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By RICHARD CENTING
THE "Olympia Review" (January 1962)
carries a fragment from a novel by
Jack Caroll to be called Bottoms Up, one
of the funnier satires on the implications
of photography in modern society.
The hero, Arthur King, has an unex-
pected triumph as a prize-winning pho-
tographer which causes him to leave his
home and to make photography a career.
On a flight to Hollywood, he sees a heli-
copter which has crashed atop a plateau.
Near the plane two people are frantically
stamping out H-E-L- in the snow. The
pilot of King's two-passenger plane has
not seen the marooned pair but the pho-
tographer realizes that this is his oppor-
tunity for a great human interest pic-
ture. Instead of taking the photograph
immediately he waits until the plane has
almost passed the site. The couple, realiz-
ing they have not been seen, slump to
their knees in anguish. Finally, King
clicks the shutter of the camera, as the
long shadows of twilight accentuate the
tableau. After contemplating the achieve-
ment, he comes to a philosophical con-
clusion: We are essentially alone.
Although he is only being humorous,
Jock Carroll gives us an example of the
questions that must be asked about the
correlation between aesthetic form and
dramatic content, not only in artistic pho-
tography but in the motion pictures as
well. By exaggeration, he has shown how
meaning might be interpreted from the
surface reality of photography-in this
case perhaps too much interpretation. On
the other hand, when properly used, pho-
tography is an art and deserving of its
own serious standards of criticism. Mo-
tion pictures, in fact, depend on a unifica-
tion of photography and dramatic action
for their greatest effects. Photography in
films can interpret life and not be mere-
ly graphic illustration.
IN HENRY MILLER'S collection of es-
says, "The Cosmological. Eye," he de-
scribes the effect of a photograph in a way
which sums up the emotional satisfaction
one receives from masterful photography:
"On my wall is the photograph of a chair
by my friend Brassai. To me it's a poem. I
no longer see a wire chair with holes in
the seat but an empty throne."
A greater utilization of this kind of
artistic photography would greatly im-
prove contemporary films: m o v i e s
tend to be more prosaic than the intri-
cate shapes and colors of experience. The
movements of crowds, industrial construc-
tion, oddities of clothing, expressive
hands, motions of animals, patterns of
buildings, arrangements of sky and land
and even the contents of refrigerators are
animate and inanimate objects which
can enrich film drama if directors have
the courage and ability to use them.
Artistic photography does not have to
make the cinema as static as non-repre-
sentational Celtic illumination, in which
geometric design was the basic form.
Dwight MacDonald has said, "A movie is
much more than a collection of photo-
graphs. Like music, it unrolls in time and
like literature, it makes a statement
about human life." Yet photography can
make statements about life if we are se-
lective in the use of its techniques.
The outstanding achievements of artistic
photographers like Edward Steichen,
Margaret Bourke-White, Brassai, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, Edward Weston, and
more recently, Robert Frank, have found
few counterparts in recent films. How-
ever, Frank's short, "Pull My Daisy," was
less interesting than his evocative col-
lection of photographs, "The Americans.."
Production schedules of films may not
allow enough time for an individual to
master a subject. "Last Year at Marien-
bad" was great because it had such visual
imagination. The people in the film
had turned into pieces of furniture and
statuary, but there was a dynamic feel-
ing of motion none the less. In Truffaut's
"Shoot the Piano Player," the outdoor
winter scenery seen through a car win-
dow has a fascinating clarity, almost like
a projection of the natural attitudes of
the hero.
THE HISTORY of the cinema contains
examples of the uses of photography
that seem to have been forgotten by our,
modern directors. "Lot in Sodom" (Wat-
Visual Image's Are As Vital-
To Cinema As Dramatic Content
Photography as an interpreter of life in "The Seventh Seal".
son-Webber, 1933-34), a poetical treat-
ment of the Biblical legend was stunning
for its rhythmical arrangement of sym-
bols. Discarding a realistic, chronological
reconstruction of events, it succeeded in
transmitting more emotion than the bet-
ter-known religious epics. One might
favorably compare "The Life and Death
of 9413-A Hollywood Extra" (1928), a
satirical fantasy written and directed by
Robert Florey which portrayed the rise
and fall of a would-be star, with self-
critical films from Hollywood since that
time. For example, Sir Carol Reed's "Odd
Man Out" (1947), opens with an at-
tempted robbery photographed in docu-
mentary style and proceeds to quiet sim-
plicity when the revolutionary leader dies
in the snow.
The list of films that transcend recent
American experiments is long and versa-
tile, to say the least: the pastoral beauty
of Dovzhenko's "Earth" (1930), the hu-
mor of Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936),
and even the fragments of Eisenstein's
"Que Viva Mevico!" surpass the most
daring innovations of recent years. In
the masterpiece by Preston Sturges, "Sulli-
van's Travels," (1942), a train sequence
near the end expresses the irony of the
situation completely. No one who has seen
Eisenstein's "Potemkin" (1925) can for-
get the horrifying realism of the Odessa
steps sequence or the beauty of the ships
at twilight. In the pre-credit footage
of some Hollywood films we may have a
few "silent" scenes that are visual inter-
pretations of the story; then we quickly
lapse back into the "talkies." "The Public
Enemy" (Wellman, 1931), made a socio-
logical fable out of the usual gangster
movie by using swift scenes almost like
metaphors in poetry. Remember James
Cagney mashing half a grapefruit on the
face of his mistress?
It is lamentable that Hollywood, which
once fostered many great movements in
motion pictures (Griffith, et al), is not
now producing films of significant inter-
est despite the more sophisticated equip-
ment available to them. Those of you
who find patriotic fur rising when any-
one knocks Hollywood, please check
Time's article "A Religion of Film" (Sep-
tember 20, 1963), which contains a map
showing the location of the world's great
film directors: Not one is American.
Probably the last great American films
were "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"
(Huston, 1948), and "Monsieur Verdoux"
(Chaplin, 1947).
"David and Lisa", which Time called
"The best U.S. film of the Year" in 1962,
seemed more like a documentary about
mental disease than representative of
any new cinematic forms. From the point
of view of photography, its structure is
monotonous: the sequences seem about
the same length and each-open on a low
note and end on a high note. There was
little variety in camera movement; the
acting seemed wooden and the resolution
of neurosis by all-conquering love was
traditionally melodramatic. The . film
succeeded in shaking up the preconceived
notions in Hollywood about experimental
films. For some reason, "David and Lisa"
appeared more European than anything
American producers have done of late,
probably because it had a serious inten-
tion. But the French film "Sundays and
Cybele" was much livelier than "David
and Lisa" for the photography in "Sun-
days and Cybele," although highly imag-
inative, never intrudes to spoil the flow
of the story. It evoked a feeling of ro-
mance and ritual that did not come across
in "David and Lisa."'
THE CINEMA'S special resource-visual
complexity, the constand fluid changes
of viewpoint and the ability to roam
freely in time and space, were put to
excellent use in another French film,
Jean-Luc Godard's, "Breathless," (1961).
The camera, handled by Raoul Contard, is
spontaneous and comic, taking sudden
turns and finding different angles to cap-
ture the magic of Paris; it moves in and
about the boulevards and side streets and
bars and bedrooms of Paris, picking up
details as the- microphone records the
immediate sounds of the street. Those
who have seeh the film usually remember
Jean-Paul Belmondo stroking his lips
with his fingers, almost as a gesture of
skeptical defiance. Such a movement
can express rapidly what the conventional
film would try to talk out for two hours.
The, screenplay by Francois Truffaut il-
lustrates how stimulating an original
script can be and the cutting in the film
demonstrates the effectiveness of brief
images over tedious, immobile sequences.
In the Russian film, "The Lady with
the Little Dog" (1962), directed by Joseph
Hieftz; we have a remarkable blending
of narrative content with artistic pho-
tography. There is one scene in which a
clarinetist plays a tune as white snow-
flakes fall into a gray world which pic-
torially creates the symbolic image of
the frustration of the'characters. Adapted
from a short story by Chekhov, this film
rendered almost perfectly the dramatic
tensions of the hopeless love affair. Like
the novel, movies can convey tedium
without being tedious by concentrating on
the details of a situation that make up
its basic conflict. It would be interesting
to see how one would film any of the
novels of Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe often is
regarded as an undisciplined romantic,
full of matter with no art, although his
novels are crowded with a multitude of
revelatory poetic details. The communi-
cation of passion in film would necessitate
the creation of a montage that captured
the spirit of his individual observations.
For example, three of the most praised
American films of the- Fifties, "From
Here to Eternity", "High Noon," and
"Marty," were all small-screen black-and
white films, which concentrated on little
details that gave impetus to the narrative.
"R ASHOMAN," the Kurasawa master-
piece, merged exquisite photography
with a clever story to evoke the very mys-
tery behind the questions of truth and
evil. In "Wild Strawberries," (1957), writ-
er-director Ingmar Bergman used the
dreams of an old man to present all his
horror at having lived a pompous and
meaningless existence, and in "The Sev-
enth Seal" (1956) fashioned a film which
is, I believe, a landmark. He makes us
believe in a real world in which men and
women are struggling and dying with the
problems of immortality. The dance of
death at the end of "The Seventh Seal"
was the poetic culmination of the pic-
torial action of the film. Throughout the
film, from the .unearthly opening scene
in which .the squire, Jons, plays chees
with death to the procession of the flag-
ellants and the burning of the witch, we
are in the grips of pure allegorical trag-
edy, The arrangement of many of the
scenes achieve the impression of indi-
vidual paintings: the lighting and the
positions of the actors have an inevitable
symmetry that is characteristic of the
greatest art. Bergman has this to say
in the introduction to his screenplays:
"When we experience a film, we con-
sciously prime ourselves for illusion. Put-
ting aside will and intellect, we make way
for it in our imagination. The sequence
of pictures plays directly on our feeling
. .. and film is mainly rhythm."
A play such as "The Dream Play" by
Strindberg may be exceptionally adapt-
able to the film. Such a film could pro-
duce the expressionistic dreams in a more
credible way than the restricted sets of
the stage. The camera can give us that
intimate awareness of an actor's perform-
ance which is often lost on the stage. The
symbol at the end of the play, a growing
castle which has a bud on its top that
bursts into a giant chrysanthenum and
a burning wall resembling faces in an-
guish, could be presented as a powerful
visual image.
"Orange and Blue," a fifteen minute
short produced at the Film Study Center
of Harvard University, was more gratify-
ing emotionally than the three-and-a-
half hour long "Lawrence of Arabia."
"Orange and Blue" was the imaginative
creation of a visual journey of two rub-
ber balls through a junk yard imitating
the play psychology of children, express-
ing curiousity, adventurousness, timidity,
coyness, and joy. As in the short, "The
Red Balloon," we are completely taken
up by the screen creation of the feelings
of youth uncommitted to the realism of
adulthood. This is what films should do:
make us believe ini a new kind of world,
order our experience, permit our fancy
to be aroused. The cinema is a visual lan-
guage that even still our emotions; to do
this, however, it must utilize its own
sensuous elements of aesthetic experience.
Photography implies the existence of
a rhythm in the world of nature. If films
are to communicate their subjects, the re-
lationship between photography and dra-
matic content must be recognized and
maintained. A film depends not only on
the receptive mind but also on the spec-
tator's visual associations The plastic
beauty of the film must not become a
lost art.
THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE..
I
"Ann Arbor's Fleeting Fall'
MAGAZ IN E
Vol. V, No. 4
Sunday, October 20, 1963
Page Eight