Tokyo Story

Tokyo Story can be seen to represent “a systematic alternative to Hollywood continuity cinema.”[1]  The methods Ozu employed to achieve this alternative have positioned him as one of the most influential and esteemed filmmakers of Asia and the world. Before watching Tokyo Story I remembered hearing that it was a film that lowered one’s heart rate, which seemed to resist the motivation for cinema-going in the West. For me the Hollywood film seeks to quicken the pulse. We turn to cinema to escape reality. With this in mind directors focus on dramatic events and cushion those events in car chases and explosions so that for a couple of hours we can forget our problems.

Having tried unsuccessfully to piece together the film from YouTube clips I reverted to the screenplay, which though beautiful and detailed did not give me a feel for what made Tokyo Story such a wonderfully constructed and deeply moving piece of cinema. Ozu conceded that this was his most melodramatic film[2]. I can confirm, thanks to my bizarre experiment/“youtube fail”, that no isolated scene is exceptionally poignant. The narcoticizing effect of Ozu’s gentle narration lowers ones heart rate to that of an aging couple, both engrossed in folding and refolding travel gear. I blame this technique for my hypersensitivity. I have never cried as hysterically in a film as when Suichi marvels at the size of Tokyo and Tomi answers “Yes isn't it. If we got lost, we may never find eachother again.”[3]

The poignancy of this film is due largely to Ozu’s rejection of the plot driven movie. He compels the audience to contemplate the actions and reactions of his characters rather than the events themselves. In some instances he omits the event altogether. This is most notable at the death of Tomi Hirayama. On paper it would seem nonsensical to skip the death of a central character. Ironically, it gave the film greater poignancy. Becoming aware of a loved one’s mortality can often be more upsetting than the point of their death. Ozu uses this precedent and rather than exploiting cinema to forget our grief Ozu forces us to acknowledge the realities of our own existence.

David Desser’s makes the important point that “Tokyo Story is not a simple humanistic protest against the transience of life and the bitterness of experience”[4]. He qualifies this statement by citing the beautiful shot of Suichi walking back to the house. To a western audience his remark “It was a beautiful sunrise. I think we are going to have another hot day”[5] seems absurdly mundane given the circumstances. Desser asserts that this statement symbolizes Suichi’s “wisdom and acceptance”[6]. The acceptance and consent of “the painful necessities as well as the joys of existence”[7] sustain throughout the film. It is an idea that is rarely given much credence in western cinema or culture for that matter. Unfortunately the idea that people die and children outgrow and disappoint their parents is a notion that we still find hard to accept and so we rent a dvd.

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[1] http://www.asharperfocus.com/Ozu-style.html

[2] Cavanaugh, Carole. "Monumenta Nipponica Translations." Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 53No. 2., p 296

[3] Tokyo Story. Dir. Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku Eiga, 1953.

[4] Desser, David. Ozu's Tokyo Story. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, p 149

[5] Tokyo Story. Dir. Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku Eiga, 1953.

[6] Desser, David. Ozu's Tokyo Story. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, p 149

[7] ibid

The Films of Charles and Ray Eames

For most, and certainly for me, the name “Eames” is synonymous with the couple’s iconic chairs and celebrated Santa Monica home. In contrast, their films tend only to appear as footnotes on their extensive list of groundbreaking achievements. These films however share the principles central to their more eminent creations.  Like their architecture and designs, the films of Charles and Ray Eames demonstrated a new and innovative method for operating within an aesthetic field. Their works are irrefutably modernist and perpetuate the rejection of the “ornamental”. This may seem to contradict the assertion that they were decorative modernists. I use “ornamental” to refer not simply to that which is aesthetically ornamental but also ornamental in a narrative sense. Their films avoid characterisation and ornamental narrative-structure, marking the transition from films that only “show what they felt” to those that “tell what they think”.[1]

In his article Poetry of Ideas, Paul Schrader suggests that Charles’ casual attitude to cinematography allowed him to “give film a new way of perceiving ideas”.[2]  Unsurprisingly the article concentrates predominantly on Charles, while his “helper” Ray, takes a back seat. This is not an unusual depiction as throughout most of their careers Charles was portrayed as one of, if not the “most influential designer of the century”[3] while Ray served as a scapegoat for his “deviations from Spartan Modernism”.[4]  This situation is painfully apparent during their appearance on Good Morning America, specifically Ray’s dispreferred response during the interview. Taking these perceptions into account Schrader’s article provides a most useful insight into the importance of these films within cinematic modernism.

The Eames films acted as vessels for their ideas and convey the developing relationship between cinema and modernism. We see this development throughout their creations, for example their celebrated chairs were designed without upholstery, exposing the back plywood. This conveys a key ideal for the couple; that objects and materials should be appreciated for their intrinsic worth. This notion is central to their 1979 film, Toccata for Toy Trains. In the introduction Charles stipulates, “There is nothing self-conscious about the use of materials… wood is wood” and “tin is tin”, “These are real toys not scale models”.

The idea of “object integrity” came up several times throughout the seminar. The close-up shots and unusual camera angles (e.g shots taken from inside the toy train), have a simultaneously disorientating and immersive effect that encourages the viewer to focus on the authenticity of the objects as they flick across our screen. In both The Blacktop and Toccata for Toy Trains, human presence is omitted. Consequently I found myself conferring agency to objects in a subconscious effort to construct a narrative from the images.

This was especially true for The Blacktop, during which I not only awarded agency but also switched allegiances between objects throughout the course of the film. The absence of establishing shots prevented me from anchoring the water to a specific location and so I was set adrift, forced to navigate between the water as colonizer and water, as colonized. In hindsight it seems silly to anthropomorphize water, but I feel it is a testament to their competency as filmmakers. 

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[1] Schrader, Paul. "Poetry of Ideas: The Films of Charles and Ray Eames." Film Quarterly,1970

[2] ibid

[3] http://www.milandirect.com.au/designers/

[4]  Skeggs, Beverley. Feminist Cultural Theory: Process and Production. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995, p 207

Rose Hobart

I wanted to revisit our first film, Joseph Cornell’s surrealist offering; Rose Hobart. Melissa suggested in today’s seminar that in the previous semesters she has taken this unit it had re-emerged as a topic of discussion throughout the course. I was surprised to find that this was the case; Surprised largely because I found it utterly unwatchable. The fifteen minutes cut from George Melford’s Hollywood Melodrama East of Borneo, throws linear time and causality to the wind. If Cornell has “removed the spine of East of Borneo” then he has only left behind an inexplicable, disordered puddle of overly-fetishistic, amour fou. I found myself physically uncomfortable in the screening and became increasingly uncomfortable and disoriented as shot after shot of the perpetually concerned Rose Hobart were repeated looking out windows or frowning at Princes.

In this sense it is a archetypal fanvid; enthralling for the infatuated fan and unwatchable to the general public. To illustrate my point, approximately 18% of General Hospital videos uploaded onto youtube are fanvids however they are the least viewed type of upload. What unites the fanvids of today, Andre Breton’s cinema hopping and Cornell’s synthetic criticism is their refusal to accept the passive status of the spectator. While I maintain that this is an awful film to watch I feel that Julien Levy, the New York gallery owner and first American champion of surrealism is accurate in his assessment of the importance of Cornell’s film. Rather than focusing on the absence of plot he draws on the “wealth of innuendo which accompanies each action” which he argues forms a richer emotional pattern than an audience is used to. This is true for the audience at “goofy newsreels program” screening in 1936 as well as for anyone who “stumbles across” a True Blood fanvid. What is critical in Cornell’s work is how he “affirms many of the cinematic codes” (such as the eye level shots to link shots). The juxtaposition of shots and subversion of the linear narrative does not make for an enjoyable watch but it was a successful film in terms of “introducing notions of distance and materiality that were hitherto absent from cinema”.

I had originally found the soundtrack to Rose Hobart extraneous. I had not noticed that the two samba tracks that score the film are themselves imperfect. In The Global Art of Found Footage Cinema Adrian Danks suggests that the crackles and pops in the recording imply its previous use. I found the music nauseating by the third loop and found myself anticipating each proceeding note with dread. Danks argues that the music at times adds to images, and while I would have to disagree, he goes on to discuss how the music functions equally as a counterpoint. The practice of using music to “create a mood or sensibility which flows with and operates in contrast to what is unfolding on the screen” has had implications in advertising and music video.

Man with a Movie Camera

Dziga Vertov's 1927 film Man with a Movie Camera is widely recognised as “the grand summa of the Soviet futurist-communist-constructivist avant-garde”[1]. Unlike Ruttmann's Berlin, Symphony of a City, Vertov does not reference a specific city. His city symphony amalgamates footage from Odessa, Kiev and Moscow into a Soviet meta-metropolis, where peace has been made between man and machine. In his 1922 manifesto Vertov states that through cinema the kinoks aim to “reveal the soul of the machine, causing the worker to love his workplace, the peasant his tractor, the engineer his engine”[2]. Having read the rather angry manifesto before watching the film I anticipated a very slow and painful death of cinematography. When it was first released screened in New York critic Jay Leyda found himself "reeling" from a New York theatre, "too stunned to sit through it again"[3]. I however, found it far more engaging than Berlin.

Vertov’s film is an extended montage of shots capturing the people of Soviet Russia as they go about their daily life. A “man with a movie camera” unites these scenes. His role is simultaneously character in and creator of the film. In the duality of his role, the man with the movie camera is a constant reminder that what we are seeing is a selective view of the world filtered through a mediating ideology. In this reflexive mode, the viewer’s attention is ‘drawn to the device as well as the effect’[4], allowing us to ruminate not only the subject matter of the film, but the way in which we are shown this subject matter. Along with showing the cameraman moving about the world, Vertov’s extravagant use of filmic techniques such as double exposures, split screens, stop motion animation and fast and slow motion all draw attention to the fact that what we are watching is a film, not reality. Vertov thereby engages in a metacommentary, speaking to us ‘less about the historical world …than about the process of representation itself.[5]’ The intention is to break down the presuppositions that shackle visual perception by refusing to allow us to forget that we are watching a film that has been created by a subjective being. By denying us the ability to see the screen as some kind of portal to reality, the film destroys its own illusions in the hope that a new reality.

Many students were critical of Vertov's adherence to his own ideology for making the cameraman the “star” of the film. I think it could be argued that instead Vertov makes the camera the hero of the film. Rather than following the cameraman’s actions we are following, or at least trying to keep up with the action of the camera. Yuri Tsivian suggests that Vertov's film cannot be read. A viewer will invariably translate their perceptions “of the spectacle into verbal images”[6]. Due to the absence of intertitles, scripting and because the film “retains only those semantic couplings between individual sections which fully coincide with the visual couplings” the viewer is unable to read and translate the film. In this way Vertov can be said to be successful in creating a genuine, international purely cinematic language, entirely distinct from the language of theatre and literature[7].

Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt

Walter Ruttmann’s 1927 avant-garde film, Berlin, Symphony for a Great City adheres to the dawn to dusk format as it narratates the urban landscape of Berlin. With the use of rhythmic and associative montage Ruttmann composes a symphony of movement out of images he selected from German life in the 1920’s. It is organized into five acts, which correspond to the five stages of the workday, however his vision is symphonic rather than episodic. In the reading Graf identifies “a total suppression of intertitles, narrative and plot elements” in order to achieve a “pure film form”. Whether or not he succeeds in this, the film is recognized as a marking the maturation of the city symphony genre. It is an important film both as a document of Berlin life in the 1920’s and as a demonstration of Ruttmann’s exceptional use of rhythm, cutting and montage to structure film. His architectural background is evident in his attention to the shape of objects throughout the cityscape. He also relies on rhythmic and associative montage to construct an exemplar of the city symphony aesthetic. The rhythmic visual regime of the city film emphasizes the city as a ‘complex spatial arrangement of buildings, traffic, streets and boulevards’[1].

Cinematic montage is used to replicate the frantic, discontinuous space and pace of the urban metropolis. The frequency of the cuts denotes the changing tempo throughout the day. Graf suggests that the “instrumentalization of cutting rhythm in Berlin functions as a device of both emotive and illustrative description”.  In the factory sequence Rutmann lays emphasis on the efficiency of the machine and particularly the beauty of that efficiency. I think many people will instinctively compare this scene with that of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis which came out in the same year. Fritz Lang projects an idea of the city worker as an automaton, marching in synch into the mouth of the factory where they will be enslaved by the machine, and left physically vanquished. In contrast Ruttmann projects an image of a relatively jovial factory worker entering the factory. Topical groupings like this are used throughout the film, like the children going to school, the women performing domestic duties, and people eating. In this way Ruttmann treats the people as much as objects as he does the buildings, trams and trains.

Metropolis clock. 

Scene from act 1. The factory sequence.

The factory sequence focuses primarily on the machines. I did however think the shot of the hand pushing the lever was interesting as it encapsulates the idea of the Berliner as part of a greater machine. In emphasizing the efficiency and beauty of the machine he purports the idea of a synthesis or rather a partnership between man and machine. This idea reoccurs throughout the film, most notably the opening scenes of the train entering the metropolis. It is ostensibly being driven by a man and is also carrying people. When it enters the terminus, the workers, like cogs in a machine, mechanically open the station doors. They co-exist and are part of a greater structure, the metropolis itself. Visually this is interesting however I did at first feel that Ruttmann’s city symphony is lacking in a critique or social commentary, particularly due to his “exclusively aesthetic concentration”[2]. Machines are not seen by Ruttman to have social utility, instead they exist as “fascinating, intricate, moving objects”[3]. This does however set Berlin apart from other documentaries of the time, which are produced with explicit social biases, and adds to its value as a historical document.

In Weimar cinema: an essential guide to classic films of the era Noah William Isenberg suggests that Berlin is essentially a record of the “1920s explosion of advertising and concomitant transformation of modernity into a society spectacle”[4]. He suggests that advertising operates on multiple levels, beginning with the shots of “signs painted on the walls of buildings and store fronts announcing new products”[5]. This is reemphasized in the fifth act. As night falls the metropolis becomes saturated with advertisements, Isenberg asserts that “texts, words and graphic inscriptions proliferate in the city, transforming the urban environment into a complex web of linguistic signifiers whose shared focus is the commodity”[6]. I think Isenberg is accurate in his assertion that Berlin functions as an advertisement of modernity. Ruttman’s impassiveness affords him a unique perspective in representing modernity and the urban landscape. The lunchtime sequence is illustrative of this perspective. There is no apparent differentiation between age, class, gender or even species. Lunchtime is a necessity for a baby, a businessman, a monkey, a camel, rich and poor alike. Rather than drawing attention to the disparity in living conditions, he uses associative montage to intimate how all organisms in the urban landscape are motivated by the same requirements and compulsions, to eat, to sleep, anger, sex etc.

Train entering terminus.

Isenberg sustains Graf’s assertion that in Berlin, the camera takes on the role of Baudelaire’s flâneur; "a person who walks the city in order to experience it"[7].  The shots taken from the train out onto the passing landscape position the viewer within the train, within the machine and by extension a cog in the metropolis. Like the flâneur however, we are a detached observer, both in the city and apart from it. The absence of dialogue, intertitles and the continuous cutting from shot to shot precludes the audience from engaging with individuals within the documentary. We see Berliners in constant motion yet we have no sense of them arriving at a destination. Ruttmann does not impress ideologies onto the audience and so we remain the removed. I would however argue that this detachment in portraying the metropolis demonstrates a form of rebellion. Like Baudelaire, Rutmann is asserting that traditional art was inadequate for the new dynamic complications of modern life. Social and economic changes brought by industrialization demanded that the artist immerse himself in the metropolis and become, in Baudelaire's phrase, "a botanist of the sidewalk"[8]. In doing so he articulates a critical attitude towards the “uniformity, speed, and anonymity of modern life in the city”[9].

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