Movie n Cinema

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon

It is hard to imagine a better, more stirring and heartfelt tribute to the military spirit than John Ford's sublime, lovingly rendered She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. It is a love letter to the uniformed military man, and especially to the frontier men of the U.S. Cavalry, from a director who has always been enthralled by the army life. Ford loves the routine and ceremony of the army, he loves the salutes and formal language, he loves the rigidity of the formations and the close, affectionate bonds that form between the men. Most of all, though, he loves the look of things: the bright blues and golds of the uniforms, which never seem to fade no matter how dirty and dusty they get; the red and white standard flag held high above the ranks; the glint of the sun off the polished silver of a sword or a bugle. There's real poetry in Ford's representation of these men, an eye for the beauty of the military life that's almost entirely divorced from the facts of military combat and bloodshed. This is an idealized vision of the military, in which nearly nobody suffers so much as a wound; only one cavalryman actually dies on screen in the entire film, and it's a frequent occurrence for the troops to emerge from a fierce, violent battle only to announce, "no casualties."

Ford almost seems to prefer his military men when they're at rest and at peace, rather than in the middle of a battle. The most lovingly photographed sequences — and there are many, in a film where virtually every other frame is awe-inspiring — are simple shots of the cavalry riders winding through a valley beneath a towering rock, or scenes where the commanding officers inspect a line of troops in the morning. When the plot turns to the inevitable skirmishes with Indians, they seem almost perfunctory in comparison, though still exciting and dramatic. It's as though Ford knew he had to include them but did so only for the sake of that obligation. It is surely no coincidence that the film's narrative arc concerns halting a war rather than fighting one. This is basically a film about the desire for a peacetime army, which for Ford would surely be the ideal army: then one could admire all the shiny buttons and tight rows of men without the possibility of bloodshed and violence to interrupt the ceremony.

Ford's previous film about the cavalry, Fort Apache, acknowledged the harsh consequences of military service, accepting the darker side of military discipline and the possibility that vain, selfish commanders can needlessly waste the lives of blindly obedient young men. There is no trace of that subtext or anything like it here, in a film where obedience and respect for elders are the highest virtues a man can possess. This film is about the director's profound and unabashed love of the military and the men who serve in it as much as it's about anything. Indeed, there's little enough room in the film for anything else. It is a film almost entirely devoid of real drama, though there are plenty of smaller conflicts to suggest that drama might be somewhere over the horizon. The film centers on cavalry officer Nathan Brittles (John Wayne), a sixtyish man on the verge of entering a forced retirement; the army has decided he is too old and has entered his resignation for him. As he forlornly counts down the days, along with his jovial Irish sergeant Quincannon (Victor McLaglen), he is assigned one final mission: to escort his superior officer's wife and niece away from the fort while scouting out and chasing off the aggressive Cheyenne patrols encroaching into the area.

Brittles leads his men through dangerous territory towards the stagecoach waystation where they're supposed to drop off the womenfolk. Along the way, he has to keep peace between dueling lieutenants Cohill (John Agar) and Pennell (Harry Carey Jr.), who are sparring over the love of Olivia (Joanne Dru), one of the women they're escorting. Even this is something of a foregone conclusion; it's obvious that Olivia loves Cohill even though they often butt heads, and after a while the love triangle is defused without much fuss. Ford simply isn't interested in igniting too much drama here. He throws up only enough sparks to keep things interesting, to initiate opportunities for a character study of the opposing lieutenants: Cohill is stubborn and sometimes snarky but basically decent; Pennell is a spoiled, hotheaded rich kid who impulsively plans to quit the cavalry but eventually simmers down and settles into his secondary role. The film is much more about mood than narrative, and the plot basically boils down to the cavalry line leaving the fort, fending off several quickly paced Indian attacks, and then returning the way they came. It's an utterly and intentionally circular film, which is perhaps why the same striking rock formations from Ford's prized location of Monument Valley keep recurring, even when actions are obviously meant to be taking place in widely separated locations.

This setting is not, then, an accurate depiction of a Western frontier, but a patently artificial pastiche of archetypal Western images, with locations chosen not for geographical fidelity or logic but for their grand, imposing appearance. It is a film filled with overpowering vistas, frames evenly divided between the broad expanses of brown rock and green fields and the pale blue of the sky, alternately padded with fluffy cotton or darkened to a dirty gray with the roiling cloud masses of a thunderstorm. Within these gorgeous landscape shots, the cavalry lines advance, a row of tiny blue dots sketched across the red-brown rock. Ford's West is populated only with the West's grandest vistas, its most beautiful and awe-inspiring locations; there is no room for any plain, ugly expanse in Ford's conception of the West, no room for an image that does not impart a sense of the poetry that exists in simply walking or riding through this majestic scenery. When actual scenery doesn't suffice, Ford resorts to the even more obvious artificiality of a constructed set, like the red-tinted light washing over the plaster graveyard where Brittles mourns for his dead wife and daughters. If there is one thing Ford is definitively not trying to capture, it is realism, perhaps because any realistic evocation of this milieu would spoil the poetry and beauty with a great deal more blood. The only red he is interested in here is the glow of the sunset.

With this lyrical, meditative film, Ford has composed his ultimate ode to military virtues and the colorful, ceremonial splendor of uniformed life. There are occasional missteps, like the stirring, patriotic voiceover that opens the film and unexpectedly returns for the awkward, overly prolonged denouement. This narration is tonally wrong, though its words basically just reinforce the open admiration for the cavalry that is already there in every frame of the film. Ford hardly needs these words to say what he'd already spent nearly two hours saying: how magical the frontier was; how grand the military man was and is; how brave; how shiny his buttons.

The 39 Steps

The 39 Steps is a fascinating early film from Alfred Hitchcock, made five years before he left Britain to begin making films in America. It's a loose, free-spirited thriller, ragged around the edges, sloppily plotted, and often unevenly paced, but the director turns it into a near-masterpiece almost in spite of itself. Its subject is pure Hitchcock, an early stab at the kind of "wrong man" thrillers that would soon become his most characteristic works. Ordinary businessman Richard Hannay (a suavely charming Robert Donat) stumbles into an international espionage plot when he brings home a mysterious foreign woman (Lucie Mannheim) after a vaudeville-style show. She's wearing a black lace veil and speaks with a sinister accent, so of course she turns out to be a mercenary spy, working for the British government to prevent some military secrets from leaving the country in the hands of an enemy spy (Godfrey Tearle). The only thing she manages to tell Hannay before she's abruptly murdered in the middle of the night is that the spy ring's leader is missing the tip of his pinky finger, and that she had planned to meet a man in a certain town in Scotland next. Hannay, quite naturally suspected of his guest's murder, flees towards Scotland with both the police and the spies on his tail.

This is essentially the blueprint for the typical Hitchcock plot, with details, incidents, and set pieces that would form the foundation for many of his later films: the man on the run for his life, the girl he meets who suspects him at first but comes to believe in him, the passionate kiss to throw pursuers off the trail, the showdown in a public place. The film begins and ends with scenes at vaudeville performances, where Hitch takes advantage of the crowds to enhance the suspense and mystery, particularly during the opening sequence where a gun fired from an anonymous figure in the crowd triggers a riot as everyone flees the building. There's a lot at stake here, and Hitch treats the dramatic moments and suspense showcases with suitable seriousness, but in many other ways he maintains a light touch. The plotting is often haphazard, as is the geography, and Hannay's journeys from one place to another are elided with simple and sometimes jarring cuts. His truncated stay in a country farmhouse is enhanced by the way that Hitchcock creates some makeshift drama surrounding the suspicious, curmudgeonly old farmer and his much younger, obviously dissatisfied bride. It's Hitchcock's eye for detail — his willingness to slow the pulse of the plot down long enough to linger on little bits of business like this — that enriches his storytelling. He seems to recognize that his plot, however exciting and suspenseful the situation might be, is rather basic; the appeal of the film lies not in the story but how it's told.

To that end, the film is often also funny, mingling generous doses of humor with the suspense. This is especially true once Hannay gets entangled with Pamela (Madeleine Carroll, who has the wry smile and wide eyes of a great screwball heroine), the girl who he first meets when he comes up with the ingenious idea to kiss her on the train, in the hopes that the police will overlook him. Pamela seemingly hasn't seen enough spy thrillers, because she defies genre expectations by not believing this stranger's overblown spy story and immediately giving him up to the cops instead. When he runs into her again later, Hannay is forced to deliver a stirring political speech after ducking into a random building during a chase; the people inside mistake him for a politician they'd been waiting for. Of course, Pamela herself soon arrives with the real politician in tow, and in the confusion that results, the duo winds up handcuffed together, pursued by a pair of spies posing as police. The whole thing is disarmingly preposterous, especially when they check into a motel together, posing as eloping newlyweds so in love that they can't stop holding hands. There's a fantastic scene where Hitchcock, already a dirty old man before his time, gets some chaste sexual humor out of Pamela taking off her stockings while handcuffed to Hannay; he keeps the camera at knee level, following the arc of her hands as she strips off the leggings, dragging Hannay's hand along her leg in the process.

The film's tonal shifts from spy thriller to low-key comedy are handled with characteristic smoothness by Hitchcock, always a consummate pro at juggling diverse moods and styles. He keeps everything crisp and breezy enough that one hardly notices just how slight and silly the whole affair is, right down to the question of the murdered woman that started it all: the film never answers who killed her anyway, or why whoever did it didn't just kill Hannay, who was sleeping in the next room, at the same time. One might as well ask about Hannay's miraculous escape after being shot at close range, an event so improbable that Hitchcock can hardly even bring himself to show it: he simply cuts from the seeming murder to a scene of Hannay explaining why he wasn't killed. It hardly matters. Indeed, the flippant way that Hitch shrugs off nonsense like this only makes the film more enjoyable. All of Hitchcock's films have ultimately inconsequential MacGuffins that drive the plot and necessitate the suspense sequences, and in this case the ostensible MacGuffin is the government secret being smuggled out of the country. But really the whole plot itself is one big MacGuffin, a highly artificial way of throwing an ordinary guy into a dangerous situation and setting him loose. Hitchcock is having fun with this, not worrying about tight plotting or plausibility. He's more interested in the action set pieces or the easygoing humor of his reluctantly united couple — or for that matter the technical jolt he gets out of blending a woman's scream into the shriek of a train whistle. It's a fun, lively thriller, an early indication of the great director's genius at work.

The Tall T

The Tall T is a crisp, economically made and structured Western, director Budd Boetticher's second collaboration with star Randolph Scott. It's a taut thriller for much of its short length, but Boetticher builds up to it slowly. The rambling, laidback introduction establishes Scott's Pat as a real good old boy with an easy smile and a gentle temperament, a former ranch hand who's only recently struck out on his own, buying a small piece of land and a few goats for himself. The Hollywood Western has such a long tradition of stoic, hard-edged heroes that it's almost shocking to see how cheery and charming Pat is, displaying his folksy good humor as he banters with his friends and engages in a bit of good-natured oneupsmanship with his former boss, a ranch owner who wishes he could get back his best employee. One expects a Walter Brennan type to be engaging in these kinds of games: the wizened old-timer sidekick, always quick to spit out a corny joke or stumble into a rough-and-ready physical gag. It's disarming to see the gangly, square-jawed Scott, with his craggy good looks and tough-guy build, putting himself on even ground with the sidekicks and bit players of the Western genre. This is perhaps one of Boetticher's characteristic touches: a few years earlier, the climax to The Man From the Alamo had gathered together all the usual castoffs of the Hollywood Western — women, cripples, and old-timers — to take center stage as heroes for a change. There's a similar logic at work in making Scott the butt of the joke as well as the traditional über-masculine hero.

Scott's predicament doesn't stay funny for long, though. The introduction is just long enough to give a sense of Pat as a quick-witted, easygoing guy who can't resist a challenge, and who nevertheless has a sense of obligation towards making his ranch work. He is proud to own something that's all his. After losing his horse in a bet — and getting all wet in the process — he hitches a ride on a stagecoach that's carrying the shameless gold-digger Willard Mims (John Hubbard) and his new bride Doretta (Maureen O'Sullivan), who he obviously married because her father owns the biggest copper mine in the area. This sets up a situation that should be familiar to anyone who saw the previous Boetticher/Scott collaboration, Seven Men From Now: the cowardly husband, the wife who deserves better, and Scott, who just happens to be providing a counter-example of proud, self-assured masculinity nearby. The film's igniting incident occurs when the stage is hijacked by a trio of thugs, who Mims quickly alerts to the fact that they have a potential ransom on their hands; he sells out his wife to save his own skin. It's a perfectly schematic Western plot, and one that's well-suited for Boetticher to explore the broad outlines of his typical concerns: the definitions of masculinity, cowardice, and bravery.

If that was all the film had to offer, it'd probably be enough: another well-made, reasonably exciting Western actioner from a director who made a long string of similar movies. But in fact, despite the relative simplicity of his plots and the broad strokes of his morality tales, Boetticher is at his best in the smaller touches, working around the edges of the story, infusing personality and an eccentric eye for nuance into these otherwise relatively standard stories of frontier violence. The humor in the film is surprising enough, and even more surprising is that it's not limited to the folksy introduction. At one point, Boetticher interrupts a taut standoff between Pat and the head outlaw Frank (Richard Boone) with a bit of slapstick that sends the villain into hysterics. The soundtrack, sparsely used throughout, here builds tension as though it's leading towards a dramatic break, then abruptly fizzles out into laughter instead.

The outlaws themselves are an interesting trio, particularly Frank, who is in many ways a sympathetic character. He's sick of the immaturity of his two much younger compatriots, the cold-eyed killer Chink (Henry Silva) and the dim-witted man-boy Billy Jack (Skip Homeier). In many ways, Frank keeps Pat around simply to have someone to talk to; Pat isn't really needed for the whole hostage and ransom plot, and Frank's henchmen would just as soon have killed him straight off. But Frank wants to hear about Pat's ranch — he has dreams of having his own place someday, too — and at one point orders his captive to talk at gunpoint. He's a man desperate for real companionship, a subtext that runs through the whole film and through several different characters, including the frontier stationmaster who Frank's gang kills earlier in the film. Pat himself is a lonely man, unmarried and working land that is not yet well-established enough to even have any other ranch hands. The film's most poignant thrust is the necessity of having someone to talk to in the midst of this forlorn, empty country, a terrain that Boetticher emphasizes with gorgeous wide shots of lone riders isolated in the midst of the rocky, expansive open country.

The film dispenses with its discourse on bravery and cowardice relatively quickly, particularly in comparison to Seven Men, where this remains the central dichotomy driving the story. The craven Mims is the film's least developed character, never rising above the level of caricature, and never getting the moment of redemption that Walter Reed's much more fleshed-out variation on the character earned in the earlier film. Boetticher's penchant for recycling basic plot structures can be misleading; in this film, he is far more interested in the relationship between the lead and the outlaws than he is in probing the contrast between the hero and the coward. This interest is reflected in the geometry of Boetticher's shots, the way he weighs Scott against the three bandits in the frame. There's an in-built tension and drama to the way Boetticher uses the widescreen frame, the way he balances figures against one another. They seem to be forming abstracted shapes together, their bodies standing at the corner points of invisible figures traced in space, the lines drawn by the aimed barrels of guns. When Pat learns that the outlaws have killed two of his friends, a stationmaster and his young son, the camera traces the path of Pat's gaze, towards the well where the bodies have been thrown and then back to the outlaws. Nothing is said, and Scott's stony face betrays little overt emotion, but the camerawork in the scene nevertheless conveys the impact this has on the hero.

What this is all leading to is the even more careful geometry of the film's climax, in which Pat faces down the outlaws one by one, culminating in a violent denouement that must have been downright startling at the time it was released, and which still maintains its bracing intensity. The Tall T is a Western masterpiece from Boetticher, a master of the genre who turns his pulpy, low-budget material into an epic morality play with potent, unforgettable imagery.

7 Questions With Director Pete Chatmon....

Quite by accident I happened upon a movie called "Premium" while channel surfing on cable. It was described as a film in the vein of "Hollywood Shuffle". I didn't really get that, the only thing that seemed to be a commonality was that the central character was a struggling Black actor going through numerous shenanigans. What it was however, was a well made, well directed, well written, and well acted surprise of a film.

It made me investigate further, and I found out that a dude named Pete Chatmon wrote, directed, and produced it. I posted about it and called him "kind of a hottie" (which he called me out on). The truth is, he is very much a hottie. Not just because of looks, but he has the talent, drive, and ambition that makes me exhausted just reading about his activities. He is a true case study on what to do to make it, not just in film, but in life. The fact that he is an obvious cocktail lover with amazing sartorial sensibility and a true New-York-style "keeping it real" swagger is just the icing on a very delicious 7-layer cake for me. Check out his views on things; this man is gonna be huge--East Coast stand up!

Pete Chatmon: Nota Bene-I am sipping on my 4th glass of the good stuff as I type this so the levels of "real talk" are likely to be quite high. My apologies should it be "too" real. Actually, I'm not apologizing. Read on people!

Question #1

Your film "Premium" was an impressive outing; a fresh take on Black male/female relationships. I know you've been asked this ad nauseum, but how did you manage to snag such a quality cast for your first feature film?

I had to look up ad nauseum right quick to make sure I was on the right track! -- Getting cast is all about the script. Especially when there is no money or the salary doesn't drastically change the actor's lifestyle. With PREMIUM I felt that I had written something that would be unique (although "normal" experiences for black characters shouldn't be) and would entice actors interested in supporting the voice of an emerging filmmaker + the opportunity to put a spotlight on the realities of the experience that they live day in and day out. It's the same thing I've done on my non-profit or documentary work -- people get on board for a project about education or AIDS because it's the right thing to do.

Along the same lines, there are "commercial" projects, or endeavors, that strike the same chord for the right people. We all play a specific part in the machine of making art, and I've always moved with the assumption that since I'm not crazy (right?) there are folks out there who share similar sentiments and viewpoints but with different talents. The talents that will help me realize my ideas. So...I write, produce and direct this film knowing that there is an actor waiting for someone to present him or her with this opportunity to flex. It's symbiotic. The final piece is having a great casting director like Sig de Miguel who can work his magic to ensure that actors, their agents, and managers, are aware of the viability of your project.

Question #2

Your film "761st" has a barely touched subject matter (Black WWII war heroes), and details the war experience in great depth with those who were actually there. What gave you the idea to make such a film? How did you bring it to fruition?

761st was born under the decision made by my Executive Producer, Steve White. There was a September 2002 NY Times article about the 761st Tank Battalion and the fact that they had 48 straight annual reunions up until that point and were facing the possibility of having to discontinue the event due to lack of money. A battalion that once numbered over 700 men had been reduced, thanks to the unavoidable passage of time, to just 31 members.

The "barely touched" portion of your question flows directly into why they met every year. Imagine telling your grandchildren, or other people you come across in your life, that you fought in the Battle of the Bulge. That you have the 2nd longest military active duty (183 straight days and no relief) in American history. Imagine that people look at you crazy because the things you are saying are not reflected in the history books, the movies of the time, or just general public knowledge. You would surely get tired (if not pissed off) of saying "I really did that" and trying to convince people of something that should be American common knowledge, let alone "Black". Meeting with your comrades once a year they didn't have to say or prove anything because they all..just...KNEW. Lived it. They were all there and that shared experience provided comfort, relief, and affirmation of one of their major life contributions.

But, back to your question -- Steve started interviewing several of the soldiers after agreeing to help to pay for their reunions so they could continue to have this yearly solace. The NY Times articles stayed with him in his heart for quite some time and he decided to go meet with the head of their Allied Veterans society in Chicago. He teamed up with the unit historian, Wayne Robinson (also a tanker, but in the Gulf War) and they compiled about 50 hours of interview footage.

I met Steve 2 years into that process as I was raising money for PREMIUM. He supported me in that project and right after I locked picture we met in a coffee shop and he presented me with the story of the 761st. I looked at all of the tapes over the weekend and said "let's make this happen". I came up with a battalion of my own, 2 producers (Christina DeHaven and Emily Konopinski) and an editor (Adam Hark) and we proceeded to handle the jobs of probably 20 people. I mapped out a storyline, including new interviews, visual approach, and the writing of the narration, that would cement an understanding of their accomplishments for the viewer but in the later portion of the film take America to task for not honoring what they had done. The military is an honor system, where it you do "a,b,c", you become a Colonel. When you do "x, y, z" you become a general, etc etc. It's a merit system and the only reason they were not acknowledged for their exploits was racism. Not a single Black soldier received a congressional medal of honor for what they did in WWII until January of 1997 and only 9 men received it at that time. One was Ruben Rivers, of the 761st. Posthumously.

Clearly, I can keep going on and on about these guys, but to bring some conclusion to your questions, I was amazed by their story and the fact that they had fought in Europe, and many died, for freedoms that they did not enjoy in America. They were a reflection of true patriotism and I can't wait for people to see the film! We are working on getting it out on DVD in the next couple months, and I think it's some of my better work -- I became a better and more economical writer as a result of writing this narration and streamlining years of history into something palatable for a general audience. Andre Braugher narrates the film ... a lot of people don't know that because the trailer was cut while we were still editing but he did the narration wonderfully and I think part of his motivation was that he had played Jackie Robinson in a cable tv movie in the early 90s and Jackie Robinson had been a member of the 761st. The history is rich...trust me. And getting a remarkable talent like Andre Braugher to narrate this independent doc falls in line with the answer I gave to your first question about casting.

Question #3

Being an East Coast auteur, do you find it harder to make/keep contacts? Is there a support system for Black filmmakers in New York? I know that some Black filmmakers have stated to me that they believe it is more advantageous to stay in the non-Black film circles of LA.

It's all about your network, and then your location. Clearly, Des Moines isn't the place to get your film career popping (in most cases), but as far as other metropolitan centers, and NY vs. LA specifically, if your support group is in NY, then you stay there. Point blank. I couldn't do 90% of what I do any other place in the world. The money we raised for PREMIUM would never have been raised. We put together a Doritos commercial for their Crash the Superbowl competition for about $300 in just a few days.

That's relationships at work. If I were sitting in my LA apartment, motivated to do any of the above or the other projects we've put together, it would never have happened because I didn't have the ability to bring people together who were both talented, competent, and trustworthy in the sense of shared vision and mutual goals. I can do that in NY/NJ because we have a strong, deep rooted team that often surprises me with their willingness to join forces for no money in the interest of art. That said, if and when it's time to go to Hollywood, I'll go...my momma ain't raise no fool...but overwhelmingly the ideas that I generate and create as a writer tend to take place in NY anyway. And whatever money is to be made through the system through ideas that will make them money is to be used to facilitate more stories like PREMIUM and the 761st.

Question #4

You went to a very well respected film school (Tisch at NYU). There are a lot of aspiring filmmakers who read this blog. Do you feel that film school is an imperative necessity for a Black filmmaker? Or do you feel as if talent and contacts can be enough as essential tools?

It's not about film school. It's not about talent. It's not about contacts. I have friends who's parents, in my eyes, are like kings and queens and titans of business. But the children don't necessarily achieve on the same level. Now, they may "fail upward", but the dedicated pursuit of a life's goal is not there despite the available contacts. I always say that I am far from the most talented filmmaker, yet there are people I graduated from NYU with who were more talented and still haven't made a feature film. Some may not even be on a directing track anymore.

Personally, I know that I will not allow myself to be out-hustled (from IW-i noticed!), and that doesn't just mean being up late and thinking. That doesn't impress anyone because one you hit 15 years old, staying up late ain't even hard anymore. It's about WHAT you are thinking about when you're up late. Out maneuvering the competition. Pushing yourself creatively.

Mastering your craft. I've got a long way to go, and the hard thing about directing is that you can't work that muscle as often as you can the writing muscle because you need the camera, crew, money, idea, etc to flex with rather than just a computer or a pad or diary or something. Film school is great to nurture the contacts and seek guidance of working professionals, and have a certain stamp of credibility upon graduation, but it doesn't define you. To be honest, I've learned most of what I know since I graduated film school by just doing. My final point is that talent isn't going to be earned anywhere. Y'all could drop me off at Julliard today and come back in 2 years and you're not gonna hear a concerto coming out of my dorm room. But a film -- that's another thing!

Question #5

A subject that comes up here quite often is the dissatisfaction with what "The Hollywood Machine" is producing in the way of Black Cinema. What, in your opinion, can the public at large do to change things? (Everyone gets asked this question, btw)

I'm a realist. You can't blame the public. Well, you can, but then you are just continuing to make shit on the sidelines (if at all) and complaining about why "people aren't feeling me". You're the mad rapper at that point. I'm not saying you HAVE to play within the system, but don't be mad when people aren't flocking to your product. I stand behind PREMIUM with my head up and defiant eyes, happy that everyone involved with the film was able to do it. We made something that I wrote in my momma's house and got it in a few theaters and on cable and I directed actors that I watched on TV in the very same room where I wrote the script.

But I also know that the film is a break from certain expectations and the minute you do that you are going to lose a certain amount of people AND fail to reach a certain amount of people because it won't be marketed to them on the true merits that might appeal to their sensibilities. So what do you do? In a perfect world, that film would have been my "She's Gotta Have It", opening the door to industry opportunities where the suits wanted my voice to give a little flavor to their content. But since it didn't go down like that, you can keep trying to raise millions of dollars on your own (which is no joke!) or you can find a way to write something that appeals to their bottom line while never losing your integrity.

I have on my wall "You Are the Will Smith of Directing" and by that I mean I need to direct something like "iRobot", and then make "Pursuit of Happyness". I need to make "Hancock" and then make "Seven Pounds". And throw a documentary in between. Even Spielberg had to make tons of money for the system before he could make "Schindler's List". People are naturally that way. How many times have you looked at all 200 items on the chinese food menu only to get shrimp fried rice or general tso's chicken for the millionth time? It's the reality of the situation, but I personally think that Will reaches more people -- more new people -- than a small indie film that essentially ends up preaching to the choir. When I saw "Pursuit of Happyness", I looked back (I like to sit in the front) and saw that the theater was packed with mostly senior citizen white couples. Change has come, and Obama cements it in the same way. You can have black characters doing black things (so to speak ) and it can still be universal, but for mainstream America the packaging is very important. Clearly, I'm getting tangential again, so I'm going to stop here!

Question #6

What projects are you working on now? What can look forward to in the future?

2009 is gonna be crazy! We have a heist film and romantic comedy in development, a 1 hour cable drama we are presenting to networks, and our team of talented filmmakers are doing the hottest music videos, commercials, and viral content you can find. I'm proud to work with these guys -- Anthony Artis, Mike Brown, Benjamin Ahr Harrison, and Dennis Liu. We've also expanded and launched Double 7 Boutique with our Resident Creative Director, Candice Sanchez McFarlane, to customize marketing campaigns for a wide variety of clients. People spend their budgets in the traditional arenas, but more and more they are leaving a few dollars for more creative media channels and platforms. Double 7 Boutique takes those few dollars and make 'em look like millions of dollars to increase market awareness and penetration for a brand.I would say keep up with Double 7 and join our communities (listed below) because while we are doing all of this, and keeping people engaged in the process, it is also our mission to provide information and motivation to other filmmakers to achieve their goals. When we have 10 "Pete Chatmon's" then the audience is no longer to blame. They'll have no choice but to see our content.

Question #7

Are you married? Just kidding! Any thoughts or advice you would like to leave for the readers?

I will end it with one of my favorite quotes:

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

- T.E. Lawrence (1888 - 1935), The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
AKA Lawrence of Arabia

Thanks for the opportunity to talk to your audience. And I can't leave without a few plugs! Peep the links and join what suits you below:

http://www.double7world.com/ -- Our global community site

http://www.double7film.com/ -- Our corporate site where you can see all of our work and meet the team

http://www.doubledownfilmcommunity.ning.com/ -- The Only Community You Need to Achieve Your Filmmaking Dream

www.twitter.com/petechatmon-- Follow Pete Chatmon on Twitter

www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8871754074 -- The Double 7 Film VIPs Facebook Group

From IW: Got that? Here are a few more links for this very busy man and his projects:

FUNDRAISING PART I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tewQhzZZdrM&eurl=http://www.youtube.com/user/Double7Film

FUNDRAISING PART II http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGD9fLwq4Zw&eurl=http://www.youtube.com/user/Double7Film

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Top 10 Black Movies Of 2008? You Be The Judge...

Last year I put out a list of the 10 Worst Black Films Of 2007. I really wanted to do the 10 best, but couldn't think of 10. This year, sadly, is not much different, but I don't want to seem whiny about how much is so wrong and nothing is right about Black Cinema, as I am very optimistic about 2009. I've seen some things stray from the norm, "Medicine For Melancholy" and "I'm Through With White Girls" just to name two, and I believe it is the beginning of a positive trend.

So there is this guy Kam Williams that I never hear about except at the end of year where he gives his opinions on the year in Black film. Here are his views as he sees fit that I saw on The Obenson Report...what do you think?

Ten Best Black Feature Films:
1. The Secret Life of Bees
2. Cadillac Records
3. The Family That Preys
4. The Express
5. Miracle at St. Anna
6. Meet the Browns
7. Never Back Down
8. Seven Pounds
9. Soul Men
10. The Longshots

Best Independent Black Films
1. I’m Through with White Girls
2. How She Move
3. Ballast
4. All about Us
5. Blackout

Best Black Documentaries
1. The Souls of Black Girls
2. A Man Named Pearl
3. America the Beautiful
4. Meeting David Wilson
5. All of Us
6. Trouble the Water
7. One Bad Cat
8. The Dhamma Brothers
9. Very Young Girls
10. Disappearing Voices

Best Actor (Lead Role)
1. Rob Brown (The Express)
2. Evan Ross (Gardens of the Night)
3. Anthony Montgomery (I’m Through with White Girls) 4. Djimon Hounsou (Never Back Down) 5. Derek Luke (Miracle at St. Anna) 6. Bernie Mac (Soul Men) 7. Boris Kodjoe (All about Us) 8. Don Cheadle (Traitor) 9. Forest Whitaker (Ripple Effect) 10. Will Smith (Seven Pounds)

Best Actress (Supporting Role)
1. Alicia Keys (The Secret Life of Bees) 2. Taraji Henson (The Curious Life of Benjamin Button) 3. Viola Davis (Doubt & Nights in Rodanthe) 4. Beyonce’ (Cadillac Records) 5. Sharon Leal (Soul Men) 6. Tre’ Armstrong (How She Move) 7. Kellee Stewart (I’m Through with White Girls) 8. Jessica Lucas (Cloverfield) 9. Tasha Smith (The Longshots) 10. Gabrielle Union (Cadillac Records)

From IW: There is so much I could say about this, but it would make me weary. What is up with that top 10 list? Seriously, Boris Kodjoe as best actor of anything? In this lifetime? In this universe? Just wow. Best actress Beyonce? Gabrielle Union? Really, dude? I know our choices are limited, but Gawtdamn. I have a hard time taking his lists seriously, and I definitely don't want him speaking for our community. I have even spotted his same lists on a couple of YT blogs--they seem to feel as if he is speaking for all of us, and the comments are marveling in what "we" consider excellence.

Please. please, please, let me know your thoughts on these lists and let me know if I'm being too harsh.

Update: Got this in my inbox this morning...apparently Mr. Williams is one of those whom Googles himself daily. Maybe I would too, I dunno. Anyhoo, for those of you who were wondering who he is, here is the deal from the horse's mouth, as well as said horse letting me know about my very opinionated self, haha!

Dear Invisible Woman,

Thanks for posting my list on your blog.

As to who I am, here's a brief bio:

Voted Best Male Entertainment Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2006, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the African-American Film Critics Association, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.

I see about 500 films a year, as many as the handful of top black film critics who also see a large number. I might be the only one who puts out a top list of black movies in addition to a general top 10 list. I do not presume to speak for black people anymore than a white critic presumes to be speaking for anyone besides him or herself in putting out a list.

Kam

Happy Holidays, blah, blah, blah....

Ok, I'm a bit of a Scrooge about Xmas. I just think most of it is kinda ridiculous, and I do my best to stay out of the way. But I do take full advantage of the aspect of folks going into complete slack mode, hence-my lack of posting. I will be back this weekend to give some real movie news (there is some good stuff) as well as a terrific interview I did with "Premium" director Pete Chatmon, that I believe you'll find a good read.

Until tomorrow, I'll leave you with some reposts of the reviews I did last year on "The Perfect Holiday" and "This Christmas". Read while drinking egg nog with lots and lots of brandy...peppermint schnapps in hot chocolate also allowed! On a side note, the picture above is from a real film, with the taglines "One man delivers hope...with a vengeance!" and "He Knows When You've Been Naughty". The plot is described as: "A down-and-out Santa is robbed of all the toys for all the poor kids in town. He searches for the thugs responsible and serves up his own brand of holiday cheer." Hmmm...don't think I'll be reviewing that one...

BLACK CINEMA AT LARGE

Your Black Cinemist At Large was on her j-o-b this weekend, having seen both "The Perfect Holiday" and "I Am Legend". Since I am not up to 100% yet, I'll write about the former one today, as I'm sure it's still a little too early to give spoilers on the latter. Plus I have a lot more to say about "I Am Legend", so I'll wait a couple more days.

I went into "The Perfect Holiday" with zero expectations, to say the least. I mean, I'm not afraid to say it, I am not the biggest Latifah fan, and the director's last handiwork was "The Cookout", what I consider to be possibly the most abysmal black film ever made in history. Lance "Un" Rivera started his career as a rap mogul, whose most famous claim to fame was being supposedly stabbed by Jay-Z....but I digress.

I find it very unfortunate that this film had a dismal showing at the box office, (early predictions were less than $3 million total), 'cause to my very great surprise, I actually enjoyed it. Seriously. No one was more surprised than me.

Since it's easier for me to give observations as opposed to reviews, I'll just do that. It is, I guess, in a way, a sort of capsule review....and also kind of a lazy mini cop-out, haha.

-One thing that bowled me over was that Charlie Murphy, playing a self centered Jay-Z type rapper, is now officially funnier in every way than his brother Eddie. Who saw that coming?

-Speaking of funny, Faizon Love is finally returning to his earlier promises of hilarity he touched on with "Big Worm" in "Friday". My man got in some serious zinger time.

-Gabrielle Union is not much of an actress, but she is starting to grow on me, and sometimes I find her pretty charming, and definitely a pleasure to look at...she has the most marvelous skin I've ever seen. Pass that secret on, girl!

-There were only a couple instances of side-eye; the soundtrack could sometimes get very loud and out of place (a la "The Cookout", work on that, Lance), and also the stylist in me noticed and was distracted by a couple of wildly inappropriate outfits...but when I saw the "Costume Designer" was Misa Hilton-Brimm, Puffy's first baby's mama, it made more sense. She is singlehandedly responsible for the whole 'ghetto fabulous' look, beginning with Lil' Kim and continuing on from there.

-Morris Chestnut is so fine, he is almost painful to look at. Gawtdayum! Nuff said....it doesn't even matter what came out of his mouth or how he performed (satisfactorily, by the way).

-I really, really, like Rachel True (Half & Half). She seems so cool, sweet, and "peace and love". You can even believe her being cool enough to get with Faizon Love, which she does in this.

-Gabrielle and Morris had real and genuine on-screen black love chemistry...VERY refreshing to see.

-The kids had just the right amount of sassiness, without being brats or getting on your nerves; (can anybody say "Are We There Yet?"-yikes) they almost seemed like real-life children.

-My man Katt Williams was in it, with only one or two hair processes instead of six, haha.

-King Latifah and Terrence Howard seemed to be there strictly for marquee value only...they had absolutely nothing to do with the story, tho Terrence was just as surly as ever....and he literally had about 2 lines of dialogue. I mean, why bother?

Lance Rivera either went to film school after that "Cookout" travesty, or he sat down and watched every holiday and Doris Day film ever made back to back, and copied their look and feel verbatim. And lo behold, it worked.

I was talking to someone the other day about how I would absolutely love to see a film with an all black cast, that didn't make a whole big deal about being "BLACK". That it just told a story, but the cast could easily be replaced by any ethnicity. This is one of those films; it reminded me of any garden variety Doris Day/Rock Hudson film that I used to watch growing up, and I loved it. All of the characters of this film were interchangeable with any of those in Doris' movies, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

That is the exact reason why I feel so bad about how this film is performing....there was a crystal clear bootleg copy available to the public the same day it opened, and since this movie doesn't have the crossover appeal of "American Gangster", it was doomed to fail, as a whole household can pay to see it for $5.00.

Bootleg can be the devil folkses.

I mean, we have a film that is charming, minimal coon, fairly intelligent, that looks like some actual money and effort were put in. A film that has good looking, positive, articulate folks; a family oriented script with a little sexiness thrown in, with a production value that is crisp, clean and beautiful, not to mention well-edited. Isn't this what we've been saying over and over we want to see?

And guess what? It's going to do buttkist at the boxoffice.

So next time those of you who buy bootleg before paying box office, think about where the problem lies when we can't get the "YT" studios to support and distribute black film. It called C.R.E.A.M.**

And it's as simple as that.

**c..r.e.a.m.=cash rules everything around me

"This Christmas"

I neglected to write about "This Christmas " yesterday, which actually did a very respectable 2nd place over the holiday weekend behind "Enchanted" (??!!) a movie I only heard about the day before it came out. How did a film like that break records? But I digress...

When I first saw "This Christmas", I wasn't exactly bowled over by it. To me, it was an extra large helping of "Soul Food" (even Mekhi Phifer was in it!) with a side of "Mo Betta Blues" with "Waiting To Exhale" for dessert. But in hindsight, there were some elements that did bring some thoughtfulness (spoilers ahead):

- Why does every movie like this have a long suffering matriarch that always says "family is family, no matter what"?

-Why is there always so much drama at one family dinner? I don't know about y'all, but on a typical holiday get-together with my family no one is being chased by thugs for money, no one is AWOL from the armed services, no one is secretly married to a white girl with a baby on the way, no one gets caught having an affair within two days of said event, no one pushes a car off a cliff, no one pulls a gun out on somebody at a club, two siblings don't have a knock down drag out fight in the rain on the front lawn, and nobody gets caught trying to have sex in the closet. (Yes, all of these happened in a 2 day span in the movie). Even one of these factors would be enough for my family to talk about for the next 10 holidays.

- Was it wrong for me not to feel sorry for the YT secret wife when she showed up and her AWOL man was in jail? He ruined his whole military career over her, and from what I could tell, she had no discernible attributes that seemed worthy of ruin. She didn't seem to have a job, much less a career, no money, not particularly charming or charismatic...she wasn't even that pretty...I mean, could they have cast someone else? Even Paris Hilton would have been more interesting.

- Was it wrong that I thoroughly enjoyed the scene where Regina King hands down whupped her husband's ass with a belt and a ton of baby oil? (Sorry guy readers, haha)

-Lauren London is so very, very pretty....wow. Keith Robinson (Dreamgirls, Half & Half), on the other hand, always seems stiff and uncomfortable to me, tho this is the loosest I've ever seen him. Regina King has obviously been working out a lot--her body looks great.

-Who knew Sharon Leal could be so sassy and actually hold screen time? She seemed like an entirely different person. In "Why Did I Get Married" she was like a lump on a log. Maybe cause she had to kiss Tyler Perry in that film, instead of Mekhi, like in this one. I would've been sour too. LMAO at her line "You decided to be with that fraction of a man!"

-I love Chris Brown and all (as I stated in my Omarion comments the other day), but why do they keep sending a boy to do a man's job? First, a remake of a Donny Hathaway song, which is admirable, but let's be real, no one can eff with The Don. Then they have him sing "Try A Little Tenderness" originally sung by Otis Redding in the film? Painful! That song is to be sung by someone that looks like Idris Elba or Delroy Lindo (both in the film), not some teeny-bopper that makes it sound like a pop song. And what is up with the older women attraction for him? He looks like someone's 16 year old kid brother. Damn, Gabrielle Union.

-Speaking of Chris Brown, why is it in the first scene where he had his shirt off, all I could hear was WOOOOOO!!! By all males by the way. Interesting.

The positives are that everyone had something valuable to contribute to the world (except YT), the film looked crisp and professional, and there were no bad wigs and weaves (the make-up was on point, too). Cooning was kept to a bare minimum...as a matter of fact, I don't remember any to speak of. People had nice cars without rims, and no one seemed to live in the ghetto.

If anyone had time to see this, I would really like to know what you thought of it....sucio!

P.S. Everyone: A peaceful journey to Ms. Eartha Kitt.

The Oldest Established Really Important Film Club

A new monthly film club has been born, founded by three of my favorite bloggers: Jonathan at Cinema Styles, Marilyn at Ferdy On Films, and Rick at Coosa Creek. The idea is simple:

The Oldest Established Really Important Film Club is neither old nor important but it is a place for serious-minded film lovers to come together to watch, write about and discuss film. Each month a different member will select a film for everyone in the club to watch with a given date for discussion. On that date the member who chose the film will put up a post on their blog about the film with other members expected to join in the discussion.

Basically, each month one blog will be the centralized location for discussion: the blogger will pick a film to be discussed, post about it on a designated date, and then wait for the flood of comments to let loose. Marilyn will be posting about the first film, Jennifer Baichwal's documentary The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia, on January 12. The bloggers who will be choosing films are already scheduled for the next year, and several have already picked what films they will be selecting. My own pick, slated for discussion in July 2009, is Paul Verhoeven's Black Book. You can check out all the details and be kept up to date on current and upcoming discussions at the Oldest Established Really Important Film Club. Jonathan has also designed several sidebar buttons and banners, like the one above or the one you may have already noticed along the side of this site. Anyone who is interested in this club — as a participant, commenter, or simply a reader — should use one of these banners to help spread the word.

Films I Love #12: Equinox Flower (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958)

The sound films of Yasujiro Ozu are almost all cut from the same cloth, sharing similar plotlines, characters, and aesthetics, making it difficult to single out one film as his finest work. Nevertheless, Equinox Flower is my personal favorite mainly because in this film, Ozu achieves perhaps the most delicate balance between the many elements of his work: the understated rhythms of daily life, the subtle dramas percolating beneath seemingly placid surfaces, the formal grace of his simple aesthetic, and the deadpan humor and wit, so often overlooked, with which he gently skewers his characters. The story is a familiar one, a variation on Ozu's perennial concerns of marriage, familial bonds, aging, friendships, and the difficulty of expressing emotions in a largely repressed society. In this version of the typical Ozu tale, Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) is upset by his daughter Setsuko's (Ineko Arima) desire to marry a man he does not approve of. Wataru represents a hypocritical fusion of traditional and modern Japanese values, giving out open-minded and sensitive advice to friends, and yet when it comes to his own daughter's happiness he is angered by his lack of control over her life. He wishes her to marry a man he picks for her rather than marrying the man she loves and chooses for herself. The story may be simple, but Ozu's compositions, mostly static shots from his signature low angle, are immaculate and perfectly conceived. Each image in an Ozu film has weight and formality, and his colors are richly textured, pitting eye-popping reds against a background palette composed mostly of lush green hues. Ozu's films are arch-formalist masterpieces in which mundane human dramas are deliberately parceled out, bit by bit, within a rigidly conceived framework.

Hello All....

Sorry I haven't posted in a minute, but Mama's been taking care of some serious bidness the past 2 weeks. I want to say thank you to the new folks that are following my blog...I have found some very interesting reads through the blogs that you have. Kudos!

I will do a few more posts before we wrap up this crazy, amazing year. But today I want to leave you with 2 videos, both that highly peaked my interest. The first I was gonna do independently as a "Terrence Watch!" until I found the second vid. Thank you reader Harlepolis for sending this to me....it is of Jamie Foxx on Big Boy's radio show talking about his experiences with my beloved, Terrence Howard. He absolutely destroys it as he imitates Howard and his special way of talking, and speaks on Terrence's ummmm..."unique" personality. Funny as hayall!

This second one I saw while reading "On The Black Hand Side". It is of Etta James and Chuck Berry absolutely, positively KILLING it on some awards show. They show everyone, from youngest new jacks to the oldest heads, who the true royalty really is. Etta's talent is so huge, Bey can only dream at night of coming close...and Chuck is evidently quite the hype man.

You can see this reunion brought them back to the memories of their early days together...LMAO at Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones coming in on the end as if he were on the same level and caliber (or even deserved to be in the same room) as James and Berry.

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Chuck Berry & Etta James
Uploaded by Roselyne14

If you are not able to view the above video, click here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4naj_chuck-berry-etta-james_music

The best films of the 1980s

The fine folks at the Criterion Forum have an ongoing "lists project" intended to compile a series of best-of lists for each decade in cinematic history. These lists are invariably interesting and educational, with a much more varied and well-rounded view of film than most critics' organizations tend to produce when asked to gather lists of this sort. The project is currently polling the forum members to list the best films of the 1980s, and I've decided to contribute. I'm coming into this at the last minute — the lists are due on January 15 — so I haven't watched or re-watched any films specifically for this purpose, something I might've liked to do if I'd prepared for this earlier. Instead, since I probably won't be watching very many films at all until the new year, I put this list together now based only on films I'd already seen. There were still more than enough great choices from this supposedly sub-par decade for cinema, and the list below has been culled down from an initial selection of nearly double the size. I also limited myself to a maximum of three films per director, or else Woody Allen, Jean-Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer each might have had several more films on the list: this was an especially strong decade for those three favorites of mine.

Here is my list:

1. Sans soleil (Chris Marker)
2. King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. Fanny & Alexander (Ingmar Bergman)
4. The Aviator's Wife (Eric Rohmer)
5. First Name: Carmen (Jean-Luc Godard)
6. A nos amours (Maurice Pialat)
7. Down By Law (Jim Jarmusch)
8. Three Crowns of a Sailor (Raoul Ruiz)
9. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes)
10. Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
11. Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
12. Coup de torchon (Bertrand Tavernier)
13. Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
14. Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
15. Dead Ringers (David Cronenberg)
16. Damned If You Don't (Su Friedrich)
17. The Angelic Conversation (Derek Jarman)
18. The Dante Quartet (Stan Brakhage)
19. After Hours (Martin Scorsese)
20. Quando l'occhio trema (Paolo Gioli)
21. The Falls (Peter Greenaway)
22. My Girlfriend's Boyfriend (Eric Rohmer)
23. Hail Mary (Jean-Luc Godard)
24. Broadway Danny Rose (Woody Allen)
25. Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog)
26. Tango (Zbigniew Rybcznski)
27. The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)
28. Secret Honor (Robert Altman)
29. Le Pont du Nord (Jacques Rivette)
30. Pauline at the Beach (Eric Rohmer)
31. Grass Labyrinth (Shuji Terayama)
32. Videodrome (David Cronenberg)
33. RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven)
34. Elephant (Alan Clarke)
35. Chocolat (Claire Denis)
36. Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
37. Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch)
38. The Thing (John Carpenter)
39. The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris)
40. Mala Noche (Gus Van Sant)
41. Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
42. The Last of England (Derek Jarman)
43. Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen)
44. Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (Les Blank)
45. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
46. Loulou (Maurice Pialat)
47. Dimensions of Dialogue (Jan Svankmajer)
48. The Ties That Bind (Su Friedrich)
49. Street of Crocodiles (Quay brothers)
50. The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)

The Elephant Man

If most of the films of David Lynch might be described as a journey into the strangeness beneath the thin outer skin of ordinary reality, The Elephant Man essentially reverses the director's usual preoccupation: the film locates the ordinary and the human within an external skin of extraordinary surreality. The point is basically the same in either case, namely the coexistence of the prosaic with the unimaginable. Based on the famed real-life "elephant man" John Merrick, the film traces Merrick's transition from a carnival sideshow attraction to a cultured, intelligent man living in relative comfort and tranquility. John Hurt, playing Merrick beneath a thick coating of makeup and prosthetics, turns in a performance of amazing sensitivity and complexity. He is deformed, his head and body misshapen and covered in bulbous, fleshy protrusions. The sensibility at work in creating this image is obviously the same one that dreamed up the "lady in the radiator" with her swollen, protuberant cheeks for Lynch's debut Eraserhead: in these two figures of warped humanity, one entirely imaginary and the other based on a real person, Lynch's aesthetic of humanity made strange achieves its most potent early expressions.

That Hurt, his face hidden and distorted by this overpowering accumulation of makeup, still manages to be expressive and poignant is a miracle of acting. His performance, filtered through the obstructions of his disguise, mirrors Merrick's own slow emergence from within the cocoon of his appearance: both actor and character must project their inner selves through intimidating façades that threaten to suffocate them. When Merrick is initially discovered by the physician Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), he is completely submerged in his externality. He is being displayed daily at a demeaning freakshow by the abusive, exploitative Bytes (Freddie Jones), who showcases his pet freak by day and beats him by night. Merrick is, as a result, withdrawn into himself, hidden away behind his own face, which he wears as a mask: everyone assumes that he is merely an uncomprehending animal, and he does or says nothing to disabuse them of the idea. It takes Treves, who slowly begins to realize that his new patient is more conscious than he had initially suspected, to draw out Merrick's inner life. The film's narrative is about finding a human mind, a human soul, within what had previously been deemed a mere empty husk. Treves is perhaps slow to recognize the humanity of this man; when he first discovers Merrick, his instinct is to display the elephant man before an assembly of medical professionals, exchanging one type of sideshow for another. But once Treves begins treating Merrick as a human being rather than a sideshow freak or a medical example, he discovers, much to his own surprise, a fully functioning intellect within this distorted body.

Lynch, perhaps recognizing that his central character is strange enough already, plays things relatively straight here. His images are disarmingly beautiful and classical, lending an unflinching sense of reality to his outrageous hero. The direct, unpretentious quality of Lynch's imagery makes Hurt's Merrick believable as more than an accumulation of impressive makeup effects and acting tics. The physicality of this elephant man is enhanced by the way he is introduced, slowly building up to his first appearances in much the same way as the classic monster movies held back the unveiling of the creature. Merrick is variously cloaked in shadows or hidden beneath burlap masks and heavy coats; in one inventively staged sequence, the outline of his body is visible through a thin curtain as he is displayed to a group of scientists. Paradoxically, as long as Merrick is living as a spectacle, Lynch withholds his full appearance from the audience, only suggesting the contours of his deformed body at most. When people view him only as a monster or a freak, Lynch films him through the filter of the monster movie, presenting Merrick in the shadowy half-light that is characteristic of the genre. This intensifies the effect when Merrick is finally revealed without any obstructions, when he appears in shadow-free daylight; his transition into humanity and society is signaled by his emergence into the light.

The film is dotted with very recognizably Lynchian dream sequences, in which Merrick is haunted by images of his mother — whose photo he cherishes as the only reminder of her role in his life — being trampled and mauled by elephants. These dreams incorporate ghostly superimpositions and slow-motion billows of smoke, familiar markers of the Lynchian unconscious. The director's hand also shows through in the sound design, which occasionally delves, without explanation, into the underbelly of the hospital where Merrick is staying, capturing the creaks and mechanical whooshes of pipes and machinery. The film explicitly takes place on the cusp of the machine age, as indicated by an early scene where Treves performs surgery on a man injured in a factory accident. He comments that they will be seeing more and more injuries like this, and laments the heartless nature of machinery, which "cannot be reasoned with." This idea flows subtly through the entire film, never mentioned again but always present in the soundtrack's pristinely recorded machine rhythms. Merrick's warm, reasoning humanity, found in an unfamiliar and externally awkward guise, is a counterpoint to the cold but perfectly sleek inhumanity of the machine and the metal pipe. As with all of Lynch's films, The Elephant Man is an eye-opening glimpse into the strangeness — and the strange beauty — of humanity.

The Bechdel Rule for Movies

First off, enlarge the above image and read the comic strip.

Interesting, no?

This was called to my attention by comic critic Tom Crippen at the blog The Hooded Utilitarian. Alison Bechdel is a feminist comic writer/artist who is perhaps best known for her recent memoir Fun Home, though she also writes and draws a weekly comic strip called Dykes to Watch Out For, which is, I believe, where the strip in question originated.

The rule she posits in that strip isn't quite a rule, actually — I don't think most people would use it as an unbreakable guideline for what they see, even if Bechdel's friend apparently does — but it does bring up some very interesting questions about the role of gender in (especially) Hollywood movies and the relationship of these movies to their presumed audiences. Thinking about what movies might meet the rule and what movies wouldn't is a useful test for determining what constitutes a movie made "for" women, as opposed to one made "for" men. I don't think the rule necessarily separates anti-feminist movies from pro-feminist ones, or sexist ones from non-sexist ones, but it does help gauge the position of women and their interests in films. As a general rule, films that pass the test give screentime to women independently of their relationships to the men in the films, whereas in films that fail the test, the women (if any) exist primarily only in relationship to the male leads. As Tom points out, there are films that might fail the test that nevertheless have strong central women characters; he cites the Terminator cycle, and he probably has a point there.

To give some idea of what results the test might yield when applied to various types of films, I thought about some recent films I've watched myself. Of the films I posted about here in December, the ones that pass the test are In My Skin; The Women (Naturally, I thought of this one first; though Tom cites it as a debatable case, I'd say the titular women, who are always talking, do talk about something other than men at least part of the time. At the very least, they talk about each other, too.); Le Pont du Nord (perhaps unsurprising from the greatest director of actresses); and The Seventh Victim (some women talk to each other about Satanism!). Considering that I've written about 15 films here so far this month, the fact that only 4 of them meet the qualifications of Bechdel's test goes a long way towards proving her thesis. Of the films that do not meet the test, however, it's worth pointing out that Rohmer's A Summer's Tale does have very complex and well-developed women characters. Interestingly, it would also fail a corresponding test for male characters.

The percentage for November's viewing is arguably even worse. I wrote about 33 films and still only 4 met the test's strict requirements: Bell, Book and Candle (women talking about witchcraft), Naked (women talking about poverty and jobs), A Prairie Home Companion (women talking about music and the past), and Far From Heaven (women talking about race, politics, etc). Equally interesting are the films that are left out. Sink Or Swim would doubtless be an exception for Bechdel and her friend, since the film is a one-woman show, an avant-garde pastiche with a voiceover; it is inarguably feminist. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is another intriguing exclusion: it features two women friends who, as far as I can remember, rarely if ever talk about anything besides men in the course of the film. And yet this is in many ways the point of the film, which is a satiric commentary on the ways in which society requires women to conform to various stereotypes imposed by men. Clearly, Bechdel's rule does not allow for the complexity of themes that can underlie the treatment of gender, even in a seemingly straightforward musical comedy like this.

Anyone else have any thoughts about this comic and what it says about film and gender?

Films I Love #11: I Fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi, 1962)

Ermanno Olmi's I Fidanzati is a deceptively simple film that is stunning in its effect. Its minimal story concerns the construction worker Giovanni (Carlo Cabrini), who is forced to leave behind his home town and his fiancée Liliana (Anna Canzi) in order to find a better job in a different part of the country. After an opening dancehall scene that is surprisingly static and formal, the film shifts subtly back and forth between Giovanni's tenure in the south of Italy, and his memories of his troubled engagement to Liliana back home. Long stretches function almost like a silent film, capturing the quiet and stillness of rural life, as well as evoking the loneliness and isolation of Giovanni, alone in an unfamiliar place, far from his family and those he loves. Olmi's lush, textured images are so classically beautiful as individual frames that it's easy to forget the perfect control and crispness of his editing rhythms. These sumptuous visuals capture the forlorn beauty of the rural landscapes that Giovanni wanders through, even finding cause for wonder in such unlikely images as a nighttime work site, where showers of sparks from welding torches are transformed into an unearthly fireworks display.

The accumulation of detail and incident is slow and deliberate, gently nudging the protagonist towards the realization of how deeply he misses his fiancée and how much he values their relationship. In the final twenty minutes of the film, the couple begin exchanging letters, which are read aloud in voiceover. This sudden outpouring of open, sincere communication has an energizing effect in contrast to the rest of the film's quiet and reserve. And despite the romanticism of this central relationship and the beauty of Olmi's images, the film also serves as a subtle Marxist critique of the alienation of labor, the economic pressures that uproot workers from their homes and their families in search of increasingly scarcer and lower-paying jobs. Like most great political films, I Fidanzati locates its politics squarely in the personal, in the dramas of separation and love that drive its central couple.