Morgiana (1973)

Dir: JURAJ HERZ
Country: CZECHOSLOVAKIA

If there were two defining characteristics of art cinema in the 1960’s then it was a need to challenge prevailing orthodoxies (both in terms of film form, filmic traditions, and politics) and to reconstitute the theme of national identity in the wake of tumultuous world events. It became a decade of national cinema and new waves. The most prominent occurred in France and was represented by the films of former critics such as Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. In Britain the ‘Angry Young Man’ impulse gave rise to the ‘kitchen sink’ realism of films such as Room at the Top (1959), A Taste of Honey (1961), and This Sporting Life (1963). While the young French filmmakers were concerned with challenging the so called ‘Tradition of Quality’ and pushing the boundaries of film form, the British filmmakers were occupied with issues of class and realism. In Japan filmmakers such as Nagisa Oshima, Seijun Suzuki, Shohei Imamura, and Susumu Hani contributed to a wave of audacious politically motivated films that interrogated questions of gender and the recent occupation. The influence of Italian Neo-Realism and the French New Wave had a profound effect on a generation of South American filmmakers, and tremors of seismic activity could be detected in Cuba, Argentina, and most notably Brazil’s ‘Cinema Novo’. One of the least written about areas of activity occurred in the Eastern bloc countries; Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all enjoyed brief but brilliant moments of filmmaking sunlight, before the boot of communism ground out the creativity. Morgiana is considered one of the last flowerings of the Czech New Wave and is both a brilliant and frustrating viewing experience.

We Are What We Are (2010)

Dir: JORGE MICHEL GRAU
Country: MEXICO

AKA:
Somos lo que hay (Original title)

Mexican writer/director Jorge Michel Grau has crafted a powerful debut feature which seamlessly blends horror and art cinema into a potent social allegory which has the family at its centre. Although Grau downplays the horror elements of his narrative, the decision to use certain generic signifiers offers a potential new direction for an increasingly unadventurous national cinema that seems more preoccupied in genuflecting at the altar of past glories. For much of the films running time this is a family melodrama, but one which becomes increasingly desperate and hysterical. With this increase in tension comes certain plot revelations that propels the frantic family into a series of actions that eventually lead to disunity and downfall. The film opens with the death of the family patriarch in a modern shopping mall. After riding the gleaming escalators the man stares with undisguised hunger at a series of shop mannequins, before throwing up black vomit and expiring on the spotless white floor tiles. Within seconds of his death his corpse has been carted off and his mess mopped up. The swiftness and efficiency of his removal in this middle class consumerist space is easily the most troubling aspect of this opening. We soon discover that not only was this bedraggled chap the head of the family, but also the hunter. For we are in the company of a family of modern day cannibals. His addiction to whores, and the implicated disease ridden nature of their flesh, not only costs him his life, but plunges his family into crisis.

Onibaba (1964)

Dir: KANETO SHINDO
Country: JAPAN

AKA:
Devil Woman
The Hole
The Ogress
The Witch
The Demon

Legendary Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindô directed his 45th feature film Ichimai no Hagaki in 2010 at the tender age of 98. Born in Hiroshima in 1912 Shindô has also written some 158 screenplays, making him easily one of the most prolific filmmakers in world cinema. Shindô’s failure to secure the type of distribution enjoyed by Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, and Ozu remains a mystery. His early films are slightly more visible in the West. In recent times we have enjoyed pristine DVD presentations of The Naked Island (1960), Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968) and they have afforded us a glimpse into a highly stylised and expressive formal style that is both challenging and invigorating. The latter two titles have also illustrated Shindô’s ability to meld this formal eloquence with popular genres and past theatrical traditions. However the unavailability of Children of Hiroshima (1952) still remains a mystifying aberration. It is certainly the case that as the 1960’s wore on Shindô’s work became less distinctive and his interest in social purpose took a back seat to explorations of sexuality. But as we saw in Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses (1976), sex in its purest form can be a potent political and social weapon. The success of his quasi historical horror film Onibaba isn’t particularly surprising as it retains just enough generic signifiers to satisfy western audiences, and possessed the added draw of an unusually frank exploration of frustrated sexuality.

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Dir: HARRY KUMEL
Country: BELGIUM/FRANCE/WEST GERMANY

aka:
Les lèvres rouges
Blood on the Lips
Children of the Night
The Promise of Red Lips
The Red Lips

The traditions of the horror genre and those of art cinema are not the mutually opposed spheres of representation that one might at first glance think. Both horror and art films share an interest in transgression. These transgression’s might be political, social or cultural, but the form they normally take is through expressions of violence and sexuality. Art films sometimes use this thematic trajectory for a grander metaphysical or philosophical vision, whereas horror films enjoy the mess. The horror film takes pleasure in the breakdown and revels in the gooey stuff, but ultimately there is recuperation and conservatism. Radicalism and challenges to taboos are far more common in art films. But this is not to say that horror films cannot highlight a political or social anxiety, they just very rarely offer ideas to remedy the problems that have arisen - aside from the mindless destruction of the threat. These distinctions and commonalities are important things to consider when discussing Harry Kumel’s 1971 film Daughters of Darkness, because this is one of the few films that successfully cross pollinates the two forms.

L'enfance nue (1968)

Dir: MAURICE PIALAT
Country: FRANCE

aka:
Naked Childhood

For the last five or six years I’ve been on/off collecting a series of DVD’s released by Eureka under their ‘Masters of Cinema’ imprint. In many ways this label is the nearest we have in the UK to the Criterion Collection, and they offer a wide range of world and art cinema in the best possible transfers. Between 2008 and 2010 ‘Masters of Cinema’ released a number of films by French filmmaker Maurice Pialat. I had steadfastly avoided these because I’d never heard of the man, but recently I took a punt on his 1968 debut feature film L’enfance nue (translates as Naked Childhood) and was very glad that I did. Pialat had directed the short film L’Amour Existe (1960), a dour and depressing travelogue through the working class suburbs of Paris, but little in that film (which is included on the Masters of Cinema DVD) could prepare one for the piercing naturalism of the startling L’enfance nue.

The Iron Rose (1973)

Dir: JEAN ROLLIN
Country: FRANCE

aka:
La rose de fer
Rose of Iron

The production of horror films and works of fantasy have been sporadic during the history of French cinema. Unlike the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy or even Germany, French horror has never successfully coalesced into a cycle or movement. This is somewhat of a surprise when we consider that much of the visceral quality of horror owes its origins to the French theatrical tradition known as Grand Guignol. Furthermore the elements of fantasy and dislocation that form the backbone of horror’s nightmare logic can be seen in the experimental work of the surrealist art movement - which found its greatest prominence in France in the 1920’s. The work of Georges Franju in the 1940’s and 1950’s offered a link to these past traditions, most notably in his abattoir documentary Blood of the Beasts (1949) and his outstanding cosmetic surgery nightmare Eyes Without a Face (1959). But it would be the offbeat cinematic offerings of Jean Rollin that would make this link to the past most implicit. Whether you rate his films or not his importance within French traditions of fantasy and surrealism are notable.

Kuroneko (1968)

Dir: KANETO SHINDO
Country: JAPAN

aka:
Yabu no naka no kuroneko
The Black Cat
The Black Cat from the Grove

Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindo is best known to western audiences for his shattering and moving tribute to the survivors of atomic destruction in the drama Children of Hiroshima (1952) and his sultry and sensual historical horror film Onibaba (1964). The latter is an evocative and oppressive allegory of Japanese class and social divisions and the tragic effects of a corrosive sexual jealousy. For Kuroneko Shindo recycled the basic premise of Onibaba (in which two resourceful women lure samurai to their death for material gain) and retained the same historical setting, war torn landscape and aesthetics of hunger. Kuroneko is a more conventional horror film in the sense that it foregrounds aspects of the supernatural, demon curses, and the quasi-mythical image of the cat. It makes use of the Kaidan or avenging spirit motif which unites much traditional Japanese horror and is brought to atmospheric life by beautiful monochrome cinematography and a formal eloquence that marks it out as one of Shindo’s most visually elegant productions. Despite these familiar signifiers however the film is still strange and otherworldly, and in its attention to traditional theatrical modes of narrative address possesses an inherently alien quality which is eminently fascinating.

Stroszek (1977)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

One of the meta-narratives or major thematic concerns that preoccupied the generation of filmmakers that made up what scholars termed ‘New German Cinema’ was coming to terms with, and exploring, the cultural colonisation wrought on West Germany in the aftermath of World War Two by America. Wim Wenders approached the subject from the perspective of cinema itself in The American Friend (1977) and Kings of the Road (1976) and throughout his career revised the form of the road movie for a generation of alienated Europeans. Rainer Werner Fassbinder opted to explore the question through a reconstitution of Hollywood genre - most notably the Sirkian melodrama of films such as Fear Eats the Soul (1974). Whilst the films of these two ‘New German’ heavyweights were by no means conventional, Werner Herzog’s single contribution to this ongoing narrative is a truly wacky and oddball take on the subject. Stroszek was Herzog’s sixth fictional feature film and it was his first, and to date last, to be set (albeit partially) in contemporary West Germany. Up to this point Herzog had preferred to set his films in the past and in some cases on other continents, and used the storytelling method of allegory, metaphor and symbolism, to make comments on Germany and its recent past. In Stroszek Herzog concocted a narrative (partially based on the childhood experiences of Bruno S.) that enabled him to formulate his view at the time of both West Germany and America. Like most filmmakers of that generation Herzog’s vision is deeply ambivalent, but ultimately he suggests that all countries are alike in the manner in which they can crush the life out of their citizens - the only difference is in the method.

Woyzeck (1979)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

Werner Herzog is well known for his daring approach to filmmaking and for his commitment to taking risks in service of his never ending search for the ‘ecstatic truth’ within an image. But in many ways his boldest filmmaking move occurred during 1978/9 when he made two films back to back that were based on pre-existing material highly venerated in Germany. The first was a remake of F.W. Murnau’s silent expressionistic horror classic Nosferatu (1922) with Klaus Kinski playing the eponymous bloodsucker. The second was the trickier proposition of adapting Georg Buchner’s unfinished play Woyzeck - a demanding work requiring the steely nerve of a major actor to cope with the harrowing treatment the character endures. With just a week off after the completion of shooting on Nosferatu Kinski stepped up to the plate and 18 days later the shooting of Woyzeck was complete and Kinski was able to have his nervous breakdown in peace. The speed with which the film was completed has to be admired and shows an economy of filmmaking from Herzog which has remained unrepeated. To add yet more exhaustion and trauma to the characterisation of Woyzeck Herzog insisted on extremely long unbroken takes - there are in fact only 27 cuts in the whole movie! While this was undoubtedly a major challenge to the actors, it enabled Kinski to probably give the greatest performance of his career.

Fata Morgana (1971)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

Fata Morgana is the most oblique and inscrutable of Werner Herzog’s early films. It is neither a work of fiction, nor a documentary. But exists within a liminal space between these two spheres of representation. It is totally devoid of plot, employing none of the narrative conventions of Hollywood cinema, preferring to approach time and space from a position of non linearity rather than cause and effect. The editing strategies employed in post-production emphasise this attitude towards time, and the result is a film that has the timeless quality of a myth or a fable. Its position as myth is clearly signposted by Herzog’s inclusion of the Popol Vuh (a Mayan creation myth) which is narrated over the images by German film historian Lotte Eisner. This is further confirmed by a three part structure which gives the film the appearance of a meditative and free flowing essay. The three parts are titled Creation, Paradise and The Golden Age and are an echo of Herzog’s early conception of the film as a science-fiction document of alien visitors recording their findings of a long dead civilisation. The imagery that Herzog selects however often undermines the chapter it is within - The Golden Age for example has a number of deeply ironic and unspeakably sad scenes, and Paradise offers us the vista of a blasted landscape crushed under the unyielding glare of the sun. There is subsequently a deep contradiction at the heart of Fata Morgana, a contradiction that seems to exist within most of Herzog’s films, and which makes the viewing experience an oddly disquieting one.

Heart of Glass (1976)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY

aka:
Herz Aus Glas

Heart of Glass is a challenging and demanding film, but almost certainly the clearest statement made by Herzog about the insanity and visionary nature of a fever dream. This time Herzog is concerned with collective hysteria as he charts the gradual breakdown and dissolution of a small community in late 18th century Bavaria. The centrepiece of the village is a factory that produces ruby coloured glass, but when the man entrusted with the secret of the ruby glass dies, taking the secret with him to the grave, the village is plunged into an apocalyptic anarchy that ends with madness and destruction. Herzog opens the film with a beautifully composed shot of a herdsman with his back to camera. An ethereal mist hangs in the cold air, which gives the image an unsettling and disturbing resonance. The sound of Swiss yodellers on the soundtrack only adds to the odd sense of eerie timelessness which opens the film. The herdsmen is Hias (Josef Bierbichler), a man who also possesses the gift of prophecy. What follows is a prophecy of destruction and rebirth, and Herzog fills the screen with one haunting image after another. The clouds resemble rivers in the sky, a waterfall becomes a hypnotic conduit to another plane of existence, and a pool seethes and bubbles as though eager to eject life into a newly formed world. All the while the hypnotic tones of Hias speak a litany of grave pronouncements amid an ever increasing culture of impending doom. There is something revelatory in this imagery, and although it is shot through with destructive pessimisms the music of Popol Vuh creates an uplifting counterpoint to the catastrophe that Hias foresees. There is an odd contradiction here, one which doesn’t resolve itself at all in the film, and makes Heart of Glass a very unsafe viewing experience.

Stalker (1979)

Dir: ANDREI TARKOVSKY
Country: SOVIET UNION/WEST GERMANY

The films of Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky are challenging and often inscrutable. The images presented in his films are enigmatic and the layers of meaning unfathomable but at the same time stimulating. The narratives of his films regularly play out in a linear fashion, but details of plot are often obscured by his meditative and dignified use of the camera. The editing strategy employed in his cinema often creates a sense of temporal confusion, a blurred netherworld in which memory and reality do battle in a war of representation. A world in which cinematic space is manipulated to become strange and otherworldly. His films walk a thin tight rope between commercial generic material (two of his most famous works have been positioned as science fiction) and an avant-garde style that is peculiarly his own. His films often betray a yearning for escape. The harsh realities of Soviet communism and the national trauma of World War Two dispersing into the realm of the visionary, into a sphere of dreams and half constructed recollections. Tarkovsky’s films are subjective ruminations and they reflect the confusion and fallibility of the human mind.

Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972)

Dir: WERNER HERZOG
Country: WEST GERMANY, PERU, MEXICO.

aka:
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes

In 1972 German filmmaker Werner Herzog travelled into the dark heart of the claustrophobic Peruvian jungle, armed with a camera, a skeleton crew and an army of Indian extras in order to film Aguirre: Wrath of God, an astonishing work of film art that would herald his international breakthrough, and eventually become one of his most celebrated works. On one level Aguirre is an epic adventure film, and as such it has a linear and easy to follow narrative. This linearity marked a break from Herzog’s past efforts. Herzog also cast a recognisable international figure in the shape of Klaus Kinski as the eponymous plotter Aguirre. Therefore its clear that this was a slightly more commercial venture from a director who previously seemed more allied with an Avant-garde style of filmmaking.

Herostratus (1967)

Dir: DON LEVY
Country: UK

This troubling and challenging piece of experimental cinema almost defies a simple explanation. To reduce it to mere plot or narrative mechanics is to perform an injustice of which the film is undeserving. It may on the surface utilise certain conventionalities of mainstream narrative cinema, but this is a film about what lurks underneath such pretence. Like Jean-Luc Godard, Australian filmmaker Don Levy utilises film form itself as part of his strategy of attack. There is a self awareness in this film that to use mainstream methods of representation is in itself a statement of hypocrisy. If one is to challenge social and political institutions and to interrogate questions of history and our failure to learn from it, one must provide a revolutionary framework of representation in which to do it. Godard was aware of this, which was why film form was fore grounded in his cinema, and Don Levy seems fully aware of this too. Levy makes exceptional use of montage, one juxtaposition equates the bloody mechanics of an abattoir with the beauty of the female form. What exactly this signifies and means is unclear, it could possibly be a statement on the commoditisation of the human form - and this reading is in keeping with the films general attitude toward the marketplace and the forces which govern it. But the meaning is less important to me, it is the physicality of the images themselves which linger in the mind. The fast cutting images assault and on some occassions offend the senses, but every frame is part of a very delicate composition. Levy also makes use of newsreel footage and documentary material of concentration camp victims to create a statement about the failure to right the wrongs of the recent past, and too address the underlying issues that led to the attrocities committed in World War Two and Britain’s part in the conflict.

Scandal (1950)

Dir: AKIRA KUROSAWA
Country: JAPAN

aka:
Shubun

1950 saw the release of two films by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. The first Scandal has largely remained an obscurity in Kurosawa’s filmography, far overshadowed by the second film of the year Rashomon. The latter introduced western audiences to a new world of Japanese cinema when it scooped the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival in 1951. Kurosawa was soon heralded as an artistic genius and feted by art cinema enthusiasts eager for something outside their experiential world. The historical films of Kurosawa often betray their indebtedness to Hollywood, Rashomon however is the most atypical of his historical adventures in its attitude to point of view and subjectivity, which perhaps accounts for its art circuit success. Personally I have always found Kurosawa’s contemporary set social dramas to be more interesting, and as a representation of the complexities, anxieties, and dilemma’s of a Japan occupied by a foreign force Scandal emerges as a more important film than Rashomon from a socio/historical point of view.