The Filmic Space According to Farber1
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DOCUMENTS · Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 4. · 2014 · 68-72 The Filmic Space According to Farber1 Patrice Rollet Manny Farber claims for a strictly changing topography of Farber’s articles reveals ‘topographical’ writing despite, according to itself, ultimately, as the fundamental landscape himself, this term overly entails the sign of that should sum up all the rest within itself, unity of a filmic space that Godard’scollages through a scenography that changes on every of 1960’s have definitively turned problematic. occasion and that pushed to the limit, makes He articulates his new configurations even in the most material architectural structure (the the titles themselves (Birthplace: Douglas, Ariz, little typographic block that constituted, for 1979, Taking Off Grom A Road Picture, 1980; example, the 800 words of his column and a Across the Tracks, 1982, Earth, Fire, Air, Water, half, in the space of The New Republic’s page, 1984, Change of Direction, 1985), as well as at the beginning of his career) dispute the in the way in which he has forever, practiced critical dramaturgy. the critic. His language attests, simultaneously, a stratigraphical and atmospheric attention Then, cinema: art of space? Yes. But towards the natural and urban landscapes undoubtedly, more exactly in the sense that that surrounded his life. From the very Eric Rohmer understood it in one of his first unusual inclination of the tablelands in San texts in La Revue du cinema, in which it already Diego, to the dimness of The Lyric, the movie corresponded to the whole of the filmic space, theatre across his place in Douglas, without rather than to the interior of each shot, to forgetting the dark crowds of those, where as an respond to certain conception of cinematic adolescent, he went to watch the action films by spatiality (narrowness of its visual surface and Hawks or Wellman […] but above all, the films breadth of its place of action). Faber, kindly approached as landscapes whose surface must goes off on a tangent in Rohmer’s Knee, a circular be measured, literarily and in all directions, painting of 1982, through the figure of two grey in order to discover inside them, unknown metallic rulers that give dynamism to the central points of view, even fugitive, even improbable, railroads. Simultaneously he pushes some of the even erratic, that will open upon them new fiction corpuscles removed from the work of the critical perspectives. It is not so much about filmmaker (Clara’s knee, or Chloè’s face in Chloè in making visible the unsuspected details of a the Afternoon (L’Amour l’après-midi, Eric Rohmer, blurred cinematographic space, as to unveil the 1972) to the perimeter. breaking points or the fracture lines that shake, in a subterranean fashion, the tectonic plates of In the matter of fact, it would be instructive to a Californian falsely soothed landscape, and the compare until its parodic pedagogical dimension, films that Hollywood produces there. And the or its common sense of retroactive envelope, term 1. This article is an excerpt from the postface by Négatif. Paris. P.O.L. Deep thanks to Patrice Rollet for Patrice Rollet published on the French edition of permission to reproduce this article. Manny Farber’s writings: Farber, Manny (2002). Espace 68 PATRICE ROLLET by term, the three spaces that Rohmer would (Raoul Walsh, 1941), of Liv Ullmann, ‘one latter identify to shed lights on the formal setup of those rare passive Elegants in acting who of Faust (1926) by F.W Murnau: can leave the screen to another actor and still score’ (FARBER, 2009: 610), in Hour 1) ‘The pictorial space’ (The cinematographic of the Wolf (Vargtimmen, Ingmar Bergman, image projected on the screen as 1968) or of Lynn Carlin, whose ‘role out representation of certain part of the physical sight by the time her husband returns from world.) a bored-with-job whore’ (FARBER, 2009: 2) ‘The architectonical space’ (Those same 637) in Faces (John Cassavetes, 1968). parts of the natural or artificial world in relation to which the filmmaker measures Nobody has been able to elucidate this himself during the shooting.) space of interpretation as Farber, with all 3) ‘The filmic space’, in the strict sense, (a the nuances that the acidity of an etching virtual space suggested to the spectator with may authorize: in the golden age of its the help of the two precedent elements, history the American actor, but not him rather than the filmed space itself.) exclusively, testifies moments of grace and absolute coherence in his interpretation, With the three spaces formulated by always keeping himself, even at those Farber in the introduction of his book, with the moments, in the periphery of his role particularly precious concern whilst exceptional and like adjacent to his own self; not as to him, for an almost conceptual clarification of Marlo Brando or Paul Newman, watching his thought: themselves act for pleasure, but as Burt Lancaster, seeming to ‘disappear into 1) ‘The field of the screen’ (that concentration’ (FARBER, 2009: 588), approximately corresponds to the pictorial Sean Connery, ‘sifting into a scene, space of Rohmer.) covertly inflicting a soft dramatic quality 2) ‘The psychological space of the actor’ inside the external toughness’ (FARBER, (that Rohmer does not mention in the 2009: 560), or Henry Fonda, creating opening of his thesis statement, but the impression of ‘walking backward, to which he later returns, and that for slanting himself away from the public Farber, does not belong exclusively to the eye’ (FARBER, 2009: 577). Therefore, mental or imaginary order, given that the the main roles have the supreme class performance of the actor can progressively and elegance, in my concept, of a Gary dig or fill, empty or overflow, make precise, Cooper that will later remind a Harrison or instead undetermined, very directly, Ford, characterized by always having an very concretely, very physically, the filmic apologizing look for being in the shot; space that he brings into existence or makes while secondary roles, as Leonid Kinsky disappears, in the same terms that the in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), framing, the light or the montage: They are Eugene Pallette and Eric Blore in a film Rita Tuwhinghan, Jeanne Moreau and above by Preston Sturges, mobilize an ‘whirring all, Giuleitta Masina, ‘three tiny women energy is created in back of the static –swell their proportions to gigantism with mannered acting of some Great Star’ gestures and decor’ (FARBER, 2009: 559), (FARBER, 2009: 559). In his decline and placed by the side of Ida Lupino who ‘has in ‘cartooned hip acting’ (FARBER, 2009: her place, and, retracting into herself, steals 588), the actor only shows an intermittent scenes from Bogart at his most touching’ sample of what he can do […] He can no (FARBER, 2009 :691) in High Sierra longer afford the slightest deviation from Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. II · No. 4 · Autumn 2014 69 THE FILMIC SPACE ACCORDING TO FARBER a movie that, henceforth considers itself to middle point of a distant command, somehow be an equal to a painting or a symphony, detached from the frame that surrounds his own completely controlled by their author. self – between the two antithetical positions of Chaplin, who adapts the frame to himself and 3) ‘The area of experience and geography controls the space that surrounds him from within that the film covers’ (that as the filmic the shot (even when everything moves around space in Rohmer, contains the other two, him and he is trapped, despite the resistance but implies less the peaceful virtuality of an of his own body, in the apparently irreversible ideally reconstructed space by the spectator’s movement of the assembly line in Modern Times mind, than precisely a more uncomfortable 1936) and of Laurel and Hardy in their short negativity –and this is the whole difference– films, where they accept, to really lose themselves of a space without boundaries, like those in the frame, moreover pursuing their efforts, images expanding over a page without trough the centrifugal force of their gestures being delimited by any margins. This space and their actions that reach insanity, to plunder serves as a reverberation pedal, or as a sound and disperse the slightest decor, until they get to box of the film beyond itself. It gradually completely dissolve, both in literal an figurative connects the apparently most distant sense, the space that surrounds them. (Whatever territories of an experience lived in a state of it is, all-over, but political and social as well. The perception, well seen by Rohmer, between environment of American suburbs with its slight perception and conscience. But, in the case desire for money, for material comfort and for of Farber in an area of the cinematographic public recognition, is subjected from the outset, unconscious even more difficult to localize, to the constant confrontation with the police, the which belongs equally to the spectator and wasteful expenses, and the return to the formless the filmmaker, and leads in the intersection in some terrains more than desolated: for example, of its paths, to both the hidden interiors the destructive Big Business 1929 by James of the literally unsolvable space of the Horne y Leo McCarey, that presents –with the structural cinema, and the great highway occasion of the door-to-door selling, as derisory of the American road movies of the 1970’s, as incongruous, at Jimmy Finlayson’s residence, always opened to the exterior. where Lauren and Hardy arrive to sell