Re: Guest Post: NickS Sets the Scene

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Oh, hey, I've seen that movie! Always seems to me like a huge influence on Bunuel. In fact, I realize now that I remember scenes from it as being in some Bunuel movie or other.


Posted by: Frowner | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 7:22 AM
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Having just watched the clip, I really like the very next scene, (too), between the woman and the maid.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 7:27 AM
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That's like one of the classics of world cinema, arguably the greatest movie ever made. (I'd say it's not quite as good as World of Apu or Fight Club.)


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 8:39 AM
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Going by the synopsis at Wiki,which as usual doesn't bother with spoilers. I had apparently misremembered the end of the movie.

Somehow I had thought Rules had climaxed something like King of Marvin Gardens or The Shooting Party.

IOW, Christine rather than Schumacher. Schumacher makes no sense to me, and the are too many mistaken identities.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:02 AM
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God I love that movie.


Posted by: Bave Dee | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:11 AM
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I saw this at the theater when the new print came out several years ago and was making the rounds of programmed theaters. So awesome.


Posted by: Blume | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:13 AM
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One of the movie viewing experiences that helped me to realize that I have no appreciation for great cinema. I watched the opening sequence and my reaction was similar to when I saw the movie --"That was ok, but I don't get what's the big deal."


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:17 AM
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I have no appreciation for great cinema

I sort of feel this way sometimes. One thing that's helped a bit is the tip (from a cinematography class) to think of who the narrator is. Or put another way, through whose eyes are we seeing things, and what's being included or excluded?

Viewed with this question in mind, the described scene is conveying an impressive amount of information in a very short span of time. (And thanks to NickS for bringing this film to my attention; I'd not heard of it.)


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:25 AM
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I have no appreciation for great cinema

I feel this way about poetry. I feel like everyone else has an extra sense that I'm lacking. I often find prose very beautiful, and yet I'm totally missing the point of poetry.

(I'm sure this is a muscle that I could develop and build. I would love to audit one of AWB's classes some time and get an inkling of what's available.)


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:32 AM
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re: 9

Yeah, I sort of understand that. There are poets and pieces of poetry that I really like, but I often have the nagging sense when reading poetry that 'this is just wank'. I'm not entirely ready to give up on the idea that that may be because 99% of it is wank, though. This nagging sense was not cured by several years of studying English Lit at university.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:35 AM
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9,10: I spent years like that, and slowly did manage to build my 'poetry muscle'. Three things that helped:
1) reading aloud to myself, slowly (even when I felt stupid about it)
2) learning to feeling free to like and not like and change my mind
3) discovering that, at least at first, the poetry I liked had a lot in common with convoluted prose (e.g. Robert Browning, Matthew Arnold). Not minding this.


Posted by: U. Awl | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:45 AM
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learning to feel free. Gah.

Also, 4:
Sex poems! (oudemia can probably recommend)


Posted by: U. Awl | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:47 AM
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That's like one of the classics of world cinema, arguably the greatest movie ever made.

Shhhh. That's true, of course, but I worried that if I had said that in the post people wouldn't have clicked through to watch it.

Also, and more importantly, I didn't feel like my memory of the film was clear enough to talk about the film as a whole. But that opening is great; I'm glad people like it.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:47 AM
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Depth. Illumination of the quotidian while remaining utterly opaque. There is an amazing lightness and compassion in Renoir that conceals as much as reveals.
You really like these people. This movie is great fun. The viewer is trying to "make sense of it all" as are the characters. The characters are also living it.

I'm not entirely ready to give up on the idea that that may be because 99% of it is wank, though.

You know, if you really accept Wilde's dictum that "Art is entirely useless" you then stare into the abyss.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:49 AM
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I'm sort of waiting for one of the smart-about-film people to show up and tell me that 8 is a bush-league heuristic, while simultaneously feeling pretty comfortable with the fact that any film analysis I do is likely to be pretty bush-league.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:49 AM
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11: Yeah, all of that. And being willing to accept what I actually like and find moving, without worrying too much about its quality as poetry in any objective sense.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:50 AM
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16: right, that's a better way of putting what I meant by 11.2.


Posted by: U. Awl | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:53 AM
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Here's a question (except it's really just whining) that I always have about poetry: The line breaks always feel like I'm being ordered to find it compelling. Can't you just write a prose-poem?


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:55 AM
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Reading out loud is huge. I don't end up doing it often, but sitting with a friend and a Norton's Anthology of English Poetry and passing it back and forth reading bits you like to each other can be a very entertaining evening.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:56 AM
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18: Maybe moving back to older stuff, with a clearer rhyme and rhythmic scheme, would help you get past that? There's a lot of (um, does one still call it free verse?) where I can't really see what the line breaks are for other than to make it look like poetry. That's mostly me being a clod, of course, but for something where the musical rhythm is clear and explicit, I don't have that reaction.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:59 AM
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re: 11

It's not due to lack of exposure to poetry, and I do have poets whose work I really like. I'm not sure if I'm ever likely to be arsed to spend any time developing a 'poetry muscle' though, given the conviction that a lot of it probably just is wank.

You are probably right, though, that if I followed those prescriptions I'd find more things that I do like.



Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:59 AM
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a lot of it probably just is wank.

And this is, of course, true. Most of everything is.


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:00 AM
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9: You have to be dead inside not to appreciate this poem.


Posted by: Josh | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:01 AM
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The Shooting Party with Mason & Gielgud has much the same structure, if not a ripoff, and is very good. Joseph Losey's The Go-Between is another masterpiece.

I have always felt Rules worked better as an Edwardian movie, pre-WWI, than as a pre-WWII movie, which probably mean I understand neither the movie or pre-WWII France. Renoir says he wasn't doing social commentary, more like a study of personal morality.

Technique. Renoir used full depth of field and deep composition ten years before film noir and then the 50s geniuses took it up.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:03 AM
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Maybe moving back to older stuff, with a clearer rhyme and rhythmic scheme, would help you get past that?

Yeah, it doesn't bother me if there's a fairly rigid rhythm to it.

There's a lot of (um, does one still call it free verse?) where I can't really see what the line breaks are for other than to make it look like poetry.

This is where it irritates me. I'll still get the informal rhythm if I read prose aloud. Line breaks just seem so extremely heavy-handed to me. Also I have little patience for spoken-word poetry for the same reason. Just read it, and let me find it compelling on my own.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:04 AM
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23: I'm moved by that poem. The line breaks added a lot. Maybe I only mostly have seen crappy, heay-handed poetry.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:07 AM
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re: 22

Actually, I'm pretty sure that poetry is particularly bad for this. The collaborative nature of music and cinema somewhat ameloriates the worst wanky instincts, and I think even with prose the nature of the form helps a little.

The process of condensing in poetry and that very narrow focus on language often seems, to me, to open up particular dangers.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:09 AM
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A poem with line-breaks, the one you are reading, is a physical artifact, like painting or sculpture. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick did work on margins.

Poetry reveals and subverts the tyranny of margins, the oppressive hegemony of those damn parallel lines.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:16 AM
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Paradise Lost is quite good to listen to as well as to read. The librivox recording of the first book is over the top and nice.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:17 AM
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I have always felt Rules worked better as an Edwardian movie, pre-WWI, than as a pre-WWII movie, which probably mean I understand neither the movie or pre-WWII France. Renoir says he wasn't doing social commentary, more like a study of personal morality.

The thing that I remember frustrating me when I watched the movie was that it didn't lend itself to abstraction at all. I was watching a "great movie", I wanted to figure out what it was "about" and couldn't come up with a good summary. It is much less explicit in its intentions than Grand Illusions and, for that reason I like Grand Illusions better.
But I would still find myself saying to myself, occasionally, "I made this flight for a woman and she isn't here." I didn't even mean anything specific, it certainly didn't come to mind thinking about specific people, it just suited a certain mood of feeling like some moment was utterly lacking the sense of accomplishment that I would have hoped for.

Watching the opening convinced me that I need to watch the movie again.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:21 AM
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That poem has a great punch line.


Posted by: k-sky | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:49 AM
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That poem has a great punch line

Yeah, I can't say that the rest of the poem by itself did anything for me, but as a setup to the last line it was great.


Posted by: CJB | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:51 AM
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Here is another essay on La Regle There obviously are many.

The feeling of powerlessness is bred by the manner in which the film is shot. It sometimes feels as though it's a tease, as there's often multiple characters doing their own thing in different portions of the screen. At times there are two fairly distinct stories going on simultaneously, but usually they comment upon or add to one another in some manner that is more important in serving the portrait Renoir is painting than individually. The characters are arranged horizontally rather than vertically to not only maintain the depth of field, but also have the secondary action in the background be at least as compelling as what's in the foreground so as to create a disturbance.

One of of the particular interests of David Bordwell is depth of field and deep focus, scene composition, coverage and the cognitive effects. The linked post discusses whether Toland was bullshitting about his goals in Citizen Kane

Forcing the viewer to choose which part of the frame she should focus on, what is foreground and background, is not only disorienting but anti-Romantic? Socialist?


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:52 AM
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33 is one of the reasons I vastly prefer Altman to Coppola. Sometimes I think Coppolla never made a good movie after The Conversation. Partly kidding, but I think the Godfathers are kinda reactionary.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 10:57 AM
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Godfathers are like zebras.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 11:02 AM
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You never know how they got their stripes?


Posted by: U. Awl | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 11:10 AM
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I love that opening and will have to cue it up. It's probably just the tyranny of the familiar, but I keep seeing the influence of (Asst. Dir) Henri Cartier-Bresson in the cinematography, particularly the framing of the shot as the camera pushes through the crowds towards the plane, but people keep moving back and forth in front of it creating new patterns and impressions.


Posted by: Jimmy Pongo | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 11:43 AM
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I rewatched that opening again, and this time noticed all the mirrors.

Altman Bio Page

"[La règle du jeu (1939)] taught me the rules of the game." RA mentions Renoir several times.

"I also like the audience to use their necks..."


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 11:58 AM
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re: 34

Yeah, I probably agree. I do like the Godfathers but they really aren't as great as people sometimes say. I watched them again fairly recently, and the person I watched them with wasn't that impressed and I could understand why.

re: 37

Second assistant directory is pretty junior, no? Not someone who is going to be exercising much influence on the cinematography?*

*I don't know anything about whether that was the case in this particular instance.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:05 PM
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Second assistant directory is pretty junior,

I thought the asst directors did the 2nd and 3rd unit shoots. Rather than standing behind Renoir, Cartier-Bresson would have had sole control of that exterior (if it was), plane landing. And it felt very different from the apartment scenes, darker and more claustrophobic, almost in close-ups.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:15 PM
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Or to break it down even farther, the 1st asst would have done the scenes with Andre & Octave, while the 2nd asst would do the radio, crowd, and flying plane scenes.

How much control and consistency the primary would have would be a matter of choice, determined in hiring and pre-shoot.


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:23 PM
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re: 40

Not according to wiki:

The Second Assistant Director (Second or 2AD) creates the daily call sheets from the production schedule ... in cooperation with the production coordinator. The "second" also serves as the "backstage manager", liaising with actors, putting cast through make-up and wardrobe, which relieves the "first" of these duties

The second unit director is a different role. Again, no idea what was happening in 1930s France.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:23 PM
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41 is wrong, according to the various wiki articles and other articles on film production terminology that I've been looking at.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:24 PM
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Quoting again:

The second unit has its own director and cinematographer. The director leads the second unit. Second unit director is good position for aspiring first unit directors to gain experience, and is considered above the post of assistant director.

Italics added.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:25 PM
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Of course, the terminology might not have been as specific back then, and H C-B did indeed direct those scenes.


Posted by: nattarGcM ttaM | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:27 PM
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38: Huh, that makes sense. Gosford Park seemed heavily influenced by La règle du jeu.

In other cinema news, I recently rewatched The Interrogation (Przesluchanie) and thought, I should recommend this to bob mcmanus. So consider it recommended.


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:30 PM
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I don't know anything about who was resposible for what, but, from the Cartier-Bresson site he also worked with renoir on "A Day in the Country", so it could easily be mutual influence.


Posted by: Jimmy Pongo | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:43 PM
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I was a bit surprised, when I was starting to make a list of movies I"ve seen, that I don't like pretty much any movie made by any member of the Coppola family. Except maybe one. I haven't seen all of them.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:46 PM
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or "Renoir", either one.


Posted by: Jimmy Pongo | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 12:47 PM
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30 - Nick, I also liked Grand Illusion better than Rules of the Game, critical consensus be damned.

48 - Seriously, there are like eight hundred thousand Coppolas. (Jason Schwartzman? Coppola! Nicolas Cage? Coppola! Atom Egoyan? Coppola! Spike Lee? Coppola!) You're basically saying that the only American movie made since 1970 that you liked was Peggy Sue Got Married.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:16 PM
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50, addendum: Rfts points out that you might have liked Catch Me if You Can, by Steven Coppola Spielberg, or Aliens, by James Cameron Coppola.


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:24 PM
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I don't actually understand 50 and 51, unless they're really all related. Anyway, you can amend 48 to read "directed by" and then interpret Coppola as someone with Coppola in the name they go by in the credits.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:28 PM
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Wait. Some people think Rules of the Game is a better movie than Grand Illusion? Such wrongness in the world! Goodness.


Posted by: oudemia | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:29 PM
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52 - Just goofin'. (Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, and Nicolas Cage really are Coppolas, in addition to Frank and Sophie.)


Posted by: snarkout | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:33 PM
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I lurve that movie. (Did I spell that right?) And I was going to bring up Gosford Park, but, pwned.

I'm generally very bad at remembering details of movies -- if you ask me immediately after watching a two-hour movie what the opening scene was, I probably can't say without some reminder -- but this one is really clear in my memory and it's been years since I saw the movie. I think it's pretty special, but I lack the film-analytic chops to make a case for why. The post does a nice job of gesturing at some reasons.

Unrelated: holy shit, is Vernazza ever stunning.


Posted by: essear | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:35 PM
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I lurve that movie. (Did I spell that right?)

Totes.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:40 PM
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That's a lot of Coppolas.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:40 PM
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Isn't that what brought down the financial system?


Posted by: LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:48 PM
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48: Godfather, Godfather II, what? How? You don't like either? I don't understand.


Posted by: di kotimy | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:50 PM
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That's a lot of Coppolas.

Their family really likes to Coppolate.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 1:51 PM
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Can't populate coppolas without coppolating poppas.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 2:04 PM
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59: I guess I can appreciate them technically as films, in my amateurish non-film critic way, but as stories I just couldn't care what was going on from one moment to the next.

I think the partial exception is Apocalypse Now, non-redux version, until the end when it becomes a story about a book club gone horribly wrong.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 2:13 PM
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Arguably, Heart of Darkness is also a story about a book club gone horribly wrong.


Posted by: Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 6:41 PM
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Speaking of film openings, the Guantanamo and Yoo posts made me think of this this one.


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 9:39 PM
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||

About 20% of the students at one of the local schools didn't show up on Friday either because they had the flu or didn't want to get it.

|>


Posted by: eb | Link to this comment | 09-26-09 11:06 PM
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