Right: Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Migration, by George Butler
Photos: Classiq Journal
I often associate a view I see with movies. I see a red and grey barn on a countryside road and I think of Bergman’s remote Fårö island home. A deserted street lined with tall buildings on a rainy, grey day from the window of a cafe, Three Days of the Condor. A flock of birds on a wire, The Birds, always. The sky before a storm about to break, Der Himmel über Berlin. A blanket of fallen leaves, in an autumnal colour palette of reds, yellows and golds, Woody Allen’s Another Woman.
Woody Allen’s films have a certain look. Have you noticed? They are beautiful to look at. I feel at ease watching them. It’s like entering a familiar world. I can not speak for others, but the cinematography in Allen’s movies has always been one of the things I personally love the most about them, to the point where I think you can not talk about his films without talking about the way they are filmed, just as you can’t talk about them without talking about the writing. So I wasn’t surprised, but I was certainly glad, that the element of cinematography is brought up so often in the book Woody Allen: A Retrospective, by Tom Shone. Because “cinematography is the medium,” the writer-director himself insists. Of course, he is right.
Until Allen came along, comedies did not look like this. “Mostly the good-looking stuff is stuff without laughs in it,” he remarked. The look of comedy, its status as cinematographic artifact, was not something anybody paid attention to or considered important. “I don’t see any reason why movie comedies can’t also look pretty,” said Allen, who hired Belgian cinematographer Ghislain Cloquet, who had worked with Jacques Demy and Robert Bresson, to shoot Love and Death. He then went on to employ The Godfather‘s cinematographer Gordon Willis to shoot Annie Hall, and continued to work with him on seven more movies, including Manhattan, “one of the best-photographed movies ever made,” as Roger Ebert described it, along with the thematically and visually chilly Interiors, probably Allen’s most Bergmanesque film, and Zelig, one of Woody’s most visually complex movies. Manhattan “brought to maturity the simple, elliptical style they had worked on-the-fly for Annie Hall,” is noted in the book – long scenes playing without a cut, without even a close-up or a reverse angle to break up the flow, with actors repeatedly wandering out of frame entirely, still speaking, only to return at a later point in the conversation.
Manhattan, with the city appearing almost as another character, was all shot in black and white because that’s how Woody Allen remembered the city from old movies. I admit that I am guilty of having sometimes fallen into the trap of holding his vision of New York against Woody Allen; a New York that is recognisable to everyone but which does not exist in reality. But the thing is Woody Allen has never tried to pretend otherwise. The New York in his movies is the New York he had seen in the movies in his childhood (“I not only was totally in love with Manhattan from the earliest memory. I loved every single movie
that was set in New York, every movie that began high above the New York skyline and moved in.”), that is to say, a New York that has more to do with cinematic universes than with reality. We need that kind of cinema, too, just as we need realistic films. I always go back to that Roger Ebert quote: “We go to different films from different reasons.”
Hannah and Her Sisters marked the beginning of Woody Allen’s collaboration with Michelangelo Antonioni’s cinematographer Carlo Di Palma (Blow-Up, Il deserto rosso), who had had an auspicious beginning in cinema with Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione. They would work together on eight more films. Di Palma’s ravishing autumn colours of Manhattan in Hannah and Her Sisters (the narrative goes throughout the course of two years and three Thanksgivings) are a highlight of the film and the movie itself is another one of Woody Allen’s love letters to the city of his heart. It was in fact argued that it was Di Palma who brought a cosmopolitan, Europeanised look to Allen’s New York, and one of the arguments in this regard was the travelling shot he devised for the restaurant quarrel scene in Hannah and Her Sisters.
Another Woman was the first time filming with cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who had developed an intimate, close-up-driven style of shooting with Ingmar Bergman which he called “two faces and a tea cup”. Another Woman is a very Bergman-like movie, both in tone and look, even though Allen was less enamored with close-ups than Bergman and preferred a darker palette that took some getting used to. Allen and Nykvist would do two more films together, Crimes and Misdemeanors (a film Bergman himself held in high regard, as Linn Ullmann briefly mentions in her book) and Celebrity.
For Midnight in Paris, Allen had discussions with cinematographer Darius Khondji, who would film three more of Woody’s films, about shooting the 1920s sequences in black and white, but they eventually decided to go with colour. “Matisse said that he wanted his paintings to be a nice easy chair that you sit down in, and enjoy. I feel the same way: I want you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the warm colour, like take a bath in a warm colour.” Let’s do that.
Right: Criterion Collection cover art by Sean Phillips for “On the Waterfront”
Viewing
Woody Allen films. For all the reasons mentioned above. But I wonder, why hasn’t Criterion released any Woody Allen films? Actually, there are so few decent editions of Woody Allen’s films available at the moment. Which, really, is cinema’s and the viewers’ own loss. Fortunately, Arrow Films did a beautiful job with its three collections of the filmmaker’s works (and which fortunately I own). Unfortunately, they are not available anymore. Which brings me back to the above question.
Polisse, 2011
This is a tough film. It’s also one of the best films I have seen in a long time. It is a shockingly realistic chronicle on the daily life of an investigation group of the Parisian Brigade for Child Protection. What these people experience in their work (difficult to imagine, harsh to watch and hear – hear because the most disturbing stories are not graphically presented, but calmly recounted in the investigations the police conducts with the accused, an approach that is incredibly effective in showing the psychological strain on the cops) reaches them from within. Their specific sense of humour seems to be the only thing they can cling to to be able to go on, to show up for work day after day, not to sink into drama. Until it isn’t. The sound of children playing in the schoolyard as the end credits roll sticks with you after that unexpected finale. And the title of the film, especially seen on the movie poster, the word “police” misspelled in French (“polisse”) by a child’s writing (an idea Maïwenn took from her son’s orthographic mistake) on the backdrop of one of the cops, his/her face covered by a photo of a child, that’s an image that speaks a thousand words, the image that tells the whole film in a frame, that quietly speaks of all its drama and power.
A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951
Even today, seventy years later, watching Brando in Streetcar leaves you with something so vivid and intense that makes you realise that, to this day, he still has no identifiable image on film. I have recently written about Marlon Brando and the undesigned outfit, the new symbol of American maleness. I am planning to rewatch On the Waterfront now. “For all its exterior shots, the real drama of On the Waterfront is interior. Marlon allowed the audience to see that.” – I am currently reading William J. Mann’s The Contender: The Story of Marlon Brando and there are a few films that simply require a new viewing.
BAC Nord, 2021
On what criteria are those “best of” lists based? I check those out twice a year because I need to be informed, and I am careful where to look, and still, they lack rigour, with each list copying each other. BAC Nord premiered at Cannes this year outside the competition. That alone doesn’t make it good, but it does make it eligible for being considered among the films released this year. Because it is good. Based on a true story, a major police scandal in the Northern suburbs of Marseille, from 2012, when several polices officers from the anti-crime unit were arrested for extortion and drug theft as part of an organized gang, the film follows the story without judging or taking sides. “Whether they’re guilty or innocent, what I’m really interested in is the person caught up in this kind of crisis,” director Cédric Jimenez, a Marseille native who grew up in those same suburbs, said in an interview at the festival. “I dissect the case from a human perspective.” It is this human quality that makes the film very powerful. And the soundtrack makes you beat along with the characters.
Reading
I mentioned George Butler’s art a little while ago in the journal. In the meantime, I have been sent the book Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Migration, and I will dedicate a separate article to it, but for now I wanted to stop over one question the artist asks himself: “Can art change anything?” I do believe that George Butler’s art does more than reveal world issues, more than making these stories seen and heard. It brings people together and reaches deep down to what makes us human. And it’s in the very nature of illustration, much more than photography, to do that.
Read Instead…in Print. A cultural endeavor where I handpick and highlight the most interesting books about film.
An American looks back on two decades living in Italy. It’s about embracing a simpler, more meaningful, more beautiful and down-to-earth way of living, as opposite to believing that self-interest is the thing always at work, underneath everything. “This dolce vita is not really a fake thing or just the name of a movie, I mean, it’s really a national pastime of enjoying. And Italians are much more concerned with their experience rather than how much they can do and how much money they can make and how much they can get out of a situation or a person or a job. That’s a generalization, but it’s definitely true when you compare it to America and where I came from.”
Jim Jarmusch talks to Francesca Aton for Art in America about his creative influences, the latest in films and books and what else has kept him inspired during the pandemic. His book, Some Collages, came out this September.
Listening
Monocle on Culture speaks to director Cary Joji Fukunaga and producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson about the much anticipated new James Bond film, No Time to Die.
Nirvana, Nevermind. Because it never gets old. And because it’s been 30 years since its recording in Sound City. “In the age of digital, when you can manipulate anything, how do we retain a human element? How do we keep music to sound like…people? The feeling that I had when I was young?” – Dave Grohl, reminiscing about the times of their beginning in music, in the documentary he directed, Sound City.
Exploring
Readings bookstore, Australia, even if only from afar. Because I love my favourite local bookstore to pieces and I love seeing what others are doing for their communities as well. The Readings Kids’ Book Subscriptions, for example. Readings’ children’s books experts handpick a book every month and have it delivered straight to you or the little one in your life. I can’t think of a more beautiful gift for a child. “When I was little, one of my father’s ex-colleagues would send me, unannounced, a book. He had a bookseller select the book for him and they were always perfect; it gave me immense pleasure to receive that special parcel each month. When I had grandchildren, I wanted to do the same thing for them and I turned to our marvellous and award-winning children’s booksellers to guide me. Now with the Readings Kids’ Book Subscription, that service and advice is available for the little people in your life.” – Mark Rubbo, Readings managing director
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s all three newsletters: Roden, Ridgeline, and Huh. Wes Del Val’s book-ish interviews. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Here’s the Thing, with Alec Baldwin. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Sophy Robert’s The Art of Travel. Monocle and Sirene magazines, in print.
““Just give me the information on the phone or via email.”
No, they wanted to have lunch.
And what I realized afterwards was, those lunches were bridges.
And the bridges were connections to real people, real relationships.”
JJ Martin on Italy
