[the private] (Altman, 1973)
Personally, I know nothing about Raymond Chandler, and even less to the character of Marlowe. What I was most impressed - and stunned - in this film is that of course is the false absolute thriller (but I'm willing to believe that there, blowing up the mess - all transplanted LA, 1973 - Altman affected more deeply the truth of this character and to the world of Chandler).
What I take from this film to pieces this "anthropological" (a sociological observation of exceptional hardness, it is far from the tree unifying kind, the regressive and compotière American cinematic landscape - or not - today, including its subversive escape chilly and cautious), with of course the quickdraw is both relaxed and disillusioned Elliott Gould, sleepwalking and swinging like a saxophone solo by Sonny Rollins. Kind the guy is totally misplaced relative to the middle where he wanders, has included the villainy / human stupidity, that virtually nothing can surprise, but not yet paid at any time in cynicism. Someone deeply good, ethical, whatever. From beginning to end, must see, it keeps coming to wear out the face for not a circle, sometimes by the cops, sometimes by the underworld, through a bewildering collection of crackpots severe representative of an America completely disoriented (the only people who seem balanced in the film are her neighbors who spend their time preparing for "cakes" on their patio). And the guy does not depart from some form of kindness moody, elegant detachment, a mixture of stoicism a bit sarcastic and quiet compassion. The kind of guy who goes all out to go buy in the middle of the night for canned cat. In short, an admirable character, one of the finest anti-heroes of all contemporary cinema.
Otherwise, the film is a snorkeling in the swill of American society, a dark and a relentlessly pessimistic. With this characteristic form of the best Altman, destabilizing the framework and a multiplicity of plans views "floaters" that are no longer subject to a teleology demiurgic sense. The quickdraw, the singular style of this "private" in translation is the perfect body, constantly device, the limit dropped while the frame is filled, literally suffocated by all these figures garrulous, neurotic, clueless, schizophrenic, which s' agitate in vain, driven by their passions unnecessary and ridiculous.
The beating scene in Marlowe's apartment, when the gang leader in Hawaiian shirt, an indescribably stupid passes without transition exhibition tour of his abdomen which he seems very proud (also nonexistent) free to the disfigurement of his girlfriend (just to show his determination: "You see my fiancee is the one I cherish most in the world . I'm not joking, there is not a being on this earth I love more than my girlfriend "), with the shard of a bottle that breaks for the occasion, is one of the most stuff traumatic as I could see in a film, a disquieting strangeness goes even further than certain sequences of "Blue Velvet
.
Would that because here the horror of violence is not preceded by its own announcement: it occurs in a loose texture, something daily porous approximate undecidable, we know too well what happens, as often with Altman there are several scenes that seem to evolve independently and simultaneously in the same scene on the same horizontal plane to which any depth was removed.
(Anecdotally, one of the big dogs who stands in the shadows, slibard, arms crossed, and which one does not see clearly the face is Schwarzenegger in his first film appearance. No interest but the detail is fun)
Special mention also for Sterling Hayden, who composes for the second time after Doc Strangelove (his famous Gen. Jack D. Ripper, specialist in "body fluids") , but opposite in a register, a character striking frappadingue-depressive megalomaniac condensing several features of Ernest Hemingway. One of the most running-gags, say ... delightfully nihilistic being the way it is constantly harassed by a kind of dwarf who seems to terrify psychoanalyst (he, a rock two meters run by a violent destructive simmer), which, with the emphasis and approach in a Donald Duck Doliprane, comes to claim a tone martinet his fees in the middle of his "party" deliquescent in his sumptuous residence in the seaside "Pay The Bill , Jack. Pay the Bill
" while administering her some giflettes.
Well, it will be understood, this film "nonchalant" Dante is
. A VO view only.
PS: At this occasion, I reread the chapter Cinema 1 - rather disappointing in my opinion - where
Deleuze talks about Altman, he associates with some other very quickly as Scorsese and Lumet, under one banner (as are very different approaches), and everything is a bit faster ships criticism which I summarize in broad strokes:
they invest, denouncing their grip, the shots , which now operate "empty". Regimes of meaning and reality hitherto governed the American society, its old order and disputed, are no longer for the filmmakers of "crisis" of the action-image and the American dream, as "snapshots", specifically: empty and shimmering surfaces interchangeable situations dispersive interference and weak bonds.
But they do not offer any creative project, do not create any new image to come out and they remain in the register of parody cliches, and thus their criticism of the system, institutions, power equipment, and remains close harmless. They thus contribute to the perpetuation of stereotypes they denounce which feeds both the film industry that the established order that sustains it.
is some truth to some of Lumet's films (the worst), slightly less for Scorsese, Altman and on, here I disagree: it's too soon Shipping and categorized.
is one of the low moments in the book. God knows if it's a great book, and we could never really exhausting (especially if like me you can not boast of having read and fully peeled and rigorously), but yes, this part of Altman & consort is low. Deleuze does not necessarily always right, and here I think we can dare say he is wrong, at least if Altman.
For the work of Altman film far exceeds the one-dimensional parody to really give birth to new images. Altman is the director of the destruction in whole or creaky it's not (some minor films such as Mash, at first, or The Player, towards the end, no doubt). He invented positively
other terms of visions, experimenting with new ways to approach the multiplicity of reality, to grasp the "life" and "event" forms new optical and sound, sensory-concrete paving on the complexity, entanglement, movement.
attention to the collective never practiced so far: an approach "democratic" places, social settings, where the periphery is as important as the center, including rethinking and radically challenging the notion of depth of field as well sound mind, (the new work on the focal lengths that blur the line between the "distant the "next" the sound study that all dialogues are captured on a scale equivalent, overlapping in a "buzz" going).
The micro and macro interpenetrate so that a new way to watch and listen to offers.
And of course it was taken, plagiarized, reduced by other pictures under the name "Choral", very fashionable, but not relevant for the work of Altman, who does not film chorale : on the contrary we could talk with him " Klangfarbenmelodie
"aggregates that do not aggregate on the mode" Symphony. "Improvisation in jazz, post-bop, be a more appropriate analogy. Or the bands of Charles Ives, boring into each other blocks to form polyrhythmic constantly moving. What emerges from all this is far from sticking to clichés, a way to capture an overall movement in perpetual metamorphosis, never overlooking but always shifts from one space to another.
And that's a language, a way that Altman invents, experiments, and nobody has yet managed to emulate. Magnolia, for example, Paul Thomas Anderson, it's pathetic, quite the opposite: everything is founded on the interdependence theme that ties it all, plus it is that
shots for once, and uniquely morbid or nothing: unworthy or absent fathers who are dying from cancer, their son and hysterical girls that go nowhere ... But this little world connects in a suspended moment of grace, the time of a rain of frogs and a song played on the radio ... The movements of life and power are liquidated in a sordid pathos and melodramatic, and we add a last minute dash of the sublime "Kantian" not to sink into the sordid complete.
None of this in Altman: it is the power of life in the multiple of acquiescence in the chaos, the drama, in desperation, sometimes relaunch of endurance, joy to exist, reasons to rejoice and create; losses, cracks nothingness, areas where the indiscernibility stay in the negative talking about Hegel now integrates with life, sometimes do not convert to be but such is life according to Altman, may resume his duties. And away from nihilistic sneer, it also teaches us the possibility of a generous in defeat, dispersion. Of course, not all his films, but the best "short cuts
", which mixes all this is a wonderful example.
Deleuze, obviously, has had access to a very defined the work of Altman, the descent démythologisaton ( Buffalo Bill and the Indians , John Mc Cabe , Mash if it is: and yet, one could decode them otherwise), but this slope does not include other slopes where he probably found more cause for celebration. Besides in other films such as The Long Goodbye
precisely, it is only very superficially one could argue that this is a parody of gender coded (film noir): it is also the sharpness and detail in the sociological observation, almost "hyper-realistic". Deleuze and completely misses this dimension, perhaps the most important for Altman.
More generally, in the chapter on American cinema called the "crisis", the creation Device staging based on the weakening of the chains of causality, or even their complete dissolution in break schemes, floating or dispersion (as "ballad", not plots, trampling narrative balance of voids and transient increase in indirect image sources as windows, windows, reflections, etc.) is described as a negative symptom of degradation or
degeneration of the "great shape", the "sensory-motor" that generates the motion of the image by linking the actions and situations in an organic unity (SAS).
But why consider as twilight index of "decay", changes in film form that take place at the same time and in a manner very close to Europe? Why remove a hand Lumet, Altman Schatzberg or what is positively given the other, an Antonioni eg creating situations optical-sound "pure"? How the use of clichés like surfaces without depth narrative, critical review and reflective of the image itself, self-indexing or self-serving, does it not constitute a resource of explore such situations? Why what is leased Progressive as Godard would be considered reactionary Univoc in the case of American filmmakers of this period?
(Period I'd rather trend - but that's me - to be considered as THE great moment of American cinema: the period known as "classical" (including the classic "French" I get as a strident sound frequency at the limit of physical torture), and with rare exceptions (like Welles), produces in me an annoyance and a crippling fatigue, especially the western "Fordist". I do not understand that. As a huge yellow postcard, asphyxiated, saturated values silly, pompous and numbing, games, served on an actor, including issues in advance and rehashed until all redundancies, and predetermined outcomes from the sewn generic. As the story of a closed world, a hundred times repeated a hundred times repeating the conduct of its telos
boring, and with which I am anxious to end it and move on.
And after the blessed parenthesis, located roughly between the late 50s to late 70s - the cinema of crisis and crisis - and as if in fact we could not go further in the "crisis" (included Antonioni and Godard), here we go off again in the opposite direction, Rebelote - in the vacuum
years 80 - for the carousel of Epinal, roll jêêunesse, the triumphant return of "full" of yesteryear, just how "hollow" nostalgic itself. So there for the cliché, it is served and served well: it's heavy. It is more discontinuous surfaces without depth, floating regimes and dispersive, spaces and any areas of indiscernibility. It's cabaret shows enlarged, the return of the great all-in-decor blocking all the gaps, removing all intervals, strangling all the vanishing lines imaginable. Plus a micro-gram load, not the least crevice where slip, from which one could feel the cutting area. More issues, more than a large dance-sitcom more crowded than the telephone booth of the Marx-brothers, banded with jingles and flashing signs, and - oh, misery and decay - kitsch on all floors, saturated colors , color filters, backlight atmospheres, neon tubes fuchsias, passions phantom-of-the-operatic screaming synths and assorted peroxidized manes. In short, it indigestion. Besson meets Blade Runner in The Subway With Vangelis Papathanassiou; ET phone home, Ferris Buller IS going back to the Future with Darth Vader and Lisa Minelli. Of course, there are still Carpenter, Cronenberg, Lynch, to inject some gray areas or dead, of wanderings of an interregnum in the register of fantasy, with various successes. This is the bare minimum. They helped us get through chugging full howling maelstrom of his empty 80s.
Despite the persistence of gelatinous disco-revival thankfully limited in theme nights, karaoke dance floor, there seems to have finally emerged from this period friction pubarde so endearing, for lines a bit more austere, more sober, even in fun, and it's not bad. A little air ... )
But seriously, going back to the divisions and periodizations identified by Deleuze, these are nevertheless dividing lines that do not seem entirely clear nor settled once and for all . In terms of method, they also continue to identify and define large sets of mobile immediately refute the logical - the peopling of a merry-cons proliferation burgeoning examples singularities, alternatives, figures orphan whose kaleidoscopic sum ends up being more important than the designated paradigm which they depart. Hence a question: why is this paradigm rather than another? Why not, and at the same time, why? Good: we say that the syntheses are disjunctive, and no doubt they are. That is why we should not give credit to such an exaggerated motor assembly, it is itself crossed by a logic multiple mad, constantly short-circuited by another moving all that permeates and exceeds it in same time, doing "spin off all relations with their terms. "This is the famous" plane of immanence "constructivist Deleuze, his overall philosophical system, or rather overlooked by so easily ignore so many readers of books on cinema, which contrive to fix the sets and fossilize appointed. But it's not because the units are moving there is no unity, and vice versa, this is not because of the unification process can be drawn that there necessarily Unit:
"there are no universals, not transcendent, not A, not subject (or object) of Reason, there are only processes , which can be unifying, subjectification, rationalization, but nothing more . These processes operate in "multiplicities" concrete is the multiplicity that is the true element when something happens. These are the multiplicities that populate the field of immanence, just as the tribes inhabiting the desert without ceasing to be a desert. And the plane of immanence is to be built, the immanence is constructivism, each multiplicity is assignable as a region of the plan. All processes occur on the plane of immanence and multiple assignable: the unifications, subjectivations, rationalizations have no privilege
, it is often blind alleys or fences that impede the growth of the multiplicity, the extension or development of its lines, the new production. When you invoke a transcendent, it stops the movement, to introduce an interpretation instead of experimenting. Bellour has clearly shown the film to the flow of images. And indeed interpretation is always done in the name of something that is supposed to miss. The unit is precisely what the many missing, as the topic is what the lack event ("it rains"). "[" On Philosophy ", September 88 interview with R. Bellour Ewald and Br in Talks
, Midnight, 1990 199-200]
same time, the premise - just interviewed by Deleuze himself apparently - a translation or commutation "organic" process between s logic processing and conduct chrono-logical
, sometimes tends to assimilate a vast "teleology of history" that one might wonder if she is not busy at times - to the limit and without his knowledge - by the breath of a strictly Hegelian Spirit, breathing rhythms of a wide dialectic that does not say not his name. And it potentially creates "sequencing" arbitrary, sometimes poor or naive empirically, alas, allowing a certain dogmatism-clenching in the hands of some "cinephile", which intends to use this taxonomy, not as a method (which opens), but as a "Césame" (closing).
Anyway, the "page" does Altman closes certainly not the way Deleuze seems close, not more than Lumet in another register (as also in Lumet This is only a delimited portion of its cinema who incurs reproach justified-a "reformism warm "trying to save what could be the" American dream "Lumet is also a more radical, more offensive, is also a tragic Lumet, etc.).
short, this development [p. 280-284 in "crisis action image," tome1, The Movement-Image
] seems too systematizing, too ideal, even if some critical points are accurate. But hey, too, book dates from 1983, and the filmmakers involved, just a few, have created works from, some great, others not too early, but each for the best, has deepened his language ...
