Port of Call

Ready for Close-Ups

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In a small'ish port town a reformatory girl (and ex-gang member, Swedish style) (Nine Christine Jönsson) under the terms of her probation labors in a factory while boarding involuntarily with her mother. A flashback reveals her problems stem for the most part from the broken marriage of her parents, although what might come off as a rather simplistic formative trauma is kept to a minimum of exposition, a sketch, really, within the contemporary narrative proper. (During this scene, for the first time in Bergman a clock ticks on the soundtrack. A bell tolls minutes later after three of her inebriated co-workers challenge her date [Bengt Eklund], "the salty sea-dog," to a rumble.)

Mirror reflections, and double compositions, irony of the self, irony of comparison.

Much of what I'd written here was lost thanks to the Blogger window being open for a period of time beyond twelve hours, which knocks off the auto-save function, and I was too stupid to hit command-A command-C before closing the window. A run-through recap of what I might have written:

-There's the ex-gang-member friend in need of an abortion. She's accompanied by Berit (Jönsson) and Gösta (Eklund) to the procedure in a back room, but post-op all hell breaks loose, and in a portrayal, although not graphic, far beyond what most mainstream Western cinemas would agree to show in 2020, let alone 1948.

-Berit confides her history to Gösta in the way of men and the reformatory, who in turn shocks after the flashbacks of her actions by uttering, "How many guys have you HAD? ... Why couldn't you have kept your mouth shut?"

-The abortionist smears makeup on Gertrud directly post-procedure as though she's already a corpse. A shot and a pill, and she will abort in a week or so... except she dies straightaway...

-The police question Berit. "If you tell us the abortionist's address we can all go home." Negotiations, not to drag Berit through the mud in court. Her attitude matters a great deal to these bureaucrats, who threaten her with being an accomplice to murder.

Berit, post-probation, and Gösta contemplate running away on a departing ship. They don't. Something about hanging around and sticking it to the olds. In short, Port of Call [Hamnstad, 1948] sticks out liberal, provocative ideas in the way of youth living, sex, and consequences, but the film ends when it ends (this is not an original Bergman manuskript), and it's likely enough that the master, still in his relative apprenticeship, found it most advantageous to move on to the next project. •

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Other writing on Ingmar Bergman at Cinemasparagus:

Kris [Crisis, 1946]

Skepp till India Land [Ship to India, 1947]

Hamnstad [Port of Call, 1948]

Törst [Thirst, 1949]

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Ship to India

A Passage to Maturation

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In an earlier piece on Crisis I mentioned a similarity to an Ozu film in Ship to India [Skepp till India Land, 1947], but I would never assert that Ozu was a filmmaker Bergman had his eyes on given the essential non-distribution of his films in the West for a very long time, first; — and second because Bergman was a cinephile of shall we say super-mellifluous tastes. (Too many trills in the line; he not only hated Godard, but also Welles.) Nevertheless, one scene. The rest owes itself to a handful of Warner and RKO programmers not to mention the cinema of mutiny and, say, the superior L'Atalante or The Docks of New York...

The Italian style of Crisis gives way here to more modern, then-contemporary '47 American studio values.

With Swedish allowances: besotted Johannes attempts to rape his father's mistress (before her variety-show gig she was a whore), out of resentment for his congenital humpback, against a staircase before his mother steps inbetween to break up the assault. He's ashamed. At the next communal dinner, his father (a physiognomical cross between Max von Sydow and John Huston) brings up the missing cognac; Johannes tells him it's being replaced.

Johannes and Sally the whore bond in a hayloft. Sally says later to Johannes's mother, after she proclaims in her constant Jean Arthur voice, "Imagine if I'd hit back after every time I was hit." — "[...] One shouldn't just accept things like an animal that's whipped until it dies. One should stand up for one's rights." The paradox of Bergman the Feminist.

And always the pull of the Hollywood style still in this era of his.

To wit, an excellent final act in which action and kinetic dramatics take grasp and run the scenario over the gunwale...

And then...: the snapback to the present as we're reminded the film was a flashback. Johannes lies in a dirty sea meadow, found by two young girls. It's seven years later. He runs up to a ship and Sally is there; he coaxes her into coupledom.

The seagulls fly; the pair rush to a departing ship; their love is sealed. No indication whatsoever of India Land. •

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Other writing on Ingmar Bergman at Cinemasparagus:

Kris [Crisis, 1946]

Skepp till India Land [Ship to India, 1947]

Hamnstad [Port of Call, 1948]

Törst [Thirst, 1949]

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Crisis

Corpus Day

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Crisis [Kris, 1946] is Bergman's first film. A banal story involving the small-town keeper of a boarding-house, her adopted teen daughter, the boarder who yearns for her, the biological mother fleshpot salon-keeper who comes to snatch her away, and the bio-mother's lover, a young kept man who himself falls for the daughter.

It's not without certain atmospheric touches, nor racy scenes around the young woman, but neither distinguish the film in the manner to which we'll become accustomed and struck by a few Bergman films after.

There's the suggestion that the salon doubles as a brothel, but neither resulting trauma nor insouciant pleasures are expanded upon within the scope of the filmed scenario. Also: a plot movement hinging on a sudden ailment in one of the characters, straight out of the Japanese playbook. (In Bergman's next film, the following year's Ship to India, a character will declare his macular degeneration shortly after a framing that wouldn't be out of place in any Ozu movie of the period.) — A slight film, but concise, bearing no hint of pretension. •

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Other writing on Ingmar Bergman at Cinemasparagus:

Kris [Crisis, 1946]

Skepp till India Land [Ship to India, 1947]

Hamnstad [Port of Call, 1948]

Törst [Thirst, 1949]


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Poemquotes 18 - Three by Baudelaire from "Spleen and Ideal"

my translations

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XIV. L'homme et la mer - Les fleurs du mal
[XIV. Man and the Sea] [The Flowers of Evil]

Free man, always will you cherish the sea!
The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul
In the infinite unfurling of its swell,
And your mind is not a less bitter gulf.

You like to plunge into the bosom of your image;
You embrace it with eyes and arms, and your heart
Is sometimes distracted from its own rumble
By the sound of this untamable and savage groan.

Both of you are gloomy and reserved:
Man, not one has sounded the depth of your fathoms,
O sea, not one knows of your intimate riches,
So jealous are you in keeping your secrets!

And yet here though are centuries innumerable
In which you've battled one another without pity or remorse,
So much do you love carnage and death,
O eternal fighters, o implacable brothers!

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XV. Don Juan aux Enfers - Les fleurs du mal
[XV. Don Juan in Hades] [The Flowers of Evil]

When Don Juan descended toward the underground flow
And when he came to give his pittance to Charon,
A somber mendicant, his eye proud as Antisthenes,
With arm vengeful and strong seized each oar.

Showing their pendulous breasts and their open robes,
Women twisted beneath the black firmament,
And, like a great gaggle of sacrificial victims,
Trailed a long lowing behind.

Sganarelle, laughing, demanded his pay,
While Don Luis with one trembling finger
Showed all the wandering dead on the banks
The audacious son who mocked his white brow.

Shivering from her bereavement, chaste and thin Elvira,
Near the deceitful spouse who had been her lover,
Seemed to demand of him a final smile
In which shone the sweetness of his initial oath.

Upright in his armor, a great stone man
Held himself at the helm and chopped the black swell;
But the calm hero, bent over his rapier,
Regarded the wake and deigned to see nothing.

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XVI. Châtiment de l'orgueil - Les fleurs du mal
[XVI. Penalty for Pride] [The Flowers of Evil]

In these wonderful times in which Theology
Blossoms with the most lifeblood and energy
We recount that, one day, one of the greatest doctors
— After having pried open indifferent hearts;
Having stirred them in their dark depths;
After having crossed toward the celestial glories
Of singular paths to himself unknown,
Where the pure Minds alone perhaps had come, —
Like a man who has clambered too high, stricken by panic,
Yelled out, transported by a satanic pride:
"Jesus, little Jesus! I've raised you up so high!
But, if I'd wanted to attack you in the absence
Of armor, your shame would equal your glory,
And you would no longer be more than a piddling fetus!"

Immediately his reason took leave.
The radiance of that sun was veiled beneath a crepe of mourning;
All chaos rolled within that intelligence,
Temple once alive, filled with order and opulence,
Beneath the ceilings of which so much pomp had glistened.
Silence and night took up inside him,
As in a subterranean vault whose key has been lost.
From that moment he was indistinguishable from the animals in the street,
And, when he vanished without having seen a thing, across
The fields, without telling apart summers from winters,
Filthy, useless, and ugly as a worn out thing,
He became the enjoyment and the laughing-stock of the children.

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Poemquotes 17 - "XIII. Gypsies Traveling" by Charles Baudelaire

my translation

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XIII. Bohémiens en voyage - Les fleurs du mal
[XIII. Gypsies Traveling] [The Flowers of Evil]

The prophetic, ardent-pupiled tribe
Set forth yesterday, carrying their little ones
Upon their backs, or delivering to their proud appetites
The ever ready treasure from their dangling mammaries.

On foot the men, beneath their gleaming weapons, go
Alongside the covered wagons in which their kin are huddled,
Moving over the heavens eyes overburdened
By the gloomy regret of vanished chimeras.

At the bottom of his sandy recess, the cricket,
Watching them pass, redoubles his song;
Cybele, who loves them, increases her verdures,

Makes the rock into a spring and the desert bloom
Before these travelers, for whom is opened
The familiar empire of future darknesses.

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Poemquotes 16 - "X. The Enemy" by Charles Baudelaire

my translation

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X. L'Ennemi - Les fleurs du mal
[X. The Enemy] [The Flowers of Evil]

My youth was but a gloomy storm,
Traversed here and there by shining suns;
The thunder and the rain made such a ravage
That there remains in my garden barely any ruby fruits.

Here then I touched the autumn of ideas,
And had to put to use the shovel and the rakes
To gather the flooded grounds anew,
Where the water digs holes large as tombs.

And who knows whether the new flowers I dream
Will find in this soil washed like a shore
The mystical food that would provide their vigor?

— O suffering! o suffering! Time eats life,
And the obscure Enemy that eats away at our heart
Grows and draws strength from the blood we shed!

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Film Socialisme

The Goldbergs

===IV. Correspondences - The Flowers of Evil
[IV. Correspondances] [Les fleurs du mal]
by Charles Baudelaire - my translation
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Nature is a temple where living pillars
At times allow confused words to emerge;
Man crosses them through forests of symbols
Observing him with familiar looks.

Like prolonged echoes mingling from afar
Within a tenebrous and profound unity,
Vast as night and clarity,
Perfumes, colors, and sounds give response.

There are perfumes fresh as children's fleshes,
Gentle as oboes, green as prairies,
— And others, corrupted, rich, and triumphant,

Having the expansion of limitless things,
Like amber, musk, bezoin, and incense
Singing the transports of the mind and the senses.

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The other correspondences were not only bereft of the here and now, but also of “limitless things.” The last slice of mastery before the Cold War began in true, an unedited truth beyond all remnants true or untrue. It was the last thing to come.

Behold: this tale of granddaughters and grandfathers aboard the ship the Costa Concordia, which would later — sink. These sirens perhaps did not hijack, but certainly served to set the ship upon its course. “The last beautiful free souls on this planet,” as has been said. “La muse malade,” in the words of Baudelaire. — “My poor muse, alas! what have you then this morning? Your hollow eyes are populated by nocturnal visions. And turn by turn I see reflected upon your complexion the folly and horror, cold and taciturn. // The greenish succubus and the pink elf, have they poured forth fear and love from their urns towards you? / The nightmare, of a despotic and mutinous grip, has it drowned you at the base of a fabled Minturnae?” I would like that exhaling the odor of the saint, in your presence.

Since at least Détective [1985], Godard has trafficked in conspiracy and invisible backstory, or that which requires unearthing and which does not exist onscreen except in fleeting suggestions or images. Pieces of gold, here; a watch. I think in Film Socialisme [2010] and Adieu au langage [Goodbye to Language, 2014] in fact he comes closest to Rivette, who once spoke of Pialat "inventing" Sandrine Bonnaire "in the archaeological sense."

Then can you imagine x + 3 = 1? Can Saint Mary imagine 1 + 1 = 3? When we travel south, latitudes become negative, so we have to travel north instead... If you make fun of Balzac I'll kill you. If the sun attacks me, I'll attack the sun too. •

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Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Shuttled?

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Another underrated Linklater, with the underrating this time enhanced by multiple (four) reschedules of the theatrical premiere and no festival exposure whatsoever. "Enhanced," because it's a personal film that mixes class and romantic comedy with drama; contains prime intelligent lengthy Linklaterian discourse (Blanchett and Fishburne intercut with Crudup and Greer) on the vicissitudes of artistic integrity and mid-life crisis; plays its action out in exclusively drizzly settings (with Pittsburgh standing in for most of the Seattle-set interiors and some exteriors); and features a remarkable actress, the young Emma Nelson, wise beyond her years and light-years beyond the stupid teen portrayals of Olivia Wilde's Booksmart. Its art-design is also tremendously beautiful, which at some point in the last decades became a liability, for such things are "not realistic." Like Everybody Wants Some!! [2016], a beautiful entry in Linklater's body of work. See this when you can. •

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Lloydie: The Boy from St. Thomas

Life / Weapon

===To address Lloydie: The Boy from St. Thomas at last: a 2019 7-minute short essay-film by Keifer Nyron Taylor that the director tells us captures the last days of his grandfather, Lloydie Plummer, exploring his violent upbringing in Jamaica, his close friends and the damage done to the family he built after migrating to the UK. The film can be watched free of charge here.

Taylor suggests that to describe all about Lloydie would involve invoking the distances between still snapshots of the family around Lloydie, who seems to exert a gravitational pull among those close to him, friends or spouse-partner, toward embrace, or the fate of the battered-faced. Used, user, abuser. An intertitle quotes a passage written by Lloydie during his time served at HM Prison Liverpool: "[My father's wife] told a lie and my dad beat me. I never went back. I saw him for the last time in Kingston before I left JA for UK in 1959. He is dead now."

Lloydie inhabits front-rooms. Who filmed him here, in the present, on this black-and-white 8mm (?) stock? The familiar glow of the resigned: those individuals who by some befalling hole up in a cave of their making, lamps off, telly on, striking out around 2 or 3 for some chore in the world. Through the film-stock, the drop-away to soundtrack silence, and the inert melancholy of the scenes themselves Taylor conveys to us that we're witnessing an end-of-days, perhaps illness encroaching by way of 'self-illusion'...

Lloydie inhabits front-rooms, and seems to have always been this way.

Along for the ride, Lloydie, passenger in his own vehicle, merges with those automobiles twisting through the passages of the motorway, Tarkovsky's Solaris inchoate.

Then the gathering for a funeral; a floral arrangement lining the rear windows of a hearse to spell "GRANDAD." An open casket, members of Lloydie's family and community filing by to pay their respects before, in one cut, he's resurrected on film nodding off from the perch of his settee as though to lend a ritual haze and to acknowledge, or gaze-down, in turn the attendant mourners.

Life swells wild with expectations, and grows tiresome. •

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Sous le soleil de Satan

Full Mettle Pialat

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Pialat's masterful Palme d'Or winner of 1987, Sous le soleil de Satan [Under the Sun of Satan] re-emerges in a new HD master of Gaumont (a rework of their early 2010s master) with the scene of the confrontation with Satan (Jean-Christophe Bouvet) restored to its presumably proper color-timing on the American Cohen Media Blu-ray. (I co-produced the Masters of Cinema DVD, and vaguely recall that the original surreal blue color filter over the scene, although initially approved by Pialat's estate and associates, including DP Willy Kurant, was tampered with by the lab at the time of outputting the HDCAM master tape.)

The straight-razor unites the tonsure and carotid. Add the chain and we have an incomplete catalogue of the holy utilities of the Church's mesmeric masochism. The twice-proclaimed "miracle" of the encounter with Satan suggests that Man and Servant dwell sous son soleil exactement.

"I was shown Man's misery and Satan's power for a reason."

Gabe Klinger's piece on the film, along with Pialat interviewings on it and other miscellany are here. Pialat's short films included on the Gaumont and Masters of Cinema DVD editions, Isabelle aux Dombes [Isabelle in La Dombes, 1951], his first film, and Congrès eucharistique diocésain. [Diocesan Eucharistic Congress.] are not included on the Cohen Blu-ray, but the stunning c. 2010 12-minute interview with Depardieu is. •

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Notes, information, and remarks by Pialat on the director's short films, which span in their entirety 1951-1966, can be found here.

Kent Jones's 2008 essay on L'enfance-nue, and my translations of accompanying interviews with Pialat can be found at this blog here.

Emmanuel Burdeau's 2009 essay on Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble, and my translations of accompanying interviews with Pialat can be found at this blog here.

Gabe Klinger's 2010 essay on Sous le soleil de Satan, and my translation of a 1987 interview with Pialat, and a 2003 interview with Sandrine Bonnaire, can be found at this blog here.

Adrian Martin's 2009 essay on La gueule ouverte, and my translation of remarks about the film, can be found at this blog here.

Dan Sallitt's 2008 essay on Police (which he considers one of his favorite pieces of his own writing) has just been posted at his blog, here. A dossier of my translations of interviews with Pialat about the film has been posted here.

Dan's 2010 MoC essay on À nos amours. has also been posted at his blog here. A visual I made for the film along with my translation of the 1984 Le Monde conversation between Maurice Pialat and Jean-Luc Godard can be found here.

My essay on Passe ton bac d'abord... — "The War of Art" — can be read here. A dossier of my translations of four interviews with Pialat around the film can be read here.

Sabrina Marques's essay on Van Gogh is here, alongside Godard's letter to Pialat, and words from Pialat about the film.

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Un flic

Menswear

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Melville's final film, in which the master had decisively simplified his line. Un flic — A Cop [1972] — reductio ad absurdum, arbitrary, perfunctory even. Why not Four Hoods? Or An Informant? It's enough that in the quest of Delon's character ("Édouard Coleman") to put an end to criminal schemes, his ethos is the application of set, often unwritten policies; Melville renders Delon anonymous in spite of his movie-star-looks — what is a bit of a stunt in Le samouraï [The Samurai, 1967] in Un flic is perhaps an equally daring grounding of the man. In no other film — Le samouraï, L'armée des ombres [Army of Shadows, 1969], Le cercle rouge [The Red Circle, 1970] — are the steel blues and greys of the filters, gels, color-timing, sets, and wardrobes so persistent nor so ominous, nor so severe: take the seaside bank at the opening of the film, undoubtedly one of the bleakest locations in all of French cinema. The characters here represent "égarés," lost in time in a world unmoored from an actual present; Un flic is not so much a film of '72 as it is a proverbial train-set upon which Melville lays the tracks of his obsessions, underscored most movingly in the sequence involving the train and the helicopter, obvious miniatures that harken back to an earlier cinema, one of Merian Cooper and Alfred Hitchcock. To be stranded in the world of Un flic is to experience the least routine of pleasures. •

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