Belle du jour: The Films of Buñuel and Carriere

The name Luis Buñuel is familiar to even those with only a passing interest in movies, largely due to the success of his satiric films of the 1960s and ’70s. But when the great director made his seamless transition from experimental Surrealist filmmaking to commercial narrative work, he did so with the help of a slightly lesser-known talent: screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere.

Carriere was instrumental in helping Buñuel to shape his cynical satires, working closely with the director in the writing of screenplays both original and adapted. The result was a lasting partnership, one that generated six films and even extended to the writing of Buñuel’s autobiography, My Last Sigh, published just before his death in 1983.

The San Francisco International Film Festival presented Carriere with its Kanbar Award for screenwriting this year for a distinguished career in which he worked with some of the world’s greatest directors, including Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard and Louis Malle.

Pacific Film Archive will show Belle du jour (1967), a Carriere-Buñuel collaboration, as part of a series of movies from the International Film Festival at 5 p.m. Sunday, April 30, with Carriere making an in-person appearance. PFA will then follow up with four more Carriere-Buñuel collaborations on May 5 and 6, beginning with Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). Other films in the series include The Milky Way (1968), Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), and Phantom of Liberty (1974).

Diary of a Chambermaid was the first film in which Carriere and Buñuel worked together, adapting the novel by Octave Mirbeau. The story had been brought to the screen once before, by Jean Renoir in 1946, but Buñuel refused to see it for fear that it might color his perceptions of his own work. Carriere and Buñuel took certain liberties with the novel, shifting the time period to the 1930s and altering several plot points.

The result would serve as a sort of template for future Carriere-Buñuel collaborations: The film examines and satirizes the dark underbelly of bourgeoisie society and features a wide-ranging assortment of fetishes, vices, hypocrisies and subterfuge. As with their later fims, Buñuel and Carriere do not judge these characters. They are presented from a certain distance; we watch them, we gain a certain understanding of them, but we are not made to either identify with them or be repulsed by them. Buñuel and Carriere merely present them as they are and allow the audience to come to their own conclusions.

Jeanne Moreau plays the role of the chambermaid as an inscrutable blank slate. The other characters, as well as the audience, are left to project onto her their own interpretations of her motives and emotions. When she first comes to work at the Monteil estate, she is somewhat defiant toward these decadent aristocrats, flouting her mistress’ rules and looking upon the family with condescension. Yet gradually her behavior starts to change, and it is difficult to understand why. When she eagerly goes to bed with a suspected child-murderer, we wonder whether her lust for him is genuine or just a device by which she hopes to frame him. Or perhaps it is both; perhaps she is seeking justice while conveniently satisfying her own particular fetish.

Only at the end does it become clear that somehow, for reasons unexplained, the chambermaid has decided to become one of them; that, whether due to opportunism or some darker motivation, she has managed to ensconce herself in a throne-like bed in her own castle-like mansion, safely and blithely indifferent to the rising forces of fascism in which her new husband plays a significant role. In the end she is as bored, stagnant and self-indulgent as the family she once mocked.

The Carriere-Buñuel themes take a darker and more personal tone with Belle du jour, starring Catherine Deneuve as the frigid wife of a young surgeon. They are happy together, but they keep separate beds even a year after their marriage. Gradually we learn that the young bride, Severine, is anything but frigid and in fact has an active fantasy life. It’s just that conventional lovemaking within a marriage is not sufficient to arouse her libido.

And this is where the familiar themes come in.

Belle du jour is about fetishes, appearances, fantasy and restraint. Severine is overwhelmed by fantasies of being taken by force, of being humiliated, abused and denigrated in strange rituals. Flashbacks suggest that these desires stem from incidents in her childhood, but the fetishes themselves are wisely never explained, for nothing robs a fetish of its allure than an attempt to explain it.

Severine’s fetishes, which are often subtly infused into the fantasy sequences, seem to bring her to a frenzy. Like a Pavlovian dog, she harkens to the sounds of ringing of bells and mewing cats. And in her dreams she is objectified and treated cruelly to a soundtrack of primal noises.

Her desires lead her to take a job as a prostitute, arriving at the whorehouse each day dressed in black, as though in mourning for the life she is leaving behind, and returning home each day by 5 to her unsuspecting husband.

One scene involves a man entering the bordello with a little black box. We do not see what is in it, but it is enough to cause one prostitute to refuse to do his bidding. Severine accepts, however, enticed by whatever fetish he carries in the box. And his excited ringing of a tiny bell only seals the deal, coaxing an excited smile from her.

Deneuve is often discussed as simply a great beauty, but she is far more than that. Her acting in Belle du jour is subtle and effective. She is able to consistently demonstrate the duality of Severine’s existence: the trepidation, shame and fear combined with passion and desire, as well as the bliss of masochistic fantasies fulfilled.

The film’s conclusion is ambiguous and probably has a number of valid interpretations. At first glance the final 20 minutes seem like a 1930s American film under the Production Code, with a wild woman bringing ruin to herself and to those she loves because of her lurid behavior. But another interpretation takes the film in quite another direction. Severine has her fetish: to be defiled, abused and humiliated. Hussan, a friend of Severine’s husband, has his fetish: to defile his friend’s seemingly virtuous young bride. The gangster Severine becomes entangled with has his fetish: to live the life and die the death of an outlaw, disrupting the social order and going out in a hail of gunfire. And the husband can be said to have a fetish as well: a virtuous wife by day, a sexual animal by night.

The ending, with Hussan revealing Severine’s secret to her paralyzed and unresponsive husband, provides a bit of satisfaction for everyone, for Hussan gets the chance to expose Severine’s tawdry dark side, thereby defiling her in the eyes of her husband; the gangster gets his tragic, romantic death in the streets; and Severine ends up sitting quietly under the mysterious gaze of her husband, exposed and vulnerable, just as in her fantasies—a “slut,” a “whore,” waiting for the “firm hand” to administer punishment. And the husband now has his virtuous and apologetic wife, but an all-new and improved version, for this one just might share his bed.

A final dream sequence concludes the film, with the husband forgiving his wife for her actions. Is this a vision of the future, or is it a new kind of fantasy for Severine, one in which her husband finally grants her the forgiveness and understanding her guilty conscience craves? Or perhaps it’s simply a new twist on the old fantasies, with Buñuel and Carriere taking one last swipe at the bourgeoisie as they infuse the dream once again with the ringing of bells and the mewing of cats—everything a good society girl needs to keep her happy.

The Films of Jean-Claude Carriere and Luis Buñuel

Belle du jour (1967)

5 p.m. Sunday, April 30

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)

7 p.m. Friday, May 5

The Milky Way (1968)

9 p.m. Friday, May 5

Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

6:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6

Phantom of Liberty (1974)

8:30 p.m. Saturday, May 6

Pacific Film Archive. 2626 Bancroft Way. www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.

The Surreal and Subversive World of Busby Berkeley

The films of Busby Berkeley are rendered in the popular imagination as naïve and silly entertainments from a simpler time, from a bygone era of innocence, frivolity and wholly unsophisticated audiences. This notion is not only false, it gives short shrift to the director and to the moviegoers who flocked to his films. 

In the 1930s films of Busby Berkeley the plot is merely a hook on which to hang the director-choreographer’s surreal musical sequences—interludes of imaginative and often highly subversive sexual fantasies. 

Six of Berkeley’s best-known movies have recently been released in a box set, "The Busby Berkeley Collection," and a careful viewing of these early musicals dispels any lingering notions of their innocence. 

Movie musicals began with the advent of reliable sound technology in the late 1920s, which sent the industry into a tailspin as the major studios hastily adopted the new medium. 

Though there are examples of extraordinary filmmaking during this era, they are few and far between. For the most part, the earliest talkies were awkward and clumsy, and hardly any them are remembered today, other than as examples of the pitfalls of the new technology. 

Much of this was due to the physical demands of the equipment. The boom microphone hadn’t been invented, so large mics had to be somehow concealed on the set, and actors had to do their best to direct their voices toward them. And the camera, which was quite noisy, had to be engulfed in blimp-like wrapping to silence it, or placed inside a sound-proof booth, filming the action from behind a plate-glass window. Both techniques essentially immobilized the camera, rendering the early talkies static and stagebound. 

This is the context from which sprang the Hollywood musical. Early musicals were essentially filmed stage productions, with the camera placed dead center in the equivalent of the front row and the actors and dancers paraded back and forth before its gaze. And that was enough—for a while. Audiences were drawn by the spectacle, by the novelty of sound, and of course by the allure of Hollywood chorus girls. 

Then came Busby Berkeley. 

Before making the move to Hollywood, Berkeley had made a name for himself as a choreographer in a string of successful New York stage productions. Once in the movie business he quickly expanded his role, first taking over the direction of his musical numbers and then assuming control of the films themselves. 

Berkeley wasn’t much of a director when there was no music. In fact, he was quite mediocre. It’s unclear whether he simply had no talent for handling actors and dialogue or simply didn’t care enough to bother. But once the music started, there was no one like him. He exploited every device and angle that cinema afforded him. 

Berkeley presented dancers in vast groups, in multitudes swirling about in shifting geometric patterns. More often than not these multitudes featured dozens of identically and scantily clad ingenues in pulsating patterns, with the camera dollying smoothly and suggestively toward and through them. Film critic David Thomson, in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, describes Berkeley as having revealed cinema’s “ready, lascivious disposition toward orgy.” 

Gold Diggers of 1935 was made shortly after the industry began enforcing the Production Code, Hollywood’s attempt to appease the federal government by a method of self-censorship. It laid down strict rules of morality for film content: villains were to be punished; good must always triumph over evil; loose women should learn the error of their ways or at least be made to face dire consequences, etc. A director could manage to smuggle in some immoral behavior here and there, as long as it was questioned or punished by the film’s end. 

There were plenty of directors who flouted these rules, slipping subtle innuendo into their films. But no one subverted the code more ostentatiously than Berkeley. 

By the time Gold Diggers was made, sound technology had advanced significantly, with boom mics and a mobile cameras allowing Berkeley to expand his canvas. Though it is neither the film’s biggest nor most famous number, the “Words in My Heart” sequence is one of Berkeley’s most fascinating. The song features dozens of virginal upper-class society girls, dressed in white and seated primly at pearly white baby grand pianos, all swirling and spinning in ecstatic little pirouettes amid a sea of blackness. As they move about, the group takes on various shapes, at one point aligning themselves in two columns which recede into the distance. The two lines begin to move apart and together again in sensuous undulations as the camera pulls back, essentially taking on the appearance of a sort of animated Georgia O’Keefe painting. 

This would be suggestive enough, but Berkeley takes it a step further. For if you look closely, under each of those pianos is a pair of black-clad legs, the legs of dozens of men who are essentially carrying the pianos on their backs, propelling these young belles around the floor. The furtiveness of their placement, along with the positioning of the their bodies in relationship to the women, suggests far more than one might suspect at first glance. 

The fact that these men are visible is not an accident. Special effects were quite sophisticated by the early 1920s. This is not a case of a director clumsily revealing the mechanics of his technique. Berkeley chose to make those men visible, chose to incorporate them into the dance, chose to allow reflections on the black floor to bring out their silhouettes. With Freudian flair, he quite deliberately placed them beneath the gleaming, shimmering surfaces of lovely white pianos and lovely white ladies. 

The song is followed a few minutes later by the film’s climactic sequence, Winy Shaw’s Oscar-winning performance of “Lullaby of Broadway.” Again, the segment is typical Berkeley: A swarm of dancers parades across vast Art Deco sets, drawing Shaw into their whirlwind of movement. But the sequence ends abruptly as Shaw falls from a balcony to her death. It’s difficult to interpret this development: Was Berkeley bowing to the Production Code? Or was he satirizing the code? Or was it just a tragic little melodrama with no greater consideration? 

Perhaps it was meant to appease the censors, not for Wini Shaw’s devil-may-care frolic among the chorus, but for the racy “Words in My Heart” sequence that preceded it. 

In the depths of the depression, Hollywood provided glossy, escapist movies which sought to entertain audiences by returning them to the heady days of the 1920s, to the days of jazz, flappers and prosperity, an era when the theories of Sigmund Freud were in vogue. And in that generation of directors, there was no one more giddily Freudian than Busby Berkeley. 

"The Busby Berkeley Collection," featuring Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1935, as well as bonus features, including a compilation of more than 20 complete musical numbers from nine of Berkeley’s Warner Bros. films of the 1930s. Warner Home Video. Unrated. $59.98.

Seeking Redemption: Shakespeare Behind Bars

It can be tempting to dismiss violent criminals, to simply lock them up and write them off. The details of their crimes justify it for us, allowing us to make them into monsters, to dehumanize and judge them. 

Shakespeare Behind Bars, opening today at Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley, doesn’t offer that luxury. This award-winning documentary goes behind the scenes at Kentucky’s Luther Luckett Correctional Complex to remind us that the world is not so black and white, that men are not merely one thing or another but are complex and ever-evolving. 

Every year, volunteer director Curt Tofteland stages a Shakespeare play at Luckett, visiting the prison twice a week for nine months to work with his cast of convicts. The picture this film presents is disarming, for the movie is not just moving and entertaining, it is genuinely funny; prison would seem an unlikely setting for a movie of such warmth and compassion, humanity and joy. 

For this season, Tofteland has chosen The Tempest. He has selected this play for its themes of forgiveness and redemption, knowing these concepts will resonate with his cast, especially with the veterans who will be up for parole within months of the season’s conclusion. This may sound a bit heavy-handed at first, but we soon see that Tofteland’s relationship with these men is anything but patronizing; there is no condescension in his direction. Indeed, it is readily apparent that the men of Luckett not only enjoy these plays, but might have selected The Tempest themselves, given the choice, and for precisely the same reasons. 

The prisoners we meet are articulate and intelligent and often charismatic. They seem to come from all walks of life. Some are educated, some are not, but all are intellectually curious. Granted, this group is self-selecting; there are hundreds of prisoners at Luckett who have opted not to spend their time rehearsing Shakespeare, so we’re not exactly getting a representative sample. But the men presented here challenge many stereotypes. 

The troupe’s rehearsals are essentially group therapy sessions, with Tofteland in the role of facilitator. The men encourage and critique each other, each offering his own interpretation of character and motivation. And through this process each man gets closer to his own particular truth, gaining a greater understanding of his own character and motivation. It is fascinating to watch. And because it’s Shakespeare, and the dense language is not always easily understood, it gives them occasion to painstakingly deconstruct the play line by line, discovering the ways in which gesture and inflection can alter a scene’s meaning. Eventually the play will settle into something resembling a final form, but what matters to these actors is the process, the collaborative and cathartic act of creating a truthful ensemble performance. 

The insights often come indirectly and the men are often surprised by them. The roles in the play were cast deliberately by the actors themselves, so most of them start off with a certain level of awareness of the parallels between themselves and their characters. But gradually they peel away layers of meaning in Shakespeare’s lines, simultaneously delving deeper into their own thoughts and emotions. And through these revelations they develop greater sympathy and understanding for one another. There is growth here as well as catharsis. 

Big G, a bear of a man who looks more like a linebacker than a Shakespearian actor, offers key insights into the process: “I’ve often thought that a bunch of convicts would make great actors, because they’re used to lying and playing a role, but it’s the opposite of that. Because you have to tell the truth and inhabit a character. And that’s so scary for me and the guys in the group because we’re opening up our inner selves for everyone to see.” 

It is possible that these men would be averse to conventional therapy, that bravado and machismo would not allow such a frank discussion of self. But by staging these plays they are doing something more difficult and brave, opening themselves up and examining their own lives before an audience. 

We are witness to great camaraderie, moral support, friendship and compassion. They yearn for redemption. Some seek to forgive themselves; others find self-forgiveness hollow and instead seek forgiveness from friends and family, as well as from the society which has spurned them. 

Just as it is can be easy to dismiss the incarcerated, it is likewise easy to sentimentalize them, to believe that these men who strut across a prison stage have put their violent impulses behind them. But Shakespeare Behind Bars will not allow us that luxury either. In wracking one-on-one interviews the prisoners open up to the filmmakers, revealing the crimes for which they have been imprisoned as well as their hopes for some kind of closure. 

It can be difficult to rationalize the vibrant, passionate Shakespearians with the images they describe of violence and crime, but we cannot allow ourselves to believe that their sins are in the past merely because they are discussed in the past tense. The path to redemption is a long and arduous one and rehabilitation does not come easily. 

But as much as these men may look forward to the performances for which they are rehearsing, they are really in it for the process, not the final result. For each of these men, like the play itself, is a work in progress, and the act of creation is far more rewarding that any curtain call. 

Chasing Demons: The Devil and Daniel Johnston

All too often, films about the mentally ill descend into preciousness, romanticizing the drama and pain of madness. But The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a fascinating documentary opening today at Shattuck Cinemas, does not fall into this trap. 

For this is not the story of a mentally ill man who happens to be talented, but rather the story of a great artist and the trials he faces in pursuit of his art—the most significant among them being manic depression. 

Daniel Johnston may be the best living artist you’ve never heard of. At one point the film places him alongside Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and Lord Byron. This may seem like hyperbole, but the comparison is appropriate; Johnston is truly a unique artist. 

Yet the word “artist” does not accurately convey his talents, for Johnston is more than that. He is a fine artist, a cartoonist, a filmmaker and a singer/songwriter. And he excels in each field. 

Johnston’s journey from suburban Boy Scout to cult legend has all the trappings of folk music mythology. Like the story about Robert Johnson making a deal with the devil at the crossroads, his life is full of archetypal imagery: devils and demons, divine revelations, wayward road trips, traveling carnivals, mental breakdowns, plane crashes, a “lost year,” falls from grace followed by triumphant resurrections. Johnston’s odyssey zigs and zags through wellness and illness, through the South, the Midwest and New York City, through folk music, MTV and early '90s grunge rock. 

His story is one of salvation through art. He believes he has lost his soul to the devil in pursuit of fame; he believes that he is damned, yet is actively and forever seeking redemption. Though the man has clearly been through hell in his lifetime, his current state is more or less a season in Purgatory as he continually tries to purge his demons. 

“True love will find you in the end,” he sings, and he is singing of the love of God as much as love of woman. 

Earthly love, however, is also a major theme, specifically his desire for Laurie, the unrequited love of his life whom Johnston met in college. She became his muse, the Beatrice to his Dante, “the inspiration for a thousand songs.” Her image is his guiding light, a symbol of youth and beauty with whom he hopes to one day be reunited. 

In 1985, a 22-year-old Johnston arrived in Austin, Texas, where the critics and musicians in the city’s burgeoning folk scene were stunned by the brilliance of the music pouring forth from this strange kid. Word spread and soon Johnston became something of a local celebrity. When MTV came to town to document the local music scene, Johnston wormed his way before the cameras, thereby planting the seeds for a nationwide cult following. He went on to win several Austin Music Awards, including best songwriter and best folk artist, beating such soon-to-be-famous musicians as Nanci Griffith, Timbuk 3 and the Lounge Lizards. 

A breakdown followed soon after, but he made a triumphant return to Austin a few years later. And that in turn was followed by tragedy. There seems to be something in him that won’t allow him to enjoy success, as if deep down he knows that salvation requires greater suffering. And if that anguish isn’t forthcoming, he’ll create some of his own. 

Johnston’s music is haunting. He has recorded 20 albums worth of stripped-down, no-frills songs and the film captures the context and drama of their creation. They are poignant and unadorned, their spareness allowing the listener to imagine the instrumentation and full production that might have accompanied them had Johnston had the means or ability to complete his vision. Though he can’t exactly sing and his guitar skills are rudimentary at best, he has a talent for piano and is a gifted and poetic lyricist, with an ear for melody and phrasing. His songs are powerful and his performances in the film are heartrending and raw. Much of his music is a lo-fi melding of blues and folk turned inside out. He was a quirky, geeky, white-boy deconstructionist before Beck even hit puberty. He has a knack for cleverly turned phrases and honest, soul-baring simplicity. 

The film effectively demonstrates that the power of Johnston’s art is in its immediacy. Every drawing and every song is a sort of exorcism, a method by which he continually divests himself of the tumult in his mind and heart. The creations themselves are not so important to him; he churns them out at an astonishing rate. He does not dwell on them; they are too many in number. Once the exorcism is complete, he is on to the next one. This is his most effective therapy. It is as if each day brings new demons that must be put down before dusk. “Do yourself a favor,” he sings, “become your own savior/And don’t let the sun go down on your grievances.” 

The Devil and Daniel Johnston is both inspiring and heartbreaking, a stylish yet simple and effective portrait of an extraordinary artist. The film leaves us with an image of Daniel and his parents in front of their current home in Waller, Texas. His parents are elderly and will not be able to support their son much longer. Though this seems to be a somewhat peaceful period in his life, it is clear that another life-altering change is just around the corner. One gets the feeling that the trials and tribulations of Daniel Johnston are hardly in the past. His most difficult years may still lay ahead.