Soundings on Cinema : Speaking to Film and Film Artists

Soundings on Cinema Also in the series William Rothman, editor, Cavell on Film J. David Slocum, editor, Rebel Without a Cause Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema Kirsten Thompson, Apocalyptic Dread Francis Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema Soundings on Cinema Speaking to Film and Film Artists f Bert Cardullo STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2008 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Cover photo courtesy of Photofest. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cardullo, Bert. Soundings on cinema : speaking to film and film artists / Bert Cardullo. p. cm. — (SUNY series, horizons of cinema) Includes index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7407-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7914-7408-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures producers and directors—Europe—Interviews. 2. Motion pictures—Europe. I. Title. PN1998.2.C3643 2008 791.4302'3309224—dc22 2007030823 10987654321 Contents List of Illustrations vii Preface ix I. Italian Neorealism and Beyond 1 Actor-Become-Auteur: The Neorealist Films of Vittorio De Sica 3 An Interview with Vittorio De Sica 25 Filmography of Feature Films: Vittorio De Sica 35 “The Cinema Is a Woman”: The Artistic Achievement of Federico Fellini 37 An Interview with Federico Fellini 57 Filmography of Feature Films: Federico Fellini 67 More from Less: The Movie Aesthetic of Michelangelo Antonioni 69 An Interview with Michelangelo Antonioni 81 Filmography of Feature Films: Michelangelo Antonioni 96 II. Franco-Finnish Relations 97 “Everyone Has His Reasons”: The Words and Films of Jean Renoir 99 An Interview with Jean Renoir 113 Filmography of Feature Films: Jean Renoir 135 Dostoyevskyan Surge, Bressonian Spirit: Une femme douce and the Cinematic World of Robert Bresson 137 An Interview with Robert Bresson 151 Filmography of Feature Films: Robert Bresson 158 vi Contents Lonely People, Living in the World: The Films of Aki Kaurismäki 159 An Interview with Aki Kaurismäki 175 Filmography of Feature Films: Aki Kaurismäki 182 III. Anglo-Nordic Temperaments 183 Early versus Later and Latest Ingmar Bergman 185 An Interview with Ingmar Bergman 201 Filmography of Feature Films: Ingmar Bergman 217 The Committed Cinema of Mike Leigh 219 An Interview with Mike Leigh 235 Filmography of Feature Films: Mike Leigh 255 The Theater of Film of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg 257 An Interview with Hans-Jürgen Syberberg 269 Filmography of Feature Films: Hans-Jürgen Syberberg 278 Index 281 Illustrations 1. Vittorio De Sica 4 2. Bicycle Thieves 15 3. Federico Fellini 43 4. La strada 47 5. L’eclisse 72 6. Michelangelo Antonioni 78 7. Jean Renoir 100 8. The Rules of the Game 109 9. Robert Bresson 138 10. Diary of a Country Priest 149 11. Aki Kaurismäki 160 12. Leningrad Cowboys Go America 164 13. Ingmar Bergman 186 14. The Seventh Seal 195 15. Life Is Sweet 229 16. Mike Leigh 232 17. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg 261 18. Parsifal 263 vii Preface This book began as a wildly ambitious adventure over three decades ago, a few years after I had graduated from college: try to interview, or at least meet, as many of the world’s most esteemed filmmakers as possible. Through various contacts—familial, academic, journalistic—unflagging persistence, and some great good luck, I was able to do so. But my “adventure” took much longer than I had expected, for the usual reasons: money, time, other commitments, and so on. In any event, meeting up with filmmakers got easier after I became the movie critic of The Hudson Review in 1987. And Soundings on Cinema is the result of hours of conversation with the likes of Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Bresson, to name just two of my subjects in the pages to follow. The conversations with Antonioni, Vittorio De Sica, and Federico Fellini were all conducted, as much as possible, in English; when each director had to use Italian, I translated later with the assistance of my mother, a native speaker. The same goes for the interviews with Jean Renoir and Bresson: mostly in English, with a smattering of French, which I was able to translate on my own. Ingmar Bergman, Aki Kaurismäki (who gra- ciously provided me with my introduction to the reclusive Bergman), and, of course, Mike Leigh all spoke only in English; and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg spoke exclusively in German, which I myself subsequently translated. In the cases of the interviews with Kaurismäki, Bergman, and Leigh, each man either was already familiar with my writings on his work or requested copies in advance of our meeting. When those writings were negative, in whole or in part, as in the instances of Autumn Sonata and Vera Drake, the filmmaker happily happened to agree with my assessment (Bergman) or wanted very much to contest it—in person (Leigh). Soundings on Cinema is organized along national lines, and, although I have limited my nations to those of Europe, I have otherwise tried to ix x Preface be inclusive in my selections. Finland, Italy, Germany, France, England, and Sweden are represented here. I would have liked to include other continents and other countries along with their best directors, and I tried. But Gutiérrez Alea of Cuba, for example, regrettably passed away several weeks before our scheduled meeting; Ousmane Sembène of Senegal can- celed on me three times; and Agnès Varda simply refused all requests for an interview. Still, I managed to conduct nine interviews with some of the men who figured (and figure) most in the making of the movies; in any case, restrictions on length would have prevented me from including all the filmmakers I would have wanted. It must be said, moreover, that the subject of African or Latin American cinema—like the subject of Asian cinema—deserves a representative collection of interviews unto itself. The European filmmakers I have included, the reader will note, are important not because they are “mere” directors, but because they are writer-directors or cinematic auteurs. Each of them has written, or collabo- rated in the writing of, every script he has directed; some are even complete auteurs in the sense that they perform almost every function that goes into the making of a film, including editing and musical scoring. Why is such authorship so important? For the obvious reason that it puts a work of film art on the same level as any other work of art (not so negligible a reason when you consider the relative youth of the cinema as an art form): as primarily the product of one person’s vision, supervision, and execution. Auteurism is also significant for the less obvious reason that, as it is properly understood, it correctly privileges the well-wrought script, the carefully chosen word, as the place where every narrative film of quality must begin. That so many narrative films do not so begin—that they limit auteurism to signature visual style or stylistic flourish—is the reason so many of them finally fall short of cinematic wholeness, let alone excellence. A word on the pairings: Each interview is accompanied either by an overview of the director’s career, a section on a particular film of his, or a series of interconnected reviews of films by the auteur in question. My intent in doing this, of course, is to “bounce” my writings off a director’s own words, to juxtapose what I think of his work against what he thinks of his work. We do not always agree, but, why must we? Where I am bold enough to differ, say, with Leigh, I hope that our disagreement is a pro- ductive or “teaching” one. Where I am (at the tender age of twenty-five) cheeky enough to challenge De Sica, in conversation if not in writing, I trust that his exasperated response to my question is telling as well as comic. As for the three groupings themselves, they are, aside from being geographically representative of Europe, artistically inclusive as well. Among the Italian neorealist directors, for example, are those who go beyond re- Preface xi alism into realms that can only be called “romantically fantastic” in the case of Fellini and “sculpturally spatial” in the case of Antonioni. In the group- ing “Anglo-Nordic Temperaments,” Syberberg’s theater of film is juxta- posed against Bergman’s film as music. Finally, among the French, there is one director, Renoir, to whom one cannot easily ascribe a specific narrative style or tone—and there is another director, Bresson, whose style and tone remained the same throughout his career (as they have remained the same, thus far, in the work of his Finnish admirer, Kaurismäki). I have tried to make the interviews themselves as artistically inclusive as possible. That is, my questions focus on practical matters related to filmmaking (which, lest we forget, is variously known as a technology, an industry, an entertainment, and an art) as much as they do on histori- cal, aesthetic, and critical-theoretical issues raised by the films themselves. Among those practical matters, furthermore, the reader will note that as much attention is given to acting, design, and cinematography as to di- recting, writing, and editing (with some attention paid to finance and audience-reception, as well).

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