Film Chronicle: by Alan Lovell

film chronicle
by Alan Lovell
This is the first of a regular series of columns in engage yourself in this way, the picture remains
NLR on the cinema. Alan Lovell writes: I am obstinately outside you, not something you can
not aiming at a comprehensive coverage of what come to easy terms with. After the picture the
is happening in the cinema. I intend to write only people and the situation remain with you. Pain
about films or developments in the cinema which and unhappiness are not things you can get rid
are important and which interest me. I will try to of by a thirty minutes emotional bath in a
write about films which have a fair chance of being cinema.
seen throughout Britain, or films which are so The stylisation has other important effects.
important that I think people ought to know about Because of it you do not feel that the picture is
them, even if they never get a chance to see them. about one particular situation but that it is
representative of a common situation. The
You wont see The Visit at your local cinema. rhythm of the picture makes you feel that the
Its subject is uncommercial, it only runs for half situation has a long history and will have a long
an hour, and its slow. Its also one of the most future. It is not just one isolated moment in time.
remarkable pictures ever made in Britain. Because sound is used so sparingly, it has a very
The Visit is about an unmarried daughter who powerful effect when it is used. The first time it
looks after her elderly parents. One day the is used is when the boy and his fiancee are walking
unvarying pattern of their lives is disturbed by along the street to the old peoples house. The
a visit from a young nephew and his fiancee. This sudden burst of music makes the whole scene
visit forces the daughter to remember all the extraordinarily lyrical.
opportunities in life she has missed. I think its important to notice that the stylisa-
Jack Gold, who wrote and directed the picture, tion of The Visit is not imposed from outside.
didnt choose the easy way to do it. Apart from It springs naturally from its subject matter. The
avoiding the conventional dangers (the parents rhythm of the picture reflects the rhythm of the
are shown to be rather unpleasant, there is no characters lives, the formality and awkwardness
emotional kick to the ending), he has treated of the groupings and camera set-ups match the
the subject in a very original manner. The film is formality and awkwardness of working class
highly stylised. The rhythm is much slower than homes.
normal, shots are held for a very long time, Made under the best possible conditions, The
camera angles seem awkward, and compositions Visit would be an achievement. In fact it was made
are formal. Sound is used in a very sparing and under terrible conditions. It was made on a very
calculated way. small budget (from the British Film Institutes
The main effect of this method is to distance experimental fund), its making was spread over
the audience from the film. It would be very easy, eighteen months, and all the people who worked
with a subject like this, to let the audience come on it did so in their spare time only!
away feeling that they had resolved the situation The film has receive very little critical attention
by identifying with the characters and showing and so far hasnt been shown very much. Left
sympathy for them. You cant do that with The Clubs have a chance to do something about this.
Visit. The slowness of the film means that after A 16 mm. film show isnt hard to organise and the
you have made the first automatic identification film can be hired at a very reasonable price from
with the people and the situation you see on the Contemporary Films (Soho Square, London,
screen, you have time to stop and think about W.1.)
your experience. Because you are able to dis- * * *
47
Most films are so lousy that there is a danger of very well. The hero is standing inside the entrance
going overboard about any film which is just of a station. Over his shoulder we see a car passing
serious. Robert Bressons films are always serious across the entrance. We do not hear the noise of
and there is a danger, because of this, of taking the car, and it seems, because of this, a ghostly,
them all for masterpieces. At least one of them, unreal thing. In the one simple image the unreality
A Man Escapes, is. His latest film, Pickpocket, and meaninglessness of the world to the hero is
seems to me one of his less successful films. stated exactly.
All Bressons films are studies of human Having created this world very powerfully,
isolation. Pickpocket is no exception. Its centre Bresson seems unable to do anything more.
is a boy in his twenties who tries to escape from Various themes are stated in the picture but none
his isolation by becoming a pickpocket. The film are developed. There is a Crime and Punishment
follows his various adventures until he find a way theme of the relationship between the criminal and
out of his situation in a relation with a girl he has the police. There are hints of some kind of mystic
come to love. brotherhood between the thieves. Much of
Bresson succeeds completely in creating the Pickpocket seems to be a sketch for a much
boys sense of isolation. He does this mainly by longer and more ambitious film.
the respect he has for the language of the cinema. The most disfiguring element is, however, the
Most films consist of a kind of fuzz of sound undercurrent of sexual feeling in the film. The
and vision, which by its vagueness encourages long sequences of pockets being picked feel more
people to make vague responses to the film. The like rape than theft. This feeling is never under
effects in Bressons films are always carefully the artists control. It gives emphasis to scenes
calculated. Bresson never puts an image on the which dont need it and is absent where it is
screen unless it has an important part to play in needed; the relationship between the boy and the
the film. No detail inside a particular image is girl is so sexless as to be unpleasant.
there accidentally. There is one image in Pickpocket is, I am sure, a crisis for Bresson.
Pickpocket which illustrates Bressons method He is now perfectly able to create the anguish of
Pickpocket Jazz On A Summers Day The Visit

spiritual isolation. He seems quite unable to but it is interesting on the level of the advertise-
find a way of coming to terms with that isolation. ments in the American glossy magazines. Its
The only film where he was able to was A Man no surprise to find that Bert Stern was one of the
Escapes and there he was able to put his hero in a leading commercial advertising photographers
very formalised situation, the life of a prison before he made this film. The press hand-out
camp. Whenever he moves into a more general quite rightly says that the film,
situation (Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket) Incorporates many of the startling and breath-
he is lost. taking colour effects that characterise Sterns much
* * * discussed photographs for Smirnoff s Vodka,
The judgments that director Bert Stern makes DeBeers Diamonds and other blue-chip advertisers.
in his film of the Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz on a In the end, Jazz on a Summers Day, is no more
Summers Day, are simple enough. They are, than the old Time-Life projection of America,
roughly, that jazz is happy music, festivals are the country of no problems, no unhappiness, no
gay occasions, and Newports a nice place. Apart guts, no intelligence. It only uses jazz as a fairly
from this, he makes almost no judgments of any effective disguise of this.
kind. Finally, a plug for a new film magazine,
Musically, performers of no interest at all, Definition. Im on the editorial board, so I think
like Chuck Berry and Big Maybelle, are treated its good and I hope youll buy it. The second
in exactly the same way as talented artists like number contains articles on Andrezej Munk and
Theolonius Monk and Gerry Mulligan. Good the Polish cinema, the British film set-up, and
artists who played badly at the festival (Louis Sight and Sound. It costs 2s. 6d. and can be
Armstrong) are presented exactly as the good obtained from 84 Tyrwhitt Road, London, S.E.4.
artists who played well (Sonny Stitt). An intensely
serious artist like Monk has his music illustrated
by yachts making pretty patterns across the sea.
An intensely pretentious artist like Chico
Hamilton has his music presented on his own
estimate of it. There is no enterprise in the selec-
tion of artists. Occasionally, you see somebody
in a background group playing beautifully (Buck
Clayton) but you get the odd flash of them and
thats all. If the festival authorities didnt think
them good enough to feature, neither does Bert
Stern.
Sterns human judgments are even worse.
There is a sequence of Jack Teagarden and Louis
Armstrong clowning together. This is shown as if
it were very funny and entertaining. In fact both
Armstrong and Teagarden look tired, old and ill.
And Armstrongs clowning is just depressing.
It isnt that he uncle toms but that the act is so
automatic and lifeless. Look behind Louiss eyes
and hes dead.
Audience shots are included on the same basis
as the press takes pictures of Aldermaston
marcherslook for the wierdies.
The real excitement of the film is all accidental.
The camera rests on Mahalia Jackson as she
sings beautifully and movingly (even this is
spoiled by a final long shot in real soap opera
style of Mahalia Jackson singing The Lords
Prayer). Anita ODay is caught at her most
entertaining. Jimmy Guiffre hints at the sheer
physical effort of playing jazz as he breathes
deeply out at the end of a number.
Bert Sterns main interest in the film seems to
have been the colour effects. Certainly colour is
used in a more enterprising way than usual,
49

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film chronicle

Pickpocket Jazz On A Summers Day The Visit

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