| | thursday, august 13, 2009 | | | The College Football Preview issue of Sports Illustrated for the 2009 season hit newsstands this week and it pretty much follows the pre-season script. Ole Miss is the new hotness and will represent the SEC West come the conference Championship in December.
Whatever.
I got a chance to chat with the magazine's SEC writer, Andy Staples and he explained there is a lot more uncertainty in the conference this year than most people seem to think. Ole Miss has some advantages going in but Alabama, LSU and Florida are hitting their stride as powers on the national scale. We also discussed the progress Nick Saban has made stocking the talent cupboard that was pretty bare when he arrived in Tuscaloosa.
My interview can be found over at the SB Nation website covering all things Alabama, Roll 'Bama Roll.  | | | more: Alabama Football | Interviews | Roll Bama Roll | | | | | | thursday, august 06, 2009 | | | Mike Vigilant really had no idea what he was in for when he undertook writing a play about the life of legendary Alabama football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. He soon found himself immersed in a daunting quest to make sense of a semi-mythic figure whom everyone seemed to have a strong opinion about.
Yet, what he discovered months of research was a complex man who embodied many of the ideals we all strive to realize in our lives. His play, Bear Country proved to be a smash hit for the Alabama Shakespeare Festival last January and is being presented for a month-long run in Birmingham.
My interview with Vigilant, A QnA with Bear Country Author Mike Vigilant, is over at Roll Bama' Roll. | | | more: Alabama Crimson Tide | Interviews | Roll Bama Roll | | | | | | monday, july 27, 2009 | | |  he German director Wim Wenders and American playwright Sam Sheppard began the collaboration that would become the 1984 film Paris, Texas, with nothing but "this one character and the landscape he would show up in."
The character was a travel-worn and weather-beaten man in a dusty suit and distinctive red baseball hat. The landscape was the harsh South Texas wasteland of Big Bend National Park. And from that the pair proceeded to weave one of the most compelling cinematic tales of the era.
Although the start of Paris, Texas seems somewhat arbitrary, it's vastly important that the tale begins with this unusual protagonist, Travis Henderson (a superb Harry Dean Stanton) crossing a threshold - the US/Mexico border at Terlingua, Texas. He's moved out of nowhere into somewhere. Although the dingy South-Texas border town where "the dust has come to stay" certainly doesn't seem like much to speak of.
Travis' cinematic starting point amidst the epic sun-blasted emptiness South, Texas is the first of many parallels to John Ford's 1956 masterpiece, The Searchers. Big Bend National Park serves to stand in for the majestic landscape of Monument Valley, Arizona that charged Ford's film with such allegorical power.
And, as a result, Paris, Texas, much like The Searchers plays out with the suggestion of a greater mythological level of meaning standing behind the story that comprises the plot. (The effect is carefully emphasized in the film's soundtrack by Ry Cooder's hauntingly beautiful rendition of Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground.")
In The Searchers, Ethan Edwards returns from years of adventuring in Mexico with a steely sense of self and a seemingly unshakable resourcefulness. Travis, by contrast, seems dazed and stupefied by the complicated dissonance of the mundane reality after four years of directionless but purposeful wandering beyond the borders of the regular world. He certainly appears to have spent much of the recent past wrestling with things far greater than himself.
In both stories the protagonists must come to a new understanding about themselves and the type of place they want the world around them to be. But while Ethan's is one of re-evaluating his beliefs, Travis' story is one of awakening. Both become caught in the same moral quandary at the end, by succeeding in setting things right they create something they are unable to have themselves.
This interplay between the sublime and the mundane permeates Paris, Texas. The dreary reality of the desert border town gives way to California's clean urban artifice where Travis' brother Walt (a fantastically understated Dean Stockwell) now resides.
The dingy reality of the modern American frontier has given way to its cultural shorthand in the current West. Walt wears a trucker hat advertising western clothing and a herd of oversized horses gallop by on a billboard in the back of his workshop.
The myth is used to market and the meaning is left somewhere far behind. The sacrifices of Edwards' ilk have been forgotten and the anarchic nature of the modern world requires a new hero to restore the proper order.
But Walt's billboard advertising business is presenting the image not the actual reality of the thing - a point Wenders subtly emphasizes when the skyscraper he's standing in front of in his introductory shot turns out to be nothing of the sort. It's also a clear comment of the director and the trade he's engaged in with the audience.
Paris, Texas the place is only present in the form of a tattered photograph Travis carries and a weary story about his mother. The vacant lot in the picture - where he was possibly conceived and born - suggests and emptiness within Travis himself, it also implies a possibility of building anew. And this is the general expectation the viewer has going into the film (much like the initial hope in The Searchers that the girl will be found quickly and returned to her family). Things don't turn out that way, though.
The first half of Paris, Texas focuses on Travis' return to the world and being re-united with his son. The logical expectation is that the second half will result in him re-uniting with his wife. The film's tagline insists there is a place to "pick up the pieces" but it doesn't promise they will be put back together again. Another boasts that "lost love is found" but restoring it is another matter altogether.
That instinctive desire for the happy ending, or at least a neat one, is assiduously American and Wenders never seems tempted.
Similarly, Sheppard is too much of a realist about how the flaws of an individual can become chasms between others to let sentimentality obscure his vision. But, instead, Travis understands that while he is recovering the pieces of his shattered life, it's not to reassemble it for himself.
As the film began with Travis crossing one border, it resolves at another - The Meridian Hotel in Houston. In geography, a meridian is an imaginary delineation that is critical to provide a proper sense of place upon the globe after Travis, at last, understands his role is to bequeath that to his estranged wife and son.
Still, part of the power of Paris, Texas is the fact Harry Dean Stanton simply embodies the character of Travis Henderson. The weathered Tennessean's gangly appearance gives way to a strong determined stride in his walk. While where is an almost childlike confusion in his manner, there is not the slightest clumsiness or hesitation in his determined lanky gait.
Stanton has an amiable likeability that endears the audience almost immediately. But there is an unnerving edge beneath that tranquil surface as well. On several occasions he slips quickly into anger with a speed and intensity that catch you by surprise. And this is imperative to making the story work - because Travis is a creature of powerful passions.
"I never knew I had so much rage in me," Travis says and the film leaks the red of his passion. He wears it like a distinctive badge from the first moment we see him until it gradually envelops him whole at the end.
The epic power of his passion creates a singleness of mind in the man and it compels him to movement although not to any destination. His passion consumes him so completely that he no longer needs to eat or sleep - he feeds upon it alone. The only compulsion he must obey is to move, because there is no rest. With the stillness returns the pain and the only solace is in motion. He stumbles out of the desert and searches for water. Obviously to quench his thirst but also to assuage the fever of the fury that consumes him. The cold of the ice suffices too well - perhaps it restores the memory of peacefulness with his mother he later recounts to his brother - and he passes out senseless.
While this distinctive fury is another commonality with Ethan Edwards there are several clear modern antecedents as well. Travis's very name denotes his place in a succession of outsiders immortalized in modern film as consumed by rage. The most immediate and obvious predecessor being the iconic Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) from Martin Scorsese's 1976 film Taxi Driver. The connection extends back to the character Bickle was named for, Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) from Lindsay Anderson's 1968 opus, If...
But as similar as Travis Henderson may be to these immediate antecedents he differs in one vital respect - he does not allow his anger to transform into violence. Or, perhaps more exactly, he has already been consumed by the fires of his rage - and, we eventually learn, it almost devoured him physically as well. Like Ethan Edwards he eventually discerns another alternative.
Cinematically, this poses an interesting problem. While Stanton provides a performance of fantastic nuance and the battles Travis is sublimates beneath his wearied brow the basis of this turmoil is necessarily unknown.
There is an interesting scene in the middle of Paris, Texas when Travis encounters a semi-crazed man screaming from a highway overpass. Instead of the aversion one might expect upon encountering such an individual, Travis seems to recognize something of a kindred troubled spirit. As he passes he reaches out and touches the man compassionately on the back. It's an achingly small but infinitely telling moment.
The solution is through Wenders dynamic use of color as the method of conveying meaning. Throughout Paris, Texas various hues create an atmosphere of passions and a mood of disquiet. The color red is constantly a reminder of the passion - be it fury or love - that Travis keeps within himself. It is constantly present from the distinctive red baseball hat to the moments when the hue seems to envelope not only him but the entire film.
Yet, when Travis finally puts the passions and fears aside and allows himself to see things clearly it is beneath a true white light and he and his son are swaddled in the black furniture of the laundromat waiting room. He and Jane both are dressed in black - almost in formal dress - during their final meeting.
This distinctive use of color is one of the most apparent influences on Wenders by the Michelangelo Antonioni. It's not a coincidence that both directors first trained as painters.
For example, Wenders also made an interesting decision to leave fluorescent lights untreated - a process that makes them appear green on film. The effect projects a "poisonous" feeling the director notes - putting a strange sense of unease in what should be relatively innocuous scenes and settings. It's an effect that recalls Antonioni's famous insistence on painting trees grey for the filming of Red Desert to enhance the visual impact of the fog in certain scenes.
As pronounced as the similarities between the two directors visual style may be, there is a notable disjunction in their storytelling philosophy and, most likely, their personal worldview as well. Wenders eschews the fascination with mundane disconnected events. Long takes serve to hold volumes of dialogue not ambient noise. There is a surfeit of alienation but a welcome dearth of ennui.
Most importantly, while the motivations of the characters in Paris, Texas are often oblique and their destinations unclear they keep moving forward in a deliberate manner. None are given to the meandering aimlessness of many Antonioni's protagonists. Nowhere is this contrast illuminated better than with heroines of the respective directors. Antonioni ably employed the ineffably compelling Monica Vitti to sway the viewer's sympathy and Wenders does much the same with the superb Nastajassa Kinski.
Yet, unlike Vitti's heroines, Kinski's Jane isn't aloof and disconnected from the world around her. She is intimately engaged in the world and wounded by it directly, not by her distance from it.
It's this particular point that underscores the philosophical gap between Wenders and Antonioni in terms of the conflict between man and the malaise of the modern world. As much as the characters in Paris, Texas have been marginalized by the inexorable depersonalizing tyranny embodied in urban America, they are not at direct odds with it. The man screaming from the overpass seems a reaction to the society rather than a rejection of it.
Of course this kind of objective perspective is partially due to his nationality. Germans in particular seem to have a fascination with the wide open territory of the American west without any ingrained allegiance to the semiotic priorities it presents for Americans. The mythological pull of the frontier and the heavy symbolism it carries can be dealt with in a variety of ways other than abject reverence. The vast emptiness of the region is inescapably alluring but isn't sacrosanct. Nor is he restrained by the shackles of ironic awareness when depicting the more kitschy aspects of Americana either.
Moreover Wenders has a tendency to see the things that are so common to Americans that we often overlook them. The graceful swoop of highway overpasses seem to draw the attention of his camera like a moth to a fluorescent light. Only moving trains seem to hold a greater attraction for his directorial gaze. The visual sense of the director dovetails nicely with the austere storytelling skills of Sheppard. His ear for dialogue and unerring sense of pacing fit the deceptively low-key cinematic approach of the director.
Sheppard's impact is most apparent in the end of Paris, Texas where Travis has tracked his estranged wife to a strange exhibition parlor where she works. Wenders described the set-up as a "theme park peep show" and confessed it was created as a device for the film and not based on anything they were aware of existing in real life.
The two-way mirror featured in these scenes is an interesting device that would seem almost ludicrous if not for the way Sheppard uses it to create a very delicate exchange between Travis and Jane that is on par with anything he ever penned for the stage. That effort is more than matched by Stanton and Kinski's powerful and pitch perfect.
Moreover, Wenders, who sometimes given to excessive artistic flourish, exhibits a restraint in Paris, Texas that underscores his directorial ability. He only changes focus when necessary and that's to study the effect of the scene on the faces of his two actors. The gamut of emotions that are visible on Kinski's face as Jane realizes who the speaker is and what his strange confession means is one of the most powerful scenes in any film from that era.
Yet, the mirror isn't simply a device for the performance; the unusual setting becomes a microcosm for Travis' life. The quasi-creepy fantasy setting of each room- the pool, the hotel, the cafe - are more than just a workplace for Jane, they also suggest the ideal lives that Travis (and the viewer) believes he may be able to construct for his family. As tempting as the ideal might be it's also a carefully crafted illusion.
His first encounter with Jane is disastrous and he allows himself to become enraged with jealousy once again. It's only after he reflects on his reaction (and where it might have arisen from) does he understand his own hopes for an ideal life are just as illusory.
Because Jane's side of the mirror is starkly different - the edges of the fantasy give way to the tawdry wooden framework and exposed insulation. Maintaining the illusion in the face of such an unsightly reminder of reality becomes a heroic task doomed to eventually consume her. She knows it and she knew it when Travis tried to create it before. And so she tried to escape even as he labored to hold her.
The upshot is the introduction of the two-way mirror and the subtle way it could be used to create the exchange between Travis and Jane. But it touches on ideas much much deeper than that. Travis now knows he has to keep some sort of barrier between him and his wife lest his inner fury consume them both again.
This barrier is repeated in the glass windows of the hotel where he sees his wife and son reunited but without him. This time the drama behind the reflective glass isn't his fantasy though and that might be enough to make it bearable. | | | more: Movies | | | | | | wednesday, july 15, 2009 | | | An international construction team led by Spanish contractor Sacyr Vallehermoso SA netted the design-build job to construct a pair of new set of locks for the Panama Canal. The work is the heart of a $5.2 billion effort to expand the historic waterway.
The $3.12 billion bid by Grupo Unidos for el Canal was significantly within the Panama Canal Authority's estimated $3.48 billion for the lock-building effort. The technical evaluation of the consortium's proposal was also the highest of the three proposals for the work.
In addition to Sacyr Vallehermoso, the winning consortium Impregilo SpA of Italy, Belgium's Jan De Nui NV, Constructora Urbana SA (CUSA) of Panama and Heerema Fabrication Group of The Netherlands. The design team is made up of MWH from Broomfield, Colo., Tetra Tech of Pasadena, Calif and Holland's IV Group.
The ACP is now preparing an order to proceed for the work to commence and the consortium is expected to start work no later than 42 days from that date.
My story on the awarding of the locks job, Spain-Led Team Wins Plum Job In Panama Canal Expansion, is in this week's edition of Engineering News-Record.
| | | more: Engineering News & Record | Panama | The Panama Canal | | | | | | wednesday, june 03, 2009 | | | College football and my beloved Crimson Tide are still a good three months away but I’m already getting ready. The season preview for Alabama Football, Yea Alabama is now available for pre-order through Maple Street Press. It will ship on July 6.
Why would you care? Because not only is it 128 pages of top-notch Alabama football coverage it boasts an article I penned, “A Bama Fan Abroad” describing the trials of a college football fanatic forced to reside beyond the borders of the USA.
Yea Alabama is produced by the same group that produces the website Roll ‘Bama Roll which I contribute to as well. So check them out and, as always, Roll Tide!
| | | more: Alabama Crimson Tide | Yea Alabama | | | | | | monday, may 25, 2009 | | |  ilm, due to its nature as a primarily visual medium, is often a pursuit of the proper objects of our obsessions. More often than not this ends up with a product that spends its energies putting a premium on pulchritude and lacks any suitable involvement of desire. Few directors understood this as early and as well as silent film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst.
It's difficult to know if the director understood what he was getting when he espied the young, and undeniably lovely, Louise Brooks and selected her as his lead in Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora) - the retelling of Frank Wedekind's "Lulu" plays. Brooks, it turned out, was much much more than just another pretty face.
Her attractiveness - both in terms of physical appearance and sexual magnetism - didn't simply provide a centerpiece for a particular film; it scratched the deeper levels of the medium's potential. Critic Andrew Sarris felt her beauty was evidence of cinema's ability to touch on the universal aspects of the human condition.
"The preeminence of Miss Brooks as the beauty of the twenties indicates the classic nature of the cinema, and its built-in machinery for an appeal to the verdict of history," he wrote.
As a film, Pandora's Box stands in pretty good stead itself. It's a classic of German Expressionism and Pabst brought the full box of tricks to the film Box - exaggerated shadows, angular sets and unsettling camera angles. Yet this isn't as experimental an effort as Pabst's later - and superior - effort, The ThreePenny Opera, but it's also stylistically smoother as a result.
The relatively controlled touch on Pabst part in Pandora's Box makes the influence of the work would have on the film noir that much more obvious. The exaggerated visual style gives the film an allegorical feel that can be interpreted as a universal statement about sexuality or as a historical commentary about a very specific span of German history - the brief "golden period" of the Weimar Republic between the wars.
The devastation of the WWI had left the Germany in ruins but by the mid-1920s the economic policies of the Dawes Plan produced a period of largess in the country and even outright decadence in Berlin. Yet the unsettling reverberations of the Treaty of Versailles and the undergoing social turmoil were evident in the artistic explosion that occurred.
By the time Pabst made Pandora's Box, the Great Depression had already taken hold in Europe and the influx of economic support from the United States had ceased. The unsettling underpinnings of the society were already beginning to show and the forces that would shape the terrible era to come were beginning to stir to life. Widekind's plays, depicting "riven by the demands of lust and greed" were the perfect vehicle to capture the zeitgeist and Pabst clearly knew it.
It is, perhaps, possible to look at the story as an allegory of German institutions destroying themselves chasing after an American strumpet who eventually allows herself to be destroyed by a murdering Brit anyway. Yet Pabst seemed less interested in the social implications of the tale as he was with plumbing the human condition - the female libido in particular. And no actress was more perfect for that particular task than Louise Brooks.
Brooks' legacy as the preeminent beauty of the silent era is usually eclipsed by Greta Garbo who had considerably more commercial success than her American counterpart. But comparing them directly somewhat does a disservice to both. Roland Barthes insisted that Garbo's visage was that of the divine; a Platonic idea of the female form. J. Hoberman countered that Brooks' countenance embodied the "universal object of desire."
For the French film historian, Henri Langlois, it was no contest: "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks."
Testimonies to Brooks appeal (like this one) invariably itemize her distinctive look; the trademark bob haircut, the swanlike neck, the dark expressive eyes. Yet, as daunting as her attractiveness may have been, the unexpected radiance of her smile had the power to shatter cynicism about her and cement her already formidable charisma.
All of which are undeniably delightful to behold and indivisible from Brook's daunting allure but fall woefully short of explaining the mesmerizing effect of her presence on the screen. The famed German film critic Lotte Eisner said that she was the rarest of actresses, needed no directing "but could move across the screen causing the work of art to be born by her mere presence."
Pandora's Box makes a convincing argument but Pabst stacked the deck in her favor, providing her with a role that closely matched her natural temperament. Although only in her early 20's when the film was made, Brooks had an natural physical grace from her years as a vaudeville dancer and a voracious sexual appetite that lifestyle had fostered. The parallels to Frank Wedekind's Lulu were obvious.
Lulu was featured in the plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box) that recount the young dancer's rise through Berlin society and subsequent downfall. Wedekind described her as "the personification of primitive sexuality, who inspires evil unaware." Not only does her uncontained sexuality brings destruction to the men who try to possess her; it leads her into the murderous arms of a sex maniac (her deepest desire in Brooks' assessment of the character).
In Pabst's film, Lulu is completely defined by her sexual nature but at the same time she is almost completely naive of how her desirability warps the mores of those about her. Which makes sense. A purely hedonistic creature such as Lulu would be invariably focused on her own individual desires. In fact she's almost completely passive beyond them. (And despite her similarity to the character, Brooks herself had none of this same naivete).
It's a trait made clear by Lulus complete inability to pass in front of a mirror without stopping to admire herself. Pabst's affection for mirrors as a visual device in his films was recurrent and he supplied the character with ample opportunities to preen in such a manner. Even at the very end of the film, when she is suffering the afflictions of poverty, Lulu finds a reflective surface to behold herself in.
Brooks herself, in an article she penned for Sight & Sound magazine in 1965, declared Lulu a "a tragic creature with no sense of sin."
It's an assessment of the character that parallels the character of Pandora in mythology. According to Hesiod's Works and Days, Pandora was created as a punishment for mankind. Blessed by many gifts but she is also entrusted with a jar, or box, and warned not to open it. Yet open it she does and the ills of the world, which had not been known until that time, are then loosed upon mankind. Only hope remains in the box she has been entrusted.
The story has similar parallels to the Garden of Eden and how the power of enlightenment also brings and understanding of the evils in the world as well. And both carry a not-so-subtle implication for the act of sex particularly since Pandora's Box can be easily interpreted as symbolic of the womb.
In the Garden of Eden, sex isn't an issue. Love seems to be completely platonic. But the dawning of awareness introduces an understanding of decency with Adam and Eve scrambling to cover their nakedness. Lust and its sordid implications have arrived, along with the pains of childbirth and the agonies of mortality.
Despite the import of Pandora's act (and, possibly, Eve's) and the punishments she incurs, blaming her is misguided, argued Willem Jacob Verdenius.
"There is no reason to think Pandora acted out of malice in opening the jar," he wrote."For she was exercising her curiosity, and when she saw what was let out of it, she quickly closed it."
Similarly, since Lulu acts according to her nature, its difficult to blame her for her actions. Yet, that isn't to say she isn't responsible for the destruction that follows in her wake. Lulu, Brooks noted, possesses an astonishing indifference to the suffering of others. Her abject hedonism implies a powerful selfishness that renders her nigh incapable of sympathy for those around her.
So while wickedness might be absent in Lulu, it's very clear she possesses an abundance of vanity. And that provides her an extreme competitiveness when it comes to her conquests. As winning as her smile is when aimed at men she wishes to entice, its radiance is matched by the victorious smirk she presents when she has claimed her quarry from another.
In fact the scene that precedes the smile in questions is possibly the most overt depiction of sexual intercourse committed to film during the silent era. Pabst clearly didn't feel the need to be subtle and the throes of anger and the thrashings of conflict are unmistakably comparable with the acts of passion. And the crescendo of intimacy isn't as much a culmination of the conflict as its coda.
The scene contrasts remarkably with a similar one at the end of the film when Lulu has been driven to prostitution by poverty and unwittingly chooses Jack the Ripper as her first John. But instead of a financial transaction, it turns into one almost spiritual in overtone as she is slain by her new lover.
(The clear analogy between the knife and an erection is somewhat overdone but serves to contrast the famous scene in Fritz Lang's M released two years later. In the latter the young victim hands the knife to the sex maniac -a chilling moment of horror. The suspense is there in Pandora's Box as well, but the willingness of the victim completely changes the tone of the scene.)
For Brooks herself, the ending is inevitable because Lulu "feels passion for the first time" because it has been her childhood dream to die by the hand of a sex maniac. That assessment seems... unfulfilling. Because Lulu's passion, for all its destructiveness, never seems particularly perverse.
What seems different is that Lulu chooses to give herself in this particular congress. Jack lacks money but she decides to continue anyway. Money, of course, never motivates Lulu. Her sexuality isn't a commodity that she uses for her advantage and, until her final lover, the motivations of the men she chooses to consort with has never seemed part of the excitement for her.
Every other person in Pandora's Box beholds Lulu and feels the need to possess her. It's not the having her that is so terribly destructive, it's the quest to contain her. Jack is different, is like Lulu in the sense they are both creatures of complete passion. The ecstasy is what they each want to possess - not the object that inflames it. | | | more: 52 films 26 books | Movies | | | | | | wednesday, may 20, 2009 | | | The $5.25 billion Third Lane Expansion of the Panama Canal has made quite a bit of progress in the past 21 months and it's getting ready to kick into an even higher gear.
To date, substantial work has been done on the Pacific Access Channel as well as dredge works on the Pacific entrance to the waterway. (In addition to ongoing dredge and construction efforts undertaken by the Panama Canal Authority).
In July, the Panama Canal Authority is slated to award the estimated $3.3 billion design/build contract for the construction of the new locks. Three consortia comprised of more than two dozen international firms are vying for the historic job.
To prepare for that vast undertaking, the canal authority has partnered with Denver, Col.-based CH2M Hill to create an innovative management team that will oversee the effort.
I traveled to Panama last month and spent almost two weeks researching an overview on the canal expansion that is available in this week's Engineering News-Record.
The package includes a look at the ACP/CH2M Hill partnership, Panama Widens Horizons, an overview of the dry excavation effort, Ongoing Canal-Related Work Is a Blast and a look at how construction firms are using the opportunity, Firms Seize Panama's Non-Canal Construction Opportunities. There is also an online-only Q&A with the head of CH2M Hill's expansion effort, Ten Minutes With Mike Kennedy.
This issue is one of ENR's "digital only" efforts and an online copy can be found here and a two-minute narrated slideshow of the expansion effort I made is available here. | | | more: Engineering News & Record | Panama | The Panama Canal | | | | | | monday, april 06, 2009 | | |  pon first viewing, Jean Cocteau's 1946 film Beauty and the Beast (La belle et la bete) is a delightful interpretation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's version of the famous fairy tale. It appears to be an innocent diversion for any age but appearances are often deceiving.
Like it's source, Cocteau's story of Beauty (Josette Day) and her improbable lover (Jean Marais) proves to have a very deep and somewhat darker subtext when subjected to a more concentrated examination. Still, not only does it prove capable of the scrutiny, it loses none of its considerable charm as a result. Beauty and the Beast belongs to that rare category of cinema where watching the film encourages the viewer to explore the possibilities of their own imagination.
Like all great works of art, the testament of the filmmaker's craftsmanship of the filmmakers is the seeming effortlessness in telling the tale. And the delights of the film are a starting point for those who are open to perceiving its splendors. At some point, Beauty and the Beast takes willing suspension of belief and allows it to blossom into a fantastic adventure for the imagination.
At it's unvarnished core, all filmmaking is a subtle game of deceit and making something appear to be what it is not. There is a significant challenge in controlling the degrees of this deception to cast an effective spell upon a viewer. One of the reasons Beauty and the Beast succeeds so splendidly is that it creates a vivid contrast between the ordinary mundane world and the fantastic magical realm of the beast.
The opening sequence - which works wonderfully due partially to Michel Auclair's devouring of any and all available scenery as Beauty's rakish younger brother Ludovic - does much more than introduce the characters and their respective places in the story. It sets the ground rules of the "real" world in the film.
The tawdry reality of the farmhouse and the rough physicality necessary for life there is repeatedly - but not overtly - emphasized.
This is clear as the sisters Felicie (Mila Parely) and Adelaide (Nane Germon) prepare to go calling; they have to awaken the lazy servants, farm animals fill their unused sedan chairs and an unruly gate must be kicked open, causing one of the bearers to drop his burden, to the discomfiture of the passenger.
The viewer is presented with a world that works very much under the rules in their own. In as much as there is an assumption in the real world that the laws of physics will continue to apply, Beauty and the Beast begins by inviting a similar assumption that this will be the ground rules for the world of the film as well.
But things are about to change and when Beauty's father (Marcel Andre) enters the forest following his disastrous trip to the town, suddenly the rules of reality begin to warp and transform: gates open unassisted, lamps ignite spontaneously and statues peer curiously at goings on about them. As Cocteau begins reaching into his impressive bag of cinematic tricks to present a strange realm of magic and fantasy, the wonder of Belle's father provides an anchor for the audience.
His awestruck gaze at these fantastic occurrences is a cue for our own. No, we don't believe them, but we believe they are happening to him. This is reinforced in a very simple reaction by Belle's father when the ghostly hand pours his wine - he peers under the table to see if there is a person there. His reaction suggests there is not but, almost certainly, there was during the filming.
This conditioning prepares us for Beauty's entrance into this world which is as fantastic as the place itself - her father returned to the world as he was, she is being transformed.
It's a gloriously hallucinogenic sequence where time and motion bend and transform with seeming impunity. The visual power of the imagery overwhelms the viewer much as one would expect Beauty to feel faced with such a place of wonder.
Cocteau certainly intended the contrast between the two settings in Beauty and the Beast. In terms of design and cinematography the farmhouse portion was modeled on the works of Dutch painter the paintings of Jan Vermeer and the Beast's kingdom was based on the engravings of Gustave Dore.
The differences are even more apparent when there are elements of one world present in the other such as the fact gates open by themselves for the Beast's horse, Magnificent, no matter which world he is in. Yet there is a scene in the "mundane" setting that touches on the substantial illusion of the work as a whole. It's a passage that appears in Leprince de Beaumont's version of the fairy tale but Cocteau gives it an unexpected prominence in the film.
Beauty's sisters want to convince her to stay away from the beast longer than the week she had promised in the hope he will be wrathful and kill her. Incapable of feeling sorrow for their sister - and, most likely, anyone but themselves - they have to find way to project the illusion of sorrow.
They then use an onion to make themselves cry and then, with the appearance prepared, they put on an act for Beauty, pleading with her using an earnestness neither of them has ever felt for their sibling. Beauty, who believes her sisters are being sincere, is torn by grief and chooses to break her vow to Beast with terrible consequences.
While the satiation that prompted Beauty's emotional state was illusory, the feelings she experiences are very real. And, in much the same manner (but certainly not the same spirit) the filmmakers use their skills to manipulate the feelings of the viewer.
The film consists of actors and effects that seem to be something when viewed in the context of the work but, when filmed, were something else entirely. By inserting this scene Cocteau suggests there is an applicability of the story to the real world but without resorting to gross proselytization.
The groundwork for this scene and its apparent ontological ramifications is set in the opening sequence which is delightfully curious and even startling in its originality. An old man writes the film's credits in chalk on a black board as a man, and then a woman erases them. Who these people are and why they would be doing this is simply left unexplained. But it suggests a meta story beyond the talein the film itself.
This idea dovetails with Cocteau's surrealist sensibility and its emphasis on evoking the imagery of the unconscious. Although he disavowed the label, much of Cocteau's work fits well within the Surrealist school and Beauty and the Beast is certainly not an exception. The problem is there is a common perception of this in terms of art that can mislead grievously. While Dali's paintings and Brunel's films were certainly vivid examples of surrealism, they certainly didn't define it.
Cocteau fits well into the surrealist camp when one examines the tenets of the movement and its dedication to depicting the workings of the unconscious mind. The neglected associations, the omnipotence of dream and the disinterested play of thought, as the textbook definition put it.
And that meant an emphasis on the then-popular theory of Sigmund Freud. While the surrealists embraced the idiosyncratic aspects of his theories they had little use for his darkness of the mind - in part because much of that ground had been covered by Dada. And while much of Freud's work has fallen out of favor, the influence on aesthetic efforts like Beauty and the Beast certainly remains valid.
By the 1940 the theories of the Austrian psychiatrist had also been aimed at the Brothers Grimm. Because they are remarkably robust in imagery and symbolism, fairy tales were a natural subject for psychoanalytical interpretation.
The story, Beauty and the Beast, got its first serious analysis in Freudian terms by Jacues Barchilon more than a decade after Cocteau's film. But while the published work was after the general examination of such tales was certainly common as Cocteau undertook his work.
So when Cocteau undertook his film version of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 version of the tale it was a logical confluence of his artistic interests and the growing tendency to see such stories in psychoanalytical terms. Filled with symbols such as keys, roses and mirrors, the story is a treasure trove for cinematically explicating Freud's view that sexual desire is the primary motivational energy of human life.
Freud turned to mythology as a means to bolster his theory of psychosexual development so, in an interesting way; Cocteau's film is an interesting reverse-engineering of the approach. Freud suggested the myths showed there existed a need to repress certain sexual desires until proper awareness emerged.
The beast, in this line of thinking, is a representation of the gross sexual drive that is inherent to the "id." It would be tough to come up with a better cinematic depiction of Freud's "cauldron full of seething excitations" than Cocteau's beast prowling the halls of his castle inflamed with animalistic desire. The twisted dark and mysterious forest that surrounds his domain is this same mythical territory of the unconscious traversed by Dante and little red riding hood on the start of their respective adventures.
But the Beast - despite his base nature - struggles to contain his urges much as the instinct of the id is balanced by the critical and moralizing function of Freud's "super-ego." His refinement isn't simply a facade, it is a part of who he is and part of the reason he succeeds in taming his lust.
While the balance between these two was necessary they also need to be rectified with the organized realistic part of the psyche, the "ego." Partly this is the struggle of the beast to control his animal desire and realize his romantic devotion to Beauty. In another, it's Beauty coming to terms with the base aspect of her lover and accepting it as part of him as well.
The introduction of Avenant into the story helps create a cohesiveness of meaning in the story that is invaluable for the structure of the film. It also marginalizes the importance of Beauty's father in terms of her motivations. The story is full enough of psychological import that pushing the Electra overtones to one side was probably a prudent decision.
Beauty and Avenant are not seen until they are alone and together. There is a reflection and an arrow - two items weighted with meaning that will grow in importance as the film progresses. The sexual conflict between them is established as well with Avenant trying to force himself upon her and she resisting. Later, she confesses she was in love with him despite denying his advances.
It is unsurprising that the climax of the film occurs with Beauty and the Beast prone and entwined as lovers at the foot of the spring. The acceptance on the sexual level - and the likely consummation of their desire - permits the beast aspect of her lover to become subdued by the realistic aspect.
Still, it is interesting that Beauty admits she has loved the more beastly aspect and will have to "learn" to live with the more normal man he has become. It's a very interesting observation that touches on aspects of psychology and human sexuality much more subtle than the broad symbolism of the story itself.
Yet this interpretation raises some interesting questions concerning the conclusion of the film. Avenant is struck by the arrow of Diana - a Roman goddess whose toxophilite prowess is only rivaled by her vengeful chastity. It's an act that echoes back to the initial confrontation between Avenant and Beauty that led to him forcing himself upon her.
In terms of the narrative it could be read that as one curse ends, another begins. This presumes Prince Charming and Avenant - despite their similar appearance - are two distinct individuals. But on a slightly more allegorical plane - and one no less likely due to the fantastic nature of the film - it could be that they same individual and it is the beastly aspect of Avenant that is defeated (as well as Beauty's virginal aspect).
There is one interesting issue the presence of Avenant creates in the film is the question of homosexuality in all of this. The nature of Avenant's relationship with Ludovic is left somewhat vague but it is certainly a valid question given the fact the actor and the director were known to have had been in a relationship.
If the interpretation of Beast as a form of the raw sexual drive is valid - the object of desire is somewhat less important. It's as likely such an overpowering libido would be most driven to be sated rather than a proper object of desire. It's at this point interpretation of scene at Diana's pavilion and it's abundance of symbolism that can become quasi-comical if considered for overlong.
The seemingly effortless synthesis of charm and significance in Beauty in the Beast is very much apparent in the final sequence of the film when Beauty and Prince Charming leap into the air and fly away through billowing clouds.
On the one hand it is an enchanting visual image of the lovers being transported to their "happily ever after" - a superb conclusion to a well-told version of the tale. Within the context of dreams, flight can be representative of liberation and, for Freud; it was distinctive hallmark of sexual release. A fitting end to the psychoanalytical odyssey the story represents.
Take your pick, both are supremely enjoyable and you can always watch it again. | | | more: 52 films 26 books | Movies | | | | |
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