Captain Lightfoot, Douglas Sirk

I wrote a post here about how I thought Douglas Sirk's use of real Irish locations in Captain Lightfoot struck me as odd. The really real Irish locations (the village for instance,
or the prison-castle

) seemed very touristy to me, and rather artificial (even though as you can see on those stills they are authentic)-- while the fields, the stone walls, the rivers, in other words, the open air that could have been shot anywhere seemed very Irish, and very real, probably because it fit the mood of playful larks, of anything-goes with those crazy Irish temperaments ("the bad good old Ireland" as the introductory title says). In other words, they seemed real because seeing Rock Hudson playing pranks on British soldiers in a field seemed so logical.

Apparently I'm not the only one to think there's something going on with Sirk's use of the Irish landscape. Jean-Loup Bourget writes in Bright Lights issue #6 of 1977-1978 (Sirk and his critics):
"Sirk's admirers have done him as much disservice as those who forgot him. In the Dictionnaire du Cinema published by Editions Universitaires, 1965, Patrick Bachau, after an interesting passage on the decadent and autumnal quality of the Sirkian universe, stakes everything on his own personal discovery of the high point of Sirk's work, which, in his case, happens to be Captain Lightfoot (1955. Regaling us with an account of his favorite film, Bachau refers to "a happy, humorous adventure story about the Scottish rebellion" with "the little moorland villages, the harps, the scarecrows, the pubs reeking of ale, and the fields of Scotland." In fact, Captain Lightfoot tells of an episode in the Irish struggle against the English, and the entire film is suffused with a totally Irish atmosphere about which Sirk himself has spoken at length (in the interview published in Cahiers du Cinema). Bachau is the only one to be taken in by the harp; perhaps he was simply thinking of Brigadoon."

While the confusion is pretty funny indeed, I can see where Bachau went wrong. Again, in the film, Ireland is more in the link between action and background, than in the background buildings themselves, though they are still supposed to indicate time and place. We are far from Brigadoon indeed, but there's some ambiguity worth investigating here...

The Eagle (1925)

The Eagle's story is from Pushkin's unfinished short story Dubrovsky written in 1841. It's not just that the film plot is nothing like the original, it's really how different it is.
Pushkin's story in the translation I read is a medley of styles and purposes. It's a rather melodramatic love affair playing on the conventions of the brigand-love-beautiful-damsel type. There's plently of costume play, disguises, secret identities and sudden dramatic revelations (notably with Dubrovsky's living with Troekurov as the French tutor Mr. Deforge). In the second part of the story, this becomes the prevalent notion, even if Pushkin retains more than a trace of irony in the marriage of beautiful Marya Kirilovna to old rake Prince Vereisky. Instead of a conventional last-minute rescue from Dubrovsky (and one expects that he's going to turn up at the secret, and rapid, marriage ceremony, either as a fake priest, or even as the Prince himself), the young girl gets married, and packed off to a life of solitude and misery. Indeed, she did not say "no", and commonsense (but not romantic) Dubrovsky is a fool for having counted on the girl's stamina (turns out she had none: she herself was not a romantic heroine, in spite of Pushkin's self-conscious assertion to the opposite at the beginning of chapter VIII: "The reader has probably already guessed that Kiril Petrovitch's daughter (...) is the heroine of our story"). Unceremoniously, the story drops her, and finishes off Dubrovsky himself by shipping him abroad after a conclusive, if rather unheroic, battle against the Czar's soldiers in the woods.
This irony is everywhere to be felt in the first part of the story, before Dubrovsky reveals himself behind his disguise of Mr. Deforge. It is irony attacking small-country squires and their gross manners (Troekurov's amorous inclinaisons towards his serf-maidens), local police corruption (the new captain of the police force agreeing with Troekurov that he is, indeed, a fool), justice (Chapter II: "We quote [the court's decision] in full, believing that every one will be pleased to learn one of the methods whereby in Russia a man can lose an estate to which he has incontestable rights") -- official Russia is in for a severe flogging. Everything is turned on its head: even friendship becomes full-fledged hatred (between Troekurov and Dubrovsky, life-long pals) on the spur of the moment. This irony indeed allows the melodramatic plot to move forward and be more acceptable: if Dubrovsky becomes instantly crazy at the reading of the court's decision against him, it is not because we are in a bad Pamela sort of story, but because he is a fool and open to ridicule. This is a very clever narrative strategy as it allows Pushkin to get away with rather incredible, and very unsatisfying, elements in his story (Dubrovsky disappearing at the end for instance), by charging them all to the sense that all humans, deep down, are ridiculous.
As the hero to the story, Dubrovsky does not escape from this pervasive sense of ridicule. Dubrovsky's opening description is not exactly flattering: "It is time to introduce the reader to the real hero of our story. (...) Careless and ambitious, he indulged in extravagance, played cards, made debts and, little troubling about the future, vaguely thought sometimes that sooner or later he would have to marry a rich wife" (chapter III). Then again, his dreaminess when decisive action is required, on the way back to his father's house, does not bode very well. Conversely, his decisive action, when Troekurov comes to apologize and give him back his estate, could not come at a worst moment -- he turns him away without listening --, a moment when some dreamy listening might have been in order. Here again, Pushkin takes very conventional traditions, and subtly, slowly, turns them into outright ironic ridicule.
And then there are the "little people". Serfs, servants, coach-drivers, police officers, no-account local landlords, small village urchins, they all have a name, an identity, and make for a strong presence in the tale. Not only is this ridiculous melodramatic story set in real places where the geography (notably between the estates of the two feuding families) is clear and organized (including over time: Dubrovksy remembers when as a child he used to play in this wood and that with little Masha); it also has a strong realistic social background. This is, of course, on a par with the social criticism implicit in this story of outright corruption. But it is still remarkable how the power figures (Czar, Catherine II) are absent (except as distant points of reference that have no influence whatsoever on the story), and how the story is focused on a rather narrow, and a lower, sociological circle.
In the end, no one knows what's going on. The real authorities (the soldiers in the end) are far away. Once they intervene the story ends (but Pushkin refuses the mantle of efficiency to them: their battle with Dubrovsky is a disaster, even if he does decide to run away because of them). There is a story because those little people are trapped together in some no-account landscape and place. No one is in charge, the story goes by leaps and bounds, dictated by the moods of this or that character, irrationally. Still the serfs are touching figures, in their devotion to Dubrovsky (though he has no regard for them and their devotion, in the end calling them all brigands), and even if they prefer to save a cat to a police-officer (in the fire of Dubrovsky's house). Pushkin brings the story down to earth, where it belonged in the first place, strips it of romantic conventions, exposes corruption -- and leaves them all behind in the end. It's a way of grounding the story in a very realistic setting -- to deny it any reality because the fanciful irony is everywhere, and masterfully discharged by the narrator.
I'll be looking at the film story next. I think there's a story there in how Hollywood, in 1925, with Valentino and remarkable technical achievements, refuses anything that reeks of outright social irony, goes back to the melodramatic romanticism, adds an extra layer of it just to make sure -- but still manages to touch us.

Tarzan !

Il est temps de faire avancer la démonstration.

Le premier, c'est Bruce Bennett, Tarzan d'un temps (1935, The New Adventures of Tarzan), champion d'athlétisme lui (à ne pas donc confondre avec l'autre, Johnny Weismuller le beau nageur), dans un film qui n'est pas la série des Tarzan inaugurée par W.S. Van Dyke (avec leur éclat d'érotisme sensuel vite, trop vite subjugué, mais si poignant, dans Tarzan the Ape Man de 1932, lorsque Maureen O'Sullivan s'en remet à l'irrationel de son désir pour cet être incompréhensible, mais étranger, et libre).

C'est le serial de Rice-Burroughs lui-même, dont la compagnie, la Burroughs-Tarzan Enterprises Inc., fut créée (bon, avec l'exception de Phantom of Santa Fe, mais on vous explique tout cela ici), et bien, pour cela. Une version condensée de 12 épisodes, version déjà remplie de plans répétés sur la faune africaine, et on se croirait en safari -- moi qui détesterais en faire, ça tombe plutôt bien !

Et Indie, alors, dans tout cela ?

J'y viens.

Là où Van Dyke (et il rigolerait bien d'entendre cela) faisait du contemplatif sur la nature du sauvage (Tarzan est-il blanc, ou sauvage ? Qu'est-ce que sa sauvagerie ? Chaque épisode tourne autour de la leçon de moralité, finalement explicitée dans le dernier épisode à New York par, oh figure d'autorité du cinéma, un juge, que Tarzan peut nous en apprendre, en terme d'humanité...), Burroughs fait du conte pour ado (bon, ok, pré-ado, même en 1935): chasse au trésor, picaresque pittoresque, grands voyages, grands combats, grands méchants et grands gentils. Des aristocrates contre des vauriens.

On aura reconnu Indiana Jones, Dr. Jones, au passage. Noblesse de Tarzan l'aristo, noblesse du chercheur fou; intrépide, un peu félé aussi (Tarzan se jetant dans l'eau pleine de crocodiles), liane ou fouet, petit singe sur l'épaule (mais Tarzan-Bennett, lui, parle très bien le singe), ils visitent les jungles oubliées (puisque ce Tarzan de Burroughs est un aristo qui ne va dans la jungle, tel Zorro, que si on a besoin de lui!), trouvent des ruines, des temples aux inscriptions bizarres, mais que les méchants déchiffrent, ouvrant la voie aux héros, après forces combats, et nombreuses suspensions de filles au-dessus de dangers variése (léopards, crocodiles -- les aventurières anglo-saxonnes ne savent-elles donc que hurler?). Il faudrait y regarder de plus près, mais je suis sûr qu'il y a une filiation à retracer ici.

Indie. Mais Indie, lui, est sympa. D'abord il a le sens de l'humour, ensuite il n'aime pas les nazis. Ce qui est toujours, chez un individu, le signe d'une nature essentiellement droite. Tarzan-Burroughs, lui, est un colon anglais: safari, couchers de soleil, tenue de buttler (!), et puis surtout, il se bat avec les Blancs, contre les autochtones. C'est tellement vrai, que la race l'emporte sur l'intrigue: le méchant (blanc) voleur d'idole, et moteur de l'intrigue pour 3/4 du film, disparait à la fin, son sort pas réglé (et finalement on s'en fiche: il est blanc) -- car la fin, c'est le combat des blancs contre les indigènes, où Tarzan assiste complaisamment au massacre à la mitrailleuse de tous ces petits hommes, qui s'entassent, devant la caméra. Vous voyez le genre.

Indie, lui, se battra contre d'autres blancs. Les indigènes, au fond, lui seront toujours sympathiques (les paniers du Maroc!). Et le film, débarassé du trop-plein colonialiste (même si on peut en reparler sur Jurassic Park...), de retrouver le divertissement.

Filiations, filiations....

Tarzan?

Avec le chapeau en moins....

Tarzan?

Vous connaissez ? Il a un petit air d'Indiana Jones....

Farewell to Arms (1932)

Ce qui m'a intéressé ici, c'est la lumière, comme on s'en doute.

La lumière,et l'audace de certaines solutions de mise en scène: dans la scène où Coop et le médecin italien se nettoient, le miroir, c'est la caméra. Pas une fois dans la scène, d'ailleurs, ils ne regardent ce miroir...

On a beaucoup dit que Hollywood, c'était montrer l'acteur en clair (image 7, le couple près d'une fontaine), au mépris du reste -- éclairage de la star, construction triangulaire avec la star en sommet, etc. Bon, la construction triangulaire, c'est un peu comme la perspective cavalière -- un schème de la représentation (Gombrich), ou une forme symbolique (Panofsky) ? -- un choix représentatif qui s'impose comme habitude mentale par la suite. En revanche, ici, j'ai mis plusieurs exemples (et pas forcément des exemples de raccrot: ce sont en fait les grandes scènes du film, les grands duos romantiques, les pas-de-deux) qui montrent qu'on ne craint pas l'ombre, jusqu'à l'illisibilité (qui, dans l'image montrant la bombe qui finit d'exploser -- image 4 -- a vu la silhouette de Helen Hayes, qui finit de sortir du cadre ?).

OK, on est en 1932. Mais Farewell to Arms ce n'est pas à l'époque un petit film indépendant d'un studio de Poverty Row: ce sont les Oscars 1934 du son, et de la cinématographie justement. On est donc en plein dans le style hollywoodien (en tout cas, dans ce que Hollywood affirme alors comme son style, comme son idéal esthétique, ce n'est pas forcément la même chose). On y recherche l'effet pictural (image 10, un bel effet de gravure ancienne), on cache les stars sous les ombres pour traduire l'intimité, on sculpte la profondeur avec des touches de lumière savantes (image 9: Coop, la colonne du cloître -- mais les personnages qui parlent, eux, sont en ombre chinoise). Esthétisme ? Symbolisme ? Influence expressioniste ? En fait, on est toujours dans une pratique du cinéma muet:

L'image n'est que dans un rapport indirect avec ce qu'elle représente. Elle représente une geste, un fantasme de réalité, justement, une ombre. On n'y est pas sûr d'y voir ce qu'on y voit. Non par pudeur (image 2: nous sommes encore dans la période d'installation du Code), mais par ontologie. Le couple dans l'ombre, c'est presque une convention depuis Flesh and the Devil (1926), une façon de faire flotter l'image à l'horizon du désir.

7th Heaven (1927)

Borzage, pour qui les jeux de lumière (photogramme: ruelle la nuit, ici avec des angles plus expressionistes), ou les références à la gravure (2ème photogramme: les égouts, traités ici à la Gustave Doré en lumière + diffusion + construction picturale, cadres dans cadre, de l'image, et perspectives accentuées), ne sont pas nouveaux.

(deux photogrammes de 7th Heaven, 1927, dir.: Frank Borzage)

Indian Lovin': A Man Called Horse (1970) and Broken Arrow (1950)

(from A Man Called Horse)
Can a White man only love an Indian woman by a river ? What's up with that ? Or is there a long line of descendants from the mother of all Indian-lovin' shots ? (from Broken Arrow)



Let's trace that genealogy if we can, shall we? (Some genealogical work on Broken Arrow here)

And while we're at it, I find this sequence (we fade from one image to the next) particularly gruesome (also from A Man Called Horse):




(I am particularly galled that this should pass off as authentic and respectful portrayal of the Sioux culture)

Broken Arrow - Delmer Daves (1950) - Genealogies

Jeff Chandler is Cochise in this hopeful vision of peace between Whites and Apaches, with Jimmy Stewart in his first major western role (10 years after Destry Rides Again, the first of many western roles). 4 years later, Chandler is the dying Cochise in Sirk's Taza, Son of Cochise with Rock Hudson as Taza, and Barbara Rush as Taza's wife Oona. Both reappear in Sirk's Captain Lighfoot the following year, while Chandler is in another Sirk's costume drama (about Attila this time; Chandler is a Roman) in 1954, Sign of the Pagan. But then, in 1952, Chandler had again been Cochise (this time at George Sherman's Battle at Apache Pass), and one way or the other was busily engaged in those years trying to find peace between a couple of Indian tribes (the Kiowas, through war, in War Arrow; the Sioux, through diplomacy, in The Great Sioux Uprising) and Whites. It does seem that after Taza, Chandler killed off Cochise for good -- or, for that matter,any impersonation of Indian leaders.
A good cycle, that: make peace with Stewart, back up on the backstory by going over Apache Pass (which Stewart mentions in Broken Arrow...), and then, after a couple of less graceful tries, make your exit with Taza.
Ah, genealogies. Now, seems only Bertrand Tavernier is bothered that a Jewish actor should play Cochise (but he's not bothered by Debra Paget playing Soonseearayh, and she's no Apache that I know). What this genealogy suggests to me is rather good Hollywood sense in using an actor: Daves took a bet on him, his stature carried the role, then Hollywood tried to squeeze all the juice out of that orange, and then he went off to other things.
Bird of Paradise of 1951 has him and Debra Paget again (when do they get enough of a good thing?) on a South Sea island now...

The Hallelujah Trail (1965)

"It's a woman's pettycoat. Charge !"
A western stood on its head, and though a bit bloated, its very bloat is of the essence. A fake epic ("the land, it all starts with the land" -- but then the geography is so complicated that 3 times we are shown maps, and in the end all get lost in quicksands, somewhere), it needs to take all epic conventions and destroy them by gouging them out of all meaning: heroism, a general sense of purpose (the West without Indian wars descends to the level of playground squabbles), fairness in Indian dealings, the overal grandeur of the man of the west (Oracle Jones, or Capt. Slater), all are studiously, ferociously deprived of their mythic substance. The only myth to survive is love -- Hollywood love between hero and heroine, redemptive love that signals that there is a beyond to the film, our world where the more mature business of organizing one's emotional life really matters, away from film's pleasant but ultimately foolish games.
Yes, it's a long film. It doesn't have to, but then it has a musical prelude, a musical intermission, and a musical conclusion all on a very, absolutely black screen. And it drags on, until film forms reach the point where they start to decompose and rot: the last charge, itself a necessary element in all westerns, becomes a drunken riot of double visions and strange sounds as the cavalry circles round the Indians entrenched behind their wagons, and the Indians are so drunk that the soundtrack is about to stop. At that point one wouldn't be surprised to see the film just stop, freeze on a frame of many irrelevant colours -- as if it just wasn't possible to go on making westerns, period. All in all, a more ambitious endeavour than The Great Escape or even The Magnificent Seven (really??).