As the Walker Cinema stews in its top-to-bottom renovation, we wait patiently for the moment we can submerse ourselves in the forthcoming red trimmings and the best that analog and digital technologies can provide. That moment will come on June 22 with a very special pre-screening of Sundance darling Beasts of the Southern Wild. (Psssst! Tickets are free while they last!) When that evening arrives, I will be sitting in the audience not only as a member of the Walker Film/Video Department, but also as a Twin Cities film fan eager to see what will probably be a landmark film for 2012.
I’m brazen enough to make such statements only after the recent issue of Film Comment landed on my doorstep yesterday with Quvenzhané Wallis, the young star of Beasts, on the cover and another stunning appraisal from frequent Walker guest Scott Foundas. For those who weren’t following the scent of Beasts left at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, critics flew to their note pads and laptops in praise of this unique film. Manhola Dargis called it the standout of the fest, but went on to proclaim it “among the best films to play the festival in two decades.” In his article in Film Comment, Foundas reiterates the sentiment: “It was easily among the most audacious such debuts in the almost quarter-century since sex, lies, and videotape.”
Those are strong words, especially considering what sex, lies did for the US indie film business, and what it did for putting the Sundance Film Festival on the map. I would argue that American independent film is currently undergoing a quiet revolution of the same magnitude that lies just below the radar with directors like Matthew Porterfield, Aaron Katz, Kelly Reichardt, Ramin Bahrani, and Sean Durkin. Perhaps Benh Zeitlin, and his new film that seems to be percolating for a summer explosion, will push this group, only loosely associated but budget and vision, into the mainstream discussion of important works that are made to do something much more profound than tally box office totals.
Zeitlin’s trials, inspirations, motivations, and philosophies—as outlined in the Film Comment interview and article—are as meritorious as you are going to find in any filmmaker. And part of Zeitlin’s vigor, no doubt translated in his film, can be atributed to his dedication to New Orleans and the area he now calls home. In speaking of New Orleans, he says: “This town is full of film at this point, but none of it is organic to the city. New Orleans pretty much expresses itself through music and parade culture, and I think it would be amazing if people were expressing themselves [that way] with the camera. No one would have ever seen anything like what would come out of this place if there was a real film culture.”
Foundas avoids delving into plot details and narrative surprises in his piece, but, be forewarned, the film’s trailer answers some of the questions about Beasts of the Southern Wild‘s magical plot, and arguably gives some of them away. Whether its a spoiler or not, I’m unconcerned and counting on the theatrical experience to reveal the alluded mythical power of this exciting new film.
Film Comment’s May/June is available now on newsstands, if those things still exists, or subscribe here. Beasts of the Southern Wild screens at the Walker on June 22, 7:30pm.
Today’s still places us in a small oasis–away from the high-octane intrigue of Vienna at large. Holly takes a few minutes to reminisce during a brief cigarette break. The action will of course pick up again soon, but for this brief respite we are allowed into a more intimate moment in Anna’s apartment. Holly helps Anna rehearse for a new stage role (I had almost forgotten she was an actor, since she seems to be a full-time sleuth) and the two reminisce about clever old Harry. Harry is the man that brought this unlikely pair together, but it is Anna’s erstwhile feelings for him that are keeping them apart. This very evening (in screen time) Holly and Anna will make the trek to talk to Harry’s porter for a third time, but as we know, he has already been murdered. Somehow, though, this pleasant evening in makes us forget the murder of an innocent man that these two are about to stumble upon. While Holly lights his cigarette, we viewers are given a reprieve from the suspense, and somehow allowed to relax ourselves, as if that nicotine is pumping through the camera, the printer, the projector, and then reflecting gently off the screen onto our enthralled faces.
In a film about an American drunk wandering through Vienna while intoxicated, pretending to be a detective, we haven’t seen too much of Holly actually imbibing. Aside from his drunken row with the british cops way back in Still Dots #9, Holly has stayed on the wagon. Still, something in his demeanor has caused critics the world over to think of Holly as a drunk (Ebert classifies him as an “alcoholic author of pulp Westerns”). But really, what is Holly to do? Dumped in a city where he knows no one at all, jobless and penniless (aside from the monopoly money he’s been fed by the British authorities) Holly has to cope with the fact that his best friend has died. And beyond that, he really doesn’t have much else to do. Speaking no German, French, Russian, or Czech, Holly is left to his own devices which seem to be wooing Anna, hunting the conspiracy behind Harry’s killing, and drinking.
It is in this first category that Holly is currently engaged. His tact is charming if misguided, but here is a brief sample of their tête-à-tête:
Holly: When he was fourteen, he taught me the three card trick. That’s growing up fast.
Anna: He never grew up. The world grew up round him that’s all . . . and buried him.
Holly: Anna, you’ll fall in love again.
Anna: Can’t you see I don’t want to. I don’t ever want to.
This dialogue is tinged with more than a hint of melodrama, but that is to be expected in the circumstances. What is striking about this dialogue, though, is how quick-witted it is without feeling quippy. Anna’s descriptive imagery is sharp, and it flows off their tongues quickly, bantering back and forth like it’s nothing. A lot of studio pictures of the 1940′s had a tendency to be chock full of clever and witty repartee, but The Third Man achieves the same level of wit without the stagey performance that came along with such films. Holly and Anna deliver these lines with a solemn, soulful disposition which lends credence to their intelligence as well as their emotional depth.
Films like His Girl Friday had hours of sharp dialogue, but the performance–though very impressive–lacks the social and class consciousness that weighs the words of Holly and Anna. In the same review I quoted above, Ebert called The Third Man the “exhausted aftermath of Casablanca” since the characters both live in the aftermath of war, but The Third Man‘s heroes are not “bathed in the hope of victory.” But in these tender, distinctly non-noir moments, the back and forth between Holly and Anna is reminiscent of the exhausted aftermath of 40′s Hollywood. Maybe years of unfulfilling marriages and jobs would leave Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson as low as Holly and Anna.
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
Adrift amongst melancholy memories, Anna sits fiddling with one of her bedknobs (which Jeremy surmised might contain hidden secrets) until Holly Martins interrupts her reverie. Holly seems to have a chipper air about him, perhaps because the porter had promised to divulge more secrets regarding Harry Lime’s death later that evening—a promise that’s nullified with the offscreen murder of the porter by one of Popescu’s associates. At first, Anna too seems jovial, even playing along with Holly when he offers to fumble through some of the German dialogue that Anna must rehearse for her next play. This leads to the following exchange:
Holly: Is it a comedy or a tragedy?
Anna: Comedy. I don’t play tragedy.
[...]
Holly: [reading the script] Well, um…’Frau Hausmann…’
Anna: No, no. It’s no good.
Holly: Bad day…?
Anna: It’s always bad about this time. He used to look in around 6. I’ve been frightened, I’ve been alone, without friends and money…but I’ve never known anything like this.
The “he” in this case is, of course, Harry Lime, whose purported criminality is constantly at odds with Anna’s sentimental, rose-colored memories of him. It’s too soon to conjecture about the motivations underlying Harry’s behavior (since we still don’t know the full extent of it), but the reason Harry is such an entrancing and mystifying character without even having encountered him is because of this irreconcilability between his tenderness towards Anna and his alleged inhumanity towards many others. Was Harry a good or a bad man? This question—perhaps unanswerable in the context of any individual—is becoming trickier for Holly to ask himself the more he discovers, and it certainly won’t become any easier to answer.
Desperate for a distraction from her loneliness, Anna pleads with Holly to share something (anything) about his former friendship with Harry. As he does so, we get a sense of both Holly and Harry as headstrong young men who hold the illusion that the world is within their grasp: they drink, cavort, womanize, amuse themselves with carefree abandon. As a boy, Holly tells Anna, Harry was both mischievous and clever: he knew how to raise one’s temperature to get out of a school exam, how to play cards, how to avoid punishment (and perhaps, later, arrest). Anna relates this resourcefulness to the harsh truths of postwar Vienna, as she mentions that Harry was able to doctor Anna’s passport and papers at a time when the Russian sector was repatriating Viennese residents who had fled Czechoslovakia (as Anna had done).
The image of Harry Lime as a charming troublemaker who used theatricality and brazenness to overcome a harsh life is uncannily (and, one presumes, intentionally) reflective of Orson Welles himself. Despite his family’s relative wealth (Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin to a concert pianist and an inventor who had found success with a popular bicycle lamp), Welles’ youth was turbulent: after his father succumbed to alcoholism, Welles’ parents separated in 1919 (when he was four years old). His mother supported herself and Orson by providing musical accompaniment to lectures at the Chicago Art Institute (Orson’s older brother Dickie had already been institutionalized for learning difficulties). Orson’s mother, Beatrice, died of jaundice in 1924, when he was only nine years old; about a year later, he and one of the daughters in the foster family that had taken him in ran away from home, and they soon took to singing and dancing on the streets of Milwaukee for money. Orson’s father died a few years later, when he was 15. Most accounts seem to trace the burgeoning of Welles’ artistic career to a stunt he pulled while touring Europe in the early 1930s: Welles reportedly strode into Dublin’s Gate Theatre in 1931, proclaiming himself a Broadway star and attracting the attention of the theatre’s manager, Hilton Edwards, who was wowed by the young man’s boldness.
A young Orson Welles
An extensive biography is unfeasible here, of course, but there seem to be limitless anecdotes about Welles’ outsized personality, penchant for spinning opulent (often untruthful) tales, promotional braggadocio, and sly resourcefulness as a filmmaker throughout his later career. (A lot of this is swiftly recapped in the introduction to Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Discovering Orson Welles.) Welles’ mercurial nature even affected the making of The Third Man, as he traveled Europe for weeks, evading the filmmakers while he was scheduled to be shooting on location in Vienna; when he finally did arrive, he refused to shoot in the city’s sewers, necessitating reshoots at studio-built sets back in England. In any case, there are undeniable parallels between the lives and personalities of Welles and Harry Lime: while Welles’ larger-than-life nature contributed to his bold artistic experimentation (“I’ve never been interested in success,” he was once tellingly quoted; “I’ve always been interested in experimentation”), Harry Lime’s savvy understanding of the ways of the world (not to mention his self-acknowledgement as a mere human speck amidst an apathetic cosmos) eventually lead him into the morally questionable territory that Holly Martins will soon uncover.
Anna Schmidt has told Holly that she only “plays” comedy, not tragedy; maybe the same is true for Harry. After all, according to Holly’s appraisal, Harry “just made everything seem like such…fun.” We’ll soon understand just how tragic and ruthless is the business that Harry Lime was mixed up in, but somehow (we’ll also soon realize) he has the perverse ability to make it seem insignificant, even playful. Maybe both Anna and Harry have encountered so much tragedy that they’ve become inured to it—they simply won’t accommodate it. This gets to one of the primary questions lying beneath The Third Man‘s surface: is the movie itself comedy or tragedy? Its author, Graham Greene, himself called it a “comic thriller,” an apparent paradox that’s actually conveyed from the very first scene (in which a droll voiceover, contributed by Carol Reed himself, regards the corruption and violence of postwar Vienna with bemused world-weariness). For a movie (partially) about the eradication of previous moral codes and the devastating precedent of slaughter instilled by World War II, The Third Man is also remarkably light-footed and entertaining.
But to ask whether the film, or Anna or Harry themselves, are “comedic” or “tragic” is to assume that these two forms are diametrical opposites, which may not in fact be the case. After all, if we return to origins, both comedy and tragedy derive from Dionysus, the twice-born son of Semele and Zeus. The tradition of tragedy grew out of dithyrambs, group lyric praises that were delivered to Dionysus; comedy, meanwhile, grew out of komos, which were bands of male revelers that would sing bawdy songs in honor of the two-faced god. (In psychological terms, this would be considered as the duality between the telic/serious and the paratelic/comedic modes.) But both functions served the same purpose—either sacred or profane social invocations created for Dionysus for the sake of rebirth, fertility, and the protection of youth—and were therefore flip sides of the same coin. In fact, the well-known masks of tragedy and comedy associated with ancient Greek drama (in particular, with Melpomene, the muse of tragedy; and Thalia, the muse of comedy) were commonly used in ceremonies honoring Dionysus. An origin story such as this suggests that both comedy and tragedy are merely dialectical ways of reacting to the same event or responding to the surrounding world, a Dionysian hybridity reflected (at least implicitly) by comedic works of art that attempt to deal with sadness, bleakness, violence, or other unpleasantries through dark, cathartic humor.
Comedic and tragic masks, or "personae," from Greece circa 500-300 B.C.
It’s an aphorism that most great comedians, and perhaps even many great comedies, contain an element of the tragic or disturbed within them, if only in the theoretical sense that comedy entails a breakdown of social mores and institutions and, in this sense, lays bare some kind of societal disrupt. (In fact, many of these cathartic or palliative functions of comedy are addressed by Rod Martin’s The Psychology of Humor.) But the comedy in The Third Man often takes on an explicitly bleak tone, presaging some of the later, politically-oriented, morbid humor practiced by Pietro Germi, Lindsay Anderson, and Dusan Makavejev, among others.
But in terms of tragedy and comedy commingling and intersecting (like successive pages in the same flipbook), the greatest cinematic example must almost certainly be Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), a caustic satire that was met with scathing reviews, bans, and riots upon its release. A film in which the elegant farcicality thinly veils rampant social corruption, petty squabbles, and tragic passions, Renoir’s masterpiece manages to wear both theatrical masks (tragic and comedic) at once. Indeed, one of the movie’s most famous quotes (uttered by Renoir himself, playing the character of Octave), both humorous and despairing, can be revealingly applied to Harry Lime and the injustices he commits: “The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons.”
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
Were zither chords visible, a jangly milleu would still hang over this frame from the chord marking the end of our poor porter’s life. His clear eyes turn and look to an unknown assailant, and hang suspended behind Anna in cross-dissolve limbo. Is it one of the four men who met on the bridge last week? Or perhaps some dastardly assassin hired by the group? Whoever it is, the porter’s eyes tell us that he recognizes his end has come, just as the zither crescendo cues us to see trouble brewing. In seconds, the last twinkle of the porter’s eyes will disappear, never to be seen again, but for now they linger like the Cheshire Cat’s smile gazing through a fascinated Anna.
In a scene hidden between this Still Dots and the last, we see Holly passing by Harry’s old apartments again when the porter leans out of the window and tells Holly “I am not a bad man. I would like to tell you something.” Holly’s fierce excitement is met by a shushing from the porter and an invitation to come back that night, when the porter’s wife has gone out, to hear the rest of the porter’s story. Just after promising to help Holly in his mad quest–for the third time–the porter shuts the window behind him and turns to meet his zither-clanging assailant. But remember, this assailant is a direct product of Holly’s meddling. Had Holly not carelessly dropped the porter’s name to Popescu, the man would not be facing this trouble at all. Whatever secret it was that the porter had to share will now be lost to the ages, and it only becomes another of the loose ends and mysteries that plague this city the Matt called “a night city if ever there was one.”
As the porter is quietly murdered off screen on the other side of the city, Anna should have no clue, but something about her fascinated yet sullen expression seems to suggest a chill running through her. Perhaps some element of their superimposition suggests a spiritual or possessional connection, and since this is the last image we see of the porter, this gaze is his last chance to claw at screen-life. This is a less deliberate association than the image itself suggests, since it is a quick dissolve between shots rather than a sustained superimposition. Cross-dissolves are not unusual in almost any type of film, but something in the lingering glimmer of the porter’s eyes suggests that this is more than a smoothing between shots. In the shooting of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles–a student of stage theater–did his fades and cross-dissolves outside of the traditional editing method. Instead of editing filmstrips in the studio to create dissolves, Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland gradually dimmed all of the lights on set until his actors and sets faded into blackness. This method maintained control of exactly which faces or figures would remain lit the longest, leaving their ghostly projection burned deliberately into viewers’ minds. While The Third Man is definitively not Orson Welles’, his shadow looms large over it, and today’s cross-dissolve carries with it some of that Wellesian intentionality.
The spirit of the porter may indeed be captured in this frame, though, the dissolve is no more than a fleeting superimposition. Superimposition has long been used as a meaning-making cinematic trick, almost as long as montage itself. Georges Méliès was known to pass the same film through the camera as many as seven times to create the cinematic tricks that made his short films so enchanting. Fritz Lang’s expressionistic collage created complex meaning through multiple exposures and superimpositions. Though perhaps less deliberate than the Fritz Lang examples, and less magical than Méliès’, today’s Still Dots captures a subtle combination of characters visually, that harkens back to the silent era.
The other thing I find fascinating about today’s still, is Anna’s activity. She semi-obsessively fiddles with the decorative piece on the head of her bed, peering down into the space beneath it. What could be seen as a fiddly nervous habit could also present itself as something more suspicious. A knock will come at the door and Anna will quickly replace this metal piece and pull her hand away, as if she had never touched it, before beckoning them in.
This bed becomes a set piece in other moments of the film yet to come, becoming a unique yet unassuming signifier of “Anna’s apartment.” Holly and Anna will both drape themselves over its art-deco lines. But if Anna’s actions can be read literally, there might be something hidden inside this innocent bed, stuffed into a post and covered with the decorative piece she holds in her hand. If this is so, if Anna has some secret thing–a document? a photograph? some piece of evidence?–stashed in this secret compartment, it will literally never be mentioned outside of this six-second shot. Were this a film that followed traditional rules of storytelling, such a secret would have to lead to some payoff, even if it was revealed so subtly. Hayao Murakami’s IQ84 sets up this binary more eloquently, in two passages.
“According to Chekhov,” Tamaru said rising from his chair, “once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired.”
“Meaning what?”
Tamaru stood facing Aomame directly. he stood only an inch or two taller than she was. “Meaning, don’t bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away withh all useless ornamentation.”
. . .
Aomame nodded. “Meaning you want me to break Chekhov’s rule.”
“Exactly. Chekhov was a great writer, but not all novels have to follow his rules. Not all guns in stories have to be fired,” Tamaru said. Then he frowned as if recalling something.
(1Q84, pg. 325, 352-3)
The object that Anna may or may not have stashed in her bedpost, is the pistol entering this story. Perhaps our close reading will tell otherwise, but it seems that this gun will never be fired.
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
This ghostly image is an ominous portent of things to come: here, Dr. Winkel is preparing to bike to “the bridge,” a meeting point to which Popescu has called his cohorts (Baron Kurtz, Popescu, and the unknown Third Man are also en route) in order to address the situation with Harry’s former porter. Having foolishly informed Popescu that the porter saw the mysterious Third Man ushering Harry’s corpse across the street, Holly has unwittingly set in motion the machinery of murder. Holly, the self-styled cavalier vigilante, is in way over his head, only he doesn’t know it yet; soon, the repercussions of his solitary investigation will become clear to him.
Popescu has also cryptically threatened Anna Schmidt, whom Jeremy aptly labeled “the only truly courageous character” in the film. The previous scene (Holly’s interrogation of Popescu at the Casanova Club) ends with Popescu pointedly eyeing Anna, sitting at the bar alone: “A nice girl, that,” Popescu intones in his half-Romanian, half-German accent. “But she ought to go careful in Vienna. Everybody ought to go careful in a city like this…” A jarring zither chord is struck and a montage, bridged by a series of dissolves, indicates Harry’s former cohorts preparing for their next deadly endeavor.
As if to corroborate Popescu’s alarming appraisal of Vienna, this series of shots emphasizes the fact that The Third Man was indeed shot on location in this troubled city. True, almost all of the film was shot on location, and we’ll see plenty of examples of the architecture and maze-like design of Vienna forming a threatening backdrop to the action. But this montage is one of the most striking examples; it does somehow seem as if the city is instigating, or at least reflecting, these characters’ criminal behavior. Today’s still, for example, proceeds to pan left as Winkel walks his bicycle into the street, revealing an immense pile of rubble—one of the many scars inflicted upon Vienna by World War II:
If this gaping war wound serves as an appropriate backdrop to the villainy of Winkel and his associates (contrasting state-sanctioned atrocity with murder, greed, and corruption on a more personal level), an ensuing extreme high-angle shot of the gang meeting at the aforementioned bridge reemphasizes the role that the city itself might be playing in the terrors to come:
This bridge is Vienna’s Reichsbrücke, which spans the Danube from Vienna’s Leopoldstadt to Donaustadt. (Interestingly, this bridge was the only one over the Danube that was not severely damaged during World War II. Earlier, in the 1930s, the Reichsbrücke was reconstructed as a suspension bridge in an effort to reduce the level of unemployment in Vienna—itself an indication of the economic woes that plagued the city before, during, and after the war.) In The Third Man, director Carol Reed typically employs overt camera angles to add tension to moments of suspense and/or action. The canted angle is the most prevalent of these stylistic tricks, but the sudden cut from a street-level observational shot to this vertiginous extreme high-angle not only jars the audience into a heightened sense of alarm; it also gives the impression that these men’s behavior is pre-ordained or at least guided by larger sociopolitical or metaphysical forces—that they’re the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of their own destiny. (Among The Third Man‘s many ideas is the sense that iron-clad notions of heroism and villainy aren’t always applicable to a turbulent world assaulted by war, nationalism, and capitalistic self-interest.) James Agee said of Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out that it “paints a melancholy, multitudinous portrait of a night city” (in that case, the city is Belfast); the same can be said about The Third Man‘s Vienna, a night city if ever there was one, which seems to have a tragic, almost preternatural influence over its inhabitants’ actions.
Yet Still Dots #42 transfixes and, in a way, unsettles me for vaguer reasons, reasons that are very difficult to put into words. Its perhaps unending row of brick facades, its whitish grain that resembles pockmarks on concrete, and the translucent lines and shapes on the right side of the frame (due to the fact that the dissolve from the previous shot is not yet complete)—all of this seems to manifest an otherworldly reality in which the shock of World War II lingers like a phantom. It’s as though the brutal reality of the war shows us reality as it is, and it’s more surreal than we ever could have imagined. Like Elem Klimov’s 1985 film Come and See, visions of a reality suffused with war and uncertainty take on a hallucinatory quality:
What this image from The Third Man and the movie Come and See as a whole offer us, in other words, is the laying bare of “the Real,” a sort of hyperreality which Slavoj Žižek calls:
…the key feature of the twentieth century… In contrast to the nineteenth century of utopian or ‘scientific’ projects and ideals, plans for the future, the twentieth century aimed at delivering the thing itself—at directly realizing the longed-for New Order. The ultimate and defining moment of the twentieth century was the direct experience of the Real as opposed to everyday social reality—the Real in its extreme violence as the price to be paid for peeling off the deceptive layers of reality. (Welcome to the Desert of the Real, 7-8)
Žižek also defines the “fundamental paradox of the ‘passion for the Real’: it culminates in its apparent opposite, in a theatrical spectacle—from the Stalinist show trials to spectacular terrorist acts… The passion for the Real ends up in the pure semblance of the spectacular effect of the Real” (9-10; emphasis in original). And what is a film still but a “pure semblance” of that which it’s filming? Today’s still from The Third Man in particular takes on a ghostly quality precisely as a vicious cycle of murder and greed is maintained by Popescu and his cohorts. Is the “effect of the Real” to make clear just how spectacular and “non-real” the modern world actually is? Mixed in with The Third Man‘s entertaining, darkly comic murder mystery is, perhaps, a fleeting glimpse of “the Real” after it was horrifically transformed by the world wars—a single frame that bears witness to the “peeling off [of] the deceptive layers of reality.”
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
Today’s frame finds our elusive Romanian friend Popescu skulking away from the center of this frame as if afraid that the limelight might shine out the dark secrets hidden beneath his thick mustache. Maybe he fears being the center of attention but maybe a shadowy figure like Popescu simply fears the symmetry that his central presence would instigate. Were Popescu standing front and center, facing our camera-eye, the organized symmetry of this frame would be almost WesAnderson-esque. The organization and evenness of that frame would leave no room to hide his secrets—not like the four-government bureaucracy that serves to muddle Vienna, a system convoluted enough to hide all of Popescu’s secrets.
Popescu’s elusiveness, which Matt delved into last week, only serves to draw our interest away from him and toward the figures that populate the background of this scene. These figures are reminiscent of ancient Greek black figure pottery, popular in Corinth between the seventh and fifth centuries BCE. Yet the figures themselves are definitively modern-era. Specifically the figure on the right seems like she could be stepping out of a 1920′s nightclub. Unlike their predecessors in ancient Greek pottery, their imaging is reversed. Corinthian pots delineated male and female figures by color, in black figure pottery the male bodies were inscribed in black while the females were only given black outlines. But our female figures are more filled-in, and from their pose and positioning seem more empowered as well. While the Greek image below shows two female figures (Maenads) literally serving a male figure (Dionysus) by offering him a rabbit. Our figures, by contrast, sit independent in the middle of the frame and through their posturing, are offering rabbits to no one.
Ancient Greek black figure pottery shared a strong likeness with the dark figures that populate the background of this frame.
The Casanova club itself seems like a fitting place for a tribute to Dionysus (the god of wine and debauchery) but its walls are instead populated with these images of stark, individual, women. As Popescu stalks away from the frame, evading difficult questions, and Holly prepares to accidentally inform on Harry’s porter, these shadowy women serve as a reminder of the only truly courageous character: Anna Schmidt. As she continues helping Holly in his investigation, it becomes clearer and clearer that she was the only one of the bunch who truly loved Harry, and even though she is putting herself in more and more danger by doing so, she is devoted to finding out what really happened, for Harry’s sake. On a couple of occasions she has seemingly reminded Holly that his cowboy crusade should really be for Harry’s sake, rather than his own ego.
But in the micro-scene that today’s frame circles–a conversation between Holly and Popescu–Anna has seemingly sunk into the shadowy background of the Casanova club. She is–or was when we last saw her–drinking alone at the bar while Holly “interrogates” Popescu. Perhaps these two silhouettes are meant to be her stand ins, winking at us from the edges of the frame and saying, “will you look at these idiots?” Whatever they are saying, though, their presence is muted as far as the plot or the characters themselves are concerned. They remain, like Anna Schmidt, a shadowy figure alone in the distance.
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
Holly Martins has finally met Mr. Popescu, the mysterious Romanian who was allegedly at the scene of Harry Lime’s death, along with Baron Kurtz and the unknown “Third Man.” (Not to mention Harry’s own driver, behind the wheel of the truck that struck him.) One wonders if Holly is starting to catch on that none of Harry’s “associates” can really be trusted. He greets Baron Kurtz civilly enough at the beginning of this scene, but always seems to eye him with more than a little suspicion (and who can blame him?). He had also been surprisingly antagonistic towards Dr. Winkel in a previous scene, repeating the incorrect pronunciation of his name (wink-el instead of vink-el) numerous times and disparaging his collection of trinkets and artifacts.
Now, perhaps, Holly wants to believe that Harry’s former cohorts are reputable folks but finds it increasingly difficult to do so. His discussion with Popescu turns almost immediately into a no-nonsense interrogation of him, and when Holly doesn’t get the answers that he wants (namely, that Popescu suspects foul play), he takes on an authoritative tough-guy tone. “Who was the third man?!,” demands Holly grimly. Moments later, he accusatorially mentions to Popescu, “Somebody’s lying…”. Holly even asks Popescu about the mysterious Joseph Harbin, suggesting that his allegiances have started to drift away from Harry Lime and his former “colleagues” to Major Calloway and the forces of official law and order.
On Tuesday, Jeremy mentioned how Holly’s “foolish blowhard mouth” is apt to get somebody killed—he’s a privileged American, traipsing cavalierly through a dangerous postwar city that threatens to swallow up everyone else around him (something to which Holly is, of course, completely oblivious). Holly’s brash exceptionalism raises its ugly head during his conversation with Popescu, too. After asking Popescu about the third man, the Romanian evades the question with broken English: after taking a swig of whiskey, he says, “I oughtn’t to drink it. It makes me acid.” (The latter phrase brings to mind the “black bile” that, in archaic times, was thought to cause anger; is Popescu’s solecism a sign of the violence to come?)
Holly, with no consideration of any kind of repercussions for himself or others, proceeds to tell Popescu that it was Harry’s former porter who admitted to seeing the third man in the first place. Popescu deviously replies with the sort of nationalistic cultural stereotyping that seems prevalent in The Third Man‘s fragmented Vienna: “You’ll never teach these Austrians to be good citizens,” Popescu scoffs after learning that the porter decided not to give his testimony to the police. “It was his duty to give the evidence…even though he remembered wrong.” Only moments later, Popescu evades another potentially incriminating question by pointing out cultural differences instead: when Holly says that Baron Kurtz finds it conceivable that Harry was running some kind of criminal racket (a possibility that Popescu rules out immediately), the Romanian blames a sort of Anglo-Saxon insularity for Kurtz’s suspicions. (Turns out Popescu also buys into a certain brand of cultural exceptionalism.) More than a character quirk, Popescu’s willingness to blame cultural discord for unseemly behavior (including that of which he himself is accused) reflects a turbulent postwar Vienna parceled out to an assortment of foreign powers, not to mention the legacy of a devastating global war that ran on jingoism, xenophobia, and genocide. Popescu’s simply modeling his behavior on the way nations and governments conduct their affairs—a tragic psychosocial affliction shared by characters in movies such as Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Milos Forman’s The Firemen’s Ball (1967), and Emir Kusturica’s Underground (1995), for example.
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
Last week, Matt divined an unbreakable connection between this nightclub, the “Casanova Club,” and the famous “Rick’s Café Américain” in Casablanca (1942). The similarities do not end at the similarity of names–Casanova to Casablanca–nor at the decor, style or position. Indeed, these nightclubs are in some ways direct mirrors of one another, settled on opposite sides of World War II. Casablanca is set in early December of 1941, in the week before Pearl Harbor pulled American forces into the Allied side of the war, and Humphrey Bogart’s morally ambiguous Rick lives in Vichy-occupied Casablanca. Meanwhile The Third Man‘s Vienna takes place in 1949 post-war Vienna, a city with its own morally questionable American ex-pat, Harry Lime. What’s more, both cities present a cosmopolitan European diaspora: Casablanca was filled with Europeans and Americans trying to escape the war, while Vienna is full of Europeans and Americans occupying the city and enforcing postwar agreements. The brusque entrance of the police brigade, seen in today’s frame is even reminiscent of a famous moment in Casablanca, seen here:
While these officers may be just as crooked as Casablanca’s Captain Louis Renault, they don’t show it off quite so brusquely, and Holly seems less able to accept the inustice he sees than Rick’s cynical shrug, but both men attempt to stand up to these entering policemen. Our frame here catches Holly as he yells out “Who are you looking for now?” and Anna pleads quietly for him to shut his foolish blowhard mouth. This scene will come to demonstrate a large part of Holly’s selfish ignorance. As Holly yells at the four incoming police officers (one for each occupying sovereign nation), and Anna covers her face, glares at him, and whispers, it becomes infinitely apparent how oblivious he is of the danger that everyone is in. Anna, with her papers confiscated by Calloway, is essentially an illegal immigrant who, if captured by any of the four policemen standing over her shoulder, would be in even more danger of being deported to the Russian zone. Yet Holly, impervious to Anna’s position, yells out at the cops, receiving for his effort a disparaging look from the American officer and an excuse to turn back to his drink and mumble “silly looking bunch.”
Holly’s relative immunity, or indeed Rick’s relative immunity in Casablanca, can be traced back to the same essential understanding that allows Holly to behave in such a way. That understanding is simply the assumption of American exceptionalism, a concept that for better or worse can be linked back to German theorist Carl Schmitt (no relation to Anna Schmidt as far as we know). According to Carl Schmitt, the power of the sovereign, or indeed the power inherent in any system of government, is the power to decide the insaturation of the “Ausnahmezustand” or literally, the “state of exception.” Whether this be martial law, executive order, or in the case of World War II Germany, Hitler’s assertion that “Der Führer schützt das Recht” (The leader defends the law), the state of exception is the exercise of executive power. For Schmitt, every government, in order to have power, must have some element of dictatorship/sovereignty and this element holds the power to decide the exception. As Holly strides effortlessly through police lines, thumbing his nose at the British officers, and living for free on the promise of delivering a lecture on the modern novel, he is the picture of privilege and exception.
American involvement in World War 2 is no exception to American exceptionalism. While the rest of the world and especially Europe was still staggering from the horrors of The Great War, they were unwittingly embroiled into this terrible conflict, but it was years before the US took a side. While the United States’ geographic separation certainly permitted some amount of political separation, even after years of increasing aggression in Europe, it took a direct attack on a US military base to initiate American involvement in the war. The presumption that the United States does not exist as a part of the same world as the more cosmopolitan Europe is the same heart of American exceptionalism that has infected Holly’s behavior.
This perspective can be traced back even as early as the early 1800′s, with the Monroe Doctrine dictating that European Imperialism in the nations of the Americas was over, but that American involvement in those same nations was permitted. Talk about exceptionalism, yet the great blue expanses of the Atlantic and Pacific ocean have long served as a metaphor for the emotional and political separation inherent in American sovereignty. Holly, blustering his way through postwar Vienna with the bravado that we have so often called cowboyesque, is nothing but a visualization of this exceptionalism. What would make Holly think that a cowboy, or even a hard boiled California detective like Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe, could have the right to do as he please in this downtrodden European city? Holly is the imago of American exceptionalism staggering in and out of shadows on these cobblestone streets.
And in his meandering, Holly is continually endangering the lives and livelihoods of the people around him. In addition to drawing unwanted attention to Anna, a woman without viable papers, Holly’s big mouth will soon (as we will come to see) pull the strings that endanger the life of another character. In his haphazard western/detective investigation, Holly will let slip something that he shouldn’t have. And why? Holly is trying to prove his friend’s innocence, but more simply he wishes to exercise the near limitless power of his personal blend of American exceptionalism–an exceptionalism that, more often than not, harms those who are not swathed beneath its protective red white and blue cloak.
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
The lineup for the 65th Festival de Cannes was announced last week with a number of names familiar to Walker Film/Video. As Curator Sheryl Mousley prepares for her annual trip to Cannes to forge new connections, we thought we would highlight Walker appearances and screenings connected to this exciting slate of directors and films.
In Competition: After The Battle (Baad el mawkeaa), directed by Yousry Nasrallah March 23, 2006: Mercedes, introduced by director Yousry Nasrallah
Cosmopolis, directed by David Cronenberg January 1992: David Cronenberg Retrospective
Holy Motors, directed by Leos Carax June 2000: Léos Carax: L’amour Fou (Crazy Love) – A Regis Dialogue & Film Retrospective including the regional premiere of Pola X.
Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin June 22, 2012: Regional Premiere Beasts of the Southern Wild re-opening the New Walker Cinema
Midnight Screenings:
Dario Argent’s Dracula, directed by Dario Argento July 14, 2011: Traumadirected by Dario Argento, screened as part of the Location: MNprogram
Special Screenings: Journal de France, directed by Claudine Nougaret, Raymond Depardon June 6, 2002: Peasant Profiles: The Approach, directed by Raymond Depardon, screened as part of the Vignettes of Lifeprogram
Les Invisibles, directed by Sebastien Lifshitz June 11, 2010: Going South, directed by Sebastien Lifshitz, screened as part of Queer Takes: Alt Families program
An image that will now be permanently (wondrously) imprinted on my memory, Still Dots #38 captures a particularly bizarre moment at the Casanova Club (or maybe it’s simply business as usual in this establishment). The Casanova Club offers a swanky refuge from the scarred postwar streets of Vienna, a sort of five-star oasis of stiff drinks and fine dining (they don’t even accept Holly’s army money!). The name is obviously meant to evoke Casanova’s romantic allure, but one wonders if it’s also supposed to resemble Casablanca (1942), one of the most famous American films made during World War II, in which Rick’s Café Américain serves a similar purpose: an upscale haven for a beleaguered city’s upper class as well as for international expatriates.
Holly and Anna, now reunited, have come to the Casanova Club to follow up on a lead: Anna has just been informed by Major Calloway that this haunt used to be (and apparently still is) frequented by Harry Lime’s shady cohorts. After stopping at the bar for a few whiskeys (which Anna likely needs after her run-in withthe military police) and a trip down memory lane provoked by Anna’s snapshot of Harry, Holly looks over and spots the semi-absurd vision immortalized in today’s still. Likely intended to provide a moment of comic relief (especially after the bleak interaction we’ve just witnessed between Anna and Major Calloway), the shot pairs Baron Kurtz’s gargoyled visage with this somewhat embonpoint Viennese woman, well-attired and accoutered and single-mindedly enjoying the broth before her. (She seems to not even notice the musical accompaniment that Kurtz and his violin are providing.)
How has Kurtz wound up as a violinist-for-hire at the Casanova Club? Kurtz himself offers the simplest (and therefore least likely) answer, as he makes his way over to Anna and Holly and sheepishly says (while gesturing with the violin), “You found out my little secret. A man must live…” The irony here is that the manner in which Baron Kurtz actually makes a living is considerably more scandalous than his gig at the Casanova Club; when Anna and Holly really do find out Kurtz’s “little secret,” the depths to which he and his accomplices sink in order to make a comfortable living become disturbingly clear. (The irony is paralleled moments later, when Holly and Anna are introduced to Mr. Popescu, another of Harry’s former friends who allegedly helped carry his dying body to the Josefplatz statue. Popescu just happens to be idling at the Casanova Club as well this evening, and he confesses to Holly that he helped Harry forge Anna’s identification papers as a gesture of kindness. “Humanity is a duty,” Popescu says in self-exoneration—though we’ll eventually come to realize that a humane regard for one’s fellow man is less important for Popescu than monetary well-being.)
But there seem to be a few additional explanations for Kurtz’s gig as the Casanova Club’s resident violinist. For one, the position would allow Kurtz to spy covertly on Vienna’s elite upper class and on the wealthy globetrotters who make their way through this fine establishment. (This possibility is reified by Kurtz’s cryptic pluck of the violin’s strings, which acts as a secret message to Popescu that Holly Martins has entered the building.) Indeed, the unexpectedness of Kurtz’s side-job (it’s a surprise in itself that Kurtz even knows how to play the violin) brings to mind some of the ludicrous disguises that Inspector Clouseau dons in the Blake Edwards Pink Panther films.
And yet, maybe there’s an even simpler reason for Kurtz’s gig as a violinist. The surprisingly blissful expression on his face in today’s still—the closed eyes, the oblivious smile (which looks markedly different from what Jeremy called the “used-car-salesman smirk” typically painted on Kurtz’s face)—suggests that he truly is a music lover, a man who can disappear into the beautiful sounds he creates with the instrument crooked between his neck and shoulder. There’s a lot to suggest that Kurtz is a shady, disreputable fellow, but maybe he is simultaneously a lover of the arts (after all, he professes to be an avid reader of Holly Martins’ books as well—a claim which seems like a dubious attempt at ingratiation, but maybe Kurtz truly is a fan). Could Kurtz be more ambiguous, more paradoxical, than we initially assume him to be: a realist who exploits the sick and dying on the black market, yet who also finds refuge in the transcendental nature of art and creativity? Maybe Jeremy was right when he posited, months ago, that Kurtz is a kind man at heart, a softie underneath his cynical, duplicitous exterior. If this is the case, it makes Baron Kurtz surprisingly akin to the ambiguous character of Harry Lime: a villain, perhaps, but one who is still ultimately vulnerable and human, with a surprising capacity for compassion.
Over the absolute length of one year — two times per week — Still Dots will grab a frame every 62 seconds of Carol Reed’s The Third Man. This project will run until December 2012, when we finish at second 6324. For a complete archive of the project, click here.For an introduction to the project, click here.
