal, repurposing the trite slang of a dead counterculture and performance art pretense into inflammatory, pornographic pop art.

The artificial nature of Stephen Sayadian’s production, borne of painted stage flats and intentionally stilted performances, enhances the contrast between the revolting and the risible, forcing the audience to reconcile their manic emotional swings. By pairing elements of explicit erotica with delirious visions of human experimentation, Sayadian insinuates menace while eliciting laughter and arousal, exhibiting the uncomfortable relationship between power and sexuality. His methods may be manipulative, but the results are profoundly unsettling, evoking bewilderment and biliousness from a fleshy mass of mouths and orifices, refashioning blue movie fellatio into an act of abhorrent, alien intrusion.

Crude metaphor also lurks in the stupefacient prattle of Sayadian’s characters, each evocative turn of phrase and hollow cliché acting as acerbic comment on the commodification of medicine and culture. Read in a opiated haze and peppered with loquacious psychological terminology, his nympholeptic leads repurpose shock therapy and pharmacology into consumeristic poetry, quivering with delight as they pervert Gray’s Anatomy and dime-store fascism into soft-core kitsch. With each orgasm and histrionic utterance, this stream of comic drivel aligns the hallowed doctor-patient relationship to the vulgarity of prostitution, punctuating the bellows of tortured paranoiacs with the suggestive, guttural foley work of smut cinema.  

Despite the ironic distance struck between the director and the subtextual implications hidden within his material, Dr. Caligari finds a way to insinuate the toxicity of capitalist culture through weeping sarcoma and frenzied withdrawal, likening the scandal and secrecy that obscure human sexual desire to the sorrow of addiction and terminal illness. By standing in contrast to society and cinema’s puritanical restraints, Stephen Sayadian found solace and symbol in the mechanization of fornication, beholding the open secret of adult entertainment as a reflection of the true sexual self, beyond the mores of preference, gender and public perception. Under the guise of morbid curiosity, Sayadian mutated the safety of science-fiction into a prurient prayer, condemning civilization as both sinister joke and libidinal prison.

Dr. Caligari (Steiner Films, 1989)
Directed and Photographed by Stephen Sayadian
Written by Stephen Sayadian and Jerry Stahl

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989, Shinya Tsukamoto)

Scouring industrial rubble like a lustful eye leering at naked flesh, Tetsuo: The Iron Man mutates a sea of knotted wires and rusted screws into a representation of the sexual subconscious, fetishizing moist plumes of steam and the propulsion of pistons as quotidian symbols of obscured desires. Hiding masochistic fantasies behind the pantomime of a monster movie, Shinya Tsukamoto liberates his repressed urges through his performance as “the runner,” employing each vision of a hemorrhaging wound or grisly insertion of phallic machinery as technophilic erotica and coy denunciation of metropolitan automation. Though these contradictions do little to justify the narrative, the frenzy manifested by erratic edits and perpetual motion inspires a second-hand paranoia, lending credence to Tsukamoto’s sweat-soaked, overwrought interpretation of labor, love and libido.

Favoring the brooding manner and frosty electronics of The Terminator over its humanistic inclinations, Tsukamoto strips his dialogue down to greetings and exclamations, personifying the impassive nature of hardware through a tumult of interwoven sex and violence. The vast detritus that functions as set design beholds the menace in the inorganic, imprisoning its characters in claustrophobic spaces, employing subway platforms and minuscule apartments as inescapable torture chambers. The disquiet fostered by this surge of images is magnified immensely by the deafening shriek of the foley work, transforming the welling hiss of locomotives and tracking ripple of video cassettes into an audible, insectile squirm.

Concealed beneath the Sturm und Drang, and tangible only to the strong of stomach, is the existential crisis of a withering body, repurposed from the shards of revenge cinema cliché and reborn as melancholic manga origin story. In opposition to the Western tradition of pious paladins, Tsukamoto exploits the tragedy of adapting to physical abnormality into a bonding experience between his hero and villain, culminating his exercise in audio-visual assault with an entangling of physical forms that dances between grueling effects display and tender scene of sexual congress.  

The moment our warring golems merge is the only recess from feverish instability in Tetsuo, exhibiting two bodies suspended in placental fluid, their torsos drifting near enough to embrace and affirm their carnal allegiance. By marrying the extreme intimacy shared between anger and lust, Shinya Tsukamoto taps into the psychosis that governed the sexual power struggles on display in Ai No Corrida and Last Tango in Paris, abandoning their interest in personal catharsis in favor of physical maelstrom, evincing a disconnected Tokyo through urban decay and exposed viscera.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Palisades Tartan, 1989)
Written and Directed by Shinya Tsukamoto
Photographed by Kei Fujiwara and Shinya Tsukamoto

Forbidden Zone (1980, Richard Elfman)

Brandishing the mayhem and inanity of a Tex Avery short, Forbidden Zone luxuriates in its own scatalogical hobbyhorses, funneling eclectic musical numbers and bursts of herky-jerky animation through the subconscious of a hyperactive schoolboy. Any deviation from this ethos of chaos is in service of skewering narrative cliché, repurposing themes of revenge, honor and love as trite wallpaper atop affected hysterics. Though the transformation of sadism and stereotype from cartoon to camp is ethically questionable, the visual audacity and salacious sexuality on display are provocative and flirtatious, coquettishly luring kitsch culture into the degradation of the red-light district.    

Taking aim at early cinema’s ideological purity, specifically Disney’s putative benevolence and silent cinema’s modesty, Richard Elfman employs their antiquated perceptions of race, religion and orientation as fodder for a carnival of oddities, criticizing their piety without discarding the potency of their derogatory renditions. Benefitting from the benign joviality of outmoded animation and expository intertitles, Elfman’s incendiary visions of minstrelsy and queer identity are a jarring juxtaposition, gleefully perverting American art history into a nightmare of cultural despotism.

Despite the grandeur of his subtextual goals, Elfman’s work functions best as meticulously-designed exploitation, treating pale, nude flesh and shoe polish black as cause célèbre and indicators of a pictorial motif. By selecting black-and-white film stock, Elfman intentionally removes tonal gray area, strategically pigeonholing his two opposing hues as lust and fear, reducing women to their most primal functions and restricting African-American vocabulary to a discourse worthy of Dumbo’s murder of crows. This uncomfortable mélange of political agenda and sensationalism succeeds through its contrasts, provoking the viewer to confront pejorative notions, even as they’re aroused and entertained by them.

On a purely aesthetic level, the absence of color adds an unending depth to vast spaces and a claustrophobic tightness to narrow chambers, constructing a universe within the confines of the discernibly handmade sets. Elfman and cinematographer Gregory Sandor create striking tableaus and abstractions on a modest budget, memorably capturing a rogue’s Last Supper beneath floating human chandelier and a sea of talismanic dice shooting through space and beckoning the viewer towards the Sixth Dimension.

The evanescent nature of the metaphors on screen and caffeinated grooves of Oingo Boingo’s suggestive score all serve at the behest of Richard Elfman’s libido, dragging the bobby socks and Big Band of a bygone America into an adolescent nocturnal emission. Each erotic detail bears the specificity of one man’s fantasy, exhibited before us in the satin evening gloves of a perennially topless princess and a covetous queen’s overflowing bodice. The moment her breasts finally spring free, in the midst of a death rattle, feels like an emancipation, and it’s the liberating power of prurient sexuality that makes this fever dream so infectious. 

Forbidden Zone (The Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1980)
Directed by Richard Elfman
Written by Richard Elfman (story and screenplay), Matthew Bright (screenplay), Nick L. Martinson (screenplay) and Nicholas James (screenplay)
Photographed by Gregory Sandor

Win It All (2017, Joe Swanberg)

Rooted in the local color of Chicago’s dive bars and bowling alleys, Win It All recites its fiction without fabrication, amassing authenticity from its environment and the instincts of its troupe of actors. Where most accounts of ludomania glorify addiction by transporting it to an exotic locale, Joe Swanberg hones in on the triggers next door, ensconcing Eddie (Jake Johnson) in the foggy lowlights of back alley poker halls and racetracks, reflecting his impulsivity in red-hued glare and toppling piles of mottled chips. The ambience is appropriate, but never gratuitous, leaving room for a tale imbued with humor and heart, engrossed by a man willing to wager on happiness, instead of revel in self-perpetuated defeat.

Forfeiting adult routine in the name of momentary exhilaration, Eddie shuns the family landscaping business in favor of nocturnal games of chance, subsisting solely on valet parking tips, scrounged egg sandwiches and musings of the stakes to come. By a twist of fate, a shady associate entrusts him with a duffel bag before a six-month prison bid, promising a windfall of cash if the sack’s contents are left untouched during his incarceration. Envisioning a bounty of loot beneath the zipper, Eddie nervously stashes the tote in an unkempt closet, his face wriggling between fear and elation as ascending drum roll complements his compulsive urges and his hands wrestle to unlatch the zipper’s threads.

Quantifying Eddie’s bipolar shifts in temperament with a tangible number, Joe Swanberg employs an on-screen ticker* that flashes the bag’s remaining balance with each unsolicited cash advance and inevitable loss. The tension garnered by revealing excised portions of the narrative through brisk edits and a fluctuating monetary value draws us closer to the frenzied mindset of the addict, paralleling our voyeuristic suspense to the fleeting glory and enduring guilt of the chronic cardsharp.

Utilizing this formal technique to conjure intimacy and empathy, Swanberg furnishes equal time to Eddie’s small victories, treating passages of tenderness and fortitudinous labor as a symbolic currency that rivals cash. Jake Johnson recognizes the levity beneath the sober implications of their story and endows the lead role with enough charm to unveil the victor beneath the shroud of dependency. His half-joked sincerity bears the instinctual adlibbing that animates Joe Swanberg’s writing and, like Robert Altman before him, Swanberg knows how to coax his performers into the relaxed rhythm of real conversation, asking them to shade in fantasy with the pigment of bonafide experience.

Win It All (Netflix, 2017)
Directed by Joe Swanberg
Written by Jake Johnson and Joe Swanberg
Photographed by Eon Mora

*My wife’s term for the on-screen account balance. Thanks for the help, honey!

Clean and Sober (1988, Glenn Gordon Caron)

Unusually optimistic for an exploration of addiction and recovery, Clean and Sober avoids the fatalism of its kindred spirits by being as candid and confessional as the treatment process, allowing its characters to expose their doubt and guilt without cinematic flourish or arrogant moralizing. It nearly slips into mawkish cliché in its closing passages, capitalizing on audience sentimentality, but takes an abrupt turn towards the painfully pragmatic, illustrating the humility and lucidity needed to reclaim a forfeited life.

Cutting between the panicked scrambling of an ill-fated addict (Michael Keaton) and the temperate reflection of a recovering alcoholic (M. Emmet Walsh), the film utilizes both facets of drug dependency, asserting the potential for rehabilitation over the humiliation of intoxication. Though Keaton’s assertive evocation of excess possesses the sniffling and sweat-drenched mannerisms inherent in stereotype, he never lets them overshadow the selfishness that motivates Daryl, opening the door for the self-reflection that accompanies fear and loss.

The first step to eliminating these opportunistic inclinations is to deny his compulsive behavior, a measure taken with pride by his stern and sarcastic addiction counselor, Craig (Morgan Freeman), who spouts out the word “no” with the righteous indignation of an irritated parent. Their protracted interactions take on the rivalry of sport and Keaton and Freeman revel in the belligerent battle of wits served up by Tod Carroll’s curt prose, tempering their performances to avoid histrionics and sidestep the melodrama that plagues tales of redemption.

Ultimately, Craig’s candor proves too confrontational for Daryl, pushing him to stop trying to sustain an irreparable existence and take responsibility for the friends and family left drowning in his wake. Anxious from the castigation and left without a patsy to ply for contraband or cash, Daryl abandons the soul-searching of the group home and attempts to dive back into the bottle, realizing rock bottom as he hoodwinks his mother into paying off embezzled funds. In a moment of pure serendipity, he accidentally phones his AA sponsor (Walsh) in a frenzied state, agreeing to take a “moral inventory” of his faults and own up to the duplicity that fed his habit and destroyed any semblance of a meaningful relationship.

Glenn Gordon Caron exhibits Daryl’s long road to recovery in ellipses, visualizing self-reflection as vacant stretches of time, previously accelerated by the rush of inebriation and irresponsibility. The quiet conviction is unparalleled in mainstream cinema, depicting readjustment as an impossible task, overshadowed by a yearning that will temporarily cure the interminable loneliness. Passion isn’t even enough to fill this void and the script maturely treats Daryl’s obsession with Charlie (Kathy Baker) as nothing more than a “self-important and conceited” distraction from his own shortcomings. The only solution is acceptance and, as the film comes full circle, Daryl admits to his dependence on alcohol and cocaine, understanding that a new beginning is the best outcome an addict can hope for.

Clean and Sober (Warner Bros. Pictures, 1988)
Directed by Glenn Gordon Caron
Written by Tod Carroll
Photographed by Jan Kiesser

Shame (2011, Steve McQueen)

Assembling its protagonist from stark snapshots of a daily routine, Shame embodies sexual addiction through detached observation, presenting the spindly, compulsive Brandon (Michael Fassbender) without editorializing, exposing the yearning behind his concupiscence by sapping each climax of its satisfaction and passion. The method of documentation is austere and the performances reserved to scarce, subtle glances, but Steve McQueen’s eye for nuance and composure elevate wanton degradation to the heights of Shakespearean tragedy, transforming a life measured in short bursts into a treatise on millennial disconnection.

The appearance of physical health and wealth are the facade that obscures Brandon’s nocturnal escapades, each impulse concealed beneath a shy demeanor and the loquacious boasting of his adulterous employer (James Badge Dale). When liberated from the social and professional constraints of an anonymous corporate career, he manifests his prurient daydreams in games of carnal conquest, engaging potential paramours through understated gesture and amorous stare. McQueen and his team of photographers capture this exchange of body language through fleeting glimpses of crossed legs and moistened lips, revealing infidelity with a gentle pan and the soar of strings, inserting melodrama into the frivolity of casual sex.

Aside from the emotive intonations of the score, the production is as streamlined and spartan as Brandon’s lifestyle, which makes the sudden arrival of an erratic younger sister seem like a jarring and unwelcome intrusion. Sissy (Carey Mulligan) even possesses a fleshly magnetism that coaxes Brandon’s suppressed urges to the surface, transforming their cohabitation into a whirlwind of suggestive altercations and misdirected anger. Nestled just beneath Brandon’s fury and disappointment is a fear of intimacy, manifested by years of impersonal intercourse and the implication of a grim adolescence, personified by Sissy’s juvenility and incompetence.

Sean Bobbitt’s camera is as invasive as Sissy’s need for affection, coldly spying its subject as he nervously eyeballs clocks and bides time until his next release, constructing a photographic prison from the hopeless shards of Brandon’s own gnawing temptations. Fassbender mirrors the visual desperation by treating his subject like an empty vessel, evoking loneliness without words and only springing to life at the rush of blood and wince of orgasm.

Ultimately, Brandon’s inability to perform during a romantic tryst is what exposes his insecurities, transforming his pragmatic opinion on marriage and polyamory into a safeguard from abandonment, stemming from the tacit childhood trauma that lingers in his mind’s eye or memories of his forsaken Irish home. Steve McQueen approaches this anguish clinically, as if reading from a transcript, maintaining a distant and candid viewpoint without ever leering at the fallout of Brandon’s eventual collapse. The bravura with which he handles this delicate subject lends Brandon’s quest for instant gratification a macrocosmic timelessness, reflecting human agony in the face of convenience and accessibility.

Shame (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2011)
Directed by Steve McQueen
Written by Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan
Photographed by Sean Bobbitt

Italian for Beginners (2000, Lone Scherfig)

Daring enough to embrace genre within a movement that despised it, Italian for Beginners ingrains tangible suffering into the American romantic comedy model, balancing the schmaltz of contemporary coupling with an analytical approach to religion, death and alienation. By inserting femininity and whimsy into the claustral doctrine of Dogme 95’s manifesto, Lone Scherfig bridges the gap between the stoic nature of Danish culture and the progressive sexuality of the 21st Century, revealing the intimacy, honesty and faith at the heart of the modern courtship ritual.

Appointing community as the focal point for a sophisticated soap opera, Scherfig unites her solitary souls in a sparsely-populated Italian class, treating each lesson as a symbolic rebirth in the wake of unbearable tragedy. Beneath each character’s sorrowful yearnings and libidinous urges lies the absence of God, personified by a parish without a pastor and an interim priest (Anders W. Berthelsen) in mourning for his late wife. The bitter words of his atheistic predecessor echo throughout the film and torment his spirit, but, through a bout of intraclass infatuation, his conviction grows and he ventures to prove that God is more than “an abstraction.”  

Additional existential threads are woven into this blend of ardor and turmoil, broaching topics as varied as alcoholism and mental illness, building psychic bonds through a shared grief and the proximity of location. Unfortunately, this lack of space contaminates the photography, resulting in tight close-ups and rapid edits that muddle the content of the dialogue, leaving the eye too distracted for the ear to actively listen.

The severity of style also hinders Scherfig’s humorous notions, smothering each pratfall and witty bit of banter in unnecessary formality and inexpressive set dressing. However, the drab decor and bounty of stern glances does benefit the dramatic tone, falling in line with Dogme’s ambitions by showing the veracity in simple gesture and vigorous physicality. As the artifice of its premise wears off, the fidelity of these images takes on a humanistic tenderness and harnesses the film to reality, forgiving the neat conveniences sprinkled throughout the script.

Aside from its convoluted passages, Lone Scherfig utilizes the familiarity built into her source material to dig to subcutaneous emotional levels. By allowing the desperation of her characters to speak for humanity on a grand scale, Scherfig dragged the fantasy of romantic passion into real life, paralleling religion and love through a wellspring of hope and the abandonment of self.

Italian for Beginners (Miramax Films, 2000)
Directed by Lone Scherfig
Written by Maeve Binchy (based on her book “Evening Class”) and Lone Scherfig (screenplay)
Photographed by Jørgen Johansson

Julien Donkey-Boy (1999, Harmony Korine)

Building a narrative from sight and sound instead of story, Julien Donkey-Boy prevails through Harmony Korine’s desire to augment the medium, confronting the formality of fiction with the amateurish and idiosyncratic. His eye for contrast and knack for reanimating outmoded equipment work to democratize the form, conjuring breathtaking images from discarded objects, elevating the smeared color of videotape and harsh light of a Polaroid camera to an ineffable grace. By placing the rudimentary and sophisticated shoulder to shoulder, often through the juxtaposition of arias atop degraded photocopies, Korine redefines beauty, begetting an elegance that lifts the ordinary to the sublime.  

Exhibiting a breathing, impressionistic palette, Korine and Anthony Dod Mantle employ the jaggedness of stop-motion animation to blur each gesture and flicker of light, shifting the focus from the inhabiting action in a scene to its physical appearance. Superimposition also contaminates the frame, reducing structures to shapes and spawning startling, alien landscapes from an amalgam of floating heads and the brittle vertebrae of tree branches.

The low-resolution of the camera often enables Korine’s grimmer tendencies, but efforts are made to embrace the film stock’s static-laden warmth, lending the sunlight a warped reverberance that bathes Korine’s muse (Chloë Sevigny) in an amber halo. The drone of radio waves and Valdís Óskarsdóttir’s spasmodic edits also blanket the composition in messy decadence, reflecting the bewilderment of its lead, Julien (Ewen Bremner), through an assemblage of jump cuts and tinted stills that reproduce the psychosis of schizophrenia.   

Despite the wealth of technique on display, Korine never bastardizes Julien’s disease in the name of style or shock, demonstrating tenderness towards his peers and restraint in the depiction of domestic abuse. Each elaborate use of collage is intended as an exaltation, upholding the optimism and exuberance of the “disabled” cast as opposition to a segregated cinema and shield from parental cruelty, personified on screen by Julien’s intoxicated patriarch (Werner Herzog).

Though the catastrophe of the closing passages possesses a despair at odds with the hopefulness of his ensemble, Korine’s directorial eye is far more benevolent than in previous endeavors, regarding each peculiarity and parlor trick as endearing trait rather than carnival sideshow. Through the rigid tenets of Dogme 95, Korine absolved himself of exploitative tendencies, repurposing his nostalgia for obsolescence into a statement on cultural disenfranchisement and indifference. By gazing upon his subjects with respect and empathy, he treated their lives as worthy of the melodrama of tragedy.

Julien Donkey-Boy (Fine Line Features, 1999)
Written and Directed by Harmony Korine
Photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle

The Idiots (1998, Lars von Trier)

Aspiring to free cinema from the “deadly embrace of sensation,” Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg sought authenticity through obstruction, liberating the form by restricting its access to optical effects, musical cues and narrative tropes. The resulting movement, known as Dogme 95, would strip film culture of its adherence to fantasy, disconnecting from Hollywood escapism and European intellectualism in equal measure, favoring unfettered honesty at the expense of aesthetic superficiality.

Von Trier’s The Idiots bears the mark of this primitivistic ideology from its opening shot, presenting the film’s title in bone white chalk on the planks of a hardwood floor. His photography captures the imperfections of handheld camera work, wavering with the quiver of a palm and settling for off-kilter angles, probing each location based on an actor’s position or the continuous flow of dialogue and sound. Background noise and music infiltrate each scene diegetically, lending a cluttered veracity to sequences filmed in a cafe and succeeding passages of impropriety, emulating the human ear’s ability to interpret multiple frequencies.

Despite the outwardly organic appearance and lack of directorial credit, von Trier still possesses artistic conceits, utilizing a documentary-style framing device to reveal specifics about his esoteric subjects, permitting his stylistic preoccupations to bend the rules of a self-imposed “vow of chastity.” His theme also boasts the impertinence of an instigator, employing the taboo as a metaphor for Dogme’s tenets and noble motivations.

Yet, these infractions feel arbitrary when surveying the finished product, due, in part, to the sentiment lurking beneath the charade and von Trier’s capacity for self-reproach. Using a commune of pranksters as his avatar, von Trier paints auteurs as sadists and liars, finding insincerity and contempt in their provocations and self-serving code of ethics. Though his protagonists treat the public space as their stage, as opposed to the confines of the arthouse, their manipulations are no less sinister, exploiting societal mores for pleasure and money at the expense of human suffering.

“The Idiots” primary mode of expression is “spassing”: an act that entails bellowing like a petulant child, contorting palms and fingers into palsied fists and pounding feverishly at pulsating temples. Von Trier realizes the crudity inherent in this symbol and harnesses its negative energy for many fraught moments, chiefly an awkward restroom vignette where a biker is persuaded to steady the urinating penis of a purportedly disabled teenager.  

Each viewer is permitted to determine the comedic value of these performances and von Trier has positioned Karen (Bodil Jørgensen), his nearly silent lead, as their representative and objective witness. Her permissiveness, despite trepidations about offending the masses, reflects the complicity of the audience, exposing the innate voyeurism of filmic art and immorality of unbiased spectatorship.

Thankfully, the man behind the camera has not freed himself from blame and von Trier’s acts of self-deprecation are far more scathing in their frankness. Stoffer (Jens Albinus) embodies his headstrong temperament and exhibitionist spirit, obscuring a prurient nature beneath a thick haze of rhetoric and bravado. Though he chides bourgeois lifestyles and unearned wealth, he possesses both and survives on a charlatan’s living of confidence scams and familial goodwill. Each act of liberation in his name ultimately denies reality and his desire for control and superiority culminates in a cruel impulse to film and ridicule a party of handicapped visitors.

As penance for his corresponding trespasses, Lars von Trier transforms a vulgar stunt into an act of sacrifice. Appointing Karen as his proxy, he parades her before her estranged family, allowing the misery of a departed son to spring forth in a cathartic “spass.” His camera exalts her and the cinema to sainthood, aligning the blood and wine streaming down her worn face to Christ’s wounds from the crown of thorns, regarding dramatic torment as the purest reflection of actual sorrow.

The Idiots (October Films, 1998)
Written, Directed and Photographed by Lars von Trier

Shine a Light (2008, Martin Scorsese)

Functioning as reverent concert film and abridged history lesson, Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light regards the vigor and passion of The Rolling Stones as emblematic of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s perpetuity, employing their eclecticism and longevity as a rock-solid representation of the genre in its entirety. Though he often confuses controversy and celebrity for substance, captured in his preoccupation with stadium-tour excess, Scorsese never strays far from Keith Richards’ fingers and Mick Jagger’s hips, understanding that the roux for rhythm and blues is the fervent vibration of electric guitar and insinuation built into every sway.

Commencing days before the band takes the stage, Scorsese complicates his narrative by examining the technical aspects of event planning, implying a looseness with grainy, hand-held photography that contradicts the painstaking detail applied to stage lighting and ornamentation. His endorsement of the dubious union between art and politics is also antithetical and inappropriate, diminishing the danger and sexuality inherent in the Stones’ music with every posed photo of President Clinton and on-screen deliberation between financiers.

Thankfully, the performance footage broadens the color spectrum and trains its eye on the entertainers, stranding the reality of the music industry behind the curtain. Robert Richardson’s keen instincts capably capture depth and frame shots in a chaotic environment, evading the glare of spotlights and flash of cell phones to reproduce the emotional bond between performer and audience.

Mick Jagger’s flair for working a crowd into a frenzy is also undiminished by the pageantry of the production design, finding his form and footwork as lissome and flirtatious as it was at the height of the British Invasion. He’s even ushered a sense of humor into the autumn of his life, coquettishly smirking through “Some Girls” funniest verses and playing roué to Christina Aguilera’s sultry chanteuse.

Yet, this propensity for playfulness doesn’t betray a lack of consideration, as Jagger and company have manifested a coherent theme from an array of back-catalog favorites and tried-and-true standards. Pivoting between styles during Scorsese’s montages of archival footage, the boys honor country, soul and blues with intimate renditions and an aesthete's rigor, welcoming Buddy Guy and Jack White to the stage to inject authenticity and juvenility into their guileless interpretations.

A spirited cover of “Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)” finds the band at their most excitable, as each strum of Keith Richard’s low-hanging guitar embodies the “ecstasy” lingering within Barrett Strong’s words and enkindles a nostalgia for the neglected facets of rock history. By championing these forebearers and contemporaries, The Rolling Stones have ushered the form into the 21st Century, supplanting the vapidity of fame with a scholarly approach to the art and sexuality of the recent past, transforming the transitory nature of popular culture into enduring folk tradition.

Shine a Light (Paramount Classics, 2008)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Photographed by Robert Richardson

Cocksucker Blues (1972, Robert Frank)

Suppressed by its subjects and prefaced with half-hearted swatches of legalese, Cocksucker Blues betrays any attempts at authenticity before its opening shot, transforming the backstage shenanigans of The Rolling Stones and their associates into a montage of decadent playacting. Lingering outside of Robert Frank’s camera eye, the Stones play supporting roles as penance for the violence of their Altamont Free Concert, forcing the photographic team to shift focus to the disreputable aspects of the recording industry. Left without a compelling narrative core, Frank can only allude to the band’s tour-borne malaise and repressed guilt, digging for meaning in the monologues and writhing bodies of junkie courtesans and revelrous stagehands.

Emulating the gaunt profiles of the primary cast, the film stock is weather-worn and ragged, stripped of color either by design or through decades of bootlegging and videotape generation loss. Edits are just as frayed, carrying little chronology and interrupting pertinent story threads with incongruous clips of stacked studio equipment and dangling light fixtures. This unseemly clutter even carries over to the natural sound recording, melding cacophonous conversation, background noise and diegetic music into an inaudible sonic puddle.

A staggering compositional indifference smothers the piece entirely, leaving lurid bursts of carnality and drug abuse unrecognizable beneath an amateurish color palette unsuited for observational photography. Nudity functions as the only visual leitmotif and emblem of rebellion for the duo of cinematographers, who leer at the artists in various states of undress, splicing in clips of a roadie coaxing his flaccid member to imply an all-embracing promiscuity. These acts of transgression further develop into a “pornographic party” film, treating oral sex and its biological aftermath as childish provocation and inserting the performers into an airborne orgy that crosses the line between frisky and felonious.

The band’s complicity in these unsimulated sex acts is suspiciously obscured by the camera, lending a dubious nature to each explicit endeavor, directing guilt away from the Stones and towards the prurient glance of the filmmakers. If only this avarice for on-screen orgasms and needle injections carried over to the performance footage, which bears a muddiness and intangibility that distances the viewer from the vigor of each uproarious set and directs their attentions towards Frank’s esteemed objects of revulsion.

By making “band-aids” the primary mouthpiece for Mick Jagger and company, Robert Frank betrayed the band’s trust and implied an immorality and indulgence manifested by disingenuous editing and the veil of journalistic integrity. Left with only fleeting moments of musical majesty and witty repartee, the remaining picture bears the vapidity of a green-room gathering, coasting by on its distant association to cultural prominence.

Cocksucker Blues (Marshall Chess, 1972)
Directed by Robert Frank
Photographed by Robert Frank and Daniel Seymour

Gimme Shelter (1970, Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin)

Bearing the reflexive chronology and confessional introspection of reality television, Gimme Shelter denies the triviality of celebrity exposé, humanizing The Rolling Stones by transforming them from performer to observer, allowing each member to recount fears and frustrations from their seats at the editing bay. The resulting oral history is “behind the scenes” without feeling sanitized, uncovering the ecstasy and exasperation of artistic endeavor in the face of human antipathy.

As hushed and solitary as a police interrogation, the introductory passages preface the dread of the Altamont Free Concert by observing the artists after the fact, capturing the confusion and frustration on Charlie Watts’ face as radio broadcasters and Hells Angels blame his band for the stabbing death of an intoxicated spectator. Unfurling footage from a jovial New York City gig plays silently in the background as ironic counterpoint, perverting the pleasures of a stellar performance into a point of embarrassment, as the participants contemplate the cataclysmic events that would occur within one week of their on-stage extravagance.

The grain of the handheld concert footage is as intimate and tightly-shot as a home movie, soaking up the glow of the stage lighting and reflecting pools of sweat, harnessing the energy beneath the clamor and feedback. Sheltered from portraits of the forthcoming chaos, the viewer is permitted to indulge in the expressiveness of the camera, swaying along with double-exposed snaps of Mick Jagger’s gentle, spiraling motions, kneeling in reverence to the spirituality of a communal, aural experience.  

The Stones also bow to the transfigurative power of music, narcotically bobbing their heads and mouthing the words of “Wild Horses” from beneath wet lips, as the track takes its maiden spin on Muscle Shoals’ four-track mixing console. Glimpsing the impact of the ballad on its creators is incredibly stirring and inclusive, welcoming the audience in as participant instead of voyeur, eliminating the divide between artist and aficionado.

Exposing this vulnerability to their vast fan base would eventually become a curse for The Rolling Stones, despite best intentions. Their goodwill would be exploited and sacristy breached by the drug-addled attendees and self-serving security at Altamont, which was created as a West Coast-variation on Woodstock’s bountiful “good vibes,” but would devolve into a stateside manifestation of the Vietnam War.

Tensions seeped into the euphoric gathering from the moment the Stones disembarked from their chopper, as crowds rushed the dwarven, slapdash stage and bikers struck the interlopers with splintered pool cues. As hedonism and blind rage butted heads and opening acts got caught in the crossfire, Mick pleaded with the crowd to “cool out,” but his yearning fell on the deaf ears of drunken revelers. His vocals even began to emulate the anarchy, as words spewed out in a tortured wail and cymbals clashed behind in utter cacophony.

The conflict culminated during a somber rendition of “Under My Thumb,” as a teenager in a verdant leisure suit directed his pistol at the stage and sunk to the dirt beneath a sea of descending knife blows. As frames of the maelstrom are rewound and scrutinized in slow motion, Mick turns pale with indignation and the image freezes on the chilling vacuousness beneath his eyes. Through this haunting portrait of disillusionment, the Maysles Brothers encapsulated the anxieties of a culture incapable of detaching its ideology from the militaristic temperament of its government.  

Gimme Shelter (20th Century Fox, 1970)
Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin
Photographed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Gary Weis

Case for a Rookie Hangman (1970, Pavel Juráček)

Fracturing its various moods and themes into isolated chapters, Pavel Juráček’s Case for a Rookie Hangman refashions excerpts of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels into a paranoid and disjointed nightmare, indulging fits of farcical humor and surrealistic imagery in the name of sociological discourse. Where Swift intended to disguise his contempt for the scientific and political elite beneath obvious fantasy, Juráček reins in the supernatural aspects, zeroing in on Gulliver’s subconscious guilt and utilizing it as the chief metaphor in his literal trial by jury. The resulting work wavers between madcap and nerve-racking, snickering at man’s attempts at dominion in an absurd world, while admiring each character’s capacity for faith in the face of corruption.

The opening duo of chapters stray the furthest from reality, placing Lemuel Gulliver (Lubomír Kostelka) at the mercy of his environment and the darkest corners of his own mind. Our initial introduction is shot from over his right shoulder, lending access to Gulliver’s perspective and enlivening the humorous and preposterous circumstances that befall him, spearheaded by a speeding car without a driver and a dead rabbit bedecked in a three-piece suit.

The score’s ethereal harp and festive keys imply congeniality, but gradually unfasten into abstract bits of shrill sound, mirroring the macabre tenor of each subsequent section. As memories peek out from Gulliver’s prattling narration, lucid metaphors flood the screen and landscapes shift like the curved glass of a funhouse mirror, manifesting floorboards akin to struck piano keys and ominous structures fit for a Franz Kafka novel.

The leitmotif of Lemuel’s delusional visions is a drowned schoolgirl, either acting as reinterpretation of childhood shame or flicker of repressed sexuality. Pursuing the phantom through the pandemonium of his dream world brings her no closer, but each passing glance and prurient sensation unlocks a facet of his persecution complex, prompting leering faces to peer out from pockets of light in the darkness and descend upon him like a pack of ravenous wolves.  

Tracking shots follow Gulliver’s frantic motion with the ebb and flow of a pendulum, exemplifying fluidity in spite of the anarchic volatility of the narrative. The dialogue is just as unrestrained, pouring forth from Gulliver’s head like a faucet and adding abstract layers of rhetoric atop an already befuddling scenario.

Forthcoming vignettes are far more conventional than the cerebral commencement, stranding Gulliver in a sea of interchangeable characters in realistic settings, examining his culpability before a criminal court in a foreign land. His role as an observer to the contradictory nature of his captive nation’s laws and superstitions lays the base for Pavel Juráček’s incisive tinges of irony, perverting scientists into fundamentalists and kings into woebegotten baggage clerks.

This mélange of sarcasm and symbol can be perplexing, even maddening, but beneath its cynicism lies an understanding of why man makes myths and shelters itself in hope, making Case for a Rookie Hangman an empathetic study in human folly and not an act of condescension.

Case for a Rookie Hangman (Barrandov Studios, 1970)
Directed by Pavel Juráček
Written by Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) and Pavel Juráček (screenplay)
Photographed by Jan Kalis

The Joke (1969, Jaromil Jireš)

Narrated with the remoteness of a passing thought and edited with the swiftness of memory, The Joke wrestles between the mirth of youth and resignation of middle-age, laying bare the narrow divide between love and hate and the fragility of human relationships. By ensnaring beauty and song in the prison of the past, Jaromil Jireš uncovers the swelling rancor within communist Czechoslovakia, revealing student politics as a bourgeois social club held over from the Third Republic, corrupt in its blind faith and detached positivity.

Repurposing the revenge thriller as wistful rumination, Jireš exchanges the prerequisite rage for mournful misanthropy, permeating the dejected Ludvik’s (Josef Somr) notions with poetic turns of phrase, transforming his sarcastic barbs into acts of opposition. Passages of reminiscence even carry a whiff of this sardonic subjectivity, morphing communal events into a singular, bitter mindset, further intensifying revelations of betrayal and collusion.

Enkindled by a chance encounter with an ex-comrade’s spouse (Jana Dítětová), Ludvik plots a game of sexual humiliation to compensate for a decade of ostracization, reliving his college years in panicked flashes that pour over into the banality of adulthood. As sentiments from his hopeful past rush into the bleak present, Jireš expounds upon the permanence of Ludvik’s expulsion from the Communist Party, constructing a broken character from the taunts of his harshest critics and scars of his most traumatic experiences.

The cruelty of Ludvik’s memory, which maliciously inserts his middle-aged body into adolescence like a thorn, wholly contaminates the form, introducing acerbic irony into the anthems of yesteryear, perverting them as the soundtrack for aberrant sex and chain gang labor. This juxtaposition not only stirs up a sober, unsettling ambience, but exposes the hypocrisies inherent in socialism, exhibiting the chasm between the privileges of the educated elite and the desperation of the working poor with each edit between hymn and hardship.

This fatalistic approach deliberately drains politics and vengeance of their cinematic intrigue, leaving behind a diatonic, acrimonious declaration of human disconnection. Its lack of paranoid hysterics and mercurial lighting, which benefited kindred spirits like The Ear, nurtures thematic continuity at the expense of rising action, stranding the narrative in a metaphorical limbo without the capacity to illustrate its intellectual conceits on screen. Left without an emotional or visual anchor, astute points about the treachery of nostalgia and persistence of social class are trapped behind glass, suffocated beneath the scowl of a stone-faced gallery piece.

The Joke (Barrandov Studios, 1969)
Directed by Jaromil Jireš
Written by Milan Kundera (novel/screenplay), Jaromil Jireš (screenplay) and Zdeněk Bláha (dramaturge)
Photographed by Jan Curík