Dreams and Pomp

The Plaza Theater in Atlanta, in cooperation with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Emory University, is running a film series devoted to Elia Kazan. Monday night’s double bill included A Letter to Elia  (2010), Martin Scorsese’s new hour-long documentary (co-directed by Kent Jones) and Viva Zapata! (1952). Other entries in the series include A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (September 20), Gentleman’s Agreement (September 27) and the little-seen Wild River (October 4), which some critics regard as one of Kazan’s best. For more information see the Emory Film Studies Department’s events calendar.

For those who missed A Letter to Elia, it will be showing on PBS October 4 as part of the American Masters series. It’s a deeply moving tribute by Scorsese to a filmmaker whose work had an immediate, personal impact. The documentary does provide an overview of Kazan’s career, but the main focus is instead on Scorsese’s relationship with Kazan’s films and eventually his friendship with the man himself.  It has generous, beautifully transferred clips from On the Waterfront, East of Eden, A Face in the Crowd (a brilliant film!), Wild River and America, America. (After all the clips, I’m dying to see the latter.) While the documentary doesn’t gloss over Kazan’s decision to name names before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, it treats him with sympathy.  In my view, it’s at least as good as Scorsese’s other documentaries My Voyage in Italy and A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies.

The screening was followed by Viva Zapata!  (1952) Hollywood’s great, failed love letter to agrarian revolt, an absolute must on 35mm. There is that small problem of Marlon Brando in makeup… He’s a great physical actor–his movements and gestures are transfixing. The problem is that when he opens his mouth he sounds like Brando and not Zapata, and that pesky makeup never quite convinces. Brando almost-but-not-quite pulls off the stunt. But the film as a whole is superbly directed, demonstrating Kazan’s feel for locations and his compelling gift for staging within the shot. The black-and-white photography and Alex North score are also outstanding. After the screening, one of my colleagues pointed out that we still watch Touch of Evil (1958) despite Charleton Heston’s less than convincing performance as a Mexican, to which I replied yes, and Brando is a far better actor than Heston. When Fox finally releases the film on DVD as part of its forthcoming Elia Kazan box set, I recommend that you check it out with the caveat that it will lose  some of its richness of texture on the small screen.

Friday night’s screening of Jeanne Dielman did not disappoint. As a film about psychological breakdown, I find it more subtle and more strikingly conceived than Polanski’s Repulsion, which relies a bit too heavily on obvious visual effects, brilliant as it otherwise is.

I could only admire Jeanne Dielmlan‘s rigorous–but not rigid–construction. The first section very economically tells us about Jeanne Dielman’s daily routine; later we see different portions of the same routines, or variations in her actions. So in its own way, the film is not repetitive though it seems so on the surface. The camera setups and lighting are also remarkable; the entire film is an elaborate play between things shown onscreen and hidden offscreen, light versus dark, focus vs. out-of-focus, indoors versus outdoors, and so on. The film’s visual design becomes so intense that a simple change in angle, or even a sudden cut to a medium shot registers as a physical shock. It’s also very funny, thanks especially to Delphine Seyrig’s brilliant timing and physical grace. I for one will not soon forget the utterly bizarre nighttime dialogues between her and her son.

One bit I found particularly moving was when Jeanne Dielman’s neighbor comes to pick up her baby after Jeanne has been watching it for the afternoon. She talks at length about herself and her frustrations raising her children, while Jeanne listens without interest and with visible impatience. This is echoed later in the film when Jeanne goes looking for a button and tells the shop owner all about the aunt who sent her the jacket from Canada. It really brings home the fact that all these women lack opportunities for meaningful conversations, whether with their immediate family or with other women like them.

Even if you see the film on DVD, I recommend going to see it in the theater if you get the chance. It’s bound to lose a great deal of its hyperintensity on the small screen. But more importantly, watching it with a crowd is great fun. Even after we were all warned that the film is about a housewife’s routines and that it’s 200 minutes long, a number of people stood up and stumbled out as late as two hours into the film. I’d like to know why, if you’ve watched this film for more than two hours and you’ve figured out right away that “nothing” is happening, would you not stay to the very end? Why cheat yourself out of the payoff?

Jeanne Dielman is such a rich film that one could write an entire book about it. I’m surprised no one has done it yet.