1960s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[puxzkkx]

I could probably make a Top 50 of Japanese New Wave pics alone.

[Yojimbo]

Film for film, Contre le melodrame is one of the greatest box sets ever released.

Couldn't agree more, although 'Bitter End Of A Sweet Night', which isn't on that set, would certainly make my Top Five Yoshidas.

Oshima, Yoshida, Godard, and a variety of lesser-known Japanese samurai films may well dominate my final selection

[Cold Bishop]

It really is the Japanese Decade: the emergence of the New Wave - and it's own mini-movement, the Art Theatre Guild - with its endless amount of both formal and thematic experimentation and audaciousness; the late period masterpieces of such Classical masters as Ozu and Naruse; a lot of the post-war generation still going strong, i.e. Kurosawa, Ichikawa, Kobayashi; directors like Fukasaku and Misumi revving up the pop-cinema genres that would reach their peak in the early 70s; Seijun Suzuki, who was practically a one-man movement with his prolific output; and I'm sure there's many nooks and crannies that I'm still completely ignorant of....

Everyone talks about the Nouvelle Vague, but I'd surprised if my list isn't dominated by Japan.

[Tommaso]

Here are the first two I watched specifically for this round of listmaking:

David Holzman's Diary (Jim McBride, 1967)
A Man Vanishes (Shohei Imamura, 1967)

These two somehow feel like two different takes on the same subject: the question of cinematic truth and the fictional character of documentaries. In the case of the McBride film, things are more obvious, as this is very clearly a mockumentary, with the director gving us all sorts of hints at the fictional character of the film (which however some early audiences didn't see, if one can trust the Second Run booklet text), most prominently a poster of Hitchcock's "Suspicion" early on. The urge of Holzman to document his life in the hope of finding some elusive meaning only to become more of a drifter than at the beginning is a fascinating ode to filmmaking and its ultimate futility in establishing the 'truth'. Perhaps a bit too 'intellectual' in its take on (or against) Godard, but as a portrait of New York in the mid-60s I find this a very captivating film, not least because of the stunning performance of the main actor.

A Man Vanishes, however, is even more intriguing, as the film is indeed a documentary, filmed partly with hidden camera and real-life people. But when the search to find the missing person proves more and more fruitless, it's fascinating to see Imamura's shift to fictionalization, stressing the relationship between the two sisters instead, making us believe that they may be the key to the puzzle, and in the end exploding the whole conceit by showing us that everything was apparently only staged. Which, however, it wasn't. Imamura stating that "it was all fiction" is as evidently wrong as the idea that this was "the real truth". It's interesting to read in the MoC-booklet that "The Rat" started to become an 'actress' as soon as she knew that she was being filmed. And because of the editing and the (intentionally) out-of-synch audio one gets the feeling that all this is pure contrivance on the part of the director, which however it is only to a small degree. Great stuff, really, and it certainly doesn't feel at all like 130 minutes running-time.

[Yojimbo]

It really is the Japanese Decade: the emergence of the New Wave - and it's own mini-movement, the Art Theatre Guild - with its endless amount of both formal and thematic experimentation and audaciousness; the late period masterpieces of such Classical masters as Ozu and Naruse; a lot of the post-war generation still going strong, i.e. Kurosawa, Ichikawa, Kobayashi; directors like Fukasaku and Misumi revving up the pop-cinema genres that would reach their peak in the early 70s; Seijun Suzuki, who was practically a one-man movement with his prolific output; and I'm sure there's many nooks and crannies that I'm still completely ignorant of....

Everyone talks about the Nouvelle Vague, but I'd surprised if my list isn't dominated by Japan.

Maybe we should do a separate Japanese 1960s list! :-k

[knives]

Director's Guide Part 1

Otto Preminger
Exodus (1960)-R1 MGM (non-anamorphic)
Advise and Consent (1962)--R1 Warners
The Cardinal (1963)--R1 Warners
In Harm's Way (1965)--R1 Paramount
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)--R1 Sony
Hurry Sundown (1967)--R1 Olive
Skidoo (1968)--R1 Olive

Preminger has a really odd time this decade continuing down the large and personal road started last decade before going completely off of his rocker. Things start off very well with Exodus which more than any film in his career is saved from his distant bemusement. There's just about a billion ways this project about the founding of Israel should have gone wrong with this final product being the only good potential. Things are more focused upon interpersonal bickering with not even Paul Newman's supposed hero doing much to develop progress. Much easier to understand the success of is what's probably Preminger's masterpiece (and my favorite by the man) Advice and Consent a film which takes all of the best components of Anatomy of a Murder and turning them up to eleven. This is one of the few genuine epics out there with an amazing cast featuring just about every human under the sun like Preminger regular Burgess Meredith to Charles Laughton in his last performance. A personal highlight is Larry Tucker's bizarre cameo. The Cardinal, the next round in this tea of perfection, duplicates Exodus' success by going the unexpected route this time focusing in on the problems of race in America with a sloppy and violent view of the whole affair. We don't have Spike Lee this decade and this is a perfect substitute. Finally with these epics is In Harm's Way which is a far better From Here to Eternity than that blight could ever be. This isn't so much a war film as a measure of the people who make the military. The next turn for Preminger is easily his weirdest with Bunny Lake is Missing. You can tell at which point exactly Preminger becomes a raving lunatic, but at least with this film it works brilliantly. Despite often being derided as a Psycho rip-off I really don't see it beyond genre similarities and a particularly perverse twist which Preminger plays to maximum insanity. It's almost like the last inky wells of noir entering into horror. Hurry Sundown doesn't fare so well being the one serious misfire of the decade despite some nice ideas. Better than that though still hit and miss (in the mind of some viewers) is Skidoo which if nothing else is some of Preminger's most experimental and weird use of the widescreen format almost entering into a meta-play with it. In the face of reputation I'll argue that this is one of Preminger's most fun to see and his most daring.

Robert Rossen
The Hustler (1961)--R1 20th Century
Lilith (1964)--R1 Sony

Despite living through a decent chunk of the decade severe health problems prevented Robert Rossen from being as productive this decade as he deserved to be, but fortunately in the two jobs he did get off of the ground he put his all into mastering direction, writing, cinematography, and editing to a science for what might be the two best American films made during this stretch. I doubt I need to talk heavily about The Hustler which is one of those few staples that not only matches all praise, but often exceeds it as Rossen knows just how to bring out the best in a group of people who are the best. Unfortunately far less famous is his final film Lilith which is a whole different kettle of fish. It was intended to function something like a counter to On the Waterfront dealing directly and personally with Rossen's experiences with McCarthyism, but fortunately it becomes so much more than that even predicting Taxi Driver a little. The film almost functions as Rossen's peak with intimate real world characters dealing blackly with such internal philosophical problems that the world turns semi-surreal.

John Schlesinger
Terminus (1961)--R0 BFI (British Transport Films Vol. 3)
A Kind of Loving (1962)--R2 Optimum
Billy Liar (1963)--R0 Criterion (OOP), R2 Optimum
Darling (1965)--R1 MGM
Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)--R1 Warners
Midnight Cowboy (1969)--R1 MGM

Schlesinger takes awhile to comfortably express his voice this decade, but even before he does he manages to make nicely weird of the expectations toward British cinema at the time. He's a real strong punch right out of the door with Terminus a train film that manages to cram in a thousand different stories and people giving complete life and personality to each and every one of them. What's even more interesting is how little he uses montage which would probably make his job significantly easier. That same sort of daring features into his next three films which almost function as a comedic commentary on the Kitchen Sink hero. That said they're all very good as dramatic films too with A Kind of Loving in particular standing out as Schlesinger's most successful early example of turning the real into the bizarre and absurd. Billy Liar is easily the most famous of these early films, but I find it to largely be the most awkward of these efforts never really recovering from how terrible the protagonist is. Darling charmingly switches things up with a female protagonist (too shockingly rare of these films) and testing to see how that changes audience perception. Largely I think it is successful even as it has the poor man's James Mason in the male lead. the playing with how the story fails at documentary with the faked documentary segments thankfully feels as the last nail in the coffin of a very dead corpse. Schlesinger though really blooms into his own with his final British film and first colour film the anti-epic adaptation Far from the Madding Crowd. Things just go absolutely wild as Schlesinger invests everything into the point of view of his characters lending to a shrunken atmosphere that is at turns open and agoraphobic. Things drop down again with his first Hollywood film Midnight Cowboy. The big problem here is trying too hard as Schlesinger attempts to imitate Warhol and Bruce Conner without doing anything to make the story connect. Things get better in the second half which feels like Rent at times, but is otherwise perfectly fine.

Alexander Mackendrick
Sammy Going South (1963)--R2 Optimum
A High Wind in Jamaica (1965)--R1 20th Century Fox
Don't Make Waves (1967)--R1 Warner Archive Collection

Mackendrick had a sadly unfortunate time this decade getting fired or quitting from the majority of the projects he was attached to, I especially would have loved to see his Guns of the Navarone, but he did manage to make a trio of films that range from near to actual masterpiece. He starts off with a pair of children's films which does the ever so rare action of treating their subject with respect and interest with not an ounce of cynicism toward making films about children and the dark worlds they reside in. Even the plots are similar as an act of violence gets the protagonists lost in a harsh and ugly world that forces them to grow too early. Sammy Going South in particular plays like a particularly vicious Walkabout predecessor though oddly enough it seems to have better politics in regards to the natives. Even when the film settles down in its last act between Sammy and Edward G. Robinson things still carry that coarse edge suggesting innocence may never have been. Without revealing too much A High Wind in Jamaica becomes even more brutal as it turns to an ensemble of children and leads with Anthony Quinn's pirate captain's point of view. He's already given up on innocence and the children just provide a sad speedbump towards his inevitable end. With all of this sadness and confusion of course it is with his turn back to the adult world that things become light and bubbly again, almost saying that it is the over thirty sect that fails to act mature. Don't Make Waves for whatever failings of genre it has is comedic genius that is totally aware of what's expected of it and tries to avoid those expectations at every moment until it becomes a miniature Short Cuts. Where else for example are you going to see a film just shrug, say this is the point where the lead is suppose to get in his bathing suit, and then light him on fire to achieve that goal. Behind all of this silliness though Mackendrick manages to make the relationships work in this wonderful '30s sort of way.

[Sloper]

That same sort of daring features into his next three films which almost function as a comedic commentary on the Kitchen Sink hero. That said they're all very good as dramatic films too with A Kind of Loving in particular standing out as Schlesinger's most successful early example of turning the real into the bizarre and absurd.

This is such a wonderful film - easily my favourite 'kitchen sink' drama, head and shoulders above stuff like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Billy Liar and This Sporting Life, which often seem to get more acclaim. It's a long time since I've seen it but I'm not totally sure what you mean by 'turning the real into the bizarre'. To me it's simply one of the most honest, mature films about love I've ever seen, with two detailed, sympathetic (not to mention pathetic) performances at its centre from Alan Bates and June Ritchie (I have a real soft spot for James Bolam as well), and a priceless turn from Thora Hird as the mother of all mother-in-laws. It's unflinching and often devastating in its exploration of all the petty compromises and disappointments of ordinary life, while always eschewing the potential for maudlin tragedy; and it manages to be redemptive without being trite, which is a rare quality in a film. I was planning to make this my spotlight title, so I'll try to re-watch it soon and report back at tedious length.

My knowledge of this genre is full of gaps, but I strongly recommend The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner as well, a much less subtle film but still very brilliant, with a seething performance from Tom Courtenay, the bloke from my avatar in full-blown Establishment Bastard mode, and an absolute killer of an ending. And James Bolam again. Oh, and lovely use of the song 'Jerusalem'. Whenever you hear it, think of this film.

[knives]

That was probably just poor phrasing on my part as I meant that comment more generally to apply to the whole of Schlesinger's career. His movies for the most part are fairly done to earth in terms of story content, but he tends to play them in a way to make these very real and honest mechanics seem otherworldly. For example in Darling the use of the interviews makes the otherwise typical story mechanics of kitchen sink seem like Hollywood fantasy (which also does well to reflect the lead character's mental space). Especially in these early films it seems he is trying to use realism for expressionistic means which allows for a greater feeling of intimacy. What really hurts Kitchen Sink films for me usually is how they want us to care deeply about the protagonists exclusively because of their situation forcing them to be very passive, but Schlesinger really tries to get into the head of his protagonists which allows for not only greater versatility of story, but also gives activity to the narrative in a way that does allow for that all important caring.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Oh, and lovely use of the song 'Jerusalem'. Whenever you hear it, think of this film

Whenever I hear 'Jerusalem', I have to think of 'Handsworth Songs', which is not eligible. Astonishingly, Mills-Platts' Bronco Bullfrog is also not eligible; it's dated 1969 by the BFI and on screenonline, but unfortunately imdb dates it 1970. Well, this would have been a no-brainer for me, as is actually Saturday Night and Sunday Morning which in my eyes is the quintessential Woodfall film with all its highs and lows, that is its close portrayal of that Northern working class milieu, its angry hero, mavellously acted by Finney, who doesn't find no way out of his plight - and the girl who gets him to compromise in the end, of course.
I've also fond memories of Richardson's A Taste of Honey which is usually acclaimed for offering a less negative portrayal of women, but I'll have to watch it again to remember it more precisely. Same goes with the L-Shaped Room and with Ken Loach's Poor Cow and Kes which are eligible here.

[Sloper]

That was probably just poor phrasing on my part as I meant that comment more generally to apply to the whole of Schlesinger's career. His movies for the most part are fairly done to earth in terms of story content, but he tends to play them in a way to make these very real and honest mechanics seem otherworldly. For example in Darling the use of the interviews makes the otherwise typical story mechanics of kitchen sink seem like Hollywood fantasy (which also does well to reflect the lead character's mental space). Especially in these early films it seems he is trying to use realism for expressionistic means which allows for a greater feeling of intimacy. What really hurts Kitchen Sink films for me usually is how they want us to care deeply about the protagonists exclusively because of their situation forcing them to be very passive, but Schlesinger really tries to get into the head of his protagonists which allows for not only greater versatility of story, but also gives activity to the narrative in a way that does allow for that all important caring.

I just misunderstood, I think - but thanks for clarifying. And broadly speaking I agree with your final point, although Loneliness offers a great example of the hero turning his own passive despair into a kind of triumph.

Wu.Qinghua, I've been meaning to re-visit Saturday Night for a long time; and I've never seen A Taste of Honey or Poor Cow. A Kitchen Sink Binge is in order...

[Wu.Qinghua]

And I've got to re-visit Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Alan Silitoe's novel is one of my all-time favourites, and I've always been a bit disappointed by Richardson's adaptation because everytime I saw it I had the impression that it can't really come up to its literary model. But on the other hand, it's anything but a bad movie - and it's use of Blake's 'Jerusalem' is memorable indeed.

[domino harvey]

Well, the baton has been picked up! Exodus will likely by my sole Preminger pick for the decade (but Bunny Lake is Missing could surprise)... Larry Tucker is of course amazing in Advise and Consent-- even in such an overstuffed den of talent he shines. While I like Far From the Madding Crowd very much indeed, Billy Liar is less enamored with its protagonist than I think you give it credit for and is quite winning in its own fashion-- that said, I doubt either make my very crowded list! Completely agree on the necessity of the last two Rossen films-- he was taken out in his prime, and God only knows what he could have done next. Lilith in particular seems to anticipate the recent deconstructionist romantic comedies in tearing down the appeal of Seberg's character, who is, as is frighteningly made cogent, in an insane asylum for a reason! Both will be among the American contingent on my list.

[knives]

Being Jewish, but not being a zionist (I've gotten spat on for that before) Exodus means a whole lot for me to the point where I'm uncomfortable a little saying what the quality of the film is since I project so much baggage onto it. I don't think I could ever as a result of that talk about the film with any sense of objective viewpoint (the same thing happens with Notre Musique). That said I feel comfortable calling it great and really for a productive filmmaker I can't think of any American with more masterpieces per film this decade than Preminger.

[colinr0380]

I have to agree with Sloper on A Kind of Loving being the Schlesinger standout of the decade. It is also perhaps Alan Bates' best film. I love Billy Liar but I think that A Kind of Loving is the key foundation that allowed Billy Liar to embellish with widescreen, fantasies and Julie Christie - there is something even more tragic about the crushing banality of the situation that Alan Bates gets into here, without any real monsters to fight against in his wife and mother-in-law. There are no fantasies, no Julie Christie here to brighten things up for a while (or Simone Signoret to ignore until it is too late as in Room At The Top) and provide an avenue of escape.

It's not afraid to make the hero unsympathetic in his lashings out at the inevitable future laid in front of him, yet he's also understandable in having those somewhat selfish responses to the dawning realisation that he is going to have to share the rest of his life with his new family, even before his child arrives! Never have the idea of family ties that bind been so utterly frightening and depressing.

[zedz]

I could probably make a Top 50 of Japanese New Wave pics alone.

I just did a quick extraction from my last list and also-rans, added in things I'd seen since or had overlooked, and got to 51 'essential' (to me) Japanese films of the 60s without breathing hard. And there are a lot of presumably great films I haven't seen: most of Naruse and Hani's output, for example, a vast swathe of highly regarded documentary work, and so forth.

[Dr Amicus]

It's good to see A Kind of Loving get some attention here - I probably like it a bit less than some of its more ardent proponents so far, but it's a worthy addition to the cycle that tends to get overlooked. It probably won't make my list - it didn't last time - but if I get the chance I'll revisit it along with some of the others - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, A Taste of Honey and This Sporting Life made my list last time and I hope they stand up. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning is the one I've seen most often - I taught it one year at Uni - and to me it's less successful, being carried primarily by Finney's remarkable performance. Still, I must get round to finally watching the BFI Blu of this and Runner...

As an aside, there's an interesting attack on the cycle from the 60s - I haven't got the details at hand, but I'll try and find them if no-one else can chip in. One of the points raised by the article is the prevalance of certain motifs repeated constantly - the one I can remember is "the shot of our town from that hill", not least because my students got probably got a bit tired of me pointing out all the examples whenever we watched a clip in class...

[knives]

Young Torless

In many ways this film seems to be avoiding its purpose. The two lead characters, the titled Torless and the picked upon Basini, don't really interact and Basini's tortures are played wisely with this deranged sort of benign intent that characterizes much of actual childish play. I'm not sure how to take this along with the central metaphor of Nazism. It is clearly meant to be a condemnation of the German people, but for me it almost functions as as an excuse at least at first. It is in this first half of the film were things go beyond Nazism and become relevant to all of time and space as Schlöndorff strongly takes the point of view of the torturers. This is reflected more than slightly with Torless himself who plays himself off as not only the good German, but the ignorant one. You can't be blamed for what you don't see. He even manages a touching if on looking back ugly scene near the end of the film in which he becomes an ear for Basini's fears and confusions.

All of this ordinariness makes for an average film. One that is completely unassuming and normally I wouldn't praise a goal of mediocrity, but all of this disengages the viewer in such a way as to get friendly with everyone and jokingly expect certain things that come from this sort of freaks and geeks story. Certainly everyone is going to learn their lesson, but than at about 46 minutes in the film changes gears in such a way that by the end of it not only was I more engaged, but it became impossible not to question my own response to the story at this point. The audience had become like Torless an unthinking good German. It's almost a cruel trick Schlöndorff as he steals frequently from Truffaut to characterize Torless making it even harder not to sit as him. There's even an opening scene gag were he gets in trouble from a teacher in a way not dissimilar to Doinel's escapades. Of course though Doinel never had a cripple for a teacher.

All of that sympathy and love becomes perverted in one speech where a fellow classmate looking like the most fascist monster you can conceive gives a speech pleasuring in the torture of Basini. This bastard owns the camera to the point were Torless becomes small almost invisible. Though it is him that stays in the mind through the whole affair leading to a questioning of why I ever sympathized with him to begin with and what that means of mean. The experience is not unlike propaganda where familiar and friendly images coerce an unusual to say the least reaction by placing the mental location into familiar waters. There are a lot of clues that Torless is not a hero way before this scene, but it is all covered in familiar iconography, that Lindsay Anderson would similarly use in If... later on, which makes it all so easy to ignore. Maybe Schlöndorff is just lazy or stupid when it comes to that, no big deal. That's all just excuses for not tackling right away the truth of the matter. Turning a blind eye makes everyone culpable and that we turn blind eyes to everything everyday even if we will never feel it as viscerally as Basini's passion in this film.

Even that torture is something I need to question now though the experience is without question essential. The little Nazi's speech accomplishes a lot, but we do need to see how and why Torless will never earn his redemption, but by tackling it in the way the film does it seems to me that Schlöndorff only tackles how the audience has been up to this point and never really deals with how Torless and in effect we can see redemption.It is without question important to never see Torless come close to that road. Activity is hard and he does do hard work such as going to the authorities, but naturally with no success. If though there are no options to succeed than how are we expected to do it. Ambiguity works fine in some cases, but if there are no answers just say so. Plus since the only logical conclusion is that nothing will succeed then why put forth the effort into doing the impossible? We are damned either way.

[Mr Sausage]

I'm not really a fan of either the book (which was written before Nazism) or the film. In the book, Törless, not so much a Good German, is continually pestered by philosophical confusions that he earnestly tries to resolve, with the Basini episode sort of being the catalyst for it all. Törless is alternately outraged by, sympathetic towards, and attracted to Basini, and the whole thing sends him off on the pursuit of philosophical clarity among other things. In the end, he refuses to engage in the final public torment of Basini, standing up to the threats of Beineberg and Reiting. Yet he does nothing to stop it, either; he sits there, passive, wrapped up in his own thoughts. And that was the problem for me: Musil was making a novel of ideas out of something much more urgent, the rape and torture of a young person. So Basini's awful plight, what he must be really feeling in those moments and after, and how this would affect an innocent observer, is always turned away from and left alone in favour of endless philosophical vapourings. I always got tired with the way you had to spend pages listening to Törless juggle dimly related abstractions in his head while what was really going on didn't get dealt with. Never got the sense that Musil cared about Basini as a human or the general situation as much as he cared about the ideas (which I have trouble pinning down even now).

The movie didn't strike me as doing much to rectify that. Most people seem to take it as an allegory for the rise of Nazism, and perhaps it is (tho' it follows the novel so closely). But, again, I feel that odd distance from the material, as if I were watching some rather abstract and not terribly interesting young men play out a philosophical scenario that, given the subject matter, ought to have more impact than it does. It still seems to remain in the realm of ideas, abstract, distanced, and therefore nowhere near as hopeless and as terrifying as I imagined it would (or still think it should) be. Some emotional connection is missing somewhere.

[knives]

I think I agree with you and that seems to be at least in part what I was trying to articulate at the end there. I understand, in the film, the reason for Basini's torture, but the way it is handled in the film seems wrong and displaces things in a manner that only hurts the film. It is either posing the wrong narrative blocks for its thematic concerns and/or vice versa.

[Mr Sausage]

I think I agree with you and that seems to be at least in part what I was trying to articulate at the end there. I understand, in the film, the reason for Basini's torture, but the way it is handled in the film seems wrong and displaces things in a manner that only hurts the film. It is either posing the wrong narrative blocks for its thematic concerns and/or vice versa.

Yeah, I'm kind of glad I'm not alone on this as a lot of people seem to love both. I had hoped that the movie, being in a more immediately visceral and less philosophical medium, would fix the things that put me off of Musil's novel. But it just seemed of a piece with the book. Next to If... it's positively anemic, even tho' the abuse that goes on in Young Törless is so much more serious and horrifying (or would be if one didn't feel so emotionally alienated from the situation).

[knives]

Yeah, I couldn't get Anderson's film out of my head the entire time I watched the film. They even have an identical scene, but somehow in doing less on the side of the villains and more for the heroes, which almost makes them villainous in action, it manages to tackle so many shared concepts better (in addition to a few that seems unique to If.. and Zero for Conduct). Seemingly this should be the opposite, but I suppose the thing Anderson (and Vigo) has in his favour is a sense of life born out of humour. These are peoplen dealing with real problems, not metaphors.

[Mr Sausage]

These are peoplen dealing with real problems, not metaphors.

That's a really good way of putting it. I rarely felt like Törless had any real human reactions to what was going on. There was one moment in the book where I did, and that was when his sexual attraction for Basini became so overwhelming that he slid into bed with him and was on the point of seducing him before (as usual) becoming passive again and returning to his intellectual investigations. But I don't remember that scene being in the movie, and its absence just made Törless seem like even less of an identifiable human being witnessing the degradation of another. You're continually being pointed to something beyond the immediate situation, and that is frustrating.

[knives]

That scene and the majority of the love portion of things is missing. Outside of Barbara Steele's cameo the film is completely sterile.

[colinr0380]

I'm afraid I don't really buy the comparison to If..., which is more a howl of adolescent rage against the machine with Malcolm McDowell as the machine gun toting poster boy acting as the impudent but impotent individual acting out against the uncaring system.

But then isn't the theme probing the myth of 'intellectual distance', as the main character mulls things over instead of actually trying to dealing with real people in real trouble, instead retreating back into safe abstraction. Isn't that what links it to the idea of knowing but not doing anything about actions that you are involved in (though I agree this is a wider statement than just relating to Nazism)? Especially when you are in an environment that seems to tacitly support this by creating the circumstances in which such events can constantly occur (much as the local brothel does in other areas).

The 'hero' tries to keep an intellectual distance from events, in the world but not of it and watching casually while events escalate from animal torture to human bullying, to human torture. The aspect of the film that I find most interesting and disturbing is the way that he keeps allowing himself to go a little further seemingly to test himself and his moral framework and see how far things can be pushed before the line of human decency is violated. It illustrates nicely the political point of how given enough time small moves through the judicious application of coercion and/or charisma can inevitably push everything and everyone towards a more extreme position.

Yet in doing so our 'hero' missed the fundamental fact that he was damned from the very first moment he participated - that the line had passed him, and everyone else, by some time ago without him even being aware of it. Which makes his thin veneer of intellectual musing about the nature of violence and morality not just cruel in the way that it shield him from the tortures going on, but also completely pointless as a form of necessary research that could perhaps at a stretch have justified the allowing the experimentation to occur.

He's almost a classic Dostoevskian hero in that sense, though not quite as internally driven as characters from Doestoevsky - here he's more of the justification cog in the wider abuse machine, trying to find mitigation for the worst abuses of the system.

[Wu.Qinghua]

Here are two more candidates for the experimental film list: Harun Farocki's early shorts (made when he was a student activist at the Berlin DFFB):

Die Worte des Vorsitzenden (1967, 3')
NICHT loeschbares Feuer /Inextinguishable fire (1969, 28')

Both films are part of the DVD set 'Harun Farocki. Filme 1967-2005' (Absolut Medien 2009, no subs). But 'Inextinguishable Fire' has also been sold individually on DVD by 'Harun Farocki Filmproductions' WITH English subtitles around 2005.

'Inextinguishable Fire' is the first film that got Farocki a bigger audience. It might have been his last student film, but as he got relegated out of the university, it was broadcast by the German public television. It's a target-group film ('Zielgruppenfilm') aiming at the technical intelligentsia and dealing with engineering sciences, chemical industrial production and the napalm bombardements in Vietnam. It's the one where he burns himself in the beginning ...

Edit: I thought I should add that the Farocki-set, which is sold by Absolut Medien, does not feature English subs. But there are English-subtitled DVDs of nearly all those films which have been sold by Farocki at some time and which should be available through the Goethe-Institut.


And here's two more films from the anti-authoritarian camp, which I tend to label as essay or, in the second case, documentary rather than experimental:

Break the Power of the Manipulators (Helke Sander 1968, in: Helke Sander. Edition der Filmemacher, Neue Visionen 2007, 5DVD with English subs - it's more important for the 70s and 80s because of Redupers and Subjective Factor, but contains two minor 60s shorts, too)

2. Juni 1967 (T. Giefer & HR Minow 1967, in: 2. Juni 1967, Laika 2010, no subs)