The cadence of Spacek’s voice-over feeds into Malick’s devaluing of language. Like the curlers Holly wears, her tone is a product of romance magazines. Her line, “Each lived for the precious hours that he or she could be with the other,” is followed by Holly saying on-screen, “My stomach’s growling.” Her name itself suggests Hollywood. If Badlands is structured by two narrators—the heroine’s voice and the camera—they occasionally come into conflict. In films like Days of Heaven and Tree of Life, Malick would develop the use of contrapuntal voice-over; rather than being redundant with the images, it invites a meditation on them.
When movies present circular narration through voice-over or flashbacks, they lead us to question who we can trust: the narrator? unreliable; the director? manipulative. Can we believe our perceptions? No, they are too limited, especially when movies begin with the voice of someone who is dead. Misdirection is a strategy that prevents us from taking anything for granted, especially the manipulations of gifted filmmakers.
Whether exploring visual rhymes, voyeurism, space, or subjectivity, opening sequences guide us into the dynamic and meaningful unfolding of an on-screen narrative. As director Tom Tykwer acknowledged during a master class at the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival, a first scene “creates enormous intention, and attention for the audience.”4 We can add a third term: between the filmmakers’ intent and the viewers’ reception is the tension of anticipation. The audience has to be invested in what happens next. However, clips and photos can provide only a glimmer of that experience; we must watch the films in their entirety to appreciate how they create internal coherence and offer continuing resonance.
Let us end where we began. The definition of overture includes, “A proposal, something offered to consideration”—which is my hope for the reader of this book.5 Overture is a suggestive word to describe what draws me to the films discussed here. First, it is a musical term, referring to the prelude of a performance: an overture contains fragments from the compositions that will be heard in the entire work. Second, it comes from ouverture in French, meaning “opening,” rooted in the Latin word apertura. In turn, this leads to aperture, the diameter of the exposed part of a lens, referring to the apparatus that must be opened for light to enter the camera. Finally, an overture is philosophical: when we open a book, or when a film opens for us, it ideally engenders openness in us toward characters in situations far from our own. In the best of cases, this openness creates lucidity.
Notes
1. The Crafted Frame
1. Victor Brombert, “Opening Signals in Narrative,” New Literary History 11 (1979–80): 501.
2. Ibid., 494.
3. Eleanor Bergstein, “Commentaries,” Dirty Dancing, directed by Emile Ardolino (New York: Lionsgate, 2009), DVD.
4. Jan-Christopher Horak, Saul Bass: Anatomy of Film Design (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2014). See also Pat Kirkham, Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design (London: Laurence King, 2011); and Andreas A. Timmer’s doctoral dissertation, “Making the Ordinary Extraordinary: The Film-Related Work of Saul Bass” (Columbia University, 1999).
A related article in Slant Magazine discusses the importance of The Pink Panther (1963):
Cue Henry Mancini’s immortal “Pink Panther Theme” (dead ant, dead ant.) Enter the Pink Panther, not the titular diamond with a small flaw shaped like an animal that the movie is actually about, but Friz Freleng’s irrepressible creation, an animated panther that would frame the rest of the series and go on to have a cartoon career of his own, one that kept Freleng going after his years at Warner Brothers. This is the one that put cartoon credit sequences on the map. It’s my tribute to all those cartoon titles that were in vogue in the 60’s like Bell, Book, and Candle and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, as well as retro-60’s titles like the ones for Andrew Bergman’s Honeymoon in Vegas. The Pink Panther rearranges names from anagrams. He purrs up against Capucine’s name. He ogles Claudia Cardinale’s name. He wears a monocle and smokes a cigarette from a holder. He gives himself credit where credit isn’t due. He mocks and cajoles various technicians. He gets chased around by Inspector Clouseau (look up bumbling in the dictionary) and leaves pink paw prints everywhere. He entertains us while the names go flashing by. And all the while, Mancini’s music keeps playing.
(Slant Magazine, “5 for the Day: Title Sequences,” November 17, 2006, http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/5-for-the-day-title-sequences)
5. Susana Sevilla Aho, “Things Are Not What They Seem,” video essay, 6:19, filmed fall 2013, uploaded January 26, 2015, https://vimeo.com/117864748. She made the video for the University of Connecticut’s Digital Media and Design class “Broadcast Graphics and Title Sequences,” taught by motion graphics designer Samantha Olschan.
6. Anthony Minghella and Tom Tykwer offered fascinating insights into adaptation in general, and opening sequences in particular, during a 2003 master class at the Berlin International Film Festival. Their remarks focused on The English Patient and Heaven, Tykwer’s terrific drama of 2002 based on a screenplay by Krzysztof Kieślowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. “Interview to Tom Tykwer and Anthony Minghella,” YouTube video, 1:25:09, Script Factory Masterclasses, Berlinale Talent Campus, Berlin International Film Festival, 2003, posted by “FanFresFilms,” October 6, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GwmJyl_ZvE.
7. E. L. Doctorow, Writers on Writing: Collected Essays from “The New York Times,” introduction by John Darnton (New York: Times Books, 2001).
2. The Opening Translated from Literature
1. Millicent Marcus, Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), x–xi.
2. All Bernardo Bertolucci quotations in this discussion are from the Walter Reade Theater event and come from my personal notes.
3. Part of my analysis of The Tin Drum overlaps with my essay “Reassessing The Tin Drum,” liner notes, The Tin Drum, directed by Volker Schlöndorff (New York: Kino Lorber, 1999), DVD.
4. Carrière invoked Bruegel, the Flemish painter of peasantry, in the DVD commentary of the film. Jean-Claude Carrière, “Commentaries,” The Tin Drum, directed by Volker Schlöndorff (1979; New York: Criterion, 2004), DVD.
5. These quotations are from my personal notes.
6. John Hughes, “The Tin Drum: Volker Schlöndorff’s ‘Dream of Childhood,’ ” Film Quarterly 34, no. 3 (Spring 1981): 5.
7. Jack Kroll, “Bang the Drum Loudly,” Newsweek, April 21, 1980.
8. Part of my analysis of The Unbearable Lightness of Being appeared in my book Philip Kaufman (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2012).
9. Quotations from the NYU event, of which there are several in this chapter, come from my personal notes.
10. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, trans. Michael Henry Heim (New York: Harper Perennial, 1999), 3.
11. Victor Brombert, “Opening Signals in Narrative,” New Literary History 11 (1979–80): 498.
3. Narrative Within the Frame
1. See André Bazin, What Is Cinema?, translated by Hugh Gray (Oakland: University of California Press, 2004). And for an excellent study of his work and influence, read Dudley Andrew’s André Bazin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
2. Murch wrote, “Much of my own work in its formative years was stylistically indebted to Welles, and specifically to ‘Touch of Evil’: the use of the illicitly tape-recorded conversation in ‘The Conversation’ (written and directed by Francis Coppola in 1974) is similar in many ways to the final reel of ‘Touch of Evil’; and the use of source music to score ‘American Graffiti’ (written and directed by George Lucas in 1973) is similar to Welles’s copious use of source music in ‘Touch of Evil’ (even, as I learned from his memo, down to the specific methods used in recor
ding).” Walter Murch, “Restoring the Touch of Genius to a Classic,” New York Times, September 13, 1998.
3. Julie Salamon, review of The Player, Wall Street Journal, December 15, 1992.
4. “Werner Herzog Interviewed by Lawrence O’Toole,” by Lawrence O’Toole, Film Comment, November/December 1979, 48.
5. Paraphrased from my personal notes.
6. Roger Ebert, “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” Rogerebert.com, April 4, 1999, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-aguirre-the-wrath-of-god-1972
7. Columbia University student Alies Sluiter’s unpublished paper of May 2016 offers a sensitive comparison of The Piano to The Mission (1986), whose protagonists both
use music to connect with people they meet in the new, colonised lands in which they find themselves. Notably, the main musical theme of both films is introduced as diegetic score via the protagonist playing an instrument. In The Mission, Father Gabriel (Jeremy Irons) sits on a rock and plays his oboe, to entice the indigenous Guarani to come out from the forest and meet him. In The Piano, Ada (Holly Hunter) pokes her hand through a hole in the shipping crate and plays the theme with one hand while she comforts her sleeping daughter Flora (Anna Paquin), with the other. Both films utilize the main character’s performance of musical instruments to drive the action forward, although they approach it in different ways.
She highlights how Ennio Morricone’s score for The Mission “explores two cultures colliding, through his use of traditional baroque composition techniques and instrumentation … as well as traditional South American drums and flutes.” Alies Sluiter, “How Does Music Function as a Narrative Device in Roland Joffe’s The Mision and Jane Campion’s The Piano?” (paper prepared for “Analysis of Film Language,” taught by the author, Columbia University, May 2016).
8. Christina Chrisostomo, “The Musical Construction of Identity in The Piano and The Mission” (paper prepared for “Analysis of Film Language,” taught by the author, Columbia University, May 2016).
9. This true story was also the subject of Ben Ross’s short 3 Believers in 1990, starring Elżbieta Czyżewska and Olek Krupa.
10. Annette Insdorf, “Oscar Nominee In Darkness Illuminates History and Heroism,” Huffington Post, February 9, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/annette-insdorf/in-darkness-review_b_1258078.html.
11. Agnieszka Holland, interview with the author, Telluride Film Watch, September 2011. Composer Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz recalled:
After my first discussions with Agnieszka I realized that “In Darkness” is going to be the greatest challenge in my career as a composer of music for film. The theme and the approach to it made us all pose fundamental questions about the nature of music itself, the role of musical narrative in such a story, and the way it’s supposed to correspond with the reality depicted in the picture. It was clear from the start that we will have to forget about the conventional approach to film scoring, where the music simply supports the emotional narrative, builds tension or suspense and gives a boost to the action. I remember, that after having seen the first edit of the film, Agnieszka and I were very close to the decision not to use any score at all. We were dealing with a material so delicate and yet so intense, that we had to look for a different, deeper level, on which music could constitute its own narrative. The film has a subtle metaphysical tension. It’s a metaphysics without the presence of God, hidden from His eyes. The two worlds in which the film is happening, interact with each other, and the role of the music should be to build the bridges between them, transport emotions and impulses between the underworld and the reality above ground.
(Antoni Komasa-Łazarkiewicz, press kit for In Darkness, directed by Agnieszka Holland [Sony Pictures Classics, 2011])
4. Narrative Between the Frames
1. “French Resistance: Costa Gavras,” interview by Maya Jaggi, Guardian, April 3, 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/apr/04/costa-gavras.
2. Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima, mon amour, screenplay, trans. Richard Seaver (New York: Grove, 1994).
3. Pablo Picasso, “An Interview,” Artists on Art from the XIV to the XX Century, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves (New York: Pantheon, 1945), 417.
4. Robert Hughes, ed., Film: Book 2. Films of Peace and War (New York: Grove, 1962), 51.
5. Midnight Cowboy also utilized this kind of dislocating montage in 1969; screenwriter Waldo Salt suggested that these were not flashbacks, but “flashpresents.” Syd Field, “The Use of Flashbacks in Movies,” Writers Store, n.d., https://www.writersstore.com/the-use-of-flashbacks/.
6. Part of my analysis of Schindler’s List appeared in my book Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), copyright © 2003 Annette Insdorf. Reprinted with permission.
7. Part of my analysis of Three Colors: Red appeared in my book Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2013).
8. “Coloring the Message,” In Camera (Autumn 1994): 1.
9. Shine was shot by Geoffrey Simpson, who was also the cinematographer of Vincent Ward’s visually sumptuous The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey (1988).
10. Scott Hicks, press kit for Shine, directed by Scott Hicks (New York: Fine Line Features, 1996).
11. Bruce Newman, “Shine: The Movie,” Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1996, http://articles.latimes.com/1996-11-17/entertainment/ca-65409_1_david-helfgott.
5. Singular Point of View
1. See Robert Warshow, The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre, and Other Aspects of Popular Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002); and Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films, 25th anniversary edition (1976; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
2. The Bertolucci paraphrase is from my notes. Jan Epstein’s description of the 1990 Cannes symposium is online in Urbancinefile: “At the Cannes Film Festival this year, a two hour symposium was held, attended by some of cinema’s best known filmmakers and critics: Bernardo Bertolucci, Roman Polanski, Andrzej Wajda, Jane Campion, John Boorman, Dennis Hopper, Theo Angelopoulos, Derek Malcolm, and Annette Insdorf, amongst others. The forum was intended as a colloquium between filmmakers and critics—often seen as adversaries.” Jan Epstein, “46th Melbourne Film Festival,” Urbancinefile.com, n.d., http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=338&s=features.
3. Mike Nichols, “Commentaries,” The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols (New York: Criterion, 1999), DVD.
4. Joseph Gelmis, The Film Director as Superstar (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 277.
5. James Sanders, Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies (New York: Knopf, 2001), 397. Pauline Kael famously praised Taxi Driver for its ending, in which Travis Bickle, a murderer, is hailed as a hero because the city is sicker than he is.
6. “Walter Murch in Conversation with Joy Katz,” by Joy Katz, Parnassus: Poetry in Review. The Movie Issue 22 (1997): 124–153.
7. John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now Redux (New York: Talk Miramax/Hyperion, 2001), vi–vii.
8. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (New York: Signet Classics, 1950), 65.
9. D. W. Griffith famously used the same music with the thunderous arrival of the Ku Klux Klan in Birth of a Nation (1915).
10. Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Avon, 1978), 3.
11. Rita Kempley, “Come and See,” Washington Post, September 25, 1987.
12. Simon Kessler, discussion in “Analysis of Film Language,” taught by the author, Columbia University, April 1, 2016.
13. Patrick Ford, discussion in “Analysis of Film Language,” taught by the author, Columbia University, April 1, 2016.
14. Kurt Vonnegut, Sla
ughterhouse-Five (New York: Random House, 2015), 93–95.
15. Roger Ebert, “Come and See,” Rogerebert.com, June 16, 2010, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-come-and-see-1985.
16. Rachel Cooke, “Samuel Moaz: My Life at War and My Hopes for Peace,” Guardian, May 1, 2010, http://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/02/israel-lebanon-samuel-maoz-tanks. Bracketed material in this quotation is from the source.
17. J. Hoberman, “An Israeli Tank Rolls North, Fumbling to War, in Lebanon,” Village Voice, August 4, 2010, http://www.villagevoice.com/film/an-israeli-tank-rolls-north-fumbling-to-war-in-lebanon-6394221.
6. The Collective Protagonist
1. Annette Insdorf, “Team Players,” Washington Post, January 14, 1996, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/style/1996/01/14/team-players/db317334-b644-40bf-8c4e-89b2adafc966/?utm_term=.6e48dfc5a285.
2. A. O. Scott, “An Israeli Tale of Mistrust, Without the Finger-Pointing,” New York Times, February 3, 2010.
3. Insdorf, “Team Players.”
4. Ettore Scola, interview with the author, March 21, 1984, personal notes from audio tape.
5. Ibid.
6. Part of the analysis of Day for Night appeared in my book François Truffaut, revised and updated edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), copyright © 1994 Annette Insdorf. Reprinted with permission.
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