Bernard Chardère on 60 Years of Positif

“And perhaps there is also, in this, a reluctance to let us English-readers in on the juicier details of Positif's colourful history: it's easier by far to sweepingly sketch a fifty-year canon of great directors than to explain to a foreign (and sometimes frankly indifferent) audience the intricate divisions between factions of the French Left in the '50s, or the evolution of Surrealism as a cultural movement beyond the arty, glory days to which it is too often reduced.” – Adrian Martin on Positif 50 Years.

Positif, with its eleven issues a year, produces far more writing than any other film criticism magazine. Its large paper size and small margins allow it to cram far more into one page and entire issue than it even seems possible. (Its quantity might also have to do with its writer's pro bono work). Even though its party line is less strict than Cahiers, and there are variation in prose to account for its over-fifty member's writing style, there are historical factors to account for its humanistic, literary, philosophical, political and surrealist perspective.  

Positif with each new issue creates a hierarchy by prioritizing its film reviews, by placing them at the front of the magazine, in order of importance: review and an interview, review, notes. Its many other sections (e.g. Bloc-Notes, festival coverage, DVD and book reviews, Cinéma retrouvé etc.) offer an expansion of what is the actuality of cinema, aside from solely Parisian new releases, while also giving it room to impose its editorial position on alternative film-related projections and texts.

But there is a language barrier that is preventing it from being better known in the English world (cf. Cineaste's Review for some historical factors).

In Jonathan Rosenbaum's article Everyone's a Critic he brings up some of the differences between English and French film writing, highlighting that the European tradition builds upon the intellectual tradition of continental philosophy while in the U.S., industry journalism along with an anti-intellectualism democratization of media outlets restrict the discourse on difficult and foreign films.

In this setting, from the perspective of English film criticism, Positif appears as a untainted oasis, especially in contrast to the wide emergence of shallow and quickly-written film writing that pops up all of the time on the internet.

But it might seem beyond the point to be championing a mostly inaccessible French film magazine (cf. Positif's reception in North America) and to rag on English film writing, especially since it's not in a good state (e.g. jobs are being lost, there are less ones available etc.).  

Positif isn't perfect either: it can be too generous and not critical enough, it doesn't do enough to support small scale festival films that could really benefit from favorable reviews - French film criticism actively rails against a lot of these experimental narrative feature films - or young French cinema that struggles to get even made and then seen (cf. Jeunes cinéastes français).

But I still think that it is important to write about Positif ... so I will continue to do so.

For Positif's sixtieth anniversary they updated a little their classic format: First off they changed publishers from éditions Scope in Paris to Actes Sud at the Institut Lumière in Lyon (cf. Positif by Actes Sud), they slightly altered the magazine's format and layout, and they finally updated to color. Like usual these issues were of high quality (cf. Positif's sixieth Anniversary).

To correspond with Positif's sixtieth anniversary, its founder Bernard Chardère, contributed two essays back to back, after not having written in the magazine since 2005 (with the exception of an Hors-Séries about Cannes in 2007).

In Positif N.615, which has a still of Alain Resnais' Vou n'avez encore rien vu on its cover, Chardère has a nice dossier Les 60 ans de Positif: Notre travelingue en arrière et en couleurs which, in a laissez-faire graphic design, includes: a nice text, pictures of its first fifteen covers ("Je ne m'en suis occupé qu'à partir d'ici ... jusque-là."), portraits of its first group of writers (along with the names of their favorite filmmakers), old photographs of its comity sitting around a table, an advertisement for the new re-editions of its earliest issues, and a promotion for events celebrating its sixtieth anniversary.

In Chardère's text Ah, Quel Titre?! he discusses what he sees as the secret for the long life of Positif and the genesis of its title. Since Chardère's writing, like that in Positif in general, is more about writing style and tone (cf. Positif N.500: Bernard Chardère's Contribution) here is what he wrote in its original French because I would not even know how to translate such wonderful and wild writing, which he would push further in his Bloc-Notes Mai en Cinéma: 60 ans, verte jeunesse (Positif N.617-18). - D.D.

***

Ah, Quel Titre?! 

Il m'étonnera toujours, cet oiseau-là. Ce n'est pas qu'il renaît inlassablement de ses cendres - car le Phoenix, lui-même, avait été carbonisé, alors que Positif est resté parfois muet, mais vivant toujours - c'est qu'il parvient à changer déditeur sans la moindre solution de continuité, d'une livraison l'autre, tel un prestidigitateur tirant de son chapeau ce qu'il y a mis : le prochain numéro.

Cela, répété au fil du temps, une bonne douzaine de fois. Les éditeurs de la revue éclosent comme la fleur des champs, fondent comme neige au soleil, prospèrent, dépérissent... La revue, quoi qu'il en soit, quoi qu'il en coûte, poursui sur sa lancée, telle la flèche de Zénon (d'Élée. Bien que « les positivistes » préfèrent l'autre, de Celtium, plus social).

Ainsi les rayons du lecteur-type finissent-ils par ployer.
À ce propos, je devine qu'on attend de moi la révélation du secret du fondateur: comment avez-vous fait, il y a 60 ans? D'où tirez-vous (les premiers) cette vitalité, digne de La Revue des Deux Mondes (ou plutôt du Magasin Pittoresque, dont en saint-simonien véritable, j'ai la série dans ma bibliothèque)? Bien sûr, qu'il y ait une recette, un tour de main, comment le nier, mais l'essentiel fut simplement l'esprit d'équipe dans une incontestable suite dans les idées. Sans omettre la fidélité à un principe: la réunion du dimanche; inutile de chercher plus loin.
À coeur ouvert, récapitulons: solution de continuité, secret du fondateur, tour de main, esprit d'équipe, suite dans les idées, réunion du dimache. Qu'ajouter encore?

Ah, j'allais oublier...

Oui, j'allais oublier de divulguer, enfin, Le secret: quel titre?

Nous hésitions de concert, avril 1952; l'imprimerie s'impatientait. Je me revois - avais-je quitté mon duffle-coat? - arpentant de long en large la pièce exigüe où Guy Jacob avait rassemblé Irène Giraud, François Michel (ceux-ci peuvent encore témoigner), les Ottavi, Madeleine, Vivè-Pomme bien sûr, assurant que le plus inattendu, significatif, polysémique, était bien « Positif ».

Comme si vous y aviez été:

∙ de la pellicule négative on tire un positif...

∙ de même faudra-t-il, dans les films dont nous parlerons, souligner le meilleur...

∙ le reste - progressistes étaient nos coeurs juvéniles - à l'avenant.

Avec l'impression diffuse que l'on mécoutait dans un silence anormal. Les petits camarades, en effet, avaient rempli notre bouteille de marc du Bugey de quelque chose d'autre - pétrole lampant? vomito negro? - et au lieu de prêter attention à mes raisonnements, tous guettaient l'instant où je terminerai une phrase en vidant mon verre...

Ce petit fait vrai survint, salué avec applaudissements, brouhaha, et haut-le-coeur; du même coup, l'affaire fut entendue. Toutes objections oubliées; victoire à l'arraché: on l'appellerait décidément Positif.

Quel titre!

En nota bene, quelques clins d'oeil, à bons entendeurs salut, depuis le siège de la revue, retrouvé après 600 numéros. Il est vrai qu'en 1984 déjà, le responsable du transfert situait en 300 pages Les années lyonnaises de Positif dans L'Histoire contemporaine.

Acceptons-en l'augure et ajoutons aux maître-mot, à côté de marc du Bugey: Histoire contemporaine. Il ne tardera guère, le N°1000. Il n'y a plus qu'à l'écrire: le titre est là.

Positif: Le cinéma retrouvé

The Le cinéma retrouvé section in Positif consist of extended film reviews of major re-releases of old films in theaters and/or new DVD releases usually in updated restored formats. It's a great way to discover a couple of new films each month and to read a lengthy review of it that contextualizes the film historically, places it alongside the director's body of work,  and deems it socially important as a valuable work of art.

The section works best if there is only two films that are reviewed and that will be released on DVD soon. It offers an outlet to write more thoroughly about these old films and provides a mise en hauteur compared to the reviews in the Notre sélection DVD section. The reviews are an additional homage to the films, which might have been written about as critiques in their first theatrical release, and the new reviews expand upon the former, further championing the director and/or film, while the prose reflects the style of that new individual writer.

When Positif changed publisher they updated their website, where instead of putting the regular editorial, usually by Michel Ciment, on the home-page beside the table of content, the two of them can now be found via links at the bottom of the page as a sleek .pdf document. For a full listing of the Le cinéma retrouvé they can be found via Positif's archieve. I can’t pinpoint what issue that the section started, or all of the films that have been featured, but I can list some recent ones, which I tried to make sure to watch and then read about, sometimes having to wait a few months to watch the film, since the French releases are a few months ahead of the North American one's.

To highlight some of the good recent Le cinéma retrouvé film reviews: Pierre Eisenreich contrasts’s seeing Michael Cimino’s Heaven's Gate in both in print and on DCP and reads the story as a dream and Lætitia Mikles’s reviews Le Joli Mai that will become available in North America in the fall (N.628); Marc Cerisuelo’s discusses the production history of  Ernst Lubitsch’s masterpiece To Be or Not to Be and Pierre Berthomieu’s discusses the use of split screen and genre in Robert Aldrich’s  Twilight's Last Gleaming (N.627); Adrien Gombeaud offers a sensitive reading of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Dust in the Wind, and Bernard Génin’s speaks of Martin Rosen’s unique animation style in The Plague Dogs (N.625); Philippe Rouyer proposes Kubrick’s Fear and Desire as his first non-verbal visual experience, and Laurent Vachaud’s offers a delirious take on Kubrick’s relations with the Illuminati in Kubrick: Le secret de la pyramide (N.623).

Positif N.500: Bernard Chardère's Contribution

To celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Positif, for their 500^th issue (Oct. 2002), the editors prepared a special issue. In it, the feature section was full of previously unpublished documents from famous filmmakers (e.g. Kubrick, Marker, Kiarostami, Cronenberg etc.), reflections by 87 collaborators on their participation with the magazine, and their favorite ten films from this period. The impressive roster of contributors included: Bernard Chardère, Gilles Jacob, Bertrand Tavernier, Michel Ciment, Michael Henry Wilson, Philippe Rouyer, Laurent Vachaud, Pierre Berthomieu, and others.

A noteworthy contribution to the section Cinquante Ans de Cinema is Bernard Chardère’s (which I translated below, along with his top ten). These early issues of Positif that he describes have long been shrouded in mystery since they are unavailable in Canada (cf. Positif in Canada). Luckily, they were recently re-printed as Les nouvelles éditions de Positif (Nouvelles Éditions Jean-Michel Place): Positif n° 1 à 15 and Positif n° 16 à 31. Now we just need to get them over here! - D.D.

***

1952: Bernard Chardère

For the sake of the cause (Cosa Nostra), if I had to evoke the year 1952, where to start? Perhaps with the projections "with a presentation and discussion," the heirs of the "conferences with a projection" from the times of the magic lanterns.The first orders for Positif came from the dense network of cine-clubs that were spread across the country (which dried out all of the original versions). In Paris, the profession was organized with an iron fist, without velvet gloves, by the unions, and for anyone interested in joining they would have had to first go through the L'Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC). Another thing to take into consideration, in regards to discoveries I mean, would be the lines of inquiry around the cinema, and there were two major camps: the Catholics, who went about it in their traditional ways - morality, censorship, etc. - looked for an emancipation, at least aesthetic (Téléciné, Henri Agel ...), and there were the communists, guided by historian Georges Sadoul and the French weekly L'Écran français, who professed their faith to denounce, in a herculean effort, any Hollywood production. The only exception, Orson Welles, who was both loved at a time, without reticence, by Positif and Cahiers.
 

The table of contents from the issues of this era are filled with a majority of texts about Italian Neorealism, English comedies, and the rediscovery of Soviet and German classics. While also highlighting the incredible mass of mediocre French films: it wasn't famous, our own Saturday night cinema. In the streets and in print, with a critical point of view such was our intellectual responsibility (Leenhardt, Astruc, Kast ...), to consider the unfortunate state of our cinema. What to do? But to escape with Avalanche (Segard), Le bagnard (Rozier) Bel Amour (Campaux), Bille de clown (Wall), Boite de nuit (Rode), Boniface somnambule (Labro), Bouquet de joie (Cam).

Let's stick to the letter B: for example, to highlight some directors that we championed. What to do, if not, to fall into the arms of American cinema? (which we are offered in France, only which that is deemed "worthy" to export, let's remember).

So in this context we decided to take out our pens. In the six issues from 1952, Positif devoted articles to L'Auberge rouge (Autant-Lara), L’Ange bleu (Sternberg) La Carrose d'or (Renoir), Le Christ interdit (Malaparte), Deux sous d’espoir (Castellani), La Grande Vie (Schneider), Le Fleuve (Renoir), Miracle à Milan (De Sica), Los Olvidados (Buñuel), Orphée (Cocteau), Othello (Welles), Pas de paix sous les oliviers (De Santis), Rashomon (Kurosawa), Subida al cielo (Buñuel), Les Vacances de M. Hulot (Tati). There was equally major studies on the national cinemas of Spain, Italy, Russia; articles on Bresson and Renoir, Donskoï, Duvivier, Epstein, Vigo, Welles and an entire issue on Huston (African Queen, The Asphalt Jungle, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Red Badge of Courage, We Were Strangers).

"You were the first, really, to liberate films from the intellectual empire of the Critics, to open them up towards life, and into the real world," reassures us today an obsever without any indulgences, Georges Goldfayn. It's true though that we believed in cinema as a generous humanism, which we put to use, in a random order, to discover life, and as a way to improve it, and at the same time, with a crazy love for this unique form of expression, and an appetite to learn its many-fold components and masters.

Positif's layout and format was conceived spontaneously. There were excesses, omissions, blunders, certainly: the failings of youth. What has been done is done! Our choices as an emerging magazine must have corresponded to ... something: incomplete, they would contribute, one stone at a time, or if not towards a definition of a "general line", or at least to the creation of a common spirit. This all just happened as we were putting together more issues after its initial launch, it continues to be enriched today, as it was fifty year ago, a great response to the most skeptical of its founders.

Well we want to authorize this, after this message, the archaeology, to draw a personal reverence to film criticism, saluting, the chef editor Ciment, and the publisher Paul Louis Thirard and everyone else on the team, that I would have had the pleasure to read during the first few years of the second century of the cinema. The first years: always the best...

***

Bernard Chardère's ten favorite films of the past fifty years, in no order: Il Grido (Antonioni), Él (Buñuel), The Dead (Huston), Hamlet (Kosintzev), 8 ½ (Fellini), Lancelot du Lac (Bresson), The Night of the Hunter (Laughton), Smiles of a Summer Night (Bergman), 3 Women (Altman), Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Tati).

Kubrick & The Illuminati by Laurent Vachaud

Positif by Actes Sud

Since the main reason Anglophone cinephile's don't know about Positif is because of its language barrier, which has led to its physical and editorial marginalization (cf. Positif's North American reception), I've decided to try to ameliorate this situation at Toronto Film Review by discussing it more. The following is a translation of Positif's unsigned description, which is really good and accurate, from its publishers Actes Sud's webpage. - D.D.

***

This is the story of a group of peers from diverse backgrounds who, united by their love of the seventh art, meet every Sunday for three hours, for the last sixty years, to discuss the latest news about cinema, among other things.They determine the content of the next issue of the magazine, read texts that were sent to them from potential guest contributors, and develop future projects. Positif has no chief-editor, the writers are not paid and decisions are made by a committee, composed of members representing different generation of writers who have succeeded each other, since its inception all of the way to its more recent arrivals. This coexistence of generations creates a perpetual dialogue, lively and sometimes contradictory, which makes Positif a magazine that we can truly say has a "spirit" or "tone" that has evolved with its new writers, rather than replacing one group by the direction of an other. This decentralized operation, "eccentric", has probably something to do with the fact that the magazine was not born in Paris but in a smaller city. In this case it is Lyon, where its founder, Bernard Chardère, will later create the Institut Lumière, which is now the current co-editor of Positif with Actes Sud!

Today our editorial policy in terms of artistic curiosity, historical information and critical analysis is motivated by a strong reaction to the promotional hype and to the steady space reduction allocated to film criticism in the press general. For us, a sharp appreciation of aesthetics is more compelling, especially compared to other newspapers that have turned their cultural pages into more or less open commentaries, dictated by the "market" and its "targets", about the performance of films at the box-office. In recent years, the landscape of film periodicals has changed dramatically. Magazines prefer zapping, short capsule reviews, the "people" profiles, and business or financial information. At the same time, there has been the development of more advanced research publications, theoretical or historical, often remarkable, but for a scholarly readership. 

Positif, a monthly film magazine that is available in kiosks and specialty book stores as well as libraries, persists still in the midst of all of the hazards of the publishing world, to proclaim itself a "movie magazine" against all odds, just like it did during its infancy and perhaps in a more singular way. With the breakout of information on the internet and the new ways of distributing movies, we feel more than ever the need for well-informed choices, as a way to sort through this continuous stream of images.

Being published jointly by the Institut Lumière and Actes Sud, Positif confirms its shift not only geographical, but also "moral", vis-à-vis a way of thinking that is necessarily Parisian and culturally correct. Independence is our keyword, and we are confident that there will always be new battles to fight for the cinema that we love. That is why this joint publication is both a sign of a homecoming and a faith in the future.  

Bernard Chardère's first Positif Editorial

The only store in Toronto that sells Positif is La Maison de la Presse Internationale in Yorkville. The magazine ships one month behind, unlike Cahiers, whose new issues arrive the month they are published. The Canadian university periodicals of Positif go back to the early 80s, while Cahiers' entire catalog is easily accessible. In New York City, no stores sell Positif, while you can find Cahiers at St. Mark's Bookshop. And the only place in North America to celebrate Positif's 60th anniversary was the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2012 at the Film Society Lincoln Center.

These points illustrate the lack of visibility Positif has in North America.

Present-day English-language film criticism grew out of journalism, alt-weeklies, leftist politics, academia, art criticism, and now with the internet, bloggers (cf. American Movie Critics). To speak in generalizations, the two major streams of American film criticism are infotainment, and on the other hand, serious criticism, which focuses on foreign and independent films. One group unconditionally praises everything while in the other, skepticism towards the mainstream embitters and creates resentment. These two groups hardly ever meet. The fissure between these two polarities is, for example, the reason why one of the master filmmakers of our time, Steven Spielberg, has still not received the critical appreciation that he deserves in the United States, unlike in France (Cf. Berthomieu on Spielberg).

The gate-keepers of what passes as "good" film criticism have at stake the moral superiority of their evaluations that would be undermined if the oppositional reviews published by Positif were better known. In this setting the marginalization of Positif becomes an urgent concern as it hides its aesthetic and editorial position.

It does not even seem like Positif is on anyone's radars. It rarely appears discussed on social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter (except for its rare contributors that are on it) and Michel Ciment even speaks about how Positif's dossiers are created in opposition to the internet. There are also some well-researched blogs dedicated to Positif like Nightswimming or the periodical index Calindex.

On the other hand, Cahiers which has more visibility, is unfairly being lacerated, accused all over again of fetishizing mainstream Hollywood, without any attempt to understand its many subtleties. The common finger-wagging refrain being that: can you believe that Cahiers likes so and so? Or can you believe that Cahiers doesn't like so and so? For an example see Tony Rayns attack on Stéphane Delorme in the June issue of Sight & Sound.

All the while Positif proposes a counter-balance to Cahiers as it offers a more comprehensive, authoritative and generous overview of contemporary releases as well as the history of cinema.

In Positif 50 Years: Selections from the French Film Journal, which was published by the Museum of Modern Art to celebrate its 50^th anniversary, there are many original English translations of Positif film reviews. The book is divided by decades: there are six reviews from the '50s, seven reviews from the '60s, fifteen reviews from the '70s, four from the '80s, and twelve from the '90s. In the book's introduction, the magazine is described as,

“Positif has consistently championed independently spirited, idiosyncratic, and original cinema from America, France, and around the world. It has maintained that cinema is an art like other plastic and performing disciplines, and it situates filmmakers not only within the history and culture of cinema but also within the general development of modernism. In the last decade, Positif was among the first to detect the emergence of a new generation of Asian filmmakers.”

The founder of Cahiers, André Bazin, became a martyr figure, and his ontological approach to cinema, What Is Cinema?, has become a standard academic text. All the while Positif's founder, Bernard Chardère, has almost been totally ignored, even though he has been immensely prolific. A major difference between Bazin (Cahiers) and Chardère (Positif) is their geographic and religious views: Chardere's Lyonais Jansenism proposes an open humanism while Bazin's Parisien Catholicism is more dogmatic. Chardère, in a video for Positif's 40th anniversary, says "We will say positive things about the films. Talk about its good qualities. It's humanity," and "We have to save the images, these old films. It's not easy, were a minority."

The eighty-three year old Bernard Chardère seems to be getting more attention now. He is a writer and editor of more than a dozen film books, a filmmakers in his own right, the founder of the Institut Lumière in Lyon, and is the subject of a new book - Carole Aurouet's Bernard Chardère, 60 ans de cinéma.

The following is the first editorial of Positif (May ’52) by it’s founder Chardère, Why We Are Going to Fight from Positif 50 Years. Ciment writes of it, “Bernard Chardère, a literature student, founded Positif in Lyon at the age of twenty-two with the help of a number of friends. In his editorial in the first issue, he provides the broad outlines that the journal intends to cover over the coming years of film history in the making.”

***

Why We Are Going to Fight by Bernard Chardère (Positif No.1, May 1952)

Introduction

You’re Going To Say:

Not another film magazine (and yet another preface!) when so many others have fallen by the wayside … Doesn’t it matter that the market you are breaking into has no more readers?

Decentralization is very nice when you’re talking about it from Paris, but in a city where sponsors can’t even support an undefeated soccer team…

What affiliations, what skills, what money? You are doomed to being ephemeral, so we won’t buy you.

We Say:

You like the movies: you also know that film is an art. It took fifty years for the professors to admit it; in another half-century students will be writing theses that attempt to reconstruct lost masterpieces. But whose fault was it that they disappeared? It is up to us to do something against the merchants of the mediocre.

            That is the role of a film magazine: apart from what it has of interest to each individual reader, it acts as a witness for us all, we the masses. To be sure, it is a minority mass, but “the minority is always right.” What Henrik Ibsen meant to say was, “We’ll always be right.”

            The “battle” is a specific one: the magazine needs to last. A film magazine becomes more important as time goes by. You may not have seen a particular film, and you may not have purchased the issue of Positif that discusses it, but you will see the film one day…. Then a friend who happens to have a copy of our magazine borrowed from someone else will lend it in turn to you. We wish to remind you, however, that if you read this copy, borrowed from someone else, to get the information you need, we will be unable to survive. We hate to remind you of this so early on, but without your subscriptions we can do nothing.

We Don’t Want:

-       To be a news magazine. Although our main office is in Lyon and no film news come from anywhere but the first-run theaters in Paris, our team has enough people with access to the latest professional screenings who are able to keep up with the most-current projects. But Positif will not in any way attempt to be a film daily; we will have as much to say about Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game as his The River (let alone The Golden Coach, which is based on Prosper Mérimée’s novel Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement). Not only that, but as a general rule, you need to screen a film more than once before you can talk about it. And although film-festival summaries are indispensable, and we have nothing against them, we would prefer to do something else.

-       Be a retrospective magazine. We will not focus tenderly and exclusively on the silent era. When the cinema was silent, we were barely learning to speak, and when The Jazz Singer came out, most of us knew nothing about the movies. We like the masterpieces of 1920. But we also believe masterpieces are still being produced today and that it is important to say so, if only to make sure that there will be some tomorrow. We want to reach a broad public rather than a few circles of initiates (or people who believe they are). It is an ambitious dream, but the fact that Diary of a Country Priest was such a widespread success indicates that we ought not to despair over the taste of the “masses.”

-       A “youth magazine.” While it is true that members of our team might be described as young, we refuse to focus on scandal, to wallow in anarchy, or to parade the flotsam and jetsam of a difficult puberty. Likewise, we will mistrust peremptory judgments, capital punishments, and mere summaries, just as we will be cautious about enthusiastic infatuations for the three random sublime minutes in an otherwise idiotic film; in other words, we will attempt to avoid all of the false audacity that does such a poor job of covering up inexperience and ignorance, to which we willingly admit.

We Want:

-       Discoveries rather than rehashes, even subtle ones. Shedding light on the unknown John Huston is far more useful than trotting out the usual clichés about The Devil’s Envoy for the nth time.

-       Interesting contributions, in particular from those who do not often get an opportunity to express themselves: the makers of films that we admire. Doesn’t a single sentence from Jean Renoir have more resonance than a hundred books of exegesis?

-       An improved layout: it will be what you make of it. It is your subscriptions and your friend’s subscriptions that will make it possible to increase the number of pages, the number of photographs, and the quality of the paper.

-       Last, we would not want to be unworthy of film criticism. Here we salute our elders: Cahiers du Cinéma, on a solid footing in the wake of the sadly missed Jean-Georges Auriol, Sight and Sound, Bianco e Nero … However (more modestly perhaps), it is from Raccords that we would like to pick up the torch. Like Gavin Lambert’s Sequence in England, the magazine published by our friend Gilles Jacob recently disappeared. And yet “no one died,” and you will find a few names here soon … It is only natural that there is a link between us and Jacob’s magazine. Rather than starting from scratch after a fade-out, Positif will hit the screen as a fade-in.

Projection privée: Special Cecil B. DeMille

To correspond with Jean-Loup Bourget's new book Cecil B. DeMille - Le gladiateur de Dieu, Michel Ciment's exceptional podcast Projection privée invited Bourget, the great Pierre Berthomieu, and Jean A. Gili for an episode dedicated entirely to DeMille. If you speak French it is well worth the listen. It is probably the most enjoyable and delirious Projection privée episode in a while, along with the Billy Wilder episode that included both Dominique Païni and another one of the greats - Stanislas Bouvier.

Hunting For Hidden Gold by Moen Mohamed

IL CINEMA RITROVATO, JUNE 29 – JULY 6, 2013

BOLOGNA, ITALY

The annual gathering of classic cinema worshippers was once again a resounding success.  To have an entire festival devoted to the revival of cinema past, with many restorations, retrospectives and one-of-a-kind programming​, it is hard for Il Cinema Ritrovato (Cinema Rediscovered) to have an average, much less weak year.  It is indeed a festival of treasures.  As our modern age has gone almost completely digital, it is a special treat to have films projected in glorious  35mm.  Many of the prints are imported from archives and film institutions.  Beautiful and pristine were the DCP restorations of Falstaff (Chimes at Midnight) (Orson Welles, 1965), Richard III (Laurence Olivier, 1955), Il Miracolo (Roberto Rossellini, 1948), Rome Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945), La Pointe-Courte (Agnes Varda, 1955), Borom Sarret (Ousmane Sembene, 1963).  As much as this is a festival that looks back on the history of cinema, it also serves as a reminder as to where we are presently in contemporary cinema.  Is the progress of modern cinema extraneous and independent from methods of the past?

​This year, yet another unsung director was given the spotlight - the Films of Allan Dwan are refreshingly witty and bursting with energy.  Like the Jean Grémillon showcase in 2012, I wondered again how is it that I never heard about Dwan although he has directed hundreds of film.  The 2013 edition focused on the films of 1913, Vittorio de Sica (Actor & Director), European Cinemascope, Pre-War 1938-1939, Silent Films by Hitchcock in brand new 35mm restorations, 60s Czech Cinema, 1930s Japanese Cinema, Homage to Burt Lancaster and Russian pioneer Olga Preobrazenskaya.  There was a Master Class with Jonathan Rosenbaum; lectures and demonstrations of the restorations; In Conversation with Joanna Lancaster (Burt Lancaster’s daughter); Dialogue with Thierry Frémaux (Cannes Delegate) on Digital & Film - A Future for the Past; lecture on The History of the Criterion Collection by the founders; and a Master Class with Alexander Payne, who came to see many of the films I saw.  Sitting not far from me in the same row, I gathered from his discussions with others  that he, like most directors, is an ardent cinephile and a fan of classic cinema.

However, the most entertaining and invigorating event was saved for last - the closing night in the Piazza Maggiore, where 5,000 spectators were treated to the music of, in my opinion, cinema’s greatest music composer in a special homage to Bernard Herrmann.​  Perfectly executed by the Orchestra del Teatro Communale di Bologna, this full orchestral serenade was the cherry on the pie as the festival was brought to a close.  I can still recall my goosebumps when they played ever so beautifully, every bit of music from Vertigo.  Piercing, penetrating and provocative is Bernard Herrmann's haunting compositions. 

Out of the 45 feature films I saw, these are my favourites from this year's banquet, in order of preference:

UNE SI JOLIE PETITE PLAGE

​DCP | 1949 | France | 90 min | ​Yves Allé​gret | Programme: Rediscovered & Restored

A revelation.  ​It seems the spirit of ​Jean Grémillon still lingers a year later at the festival​.  A young man (who appears to be sickly) goes to a small seaside village with "such a pretty little beach" he is told.  But it becomes apparent that he is overwhelmed by a great sadness of something that has happened in his life, but we do not know what.  Certain facts are hinted at and we are intrigued by his behaviour towards the few inquisitive but interesting people who live and work at the tiny inn where he is staying.  Covered with a gloomy atmosphere and foreboding, the landscape itself becomes an oppressive character.  There is a sense of thick humidity amidst the almost incessant rainfall.  He is told by the landlady that the village is not good for the lungs as she probes for more information as to whether he is suffering from tuberculosis.  Without any flashbacks or urgency to disclose the young man's history, this film builds to a climax with even more precipitation and angst.  Much of the film’s success should be credited to the heartbreaking performance of Gérard Philipe, a beloved actor who, in a short career, worked with directors Claude Autant-Lara, Luis Bunuel, Max Ophüls, René Clair, Marcel Carné, René Clément, Jacques Becker and Sacha Guitry.  Sadly, he died of cancer 10 years after Une si jolie petite plage, at the age of 36.

​LETTRE A LA PRISON

35mm | 1969 | France | 73 min | Marc Scialom | Programme: Rediscovered & Restored

This is why I love coming to Bologna, to discover a great film that was discarded by its own director after being disillusioned by lack of support.  Made with the help from family and friends and without a producer, shot in Tunis, Marseille and Paris, Lettre à la prison is the most experimental film I saw at the festival and it addresses the painful subject of post-colonialism and racism.  This non-narrative masterful film loosely tells the story of a young Tunisian man travels to France to meet his brother who is in jail after being accused of killing a white woman.  The soundtrack of the film is the voice-over reading of 2 letters, one by each brother, both recollecting their origin, childhood and feelings of their new country.  Scialom was not supported by his fellow French filmmakers, including Chris Marker and ironically, this film resembles Le joli mai.  Scialom is a Tunisian born of Jewish and Italian heritage.  He moved to France after the Nazi persecution in Tunisia.  Obviously, the themes of this film resonate with him.  40 years after he had abandoned the film in a drawer, his daughter stumbles on the film and the discovery is to our benefit with the restoration done by the L'Immagine Ritrovata di Bologna.  This is a special film that deals with the painful and irreparable loss of cultural and personal identity.

INGEBORG HOLM​
35mm | 1913 | ​Sweden | 72​ min | ​Victor Sjöström | ​Programme: The Films of 1913​

​Another film by Victor Sjöström that left me shaken only reinforces my regret in missing his retrospective at Cinematheque Ontario many years ago.  This film from 100 years ago is as noble as the great works of Mizoguchi and Ozu.  It is tough in its social commentary.  A woman has been separated from her three children after the death of her husband.  She is unable to provide for them due to her ongoing illness.  The film comments on the laws of society not from a sentimental angle, but it realistically shows both sides without the use of overt melodrama.  When she learns one of her children given away to foster parents falls severely ill, she escapes from the workhouse where she is forced to stay and makes the long and dangerous journey just to see her child.  This journey runs most of the second half of the film and it is unhurried and tense.  I may be wrong here but I don't think any director up to that time in 1913, had ever achieved what Sjöström does with Ingeborg Holm, in which the individual is fully realized with multiple mental layers.  An absolute poetic ​gem​ of film.

​MANILA IN THE CLAWS OF DARKNESS​

DCP | 19​75​ | Philippines | 126​ min | ​Lino Brocka | ​Programme: Rediscovered & Restored​

​Finally, I understand what I have been hearing about Lino Brocka for so many years.  A noir-melodrama infused with realism, poetry, beauty and grittiness, all unfolding in the unforgiving and cruel streets of Manila.  Yet, this film is an original as it is hard to classify although there are similarities to Pasolini and Fassbinder.  Brocka is an artist who understands Filipino culture and way of life.  He cuts deep into the social fabric of the lower classes and gives us a film of many dimensions and substance.  One hardly gets a chance to breathe when the next onslaught descends.  Brocka has something vital to say about his culture and he has made a film that succeeds on all levels.  A young man comes to Manila in search of his girlfriend who has been whisked away by a shady woman with promises of a job.  A simple story that is anything but, with many unforgettable sequences.  The long diversion into a gay brothel is at times hilarious but realistic.  This is one of the newly rediscovered masterworks of cinema.  Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation has done well.

THE ​LAST JUDGEMENT​

35mm | 1961 | Italy | ​101 min | Vi​ttorio de Sica | ​Programme: Vittorio de Sica, Actor & Director​

One of the best films of the festival was reviled and shredded by critics and audiences upon its release.​  ​Written by the great Cesare Zavattini (Bicycle Thieves, Shoeshine, The Children Are Watching Us, Two Women, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Umberto D.), De Sica considered this film to be among his best work.  Somewhat of a religious fantasy told with dark humour, the film crackles with wit and fun about what would happen if we were given a few hours before the world ended and we stand trial for the final judgment.  A voice booms from the sky in Naples announcing that the last judgment will commence at 6 pm.  People go about their daily routine - a skirt-chaser who is trying to find a replacement for his wife how died the day before, a procurer who sells Italian children to rich Americans, an ambassador insults a waiter who demands an apology, a French socialite who travels to Naples to see the statues and when she realises that the world is coming to an end, she declares that "instead of seeing the statues, I am in a hotel room with a man - like a slut!"  She is promptly offered cocaine to calm herself.  Hilarious is Vittorio Gassman’s turn as a dandy whose hat gets tomatoed by a boy.  De Sica tackles hypocrisy and cruelty inherent in human nature and I think the reason the film failed is because it was way ahead of its time.  Any society that believes in the final judgment as really and truly THE FINAL JUDGEMENT, may not understand that De Sica was not making fun of a religious doctrine, but he was making fun of the weakness and natural behaviour of human beings.  Like many spectacular failures, this one has a cast to end all ensemble casts:  Alberto Sordi, Jack Palance, Vittorio Gassman, Silvana Mangano, Vittorio de Sica, Ernest Borgnine, Anouk Aimée, Melina Mercouri, Lino Ventura, Paolo Stoppa and Lamberto Maggiorani from Bicycle Thieves.  A strange, brilliant, unsettling and fascinating experiment of a film.

LADY ON THE TRACKS​
35mm | 1966 | ​Czechoslovakia | 8​0 min | Ladislav Rychman | Programme: 1960s Czech Cinema​

This time-filler turned out to be one of the festival's most entertaining experiences and a delightful surprise.  The Cinemascope frame can barely contain the glamour, drama and sweet vengeance of this musical about a middle-aged female streetcar driver (not unlike Cabiria) who, one day on her usual route, sees her husband kissing a young blonde on the street.  She abandons her streetcar and passengers.  Hurt and enraged, she then goes to the bank to withdraw all their money.  She makes herself over, changes her wardrobe, not to win her husband back, but she does it for herself.  This is what makes this film so special.  Her foray into a nightclub as she eyes and flirts only with the beautiful young men is simultaneously sad and funny.  Thus begins a tale of morality and equality with many surprises with the biggest one at the very end of the film.  The songs are not very many and are realistically staged as part of the heroine's conscience and inner thoughts, with no elaborate costumes and sets.  One special song is by her neighbours who sing and remind her constantly that "A woman must learn to suffer, it is in her nature."  The other is a glamourous knock-out number, "Feminina Femininae Femininum" set in a beauty salon.  And a runway haute couture show with a number punctuated with only oohs, aahs, sighs and gasps from the female socialite gathering.

THE ELDER FERCHAUX (L'AINE DES FERCHAUX)​

​35mm​ | 1963 | France | 95​ min | ​Jean-Pierre Melville | Programme: European Cinemascope​

It is inexplicable how a film by the great Melville could be so obscure that it is almost completely forgotten by all and sundry.  The usual suspects of gangsters and gamblers are nowhere to be seen but the two male leads, plus an assortment of supporting male characters are definitely Melvillian.  His themes and ideas gradually become apparent as the film unfolds.  It explores the relationships among men, this time even more acutely than many of his previous more well-known and successful films.  Jean-Paul Belmondo plays an amateur boxer who takes the job of a private secretary to escort a corrupt French banker to South America, giving him safe conduct.  The titular banker is played sardonically by the great Charles Vanel.  As they travel south, they end up stuck in the Louisiana backwoods and a game of dependency, fear and spite is played.  It is there the men’s loyalty and indifference are tested.  This may be Melville's most personal and cruel film.

NINE LIVES

35mm | 19​57 | Norway | 95 min | Arne Skouen​ | Programme: Rediscovered & Restored​

Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, Nine Lives takes place during World War II and is based on the real-life experiences of a resistance fighter’s escape from the Nazis after he and a small group of men on a sabotage mission to blow up a German ship, are attacked.  Alone, pursued by the Germans, he attempts to make the dangerous journey from Northern Norway across treacherous territory and over the mountainous and snowbound border to Sweden.  The landscape and snow become characters as he navigates his way across the merciless terrain.  He gets help from the villagers, but must remain buried in the snow via a makeshift snow tent as the Germans close in.  A  fascinating sequence is the blindness he experiences as a result of all that snow.  Man and nature are at the fore-front and background of this excellent film.  Beautifully shot on location, with minimal dialogue and a few tense and very real mountain scenes, Skouen creates a vivid portrait of the enduring spirit of a human being and the kindness of strangers.  When death is inevitable if you reveal yourself to anyone, how do you know in whom you can trust?

UP IN MABEL'S ROOM​

35mm | 19​44 | ​USA | 76 min | Allan Dwan | Programme: The Films of Allan Dwan​

A young couple’s marriage is put to the test when the husband realizes that he must retrieve a certain piece of lingerie he gave to a former fling whilst on vacation in Mexico.  Hilarity ensues as this farce goes into overdrive about mistaken identities, hiding under beds, getaways, blackmail and all kinds of shenanigans.  Dwan’s direction is deft and he keeps the actors on their toes.  The film is fast-paced, witty and very funny.  Made during the war, I am sure it provided much relief to the audiences.  The opening statement on the screen says: “Make no mistake, this is a war film, fighting the Nazis and the Japanese is no easy task, but brother, have you ever tried keeping a secret from your wife?  Now, that’s war!”

THE WOMEN OF RYAZAN​
35mm | 19​27 | ​Soviet Union | 81 min | Olga Preobrazhenskaya & Ivan Pravov | ​Programme: Focus on Preobrazhenskaya​ & Pravov

Considered by many critics to be Olga Preobrazhenskaya’s best film, The Women of Ryazan is a melodrama at heart and its soul is the silent suffering of a beautiful young bride who becomes prey to her lascivious father-in-law as he torments her for her youth and body after his son is called away to World War I.  However, the real villain of this moving film is not the father-in-law, but the women of the village of Ryazan who are insufferably unfeeling and spiteful towards the young bride who is an orphan.  Prejudice leads the way for slander and gossip which brings about nothing but destruction and chaos.  The French title, The Village of Sin, is perhaps better-suited for the film.  We are told in an introduction to the film that Eisenstein and Vertov disliked Preobrazhenskaya and her work.  She was, after all, a female pioneer in the Russian film industry and although this film does not come across as feminist, it is an exceptional film about human conflict.

IL GENERALE DELLA ROVERE

35mm | 1959 | Italy | 138 min | Roberto Rossellini | Programme: Vittorio de Sica, Actor & Director​

In a role he was born to play, De Sica brilliantly captures the character of petty thief with a deep sense of benevolence.  His dignified approach to the character makes this film a joy to behold.  He swindles money from families of the arrested partisans with the promises of release as he lies about his connections with the German army.  But he really believes that he can help and it is that sincerity that makes his character so compelling.  His encounter with a high-ranking German official leads to mutual respect and a friendship of convenience.  De Sica is asked by the German official to impersonate a certain Generale Della Rovere believed to be captured by the Germans.  His job in prison would be to get the identity of a key partisan fighter.  Rossellini keeps the focus clearly on this flawed human being who changes and grows before our eyes as the film progresses.  It is hard to believe that this film was De Sica's only success after Rome Open City made 14 years before.  He was not to be forgiven for his affair with Ingrid Bergman until he awakened the nation's conscience with this film.  Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice and nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, Il Generale Della Rovere is one of the great films of the festival.   

BLACK HAIR

DCP | 1964 | South Korea | 107 min | Lee Man-hee | Programme: Rediscovered & Restored

I had no idea what to expect from this rare screening.  Old South Korean films are a rarity to be screened so my interest was piqued.  This is a captivating film set in the world of pimps, prostitutes and some very bad men.  With its dark streets, smoky bars, 1960s cabarets, Black Hair is film-noired to the maximum.  The boss of a gang suspects his wife of adultery and decrees that she be punished according to the rules he made himself.  The punishment is the jagged edge of a broken bottle to the face.  After her disfigurement, she wears her black hair across her cheek to hide the scar.  So far in this film, we have seen this scenario before in other 1960s Asian films.  But here's why Black Hair is special and one of my favourites of the festival:  From the moment of her punishment, the rest of the film plays like a grand Shakespearean tragedy as the boss is filled with remorse, guilt and shame.  He wanders the rest of the film like a man preparing to die but who desperately needs to do penance.  With a climax worthy of any of the Bard's tragedies, replete with declarations and speeches about regret, love and loss, Black Hair is an inky black & white Cinemascope treat.

BLACKMAIL

35mm | 1929 | Great Britain | 90 min| Alfred Hitchcock | Programme: The Silent Films of Hitchcock

This is the best of all the silent Hitchcock films I saw at the festival.  It does show indications of later Hitchcockian themes.  It is beautifully crafted, very stylistic with excellent use of shadows and light.  But most importantly, it is exquisitely directed.  The murder scene is shown only by the scuffling behind closed curtains and then the shadow of a fist.  As with any Hitchcock film, one shouldn't say much.  This is a film to be relished and discovered from start to finish.    

INO AND MON​

35mm | 193​5 | Japan | ​60​ min | Sotoji Kimura | ​​Programme: 1930s Japanese Cinema​

A young woman has fallen to ill-repute after being impregnated by her lover.  She now works as a geisha or prostitute in the city and visits her family from time to time.  These visits spark tension and volatile fights between the brother and sister.  The mother, father and younger sister try to make peace but the fracture is irreparable.  A visit from the former lover changes the course of the film and reveals the true nature of the brother's antagonism towards his sister.  This is a strikingly beautiful film about the fractured relationship between a brother and sister and ultimately about sacrifice.  

THE INSIDE STORY

35mm | 1948 | USA | 87 min | Allan Dwan | Programme: The Films of Allan Dwan​

What a wonderful surprise the films of Allan Dwan are!  His films are filled with great spirit and optimism in humanity.  I am impartial to comedies and light romances, but when the writing and direction are as sharp as in the works of Dwan, then I am front-in-line.  This cautionary and not surprisingly relevant tale set during the Depression years, reminds us of the need to keep the economy alive by the circulation of cash.  The appearance of $1,000 in cash at a tiny New England hotel leads to a series of misunderstandings that result in the $1,000 being circulated with confusion in the small community.  There is an air of beauty and magical fairy-tale like quality to this film (as in most of Dwan's films from this period).  The cast is superb, handling pages and pages of dialogue that sparkles with witty one-liners.  A waitress is asked if the coffee is fresh, to which she replies, "If it were any fresher, it'd be insulting!"  A greedy shopkeeper tells his landlady after paying rent he owes, "I hope I never see your face again!"  She replies, "Well, I have a very good memory for faces and I hope I never see either of yours again!"

AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON​
35mm | 193​0 | ​Soviet Union | 125 min | Olga Preobrazhenskaya & Ivan Pravov​ | ​Programme: Focus on Preobrazhenskaya & Pravov​

Based on what is considered a masterpiece of Soviet literature by Mikhail Sholokhov, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1965, this ethnographic melodrama is relentless in plot development.  The first 30 minutes set the tone of the film as a Cossack soldier returns from war to his tiny village and brings along his veiled Turkish bride.  Racism, intolerance and hatred set the stage for tragedy.  We are then thrust forward two decades and the focus is now on the grandson of the Cossack soldier and his tumultuous relationship with his father.  He falls in love with the wife of another villager and they elope.  Murder, hate, loyalty, seduction, suspicion, jealousy, civil war, the Ukrainians et al intertwine to create a film of passions and fury.   What is most impressive is how confidently the film is directed in spite of all that narrative material.  It seems at times that the frame could not control the overflow of emotions and drama.  

RENDEZVOUS WITH ANNIE

35mm | 1946 | USA | 89 min | Allan Dwan | Programme: The Films of Allan Dwan​

Different from his comedies, Dwan shifts gear with this lyrical and romantic film about an air force clerk in World War II who decides to go AWOL with the help of his friends who are pilots, to travel from England to America to visit his young bride.  Some months later he is discharged and returns home, happy to be reunited with this wife.  But the town has changed their attitude towards him and it is only after he discovers his wife has just given birth to a baby, he understands the reason for the small town's discomfort.  He now has the task of trying to prove that he did indeed come back for one night 9 months ago to be with her, but alas, there are no witnesses.  The pilots will not reveal what happened as they will be court-martialed.  Bristling with joyful energy and great performances, especially Gail Patrick as a nightclub singer, Rendezvous With Annie is an overlooked gem.

EXPERIMENT IN TERROR

DCP | 1962 | USA | 123 min | Blake Edwards | Programme: Rediscovered & Restored​

Never before has asthmatic wheezing been used more effectively in cinema.  To hear the terrorizer say "Hello Kelly" amidst gasps of breath, sends chills up your spine.  It is hard to believe this taut thriller and excellent policier was directed by Blake Edwards, but his filmography is diverse.  The opening 10 minute scene is rivetting with just the shadow of a wheezing man as he frightens Kelly after clutching her from behind and covering her mouth with his hand.  Steeped in voyeurism, this film is relentless in the pursuit of a man who threatens destruction and death to Kelly (played with strength and vulnerability by the wonderful Lee Remick), if she does not help him rob the bank where she works.  But this is not a caper or heist film.  The identity of the psychotic killer is revealed early in the film and there is (mercifully) no  explanation of motive and attempt to psycho-analyze his character.  Edwards keeps the focus strictly on the coldness of terror and the uncertainty of the next move.  A wonderful discovery and a great opening score by Henry Mancini.

F​IVE MEN FROM THE CIRCUS​

35mm | 193​5 | Japan | ​65​ min | ​Mikio Naruse | Programme: 1930s Japanese Cinema​
We are treated to the international premiere of this rare Naruse film, which was never screened outside of Japan since its release in 1935.  Unsuccessful and a critical failure, one tries to understand why and how this film is any different from other Naruse films of the same period.  Although it is a film about the five travelling band players, Naruse focuses on the many women the players encounter on the road and how their relationships with these women affect their lives.  

FIFTEEN MAIDEN LANE​

35mm | 19​36 | ​USA| 65 min | Allan Dwan​ | ​Programme: The Films of Allan Dwan​

Allan Dwan’s edgy romance set in the world of the New York diamond business at the titular location is about a suave jewel thief and his newly acquired accomplice.  During an escape, he slips a precious jewel into her purse.  She plays along as she is completely aware of what has happened, all the while baiting him.  Well-structured and excellently edited, this fast-paced film is funny and unpredictable.  Cesar Romero is fantastic as the no-nonsense thief who lets his guard down for his beautiful partner-in-crime.  Double-cross after double-cross, twists and turns, all perfectly assembled by Dwan.

Until 2014...

Michel Ciment et Philippe Rouyer présentent la revue POSITIF

Bernard Chardère sur 40 ans de Positif

Here is a video from 1992 of Positif's founder Bernard Chardère reflecting on his career and the history of the magazine. - D.D.

Winston Washington Moxam in Toronto

The Winston Washington Moxam films The Barbecue and From the Other Side will be screened, and introduced by Scott Birdwise, at the Lightbox on Wednesday, July 10th at 8:30PM.

Rio Bravo by Hawks, Schickel and Carpenter

I don't know if Rio Bravo is Howard Hawks’ best film or if I would call it the best film ever made - even though it deserves to be up there with Citizen Kane and Vertigo - but it's great and it deserves close analysis, and for this, the Warner Home Video – Ultimate Collector’s Edition of Rio Bravo is a great resource: it comes in a nice two-disc cardboard box set that includes in two separate sleeves eight vintage-style lobby cards, a reproduction of the Rio Bravo comic book (Dell Comics), and a pamphlet with vintage Rio Bravo posters as well as exploitation tips. The special features on the DVDs include a commentary by Richard Schickel and John Carpenter, movie trailers for several John Wayne pictures, and the documentaries The Men Who Made the Movies: Howard Hawks, Commemoration: Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo and Old Tucson: Where the Legends Walked.

Schickel’s documentary The Men Who Made the Movies: Howard Hawks is a good introduction to Hawks' career and it includes rare footage of Hawks late in his life, where he's still looking as cool as ever, with a cowboy hat and glasses, as he joins his teenage grandson to watch him motor race.

“The French have been very kind to me,” says Hawks, “they attribute a lot of things to me, that I have no thought about.” He chuckles, “I don’t do the analysis that you guys do” (cf. Comolli on Sergeant York, Rohmer on The Big Sky). Hawks instead opts for straightforwardness to discuss his career and brings up the transition to sound at the dawn of the talkies, early special effects, the cross-talk of overlapping dialogue, fostering a creative atmosphere on his sets, and that “you don’t have to be too logical, you just have to make five to six good scenes.”

It's a shame that the earliest film discussed is The Dawn Patrol ('38) because this omits Hawks’ great silent films like Fig Leaves, Paid to Love and A Girl in Every Port (cf. Langlois on Hawks). But instead it focuses more on Hawks' middle to later career as it situates the films in an adventure (Scarface) and comedy (Twentieth Century) dichotomy. The documentary is full of interesting remarks like how Red River is said to be his John Ford film (which recalls the Hawks' quote, "I learned right in the beginning from Jack Ford, and I learned what not to do by watching Cecil DeMille.") and Hawks speaks about why he made Rio Bravo, “I didn’t like High Noon. It's ridiculous, the man is not a professional.”

Joseph McBride, in Hawks on Hawks, would write about the Hawksian professional,

“Hawks’s films almost always deal with a tightly knit group of professionals trying to perform a difficult task together while upholding their own rigorously defined code of conduct. Whether they are gunfighters, aviators, hunters, detectives, newspapermen, or scientists, Hawks’s people function in a self-enclosed society in which the standards of personal conduct are professional skill, group loyalty, and self-respect. The highest accolade one Hawks character can pay to another is “You did a good job,” and the worst thing one can say of another is “He just wasn’t good enough.”"

Even though some film critics claim that Hawks' films Only Angels Have Wings, To Have and Have Not and Rio Bravo form a "clear trilogy" on the basis that they have a similar structure and share the same screenwriter Jules Furthman; I'm skeptical of this because many of Hawks' other films share this structure as they are routinely about a small group of ordinary men who perform actions of bravery under the extraordinary circumstance of being threatened by external forces. There is the crew in the outpost in The Thing, the writers that are held hostage in Balls of Fire, the aviation plane in Air Force, the boat in The Big Sky, and the racing club in Red Line 7000 to only name a few examples.

***

The filmmaker John Carpenter elaborates about the motif of the contingent group under siege in the films of Hawks,

"It's endlessly fascinating. I mean, that's life. It's amazing to watch how people interact with each other under stress and in joy. So it's endlessly fascinating and endless in the number of stories, it seems to me, about people and how they respond to the environment they're in; whether they're in love or whether they're in hate, or whether they're in trouble, or whatever.

Carpenter also elaborates on his admiration for Hawks, from the same interview in The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror,

"Howard Hawks to me personally was the greatest director because he made a great movie in every genre. He did musicals, he did gangster movies, he did westerns, he did comedies. He moved with ease through these different genres. But what he brings to it is his own personal vision of the world, his own personal concerns with people, with actors. He's a very deeply personal filmmaker who worked with genres. That's what inspires me about him"

For a long time Carpenter was a Cahiers du Cinéma favorite (along with Romero, Cronenberg, and Argento) and their affinity towards him culminated in a lengthy interview with Nicolas Saada about his entire career, but which continued onward with Stéphane Delorme who wrote a rave review of Ghost of Mars ('01). But since Ghost of Mars, there was nine years that passed before his next film, The Ward ('10), which was received with ambivalent to poor responses.

So in this recent period Carpenter has been neglected and his films from the past have also been unfairly neglected. But luckily there has been more talk about Carpenter recently, most notably from the Vulgar Auteurist, but also in Jason Zinoman's book about American Seventies horror films Shock Value, and The Seventh Art recently blogged about the documentary John Carpenter: Fear Is Just The Beginning... ('04).

***

In the introduction to The Technique of Terror, Ian Conrich and David Woods situate Carpenter,

"Moreover, he is part of the group of filmmakers who emerged in the early to mid-1970s, the new wave of Hollywood renaissance of post-classical directors who were both self-taught and film-school educated. Crucially, such filmmakers were familiar with the work of their peers and of the saturated style of Hollywood's system of genre production. Working within a deregulated American movie industry, filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas have exploited the medium's commercial opportunities to make productions that have defined contemporary film and marked key transitions in American mainstream and art-house cinema. Others such as John Cassavetes, John Sayles and Robert Altman have been celebrated for their independence and heightened storytelling abilities. Carpenter, like Brian de Palma, is different; both being noted for their stylish re-interpretations of, and open homages to, directors of classical Hollywood (primarily Hawks and Hitchcock) as well as for their reliance on genre patterns of filmmaking. Both filmmakers have crafted astonishingly creative films, but in an age in which studios are increasingly driven towards high concept productions, there appears less of a desire for companies to accommodate the idiosyncratic nature of an independent director."

It is this connection between Carpenter and Hawks that I would like to further highlight.

Carpenter made several note-worthy student films at USC that led him to get funding to make his hippie science-fiction film Dark Star whose success let him go on to make one of his best films, Assault on Precinct 13, which is about a group of policemen that are under siege by local thugs in an abandoned Los Angeles precinct. Like many of Carpenter subsequent films, Assault asks questions about the role of violence in society and ways that it is expressed and controlled.

This structure of a group under siege, which is an ode to Rio Bravo, would be used by Carpenter in many of his other films. There are the Snake Plissken films starring Kurt Russell (Escape from New York & L.A.) as well as Ghost of Mars and Prince of Darkness. These latter films are already taking the fright of violence and pushing it towards the supernatural horror, which achieves an aesthetic climax for Carpenter with The Fog and Village of the Damned, but which is already there in The Thing, whose direct inspiration is Hawks' The Thing (a film that Carpenter speaks very highly of, which he discovered as a child). There are also some similarities between Vampires and Hatari! as they are both about the hunt for a rare and dangerous target.

Regarding Carpenter's comments about people and groups under siege, what actually interests him about the setting is the people, their character, and their inter-relational dynamics. It is not the face of evil that interest Carpenter but regular peoples responding to it, how they deal with this threat, and how they stand up for themselves. The bonds of friendship that are so important for Carpenter is what really connects him to Hawks and not so much the surface similarities that the two share. When Natasha Henstridge and Ice Cube reunite at the end of Ghost of Mars it is the celebration of the platonic friendship that is on display, which recalls Hawks' remarks about A Girl in Every Port, "This was the beginning of a relationship I have used in a number of picture. It's really a love story between two men." But for Carpenter by having the women as the character in power he's reacting to the male-centrism of Hawks (and of some of his own films), critiquing it, and offering a solution, which he would push further in The Ward.

***

It is these kind of connections that would have been great to hear about from Carpenter and Schickel on the lengthy Rio Bravo audio commentary instead of only casual observations mixed with immediate responses. The commentaries shift from Carpenter to Schickel, which make it hard to distinguish who exactly is talking, and even though it's never addressed if they recorded the commentary together, one gets a sense of two Hawksian friends bonding over a subject of mutual interest. As it progresses they talk less, and there are several extended quiet passages, which allow for the watching of the scene in full, and that are sometimes intercut with brief laughter.

The following is a paraphrasing and quotations of the highlights from the Carpenter and Schickel audio commentary:

Rio Bravo is “one of Hawk’s last great films,” posits Schickel, and he would go on to explain why, “It’s about more than just a western.” Hawks was a film industry veteran by the time he made it and he knew what worked. Its leisurely pace was a response to the fast pace of the television sitcoms of the period. This is why in Rio Bravo there are a lot of scenes of people just standing around and talking, these scenes are also used as bridges between the action scenes. The musical interlude was another standard of the movies of the period. As Schickel succinctly puts it, Hawks is a minimalist anecdotalist. 

There is a lot to say about Wayne in the film: he plays a heightened version of himself in an acting style that would only be appreciated after the fact. He knew his limits and the responses people had towards his anger (“The silence of the patriarch is always a good weapon in the hands of John Wayne”) but he had a good sense of humor about it. Wayne’s cowboy hat is the same one that he has been wearing in the movies since Stagecoach and he is wearing a Red River brand belt. There is real chemistry between Wayne and Angie Dickinson, and the scene where he carries her upstairs after he finds her sleeping on a chair, says all there needs to be said about his feelings towards her. Dickinson would make her mark with this picture with her great performance as a Hawksian woman, which are famous for setting their own moral standard. Dean Martin just got off from working with Jerry Lewis and did some serious work in a few films like Rio Bravo and Some Came Running. Walter Brennen, a long time Hawks collaborator (Come and Get It), who plays stumpy is like the bickering wife figure that was so prominent in the television sitcoms of the time. Ricky Nelson, who at the time had a big teen following, gives a nice cool performance and it was Nelson’s father who was Hawks’ friend that got him the job. The character actor Pedro Gonzales Gonzales's “painful ethnic humor" is a little patronizing but "is a stereotypical western character of the time."

Carpenter begins on a high note: Rio Bravo “is one of my favorite movies of all time” and Hawks “is my favorite director.” Hawks is a director whose camera is always at the right place at the right time and he always knows where to set the camera, and there is a moral quality to its gaze. Regarding the filmmaking: “One of the strangest opening sequences” as it is all silent and it can be seen as a return to the silent cinema that started Hawks' career. Carpenter speaks eloquently about the lateral tracking shot of Wayne and Martin walking down the street with the tumble weed going past them connecting them together. Carpenter also wonders if there was an influence by some Japanesse films like Yojimbo.

Rio Bravo is an adventure film about characters who define themselves by their professions and the depth of it comes from how these actions have emotional consequence. The love between men is a major theme that runs through Hawks' films. But Rio Bravo is also a romantic comedy but that proceeds through anti-romantic scenes of the two principals fighting together. In a Hawks movie, the male is always befuddled by the female. He compliments Wayne as the sheriff, “not Shakespearian, but who can spin like that,” and talks about the simplicity of Chance’s philosophy.

“Nobody does it like Hawks, Nobody does it today like Hawks, I don’t think that they can.”  Hawks was a “straight-forward director, unlike Ford, who was more poetic.” He was more like an engineer who is clear, simple, direct and thoughtful. Regarding the Nathan Burdette subplot "it is a little perfunctory" as the story is "more about what's going on between the lines." Rio Bravo concludes with Wayne finally getting together with Dickinson while the two other sheriffs Martin and Brennen are walking on the street happily bickering, which they will continue to do for a long time afterwards.