[!@#$%!]

just finished watching (2nd time in my life) fassbinder's merchant of four seasons (sorry i don't know the german title).

it's great to be able to watch movies again. and the movie is great. sad and funny--very funny.

listening now to some criterion commentary linking him to dougas sirk. now i have to watch sirk for sure! i think i might have seen one or two, unaware of him.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

peckinpah is more about death. what to do in the face of it. that's where he gets me-- it's one of my major preoccupations in life. is peckinpah a more skilled director of actors than ford? of course not. but his view of the world is just exactly where it matters to me.

---

the more i think about it, the more i believe peckinpah wasn't about "ultraviolence"-- it was more about having his eyes wide open to life's basic realities and not wanting to look away from them. MOST works of art will flee to ideas, to mythologies, to ideals, but this fucker did not flinch one bit. not one bit. he kept staring.

I never knew about the buddhist thing but it's interesting, especially in his treatment of violence. I could kind of make the connection if he simply showed it how it is, as a kind of natural force, but doesn't his excessive use of slo-mo, etc, only ultimately serve to make it something other than what it is? For me it does become idealised, mythologised. Surely it's impossible to read the final scenes of a film like Straw Dogs any other way. Even Slim Pickens' death in Pat Garrett, which I love, is ultimately a glorification of death through violence.

Ford's western's are noted by their general lack of violence compared with pretty much any western. Even big gunfights are either shown off camera or in such a way that they appear uneventful. Even his portrayal of the gunfight at the OK corral in Clementine is a bit of a non-event, relative to its treatment in other films. Not sure if that's attributed to his Irish catholicism but it's something I've always liked about his films: as though he saw violence as a socially necessary but ultimately banal act.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

just finished watching (2nd time in my life) fassbinder's merchant of four seasons (sorry i don't know the german title).

it's great to be able to watch movies again. and the movie is great. sad and funny--very funny.

listening now to some criterion commentary linking him to dougas sirk. now i have to watch sirk for sure! i think i might have seen one or two, unaware of him.

I like Merchant of Four Seasons a lot but I'm struggling to find anything very funny in it, although it's a while since I watched it.

And yeah, definitely check Sirk out, although I'm slightly at a loss as to why Fassbinder is so often described as being a very Sirkian filmmaker. All his interviews have him talking about what a huge influence he was but I just don't see it translated into the films themselves. A bit like when Tarantino goes on about his debt to Mario Bava. Cool but where is it in the actual films?

[TheDom]

Thank you two! The Wild Bunch is next in line for me. It seems right up my alley.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by TheDom

Thank you two! The Wild Bunch is next in line for me. It seems right up my alley.

make sure it's the original director's cut. ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES. seriously.

@ demonyo: posting in a break from work but i'll reply later to the glorification of violence + sirk bits.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

I like Merchant of Four Seasons a lot but I'm struggling to find anything very funny in it, although it's a while since I watched it.

And yeah, definitely check Sirk out, although I'm slightly at a loss as to why Fassbinder is so often described as being a very Sirkian filmmaker. All his interviews have him talking about what a huge influence he was but I just don't see it translated into the films themselves. A bit like when Tarantino goes on about his debt to Mario Bava. Cool but where is it in the actual films?

the funny (to me) & sirk actually relate.

according to the critic (some professor of german) (sorry i have already sent back the disc and i can't rewatch it) fassbinder in the 60s made very cold very intellectual films in which there wasn't a lot of love for the characters.

around 1970 he discovers sirk and adopts similar techniques to portray an excess of emotion (previously absent in him): very artificial lighting, very calculated mise en scene, exaggerated acting, etc.

 

the difference (i think) is that while sirk apparently made these things in earnest (i don't know, having not seen) fassbinder seems to use them for ironic & critical effect. the take for me seems to be that having feelings makes you vulnerable to exploitation, and a display of feelings is never innocent but rather part of a larger machinery of social repression.

i watched this interview after teh movie so i didn't go back to corroborate but can say some things i remember noticing: these zoom-ins into closeup. the massive tears in the wife's face that look like she was splattered with egg white (see photo), the whole story with that little record he plays over. his "true love" dressed like some butterfly. the lashing in the war flashback-- looks more like a bedroom scene. the drinking and throwing of chairs and everything-- it's all over the top, but it doesn't sweep you. then at the very final scene, that very deadpan "okay" comes in total contrast from eeeeeeeeverything that has happened before. and of course we laughed at this. it's the realpolitik beneath the great display of feeling.

and the reason why i think all this is funny is that, while the pain of the characters is supposed to be authentic, the display of emotion is highly artificial and self-conscious, and seems to point at something else, to look at social structures and ideologies beneath feelings, as way as ways in wich people manipulate and mindfuck each other. it's the opposite of a "romantic" film in which the focus is on the feelings and everything else is an excuse. here the feelings are deprived of their finality through exaggeration-- we see past them, into other machinery in operation.

in some other type of drama, a class difference between lovers is an obstacle to be overcome by love; here love can't overcome it and instead we end up looking at class prejudices very coldly. i'm not saying sirk may not do this either, as i've said i have not seen him, but OTHER films don't do that-- the princess marries the pauper, love triumphs, etc.

so i don't know how or to what end sirk used his exaggerated feeling, but in the case of fassbinder it appears to me to be very very brechtian. distancing rather than demanding instant identification. so a lot of the feeling comes across as massive contrivance-- to use or manipulate someone for example. and the sister-as-greek-chorus helps us see that.

in the case of the film-- it shows completely how love is given or withdrawn according to performance of class standards. performance = love. that is completely cold and completely horrible, and that's the supersad part.

and yes, while i feel for the characters, i've always found brechtian irony very funny. no?? on top of the supersad, you can also laugh. a bit like his friend in the war-- "let's go save him" "no, wait, let's see what happens." i guess his friend is a stand in for the audience, too. "you're a pig". ha ha ha ha. yes. oh and absurdities like the encounter with the friend in the bar/restaurant-- they look at each other, he drops the plates he's about to serve, they embrace, walk hand in hand, we're left looking at the broken plates on the floor. hilarious.

plus, this totally ex-post-facto, and completely arbitrary, which only adds to a brechtian read-- the main character looks to me a lot like george costanza, ha ha ha. similar face, body type, even some attitudes.

 

 

[Rob Instigator]

jesus that sounds horrible. Like torture...

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

jesus that sounds horrible. Like torture...

yes... merchant of four seasons is very much a film about torture. social torture more than the conventional kind. but there's that kind too!

 

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

the difference (i think) is that while sirk apparently made these things in earnest (i don't know, having not seen) fassbinder seems to use them for ironic & critical effect.

Sirk was definitely using it ironically. He wanted to show how fake and constructed hollywood was. He often put in outrageously ott happy endings for that very reason. And as you say with Fassbinder, very Brechtian. In terms of humour, I can see now why you might find him funny but he's never had that affect on me. I ultimately find his films quite cruel, which isn't a criticism of him/his films, more just a reflection of my narrow reading of him/them.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

Sirk was definitely using it ironically. He wanted to show how fake and constructed hollywood was. He often put in outrageously ott happy endings for that very reason. And as you say with Fassbinder, very Brechtian. In terms of humour, I can see now why you might find him funny but he's never had that affect on me. I ultimately find his films quite cruel, which isn't a criticism of him/his films, more just a reflection of my narrow reading of him/them.

aaaaah-- then i DEFINITELY have to watch sirk. i'll have to put together a list & add it to my rental queue.

and yeah, it's not a happy laugh but it's definitely a laugh for me. in this one, not in all of them. with another one i watched recently, what's the name-- the one with the klimt woman-- petra von kant-- i only recall laughing at what the servant does when petra finally treats her nicely. i probably laughed at more but i don't recall it as a funny movie.

as for cruelty, yes, there's a lot of sadomasochism in his work. hans in merchant of four seasons is a classic masochist. his mother is a cold narcissistic sadist. his wife is a little more strange, i'll have to work that out. but yes-- he's all about power relationships, isn't he?

in a way, i was going to say earlier, he reminds me of peckinpah. because he's another one who doesn't flinch from horror-- real horror, not horror porn. he stares at what's fucked up and keeps staring. like when hans beats up his wife-- it's ugly and very uncomfortable but hans keeps beating and beating and beating and fassbinder makes us watch. "let's not pretend this shit doesn't happen."

is that cruel? sure, but-- life is cruel when you're fucked up-- and these people are fucked up and cruel to each other. is that how post-war germany was? is that how the economic miracle operated? i wasn't there but he seems to be saying so.

by the way, one thing the professor notes is that the names of the people--including the lawyer the wife calls, etc-- are names of prominent nazis. knowing that, that's funny-- it's almost out of mel brooks or zucker brothers (or marx bros?).

so, i don't see him as endorsing that cruelty, but rather pointing the finger at it. this is, in a way, reflected in the sister who defends hans and points at everyone's hipocrisy. and we watch, like his friend watched, and he calls us pigs. so we're cruel too.

the thing though, you have much bleaker, darker and brutal and violent films like "shallow grave" which are classified as "black comedies". and i don't find that one (or others of similar stripe, like a recent scottish one about a cop who is dying and hallucinating) funny at all-- they're just awful people being awful and nothing else. but in merchant, see-- i see the irony, i understand the social criticism, i understand the function, the hypocrisy is laid bare-- and that's sort of where the laugh comes from. not from the cruelty itself, but from the realization that it brings. the characters may act inhumane but the movie itself doesn't, i think. at least this one-- it's very lucid about little bourgeois customs.

[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Legend..

And its a masterpiece..

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

in a way, i was going to say earlier, he reminds me of peckinpah. because he's another one who doesn't flinch from horror-- real horror, not horror porn. he stares at what's fucked up and keeps staring. like when hans beats up his wife-- it's ugly and very uncomfortable but hans keeps beating and beating and beating and fassbinder makes us watch. "let's not pretend this shit doesn't happen."

is that cruel? sure, but-- life is cruel when you're fucked up-- and these people are fucked up and cruel to each other. is that how post-war germany was? is that how the economic miracle operated? i wasn't there but he seems to be saying so.

He seemed obsessed with control, power and, while I do think he was making broader social points with that, it also seemed to reflect aspects of his personal life and his relations with his inner circle. His films are a bit like Warhol's screen tests in that respect, but whereas Warhol set up a one-on-one power relationship between the camera and the sitter, Fassbinder played it out through a narrative (closer in that sense to some of Warhol's Paul Morrissey films). You could say Hanna Schygulla, Margit Carstenson, etc., were his equivalent 'superstars'. Had Fassbinder himself not made such a thing of his interest in Sirk, I think critics might've more readily connected him with Warhol. Conceptually anyway, a film like Petra Von Kant could've easily come out of the Factory.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by demonrail666

He seemed obsessed with control, power and, while I do think he was making broader social points with that, it also seemed to reflect aspects of his personal life and his relations with his inner circle. His films are a bit like Warhol's screen tests in that respect, but whereas Warhol set up a one-on-one power relationship between the camera and the sitter, Fassbinder played it out through a narrative (closer in that sense to some of Warhol's Paul Morrissey films). You could say Hanna Schygulla, Margit Carstenson, etc., were his equivalent 'superstars'. Had Fassbinder himself not made such a thing of his interest in Sirk, I think critics might've more readily connected him with Warhol. Conceptually anyway, a film like Petra Von Kant could've easily come out of the Factory.

i've never been able to stay awake through any warhol or morrissey films. and margit casterson in petra von kant, okay, she's got the iconic presence etc, but that movie is about much more than her being an icon-- it's about an icon getting old! and yes, there's an intimate/family/inner circle aspect to fassbinder's films like there is to many artists (i remember chinese roulette blowing my mind ages ago), but there's also very much a social aspect too. a lot of directors work with the same casts over and over (since you said warhol i'll say waters). but warhol would never had made something like mother küster's trip to heaven or the marriage of maria braun

anyway, this is superfun, and i'm almost forgetting to reply to the peckinpah thing. i will soon.

btw, i did put a sirk movie in my queue. since i'm obsessed with chronological developments i'm starting with "la habanera" in a kino edition. i'll get to the 40s and 50s in due time...

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

i've never been able to stay awake through any warhol or morrissey films. and margit casterson in petra von kant, okay, she's got the iconic presence etc, but that movie is about much more than her being an icon-- it's about an icon

Fair enough about not seeing them but I didn't mean in terms of their iconicity but the power plays they both seemed to focus on. And by Superstars I just meant a regular group of performers who appeared in Fassbinder's films but were also part of his social circle.

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

btw, i did put a sirk movie in my queue. since i'm obsessed with chronological developments i'm starting with "la habanera" in a kino edition. i'll get to the 40s and 50s in due time...

Haven't seen La Habanera but the films most people refer to as classically 'Sirkian' are Written on the Wind, All that Heaven Allows and the remake of Imitation of Life.

EDIT: You might've seen Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven, with Julianne Moore, which is a kind of pastiche/tribute to those films.

Speaking of Peckinpah, are you a fan of Walter Hill? Always thought he was something of an heir to Peckinpah. Not in all his films but definitely stuff like Southern Comfort, Last Man Standing, Extreme Prejudice. Wonderful stuff. He also had a big hand in the Deadwood series but that was a bit hit and miss.

[!@#$%!]

right... his 50s films are the apex... i'll get there, as i'm trying to be methodical in my approach. la habanera was actually shot in germany! with some famous swedish actress... right before he fled.

and yeah, saw the todd haynes one, and knew about the film connection (without knowing about sirk himself). it was a pretty good period piece i thought and good subject matter, but what i recall about it most is the look-- very vivid and colorful and high key light. ha, like almodóvar. this sirk appears more & more important every day and i'm sorry to have missed him so completely for so long. i've started to read about him a bit now...

anyway don't know about walter hill. loved the first year of deadwood, then it turned to watery shits. but i'll post you (later) my take on the violence thing. soon as i can focus. or need an excuse to procrastinate working on taxes, ha ha ha.

[Toilet & Bowels]

This probably won't mean much to people who lived outside the UK in the 80s but the Luke Goss (ex-Bros) is now an actor and makes absolutely heinous low budget action films. I've had to watch a few at work and they are the kind of films that make you think that the conservatives will win, the earth will fall into the sea, and those of us that survive will spend our remaining days giving blowjobs to the Koch brothers.

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by Toilet & Bowels

This probably won't mean much to people who lived outside the UK in the 80s but the Luke Goss (ex-Bros) is now an actor and makes absolutely heinous low budget action films. I've had to watch a few at work and they are the kind of films that make you think that the conservatives will win, the earth will fall into the sea, and those of us that survive will spend our remaining days giving blowjobs to the Koch brothers.

Haha. I've seen him in a couple of things. Directors seem to have him filed under 'If Jason Statham's unavailable ...'

[Toilet & Bowels]

More like "If Jason Statham won't give us the time of day..."

[demonrail666]

City of the Living Dead (Lucio Fulci)

Seen this plenty of times before on nth generation video but finally saw it in a decent version (Arrow Video). One of Fulci's more overlooked films but definitely up there with his best. Although not based on an actual Lovecraft story there's some references to his mythos and has a general Lovecraftian feel. If you like Lovecraft, ultra-low budgets, poor dubbing, outrageous gore and synth-heavy soundtracks you're gonna absolutely love it. Although if you do like those things then you've probably already seen it and love it.

 

 

--

Friday the 13th (Remake)

I'm not the biggest fan of the original but do enjoy it. I hated this though. It encapsulates the problem with so many current slasher remakes, in that within a few minutes of introducing the kids/potential victims I hate them so much that I just want them to die immediately. There's a million other things wrong with it but I can't even be bothered to go into them.

 

I'm on Jason's side.

[demonrail666]

The Conjuring

 

Bits of this were almost unenjoyably terrifying. I was actually quite relieved when some of its sillier moments came, just for providing a bit of relief from the really really scary bits.