Gregg Toland and Citizen Kane

When watching Citizen Kane, I’ve always felt that Gregg Toland’s input was always understated in history book. Yet, through recent years Toland has been receiving more and more credit for his cinematography on Citizen Kane. One only needs to watch his earlier cinema graphic efforts (like Dead End. Wuthering Heights and Grapes of Wrath) to see that the look of Citizen Kane is more Toland than Welles. Carringer’s article does a good job bringing to light Toland’s efforts. Though through the article I also realized that maybe Welles had more input than I’d previously thought. With such ground breaking techniques as deep-focus, log takes, low-angle and a variety of compositional camera angles, Citizen Kane revolutionized movie making as a true art form.

Tolland was not just a cinematographer but a technical innovator as well. Carringer refers to Toland as a “gadgeteer” who could make any gadgets work for him. Many processes and devices that are in use to this day were invented by Toland. Toland made good use of BNC camera, which allowed him to film action in close proximity. Despite typical halo effects derived from shooting directly into light, Toland was able to eliminate this effect by removing the sliding aperture from the lens and added an insert that was normally be used for still photography. This was called a “waterhouse stop.” During Citizen Kane, Welles would often encourage Toland’s tinkering.

Despite all that Toland brought to the filming of Citizen Kane, it was through Welles’ encouragement that Toland was able to master many of his experiments. Where in earlier film like The Long Voyage Home, some of Toland’s work is at odds with the directors intentions; Citizen Kane works a harmonious integration between director and cinematographer. A new sense of reality is born in the film, mixing Toland’s reality with that of Welles’ showmanship.

Though Toland’s work is remarkable in Citizen Kane and he was nominated as best cinematographer by the Academy, he lost out to Arthur Miller for How Green Was My Valley. It is through this decision that makes obvious the resentment that the Academy felt about Citizen Kane, which is possibly due to Hearst, who had been trying to put a stop to the film upon its release. Apparently, Hearst was upset at the way his wife was portrayed in the film (see documentary on Hearst Vs. Kane). Though after so many years, Citizen Kane is finally recognized as one of the crowning achievements in film history.

Preston Sturges, An Underrated Director

I’d first introduced myself to the work of Preston Sturges back in 1990, when I got my first video store job. Though to this day I have not seen all of his films, I have seen a good portion of them. Interestingly, the film that I love the most by him is barely touched upon in the article by James Harvey. Sturges’ 1942 film Sullivan’s Travels is for me, Sturges’ greatest realized work. With everything that Harvey writes about Sturges, it’s surprising to me that he fails to see comparisons between Sturges’ life and that of Sullivan’s Travels. The film begins with a film director who wants to make a gritty film about human suffering which the producers would like to talk him out of. Interestingly the film Sullivan wants to make is called “Brother O, Where Art Thou?” which the Coen Brothers slyly borrowed as the title for their 2000 release with George Clooney (was their film to be the realized work that Sullivan wanted to make?) Sullivan’s Travels was to be Sturges’ cult classic that which has been written about in the Cult Movies 2 book by Danny Perry, yet the film is merely mentioned by Harvey; as “a film about a filmmaker- was too unorthodox a picture to be really popular.”

Most people I’ve spoken with concerning Sturges’ work tend to site Lady Eve as their favorite, and I can see why. Lady Eve is a prime example of a screwball comedy, and both Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda are in top form (Henry Fonda is especially effective with his pratfalls), yet I prefer Sullivan’s Travels’ chemistry with Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake. Joel McCrea always seemed like a modern actor for the time and Veronica Lake has never looked so beautiful. Even when Veronica Lake is dressed like a male hobo, Joel McCrea responds, “you look about as much as a boy as Mae West.” The film is filled with many funny great lines, yet at the heart of the film is an extremely serious tone that probably confused audience expectations.

When reading James Harvey’s piece on Preston Stuges it’s amazing to me how personal Sullivan’s Travels seems. Like the director in the film, Sturges appears to have tried to tackle more serious topics in films, but only to fall back on comedies. And as John Sullivan (the director of the film) sets out on his journey of self-discovery, he finds that after living a hard life with people he intended to make his gritty film of human suffering for, he realizes that they would rather laugh at a comedy then be subjected to more misery. Never has a film taught me the importance and necessity of comedy as entertainment. I imagine that Sturges himself must have had some kind of similar revelation. The fact that the character John Sullivan is a divorcee also draws parallels between character and director, I’m sure Sturges had a few axes to grind after his divorces.

Preston Surges is really one of the very great directors of the 40s, and I highly recommend everyone to check out more of his work. Many that have discovered his work have become big fans and for good reason. Most of Sturges’ films are really funny but more than that they have something to say about our society (Sullivan’s Travels), politics (The Great McGinty), advertising (Christmas In July), wealth (The Palm Beach Story) and sexual one-night-stands (The Miracle of Morgan Creek). In my opinion Preston Sturges is an exciting discovery for anyone interested in screwball comedies or just good films.

Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

Laura Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” is a study on our fascination for cinema. From the individual’s social molding, a preexisting fascination of film is created. Mulvey believes that women are the bearer of meaning rather than maker of meaning. Phallocentric theory has reduced the position of the woman to the point of observational interest, rather than creator of their projected image. Mulvey uses castration complex to examine woman’s image as bearer of a bleeding wound. If there is pleasure in looking, what visual interest does this have for women? Mulvey’s interest is to break from pleasure expectations, to conceive new ones.

Scopophilia is the pleasure to look, as well as being looked at. With cinema, we take people as objects, and subject them to a form of control through a curious gaze. Mulvey believes that in the extreme, we become voyeurs, whose sexual gratification comes from looking and controlling the “objectified other.”

“Woman as image and man as bearer of the look” has created a sexual imbalance in cinematic form. Males’ projected fantasy on women, has been problematic for harmonious interpretation of the sexes. The female has been “coded” as an erotic spectacle, which “freezes” the narrative for sexual consideration. Hetero-normative visualization seems to colonize the cinematic gaze.

There are three cinematic looks associated with cinema:
(1.) camera, (2.) audience, and (3.) character. Mulvey’s article believes that the neurotic needs of the male ego has created a one dimensional fetish of women presented as an image of castration threat.

Cinema of Attractions

Tom Gunning’s interesting article on the early film and the incredulous spectator, looks at early reactions to the new art form known as cinema. According to Maxim Gorky (a spectator from 1896), the mixture of realism and non-realism in film, “presents not life but it’s shadows.” Yet if the audience in watching in the shadows of the theater, does this shadowed life not become more magnified? Making our relationship to what we see on the screen all the more powerful? While the article explains that during the earliest showing of film (especially Lumiere’s Train) audience were terrified by the accosting images that were presented. Unable to grasp that film was not reality, many of the audience members screamed and ran for the exit doors. This knee-jerk response seems totally suitable to me though, for no one knew how to psychologically assess film yet. It also seems like a funny commentary on the way people feel that film can be dangerous, even at it’s most harmless.

“Excitement bordering on terror,” proclaimed a Montpellier journalist in 1896, seems to for-shadow future cinematic genres and explains our complicated relationship to film in terms of enjoyment. I myself am lured by the lurid, and transfixed by the objectionable, the psychological attraction to a cinema of terror is a complex one. The first decade of cinema is known as cinema of attractions, due to addressing the audience with an assaulting image. The are no dramas to be followed, just a presented moment meant as a “dose of scopic pleasure.” Yet the pleasure’s consisted of such things as railroad smash ups, elephant electrocutions and mug shots of female crooks, all quick and sensational viewing experiences. Yet there were also educational films that presented magnified insects, such as Charles Urban’s Unseen World series.

Another type of film, “curiositas” draw the viewer in with horrible sights as a means to excite, the act of seeing or the thirst of knowledge. These seem to act as a sort of precursor to exploitation cinema, or mondo documentaries of the 60s. The carny like presentation mixed with the repulsive attractions, were objectionable to many who found the entertainment vulgar or unrefined. Yet, I find most of these early films as merely a study on the relationship with humans and the need to watch things. Are we not attracted to what is shocking? Do we not slow down when we approach a car wreck, to witness what could be our own horrible destinies? Maybe there is something cathartic about viewing what could be our own personal fate in the dangerous world in which we inhabit.

The Close-Up (revisited) by Bela Balazs

“The Close-Up” by Bela Balazs, breaks down the importance and poetry of the cinematic close-up. In the days of the silent films, the close-up revealed hidden things of life that we thought we already knew so well. From a general to a particular, the close-up transforms. The close-up deepens and widens our vision of life, while revealing new things and the meaning of old things. Emphasis can be found in the quality of a gesture, a speechless face, or an object and it’s importance in a visual life. The close-up has a “lyrical charm” that effects the heart perception rather than visual. They can be used for dramatic revelations for what is happening underneath the appearance. It shows us the facial expression as more subjective then speech or grammar. Balazs believes that “most subjective and individual of human manifestations is rendered objective in he close-up.”

Physiognomy is the dimension an isolated face can take us, when taken out of space and consciousness of space. We see not the make up of facial construction as much as moods, emotions, intentions and thoughts. The psychological effect of a facial expression are picture like, yet seem outside space. Like a “silent soliloquy”, it “speaks instinctively and subconsciously.” An uncontrolled and unsuppressed language, the face reveals what is concealed. Through the close-up, film can offer the possibilities of an expression that the stage cannot. We can see the bottom of the soul through tiny movement of facial muscles or the moisture in an eye. Deeply moving tragedy can be expressed through the “microphysiognomy” of the close-up. Near the end o the silent era, the human face had grown more visible and more expressive. We saw conversations built of facial expressions and gestures. We could follow duels and attacks through the faces of the combatants. The silent film close-up presented drama in a subtler and more realistic way than that of stage play.

In response to my last post of the close-up, I agree with you Prof. Herzog that Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests are VERY hypnotic, and mesmerizing. Though Epstein may agree with me on a film like Walkabout, I’m still a fan of other films that take on a more tourist quality. Most Italian films of the 70s took on qualities of travelogues and to nice effect. Landscape like the face takes on different guises throughout the years, and it’s nice to see how things once were, just as seeing the youthful expression of a once beautiful actor or actress. In response to Msbeatty, I myself have not given up on the long-shot either, for I still believe that both are needed for cinematic balance. I agree that Leone did both to perfection, hence why all his films are masterpieces of cinema. Like the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, I never tire of the director’s gaze when illustrating the pain, wonderment or psychology of a great actor. It is then that the close-up is at it it’s most lyrical and poetic.

Andre Bazin and the Evolution of Cinema

In Bazin’s article “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” he breaks down the progression of cinema after the silent era. Bazin believes that by 1928, the silent era had reached its artistic peak, and that sound was not there to destroy cinema but to fulfill it’s potential. Between 1928 and 1930 a new form of cinema was being created, through the introduction of sound a new form of editing was also being revolutionized. Certain aesthetics of the silent era were to be carried over to the sound era, though not so much of “setting silence over against sound than of contrasting certain families of styles, certain basically different concepts of cinematographic expression.” Between 1920 and 1940 there were two opposing trends, of the director who put faith in the image or the director who put faith in reality (or one can relate to the “plastics of the image” or relate to the “resources of the montage”). With the invisible use of montage, the scenes are broken down for analytical purposes. The three montage processes are:

a.) Parallel Montage: A sense of the simultaneity of two actions taking place at a geographical distance by means of alternating shots from each.

b.) Accelerated Montage: A multiplicity of shots of ever-decreasing length.

c.) Montage by Attraction: The reinforcing of the meaning of one image by association with another image not necessarily part of the same episode.

Montage can substitute a vision of an event to alluding to an event. Montage can create a sense or meaning not contained in the image but derived from the juxtaposition. Bazin believes that, “the meaning is not in the image, it is in the shadow of the image projected by montage onto the field of consciousness of the spectator.” Bazin believes that Soviet cinema “carried to its ultimate consequences the theory and practice of montage, while German school did every kind of violence to the plastics of the image by way of sets and lighting.” (I question if he is referring to German Expressionism, ie: “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”?) Bazin then points out that it does not appear that cinema was at a loss of ways of saying what it wanted, in place like France, Sweden or the U.S.

In America from 1930 to 1940 seven major types of film were being made; (1) Comedy (2) Burlesque Film (3) Dance & Vaudeville (4) Crime & Gangster (5) Psychological & Social Dramas (6) Horror & Fantasy (7) Western. The French however were making stark somber realism, or poetic realism. By 1938 or 1939, (especially in France and the U.S.) had reached a level of perfection, through technical process and the maturing of different kinds of drama. By 1930, Panchromatic stock was being commonly used as well as a growing understanding for microphone potential and the standard use of the crane. It is believed that all the technical requirements were in place by 1930, for the art of cinema.

The standard pattern for editing was in a universal standard state by 1938. There was a verisimilitude of space in which the position of the actor is determined, even during close-up. And the purpose of the editing was dramatic or psychological. The typical procedure with sound films by 1938 was shot-reverse-shot, where in the dialogue scene, the camera followed the order of the text, showing the character who was delivering the speech. Orson Welles is cited for changing some of the rules with “Citizen Kane.”

Magnification and the Poetry of the Close-Up

Jean Epstein’s article “Magnification” seems to be a love letter to the cinematic close-up, and I am in agreement with his central sentiment. When Epstein describes “the close-up” as “the soul of the cinema,” he is absolutely right. It’s the one moment in the film when you see beneath the surface and get into the interior psychology of the character. It is the moment when actors act, not in the broad theatrical way, but in the subtle flexes of the facial muscles or the ocular reaction that gives away what the other characters of the film may not see. The close-up on the face can show the manifestation of pain or the joy in humor; the face is like a landscape that alters with mood rather than a cut or edit.

Though Epstein’s article presents a compelling declaration of love to the close-up, I do not agree in every aspect of the article. When Epstein writes, “If it (close-up) is too long I don’t find continuous pleasure in it.” Where I feel that in some of the longest close-ups are the most pleasurable as in the Western epics of Sergio Leone. In the film Once Upon A Time In The West, the end has an extremely long edit of close-ups that I find extremely exciting. When the showdown with Charles Bronson and Henry Fonda takes place (very similar to The Good, The Bad and the Ugly), long close-ups build to a satisfactory climax, while the viewer is subjected to the sweat and grit of the face of fear and the nervous twitch of the trigger finger.

When Epstein writes that the “landscape film is, for the moment, a big zero” I again disagree. One needs landscape like one needs an establishing shot. Without one, the close-up is meaningless. It’s like a magic trick of an appearing rabbit, without the hat. The landscape has a poetry all of it’s own. Like the face is just one part of the body, the landscape expresses the painful results of war or the joyful successes of harvest. In a film like Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout the landscape is like a character in the film. The beautiful scenery of the Australian landscape can be at times inviting and dangerous like the close-up of a face of our hero or villain. When Epstein refers to landscape as “zero” he is plainly not seeing that landscape and close-up add up to something far more than their isolated parts.

The art of cinema is referred by Louis Delluc as “photogenie,” which Epstein “describe as photogenic any aspect of things, beings, or souls whose moral character is enhanced by filmic reproduction.” But I find just about anything is enhanced by filmic reproduction provided it’s shot nicely. When one sees a telephone in normal life it is merely a phone, but when one sees a close-up of a telephone in a film the item carries with it a certain weight. Will this item deliver good or bad news? Will it transport secrets of a rendezvous or that of a threat of blackmail? Filmic reproduction enhances some of the most mundane of household items into the most significant plot points of a film. The art of cinema is its ability to mirror our lives in to forms of escapism. What is escapism when we are so held captive by the close-up.