FILM PROMOS... 60s STYLE

A great film deserves a great promotion. Even in 1964.

Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie is a complex psychological drama about a beautiful compulsive liar and thief (Tippi Hedren) who helps herself to her various employers' safes and vaults before changing her address and identity. One of her bosses (Sean Connery) falls for her and uncovers the truth behind her actions, but takes her as his wife rather than sending her to jail as he gets at the root psychological trauma. It has been said that Marnie is like a culmination of Notorious (1946), Rebecca (1940), and Spellbound (1945). Its cinematic triumph is the use of framing and its exquisite color palette.

The film was introduced to audiences with a bang in July of 1964. In the lead up to the release, there was a contest with the theme of "Who is the Prettiest Secretary," which surely grabbed female audiences. Then at the actual opening night select movie theaters displayed a large safe that was filled with merchandise from neighborhood retailers (jewelry, clothing, gift certificates, etc.). Moviegoers were invited to take their shot at cracking the safe, for if they succeeded the contents would be theirs.

An assortment of movie posters were created billing it as Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspenseful Sex Mystery" with headlines like the below. In the image above, the list begins and ends with the most powerful selling points: sex and love. Additionally, the borders are designed in a modern 1960s style, which again sells it to a younger, more culturally immersed audience that doesn't want their mother's same old romantic movie.

Selection of poster headlines:

"On Marnie's wedding night he discovered every secret about her... except one!"
= Allowing the viewer's mind to wander to interesting places to figure it out, creating expectations they want to know will or will not be met in the actual film

"Thief...Liar...Cheat...she was all of these...and he knew it!"
= Painting a character will ill traits and adding second level of intrigue with a "he"

"Only Alfred Hitchcock could have created a woman —so mysterious —so fascinating —so dangerous as Marnie"
= Banking on Hitchcock's directorial star power as well as setting up intrigue for a character

"Alfred Hitchcock's love stories start where others fail to go!"
= Banking of Hitchcock's directorial star power and asserting success via the negative "fail"

YEE HAW, MOTHERFUCKER

The Western is the most enduring and most successful Hollywood genre in history. John Wayne. Robert Redford. The Williamsburg Hipster. The cowboy represents the desired image of America by embodying a specific set of traits.

Independence
Autonomy
Ownership
Strength
Virility
Protection

But the cowboy is not unique to America. It evolved out of the medieval English knight. Our cowboy -- that we have constructed and shaped to our needs since the turn of the 19th century -- is an archetype that furthers a dominant ideology. What these figures do is provide a central icon around which to establish an identity as a nation. The cowboy offers a myth that seems to substantiate the ideology behind it, which is certainly capitalist. At the turn of the 19th century America needed to cultivate an idealized self-image characterized by the individual, self-reliant, transient qualities of the western hero in order to further capitalism as the dominant ideology. The myth prevails and masks the violence of the West, class and racial unrest in America, and capitalism’s control over American culture.

Cowboy boots. So damn American. We wear them as aspirational participants in the myth in considering ourselves to be strong, independent people. And maybe we like seeing them because at some level we like to feel that we have a strong, independent leader to take ownership of us and protect us against the evils in our lives.

STORY TIME: DATE NIGHT

EXT. CAFE IN PARIS, FRANCE 1896 - EVENING

WOMAN
My, this is so lovely!

MAN
Yes, it's one of Paris' finest cafes.

Enter WAITER

MAN
Garçon, one cognac for me and an absinthe for the madame.

Enter WAITER with drinks

WOMAN
Oh, this, what is it, absinthe, has a very curious taste.

MAN
Yes, it's good for you. Here (nudges cognac across table), now try this.

MAN leans on elbow on table and grins cunningly

MAN
Drink up, darling, drink up.

FADE OUT

HOLY MISE-EN-SCENE

This stop-motion animation-style video by the director "Pes" (a.k.a. Adam Pesapane) for the Washington State Lottery is delicious. The colours are so luscious and the palettes of each scene are harmonious in their simplicity. Also, this video is a great example of reappropriation (one of the post-modern principles of art) in its utilization of everyday objects as landscape settings and props. For example, white rubber gloves as snow on the mountain, pine cones as trees, and lunch box as barn.

BIG SHITPILE: THE MOVIE

click for larger

It's fun to play Oliver Stone.

AVOIDING THE INFORMATION HOLE

Jenny Holzer, Protect Me From What I Want, 1986. New York, NY.

The Information Age is packed with, well, information. Tons of data enter our awareness on a daily -- perhaps even hourly -- basis. Just walk outside. You look down and there is a newspaper. You pick it up, maybe check out the headlines. Your phone buzzes and you read a few email, click on a link, check out a web site. You walk down the street with your newspaper in your hand, your phone in your pocket and your ipod in your ear. To the left is an advertisement on the side of a newsstand. To the right is a digital sign. When you return home, you turn on your t.v. and scan through the channel guide to find something interesting to watch. While you do some online shopping. Blog reading. And investigate hotel options in Tunisia. And then your phone buzzes.

This slice of the day is typical for many people. We are accustomed to doing several things at once (almost exclusively, which means that the word "multitasking" is now archaic) by processing words, images, other words all at the same time. Information. Lots of information.

So with all of this information swirling in and around our heads, how do we select what to pay attention to and allow entrance into ourselves? Sure, you could go with chance or something in front of you. Or drive yourself crazy by being indecisive. Or...

You could have someone else do the selecting for you. That person, who we can call the "Sorter," is responsible for isolating and ushering in information. Your Sorter should be smart. Curious. Engaging. And have a similar perspective to your own. Two examples of Sorters include the following:

• Jenny Holzer - (conceptual artist) helps sort by isolating certain aspects of literacy, mostly in the form of arphorisms or selections from government documents. She then enlarges them to a vast scale, which forces us to pause and look so that we take in information that is thought-provoking. Holzer's "Protect Me From What I Want" was projected in NYC's Times Square in the 1980s. Stop and think about that.

• Oliver Stone - (filmmaker) is a Sorter by virtue of the moving image. He steps back and isolates a sliver of our culture that is interesting or significant. This sliver is usually the life of a person, whose life details could easily be lost in the "Information Hole." Such examples include Jim Morrison of The Doors and George W. Bush. By pulling this information out and pushing it into our consciousness in the form of a film, Stone enshrines and enlarges these interesting parts of contemporary humanity. And what could be a better medium than film, which is both enjoyable and is easy to process since it is visual information. Pretty powerful stuff.

DEEP THOUGHT

(Not enough arm hair to be The Wolfman)

GLORIOUS INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Don't call it a movie. This is a film.

Much of the brilliance of this film arises from the ways in which writer and director Quentin Tarantino playfully toys with what audiences and film theorists expect in a genre film. Inglourious Basterds is technically a contemporary western, however Tarantino sets out to either break or modify all of the traditional codes inherent in the genre. Check it out:

Code: Good guy wears a white hat
Modified Code: Good guy wears a white tuxedo

Code: Takes place in the American West
Modified Code: Features lead character from American West
Modified Code: Opening scene is in the country that visually resembles the American Great Plains

Code: There's a saloon or bar where both hero and villain drink hard liquor
Modified Code: The villain drinks a glass of milk

Code: There's a big shoot out at the end
Modified Code: The film is one big shoot out -- Pvt. Fredrick Zoller's film, which carries the plot along, is entirely a shoot out

We're all used to the same formula wrapped up in a happy little package: the set-up, the conflict, the tease of a resolution, and finally the resolution. Tarantino distorts multiple macro and micro aspects of the film so that it first violates our schema for genre; and then he distorts the narrative by breaking the rules of history in a pleasantly unexpected way. Cinematically, his attention to detail through words and mise-en-scene imprints certain images and moments in our minds. The result is a real auteur film right up there with Truffaut, Renoir and Hitchcock that derives its strength from the director also being at the helm of the screenplay.

The Characters
They're incredibly well-developed. Many of the characters get their own songs as they are introduced in the film and they each have such individual quirks that they become complex and memorable. For example, "White Lightning" by Charles Bernstein for Lt. Aldo; "Slaughter" by Billy Preston for Stiglitz; and "The Surrender" by Ennio Morricone for Sgt. Donowitz. Another detail that gets images and scenes to stick in viewers' minds is the use of a memorable nick-name. Inglourious Basterds is loaded with good ones: "The Bear Jew" and "The Jew Hunter". Even the characters' actual names are deliberately one of a kind: Shosanna, Aldo, Landa, von Hammersmark, Zoller, Wilhelm Wicki.

The Soundtrack
Just because we're in WWII doesn't mean we have to listen to the same old WWII swing music. Tarantino pops out of the period by including non-diegetic music like a song by David Bowie. And really, why the hell should we absolutely have to transport our mindsets to the 1940s when we're viewing right now in the 2000s? As mentioned above, to give his characters more depth and weight Tarantino bestows some with an entrance theme song, each being appropriate not only in terms of title and lyrics, but actual mood and feel of the song. The use of music simply for relevant lyrics is the mark of a true simpleton director.

Language
Throughout the film Tarantino outwardly plays with the roles of viewer and director so that our existing expectations of language are jostled. In the first scene in which Col. Landa is introduced the exchange is, as expected, in French with English subtitles. But then Landa, the character, says to LaPadite for us, the audience, let's use English; they then resume their conversation in English. It seems to be a snide way of poking fun at the absurdity of other films that use dialogue in other languages just to remain historically and culturally accurate. A film is a creative work of art that doesn't necessarily have to be so accurate. Tarantino comes back to again mock language used for language's sake during the tavern scene in which the Basterds have a meeting with von Hammersmark. Lt. Hicox' German accent is "off" according to one of the enemy SS soldiers, which then sets off one of Tarantino's trademark Mexican stand-off scenes. There is one more stab at language during the climax of the movie premiere. This time Tarantino brings to light the embarrassing truth that Americans only know English and are stupidly limited when a second language is needed.

Let's not forget the title of the film and its intentional misspelling. "Basterds" could refer to the uneducated George Bush-style American stupidity that Aldo represents. "Inglourious" could have simply been misspelled simply to match "Basterds" or it could be, like many of Tarantino's other touches, a way of distinguishing the film as one of a kind to stand out amongst war movies (especially 1977's The Inglorious Bastards). The idea of labeling this renegade group as honorless when they doing what Americans should have done during Hitler's reign seems nonsensical. It was the American public and the government present during WWII that were the actual inglorious ones, as they were too high up on a morality horse to assasinate an evil dictator. Or too inept to do so (but I don't buy that).

The Shot
Auteur directors usually scrutinize every single shot so that frames are staged in artful ways independent of the film's story or plot. The opening scene of Inglourious contains frames that are very unbalanced with many vertical lines striking through the filmic landscape; the way in which the axe is left slicing into the trunk of a tree is at once malicious and violent. The shot of the axe foreshadows not only the violence that is about to come, but it also conveys a feeling of anger that comes to set the backbone of the entire vengeful narrative.

Notice anything especially visually compelling in the opening scene? The colour palette and presence of props and landscape is kept to a minimum for a clean and striking impact. The shots are not cluttered with stuff so that select props stand out very markedly: the axe, the glass of white milk. Many of the scenes are clean by sticking with one predominant colour or similar blend of colours such as the luscious, saturated reds of the movie premiere theater scene: the red Nazi flags sumptuously draped all over Shosanna's theater, the red of Shosanna's plump lips, and the fluttering sensuality of Shosanna's elegant red dress. These deep reds are also function collectively to foreshadow the blood bath that is to come. By exploiting the richness of colour Tarantino gives a level of depth to the film so that it stains our collective consciousness.

Narrative
Finally. A WWII movie in which Hitler actually gets killed. It's about time. For so many years audiences have gotten so accustomed to WWII movies that stay so true to history that it is expected that Hitler lives, at least until his own suicide. Tarantino exploits our deep desire for the evil one to be toppled so that the resolution of the film is intensely satisfying. After all, it is a western.

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE: BRILLIANT MASTERPIECE

It’s not a movie. Not a motion picture. It’s a work of art in motion. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) by Luis Buñuel has the rare trait of under-dialogue. This can be explained as a story and visual back and forth in the form of back-to-back contradiction that is not apparent on the surface while watching the film; it is witnessed by the unconscious or carefully attentive mind of the viewer. This duality is alluded to by the use of black and white in the film. For example, Conchita wears a black and white top and carries a black and white bag: the black and white is indicative of polar opposites. That Obscure Object also did something no other film did before: have two actresses play the same role without at all acknowledging this as though it doesn't happen. But that’s not the only first.

Buñuel’s film isn’t just a film. It is a work of fine art. And to accent his interest in classifying it as art, Buñuel placed his friend Salvador Dali’s paintings (they’re barely visible in the frame, but so obviously his style) into the set of the bedroom during Mathieu and Conchita’s honeymoon. Their existence in the mise-en-scene is a subtle reference to the use of Surrealist automatism as storytelling as opposed to the film being strictly conscious filmmaking.

Buñuel, whose camera was his paintbrush, just let his unconscious run wild. He shot in the moment without numbered shots or any planning. That way it was stream of consciousness and truly fine art.

Visual transitions that are more interesting than match-on-action shots get us from one scene to another. Usually a transition appears as a quick fade or even just a cut separating two scenes; this is what contemporary bourgeois directors like Spielberg and Ridley Scott use. Buñuel, however, employs a more creative approach. He may have a character speaking in front of a not readily apparent portion of the background, say in front of a landscape painting featuring an aqueduct. Then all of a sudden we’re looking at a shot of a real aqueduct. It’s not a painting; it’s the camera planted in front of the aqueduct so our new scene is of the aqueduct.

Terrorism is a major theme in the film. It comes in and out throughout the entire length of the film, as though it is a thought or a panicked worry cropping up here and there in someone’s mind. It behaves like a thought: transient, but always there haunting you every now and then like a worry. And we all know how negative worrying can be for your health. Which is why, yep, our characters die in the end because of terrorists. But the funny thing is, we the viewers are thrilled because the film is over! The back and forth tease finally ends and we are relieved.

Much like deja vu, these random terrorist worries and neuroses together function as a type of foreshadowing. First we hear the conversation in the scene in which Mathieu first meets Conchita as the maid. Then we see through a POV shot that Mathieu is reading a newspaper with the headline, “Jet Blown Up By Terrorists. 290 Dead.” Wait, why 290? As noted above, Mathieu and Conchita get killed by terrorists in the end, so it’s not 290 people, but rather our two people. Just add 2 plus 9 and you get 11, which is visually 1 and 1… Mathieu and Conchita.

Making of the film: Jean-Claude Carriére and Buñuel collaborated so closely to make this work of art (true partners work together 50/50) that they lived together in an isolated location while staying in small monk-like cells adjacent to each other. The two artists ate all of their meals together and had designated brainstorm times as well as brief alone time. The process from there is unbelievable. While they lived, they lived the screenplay. In those close quarters they were the actors, writing from their own perspectives and viewpoints as the actors. But aren’t the actors supposed to act out what the writer and director already have? Yes. But the director is god. As such, Buñuel made this sentiment clear by acting before the actors get to acting. He is the original. The 360-degree, all-encompassing god and auteur of the film. They just let the unconscious run wild. And it turned out that two men living closely together all alone for a long period of time is surprisingly similar to a married couple. Whoa.

HOSTEL PART II: BRILLIANT MASTERPIECE

Hostel Part II by Director Eli Roth is brilliant. Not for the rampant nudity, European allure, or for the shocking bloody gore that was so rampant in the first Hostel film. While it could use a lot of help stylistically in terms of mise-en-scene and editing, the narrative of this film is compelling if you stop seeing it as just an über-grotesque horror movie.

So what is Hostel Part II (2007) about? A trio of attractive female college students from the U.S. wish to have fun in Europe, but instead become victims of a pay-to-kill company called Elite Hunting. Wrong. How about this: Three Americans bring their spoiled ways of American dominance to Europe only to find that rich hunters pay top dollar to brutally torture and kill them. And... EUROPE rocks.

Let's see. We have the typical horror genre pairing of two sexually promiscuous, attractive girls with an innocent, smart girl who doesn't quite fit in. The smart girl, not strong enough to do her own thing, falls in with the other two girls in power who wish to act recklessly abroad without care or responsibility (sound familiar?). Unlike the horror genre of the past seen in films like Halloween, however, the smart non-promiscuous girl does not live. The two lewd girls – both from wealthy families and who enjoy recreational drugs, drinking, men and partying – represent the 21st century American who is so inwardly focused on demonstrating power, having many possessions, and being number one, fails to think outwardly and to consider not just how his actions affect others, but how his actions affect others' perceptions of him. Face it. Americans are selfish.

So these three American girls end up in Europe drinking its vodka, bathing in its hot springs, painting its beauty, and using its men all rather selfishly. And what happens to them? Their European equivalent – an also very attractive, albeit more refined and cultured, model-esque woman named Axelle (a very masculine, strong name that implies the dominance European females have in not being subservient to their men; in contrast, Lorna, Beth and Whitney are all very feminine names) – lures them to Slovakia. To that damn hostel. Which now, by the way, is a very high-tech operation with scanners, online/mobile bidding, pagers, luxury suites, make-up artists, and car service. Accolades to Roth for evolving his basic plot point beyond what we saw in the first Hostel film to keep it fresh, interesting and more challenging for our characters. This basic plot line not only shows the willingness of Americans to abandon their own desires and ability to lead in following the good-looking European, but it also reminds us just how blind Americans can become in the face of acquiring things. Anything. Whole countries. The opposite sex. Couture. Spas.

Why has this country become so absorbed in itself to the point of using other countries, people, and cultures to make itself feel strong and dominant. Number one. The best. Hostel Part II's plot itself is centered on two American men who, feeling weak and insecure, turn to the Elite Hunting company to feel good about themselves again vis-a-vis a blatant display of machismo in torturing and killing weak and defenseless women. Maybe the truth of it is that we're scrambling, arms flailing, to get a hold of anything so we do not drown into second place. Number two. And trust me, we don't want to "try harder" as number two. Americans, for the most part, are a bit lazy (and not like the French). So in the face of a very demoralizing time period – 2007 – that is marked by a fighting winless war in the middle east, unchecked inflation, a cowboy president, and the utter neglect of things that could truly make our country excel (by improvements in education, transportation infrastructure, scientific discoveries, etc.), what happens to us self-involved, insecure Americans? Europeans kill us. But not before torturing the hell out of us with steak knives, power saws, cheese slicers, etc. Even when we try to get away from it and escape the European punishment of our unchecked, selfish behavior, we really can't escape. We're once again put in our places. Or, as Hostel illustrates for us, our heads are put on display in a hidden trophy room within a dashing European's mansion.

Interesting thoughts culled from the film:

• The man who leads Lorna to her doom is named Roman. This could be a reference to Roman Polanski, who is now living in exile in Europe after the Americans forced him out of the country.

• Sasha, an executive with Elite Hunting, executes one of the children of the "Bubblegum Gang" after they interfered with his kidnapping of Beth. This could be representative of the European failure to let their children just be -- that is, to be children as opposed to being "little adults."

• Americans rush too much and are clumsy, as is evident by Todd's eager over-excitement and his subsequent ruining of Whitney's face with a power saw once he has her in his chamber. Oops.

• Not all of the Elite Hunting company's clientele is male: Lorna, the first of the three to die, falls victim to a sadistic woman named Mrs. Bathory who slowly slices her with a long – and appropriately phallic – scythe, which hints at the European acceptance of females on a equal level to men. Whereas in America, Stuart's wife is seen playing the classically feminine role of wife and mother. Contrast this to MRS. Bathory, who herself is also married, yet is not taking on a feminine gender role.

• Death. The two girls who end up dead are: 1) an unattractive dork and 2) an over-sexed Barbie doll while the one who lives is intelligent, subdued and quiet (more European).

• Europeans are way too into soccer. Seriously. After Beth has the "Bubble Gum" gang kids decapitate Axelle, the kids take to playing an impromptu game of soccer with her head. Anyway, it's a very humorous touch from Roth.