The opportunity to view Jean-Luc Godard’s UNE FEMME MARIEE (1964) after many, many years of trying to track down a good copy allowed me to fully comprehend the richness of Godard’s achievement within this film. The story is simple and can be summarized as this: a married woman carries on an affair with an actor. She sees him whenever her husband (a pilot) flies out of town. When he returns they argue over previous arguments. The two share a son from the husband’s previous marriage. She finds out that she is three months pregnant. When her husband flies out of town again she shares a final tryst with her lover in an airport hotel before her lover has to leave out of town for a stage play. As always with Godard the story is never as compelling as the way it is told and in the case of UNE FEMME MARIEE never was a tale of tail told so compellingly.
What was always and is still the most striking aspect of UNE FEMME MARIEE was not its commonplace story, but instead the phenomenal images organized by Godard and Coutard. The trysts between Charlotte (Macha Meril) and her lover Robert (Bernard Noel) and Charlotte and her husband, Pierre (Philippe Leroy) are presented in a series of ever-increasingly fragmented images. Images that not only partition the body of the woman in the calculated perspective of the observing male, but images that also accentuate her body as a male possession visually and physically. These fragmented images of the female body, the male gaze and the male's hands ceaselessly caressing these partitioned areas actually increase the erotic importance of off-screen space in a method that no other film has done since. The very positions of the body of the woman and the hands of the man -or the upper body of the man and the hands of the woman- imply sexual positions and sexual acts that were not being shown explicitly by Godard and indeed could not be shown by Godard at that time. Thus, images of fellatio, cunnilingus, anal and vaginal penetration are implied by the severe limiting of what we can see. In some shots, it is impossible to discern with absolute certainty the location of the body off-screen by the relationship of the hands, arms, or legs of the two figures to each other. For instance, in one shot which frames only Charlotte's legs as she lays on the bed, her lover's arm enters the frame perpendicular to the raised position of Charlotte's leg; the perpendicularity of the lover's arm implies that he was either kneeling down at the end of the bed or suspended by some contraption to create this enigmatic image. Other fragmented images clearly imply fellatio and/or cunnilingus, but because of Godard's distancing effects (e.g. no sexual undulation, blank stares into the camera, and the statuesque positionings of the characters within a severely constricted frame) the implied sexual act is an afterthought to the incongruous images presented. For example, Godard even plays with these distancing effects by having a medium close up shot of Charlotte looking contemplatively off screen with a finger on her chin. Only after she starts to move and talk, do we realize that it was not her own finger on her chin, but rather the finger of her lover from an off screen position that clearly implies cunnilingus. Thus many of the fragmented images are sexually charged by the eroticization of not what is on screen but instead by what the synecdotal arrangement of body parts on screen imply about the positions of the whole bodies off-screen. This is pornography by the negation of that which is pornographic. What cannot be shown is still known to the 'enlightened' audience by the evidence of things unseen. Godard and Coutard evoke a certain erotic faith in their images of marital unfaithfulness on the part of the audience who cannot see the (w)hole, but know that it is there. It must have been quite a hilarious irony to both Godard and Coutard when the French censors (besides changing the name of the film from 'The Married Woman' to 'A Married Woman) forced them to edit out a shot of Charlotte removing her panties (which Godard replaced with a visual pun- the shot of a her husband's plane because in French the word plane means 'shot'), but none of the censors decided to do anything to the bevy of shots that imply a panoply of sexual acts.
Yet in spite of the visual and formal brilliance of UNE FEMME MARIEE the presentation of a married woman with a lover is more troubling for what Godard leaves off screen about both the husband and the lover. Specifically, we see Charlotte's trysts and we instinctively pass a moral judgment upon her, but the frequent business trips of her husband, as well as the final voyage of her lover all imply that they were also unfaithful. Yet Godard never mentions the infidelity of the husband and the lover. His omission of the unfaithfulness of men no doubt opened him up to charges of male chauvinism and misogyny. Although to his credit he has several 'Brectian' interview sequences with the actors where an unheard off-screen voice asks questions about the role of memory, the present, conscience and the relationship between the characters. Most importantly here is a sequence called "Le Theatre et L'amour" (the theatre and love). In this interview scene we have Charlotte asking Robert about his real feelings about love. Robert stumbles badly in trying to articulate his thoughts about love while simultaneously hiding his true feelings. That Charlotte is the one mercilessly interrogating him redeems her character by giving her an intelligence that lifts her out of the audience's judgment of her as self-serving and indecisive. Through this interview scene we can infer that she knows that Robert is no better for her than her own husband whose attempts at controlling her are just as painful to her as his frequent absences from her.
More troubling than Godard's omission of male infidelity is his thematic disjunction of scenes about Nazi death camp trials being held at Auschwitz (where her husband and his acquaintance had just stopped to see before returning home) and the fact that as part of a cover for their final tryst Charlotte and Robert stop in at a cinema to see Alain Resnais powerful documentary on the Nazi death camps, Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog). Now one could argue that by including the subject of the Nazi death camps in to a film about marital infidelity Godard was drawing a critical comparison to the seriousness of the past (The holocaust) and the frivolity of the present (infidelity), but for whatever reasons this thematic disjunction evokes a sense of the lost consciousness of contemporary post-war French society. This is a theme that Godard would take up again with greater clarity in his next film, ALPHAVILLE (1965).
In spite of this thematic disjunction, UNE FEMME MARIEE is one of my favorite Godard films because of its bold experimentation which pointed out that there are no limits to the expressive power of cinema no matter how much you limit what can be seen.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
Logic/Cinematic Grammar/The French New Wave part 1
-If A looks at B, then B is the object looked at by A. Therefore, A looks at B.-
If we can tentatively agree that the Point-of-View shot sequence is the modus ponens of the basic logic of cinematic grammar, one can invite other notions into a general argument about The French New Wave (1959-1968) as a cinematic movement. Namely, that the various idiosyncratic styles of all of those filmmakers associated directly or by circumstance to The French New Wave were filmmakers who deliberately or instinctively defined their cinematic style via their aesthetic relationship to the use of the point-of-view shot sequence. Some filmmakers avoided this basic cinematic grammar to a greater degree than others. For instance the classic point-of-view shot sequence is anathematic to the cinematic ecriture of Anges Varda (Cleo 5 a 7, Le Bonheur) and Jean-Luc Godard, whereas it is employed with various disruptions in the work of Francois Truffaut (Les Quatre Cent Coups, Tirez Sur Le Pianiste) and Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour, L'annee Derniere a Marienbad). But the point-of-view shot sequence is absolutely essential to the cinematic ecriture of Robert Bresson (Pickpocket), Eric Rohmer (Ma Nuit Chez Maude). In these examples we can see that the radical cinematic styles that was to characterize The French New Wave were styles that either sought to find another way to express the basic modus ponens of cinematic logic or sought to express more in adhering to its use. Supporting this argument is the fact that French film critic and founder of Cahiers du Cinema, Andre Bazin had already voiced his disdain for montage and his exalting of the use of long take and 'democratic' mise-en-scene which goes a long way in explaining how important the classic point-of-view shot sequence is to understanding the development of French New Wave cinematic stylistics.
Before going any further with this argument let's back up and return to the notion that the point-of-view shot sequence bears a striking resemblance to one of the oldest argumentative forms of logic: modus ponens. In logic the most basic valid conditional argument form is: If A, then B. A, therefore B which is recognized as the modus ponens argument form. In the cinema, the logic of one of the most standardized forms of cinematic grammar can be described as: If a character looks off screen and the next shot is of an object, if the following shot is returned to the same character then that character is looking at that object. The return shot is the shot the sutures the off screen glance as that initial character's point of view within the fiction.(1) We can simplify this editorial procedure as: If A looks at B, then B is the object looked at by A. Therefore, A looked at B. This is a basic cinematic rhetorical form that can be a visual corollary of the modus ponens argument form. Its conditionality is accepted as an indicative mode based upon its repetition either within the film or across a wide variety of films throughout history until the present. The evidence is that it is so widely understood by so many people across so many cultures, languages, and other differences.
If we can agree that modus ponens is a fundamental characteristic feature of mental reasoning, then it stands to reason that the application of this form of mental reasoning would find its way into the rhetorical structure of cinematic grammar. That is, older forms of reasoning that prefigured the cinema would aid and abet the organization of visual and auditory material in a narrative. Sergei Eisenstein had already pointed out to us that many aspects of cinematic grammar (the rhetorical organization of visual material to transmit a narrative) was prefigured by the 19th century novel. Most importantly, by the internationally known work of Charles Dickens. Eisenstein notes that there is an opticality in Dickens that," gives us an image clothed in an excess of characteristics." (2) Moreover, he established a link between Dickens opticality and Griffith's narrative strategies that formed the basics of early cinematic grammar. I believe that it is the deep underlying rhetorical structure basic to mental reasoning as seen in language (words, sentences) that in turn formed the basis for the ordering of visual and auditory material in Classical cinema. This is a point that may have already been addressed by semiologist Christian Metz, but I am only interested in looking at the transpositional development of this deep underlying structure from language to cinema.
If we start quickly from Ferdinand de Saussure's observation that," No word has a value that can be identified independently of what else there is in its vicinity," we find a form of mental reasoning that is primarily associative; that is, elements communicate via their juxtaposition- their sequential ordering with one another. (3) What can be accepted as true in language finds its corollary in the cinema through images and their juxtaposition- their sequential ordering that communicates a narrative or suggests associations that communicate a narrative. For instance, the Russian Formalists were quick to notice that," the meaning of individual shots gradually becomes clear because of their contiguity and sequentially."(4) This observation was confirmed by Lev Kuleshov and the now famous Kuleshov effect where the same shot of an actor's expressionless face was juxtaposed to another shot of an object and depending upon the content of that following shot, audiences inferred what the actor must have been feeling about that object- even though the actor's face had remained the same. This we can understand was an early demonstration of the point-of-view shot sequence and how the arrangement of shots evokes mental associations between the spectator and the images that are ultimately reflected back into the narrative. Thus, it was not the simple symbolic linguistic structure of language (sign/signifier/signified) upon which the cinematic grammar was based, but instead it is based upon associative forms of mental reasoning that becomes a rhetorical structure that can be transposed from the understanding of language to an art form.
The point-of-view shot sequence was standardized as a basic form of cinematic grammar by the success of early filmmakers (Porter, Griffith) and the classical Hollywood studio film which was seen and understood internationally. This is what brings us to the establishment of The French New Wave, because we know that after WWII various cine-clubs reopened and the French could finally see all of the American films that had been made during the German Occupation which had banned them. More than this, the Cinematheque Francaise which was operated by Henri Langois was the center of cinematic education that was attended by the various key members of the French New Wave: Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Charbol, Varda... et all. Having exposed themselves to the standardized techniques of cinematic grammar via the Hollywood studio system in the b-films they championed by directors who deviated from that standardized grammar as much as they could, it was inevitable that to find their own cinematic voices they would have to 'rebel' as much as possible from the standard. Think of those decidedly different films like Nicholas Ray's opening heliocopter shot in They Live By Night or Welles' deep focus and anti-montage strategies in Citizen Kane and we can see the seeds of rebellion being s(h)own to those young critics who would soon become young filmmakers.
Thus, the point-of-view shot sequence was a standard of cinematic grammar through which French filmmakers could choose to avoid, utilize sparingly or adhere to strictly to develop their own cinematic 'ecriture' and discernible style. We can discern the importance of the discussion of the point-of-view shot sequence (or the shot/reverse shot) in French film culture via French film theorist, Jean Mitry's statement that," the shot/reverse shot technique lends it self to misuse for the fact that it provides easy solutions." (5) The easiest solution to finding a way to organize visual material is to use the standard rhetorical form -the modus ponens of cinematic grammar: the point-of-view shot sequence to communicate a narrative. But to establish an auteurist style in such a way as to separate oneself from the herd and be an artist is by finding other ways and means of communicating that narrative by breaking or reformulating that cinematic grammar. Wasn't that the real mission, the summa bonna of the movement we romanticize as The French New Wave?
(2) See "Dickens, Griffith and Film Today" in Sergei Eisenstein's Film Form Vol. 1
(3) Page 114, Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics
(4) Page 15, Formalist Film Theory by Herbert Eagle, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1981.
(5) Page 62, Jean Mitry's The Aesthetics & Psychology of the Cinema.
If we can tentatively agree that the Point-of-View shot sequence is the modus ponens of the basic logic of cinematic grammar, one can invite other notions into a general argument about The French New Wave (1959-1968) as a cinematic movement. Namely, that the various idiosyncratic styles of all of those filmmakers associated directly or by circumstance to The French New Wave were filmmakers who deliberately or instinctively defined their cinematic style via their aesthetic relationship to the use of the point-of-view shot sequence. Some filmmakers avoided this basic cinematic grammar to a greater degree than others. For instance the classic point-of-view shot sequence is anathematic to the cinematic ecriture of Anges Varda (Cleo 5 a 7, Le Bonheur) and Jean-Luc Godard, whereas it is employed with various disruptions in the work of Francois Truffaut (Les Quatre Cent Coups, Tirez Sur Le Pianiste) and Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, Mon Amour, L'annee Derniere a Marienbad). But the point-of-view shot sequence is absolutely essential to the cinematic ecriture of Robert Bresson (Pickpocket), Eric Rohmer (Ma Nuit Chez Maude). In these examples we can see that the radical cinematic styles that was to characterize The French New Wave were styles that either sought to find another way to express the basic modus ponens of cinematic logic or sought to express more in adhering to its use. Supporting this argument is the fact that French film critic and founder of Cahiers du Cinema, Andre Bazin had already voiced his disdain for montage and his exalting of the use of long take and 'democratic' mise-en-scene which goes a long way in explaining how important the classic point-of-view shot sequence is to understanding the development of French New Wave cinematic stylistics.
Before going any further with this argument let's back up and return to the notion that the point-of-view shot sequence bears a striking resemblance to one of the oldest argumentative forms of logic: modus ponens. In logic the most basic valid conditional argument form is: If A, then B. A, therefore B which is recognized as the modus ponens argument form. In the cinema, the logic of one of the most standardized forms of cinematic grammar can be described as: If a character looks off screen and the next shot is of an object, if the following shot is returned to the same character then that character is looking at that object. The return shot is the shot the sutures the off screen glance as that initial character's point of view within the fiction.(1) We can simplify this editorial procedure as: If A looks at B, then B is the object looked at by A. Therefore, A looked at B. This is a basic cinematic rhetorical form that can be a visual corollary of the modus ponens argument form. Its conditionality is accepted as an indicative mode based upon its repetition either within the film or across a wide variety of films throughout history until the present. The evidence is that it is so widely understood by so many people across so many cultures, languages, and other differences.
If we can agree that modus ponens is a fundamental characteristic feature of mental reasoning, then it stands to reason that the application of this form of mental reasoning would find its way into the rhetorical structure of cinematic grammar. That is, older forms of reasoning that prefigured the cinema would aid and abet the organization of visual and auditory material in a narrative. Sergei Eisenstein had already pointed out to us that many aspects of cinematic grammar (the rhetorical organization of visual material to transmit a narrative) was prefigured by the 19th century novel. Most importantly, by the internationally known work of Charles Dickens. Eisenstein notes that there is an opticality in Dickens that," gives us an image clothed in an excess of characteristics." (2) Moreover, he established a link between Dickens opticality and Griffith's narrative strategies that formed the basics of early cinematic grammar. I believe that it is the deep underlying rhetorical structure basic to mental reasoning as seen in language (words, sentences) that in turn formed the basis for the ordering of visual and auditory material in Classical cinema. This is a point that may have already been addressed by semiologist Christian Metz, but I am only interested in looking at the transpositional development of this deep underlying structure from language to cinema.
If we start quickly from Ferdinand de Saussure's observation that," No word has a value that can be identified independently of what else there is in its vicinity," we find a form of mental reasoning that is primarily associative; that is, elements communicate via their juxtaposition- their sequential ordering with one another. (3) What can be accepted as true in language finds its corollary in the cinema through images and their juxtaposition- their sequential ordering that communicates a narrative or suggests associations that communicate a narrative. For instance, the Russian Formalists were quick to notice that," the meaning of individual shots gradually becomes clear because of their contiguity and sequentially."(4) This observation was confirmed by Lev Kuleshov and the now famous Kuleshov effect where the same shot of an actor's expressionless face was juxtaposed to another shot of an object and depending upon the content of that following shot, audiences inferred what the actor must have been feeling about that object- even though the actor's face had remained the same. This we can understand was an early demonstration of the point-of-view shot sequence and how the arrangement of shots evokes mental associations between the spectator and the images that are ultimately reflected back into the narrative. Thus, it was not the simple symbolic linguistic structure of language (sign/signifier/signified) upon which the cinematic grammar was based, but instead it is based upon associative forms of mental reasoning that becomes a rhetorical structure that can be transposed from the understanding of language to an art form.
The point-of-view shot sequence was standardized as a basic form of cinematic grammar by the success of early filmmakers (Porter, Griffith) and the classical Hollywood studio film which was seen and understood internationally. This is what brings us to the establishment of The French New Wave, because we know that after WWII various cine-clubs reopened and the French could finally see all of the American films that had been made during the German Occupation which had banned them. More than this, the Cinematheque Francaise which was operated by Henri Langois was the center of cinematic education that was attended by the various key members of the French New Wave: Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Charbol, Varda... et all. Having exposed themselves to the standardized techniques of cinematic grammar via the Hollywood studio system in the b-films they championed by directors who deviated from that standardized grammar as much as they could, it was inevitable that to find their own cinematic voices they would have to 'rebel' as much as possible from the standard. Think of those decidedly different films like Nicholas Ray's opening heliocopter shot in They Live By Night or Welles' deep focus and anti-montage strategies in Citizen Kane and we can see the seeds of rebellion being s(h)own to those young critics who would soon become young filmmakers.
Thus, the point-of-view shot sequence was a standard of cinematic grammar through which French filmmakers could choose to avoid, utilize sparingly or adhere to strictly to develop their own cinematic 'ecriture' and discernible style. We can discern the importance of the discussion of the point-of-view shot sequence (or the shot/reverse shot) in French film culture via French film theorist, Jean Mitry's statement that," the shot/reverse shot technique lends it self to misuse for the fact that it provides easy solutions." (5) The easiest solution to finding a way to organize visual material is to use the standard rhetorical form -the modus ponens of cinematic grammar: the point-of-view shot sequence to communicate a narrative. But to establish an auteurist style in such a way as to separate oneself from the herd and be an artist is by finding other ways and means of communicating that narrative by breaking or reformulating that cinematic grammar. Wasn't that the real mission, the summa bonna of the movement we romanticize as The French New Wave?
Notes
(1) See Daniel Dayan's "The Tutor Code of Classical Cinema" in Bill Nichols Movies & Methods Vol. 1(2) See "Dickens, Griffith and Film Today" in Sergei Eisenstein's Film Form Vol. 1
(3) Page 114, Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics
(4) Page 15, Formalist Film Theory by Herbert Eagle, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1981.
(5) Page 62, Jean Mitry's The Aesthetics & Psychology of the Cinema.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Le Mepris- Marriage is a bitch!
Those of us who love the work of Jean-Luc Godard are often in love more with what he does with the camera, sound, music and editing than we are with the actual dramatic storyline within his films. The dazzling tracking shots, severely constricted camera angles, rapid editing, long takes, and all of the disruptive cinematic techniques that we expect from the French New Wave, but are embodied within the work of Jean-Luc Godard over several decades. Le Mepris (Contempt -1963) presents us with multiple dramatic story lines presented as a self-reflexive document of a film about a film being produced. It is one of Godard's most supreme narrative achievements of his 1960's period. This complex story of a marriage in self-destruct mode carries within it Godard's most mature vivisection of the relationship of man to woman and woman to man seen from multiple perspectives. The classical perspective of man and woman is between the characters of Odysseus and Penelope in the version of the Odyssey being filmed within the film by Fritz Lang. The modern perspective is between Paul (Michel Piccoli) and Camille (Bridget Bardot). When disappointed American film producer Jerry Prokosh (Jack Palance) hires French screenwriter Paul Javal to come to Italy and re-write scenes for his film of the Odyssey, Jerry introduces a theory about the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope. He says," I think Penelope has been unfaithful." This modern change to Homer's text causes great discussion between Jerry, Fritz Lang and Paul. It is an attempt to bring an ancient text into modernity by violating the meaning and original design of the work. As Fritz Lang angrily told Paul," You either do Homer's Odyssey or you do nothing at all!" This attempt to bring The Odyssey into modernity by violating it is revealing of the changing roles of women and men in the sixties as juxtaposed to men and women (as property) in ancient times. Thus, when we get our intimate look at the 'real' relationship between Paul and Camille we are witnessing the emotional torment that these changing roles were exerting upon a marriage. Watching Le Mepris is like watching a train wreck in slow motion with the beautiful music of George Delerue consecrating the wreckage with blissful and yearning stings; a dirge for a marriage destroyed by modern times.
At the heart of Le Mepris is a dangerous game being played by a man and a woman upon each other. It started like this: Film producer Jerry Prokoch had heard that Paul's wife was beautiful and when he meets her he decides to take her back to his chateau in his two seater red sports car. When he asks if he can take her there, Paul says yes even though Camille does not like Jerry and doesn't want to go. From this moment, their marriage was doomed. Here Camille wants Paul to act chivalrously and protect her from Prokoch. She wants him to 'keep her close' to him by refusing to let Jerry drive her to the chateau without Paul. She wants Paul to treat her like his property; to play the old role of husband, owner, protector, provider. On the other hand, Paul, it seems, felt that if she truly loved him what did he have to fear for letting her go with Jerry to his chateau? After all, he was coming there by taxi and would arrive just a few minutes after them. Should Paul have really been worried that his wife would cheat on him with a sleazy American producer? If she really loved him what did he have to fear? Should Camille really have made such a big deal because Paul wouldn't do what she wanted him to do? Are not these the hypothetical questions that under grid every marriage in one way or another? Does not every woman want her freedom, but also to rattle the chains of her indentured heart in a relationship? Is not a man expected in some way to act like a man from the days of yore- up until a designated point? From that moment, that moment when Paul did not play the white knight- Camille lost respect for her husband and she tormented him exquisitely in that long, slow motion, domestic scene in their apartment. Paul pretends like he doesn't know why Camille is acting so bizarre. By the time he asks her," Was if because I sent you with Prokosh that day," it is too late. Indeed, Paul sends her off with Prokosh again when they are in Capri. Here, Camille makes sure to kiss Jerry so that Paul can see them. She has upped the ante, so to speak. But so has Paul, for earlier he had been caught patting the script girl/translator on the ass by Camille. The great power struggle between husband and wife plays out against the production of an epic film. In the apartment when Paul slaps Camille he does so because he knows she is making fun of him; he knows that he has lost her respect. But when Paul tries to man-handle her again, Camille strikes back him with a fusillade of blows about the head and chest. Before they go to Capri, Paul takes a gun with him. Things had gotten ugly. This power play is based upon what a woman expects from a man; she expects him to understand her whims and oblige them. Was Camille asking for the moon? No. She just didn't want to go with Jerry and she expected Paul to pick up on this and keep her close to him. It was a test of faith on both of their parts. Paul trusted her not to be unfaithful. A test that Paul failed and later Camille would intentionally flunk with disastrous results. These type of of games are played even today between men and women. Women want to be independent, feminist, but they still expect a man to be chivalrous and oblige their whims. But chivalry in and of itself requires that the women not be independent nor feminist; it requires that she submit to the will of the man. Oh sure there can be a kind of pragmatic truce between the two positions but one would have to know how to alternate (be chivalrous and allow her independence, be independent and allow him to feel chivalrous) but such a position is only temporary. There comes a point where it is either/or and not both. The marriage between Paul and Camille could not withstand the test.
One has to wonder how did Godard, whose previous dramatic work in male and female relationships was more juvenile and fetishistic (e.g. the child like questions in Breathless or the photo-interrogation in Le Petit Soldat), how did Godard know about this type of mature interrelationship between man and woman. Clearly, Le Mepris has many affinities with the real life relationship between Godard and Anna Karina. The choice to make more commercial films to support the bourgeois lifestyle that marriage strongly makes one conform towards was clearly weighing upon Godard in real life. That Godard had sent Karina off into the hands of another producer (the theatre) in Rivette's production of La Religiouse as he prepared to do Le Carabiniers and Le Mepris tells us something about where this self-destruction of a marriage was born. Many have noted that Piccoli as Paul wore a hat that was extremely similar to Godard's own hat. In fact during the Capri sequence when Fritz Lang is filming on the boat one can see Godard playing Fritz Lang's assistant director wearing almost exactly the same hat as Paul passes by him. In fact, if we consider a little more of Prokosh and Paul's theory of the Odyssey we find that both think that Odysseus stayed away from Penelope on a ten year journey because he was fed up with marriage; fed up with the bourgeois comfort and confines that closed him off from the world. That Godard went away to Italy to shoot Le Mepris (without Karina) reveals the source of the fictional detail, isn't it tantalizing to think? Le Mepris shows more than any of Godard's work one of the themes that was do linger through Pierrot Le Fou and even Weekend: Marriage is a bitch. One has to know how to play the game and adjust when it changes, sadly Paul and Camille/ Godard and Katrina could not.
At the heart of Le Mepris is a dangerous game being played by a man and a woman upon each other. It started like this: Film producer Jerry Prokoch had heard that Paul's wife was beautiful and when he meets her he decides to take her back to his chateau in his two seater red sports car. When he asks if he can take her there, Paul says yes even though Camille does not like Jerry and doesn't want to go. From this moment, their marriage was doomed. Here Camille wants Paul to act chivalrously and protect her from Prokoch. She wants him to 'keep her close' to him by refusing to let Jerry drive her to the chateau without Paul. She wants Paul to treat her like his property; to play the old role of husband, owner, protector, provider. On the other hand, Paul, it seems, felt that if she truly loved him what did he have to fear for letting her go with Jerry to his chateau? After all, he was coming there by taxi and would arrive just a few minutes after them. Should Paul have really been worried that his wife would cheat on him with a sleazy American producer? If she really loved him what did he have to fear? Should Camille really have made such a big deal because Paul wouldn't do what she wanted him to do? Are not these the hypothetical questions that under grid every marriage in one way or another? Does not every woman want her freedom, but also to rattle the chains of her indentured heart in a relationship? Is not a man expected in some way to act like a man from the days of yore- up until a designated point? From that moment, that moment when Paul did not play the white knight- Camille lost respect for her husband and she tormented him exquisitely in that long, slow motion, domestic scene in their apartment. Paul pretends like he doesn't know why Camille is acting so bizarre. By the time he asks her," Was if because I sent you with Prokosh that day," it is too late. Indeed, Paul sends her off with Prokosh again when they are in Capri. Here, Camille makes sure to kiss Jerry so that Paul can see them. She has upped the ante, so to speak. But so has Paul, for earlier he had been caught patting the script girl/translator on the ass by Camille. The great power struggle between husband and wife plays out against the production of an epic film. In the apartment when Paul slaps Camille he does so because he knows she is making fun of him; he knows that he has lost her respect. But when Paul tries to man-handle her again, Camille strikes back him with a fusillade of blows about the head and chest. Before they go to Capri, Paul takes a gun with him. Things had gotten ugly. This power play is based upon what a woman expects from a man; she expects him to understand her whims and oblige them. Was Camille asking for the moon? No. She just didn't want to go with Jerry and she expected Paul to pick up on this and keep her close to him. It was a test of faith on both of their parts. Paul trusted her not to be unfaithful. A test that Paul failed and later Camille would intentionally flunk with disastrous results. These type of of games are played even today between men and women. Women want to be independent, feminist, but they still expect a man to be chivalrous and oblige their whims. But chivalry in and of itself requires that the women not be independent nor feminist; it requires that she submit to the will of the man. Oh sure there can be a kind of pragmatic truce between the two positions but one would have to know how to alternate (be chivalrous and allow her independence, be independent and allow him to feel chivalrous) but such a position is only temporary. There comes a point where it is either/or and not both. The marriage between Paul and Camille could not withstand the test.
One has to wonder how did Godard, whose previous dramatic work in male and female relationships was more juvenile and fetishistic (e.g. the child like questions in Breathless or the photo-interrogation in Le Petit Soldat), how did Godard know about this type of mature interrelationship between man and woman. Clearly, Le Mepris has many affinities with the real life relationship between Godard and Anna Karina. The choice to make more commercial films to support the bourgeois lifestyle that marriage strongly makes one conform towards was clearly weighing upon Godard in real life. That Godard had sent Karina off into the hands of another producer (the theatre) in Rivette's production of La Religiouse as he prepared to do Le Carabiniers and Le Mepris tells us something about where this self-destruction of a marriage was born. Many have noted that Piccoli as Paul wore a hat that was extremely similar to Godard's own hat. In fact during the Capri sequence when Fritz Lang is filming on the boat one can see Godard playing Fritz Lang's assistant director wearing almost exactly the same hat as Paul passes by him. In fact, if we consider a little more of Prokosh and Paul's theory of the Odyssey we find that both think that Odysseus stayed away from Penelope on a ten year journey because he was fed up with marriage; fed up with the bourgeois comfort and confines that closed him off from the world. That Godard went away to Italy to shoot Le Mepris (without Karina) reveals the source of the fictional detail, isn't it tantalizing to think? Le Mepris shows more than any of Godard's work one of the themes that was do linger through Pierrot Le Fou and even Weekend: Marriage is a bitch. One has to know how to play the game and adjust when it changes, sadly Paul and Camille/ Godard and Katrina could not.
Monday, November 3, 2008
LES CARABINIERS: An Absurdist Anti-War Film
One is held hostage by Jean-Luc Godard's LES CARABINIERS which presents itself as an absurdist anti-war parable, but eventually reveals itself to be an unremittingly grim story of the futility of conquest, brutishness, and self-delusion. The two main male characters are the atavistic Michel-Ange (Albert Juross) and the not-so-bright Ulysses (Marino Mase). Both are seduced by two military officers into believing that by serving in the King's army they will be intitled to the riches of the countries they conquer. The two pillagers leave their equally mentally challenged wives, Cleopatra (Catherine Ribero) and Venus (Genevieve Galea) and embark on a world wind military campaign (via stock war footage) sending postcards of their exploits back to their wives. Along the way, Michel-Ange lifts up woman's skirts with the end of his rifle, both of them participate in various executions, and Michel-Ange sees a film for the first time and attempts to enter the screen. He succeeds only in tearing down the screen and not entering into the image of a woman taking a bath. When the two return home, they return with all their spoils of victory: Postcards with images of the world's treasures great and small (from the Pyramids to an American convertible). Dissatisfied by the postcards (which they are told are their deeds to their treasures) Michel-Ange and Ulysses track down the military officer who seduced them into joining the army and demand their loot. They are informed that the King has signed a treaty with his enemies. The two are told to wait in a room and then both are summarily shot off-screen. The End.
Now we know from our exposure to absurdism in the theatre that characters in absurdist works are usually reduced to charicature and that the circumstances in absurdist work is often circular and reduced to the barest dramatic reflexes, but there is something quite altogether disturbing in LES CARABINIERS that makes this absurdist work extremely distasteful to even the most jaundiced eye.(1) It has something to do with the reasoning that is presented as the basis for war (all wars as the reductionism of absurdism implies). LES CARABINIERS presents theft and appropriation as the basis for all wars past and present. Godard recognizes this parable-like quality of his work in an interview defending the film from his many detractors in 1962," I assumed I had to explain to children not only what war is, but what all wars have been from the barbarian invasions to Korea and Algeria..."(2) It is perhaps an inarguable fact that many wars are fought for some kind of appropriation of land and materials or 'the treasures of the world', one need only think of the oil in Iraq to entertain this conclusion. Certainly the atavistic and primitive characters within LES CARABINIERS lay bare this ulterior motive of war and make our scrutiny of it a distasteful look at man's basest instincts and his cruelest folly. LES CARABINIERS makes explicit the point that no war is justifiable by the film's consistent demonstration of the meaninglessness of war whether through the various executions within the film (whose reasons are not explained) or the various writings that Michel-Ange and Ulysses send back to their wives which comment on death, violence and tragedy without emotion. But the question LES CARABINIERS forces the viewers held hostage to its perspective to ask is whether or not such a generalization about all wars is true or relevant? Are all wars fought for the appropriation of treasure? I am inclined to say no and that this is an oversimplification to give all wars the appearance of absurdity instead of finding the absurdity within a particular war. (e.g. Joseph Heller/Mike Nichols CATCH-22 or the 'ant-hill' in Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson's PATHS OF GLORY) In fact, the dropping of atomic weapons upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed war from its ancient starting point of appropriation and transformed war into ideological conflicts as demonstrated by the Cold War, the Korean War, the Franco-Indochine War, the Algerian War, the Vietnam War and our current war against terrorism. Although land and materials certainly are a part of the reasoning for wars in general, after 1945 ideology plays a greater role in the reasoning for war. Thus, LES CARABINIERS is an absurdist anti-war film that was already 20 years too late when in it was released in 1963. Much of the blame for this lateness cannot be solely put on Godard for he served merely as a 'metteur-en-scene' for this film as he explained in a 1968 interview: "...it was the only time I really had a script. I mean, a full script. It was not written by me, but by Roberto Rossellini from a play by Benjamino Joppolo. Rossellini did quite a lot of work on it and after that I had just to shoot and nothing more..." (3) These comments explain several things about the film, most importantly its neo-realist visual style (documentary footage, exteriors, non-professional actors), its explicit absurdist tendencies (circular dialogue, charcicatures, brutalism)and also why LES CARABINIERS is such a departure for Godard since we can reasonably assume that he made no changes to the script and worked on the film as if it were a commission rather than an auteurist statement. Godard thought that the film was misunderstood from the vehemence of the criticism he was receiving about it at the time of its release (See: Godard on Godard, edited by Tom Milne, pages 196-200), but I believe the criticism was just and accurate because the source material for the work Benjamino Joppolo's (1906-1963) operetta I Carabinieri (1945) had not been properly updated and adapted by Rossellini. The film coming as it did just after the French-Algerian war and the start of the escalation of the American-Vietnam war could only appear as a slap in the face to every war veteran or audience member who knew that the reasonings behind wars at that time had changed. Joppolo's work, completed in 1945, was a critique of all wars prior to the atomic bomb, it simply could not stand as a generalization about all wars subsequent to 1945 without major revisions; major revisions that Rossellini did not successfully execute nor did Godard bother to re-write as was his custom on any other film he would make. I believe Godard's reverence for Rossellini is what kept him from changing the text and that this indecision is what contributed to what one writer glibly described as his,' pitiful farce' about war. It was as clear then in 1962 as it is now that wars are fought for more than just appropriation. Thus LES CARABINIERS fails as a parable and becomes a less visually interesting didactic tract against war than even some of Godard's more explicitly militant work from the Dziga-Vertov group.
(2) Page 197, Godard on Godard, Trans/ed. Tom Milne, Da Capo, 1972, New York.
(3) Page 35, Jean-Luc Godard Interviews, ed. David Sterritt, University of Mississippi, 1998, Jackson.
Now we know from our exposure to absurdism in the theatre that characters in absurdist works are usually reduced to charicature and that the circumstances in absurdist work is often circular and reduced to the barest dramatic reflexes, but there is something quite altogether disturbing in LES CARABINIERS that makes this absurdist work extremely distasteful to even the most jaundiced eye.(1) It has something to do with the reasoning that is presented as the basis for war (all wars as the reductionism of absurdism implies). LES CARABINIERS presents theft and appropriation as the basis for all wars past and present. Godard recognizes this parable-like quality of his work in an interview defending the film from his many detractors in 1962," I assumed I had to explain to children not only what war is, but what all wars have been from the barbarian invasions to Korea and Algeria..."(2) It is perhaps an inarguable fact that many wars are fought for some kind of appropriation of land and materials or 'the treasures of the world', one need only think of the oil in Iraq to entertain this conclusion. Certainly the atavistic and primitive characters within LES CARABINIERS lay bare this ulterior motive of war and make our scrutiny of it a distasteful look at man's basest instincts and his cruelest folly. LES CARABINIERS makes explicit the point that no war is justifiable by the film's consistent demonstration of the meaninglessness of war whether through the various executions within the film (whose reasons are not explained) or the various writings that Michel-Ange and Ulysses send back to their wives which comment on death, violence and tragedy without emotion. But the question LES CARABINIERS forces the viewers held hostage to its perspective to ask is whether or not such a generalization about all wars is true or relevant? Are all wars fought for the appropriation of treasure? I am inclined to say no and that this is an oversimplification to give all wars the appearance of absurdity instead of finding the absurdity within a particular war. (e.g. Joseph Heller/Mike Nichols CATCH-22 or the 'ant-hill' in Stanley Kubrick and Jim Thompson's PATHS OF GLORY) In fact, the dropping of atomic weapons upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 changed war from its ancient starting point of appropriation and transformed war into ideological conflicts as demonstrated by the Cold War, the Korean War, the Franco-Indochine War, the Algerian War, the Vietnam War and our current war against terrorism. Although land and materials certainly are a part of the reasoning for wars in general, after 1945 ideology plays a greater role in the reasoning for war. Thus, LES CARABINIERS is an absurdist anti-war film that was already 20 years too late when in it was released in 1963. Much of the blame for this lateness cannot be solely put on Godard for he served merely as a 'metteur-en-scene' for this film as he explained in a 1968 interview: "...it was the only time I really had a script. I mean, a full script. It was not written by me, but by Roberto Rossellini from a play by Benjamino Joppolo. Rossellini did quite a lot of work on it and after that I had just to shoot and nothing more..." (3) These comments explain several things about the film, most importantly its neo-realist visual style (documentary footage, exteriors, non-professional actors), its explicit absurdist tendencies (circular dialogue, charcicatures, brutalism)and also why LES CARABINIERS is such a departure for Godard since we can reasonably assume that he made no changes to the script and worked on the film as if it were a commission rather than an auteurist statement. Godard thought that the film was misunderstood from the vehemence of the criticism he was receiving about it at the time of its release (See: Godard on Godard, edited by Tom Milne, pages 196-200), but I believe the criticism was just and accurate because the source material for the work Benjamino Joppolo's (1906-1963) operetta I Carabinieri (1945) had not been properly updated and adapted by Rossellini. The film coming as it did just after the French-Algerian war and the start of the escalation of the American-Vietnam war could only appear as a slap in the face to every war veteran or audience member who knew that the reasonings behind wars at that time had changed. Joppolo's work, completed in 1945, was a critique of all wars prior to the atomic bomb, it simply could not stand as a generalization about all wars subsequent to 1945 without major revisions; major revisions that Rossellini did not successfully execute nor did Godard bother to re-write as was his custom on any other film he would make. I believe Godard's reverence for Rossellini is what kept him from changing the text and that this indecision is what contributed to what one writer glibly described as his,' pitiful farce' about war. It was as clear then in 1962 as it is now that wars are fought for more than just appropriation. Thus LES CARABINIERS fails as a parable and becomes a less visually interesting didactic tract against war than even some of Godard's more explicitly militant work from the Dziga-Vertov group.
NOTES
(1) The figures in pairs was a standard feature of most absurdist work. (e.g. Estragon & Vladmir in Beckett's Waiting For Godot, Ben & Gus in Pinter's The Dumb Waiter, Valet & Garcin, Estelle & Inez in Sarte's No Exit). In film one is reminded of the titular nomadic pair of male characters in Roman Polanski's Two Men and A Wardrobe or the master and servant in Joesph Losey and Harold Pinter's The Servant.(2) Page 197, Godard on Godard, Trans/ed. Tom Milne, Da Capo, 1972, New York.
(3) Page 35, Jean-Luc Godard Interviews, ed. David Sterritt, University of Mississippi, 1998, Jackson.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Godard's Banned Film (The film we should have seen)
Throughout this course on French New Wave cinema we have mentioned Godard's banned second film, LE PETIT SOLDAT (1960- The Little Solider) a number of times in discussion of the work of various new wave directors as well as Godard's own work. Well, I for one would like to state that Godard's LE PETIT SOLDAT is a major achievement in his career and stands as an amazing testament to vargaries of terrorism and the pecularities of torture. Those of us who have read about LE PETIT SOLDAT know little more than those who have never heard of this film. We know that it is about FLN and the Algerian war crisis that was rocking France during the late fifties and sixties. We know that the film was banned upon its release and was only shown three years later in 1963 after Godard had completed several other films. We know that this is the first film to feature his soon-to-be wife, Anna Karina, the star of his major work in the 1960's. And we know that the film features torture, but various writers including but not limited to Richard Neupert dismiss the film as a 'dull grey' work where Godard cannot decide which side of the issue of terrorism and the Algerian conflict he agrees with. But none of these writers ever discuss the amazing detexity and fluidity of the camera and editing in this film. (Although this was noted by biographer Colin MacCabe in his book on Godard) For those who might have been looking for how Godard would advance the formal practices of the New Wave after BREATHLESS, LE PETIT SOLDAT is a dazzling display of where Godard was going to go. The aggressive opening sequence of the film is crammed with all of the techniques one associates with the New Wave including, jump cuts, swish pans, rapid editing, elliptical scenes, narration and the dead pan humor which was so typical of Godard. More than this, LE PETIT SOLDAT gives us a chilling portrait of terrorism, counter-terrorism and the arbitrary and brutal nature of such actions. The film is even more relevent today as America practices counter-terrorist techniques of using torture to extract information. The film is startlingly vivid even in its plaintative black & white style. The film also presents a motif that Godard would return to again and again in his work: that of the 'secret agent' or the person living a double life. This occurs in ALPHAVILLE and in PEIRROT LE FOU where characters are involved in some kind of intrigue that has a diasterous effect in the story. It is unfortunate that some critics would want Godard to choose a side when his main concern is the effect of politics upon an individual (a theme he would also return to again and again). The final open ended shot of the film really sends a chill down my spine as I realized how easy it is to commit a terrorist act and recede into the background of normality. I urge everyone to see LE PETIT SOLDAT because even though my initial reaction to the film was lukewarm, upon seeing it a second and third time, I realize that it was one of Godard's most daring works of the 1960's and it deserves a new appreciation.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
My Least Favorite Godard Film
Jean-Luc Godard's third film Une Femme est Une Femme which featured his wife Anna Karina was released as his second film since Le Petit Soldat was banned by the French government for its depiction of torture (a secret that the French had been using brutal torture tactics in the Algerian war was not to be exposed for years to come). Une Femme est Une Femme was described by Godard himself as a musical comedy or rather a comedy that uses music as part of its expressive means of making comedy. It is my least favorite Godard film even though the film displays many of the cinema"tics" that make Godard one of the greatest and most interesting filmmakers of the La Nouvelle Vague. What exactly is wrong with Une Femme est Une Femme? The cinematography by Raoul Coutard is in color and top notch. The performances by Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Brialy are finely tuned and alternately hilarious and dramatic. Various sequences are comedic highpoints such as when Belmondo (Frederic) and a man he owes money to curse at each other (in jump cuts) as they cross the street, the domestic scenes between Brialy (Emile) and Karina (Angela) continue the New Wave tradition of torturously romantic intimate relationships, the strip club scenes are alternately repulsive and attractive and feature many of Godard's convention breaking editoral strategies- so what exactly is wrong with Une Femme est Une Femme? I believe that it is the story's premise that ultimately deflates Godard's cinematic souffle. Angela, a part time strip club performer, suddenly decides that she wants to have a baby -out of the blue- and when her live in boyfriend Emile is less than excited about the idea she asks his friend Frederic if he would oblige her request. Now granted, Godard is sending up the usually thin premises that most musical comedies as a genre are based upon, but here the immature nature of all three of his main characters are too weak to sustain such a "mature" idea as having a child. It seems strange to request from one of our most notoriously anti-narrative filmmakers that his story should be more plausible, but perhaps it is not so much the story as it is the characters that should be more plausible. Angela has no real motivation to be a mother (she's not married to Emile, they barely make enough money to live together, both still engage in various flings with other people). The premise of Une Femme est Une Femme is too implausible to sustain all of Godard efforts. It is this immaturity within his characters that make such a mature gesture of wanting a child seem contrived. It is too easy to dismiss Une Femme est Une Femme as un cadeau pour sa femme that is as Godard's gift to his beautiful new bride and to that extent it is simply a gift in color to Anna Karina and nothing more. As their real life relationship began to grow in its complexity, so also did Godard's films, from Vivre sa Vie onward through to CONTEMPT (a film more about their marriage even though Karina is not in it). It might also be interesting to speculate here that the impetus for the premise of the story within Une Femme est Une Femme is the fact that Karina had been nagging Godard to have a child in real life as well as creating a film that would showcase his wife's star potential. Colin McCabe in his recent biography, Godard: Portrait of the Artist at Seventy reveals that Karina had a miscarriage that resulted in the birth of a stillborn child that left her infertile inbetween- Une Femme est Une Femme and Godard and Karina's masterpiece, Vivre sa Vie. So the speculation as to the impetus for the story premise in Une Femme est Une Femme has some credence in my opinion given these real life events. Godard has always excelled when he is connected to an equally ambitious female (e.g. Anna Karina, Bridget Bardot, Anna Wiazemsky, Anne-Marie Mieville) and although Une Femme est Une Femme might be considered an interesting failure by some (myself included) it's critical and commercial failure upon the time of its release also points out the sevrity of the backlash against the New Wave in France at the time. It should be noted that Une Femme est Une Femme won awards at the Venice Film Festival and not at Cannes, just as Truffaut's second film, Tirez sur la Pianiste, was also a critical and commerical failure in France. But whereas Tirez sur la Pianiste is a re-discovered masterpiece because of the complexity of its narration and characterization, I don't know if we can consider Godard's Une Femme est Une Femme a masterpiece for such complexities are missing within it. I will close here by saying that I think that the actual second film by Godard, Le Petit Soldat is the real re-discovered masterpiece by Godard, despite the rather tepid overview given of the film in a recent book on the New Wave by Richard Neupert; Le Petit Soldat is an important film in Godard's career and a masterpiece of style, characterization and political counterpoint. The banning of Godard's second film and the critical and commerical trashing of Truffaut's second film are in my opinion symptomatic of a larger cultural backlash against the New Wave in France by those of the old guard. More on this later...
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Jules & Jim, but not me
Contrary to the popular saying, the third time is not, I repeat, not the charm as far as it concerns Francois Truffaut's beloved film, JULES et JIM, and myself. JULES & JIM reveals a decades long friendship between the German-born Jules (Oskar Werner) and his bff French-born Jim (Henri Serre). Intervening in that friendship is a woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) who eventually marries Jules and has his child, but then begins sleeping with Jim- with the blessing of Jules who doesn't want to lose Catherine completely. This emotionally torturous menage-a-trois is made all the more difficult because Truffaut 'emotionally retards' the Jules character and creates an idyllic scenerio that betrays real human emotions. Even if we concede that Jules was so deeply in love with Catherine and so deeply in friendship with Jim that he would condone their love affair, the emotional torment that Catherine sends Jules through time and time again (e.g. various affairs and adventures with mutual friends, disappearances for months at a time) would drive even the most devoted man to madness. Yet, in keeping with a thematic trait I noticed in all of Truffaut's work (from the short film LES MISTONS through LES QUATRE CENT COUPS (The 400 Hundred Blows) and TIREZ SUR LE PIANISTE -Shoot the Piano Player) Truffaut's male characters are emotionally stunted individuals who are either unwilling or unable make the leap into maturity as it concerns their relationships with the women in their lives. While this thematic trait was endearing in his films of adolescence like LES MISTONS and certainly in his masterpiece LES QUATRE CENT COUPS it reaches its apex in TIREZ SUR LE PIANISTE. After TIREZ this thematic trait becomes a disturbing form of masochistic torture that pushes the story within his films into a 'no-man's land' of emotional incredulity. What I mean by that specifically is that in JULES et JIM the breakdown of the menage-a-trois is inevitably going to be based on jealousy. Jealousy is a real human emotion; it cannot be avoided. It can be concluded but it cannot be avoided. The real conflict within JULES et JIM is within the character of Jules, himself. He is either unwilling or unable to come to terms with his emotional dependancy upon Catherine no matter how much she humilates him. This emotional stunting of the Jules character is what inevitably makes us judge him as pathetic. An alternate way to have saved this story and the character would have been to include an emotionally explicit scene with all three of the characters in bed together. Unfortunately as we have it JULES et JIM is a flawed work of insufferable timidity and masochicism. At the end of the film Jules has nothing but his memories to live with and I'm sure he would have a difficult time with the guilt. Were it not for Raoul Coutard's transcendent cinematography (the film is littered with extraordinary visual sequences composed with dynamism far beyond when it was made) and the seductive music of Georges Delerue I don't think I could have sat through this film a third time. After his characters go beyond adolescence I just don't believe that Truffaut could ever hit the right emotional note... and yet maybe in giving us such a sustained portrait of male emotional stunting he was both confessing to us and warning us. Perhaps I will see this film a fourth time.
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