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	In The Theaters I just saw it and boy does it...	309

Jonathan Rosenbaum in San Francisco!
	Topic by: dpowers Posted: December 22, 2002 - 12:46 PM PST Last Reply: September 12, 2003 - 1:57 PM PDT

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author	topic: Jonathan Rosenbaum in San Francisco!
dpowers	post #1  on December 22, 2002 - 12:46 PM PST   i got a mailer from the yerba buena center for the arts yesterday. jonathan rosenbaum is hosting three screenings in san francisco, jan 8, 10, 11. the anchoring feature films are great -- and he nominated two of the shorts (the house is black; when it rains) for the sight and sound all-time best movies list. TICKET INFO: call 415 978.2787, 11am-6pm daily (no service charges) or online www.yerbabuenaarts.org (service charges) EVENT INFO, directly in their words: YBCA presents WATTIS ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE JONATHAN ROSENBAUM IN PERSON Jan 8, 10 & 11, 7:30 pm $6 regular, $3 seniors & students, $3 Center Members One of the most gifted and thoughtful American film critics, Rosenbaum writes for the Chicago Reader, and is also the author of Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See; Midnight Movies (with J. Hoberman); and This Is Orson Welles (as editor), among others. Rosenbaum will introduce the films and will lecture immediately following each screening. Wed, Jan 8 THE WIND WILL CARRY US by Abbas Kiarostami (1999, 113 mins, 35mm) Four men arrive from Teheran at a village in Iranian Kurdistan, and are soon met by Farzad, a small boy who acts as their guide in a secret mission. Shown with The House Is Black by Forough Farrokhzad (1962, 23 mins, video), a profound look at a leper colony by one of Iran's greatest poets. Fri, Jan 10 A GREAT DAY IN HARLEM by Jean Bach (1994, 60 mins, 35mm) This Academy Award-nominated documentary include interviews with jazz greats Dizzy Gollespie, Sonny Rollins and Art Blakey, among others, and includes home movies and rare performance footage. Shown with three jazz-themed shorts: Black & Tan [with Duke Ellington /david] by Dudley Murphy (1929, 21 mins, 16mm); Jammin' the Blues by Gjon Mili (1950, 10 mins, 16mm); and When It Rains by Charles Burnett <1995, 12 mins, 16mm). Sat, Jan 11 TOUCH OF EVIL by Orson Welles (1958, 111 mins, 35mm) An upright Mexican narcotics investigator clashes with a crooked police chief in this Welles noir masterpiece and box office flop. [gotta assume this is the version that rosenbaum helped "remix" /david]
dpowers	post #2  on December 22, 2002 - 12:55 PM PST   i'm going all three nights. i'm so thrilled! write me if you want to meet beforehand for coffee or puddle jumping before or after. maybe a little GC presence could be arranged?
Eoliano	post #3  on December 23, 2002 - 7:53 AM PST   In what capacity was Rosenbaum a consultant on Touch of Evil? Perhaps the most significant and conspicuously obvious change to the present cut is the removal of the titles over the opening sequence. Welles in a number of interviews vehemently derided Universal for this, and other changes and cuts.
dpowers	post #4  on December 23, 2002 - 10:23 AM PST   i haven't seen a document that describes exactly what role rosenbaum played. but according to at least one source, it was rosenbaum's 1992 publication of welles's 58 pages of touch of evil notes that kicked off the re-editing project. those notes i think were discussed in this is orson welles, which JR edited. if JR hasn't written gobs about the project, somewhere, i'd be really surprised, i just haven't seen them. since touch of evil is being shown all by its lonesome on sat/10, i'm sure there will be plenty of time to ask him what's what by whom in the new version (and by its running time this is definitely the new version).
dpowers	post #5  on December 23, 2002 - 10:25 AM PST   >touch of evil is being shown all by its lonesome on sat/10< well saturday's right, but the date is jan 11.
Eoliano	post #6  on December 23, 2002 - 11:56 AM PST   We'll expect a full report!
dpowers	post #7  on December 23, 2002 - 12:14 PM PST   oh dear. okay. i was just hoping to bask....
dwhudson	post #8  on December 23, 2002 - 12:31 PM PST   > oh dear. okay. i was just hoping to bask.... Understandable. But some of us poor sods won't be able to be there and, full or not, a report on maybe just some of the highlights...? That'd be great.
Eoliano	post #9  on December 23, 2002 - 2:55 PM PST   > > oh dear. okay. i was just hoping to bask.... Bask indeed! Tis the season!
dpowers	post #10  on December 30, 2002 - 1:23 PM PST   okay okay i'll take notes. got any questions you want me to make sure to ask?
dpowers	post #11  on January 9, 2003 - 2:15 AM PST   what follows are fast notes from the january 8, 2003 screenings of the wind will carry us and the house is black, introduced and discussed by rosenbaum, jonathan rosenbaum. in no way resembling what he actually said, these notes are hopefully close enough to follow. what a night to start with, though, his talk was a swamp of iranian places and names which i had no idea how to spell. i got lost a couple times because of this. ask me questions if something is unclear and i'll fake you an answer. HOST: good evening and welcome. this is the first of three events with jonathan rosenbaum. he's the film critic of the chicago reader and lots of other articles; many books, including movie wars; monographs for the british film institute on dead man and greed. one of the most gifted and thoughtful film critics in america. infectious profound love of film and he's a lot of fun to read. please help me welcome JR. JR: a few short points before the wind will carry us. one is tentative. this film was made in 1999, and concerns the death of a 100 year old woman. it can be taken as a millennium statement, though that's a western idea, its worth thinking about. the film is not scripted, actors not professionals. abbas kiarostami has worked only once with a professional, the director in through the olive trees. also, any time you see a close up in this movie, the director is interviewing the actor to get the responses seen in the film. that's how dialogue is generated, similar to godard movies. lines over the phone being fed through phone or mic. significant because film is an autocritique, a film about media people in relationship to ordinary people, poor people. in that point of view kiarostami is criticizing his own practice. most of his films are about poor people. he's a city person from a wealthy background usually makes films about remote people from poor areas. title comes from a poem read at a pivotal sequence, written by considered greatest poet in iranian history, forugh (pronounced fah-ROOK) farrokzad, who directed the house is black. she died in 1967. i consider the house is black, shot in 1962, to be the best iranian film ever. "the wind will carry us" is the title of the poem which is read in a pivotal scene in the movie. people have memorized significant amounts of forugh farrokhzad's poetry. she's very significant figure in iranian culture. first woman in poetry to write about woman's sexual desire. to know that she's famous and scandalous is important to know to understand [the scene in the cellar]. [movie plays. it's so gooood.] JR: some of you may already know this but kiarostami had been to america seven times before, when trying for his eighth time last year to attend the new york film festival, his application was rejected because the state department required 3 months time to determine that he wasn't a terrorist. ironic - worse than ironic - that this kind of thing has been happening - because cinema from iran, one of the most demonized countries in the world, has been making in some ways the most ethical films. both of these films bear this out. the wind will carry us is a comedy, a satire, but also an ethical film about going into this remote kurdish village, about the addiction to tehcnology, about how the main character is aggressive, pushing people around. he uses the poem agaist the woman in the basement. he changes somewhat, eventually, but he's still, at the end, taking pictures of these women that don't want pictures taken, but he doesn't feel about them as he does at the beginning of the film, detached. one of the reasons i drew attention to the acting and the generation of dialogue (by interviews between kiarostami and the actors) at the beginning was that in one scene, when the main character is asking his guide in the town, "do you think i'm bad, do you think i'm good," the boy shows real embarrassment - because on the set, kiarostami is the one talking, asking those ethical questions, and the boy was embarrassed to admit that he really sort of hated kiarostami. two documantaries are available on the french DVD. you see him shooting that sequence. it's very revealing. you see how many things that feel accidental are shaped and planned carefully, such as when the apple rolls away. it was by design and took a half a day to shoot it, the crew laid concrete to get it to fall right. part of the movie's art is to make things seem incidental, accidental. what makes this movie richer [than others kiarostami has made] is how he uses sounds in it. sounds are always used to hint, to include a much richer world than what the main character is experiencing. there's always more than we can grab a hold of, with animals and natural sounds at the end of a scene, all the things that he and we can't grasp, it's very telling, not just in body language or ways of thinking, but in indicating time: that he's doing nothing but they're constantly working, always busy, always calm. he's the one that's nervous, not having things to do. there's also comedy in how he is using the technology as a blunt instrument not just the camera or the cell phone, but in the cellar, talking to the girl. he doesn't have to get his milk from her, he can go anywhere, but he goes to her to show his power over her, to show his power over the person digging on the hill, even makes up the lie about being the digger's boss to get power. the movie is not a comment about iran at all, but a comment on the major thing that's going on the world, class, city versus countryside. one way that iranian culture comes into this, though, is that there are virtually no interiors in movies, it's illegal to show women without the chaduks (sp?) [which they only wear outdoors and showing women wearing them indoors would look dumb]. this is why there's been a development toward shooting almost totally outside, but kiarostami has used this restriction to shape what he's doing artistically, that's why the central sequence in this movie so affected [oops lost it here, but i remember it's about shooting the cellar in the dark to hide the girl's face]. the movie is [haunted] by death, the old woman, the dark cellar that makes us think of the tunnel, the hole that the fiance is digging in the cemetary, like the poem that's recited, which is about death a little, it's all being twisted around [oops lost it again] kiarostami reminds me most of jacques tati, not just in talking about modernity or using long shots, but that all the times we see the characters walking through the village, it's like walking through a piece of sculpture, like tati's odd house in mon oncle. i'm not trying to imply that there's influence, but that there is a similar sensibility, and that this is another thing that makes these movies very ethical, which is, much is left to the spectator, to the imagination, half or more than half of the major characters we don't see, they speak but aren't shown. kiarostami feels that his audience is his collaborators, that what they think is as important as what he thinks and he takes it to an extreme in this movie, this movie is about what he doesn't tell or show us, much more than usual for him. the writings of forugh farrokhzad can't be found in this country. the next film, the house is black, i think it's the best iranian film, was produced by farrokhzad's lover. he was quite an extraodinary filmmaker himself. you'll hear two narrators in this film, the female voice is farrokhzad herself, the male is the producer. the film is about a leper colony. [movie plays. it's very good.] JR: on friday night i'll try to talk about our art forms, film and jazz, that go together well. when it comes to film an poetry, though, this is the only film in which poetry and film really come together. in other films the attempts have had lamentable results. i think it works here because "forugh," as the iranians like to call her, was a film editor and a poet before directing this movie, and i think it's because of the nature of the intricate and beautiful two kinds of poetry in the film [visual and spoken], extending what we noramlly mean by narrative, such as just reciting the days of the week with the man walking along the wall, it makes us think of time passing, not just days, but months, years. as when we have the long approach of the man with one leg toward the camera, or when in the long shot that interrupts the last scene, the closing of the door, [it upsets the narrative] similar to what poetry does. the boy in the class who's asked to name beautiul things, forugh adopted him, he still lives in germany. i'd count this film as the first iranian new wave film, there's a very ambiguous relationship between documentary and fiction, like the iranian new wave. the same kind of sense of interaction between educated middle class and the impoverished, i think there's a sense in the narration of her own wrongness in being there, in talking about them, but there were many interpretations of the movie, forugh was accused of using the lepers in the film, as political metaphors. it's still very controversial, 40 years later. the version here is not quite complete, there's a censor cut, but this version of the film is [not badly harmed by the cut]. QUESTION: what was cut out? JR: a few things, many small things, nothing that sticks out, maybe a scene of prayer that was considered improper but the differences i think are minor. i think one of the things that's very revealing about this as an ethical film is if you compare it to [tod browning's] freaks, there's a profound difference i think. these people (in the house is black) are seen as very ordinary and beautiful, there's no equivalent in the west of that. QUESTION: about kiarostami, i'm intrigued with the connection of [kiarostami's] abc africa with the wind will carry us, mabye as the [...] JR: i think the house is black is an influence on abc africa. there's a lengthy scene of total darkness in abc africa [like that in the wind will carry us]. [also there are similar themes in abc africa and the wind will carry us.] QUESTION: i find a fractal structure to kiarostami's films. when you're watching his films sometimes, you're not sure what world you're in. JR: i think that's characteristic of the iranian new wave in general. [the ambiguous mixing of narration and documentary.] QUESTION: but you can tell which scenes in the house is black are fake and which real. JR: not necessarily. QUESTION: the only iranian movies i've seen are these and [jafar panahi's] the circle. i'm impressed by what is left out of the films, the people that aren't shown. JR: i think it's important that the person who made the circle is a disciple of kiarostami. i've co-written a book about kiarostami. he could never have made the circle, it's too political for him, but the ellipsis [leaving story elements out of the frame] is more particular to him [than to other iranian new wave directors]. QUESTION: what's in between the early makhmalbaf and the house is black in the iranian new wave? JR: i have seen only a few films from the sixties. but it came out with the french new wave. bertolucci interviewed forugh for italian tv, chris marker wrote about the movie after he saw it. one of the major films, brick and mirror, i've seen, and another wonderful film [sorry didn't get the title and forgot to ask him later] about the way westerners see iran. it's hard to do research about iranian cinema. i've only been to iran once, but news travels by gossip, very inaccurate. [as we were working on the kiarostami book] we thought the wind will carry us hadn't opened in iran because of censorship, but it turned out it hadn't opened because no one thought it would make money. QUESTION: is there a scene missing from this version? JR: i cant swear that it's complete but i think because of how much work we have to do in our heads, we see it differently each time. QUESTION: but i've seen it a few times i remember a scene where one woman speaks longer... QUESTION: did chris marker see this before making la jetee? JR: when was la jetee shot? [no one is sure in the room] why, do you see a connection between them? QUESTION: yes. [and i'd love to tell you what she thought the connection was but i was still on mars, trying to remember when la jetee was made.] JR: the most prominent influence on the house is black was probably silent soviet film [he mentions basically everybody but eisenstein]. QUESTION: is there a famous iranian exile filmmaker? JR: several. [he mentions manhattan by numbers and a, b, c... manhattan, by amir naderi.] the title of abc africa comes from a, b, c... manhattan. QUESTION: your name appears in the credits. what role did you play around the movie? [i got to ask a question!] JR: i was involved in pushing it into the new york film festival, the print was available only if we could subtitle it in english. mehrnaz saeed-vafa and i helped polish the subtitles and many people helped with translation. several iranian academics in the united states. QUESTION: how did you come to be an advocate for iranian films in the united states? JR: through my friend mehrnaz, and because of the freedom that i have through the chicago reader. [missed this answer a little, but mehrnaz and JR are co-authors of the mentioned kiarostami book, abbas kiarostami, which comes out in march, published by university of illinois press.] QUESTION: tell me about the book on forugh you have in your hand. JR: this was done in 1997. it's out of print. but the wind will carry us poem [i learned later it's maybe a cycle of poems?] has been translated many times. but there is a web site of her stuff at forughfarrokhzad.com/ including english translations of her poems and recordings of her, reading. reads poem. [end of january 8 notes]
dpowers	post #12  on January 9, 2003 - 3:42 AM PST   > "the wind will carry us" is the title of the poem which is read in a pivotal scene in the movie. people have memorized significant amounts of forugh farrokhzad's poetry. she's very significant figure in iranian culture. < after reading through the notes, this is the only big mistake i can see. poetry is very important in iran. it's not that people have memorized forugh's poetry. they've memorized a lot of poetry in general, including hers. the wind will carry us is the first kiarostami movie i've seen that features regular references to poetry in conversation. it doesn't cripple the dialogue for the uninformed. usually it's one person starts a line, another finishes it, and the subtitles handle fit it in nicely. but i did notice that at one point, the main character, "the engineer," recites a line and is surprised that the other person has heard the poem. i think this is exploring their relationship as residents of iran but of different ethnic backgrounds (persian and kurd) but i'm not sure.
Eoliano	post #13  on January 9, 2003 - 6:57 AM PST   Well, you really piqued my interest, and I was hoping that a Kiarostami film might be playing at the PSIFF, which kicks off tonight, but no dice. At least there are three films from Iran on the program. So The Wind Will Carry Us goes on the queue.
dwhudson	post #14  on January 9, 2003 - 9:10 AM PST   Many, many thanks for that fantastic post, David. I learned more from that from a whole slew of reviews. Even so, I thought I'd post a link to a relatively recent piece Rosenbaum did on Kiarostami's shorts and how they informed his later features. Very much looking forward to that book of his -- the one on Kiarostami, that is. Looking forward to this other one he mentions, too, of course.
dpowers	post #15  on January 9, 2003 - 11:29 AM PST   great! glad you like it. i was worried i'd have to do more than fix typos and cut my mess into sentences and paragraphs. i'll probably post the other two after each night of screenings, friday and saturday. > Looking forward to this other one he mentions, too, of course. < this is why i like him. he's like the only film critic out there that would draw up a new list of his 1,000 favorite movies for an appendix. everybody else packages old capsules and calls it a best 100 book. god he's cranky. on the other hand, his audience will pay him for just such a list, where a collection of reviews is less necessary. since his american 100 is available on the web and probably gets visited frequently, pulling out the stops to cover the 100 years of cinema means the book will move.
dpowers	post #16  on January 9, 2003 - 4:49 PM PST   another tidbit. JR said facets was planning to release the house is black sometime this year on DVD. would there be anything else on the disc? no, as far as he knew, just the one short.
dpowers	post #17  on January 11, 2003 - 1:37 AM PST   here are even faster, looser notes from the second night of screenings introduced and discussed by jonathan rosenbaum at the yerba buena center for arts, in san francisco, friday, january 10, 2003. this group of films included black and tan (1929, dudley murphy); jammin' the blues (1944, gjon mili); improvisation (1950, norman granz?, featuring charlie parker, coleman hawkins and others); a great day in harlem (1994, jean bach); and when it rains (1995, charles burnett). i don't list all the musicians in the movies in these notes. follow the IMDb links above for those details. HOST: good evening. this is the second of three events with our artist in residence, jonathan rosenbaum. we're showing five films tonight, four shorts and a great day in harlem. we are lucky to be showing a 35mm print from the producer of great day, the film is not generally available for screening. JR: thank you all for coming. what inspired this particular program tonight is a combination of my love of jazz and my feeling that it's very odd, in a way, that jazz and film are the premiere american art forms of the 20th century and yet they haven't really coalesced in a very satisfying way. i'm sure you've all had the experience where a jazz musician is playing in a movie and the piece is cut short to fit in interview or narrative material. the five films tonight, apart from that i like them all, have things in common. they are all about community. and about listening to music and how one listens to music. i had a project that may see the light of day, around touch of evil [that had to do with the music] [...] [someone] has been interested in doing a doc about mccoy tyner. the idea that i had that i don't think has been addressed enough in jazz films is, we don't get to see people listening, audiences or musicians. it impresssed me to see coltrane and tyner playing together in the sixties, how closely they listened to each other. the first, an early talkie, made by dudley murphy, an interesting and neglected filmmaker whose best film was the film with léger (ballet mécanique), there are some ideas in ballet mécanique that echo in this one. this movie is about duke ellington. dudley murphy also made the only existing film of bessie smith, st. louis blues. i need to warn you that early in this film there are pronounced racial stereotypes, but i think there is a very progressive and advanced commentary about race, it has to do with the sense of audience and community in the film. the title comes from one of ellington's greatest compositions, which itself quotes from chopin. [movie plays: black and tan] for me one of the remarkable things about this film is it's in 1929 and it's about the exploitation of black entertainers, but it has some very unusual devices in its handling of time and space. in terms of time, the complete repetition of a dance sequence, from the point of view of a different character. in terms of space, we never see the audience in the nightclub, i assume it's a white audience, but the band refuses to continue playing when fredi washington collapses on the stage, to perform for her at home in bed, then to close we have her viewpoint with duke blurring out at the end, and the blur continues after she's dead. [i don't think i got the next sentence right, but here it comes:] it's the first film i think that proposes a kind of poetics. the next film, jammin' the blues, was done in 1944, for warner bros, nominated for an academy award, very studio-oriented. a very artificial setting, even more than black and tan. like black and tan it might be dated, but it's i think the best film record we have of lester young. gjon mili made other films but this is the only one that's available now. [movie plays, jammin' the blues] little footnote i want you to notice about the issue of race in this film, barney kessel in this film playing guitar, the only white musican, it was felt necessary maybe by the studio, maybe by the filmmaker, that it made not be very clear that kessel is white, so you don't see him clearly straight on. there's something else gjon mili made later that you're going to see now. only two film records of charlie parker. the one you see on TV, with dizzy gillespie, playing "hot house," in unfriendly surroundings, not a good show. parker is clearly angry at how gillespie is being patronized by the host. i thought this was all we had of charlie parker. a few years ago while i was in tokyo, which is the best place to get jazz, i found an unfinished video of charlie parker by gjon mili. unlikely you've seen this before. one of the most beautiful things about it is this thing i was talking about. you're still seeing the musicians in artificial surroundings, but it's fairly stripped down, much more natural. it shows parker really listening to and enjoying coleman hawkins's music. norman granz who produced this and jammin' the blues, introduces this. don't be surprised to find japanese subtitles! [movie plays: improvisation] nice to see a little bit of racial progress. no effort made to hide the fact that buddy rich is white. the next film is about community, actually, the next two films. a great day, about community in harlem; when it rains, about watts. this next film is actually the one i know the least well, it gives a very utopian view of jazz as we've been getting already, but i think it's the most realistic. [movie plays: a great day in harlem] i mentioned before about people talking over the music in jazz films. i can forgive it in this film because the gesture of making this film is like the gesture of making the photograph, it's hard to squeeze it all in. about this last film. in my opinion charles burnett is the greatest black director in america. i think nobody knows him basically because he's not a hustler, that's basically it. this film was made in french television, but i hear this and some of burnett's feature films are coming out on video this year. i love a lot of his films but this, at 12 minutes long, is his most perfect. this is a great example of mixing film with jazz. it's very light on its feet, as you'll see. [movie plays: when it rains] i've been talking a lot so far. any questions, rebuttals, comments? [long pause in the room] Q: where else can you go see rare jazz movies like this? JR: different places. i'm a film critic so i get around and see things because of that. like i mentioned when it rains is coming out with one of the feature films. great day is out on DVD. jammin' the blues, probably no way to get it. improvisation might be available to order on the web from japan. search engines are a great way to find rare movies on video, either by direct sales, or through collectors. Q: does seeing this film of charlie parker change your feeling of the other films of him? JR: i think this one tells more about charlie parker than any other i've seen. some sync problems, especially with buddy rich, but it's incredible that nobody knows about this film, or many of the others. i was shocked that a jazz critic i know in chicago didn't care that this one was found. that's why i get angry when people say, last year was a good year for film, or a bad year for film, how does anyone know, when there's so much that's out there that doesn't get seen? it's interesting that there are so many niche markets now being served. thanks to the internet it's easier getting information. practically everything important that was ever released here has been released in japan. as far as the films, collectors have them in the united states, it's just a matter of getting them together in one place, like collecting the musicians for the photo. also there's more out there but nobody knows how to get it to us. Q: could you talk a little about the charles burnett film? JR: a lot of things. i think it's very beautiful film about community. it has a strong jazz aesthetic. each person babu approaches for money is like a separate jazz solo. one thing very personal to me, that particular album by john handy, i associate it with a connection between the counterculture and the black community in the late sixties, early seventies. the movie is truly utopian, like great day in harlem, ending with the barter solution. it's like a kind of ideal community formation happening. triumph in adversity, seems like all the feelings that go into it, into the final trumpet solo, it's all musical, the way it's expressed. that's what occurs to me off the top of my head. Q: did these movies get distribution at the time? JR: [this answer is all jumbled up. sorry, i got really lost here.] i think these films showed then, on black circuits, some places in cities, not as much in smaler towns, there are probably ways that this can be researched but i don't know. [...] interesting essay about dudley murphy, but there are indications that the person that wrote it didn't see the film. i have an idea that black and tan was a short shown on its own, as an independent. in 1929 there were talkies around, maybe not that much a novelty. i don't quite know the answer. i assume it would have been shown in special situations, but i'm just guessing. Q: what do you know about the production of jammin' the blues? i notice it was shot by robert burks, who shot hitchcock films. JR: the main review of this film at the time was james agee, who didn't like it, thought it was too arty. knight(sp?) wrote about this film in a recent book, about the representation of the black community, about the mainstreaming of jazz, but not about production details. details also about the earlier brubeck movie i mentioned, i don't know information about that. the other movie just produced by granz. [...] what's written about is often quite arbitrary. most films, like albums, are sold in packages, like lengths of pipe. a lot of the owners of these films don't know the importance of what they have, we have to tell them. as long as we get the feelers out [we can find out what's available and get it shown]. Q: there's a community in jazz, and a community in film. how do you balance film preservation and promoting old films, with promoting lesser known contemporary filmmakers? obviously there's great need on both sides. JR: i don't know if it's one versus the other. some of these movies, recent or old, could have been made yesterday. in a lot of ways, when movies arrive for the first time in a city, that's how old they are. chantal akerman's jeanne dielman... released seven years late in new york but they wrote about it as new. as a critic, it's hard to operate with new and old mixed together, keeping them separate as you find out about them, as they arrive. [the trouble with being a critic is that each week, the movies you write about have to be the most important movies, and then the next week, you need to make everyone forget about last week.] [as far as the conflict between new and old] what we really lack is federal money for the arts, to help preserve the old movies [and to develop the arts in general]. we've decided, or someone has decided for us, that we don't need to have arts money. Q: i know that jammin the blues is on the national film registry, isn't that a good tool for preservation? JR: i don't know of any group that exists, we've talked about it at the national film critics association, there's no group that works [effectively] on things like this, if there were groups that did this, it'd be great. there was a collection from the smithsonian collecting some old jazz films. there are plenty of possibilities [for preservation and restoration]. somebody just needs to get up and do it. Q: did jammin the blues have influence? JR: [maybe] [end of notes]
dpowers	post #18  on January 11, 2003 - 1:47 AM PST   these notes were a mess. this time i took my sweetie with me and we were stumped about some of the crossed meanings in what we agreed he had said. i lost him more times this time, partly because there were more names flying around and more starts and stops in the discussion. but i also think JR was much more confident and lucid when talking about the iranian films, it seems the kiarostami book is still very present in his head.
dpowers	post #19  on January 12, 2003 - 2:59 AM PST   okay i don't think the jazz notes really tell you enough about the movies to figure out what JR is talking about, so. black and tan. you can see this on this collection, which also includes another dudley murphy movie he mentions, st. louis blues. black and tan begins with duke ellington showing arthur whetsol a new piece he's writing, in their shared, low rent apartment. a pair of bumbling repo men find their way to the apartment by following the music. they try to take the piano away, but fredi washington arrives and buys the repo men off for today with liquor. fredi has news about a job, she can dance, duke and his band can play. duke doesn't want this because fredi's heart is bad and dancing might hurt her. but they need the money. at the club, first we see the screen as a stage, with dancers on the lower level and duke's band up top. then we see fredi getting ready to dance, clearly not healthy. from her point of view we see the entire dance scene again, through kaleidoscopic filters and with unnerving focus shifts. she collapses on the stage at the end of her dance. the club manager has her body hauled from the stage and commands duke to keep playing, which he does for a short time, angrily, then leaves to follow fredi. back in the apartment fredi is in bed, dying. the band is around her and their graceful, large shadows are mourning and playing duke's new song, which is a sort of dirge. fredi looks from the band to duke at the piano and sees him becoming blurry beyond recognition. fredi dies. cut back to duke as he blurs into a fade out. jammin' the blues is just that, a band hanging around playing. but it's very stylized. the lighting is very crisp and the contrast very even. there are no apparent walls to the room they're playing in. also, sometimes we see the band sitting close together, and other times, when we zoom in on one member of the band for a solo, they're shown as being completely alone in the room. a singer is introduced by showing her swaying reflection on the piano. the singer generally performs straight into the camera, in close-up, her eyes focused just past us. i don't remember any musician looking toward the camera. for one solo, the musician (lester young on sax) is large in the frame, and in the gap left by the horizontal instrument and the musician's vertical body, the singer, very far in the background, is swaying on a chair, watching the musician. then the song is changed by having the drummer hand over the sticks in the middle of the new rhythm. a dancer arrives and pulls the singer into some very hot moves. they dance while the band rips the top off the movie. we return to that foreground/background solo shot, this time with the large trumpeter framing the small but still hoppin' dancers in the background. improvisation is charlie parker, coleman hawkins, and maybe three other musicians, playing together. they're sitting on cubes i think. they are playing in a visible space and have a consistent spatial relationship. they like playing together, and they like the joke that they were being filmed trying to mimic the music they made together in a session recorded elsewhere (because the film studio wasn't soundproofed). it's not a complete film but it's a great little session. a great day in harlem is a documentary about how a ton of jazz musicians all got up early in the morning one day to pose for a picture. greencine link. when it rains is a story with a jazzy, stylized narrator setting a day-to-day life scene with poetry. we start on the second floor of an apartment building. a woman is having rent trouble. she tells her child to wait at the top of the front stairs of their building while she goes to get help getting the money. a great, great scene of following and leading her through the crowd at a street festival, looking at regular people-type folks of all kinds hanging out and loving the sunshine and the company. a hundred different kinds of smiles. our hero finds the narrator and asks him for help. (now that he's been pulled into the story, the narrator gives a running commentary on his thoughts.) back at the apartment building, the narrator sweet talks and guilt trips the landlord but the rent is too far overdue, the landlord won't hear it. he wants the money and he wants all of it. the narrator takes off and has just about zero success in getting money. he gets rejected in some truly original ways, including nearly getting beaten back down the stairs by an ex-lover, getting the money from one friend to have another claim it right then and there as money owed, and being offered much more cash than needed if he'll hurt somebody else. (he does get a cool john handy jazz LP from a street musician in funk drag.) the landlord still won't be talked out of the eviction. but then it turns out he loves john handy, they all go inside to listen to the album, and as the narration says, "if i'd looked for common ground in the first place, this whole thing could have been avoided."
dpowers	post #20  on January 12, 2003 - 3:00 AM PST   notes from jonathan rosenbaum's third night of screenings. only one movie tonight: touch of evil. he talked up a storm and i think you'll be surprised what he had to say. you'll see "[...]" a few times to indicate where i lost him for a second. sorry! HOST: [intro, see notes from first session.] JR: thanks a lot for coming. i'm going to give a short version of how i got involved [in reediting touch of evil]. it's really a long story, but i'll tell more later. three months after orson welles died, i was fortunate to be invited to stage a tribute to him in rotterdam. one person i was able to invite was oja kodar, who worked with him in later years, on many films including [the unfinished film] the other side of the wind. i got to know oja and talked with her to get her to release some of welles's materials, and she released some of the materials, notes, films, other materials. about three years later, oja kodar asked me to edit this book [this is orson welles], worked on by welles and peter bogdanovich, with many interviews and documents related to his career. then over the next three years i'd get this huge manuscript, 1300 pages, sent to me in chunks in the mail, with 25 hours of reel to reel interviews, then thousands of pages of alternative versions of the manuscript. so i spent several years going through these materials. one of the most interesting documents was 2/3 of a memo, sent by welles to the studio, universal, that produced touch of evil, written after welles was locked out of the post-production process and prevented from shooting further continuity shots. he sat down and wrote this humongous memo, suggesting changes that he thought would improve the picture. some of the suggestinos were followed but most weren't. [...] it was a very interesting document, it was the first time he'd expressed his intentions for a film in such detail. the book, this is orson welles, was very long because of including those materials and the publisher felt that the touch of evil memo needed to be cut out. i approached magazines to get the complete memo published but nobody was interested even in reading it, except for film quarterly in berkeley, who published it. i got a call later from [mostly sure he said "dean cundey"], a cinematographer for steven spielberg, asking if i knew how to get the rest of the memo, [since/but] two thirds were all that we found. we kept in touch for bit [about looking for the rest of the memo?] but eventually rick shmidlin took over the lead from him. shmidlin had a crazy idea to go back to the movie and follow welles's instructions using the original material. i was skeptical becuase i thought universal wouldn't give us access to the material, that they wouldn't want to admit that they were wrong, and because the original was a great film and maybe the tinkering would mess it up. shmidlin flew to chicago and we talked about it. universal was interested because what we were suggesting was cheap, they'd had money and critic troubles with the restoration of vertigo that had just been completed. but because this wasn't a full restoration our project was going to cost much less. rick had the really great idea to hire walter murch. that meant we were home free because nobody at the studio would dare interfere with an oscar-winning editor on the project. we had conference calls with rick and walter. then when they got to the print stage, i was sent a video, which i'll show you parts of tonight. in any case, it proved very interesting as experiment because i learned a tremendous amount. it was everyone's experience as we were working that welles's changes were almost all improvements. there are other people who have said that the original version that was better. i hoped that all versions would be on the DVD. there was another, a 108-minute-long preview release, between this version and the original. this version tonight is slightly longer, 111 minutes, because it includes [our project's] credits at the end. there was no new material that was added on in our version, we worked with what the studio had, but in some cases there were removals, such as from the soundtrack. the release of this version was commercially very successful, though after our involvement we had no control over the DVD and the original cut was not included on the DVD release, though universal did include the entire memo on the DVD. in fact they have suppressed the original version now. really what we wanted to do was to experiment, we never wanted our version to be definitive. in fact we made that clear in the pressboook why this wasn't a restoration, that the original movie had never been like this. i'll go into some of the details of the kinds of changes we made after you take a look at it. [movie plays, touch of evil] altogether i estimate that it was possible to carry out about 85% of welles's instructions. when it wasn't possible it was because the footage wasn't there anymore. what we had was what was available in the original release version or the preview version. and some of the suggestions didn't come from the memo but from other documents, or interviews with bodganaovich. for instance, the plan to eliminate the titles from the beginning [didn't come from the memo]. one place where walter murch took initiative, welles said he wanted to have music coming from nightclubs along the street, walter placed it in the car because it made it easier to locate the car. [other deviations were situations of poetic license.] what i think was interesting is, you can literally take one shot out of a film and change the whole conception of the movie. an example, in the original, in a scene in the hall of records, when the character of pete menzies snatches files away [from mike vargas], there's a closeup of pete menzies. welles wanted it out, said it was unflattering to the actor, because of the wide angle lens. you couldn't take that shot out without messing with the dialogue [and losing some exposition]. i felt hesitant about [making the change], but the interesting difference is, the character grows because of the removal of that shot. that shot shows him as very vulnerable, very weak. so without that one shot, the decision to go against quinlan at the end of the movie beccomes one of character and strength, not weakness. there's an earlier shot, in the whorehouse. something that always botherd me about the film was that [during that scene] people giggled a lot, taking it as camp. welles always wanted the pianola music to stop, to be less evident, and once we removed the music it followed that the scene was less campy. another gain is in clarity and continuity. it has been argued that clarity is not always an advantage. something that's strong about this film is the [sense of] disorientation, the discontinuity. so some arguments [...] [after making the changes] it become more possible to get a sense of the layout of the town [...] the biggest point of contention, however, the [...], for welles, the thing that most mattered to him, is the editing between the events happening right around the explosion of the car, and the meeting of susan with grandi. now i think welles's original plan for it was for the susan/grandi scene to be cut in the middle, to be cut back to the scene of the explosion. the play in the original version was to play all the way through without the cut. i'll read from the book about this. welles's comments needed a little interpretation. [reads excerpt of memo, published in this is orson welles] ...Resigned as I am to the fact that a great majority of my previous notes and suggestions have been disregarded, the case of the scene between Grandi [Akim Tamiroff] and Susan [Janet Leigh] is one of the few issues I feel justified in re-opening. This scene is just exactly a thousand percent more effective played, as it was first arranged, in two parts, with a cutaway to the scene of the explosion between those two parts. No matter how the scene is edited, this scene has - and was intended to have - a curious, rather inconclusive quality. It was written that way and directed and played that way. The audience is presented with a menacing villain who does not, in fact, succeed in being very menacing after all. He takes a threatening tone with Susan, but as it turns out, his threats are vague and the audience must begin to realize (if the scene works at all) that he's actually more frightened than frightening. Dividing the scene in two parts, as we intended, and keeping the situation with Vargas at the scene of the explosion "alive" in the audience's mind, is not to confuse but to clarify. Making a short contrapuntal reference to what is going on across the border underlines and precisely illustrates the correct values. Absolutely nothing is gained by gluing these two parts together, except to make the total scene seem rather long and rather shapeless. The shooting was done, for the most part, on location, certain reverses and close-ups having been picked up in the studio. Now I did not allow in shooting these for a version in two parts, and hence, there is no available footage for continuous action. As the editing now stands, the welding of these two parts has been managed with as much skill as the resources in actual film made possible, and I congratulate whoever made the attempt. It remains, however, just that: an attempt. ... it goes on but it's just reiterating this point. as it happened when walter cut this scene he thought it worked better cutting back not once, but twice. my own feeeling was, it was very smooth how he cut it, but that it was too smooth. the kind of crosscutting that was done in this movie, that confused the studio, we now see on every TV cop show. [at the time it was very unusual.] i thought that it was so smooth, it lost some of the discomfort of the scene that welles put in. [clip plays. it's true, there's a detectable pattern in the cuts back and forth that upstages the action.] i should mention one other issue that showed up in these deliberations was where to locate the suggested cuts in these two scenes. [generally] welles's suggestions were very specific. also, it was amazing he wrote this long document, 58 pages, after seeing the work print just once! that's how well he knew the film. he suggested [... (quoting again from the book)]. in any case, walter found that it didn't work well that way. sometimes you lose things when making cuts, such as in the hall of records scene. a change i suggested was to correct an error. in the scene in which quinlan questions sanchez, there was an important sound of sanchez getting socked in the stomach, it wasn't in the work print i saw. rick shmidlin didn't feel comfortable going against walter, but he decided to go for it anyway. [it turned out to have been an oversight.] i could say other things but i'm interested to hear your comments. Q: one of the things i find when watching welles is i don't get the sense tht welles's focus is for a naturalistc performance from the actors. one of my big stumbling blocks was accepting charleton heston in makeup as an hispanic. i have a similar issue with othello, with [welles] in makeup. can you address his views of white performers in makeup playing ethnic roles? JR: for me [that aspect of touch of evil] is not a problem. i have more trouble with dennis weaver's performance. but there was never an option [for another actor as vargas]. the film was cast with heston. as the story goes, it was heston that said, "why don't you get orson welles to direct it." welles then said, i want to rewrite it. but heston was there in the movie already. from that point of view [welles had no power to pick another actor]. we [as a modern audience] make associations with heston in there. of course i don't now spanish and how heston speaks sapnich was maybe a problem. Q: and quinlan says that vargas doesn't sound mexican. JR: yes it's true that welles makes a comment about it. [...] and i think janet leigh had a broken arm, she'd broken it on a television show before the shooting started], that was why she always had things draped over her arm. i know that mark ritt always criticized welles for that casting. i take it from your criticism, that this isn't about political correctness. i can see that. [...] this is true about all of welles's work, particularly the late work. a person who's never been given his due, akim tamiroff, who was a good friend of welles's, and appeared most often of any actor in his films. he's quite amazing in all of them, playing both comic and tragic in every case. of course he's not mexican either. though we're more prone to believe in him than heston, there's a certain kind of way that he specialized in playing [toughs(?)], though he was russian. it's the kind of thing that varies from viewer to viewer. marlene dietrich wasn't mexican either [and few people mention that]. Q: when they take his wife to the motel, was it a coincidence that the grandi brothers owned the motel? JR: must be, since the motel was the only one out there [and the police chose it]. they say the grandis owned a lot of things around there, and this is the only motel convenient. whether the whole stry is believable [...] the thing the really fascinated me is, you're told at the end that sanchez is really guilty after all, that he'd confessed. [but] the last time we see sanchez, is when quinlan is screaming into the phone to "break him" [whatever it takes], and then later they say he confessed, i don't think we can definitively conclude that sanchez [really planted the bomb]. Q: [i] took it as the DA saying that vargas was gone, quinlan was dead, and that's that. [...] JR: the thing, the difference from the novel, and one thing that welles introduced, is that in the original novel, vargas is american and his wife is mexican. so there's a [switch] that resonates very differently. Q: i remember in the release version, the shot of grandi being strangled was held longer. JR: yes that was welles's suggestion, it comes from [the interviews with peter bogdanovich], welles actually described how many frames too long [the shot was]. but when walter actually came to do it, he actually had to reverse the shot to make it work, for some way it didn't work the way it ws, that was another change he made to make it work. one thing i regretted was, since the titles are no longer there, the title music was not part of the film, either. walter hoped it would be there over the final credits, but it didn't work there. it's not exactly the same muusic, it came from the soundtrack [not the one they used in this version]. Q: [you said jazz was in this version last night.] JR: well but it's henry mancini, not jazz music, more atmospheric, it's a conventional use of hollywood music. Q: was someone else supposed to direct it before welles, and, what did heston think, and how did it do commercially? JR: they didn't have a director at all, they worked out the casting first, then heston suggested welles. heston was supportive, so supportive that when welles suggested having more days for shooting [and universal turned him down], heston paid for the extra shooting himslvesf, it cost thousands of dollars. heston likes the film, one of his favorite things to say about it, he quotes [a magazine article, incorrectly identifying the source] that he objects to people calling it a masterpiece, "i'd prefer to call it the greatest B-film ever made." i think it's incredible that that ["greatest B-film"] description couldn't also be called a masterpiece, but that's hollywood [that's how hollywood thinks]. if it weren't for charlton heston we wouldn't have [all 58 pages of] the memo. [the way we got a copy, for this project] was that heston had a copy in his files. and i knew [...] when we published the partial memo, heston wrote me a nice lettter saying that he had the whole memo, and so [maybe this re-edit] wouldn't have happened without heston keeping that memo all this years. Q: [...] JR: i think thery's one very trashy movie that albert zugsmith [the producer of touch of evil] directed that's quite an amazing film, called confessions of an opium eater or evils of chinatown. i've seen others [that he directed] that are really quite bad, the beat generation, the private lives of adam and eve, but confessions of an opium eater was important. the person responsible for getting welles off touch of evil it was edward muhl, the studio head, of course since then muhl's been bragging about the movie, but that kind of thing happens. welles was working sort of behind their backs because he'd become a little paranoid about hollywood. [for instance the studio didn't know marlene dietrich was in the movie until after some of her scenes had been shot.] [...] one thing he did to impress them was, the interrogation of sanchez was done in two shots, [which welles was very proud of] because people didn't notice it was [such] a stunt. that was the first thing they shot [and the studio was nervous] watching his [extensive] preparation and rehearsing [without shooting anything], and then suddenly seventeen pages of the script were shot in one go. [he made the studio more nervous later] [...] went out of town [without saying why], got more independent. there was a growing paranoia between the welles and the studio and then, i think heston told this story, the biggest tactical mistake was, welles took off for mexico to start making his, i think [could possibly have been] his best independent fim, don quixote, but i think it's hard to say what happened clearly [with welles being tossed from the production]. when things happen to welles, people try to boil it down to something, to blame someone and only [that] someone, but in most cases, [the blame was spread around]. Q: the [anti-drug] references in the movie. was there any kind of compensation for them [the way television networks are now rewarded for having anti-drug plots in shows]? JR: no, nobody else was making drug references at this time. was it before or after the man with the golden arm? [disagreement in the crowd] very unique, unusual, and welles enjoyed that. [welles tried hard to make this movie stand out.] [sam fuller trying to do that, too, about racism.] Q: [...] JR: [...] rear projection in that sequence, welles did [...] that out, but there was one scene that [i think] added to the release version that isn't there in this version, [an expository scene], that isn't needed in this cut. there's another odd shot here and there, maybe one exchange between the D.A. and heston [...] Q: there's the insert shot of [...] JR: i'm not aware of that one. Q: can you talk about the sound? i know that you talked about the othello restoration some years back. [was stereo added?] JR: this wasn't in stereo, if that had been there the studio would have done it, we didn't do it. there's nothing in the sound but the car radio that wasn't requested by welles. for instance, when you removed the music from the opening shot, you could hear environmental sounds that were [hidden] by the music. it's questionable in the sense that they decided to suppress the other versions of the movie, we didn't want that. [the studio/hollywood] is weird about some things. the woman in charge of international sales refused to sell it because she didn't think anyone outside the united states would want to see this version of the movie. [that's sort of typical american isolationism.] Q: [but] the film got awards in europe when it was first released. JR: yes i think so. this was great work for me, though [almost charity work], [i was paid] less than i get from the chicago reader. [incredibly] at one point they made me sign a statement swearing that before i could see the welles's memo, [i had to swear] that i wouldn't even mention to anyone the existence of this memo - disregarding that i'd already published this memo, with comments! those are the kinds of games i had to play. [hollywood people are weird.] Q: where was the movie shot? JR: venice, california. welles wanted mexico but it was too expensive. i think this works pretty well. Q: having seen the movie several times, what's your favorite moment? JR: i'm not sure, but i think it might have been the scenes with akim tamiroff, the pathos [of his performance], [it reminds me of] edward g robinson. i also liked janet leigh. i'm not sure about [favorite scenes]. [i like the transitions. how the movie flows.] any more questions? thank you again. you've been a great audience. [end of notes]

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