The Jazz Singer: The Movie Heard 'Round the World

The great thing about DVD is that it has given the major studios the opportunity to finally do right by the classics in their archives. For the first six or seven years of the format’s existence, the studios were, for the most part, content to simply reissue their back catalogues in cheap editions, often without any attempt to remaster the image.

But over the past few years, as box-office receipts have declined, studio bosses finally seem to be coming around to the reality that if these films are going to survive and be seen, they will be seen in the home, and thus it pays to provide definitive editions that will endure.

Thus Warner Bros. has just released a lavish boxed-set edition of the film that put the studio on the map back in 1927. The Jazz Singer almost single-handedly ended the silent era and launched Hollywood on whole new trajectory.

D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation ushered the art form into its maturity in 1915, kicking off the first great era of motion picture innovation and achievement; The Jazz Singer brought the great cinematic decade of the 1920s to a close, halting the entire medium in its tracks for a couple of years as filmmakers struggled to harness and master the new sound technology.

One of the unfortunate aspects of these two cinematic milestones is that they are both marred by racism, a fact that greatly obscures their legacies. In 1999 the Directors Guild of America changed the name of its highest award, which since 1953 had been named for Griffith, in light of the stereotypes perpetuated in his most famous film. And The Jazz Singer, though widely known by name, is rarely seen today.

The fact is, The Jazz Singer isn’t that good a film anyway. Important, yes, and largely misunderstood, but not good. It’s really a silent film, with just a handful of sound sequences, most consisting of the ever-energetic Al Jolson singing and sweating and dancing, often in blackface. The combination of silence and sound proves an awkward hybrid at best.

The legend says that it was Jolson’s singing that drove a stake into the heart of silent film, but the truth is both more subtle and more interesting. Audiences had experienced sound pictures before, usually in the form of musical interludes, but these were of such crude quality that the innovation didn’t stick; the clumsiness of the available technologies only intruded on the dream-like quality of silent film. What startled audiences of The Jazz Singer and got them hooked on sound was a few improvised minutes of dialogue. Jolson, seated at the piano, finishes a song, turns to his mother and engages in some insignificant patter. The off-hand nature of the exchange gave the illusion that the audience was eavesdropping on a real-life moment, and it was that sense of intimacy and verisimilitude that truly launched the sound era.

Sound had been a huge gamble for Warner Bros. At the time, the studio was at the bottom of the heap and desperate to climb to the top. So they took a chance on sound and came up with the hit they so desperately needed. Their success sent them to the forefront of the industry, with all the other studios playing catch-up. The new medium brought with it a host of technical problems—satirized with great accuracy in Singin’ in the Rain (1950)—leading to a period of static, stage-bound films with little artistic merit. As stated in The Dawn of Sound: How Movies Learned to Talk, an excellent documentary included in the set, it seemed that audiences preferred mediocre sound films to great silent films.

The new three-disc set includes a wealth of material placing the film in its proper historical context, including commentary by film historians Ron Hutchinson and Vince Giordano; short films of Jolson from the era; The Dawn of Sound, which provides a great overview of the advent of synchronized sound, the impact of The Jazz Singer, and the demise of the silent film; and a full disc of Vitaphone sound shorts, films of Vaudeville acts of the 1920s. These films may be quaint, static and strange by modern standards, but they provide a valuable and rare historical record of the sort of entertainment that movies replaced, and to which The Jazz Singer pays tribute.

The Fantasies of Childhood: The Red Balloon, White Mane

There’s a magical time in childhood when the fiction of film is nearly indistinguishable from the reality of life, a time when a child still has a willingness and an ability to believe that magic is possible, and that maybe, just maybe, he can be its agent.

I was at that age when George Lucas’ original Star Wars trilogy was at its peak. It seemed to me entirely possible that such a cosmic drama indeed took place light years ago in a faraway galaxy, and that it might be still be in progress, maybe even somewhere in my neighborhood. Lucas’ attempt to construct a myth was successful, and I, and a gazillion other kids around the world, were his silent collaborators.

It doesn’t take a battery of special effects and widescreen melodrama to grab hold of a child’s imagination, however. Another film held sway over my young imagination, one that approached the world of youth and dreams from the opposite end of the spectrum.

Albert Lamorisse’s Academy Award-winning The Red Balloon (1959) was a major fixture in my childhood, a seemingly perennial treat bestowed on me and my fellow students throughout elementary school. And, judging by a casual survey of Internet posts on the topic, my school was hardly unique; it seems, when it comes to The Red Balloon, no American child was left behind. It seemed very real to me the first time I saw it, and though the reality of it faded as I grew older, successive viewings never failed to enthrall.

The Red Balloon and White Mane (1953), another of Lamorisse’s children’s films, are getting a theatrical release from Janus Films. The two short films will screen as a double feature beginning today at Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley.

The Red Balloon follows a few days in the life of Pascal (Pascal Lamorisse, the director’s son). In the opening scene he climbs a lamp post to untangle a red balloon, which he carries with him for the rest of the day. When he returns home in the afternoon, his mother discards the balloon by releasing it from their apartment window. But the balloon, grateful to the boy for having rescued it, hangs around, and in the morning it descends to street level again to join Pascal as he walks out the door and starts the long walk to school.

From that point on the two are inseparable. However, the pair draws the attention of a pack of bullies who chase Pascal and the balloon through the streets and empty lots of Paris. The chase culminates in a remarkable scene in which we see just how well Lamorisse has managed to anthropomorphize the balloon. In a single long shot, the balloon slowly deflates—an oddly painful moment that drew tears from many a rapt child in my classes. But what follows is an uplifting scene that perfectly embodies the fantasies of childhood.

The White Mane is also the story of childhood and friendship, this time between a boy and a seemingly untamable wild horse. Again Lamorisse produces an evocative tale, beautifully photographed, that examines the compassion and dreams of a young boy.

White Mane is a horse among horses, the leader of his herd, proud, defiant and elusive. Ranchers try to catch and tame him, but none can hold onto him for long. But the boy is able to prove his devotion and sincerity to the horse, and what develops is another magical friendship that concludes with another of Lamorisse’s fairy tale endings.

The Red Balloon (1959). 34 minutes. In French with English subtitles. 

Criterion Collection. $14.95. www.criterion.com.

The White Mane (1953). 39 minutes. In French with English subtitles. 

Criterion Collection. $14.95. www.criterion.com.

The Life of Reilly: A Career-Defining Performance

“Wow.” The word permeates The Life of Reilly, a new film of a one-man show by the late actor Charles Nelson Reilly. And with each utterance of the word, we get the sense that it’s the only time when this consummate entertainer is not totally in control of his performance. The word just seems to seep out, almost reflexively, at quiet moments during the show. It is as though Reilly himself is still marveling at his own past, reliving his memories, experiencing the formative events of his life all over again, but with the wisdom and awe of an older man keenly aware that he was too young to fully appreciate the depth, the pain, the humor and the madness of his life as he was living it.

Charles Nelson Reilly was first and foremost a stage actor, on Broadway and off, as well as a comedian, director and acting teacher. But he had always dreamed of being on television, and that’s how he is best remembered, as a familiar face in dozens of television sitcoms, commercials, and, in the 1970s, as a flamboyant wit on campy game shows. He died earlier this year from complications of pneumonia at the age of 76.

From 2000 to 2003, Reilly toured the country with a critically acclaimed one-man show entitled Save It for the Stage. Later, after Reilly had retired the show, directors Barry Poltermann and Frank Anderson persuaded the actor to revive it for just one night so that they could capture it on film. The three-hour show was re-fashioned in the editing room into a 90-minute film that opens this week at Shattuck Cinemas in downtown Berkeley.

It is easy to see how this compelling performer could carry a live show for three hours, yet it is also understandable that the film’s producers would consider that a bit too long for a movie version. But one thing is clear: 90 minutes is just not enough. Reilly is outstanding—his performance is by turns hilarious and tragic, sarcastic and solemn, incredulous and insightful. Hopefully the DVD version will contain the full show, or at least a plentiful sampling of what was cut.

Reilly took his original title, Save It for the Stage, from a repeated saying of his mother’s, an abrupt conversation-ending rebuke meant to discourage her son from discussing the family’s tragedies and secrets. And save it he did, for decades, until, in his golden years, he used it as the source material for this hilarious tour-de-force of confessional theater.

Reilly’s performance is full of surprising twists and turns. Laugh lines are followed by poignant moments of pain and doubt. Dramatic scenes are punctuated by sudden outbursts and comic asides. “That’s called a dramatic turn,” Reilly informs the crowd at one point, with mock self-congratulation. “Very few actors can do that.”

Reilly is just far too whimsical and self-deprecating an actor to play it straight. Every time he lures us into the story with his dramatic talents, he jolts us out of it with his humor, stepping outside the show to comment on the performance, on the staging, on the audience’s responses to the material. Humor is the lifeblood of the man and of the show.

But when he speaks of the saving grace of laughter, Reilly doesn’t speak of it in philosophical terms; he doesn’t talk of recognizing the cosmic absurdity of life, though the implication is there, and lingers after the show’s conclusion. For a man with Reilly’s background and ambition, there was little time to sit back and marvel at God’s sense of humor. Instead he was developing his own, using it to battle against the precarious circumstances of a man of a particular upbringing, with a particular sexual orientation, chasing a particular dream in a particularly public arena.

His youth was spent in a world of bitterness, recrimination and tragedy. Reilly’s mother was harsh and unyielding, prone to smashing the dreams of others before they could even take shape. She made her husband refuse Walt Disney’s invitation to collaborate in the great animator’s transition to color films; she tried mightily to foil her son’s ambition to act, first in grade school, then as an adult. Reilly’s father, crushed by unemployment and the missed opportunity of partnering with Disney, slipped into despair and institutionalization along a slope lubricated with alcohol, forcing his wife and son to move in with an extended family that included a lobotomized chain-smoking aunt.

And when Reilly finally escaped from the madness and made his way to New York City, he was brought low at what he thought was the peak when the president of NBC extended the courtesy of bringing Reilly to the dizzying heights of his lofty Manhattan office only to tell the would-be star face to face that “they don’t allow queers on television.”

So surely the man can be forgiven for having been too preoccupied to appreciate the absurdity of the universe. He had rent to pay. Laughter wasn’t a form of existential consolation; it was a survival mechanism, a crutch, a tool with which to survive from minute to minute and from day to day. But he had the talent and good fortune to transform that survival mechanism into a career—a career that ends with The Life of Reilly—a rousing artistic peak.

My Friend, My Horse

When I was 11 years old I was sent from the cozy blandness of the suburbs of Santa Rosa to what I thought was the wild, unruly countryside, about 20 minutes outside town. Out there in the uncharted boonies was a horse camp for kids, a small ranch stocked with the gentlest, most patient horses you could hope to find. They had to be; their patience was tested every week of every summer by a new batch of 30 loud, rowdy, snot-nosed kids—a sort of equine purgatory. 

For just one week I picked hooves, combed manes, bridled, de-bridled, fed, groomed, rode and cleaned up after the only poor beast who managed to show any kindness to me, or at least a reasonably comforting brand of indifference. 

For that experience, I am just a bit more attuned than I otherwise might have been to the pleasures of John Korty's new film, My Friend, My Horse, showing this weekend at his Take 2 theater in Point Reyes Station. Korty, an Oscar and Emmy winner for an eclectic range of work spanning animation, documentary, feature films and television, has been working on the film intermittently between other project deadlines for about five years.

Before attending that camp, horses, for me, had been merely theoretical. In my mind they weren't so much animals as vehicles for cowboys, or engines for carriages and wagons; they were background objects in history and in movies. But in that brief period of just five or six days, I learned to see them much differently. I learned to gauge their emotions by observing the positions of their ears, the loll of their heads, the whites of their eyes. And I discovered their crafty side: I learned to sneak up on them after having saddled them, to quickly cinch the saddle tighter before they had a chance to bloat themselves up again to keep it loose. 

And I learned that, once out on the trail, I was no longer in charge. For not only did the horse know every twist and turn through the woods, he also knew the location of every minor obstacle—every fallen tree and small, winding stream. I remember the mix of panic and exhilaration the first time that horse took off without my asking, picking up the pace from trot to gallop for some unknown reason. I simply held on for dear life, hunched over the horse's back, white knuckles grasping the saddle horn as he rounded a bend and then, with a sudden rush, leapt into the air, stretching to his full length as he hurdled the trunk of a fallen oak. Afterward he seemed to slow down only reluctantly, twitching and stamping his feet with pleasure and possibly in anticipation of the next one, which I would soon find out was just half a mile away.

John Korty's film is full of stories like this, of the excitement and trepidation of first encounters and of the joys of long-term acquaintance with these animals. It's a local film, locally made and featuring local people. A parade of West Marin faces—Pam Carr, Bryn Byer, Warren Hellman, Sandy Duveen, Ann Grymes, Alessa Lopez, Steve Hadland, Alli Smith, Hilary Smith, Ellie Genazzi, Victor Miranda, Jette Jarl, Mira Brock, Alan Margolis, Pat Healy, Boyd Stewart, Ed Brennan, Sophie Dixon, Carlisle Rand, Anne Sands, Maddie Murphy, Susie Rowsell, Peter Meyer, Fielding Neale, Lily Neale, Meagan Neale, and Casey Cambell, Stewart Campbell and Amanda Wisby—regaling us with stories of their lives among the thousand-pound beasts. From billionaires to former jockeys, from old-timers to pre-teens, everyone's got a horse story, some of them simple and humorous, others surprisingly emotional. 

To the uninitiated, the whole thing may seem a bit odd. Isn't this just anthropomorphism? The horse seems like such a stoic creature, and one that requires restraining apparatuses, besides.

At times, while the virtues and spiritual qualities of horses are being noted, the film cuts to images that, to a horse lover, may serve as a perfect illustration of the point. But others, looking at shots of horses staring balefully at the camera, may wonder if it isn't all in the eye of the beholder, if we're not simply projecting our notions of horsiness onto an animal that knows nothing other than horsiness, that is biologically engineered for nothing else. Why do we attribute such nobility and wisdom to these animals?

As several of Korty's subjects point out, part of the answer is in the fact that we ride them, and that once we entrust our bodily safety to an animal we'd like to think the animal isn't taking the responsibility lightly. For when you spend time riding on the back of one of these giants, putting yourself at the mercy of the whims of a (nearly) wild animal, you can't help but feel there's some sort of understanding between the two of you. You have to. At that point, it's essentially a survival skill. 

To order My Friend, My Horse on DVD, see www.myfriendmyhorse.com.

This review was written for the West Marin Citizen.

Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934

We tend to think that once something is committed to film we have it forever. The act of recording seems by its very nature permanent, and often we forget that the very materials used to record are nearly as transient as the images they capture. For the reality is that film is a tenuous medium at best, given to disintegration and, in the case of nitrate films, spontaneous combustion. And this is compounded by the fact that cinema itself was for decades considered merely a novelty, an ephemeral entertainment of virtually no great cultural or historical value.

In fact, it is estimated that 90 percent of all films made during the silent era (1895-1929) and 50 percent of all films made before 1950 are lost, disintegrated over time, neglected or willfully destroyed to extract their nitrate content, or simply mislabeled and forgotten, awaiting discovery on some dusty shelf.

The National Film Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by Congress in 1997, has helped save more than 1,000 films over the past decade. Most of these films are not commercially viable; the audiences they draw at film festivals are not nearly large enough to cover the costs of their preservation and distribution, and there’s little financial incentive for commercial companies to release them on DVD.

So the foundation, through a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress, stepped into the void and began releasing many of these rare cultural artifacts on DVD. The award-winning Treasures From American Film Archives series has consistently been one of the best reviewed discs every year in which a collection has been released. The first set featured a sampling of rare films spanning the history and range of the medium; the second focused on the silent era.

This year the foundation has released Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934, another beautifully produced collection of 48 educational films, commercial features, cartoons, newsreels and propaganda films. The four discs each have a theme: urban life, women and women’s suffrage, labor and capital, immigration and patriotism. The set includes four feature films, an illustrated book with notes for all the films, and commentaries and original musical accompaniment for each. And all proceeds support further film preservation.

Viewing these films is like traveling back in time. It’s a uniquely compelling experience to see documentary footage of everyday life 100 years ago, to see everyday people going about their everyday lives—not posed in static photographs, but walking, talking and laughing. And the more formally staged films say just as much if not more about who these people were, about how they thought and behaved, and how they sought to influence and persuade one another. And though the differences between their time and ours are legion, at times the real surprise is how much has remained the same.

100% American (1918, 14 minutes) features the screen’s first genuine star, Mary Pickford, in a film designed to encourage citizens to buy war bonds. The idea of movie stardom and the harnessing of that influence for commercial and political means was new at the time, and there was no more popular figure in motion pictures than “America’s Sweetheart.”

In the opening scene Pickford is shamed by a man on the street selling bonds. “Our boys are sacrificing their life-blood,” he cries, “What sacrifice have you made?” An alien thought in our time, when the popularity of war is maintained only by keeping it at arms’ length. We then watch as our plucky heroine struggles to overcome the myriad temptations of daily life—fancy new dresses, ice cream sundaes, public transportation—in an effort to save her pennies and donate them to the cause. Nevermind that Pickford wasn’t actually a citizen; in her native country the film was retitled 100% Canadian.

In other films it’s apparent that some things haven’t changed over the years. Listen to Some Words of Wisdom (1930, 2 minutes) gives us Mr. Courage and Mr. Fear, chatting amiably over dinner at a restaurant. The Great Depression has Mr. Fear worried about his finances, even though he has just received a raise, and thus he orders a simple meal of crackers and milk. Mr. Courage intervenes, advising Mr. Fear that it is his patriotic duty to spend his money to help jump-start the economy.

While there are many films in the collection that represent progressive causes, then as now film production was an expensive enterprise, so it is no surprise that so many of these films represent moneyed interests. Two cartoons illustrate the point. The first, The United Snakes of America (1917, 80 seconds) is essentially a newspaper political cartoon, brought to life by stop-motion animation as the drawing is inked in, first the faces and bodies of Uncle Sam flanked by an army man and a navy man. The film essentially creates a punchline by presenting the most crucial elements last, as snakes with labels such as “pro-German press” and “peace activists” come into view, attacking Uncle Sam and revealing that the cartoon is in fact a swipe at all those perceived as undermining the war effort. As far as editorial cartooning goes, this is not the least bit unusual. But to whom does this statement of opinion belong? An independent cartoonist? A media corporation—Hearst, perhaps, or Pulitzer? In the final seconds a hand comes into view to proudly sketch in the credit line and reveal the source: the Ford Motor Company.

Uncle Sam and the Bolsheviki-I.W.W. Rat (1919, 40 seconds) is another animated political cartoon in which Uncle Sam protects the gross domestic product from the evil claws of the International Workers of the World, represented by a rat that crawls out of the woodwork to feast on the harvest. The patriotic Uncle Sam, tellingly hiding behind a wall of sacks labeled “American Institutions,” takes a shovel to the head of the dreaded Bolshevik-loving rodent and crushes it. Again, praise be to the Ford Motor Company.

The status quo is again represented in a few films about the women’s suffrage movement. The Strong Arm Squad of the Future (1912, 60 seconds) is a short animated film that satirizes the movement by caricaturing women in roles of power as manly, brutish, and, most damningly, unappealing to men. More objective in its perspective is On to Washington (1913, 80 seconds), a news film that contains footage of the suffragette march on Capitol Hill. In a more commercial vein is The Hazards of Helen: Episode 13, one installment in a long-running serial in which the heroine battles not only villainous robbers, but the evils of workplace discrimination.

This is just a small sample; Treasures III is far too varied to adequately express here. Suffice it to say that this is not just a collection for history buffs or cinephiles; the films contained here offer both entertainment and enlightenment, and more than a little astonishment.

Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934. $89.99. www.filmpreservation.org.

David Mamet's House of Games

House of Games, David Mamet's 1987 directorial debut, was and still is like no other film.

Mamet had already established himself as a successful writer for both stage and screen, receiving Oscar nominations for a couple of screenplays and Tony nominations for his plays. His 1984 play Glengarry Glen Ross won the Pulitzer Prize.

When it came time for Glengarry to adorn the silver screen, Mamet had to break the news to his long-time collaborator, actor Joe Mantegna, that he was going to be replaced in the lead role by Al Pacino. As Mantegna recounts in an interview in Criterion's new DVD release of House of Games, Mamet walked into the actor's backstage dressing room after a performance, broke the bad news, and immediately dropped two screenplays on the table, saying, "But I won't make these without you."

The two screenplays were House of Games and Things Change, films that would firmly establish Mamet as a film director and Mantegna as a solid screen actor.

Mamet is known for his precisely mannered, crisply delivered dialogue. It is his hallmark, a unique approach that brings the enunciation and stylization of the stage to the screen, but without the requisite staginess that hinders the efforts of so many lesser talents. Mamet instills his words with a heightened dramatic tension, much in the way that the rapid-fire cadences of the Warner Bros. gangster films and noirs of the 1930 and '40s brought a dramatic hyper-realism to their melodramatic plots.

Like those earlier films, House of Games is full of deep shadows and drifting smoke that obscure motivations; of steam rising from sewers like forbidden thoughts rising furtively to the surface; of backroom dealings and shifting alliances that remake the world as a dangerous game of intrigue and deceit.

Twenty years later, the film still packs a punch. Mike, Mantegna's smooth, street-wise hustler, is captivating as he dismantles the pretensions of respectability that shackle Lindsay Crouse's Margaret to an unsatisfying bourgeois life. The labyrinth of lust and greed, of cons and revelations, is still mesmerizing even after multiple viewings.

Extra features on the new release include current interviews with Crouse and Mantegna, the two actors reflecting on the film and their work with Mamet; a commentary track by Mamet and Ricky Jay, a con artist turned actor who served as a consultant on the film; an essay by film critic Kent Jones; and a short documentary, made at the time of filming, featuring interviews with Mamet, information on the genesis of the film, and rehearsal sessions in which Mamet walks his principal players through their characters' motivations.

House of Games (1987). Written and directed by David Mamet. Starring Joe Mantegna and Lindsay Crouse. 102 minutes. $39.95. www.criterion.com.

Berkeley, San Francisco Host 2007 Arab Film Festival

The 11th annual Arab First Festival continues this weekend at the California Theater in downtown Berkeley.

This year the festival has turned its focus to issues of youth and urban life, with a range of films on these topics showing at venues in San Francisco, San Jose and Berkeley.

The festival’s mission is to explore the depth and diversity of filmmaking in the Arab world with an array of documentaries and feature-length and short narrative films.

Hisham Zaman’s Winterland makes its American debut at 7 p.m. Sunday. The film examines the relationship between Renas, a middle-aged Kurdish immigrant from Iraq who has made his home in the snow-covered hills of rural Norway. Renas has been looking forward to the arrival of his bride-to-be from Iraq. It is an arranged marriage with a woman he has never met, except by way of a few letters and phone calls. He has pictures of Fermesk, however, that depict a young woman, perhaps still a teenager, gently smiling and wearing a flowing dress.

Upon her arrival, however, Renas is perturbed to find a larger and older woman. She is still young, but it is clear that the photos are quite outdated. And Fermesk too faces disillusionment, for Renas too sent photos of his younger self, dashing and svelte in military garb, and also managed to greatly inflate his status and income from his humble job in Norway. And each has still more surprises for the other along the way.

What follows is a tense drama of disillusionment and reconciliation, of hopes dashed on the snowy banks of cold reality. Renas and Fermesk must deal simultaneously with their estrangement from one another and from their home country, from family, friends and culture. The stunning photography of the wide-open fields and snow-blanketed hillsides of rural Norway presents a beautiful but alienating environment, pristine and harrowing at the same time. Zaman’s camera transforms the landscape into a vast white desert, where the two protagonists have no reference points other than each other.

Nasser Bakhti’s Night Shadows examines similar themes of Arab displacement but in a dark, urban environment. His film follows the interlocking lives of five characters, each adrift in the darkness and decadence of Geneva nightlife.

A jaded cop, nearing retirement, faces another night on the beat with his obnoxious brute of a partner. Hans’ dedication to his job has cost him his health and his marriage, and those losses have in turn cost him his passion for his job. His partner, a brash, insensitive thug, cares nothing for the immigrants he is tasked with tracking down, and his cruelty and ignorance are only brought to his attention when his wife threatens to pack up the kid and leave him. Claire is a down-and-out junkie with no friends or family, forced to consider prostitution to sustain her habit. Adé is an illegal Malian immigrant who dreams of a professional soccer career while working as a waiter. And Mohammed, a Moroccan immigrant, has been forced to abandon his medical studies just to get by while supporting his family back home.

Each, whether a native or an immigrant, faces the same hostile environment, one that undermines their common humanity and puts them at each other’s throats much of the time in a thoughtful parable of ignorance and xenophobia.

2007 Arab Film Festival. Through Sunday, Oct. 28 at the California Theater in Berkeley and at the Castro Theater and Roxie Film Center in San Francisco.

Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains

Jimmy Carter is more active in his 80s than I was at any time during my 20s. If that’s an exaggeration it’s not much of one. The man’s zest for life is well known, but it is still awe-inspiring to see. In addition to his work with Habitat for Humanity and the Carter Center and a writing career that results in a book per year, the man somehow manages to find time to paint, preach, hike, bicycle and travel the world.

And that seems to be at least one of the points director Jonathan Demme is trying to make with his new film, Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains.

The film follows Carter during his 2006 book tour after the publication of his best-selling book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Demme and his crew tracked Carter across the country as he answered myriad questions on countless radio and television shows, defending his positions and clarifying his arguments in the face of a storm of controversy. Usually the debate in these appearances centers on the title of the book, since that is as far as most of these media types, and, it seems, many of Carter’s critics, have read. The result, as so often happens in discussions of the Middle East, is a debate that can quickly degenerate into name-calling and deeper entrenchment into opposing camps. Throughout the film Carter is seen struggling to keep honest debate alive, never allowing himself the luxury of the tactics chosen by many of his critics.

Demme too has problems with his title, for one might easily get the impression that the film will provide an overview of Carter’s life and career, or at least his post-presidency career. Nothing doing. The film might well have been titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid — The Movie. If you subscribe to the Hemingwayesque notion that a man is best defined by his performance under pressure, the film does indeed provide something of a portrait of the man, with plenty of evidence of his honesty, his optimism, his sincerity and his mettle. And though it touches on the depth and range of Carter’s work, with side trips to Habitat for Humanity projects in New Orleans and to meetings of the Carter Center board, the film consists primarily of countless scenes of media interviews and behind-the-scenes chatter in transit to and from those interviews. Most of it is fun and fascinating, but some of it is simply repetitive, and at 126 minutes, the film drags a bit, with Demme at times losing sight of any larger purpose for the production.

Still, it is instructive and inspiring to see Carter in action, still working for a better world at a time when most of his fellow former presidents were content to while away the hours on a golf course.

Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains (2007). Directed by Jonathan Demme. 126 minutes.

Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in the West

Sergio Leone is often thought of as an ironic filmmaker, a mischievous genre deconstructionist. But though his films have plenty of humor and wit, they also contain great beauty and depth and insight. Though he may have worked most famously in a genre largely considered pulp—the Western—Leone was one of the great cinematic artists.

Pacific Film Archive is presenting seven of Leone’s best films, starting Saturday and running through Oct. 28.

Leone is best known for his films with Clint Eastwood, the so-called “spaghetti westerns” in which the director deconstructed and built upon the traditions of a uniquely American genre. The “Dollars Trilogy” culminated in perhaps his most beloved film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1967). But his masterpiece is Once Upon a Time in the West, (1968) a nearly three-hour epic that re-imagines the great myths and imagery of western expansion.

Leone did not merely deconstruct and caricature the Western, he revitalized it, bringing a greater depth and mystery to its vistas and villains. He delved into the roots of the form’s archetypes, digging up the primal thoughts, emotions and characters that inhabited the landscape. And then he magnified it all; he distilled the genre to its essence and then spread it on thick in deep sepia tones.

But it is the faces of his characters, even more than the dramatic Monument Valley backdrop, that provide Once Upon a Time in the West’s most enduring images. Leone deepened the impact of the close-up, juxtaposing and equating the rugged terrain of the landscape with the equally rugged terrain of the human face, each giving greater significance to the other. The eyes of his sweat-soaked, sun-scarred outlaws reflect the landscape and imbue it with meaning, and the landscape shapes the characters who survey it.

Though the widescreen format is ideal for shooting vast panoramic landscapes, it poses problems for photographing people. Close-ups must crop the face above the eye, and yet they still leave wide swaths of wasted open space on either side. Leone made use of these limitations, however, bringing his camera in even tighter and expertly balancing close-up faces on one side of the frame with open vistas on the other.

Leone’s masterful use of the widescreen format is particularly evident in the scene where Jill arrives at the McBain ranch to find the bodies of her husband and his children laid out on tables in the dooryard. The body of her husband, his head in the lower left corner of the frame, slants upwards across the frame to where Jill’s grief-stricken face is positioned in the upper right. Across the frame to the left of her is a group of attentive neighbors dressed in black, and behind them the rugged hills as backdrop. In one expertly composed image, Leone tells the whole story.

Leone knew how to move his camera as well. One of the most stirring moments in any Western comes when Jill first arrives in Flagstone, hoping to find her new husband waiting for her at the train station. She waits and watches in vain as the throng of passengers moves past until she finally heads into the station office. And here begins a brilliant marriage of form and content: Leone’s camera follows her to the door and then watches through the window as she asks for directions from the station agent. The agent guides her through a door on the opposite side of the building as Leone lifts his camera above the window, up the wall and over the roof, and as the music swells we get our first look at the town, all construction and bustling activity. It is the birth of the West, and we encounter it along with Jill, who is soon to become its guiding feminine life force. Indeed, it is as if the town only comes to life once she lays eyes on it. It is a shot full of the promise, the legend, the myth and the glory of the West, achieved with simple but masterful technique.

Claudia Cardinale, as Jill, is in fact the cornerstone of the film. Though the photogenic Italian’s voice was dubbed by an actress with a better grasp of English, Cardinale was not cast simply as eye candy, but for her expressive face and her ability to project a mix of weariness and determination. In the scene at the station and again toward the end of the film, when Harmonica walks into the house only to announce his departure, Cardinale demonstrates her talent in a close-ups that sees her effortlessly transition from joyful anticipation to crestfallen disillusionment to iron-willed perseverance. Her face is beautiful yet damaged, once by the life she has escaped and again here while she watches as the life she hoped to escape to is ripped from her grasp. And again Leone demonstrates his knowledge and faith in the terrain of the human face, patiently holding the camera’s gaze on Jill as the emotional change overtakes her features.

As the New Orleans hooker turned pioneer homesteader, Jill may at first seem like a mere variation on a stock Western character. But Leone is after something else here. Throughout the film, Jill is consistently associated with water—the water that runs beneath the dream of a town that will be known as Sweetwater; the water that will fuel the heaving, churning steam train that represents progress; the water she heats for the weary Cheyenne’s coffee; the hot bath with which she renews herself after suffering the world’s degradations; and the water she brings to the thirsty railroad workers in the film’s closing shot. She is the life force of this brave new world, the madonna that gives birth to this new land. And though the moments when her clothing is torn or barely held together by flimsy string may seem at first like simple exploitation, there is greater significance in these images. For in the end it will be her strength and determination that shines through the dust and violence, just as it is her beauty and courage that are unleashed once her dandified city clothes are torn apart, the phony veneer of sophistication and respectability giving way to the earthy mother of the West.

Berkeley Video and Film Festival 2007

The Berkeley Film and Video Festivals marks its 16th year this weekend with another vast and varied program of independent productions. If there’s a theme to the annual festival, the theme is that there is no theme; it simply showcases independent film in all its unruly diversity, from the brilliant to the silly, from mainstream to left field, from documentaries and drama to comedy and cutting-edge avant garde.

The festival, put on annually by the East Bay Media Center, runs today (Friday) through Sunday at Landmark’s California Theater in downtown Berkeley.

Festival Director Mel Vapour takes pride in one participant’s description of the festival as a bastion of artistic integrity among film festivals, and one that remains blissfully celebrity-free. This year’s program is no exception, providing a feast of cinematic pleasures untouched by commercial considerations.

One of the most extraordinary films on this year’s program is George Aguilar’s Diary of Niclas Gheiler. Aguilar has created what he terms a “documentary mashup,” consisting of old family photographs and found footage combined with words from his grandfather’s diary. The result is a stirring poetic reverie on his grandfather’s life in Germany from World War I, when he served alongside a young Adolf Hitler, and the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in the run-up to World War II. It’s a 32-minute tour de force that approaches history from a deeply personal perspective.

The Big Game, by L A Wood, presents a sympathetic view of the Memorial Stadium oak grove tree-sit. Regardless of where you come down on the myriad issues surrounding the UC Berkeley’s plan to build an athletic performance facility along the stadium’s western wall, this entertaining 30-minute film is sure to provide grist for your political mill. Though university officials declined Wood’s invitation to comment on camera, he does little to fill that gap in the narrative, at no point providing the viewer with an account of the university’s reasoning behind its plans or its responses to the protest. The result is a film which may be endearing to the like-minded, but which will only fuel the ire of those on the other side of the debate, encouraging rather than tempering the tendencies of each side to paint the other in broad strokes. Familiar faces abound; in fact, the film is a veritable who’s who of Berkeley Daily Planet opinion page contributors.

Henry Ferrini and Ken Riaf’s Polis is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place provides a compassionate portrait of the larger-than-life poet—his work, his humanity and his influence—using archival footage and audio along with testimonials from friends and colleagues. The central narrative concerns Olson’s quest to preserve the unique qualities of his hometown, a quest one fellow poet likens to a Superbowl match-up between the Minnesota Vikings and the Miami Dolphins, in which the Dolphins abandoned their game plan in favor of tactical improvisation that reached the level of poetry. It’s an analogy many tree-sitters would be loathe to accept, but in the context of Olson’s all-encompassing, all-embracing, big-picture view of life and community, such supposed polarities as football vs. poetry are exposed as meaningless.

Other films from this weekend’s program:

• Orit Schwartz’s The Frank Anderson, a sharp comedic short (featuring several familiar faces from larger-budget Hollywood productions), tells the story of an insurance agent who pays a price when he denies coverage for a man’s breast reduction surgery while enthusiastically offering to pay for enhancement surgery for a woman he hopes to bed.

• Flaming Chicken, Gerald Varney’s 20-minute impressionistic musing on San Francisco, is comprised largely of hitherto unseen footage Varney shot while working as a Bay Area journalist in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

• Silhouettes, a seven-minute short by Acalanes High School (Lafayette) students Patrick Ouziel and Kevin Walker, details the plight of a teen whose shadow, which takes the form of a rabbit, leads to bullying from his peers.

• Chronicles of Impeccable Sportsmanship, Erika Tasini’s excellent silent short that depicts curious dynamics among a rooftop-dwelling family.

• The Homecoming, a solemn and mysterious 10-minute film, consists of evocative scenes that almost play like trailers from longer films.

• Tile M for Murder, an absurd, almost cartoonish comedy, features a hostile couple squaring off over a game of Scrabble on a sweltering summer day. “It’s a hot day and I hate my wife,” says the husband, and off we go on a bile-fueled ride in which the words spelled out on the board dictate the course of events.

• Mark Hammond’s feature film Johnny Was boasts an excellent performance by Vinnie Jones as a former Irish Republican Army fighter hiding out in London. The film also features the screen debuts of boxer Lennox Lewis and former Who frontman Roger Daltrey.

But this sampling just scratches the surface. There are simply too many films on the program to do justice to them in the space allotted here. Suffice it to say, this is a film lover’s film festival, one that eschews the predictable fare that so often passes for independent film these days in an effort to present an engaging and wide-ranging program of cinema artistry.