9. American Anthem (Albert Magnoli, 1986)

“Irony ruined everything. I wish my movies could have played at drive-ins, but they never did, because of irony. Even the best exploitation movies were never meant to be 'so bad they were good'. They were not made for the intelligentsia. They were made to be violent for real, or to be sexy for real. But now everybody has irony. Even horror films now are ironic. Everybody's in on the joke now. Everybody's hip. Nobody takes anything at face value anymore” – John Waters

It's not that irony is always without exception a bad thing, it's just that besides vastly overrated, it can also be really damaging when used indiscriminately. Without a core of honesty, irony can never mean anything. The longer I've been living with the films of Douglas Sirk for instance, the more I feel they are in dire need of rescuing from their ubiquitous ironic image as I start to take them far more straightforward than most critics will allow. The ironic distancing is there of course, but over the years critics have so emphasized this aspect, mostly due to Sirk’s own intervention, it came to overshadow everything else. The forming of the family at the ending of 'Imitation of Life' for instance is without a doubt ironic, and is not meant to be believed, but the irony can only mean anything when it can bounce off an honest core. Most people who saw it then (and now) will perhaps only see Lana Turner finally forming the happy family she has been denied the entire picture, and there’s nothing wrong with that, because it is really there. But those who are attuned to the deeper layers of Sirk can also see this family union will be an illusion as nothing fundamental has changed and after this brief moment of familial bliss chances are everything will go on as dysfunctional as before. Which is to say, the tear-jerking quality of the moment is not at all destroyed by the ironic distance, but instead is actually enhanced by it, as irony and honesty work together instead of against each other – Sirk forces you to believe in one thing while knowing it’s probably all an illusion.

Similarly I feel that, like Sirk, virtually all eighties movies have to be rescued too from all the distancing irony, so we can start reveling again in their straightforward honesty. Looking back at the eighties from our current point of view, it is perhaps tempting to use our widespread cynicism and ironic distancing when watching these movies, but that would be a gross distortion of what they actually are. With the obligatory couple of exceptions of course, most of these movies were as straightforward as they could possibly be, excess and all, and I think that is how we should treat them. We have lost a certain innocence when looking at them, warped as we have become when post-modernism knocked the bottom from under us, forcing us into a position where nothing truly meant anything anymore because of this lack of solid foundation. I may not agree with so many of the sentiments of the eighties, like the extreme consumerism, parents trying to live through their children or the gross ambition, but I can relate to the fact the 80s weren't afraid to speak out. It's the same as most 80s clothing: it may be loud and garish, but at the same time it isn't afraid to stand on its own without having to treat everything as an inside joke. Obviously the decade had more than its share of preposterous excess, and they're a lot of fun because of it, but it really shouldn’t be so hard to approach them on their own merits. It had its own identity, for better or worse, and in my opinion should be seen in just this way, without the unnecessary distancing. Most people who nowadays claim to like 80s movies, can only do so when looking down, with the comfort of distancing irony.  It's as if they're afraid of truly living their lives to the fullest and feel only comfortable on the outside looking in, like people who only dare looking through the windows of a whorehouse without actually going in. It's a mental wall that really shouldn't be there, because when you can only define your life in relation to something else, it will always prohibit you 'sucking the marrow out of life', to borrow Thoreau's beautiful phrase. But unfortunately it goes even deeper than this, as the walls most people create around them inevitably lead to corruption. As Krishnamurti says:

“Corruption begins in the lack of relationship; I think that is the root of corruption. Relationship as we know it now is the continuation of division between individuals. The root-meaning of that word individual means ‘indivisible’. A human being who is in himself not divided, not fragmented, is really an individual. But most of us are not individuals; we think we are, and therefore there is the opposition of the individual to the community. One has to understand not only the meaning of that word individuality in the dictionary sense, but in that deep sense in which there is no fragmentation at all. That means perfect harmony between the mind, the heart and the physical organism. Only then an individuality exists.”

So if we keep our condescending attitude towards eighties movies, how on earth are we going to prevent the inevitable fragmentary nature of our relationships? How can we start cultivating a truly honest and open relationship first with ourselves and consequently with the world around us, when we keep on claiming to love something because it is so bad? Love is quite simply impossible with such distancing, it’s at best the illusion of love. Krishnamurti again:

“And when you say, ‘I love somebody’, is it love? That means, no separation, no domination, no self-centered activity. To find out what it is, one must deny all this – deny it in the sense of seeing the falseness of it. When you once see something as false – which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human – then you can never go back to it; when you see a dangerous snake, or a dangerous animal, you never play with it, you never come near it. Similarly, when you actually see that love is none of these things, feel it, observe it, chew it, live with it, are totally committed to it, then you will know what love is, what compassion is – which means passion for everyone”.

If we can only place ourselves above everything we see, thinking we are better or more clever than those movies, while at the same time professing we love them, how can we ever form a true relationship with it? Any relationship that’s based on such inherent separation is without exception based on an illusion of love, because you cannot truly love that which you feel superior to. The fact this has nevertheless become commonplace in our society points to the root of our emotional and spiritual malaise, and also explains why so many people nowadays have so much trouble to form any kind of deep relationship with anything or anyone in the world, preferring a shallow and easy kind of attachment instead. It's an excruciatingly ugly song, but I can't help but feeling Billy Joel was right when he sang “honesty is such a lonely word” and we have to reclaim this honesty. We have to learn to break out of our detachment again and form deep, honest and loving relationships again with all that’s around us in order to banish this horrible situation of claiming to love that which we only feel contempt for. And many of those oft derided eighties movies are as good a place to start as any. 

One type of movie that was very popular during the decade, was what I shall call now, for lack of better word, ‘achiever movies’. Of course achievement was insanely prominent at the time, so it’s only natural it would find its way back into the popular entertainment of the day. The beauty of these achiever movies is they were all exactly the same: it’s all about some young kid trying to pursue his dream by accomplishing something in his chosen profession or passion. Dance pictures like ‘Flashdance’ or ‘Dirty Dancing’ were prominent obviously, as were all kinds of sports pictures, with ‘American Anthem’ being one of them. I have to admit I'm superficial enough to first have seen this picture solely because of its rather titillating cover art and on this point it surely does not disappoint: the stimulating body of the stimulatingly named Mitch Gaylord is also matched by his quite stimulating face. This being a film from the eighties, most people are not exactly hard to look at, which immediately places it into the somewhat shallow type of eighties films that's related to the Jane Fonda workout video. Right from the credits with images of people training and sweating accompanied by one of those nondescript 80s songs, it's abundantly clear what kind of picture it's going to be. It's not a perfect picture by any means – in fact it seems tailor-made for those who like to look down on things, who like to have a superior chuckle when watching supposedly 'bad' movies as there is going to be the kind of overblown melodrama most intellectuals frown upon. But instead of condemning this overflow of emotions, we should celebrate it and let it work on us. Because all these emotions can only posit a problem for people who are hopelessly out of touch with their feelings and know only how to communicate through intellect. So if nothing else, a film like ‘American Anthem’ could serve as a correction, as it feels like something of a warm bath of pure emotion. Jump into it, relax and feel the warmness of the experience flow through your body. 

The beauty of ‘American Anthem’ is that it has almost some kind of transparency, like it’s an empty vessel with the eighties merely passing through it. Which is to say, few films could serve so well as a time capsule as it has all the ingredients that made the decade so memorable. In everything it exudes the feeling I immediately associate with the eighties, from the look of neon, to the unmistakable sound of the music to those unforgettable musical interludes which seem to be the not so distant cousin of the montage sequences that gave the 30s en 40s their flavor. Jonathan Rosenbaum has once described the style of Nicholas Ray as if at any moment it could explode into a musical, something that was also true of the eighties. It often feels directly related to an MTV music video, but it's all the better for it. By sheer accident I saw the Prince vehicle 'Purple Rain' (like ‘American Anthem’ also directed by Albert Magnoli) just before it and judging solely by these two examples, the director seems to have a definite touch for the sublimely ridiculous – or the ridiculously sublime.

A theme that these two Magnoli pictures have in common is that of the dysfunctional family, which seems to have been everywhere in the eighties. Although the genre of the family melodrama never really has been away, there seems to have been a reemergence of it in the 80s which, intriguingly, links it to the fifties melodrama – with its suffocating air, all happiness and sunshine on the outside, but with all these anxieties bubbling right underneath the surface. This mood was brilliantly conveyed in the family melodrama, which with all its complexity of tone still defines the era and for which the earlier mentioned films of Douglas Sirk could serve as the ultimate example of the decade. In contrast, the eighties clearly had the subtlety of a sledgehammer, but there's something really refreshing about this, as it always laid all its feelings right on the line. As such, it became something of the exact reverse of the fifties: on the surface it's all trouble and dysfunction, but underneath it all there was a deep conformity at work, with people only desperately trying to fit in, especially in those achiever movies where people are ostensibly following their individual dreams while mostly really just longing to belong. The dress styles may have been eccentric in the eighties, as opposed to the conformist clothing in the fifties, in the end, the decade was mostly about acceptance. The combination of a surplus of pathos and the stereotypical characters gives these eighties melodrama force and conviction as they reduce conflicts to their most archetypal essence. This doesn't mean it's better than the irony and complexity of the fifties, but at the same time it also isn't the other way around. The beauty of this world is that both can and should exist next to each other, as mirror images.

It is interesting to place 'American Anthem' next to a completely different film from the fifties, 'The Next Voice You Hear', because they suddenly bring both decades very much together. 'The Next Voice You Hear' has become something of a cult item, because of its supposedly backwards attitude. Made at MGM, always the most family oriented of major film studios, it wasn't made during the reign of L.B. Mayer, who was famous for his love of sentimentality, but was in fact a pet project of his successor Dore Schary. Schary, a former screenwriter and heavily committed to the social problem picture, gave us a film that I personally deeply love without even the slightest bit of irony, but am actually afraid of showing to friends. The story is as simple as effective: at one point, the voice of God breaks in at a radio transmission and starts to complain about the mess people have made of the world and keeps doing this until the people are ready to face their problems. All this is done with such an honesty, it almost makes Frank Capra look ironic. While at outwardly 'The Next Voice You Hear' couldn't be more different from 'American Anthem', what unites both films very much is the sheer conviction and openness with which it confronts its problems. This makes both a very easy target for the kind of denigrating criticism I spoke of at the beginning of this piece, but this is precisely what makes both movies so endearing to me. Because what this world needs is now is not more irony and even more distancing, but really more plain honesty and straightforwardness. Love or hate these pictures all you will, but please do it with all your heart.

Buy American Anthem on Amazon

8. Trans-Europ-Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1967)

There is a moment in 'David Holzman's Diary' (which like 'Trans-Europ-Express' is another critique on the Nouvelle vague) when one of the persons speaking to the camera talks about how difficult it is to present the real truth to the camera even when you’re making a documentary, as even that format has to be manipulated. So the only solution perhaps, he suggests, could be to just take all your clothes off and stand in front of the camera naked. It's an interesting idea to be sure and also one that evokes several key issues in the films of Alain Robbe-Grillet. In an interesting example of life imitating art (or vice versa), Vanity Fair recently wrote an account of how the late director’s widow was not only still very much at her masochistic game at an astonishing ripe age, but also published the masochistic contract she and her late husband had agreed on back in 1958. That Robbe-Grillet was immersed in masochism shouldn't really come as a surprise, since it crops up in virtually all his films, but without any exact information one could only guess at the extent. But with this knowledge now out in the open, it does open up the way toward reading his entire film output through the lens of masochism, which up until this point doesn't seem to have been exactly common.

Usually talking about films of Robbe-Grillet hasn’t exactly been common, period. While his literary output has become quite famous and influential, his films are usually simply ignored. His one film that can hold any claim to fame is the pivotal puzzle film ‘Last Year at Marienbad’. But since he only wrote the script for this and it was directed by Alain Resnais who did have a highly praised film career,  ‘Marienbad’ is usually chalked up to the credit of Resnais, especially since it does have much in common with his other films. But here’s the kicker: so it does with Robbe-Grillet, who has also claimed his script was so detailed as to also include every exact camera movement and the only thing Resnais had to do was to execute his script, which would suddenly make him primary auteur of the film. While the authorship of ‘Marienbad’ will probably always be a tricky question, if we can agree on at least joint authorship, it does provide us with a starting point into the reception of the film(s) of Robbe-Grillet. It is a film that’s been especially popular in media studies, where its unusual narrative is usually seen in relation to the interactivity of modern media. Someone who plays an adventure game for instance, influences the direction the game’s narrative will take by making certain choices at particular moments, within certain limits of course. In a similar way, because so many contradictory signs are given in ‘Marienbad’, it is often said the viewer is taken out of his usual passivity into a more interactive role where he has to basically ‘make up’ his own narrative out of the given material. So, even though the entire film plays in a hotel, some interpreted the film to be set entirely in an insane asylum with everything being an illusion, even though no such asylum is ever hinted at. Seen this way ‘Last Year At Marienbad’ then becomes something of a forerunner to modern video games.

While all this is all very interesting and intellectually stimulating, it does run into some problems. For one, any true interactivity can obviously never be, as the narrative and the way it has been presented has already been set in stone by the writer and/or director, with the supposed freedom being merely an illusion. But more important than this, is of course that all this isn’t really as different from most narrative pictures as they all require a viewer to sift through the presented information and latch on to that which resonates most with him. This doesn’t mean a viewer can make any narrative just make it mean whatever he wishes it to, but it does mean every viewer is allowed and even required to choose those elements dearest to him while possibly ignoring others. This would make the difference between ‘Marienbad’ and any other more straightforward narrative picture merely of matter of degree and perhaps emphasis but certainly not in structure. But in any case, such a reading would only be fruitful if we were to see ‘Marienbad’ strictly an Alain Resnais picture, with whose oeuvre such considerations resonate much more than with that other Alain. Because they may have both started out with similar concerns, Robbe-Grillet took them into quite different territory. The concept on interactivity strongly implies the viewer is as much in control as the director/writer, and this is where you inevitably run into trouble with Robbe-Grillet. While he certainly encourages a critical role for the viewer and has repeatedly said so in interviews, just because it’s not passive it doesn’t automatically follow it is active too. But if he wants neither an active nor passive role, then what does he want?

Well, frankly speaking, he wants to force the viewer into the role of subjugation, which is where his masochistic proclivities kick in again. At the beginning of ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ there is so much information given in so short a time, it quite literally leads to an information overload and the screen indeed explodes because of it. What Robbe-Grillet illustrates with this, is that it’s quite impossible and even undesirable to try to ‘get’ the story completely and try to understand its every last detail. Brian Eno said when making ‘Another Green World’ he wanted to deflect the attention away from the lyrics, because he felt by only listening to the words, people ignored the music that went with it too much. So he either didn’t use a voice at all, or sang only nonsense, which was his way of trying to coax the listener into more awareness of the totality of the songs instead of just a part of it. In a similar manner, Robbe-Grillet wants to take us away from the mere ‘following’ of the story to the ‘experiencing’ of it and does so by explicitly announcing it at the beginning. When people ignore this, the whole film can become quite a heavy experience, as I can attest to myself; it was once one of the first Robbe-Grillet pictures I saw and I distinctly remember being highly confused by the beginning and felt I was falling behind constantly because of this, making ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ a perhaps interesting but also frustrating thing to sit through. Now, better equipped by realizing what he was trying to accomplish instead of fighting it, I gave up my control and was all the better for it.

That the movie exposes the mechanics of film is something that most people readily understand, but that it’s also explicitly about control is something that cannot be stressed enough. We see Jean-Louis Trintignant the actor who plays himself, and as actor starts playing the character in the movie within the movie that the director and his secretary make up on the train as they (and the film) go along. That this director is played by the real director Robbe-Grillet and his secretary by his wife Catherine already exposes the several layers of control: the director in the film may control the actions of Trintignant, but his own actions are in turn also controlled by the director outside the film, who in the end controls everything. Because Robbe-Grillet in the very first minutes explicitly announces who is in command, he forces the viewer into the position of subjugation, which makes the entire opening of ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ the equivalent of the masochistic contract the director wrote for his wife. He makes no bones about who is in charge and what the rules are going to be and you’d better play along if this is in any way going to be a satisfying experience. Like the dominated party of masochism, the viewer has to give up his sense of control voluntarily and accept he is in the hands of a dominator.

But unfortunately this giving up of control seems to be the biggest fear in our Western civilization. I know from experience that whenever I try to talk with friends about psychedelic drugs they can agree with most of it until I get to the point of giving up control, which is invariably where they break down. Now, there is quite some difference between various psychedelics (LSD for instance is much more psychological than magic mushrooms) but they all involve the temporary loss of control as you realize there is more to life than a rationalistic Ego and you can also anchor yourself in alternative sources like Soul or Nature. The beauty of the psychedelic experience is that by training yourself in giving up control you become much more flexible emotionally and spiritually since you’re used to relinquishing it. But how this fills quite a lot of people with absolute horror, I realized when a friend of me, without the slightest sense of irony, asked me “why would you want to give up control”? You only have to look at the popularity of the films of David Lynch to see that such an attitude can lead to strange situations. While I’m glad to see his films are so widely seen, I do often wonder what it is exactly that people seem to get out of them. Because to me, Lynch is primarily about the acceptance of mystery, which is really just another form of giving up control. This doesn’t mean his films are completely incomprehensible or mean nothing, but it does mean that truly understanding these films would also mean accepting the fact that not everything can be understood – and certainly not by rationality alone. We should do our utmost to try to understand as much as we can of the world around us, yet at the same time should also accept and celebrate the fact there is (and always will be) much that will remain mysterious. As Woody Allen put it: “I’m astounded by people who want to ‘know’ the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown”. I’m astounded by people who claim “to have found the key to ‘Mulholland Drive’” by giving yet another explanation of an experience that does it damnedest to remain mysterious. Lynch, like Robbe-Grillet, is very influenced by true surrealism, although since nowadays everything that’s slightly out of the ordinary or just weird can be described as ‘surreal’, the word has almost lost all its meaning. But surrealism at the root is all about the celebration of mystery and the loss of control. But this is not something most people are comfortable with now, as they want every little detail explained to them because not understanding something would mean giving up control and that’s scary. The result is that even so-called fantasy films have very little in the way of magic, as it seems to limit itself to the appearance to some creatures with little if any imagination applied to the story. As everything at the ending can easily be explained, it provides people with the kind of fake comfort the fantasy genre by its very nature should not have. To get an idea of what I’m getting at, try comparing the ‘Lord of the Rings’ franchise to John Boorman’s amazing ‘Excalibur’, one of the few fantasy films that lives up to its genre. By steadfastly frustrating complete legibility of his movies, Robbe-Grillet forces the viewer to give up control, which is also probably the most liberating aspect of his oeuvre, since exercising control is so unfortunately fundamental to Western society. 

By at the beginning of ‘Trans-Europ Express’ forcing the viewer to give up his control over the story and duplicating the masochistic experience, Robbe-Grillet moves his film in decidedly masochistic territory, so it could be illuminating to delve somewhat deeper into this material. I’m usually not one to quote Gilles Deleuze, but since his essay ‘Masochism: Coldness & Cruelty’ is so brilliant and insightful it’s hard to ignore. In it, the distinction is made between two concepts that are usually conflated by the term sado-masochism, but as Deleuze so beautifully shows, that term is really an contradictio in terminis, as they are their own opposites. Sadism (so named after the writings of the Marquis De Sade) is all about bringing everything into the light. Every little detail, no matter how disgusting has to be described and all that’s mysterious or hidden should be abolished. That people can feel rather uncomfortable with this is something that Pier Paolo Pasolini found out all too well when he made the notorious ‘Salo’, probably still the definitive sadist film and one that could serve as a substitute for those who are not really inclined to read Deleuze to understand what sadism is all about. That this trajectory toward maximum exposure and legibility is quite the opposite of masochism (so called because of the work of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch) should by now be clear. Because the masochistic universe cloaks itself in mystery and obscurity, it is directly related to darkness, while sadism represented light. Sadism is goal-oriented and therefore associated with the frenzy of movement, while masochism is all about the postponement of desire and orgasms and therefore only concerned with the ritual process itself and stasis. Crucially, for the sadist it is not very relevant who his victims are and they are interchangeable, but not so with masochism. Because instead of the involuntary coercion of the sadist world, masochism has to involve the willing participation of two sides, and both dominator and the dominated are an integral part of the whole experience. While I’ve not more than dipped my toes into it and am certainly no expert, I’ve experienced enough to know that being dominated is not at all the same as being passive. The subjugated person has to be attentive at all times, because without his or her reactions, the whole experience would mean little for the dominator. While sadism is basically one-sided, masochism always works two ways, which is also why the contract is so essential. Because both people go into it extremely aware and even though one of them must be submissive, the ritual quality of the experience only functions to heighten awareness, not lessen it. The dominator may seem in total control, but he is of course in turn as much controlled too, because the submissive party has control over his satisfaction since the reactions of the submissive reaction are as much a part of the experience as his own.  

This is also why the willing subjugation of the viewer is so crucial for Robbe-Grillet, because without it, his films simply wouldn’t work. The idea that Robbe-Grillet uses the entire film apparatus as his own private masochistic game may sound quite outlandish, but anyone who has studied his films carefully knows we are dealing with a quite outlandish person. One of the reasons these films are still so little known is that, while he was alive, Robbe-Grillet has actively tried to prohibit any home video releases, insisting they should only be seen on celluloid film. This should already indicate how important the film material really is for him, a notion that’s also reinforced by a brief but nevertheless crucial moment in ‘Trans-Europ-Express’, where we see shots of Trintignant on the train rapidly alternated with shots of darkness, creating a flicker effect that can also be spotted in the credits of ‘Successive Slidings of Pleasure’. These moments seem specifically designed to remind us of the working the film projector. Some people may not know this or forget it, but moving pictures only give the illusion of movement, as they are in reality nothing more than a succession of still frames that by projecting them at 24 frames a second give the eye the illusion of movement. The difference between projected celluloid film and video has once been described as “film works like mad to get moving; video works like mad to keep still”. What is meant by this, is that for every frame of film that goes through the shutter, there’s also one of complete darkness as it closes, so that in effect, even though the brain is too slow to notice, you technically spend half your time in darkness when watching a film projected in a theater. Video on the other hand works entirely different: before the last image on the screen has faded, already new lines are forming so that instead of half darkness/half light you are seeing light all the time. Since the difference between film and video can thus be schematized as the different between stasis/darkness and movement/light, it’s easy to see why Robbe-Grillet was so much drawn to film while abhorring video. He used film as his own ‘erotic dream machine’ (his own term) and through its ability to create a dream-like state played out the desire of enactment of masochism – with the viewer in the submissive and receptive position.  

According to imdb trivia “This film was banned by the British Censor because of its depiction of sexual bondage (which is now regarded as very tame)”. While its rather sensational reputation could make sure many viewers come away feeling somewhat unsatisfied because of its tameness, this would also be a serious misreading. They have to be rather tame, as being more explicit would be in conflict with the masochistic universe where everything must be obscured. But more importantly, the obvious depiction of bondage is far from the only connection with masochism as its entire mise-en-scene is built around it: the film is full of ritual sexualized imagery, with orifices in the form of doors and hallways constantly emphasized. The soft filters create a gauzy atmosphere of concealment which is paradoxically contradicted by the usually unfurnished hotel rooms that leave no room for obscurity. The acting is usually without any emotion and buried underneath all the statuesque coldness of cruelty. It is no coincidence of course, a large part of the film is situated on a train, which can suggest movement while never really showing it. Camera movement is kept to a minimum, which reinforces the masochistic ideal of stasis, but actors often move around much, although it’s movement that ultimately leads nowhere. This is not the defeated nihilism of Samuel Beckett but just the masochistic ideal, which is also why there is no climax or big pay-off: masochism is all about the postponement of climax or orgasms and is centrally interested in the stylized, ritualistic process itself instead of any end-goals. There’s a moment in ‘Successive Slidings’ where the lawyer says “we’re always waiting for someone or something all the time”, which couldn’t have articulated the sense of longing and stasis better. The soundtrack of ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ is highly stylized too and by Robbe-Grillet’s own admission directly influenced by surreal filmmaker Rene Clair. The voices are obviously dubbed and very poorly at that, but this is in no way a defect of the exquisite Redemption blu-ray as it presents the film how it should be. Robbe-Grillet never uses sound in any realistic way, but only uses it as counterpoint to create tension with the image. In ‘Successive Slidings’ there is even a moment when the girl plays a gramophone with sound effects, and Robbe-Grillet hardly could have been more explicit about his stylized use of sound where the discrepancy between sound and image creates masochistic tension.

This tension is also what sets Robbe-Grillet apart from the Nouvelle vague pictures ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ seems a direct answer to. Let’s compare it with Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’ for instance: they both share the criminal milieu and engage in similar deconstruction games, but this is where the similarities end and the differences begin. The whole Nouvelle vague movement was itself a direct answer to the ‘cinema de papa’, the kind of stage-bound, artificial literary adaptations that French cinema in the fifties were known for. In defiance, Godard and company took their camera to the streets, used direct sound and looked to film history itself instead of literature. By ironically puncturing the illusionist aspect of film and lay bare all its mechanics, they wanted to get at more reality. Robbe-Grillet however went the exact opposite way: he took the deconstruction of Godard but used it not for more reality but went back into artifice. Godard laid open the suspension of disbelief that’s so crucial to most narrative cinema. Robbe-Grillet took the ingredients of this suspension of disbelief and transformed them into the suspension of desire that’s so essential for masochism. Godard was interested in playful reality while Robbe-Grillet went for playful artifice. For Godard film is ‘truth 24 frames a second’, but for Robbe-Grillet it’s illusion 24 frames a second while remaining aware of the illusion the entire time. Robbe-Grillet wants to take the viewer out of his usual passivity, only to force him into a very different kind of passivity, namely that of masochistic subjugation. Like psychedelics, it’s empowerment by relinquishing control. 

But there is yet another difference between Godard and Robbe-Grillet. While Godard and his mates may have critiqued virtually everything under the sun, what they never undermined was the cult of masculinity. Indeed they have often been accused of extreme male chauvinism, something that Michel Mourlet’s famous love letter ‘Charlton Heston is an axiom of the cinema’ attests to. Without putting too fine a point on it, many of these Nouvelle vague pictures are decidedly masculine in point of view and style. When Jean-Paul Belmondo explicitly models himself on Humphrey Bogart in ‘Breathless’, it perpetuates the myth of strong masculinity that’s raging rampant in contemporary society. And while his actions only get him into trouble, at least Belmondo is given the freedom to act, something that Jean-Louis Trintignant in ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ is emphatically denied. Robbe-Grillet makes it entirely clear that his hero is nothing but a puppet who is constantly being pushed around with little or no control over his own actions. While all his films feel very feminine, that the whole of ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ seems consciously designed as a female corrective to the masculine ‘Breathless’ and similar pictures is also indicated by the poster of James Bond that is at one point seen behind Trintignant, an ironic comment on his lack of authority. By denying the actor any control over his actions and indeed building his entire movie around the notion of control, Robbe-Grillet equates Trintignant with the submissive female position. In terms of style too this difference is found, with Godard’s jazzy, fluid approach in direct contrast with the frozen quality of Robbe-Grillet.   

The masculine criminality together with the feminine bondage make ‘Trans-Europ-Express’ an unique mixture of opposites. This curious combination is also found in the highly intellectual approach of the director and the somewhat salacious sexual content. While the tension this creates may condemn these films forever to some no-man’s land, as they are often too intellectually minded to satisfy exploitation tastes yet are at the same time also too risqué for intellectuals to feel entirely comfortable with, it is also the point of these films. They feel the product of two forces pulling in opposite directions, with these forces eventually canceling each other out and leave these films hovering somewhere in the middle, in moving stillness. The paradox in this description brings us to the heart of Robbe-Grillet’s aesthetic, which is entirely based on tension and which makes it impossible for one of the forces to become dominant. They can be neither more about sex nor mind-games, because moving in either direction would tip the balance that Robbe-Grillet strives for so hard. It is these paradoxes that give these films force: they reveal as much as they conceal; only by subjugating to the extreme intellectual demands of the director, can one reap the sensual fruits of his playfulness. And as they require a viewer that’s both critical yet submissive, they make an astonishing case for the relinquishing of control that could serve as a strong corrective to the damages of male dominance in our society. Which is not bad for a couple of moving images that are not really moving. Because by giving up control, you can learn to see more clearly.

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7. Voice Over (Christopher Monger, 1983)

I'm not particularly proud to say this, but I've got an aunt who, when taking family pictures, deliberately situates in-law family members at the very edges of the composition. When I asked her about this she replied, without batting an eye, she did this because this way it would be easier to cut them off the pictures in the case of some future breakup. I always thought this to be something peculiar to my aunt (and 'Mommie, Dearest') but as fate would have it, within 24 hours I would see not one, but two movies where exactly the same thing occurred: first the little horror movie 'Julie, Darling' and later 'Voice Over'. In both movies, it's nothing but an extremely brief moment and both are without emphasis, but to me they are quite exemplary. There is something quite unsettling about all this, because it strongly suggests that people are being blind to certain problematic facts and they simply block out that which seems unpleasant. Clearly, these problems are not going to go away even if you close yourself off from them, and quite a big chunk of the problems plaguing Western society is people not facing these facts, making their whole lives nothing more than some childish game of hide and seek, basically retreating to a fantasy world and refusing the come to terms with certain realities. 

This clash between reality and fantasy is potently conveyed at the very beginning of 'Voice Over': after some depressing scenes in a dingy radio studio, an overweight, half-undressed man is seen delivering florid prose in an utterly despairing excuse for an apartment. It’s all very uneasy, because it already suggests this man’s fundamental imbalance, something that the rest of the movie will so hauntingly explore. As will be typical of the elliptical nature of 'Voice Over' (which is a somewhat ironic name, as the voice over in movies is typically used to explain everything to the audience, while such an easy comfort is emphatically denied the viewer here), we are kept guessing as to the exact nature of the situation, but as will become clear gradually, it focuses on a radio personality by the name of Fats Bannerman who hosts some anachronistic radio show called 'Thus Engaged'. The show apparently is a great success, but things start to go really wrong when a female interviewer exposes Fats and his show as basically nothing more than a rip-off of Jane Austin which is only popular with poor kids instead of the educated crowd, as Fats seemed to think. It is also made clear during the interview that Fats clearly has flown into his fairy tale territory because he couldn't deal with the problematic break-up with his wife and just when the interviewer is trying to break this bubble, Fats does that which he apparently has always done and will do in the rest of the movie: he flees both literally and figuratively. 

After drinking himself to a stupor, Fats is seen entering an apartment with two much younger girls who are obviously flirting with him. Most people could already sense something's wrong here, because the chances two beautiful young girls like that would go for a not particularly attractive overweight older man are very slim indeed, but as the movie leaves so much room for interpretation, you could still chalk it up to Fats' new-found celebrity. When the girls start taking compromising pictures, things obviously start going really wrong, to everyone but Fats that is, as he is so firmly entrenched in his own delusions he remains blind to all the signs. While it's clear the girls are rather mean-spirited, they should've also served as Fats's wake-up call, as they puncture the  mistaken fantasies of his radio show at every turn: when they comment nobody on his show ever screws, he answers rather foolishly they didn't do that in the 19^th century – obvious nonsense to anyone but Fats who apparently has a strong psychological need for such fantastic ideas. What this moment portrays then, is not so much some misogynistic comment on the viciousness of the gals, but the rupturing of Fats' dream world where all females have to be pure virgins. Because he has lost himself so completely into the supposedly chivalrous 19^th century values of his show, Fats has lost all contact with reality, until he is brutally awakened by the girls.

Unfortunately for Fats though, it isn't exactly the wake-up call to the road of sanity, because instead of opening himself up to reality he retreats even more into his fantasy world than before, even though at precisely that point he starts incorporating reality into his anachronistic show. This is the point: even though fantasy and reality begin intruding on each other, as would be necessary for his wholeness, they never meet and in fact go opposite routes: his show becomes more real and more attuned to the real demands of his youth audience with vampires, gore and sex invading his once so 'pure' show and at one point he even begins to use his real childhood stutter (it becomes more you, it's very modern, one person says to him ironically). His real personal life on the other hand becomes utter fantasy and withdrawal: at one point he suddenly drags one of his former girl attackers – heavily bleeding – into his apartment, claiming he found her like that on the street, although the movie leaves open the possibility of this being the work of Fats. Now he appears to have completely lost the little sense he had, and despite the strong objections of some friendly doctor, he insists on caring for her in his own home instead of giving her the proper medical care. As his show becomes more successful at every turn, he eventually is able to leave his horrible old living quarters and move to a much larger and more comfortable apartment, where he is ironically better equipped to care for the barely recovering girl. Even though its more luxurious surroundings almost give the illusion of a well-adjusted family life, director Monger immediately destroys this illusion with a beautiful pan across the house showing Fats and the girl in separating rooms and obliquely commenting on the impossibility of any true communication between them. 

What the movie chronicles then is the lack of balance, between proper alignment between reality and fantasy, a relation that seems heightened by the imbalance between sound and image, as it often feels more like a radio play with its emphasis and sound instead of visuals. It wasn't until I read the booklet though, that I realized the movie had been interpreted very different upon its release and was in fact heavily attacked by feminists for its apparent misogyny. The fact I've never even entertained such a notion throughout the movie could mean I'm just totally oblivious to everything around me, but could also point to the fact I just see things really different from most people. Whatever the case, it does introduce the idea of the difference between men and women, which clearly is something 'Voice Over' deals with and which cannot be ignored when discussing this film but which seems something those feminist attacks did in fact do. I’m not at all against feminism, yet at the same time I can’t say I feel much affinity with the movement, probably because the crucial differences between men and woman are so often glossed over. I’m all for equal rights, but treating both men and women on equal ground doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to treat them as if they were the same. Because not matter how you look at it, they are and always will be differences between men and women and those should always be recognized instead of ignored.  

One of the great joys of recognizing life as the web of interconnectedness that it is, lies in the unexpected connections that can be made between movies you just happen to see after one another.   Because I not only saw 'Julie Darling' right before 'Voice Over', but also the amazing 'Steel Magnolias', a movie that can be seen as the yin to 'Voice Over's' yang. 'Steel Magnolias' is all about the female spirit, its openness and resilience; men on the other hand are good at getting things organized and done, yet they are also closed-off and unable to deal as resourcefully with situations of change. ‘Steel Magnolias’ hits hard at the difference between the male and female core, something that still hasn't been acknowledged enough. Everybody has either a male or a female core, which will define their basic qualities: people with a male core are usually definite and fixed in their ways, firm with a clear goal. A female core on the other hand is always more attentive and open to change and those who are blessed with it are better to deal with change than their male counterparts. Gay men and women are nature's glorious reminder these male and female cores not necessarily have to be limited to either males or females, so there can be males with a female core and vice versa. This becomes evident throughout 'Steel Magnolias', but especially in moments of crisis, when the men are simply unable to deal with it and the women constantly show themselves to be both tender and though, hence explaining the title: the men cannot bend without breaking and so their only resolution to problems they cannot face is denial, while the women are always able to deal with all the situations head-on, always bending without ever breaking.

With this in mind, the scene which has been singled out most for its supposed hatred of women, the vicious attack on Fats by the girls, can now be seen in quite the different light: because instead of the girls being merely there to throw some bad light on the female species, it seems to me abundantly clear that instead it's the other way around and if any attack has been perpetrated by the movie, it's not on women but on men. Fats is just a disturbed and blind man, who lives in a world of fantasy and his attackers were really only doing him a favor by trying to yank him out of his self-imposed fantasy world. This fundamental difference between female openness en male withdrawal is never spelled out (nothing is in this film), but is repeatedly hinted upon throughout the movie: all male characters retreat in fantasy with female characters trying to get them out of it. Next to Fats, the only other male character of any consequence is FX, his special effects assistant and he too is not too adept at facing situations. When Fats quizzes him about the changes the show has been going through, he not only can never give a straight answer, he also rather superficially blames the female interviewer for it, thereby childishly clinging to that which is familiar. In sharp contrast to the male’s inability to deal with situations, all the female characters are always facing the problems up front: besides the already discussed female teasers, there's also the nagging interviewer and the woman radio boss – all are very different from each other but share this same character treat. The case of the radio boss is especially revealing, as she does complain about the impossibility of changing the show, which could indicate a failure to adapt, but this is just misleading. Because in the end, she does face the problems up front and is directly handling the new situation, while Fats just numbly escapes into pure fiction as he only keeps repeating he doesn’t think the show is tripe. Fats does change the show around, but only selfishly without any thought about the consequences, which is exactly what the woman does do. Her not wanting to change the show is grounded in commercial motivations, which one may or may not agree with, but at least she is able to take in the whole picture.

If these female characters look and feel so much more negative next to their counterparts from 'Steel Magnolias' it's not because of some malicious intentions on the part of the makers of 'Voice Over', but only because the former is told entirely through the eyes of the women and the latter is seen through its male protagonist. This would already make any misogynistic charge groundless, as it's hard to see how any movie that focuses on such an obviously deranged male could have such contempt for women. What makes the movie difficult for some, I suppose, is it's almost complete lack of judgment and the fact it refuses to idealize the women, ultimately leaving the responsibility up to the viewer. So that after Fats has killed the girl, the camera just moves away from him in a cold non-manipulative manner before fading to the credits. If any firm interpretation has to be given, it would seem more likely to say the film condemns the fact women are so often victimized by men.

Available on blu-ray/DVD from BFI Flipside

6. This Land is Mine (Jean Renoir, 1943)

‘This Land is Mine’ opens with a peaceful market place with a statue of the first World War on it. This serenity is quickly disrupted however when we see tanks and armies invading it, immediately establishing the link of the present to the past and the cyclical nature of all things. After this, we are witness to a conversation between the schoolteacher Charles Laughton and his mother Una O’Connor. It’s almost instantly established the mother is rather dependent on her full-grown son, conforming to the type of the domineering mother who basically needs to give her son the idea he can’t live without her because it would be unbearable for her if he would leave. The son is also much too dependent on his mother however: not only does he still live at home at such an inappropriate age, he clearly needs to be mothered, even if he doesn’t always appreciate it: the milk which mother has secured for him (in a backhanded manner by claiming it was for her) is given to the cat, who is of course quite grateful for it. We’re barely five minutes into the picture and already Jean Renoir and his scriptwriter Dudley Nichols have provided us with an intricate web of interpersonal relations that makes up every society: mother needs son, the son needs mother and the cat needs the son. It’s familiar territory for Nichols of course, as he already provided John Ford with a fabulous script for ‘Stagecoach’, in which the titular stagecoach functions as something as a microcosm for society, with its myriad relations between people. It's both the blessing and curse of every society, because being dependent on others makes us both strong and vulnerable and it can both stifle and enhance growth. It also strongly suggests such a society will suffer decidedly if people are only looking out for their own interests, thereby ignoring the needs of society as a whole. The mother who procures the milk for her son, for instance, is unquestionably done out of the love of her heart, but since the son doesn’t really needs it and gives it to the cat, other people who may need it much more are possibly deprived of it. And as the rest of the film will point out, a society that’s divided like this, will invariably be vulnerable to outside attacks, like the invasion of the Nazi’s.

“Everybody has his reasons” Jean Renoir once said and although this saying has become ubiquitous to the point of cliché, it, like all clichés, has become one because it contains so much truth. It would be quite appropriate of course, he himself was to experience this celebrated fact when he came to Hollywood, where he was subjected to much outside control. As a result, his working in Hollywood wasn’t the most happy of experiences apparently, but when you look at his American output, you cannot help but be struck how much of it is actually very good – even a movie like ‘The Woman on the Beach’, hacked to pieces as it may be, is still such a powerful picture. He may not have had as much control in Hollywood as he had in France and stylistically his Hollywood output isn’t as distinctive as some of his French movies, but with ‘This Land of Mine’ at least, he was able to adapt his famous style to Hollywood’s strict control and so it resembles his French masterpieces like ‘Grand Illusion’ or ‘Rules of the Game’ the most in that it is the most Renoirian. The use of long shots and fluid camera movement that still make his French movies so famous (because they stylistically stress the importance of the ensemble instead of a selected few protagonists) may be largely absent in ‘This Land of Mine’ (it very much looks like a Hollywood movie), but in spirit they are certainly very similar, making it a fascinating combination of French and American sensibilities. What it may lack in stylistic boldness is compensated for by Hollywood’s knack for casting. Anyone who’s familiar with the actors in this movie wouldn’t have a particular hard time figuring out who plays what kind of role, making it either perfectly or predictably cast, depending on one’s need for originality I suppose. So Charles Laughton is his typical uncertain and weak self, Maureen O’Hara is strong and fiery, Walter Slezak plays yet another Nazi, Una O’Connor the hysterical mother and George Sanders is again the morally weak type.

Heroes and villains are usually so clearly characterized in Hollywood war movies they often descend to parody, but leave it to Renoir to give the whole experience a human face.  Because the intricate web of relationships is always stressed in a way that's so typical for Renoir, we are constantly reminded the whole is always bigger than its parts. The subtitle of Bill Plotkin's book 'Nature and the Human Soul' is 'Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World' and could have easily served as the title for 'This Land Is Mine'. 'Together we stand, divided we fall' is an axiom that everybody recognizes when applied to a group, like a sports team. But while this may be true, it also means that the whole can never be really strong, unless its individual parts are strong also. So unless we apply the same ideas of harmony and wholeness on the individual parts also instead of just looking at the interest of the group as a whole, the whole can never be truly harmonious. You can easily compare this to the human body, as I’ve recently experienced myself: since I lost quite a lot of weight and have allowed my physical body to take care of itself, I distinctly feel I’m much more resilient to outside attacks. For instance, I haven’t been sick this winter even though there were two cases where I felt I was starting to develop a cold. Usually this would mean I would feel under the weather for a couple of days, but not this time as I really noticed my body was much better able to ward off these little attacks and nip them in the bud and the same goes for my boyfriend. Obviously, this doesn’t at all mean that we’re both somehow invulnerable now, but it does mean we are stronger now simply because our bodies our stronger. This may all sound absurdly logical, yet most people I have spoken seem to think that to have such a clean and clear body is actually more dangerous as it then would have less resistance as it wouldn’t be used to dealing with pollution and filth. But that’s more or less the same as claiming a sports team already operating at half strength because of strain, injuries or fatigue would make a better team than one that’s totally fit and healthy. When every single member is fit and complete in itself and doesn’t need to rely on others for wholeness, it makes it possible for the team to become something more, something that’s clearly impossible when the members of the team do need each other to fill in their own lacks.

What this also means is that a society that's built on too much dependency can never withstand outside pressure, especially when it comes in the guise of Nazi invasion. Because what the film subtly but cleverly suggests is that while Nazism may be grotesque and highly dangerous, it is to be praised for its cohesion and belief in their cause. And because they form such a strong group together, it makes the scattered and divided societies very easy prey. It's again like sports in this way: a team can consist of nothing but brilliant individuals, unless they work together with the same goal, it will never accomplish anything and can in fact be easily defeated by a team which is less talented individually but does function more cohesively. So what's needed then, is not people just egotistically looking out for just their own interests and merely protecting their own turf, but people who start making society whole by making themselves whole. Charles Laughton's speech near the end of the film makes all this abundantly clear, when he talks about how he is weak on the outside, but strong on the inside. Similarly, he described the George Sanders character as his own opposite: strong on the outside but weak on the inside. So what they both need then, is to find access to their complementary core, because if Laughton can combine his own inner strength with the outer confidence of Sanders, he will indeed be made whole. Not that this will be an easy process, as is made clear when Laughton can't find the paper he has written his speech on as it fell out of his pocket, implying he still needs his domineering mother for such things. But fortunately for humankind, difficult situations like a war can often provide the necessary impetus for such an arduous undertaking as in ‘This Land of Mine’, which again underscores Renoir’s fate in mankind as he is always looking for the positive side of the situation.

Those with an interest in psychology will probably recognize that what I've just described is very close to Carl Jung's concept of the animus and anima, which are often referred to as the Shadow sides of our psyches. So, someone with a male core (whether male of female) has a female anima and a person with a female core (be it male or female) has a male animus. Sound psychological advise would be to develop your own Shadow self in order to become a more complete human being, but that this is often not the case can easily be observed by the vast majority of relationships with the male performing male tasks exclusively and the female taking care of the female end of the relationship. In this way rigid gender roles are unfortunately perpetuated and society doesn't come any closer to being any more whole, for the very simple reason nobody can be completely whole without truly embracing their Shadow self. By trying to transcend those pre-prescribed gender roles we not only make our own relationships more resilient and diverse, bot we would ultimately also serve the society we live in.

This would be a good point to return to the way Renoir and Nichols used Hollywood’s fondness for type casting to their great advantage, especially because in a way it almost function as a critique of the usual Hollywood formula for war pictures. Because the one person I neglected to describe in my casting list, is the deliciously bland Kent Jones, who’s the only actor clearly casted against type. Not only is he unmistakably American (while most other actors are either European or could pass for it), he’s completely unbelievable as virile resistance hero, but this of course may very well have been the point. Whether this was a conscious decision on Renoir’s part or he was just forced onto him because he was an RKO contract player I have no way of knowing, but his presence does present the film with a complete lack of a typical male hero: there’s no Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart or even a John Hodiak here. Instead all the male actors are almost a parody of virility: George Sanders apparently was very much a ladies' man, landing not one but two Gabor sisters, but his onscreen manner has always depended very much on an effete manner. So with both Sanders and Jones highly unlikely candidates for the role of strong, masculine hero it leaves us only with Charles Laughton, who, as most nowadays know, was a closeted homosexual his entire life. His presence here works very well of course, as he brings a certain vulnerability to his role which especially in his final speech is quite essential. Compare it to any one of those endless Spencer Tracy monologues he seems to have always written into his contract to get an idea of what I mean, and to appreciate the dimension Laughton's casting brings to it that otherwise may have been entirely lacking. What the film so forcefully suggests in its present form then, is that if all the individual parts of any society are strong and working together in harmony, one of those strong male leaders that Hollywood so often depends upon would be entirely superfluous. It would be more than enough to have a couple of weaker males and some strong female personalities like O’Hara and O’Connor, as long as all of them are working together instead of against each other. In this way, Renoir intriguingly recast the battle between the French and their Nazi oppressors into a conflict between the American individual versus the European collective. He may have been bound by the rigid rules of Hollywood’s star system and may have inherited its mise-en-scene, but he was, in this particular film at least, able to infuse them with the spirit of his other work, which may very well be Renoir’s most subversive accomplishment during his stay in America.

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