Avant-garde
musician John Zorn started out in the early eighties by advertising his
concerts only after they had already taken
place. In this way, he would make sure his name did get noticed without most
people ever having to hear his actual music, which he realized was sure to put
off a lot of people, because of its rather extreme nature. The history of art
is of course filled with anecdotes like this and in the world before internet,
where things weren’t available at the click of a mouse, films or music could be
pretty well-known without hardly ever being seen. ‘The Mask’ is one of those, when
a production still of it became the cover of a popular book called Incredibly Strange Films, which, as the title already indicates, contains reviews of
films at the fringes of film culture. As with Zorn, quite a lot of people would
probably get more fun out of it when just reading instead of actually seeing
them, which would make it a little easier to accept a lot of these films are
still quite hard to track down. But as with all things, there are always
exceptions, like ‘The Mask’, which is a truly extraordinary little film that
Warner Brothers really should release in a lavish blu-ray package – if there
was to be any justice in this world. But as hell would probably sooner freeze
over, we have to make do with the more than acceptable German DVD release. Which
in any case easily blows the incredibly washed out Laserdisc or VHS sources,
that for years were the only ways to see it, out of the water.
On the
face of it, ‘The Mask’, with its use of 3-D, would be little more than a
novelty at best, but when you look a little closer it reveals itself as the
picture William Castle never made. Castle’s name will forever be synonymous as
the man who brought a certain amount of showmanship to the genre, relying
heavily on gimmicks and tricks instead of the usual emphasis on story and
character. This is also his greatest weakness however; had he been more of a
film maker and less of an entrepreneur, the quality of his films could have
been much improved, as they are often quite lacking and usually border on
boringness. In any case, despite Castle’s many efforts, Alfred Hitchcock
probably did more to change the face of the horror genre in one fell swoop with
his release of ‘Psycho’, the first picture in film history where patrons
weren’t allowed into the theater once the picture had started. With this ploy,
Hitchcock insured a more attentive audience that would have to sit through the
entire picture, instead of walking in halfway and leaving early, as had been
the custom all those years before. It’s of course no coincidence that this move
toward a more immersive way of experiencing film was also already begun some
years earlier with the introduction of the widescreen process. In a bid to
compete with the free television that started to become a serious threat, the
film industry realized they had to emphasize that which TV could never have, so
they began playing up its immersive aspect: sitting in a darkened theater with
huge screens and state of the art sound equipment could really suck you into a
moving picture in a way that the tiny TV’s at home could never do, so it was
only natural to emphasize that angle.
The main
difference (I’m generalizing here, but you’ll get the point) between most older
and contemporary pictures is the distance between the camera and the actors; Classical
Hollywood mise-en-scene, with its unwritten rules of invisibility and restraint,
favored a more contemplative distance that allowed the viewer a relaxed and
critical attitude, something that began to change with the introduction of TV.
As a result, some film directors, like Anthony Mann, Nicholas Ray or Sam Fuller,
began pioneering a more direct and dynamic visual style that relied much more
on the physical aspect instead of just the emotional. With this, they brought
the action closer to the viewer and encouraged a more immersive type of
experience that has since then become even more demanding, with most pictures
nowadays leaving hardly any room to breathe anymore. Although when done well
this type of hyper-immersion film can yield incredible results, as
‘Transformers 3’ for instance has shown, the strong reliance on complete
immersion all too often seems to be only there just to prevent viewers from
being bored. This is why so many pictures from the fifties and sixties are so
exciting, as they often combine the best of both worlds, as they manage to
allow both contemplative distance and immersion at the same time. And a film
that seems consciously designed to weave these two features into its very
structure, must almost by default be a masterpiece.
Which
brings us to ‘The Mask’, a film that makes you feel like you are witnessing the
birth of modern horror. When talking about this, the focus usually lies on the
gore aspect, so that a trailblazing film like ‘Blood Feast’ (Herschell Gordon
Lewis, 1963) is often credited as the grandfather of the modern horror film.
While this is undeniably true, it also ignores the visual aspect I just
described which is just as important for the development of the genre, as since
the eighties onwards the immersive facet of the experience has been an integral
part of virtually every mainstream film, but horror especially. To get an idea
of how truly exceptional ‘The Mask’ is, one could compare it to two flicks from
the same period, Roger Vadim’s ‘Et mourir de plaisir’ and Mario Bava’s ‘Black
Sunday’ – the latter’s original title of course translates as ‘The Mask of the
Demon’ which ties it neatly to ‘The Mask’. Although both highly influential
pictures with their own merits, their visual style is entirely classical, which
means they both favor the contemplative distance instead of the immersion. This
is not in any way a critique, as I certainly wouldn’t want to give the
impression that this classical style is somehow inferior than the modern one,
as they are only different. I merely want to point out how groundbreaking ‘The
Mask’ is, as I would be hard pressed to come up with a title from the same
period that feels as modern visually – perhaps ‘Touch of Evil’ comes to mind.
While certainly not as flashy as Welles, Roffman manages to give his low-budget
creation a kind of brooding intensity that almost never lets up. He immediately
plunges us into the picture, with some nightmarish sequence where a woman is
chased by a man. After this, we get the familiar scene where the man from the
opening tries to make his psychiatrist believe the impossible, which he of
course refuses. But even such a common, usually explanatory scene is done in a
highly uncommon way, as the intensity of the chase sequence is carried over:
the two actors happen to be dead ringers for Anthony Perkins and John
Cassavetes, so imagine those two at their most neurotic and intense and you’ll
have a pretty accurate idea of the acting here. But it’s not just that, as it’s
also the visual style that feels suffocating and claustrophobic even: the
lighting rivals John Alton in terms of darkness (one wonders if this is a print
defect, which it could very well be, as it often seems a tad too dark, although
this is unquestionably at least part of the intention); but what’s even more
astonishing, especially for a picture of this period: there’s nary a long shot
in the entire picture, as it’s all done in medium shot, close-ups or extreme
close-ups.
The
resulting atmosphere of brooding intensity is like a coiled spring, which is
very appropriate as it’s directly related to the pent-up emotions of our
Perkins and Cassavetes lookalikes. The general feeling of uncomfortable
intensity is only broken by the mask of the title, which serves as a release of
those bottled emotions and functions as something of a direct link to the darkest
recesses of their psyches. And this is where the gimmick kicks in, as these
scenes are presented in 3-D, instead of the intensified 2-D of the rest of the
picture. So it’s not just using the 3-D process as a gimmick, which William
Castle would have done probably, as Roffman had the brilliant foresight to make
the whole process an integral part of his picture. But since the 3-D sequences
only venture further into even more horror and nightmares, what should have
been a release now becomes even more suffocating. Which is to say, the 3-D
effects actually work because by entering the mind of the protagonists and sharing
his worst nightmares, the film clearly points the way to the future of total
film immersion, in a way that can only be described as incredibly modern. It’s
more than just a couple of things thrown at the camera (although thankfully
there’s quite a lot of that too), as these three lengthy sequences feel as
nothing so much as those amazing moments Ken Russell could conjure at the drop
of a hat in the seventies (Russell of course didn’t even need 3-D for this, but
that’s another story).
The
credit for the astonishing effectiveness of these 3-D moments should go to the
legendary Slavko Vorkapich, one of those tragically unsung heroes of film
history who pioneered the use of the montage sequence in Hollywood. His most
famous work is probably ‘The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra’, an
amazing short done in collaboration with the equally unsung Robert Florey and the
brilliant cameraman Gregg Toland (‘Citizen Kane’). Although the culture of
Hollywood is not always really friendly to such artistically-minded folk like
Vorkapich, he did manage to stake out something of a career, while crafting
elaborate montage sequences that often feel like little movies that could stand
on their own. This is probably also their biggest problem however, as they
often feel rather unconnected to the films they appear in. For instance,
although his work for the Claude Rains vehicle ‘Crime Without Passion’ is
achingly beautiful, it does appear somewhat tacked on, especially because the
rest of the picture doesn’t really live up to the high standard set by Vorkapich.
It’s somewhat ironic then, that after years of working with some of the biggest
names in the Hollywood industry, it would take a low-budget enterprise like
‘The Mask’ to truly develop Vorkapich’ potential and integrate his sequences
into the structure of the film. What his exact contributions were I’m not sure
of, as he is only credited for the script of the 3-D sequences, although it is
likely that would mean he has overseen everything in it. Whatever the case,
they are a truly singular experience, with the set design, eerie electronic
soundtrack, highly disturbing imagery and brilliant 3-D effects creating
moments of utter immersion that for once do justice to the promise of the whole
3-D concept. But as they are a journey that delves even further into the
nightmare world of the 2-D sequences, the release of pressure isn’t in any way
liberating but only more oppressing, making the entirety of ‘The Mask’ one of
nightmarish anguish without any room to breathe – which is highly unusual for a
picture of this period.
The only
moments where the oppressive atmosphere lets up, are those centered around the
police investigator, which interestingly seem to have been cut out of the film
originally. Virtually his entire character seems to have been left on the
cutting room floor, even though those scenes have been restored for the DVD
release, which are seemingly lost in English, as they are presented here in a
German dub. But it’s much more than just a switch of language, as also the
entire lighting scheme is different for these moments, with the darkened
atmosphere suddenly making way for the kind of bland lighting that’s sometimes referred
to as TV lighting. The result is quite similar to Bava’s ‘House of Exorcism’,
where his original film ‘Lisa and the Devil’ is suddenly invaded by completely
different looking scenes focusing on an exorcism, which were a later addition
by its producer. What the history of ‘The Mask’ is and why those police
sequences are only dubbed in German can at this point only be guessed at, but
as it stands, it would make the film probably better without them, as they
don’t really add anything to the story and only destroy the feeling of
intensity of the other scenes. However, because they not only sound but even
look much different, they almost start to function like the chorus in Greek
tragedies, that reflect on the action presented and create the contemplative
distance that brings some relief to the dark intensity of the rest of ‘The Mask’.
Whether or not those moments add something or should be left out, is something
that’s up to debate, but there can be no question ‘The Mask’ is a crucial
missing link in the development of the horror genre and one that should be
widely seen and enjoyed.
Available
on DVD from Filmclub Edition
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