Jeff's Filmmusic HoF - The Last Word

My favorite film - The opening of Werner Herzog's "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" - Music by Popol Vol

Jeff's Filmmusic HoF #5

A concert clip of Ryuichi Sakamoto playing his theme from The Last Emperor.

Jeff's Filmmusic HoF #4

The opening credits for Raging Bull - music by Mascagni - the beautiful Cavalleria Rusticana.

Jeff's Filmmusic Hall of Fame #3

A drunken Harvey Kietel in Mean Streets. Music by The Chips - "Rubber Biscuit"

Jeff's Filmmusic Hall of Fame #2

From Sergei Eisenstein's "Alexander Nevsky" - the music is by Sergei Prokofiev.

Stop Making Sense

Part of the Filmmusic Blog-a-thon hosted by Windmills of My Mind

“Hi. I’ve got a tape I’d like to play.”

Stop Making Sense thus gets under way. Not with blaring intro, smoke and pyrotechnics, but rather with one lone man armed with a guitar and a small boom box on a bare stage. This 1984 concert film by the Talking Heads ignores all the rules and just goes on its own merry way. It is the best concert film I’ve ever seen.

The Heads might seem an odd choice to present in this homey, low-key setting. David Byrne, after all, was the artist who once wrote a song that observed a scene of suburban bliss, and then concluded, “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.” All those songs about urban angst are in here, too, but the concert itself is joyful, not morose.

Take the opening bit. Byrne sets the boom box down, and behind a simple percussion beat, kicks into “Psycho Killer” This is a song about mental illness, but it’s also arguably the head’s most catchy tune, and watching Byrne strut and shimmy is FUN, despite the lyrics.

The concert itself is set up in a loose, informal way. After the opening bit, bassist Tina Weymouth joins Byrne onstage and the two of them play “Heaven”, after which drummer Chris Frantz joins in on “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel”, and so on until the stage is full of musicians. During the music, the stagehands are quietly setting up the next instrument, all in full view. Byrne and director Jonathon Demme wanted the focus to be on the music, not on the ancillary things that make up most concerts.

Ah, the music. The Talking Heads were a great favorite of mine in my younger days, and this concert catches them on a night (actually several nights) when they were “On”. The product presented onstage is in stark contrast to the image that their lyrics convey. Byrne himself is a physical contradiction. Facially, he pretty much maintains his joyless android look, but the rest of his body gives him away. Watch the guy dancing with two backup singers during “Slippery People”, and tell me he isn’t having fun.

For me, the two highlights of the film are a torrid rendition of “Life During Wartime”, from the great Fear of Music album, and “Once in a Lifetime”, for which Byrne dons Buddy Holly-esque glasses, and a suit jacket that seems a couple of sizes too big. It’s such a great song that it’s easy to miss how simply it is presented. The camera just holds on Byrne in a medium shot as he performs on a dark stage with just one small light illuminating him, and Byrne takes his great tune about domestic normalcy and injects it with equal parts funk, punk, and spastic madness.

It’s also striking to see how democratically Demme presents the musicians. Byrne is of course the focus, but the backup players are featured just as prominently as the band members. That’s as it should be, too, because bongo player Steve Scales and guitarist Alex Weir are as instrumental to the heat created on stage as the Heads are.

If the film has a weak spot, it’s in the inclusion of “Genius of Love”, by Tom Tom Club, which was the side project band led by Weymouth and Frantz. This is the only time Byrne isn’t on stage, and the film suffers for it. The song isn’t strong, and Weymouth has none of Byrnes’ jittery charisma.

Towards the end of the film, the camera turns around and gives us our first real audience reaction shot, and we suddenly realize that yeah, there haven’t been any audience shots. That’s one of the major ways that SMS strays from the tested and true, and it works beautifully. When we do see the audience, they are dancing in the aisle, as we might expect. Withholding this shot adds to the feeling that the concert has built to a crescendo. Instead of being bombarded with fast cuts and endless shots of people bopping away, we get to watch the band. What a novel idea.

Jeff's Filmmusic Hall of Fame #1

The film is Days of Heaven, and the music is by the great Leo Kottke. "The Train and the Gate"

The Marquee

The Seventh Seal

On Location

Orson Welles (top left) and the gang from the Mercury Theatre , 1938

God, sex, and allergies - An interview with Ingmar Bergman

Charles Samuels’ Encountering Directors should be on your shelf if you have any kind of a weakness for film books. Samuels conducts lengthy, in depth interviews with such titans as Carol Reed, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni. This is a link to his great interview with Ingmar Berman. It’s long, but endlessly fascinating. Bergman has a reputation for being a bit prickly, but Samuels is able to brush this aside and get some interesting comments from the director.

This piece is also notable for the way Samuels doesn’t just sit back reverently. He gets in Bergman’s face a little bit, and the results are really entertaining.

Read it here.

The Newsstand

Esquire, March , 1970

The Marquee (Blow-Up times Two)

Sansho the Bailiff

To scholars of Japanese film, Kenji Mizoguchi was part of a great triumvirate, which also included Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. As such, it was always mystifying to me why his films were so hard to see. Had you done a search on Amazon.com a couple of years ago, you would have seen only his great masterpiece Ugetsu available on DVD. It’s a great relief, then, to see Criterion release his outstanding 1954 film Sansho the Bailiff on a new DVD. It’s a long overdue chance to see one of the landmarks of Japanese cinema.

Sansho tells the story of a humanistic governor, and how his defiance of the local lord sets a tragic chain of events into motion. The governor is sent into exile, and his wife and two children are left to fend for themselves. Before he leaves, however, he imparts a bit of his wisdom to his young son. “Without mercy, a man is not a human being”. This is advice that will resonate throughout the film.

The lonely young wife eventually decides to go to join her husband, but makes the grave error of trusting a kindly older woman, who betrays them to slave traders. The wife is sold into prostitution, and the children become slaves of Sansho the bailiff. Sansho is a harsh boss. Early on, a runaway is captured and brought back to the compound, and branded with a burning stick. One woman has the tendons in her feet cut when she tries to flee. This level of cruelty is stunning, and the disc’s liner notes make the observation that this may be Mizoguchi’s statement on the atrocities committed by the Japanese during WW2.

A recurring theme throughout Mizoguchi’s career is sensitivity towards his female characters, and it is certainly evident here. It’s the young sister Anju who stays strong during their captivity. The brother Zushio, on the other hand, shows signs of succumbing to the evil around him. Sansho gives him the opportunity to brand a runaway slave, and he obediently does it rather than questioning the order. We wonder if his father’s words of advice even occur to him at that moment.

The film cuts occasionally to the mother, still in grieving for her lost children. There’s a song that she sings, and its plaintive lyrics become a leitmotif for the space that now separates the family.

“My Anju, I yearn for you.”

“My Zushio, I yearn for you.”

This same song becomes the impetus for the escape of the siblings when Anju hears a new slave girl singing it, and realizes that they may now be able to find their mother.

The escape is the axis that the film revolves around, and it invites endless discussion. The children are ordered to take an ailing woman out in to the forest and leave her to die. Anju decides that this is the moment, and tells Zushio to make a run for it, and that she will provide a diversion. By doing this, she is essentially sacrificing her life. Then, at the last moment, she tells Zushio to take the ailing woman with him. This seems strange, because he would certainly move slower carrying the stricken woman than if Anju came with him. It is plain throughout the film that Anju is the stronger of the two, and by making her the martyr, Mizoguchi is paying homage to her courage. She does the tough job because she’s more able to. Her last gift to her brother is to ensure his freedom, which she hopes will result in the rest of the family being restored. With Zushio safely on his way, Anju drowns herself in a scene that is simplistic, yet remarkably beautiful.

Free at last, Zushio manages to be appointed to his father’s old position and takes it upon himself to close down Sansho’s operation, despite having no authority to do so. This tactic seems suicidal at first, but it creates a slave revolt, which topples Sansho. The determined Zushio is now channeling his father’s philosophy, and there’s a marvelous little scene where he again confronts the old man that he branded earlier.

“My sins in branding you can never be erased…”

It’s only now that Zushio learns that Anju is dead, and this makes his final meeting with his mother so poignant. He traces her to a remote beachside village, and led by the sounds of her singing finds her crippled and blind, supporting herself by shooing birds away from the seaweed harvest. She at first believes him to be an hallucination, but gradually comes to the realization that this strange voice does indeed belong to her long-lost son. It’s a gorgeous sequence, because it doesn’t wallow in false sentimentality. This family has been shattered, and although there is a closure of sorts, there is also a sense of immense loss.

The Marquee

On Location

John Wayne in another chess game, this time on the set of Chisum in 1970.

On this Date

Alain Resnais turns 85 today.

The Marquee (Flat movie with extraordinary talent division)

The Missouri Breaks, dir. Arthur Penn, 1976

Dialogue I Love

" Mac, wait a minute. Uhmmm-mmm. Excuse me sister, excuse me. Now don't tell me we're going to let these two little angels of mercy go away from here empty handed on Christmas Eve? This joint is the home of fine bourbon and fast women...and we need plenty of religion to keep 'em both in line. So come on, folks, how about it? Get it up now, come on. Ah, come on, a little action here. A little -- What's the matter? Ohhh! Hey! Hey Lord! Can you hear me up there Jesus? You didn't think we'd forget your birthday, did you boy? There you are Jesus -- and if I had any more you'd be welcome to it. Thank you brother. The Bible says never let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Well, what's your beef, mister? You ashamed of being a Christian? Oh, I see. You think religion is for suckers and easy marks and mollycoddles, huh? You think Jesus was some kind of sissy, eh? Well, let me tell you, Jesus wouldn't be afraid to walk into this joint or any other speakeasy to preach the gospel. Jesus had guts! He wasn't afraid of the whole Roman army. Think that quarterback's hot stuff? Well, let me tell you...Jesus wouldn't have made the best little all-American quarterback in the history of football. Jesus was a real fighter. The best little scrapper pound for pound you ever saw. And love, gentlemen? Love, gentlemen. Jesus had love in both fists. And what is love? Love is the mornin' and the evenin' star. It shines on the cradle of the babe. Hey, ye sinners! Love is the inspiration of poets and philosophers. Love is the voice of music. I'm talking about divine love...not carnal love."

Elmer Gantry - screenplay by Richard Brooks, based on a novel by Sinclair Lewis

The Marquee

a.k.a. Killer Spy, 1965

Moments of Distinction

The Film – Scarlet Street, dir Fritz Lang

Christopher Cross (Edward G Robinson) has been conned by Katherine March and her boyfriend Johnny, who have been selling off his artwork under her name. Cross finds out and kills her in a fit of rage, and Johnny emerges as the prime suspect. This is a marvelous montage of testimonies from his trial. We hear from Johnny, from a couple of art experts, from her landlord, from a bartender, from a man who lent Johnny the ice pick which became the murder weapon, from Katherine’s girlfriend, from Cross’ harridan wife, Cross himself, and finally from Johnny again.

“She didn’t paint those pictures! Old Cross isn’t as dumb as he looks. HE painted them!”

“The accused brought me two pictures. He told me Miss March painted them.”

“In my expert opinion, there is no doubt about it. She was a very great artist.”

“She told me she was an artist when she rented the studio. He was with her. I didn’t like him then, and I don’t like him now!”

“Yeah, he was mean when he was drunk. He said he was gonna fix her when he left my place at about 2 AM”

“That’s when I say, you watch out, Johnny – You gonna kill somebody. So he kills her with my ice pick!”

“ I heard her say “Hey, Johnny!” before she hung up. He was there, all right! What I don’t understand is all this talk about her being an artist. I never saw her paint!”

“That was one of her peculiar traits. She never let anyone see her paint. I’ve compared her handwriting with the signature. There’s no question!”

“Mr. Cross paint??? Humph! He only copied her work! He’s a thief! He stole from me, from his employer, and from Katherine March.”

“My wife…I mean my former wife is correct. I really can’t paint. My copies were so bad I had to destroy them.”

“For god’s sake!!! He’s lying!!!!”

I think that this sequence is simply astounding. In the course of a minute or two, we see a pile of circumstantial evidence allow one man to get away with murder, and another, innocent man to go to the electric chair. Note how the camera gradually moves closer to the speaker, culminating with the good and decent Cross covering his tracks, and the frantic Johnny, who was so cool and saucy in the first frame, now pleading for his life. Scarlet Street is unusual for a Hayes Code-era film, in that someone gets away with murder (with a caveat - Cross ends up insane from guilt). I love how this little monologue boils the film down so neatly, and how the stuff that could be damning to Cross is negated.