Sam Rasnake's Blog: words of the 10,000 things

I’m not certain why I connect with film as a medium. Ideas are realized more directly in film than in writing or music. For example, in 1923 Abel Gance – a French director, noted for his revolutionary approach to film – framing, quick cuts, simultaneous angles – directed La Roue (The Wheel). In the film, a strange love story with multiple layers, a young violin maker, after a fight, falls to his death from a mountain, but before he falls, Gance fills the screen with quick cuts – dozens of visuals in the seconds before he falls.



The audience is physically able to see the man’s final thoughts in a way that is much closer to real time. This wouldn’t be possible in such a direct manner in literature, music, painting or photography. Those mediums could show a person’s final thoughts – but never approaching real time. The pace or presence of the thoughts in the other art forms would be slow or still – producing a more deliberate or measured view. More simmer than boil.

Film – in the hands of a great filmmaker like Gance – can move us in a very direct, yet layered way. Emotions, thoughts, visuals, sound, epiphany, symbols... all working in unison to tell a story. Maybe another way to consider this is that film doesn’t tell a story as much as it reveals a story – layer by layer. Gance’s full arsenal of visuals and storytelling are most clearly realized in his masterpiece – Napoleon (1927).

Orson Welles - misunderstood, displaced ... unable to keep fractures from his art - was in many ways his own worst enemy. Maybe that's the defining mark of his genius. A fugitive from the arts.

Working on Othello - all over Europe - he would leave the actors and crew in a hotel, fly to some spot in the world, to act in someone else's film for money he could use to finish his project. He spent two years in many locations - mostly Spain - filming Chimes at Midnight. The critics initially hated it, but the film as weathered time, and now is regarded as a major work – maybe his finest. I've always wondered what Chimes could have been if Welles had had full backing from a studio - a system he hated and shunned, by the way. The film would have had a great look, but the story, most certainly, would have lacked passion.

Every Welles’ film contains the man - his loss, his greatness, his fire, his unwillingness to find an end, to find completion. His being rejected by the film world is the foundation of his art's greatness.

My favorite of his films? Can’t pick one: Chimes, Touch of Evil, F for Fake, Othello, The Lady from Shanghai, Citizen Kane...

[Black Narcissus is a source for my poem "Michael Powell's Women," from Cinéma Vérité.

Watching Black Narcissus (1947), a beautiful film by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, I realize the difficult struggles between belief, commitment, and the unchangeable, deepest self. There are those places in us that demand confrontation.

The basic premise of the story is a relatively young nun is given charge of establishing a small order in a remote area of the Himalayas. All previous efforts have been unsuccessful. The constancy of the wind – a magnificent trope in this film – although a reminder of transformation – makes the viewer fully aware of the necessity for acceptance – an absolute acceptance of the self. This is illustrated in the landscape, most notably, in the old palace that resists change. The psychosexual and emotional dynamics of the former palace shadow everything and refuse the nuns’ more “noble” efforts of religious practice, medicine, and learning.

The film is quite erotic and mysterious on a very personal level – while never losing sight of its larger though more subdued political agenda in terms of culture clash. A successful work in every respect – especially the superb cinematography by Jack Cardiff. Strong performances from Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, and David Farrar.

Three video readings from from Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press / https://www.createspace.com/4377102 )

"Of Koyaanisqatsi"
http://youtu.be/21oJ_K-OESE

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"Poem to Read Aloud While Positioning a Framed Sketch of Frankenstein's Monster on a Table"
http://youtu.be/GrBm91nmX6s

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"At the Grave of Yasujiro Ozu"
http://youtu.be/oD_Gbuiw94A

Most of the twenty films on this list - all but Persona, Zerkalo, L’Avventura, Dekalog, and 2001 - became the focus of works included in Cinéma Vérité. I began listing the list films I did write about, but quickly realized the list was too long. If it's any consolation to the few that didn't enter the book, I did write pieces that connected with three films by Bergman, one by Tarkovsky, two by Antonioni, four by Kieślowski, and one by Kubrick.

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The list - more or less in order:

Persona / Ingmar Bergman, dir. (1966)

Vertigo / Alfred Hitchcock, dir. (1958)

Zerkalo / Andrei Tarkovsky, dir. (1975)

L’Avventura / Michelangelo Antonioni, dir. (1960)

Rashomon / Akira Kurosawa, dir. (1950)

Dekalog / Krzysztof Kieślowski, dir. (1989)

Fa yeung nin wa / Wong Kar-Wai, dir. (2000)

2001: A Space Odyssey / Stanley Kubrick, dir. (1968)

Ordet / Carl Theodor Dreyer, dir. (1955)

Au hasard Balthazar / Robert Bresson, dir. (1966)

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Le Mépris / Jean-Luc Godard, dir. (1963)

L’année dernière à Marienbad / Alain Resnais, dir. (1961)

La double vie de Véronique / Krzysztof Kieślowski, dir. (1991)

Banshun / Yasujiro Ozu, dir. (1949)

Ma nuit chez Maud / Eric Rohmer, dir. (1969)

Paris, Texas / Wim Wenders, dir. (1984)

Black Narcissus / Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, dir./writ. (1947)

Chimes at Midnight / Orson Welles, dir. (1965)

La Belle Noiseuse / Jacques Rivette, dir. (1991)

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes / Werner Herzog, dir. (1972)

I became fascinated with foreign films as a teen after reading an article about horror in the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland - and the author's comments in particular about Vampyr, a 1932 film by Carl Theodor Dryeyer. I wasn't able to see the film until college - but one weekend, a couple of years after reading the article, a local television station held a special viewing of silent films ... Metropolis (Fritz Lang / 1927) and Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) ... I don’t remember the others. I'd already seen Metropolis, but had never seen Passion. I was astounded at the story and the performances in Dreyer's film - especially Renée Falconetti in the lead. From that moment, I made a point to watch as many foreign films - television and theater - as possible. When I finally did see Vampyr – in a college film class – I wasn’t disappointed.

In so many ways, the pieces in Cinéma Vérité, published by A-Minor Press (September 2013), represent my writing at its most direct. The range of forms in the book, I hope, show my eclectic nature. One way to approach the collection is to consider it a biography of a journey in/through film - and I use the term biography because the self of the writing is real and not real.

This new collection is part 3 of a planned six-part series, Tales of Brave Ulysses - poetry connecting with the creative arts - specifically, literature, cinema, art, and music.

So far -
Religions of the Blood (Pudding House Press) [an introduction]
Inside a Broken Clock (Finishing Line Press) [literature / available from FLP or Amazon]
Cinéma Vérité (A-Minor Press) [film / available from AMP, Amazon, Barnes and Noble]

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In the works -

World within the World [art]
The Gilded Palace of Sin [music]
The Divination of Sticks [an afterword]