sign in sign up
<<
Home , Akira Kurosawa, Bobby Roth, Branded to Kill, Bryan Singer, Delphine Seyrig, Denys Arcand

AIN’T NO SUNSHINE The Cinema in 2003

Larry Qualls and Daryl Chin

s 2003 came to a close, the usual plethora of critics’ awards found themselves usurped by the decision of the Motion Picture Producers Association of A America to disallow the distribution of screeners to its members, and to any organization which adheres to MPAA guidelines (which includes the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences). This became the rallying cry of the Independent Feature Project, as those producers who had created some of the most notable “independent” films of the year tried to find a way to guarantee visibility during award season. This issue soon swamped all discussions of year-end appraisals, as everyone, from critics to filmmakers to studio executives, seemed to weigh in with an opinion on the matter of screeners.

Yet, despite this media tempest, the actual situation of film continues to be precarious. As an example, in the summer of 2003 the distribution of films proved even more restrictive, as theatres throughout the were block-booked with the endless cycle of sequels that came from the studios ( 2, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Terminator 3, The Matrix Revolutions, X-2: X-Men United, etc.). A number of smaller films, such as the nature documentary Winged Migration and the New Zealand coming-of-age saga Whale Rider, managed to infiltrate the summer doldrums, but the continued conglomeration of distribution and exhibition has brought the motion picture industry to a stultifying crisis. And the issue of the screeners was the rallying cry for those working on the fringes of the industry, the “independent” producers and directors and small distributors. Of course, it helped that the issue became a point of contention that was able to unify many disparate groups, from on down to the Independent Feature Project [see PAJ 76]. But for those filmmakers who were making truly independent films, the issue of whether or not their films would get any sort of notice from the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences was moot, almost a diversionary tactic to wrest attention from issues of quality, merit, value.

By the end of the year, after all the dust had settled on the terrain of the past year, most critics agreed that 2003 hadn’t been such a bad year after all. The usual critics’ awards were announced, the annual ten-best lists were published, and the consensus was that had been able to find ways for talent to flourish. In a matter of

26 ᭿ PAJ 77 (2004), pp. 26–39. © 2004 Performing Arts Journal, Inc.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 a few weeks, the crisis regarding screeners, the industry’s fears regarding piracy, the outcry from independent producers and small distributors, had abated almost as quickly as it had erupted, as if a terrible calm had ensued after a natural disaster. A serious examination of the situation of the movies, however, reveals that there is a fundamental transformation occurring, not just in terms of the actual medium, but in terms of how movies are seen and experienced.

Obviously, the transformation of digital media has had enormous impact. One change which has not been much discussed has been the shift in the idea of theatrical presentation. Just as live theatre was altered in the last century, as the arena for drama contracted because of its increasing marginalization as a primary public forum, theatres became smaller, acting concentrated on interior process rather than exterior projection, and playwrights focused on psychological rather than social concerns, so cinema has found itself similarly transformed, only what had taken a gradual in at least half a century has been speeded up to less than a decade. The ubiquity of the home video market, first with VHS tapes and now with DVDs, has brought about a collapse of distinction, so that a large part of the audience does not see the difference between watching a movie as a social event, where one attends with others in a theatrical setting, and watching a movie as a solitary occurrence, while in the comfort and the confines of home.

There is so much to say about the ways movies have changed, not just in terms of visual clarity and image depth, but in terms of the very idea of movies as a mass medium. Over and over, in all the most thoughtful commentaries on the movies written during the twentieth century, there is the idea that the movies will provide a way for the best of the arts to reach the widest possible audience. By the , the box office success of such films as Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966), Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), or Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969) seemed to indicate that the mass audience could turn out for accomplished films with varying degrees of sophistica- tion and difficulty. Yet the increasing split, between the art audiences and the mass audience, continued, with an accelerating splintering even among art house audiences, as the mass audience was treated to a greater leveling, and specialty audiences were identified and catered to as smaller and smaller niches.

During the 1960s, there were art houses and specialty cinemas in every major American city, and there were even (small) theatre chains which sought out art fare. Increasingly, by the 1990s, art houses and specialty cinemas closed, to be replaced by corporate multiplexes, which could not accommodate product from independent sources. This is something that is well known, but it becomes clearer when you meet people from outside those few metropolises which continue to have multiple options for cinematic presentation. To anyone with access to international film, there are certain names that denote significant careers—, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Aki Kaurismaki, Im Kwon-taek, Catherine Breillat. Yet, whereas once general audiences were expected to have some knowledge of , , and , now even the educated audience cannot be expected to know who , Patrice Chereau, and Amir Naderi are, if

QUALLS and CHIN / Ain’t No Sunshine ᭿ 27

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 Zoe Logan, Alexis Arquette, and Steve Braun in The queer-L.A. punk romance Luster, The Trip, a film by Miles Swain depicting a gay directed by Everett Lewis. Photo: couple in during the and Courtesy TLA Releasing. 1980s. Photo: Courtesy TLA Releasing.

Under One Roof, an interracial gay romance Anna May Wong in Piccadilly, the 1929 directed by Todd Wilson. Photo: Courtesy film by E.A. Dupont. Photo: Courtesy TLA Releasing. Milestone Films.

Nafas-E Amigh [Deep Breath] by the Jylama [Don’t Cry], a digital feature from Iranian filmmaker Parviz Shabazi. Photo: Kazakhstan directed by Amir Karakulov. Courtesy Montréal World . Photo: Courtesy Montréal World Film Festival.

28 ᭿ PAJ 77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 there is no possibility of their work finding any sort of theatrical engagement in most American cities, even though Akerman, Chereau and Naderi have all made films in English.

The situation of the independent specialty cinema might be clarified by taking the example of several such theatres in , in particular, Film Forum, Cinema Village, and The Pioneer Theatre. In all three cases, digital projection has been installed, which has allowed for greater possibilities for screenings. But what is being shown? What type of programming is being done by independent theatres, and is it enough to counteract the crush of commercial product? Rather obviously, one of the most important options for programming relates to works on digital video. Frequently, these works are documentaries. Liz Garbus, for example, was able to make several documentaries which were shown this year, such as The Nazi Officer’s Wife and Girlhood; though the subjects were fascinating, Girlhood could be seen as an example of the dangers inherent in the usage of digital video, as the ease of recording allowed for a work to be made without sufficient research. The incredible personalism allowed by digital video could be a liability, yet it proved to be the chief virtue of Josh Pais’s 7th Street, a documentary on the gentrification of 7th Street between Avenues A and C in Manhattan, as Pais recorded the changes in the neighborhood in which he has lived since childhood. Because of digital projection, independent venues such as the Pioneer Theatre, Cinema Village, and Film Forum were able to show these works without the need for filmic transfers, thus easing the post-production costs for these small documentaries.

In terms of distribution, some prominent small distributors have made the decision to focus their distribution efforts on the home video market, allowing for brief theatrical runs in some major markets (New York City, Los Angeles, ), but aggressively pursuing the home video market (in VHS and DVD). This is the primary marketing strategy of Film Movement (www.filmmovement.com), which was started by some of the partners in The Shooting Gallery [see PAJ 74], the small production and distribution company which became a major force in independent film of the 1990s but had overextended by the end of the decade. With Film Movement, the hope is that by concentrating on home video distribution rather than theatrical presentation, there will be a more cost-effective way to distribute notable foreign and independent titles. The short theatrical runs are for the purpose of getting the films reviewed, thus enhancing the renown of the films in the collection.

A number of distributors have embarked on similar strategies. Media Blasters, for instance, is a company which has specialized in foreign titles for the home video market; one of the notable films which Media Blasters distributed in 2003 was ’s , a wildly inventive film about a female assassin. This was Suzuki, a venerable Japanese genre filmmaker whose films include Drifter and , directing his first film since 1993. (Previously, Suzuki had been one of the most prolific of Japanese filmmakers, creating over fifty films since 1956; in 1961, his most productive year, he directed seven feature films.) Though the plot

QUALLS and CHIN / Ain’t No Sunshine ᭿ 29

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 became increasingly opaque, there can be no denying the immense visual imagina- tion to be found in Pistol Opera.

For TLA Releasing (www.tlareleasing.com), the initial operation was as a store in Philadelphia specializing in home video rentals and sales, including many “niche” titles not widely available in the large chain stores. By now, TLA Releasing has grown to include stores nationwide, and a growing library of titles for distribution, both theatrical and home video. One of TLA’s strategies has been to take some of the notable independent gay feature films making the festival circuit, and providing them with a specialized theatrical release and then a home video release nationwide. Some of the titles which have benefited from TLA’s distribution include Todd Wilson’s digital feature Under One Roof, Gary Wicks’s Endgame (from England), Everett Lewis’s “queercore” romance Luster, and Miles Swain’s romantic The Trip. Having established credentials as a source for and gay fare in the wake of the of the early 1990s, TLA has continued to build on its market, and has been able to bring intriguing lesbian and gay features to audiences beyond the gay film festival circuit through home video distribution. TLA has been trying to add titles for home video distribution of foreign films; the tendency there has been to include genre works, such as ’s “splatter” mystery Suicide Club (from ) or Davide Ferrario’s road caper Children of Hannibal (from ). TLA also operates the Philadelphia Film Society, which presents such film exhibitions as the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Of all the small distributors in the last decade, Milestone (www.milestonefilms.com) has stood out for its very specific focus: the primary interest has been in the distribution of restored classic cinema, particularly (though not exclusively) from the silent era. Milestone is in transition, as it shifts from a focus on theatrical distribution to a commitment to home video distribution. It is now making available a number of important, if often little-known, classic films to what is hoped will be a steady audience. In 2003, for example, in association with the National Film Board of Canada, Milestone was able to present on DVD Norman McLaren: The Collector’s Edition (one of the most sumptuous editions imaginable, with a book, incredible extras, as well as absolutely pristine transfers of this master animator’s films) and Cut-Up: The Films of Grant Munro, an excellent collection of one of McLaren’s associates, with films displaying an astounding variety of techniques. Perhaps Milestone’s most impressive achievement has been the dedication to classic cinema, as exemplified by the DVD release of ’s beautiful 1937 feature The Edge of the World, with extras that include the short follow-up film Return to the Edge of the World, the short An Airman’s Letter to His Mother, and a fascinating . Though the experience of home viewing can never match that of a full theatrical viewing, this has proven to be Milestone’s way of trying to find a means to connect with audiences, given the precarious nature of revival and repertory cinemas. There are always treasures to be found from Milestone, including documentaries about unusual aspects of movie history, such as Without Lying Down, a documentary about the Frances

30 ᭿ PAJ 77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 Marion, directed by Bridget Terry from Cari Beauchamp’s book, or Henri-Georges Clouzot’s utterly enthralling documentary of Picasso at work, The Mystery of Picasso. In addition, there were restored versions of such important early works as Mad Love: The Films of Evgeni Bauer, a collection of pre-Soviet Russian films from 1913–1916, La Terre, a feature film from 1921 shot outside the studio by Andre Antoine, and a collection of comedy shorts featuring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle’s The Cook and Other Treasures. At this year’s New York Film Festival, a special presentation was done of E.A. Dupont’s 1928 silent feature, Piccadilly, a set in the world of London’s nightclubs and ethnic neighborhoods. One highlight of the film was the star-making performance by the Asian-American actress Anna May Wong; Mile- stone intends to release the restored print, with a new musical score, for theatrical revival in early 2004 and then on home video.

If home video seems to be a way to provide distribution possibilities for indepen- dent, foreign, specialty, and classic cinema, there are still venues dedicated to advancing film as a theatrical experience. Of course, this is particularly true of film festivals, where part of the excitement is to be in an enthusiastic audience, sharing in the discovery of unexpected talent. As indicated, one problem is that so much work in the independent cinema is now being made using digital video. Additionally, whole national cinemas seem to have adopted digital video as a creative standard; this was certainly true of Sweden and Denmark, though Lars Van Trier’s last film, , was shot on 35-mm film. The problem of digital projection is one that is reaching a crisis point for many major festivals. The Film Festival, long noted for its support for independent cinema, has been struggling because of the inability to show works in digital projection. (The problem is that the budget for the festival does not include funds for technical equipment; at this time, the theatres which are used for the festival do not have digital projection.) This has been acutely difficult for sections such as the Forum, long noted for showing experimental and independent work.

In North America, the Montréal World Film Festival has been embattled, trying to define itself against its major rival, the Toronto Film Festival. This past year, Serge Losique decided to change the dates of the Montréal World Film Festival so that it would overlap with the Toronto Film Festival. These dates—August 27 through September 7—proved to be ill-considered, because this change only served to accentuate the rivalry between the two major Canadian festivals. Toronto, with its continuing association with the American motion picture industry, turned out to have the advantage in terms of international press attention and celebrities. Be that as it may, since 2000, the Montréal World Film Festival has been one of the only major festivals which has embraced the new technology of digital video. Though the films in competition were supposed to be in 35-mm or 16-mm, in 2002 Raul Ruiz’s competition entry, Cofralandes, Rapsodia Chilena, an essay on South American politics, was made and shown on digital video. Now, the Montréal World Film Festival makes sure that there is digital projection installed in several of the screening sites used for the festival. Quite frankly, this should be one of the major selling points, because so many independent filmmakers have now turned to digital video

QUALLS and CHIN / Ain’t No Sunshine ᭿ 31

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 Ashura No Gotoku [Like Asura], a film by the This Girl’s Life, a film depicting the world of Japanese director . Photo: internet porn by the London-born Courtesy Montréal World Film Festival. Los Angeles director Ash. Photo: Courtesy Montréal World Film Festival.

Alicia Miles and John Robinson in Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang’s ’s Elephant. Photo: Courtesy Goodbye Dragon Inn. Photo: Courtesy HBO Films/Fine Line Features. Film Society of .

Roberto Hertlitzka as Aldo Moro and Maya as Jack Jordan in Alejandro Sensa as Chiara in Good Morning, Night, González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams, which was shown directed by . Photo: in both the Montréal and New York Film Courtesy Film Society of Lincoln Center. Festivals. Photo: Courtesy Focus Features.

32 ᭿ PAJ 77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 as a means to make work on increasingly limited budgets, as arts funding internationally grows more endangered. As one of the only major international film festivals to have embraced digital video, the Montréal World Film Festival should proceed from a position of greater flexibility and accessibility. Nevertheless, the industrial power of Hollywood has tilted the balance towards other venues, such as Sundance and Toronto, while Montréal has not played up its receptivity to the technology which has become the standard for independent and documentary filmmaking.

This year, at Montréal, there were a number of works which did display the resources available to the filmmaker through the use of digital video. In some cases, the video was transferred to 35-mm film; this was not always the most satisfactory solution for presentation, as in the case of Bobby Roth’s Manhood, the sequel to his earlier Jack the Dog. Once again, Nestor Carbonell plays Jack, a photographer struggling with relationships, not just with women, but now with his son and his family. Though Roth’s film is consistently engrossing, the virtues of this work come from the honesty of the script and the excellence of the acting, not from any visual facility. If not downright ugly, the transfer from video to film created a general fuzziness and muddiness.

Sometimes, it seems as if the continuation of film will come from areas of what the filmmaker Tomas Guttierrez Alea had termed “underdevelopment”: Iran, Central Asia, . Yet there has been evidence that digital production has entered these areas of the world. Last year, Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten was shot on digital video; this year, the utterly charming Jylama, directed by Amir Karakulov from Kazakhstan, was another digital production; this story of an opera singer’s return to her hometown in Central Asia, bringing with her the accoutrements of urbanity to this remote village, proved to be surprisingly moving. One of the best digital produc- tions turned out to be the Canadian drama Fairytales and Pornography, written and directed by Chris Philpott; shot by David Perrault in glistening black-and-white, this dark romance was intriguing, and showed that a work conceived and projected in digital video could have its own specific visual qualities.

This past year, there was an agreement that there were few astounding revelations: no major masterpieces seemed to loom over the international film festival circuit. That didn’t mean there weren’t any number of good movies: attending Montréal, each day brought movies that were enjoyable or provocative or teasingly unsatisfac- tory. A movie like Yoshimitsu Morita’s Like Asura was a lavish and visually entrancing family drama, yet the continuity was haphazard, the tone lurching between wild slapstick and uneasy pathos. Trying for the enveloping emotion of an Ozu or a Naruse, Morita instead wound up with a movie that couldn’t decide whether to be cynical or sentimental, overstating both to the detriment of cohesion. If Morita’s Like Asura must be judged a failure, ’s Bokunchi proved to be a modest success, as this story of two children reunited with their mother in a poor seaside village managed to be charming without getting cloying.

QUALLS and CHIN / Ain’t No Sunshine ᭿ 33

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 But the good films seen in Montréal tended to be modest. One international trend seemed to be an interest in pushing the boundaries of sexuality on the screen, as in the case of Andres Waissbluth’s Los Debutantes from Chile, and Ash’s This Girl’s Life from the U.S. These films, set in the worlds of stripclubs (Los Debutantes), or internet porn (This Girl’s Life), were almost disconcertingly blasé about their settings. This Girl’s Life did prove to be one of the better films in the festival, mostly because of its honesty and its fine acting. This international trend was investigated in two short documentaries, Emmanuelle Schick Garcia’s La Petite Morte and Siobhan Devine’s My Tango With Porn; the latter, in which an artist joins the local board and is confronted with challenges to her ideas about free expression and societal standards, was thought-provoking and humorous. Other good films in Montréal included the Iranian study of disaffected college students Deep Breath, directed by Parviz Shahbazi, the French policier-cum-character study L’Outremangeur, directed by Thierry Binisti, and the Dutch memory-musical The Arm of Jesus, directed by Andre van der Hout. These films benefited from excellent acting, good stories, and a general consistency in execution. The directors under- stood their material, and did not overreach, with satisfying results. But this satisfaction did not bring great excitement or intense emotion.

For great excitement or intense emotion, there were certain films which proved to be jaggedly uneven, ambitious and adventurous and, ultimately, naggingly disconcert- ing. Two examples of these flawed films which must be cited were Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams and Gus Van Sant’s Elephant. Both were shown at the Montréal World Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, where they proved endlessly provocative, spurring a great deal of discussion. Elephant had been an object of controversy ever since it unexpectedly won the Palme d’Or at the . This meditation on youthful anomie, culminating in an act of violence, was eerily mesmerizing, as ’s gliding cinematography created hypnotic visual patterns. Yet the film remained stubbornly on the surface: whatever intimations of depth there might be in the film were left to the viewer to intuit. 21 Grams was jagged, fractured, almost a Cubist study of despair and fate; the acting was beyond praise, with , Benicio Del Toro, , , and Charlotte Gainsbourg providing performances of incredible delicacy and intensity. Some of these performances, in fact, had won awards at the . Iñárritu’s direction was also superb: he maintained the level of intensity without ever lapsing into absurdity or overwrought emotionalism. Nevertheless, the script by Guillermo Arriaga seemed precarious, based on a series of coincidences which, if not accepted, seemed outlandish. Elephant and 21 Grams, two of the most noteworthy movies from 2003, showed a problem which has been developing since the 1960s: as filmmakers develop their skills away from the traditional venues of theatrical and literary culture, with film-as-film as a dominant influence, the literary content of many films has been left in the lurch. The directorial pyrotechnics (smooth in the case of Van Sant, jagged in the case of Iñárritu) become the means by which an essential emptiness at the core of the conception of their films is to be disguised.

34 ᭿ PAJ 77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 We are at a point in which film culture has become a predominant value, yet this value has steadily undermined the traditional values embodied in the accepted high art of the past. Trying to explain why a movie like Casablanca, though a monument in pop culture, was never a really good movie (the superficiality of its characters, the reliance on clichés, the lack of psychological or intellectual development), is useless. Now, we have critics who sneer at any movie based on a play as “filmed theatre,” as if that were beneath contempt, who instantly remark “Masterpiece Theatre” if a movie is based on a novel with literary merit (but who praise almost any movie based on pulp, genre, or second-rate novels), who seem to feel that any movie based in movie references is “post-modern,” thus worthy of extensive exegesis.

This year’s New York Film Festival (October 3–19) provided object lessons in these cultural conundrums. 21 Grams was the closing night; Mystic River, directed by , was the opening night, and it would prove to be even more confounding than 21 Grams, because here was a film in which all the elements, created in full force and at a level of true seriousness, were expended on a story which was, essentially, a coincidence-ridden, cliché-heavy, arbitrarily concocted pulp melodrama. So many viewed the film in terms of tragedy, evoking comparisons to Shakespearean grandeur and Dostoevskian depths, when the movie was actually more like an elongated and rather slow version of a TV police drama, Law and Order or C.S.I. Yet Shakespeare and Dostoevsky are names to be tossed around by many people who have never read these authors, because of the need to elevate the reverence for pop which has become a critical norm.

There were no revelations in this 41st New York Film Festival, not even among the selections in the “Views from the Avant-Garde” sidebar. Of course, there were any number of fine works on display: in “Views from the Avant-Garde,” there was a mammoth screening of Ken Jacobs’s Star Spangled to Death, which clocked in at over six hours (with intermission). Also long was the Italian mini-series The Best of Youth, directed by ; this study of the changes in Italian society as reflected in a family’s travails since the 1960s was certainly well-done, but somehow less than revelatory. There was one curiosity, however: the music derived from the scores of other movies. At particularly intimate moments, sections from Georges Delerue’s score for Jules and Jim would suddenly wash over the , or ’s musical themes for various Fellini epics would momentarily add pathos or poignance to an image.

As if to prove that the virtues of high culture were somehow suspect, James Lester Peries, one of the most respected directors from , returned, after decades, with a transposition of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard called Mansion by the Lake, and it would prove to be a slovenly and inept mess, its pretenses wrecked by technical and directorial incompetence. Peries was one of the oldest directors in this year’s festival, a festival not given over to much youthful exuberance. Much better were Chabrol’s smooth new thriller The Flower of Evil, ’s rueful and reflective , and the program of short diaristic travel songs by Jonas Mekas. Marco Bellocchio’s Good Morning, Night was superb, a stabbingly

QUALLS and CHIN / Ain’t No Sunshine ᭿ 35

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 An image from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, directed by Jonas Mekas. Photo: Courtesy Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu in , a film by Yasujiro Ozu. Photo: Courtesy Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Ozu’s , with and Chishu Ryu. Photo: Courtesy Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Robert Bresson’s . Photo: Courtesy Rialto Pictures.

36 ᭿ PAJ 77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 incisive meditation on political extremism, taking the infamous kidnapping and murder of the Italian politician Aldo Moro as a for a genuinely penetrating drama. This was Bellocchio in top form, showing his amazingly fluid style, his remarkable fusion of personal drama and political insight, but with a deeper awareness of human frailty. The fiercely angry political satirist of Is Near and In the Name of the Father has become one of the most eloquent elegiasts of the tumult of Italian society.

Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn was an unexpected delight, a lovely depiction of the activities in a soon-to-close movie house in Taipei. In its understated manner, this film is about the changes occurring to cinema worldwide, as many old- fashioned movie houses have closed, and the movie houses which showed classic cinema have become virtually extinct. Taking the idea of extinction as a literal fact, Goodbye, Dragon Inn depicts the movie-going experience as a mixture of erotic longing, romantic fancy, and daydreaming reverie, as the various lost souls wander through the mostly empty movie theatre on its last show.

In January of 2003, gave a talk at the Japan Society about Japanese cinema and the impulse of . She discussed the desire to see certain films again and again as a mark of cinephilia; she identified the Japanese cinema as the cinematic equivalent of the Russian novel, an exemplar of moral truth, psychological insight, and social signification. As if to prove Sontag’s point, this year the New York Film Festival presented a complete retrospective of the films of Yasujiro Ozu on the centennial of his birth. To see some of the Ozu films that have only recently been restored—some of the silent works such as the family drama A Mother Should Be Loved (1934) or comedies such as Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (1932)—is to be amazed at the development of a narrative style, and to see the variety of Ozu’s particular oeuvre. Japanese critics have identified his major achievement during the silent period as his “Kihachi” trilogy, consisting of (1933), The Story of (1934), and An Inn at Tokyo (1935); in all three films, the character- Takeshi Sakamoto plays “Kihachi,” though the stories of the films are not continuous. In all three films, Kihachi is itinerant, and the films explore the difficulties of trying to make a living amidst the poverty of the 1930s. In the postwar period, Ozu embarked on his second trilogy, the “Noriko” trilogy, in which Setsuko Hara played a young woman named Noriko whose martial status becomes a focus of familial concern. It was instructive to see how Ozu used similar elements to divergent ends: in Late Spring (1949), the separation of Noriko from her widower father is wrenching and sad; in (1951), Noriko’s willfulness ultimately causes her family to break apart, but this is seen as rueful and comic; in Tokyo Story (1953), Noriko’s widow is the only one to extend herself to her in-laws, yet her loneliness prefigures the loneliness which awaits the father (Chisu Ryu) at the end of the film. Ozu was a formalist: there is ample testimony from many of his collaborators as to the odd meticulousness of his directorial method, and how he would subtly change the sets for each camera set-up. For him, the importance of composition and balance far outweighed matters of continuity and logic. The

QUALLS and CHIN / Ain’t No Sunshine ᭿ 37

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 retrospective was accompanied by a two-day conference, in which Ozu’s methods and themes were analyzed by American and Japanese scholars.

Seeing an Ozu movie was to be reminded that the cinema is an artform capable of the most profound depictions of daily life, capable of providing an experience of transcendence. This was also apparent when Rialto Pictures presented the revival of ’s Au hasard, Balthazar (1966); in truth, because of the vagaries of film distribution, the revival of Au hasard, Balthazar represented the first theatrical run for the film in the United States. Thinking about film festivals, it should be remembered that Au hasard, Balthazar had its American premiere at the 1966 New York Film Festival, in a lineup which included Jean-Luc Godard’s and Masculine Feminine, Luis Bunuel’s Simon of the Desert, ’s The Burmese Harp, Sergei Paradjhanov’s Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, ’s Accatone, Miklos Jansco’s The Round-up, and ’s La Guerre est finie. The probity, stylistic adventurousness, and intellectual seriousness of these films stand in contrast to the general run of today’s cinematic output.

In the text for the small brochure published by the Museum of on the occasion of the Delphine Seyrig retrospective in 2002, B. Ruby Rich ended by stating: “Above all, Seyrig has an eternal presence that speaks even in its silences and that murmurs to us still from the screen, even in her mortal absence: this movie matters, or I wouldn’t be doing it; this film can change your life, if only you let it.” In speaking of cinephilia, that obsessive love of the cinema which gripped so many in the last century, Susan Sontag advocated for those films which had the quality to change your life, because of the seriousness and passion to be found within. Perhaps 2003 did not have new films on that level of achievement, but there were enough films that found a way to potential audiences, either through home video or through theatrical revival or through the incredible diligence and dedication of small distributors, to remind us that the cinema, acclaimed as the artform of the twentieth century, has provided us with enough sustenance to lay claim to being an art whose potential has still not been realized, even as that art is endangered from the technical developments brought on by late capitalism. Even as the movies remain in a state of suspension, there are always pleasures and revelations to be found. This year, the run of incredible documentary films proved truly exhilarating. Mention should be made of Mark Moskowitz’s The Stone Reader, Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, Nathaniel Kahn’s My Architect, Jose Padilha’s Bus 174, and Rashid Masharawi’s Ticket to Jerusalem. For all the depletion in the general run of sequels and fantasy movies, two did stand out for ambition and craftsmanship: ’s X-2: X-Men United and, of course, ’s : The Return of the King. And many this year achieved performances which were galvanizing; in addition to those mentioned in 21 Grams, there were in Monster, Javier Bardem in Mondays in the Sun, Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis in American Splendor, the ensemble casts of Raising Victor Vargas, Camp, and Zero Day. This list could continue almost indefinitely, because the level of acting in movies big and small has become almost a given.

38 ᭿ PAJ 77

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021 In December of 2003, there had been a 50th Anniversary screening of Casablanca in Los Angeles; for the occasion, ’s daughters, Pia Lindstrom and Ingrid and , appeared on Live. The reason this is brought up is that the three women tried to explain that their mother was bemused by the attention that had accrued over the decades to Casablanca. That movie had not been one to which she had been particularly committed. She had regarded it merely as an assignment, a rather typical wartime adventure-romance, similar to many others being produced in Hollywood during those years. Bergman had regarded For Whom the Bell Tolls, which she made in the same year, as an artistic endeavor, and she had pursued the part (Paramount initially cast the ballerina Vera Zorina in the part, but after a few weeks of shooting, it became apparent that Zorina did not have the acting skill for the part, and Bergman was called to replace her). As a property, For Whom the Bell Tolls had all the elements of importance: a lavish production, based on a highly acclaimed novel by a great writer. The comedy of this television interview was that Larry King could not understand what Bergman’s daughters were trying to tell him. He kept asking if Bergman had known what a great movie Casablanca would prove to be, and they kept saying, no. And they kept saying that Bergman still didn’t think it was great. Bergman was grateful that fans remembered her, but she would have preferred to be remembered for work she considered of true artistic merit, such as her performances with or in Ingmar Bergman’s Autumn Sonata.

When Gregory Peck died, remarked that Peck had appeared in few “great” films. But if you look at Peck’s career, you can see that the films he made were considered “important” for their time, based on socially relevant themes or critically acclaimed books. Peck did not appear in the thrillers and that are now called “film noir”; instead, during the and early , the genre in which Peck specialized (aside from the prestige picture) was the . Westerns are no longer as well-thought-of as film noir, and prestige pictures (Gentlemen’s Agreement, Twelve O’Clock High, The Snows of Kilimanjaro) are critically despised. But in their time, many of those films were thought of as “great”; it’s not that Peck didn’t appear in many “great” films, it’s that standards have changed. And in the denigration of literature, many good films, such as the lovely Technicolor version of The Yearling or the atmospheric evocation of The Macomber Affair (containing two of Peck’s best performances), have been demoted unnecessarily.

Of course, we all want movies that entertain, but why shouldn’t movies edify and elevate us as well? But this might all be beside the point, if film as an actual physical medium no longer exists, and there is no way to preserve the heritage of the last century’s original artform.

LARRY QUALLS and DARYL CHIN are Associate Editors of this journal.

QUALLS and CHIN / Ain’t No Sunshine ᭿ 39

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/152028104323048223 by guest on 27 September 2021