The Human Adventure Is Just Beginning.
One cinema visit this week, marked with a *.
An unusually small selection as I was watching a lot of DVD extras, and I only count such things as watched films if I actually watch the films themselves.
Pandora’s Box (1929)
Let’s talk about Showgirls (1995). Wait a minute, aren’t I meant to have something to say about an acknowledged classic of the Weimar cinema of the 1920s in Germany? What does that have to do with Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhaus’ notorious sleaze-fest? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Strange as it may seem today when Pandora’s Box and most especially its star, Louise Brooks, and even more especially, the character she plays, Lulu, and the way Lulu looks, have become icons of world cinema, but there was a period when Pandora’s Box was as reviled in its time as Showgirls was in the wake of its release. Outside Germany, it was subject to a great deal of censorship with any references to lesbianism being toned down and a happy ending being imposed upon it. Inside Germany, it was treated with a kind of resigned contempt. For Pandora’s Box was that most contemporary of filmland vices: the apparently unnecessary remake. An earlier version of the same story had been filmed in 1921 with Asta Nielsen, and by all accounts it contained a lot of the standard excesses of poor silent film making, including hysterical overacting and simplistic moralising. The 1929 film’s director, GW Pabst, had also had the temerity to cast an American actress as ‘our’ German Lulu; remember the hysterical overreaction to the casting of Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones and you’ll have some idea of the revulsion with which this choice was received. Fast forward 25 years and the film was being acclaimed as a work of genius by the French, naturally enough, especially by the legendary head of the Cinémathèque Française, Henry Langlois, who famously declared, “There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!”Back to Showgirls. Among the enormous number of things that people don’t appreciate about Showgirls is that on a number of levels, it approaches its subject with a dead on documentary accuracy. It’s particularly pertinent on the exploitative relationships between men and women in a business based on exploitation. Everybody uses everybody else for their own ends, and are fully able to justify the callousness of their means. Showgirls is really a satire of capitalism, and yet it’s also prophetic: it’s impossible to watch the film now and not see prototypical Nomi Malones everywhere 12 years down the line, desperately seeking their 15 minutes of fame while actually being every bit as shallow and empty as their unknown forebear.
Pandora’s Box was fresh and new in 1929. It’s a truly modernist work, unbothered with matters of taste or acceptability. Louise Brooks probably isn’t the first naturalistic actor to appear in silent films, but she’s certainly the actor most famous for performing in a more underplayed style. What amazed me about the film on this viewing (which may be my second time; the first may have been a completely silent screening back at university if you can imagine) was how fast it moved and how completely compelling it was. It’s one of those long films that seems shorter. It took time for Pandora’s Box to be appreciated, but greatness will out. Showgirls isn’t there yet, but it’s on the way.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)
I’ve always liked the first Star Trek film. Although I pride myself on not going along with received opinion (I think the two sequels to The Matrix are brilliant, I love Titanic, I prefer the supposedly crass Hollywood remake of The Ring to the supposedly superior Japanese original Ringu, and so on), I do fall in line on the Star Trek movies: it is absolutely true that the best ones are the even numbered ones: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and the worse ones are the odd numbers: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. JJ Abrams has a big task ahead of him: his reinvention of Star Trek will be the 11th movie, and he probably knows that there’s never been a really great odd numbered Star Trek movie. Except the first one. I understand all the complaints. Yes, the film is too long, too boring, too respectful, too old, too Gene Roddenberry. But I don’t care about any of it. Those endless special effects shots of the journey into Vger that have other people yawning are what I find most compelling. If a film just gets you on some deep and personal level, there’s no going back, you’ll always love it. No matter what. It’s almost beyond reason. I’ve loved this film since I was 12, and I’ll love it till the day I die.
300 (2007) *
I’m a Frank Miller fan. Obviously I have the original comics. Obviously I loved it. Frank Miller must be so happy that he’s had two unreservedly great films made from his creator owned comics work after all the other disastrous experiences he’s had in Hollywood when he was employed as just a writer. I’ve just reread William Golding’s short piece The Hot Gates, about his visit in the early 1960s to the site of the real battle. Here’s what doesn’t quite come across in the film: the Athens of the time was about thirty years away from becoming the beacon of democracy, art, science and philosophy that forms the foundations of Western culture today. It is no exaggeration to say that if the Persian attack had succeeded, we would all be living in a very different world. What Leonidas and his 300 Spartans (and the hundreds of other Greeks who fought alongside him) achieved was to send a signal to the rest of the city states in Greece who were warring amongst theselves that they should unite against a common enemy. And when the Greeks did this, the enemy was duly defeated at the battle of Plataea and Athens was born. How does Golding put it? “A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free.” Plus decapitations, a big ass rhinoceros and seas of blood. Very cool. We march.