Quite simply, these are sophisticated people with complicated feelings such as were seldom allowed on the American screen before sound. The legend goes that Ernst Lubitsch and Charlie Chaplin (as the latter filmed A Woman of Paris) were as much impressed with Stiller as was Louis B. Mayer when he recruited him for Hollywood. But the legend is mealymouthed. Stiller is avantgarde in 1920, with a camera style that is beginning to use space, levels of action, doorways and windows—there is even a mirror shot—to give action a greater feeling of physical reality. There is a close-up of a woman at the piano, from a slightly raised angle and just a little askew, that is giddy with emotion—and Stiller repeats it to help us get the point.
Erotikon comes from a play by Ferenc Herczeg, and the screenplay was done by Gustaf Molander, Arthur Nordén, and Stiller. The photography is by Henrik Jaenzon, the art direction by Axel Esbensen. The acting is the strength of the film, and by far the central performance is Tora Teje as Irene, the professor’s wife. She is fickle yet firm in herself, witty but capable of being hurt. She is a flirt who knows she is playing with her life. I don’t think a woman had been better in a movie up to this point in time. Also with Lars Hanson and Karin Molander—who was between marriages to Gustaf Molander and Lars Hanson.
E.T. (1982)
E.T. is the model for American culture circa 1980. In trying to give identity and a look to his magical creature, his E.T., sometimes known as Puck, Steven Spielberg followed an old Disney concept: that people love the look of a baby, the wide brow, the clear, pure eye. So he pasted together a baby’s face with a photo of Carl Sandburg’s eyes, and the mixture of baby and sage was exquisite. Later he added the forehead of Hemingway, the mouth of Albert Einstein, and a voice derived from Debra Winger.
One could surely go further in reading this film for all tastes. Not only does it presuppose an alien world likely to be friendly to ours (to have seen the same movies), but it also hints at a world where parents may have failed, but never mind, the children can carry through. You can see that as a testament to the young, the newcomers, the fresh blood of pioneers—or you may be disturbed by the feeling of such trust and confidence being placed in the young, the ignorant, and those all too ready to lead them. For example, E.T. would be a very much more worrying (and interesting) film if E.T. himself had just one scene where he was less than perfect and a little inclined to play with children in the way that American kids came to play with their plastic E.T.’s.
Spielberg would also say that it was the experience of making the film that left him wanting to have children, and that he regarded the story as a precious trust not to be overexploited. Well, something happened along the way. Someone seems to have been convinced that this was a very big picture, if only because it does flatter its child characters so much by placing them as the figures most likely to see and understand E.T. And while E.T. can get high, he is too high-minded for any real wickedness, or even naughtiness. He does suggest a world of pretzeloid gods that is slightly stronger than even the societies Spielberg has seen in America.
Of course, Spielberg was still working, thinking, and changing, and you have to see E. T. as a further digestive process added on to Close Encounters—as well as a final rejection of aliens as interesting characters. So it settles for being a fabulous entertainment, one that says, “Nobody’s afraid of Steven Spielberg,” after a few films that had been pretty scary. Melissa Mathison wrote a script from Spielberg’s idea. Allen Daviau photographed it and gave a nice enchanted air to the forest. Carlo Rambaldi designed the creature E.T., and it’s a marvel in an age of robots that every house doesn’t have one by now.
What does it mean? I don’t think it means a thing. Which is rare in Spielberg’s work and may account for his respectful attitude to E.T. Predictably, John Williams did the music, and the fun was enormously enhanced by the earthiness of the kids, Henry Thomas as Elliott and Drew Barrymore as Gertie. Peter Coyote was the figure of authority required for a little suspense. The film cost $10.5 million, and the worldwide gross now stands at $756 million—is that Carl Sandburg smiling, or Ernest Hemingway?
Europa ’51 (1952)
The first fifteen minutes or so of this film offer a tour de force. Irene Girard comes home to her apartment. She is a socialite, beautiful, wealthy, but driven to keep up with her social calendar. She is late for a dinner party in her own flat. As she gets ready, she barely has time to notice or talk to her twelve-year-old son, Michel. Her husband, George, is part of her hectic life. The boy goes to bed as the dinner party begins. Then the maid brings word: The boy has had a fall and has a broken hip. But at the hospital, the word comes out: The boy had tried to kill himself. He dies.
Of course, Ingrid Bergman is Irene, and in the English version (it was filmed simultaneously in Italian) that made her delivery haughty, Knightsbridge, self-centered. But the loss of her son destroys the old Irene. She briefly listens to a friend, a Communist newspaper editor, Andrea (Ettore Giannini), who tells her there are so many sick children, most of them too poor to be helped. Irene gradually descends from her social privilege. She tries to help the poor. She hovers between Communism and God, and it may be that she has become a saint. But her husband and her family turn on her for her desertion of her own class interests, and she is committed to a mental institution. The film closes with her face—tearful but beatific—gazing through the bars of her prison.
As social parable and woman’s picture (and it is both), Europa ’51 seems to me by far the most successful of the films Ingrid and Roberto Rossellini made together, more moving than Journey to Italy and more natural and fluent in its overall acting style. It was written by Rossellini, Sandro de Feo, Mario Pannunzio, Ivo Perilli, and Brunello Rondi, and the picture was produced by the triumvirate of Rossellini, Carlo Ponti, and Dino De Laurentiis. The presence of the last two may account for the strong narrative push. The photography (very good in the realist tradition, yet nearly noir in some lighting) is by Aldo Tonti, and Renzo Rossellini wrote the music.
It can easily be argued that the politics are naïve, but nothing lets us forget the biting impact of that opening sequence, where selfishness and lack of caring have accounted for the desolation of a child. The shift Bergman makes from that cold Irene to the troubled, far quieter saint is a great piece of acting, and she gets real help from Alexander Knox as her husband and Giulietta Masina as a humble wife and mother.
Europa ’51 actually asks, What can be done with the impoverished of the world to prevent more wars? It may be that nothing has helped that dilemma more than the increased prosperity of our societies, but Irene is a test-case figure in the debate among socialism, religious faith, and some agnostic, charitable impulse. The film was badly reviewed, but in hindsight one wonders why. Bergman makes a legitimate and truthful journey from boredom and carelessness to commitment. It is a movie that resonates with the deep-seated urge for moral reform after the war.
Eve (1962)
As Joseph Losey was filming The Damned on location in Dorset in 1961, producers Robert and Raymond Hakim sent him the James Hadley Chase novel Eve and asked if he was interested. The Hakims already had Stanley Baker and Jeanne Moreau signed on for the lead roles, and Losey always felt that Baker had suggested him. It was the story of a writer in Hollywood who falls for a courtesan, and Losey liked it, though he wanted to change the setting from Hollywood to Europe. The Hakims agreed to that, and a deal was made.
For Losey—as artist, exile, and unhappily married man—this was an intensely personal project, and I think it’s fair to say that an insecure man saw the property as a chance to explore female domination (which did not appeal very much to the Hakims). Losey proposed Hugo Butler as his scriptwriter, but the two old friends (The Prowler) no longer got on. Butler wanted things cut-and-dried and may have flinched at the weakness of the main male character. Losey was constantly drawing his own feelings into the script and making the character self-destructive. So Evan Jones was hired instead, and things improved. But the Hakims did not li
ke the script. The project nearly foundered then and there, but a group meeting of all parties went through the script, and a version was agreed on.
It was now set in Venice and Rome. Tyvian Jones (Baker) has stolen a book his dead brother wrote and claimed it as his own. He takes up with Eve Olivier (Moreau), and she plays all his guilt and weaknesses. There was some early shooting in Venice at film-festival time (done by Henri Decaë), and then Gianni Di Venanzo came on for the main shoot. Richard MacDonald was art director, and old buildings and paintings were used as commentaries on the story. It was Losey’s original intention to make a sound track with Miles Davis and Billie Holiday recordings, but in the end Davis was dropped, the Holiday cues were greatly reduced, and Michel Legrand did a score (one that Losey admired).
Losey’s cut ran 155 minutes. He cut that by twenty minutes under pressure, and then the Hakims hacked it down further to 115 minutes (or less—prints vary). Their treatment of the film was appalling, and the issue may be confused in some eyes. But one day the truth will be revealed: that Eve is an extraordinary film, absolutely novel in its view of male humiliation and of this monstrous queen-bee figure who rules her world. Moreau never did anything stronger or more dangerous. Baker is brilliant and tortured. And this was before Losey did The Servant.
Although Losey fought with Di Venanzo, the look of Venice (especially) is unsurpassed in film, and the camera movements are both formal and emotional. The cast also includes Virna Lisi, Giorgio Albertazzi, James Villiers, Riccardo Garrone, and Lisa Gastoni. In short, this is one of the great lost films of all time and one of the most revealing works by Losey.
Exodus (1960)
Starting the end of the 1950s, in a bold but deliberate way, Otto Preminger addressed some of the eternally contentious issues of human government: Does the law behave justly (Anatomy of a Murder)? Can nationalism compromise with enemy nations (Exodus)? Is there a system of government that functions fairly (Advise and Consent)? Can a church exist without destroying the privacy of faith (The Cardinal)? That anyone should mount such a campaign exposes the awkward mix of intelligence, didacticism, and chutzpah in Preminger. Still, the achievement of the films is considerable. Just because the problems uncovered in Exodus have hardly improved in more than forty years that’s no reason to forget or reject the picture and the overall feeling that intelligence and good drama can convey the conflicting points of view in a great crisis.
The key to the work is to trace the way in which the prolonged partisanship of the Leon Uris novel has passed through the hands of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and then through Preminger’s subtle mise-en-scène to make a study in ambivalence. Yes, the central characters in Exodus are Jewish (or Zionist), and the film’s central task is to show the foundation of the Israeli state. But this is not a film that makes a travesty of the Arab or Palestinian point of view. There are good and bad men on both sides. One day there will be exhaustion, and perhaps from that something like compromise. But to take the title of the great Chris Marker documentary on Israel, Description of a Struggle, so the Preminger epic—filmed in Super Panavision 70, and 212 minutes—is actually far more objective and balanced than anyone had reason to hope. Forty-eight years later, it can be shown without apology. Forty-five years before Exodus, Birth of a Nation appeared—and it could hardly be shown in 1960.
All that said, there is a problem, which is Paul Newman’s rather bad-tempered attitude toward the film. One can see all too clearly that he did not feel easy playing Ari Ben Canaan. But he might have realized that an epic does deserve a committed energy at its core, such as Charlton Heston gave to several films. On the other hand, Eva Marie Saint is excellent as the American nurse through whose eyes the story is revealed.
The Ernest Gold music is as strident (though it won an Oscar) as Sam Leavitt’s camerawork is intimate and intelligent. Time and again, Preminger uses depth of focus and reframing movements to enlarge the scope of an argument. And, for the most part, the supporting acting is as rounded and tolerant as the overall sense of context: Ralph Richardson as the British general, Peter Lawford (rather overdone as an officer), Lee J. Cobb, Sal Mineo (very good; he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor), John Derek (surprisingly good), Hugh Griffith, Gregory Ratoff, Felix Aylmer, David Opatoshu (outstanding), Jill Haworth, and Marius Goring.
The Exorcist (1973)
Nothing dates worse than horror. It was not that anyone was bound to “believe” in The Exorcist in 1973—though I think it was apparent even then that the film was taking dangerous risks with anyone who had a heightened but unstable (is there a difference?) level of faith. Of course, the film was a giveaway even then: It simply would not have been made if director William Friedkin or anyone else concerned (including the novelist William Peter Blatty) had actually recognized and honored an extensive and authentic religious faith in their potential audience. If you credit God, The Exorcist is hideous—if you believe in horror, it runs the risk of being fun. The chance to be that “horrific” was a signal that we had lost our faith—and thus, by implication, the only believers left in society were extremists, the outrageous, or the crazy. And we expect them to fend for themselves.
Nevertheless, there was an inventiveness in the ingrowing claustrophobia: the way the wintry Georgetown scenes give way to that cockpit of a room where the battle over Regan’s body will take place. The special effects were startling and very frightening, and we were still an audience unfamiliar with that very unsettling way of doing films. And there was a chemistry between the rather numb puppy-fat of Linda Blair and the infernal voice of Mercedes McCambridge that came from within her. Going into the film in 1973, one expected an ordeal—and one was not disappointed. You had to hang on to the ride.
Then in 2000 the film was rereleased, with ten or so minutes of allegedly more explicit material—and audiences were rocking with laughter. I suppose in part that was because the film had an ominous reputation for horror that a new generation of kids found they could handle with ease. Add in the acceleration in disbelief that had set in during the years since 1973. But now the threadbare purpose and the absolute absence of a real interest in fear (or its meanings) was naked to behold. The film had been exploitation—and once that atmosphere had subsided, leaving just the scaffolding, then the naïveté of the filmmakers seemed embarrassing.
In the end, I think, it may be more disturbing if a child looks on the world with just a hint of unkindness or insanity than if her head spins and she vomits green bile and walks upside down on her hands and feet like a beast. What can Satan do that we don’t do anyway? The devil, in other words, is in the fine details of human behavior, as opposed to the lavish warping of nature that marked The Exorcist. And once the technology of this enterprise becomes central, then the lack of imaginative commitment leaves one very cold.
Not that anyone lets the 1973 film down, except for how Friedkin and Blatty betray their own suspense. Linda Blair works hard, along with Ellen Burstyn and Kitty Winn, and you can sometimes feel a trace of dread in Jason Miller and Max von Sydow. As for Lee J. Cobb, I just feel he’s wrong. Of course, the Exorcist story goes on and on, and I fear that it is well past self-parody now, but the cinema’s capacity to goose us has become as stupid as an uncle who has only one trick to try out at parties.
Exstase (1933)
We see several keys tried in a lock, and then a husband carries his bride over the threshold. He is a middle-aged man. He wants to get his tight shoes off. He rearranges things on top of a dresser. He is a fusspot. She is played by Hedy Kiesler, twenty perhaps. She wants much more than her shoes removed. She will sprawl on the marriage bed. But nothing happens. We never learn why this marriage was undertaken or why the man will take no steps to consummate it. But it is apparent already that Ms. Kiesler is especially beautiful and that the Czech director, Gustav Machaty, has an eye for composition that is fascinating. Although it is 1933, the film is in many respects like a silent: There is a little dialogue, in German, but it is badly synchronized. We are on the b
rink of a sensation in film history.
There is an almost immediate divorce, whereupon the girl, Eva, runs off to the open countryside. She is riding a horse. She comes to a lake and tears off her white suit to go swimming naked. Then her horse runs off and finds a gang of engineers working. One of them follows the horse back to Eva, but only after she has run naked across the meadows. She and the engineer are attracted, and very soon they are in each other’s arms. That’s when the most beautiful passage of the film occurs. She is lying down, her arms over her head, but it is clear that she is having an orgasm.
Hedwig Kiesler was the daughter of a Viennese banker, and she had been in a few films before Machaty discovered her for Exstase. The film became a scandal, not least in the eyes of Fritz Mandl, a munitions millionaire, who now married Hedy. He tried to destroy every print, but then she divorced him and moved on toward Hollywood, where she would be Hedy Lamarr. Machaty made only a few other films, and his 1931 From Saturday to Sunday is outstanding.
It’s clear that he had been influenced by Soviet cinema in his framing and his vision, but it’s hard to see that Exstase has any other point beyond saying sex is good and suggesting that Hedy is great at it. The nudity is utterly natural, and I’m not sure that Hedy was ever again as relaxed onscreen. Considering all the restrictions that came in in 1933, the orgasm scene is as startling as it is explicit. What is Eva thinking of? Well, it looks as if thought itself has yielded to sensation, but there are stories that even then Ms. Kiesler was planning developments in radar, et cetera, that would later win her government praise.
'Have You Seen...?' Page 44
