Rivette and Straub

Background on two directors

In the 1960s Jean-Luc Godard, established himself as a seminal influence on film, by being the first director to make cinema itself his subject. For him, a thing exists because a lens (camera or eye) can be trained on it. His films are the birth pangs of an approach which says art doesn't mirror life — life is art. The recent work of two major developers of this approach will be screened in the current festival. (I must admit at the outset to having seen only two of Rivette's films and none of Straub's; much of what follows has been gleaned from sources listed below.) Jacques Rivette: b1928; onetime critic of the Cahiers du Cinema group; seven features since 1960; recent released work L'Amour Fou (68), Out One/Spectre (73), Celine and Julie Go Boating (74), Duelle/Twhylight (76).

Rivette's latest film is a contemporary version of a non-existent myth. This apparently simple fact is an excellent paradigm of his work, for Rivette has been the first filmmaker credited with inventing everything. "Celine and Julie" has been called for this reason "the most important film since "Citizen Kane", the film which has best discovered the future of cinema. Those remarks were made a year before "Duelle". As Rivette's films have apparently been each more adventurous and exciting than the last, it is not unreasonable to suppose the process has continued.

Certainly the idea of a non-existent myth suggests this. In four of the first five films a play has been in rehearsal. The interplay of 'screen reality' and 'fiction' would therefore seem to be a major concern. Maybe for most other directors, not for Rivette.

In "L'Amour Fou" the female lead in the film rejects the lead role in the play her husband is directing. Alone in their apartment she finds she now lacks the order end creative involvement which had given her life purpose. Life, she finds, stems from art because art had been the essential sanity of her life. The 'fiction' (the play) had been the reality.

Rivette's plays-in-progress never reach performance. Although this means his characters never have a chance to 'succeed', to create an end product, they do retain their powers of choice, freedom and development.

"Celine and Julie" takes these structures/themes even further. There is no play; instead the exploits of two women who visit a mysterious house several times by turns. Each plays the same role of a maid in a macabre, slightly advancing story involving two other women vying for the love of a man who has sworn to his now deceased wife he will not remarry while their child lives. The maid has to stop the women killing the child. When whichever of the first pair it is leaves the house she can remember nothing, but by eating a piece of candy she finds on her tongue the scene is played out before her.

From this much it might seem that events in the house function as a kind of fictional counterpoint to the reality of the outside world. However events outside are no less mysterious than those inside. Both Celine and Julie are given to fantasy (one is into the Tarot, the other is a magician). The candy functions rather as a link between two fictional worlds. The two enter the house together and abduct the child. Thinking they have saved her they go for a boat ride, only to find the house's inmates gliding past the other way.

Such a summary cannot possibly do the film justice, which is directly to the point. Because "Celine and Julie" defines all its own terms it is not, finally, subject to external analysis. There is no proper logical storyline or meaning to be exposed. The associations a viewer can make are labyrinthine in their dimensions. Rivette has said that what you see is " there for you it's your film." Not that we may be wrong in what we extract from the work, for he has established a structure from which we understand, and in a sense even create our own films.

The presence of the house's inmates in the outside world suggests that even if reality is thought to exist it is controlled by fiction. Analogically, and because our participation is asked, "Rivette's films declare the readiness of cinema to replace rather than represent life."

An unreleased 13-hour film ("Out One") was begun with no concept of its final shape. It contains, as if to warn us, two sorts of investigators. One is obsessed with unravelling all the cryptic clues concerning the existence of a secret society, and gets practically nowhere. The other dismisses as elaborate games the group's complexities, and suffers chronic boredom as a result. The group exists but may not be active. We must approach Rivette's work from a position somewhere between these two extremes.

Like the ever-rehearsing plays, these films are usually long. They are "the unstable coinage of communication or experience," subjected to a refractory process which commingles all their elements, drawing us into the totally filmic experience. (" Out One" had cut from it "Out one/Spectre," the latter word being French for 'spectrum'). They are structured, but none has a single structure.

"Celine and Julie's" original title is "Celine et Julie vont en bateau". There is a play on 'Monter en bateau', which is to tell someone a complicated story and have them believe you; and on 'Aller en bateau', which is to be caught up in a story you're being told. "Cinema", says Rivette, "is designed to capture the unexpected."

What is the point of all this? one might ask. The answer is existential. The characters of "L'Amour Fou" are poised looking into the void. Art, although paradoxes do exist, is the only means they have to stay out of it. Rivette's other films are apparently similarly concerned with existential horror. "Celine and Julie" however, offers the best resolution of all. The process of creation has always been, for Rivette, man's saving grace. In this latter film the process is absolutely intoxicating, for the director, for the actors (who share the writing and structuring in most of Rivette's work), and for us. Those moments it contains are subsumed in the comedic mode. On top of everything else the final scene suggests is the idea that choice, and with it freedom, have been totally extended. 'Fictionalisation', the process of giving something significance becomes the very essence of life. Hence the eventual use of a non-existent myth.

"Duelle/Twhylight" concerns the efforts of two goddesses who compete to possess a fabulous diamond called the Fairy Godmother. This diamond gives its owner the power to stay on earth longer than the appointed forty days. On one level it is a mock 30s detective thriller, on another an analogy to the film world, where the goddesses (like moviestars) want to become human and the mortals (like fans) identify with them on screen, where the diamond is film itself. Once again, the name provides clues to its complexity. 'Duelle' is the feminine form of a masculine word. Twhylight', the English title, moves from the idea of dusk, through 'why twilight', to just 'why', to 'why light' and finally to light, or dawn. The goddesses, it must be added, are of the Sun and Moon.

"Duelle" is a "myth-in-progress constructed moment by moment by a variety of auteurs out of a diversity of sources-organised by one individual who allows for elements of chance ( an impoverished pianist) as well as control (scripted dialogue) to dictate the terms of that organisation."

Myth is a way of looking at the world, of fulfilling our demand for order in it. Paraphrasing a critic, it would seem Rivette's world is too unstable for such a procedure; the myth of "Duelle" refers ahead to truths existing beyond the reality (or lack of it) in the film, rather than being based on something gone before. "Duelle" reactivates our belief in myth but refuses to satisfy our demands of it.

Rivette has been compared to Lewis Carroll, Borges, Thomas Pynchon and Ornette Coleman. For my money, "Celine and Julie" is not unlike "Waiting for Godot", if you can imagine Vladimir and Estragon sincerely transcending their situation by humour and fulfilment through action. Rivette's importance to film may also prove to be not unlike Beckett's to theatre.

Jean-Marie Straub: b1933 in Lorraine; early work in Paris under Abel Gance, Renoir, Rivette, Astruc and Bresson; married his collaborator Daniele Huillet; ten years in Munich associated with the new German cinema group; now living in Italy. Four features and three shorts since 1963; latest film "Moses and Aaron" (75).

"Films," says Straub, "must have their roots in documentary. Only when each element of the film is true, correct, can one then rise above documentary to aim at something higher." Even when he uses the work of another artist as his starting point he treats it as "documentary raw material." "Moses and Aaron" is faithful to the Schoenburg opera even down to the stage directions. Yet although he "reasserts reality and hopes only to record it," Straub's films stand completely by themselves, to be approached in their own filmic terms. The visuals of this latest work do not "compete with the music, or even 'express' it," each stands in equal relationship to the other. The Vising higher is what counts.

He uses no professional actors, and insists his casts speak in monotones. Sound, be it words or music, is treated as an objective element of film. Meaning is created not by psychological study, but through a kind of distancing which does not allow us emotional involvement, forcing us to consider the materialist situations of the characters. Lack of adornment, in the use of direct sound, bare walls, minimal camera movement, is the 'realistic' base.

Straub has defined cinema as "the application of space to time." Rhythm is the key to his work allowing us to consider each shot, each scene as an autonomous whole yet propelling us forward to the next. Elliptical time jumps deliberately obscure the narrative, so that by responding to me fundamental compositional elements of light, shape, movement and sound we ourselves participate in putting everything together. (Similarities with Rivette — notably the requirements placed or the viewer — and direct contrasts — austerity vs, richness, non-acting vs. love of performance both abound).

The initial idea for making "Moses and Aaron dates back to 1959, when Straub and Oaniele Huillet saw the opera in Berlin end were totally opposed to the staging. Straub calls himself a Marxist yet sees Schoenburg's opera as anti-Marxist, although not non-Marxist. "It seems clear to me," he said before shooting, "that the opera is about the dialectical relationships between Moses and Aaron, but only on the first level. In [unclear: tl] end it will be a Mm on Moses and Aaron in [unclear: relation] ship to the chorus, the people...I want the [unclear: singers] to sing as they act, to sing in the desert; in [unclear: other] words to do the opera in the most materialistic [unclear: w] possible."

That first level dialectic is between the Idea (Moses) and the People (Aaron). Moses is the [unclear: ma] with the vision of purity, of truth, which he [unclear: cannot] communicate; Aaron is his voice. Moses leads the people into the wilderness, Aaron looks after them.

Schoenburg never completed his twelve-tone masterpiece. Final triumph of abstract thought over inadequate image may have proved inexpressible; the strength of the work is not its philosophical outcome but the vibrant musical power of the [unclear: ce ectic].

Straub and Huillet have created from it "a film in which every cut, every framing, every camera movement counts for so much, a film whose expressive terseness and rich economy of means recalls a seminal modern poet like T.S. Eliot."

The festival booklet contains more details on "Moses and Aaron" and "Duelle." Rivette and Straub owe their significance to the totally filmic beauty and expression of their work. In the end they frustrate the analyst and richly reward the viewer.

—Simon Wilson

Wild Man

Directed by Geoff Murphy

Plaza Theatre

In the bad old days, those good old days of film, craving for entertainment was almost as rampant as fear of being tricked. If an unknown man with a streak of the practised ringmaster arrives in town with the most dangerous man in the world," and offers £20 to the person who can beat this wild man in a fight, suspicions and curiosity are inevitably aroused. And if the town does have a champion......

So much for the story. "Wild Man" works best when it is closest in touch with the basic characteristic of film: the interaction of sound and visual images. In this respect Blerta's music and the beautiful West Coast scenery set the tone. We are returned to them again and again not because they symbolise anything, but simply because it is in the nature of film that this can happen. Meaning, inasmuch as it suggest people can be nasty, is not important.

The deliberate simplicity of the plot is in line with this. Cast in the familiar NZ short story mould/with an ironic twist at the end to emphasize it is nothing more) it steers well clear of psychological study and complex character interrelationships. Plot is a springboard, a means of establishing a certain number of scenes in which the action itself, or the actors, of the musicians, and of the camera, editing etc, is what matters. Those rugged green hills involve you in the sound of the saxophone; a fast-motion shot of the local idiot dancing in anguish on the road lends itself to Bruno Lawrence's drumming, and vice versa.

Shots of a woman undressing are totally gratuitous to the story, and are meant to be. When later we see her in the bath and in bursts a man, come not to seduce her but in a mad search for a chicken, the significance is revealed Spoof on "Butch Cassidy" is part of it, frustration of our preconception so that we are forced to look at cinema in a new way is the underlying principle.

The trouble is that this tendency away from the narrative is not taken far enough, or conversely, several narrative traits stand in the way of the film's full realisation. Chronology, for example, is strictly observed. Vet because no real tension or expectancy over the outcome of the fight is developed this fidelity to 'reality' hardly serves any purpose.

Of course there are pragmatic reasons why all this is so. Some parts have obviously been written specifically because certain actors were availabe (John Clarke's cameo as Or. Frederick Z. Daggenheimer is the most apparent). The film is, in one sense, about the actors in it, which is a healthy approach.

Resources also played their part. One of the characters has a deep seated hatred of travelling charlatans. We keep expecting him to interrupt the flow of the narrative or start controlling it. He never does. His importance is in himself, in his one arm and one eye, his prowess with the whip and his propensity for falling in the mud. He isn't farcical, but his is something of a parody on nastiness. If he, and some others, hover uncomfortably between the realms of story and individual entity I suspect this is mainly because there wasn't enough cash to spend shooting time developing them further.

Perhaps as a result of this money/time imposed necessary condensation, some very fine multi-levelled suggestions are made. In one sequence Bruno Lawrence drives his can hell for leather along the road, in shots containine a variety of weather conditions. This can be seen as an unlikely discrepancy or as a means of showing us one piece of action while simultaneously evoking the long time spent travelling, or as an irrelevancy in the face of camera-captured 'truth'. Director Geoff Murphy is in no way the first to adopt any of these attitudes.

The only drawback in Lawrence's enthusiastic performance as the wild man is his habit of smiling at the camera. Pink gums and well looked after teeth jar on the muddy, bloody effect we are supposed, in part, to be drawn into. The other leads — Ian Watkin, Martyn Sanderson, Tony Barry, Bill Stalker— are all in proper control, while Pat Bleakley makes a very personable idiot.

'Dagg Day Afternoon', running on the same bill, is constructed along the same lines as Wild man. John Clarke and Michael Wilson use something approaching a coherent story to spread around ample portions of their humourous selves. Parts of it are delightfully surprising; Dagg fans won't be disappointed.

This package is the most worthwhile entertainment in the commercial cinemas at the moment.

— Simon Wilson

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[unclear: The] Front

[unclear: Directed] by Martin Ritt

[unclear: Regent] Theatre

The idea for this film must have been sitting the back of the mind of screenwriter Walter [unclear: nstein] for a long time. Berstein, you see, was [unclear: e] of those writers forced out of his job by the Carthy witchhunts of the 1950's, and in order survive as a human being and in his occupation found himself in the bitter position for eight! [unclear: ers] of writing scripts and having them submittee the name of another person. That other person what a front was, someone with an impeccable [unclear: cord] of political non-involvement, through [unclear: om] a blacklisted writer could channel his work.

Most of what we see in this film actually took [unclear: ice], for Bernstein, for actor Zero Mostel, for [unclear: ector] Martin Ritt and for countless others. [unclear: he] Front' lifts the lid and shows what happened, [unclear: d] those involved in making 'The Front' have [unclear: ery] right to be bitter and vindictive about their [unclear: oject], yet the film has the grace to avoid a [unclear: arsely] emotional and hence ineffective [unclear: pression]. For it manages to articulate its ideas a low key and almost light-hearted manner, [unclear: otivated] nevertheless by a deep personal familiarity with the subject. But it would be wrong to say that ideas are at work here; in fact the political implications are never directly argued. They are brought into relief by the characters themselves, on whom the film concentrates.

'The Front' is Howard Prince (Woody Allen), a cashier end part-time bookmaker who is by his own admission, well nigh illiterate. An unlikely hero? Perhaps, To continue, old school friend Alfred Miller (Michael Murphy) calls upon Prince to ask him a favour — that is, to act as a front for the writer, to take credit for the scripts that Miller produces. Prince agrees to do so as a favour and for 10% of the earnings. Eventually he has three writers 'working' for him and his success with both the television producer (Herschel Bernardi) and public ensures him overnight fame. As a result he assumes the not altogether convincing figurative gait of a writer, with results that provide for the odd embarrassing situation. (Asked about the realness of the people in the plays, Allen as Prince fumbles a reply: "Well, if you're going to write about human beings you may as well make them people"). Things go allright for a while : money rolls in; he succeeds in falling in love with Florence (Andrea Marcovicci), the scripteditor; his new confidence even allows him to reflect a script by one of the blacklisted writers because Prince thought it not good enough for his reputation!

But Prince's success is really a house of cards built on shifting ground. Before he eventually falls prey to the same fate as the writers however, there is a stage of slow realisation that must be played out for him. At the television studio is an actor, a gruff, bloated and altogether human figure called Hecky Brown (played from the heart by Zero Mostel). Hecky is both a comic and tragic character who made a 'mistake' a few years back in that he marched in a May Day parade. When questioned by an authority figure he will not or cannot say who else was in the march. So he loses his job. Hecky and Prince strike up an unusual friendhsip. Hecky does so in order to spy on Prince, the relaying back to the authorities of his observations serving as a springboard for Hecky's return to work. But in the end he cannot do so and the pressure is enough to make him commit suicide. This, for Prince, marks the point of realisation that will culminate and find its outlet when he is brought before a Congressional subcommittee of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

The narrative is simple and one can almost detect a romanticism that has us watch Howard Prince develop from naivety through to awareness (and later martyrdom). But there is little that is crass or sentimental in 'The Front' and this is due to Bernstein's strong screenplay which, with consistently good acting from the entire cast, reveals subtleties far beyond the confines of the plot. In the trial scene for example, the simple question asked of Prince, "Did you know Hecky Brown? ", takes on a significance that outweighs an elementary yes or no reply. To say yes will admit to an illogical guilt and place him in the power of those who wish to destroy him; to say no would be a grave travesty of conscience — to deny Hecky's belief, he may as well join the panel of government inquisitors. At this point the film need acquire no more momentum from the screenplay. One has sensed the anger simmering throughout. Prince gets up out of his chair and gives vent to the passion that all the proceeding dialogue has been allowed only to express mutely. Ho goes over to the members of the subcommittee and adresses them: "You can all go and fuck yourselves! "

Martin Ritt's style is similar to Elia Kazan's: the camera is a fixed object that pans only to follow the movement of the actors and composition relies entirely upon the human figures. One feels that television would serve as a better medium for this film. Its abundant close-ups, its dialogue orientated structure and the camera's extreme objectivity are perhaps inappropriate for cinema. Television would certainly give the film the audience it deserves.

Zero Mostel really puts in a memorable performance. Many of the incidents (eg. the $250 show) were actually taken from his real-life experiences. This is Andrea Marcovicci's first film — hers is a graceful and intelligent performance, not at all camera conscious. As for Woody Allen, it takes me a while to get used to his twitchy and gesticulatory style of acting but then again he is one of the screen's most likeable types. His contribution is invaluable. All are brought together under the sensitive hand of director Martin Ritt, whose decision to fix the focus of attention completely upon his actors has been a correct one.

The Front' leaves an impression as a film made compassionately and purposefully. It is still difficult to imagine just how such persecution could have occured in the 'free' society of America within the last 25 years. People have short memories, and need to be reminded of McCarthy as much as they do of Washington or Lincoln. Let's hope the history lesson doesn't stop here. David Beresford.