The issue is, for one reason at least, valuable for Maurice
Schérer’s article Les maîtres de
l’aventure on Howard Hawks’ The Big Sky (which I translated below). Even though the article is not included in the bibliography of
C.G. Crisp’s book on Rohmer, it is a respected article and is cited by Hillier
and Wollen in their respective Cahiers
and Hawks books. And as it turns out, it can also be found in the rare English
collection of Rohmer’s writing, The Taste for Beauty (more about it in a
future post).
Regarding
this period for Cahiers, Kent Jones, in the book Olivier Assayas, writes,
"The avant-garde was a group of critics taking their first collective step toward becoming filmmakers. They were not heralding the new but something pre-existing yet hitherto unacknowledged in commercial cinema, and in the process they re-directed the attentions and priorities of film viewing through the language of discovery and revelation. The collective action of the Cahiers du cinéma critics (and of those who followed them at other publications) was fairly wondrous in and of itself, an endless lifting of the veil of surface beauty to reveal what they took to be another deeper and truer beauty. There was a great deal of excellent criticism (most of it written by Jean-Luc Godard), but it's the lovely tautologies and proclamations that are often invoked nowadays. Cinema was Bresson, Renoir, Hawks, Hitchcock, Nick Ray, and Rossellini; and cinema was not Autant-Lara, Delannoy, Decoin, Pontecorvo, Kubrick, or Wyler."
Crisp in his excellent book, Eric Rohmer: Realist and
Moralist (’88), analyzes in depth the connections between Rohmer’s writing and his filmmaking. "In fact Rohmer’s central position in recent French
cinema is due not so much to the films for which he is now so well known as to
his participation in the critical reformulation of film theory in the post-war
years, in collaboration with André Bazin,” writes Crisp. “An early and regular contributor
to Cahiers du cinéma, Eric Rohmer
helped to define the thrust of that journal’s initial critical position as a champion of film realism. The whole of the New Wave came to prominence under
that banner, and looked upon Cahiers du cinéma
as its house journal.”
Crisp elaborates,
“It is not only the crucial ten-year age gap that separates Rohmer from Godard and Truffaut, and places him alongside Bazin; it is a totally different temperament and a totally different world-view. And precisely because Rohmer in his early articles made no attempt to conceal the metaphysical foundations of his critical and theoretical position, it is instructive to analyze his support for realism during those early years, and to recognize thereby the implications which also underlie Bazin’s theorizing.”
Crisp writes (a little unfairly) about Rohmer’s
prose,
“His early critical articles suggest at least one reason why he never pursued the literary career he long considered: they show as an atrocious literary stylist whose natural expression is turgid, affected and obscure. He launches without warning into formless and tortuous theorizing, only rarely and tangentially mentioning the films under review.”
And Crisp writes about Rohmer’s departure from the magazine,
“After Bazin’s death he continued on as co-editor until June 1963, when the job of editing the magazine was taken over by an editorial committee in which Godard, Truffaut, Rivette, and ten further members were included. Three new chief editors were named, however, among them Doniol-Valcroze and Rivette, so the ultimate effect of the 1963 re-shuffle was to edge out Rohmer and leave less conservative men in charge.”
*****
The
Masters of Adventure
I'm not crazy about westerns. The genre has its conventions
and requirements, like any other, but with them they offer less liberties. There needs to be prairies, livestock, harsh environments, wooden homes, mandolin
music, pursuits, these good guys with their eternal bravery, hints of Irish
humor, weariness of the old world, and people travelling with all of their
possessions. This is what resounds, but which combined, in some westerns, achieves something more than just that. However, the greatest masters (Ford, Wyler) were able to
assert in them their mastery without sacrificing anything. I have to, speaking
on the behalf of Cahiers, openly reconcile
with Fritz Lang and his Rancho Notorious, which we did not pay homage to
on paper. I agree that this movie taught us nothing of the author, except that it
belied a pseudo-decadence. But perhaps as a critic that holds a different
opinion, and is more sensitive to innovation, I should not hold any strict laws and
be more equitable.
I therefore take this opportunity to denounce a
curious prejudice, as to what motivates a filmmaker to create: to consider ones
talent, this exercise, is what is evaluated so highly by the Cahiers writers. What master filmmaker
has not been yelled at for their decadence? From Gance to Renoir, from Clair to
Ford, from Lang to Hitchcock... For my part, I rather give credit to the man than
to the work and only with an extreme slowness do I listen when it is argued
otherwise. In short, I’m on the side of the older
generation, not because we are the same age, but because I agree that it is
strange that quality can go from being so high and then fall so low; if it is true that it was even so high to begin with. Regarding the role of chance, king of this art, as we are told, is just really another sophism. I do not think that I’m important enough to not
allow a few filmmakers of this genius – and even though it wasn’t planned –
what they achieve is a creation of what they’ve wanted to make, exactly how
they imagined it.
Regarding the genius
of Hawks I refer to the excellent article by Jacques Rivette, which he wrote
for us a few months ago. I see nothing to add to this study, if I had too,
since it was exhaustive. I value, just like Rivette, the filmmaker Hawks, as
the most important American filmmaker, except for Griffith, and much superior to
Ford for my taste, who is more generally estimated. The latter bores me while
the former delights me. This might be a futile criterion, lets say. And how can
we confirm this? I remember Alain citing Treasure Island by Stevenson as
one of his favorite books: he didn’t care for anything, which is true, other
than eagerly being seduced by the story, he used to say, about being a reader.
But if you’ve read Stevenson’s The Master of Ballantrae you would know
that the author of that story, who charmed us, offers such a rich understanding
of man, and this is what makes him a major novelist. "The purpose of art
is to show," said Conrad, in the preface of The Nigger of the Narcissus.
This is a vague sentence, like the style of its author, which I would like to
like more than I do. Because what exactly does this suggest? If the only
concern of the novelist was, through language, to describe the exterior world precisely,
than I much prefer a bad film because of this potential boredom of description,
and to get taken in by the whirlwind of action instead of the stiltedness of
pretty prose. This isn’t cinema, it is one of its least merits, which we are
severe about, because it marks the incapabilities of communication, which is
more attuned to people’s nerves than to the surface qualities of its style, the
verb and the adjectives, intent, movement and sensations, states, and morals.
This is how I disappointingly view Stevenson. I owe to
the cinema my taste for the classics because of how it treats adventures. Nowhere else have I better seen the secret roots of desire, which emphasizes
the instant when a choice is affirmed and the act begins. The arrival of the
act is best managed if it is the only event, the waiting and anxiety is
more than tragic as it weights the scene, these decisions menace the liberty of
scene. Maybe even more than life itself. To read Stevenson’s stunning Reflux:
to see how the characters are in a constant state of peril, either they are
affirmed or are cleared, how the obscure is resolved, by actions. To show a
part of man that for a long time has remained unknown, because I believe that
man is a free being and can be renewed. I don’t like the few
moments of artifice, ellipses or shadows. But what is necessary is to show the hero at the precise
moment where we expect him, with his instinct, judging.
This brings us to Howard Hawks. Apart from a few
scenes with harsh lighting, sometimes unbearable, with him, everything is
prepared. An important point, rhetoric in exposition, too dry for a brutal
resolution. There is a strong anticipation for something to happen, this is
evident, and what is really surprising, is how it’s not expected, and this
action which one would assume would be difficult, is actually done with an ease.
Just like how Hitchcock plays with the fear, the kind of fear that is
associated with danger, haunting the audience with suspicions, in a similar
vein Howard Hawks’ gaze, how does he transform his subjects? Through an
analytic examination and their geometric material. In this physical world where
folkloric American heroes live, no missteps are allowed, and for the filmmaker:
no bravura, fog or metaphor. I do not know of any filmmaker that is more
indifferent to cinematic plastic form, with his banal editing, but on the other
hand, more sensible to the gestures of characters, and pacing.
This is a sportive, efficient, beautiful style, and
its poetry is additional, but which is also in the foreground, indiscernible
from what it magnifies. Hawks is without a doubt more personal, stunning, and
elegant with his burlesque charge, more so than the excessive grinning of the heroic-comic
tones of the skillful Dudley Nichols' script, it is more traditional, and
consistent to the spirit of Ford than to the flamboyant Red River. But what
luxury of details is under its uniformity, and what restraint of exploiting the
cheap horror of an amputation, a burnt face, or a fight between a man and a
woman, and what mathematical beauty goes into the conflicts, these returns or
when the equilibrium capsizes, the system inverses, but never cancels itself
out!
I think that Hawks deserves a particular rank. Other
very good directors, like Renoir, Stroheim or Vigo, have virtues that shine
through their contradictions: a disdain for traditional forms, a rude
intransigence; while for others, still, there is a tendency towards
abstraction, all of which the auteur of Scarface doesn't bother with. Should we
hold a grudge against him? I agree that he should not be elevated to the highest
rank, because this title deserves to be earned by risk and ambition. But can
you blame a cineaste for only being a cineaste? Hawks isn't about pushing the
limits of his art form, but instead to always stay within its parameters, and
to achieve this through a classical perfection, regardless of the popular form,
wether it is the western, a thriller or a musical comedy. There are two ways to
love the cinema that I disagree with. Some people are curiously attached to the
ways in which they can be pampered, whether it is a pretentious drama, a shoddy
opera, or a didactic poem that flatters their good taste; the others - are they
less worse? - don't bother themselves with distinctions and just go see
everything, sensible, so they say. With respect to the cinema, unless it is a
masterpiece, it works best when it is more common than pretentious. But the
cinema is already too old. And was it ever any different? Who would venture
today to speak about the ingenuity of a Griffith or Chaplin? I do not believe
in involuntary poetry, in the cinema and much less elsewhere. I think that the
best westerns are those that are signed by a major director. I say this because
I love the cinema, because I believe it is the product, not of chance, but of
art and the genius of man, because I think that you can't love deeply any
movie, if you do not love deeply those of Howard Hawks.
Maurice Schérer
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