CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER (1961, FRANCE)

Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch prepare

their interviewer in Chronicle of a Summer

A film that carefully  uncovers the layers of fiction in real life.-Richard Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film

If this pioneer work does not have story form in the usual sense, it does, nevertheless, stir the mind and occasionally the heart.-A. H. Weiler, The New York Times, May 7, 1965

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"Are you happy?"

When I first heard of the film Chronicle of the Summer, I had visions of surf and sand at the French Rivera and...that isn't what this was at all. What is was was something that was new at the time but is something we are all used to now...real people being themselves in front of the camera. But what we see here is often not very pleasant to look at. Our novice interviewer asks people if they are happy and the answer for the most part is some variation of "not very." The working class have to struggle and bend the law just to make ends meet, the black student isn't very well understood by his white companions and a former prisoner of a concentration camp has to deal with young people who can't relate much to that experience either. We also deal with students about to be drafted for the French War with Algeria, for better or for worse. (Mostly worse). 

Rouch is credited as being the father of Cinema verite, defined by Roche as "not pure truth, but the particular truth of the recorded images and sounds-a filmic truth. This does not mean the cinema of truth, but the truth of cinema."

One difference that is stark here to what might pass for attempts to do this today is the honesty. Most of the people interviewed here are not happy, but they are very matter of fact about it and not prone to overwrought drama. The interviews are raw, unpolished, matter of fact and you never feel like anyone is saying anything they don't feel is the truth.

I also like the film as a document of time and of place of 1960 Paris.

Intense discussion with an African student

in Chronicle of a Summer

Holocaust survivor Marceline

in Chronicle of a Summer

THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET (1923, FRANCE), LAND WITHOUT BREAD (1933, SPAIN), THE MAD MASTERS (1955, FRANCE), NIGHT AND FOG (1955, FRANCE), DOG STAR MAN (1962), THE HOUSE IS BLACK (1963, IRAN)

I looked at the 1001 list and saw that I still had a few short films that I haven't looked at yet which were readily available on YouTube and decided to try to run through all of them this week. After viewing, I must conclude that it's a interesting lot of films, but for the most part not exactly uplifting.

Clocking in at 38 minutes is The Smiling Madame Beudet, which dates back to 1922. This French silent is given credit by some as being the first feminist film. The plot has a wife abused verbally by a boorish husband who likes to play a gag where he has a gun with no bullets that he mockingly puts to his head and pulls the trigger. At some point, you know Madame Beudet is going to put bullets in the gun. When she finally does, he turns the gun on her and pulls the trigger. Luckily, the bullet he fires misses her and he feels regret for the way he has treated her and declares his love for her and embraces her. The fact that Madame only reacts with indifference to his embrace is a most appropriate ending for a film with a feminist approach.

The Smiling Madame Beudet

Clocking in at 27 minutes, Luis Bunuel's docudrama, Land Without Bread, is about a remote village in Spain called La Alberca. The inhabitants are poor. Really poor. Food is at a minimum and bread is unknown.The film includes children we know aren't long for this world, real life village idiots, goats falling off cliffs and some other scenes that were rumored to be largely staged. This film is most bleak and depressing and quite the contrast to Bunuel's An Andalusian Dog.

Land Without Bread

Clocking in at 28 minutes is The Mad Masters, Jean Rouch's film about French colonial Africans going through some truly dramatic religious rituals. This film has been criticized for being culturally racist of Africans on the one hand, and mocking of British colonialists on the other hand. Either way, the rituals are just so damn odd, that I had trouble looking away even though I often wanted to.

The Mad Masters

Clocking in at 32 minutes is Night and Fog, Alain Resnais's 1955 film that compares contemporary abandoned concentration camps to clips of the time they were used for nefarious purposes during the 30's and 40's. These horrifying images were seen in this film by many for the first time. Maybe an attempt to escape this kind of content is what led Resnais to make very artistic films such as Last Year at Marienbad in subsequent years.

Night and Fog

Clocking in at about 30 minutes is Stan Brakhage's Dog Star Man, a 1962 experimental film which featured a bearded man climbing a mountain with his his trusty pooch interspersed with clips of the ferocity of nature...the universe...and...man, sometimes I wish I still did drugs! The book just lists the first Dog Star Man movie, but the "story" is continued in other films in this series. I do think there's a method to this madness, but I'm not sure if I should watch part one again, watch the whole series of films or just forget the whole thing and move on! Of maybe I could just watch Mallick's Tree of Life again instead?

Dog Star Man

Clocking in at 22 minutes is The House is Black, an Iranian documentary from 1963 about a leper colony. It intersperses poetry, biblical and Koranic references and I found it to be an overall effective work, though extremely disturbing.

The House is Black

I must tell you that after all these bleak short films, I do need a break in tone. I think I'll take a look at the MST3K short film A Case of Spring Fever featuring the adorable animated Coily!... I feel better already.

Coily "No Springs!," from MST3K's A Case of Spring Fever.
I may just have to order the t-shirt