my best theater experiences

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to see The Red Shoes (1948) in a theater, on a newly struck 35mm print. The crowd was fussy, and people were walking in and out of the theater throughout the screening. At every reel change, the sound would cut out for a few moments, stopping sentences short and leaving the ghostly image foolishly mouthing words. And, in the quiet moments of the film such as these, the sound from a particularly noisy film playing across the hall would seep into our theater. These distractions were tremendously unpleasant. I had come for the colors and not for the story (which I consider weak P+P), but still, I would not have minded the total imaginative immersion that the distractions made impossible.

All this set my mind on the in-theater viewing experience. Had I ever had a great one? Were such experiences worth anything?

The theater experience is overrated. Most film lovers adore the theater experience, but when I think of the film theater my first thought is of Sullivan's time with the "farmer's wife" ... yes, that awful. I mostly avoid the theater; admittedly, however, this is because the types of films that get screened in theaters are usually the types of films I think are worth avoiding. (My taste is not of the people's.) Some theater experiences have diminished my respect for a film; occasionally I have walked into a screening of a film I once loved in my youth, quite buoyant with anticipation, only to walk out of the screening disappointed and slightly angry. Such is the case with Fight Club (1999) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). (And I regret to say that The Red Shoes has also fallen in my estimation since seeing it on the big screen (but not the colors!).) The worst theater experiences generate within me a blistering, uncontrollable rage; Inland Empire (2006) and There Will Be Blood (2007) fall into this category, both experiences thoroughly horrific because the theater's sound was too loud. This sort of experience can only be described as physical violence (think A Clockwork Orange). In both instances, I walked out of the theater never wanting to watch a film again, and my pain only increased when I learned that my friends, whom I had hoped were as tortured by the film as I was, had loved it and wanted to see it again. What betrayal! Good friends are hard to find.

Let no one tell me that I must experience a film in a theater. Such people are insufferable. I know that many of them are good at heart and simply think, however naively, that the in-theater experience is the best. But there are many others for whom the theater is a test of legitimacy -- they think that you cannot have a legitimate opinion about a film until you have seen it "how it was meant to be seen." There are many tests for legitimacy, and undoubtedly your opinion will never be legitimate in their eyes. Legitimacy snobs should be shipped to Siberia.

For all that, I have had fine viewing experiences in a theater. They were difficult to remember, but, having dug them out from all the bad and indifferent memories, I have decided that I would not trade them for anything. In fact, I want to share them. Here are my three favorite in-theater viewing experiences, listed in chronological order:

#1. Jaws (1975); fall 2005

Although films had my attention at the time, I was not yet a film-lover -- I was a physics major, and one morning, while I was driving to school, I noticed a multiplex theater sign which read: "Giant Screen: JAWS." I suddenly had something to do that night.

I went to the screening alone. (I would bring a friend along to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) a few weeks later.) At the theater I discovered that they screened "classics" like this every Wed. for a few months in the Fall and that, to my delight, the screenings only cost $5. I had never been this "in-the-know" about films before.

I took my seat. The theater filled rather quickly ... not quite full, but still a few hundred people by my estimate. Hopefully this gives you an idea of how big this theater is. And "Giant Screen" is an understatement. One could land an airplane on it.

This was my first time in such an environment. For those who can imagine it, I need not stress how deeply, profoundly awed I was by the experience. There was so much space, so much noise, so much energy, so much life. That night, I was in love with movies.

But this was years ago. I hate the film now. And I am more than embarrassed that I once fell under the spell of such vulgar hullabaloo. But nostalgia wins this time. For a night, I understood what movie magic meant. It gripped me. I laughed and gasped and sweated and all sorts of weird things with hundreds of strangers, and that meant something. It was a defining moment. In just over a year I would be making the leap from physics to film studies. Although I have life left yet to regret this switch, today I can remember the Jaws screening fondly and wonder at my innocence.

#2. Brand Upon the Brain! (2006); summer 07

Before Brand Upon the Brain! played in Denver, I had known of Maddin only through his short The Heart of the World (2000), which I watched once on the internet. ("Watch" is a curious word for what I do with movies on the internet.) Others had recommended Maddin's work to me, as I had grown fond of early cinema by this time and Maddin, it seems, likes early cinema, too. I was cautious, though. For most people, a pastiche of early cinematic techniques usually just means cutting out the sound (and putting in ragtime music) and color. Sometimes the actors dress in something like old-timey clothes (usually badly done). Nobody pays attention to framing, lighting, editing, camera movement, and every other technique that defines early cinema. They just cut the sound and think it clever. Such pastiches are always painful to watch.

Hearing that Maddin's work was a pastiche of early cinema did not encourage me to see his films. What was worse were the comparisons to Lynch and surrealism. "Surrealism," too, is a completely misapplied and misunderstood technique in film. Please, people, study up on early cinema some more.

All these things considered, I braced myself and entered Brand Upon the Brain!

Before Brand Upon the Brain! started, The Heart of the World screened. I did not know this was going to happen. I was excited to see it for real. In the five minutes between the start of The Heart of the World and the end of it, I discovered that everything people said about Maddin was wrong. This is not a surrealist pastiche of silent cinema. This is something completely different, completely new, completely awesome.

And nothing could have better prepared me for Brand Upon the Brain! My heart was flying. It flew through most of the feature. I wish to describe the sort of impact it had on my mind while I was watching it: with most films, I can grasp an image easily; I can understand it spatially and figure out its place in the broader context pretty quickly. When I cannot work out an image immediately, I ask myself questions and play with the image in my mind. Why this shot? Why this time? How does it fit? In Brand Upon the Brain!, I began by trying to apply the same thought-process; many of Maddin's images are complicated -- they are very expressively shot, and their subject is frequently unreal and surprising, and all of this is made the more overwhelming by the rapid-neuro-editing style Maddin has adopted. The film's incredibly complex images pass across the screen like lighting, and one barely glimpses an image before another strike occurs. All my efforts to stop and grasp the image failed. I could not understand, in expressible terms, what the images meant, and somewhere around "Chapter 6" I stopped trying. One doesn't need logic for Maddin. One needs emotions. I let Maddin's pseudo-retro childhood fantasia flow through me. Those are vague words for a vague experience. I cannot describe what I thought or felt once in the grip of this film, but hopefully you trust me when I say that it was thrilling.

Maddin had me thinking in images, not words. There were times when, because the editing is so frantic, I began to feel as though I were catching the individual frames. And not only those frames, but the moments of darkness that cushioned them. That's right, I saw the darkness on the screen that no one sees thanks to the "phi effect." And ever since that night, when in the presence of some banal moment in other films, I have sought that darkness, have looked for that darkness between the images. It never fails to restore my interest in film.

It was a special night. I became a Maddin fan. I learned that for some festival screenings, Brand Upon the Brain! had live sound performers instead of a soundtrack. That sounded cool. Would that have been a better experience? I doubt I would have seen the darkness in such conditions. The performers might have been altogether annoying. No need for envy. I was perfectly happy with my theatrical experience. Best to treasure this memory. Best to remember the darkness.

tangent:

I may complain about the theater experience, but I have been lucky enough to see many wonderful movies on the big screen, including my favorite film (listed first): Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Sherlock Jr. (1924) (and many others from Buster), Rules of the Game (1939), It Happened One Night (1934), The Thin Man (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Lady Eve (1941), Black Narcissus (1947). The list goes on. Comfortable theater experiences. I have also had a good dose of the 60s arthouse experience: I have survived the films of Antonioni, Bergman, Bresson, Fellini, Godard, &c. in the theater. I do not get to the theater often, but I have accumulated a list of in-theater experiences that impresses even me.

And I am usually alone (or virtually alone -- at a screening of Amarcord (1973) this past summer my two comrades fell asleep!). My aloneness also impresses me. It could be that I regard the theater to be so low because I go there alone ... but then I remember that most of my worst theater experiences have been with a group. Also that I was alone for each of the three screenings in my list.

So I have a brief story to tell which, I hope, explains both my mysteriously impressive in-theater list and my preferential in-theater solitude:

On the first Saturday of every month, Starz Denver Film Center, the theater at (what was once) my school, screens a free classic. Many of these films are taken from the theater's small archive, whose history I have heard pieces of but has yet to be satisfactorily explained. In my fledgling film days, these screenings were a blessing -- I could count on going to the theater at least once a month (and the theater is a luxury for a poor student) and seeing a film which was, at the very least, old, which was all I needed to know I would enjoy myself.

I went to these screenings alone, mostly because it is hard to find people willing to see an old movie, even a free one. One month, however, I convinced some friends to go. Or precisely: one friend, his younger brother, and his younger brother's friend (but I consider all three to be good friends). The film was Went the Day Well? (1942). We loaded ourselves with Japanese candy from a nearby Asian grocers before the film. We were all quite happy.

At these screenings, before the feature, the theater also plays a short film (all films selected and introduced by H. Movshovitz), and since this short film is not noted on the schedule, it is usually a surprise. That night, Listen to Britain (1942) played. I had heard of this short before but did not know much about it. I soon discovered that it is a montage documentary. I also discovered that I absolutely loved it. So much detachment and artistry, yet so much pathos! Such a strong propagandistic message of unity and strength, but so little of it feels like propaganda! My brain filled with thoughts and questions. I did not want the feature to start yet.

But it did. And I enjoyed Went the Day Well? a great deal. I absolutely connect with British WWII propaganda and its understated emphasis on British character. Normal, stubborn people continue to be normal and stubborn, in spite of those humorless Germans. Brits don't lose their heads or get sentimental. Went the Day Well? is all about this sort of thing; ordinary Brits do ordinary things which happen to be extraordinary in wartime. And, with all that, the film does something beautifully audacious, in a very British sort of way: the film takes place after the war has ended, even though the war was still happening. Were I a WWII-era Brit exposed to such films, nothing could have stopped me from enlisting.

But enough about the film. It ended. And I was still thinking about Listen to Britain. My friends and I strolled out of the theater. They had enjoyed the film a great deal. That is good, I thought. I was hoping they would enjoy it. But what I wanted to know was: "What did you guys think about the short film that played before?" They hesitated. Nothing to say, perhaps. Finally somebody responded: "What was the short film? I don't remember it."

#3. Major Barbara (1941); fall 2008

This was another such free monthly screening. I had been attending the screenings only rarely by this time since I had become familiar with most of the films they showed, but were they to play nothing but Major Barbara every month I would attend every screening. I had fallen in love with it earlier that year, quite by accident, after stumbling upon a VHS copy of it in the library. This is what a screen version of Shaw should be, I thought.

Every seat in the theater was filled. This happened sometimes. I remember one night when, after having ticketed out a screening of The Third Man (1949) and still having people line up for it, they decided to show the film simultaneously on another screen, and promptly ran out of tickets for two whole theaters. One screen played a 16mm print, the other the Criterion DVD. My friend and I saw the Criterion screening. But The Third Man is one thing, Major Barbara quite another. A lot of this crowd had come after hearing Howie review it on the radio; I do not know what praise he heaped on the film, but judging by the crowd his review must have been stellar. Major Barbara needs the publicity -- if only more critics would follow this example!

When the film started, I worried that the crowd would have trouble understanding the jokes; Shaw's wit is many-layered, and some of the jokes are difficult to catch when they are delivered by thick, lower-class London accents. But the crowd surprised me. They caught all the jokes I hoped they would, and they laughed at many jokes I had never caught. I was surprised. I had underestimated the crowd.

The greatest joke comes in the third act, when Undershaft rebukes his son. I copy it here from the play (slightly different from the film), but change the final lines to the punchline I remember from the film:

STEPHEN. I hope it is settled that I repudiate the canon business.

UNDERSHAFT. Come, come! don't be so devilishly sulky: it's boyish. Freedom should be generous. Besides, I owe you a fair start in life in exchange for disinheriting you. You can't become prime minister all at once. Haven't you a turn for something? What about literature, art and so forth?

STEPHEN. I have nothing of the artist about me, either in faculty or character, thank Heaven!

UNDERSHAFT. A philosopher, perhaps? Eh?

STEPHEN. I make no such ridiculous pretension.

UNDERSHAFT. Just so. Well, there is the army, the navy, the Church, the Bar. The Bar requires some ability. What about the Bar?

STEPHEN. I have not studied law. And I am afraid I have not the necessary push -- I believe that is the name barristers give to their vulgarity -- for success in pleading.

UNDERSHAFT. Rather a difficult case, Stephen. Hardly anything left but the stage, is there? Well, come! is there anything you know or care for?

STEPHEN. I know the difference between right and wrong.

UNDERSHAFT. You don't say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only the simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you're a genius, a master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!

STEPHEN. You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright.

UNDERSHAFT. ...You know nothing, and you think you know everything. That points clearly to a political career.

At this, the audience burst into the loudest, longest applause I have ever heard. This was the election season, you see, and we still had a month left until the vote and were all rather exhausted with politics. The applause/laughter was deafening, intoxicating. I have never heard a more beautifully crafted joke receive more beautifully sincere applause. I did not realize Shaw could still be appreciated. I did not expect it. I will never underestimate the crowd again.

A good crowd is worth so much. A bad crowd ruins the whole experience. I had the best possible crowd for Major Barbara. If only Shaw had been there! It is a night I relive with joy. Truly, I had seen Major Barbara "as it was meant to be seen."

That's it for my theater experiences. A smart reader will notice how dull my "best" experiences have been. I bet there are some wild theater stories out there. I would like to hear them. Please tell them.

November 09 favorites

Here are my favorite first time viewings from last month (no number, no order):

Berlin Express (1948)

Voici les temps des assassins (1956)

Film Ist. a girl & a gun (2009)

That Hamilton Woman (1941)

July Rain (1966)

Four Seasons of Children (1939)

Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe) (1930)

Because I am about to die graduate and because I am having a number of computer problems (awfully frustrating), I won't be able to update much this month.

prix de beauté (1930) write-up

Since screenshots are not enough, I have decided to post my thoughts on Prix de beauté (Miss Europe) (1930).

I first heard of Prix de beauté several years ago; I was a burgeoning film snob and watched the Pabst/Brooks films as part of my education. Prix de beauté, the finale to the European Brooks Trilogy, sounded like something I ought to see. No DVD or VHS of the film sat in the library, however, so I decided my education would continue without it.

Soon after that I discovered Rene Clair, and I prodigiously tracked down his films available on home video (and was subsequently delighted by them all). Clair, it turns out, had something to do with Prix de beauté, and so my interest in it suddenly refreshed. But where to find a copy? It was on VHS, I knew, yet there didn't seem to be a public copy available to me nearby. (This, I confess, was before I had become the expert I am today at tracking down copies of obscure films.) I dropped my search, but not my interest.

Years pass until one day, over a month ago, DG tells me how much he enjoyed Pabst's The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927). He asks me why I don't like Pabst -- "No," I assure him, "I like Pabst well enough. But I really should rewatch some of his films." I hadn't watched one for a while, after all. I begin my Pabst rewatches and come to Pandora's Box (1929). This is the first time I have seen the Criterion release of it. On the DVD set is an interview with Louise Brooks, Lulu in Berlin (1984). And in that interview, right at the beginning of it, is a clip from Prix de beauté.

This clip is from the end of the film, and I describe it here in full: Louise Brooks is sitting in a darkened theater, a handsome fellow at her side, a shadow or two behind her. Over her head streams the light from a rear projector; this is the only light in the room, and her face pulses with the alternating light and darkness. She is smiling, laughing. She is watching a film of herself. On the screen her phantom image, elegantly dressed, poses and sings in an elegant room. Here is a shot from the scene:

But all is not well. Some angry fellow (whom I discovered upon watching the movie is her fiance/husband) interrupts this happy screening with a bullet through her heart. Brooks jolts forward in a moment of shock. In an instant, she has recognized death. She falls; the handsome fellow clutches her, the angry fellow experiences his own shock ... and the phantom image sings merrily over her own corpse. [For more images of the scene, see my last post, the last three screenshots.]

The clip ends and the real Louise Brooks, the aged Louise Brooks, begins her interview. But I am not paying attention. Everything about that clip -- the lighting, the editing, the camera, the juxtaposition of film life over real life -- reverberated through my soul. When I learned this clip was from Prix de beauté, I scolded myself for not properly seeking it out. Why had I not seen it? This I had to change.

The film begins pleasantly: three friends are out for a day on the beach. Brooks is the one to watch here. She, in a tight-fitting bathing suit (which is still a leap in modesty from today's beach-wear), innocently warms-up, stretching and bending and smiling and all sorts of attractive things. A group of beach hunks watches on. "What a figure!" Lucienne's (Brooks) fiance, André, who is lounging on the sand, sees this and calls Lucienne over to lecture her. He is jealous. Ever so confident, Lucienne warms him with a smile and a song (the same song her phantom image happens to sing at the end).

This brief conflict is the base for the rest of the story. Lucienne has whimsically entered a beauty contest, hoping for the prize of 'Miss Europe,' and has not told André that she has done so. André, for reasons not sufficiently explained by jealousy, thinks that all such contests should be abolished (and this viewer totally agrees). Naturally, trouble arises when Lucienne wins the title of 'Miss France' and is sent to Spain for the final competition. She doesn't tell André. She leaves without him (but is promised that everything will be explained to her fiance).

After learning about Lucienne's victory, André moodily boards a train for Spain. And Lucienne wins the 'Miss Europe' title. Fame! Attention! Leering men! Lucienne is quickly picked up by a Prince and a Maharajah, but her heart still belongs André. When André arrives, he gives her a dreadful ultimatum: either leave Miss Europe or leave me. She leaves Miss Europe. One wonders if the love she chooses is worth anything anymore. One also wonders why André is so harassed and desperate. Surely if I had a girlfriend (though considering my hermetic, cold personality, I probably never will) who had won a major beauty contest (though she probably never would) and still wanted to marry me (this definitely could not be so) ... well, my story wouldn't end with murder.

Lucienne comes to regret her choice. At one point she looks longingly at a bird in a cage in a great confusion of symbolism. She contacts the Prince again. You know the rest.

Immediately after finishing the film, I tried to research it on the internet. But researching anything to do with cult stars is a risky endeavor on the internet; while in the library, it is easy to discern the academic gold from the idol-driven glitter, but while on the internet, one is not always sure whether a link will bring solid scholarship or cultish worship. One may browse a website for a good half hour before stumbling across a gossip-laden paragraph or fetishistic image and finally realizing: "Oh, it's one of those sites." At that moment, one is drowned in creepiness and quickly closes the browser and tries to forget everything just seen and read. Such was my experience during my first round of internet research.

I still have puzzles worth solving, however, and have none of the research needed to solve them. First, I would like to know just what roles Rene Clair and G.W. Pabst played in the production. Who wrote what? Who directed what? How did Brooks get into this film exactly? My cautious second research attempt yielded no answers; there is such a variety of accounts that it has only expanded my confusion. Some have Clair directing (or, starting the production before leaving it), others have Pabst directing (especially taking over at the end); some have Clair writing, others have Pabst writing. No one, it seems, is all that interested in the credited director, a certain A. Genina. The directing, though, is impressive at times, in a humble sort of way. (This may just be Maté's camera-work, which often dazzles.) I would greatly appreciate the clearing up of this particular puzzle.
[Update: This puzzle has been solved by DG; see his comment below.]

Another puzzle, which is only clouded by internet research, concerns the film's sound. The film is dubbed. Most of the sounds are simplistic and most of the spoken lines are simple. Brooks is obviously mouthing English most of the film except when she is singing her song, at which point sound and mouth startlingly synchronize. Brooks, so the internet tells me, is dubbed by an Edith Piaf. The film runs at a slightly rushed pace, filmed, I suppose, at a non-standard silent frame rate. (To note: I imagine most of these qualities disturb the average viewer. I find them ineffably charming, as only transitional silent-sound films can be.) The puzzle is this: How was the film planned and executed? Was it conceived as a silent film, sound added under producer pressure to make the film highly marketable? Or was it conceived as a sound film, shot the way it was in order to experiment with the new technology and discover its possibilities? I suspect the latter for two reasons: Louise Brooks synchronizes her singing with the lyrics; and the final scene is dominated by those lyrics, using them to reinforce the life of the phantom image over the death of the real thing. (To clarify: the screen test Lucienne does, which she watches in the end, is of her singing, which means the film-in-the-film must have been a sound film, and consequently Prix de beauté had to have been conceived as a sound film for this effect to work.) If I knew anything about film stock, I could interpret this image as either sound or silent stock:

The horizontal bars on the left look like sound. But what do I know? Although I lean toward the conceived-as-sound theory, the puzzle is far from solved. There are still many choices in the film which could be explained either way, and thus explained in very different ways. I ought to do more research (though won't). There is history missing here.

My final puzzle is not really a puzzle but a moment of amusement. At the end of the film, when André is sneaking up to the screening room to shoot Lucienne, he passes this sign:

"EXPLOITATION LOCATION"
I know the French meaning is different from the English. I know I have no reason for grinning and being amused. I know this is total misinterpretation. But the sign, if indeed this is in a film office, is so apt, so honest. I share this puzzle with the hope that no one will solve it for me. Let my amusement live.

So much for puzzles. And so much for Prix de beauté. I've known for years I would enjoy this film; I can finally gloat about enjoying it. Indeed, for those of us with sophisticated taste, this is our greatest secret: we make up our minds about a film before we see it. This lets us craft witty insights and explore subtle details while the vulgar still labor with their thoughts. It is a minor advantage, a worthless skill, and a difficult thing to learn, but one feels good gloating nonetheless.

So much for refinement.

Update: I browsed the library today, looking for clues. I didn't find much. Most people say that the project was begun by Clair and that he left it because of conflict with the producer and/or the very idea of sound in film.

I did, however, discover something about Genina. Concerning the Tenth Venice Biennale International Film Festival of 1942, Marla Stone writes:

Augusto Genina's Bengasi premiered on the film festival's opening night at the San Marco theater in Venice. A full house, according to critics, cheered the film and its director. At the festival's conclusion, the jury awarded it the Mussolini Cup. This 1942 production by Bassoli Films represents an expansion of Genina's war/propaganda films. By 1942, Genina had a reputation as the director of "virile" propaganda films that idealized Fascism at war....

I need no longer puzzle over his obscurity.

I also discovered a review of Prix de beauté I lament not writing myself. In the June 1930 issue of "Close Up" Charles E. Stenhouse writes:

A final French talking-film, Prix de Beauté by A. Genina and with Louise Brooks looking very photogenic as Miss France but not acting as well as when directed by Pabst. Never has one of Pabst's discoveries achieved more than when under his inspiring influence. Greta Garbo! Brigitte Helm! And now Louise Brooks! The big trick in Prix de Beauté is its remarkable ending, which redeems the previous passages whose very mediocrity emphasizes the ending's splendour. An exceptional end and for once not a happy one. Louise, who has won a beauty prize, accepts a talking-film engagement against the will of the man with whom she is living. The evening arrives when she is to attend the private viewing of her film. She is seated in the little projection room watching herself on the screen and hearing herself sing a popular melody. The villain-prince seated beside her is caressing her hand. Semi-darkness broken by the flickering beams of the projector. Her lover arrives, is guided to the door by her talky-voice. In jealousy, he shoots, she falls, but her figure on the screen-within-a-screen continues to move and to sing over her dead body the words of the song.

Ne sois pas jaloux, tais-toi...
Je n'ai qu'un amour, c'est toi!

A trick -- but really one of beauty and irony, and at last a morsel of true sound-film technique. For the rest, there are a lot of grand-scale portions and the dialogue is childish but Louise has developed a talky-laugh which appeals both visually and orally, although as the film has been post-synchronized credit for the oral part may be due to her unknown French "double." What a state of affairs.