David Holzman's Diary (1967) - LD

Some people's lives make good movies. Some people's lives make bad movies.  

For those wondering where David Holzman's Diary fits into the scheme of my blog, this free-form experiment in direct cinema was issued on a Criterion Collection laserdisc back in October 1994. (If you click the above link, you'll read the original essay included in that package.) When I watched it for free online the other day via the Vimeo website, I knew practically nothing about the movie other than that it could be seen as a precursor of sorts to the 21st century phenomenon of YouTube vloggers who chronicle their lives to varying degrees of mundane detail, seeking to pull viewers into whatever fascinating experiences or excruciating dilemmas they think would hold their attention. Obviously, a lot has happened in the realm of personal public self-disclosure on film and video between 1967 and now. For starters, the editing process is so much easier. Today's viewers will almost certainly be deeply vexed by the apparent reluctance of our on-camera subject to slice out the long... I mean, really long... pauses that slow his verbal ejaculations to a tediously painful crawl, at several stops along the way.

But that's as it should be. All part of the filmmaker's plan, to lock us into the paralyzed, semi-stoned headspace of the youthful (22 years old), newly unemployed, sexually frustrated, dangerously draftable and existentially adrift Mr. David Holzman as he grasped for some anchor of meaning and purpose in his life at a particularly poignant juncture.

The explicitly stated mission of David Holzman's Diary is to put into practice none other than Jean-Luc Godard's oft-quoted maxim that "the cinema is truth at 24 frames per second." As much as I enjoy (and often stand in awe of) the films of M. Godard, I've long felt the impulse to call BS on this particular bit of attention-grabbing, self-gratifying hyperbole that probably issued from his lips in a moment of cynical ecstasy, as he recognized that he had a reporter hanging reverently on his every utterance and some strange impulse overtook him to send forth those captivating but ultimately hollow words. And yet... and yet, Godard's reputation amongst a certain set of young intellectuals at the time was such that the phrase pointed the way to an obscure but mind-expanding truth. Similarly weighted ponderings by acolytes of various tastes and temperaments were being accorded to the sayings of pop culture prophets like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Lenny Bruce and Paramahansa Yogananda. Among others. This film is merely the filmic journal of an earnest Godardian true believer.

On a side note, one of the aspects of this pioneering work that I found most fascinating was the record it provides of the technical set-up necessary to make such a movie back then. Shoulder mounted camera, bulky lavalier mic around the neck feeding into a portable reel-to-reel tape recorder - that was probably a good 35 pounds of stuff that had to be affixed to David's body to capture the free walking action that puts us virtually on the streets of northern Manhattan in the Summer of Love. So underscoring all the intellectual labor on display here, there's also a rigorous physical aspect, a price being exacted in the timeless currency of sweat and muscle sacrificed in the pursuit of art.

Given the recent adversities that young Mr. Holzman had to endure, I can hardly blame him for reaching out, practically in desperation, for some measure of reassurance from the cinema, that source of cultural wisdom and comfort that had sustained him over the recent months when life was rolling along in a more manageable fashion. If an actual flourish of enlightenment should occur in the process, neither he nor we would object, I'm quite sure. His name dropping of celebrated directors like Luchino Visconti, Francois Truffaut and Vincent Minnelli still resonates meaningfully to viewers nearly 50 years later, as we discover a common bond of aesthetic refinement that's been cultivated and blossomed along similar lines of development despite our respective distance in geospatial and chronosystemic coordinates.

So we're privileged to accompany Holzman on his shambolic, spontaneous pilgrimage through the streets of New York City, over the course of a week or so in mid-July 1967. We meet his girlfriend Penny, unfortunately a bit too hung up to feel fully at ease in front of the camera, despite having accumulated many hours of experience as a fashion model who even consents to doing the occasional nude shot. She's given multiple chances to reveal her inner light for the rest of us to enjoy, but she winds up copping out, quite literally actually, going so far as to call the police to turn her (ex) boyfriend away when he tries to patch things up and get back in her groove.

David's friend Pepe fares a little better, even though he kind of functions as a Captain Comedown, if that makes sense, puncturing some holes in Holzman's theories by calling into question several of the principles propelling the conceptual urgency that brought this project to fruition. I gotta respect David's ballsy artistic integrity to include this skeptical critique into the final cut, like he's not all that bothered to let his cynical friend's bummer take on his scheme get equal time, since he inherently holds confidence that the truth will indeed bear itself out.

Holzman's journey into the heart of cinematic darkness proceeds relentlessly, as he conquers his fear and includes the salty parlay of a jaded old whore who pulls up one afternoon in her Thunderbird for an impromptu curbside interview. She's so brash, so brazen... frankly, so much more experienced in the ways of the world in comparison to our sensitive but still rather callow protagonist, that he finds himself unable to match pace with her barrage of casual mocking profanity. By the time his tape runs out, it's painfully clear that David has endured a humbling rite of passage... yet another layer of youthful naivete and delusion stripped away, and not without a requisite degree of suffering. Still, it's a necessary encounter in his pilgrimage toward the truth.

And his meandering journey continues through several more passages that, even as they galvanize our attention while we sit in passive contemplation of the moments his camera has captured on film, must have been all the more vivifying and soul-stirring to experience in person. The contemplation  of an enigmatic beauty, randomly enjoined on an afternoon's subway ride, that metamorphoses into a thrilling pursuit through the concrete canyons of an urban jungle... the time-etched visages of wizened elders, seated in a long circuitous row on benches in Needle Park, accompanied by the inscrutable ballots cast by the gathered nations of the world on a UN proposal of vague significance... the rapturous obtainment of a fish-eye lens and a glorious indulgence in the bulbous perspective that is made possible when Life is Observed through this uniquely crafted artificial eye.

And let me not neglect to mention the space-age stimulation of an entire evening's worth of network TV, flashed past us in just a few frenetic minutes. The Huntley/Brinkley news broadcast, first-run episodes of Batman, Star Trek, the Dean Martin variety program, late night talk shows, even a post-midnight airing of Shirley Temple in Bright Eyes. And commercials... the commercials! Still capable after all these years, and even in this incomprehensibly compressed format of delivering their powerfully efficient subliminal messages. What I wouldn't give right now for a pack of Lark cigarettes!

David Holzman's Diary eventually proceeds toward a conclusion as bitterly futile, as exasperatingly perverse and ultimately thwarted as any movie I can recall viewing from recent memory. But that's not to say that the journey was unsatisfying, or lacked in any significant way that note of emphatic conclusion that assures us the time spent under its spell was a worthy investment of that most precious resource. Not all endeavors into new and uncharted territories will deliver a bounty of material or intellectual rewards. Indeed, our accompaniment with David along the way of his sad sojourn is a small dole of recompense for one who bravely pioneered a path that many of us might have otherwise traveled, were it not for his proverbial example. He courageously subjected himself to the tyranny of camera and recorder, celluloid and magnetic tape, slavishly obedient to their whims in an experimental frenzy, laying down his guard, shedding himself of inhibitions in a manner most worthy of those fearless, and all too often anonymous, astral-nauts of the golden age of psychedelia.

David Holzman's name has indeed almost certainly been forgotten by far too many of his cultural descendants of the new millennium, who owe him more than their young minds and deprived educations can even begin to fathom. He cleared a path for our exploration, and when he reached its inevitable end, he overcame the harsh disappointment he must have felt so that he could turn around and face us. He preserved this precious record in durable media, placed it before us, now freely accessible thanks to the wonders of the internet, and erected a sign post clearly warning us all: DO NOT FOLLOW.

Don't believe me? Watch it for yourself right here:

David Holzman's Diary

from Workroomfilms on Vimeo.

Next: Scattered Clouds

The Two of Us (1967) - #388

It's always the little guy that gets shafted.

The Two of Us is one of those Criterion DVDs from their middle period that hardly anybody ever references or talks about any more these days, as far as I can tell. In fact, it's so precisely "middle period" that its spine number is exactly one-half the number of the most recent release in the Collection, Moonrise Kingdom, #776. So how about that, what a coincidence... Despite being released in 2007, the DVD-only title has yet to broach the extremely modest tally of 200 entries into users of the company's "My Criterion" feature on their website. That's a ridiculously low number, as is obvious to those of us who scrupulously track these things. (By comparison, as of today, Spine # 387, the recognized classic La Jetee/Sans Soleil, is claimed by nearly 2100 collectors, while the more obscure and polarizing film WR: Mysteries of the Organism, #389, has accrued just over 500 declared owners.)

There are a number of reasons that this film has fallen off the radar of today's most active, or at least verbose, cinephiles. For starters, the director Claude Berri, despite having a distinguished enough career within the French film industry, never came close to achieving auteur status, despite a close personal and professional relationship with Francois Truffaut. Nor does he appear to have any kind of a significant following among the younger set of emerging movie buffs. After he came to prominence and put the comedic, sentimental tone of his early films behind him, Berri's preferred style was to create visually sumptuous, respectably decorous dramas for grown-ups based in historic situations that deliver an emotive, satisfying resolution - a clear "moral to the story" that pleases the mass audience. The Two of Us is his only directorial entry in the Criterion lineup. Along that line, he does boast CC credits as producer of Roman Polanski's Tess and Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain. When you look up his IMDb profile, you'll see that he produced nearly three times as many films as he helmed. His acting and writing credits also outnumber his work as director. The two films that earned him the most enduring fame, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, are both very good, potentially Criterion-worthy titles, each starring Yves Montand in some of his best work, but they were just issued in the USA on Blu-ray by a different company earlier this year, so I won't get my hopes up.

So the diffusion of Berri's talents in so many different aspects of the film industry may perversely account for why he's been somewhat neglected today. But as for the film itself, The Two of Us really is such a nice, unassuming and ultimately heartwarming tale that it's kind of no surprise that the usual Criterion fan base hasn't generated much word of mouth to draw others in or even provoke their curiosity. As much as I found to admire in cinematographer Jean Penzer's attractive compositions and rich monochrome palette, engaging acting performances (more about those shortly) and a subtle understated score by Georges Delerue, I can't really gin up a flourish of unbridled enthusiasm for the film myself. There's nothing at all that I actively dislike about The Two of Us; it's a solid piece of work with a few distinctive touches that I'm glad to have experienced, but beyond that, it feels fairly commonplace, and if it had never been released by Criterion in the first place, I doubt many of us would have grumbled about its omission. The movie probably broke into more innovative territory when it was first released than is likely to be felt nowadays, when most viewers have by now sat through dozens (no exaggeration) of stories about pitiful children enduring varying degrees of hardship due to Nazi-inflicted abuses in World War II. Berri based much of the story on his own early life, which paralleled many of the incidents recounted in the film, and he does a credible job maintaining the tension of whether or not the boy's deception will be discovered, and if so, what kind of peril would ensue. Interspersed with that mild trail of suspense are numerous winsome sketches of life during wartime as seen through a perceptive child, which indirectly connects this film with one I spoke about recently on a podcast, Victor Erice's The Spirit of the Beehive.

I'd definitely put this film over and above most of the more recent variations on that theme, in that The Two of Us is content to take a more subtle, less cloying or manipulative approach in winning our affection for its characters. The story is about Claude, a young Jewish boy sent to live with a crusty old Catholic couple in rural France during the final turbulent months of the German occupation. He's given strict instruction by his parents to conceal his ethnicity, learning to spell his new last name and warned about the perils of revealing his circumcision, lest his ruse be detected. After the premise is established, the charm of the film rests upon watching the development of a warm, unlikely bond between "the old man and the boy," as the film's French title is more properly translated. The old man, a gruff bumpkin whose crude anti-Semitism is more a product of rustic ignorance than deep-seated malice, is played by the inimitable Michel Simon, in one of his last great roles.

Michel Simon, considered washed-up and practically forgotten at this point in his acting career, made memorable appearances in the early days of this blog, when as a much younger man he basically stole the show in films like Boudu Saved from Drowning and Port of Shadows. His brawny physique, rough hewn facial features, unruly hair and untamed wild-man persona served him well over the course of fifty years as an actor, and all those attributes are vigorously put to work here, to the degree that it sparked a late revival in his professional fortunes that carried him into the mid-1970s. I would say that anyone who's a fan of Simon's work in those golden age classics of French cinema owes it to themselves to catch him in this one. It's kind of a shame that the movie is not available on Hulu, since the disc's subdued physical media sales (a hefty $39.95 SRP may also bear partial blame) probably deprives a lot of viewers of the enjoyment they'd find in his performance. Beyond my sincere endorsement of Simon's contributions, and the overall winsomeness of the child actor Alain Cohen who portrayed Claude, much of my estimation of the success of movies of this sort depends on how they end. In my opinion, Berri steered The Two of Us to a satisfyingly ambiguous, non-declarative conclusion of the sort that most die-hard Criterion fans seem to prefer. Since most of you haven't seen the movie, I won't say more about the final scene than that... but this clip will spoil it for you if you watch past the three-minute mark. There, I warned you!

Next: David Holzman's Diary

Le Samouraï (1967) - #306

What kind of a man are you?

Yes, truly, what kind of a man is this Jef Costello, this enigmatic cipher who bides his time in silent solitude, awaiting the auspicious moment to leave his sparse and dingy Parisian apartment and fulfill his contract to kill? What kind of a man is Le Samouraï, an impeccable icon of vintage postwar fedora and trenchcoat film noir style, impervious to the tie-dye and paisley whims of 1967, who rigorously maintains his impenetrable exterior surface, with barely a trace of detectable response as he carries out his grim duty to swiftly end lives that mean nothing to him? What kind of a man placidly shrugs off even the substantial financial payoff that initiates his application of lethal skill, that stirs up no visible response of satisfaction, no discernible flicker of any emotion - not even that of personal justice served, or old grievances somehow alleviated by the efficient annihilation of total strangers?

Jef Costello is an abstraction of an ancient masculine impulse - the urge to kill, without mercy, without apology, but with steely cold efficiency and a firmly suppressed yet ultimately indifferent hostility toward the relaxed, the comfortable, the powerful, the content. It's not a feeling borne of resentment, envy, bitterness or remorse for any particular set of circumstances from the past. There's no defined protest against the prevailing social order, nor is there any obvious demand for retribution lurking as a motivation for the assassinations that Jef has agreed to carry out in the course of his ordinary business, even though revenge of a sort eventually does factor into the story that Jean-Pierre Melville chose to tell in this signature work.

Le Samouraï is Melville's most stylistically refined and ruthlessly minimalistic masterpiece in a catalog of films spilling over with top rank stories of lonely men staggering into canyons of stark and isolated nihilism of the sort that inevitably draws more than a few innocent bystanders into their fatal vortex. Jef's drive to destruction is at a basic level thoroughly inexplicable in anything approaching rational terms, especially with the lack of any back story or explanatory factors to be found in this sharply whittled-down narrative. He's a harbinger of doom that has attached his narcissistic ego to a function that from all appearances is at one with the universal law of entropy itself. Aware of the inevitability of death and the ultimate disintegration of all that lives, Le Samouraï finds purpose in joining complicitly with that force, of self-consciously accelerating the process, taking an active participatory role, then moving on impassively to avoid the obstacles that would prevent him from repeating the act with the degree of masterful, disciplined control that Jef Costello has perfected.

More than most of the movies that I've covered in recent months, Le Samouraï is a film that generates a torrent of superlatives from critics and ordinary admirers caught up in its spell. The film stands distinctly apart from its peers of the latter half of the 1960s on account of its explicit temporal dislocation from the contemporary trends and concerns of the surrounding culture. There are no political allusions to speak of, no sense of disquiet concerning wars hot or cold, the sexual revolution, economic upheavals or any other shifts in values going on at the time. The roles of men and women, the functions of money and greed and power and honor, and the fundamental unbridgeable distance that stands between any two people, and most painfully in particular those who have shared moments of intimate love, or even sense its possibility in a yet-to-be-explored future - in this subdued, small-scale urban street bound epic, all those primeval forces work upon the fragile human psyche with as much elemental power as they always have, regardless of however many cops were gathered or however many hippies and radicals might be marching in the streets outside the theaters where the film was playing.

Melville's crystalline focus lends itself to a sustained effort to strip away all the excess possible to rivet our attention on a figure at once mysteriously distant yet so magnetically compelling, to the point that it's practically impossible for many of us to not find some point of identification with this cold-hearted killer, lacking in the most common attributes of conscience. Jef Costello is impossibly, breathtakingly handsome, poised to a degree impossible to not notice in a crowd, gifted with physical attributes that make him the envy of many. And yet, with this undeniable charisma, there's something tragic about the character, a morose brokenness that somehow led to him winding up in this dilemma where, after committing the murderous act that his destiny seems to have compelled him to, he must now rely on the thoroughly unpredictable mercy of strangers to help him dodge the punishment that he appears to have eluded so cleanly in who knows how many hit jobs he's pulled off in his shadowy past.

Has Costello been on the watch list of the unnamed superintendent assigned to investigate this latest murder of a prominent owner of a swanky jazz nightclub in central Paris? Did he understand the weight of the odds stacked against him in making a clean getaway on this particular night? On a first or even second viewing, one gets the sense that he's employing his uncanny instincts to slip through the ever-tightening dragnet that the detective has laid out to catch the killer, and the suspense created by Jef's evasions and the unswerving pursuit of h is adversaries generates a strong adrenaline rush indeed.

But closer attention to Jef's small gestures gets me wondering just how determined he was to escape detection altogether. Take note of the way in which he comports himself in setting up his precisely airtight (and therefore suspicious) alibis before the crime, and even more significantly, what items he chooses to take along with him afterward when he's picked up (as he apparently expected to be) at the post-killing poker game. To me, there's an unambiguous intention on his part to precisely replicate his appearance as he made his way to the nightclub's exit after pulling the trigger, even though that evidence could have been disposed of just as easily as the white gloves and murder weapon that he tossed off the bridge. Or even just left behind as he made his way into custody after stepping away from the card table.

No, after thinking it through a bit, I can't help but draw the conclusion that what we see taking place in this film is an elaborate ritual, primarily on Melville's part in scripting and shooting the tale the way that he did, but also by Jef, a man who has dedicated his prodigious talents to the cause of negation and impartial service to an order that is defined at the end of the day by its propensity for betrayal and petty hypocrisy. Jef's alliance with the darker aspects of human nature has presumably provided him a substantial degree of material prestige and sustenance, the adoration of at least one beautiful woman (to whom he doesn't seem capable of remaining faithful or lowering his guard) and at least for a time, a fleeting sense of purpose. But that charade has now exhausted itself, and he's left contemplating the shell of his own persona, more than ready to end the game, but only at a time and place, and with a witness, the kind, soulful and compassionate pianist Valerie, of his own choosing. To the last a master of his own fate, a rigorous disciple of his bushido code, after all other options have been eliminated and with implacable resolve, Le Samouraï commits Le Seppoukou.

Next: The Two of Us

Peppermint Frappé (1967) - HULU

You like it? Have another. Make it yourself.

I've been having a lot of indirect, supposedly "coincidental" run-ins with Generalissimo Francisco Franco as of late (who, contrary to some of the rumors you may have heard, is still dead.) The first one occurred a few weeks ago when I watched (and soon thereafter podcasted about) The Spirit of the Beehive, a Spanish film from 1973. It was released during the final years of the dictator's reign with the approval of his regime, in a desperate bid on the regime's part to reclaim an air of respectability after several decades of well-deserved pariah status among the more progressive European nations that surrounded the Iberian peninsula. One of that film's most significant themes was the decimated quality of life that Spaniards suffered in the years immediately following Franco's triumph in the Spanish Civil War. Many critics in the West regarded The Spirit of the Beehive to be a sidelong critique of Francoist repression and brutality, without coming right out and saying so, since that would have resulted in censorship of the movie at a minimum, and probably stronger consequences for any and all who dared give voice to more open dissent. From the perspective of outside observers, director Victor Erice's surface neutrality masked a pointed condemnation of Franco's culture of fear and repression, much like the practice of Soviet filmmakers in those same years who veiled their weary repudiation of brutal Communist Party practices by telling stories of brave insurgents who rebelled against the cruel tyrannies imposed by Nazis or other foreign invaders in Russia's storied past. (Here I'm specifically thinking of Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent and Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood and Andrei Rublev.)

Though Franco's presence was felt more than it was overtly referenced in The Spirit of the Beehive, the face and name of El Caudillo ("The Leader") was impossible to miss for any viewer who was paying attention to the non-X-rated segments of I Am Curious (Yellow), reviewed in this spot just a week ago. Vilgot Sjoman's high-grossing, censorship-busting art house sensation did have a few political and sociological points to make, in between the scenes where the lead couple ditched their clothing and romped about the screen rather unsexily over the latter half of the film. One of those punctuation marks involved Franco's official portrait, a reproduction of which was affixed to Lena's bedroom wall, mixed in with pictures of starving children, concentration camp survivors and other commonplace atrocities of the mid-20th century. The curious Swedish dissidents (Sjoman and Lena) each seemed to have a particular bone to pick with Franco, as they both took shots at not only the society he led, but also the complacent Swedes who ignored his human rights abuses and took their pleasant summer holidays on the sun-drenched shores of Spain's Mediterranean coast without as much as a flutter of guilt or remorse to trouble their consumerist conscience.

Franco references in two consecutive films can be seen as a meaningless coincidence, but his shadow lurking over a third movie in a row establishes a pattern. And that's exactly where I'm at following my viewing of Peppermint Frappé, the 1967 feature directed by Carlos Saura that came up next on my timeline. Released in Spain six years prior to Erice's award-winning masterpiece, Peppermint Frappé plays on the surface like a droll hybrid of Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. Definitely a bit left of the mainstream, regardless of any cultural sensitivities, but nothing so brazenly defiant of the political that might be construed as a daring taunt of Franco and his allies to their faces. But it doesn't take much reading up on the film before those encoded allusions and allegories are cited by commentators more knowledgeable about both the film and Spanish history than I am.

For those who haven't heard of Peppermint Frappé, and might be wondering how it found its way into my queue, I watched it over the weekend on Hulu, where it's been available on the Criterion channel for the past few years. The title (same in Spanish and in English) derives from a beverage consumed with frequency throughout the film, basically looking like creme de menthe over crushed ice, which seems much too syrupy for my tastes, but apparently went down smooth enough to encourage refills. (See the quote at the top of this post.)

But that notion of liking something enough to want to make and slurp up another one right away also applies to the obsession that drives the film's protagonist Julian into a spiral of increasingly voyeuristic and disturbing behaviors. After an unexpected run-in with Pablo, an old childhood pal who recently returned from Africa to his rustic Spanish hometown, the self-composed, impeccably respectable Julian finds himself fixated upon Elena, Pablo's beautiful and much younger new wife. His first glance at her stirs an intensely star-struck but barely contained emotional response, the sound of pounding martial drums filling the soundtrack. Is it his heartbeat? Is he overcome with a long-latent but newly resurgent passionate desire for this gorgeous woman gazing at him on the staircase landing? As it turns out, the drums are a flashback to a time and place, a traditional Good Friday street festival where he and she once met, at least in Julian's imagination. Elena claims to have no memory of such an encounter, or even of being in the town or circumstances he describes, but he's insistent about it, brushing away her denials as if they're nothing more than a coquettish game she's playing.

And she does seem to enjoy dabbling in such flirtations, making it known early on in their one-on-one chats on the side that even though she's content to be married to Pablo for now, she's open to the idea that "things happen," the kind of anything-goes come on that spurs on men like Julian to act against their more prudent calculations in favor of impulses that offer more immediate gratification. Julian embarks on a mission of seduction that produces just enough tantalization to keep him engaged in the pursuit, but he continues to run into one roadblock after another, often but not always set in place by Elena herself, who seems to enjoy watching her pursuer scramble in and out of position to pounce on that elusive moment of advantage.

Eventually, Julian's frustration level mounts to the point where he needs to figure out a Plan B, and that's when his devious eyes land upon Ana, a modest and plain young nursing assistant who just happens to bear more than a passing resemblance to Elena. (And no wonder, since both women are played by Geraldine Chaplin, the daughter of Charles and his fourth and final wife Oona - she certainly inherited his famously sweet, endearing smile.) Not content to merely woo his shy but pliable employee (that would be too easy, and one gets the sense that he'd consider such a conquest unworthy of his time and effort), Julian adds an extra level of challenge: his goal is to remake Ana into the image of Elena, to a level of precise detail that veers into deeply unsettling territory as he swabs samples of Elena's make-up and other personal grooming supplies in order to create a thoroughly convincing but nevertheless illusory replica of his best friend's wife. Yes, Julian is a world class creeper, and we soon discover that there's no limit that he won't violate in order to bring his vision to fruition.

That lust for counterfeit pleasures, the self-deluding hypocrisy that assumes others can't see through the preening vanity, the repression of more natural and emotionally reciprocal desires, the petty envy of prestige and possessions that rightly belong to others, and the outrageous lengths to which the egomaniac Julian will go as he chases his prey are the elements that link this heady blend of satire and surrealism to life under Franco's rule in the late 1960s. As is often the case when artists are compelled to craft their protests at glancing angles to avoid official reprimands, the imposed generality has a positive effect of making the jabs more universal in their application. So I don't think that it's all that necessary to study up on the legacy of Franco or post-Civil War Spain in order to enjoy Peppermint Frappé, though it surely can't hurt. A little background knowledge of Bunuel (to whom the film is dedicated at the end) and Hitchcock will definitely enhance the experience though, putting Saura's audaciously swirling 360 camera moves and the gentlemanly depravity of his main character in a nicely tailored, custom fitted historical and cinematic context.

Next: Le Samouraï

I Am Curious (Yellow) (1967) - #180

I know the value of art. The picture should be more important than the frame.

I was about 9 or 10 years old, I figure, when I first learned about I Am Curious (Yellow), a Swedish film that at the time was notoriously controversial even to the point that the scandal surrounding it in 1970-71 (when I was the aforementioned age) was sufficiently hot and bothersome enough to enter into my pre-adolescent consciousness. The exact details are pretty fuzzy in my memory by now, of course, but I think the first tip was a one-off panel gag in an issue of Mad Magazine. The image was of a theater marquee advertising that it was now showing "I Am Lecherous (Purple)". The odd music of this incongruous string of words sparked my curiosity. What does "lecherous" mean? And what does "purple" have to do with anything? By some unfolding of happenstance, I discovered that it was a play on the title of I Am Curious (Yellow), a dirty movie that showed naked people touching each other in naughty ways, even to the point where it was illegal to show it for awhile, and then the rules were changed by some judges to allow grown-ups to see it. Of course I was now really intrigued to learn more of what that was all about. A movie so upsetting to certain adults that people would get arrested and go to jail for either showing it or even just watching it? What could be so bizarre, so weird, so shocking to stir up that kind of trouble? Needless to say, my schoolboy's imagination ran wild. I was, indeed, quite curious.

This was also around the time that my buddies at school and I were starting to dig into our dads' stacks of Playboys (or cheaper, cruder, nastier stag mags that some of the fellows had access too - I didn't ask too many questions as to where or how.) We'd surreptitiously tear out pages of issues that seemed likely to be ignored, toward the bottom of the pile, that we would fold up into small squares and hide deep in our pockets so that we could share our latest contraband with each other out on the playground, if we were really daring, or on walks home after school, when the supervisory heat of prying adult eyes had cooled off considerably.

At the time, I was actually more interested in the Little Annie Fanny cartoons found in the back pages of select issues of Playboy than the straightforward pinup pics - it wasn't until a few years later that I discovered that the strip's writer Harvey Kurtzman and illustrator Will Elder were among of the original artists for Mad, back in its comic book incarnation of the 1950s. So my exploratory process went full circle, in a way, from unregulated comic books to salacious pornography in just a matter of months. It was a classic textbook case of The Seduction of the Innocent, as Dr. Wertham had warned American parents about in the decade before I was born.

But of course, my opportunities to actually see the movie that had provoked a series of legal challenges that (as it turned out) forever changed the cinematic landscape, were practically nonexistent, for quite a few years. Decades, really. Though I had heard of the film, it never showed at any theater that I knew about, and within a very short time after all the commotion erupted around the film's initial screenings had died down, blisteringly negative reviews like this one from Roger Ebert had convinced quite a few people that I Am Curious (Yellow) was an over-hyped bore, completely unworthy of the attention (and money) lavished upon it.

So even after I had purchased the handsomely slip-cased box set several years ago en route to achieving The Criterion Completion, there the disc sat, gathering dust, unwatched and neglected, mostly due to its reputed mediocrity. Though I remained genuinely, if not ardently or impatiently, curious about the film's contents, the bad press and an abundant selection of other worthwhile movies for me to watch always provided an adequate reason to just keep putting it off.

Until I finally had a compelling reason to break it open and give it a watch: this blog. I'm now at the point in my timeline where I'm compelled to pop in the next disc in the queue. And what do you know... I really enjoyed this movie!

The sexy parts are pretty much as unstimulating as I had been led to think they would be, undoubtedly disappointing to those poor saps who poured into art house theaters of the late 1960s, hungry for a taste of forbidden fruit. In fact, this scene, basis for one of the film's iconic images, plays more like slapstick comedy than anything aiming to arouse its viewers:

Such moments do communicate something meaningful about the sexual revolution that was going on at the time, and there are exchanges of genuine sweetness and erotic affection in some of the first encounters between Lena, the female protagonist whose curiosity propels the film's thin narrative, and her lover Börje. But lots of movies back then had no shortage of that kind of thing. The real rip-off here, in the eyes of many, was that there wasn't anything to be seen in over two hours of footage that even began to stir up the libido. The substance of the film, especially in its early sections, was dedicated to conversations about social issues then in vogue, debates that are, not so surprisingly to me at least, still somewhat resonant today: issues like international human rights, police use of force, gender equality, the ethics of militarism, nonviolent resistance (Martin Luther King Jr. even makes an appearance!), separation of church and state, the pros and cons of "free love" and all the challenges to conventional traditional morality that were erupting across the globe in that revolutionary era. As Lena's investigations (conducted in the form of "man in the street" style interviews that capture some amusing responses from respectable bourgeois Swedes, as well as the footnotes and collages she assembles from numerous media sources) couple with some unpleasant emotional fallout from various relational disappointments, she dabbles in the kind of exploratory search for solutions common to her era, which still draw in new adherents to this day. Meditation, vegetarianism, yoga, devotion to a charismatic spiritual authority figure, and finally just unleashed venting of her frustrations are all tried and found wanting, to a greater or lesser extent.

Interpolated between all of Lena's daze and Börje's confusion are some rather droll insert shots of director Vilgot Sjöman as himself, the director of the movie that we're immediately in the process of watching, and his crew. They pop up at the most unexpected moments, just when the emotional intensity of the fractious couple reaches a dramatic boiling point, catching us off guard a bit. Are Lena and Börje fighting because that's what the script calls for, or is their hostility genuine, to the point where its disrupting the film project itself? And what about the zig-zag of flirtation and feistiness that simmers between Lena and Vilgot during their various encounters throughout the course of the story? Is he documenting her curiosity, or is her curiosity just a role that's been carved out for her by the man behind the camera, a leering fellow nearly twice her age who's concocted a clever means to get her naked in front of the camera, supposedly in the service of artistic cinema?

Sjöman's motives are never entirely made clear, but that's really as it should be. He is sporting enough to offer a video introduction (shot by Criterion in 2002) to the first half of what would turn out to be a largely redundant double feature, I Am Curious (Blue), that I will cover here when I reach the films of 1968.

The DVD supplement (embedded above) informs us that he made a bold proposition for a big chunk of film stock and complete artistic freedom to make the movie just as he wanted to. I have to figure that those responsible for granting his wish must have had a bad rash of second-guessing to work through before the film went on to create domestic and international sensations far beyond what any of them could have ever imagined. In Sweden, the problems were based more on the subtle but umistakable mockery that Sjöman heaped upon the monarchy, its military establishment and notable government figures, who were given adequate opportunity to speak for themselves, but whose messages were framed with such indolence that nobody should be surprised by the disapproving response of those in authority.

And of course, there are the nudie bits, which I can only assume Sjöman worked with quite strategically, with a brazen, raw recklessness that went well beyond anything his mentor and documentary subject Ingmar Bergman had dared to put on the screen prior to 1967. And of course, Bergman knew how to toy with prudish sensibilities and tastefully relieve some of his audience's repression in films like Summer with Monika, Smiles of a Summer Night, and The Silence, among others. Though I think it's reasonable to credit Sjöman for the insight that he was taking a provocative step, it's nearly impossible to draw the conclusion that he had anything like the legal skirmish in mind that took his film to the United States Supreme Court, where, on appeal, it was deemed to be not obscene in the eyes of the law.

For me, the main appeal and the lasting value of this half of the film (at least) rests on my admiration of Sjöman's creative editing and self-reflexive imagination. Viewers who find it boring, indulgent, meaningless or otherwise disappointing seem to me to be missing out on a fascinating compilation of ideas, inside jokes, vintage documentary moments from a pivotal historical period and just plain mischievous fun. I consider I Am Curious (Yellow) to be a cheerfully memorable and highly amusing counterculture classic of the times - veering between naive fascination with the power of admittedly simplistic questions it was asking and over-confidence in its ability to just toss random ingredients together, trusting the juxtaposition to lend profundity to some of its mundane observations. That's the kind of fault that is easy to find in so much of the revolutionary media of this period, but I dig the zeal. My curiosity has been satisfied.

Next: Peppermint Frappé