Backstage: Obsession and Celebrity

Backstage, opening today at Shattuck Cinemas, is a story of obsession and fantasy, depicting the relationship between a pop star and one of her fans, a teenage girl who has come to idolize the singer to the point of zealous obsession.

Much of the plot may seem over the top, but director Emmanuelle Bercot based her screenplay on actual fan letters written to pop stars, fashioning these missives into a screenplay that attempts to explore the strange dynamic between the trappings of fame and the marketing of celebrity and the desperation of the young, impressionable consumer who becomes irresistibly drawn to the unattainable. 

If the film seems at times to indulge too greatly in an adolescent world, to dwell on the clichés of the pop star lifestyle, it is important to remember that this is deliberate, that the film is essentially telling the tale through the eyes of a star-struck girl who has romanticized and glorified every facet of her idol’s existence. She is hardly an objective observer; rather she provides a filtered lens that colors the action with her own dreams, desires and pain.

Lauren, the star, is self-centered and melodramatic. She sees her success as something of a trap and her self image as a reluctant celebrity, combined with her troubled romantic life, send her into wildly inappropriate bouts of self pity. But Lucie, the young girl who worships her and, through a chance encounter, becomes her confidant, interprets this drama even more dramatically, seeing Lauren as a martyr, as an artist on a grand scale, and thus any impediment to Lauren’s happiness and artistic success is seen by Lucie as a force of evil intent on destroying a goddess. 

The casting, by Antoinette Boulat and Bercot, is excellent. Emmanuelle Seigner has just the right aura, bringing to the role of Lauren great beauty and ferocity as well as vulnerability and emotional instability. And Isild le Besco plays Lucie with the appropriately ungainly movements of a budding adolescent, the stark, frightened, deer-in-the-headlights expression of a girl forever lost, and the sensual, maniacal, glassy-eyed gaze of a slightly unhinged fan seeking to forever bind herself to the object of her obsession. Supporting roles are often filled by non-actors who hold the same occupations as their characters; the security guard is played by a security guard, the record executive played by a record executive, etc., and the technique succeeds in bringing a certain veracity to the film’s otherwise heightened realism.

There are a few missteps however. Bercot created an entire album of original songs by Lauren and often relies a bit too heavily on them to carry the film’s emotional weight, with too many shots drowned out by music and too many scenes simplistically explained by Lauren’s lyrics. And her use of symbolism can be simplistic and heavy-handed as well. One of Lauren’s possessions, for instance, is a stuffed deer, meant to capture the nature of her own existence: innocence captured, killed, stuffed and always on display, a lifeless commodity used to adorn a hotel room just as posters of Lauren adorn the bedroom walls of teenagers all over France. Had it only appeared once, or perhaps only in the background, it might have been a more subtle and effective symbol. But Bercot features it so prominently it verges on parody. In one scene Lauren appears is profile alongside the profile of the deer, just to make sure we don’t miss the connection; and in another shot, Lucie is seen caressing the deer and nearly kissing it.

But again, we are seeing this story through the eyes of a deranged fan, so perhaps these awkward moments can also be attributed to her skewed perspective. And ultimately that is where Backstage has its greatest success, in the presentation of that perspective. For whatever its faults and however silly its characters may sometimes be, viewers who remember the more dramatic fancies of their adolescence will recognize some degree of truth in Lucie’s delusions and the burden they inflict on the adults around her.

Backstage (2007). Starring Emmanuelle Seigner and Isild le Besco. Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot. Written by Jerome Tonnerre and Bercot. 115 minutes. Not rated. In French with English subtitles. 

PFA Screens Two Italian Art House Classics

A fascinating pair of Italian films will screen this weekend at Pacific Film Archive. The first, Il Posto (1961), could be seen as a sequel to Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, presenting another quietly observant portrait of a young man suffering through a rite of passage. It’s as though the 13-year-old Antoine Donel of the earlier film has now grown into the 18-year-old Domenico Cantoni, sent by his parents into the big city of Milan to find a job.

Directed by Ermanno Olmi, Il Posto fits in with the Italian neo-realism school of filmmaking in its presentation of a humanistic tale of youthful dreams and ambitions sacrificed at the altar of security and conformism.

Domenico seems to dread his entry into the working world, a world presented as one of time-worn adults marking time in soulless, dreary employment. However, a ray of light appears in the form of a young woman named Antonietta (Loredana Detto), and her sparkling presence illuminates the screen as well as the life of the hero. Together they navigate the job application process and take pleasure in each other’s company, the two bright-eyed youths constituting a slightly subversive presence in an otherwise stale maze of corridors, offices and standard-issue furniture.

The key to the film is Sandro Panseri, a non-professional actor with soulful eyes and the gentle, timid face of a youth trying to comprehend and master the ways of a foreign territory. He’s a small, skinny waif masquerading as a grown-up in ill-fitting grown-up clothing. He hits all the right notes and Olmi captures each one, showing us in wordless close-ups the fear, uncertainty, shyness and delight that flitter across the face of the young protagonist.

But about three-quarters into the film, Olmi suddenly abandons the main character for an extended sequence in which we learn something of the personal lives of each one of a number of accountants at the unnamed firm where Domenico has landed. It may seem like a tangent at first, but the sequence marks the opening salvo in a tour de force closing sequence that drives home the film’s major themes.

Domenico is promoted, and in an uncharacteristic but highly effective montage, Olmi shows us why. One of the accountants we’ve encountered has passed away, possibly by suicide, and his desk is turned over to Domenico, much to the dismay of his new colleagues. One, a 20-year veteran, complains to the manager, and when Domenico agrees to move to a desk in the back of the room, a frenzied and ruthless rush ensues as the other accountants begin a mad dash to claim the desk immediately in front of their own, a desperate game of musical chairs for which they’ve apparently been waiting for decades.

The final shot shows Domenico watching a man at the front of the room as he cranks what appears to be a mimeograph machine, feeding paper into one end and removing it from the other as a deafening mechanical whirr dominates the soundtrack. The grind has begun.

Yet as bleak as this conclusion may seem, it is also somewhat ambiguous, for throughout the film we have seen Domenico warmly befriended by the adults in his new environment, receiving a series of reassurances that a simpler life of lower expectations is not all bad but is in fact full of small pleasures. With these gentle moments of camaraderie and kindness, Olmi provides a welcome softening of the film’s sharp edge.

Domenico may have found himself in a dispiriting situation, but there is still energy and vivaciousness and curiosity in his face, a sign that although life is certainly capable of pummeling the spirit out of a young man, he still has a choice—plenty of choices, really—and retains the power to shape his own destiny. And the fact that Domenico is able to so clearly see his predicament in the closing scene leaves us with hope that he has the strength and determination to overcome it, now that he finally understands it.

Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) similarly focuses on a main character with enormously expressive eyes in the form of Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), another youthful spirit facing dire circumstances. But the style and delivery of the tale could not be more different from the observational calm of Olmi’s Il Posto.

La Strada tells the tale of a boorish brute of a traveling sideshow performer, Zampano, played by Anthony Quinn. When his wife dies, he travels back to her remote, impoverished village and essentially purchases her younger sister to take her place. Gelsomina has a clown-like countenance, and eventually she takes on the makeup of a clown, too. Her childish innocence calls to mind silent film comedian Harry Langdon, blending an adult body with an infantile purity that at times confounds us with its ambiguity.

And despite its rather simple story, the film is full of ambiguities. Gelsominia is at once innocent and deeply aware of her place in Zampano’s life. And the Fool, a character capable of both cruelty and martyrdom, provides lessons in life and love for the main characters while treating them with a degree of contempt.

The film itself seems to straddle two realms, leaning at times toward realism and at times toward a sort of fable-like fantasy. Beneath its circus settings, desolate stretches of beach and never-ending highways, it is a simple love story about a man who cannot admit his feelings and a child-like woman who is entirely governed by her own.

La Strada concludes with a powerful shot of Zampano alone on the beach after learning that his dismissal of Gelsomina has led her to madness and death. As he faces the open sea, he glances upwards for a moment, as though discovering God for the first time and begging his forgiveness. And it seems like the first time that he has lifted his brooding gaze from the ground, the first time we have seen the whites of his eyes. But it is too late now, and Zampano simply crumbles to the ground as though merging with the brittle sand.

The two films are showing as part of PFA’s tribute to Janus Films, the American distributor responsible for bringing so many foreign art house films to the United States in the 1950s and '60s. The series concludes next week with a screening of Mario Monicelli’s The Organizer (1963).

Il Posto (1961)

Directed by Ermanno Olmi. 93 minutes. 6:30 p.m. Friday.

La Strada (1956)

Directed by Federico Fellini. 108 minutes. 5 p.m. Saturday.

Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way. $4-$8. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Samurai Classics at Pacific Film Archive

Pacific Film Archive will present a series of seven samurai films beginning today and running through Dec. 17.

Most of the films come courtesy of Janus Films, the great American distributor of foreign arthouse cinema whose 50th anniversary PFA has been honoring in another ongoing series.

But the samurai series ain’t quite as highbrow as all that. Not on the surface, at least. These are popular entertainments, full of action and humor. But look closer and you’ll see films full of art and artistry, of complex themes and human struggle worthy of the highest forms of art, here dressed in violent period melodrama.

Of course no samurai series would be complete without the biggest samurai film of them all, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954). Seven Samurai gave rise to an American version, The Magnificent Seven, but the western version pales in comparison with the original. Kurosawa takes his time with each character, presenting a fuller, richer, more engaging ensemble than the swaggering icons played by Yul Brynner et al.

Kurosawa is represented in the series by two other films as well: Throne of Blood (1957), his samurai adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and Yojimbo (1961), a brilliant and funny film inspired by American westerns and later remade as a western, albeit an Italian western: Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars.

But most enlightening films in the series are the lesser-known classics of the genre.

The series starts with this weekend with two films by Masaki Kobayashi, Samurai Rebellion (1967) and Harakiri (1962).

Harakiri is a stunning film, a gradually unfolding tale of heartbreak and misfortune that builds toward a climactic act of revenge. Most of the film consists of conversations in which the characters play out a tense, strategic battle of wills, yet now and then the slow-burning tone is punctuated with scenes of sudden violence.

Kobayashi and photographer Yoshio Miyajima establish themselves quickly as masters of interiors with an opening credits sequence of slow tracking shots which delineate the architectural splendor of a great mansion. The pattern continues throughout the film with beautiful but discreet compositions and graceful tracking shots through corridors and into rooms, with pillars and doors and windows and figures arranged perfectly like stones in a garden.

Kobayashi often maintains a certain distance from his subjects, unobtrusively watching them as they go about their business. But when the action starts and the tone shifts, so too does the camera, zooming in like a Sergio Leone telephoto shot or tilting toward canted angles a la Orson Welles, signaling a shift in the dramatic action as well as the strategic repositioning of characters within fragile alliances. But Kobayashi also demonstrates his talent for outdoor shots with a one-on-one battle on a windswept plain that contains echoes of Bergman.

The plot concerns the requisite lone samurai, this time seeking to destroy the facade of nobility and honor maintained by a great clan, and he does so, for the most part, without action but with words. It is like one of those extended endgame scenes in a James Bond movie where the villain stops the show to explicate in great detail for the hero’s benefit the machinations of his nefarious scheme. Only here it lasts two hours and results in a tour de force of swordfight choreography as Tatsuya Nakadai takes on the house’s company of samurai and by extension the entire feudal system. He smashes down doors, breaks through walls, smears the house insignia with the blood of his enemies and dismantles the interiors that Kobayashi had photographed with such care throughout the film, the architecture that had sustained the house and masked its cowardice.

The series also features two films by director Kihachi Okamoto: Kill! (1968) and Sword of Doom (1966).

While Kobayashi’s work embodies much of what of what is best in the samurai genre, the films of Kihachi Okamoto elaborately deconstruct these elements in gleeful parodies that, like the Italian westerns of Leone, are equal parts satire and homage. Okamoto’s Kill!, made just six years after Harakiri, picks apart the genre’s stock features and embellishes its humor-laced plot with a score that deconstructs the genre’s musical themes as well, combining Japanese instrumentation with the cartoonishly grand orchestrations of the spaghetti western scores of the 1960s.

For more information on the samurai series, see Pacific Film Archive’s website: www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

Examining the Most Notorious Expletive

Steve Anderson’s new documentary Fuck takes a thorough look at the most multi-faceted of expletives—at its murky, myth-laden origins, its many conjugations, its cathartic, emotive power as well as its power to offend. 

While the film contains clips from controversial performances by comedians Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, as well as animations by Bill Plympton and excerpts from dozens of Hollywood films, it is essentially a talking-head documentary, a string of interviews examining the word from all sides. 

But what a collection of talking heads. From sociologists and linguists to comedians and porn stars, Fuck runs the gamut, for who can’t claim some level of expertise with the word and at least one of its myriad meanings? It’s one of the most democratic words in the English language. Television writer/producer Steven Bochco relates tales of clashes with censors over “NYPD Blue”; 1950s wholesome heartthrob Pat Boone shares his G-rated alternative expletive (“Boone!”), while Ice T consequently ridicules it; moralists like Judith “Miss Manners” Martin and radio talk show hosts Alan Keyes and Dennis Prager rail against the prevalence of the word in popular culture, while Bill Maher decries the hypocrisy of the Christian right as he and other comedians and performers defend their right to use it; and Hunter S. Thompson … well, I’m not sure what the hell Thompson was mumbling about between swigs of whiskey and the compulsive adjusting of his transparent blue “Las Vegas” visor, but I’m sure it was fascinating. 

The movie is fun but ultimately it has little insight. Indeed there is more to learn about profanity, self-expression, censorship and the First Amendment by spending more time with the performances the film excerpts, namely those of Lenny Bruce and George Carlin. Bruce of course is the iconic image most associated with the topic, having been arrested onstage nine times for his use of profanity and convicted twice, events which hastened the downward spiral which resulted in his death by drug overdose. If you want a better, more moving and insightful glimpse into the topic, check out Bruce’s recordings, or perhaps Dustin Hoffman’s performance as Bruce in Lenny and you’ll get a more compelling portrait of the power of language. 

Or try one of Carlin’s performances, either on video or on one of his old records. Occupation: Foole, his 1973 album, is excerpted in the documentary and it’s a good place to start, for not only do you get Carlin’s riff on the seven infamous words, you also get his comedic take specifically on the word fuck—its drama, its passion and its hurtfulness. 

Fuck provides an interesting and entertaining overview of the word but ultimately the film is far less insightful than its director probably hoped it to be. 

Fuck (2006). Directed by Steve Anderson. 93 minutes. 

Photo caption: An array of experts weigh in: Musician Evan Seinfeld and adult film star Tera Patrick, singer Pat Boone, rapper Chuck D, newsman Sam Donaldson, radio talk show host Dennis Prager, late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, comedian Bill Maher, comedian Drew Carey and talk show host and political candidate Alan Keyes.

PFA Screens a New Wave Classic

The films of Agnes Varda and her husband Jacques Demy could not be more different.

Demy, best known for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, was both part of and apart from the French New Wave. Enamored with Hollywood’s golden age musicals, he is sometimes referred to as France’s answer to Busby Berkeley: sweet but trite stories, artfully decorated but too slight for the tastes of his contemporaries.

Varda, on the other hand, is New Wave through and through. There are no gunfights, no car crashes, no dramatic chages of heart. Varda made small, insightful films about complex young characters. She represents the feminine side of the New Wave, a movement largely dominated by male directors. And while the male directors for the most part did a fair job of portraying women, Varda’s female characters have a depth and profundity unmatched in the work of her male counterparts.

Cleo From 5 to 7 details two hours in the life of its heroine in real time, though the timing is not exact and may not be quite realistic; it’s an action-packed two hours of supposedly everyday life. In that short span, the young pop singer protagonist manages a shopping trip, a rehearsal, a visit with a friend and an encounter with a stranger, not to mention bus and taxi trips all over Paris.

But this is hardly the point. What we’re watching is the psychological processes Cleo undergoes as she awaits the results of a medical test that will tell her just how serious her condition is. She has cancer; we don’t know what kind, we don’t know how serious. We only know that this beautiful, spoiled princess of a woman is suddenly dealing with something she is not accustomed to: hardship and pain.

How she deals with it tells us almost as much about her as the trappings of her privileged life—her furs, her hats, the adulation of her acquaintances. She approaches her illness with as much self-absorbed intensity as she presumably approached her pre-illness life; she draws people to her, collects them as small testaments to her beauty. But this is not portrayed with condescension; we do not feel contempt for her. Rather we are witnessing the sudden, painful expansion of a young woman’s consciousness as she learns that she is not the center of the world, a notion beautifully expressed in a scene where she plays her latest hit on a cafe jukebox and realizes that no one is paying attention. And, in an encounter with a young soldier about to return to battle in Algeria, she finally gives something of herself to another, offering companionship and conversation to a kindred spirit who also carries a burden.

The conclusion is typical of the New Wave; there is no big Hollywood–style conclusion, no tearful dramatic close or happy finale, but rather just a small revelation, the flicker of heightened consciousness across Cleo’s face. It is not a big change, not a life-altering change, and in fact the change may prove to be fleeting. But the drama in Cleo From 5 to 7 is not in the action, it is in the mind of its heroine. Such drama is difficult to express as an actor and difficult to photograph for a director, but Varda and her star make it as evident as any Hollywood car crash.

The film is showing at Pacific Film Archive as part of the 50th anniversary celebration of Janus Films and is available on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection’s 50 Years of Essential Arthouse box set.

Cleo From 5 To 7 (France, 1961)

Directed by Agnes Varda. Starring Corinne Marchand and featuring the music of Michel Legrand. 3 p.m. Sunday at Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft Way. 642-0808. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

www.criterionco.com.

Iraq in Fragments: A Stirring, Poetic Portrait of Life During Wartime

Now that the midterm election is over, with all its slogans and clichés and simplistic solutions for myriad complex problems, along comes a documentary that provides a solid, sobering dose of geopolitical reality. 

Iraq in Fragments, opening today at Shattuck Cinemas, is like a Terrence Malick celluloid tone poem, an epic tale in three chapters examining the hope, despair, fear and tragedy of occupied Iraq. But most of all it is about humanity, about people of all ages and walks of life reflecting on what it means to be an Iraqi under the most difficult and tenuous of circumstances. 

Director James Longley has fashioned a documentary that plays like the most meticulously planned fictional narrative, taking the words of Iraqis and draping them over his lush photography. Lines of great beauty and poignancy adorn a continuous stream of stunning imagery that captures the essence of the land and its people at a time when the nation’s fate is at best uncertain. 

Longley’s compositions are lovely, his images haunting, and his subjects are the most engaging of characters. The film could not be more striking and affecting had it been crafted with great foresight and care in a Hollywood studio. 

Longley himself never intrudes, not upon the images and certainly not upon the words. There is no narration other than the words spoken by the Iraqis onscreen; the photography never draws attention to the photographer, the images never betray his presence. It is easy to forget there is a camera there at all; it’s as though we are simply catching glimpses into everyday lives, the lives of anonymous everyday Iraqis, the poor and the powerless, people whose names will never spread beyond their small villages, but lives which, under the patient gaze of Longley’s lens, take on epic proportions. Iraq in Fragments elevates each life by respecting its inherent dignity and beauty. 

The film recalls Malick’s Thin Red Line, the 1998 movie that tracked soldiers in battle in World War II and made audible their private thoughts, memories and fears. Iraq in Fragments has that quality; the words of the subjects almost seem to be flowing directly from their minds to ours, as though we are not hearing them but receiving them—a sort of stream-of-consciousness documentary. 

There have been many documentaries made by filmmakers who have spent time in Iraq over the past few years, and several of them have been excellent. But none has covered the terrain staked out by James Longley in this film. He has adopted much of the cinema verité style while bringing to it an eye for imagery that calls to mind the dramatic landscapes of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi trilogy. He has transformed the words and lives and visuals of the Iraqi people into poetic incantations that provide an impressionistic glimpse of the struggle to retain one’s dignity and humanity in the face of global machinations over which they have no control. 

Iraq in Fragments (2006). Written, directed and photographed by James Longley. 94 minutes. 

The Great Chase: Buster Keaton's The General

In 1998, amid an orgy of end-of-the-millenium top 100 lists, the American Film Institute released its list of the 100 best American films, a list that included three Charlie Chaplin movies but inexplicably no Buster Keaton films, despite the fact that several of his works, most notably The General (1926), rank among the silent era’s best and frequently hover near the top of many critics’ lists of the best films ever made.

But this has been Keaton’s lot in life, both during his career and since his death: to toil away in the shadow of the most famous comedian who ever lived. Though a late-career rediscovery of his work saw Keaton hailed as a cinematic genius, even Chaplin’s superior as a director, Keaton still retains his underdog status.

Pacific Film Archive will show The General and One Week (1921), Keaton’s first independent film, as the first installments in a new series: “Movie Matinees For All Ages.” The series debuts at 2 p.m. Saturday with Keaton and will be followed over the next couple of Saturdays with the Marx Brothers’ Horse Feathers (1932) and Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939).

The General is essentially one big chase sequence, brilliantly constructed and expanded to feature length. The story, based on a true incident from the Civil War, concerns a Southern train stolen by Northern soldiers, who spirit the engine back into Northern territory, burning bridges and destroying telegraph wires as they go. Buster, as Johnnie Grey, is the General’s engineer, and sets out to recapture his beloved locomotive. Along the way, Keaton stages a series of beautifully choreographed and increasingly dangerous stunts until he arrives in enemy territory, rescues his train—and, almost by accident, his girl—and then heads back to Southern territory while hounded by Northern soldiers. Thus the chase folds back on itself, like an arc that delivers Keaton back where he began—the “Keaton Curve,” as critic Walter Kerr put it—with gags and stunts from the first half now expanded upon in the second.

The General and Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925) are unique among screen comedies in that they combine two seemingly incongruous genres: the comedy and the epic. Such a pairing had never been attempted before, as the grand scale of the epic seemed at odds with the smaller, more personal nature of character-based comedy. But whereas Chaplin’s film only contained a few outdoor shots in the early scenes before retreating to the comfort of studio sets, Keaton preferred to shoot on location; few of his comedies take place in studio sets. And though location shooting and period costumes were nothing new in Keaton’s work, The General dwarfs his previous efforts in scale and detail. Many critics consider it the most convincing celluloid recreation of the Civil War, the imagery recalling Matthew Brady’s photographs from the period.

Keaton instructed his crew to make it “so authentic it hurts” and carefully replicated the trains, uniforms, styles and terrain of the era. There were no special effects; Keaton’s desire for authenticity extended to every shot, culminating in the dramatic scene in which a train crashes through a burning bridge as scores of Northern soldiers pour over the hillside to converge on the Southern army’s front lines.

Critical reception was mixed. Some thought it a solid picture while others considered it Keaton’s weakest effort, taking offense at the notion of making light of the Civil War. Ultimately the considerable expense of the production caused Joseph Schenk, Keaton’s producer, to intervene with the usually autonomous director-star, requiring that his next feature be decidedly less extravagant. Keaton dutifully followed up with College (1927), one of his most restrained efforts, before embarking on the more elaborate Steamboat Bill, Jr (1928). It was while making Steamboat that Keaton learned that Schenk had sold his contract to MGM, bringing an end to Keaton’s independent career.

Under MGM, Keaton struggled to keep control over his work but quickly became subsumed by the studio system after his first feature, The Cameraman (1928). Thus Keaton, like Erich von Stroheim before him and Orson Welles after him, became something of a victim of his own success as the expense of and lack of contemporary public appreciation for his greatest achievement ultimately undermined his career.

PFA’s screening of The General will be preceded by One Week, the first two-reeler Keaton released as an independent artist after his apprenticeship with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. One Week was hailed as the year’s best comedy upon its release, establishing Keaton as one of cinema’s most innovative artists. The film is an excellent introduction to Keaton’s work as it features many of the characteristics that would become his hallmarks: a fascination with machinery, a semi-surrealist perspective, trains, and of course, the Keaton Curve, as the efforts of Buster and his bride to construct a pre-fabricated house eventually leave them homeless once again.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of People's Temple

Oakland director Stanley Nelson will attend screenings tonight (Friday) at Shattuck Cinemas for his new film, Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple. 

It’s the harrowing tale of the Rev. Jim Jones, an Indiana outcast drawn to the preacher’s life, who founded a temple, moved it to the Bay Area, and then when trouble came in the form of public scrutiny and allegations of financial corruption and physical and sexual abuse, flew his flock to Guyana where he built Jonestown, a supposed utopia where he and his followers could live free of “persecution.” 

It’s a story that, to Northern Californians, may seem at once both familiar and mysterious, a story we may have lived through but one that has been clouded by myths, misconceptions and gallows humor over the ensuing decades. Nelson’s film brings much unseen footage and documentation to the tale, including footage of Jones in the pulpit, audio and film from inside the Jonestown camp in Guyana, and even footage from the fateful day when Jones ordered the murder of Congressman Leo Ryan. 

Rep. Jackie Speier, aid to Ryan at the time, took a bullet that day and tells her story in one of the film’s many compelling and deeply emotional interviews. The footage from the assault was photographed by a cameraman who lost his life during the episode, essentially recording his own death. 

Other victims and followers of Jones tell their tales, candidly, passionately, tearfully and even at times with humor. It is a tribute to Nelson and co-producer Noland Walker that these people, after all they have gone through, are so comfortable before the camera. 

“For many, this was their best chance to talk to someone who would listen,” Nelson told the Berkeley Daily Planet. Jim Jones, Jr. is one of the participants. He discusses the mixed feelings he still harbors for his infamous father. “This is the man who took him out of an orphanage,” Nelson says, “who taught him to shoot a basketball, who taught him how to read.” Yet he was also the manipulative megalomaniac who led 900 people to their deaths, a fate his son only survived by chance, having absented himself to play in a basketball tournament that day. 

It’s a gruesome tale and a difficult one to relive. It is Elmer Gantry come to life, only more violent and pathological, the sunglasses-clad rock star/preacher taking advantage of the vulnerability of people in need, of starry-eyed optimists looking for a home, for community, for friendship and love. “People’s Temple grew and became successful by promising many things and delivering on those promises: an integrated community, care for the elderly and social activism,” says Nelson. 

“If you want to see me as your father, I’ll be your father,” Jones told his flock. “If you want me to be your god, I’ll be your god.” He would be their Charon as well, whether they asked for it or not, shepherding them across international borders to a commune that would serve as their prison and as their graveyard. 

Nelson uses no narration to lead us through his film. Instead he allows his subjects to tell the story in their own words. And he provides never-before-heard audio of People’s Temple, final days, recently declassified by the CIA, in which a woman challenges Jones’ order to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid. Jones can be heard pleading with his followers. “Don’t be like this,” he says and assures them they are just “crossing over.” 

Nelson will attend one of the Friday evening screenings and will take questions and will be joined for the following screening by Jim Jones Jr. 

Revisiting Casablanca

Casablanca may seem like something of a cliché these days. Its reputation is so prevalent that for the viewer who rents a copy to take home, either for the first time or the thirty-first time, it may be a rather underwhelming experience. The film may seem dated and filled with overly familiar scenes, rendering the movie a sort of post-modern compendium of oft-quoted lines. 

But Casablanca on the big screen is an entirely different experience. The film will screen as part of the grand re-opening of the Cerrito Theater, El Cerrito's long dormant 1937 movie house.

To see the Casablanca projected larger than life in a room full of fellow moviegoers, and in an authentic theater from the era which likely showed the film in its original run in 1942, is to set aside the decades of lionization and all the baggage containing the myths of its now legendary stars, and immerse oneself in one of the most satisfying products of Hollywood’s regimented studio system. 

It’s an unlikely classic. The movie is often used as an example to undermine the auteur theory, the notion put forward by the critics and filmmakers of the French New Wave that a director is the sole author of a film. Casablanca is fascinating in that it was never meant to be a great film; in fact, many of those working on it at the time considered it something of a lemon, a contractual obligation they would be happy to put behind them. 

But what emerged was a film that embodied all that was best in the studio system, with excellent screenwriters reshaping the film until the last minute; a sure-handed director making the most of his sets and players; fine actors transforming two-dimensional characters with compelling performances. If you’ve only seen it on video, in the isolation of a private living room, Casablanca, like many great films of the past, can be underwhelming. There is something lost on the small screen, no matter how big that small screen may be. Movies of this era were meant to be seen on the big screen, not because they contained big action sequence or special effects, but because they contained big emotions. 

Humphrey Bogart’s talents are arguably better displayed in other films; he’s tougher and grittier in the Maltese Falcon; he’s darker and more sardonic in his films opposite Lauren Bacall and in the lesser known and underrated In a Lonely Place. But Casablanca is where Bogart truly made the big time, stepping up to play a complex romantic leading man after only having played thugs and tough-talking detectives. And Ingrid Bergman delivers one of her finest performances, conveying deep undercurrents of longing and regret even without saying a word. And the direction of Michael Curtiz and the photography of Arthur Edeson lends an evocative sheen to the melodrama, with dark shadows and probing searchlights piercing through the obfuscations of characters embroiled in a forlorn mix of politics, war and love.

The Cerrito opens Wednesday with Pulp Fiction at 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. and Casblanca at 6 and 9 p.m. The schedule will be repeated on Thursday. For more information, see www.picturepubpizza.com. For information on the restoration or to join the Friends of the Cerrito Theater, see www.cerritotheater.org. 

Restored Cerrito Theater Re-Opens After 40 Years

The Cerrito Theater opens Wednesday for the first time in more than 40 years, operated by Speakeasy Theaters, the same folks who run Oakland’s Parkway Theater. 

Speakeasy is kicking things off with a signature blend of classic and contemporary screenings: Michael Curtiz’s 1942 classic Casablanca and Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 breakthrough Pulp Fiction. 

The theater was built in 1937 by the Blumenfeld family, owners of a chain of Bay Area movie theaters. They built the Oaks Theater on Solano Avenue and operated Berkeley’s Shattuck Cinemas, as well as a host of other theaters in Marin, Solano, Contra Costa and Alameda counties. The Cerrito was designed by architect William B. David. 

The drive to restore and reopen the Cerrito Theater began in 2001. The theater had shut down in the early ’60s and had, for most of the intervening 40 years, been used as a storage facility for Keifer’s furniture store. When the building finally went on the market and locals were allowed into the vacated building, they found the original art deco murals still intact. An advocacy group, Friends of the Cerrito Theater, was formed and the group then persuaded the city to purchase the building. Soon after, Speakeasy Theaters, operators of Oakland’s Parkway Theater near Lake Merritt, were enlisted to run the venue. And thus began a community-driven restoration process that has seen the interior details restored, a second theater added upstairs, and the installation of a brand new marquee, lit for the first time last week. 

Catherine and Kyle Fischer, co-founder of Speakeasy Theaters, were excited by the opportunity to not only open a new theater, but to be part of a community effort to revitalize a long-forgotten treasure. Fischer says the partnership is a good fit. “We’re known for building community,” she says. “And we’re a lot of fun!” 

Fischer says the Cerrito will feature many of the same popular hallmarks as the Parkway: food and beverages (including alcohol), couches, table seating as well as traditional theater seats, and over the next few months, Fischer says, the theater will roll out some of its popular programming features, such as the Baby Brigade, a night for parents with babies. The Parkway bases much of its programming on community input, and the Cerrito will do the same, taking feedback from their customers in shaping a schedule that will likely include a blend of new and classic films, family films, and festivals. 

The Cerrito opens Wednesday with Pulp Fiction at 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. and Casblanca at 6 and 9 p.m. The schedule will be repeated on Thursday. For more information, see www.picturepubpizza.com. For information on the restoration or to join the Friends of the Cerrito Theater, see www.cerritotheater.org. 

Photo by Richard Brenneman for the Berkeley Daily Planet.

Schultze Gets the Blues

Last year Schultze Gets the Blues, a German film, played in Berkeley theaters for just a week and to generally small audiences. After one matinee screening, a group of women walked out casting sideways glances at each other and rolling their eyes. “What did you think?” one asked another. “I don’t knowwwww…..” was the response. 

Taste is subjective of course, but I couldn’t help but feel that an opportunity had been missed, for Schultze is a film of rare intelligence and grace, the sort of film that is not often made in America today. It is not only an excellent film and a far deeper one than may be first evident, but a superb opportunity for the film novice who is just beginning to take an interest in the possibilities of cinematic language. Schultze is full of simple, subtle visual cues—composition, lighting, editing and juxtaposition—expertly used to reveal character, plot and subtext. 

And now that the dust has settled around the first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, having been kicked up by the media rushing back into the beleaguered city for a series of breathless updates, it seems a good time to revisit the image of New Orleans that we had before disaster struck; a chance to look back, with affection, nostalgia and sadness, at the myths and legends of the city, myths and legends that we once believed in and hope to one day believe in again. 

The story itself is simple: Schultze, a staid, unadventurous man, retires after a life spent working in the salt mines of Germany only to find that he has little to occupy his time. Until, that is, he discovers Zydeco music, a happy accident that leads to a life-altering journey. 

Our first glimpse of the man comes in the film’s opening shot. A solitary windmill turns slowly above a flat horizon as Schultze, in silhouette, traverses the frame on his bicycle. We then get a series of scenes with little dialogue that establish Schultze as something of a non-entity. His two friends do most of the talking while Schultze sits silently and watches. He is merely a sidekick to more charismatic men, a mute witness to the lives and passions of others. He is inscrutable, distant, dutiful and bland, his face often concealed by the brim of his hat, and expressionless when not. Director Michael Schorr composes his frames carefully, often keeping the horizon and his characters low in the frame to show that it is a big world and Schultze is just one small part of it, an inconsequential figure amid a vast landscape. 

It is a good 25 minutes before we finally get a good look at his face. When Schultze discovers Zydeco he comes into the foreground for the first time and finally looms large before us, his face illuminated by the glow of the golden light of the radio dial: the magic of Zydeco by way of a magic Philco. He has finally become a presence, a personality rather than a mere figure occupying space. 

And suddenly life begins to take shape for him. He immediately picks up his accordion to play his usual polka, but soon begins playing faster and faster until he has achieved something resembling Zydeco. He is no longer merely a vessel for the continuation of his traditional polkas and waltzes; Zydeco has transformed him. 

Eventually Schultze makes his way to America to play in a Texas music festival, but Texas doesn’t have what he’s looking for and he soon heads for New Orleans. The fact that he manages to secure himself a boat and sets off down the Mississippi River is the cue that the film has now taken another direction. This is no longer a simple road trip but a hero’s journey into a mythical city. Schultze becomes a sort of Huck Finn, or even a Marlowe perhaps, but he is not venturing into some dark and brooding heart of darkness but deeper into his own dreams and hopes in search of the joy and love and music and passion that has lain dormant within him for so many years. He has risen from the dark of the mineshaft into the golden light of music, and is finally releasing himself into the lowdown, muddy swamps of pleasure and camaraderie. 

Once the river journey begins it may it may seem that Schorr is indulging in stereotypes, as Schultze is taken in by an earthy black mother of a fatherless child, a woman who welcomes him without question and cooks him soul food—the very picture of the spiritual African-American so often idealized in trite Hollywood movies. But bear in mind here, this is no longer a trip through the American South or through the Louisiana Delta as it truly exists, but rather through the delta as seen through the prism of folklore. We are witnessing the South as seen through the eyes of a man who has never before left his German homeland and who has only vague and romanticized notions of what he may find. Whether his vision is true is hardly the point; it only matters that it is true for him, that he has found a world in which he wants and needs to believe, a sort of final reward for a life of duty, hard work and quiet diligence. 

Schultze’s stay in New Orleans concludes with a wistful closing shot of silhouettes dancing in silence to the joyous rhythms of Zydeco and fades out with a gentle sigh, the contented exultation of a man who has seen the promised land and found peace. It is a glimpse of the myths and legends of the New Orleans we believed in until the levees broke and reality came flooding in. Schorr then finishes the film as he began it, with the steady, timeless whirl of the windmill above a landscape as silhouetted figures continue on their way, a quiet reminder that life goes on, and that the gentle, impish spirit of joy and passion will endure. 

Schultze Gets the Blues (2003). Written and directed by Michael Schorr. Starring Horst Krause. In German with English subtitles. Paramount. 114 mimutes. $29.98.

Berkeley Video and Film Festival 2006

The Berkeley Video and Film Festival makes its annual appearance this weekend, starting today (Friday) and running through Sunday evening at the Oaks Theater on Solano Avenue in Berkeley. This year’s program features more than 50 works, from brief clips by budding filmmakers, running just a few minutes in length, to full-length features by established directors. 

Festival Director Mel Vapour says this is their best and biggest yet. The festival has expanded over the years to include films from beyond the East Bay, and perhaps the most notable national product in this year’s program is The Big Buy, directed by Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck and produced by Robert Greenwald, who also produced last year’s Wal-Mart: The High Price of Low Cost. The Big Buy tracks the spectacular rise and fall of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, from his early days as an apparent no-count in the Texas legislature to his ascent to national power as Newt Gingrich’s right-hand man, to his successful—and illegal—battle to gerrymander the Texas redistricting process, a move which helped send George W. Bush to the White House. 

If you’ve been following the news, you know the rest of the story. But what The Big Buy adds to the tale is the behind-the-scenes machinations of the investigation into DeLay’s organization. Along the way, we hear from the usual suspects when it comes to commentary on all things Texas: Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, etc., names sure to find a welcoming audience in Berkeley. The Saturday evening screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Birnbaum. 

Other films in the festival have roots a little closer to home. Festival Director Vapour has watched director Hoku Uchiyama grow up, from a young, talented kid who took part in youth programs at Vapour’s East Bay Media Center to a film school graduate and accomplished filmmaker. Uchiyama’s 34-minute film Rose is an engaging short subject with a compelling story and evocative photography. In the film’s first few minutes, Uchiyama clearly and effectively delineates his characters with a series of shots of the young protagonist and just a few lines of dialogue, drawing the viewer immediately into young Travis’ world and setting the stage for a tale that seamlessly blends the mystic with the mundane. The compositions, camera movements and polished style demonstrate the young director’s confidence and control over his craft. 

Two other films concern Berkeley itself. Double-Spaced: A Berkeley Comedy has that “Hey everybody, let’s make a movie!” feel to it. The movie is about students and feels like it was made by students as well, almost as a lark. It features plenty of shots of the city, from downtown to Telegraph Avenue, and of course plenty of shots of the UC campus. It even contains a brief shot of the student protagonist reading this very newspaper, but before you have a second to ponder this stark breach of realism, a close-up reveals that he is fact reading the comics page. 

It’s an amateurish film that wears on its sleeve its aspirations toward Wes Anderson-style preciousness, with a wayward protagonist caught up in a loony bit of intrigue, a soundtrack consisting of light, catchy pop songs, and an optimistic ending meant to reinforce the humanity of all involved. It has an awkward feel to it, and most of its punchlines are oversold. But then there’s Meghan Kane, an actress who, in just two scenes totaling probably just 60 seconds of screen time, steals the show with a hilarious and uncanny depiction of a student many will recognize: the glib, patronizing, utterly self-satisfied graduate student, so taken with her own fabulousness that she must focus her every word and gesture on the never-ending effort to make all around her aware of their comparative lack of fabulousness. It’s just a few seconds, but it’s worth the price of admission. 

Another film takes on the Berkeley theme as well, this one with slightly higher aspirations and budget. Berkeley concerns a young man who comes to town as a freshman in the late ’60s and has his life transformed by what he finds. The film stars Nick Roth as the student and Henry Winkler as his father. The film attempts to capture the experience of Berkeley during the Vietnam War era, but doesn’t quite pull it off. For many viewers the film will probably be a moving evocation of the experience; for others, it may seem to merely trivialize it. The Saturday night screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with director Bobby Roth. 

These examples only hint at the breadth of the festival’s offerings. For a complete schedule see www.berkeleyvideofilmfest.org. Day passes for the festival are just $12. 

Berkeley Video and Film Festival. Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Oaks Theater, 1875 Solano Ave., Berkeley. www.berkeleyvideofilmfest.org. 

The Up Series: True Human Drama

Often the most compelling dramas are not found in novels or Hollywood movies, but in everyday life. This is the charm and allure of The Up Series, an extraordinary documentary film project now in its fifth decade. 

Begun in 1964 as a program for England’s Granada Television, the first film in the series, 7 Up, featured interviews with a group of 7-year-old children in an effort to catch “a glimpse of England in the year 2000.” 

Michael Apted worked as a researcher on the first program and, with the second program, 7 Plus 7, broadcast in 1971, he took over the project, directing another film every seven years to follow up on the lives of the original 14 participants. The latest film in the series, 49 Up, opens today (Friday) at Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. 

The project was begun all those years ago with very definite ideas in mind. The children were selected from various strata of English society with the intent of showing how one’s background may determine one’s future. “Give me the child until he is 7 and I will give you the man,” the narrator intones, and far more often than necessary. 

The premise may have been a bit contrived—even the 14-year-olds ridicule it for its simplistic approach in 7 Plus 7—and often it seems that Apted is far too determined to make the subsequent films conform to the expectations of the first. It might have helped to have had a sociologist involved with the formulation of the questions in order to give them a little more weight and validity; and perhaps someone with a background in therapy or counseling could have posed the questions in place of the director, someone with a better sense of how to communicate with people, to demonstrate the necessary curiosity and compassion. For Apted is often incapable of keeping the questions neutral or of phrasing his queries in such a way as to invite discussion. There are moments where his clumsy comments reveal as much about his own perceptions as those of the participants. In 7 Plus 7 he asks a trio of 14-year-old girls if they worry about the “danger” of finding themselves married and homebound with children when they’re in their early 20s. In 28 Up he asks a man if he’s worried about his sanity, and seven years later, when the man is 35 and still struggling to find his way in life, Apted asks if he has given up, to which the man snaps back “My life’s not over yet!” 

Perhaps this is a deliberate technique on Apted’s part, but if so it sometimes comes across as insensitive and rude, even if it now and then produces a valuable insight. At other times Apted seems too intent on validating the project’s original premises, attempting to draw definitive cause-and-effect links between the circumstances of childhood and adulthood. In effect, Apted, though he keeps himself off-camera, becomes a character in the drama, his leading questions often belying his own prejudices and preconceived notions. 

But these are minor flaws. Taken as a whole, the series is probably among the greatest documentaries ever made. And yes, there is much truth and value to the film’s premises, and to its aspirations toward sociological significance, and often its hypotheses are validated as children who seemed destined for a particular line of work or station in life indeed end up fulfilling those expectations. But the series is full of surprises, and overall it works best as simple human drama: Shamelessly cute 7-year-olds grow into awkward, gangly 14-year olds; budding, passionate adults of 21 become 28-year-olds settling into careers and families. The participants are honest, intelligent and interesting and their stories invite compassion; we take pleasure in their triumphs, we shed tears for their tragedies. We see them face rejection, take on new jobs and careers, search for love and companionship; we see them start families, raise children, and deal with the deaths of their own parents; we see them struggle to maintain marriages and face the setbacks of divorce; we see plans laid and hopes dashed, and then we see them rise again to rebuild their lives. 

The project itself has been something of a mixed blessing for its participants. One man even describes it as a bit of poison he is forced to swallow every seven years. Some opt out of later films, sometimes to return later, sometimes not. We don’t get the impression that any of them are participating in the project for the pleasure of being on television or on the big screen; they seem to participate out of a sense of duty, and not to the filmmakers, but rather to their fellow Englishmen. For even when they question the value of the project, they seem to evince a knowledge that their stories may in some way shed light for others on worthwhile issues. 

All the films leading up to 49 Up (2006) are available on DVD from First Run Features. But you don’t necessarily need to have seen every film to appreciate the drama of the later productions. Each film features plenty of footage from the previous films to at least present the arc of each life. 

It must have been a wonderful experience for the original audiences to see this series begin and watch as these lives unfurled over the decades, to have grown up with these men and women and checked in with them every seven years. Undoubtedly many have found kinship with these 14 people as they have made their way through life. But to see the entire series, in sequence and all at once, is a revelation; full and rich human lives unfold in one film after another, the participants aging 40 years in just a few days’ time. The haughty are humbled, the meek gain confidence, the lost become found, the pampered lose everything. These are true human dramas, moving and fascinating, and unfolding in real time. 

Spirit of the Beehive: Tracing Childhood's Alternate Realities

Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) is one of the most influential and iconic of Spanish films. Set “somewhere on the Castillian plain” in 1940, just after the Spanish Civil War, Erice’s film conjures a remote village where the echoes of war and repression resound in the lives of an increasingly fragmented family. 

Criterion has just released the film on DVD in an excellent edition which faithfully renders the film’s honey-colored lighting and evocative score. The two-disc set also includes informative extra features, including an interview with Erice and a documentary about the film in which Ana Torrent, the child actress, returns to the village as an adult. 

Torrent plays a young girl, also named Ana, just 6 or 7 years old, who becomes mesmerized when she and her older sister attend a screening of James Whale’s Frankenstein, an experience that inspires a series of thoughts, emotions and free associations which haunt her and dramatically transform her interpretation of the world in which she lives. 

The two girls live with their parents in a shell of house, a hollowed-out Faulknerian manor that stands like a decaying relic of a long-lost past. And contained within that house are likewise faded, hollowed-out people, seemingly damaged by years of conflict, both personal and political. I say seemingly because Erice never spells anything out with any degree of certainty; he merely suggests, presenting his characters as they exist in the present, their withdrawn behavior providing the only intimation of what happened in the past. 

Distance and space are major themes. The horizon of the plain is high and far, with fields stretching for miles in all directions. And the distances between people seem greater still. The parents, for instance, are rarely shown in the same shot, and each frequently seems to have no idea where the other has gone. The wife bicycles off to the train station to deliver a letter, and we get the feeling she has done it surreptitiously. She stands for a moment on the platform, watching with detachment as soldiers on the train gaze at her through the windows as they briefly pass in and out of her world. Meanwhile the father returns home from his beekeeping tasks and settles himself in a chair in his study, facing away from the door and toward a window as he puts on headphones to listen to a short-wave radio. Their connections with each other and with the outside world are tenuous; the world, for whatever private reasons, is held at arm’s length. 

In one extraordinary shot, Erice keeps the camera trained on the wife’s face as she feigns sleep when her husband enters the room and fumbles his way into bed. He never enters the frame; he is but a vague, shapeless shadow on the wall behind her. And when he finally settles in, she opens her eyes again and simply stares straight ahead until the fadeout. Her husband is no longer a partner and companion, but merely something she lives with, a regularly occurring event she has ceased to even acknowledge. 

The film is based primarily on the childhood memories of Erice and his co-screenwriter Ángel Fernández Santos. It began, Erice says, with the image of the Frankenstein monster and the little girl together at the water’s edge in the 1931 movie. That image, he said, conveyed to him all one could ever wish to express in an image. But the cinematic influences on Spirit of the Beehive go further than Frankenstein. In fact, the film is full of subtle references to other films, for its premise is based on the dreamlike qualities of the cinematic experience. The scene at the train station is staged to resemble one of the Lumiere brothers’ earliest films; many of the wide shots of the plain suggest the panoramic drama of American westerns; and the scene in the cinema, with the faces of enthralled children gazing in rapt attention, is reminiscent of the scene in Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows when the young protagonist skips school and takes in a Punch ‘n’ Judy show at the local amusement park. 

There is a crucial moment in the cinema scene that sets the stage for the rest of the film. The children, including Ana, were in fact watching Frankenstein while Erice and his cameraman staked out a spot off to the side and filmed them with a hand-held camera, capturing the reactions on their faces. It was a gamble and it paid off, for Erice got exactly what he was looking for: At the moment when the monster kills the little girl, Ana’s face changes; her eyes widen as she leans forward and appears to catch her breath. She has clearly identified with the characters on the screen and is seeking to understand the monster, his lumbering, primitive form something of a reflection of the walking dead around her. It is the magic of cinema, just as Erice remembered it from his own childhood. 

Thus begins a subtle and complex inner drama as Ana, too young to distinguish between fantasy and reality, internalizes the story, becoming deeply concerned for the ostracized monster. Her older sister tells her that the monster is not really dead, that he lives nearby in an abandoned well. Eventually Ana makes the trip out to the well alone, and finds in the adjoining farmhouse an escaped freedom fighter. And when the fighter is later discovered and executed, screen fantasy and daily life become inextricably linked in her mind; she confuses the freedom fighter with the monster, his death with the monster’s death, the film’s vengeful townfolk her own townfolk. 

And here again we see the brilliance of Erice’s use of long takes. Previously they had been used to emphasize the spaces between people and the slow passage of time. But with Ana they express much more, dramatizing that stretch of time between a child’s absorption of events and her final synthesis and interpretation of those events, the melding of disparate experiences into a new and private reality. 

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973). $39.99. 99 minutes. Criterion. www.criterion.com.

Winsor McCay and the Birth of Animation

Despite his claims to the contrary, Winsor McCay did not invent the animated cartoon. But the legendary cartoonist did play a pioneering role, helping to advance, shape and define the nascent art form.

This Saturday Pacific Film Archive will present several films by McCay as part of a presentation by another accomplished cartoonist, John Canemaker.

Canemaker has many achievements to his credit, the latest among them being the Academy Award he won last year for his short film The Moon and the Son. The film depicted an imaginary conversation between Canemaker and his deceased father and featured the voices of John Turturro and Eli Wallach.

Canemaker will be present for a screening of his own films as part of a program entitled “John Canemaker: Marching to a Different Toon” at 5 p.m. Saturday and will follow at 7:30 p.m. with a presentation and discussion of the McCay films.

The presentation on McCay is based on Canemaker’s own biography of the great cartoonist, Winsor McCay: His Life and Art. The book was first published in 1987 but has been newly revised and expanded in a beautiful new edition that presents excellent reproductions of McCay’s artwork along with insightful and scholarly analysis. It is the only comprehensive biography of McCay and will surely play a crucial role in helping to better establish his legacy in print and animated cartooning.

McCay’s range and talent is difficult to comprehend today. He was an extremely prolific artist, creating a number of popular comic strips as well as illustrations, editorial cartoons and animated cartoons, working on many of them simultaneously. The work for which he is most renowned focused on dreams and fantasy and included his most famous and beloved creation, Little Nemo in Slumberland, widely considered one of the greatest comic strips of all time.

Another of his unique, though lesser known, strips is Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Like Nemo, it relies on a predictable pattern in the creation of a most unpredictable strip. Each week the strip depicted a harrowing nightmare consisting of often surreal and hallucinatory imagery, and each week the strip concluded in precisely the same way: The protagonist would wake up in bed, realize it was just a dream, and exclaim that never again would he eat so much rarebit for dinner.

McCay used the same basic structure for Little Nemo, with the young boy always waking up or falling out of bed in the strip’s final panel, a device later used to great effect by another comic strip artist, Bill Watterson, whose Calvin and Hobbes often featured the wild adventures that take place inside the mind of a highly imaginative 6-year-old boy.

Little Nemo in Slumberland ran as a full page every Sunday at a time when a newspaper page was nearly twice the size of today’s broadsheet pages. The comic strip was a relatively new medium when Nemo debuted in 1905, just 10 years old and still struggling to find its niche. McCay’s superior draftsmanship, wide-ranging imagination and bold use of color took the form to new heights.

Brilliant as his imagination and artwork were, McCay was not without his shortcomings. He never seemed to master dialogue or narrative thrust. His dialogue is trite and redundant, and often crammed into awkward and at times barely legible word balloons. Of course, the word balloon itself was a recent invention, and it took time for artists to learn to incorporate them gracefully into their compositions. But McCay never seemed to fully grasp the concept; in fact, Nemo, even in its second incarnation in the 1920s, still evinced this anomalous flaw.

McCay later turned his attention to animation, and once again, he played a major role in the development of a new art form, using his bold imagination, unparalleled drawing skills and showman’s flair in advancing the new medium. McCay employed wonderfully sophisticated effects and charming characters in his animated work, even taking his films on the road in vaudeville.

“Where McCay differed from his predecessors,” Canemaker writes, “was in his ability to animate his drawings with no sacrifice of linear detail; the fluid motion, naturalistic timing, feeling of weight, and, eventually, the attempts to inject individualistic personality traits into his characters were new qualities that McCay first brought to the animated film medium.”

McCay developed techniques that would later become commonplace and, in stark contrast to other, more secretive artists of the day, refused to patent those techniques, believing that the art form stood a better chance of progressing if artists shared their knowledge.

Saturday’s screening will include four of McCay’s 10 animated films. His first film was Little Nemo, in which Nemo, Flip and the Imp go through a series of fun-house mirror style transformations. At the time, audiences were skeptical and often didn’t believe that the film was hand-drawn.

“It was pronounced very lifelike,” McCay wrote in a 1927 essay, “but my audience declared that it was not a drawing, but that the pictures were photographs of real children.”

So, in his next film, McCay drew something a little more difficult. How a Mosquito Operates, a somewhat twisted presentation that would fit right in today in Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Animation Festival, features a disturbingly oversized mosquito plunging his proboscis again and again into the face of a sleeping man, eventually becoming so bloated with blood that he explodes. Again, the cartoonist encountered skepticism.

“My audiences were pleased,” McCay wrote, “but declared the mosquito was operated by wires to get the effect before the camera.”

So McCay decided to create a character that could not be photographed: Gertie the Dinosaur. Gertie was a popular creation and McCay proceeded to take her on the road in vaudeville with a clever act that consisted of McCay standing beside the screen and commanding Gertie as though she were a trained elephant. He would toss her a pumpkin, crack a trainer’s whip, and even step into the frame himself, disappearing behind the screen and reappearing onscreen as an animated figure riding on the dinosaur’s back, a moment later satirized by Buster Keaton in his first feature film, The Three Ages.

McCay’s next project was his most ambitious. The Sinking of the Lusitania took two years to produce and consisted of nearly 25,000 drawings. It marked the first time McCay used the technique of drawing on transparent cels on separate backgrounds, a technique that not only saved time and work, but also contributed greatly to the film’s dynamics. For the first time, McCay’s animated work took on a more cinematic quality, using dramatic angles to further enhance the action.

Great as his films are and important as his contribution may be, McCay’s defects again hindered his progress. Animated cartoons would soon develop plot and narrative, and, eventually, sound, but without McCay’s help. He played a significant role in nurturing animated film into its adolescence, but it would take other talents to bring it to maturity.