"No Country for Old Men" - Joel & Ethan Coen (2007)

Joel and Ethan Coen’s Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men (2007) is an Existentialist film noir based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name. The film is notable for several reasons, not least of which is the extraordinary degree to which the Coen brothers have faithfully transcribed McCarthy’s novel to the screen. As a consequence, the authorship of this film narrative must be almost entirely credited to McCarthy, with the Coen brothers being credited with having the intelligence and commitment to stick with the story exactly as McCarthy told it and the skill to craft it into a film. This is not a trivial point. Attempts to transfer novels directly into screen visualisation usually fail, and for several reasons. Whereas films are essentially dream-like and action-oriented, novels are really extended essays in narrative form. In addition, interior monologues and narrative commentary concerning abstract subjects are not easily and compactly represented in film form. There are also usually far too many events in a novel to be depicted in a two-hour film, and for this reason short stories and novellas are often more suitable sources for film scripting. As a consequence, it is almost always necessary to pick out the more action-oriented elements of a novel and carry out other plot modifications in order to have the story told in about 100 minutes. Furthermore in the case of McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, there are actually two stories: an action-packed inner story about stolen money, and a slow, reflective, downbeat outer story about a sheriff who witnesses the goings on. It is to the Coens’ credit that they stuck with McCarthy and told both the inner and outer stories, rather than simply presenting the melodramatic inner story. That’s what elevates the film several notches above the level of a grisly crime flick.

The setting, like many of McCarthy’s novels, is southern Texas near the Mexican border and sometime in the past – this time in 1980. This element of the past is always an important contributor to the grim, fatalistic mood of McCarthy’s novels. We are not reading a story that may have been written in 1980 about events of that time. Rather, we, the readers, share the narrator’s knowledge that the short-term hopes and fears of all of the characters in the story have long since come due and been rendered no longer relevant. This point doesn’t come across very readily in the film, and some viewers seem to have thought that the story is contemporary. The film opening quickly introduces the three principal characters:

• Anton Chigurh, who has been picked up and arrested on the road by a cop;
• Ed Tom Bell, the local sheriff to whom the cop reports;
• Llewellyn Moss, a young cowboy who lives in a trailer with his wife and hunts antelope out in the west Texas open spaces when he is in between jobs as a welder.

On one such hunting outing out in the desert, Moss stumbles upon the scene of an outlaw drug deal that ended in a shootout. There are dead bodies everywhere, along with the undelivered drugs and a suitcase containing about two million dollars in cash. Moss decides to take the suitcase in the hopes of starting a new life for himself and his wife. In the novel, but not the movie, it is clear that he knows from the outset the severe dangers in store for doing this. But never mind, the dangers are apparent soon enough in the movie. Chigurh is an ice-cold killer who is soon relentlessly and methodically tracking down Moss to recover the lost drug cash. This is the inner story, and its telling occupies much of the film

The other part of the film, the outer story, concerns Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, who soon learns that Moss has the stolen cash and that Chigurh is on his trail. Bell’s goal is to find both of theses men – to protect Moss from destruction and to arrest Chigurh before he kills Moss. Along the way, the elderly lawman, from a family history of lawmen, reflects on the demise of the social order that has occurred since his youth. He occasionally discusses the degenerating state of society with other aging lawmen, who are equally gloomy and powerless to stem the seemingly inexorable decline of common decency and morality. This is the moody, elegiacal strain to the story that pervades most of McCarthy’s novels and is, to a certain extent, captured in the film.

What captivates most audiences, of both the novel and the film, is the character of Chigurh. He is not simply a psychopathic killer, but is more of a symbol of the unquenchable and relentlessly destructive power of karma. He is ordinary, but at the same time he is also inordinately repulsive and strange. He conjures up some dark, half-forgotten personage in everyone’s nightmares. He is Death. He is Kali. At least, a psychopathic killer can be potentially localised, isolated, and ultimately destroyed -- but not, it seems, Chigurh. He represents the brute, uncaring swirl of dark forces which play out their machinations according to unfathomable and unalterable rules. As a fictional character, he is reminiscent of McCarthy’s "Judge" in Blood Meridian, but Chigurh is perhaps an even further advance in the direction of the apocalyptic.

Sheriff Bell senses the utter depravity of Chigurh and sees him as representative of a new, soulless breed, driven by drugs and money, that is here to stay. Bell is powerless to turn the tide and can only make melancholic comparisons between the comprehensible past and the incomprehensible present. For McCarthy, it seems, the few decades following World War II, where some general degree of order and human decency prevailed, even among the lawless, may have been an exception in human history. That all-too-brief period may have been a unique and isolated period that is now fading away forever. Those who lived through it were living in a cacoon that could not endure. These reflections of Bell (and McCarthy) are the core of the outer story, and although the film spends less time than the novel on this aspect, the basic themes are there. The significance of the outer story is emphasised when the inner story ends abruptly and disturbingly, without the closure that most audiences expect. The outer story offers the final commentary. Fans focusing strictly on the inner story feel cheated.

One might speculate further about McCarthy’s ultimate vision. In an early scene, Llewellyn Moss spies an antelope through his gun site and whispers, “hold still”, before he shoots to kill. Later, Chigurh approaches a motorist that he has forced to stop on the roadside and says softly, “hold still”, before exterminating his victim with a cattle stun gun. The stun gun is an efficient way to kill pastoral animals: a cylindrical bolt is explosively shot forward into the animal’s brain and then retracted, killing the animal instantly. This is the mechanised way of killing animals (10 billion per year in the US alone) which is now customary. The animal about to be killed is not approached in hostility, it is merely terminated by a soulless executioner who operates according to rules incomprehensible to the animal. To the many humans killed by Chigurh in this story, their own deaths are equally inexplicable. To Chigurh it is natural; it is their karmic fate. This is the way the world works. Bell finds the modern world incomprehensible, but we can see the connection between Moss and Chigurh. Our killing of animals for meat, which is harmful for human health, unsustainable for the environment, and ultimately inhuman, is reflected in the persona of Chigurh. Whether McCarthy intended this connection or not, it would be worthwhile reflecting on it.

The filming of No Country for Old Men is skilful and effective throughout. If there is one thing that characterises the Coen brothers’ films, it is the depiction of a more-or-less ordinary character situated in a world that is spinning out of control. It is not just individual adversaries that the character must deal with, it is the entire world that seems unmanageable. This is a cinematic disposition that they share with Hitchcock, and McCarthy’s novel works perfectly for them in this film. However, the Coen brothers sometimes employ effects that unfortunately distance the viewer from the fabula, and this reduces one’s involvement. By sticking closely to McCarthy’s narrative almost every step of the way, they have avoided that tendency, much to their and our benefit. Also, the Texas landscape once again serves them well: my favourite Coen brothers film was their first, Blood Simple (1985), which was also set in Texas, and there are significant affinities between No Country for Old Men and that film.

Throughout No Country for Old Men there are extended and skilfully rendered sequences of point-of-view shots and reverse shots, as we trail one of the three key individuals looking about for threats in a hostile environment. (Interestingly, Moss, Chigurh, and Bell are always on the lookout for each other, but almost never see each other in the film.)

This brings me to a minor point that has been the subject of some discussion. When Bell visits the crime scene at night at the El Paso motel after Chigurh has killed Moss, there is a brief, but very obscure, image of Chigurh in the darkness. But where exactly is Chigurh? Many people, including the IMDB FAQ, argue that Chigurh is hiding somewhere in the hotel room. I don't think so. In McCarthy’s novel at this point, Chigurh is outside in the darkness, sitting in a truck in the motel parking lot. Chigurh presumably sees Bell from there, but does nothing, since Bell apparently doesn’t see him. This strikes me as more plausible location of Chigurh, and I believe that the film follows the book here. The very fact that Chigurh's location is a confusion to so many viewers is an indication that this shot was not well executed. A much better shot in this same scene is the point-of-view shot of Bell glancing at the unscrewed front panel of the motel room ventillation duct. In that brief shot we come to know what Bell doesn't: how Chigurh recovered the money.

The casting of the roles and the performances are spot on. Javier Bardem has the moves and the demeanor appropriate for Chigurh. And all the actors match up well with the characters in the novel. Woody Harrelson is just right as the mafia hitman, Carson Wells. And a movie like this just wouldn’t be right if it didn’t have Barry Corbin in there somewhere, and, sure enough, he has a small, but significant, presence.

As a novel, No Country for Old Men is not my favourite work of Cormac McCarthy. I find The Border Trilogy -- All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998) -- to be superior and more haunting narratives, in particular, All the Pretty Horses. Many people prefer McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, which is as dark and dystopic as you can get, and although that might appeal to some tastes, I find it somewhat artificial and schematic. But No Country for Old Men is certainly good enough, and it has been meticulously brought to the screen. A film version of Blood Meridian is said to be coming out in 2009, but I doubt it will top the Coen brothers’ offering.
★★★½ 

"The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum" - Kenji Mizoguchi (1939)

Kenji Mizoguchi was at the height of his artistic powers with The Story of the Chrysanthemum (Zangiku Monogatari, 1939), which continues the progression of his visual expressiveness shown in Osaka Elegy (1936) and Sisters of the Gion (1936). The story, based on a novel by Shôfû Muramatsu, was again co-scripted by Yoshikata Yoda, who had begun his long-term collaboration with Mizoguchi with Osaka Elegy.

As with Osaka Elegy and Sisters of the Gion, there is a focus of attention on the unsatisfactory condition and fate of women in Japanese society, although one might argue this time that the main character in Zangiku Monogatari is not a woman, but the male actor, Kikunosuke Onoue. Unlike the feisty and willful “Ayako” in Osaka Elegy and Omocho in Sisters of the Gion, who each questioned the traditional feminine roles, however, the principal female in Zangiku Monogatari, Otoku, is self-effacing and willing to sacrifice everything in loving devotion. But despite the ultimate tragedy of the story, which is a characteristic outcome of all of Mizoguchi’s films, Zangiku Monogatari is one of Mizoguchi’s most romantic and satisfying undertakings.

Mizoguchi’s films can be compared with those of Josef von Sternberg in terms of both narrative content and filmmaking technique. And Zangiku Monogatari is a particularly good example. It features sculpturally lit and carefully composed camera shots with a deep focus, often looking through environments in depth, where the principal figures are seen well behind partially obscuring foreground artefacts. There is also delicate camera tracking, dollying, and panning that follows the action of the scene without being obtrusive. In Zangiku Monogatari, Mizoguchi in fact demonstrates a mastery that even goes beyond von Sternberg, with many dramatic scenes lasing several minutes without a single editing cut. When you consider the bulky camera equipment and high demands for lighting that existed in those days, one’s admiration for the artistry of these effects is even greater.

The film opens in Tokyo in 1888 and traces the story of a Kabuki stage player over the ensuing six years. The narrative can be divided into five sections or acts.

1. Kikunosuke Faces Criticism (22 minutes). The prominent Kabuki acting troupe led by the famous actor, Kikugoro Onoe V (a real historical figure) is shown in performance. The Kabuki productions are highly stylized and full of ritual gestures, but they were apparently highly popular with the public. Kikugoro Onoe V is so famous that his family is essentially upper-class. After the performance, Kikugoro expresses contempt for the inept performance in the play on the part of his stepson, Kikunosuke, who he fears will never learn to be a good actor. It soon becomes evident, however, that Kikunosuke is the heir apparent to Kikugoro’s position, by right of his family relationship, and he is guaranteed a successful career. As a consequence, Kikunosuke is a spoiled playboy who is indifferent to hard work and who is always shielded from harsh criticism by his family and friends. One day, however, Kikunosuke runs into the family wet nurse, Otoku (who is nursing his baby stepbrother) and happens to ask her what she really thinks of his acting, since he suspects that his acquaintances won’t tell him the truth. Despite her lowly position as a servant, she politely tells him that he could be much better if he tried, and she urges him to apply himself seriously to his craft. So Kikunosuke finally realises that he is an artistic failure who is only a big shot because of his father’s fame.
2. Kikunosuke and Otoku (33 minutes). But the playboy Kikunosuke has finally met someone who is interested in him as a person, and not just for his family position. He gives up carousing with geishas in the evenings and starts staying at home in the evenings to talk to Otoku, but this leads to gossip. One evening his mother returns home and catches the two of them chatting, and the next day she summarily dismisses Otoku and banishes her from the house. Kikunosuke manages to find out where she has gone, and, in a dramatic scene, proposes marriage. But when he later faces his domineering stepfather, the very idea of marriage to Otoku is utterly rejected. Kikunosuke is reminded that, as an orphan, he is lucky to have been brought up in luxury and should not risk challenging his father. Besides, Otoku is of a lower station and is older than he is. After all, “face” is everything for people of their class, especially for performers who depend on the public’s acceptance. Faced with this rejection of Otoku, Kikunosuke refuses to bow to his father’s demands, and he stubbornly leaves home, despite the entreaties of his friend and fellow actor, Futusuke. But at the train station, where he had arranged to meet Otoku and travel to Osaka, he learns that she has been kept from joining him, so he departs alone.
3. One Year Later (20 minutes). Kikunosuke is now a struggling and still inept actor in Osaka (over 500 kilometers from Tokyo). Expressing built-up despair, he decides to give up acting for good, but when he walks out onto the street, he is shocked to find Otoku, who has finally managed to find his whereabouts and has come to him. They immediately repair to Kikunosuke’s small quarters. Otoku says that she has only come to be his servant and help him succeed, but Kikunosuke assures her that she is now his wife. With renewed determination, Kikunosuke vows to continue his acting career; but when his acting troupe’s leader passes away, Kikunosuke is suddenly out of a job, and his only option now is to join an itinerant acting crew that plays before lower-class audiences in smaller towns.
4. Four Years Later (34 minutes). Kikunosuke, still an itinerant actor and going nowhere, has degenerated to an aimless existence. Though Otoku remains loving and supportive, as always, he quarrels with her over pocket money. But after things get worse and they are out of work and money, they learn that that Futusuke’s acting company from Tokyo is playing in nearby Nagoya. Out of old friendship, Futusuke and his father give Kikunosuke a major role in their play, and there is an 8-minute sequence showing the Kabuki performance, with Kikunosuke in the starring role. He succeeds brilliantly, and the jubilant Kikunosuke and Otoku realise that they can now return to the big-time Tokyo Kabuki scene in triumph. Otoku tells Kikunosuke that she had always believed in him.
5. The Final Parting (34 minutes). At the train station, Kikunosuke again looks for Otoku and is told by his friends she cannot accompany him back to Tokyo. His father will only take him back without Otoku, and Otoku has agreed that Kikunosuke should return alone. Reluctantly, Kikunosuke leaves without her and rejoins her family. Otoku returns to Osaka and lives alone in the old room that the two of them had shared. One year later, Kikunosuke and the Onoe acting troupe happen to visit Osaka, and there is another Kabuki performance presented at length. Afterwards, Kikunosuke is informed by an old friend that Otoku is in town and dying from consumption. Kikunosuke rushes to her bedside and swears that they can now live together – his father has finally relented and accepted their union. But it’s too late for them now. Otoku, selfless to the end, urges him to fulfil his obligation to his now-adoring public and accept their acclaim by participating in the ritual river barge procession. He does so, and we see him bowing to the cheering crowds on his river barge, while Otoku passes away back in their room.

Now one could say that Zangiku Monogatari is a story about the coming to maturity of a great Kabuki actor, who has been aided by a selfless woman who supported him and always believed in him. Certainly the events of the film closely follow Kikunosuke’s career ups and downs, from early failure to final triumph. Kikunosuke, played well by Shôtarô Hanayagi, is a sensitive, introspective individual who can be stung by criticism but who can stand up for his principles. And to the degree that there is a subjective perspective, it is that of Kikunosuke, rather than of Otoku. But in fact, the principal theme of Zangiku Monogatari is that of romantic love and the difficulty of finding a place for that in traditional society. Throughout the film there is a striking visual contrast between the rigid demands of society, symbolised by the absurdly ornate rituals and stylised gestures of Kabuki theatre, and the unearthly passions of romantic union. Otoku does not rebel against the demands of society, but instead accepts her humble position and seeks to find a way that she can serve “her young master”. She sacrifices everything for him, hoping to help him achieve his ambition, and by so doing, she unwittingly shows him the far greater possibilities of romantic love. But as in almost all of Mizoguchi movies, the male figure lacks the strength to give himself over completely to love (although Kikunosuke is more committed than most of Mizoguchi’s male characters). The final scene is heartbreaking. This is the third time in the film that he has left Otoku in order to fulfill the demands of his profession, and this time the separation is complete. While he is bowing to the cheering multitudes in a ritualistic and triumphant manner, his true love is dying in her bed alone.

There are some absolutely brilliant camera shots in Zangiku Monogatari that are worth repeated viewings. All of them feature elaborate camera and character movements that sustain the dramatic action in a fluid form of visual poetry. Here are some of them:

• In Act 1, there is a shot that lasts 4:40 showing Kikunosuke becoming fed up by the antics of two tipsy geishas who are quarrelling over his affections.
• Another particularly memorable scene in Act 1 is a long tracking shot when Kikunosuke first meets Otoku and asks her what she thinks of his acting. It is shot from a low angle, upwards towards the embankment on which they are walking back and forth, and it lasts 4:50.
• In Act 2, Kikunosuke is alone with Otoku and wants to get to know her better. He cuts some watermelon for her, while she busies herself preparing some refreshments. The shots lasts 5:20 and delicately shows their tentative and polite approaches. In the end, he tells her that he will try to be a good actor for her – she will be his inspiration.
• The dramatic encounter in Act 2 with Kikunosuke’s father during which he is told to give up Otoku lasts 5:30.
• In Act 4 there is a touching scene after Kikunosuke has abused Otoku and has struck her, taking some pocket money from her by force (she has been earning some money as a seamstress). She comes over to him and humbly apologises in an act of total submission. Trying to maintain his pride, Kikunosuke sullenly returns the money to her, admitting his wrong.
• In Act 5, after Kikunosuke has boarded the train back to Tokyo and has learned that Otoku won’t be coming back with him, there is a dramatic 4:00 scene in the railway car. Kikunosuke movingly tells Futusuke and his companions how empty his life would be without Otoku.
• The final long shot between Kikunosuke and Otoku at her bedside lasts 6:15. In it they express their happiness at his success. They are both in tears, but perhaps for different reasons. Kikunosuke is worried about Otoku’s health, while Otoku expresses the sorrow of the last chrysanthemum.

★★★★

"Bedlam" - Val Lewton (directed by Mark Robson, 1946)

Val Lewton produced Bedlam (1946) shortly after The Body Snatcher (1945), and like that previous work, it is more of a grisly historical melodrama than a horror film. Also, like The Body Snatcher, there is no suggestion of the supernatural, as there often is in other Lewton-produced films. The screenplay, to which Lewton again contributed under the pseudonym of “Carlos Keith” and on which he collaborated with director Mark Robson, was inspired by Hogarth’s series of paintings, “A Rake’s Progress”, and there are several inset stills from that work inserted into the film for inter-scene punctuation.

The film is set in 1761 at St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum, which is an allusion to Bethlem Royal Hospital in London and known as “Bedlam”. In those days citizens could amuse themselves by paying tuppence and entering the asylum to laugh at the lunatics that were held there. On one such occasion near the beginning of the film, wealthy Lord Mortimer and his protege, Nell Bowen, stop at the asylum for some entertainment and learn that one of the inmates has just died trying to escape. Ms. Bowen assumes upper-class airs and feigns indifference, but we soon learn that she suspects that the asylum inmates are ill-treated. Invited by the asylum master, George Sims, to inspect more thoroughly, Nell finds the conditions appalling and vows to campaign for asylum reform. This sets the narrative conflict of the film, as the spirited Nell Bowen, played by Anna Lee, confronts the cynical and cruel asylum master, played by Boris Karloff. But the film is more than a simple melodrama, because it engages in a lengthy and nontrivial moral debate over the course of the drama.

On the occasion of visiting the asylum, Nell runs into a morally upright Quaker, Hannay, who had just applied for a stonemason’s job at the asylum. They start a discussion about the proper attitude towards one’s fellow creatures that will run through the entire film. As a member of the Society of Friends, Hannay, of course, is steadfastly opposed to violence and believes that compassion and love (agape) are the only proper responses to whatever one encounters. Nell gradually becomes sympathetic but is sceptical that such naivete will lead anywhere. She does urge her patron, the rotund and foppish Lord Mortimer, to devote funds to the betterment of inmate conditions at the asylum, but Mortimer balks when he learns how expensive this will be.

Nell becomes fed up with the self-indulgent Mortimer and scornfully abandons his patronage, returning to her former occupation as a street performer. But she continues her campaign against Mortimer and the asylum, and soon the devious Sims has her forcibly committed as an inmate/prisoner in the asylum. Now inside, Nell, is terrified by the possibility of being manhandled by the population of deranged inmates. Hannay manages to pay her a visit, but he tells her that he is powerless to do anything, and in fact now that she is “inside”, she has the opportunity to use Christian love to change the behaviour of the inmates for the better.

This she does, and the inmates become docile and affectionate before her. When Sims comes around to impose his final “treatment” on Nell, the inmates turn on him and Nell escapes. Now in charge, the inmates put Sims before a mock trial. Sims pleads for his life, telling them of his own doubts and fears, and they surprisingly sympathise, but before Sims can make his escape, he is stabbed by a not-quite catatonic inmate. The inmates then use bricks and mortar to wall up the still-conscious Sims in “Cask of Amontillado” fashion, ensuring his death.

Now, at the end of the film, news of the disappearance of Sims draws Hannay and Nell back to visit the asylum. When stonemason Hannay sees the recently cemented wall, he figures out what happened, but he clams up, signaling to us that Nell's pragmatic approach has apparently won out in their own personal contest concerning ethical behaviour. Nell whispers to him that, after all, the inmates have already suffered enough, and Hannay assenting, sighs in resignation that God will give final judgement, anyway.

Despite generally good cinematography and acting, Bedlam has some weaknesses. The early upper-class frolics and witty verbal exchanges are supposed to be humorous, but they have a forced quality to them and don’t seem to lead anywhere dramatically. Anna Lee, as Nell Bowen, is excellent and magnetic, and Boris Karloff, in a strong performance as the evil George Sims, is unusually unctuous and serpentine, even for him. The strength of these two leads serves to carry the action and helps maintain the focus on the primary contest between them. The acting of the others is reasonably good, but as in Isle of the Dead, the performance of Jason Robards, Sr., is completely unconvincing.

Overall, Bedlam is an odd mixture and perhaps tries to do too much. It is sometimes humourous, sometimes spooky, and sometimes alarming. It is expressionistic only at times, and it never quite hits its stride as a thriller, although it does have its moments. A praiseworthy feature is the fact that it reminds us of what dramatists and filmmakers have long sought to expose: the obscenity of psychiatric practice in Western societies and the unjust way that medical staff can incarcerate people indefinitely. Bedlam stands in a line with other excellent films, such as Shock Corridor (1963), and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), that have attempted, so far with very little success, to bring about an end to these practices [1].

Outside of the main conflict between Nell Bowen and George Sims, the subtextual moral debate between Hannay and Nell has its own interest, particularly because of the conclusion it reaches. The film has not finally come down in favour of literal honesty or the strict observance of a code of social morality. Instead, it follows the course of the gradual opening-up of Nell Bowen’s heart and concludes on a promising note of love. Nell has followed her own unique path and has not submitted to anything or anyone -- not to the self-indulgence of Mortimer, not to the cynicism and force of Sims, and not even to the docility and helplessness of Hannay. It is the rigid Hannay, after all, who has changed at the end of the story, not Nell. She has succeeded on her own self-styled and passionate terms.
★★★

Notes:

1. For further reflections of mental health care, see my reviews of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and Shutter Island (2010).

"M" - Fritz Lang (1931)

M, filmed in only six weeks, is far and away Fritz Lang’s most popular film and his own personal favourite. It tells the story of a pathological child-killer, superbly played by Peter Lorre. The story has three main phases.

1. In the first phase the situation of conflict is established. There has been a series of gruesome child murders that have gripped the city (said to be a city of four million people, suggesting Berlin, but the real events that inspired this story took place in Düsseldorf). The police are combing the city for everything they can to find on the killer, but there are no clues. As the frustrated police increase the intensity of their search, they continually raid all the houses of prostitution and known gambling parlours, interfering with “business as usual” for the criminal underworld.
2. In phase 2, the criminal underworld decides that they, themselves, must capture the killer in order to get the police off their backs. This stage of the film tracks the parallel activities of the two groups, the police and the criminal underworld, as they work separately to hunt down the killer. Most people find this clever back-and-forth switching between parallel scenes showing the two contrasting groups working towards the same goal to be the most intriguing and satisfying aspect of the film.
3. In the third phase, the killer is cornered and eventually captured by the criminal underworld. They proceed to hold a mock trial, which seems to have about the same degree of "fair hearing" court procedures as those conducted by the government authorities. It is here that the killer, played well by Lorre, finally breaks down in a dramatic confession of his guilt.

The killer, Hans Beckert, is presented in the film with a certain amount of sympathy for the way in which he is the helpless victim of his own pathology. Because of Lang’s sensitive treatment of the killer, his characteristic fatalistic development of events gains a rare tragic intensity. This brings out a difference between Alfred Hitchcock and Lang. Hitchcock’s dramatic tension emphasises the suspense, while Lang’s emphasises the fatality of character. Lorre, as the culprit, squirms in a relentlessly encircling web. The killer, tracked down and caught like a dangerous animal, is presented as unable to check his sick urges. After each of his crimes he remembers nothing of the details and his urges. His attitude is one of utter disbelief and sorrow. With M, Lang gives a new dimension to the “dual personality” theme which has so often fascinated the German mind.

Stylistically, M is especially significant in several respects. It marks a transition for Lang as a director. Although he still uses people and objects expressionistically, he has opted, on the whole, for a more realistic depiction of character and events. Cardboard characters, monumental sets, and the grouping and movement of crowds no longer have such a complete monopoly on Lang’s attention as they did in Metropolis.

Also M was Lang’s first sound film. He immediately incorporated sound not only as an additive feature but as a separate, independent element. Long before the audience gets a first view of the main character, they hear him talking to a young girl or whistling a melody from Grieg’ (Peer Gynt Suite, Hall of the Mountain King”,) which remains his “leitmotiv” throughout the movie. Sound is also often used to tie up different elements; while the sound of one scene lingers, the camera moves through a sequence of different, but related takes. Possessed of a quickness in learning technique, Lang became a master of the use of sound in his first attempt.

Throughout the film, there is an interesting subtext conveyed by presenting the parallel activities of the police and the underworld. Both forces are led by charismatic leaders: Inspector Karl Lohmann for the police and the ruthless Schränker (himself wanted for three murders) for the underworld. Because both forces are highly organised and are undertaking the hunt in parallel, many viewers think that Lang is representing the two forces as essentially and morally equivalent. But I don’t hold to that opinion. The two forces actually represent two competing and contrasting world views, and this may have represented a commentary about contemporary German society. Throughout the film the police attempt to use science and technology in order to hunt down the killer, Beckert. They represent the Western rationalist view, including the notion that a psychotic criminal is, himself, the victim of some forces outside of his control and needs medical care, rather than punishment. On the other side, Schränker and the underworld use more traditional social operations to track down the killer. For example, they organise all the beggars in the city to follow every single school child as they walk home from school. They can be seen to represent more traditional forces of social control that are closer to mob rule than the rule-driven mechanisms of the police. This mode of operation can sometimes be more efficient in the eradication of evil-doers, but is it desirable? Their leader, Schränker, is simply the most ruthless and cunning among them, even resorting to torture; whereas Police Inspector Lohmann is more cerebral and reliant on rational procedures of evidence gathering. In the end Lohmann succeeds in locating the whereabouts of the mock trial and just barely halting what would have been a gangland-style execution. Justice has prevailed. Even today, though, viewers are likely to be divided on what really should be the ultimate fate of Beckert.
★★★½

Aesthetics of Two Neorealist Films: "Open City" and "Paisan"

“Neorealism is more an ontological position than an aesthetic one”

– André Bazin

Critical consideration of certain Italian post-war films referred to as Neorealist must perforce deal with rather fundamental questions concerning the nature of the cinematic experience. Unfortunately there is a lack of general agreement as to what actually constitutes Neorealism, since the films have been interpreted on several different levels. However, art movement categories frequently suffer from problems of definition, and, usually it is a case of the old logician’s problem of whether to characterize the class by its defining statement or by its individual members. In the case of Neorealist films, it seems that the weight of opinion has expressed itself in terms of the latter choice, and Neorealism is generally taken to apply only to the specific post-war films of Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Lattuada, and a few others. Such a classification would not be interesting in terms of film theory unless there were certain common cinematic characteristics among these films, and such is the case for the Neorealist films for which there is a persistent critical opinion which asserts that conditions in Italy after the war were such as to engender a common cinematic expression.

However, critics and historians express the essence of Neorealism in terms only of the social environment that spawned it. Arthur Knight [1] remarks that “drawn irresistibly to social themes, they [the Neorealists] were united by a common [social] philosophy.” Hollis Alpert [2] says Neorealism meant “the birth of a new conscience, which was translated into social awareness and a concern for the ordinary man.” And Andrew Sarris [3] observed that Neorealism “was never anything more than the Stalinallee of social realism.” While this line of analysis may be appropriate to the Communist theoreticians who dominated Italian criticism, it doesn’t go far enough to provide the aesthetic distinctions which distinguish the Italian films from other efforts at realism, such as, say, cinema verité. Indeed the importance of the aesthetic basis of the Neorealist films is likened by André Bazin to that of the Russian films of the Twenties [4]:

Potemkin turned the cinema world upside down not just because of its political message, not even because it replaced the studio plaster sets with real settings and the star with an anonymous crowd, but because Eisenstein was the greatest montage theoretician of his day, because he worked with Tissé, the finest cameraman of his day, and because Russia was the focal point of cinematographic thought. . .

It is my purpose here to look at some aesthetic ideas appropriate to the Neorealist films and then consider two important films of this genre, Open City (Roma, Città Aperta,1945) and Paisan (Paisà, 1946), in light of those ideas. I restrict myself to the two films by Roberto Rossellini, because, though uneven, each contains sequences which are, in my opinion, expressive of the essence of the neorealistic aesthetic – this despite Rosselini’s own statement [5] that Neorealism was

“above all a moral standpoint from which to view the world. Afterwards it becomes an aesthetic viewpoint."

This merely reflects the fact that the expression of an amoral standpoint can have profound aesthetic consequences, consciously intended or not.

The most memorable scenes of the two Rossellini films, the activity in the Roman streets in Open City and the fourth (“Forentine”) and Sixth (“Po River”) segments of Paisan, are those that give, in the words of James Agee, the “illusions of the present tense.” [6] In these scenes we are presented images of unanalyzed reality – or rather, images that are one level of abstraction closer to concrete reality than those usually present on film [7]. Getstalt psychologists have determined that a certain amount of analysis takes place at the level of perception, that is, prior to cognition [8]. When one is shown four dots arranges as follows:

One perceives, in addition, the form of a square in the manner of (a), rather than (b) or (c):
In general, reality is reduced to the most simple patterns at the moment of perception. A certain “reduction” of reality takes place. Much of the history of modern painting is concerned with artists’ attempts to deal with the formal perception of the world as opposed to reality as it appears unanalyzed (as it might appear in a photograph). Similarly most of the advances in film technique have been concerned with ways of presenting a reduced or analyzed version of reality on screen – analyzed so that certain formal and thematic connections can be made by the viewer and so that the film itself can become a statement by the author.

As stated above, the important scenes in Open City and Paisan present the world in a relatively unanalyzed state and run counter to the, up to then, historic course of cinematic expression. Though at first thought this might merely seem to be a retrogression in film technique, there is another consideration. With virtually every mode of artistic expression (except music), there is a delicate balance that must be maintained between the referential reality and the language or grammar of expression. To elaborate on this, let us consider an idea from gestalt psychology – that reality is perceived structurally and this structure is the simplest possible for the circumstantial stimuli [9]. From such an idea it is quite reasonable to speculate that what we might call the most admirable “statements” about the world are those that can be applied to the greatest amount of reality and yet have the simplest attendant structure. Certainly such a principle dominates the ascendency of theories in the scientific world, and something similar is involved when we admire a Shakespearean play for its universality and profundity – here the structure of the play applies to a wealth of human situations that have existed in the world over centuries. The delicate balance between the referential reality and the language of expression means that the language should be profound (possess a significant abstract structure) and yet be directly applicable to concrete reality. The more general the abstraction present, the more widely applicable is the structure to reality, but at the same time the further removed is that structure from concrete reality. The danger exists in allowing the language of expression to become disengaged from concrete reality.

An example of this disengagement coming to pass is the American Western film, a genre which once may have had close connections with reality, but which has become progressively more mythic and self-contained. The Western is now a self-consistent but disembodied iconography; such films are merely exercises in grammatical expression, analogous to writing love poetry in Latin, and meaningful only to buffs. André Bazin was referring to this kind of imbalance when he wrote the following [10]:

[the representation of reality on the screen] is a necessary illusion, but it quickly becomes identified in the mind of the spectator with is cinematographic presentation. As for the filmmaker, the moment he has secured the unwitting complicity of the public, he is increasingly tempted to ignore reality. From habit and laziness he reaches the point when he himself is no longer able to tell where lies begin or end. There could never be any question of calling him a liar, because his art consists in lying.

The connection of art expression to reality is not a static condition. As an audience’s perceptual organization of the world evolves, the artist must continually adjust his language of expression so as to continue to relate to his audience’s perceptual reality. Thus a medieval painting seems unreal to modern observers, because it relates to a perceptual reality that no longer exists in the minds of its spectators. Bazin expressed an awareness of this entire aesthetic situation when he observed that “the objective nature of the modern novel, by reducing the strictly grammatical aspects of its stylistics to a minimum, has laid bare the secret essence of style.” [11]

The aesthetic ideas presented so far have been quite general, and they naturally manifest themselves differently in different art forms. When Bazin [12] says that “the cinema stand in contrast to poetry, painting, and theater, and comes ever close to the novel” , he means that the power of the film to represent reality can most closely be compared to that of the novel. There is a danger, however, in drawing this analogy too closely, because the novel’s communication through words is always a highly abstract process. Even if the novel is more concrete than poetry or theater, it still involves the author’s translation of his perceptual reality into linguistic symbols and the ensuing reverse translation by the reader into his own perceptions. Such an abstract process always involves a considerable degree of analysis by the mere use and choice of words independent of grammatical style and is thus less immediate than film. Film, however, is a medium wherein reality can be presented almost without analysis – the balance can be lost in the other direction in this case.

Some of the earliest enthusiasts of Neorealism made the mistake of assuming that the art lay in merely photographing reality outside of the studio. But this is clearly only one component of the process. Surely a film that involved no creator’s selectivity, no analysis of perceptual reality, would not be an artistic statement. It would be no different than looking randomly out the window. The vapidity of such cinema was remarked upon by Stanley Kauffman in his review of the Zavattini - De Sica film, The Roof (Il Tetto, 1956), when he complained that {13]

"they strove to make the film as much like life as possible. Therefore its hour and half contains moment of pathos and humor and excitement together with long stretches that are not particularly interesting. Just like your life and mine."

Such was the result when Zavattini tried to put his own doctrinaire theories about Neorealism into practice.

The Rossellini sequences, on the other hand, are outstanding, because they do represent a distinct point of view (the filmmaker’s statement about reality) and yet effectively root the viewer in concrete perceptions (contrary to previous films which had become increasingly abstract and grammatical). The thematic current that runs through the films is the idea that heroism consists not of accomplishment but of resignation to one’s fate, coincident with the maintenance of one’s moral commitments. When the priest and the Communist both die for their cause in Open City, they do so with a peculiar sense of peace, giving us the feeling that they have achieved, through their resignation, some degree of perhaps Christian transcendence. Critics have tended to isolate Rossellini’s form from his content. Thus Robert Warshow [14] states that “Rossellini has no intellectual defences, and when he attempts to go beyond the passive representation of experience, he falls at once into the grossest sentimentality and falsehood.” Whether false or not, Rossellini’s moral theme is inextricably intertwined with the manner of its presentation.

Moreover critics take exception to Rossellini’s essentially melodramatic narrative form [15]. Yet this melodramatic style is an essential quality for Rossellini. Rossellini organizes the plot around key events, highly dramatic events involving life and death. In the best sequences (the “Florentine” and “Po River” episodes of Paisan), the audience is given no background, no reason for the event. The unanalyzed event takes up the entire action. There are certain relationships among the characters which the audience would find useful to know, but the narrative does not point these out or slow down for audience comprehension. The action itself seems to exist independent of the filming of it, and the camera has no time to examine details. Robert Warshow points out that American films devote considerable screen time to the establishment of characterization in order that the characters, who are really abstractions, can be given the necessary background detail so that they can be individualized and so that the action can be explained in terms of the individual motivations of the characters. Rossellini, keying only on the action of a highly charged event, achieves the unanalyzed and unexplained immediacy he wants, but he does so only by being melodramatic. That is, by having such unrelenting dramatic action, Rossellini appears melodramatic. The failures, (a) in Open City of scenes involving Bergman and his coterie and (b) in Paisan of the episode involving the three American chaplains, arise from Rossellini’s use of symbolic characters, i.e. his deviation from the successful melodramatic-event narrative style.

The remarkable “Florentine” and “Po River” episodes of Paisan work because they are melodramatic. The viewer is constantly perceiving violent and fragmented images (not fragmented artificially, but as they would come to a bystander) which he must assemble coherently in his mind. The analysis, performed by the viewer, would not even be undertaken if the event itself were not of sufficient dramatic intensity.

In the “Florentine” episode a woman is looking for her lover in a contested part of the city. The camera maintains a consistent third-person perspective. There are no cuts to closeups. Indeed the camera seems to be somewhat wary of the danger present in the situation. The viewer thus feels himself part of the action. When two fascists are captured, they are rushed up almost too close to the camera for comfort. One feels like taking a step backwards when watching. This sense of immediacy is maintained until the woman learns of the death of her lover and the episode ends. The viewer’s knowledge of the woman and whatever her lover meant to her is constructed consistently of what can be drawn from her actions during the event. This is a limitation, but at the same time the event is so real that it seems as rich as life itself – so full of possibly meaningful, briefly glimpsed detail that still awaits our minds’ attentive reflection. This overall effect is enhanced by the elliptical succession of images. Important actions are not even shown, and the viewer must fill it in for himself, because the action is racing ahead. The entire “Po River” sequence is put together in this fashion. Also, because the viewer is putting together some of the action in his mind, the unseen events make their presence felt in succeeding scenes, just as they do in real life. An example of this shadow casting of an event is the effect of Pina’s death on the subsequent scene in Open City.

The passive, eye-level camera techniques, the newsreel editing, and the naturalistic acting ultimately bring about the active perceptual participation of the viewer. The necessity of the viewer to continually analyze the event and keep up with the action harmonizes with Rossellini’s moral purpose. The various deaths reported in the “Forentine” and “Po River” episodes of Paisan seem so random and brutal, so subordinate to the larger context of the war and the rest of the real world, that we, the viewers, can only reflect upon them in our own time. Yet at the same time the characters who participate in these events are struggling on behalf of their ideals. This combination is what gives the strength to what is best in Rossellini’s films. The moral attitudes of the characters and the concrete context in which they are depicted each give substance to the other. And this is the crucial point that is missed by Bazin and Warshow and which the foregoing argument has been an attempt to justify: that the potency of Rossellini’s realistic cinematography depends aesthetically on the melodramatic narrative style and the moralistic message – whether one is in sympathy with that moral message or not.

[See also "Subjective Realism in the Italian Film"]

Notes:

1. Knight, Arthur, The Liveliest Art, The New American Library (1957), p. 225.
2. Alpert, Hollis, The Dreams and the Dreamers, Macmillan (1962), p. 183
3. Sarris, Andrew, Confessions of a Cultist: On the Cinema, 1955-1969, Simon and Schuster (1971), p. 30.
4. Bazin, André, What is Cinema?, Volume II, University of California (1971), p. 25.
5. Rossellini, Roberto, Interviews with Film Directors, ed. by Andrew Sarris, Avon Books (1967), p. 475.
6. Agee. James, Agee on Film, Volume I, Grosset and Dunlap (1969), p. 301.
7. I am, of course, presuming that there actually is a concrete reality and that all of us are referring to the same thing when we use the phrase. Moreover, I am overlooking such linguistic issues, as what exactly Gertrude Stein meant when she said, “there’s no there there.”
8. See, for example, Rudolph Arnheirm’s book, Art and Visual Perception. (1974).
9. “The basic law of visual perception. . . asserts that any stimulus pattern tends to be seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as the given conditions permit.” – Rudolph Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, University of California (1954), p. 45.
10. Bazin, André, op. cit., p. 27.
11. Ibid., p. 31. In connection with realism and the recent course of modern literature, there is an interesting article by Tom Wolfe in the December 1972 issue of Esquire, entitled, “Why they aren’t writing the Great American Novel Anymore”, which generally supports the aesthetic outline in this article.
12. Ibid., p. 26.
13. Kauffmann, Stanley, A World on Film, Delta (1966), p. 292.
14. Warshow, Robert, The Immediate Experience, Atheneium (1962), p. 257.
15. “Unfortunately the demon of melodrama that Italian film makers seem incapable of exorcising takes over every so often, thus imposing a dramatic necessity of strictly foreseeable events.” – André Bazin, op. cit., p. 31.