New short film: The Lillies Are Just Around The Corner [video]

 

A strange hitman picture.

Rouzbeh Rashidi's 3rd zero budget feature film, Bipedality (2010), can be watched here...

Rouzbeh Rashidi's third zero-budget feature film "Bipedality (2010)", featuring Dean Kavanagh & Julia Gelezova, can be watched here: www.youtu.be/xYXSPEhVr5U

"Total cast and crew of three people including the actor and actress. There wasn't any script or pre-writing planning for this film and all the shots were taken only one time without any rehearsal but occasionally actors were given notes to read in order to provoke certain feelings and then filmed the scene straight away. The three main segments of the film were shot in only three days but the inserts and pillow-shots were taken over a full year in various parts of Ireland."

 

 

www.experimentalfilmsociety.com

Aki Kaurismaki's Match Factory Girl [Stills]

Kaurismäki took his penchant for despairing character studies to unspeakably grim depths in the shockingly entertaining The Match Factory Girl. Kati Outinen is memorably impenetrable as Iris, whose grinding days as a cog in a factory wheel, and nights as a neglected daughter living with her parents, ultimately send her over the edge. Yet despite her transgressions, Kaurismäki makes Iris a compelling, even sympathetic figure. Bleak yet suffused with comic irony, The Match Factory Girl closes out the “Proletariat Trilogy” with a bang—and a whimper. —The Criterion Collection

The Great Acting Blog: "The Acting In Fassbinder's Fear Of Fear"

Fassbinder's Fear Of Fear is a quite brilliant tale about Margot, whose harmonious family life with husband Kurt and daughter Bibi, unravels as she begins to suffer from anxiety attacks leading to alcoholism, an illicit affair, and a spell in a mental hospital. Margit Carstensen's performance as Margot is sensational, and marked as it is by a spectacular emotional acuity. However, one of the really striking aspects about this film is the general excellence of all the performances; from Irm Hermann and Brigitte Mira as Carstensen's nagging in-laws, to Adrian Hoven's seduce-and-destroy Doctor Merck, to all the performances in between, each possesses a precision and intensity.

I wondered how these performances were arrived at, and so had a little nose around the internet, but could find precious little about Fassbinder's thoughts on the subject. However, I did find this comment he made about working on Berlin Alexanderplatz, which may help to explain his general conceptions about acting: - 

"I find it awful when a person in a film talks the way people talk in real life. In my opinion that robs a thought of its general force. It eliminates the general state of fearfulness. How should I put it? It reduces everything to something the moviegoer can reject, simply because he doesn’t happen to speak this dialect, doesn’t move this particular way in real life. In my opinion artificiality offers the only possibility for giving a broad spectrum of moviegoers access to the specific world of an artistic work".

It's hard to know what process Fassbinder and his actors went through, but due to their predominantly theatrical background, one would assume that there would have been a decent rehearsal period, which means that there was an opportunity to shape the performances, fitting them into Fassbinder's overall vision for the film. Furthermore, Fassbinder wrote the script himself, and so would have created the structure he wanted the performances to slot into. This all helps to create the uniformity of style which the actor's performances possess. This, coupled with the considerable talents of the actors Fassbinder employed, would help to explain the general level of excellence. But what of the style?  I would describe the acting in Fear Of Fear as distilled; there is a clarity of idea and action in each scene, which leads to very precise intentions, everything we see the actors do is deliberate, and therefore meaningful. Fassbinder blocks the actors very carefully, almost to the point of choreography. This all adds up to the "artificiality" Fassbinder mentions - we are witnessing performances rather than snap-shots of life. This artificiality is characteristic of "the specific world of an artistic work", or, put another way, artificiality renders a work artistic. 

Margit Carstensen in Fassbinder's Fear Of Fear [1975]

My Film Of 2012 ....

Intriguing, unusual and simple, great performances, stunning black & white.

The Face Of Another: "Kati Outinen"

The Great Acting Blog: "My 5 Favourite Performances Of 2012"

Irene Jacob in The Dust Of Time (Theo Angelopoulos)

An epic performance by Jacob, in a film which spans decades. She not only manages the shift in age without fuss, but she also delivers a performance of astonishing sensitivity but which is neither self-pitying nor self-promoting - it's honest and true. An example of the high artistry which acting can be.

I blogged more fully on Irene Jacob in "The Shy Poetry Of Irene Jacob"

Andre Wilms in Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki)

A wonderful example of laid-back-cut-the-crap simplicity, which sits perfectly in the cinematic universe of Aki Kaurismaki. Wilms plays an aging ex-bohemian-turned-shoe-shiner, who hides an immigrant on the run from the police. Every moment of Wilm's performance rings utterly true, and, along with his charm, creates something warming and moving.

Thomas Doret in The Kid With A Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

An immensely powerful performance from Doret, playing an abandoned and unloved 12 year old. His scenes of rejection are heartbreaking, as is his scene involving a show of self-loathing. Doret resists the temptation to embellish his scenes with exposition and manipulate the audience, instead he is direct, and this directness is the true source of his power in this performance. Doret went a long way in changing my generally negative view of child actors. 

I blogged more fully on Doret's performance here

Denis Lavant in Holy Motors (Leos Carax)

Lavant plays a whole range of characters from an assasin to a beggar to a monster to a family man, and all during one night. It's a great role for any actor, but to which Lavant brings his intense physicality and innate strangeness. It's a unique, bravura performance, which must be seen to be believed.

Teresa Madruga in Tabu (Miguel Gomes)

Madruga's performance is marked by a sadness, and a lonliness, and which is rarely displayed openly, it is more a question of Madruga's prescence, as when she finds out a student who was meant to be staying with her now isn't, we feel her disappointment rather than see it. It is also a performance which is inflected by the film's visuals; director Gomes employs a magnificent black and white, and often the camera is static, which creates an emptiness and emotional flatness.

The Great Acting Blog: "My 5 Favourite Performances Of 2012"

Irene Jacob in The Dust Of Time (Theo Angelopoulos)

An epic performance by Jacob, in a film which spans decades. She not only manages the shift in age without fuss, but she also delivers a performance of astonishing sensitivity but which is neither self-pitying nor self-promoting - it's honest and true. An example of the high artistry which acting can be.

I blogged more fully on Irene Jacob in "The Shy Poetry Of Irene Jacob"

Andre Wilms in Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki)

A wonderful example of laid-back-cut-the-crap simplicity, which sits perfectly in the cinematic universe of Aki Kaurismaki. Wilms plays an aging ex-bohemian-turned-show-shiner, who hides an immigrant on the run from the police. Every moment of Wilm's performance rings utterly true, and, along with his charm, creates something warming and moving.

Tomas Doret in The Kid With A Bike (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

An immensely powerful performance from Doret, playing an abandoned and unloved 12 year old. His scenes of rejection are heartbreaking, as is his scene involving a show of self-loathing. Doret resists the temptation to embellish his scenes with exposition and manipulate the audience, instead he is direct, and this directness is the true source of his power in this performance. Doret went a long way in changing my generally negative view of child actors. 

I blogged more fully on Doret's performance here

Denis Lavant in Holy Motors (Leos Carax)

Lavant plays a whole range of characters from an assasin to a beggar to a monster to a family man, and all during one night. It's a great role for any actor, but to which Lavant brings his intense physicality and innate strangeness. It's a unique, bravura performance, which must be seen to be believed.

Teresa Madruga in Tabu (Miguel Gomes)

Madruga's performance is marked by a sadness, and a lonliness, and which is rarely displayed openly, it is more a question of Madruga's prescence, as when she finds out a student who was meant to be staying with her now isn't, we feel her disappointment rather than see it. It is also a performance which is inflected by the film's visuals; director Gomes employs a magnificent black and white, and often the camera is static, which creates an emptiness and emotional flatness.

Eleven Zero Budget Feature Films by Rouzbeh Rashidi Online Now!

Rouzbeh Rashidi has released all of his eleven zero-budget feature films from 2008 to 2011 online (Unlisted: Anyone with the link can view + HD viewing is recommended). Watch the entire films HERE:

1_Light & Quiet (2008)

2_Only Human (2009)

3_Bipedality (2010)

4_Reminiscences of Yearning (2011)

5_Zoetrope (2011)

6_Closure of Catharsis (2011)

7_Cremation of an Ideology (2011)

8_tenebrous city & ill-lighted mortals (2011)

9_Filmore (2011)

10_Immanence Deconstruction of Us (2011)

11_Jean Speck (1860-1933) (2011)

Via Experimental Film Society

Le Doulos Poster Art

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-NgU78zIUICc/TWyAQGRrt6I/AAAAAAAAARI/J2d6r0...

THIS IS THE FILM: Jiri Menzel's Closely Observed Trains

 

At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Wry and tender, Academy Award™-winning Closely Watched Trains is a masterpiece of human observation and one of the best-loved films of the Czech New Wave. —The Criterion Collection

 

JIŘÍ MENZEL

With his debut feature film Closely Watched Trains (1966), Czechoslovakian filmmaker Jirí Menzel became an important member in Czech New Wave cinema and won an Academy Award. Menzel started out as an assistant director and occasional actor for Vera Chytilova following his graduation from the Prague film school F.A.M.U. In 1965, Menzel directed an episode (“The Death of Mr. Baltazar”) for the feature anthology Pearls of the Deep, a tribute to distinguished Czech author Bohumil Hrabal. Later that year, he contributed an episode in a similar tribute to the writings of Josef Skvorecky, Crime at the Girls School. Following the success of Closely Watched Trains, Menzel directed Capricious Summer (1968) and turned in a great performance as a tightrope walker (Menzel is actually an accomplished balancer and performs regularly on-stage). In 1969, he made Larks on a String, considered by many to be his best work. Unfortunately, its critical stance on Communism led to its being banned from release until 1990 when it played internationally. Because the film was banned, Menzel was barred from filmmaking until 1974 when he publicly announced that he supported Communism. He then made Who Looks for Gold?, but has since disowned the film because of the personal price he had to pay to make it. From the late ‘70s through the mid-’80s, Menzel made non-political, nostalgic comedies that were almost slapstick at times. He had international success in 1986 with the delightful My Sweet Little Village. In the late ‘80s, Menzel again returned to political activism and continued to make films though the mid-’90s.

(From http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=2:102538)

 

Via MUBI.com

Lisandro Alonso's Fantasma [2006] - A Brilliantly Minimal Picture

Couldn't find a trailer, but here's the opening 10 minutes.

 

 

"Director Lisandro Alonso offers an offbeat and wonderfully bizarre commentary on his singular filmmaking practice in this self-reflexive featurette which finds Argentino Vargas, the star of Los Muertos, wandering through the Teatro San Martin — the Buenos Aires home theater of the Cinemateca Argentina — in search of the film’s premiere. As Alonso’s camera slowly floats through the shadowy bowels of the building, striping bare the dingy backstage of the cultural apparatus, Fantasma offers a spirited commentary on the theatricality of even the most rigorously non-professional performance and of the cinematic ritual itself. —http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2009octdec/alonso.html"

The Great Acting Blog: "Kati Outinen On Aki Kaurismaki - Actors' Creativity"

Kati Outinen is probably best known for her work with Finnish filmmaker, Aki Kaurismaki, having appeared in many, many of his films, including Match Factory Girl, Take Care Of Your Scarf Tatiana, and most recently, Le Havre. For those unfamiliar with Outinen's work, I sincerely recommend you take a look, she is a model of truth and simplicity. Anyway, below, I've listed some notes from the interview above.

- She says these days it's more important to be quick than good.

- Says you can't force creativity, it takes time - you can't put a deadline on creativity, and you can't control it.

- Aki Kaurismaki doesn't control the actors, he knows what he wants, but he doesn't force the actor to do it. 

- She says artists put creativity at the top of their priorities.

- Kaurismaki only rehearses technical things, like blocking.

- Says Kaurismaki doesn't give answers if you ask questions about character - just do something and then he will offer notes.

- Says modern actresses have to look like porn stars but act like businesswomen, thin businesswomen.

- She says there are times when Kaurismaki forgets to tell her that she has the lead role in his films. With Match Factory Girl, he only told her a week before filming began.

For me, the key point is the director not forcing his "ideas" onto the actor - the actor must be allowed to get on with his work, using his own creative dynamics, not those of the director.  These days the director dominates the actor, and so the actor may not work in a creative mode, but in a mode to please the director - this may help to explain why modern acting is, in the main, so bland, and under-energied; there is a general lack of creativity. It is crucial the actor bring his own creativity to the scene, and the director must create space for this.

The Great Acting Blog: "Kati Outinen On Aki Kaurismaki - Actors' Creativity"

Kati Outinen is probably best known for her work with Finnish filmmaker, Aki Kaurismaki, having appeared in many, many of his films, including Match Factory Girl, Take Care Of Your Scarf Tatiana, and most recently, Le Havre. For those unfamiliar with Outinen's work, I sincerely recommend you take a look, she is a model of truth and simplicity. Anyway, below, I've listed some notes from the interview above.

- She says these days it's more important to be quick than good.

- Says you can't force creativity, it takes time - you can't put a deadline on creativity, and you can't control it.

- Aki Kaurismaki doesn't control the actors, he knows what he wants, but he doesn't force the actor to do it. 

- She says artists put creativity at the top of their priorities.

- Kaurismaki only rehearses technical things, like blocking.

- Says Kaurismaki doesn't give answers if you ask questions about character - just do something and then he will offer notes.

- Says modern actresses have to look like porn stars but act like businesswomen, thin businesswomen.

- She says there are times when Kaurismaki forgets to tell her that she has the lead role in his films. With Match Factory Girl, he only told her a week before filming began.

For me, the key point is the director not forcing his "ideas" onto the actor - the actor must be allowed to get on with his work, using his own creative dynamics, not those of the director.  These days the director dominates the actor, and so the actor may not work in a creative mode, but in a mode to please the director - this may help to explain why modern acting is, in the main, so bland, and under-energied; there is a general lack of creativity. It is crucial the actor bring his own creativity to the scene, and the director must create space for this.

The Great Acting Blog: "Thomas Doret In The Kid With The Bike"

Doret plays Cyril, a 12 year old who has been dumped into foster care by his father, who, unbeknownst to the boy, doesn't give a damn about him, and just wants rid of him. Doret runs away from the foster home to his dad's apartment. When the caretakers find him, Doret flees to a nearby doctor's surgery where he grabs hold of a woman, Samantha, so that they won't take him away. To calm Doret down, they take him back to his dad's apartment, and show him that it is empty and deserted, confirming that his father has left. With Samantha, Doret finally finds his father, who is however, none too pleased when the boy shows up, and tells him he never wants to see him again. Samantha in turn, takes the heartbroken Doret under her wing. However, falling under the spell of a local drug dealer, Doret robs a shopkeeper, beating the owner and his son with a baseball bat. Fearing Doret has been indentified in the robbery, the drug dealer abandons Doret and forces him to keep the stolen money. Doret gets caught by the police, but the matter is dealt with through a mediation with the shop owner, who accepts Doret's apology. Some time later, the son of the shop owner sees Doret by chance on the street, and beats him up, forcing Doret to hide up in a tree for safety, until the son throws a stone, which causes Doret to fall out of the tree. Doret lies on the ground, seemingly unconscious, until he comes to, and calmly walks away from the trouble.  

Doret's performance is remarkable in it's simplicity and directness. There is a scene where Doret visits his father again, only this time to offer the money he got from the robbery, thinking this will win his father's acceptance. His father is a little stunned, before refusing the money and sending Doret on his way. Doret hardly inflects the scene at all, he offers the money to his father with an almost animalistic simplicity, and it is this simplicity which renders the moment heartbreaking. Compare this to James Dean's performance in East Of Eden, where there is a similar scene of rejection involving money; Dean explains the character's pain to us with the preposterous emotional excretion; "YOU'RE TEARING ME APAAARRTT!", rendering the moment false and meaningless. Doret is courageous in resisting the temptation to explain what is happening, enabling us to engage with the scene for ourselves, which in turn, makes it meaningful. 

Doret had never acted before, so much of his performance will have been instinctive, and perhaps he has yet to become inhibited by the protective guff of adulthood, and so we get this wonderful unfettered performance from him. There is perhaps only one scene where Doret appears to be comprehendingly expressing the inner pain of his character, and what an extraordinary scene it is. While driving in the car with Samantha, Doret suddenly begins to scratch at his own flesh, and punch himself, it is gut wrenching to watch - it represents a bout of self-loathing, induced by Doret's belief that he is the cause of his own rejection, that he is the source of his own pain, and so wants to destroy the thing which is causing him pain (as he perceives it). Again, Doret performs the scene completely free of James Dean-style sentimentality, but with his customary simplicity and directness. I have to say that, generally, I am not a fan of child actors, and have held off seeing this film largely because the protagonist is a child, but the strength of Doret's performance here, may just have given me cause to change this view.

Doret had never acted before this film, or, at least, I have not been able to find any record of him doing so, and I am not aware of him receiving any training, and yet he is able to deliver this quite brilliant performance. No-one can know what the future holds for him, the vast majority non-actors fail to kick on after terrific debuts. Having said that, Doret does re-inforce my general view that acting is a talent which cannot be instilled. 

HSP 134 Is Complete

 

HSP (134) / 10min Colour Stereo DSLR Ireland 2012

 With Maximilian Le Cain and Rouzbeh Rashidi

 

homosapiensproject.tumblr.com

The Great Acting Blog: "Thomas Doret In The Kid With The Bike"

Doret plays Cyril, a 12 year old who has been dumped into foster care by his father, who, unbeknownst to the boy, doesn't give a damn about him, and just wants rid of him. Doret runs away from the foster home to his dad's apartment. When the caretakers find him, Doret flees to a nearby doctor's surgery where he grabs hold of a woman, Samantha, so that they won't take him away. To calm Doret down, they take him back to his dad's apartment, and show him that it is empty and deserted, confirming that his father has left. With Samantha, Doret finally find his father, who is however, none too pleased at the boy shows up, and tells him

 he never wants to see him again. Samantha in turn, takes the heartbroken Doret under her wing. However, falling under the spell of a local drug dealer, Doret robs a shopkeeper, beating the owner and his son with a baseball bat. Fearing Doret has been indentified in the robbery, the drug dealer abandons Doret and forces him to keep the stolen money. Doret gets caught by the police, but the matter is dealt with through a mediation with the shop owner, who accepts Doret's apology. Some time later, the son of the shop owner sees Doret by chance on the street, and beats him up, forcing Doret to hide up in a tree for safety, until the son throws a stone, which causes Doret to fall out of the tree. Doret lies on the ground, seemingly unconscious, until he comes to, and calmly walks away from the trouble.  

Doret's performance is remarkable in it's simplicity and directness. There is a scene where Doret visits his father again, only this time to offer the money he got from the robbery, thinking this will win his father acceptance. His father is a little stunned, before refusing the money and sending Doret on his way. Doret hardly inflects the scene at all, he offers the money to his father with an almost animalistic simplicity, and it is this simplicity which renders the moment heartbreaking. Compare this to James Dean's performance in East Of Eden, where there is a similar scene of rejection involving money; Dean explains the character's pain to us with the preposterous emotional excretion; "YOU'RE TEARING ME APAAARRTT!", rendering the moment false and meaningless. Doret is courageous in resisting the temptation to explain what is happening, enabling us to engage with the scene for ourselves, which in turn, makes it meaningful. 

Doret had never acted before, so much of his performance will have been instinctive, and perhaps he has yet to become inhibited by the protective guff of adulthood, and so we get this wonderful unfettered performance from him. There is perhaps only one scene where Doret appears to be comprehendingly expressing the inner pain of his character, and what an extraordinary scene it is. While driving in the car with Samantha, Doret suddenly begins to scratch at his own flesh, and punch himself, it is gut wrenching to watch - it represents a bout of self-loathing, induced by Doret's belief that he is the cause of his own rejection, that he is the source of his own pain, and so wants to destroy the thing which is causing him pain (as he perceives it). Again, Doret performs the scene completely free of James Dean-style sentimentality, but with his customary simplicity and directness. I have to say that, generally, I am not a fan of child actors, and have held off seeing this film largely because the protagonist is a child, but the strength of Doret's performance here, may just have given me cause to change this view.

Doret had never acted before this film, or, at least, I have not been able to find any record of him doing so, and I am not aware of him receiving any training, and yet he is able to deliver this quite brilliant performance. No-one can know what the future holds for him, the vast majority non-actors fail to kick on after terrific debuts. Having said that, Doret does re-inforce my general view that acting is a talent which cannot be instilled. 

... "What is your greatest ambition?" ... "To become immortal then die".

JLG 82

The Face Of Another: "Rudolph Hrusinsky"

See the full gallery on Posterous

The Chess Players - Satyajit Ray [stills]

The Great Acting Blog: "Poetic Acting"

Poetic acting is expressive but not expository, it is intense but with a sense of ease, it's minimal, but most importantly, it seeks to express something in-the-moment, but which cannot always be explained away. On a practical level, the actor commits to doing the actions of the scene, and does not worry about the outcomes. This approach can lead to facialexpressions, small movements, bits of emotion, which the actor may not even realise he was doing until after he has seen his performance on screen (he may never realise them on stage). These unconscious, unfettered, unplanned expressions are the poetry of acting. Poetic acting is very different to expository acting, or “doing a character”, whereby the actor consciously and rationally designs his performance, explaining the character with thought-out detail, and detail which may not even be germane to the scene at hand. Designing a performance is not necessarily the same as including those things which are essential to creating the illusion of character – for example; if one were to play a hunchback, a prosthetic hunch may be employed.

 

Poetic acting gives expression to human experience which cannot be dealt with in any other way - for example; if, in the scene, the actor tries to conceal a difficult emotion (perhaps has to tell a lie in the scene), the repressed energy may express itself, for example, as a displacement, such as the actor handling an object or adjusting an item of his clothing. These small actions may not necessarily “mean” something in terms of the literal plot of the scene, but are the symptom of some deeper movement within the actor. These wonderful, subtle expressions may never happen for the by-design actor, because he is controlling everything to the extent that he doesn't allow deeper movements to occur within himself, and so there is no poetic spin-off during his performance.

The full implications of a poetic performance may not be fully understood by an audience on an immediate, conscious level, but the performance does create a sense of harmony (even when the action is tumultuous). That's why the poetic actor produces richer results than the by-design actor. The by-design actor may produce a performance which is more immediately impressive, may at first appear to be “natural”, but it is usually generalised and superficial, and the effect dissipates fairly quickly, whereas the poetic actor's performance may at first give the impression that nothing is really happening, and his effect may creep up on the audience almost imperceptibly, but all of those organically created moments of his performance add-up to something deeply affecting, they leave us unsure, they hang in our minds long after the action has finished,lodging themselves there (even if it is only certain moments of the performance which do this). 

I intend to use the poetic form of acting for my feature film, Noirish Project, and I do not mean my own perfromance only, but the performances of all the actors in the film. The camera-work and editing will be pared back, and the script is flat and minimal, with scenes where the characters are hanging around and waiting. It is out of these seemingly empty situations that I hope this poetic form of acting will emerge to create wonderful, unplanned expressions, with the minimalism of the film giving them centre stage.

The Great Acting Blog: "Poetic Acting"

Poetic acting is expressive but not expository, it is intense but with a sense of ease, it's minimal, but most importantly, it seeks to express something in-the-moment, but which cannot always be explained away. On a practical level, the actor commits to doing the actions of the scene, and does not worry about the outcomes. This approach can lead to facial expressions, small movements, bits of emotion, which the actor may not even realise he was doing until after he has seen his performance on screen (he may never realise them on stage). These unconscious, unfettered, unplanned expressions are the poetry of acting. Poetic acting is very different to expository acting, or “doing a character”, whereby the actor consciously and rationally designs his performance, explaining the character with thought-out detail, and detail which may not even be germane to the scene at hand. Designing a performance is not necessarily the same as including those things which are essential to creating the illusion of character – for example; if one were to play a hunchback, a prosthetic hunch may be employed.

Poetic acting gives expression to human experience which cannot be dealt with in any other way - for example; if, in the scene, the actor tries to conceal a difficult emotion (perhaps has to tell a lie in the scene), the repressed energy may express itself, for example, as a displacement, such as the actor handling an object or adjusting an item of his clothing. These small actions may not necessarily “mean” something in terms the literal plot of the scene, but are the symptom of some deeper movement within the actor. The wonderful, subtle expressions may never happen for the by-design actor, because is controlling everything to the extent that he doesn't allow deeper movements to occur within himself, and so there is no poetic spin-off during his performance.

The full implications of a poetic performance may not be fully understood by an audience on an immediate, conscious level, but the performance does create a sense of harmony (even when the action is tumultuous). That's why the poetic actor produces richer results than the by-design actor. The by-design actor may produce a performance which is more immediately impressive, may at first appear to be “natural”, but it is usually generalised and superficial, and the effect dissipates fairly quickly, whereas the poetic actor's performance may at first give the impression that nothing is really happening, and his effect may creep up on the audience almost imperceptibly, but all of those organically created moments of his performance add-up to something deeply affecting, they leave us unsure, they hang in our minds long after the action has finished, lodging themselves there (even if it is only certain moments of the performance which do this). 

I intend to use the poetic form of acting for my feature film, Noirish Project, and I do not mean my own perfromance only, but the performances of all the actors in the film. The camera-work and editing will be pared back, and the script is flat and minimal, with scenes where the characters are hanging around and waiting. It is out of these seemingly empty situations that I hope this poetic form of acting will emerge to create wonderful, unplanned expressions, with the minimalism of the film giving them centre stage.

 

Béla Tarr Regis Dialogue with Howard Feinstein [video]

 

Bela Tarr discusses his work & career as part of a retrospective.

Le Mepris [still]

uc Godard

The Great Acting Blog: "Strive To Be Great"

A forthcoming Daniel Day-Lewis performance is always turned into a huge event by the media - we were told his turn in PT Anderson's There Will Be Blood was the performance to define cinematic acting for all time. Then there is the psychophantic reporting about the lengths Day-Lewis went in order to “research the character”, and that he “stays in character” between takes. All of this stuff of course, has helped to create a mythology around Day-Lewis, a mystique, a narrative, and which has become self-perpetuating. When Day-Lewis quit the run of Hamlet early, claiming that the death of his own father weighed too greatly on his performances (others juicily claimed he actually saw the ghost of his father on stage), this only added to his legend. Whereas most actors would have been branded incompetent and unreliable for quitting, for Day-Lewis this was seen as an example of just how far he is willing to go to give a truthful performance. His failure is held up as his commitment to his art (quitting is a sign of commitment in our topsy-turvy modern world). On another occasion, Day-Lewis disappeared to make shoes in Italy somewhere, and again this was cited as evidence of his commitment; he'd spent so long in the blazing furnace of creation, he just needed to get away from it all, and make shoes. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect about all this however, is the fact that Day-Lewis has been able to maintain the intensity of the attention on his work for so long - the only comparable actor I can think of is Robert De Niro during the 70s and early 80s, a far better actor than Day-Lewis, but focus on his work has faded as his career has worn on.*

 

Whatever you may think of Day-Lewis, the sheer ambition of his acting choices is an example, and should be an inspiration. Few other actors these days strive to give something extra, something remarkable, in the way that Day-Lewis does. The great explorations of acting, the will to deliver a performance of force, the longing to express, the love of art, the desire to thrill, seems to be broadly lacking in contemporary acting. Any actor who strives to be an artist is sneered at, brand names on the CV are all that count, few take the technical and aesthetic aspects of acting seriously. That's generally why acting and actors are less exciting than they were, less fun, and in turn, less loved.

Actors now see the audience as an appendage to their career, rather than the object of it. This has been evidenced in recent years by the spate of incidents in theatres where actors have broken out of character and told the audience to shut-up whenever their mobile phone has rung or when they eat crisps. I can't help but feel that in the old days, actors like Donald Wolfitt or Anew Macmaster would have rendered such distractions irrelevant and quelled any noise by the sheer greatness of their performances. Infact, Harold Pinter tells the story about when he was a young actor touring Shakespeare in MacMaster's company, they were doing Othello in some Irish village, and the 2000 strong audience were drunk and bawdy to the extent that the actors on stage couldn't hear eachother speak, that is, until MacMaster entered, and who, by the end of the play, held the audience in rapt silence – you could hear a pin drop – but he didn't ask or tell them to be quiet, he stunned them with his brilliance. That's what we should be aiming for in our work.

 

 

 

* Day-Lewis has a much lower output than De Niro, making only 6 films in the last 15 years, while De Niro has made 44 in the same timeframe. This may go some way to explain why the intensity of attention on Day-Lewis' work has endured.

The Great Acting Blog: "Strive To Be Great"

A forthcoming Daniel Day-Lewis performance is always turned into a huge event by the media - we were told his turn in PT Anderson's There Will Be Blood was the performance to define cinematic acting for all time. Then there is the psychophantic reporting about the lengths Day-Lewis went in order to “research the character”, and that he “stays in character” between takes. All of this stuff of course, has helped to create a mythology around Day-Lewis, a mystique, a narrative, and which has become self-perpetuating. When Day-Lewis quit the run of Hamlet early, claiming that the death of his own father weighed too greatly on his performances (others juicily claimed he actually saw the ghost of his father on stage), this only added to his legend. Whereas most actors would have been branded incompetent and unreliable for quitting, for Day-Lewis this was seen as an example of just how far he is willing to go to give a truthful performance. His failure is held up as his commitment to his art (quitting is a sign of commitment in our topsy-turvy modern world). On another occasion, Day-Lewis disappeared to make shoes in Italy somewhere, and again this was cited as evidence of his commitment; he'd spent so long in the blazing furnace of creation, he just needed to get away from it all, and make shoes. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect about all this however, is the fact that Day-Lewis has been able to maintain the intensity of the attention on his work for so long - the only comparable actor I can think of is Robert De Niro during the 70s and early 80s, a far better actor than Day-Lewis, but focus on his work has faded as his career has worn on.*

Whatever you may think of Day-Lewis, the sheer ambition of his acting choices is an example, and should be an inspiration. Few other actors these days strive to give something extra, something remarkable, in the way that Day-Lewis does. The great explorations of acting, the will to deliver a performance of force, the longing to express, the love of art, the desire to thrill, seems to be broadly lacking in contemporay acting. Any actor who strives to be an artist is sneered at, brand names on the CV are all that count, few take the technical and aesthetic aspects of acting seriously. That's generally why acting and actors are less exciting than they were, less fun, and in turn, less loved.

Actors now see the audience as an appendage to their career, rather than the object of it. This has been evidenced in recent years by the spate of incidents in theatres where actors have broken out of character and told the audience to shut-up whenever their mobile phone has rung or when they eat crisps. I can't help but feel that in the old days, actors like Donald Wolfitt or Anew Macmaster would have rendered such distractions irrelevant and quelled any noise by the sheer greatness of their performances. Infact, Harold Pinter tells the story about when he was a young actor touring Shakespeare in MacMaster's company, they were doing Othello in some Irish village, and the 2000 strong audience were drunk and bawdy to the extent that the actors on stage couldn't hear eachother speak, that is, until MacMaster entered, and who, by the end of the play, held the audience in rapt silence – you could hear a pin drop – but he didn't ask or tell them to be quiet, he stunned them with his brilliance. That's what we should be aiming for in our work.

* Day-Lewis has a much lower output than De Niro, making only 6 films in the last 15 years, while De Niro has made 44 in the same timeframe. This may go some way to explain why the intensity of attention on Day-Lewis' work has endured.

Drifting Clouds Cinema Blog: "Nuts4R2 Reviews Aki Kaurismaki's The Man Without A Past"

 

The Man Without A Past

Aki Breaky Heart

 The Man Without A Past (Mies Vailla Menneisyyttä) 
2002 Finland/Germany/France
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki
ICA Projects Region 2

It would be untrue to say that not much happens in an Aki Kaurismäki movie... it just seems like nothing happens because it’s all so laid back.

This is not exactly my first experience of movies by this incredible film-maker... but I haven’t seen too much of his work and it was all such a long time ago, so I can’t claim to be able to comment wisely about his particular stylistic traits. Back in the 80s or possibly the early 90s, I saw Hamlet Goes Business and Leningrad Cowboys Go America on TV. I think I saw either Ariel or The Match Factory Girl too... but I just can’t remember which one it was.

What I do remember of these is that they seemed fairly minimalist in nature, were usually quite bleak in outlook and had a good amount of heart to them. The same could be said, in some ways, about The Man Without A Past... apart from the fact that, although it still carries a certain bleak attitude, soaking through the celluloidal pores, directly from Kurasmaki’s brain to your eyes and ears... in many ways, this film is a bit of a ‘feel good’ movie. I think Kurasmaki might well say the same thing too... but I’d have to look into his work a little more. I do remember reading an interview with him, and possibly seeing one too, back in the 80s/90s and his miserable outlook seemed heavily promoted by him to the interviewers, almost like it was part of his branding.

The Man Without A Past tells the story of a man who comes to town looking for work, only to be badly beaten up and left for dead by three young thugs who take his suitcase and money. He is wrapped in bandages but then promptly dies in hospital and is pronounced dead by the staff, who exit the hospital room.  He then, of course, revives and wanders out of hospital, still in bandages, to collapse by a river. In a sequence which seems to be fairly like what I remember of Kurasmaki’s ability to pile one misfortune on after another, rather like waiting for that extra last brick to fall on Ollie’s head in a Laurel and Hardy short, a passerby then steals his boots and replaces them with what he is wearing.

He is then found by a family who live in an impoverished community that inhabit metal containers (which they rent) and the rest of the film is pretty much about how he faces up against his plight, as the mugging has left him with no memory of who he is and what his former life might have been. He slowly turns himself around and even gets a girlfriend, who works with the Salvation Army and gets him some clothes and a job with them until he gets on his feet. He does get on his feet fairly quickly, growing a crop of potatoes by his rented container, inspiring the Salvation Army band by exposing them to rock n’ roll on his juke box (which he gets for his container) and then managing them, and also getting a job as a welder while the band is taking off.

Everything is done with an absolutely straight face and penchant for an acceptance of the inevitable misery of life which is an endearing feature of Kurasmaki’s work (what I’ve seen of it) and which is a trait shard by pretty much all the characters in his films. Everyone is truthful and honest about their lot in life, weighing up their words before every response and pretty much relating on a fairly minimal but honest and up front level with each other. This is not how the majority of the universe tends to work, especially in Western culture, but this is how the ‘kurasmakiverse’ works and we’re left to accept and get on with it or leave the movie.

In the meantime, there’s a dog, a bank robbery, police harassment and a confrontation with the former life the main protagonist had when it finally catches up to him, but everything works out fairly upbeat for everybody in the end... muffled, but upbeat.

The pacing is beautiful and relentlessly casual, which makes everything feel a bit less hectic than it actually sounds. The movie is crammed full of incident but you kind of let it wash over you because of the way the shots are framed and edited, and even by the way the camera moves through these shots, in easily digestible, long, slow takes which derail any clutter implied by the narrative incident. This then leaves you in a head space, dictated by the pacing, where you can absorb the details of the characters and their reactions to each other in a way that gives you time to assess the situation and appreciate the emotions underlying them, in contrast to their stoic exteriors. Hollywood filmmakers could possibly learn a thing or two from this kind of conflict between incident and pace but, then again, their target audience is probably perceived differently and until they rethink the tolerance of their audience, they won’t benefit from this kind of approach to film-making, is my guess.

The main problem I had with the movie is that it’s fairly clichéd. It’s easy to predict what’s going to happen to the characters from one scene to the next and I don’t think this is specifically because the pacing is leisurely enough to give you time to do so... I think it’s more a problem with the writing than anything to do with direction. I didn’t feel too let down by that, though, except maybe right at the end, because the film is such a nice experience to sit through. It’s basically a love story at heart... and I’m always a sucker for a well made love story (and there are so few good ones made that are worth watching... the US seems to have lost the art of making them somewhere around the tail end of the fifties, it seems to me).

All said and done, The Man Without A Past is a cracking, well paced, easily absorbed movie which will slowly sink into you as you watch. It’s maybe a little too predictable and upbeat for its own good at times but, ultimately, it’s not doing anything you really don’t want it to do and it leaves the characters at a place where you’d want to leave them. A nice little movie to watch on your own on a quiet evening. Give it a look some time.

 

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Drifting Clouds Cinema Blog: "Strange Man At Cork Airport" [short film]

The Great Acting Blog: "Non-Actors, Employee-Actors, & Artist-Actors"

“with professional actors they have an imaginary in between you and them. In other words they have some model in their minds about how to act, or how someone did it before, or some techniques, visual or physical, they can use....it's as if you are writing a book and you are two” - Albert Serra

 

Serra is a filmmaker who primarily works with non-actors. He says he doesn't like professional actors, and the above quote gives us a clue as to why. What Serra is really doing here, is criticising actors in general for a lack of creativity, or more precisely, a lack of in-the-moment creativity: actors work-out in advance exactly how they are going to do the scene, down to each gesture, each facial movement, each inflection, and simply implement this preparation regardless of what is actually happening in the scene as it unfolds (and regardless of what the other actors in the scene are doing). This approach makes it that much harder for the director to work with the actor, because the actor has already set their performance in stone. The model of acting Serra talks about, is the model of the employee-actor, whose goal is simply to rubber stamp a performance of complacent, base professionalism, and where every effort is made to explain the character rather than create organically, because the greatest terror is that anything the actor does may be even slightlymisunderstood, every I dotted and every T crossed to absolute death, and any semblance of art is eliminated mercilessly. Of course, all this leads to the bland, meaningless, presentation-without-mistakes type of performance which so dominates contemporary acting, and which so irks filmmakers like Serra.

 

There is the non-actor and there is the employee-actor, but there is also a third kind of actor: the artist-actor. This actor arrives at the scene with nothing, and creates something out of that nothing. For sure there is preparation – memorising lines, understanding what is happening in the scene, practice – but artist-actors don't merely re-produce this preparation and call it “performance”, they use preparation as a tool for liberating their creativity, the preparation is a means and not an end. The artist-actor responds to what is actually happening in the scene, and respondsregardless of their preparation. They come to the work ready to discover. And the work that is produced with this approach is intense, various, intriguing, and true. Also, by creating in-the-moment, we are closer to the actors source personality, as oppose to the layers and layers of guff piled on in the name of technique, and being close to the source leads to a more vivid performance. Artist-actors don't bring things to the scene, they simply try to understand what the scene is, and fit themselves into it. The employee-actor almost ignores the scene entirely, and sees the whole project as an excuse to showcase themselves (“my character wouldn't do that”), and in a sense, this is what Serra is referring to when he says; “it's as if you are writing a book and you are two”: the actor is, without invite, bringing things in from outside the original conception of the project, which effectively creates a rival to the original conception, trying to turn it into something else, hence two authors. The artist-actor is flexible enough, sensitive enough, and good enough, to respond to whichever way the director may want to work the scene. The artist-actor does not want to co-author but serve the form. For actor-artists, aesthetic truth is the goal, and organic creation is the way to attain it. These artist-actors struggle enormously in a world where little more is expected of the actor than having the right colour hair.

 

The mistake Serra makes (and others do too) is to speak of actors in general – he is effectively saying all actors are the same, and take the same approach. Clearly this is not true. It is a shame that a filmmaker of Serra's calibre sees it this way. More broadly speaking though, it is utterly crucial that we recognise and endorse artist-actors, otherwise they will disappear in that gap between employee-actors and non-actors, and the art of acting will disappear with them.

Drifting Clouds Cinema Blog: "Nuts4R2 Reviews Riccardo Freda's The Iguana With The Tongue Of Fire"

The Iguana With The Tongue of Fire

Fiery Tongue In Cheek

 The Iguana With The Tongue of Fire 
aka Lizard With A Tongue Of Fire 
aka L'iguana Dalla Lingua Di Fuoco 
Italy/France/West Germany 1971
Directed by Riccardo Freda
New Entertainment World Region 0

Wow. The Iguana With The Tongue Of Fire, eh?

People who know me or know my reviews should know by now that I adore the form of, predominantly Italian, cinema known as the ‘giallo’. I’ve mentioned my passion for the beautiful camerawork, overwrought shot design and fantastic music at the expense of bad acting and scripting on numerous occasions but, if you want to familiarise yourself with my summation of the giallo as a worthwhile, collective cinematic achievement, then please see my article on just that subject here. So what I want you to realise is that it’s quite a rare thing for me to say, or type, the statement that follows...

The Iguana With The Tongue Of Fire has got to be the most unintentionally, hilariously bad giallo movies I have ever seen. 

Like most gialli, I wanted to see this one because of the gorgeous score to the movie, courtesy here of the wonderful, popular Italian composer Stelvio Cipriani. However, it has to be said that this is pretty much the only really decent thing going for it.

The film stars Anton Diffring (everybody and their pet iguana's first choice of multi-national, intimidating German), giallo favourite Dagmar Lassander and, as the main protagonist (although he doesn’t turn up for about 20 minutes or so into the flick), the one and only Luigi Pistilli. Pistilli is seen here in a rare portrayal of a hero figure, rather than a villain of some description. I’d have to say that, although he turns up in tonnes of stuff before his tragic real life suicide, this film really shows that he had what it takes to be a major star of a movie, rather than just the lead villain or a supporting role.

Now then, it has to be said that the version of this movie I was watching wasn’t, from the outset, being screened in the bestconditions. Although not a bootleg copy, the official German release of this movie I was watching had one of the worst and faded prints I’d seen of an official release. Honestly, some of the establishing location shots at the start of the movie, and near the end, looked almost as yellow as the word this genre takes it’s terminology from... literally a yellow giallo! I can’t really comment on the transfer of the print because I just can’t tell how much of the picture is the transfer and how much is the print.  After having seen the film though... I would have to say I can understand why nobody has bothered to pay out for a new print from the negative as yet.

Dealing with a set of murders in, of all places, Dublin... the story involves a German diplomat (yeah, that’d be Diffring then) who gets involved in some acid in the face/throat slash murders while staying in Dublin with his family in the German embassy.

Did I just say acid in the face and throat slash murders?

Yes I did. Starting off with a sequence where a woman has her throat cut after acid has been splashed on her, making her face all red... just to make doubly sure. One has to assume that the motives of the murderer on this one are “better dead than red.” Now this all sounds quite ghastly, I’m sure, but I have to tell you that the special effects on this, and other sequences like it, are absolutely awful. Remember that taylors dummy which scrapes down the side of the cliff edge taking off its face at the start of Lucio Fulci’s Seven Notes In Black? Well this same kind of terrible dummy is used for close ups of the acid in the face in this one. Fortunate for me because, lets face it, I really don’t want to be subjected to a woman getting acid thrown in her face but, simultaneously, unfortunate for the film because the lameness of the technical effects makes you laugh out loud at the silliness of the problem solving going on here.

So there’s that.

Then there’s some other crazy and mostly laughable stuff going on. Like the killer wearing sunglasses at the start of the movie means that every time during the movie that any of the characters decide to pull out a pair of sunglasses, and they do, frequently, whether you are expecting them to or not, there is this highly charged and ever so over dramatic musical sting to accompany a close-up shot of said sunglasses. Honestly, this is so funny you’ll be wishing every character in the movie has a pair of sunglasses to pull out so the sound guys can whack you over the ears with another musical sting.

And there’s the accents. Most gialli are shot in several languages with the predominate language usually being English to help lip synch any of the UK or US actors in the film. The sound, is then, very badly dubbed with no regard to lip synch in any language you happen to watch it in. You will never, I would guess, see an Italian giallo where the spoken word matches up to what you are seeing. This particular film is dubbed into English for the print I was watching, which would be the correct way to view it but... it’s a terrible and highly comical Irish accent that everyone in the movie, apart from Anton Diffring, has been dubbed with. Seriously. Even Luigi Pistilli is talking in this highly fruity Irish accent all the way through and I’m sorry but I was not always able to contain my mirth at this viewing.

And little details that the production design slipped in didn’t help matters either. When questioned if the chauffer of the German family was going to get some laundry done, he is asked to confirm the receipts when shown them by the investigating police. Noticing, in the top right hand corner that the washing was done by a company called “Swastika Laundry Ltd” did nothing to relinquish the sense of accidental comedy on display in this one.

To be fair to it, the story was actually quite a good one for a giallo and it even had Luigi Pistilli living with his mother and his daughter, with the mother referencing both Agatha Christie and Miss Marple as she gives her son pointers as to who the killer is. It also takes a quite nasty turn near the end when the killer is revealed, with Pistilli’s mother being severely battered (possibly to death) and his young daughter having acid thrown in her face. This is quite sobering in the face of the unintentional comedy on display throughout the movie, but utterly wasted as, days or a week after this scene in terms of movie time passing, Pistilli doesn’t see fit to reference or comment on this turn of events, not rushing back to hospital by his daughters bed but instead going off with his boss for a cheery pint down the pub... presumably a nice, clichéd pint of Guinness.

If the film had been in the hands of a better director, is my guess, then this would have seriously been a giallo to contend with. But it’s just limply and half heartedly put together... although the acting in this one is mostly pretty good. Pistilli really was a great actor and this should be better recognised, I feel.

I looked at the director’s biography on the IMDB and it was very revealing. I noticed two of his films were I Vampiri and Caltiki - Il Mostro Immortale... two films I know Mario Bava had to unofficially finish off directing due to problems with the director on the set. Similarly, his last entry on the IMDB is for La Fille De D'Artagnan, a film I really love, from which it says he was “fired” and “uncredited”. I’m guessing this particular director may have been a little highly strung to say the least. I notice that one of the gialli I have in my “to watch” pile, Murder Obsession, is also directed by this guy... so I’m not really looking forward to watching that one so much now.

The Iguana With The Tongue Of Fire is a well plotted and well acted (for once) giallo that is in every way terrible to watch... in all but the musical score, which is excellent, as you’d expect from composer Cipriani. The score is free on a separate feature on the German DVD release although I’d personally recommend getting the limited edition Digitmovies CD release if you like the music as it has more of the score on there (plus, you know, it’s a CD).

Cipriani and Pistilli fans will definitely get something out of this movie and some people will also, like myself, get a good laugh. But to most people I would say... “stay away from this one”. There are much better gialli out there and very few that are as badly put together as this one.

 

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