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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