Program Notes

MFS Members-only Screenings 2016

Program Notes

Our films for 2016, chosen at a meeting of members, span nearly 90 years of cinema and includes Australian, American and European productions with diverse styles and subjects.

What follows provides some context for each film, indicating where it fits in cinema history. Important common themes are outlined. These allow us to make connections between films that might seem quite different. Why would we want to do so? Well, it means we look more closely at a film than we otherwise might have done. There can be enjoyment in analysing a film even if it is not quite ‘our cup of tea’. We also take away a heightened awareness of certain themes. When they crop up again in later films, including those we see at home, we will be more alert and discerning viewers.

While our discussion sessions following each screening can and will consider other aspects too, these concepts provide a framework to which each movie can be related.

SCREENING SCHEDULE Our films for 2016 will be screened in this order:

February Casablanca August The Jazz Singer

March Dead Poets Society September The Wild Duck

April Bornholmer St October The Leopard

May For The Term of His Natural November Singin' In The Rain Life

June Persona December My Life as A Dog

July Breaker Morant

LOCATING OUR FILMS IN TIME These are our films in order of when they were made:

Film Year Significance For the Term of His 1927 Silent film based on the Australian novel by Marcus Clarke Natural Life first published 1870.

The Jazz Singer 1927 First feature film with spoken dialogue

Casablanca 1942 Set in Vichy-controlled Morocco. USA entered war in 1941.

Singin’ in the Rain 1952 Colour. Reflects postwar optimism (?) though set in 1920s. Makes fun of silent movie era (mentions The Jazz Singer)

The Leopard 1962 Mid-career film by Italian director Luchino Visconti. Set in Sicily 1860

Persona 1966 Mid-career experimental film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. By this time some directors are confident about departing from conventional realism and trying more subjective approaches.

Breaker Morant 1980 Dir. Peter Weir. One of the ‘new wave’ of Australian films that began in 1970s. Set in Boer War when Australia was on the brink of nationhood.

The Wild Duck 1984 Dir. Henri Safran (French-born Australian). Based on 1884 Norwegian play. Set in 1913 Tasmania but by now no longer a need to stridently assert ‘Australianness’.

My Life as a Dog 1985 Dir. Lasse Hallstrom (Swedish). Set in late 1950s.

Dead Poets Society 1989. Also directed by Weir though set in USA in late 1950s.

Bornholmer St. 2014 German TV movie about events of late 1980s

Note that from The Leopard on all the films are known for their directors, who have distinctive styles (though the director of Bornholmer St may not be known outside Germany). The prominence given to directors (taken to an extreme in auteur theory) has not always applied in the history of cinema.

Only three, The Jazz Singer, Casablanca and Persona have stories that can be imagined as happening close to the time they were made. All the others look back at least a few decades.

THEMES

1. Defiance of authority This is an important theme in at least five of the films.

For the Term of His Natural Life -- the wrongly-accused Rufus Dawes is up against the brutal British convict system. Casablanca. Rick (Humphrey Bogart) contends with the tinpot local authorities but he can do that comfortably enough. The real power to be confronted is the Nazis in Europe who Victor is in a position to fight. This sets up the moral choice Rick has to make at the end.

Breaker Morant. Like Dawes, Morant is a prisoner of the British. Note how both Dawes (temporarily escaped) and Morant (who helps fight off an attack on the base) are allowed to demonstrate their courage, resourcefulness and selflessness as free men. This reinforces our sense that they have been wronged. Dead Poets Society. Boys encouraged to resist the repressive power of an elite boarding school. This is largely at the level of values and emotions, not physical restraint, though the stakes are high. In a more general sense the film indicts the conformist values of the 1950s more generally. It includes defiance of parental power—see ‘Family’ below. Like Rick, the boys face a moral choice at the end: will or won’t they endorse the values of Keating (Robin Williams)? Bornholmer St. Confronting the power of communist East Germany. A whole society imprisoned but with freedom getting closer. The situation treated with humour (comic ineptitude of the guards and so on) but basically a serious situation. The Jazz Singer. The Al Jolson character defies his father and Jewish cultural heritage to pursue the dream of singing jazz rather than being a cantor in synagogue.

With all these films we can look for the way visuals contribute to the idea of powerful forces being confronted. What (apart from the plot itself) invites us to see power as villainous or illegitimate or excessive? What are ways in which exuberant resistance is shown? (Examples: the singing of ‘La Marsellaise’ in Casablanca and the improbable ripping out of pages from poetry books in Dead Poets Society. Neither are required by the plot but they provide compelling images of defiance.)

2. Personal identity For the Term of His Natural Life – part of the suffering of the hero is being deprived of his true identity. At the outset he feels forced to assume another name to protect his father and throughout the story others take credit for his good deeds or ensure he is blamed for their bad deeds. The Jazz Singer—Al Jolson’s character changes his name and forges a new identity for himself in the course of pursuing his ambitions. A further complication is the frequent use of ‘blackface’ as he adopts the appearance of a Negro minstrel in his performances. This becomes a literal ‘mask’, a visual element relevant to the concept of hiding or changing who you are. My Life as a Dog—the title itself signals the significance of identity. The troubled boy identifies with the lonely and doomed dog sent into orbit in a Russian sputnik. The Wild Duck—the character Harold constructs for himself the identity of a good provider for his family who is on the brink of great success as an inventor. Dr Roland suggests most people comfort themselves with a false self-image and are best allowed to do so. Gregory sees his role in life as a truth-teller. (I’m assuming film follows the play faithfully.) Persona—explores the question of identity in profound and complex ways. The patient (Liv Ullman) is unable to make a coherent self out of her experiences. Her identity is at times appropriated by her look-alike nurse (Bibi Andersson). The word ‘persona’ was the Greek word for the masks used by actors. Singin’ in the Rain—in a lighter vein, the plot turns on a partial adoption of substituted identity in that the voice of Kathy is dubbed for that of Lina, the silent movie star who can’t sing. This reflects Kathy’s identity as the true object of Gene

Kelly’s affections, whereas the studio bosses want to maintain the pretence of his romantic links with Lina. See also Family.

3. National Identity / history Works of art generally reflect the needs and biases of the time when they are produced, even if they have a historical subject. For the Term of His Natural Life—when the novel was written the Australian colonies had to come to terms with the stigma of the convict past. Hence a story about a framed innocent. The fact that it was an Australian novel known overseas may have been enough reason to film the story but it still had to suit what Australians in 1927 wanted to say about their origins. It accords with the general pioneer myth-making (across various arts) about Australia as a place requiring physical endurance, a place of struggle against a hostile environment, where mere survival is a heroic achievement. Breaker Morant—reflects the surge in Australian national pride and new attempts at self-definition in the 1970s, also seen in movies like Gallipoli, Sunday Too Far Away, etc. The emphasis is still on outdoor action, resourceful practicality rather than intellect, and capacity to endure. The British are portrayed negatively, reflecting the baby boomers’ rejection of the earlier deference to the ‘mother country’. The Leopard—again a famous novel as source. Postwar Italy needing to reflect on its history? Perhaps more a matter of Visconti’s own preoccupations. A number of his films involve eras coming to an end (The Damned, Death in Venice). Bornholmer St.—made for the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Doubtful if quite the same film could have been made just ten years after the event. Casablanca—The USA had only been in the war for eleven months when it was released and before Pearl Harbour many Americans did not want to get involved. The film’s anti-fascist sympathies are clear but it is less gung-ho than it might have been (e.g. Rick doesn’t resolve to go home and join the army).

Attention can be paid to how far films do or don’t try to recreate the past accurately. However hard they try, it is impossible to avoid selecting and emphasising some aspects and ignoring others; i.e. myth-making is inevitable.

4. Family The Leopard—a crumbling aristocratic dynasty. The Wild Duck—the links between a wealthy dysfunctional family and a humble family whose happiness is precarious. My Life as a Dog—loss of family; recovery of a wider ‘family’ The Jazz Singer and Dead Poets Society—rebellion against fathers who want to stifle creative instincts.

Families are an interface between the individual and the wider world. They provide nurture and protection but they can also be conduits for imposing unwelcome cultural values. Fathers can be good, bad or missing. Note mistaken or suspect paternity in For the Term of His Natural Life and The Wild Duck (relates to identity). Characters who are not related can still function as a sort of father. E.g. the boy with

the hostile father in Dead Poet’s Society has the teacher Keating as a ‘good’ father (but at what cost?). Harold in The Wild Duck can be said to have three fathers (one being his self-appointed moral tutor Gregory).

Sometimes it is important that characters have no family ties. This is the case with Breaker Morant and Rick in Casablanca for instance.

5. Value of Art A less prevalent theme but worth mentioning. The Al Jolson character wants to sing jazz; the schoolboy in Dead Poets has ambitions to act, and poetry is esteemed in the film. Singin’ in the Rain engages with movie history. Persona, arguably, is centrally concerned with Bergman’s subjective frustrations as a film maker: how can film relate to the real?

6. Love and sex, gender relations Unusually, not all that prevalent in this selection, given the ubiquity of love stories in movies, but that in itself is interesting. It is always worth asking: what is the role of women in a film? Are they are source of comfort and completion, moral guides, problems, missing altogether? Only Persona has women as the main characters.

GENRE Most of the films are dramas. One is a definite musical; another probably qualifies as one. Bornholmer St, as I understand it, is more or less documentary, albeit recreated. There probably isn’t a lot to say about genre but the following are some distinctions that can be made under this broad heading.

1. Popular versus Highbrow This is not a value judgement. There is no intrinsic reason why a film designed to appeal to a wide audience should be regarded as inferior. It took French intellectuals to convince American snobs of the greatness of Alfred Hitchcock, who always aimed for commercial success. However, there are constraints in devising a popular movie: it can’t be too complex or unfamiliar or, at least until recent decades, too morally ambiguous. A more limited but more sophisticated audience allows more risks to be taken with subject and style.

Popular ------Highbrow For the Term of His Natural Life The Leopard Casablanca The Wild Duck Singin’ in the Rain Persona

What about the rest? Where would you put them on the spectrum?

2. Psychological Depth If we consider the degree to which personalities and motives are explored in depth and shown to be complicated we could again set up a spectrum: Shallow--Deep. It would tend to match the previous spectrum of Popular – Highbrow. Certainly the

same movies would be at each extreme. The others might be in somewhat different positions along the spectrum though. Where would you put them?

This is not to say that the films with less psychological depth just involve ‘flat’ characters or stereotypes, but they will tend to have clear-cut heroes or villains.

TECHNIQUES Every film deploys a range of techniques. Some are unique to cinema and it took a while for them to be developed or exploited. A story told using cinema will inevitably be different from the same story conveyed by some other medium. A good film will be one that exploits what the medium of cinema can do particularly well.

Techniques have to be related to the meanings and/or feelings they are meant to convey. These are a few that can be considered (of course there are many more):

1. Visuals What is shown by the camera? Are there camera movements? What do they contribute? In what ways do visual aspects add to or replace words?

How does the sequencing and timing of shots convey meaning, contribute to pace (e.g. building suspense) etc.?

2. Dialogue What is the role of dialogue in the film? Are there particularly significant speeches or memorable words?

3. Use of stars Casablanca would be quite different without Bogart and with, say, Rita Hayworth instead of Ingrid Bergman. A star brings a certain persona, partly dependent on previous roles (and subsequent roles if viewed decades later). The character of Rick isn’t too predictable; it helps that Bogart had played characters on the wrong side of the law, not always knights in shining armour. Imagine Robert de Niro instead of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. The suitability of Jeremy Irons for the part he plays in The Wild Duck has been questioned.

4. Endings Films vary in the way they end. There may or may not be strong closure with all loose ends resolved. There were two versions of the novel of For the Term of His Natural Life with quite different endings. The ending of the film is a bit different again.