Specific reactions to Cocteau and Cornell Part II.

The films that we have been doing in this unit seem to fit fairly generally into groups. The city symphonies, Vertov, Ruttman et al are one; Rose Hobart and Sang D’un Poete seem to fit into another. My reactions to Cocteau’s film, however, were not at all the same as to Cornell’s.

In his essay about the film for Criterion, Cocteau claimed that:

The Blood of a Poet draws nothing from either dreams or symbols. As far as the former are concerned, it initiates their mechanism, and by letting the mind relax, as in sleep, it lets memories entwine, move and express themselves freely. As for the latter, it rejects them, and substitutes acts, or allegories of these acts, that the spectator can make symbols of if he wishes.

I think this is fundamental to its greater appeal. Cocteau’s film is more intelligent. Not necessarily because Cocteau was the better artist, but almost by necessity, because it is difficult to be intelligent if you are avoiding the presence of a conscious mind. Maybe that’s being blithe about it, but maybe not.

I think Cocteau’s characterisation of the film very accurate. It leads you through itself as in a dream, and yet it has purpose and rhythm to it. His other statement is harder to interpret- he offers ‘acts, or allegories of these acts, that the spectator can make symbols of if he wishes’? I think by this he refers to established cultural symbols; which is to say, he creates his own images and acts that may be read as symbols by his audience, but he does not utilise images like crosses and roses that can be read as ‘symbols’ in themselves. If that is the case, then I am confused.

The film is situated quite clearly with the Orphic myth. The poet with the lyre, the passing through mirrors into a sort of underworld, the title of the film itself all refer to it. But surely including an image like the poet with a lyre, or the lyre itself, contradicts the claim that the film ‘draws nothing from either dreams or symbols’. To me, the film reads as an expression of Cocteau’s subconscious, as evidenced by the numerous references to his childhood experiences and the presence of a ‘poet’ or artist as the subject. This expression is then consciously filtered through artistic construction; the use of the Orphic myth, the voice over, references to heraldry, and the poetry of images itself such as the snow/marble.

That conclusion would mean that the film draws much from symbols and dreams. Perhaps this is more of a definitional issue; I may mean something completely different by both of those terms. Perhaps my interpretation is not Cocteau’s. In either case, Blood of a Poet has something that Rose Hobart does not have. It is a beautiful film. Technically innovative, captivating and brilliant.

So, to continue with my thoroughly unprofessional value judgments, four stars. Ish. I wouldn’t care if Blood of Poet did not interest me intellectually at all, I would value it for its imagery.

Specific Reactions to Cornell & Cocteau Part I.

Rose Hobart

If I were to characterise Rose Hobart as anything, I would suggest that it is a film by Joseph Cornell, about Joseph Cornell.

It has been suggested in class that this film is the first fan video. That Rose Hobart fits into that genre which is, essentially, the re-editing of a film to create an homage to a single character or characters within it, or in fact, the actors that play those characters. It has also been suggested that Cornell is thereby creating a commentary on the institution of the star system in Hollywood. The footage of the film is almost entirely taken up with images of Hobart. It has been given a dream like atmosphere through the use of the blue tinting, the pacing of the editing, the repetition of specific imagery like the volcano, and the strangeness of the jazz soundtrack. It can be concluded from this that the film reflects Cornell’s obsession with Rose Hobart on an unconscious level.

To follow this further towards the issue of the star system, I would suggest that the film offers two ideas. One, it shows that the bulk of a film can be ignored purely on fascination for a single person within it, and two, that that fascination functions on an irrational level of the human psyche.

If Cornell’s aim was to use this social phenomenon of ‘stars’ as his subject for the film, then he has wasted his twenty minutes. Those two insights are not profound. It is the consequences of those insights that are actually of interest for an analysis of the star system. What does it mean for the process of film watching, that we care only for a single actor? How does it determine our understanding of a film to have a known entity (i.e, a star) assuming a role within it, as opposed to a completely new face for each character? And so on.

Instead, it appears that the true interest of Rose Hobart is its attempt to recreate Cornell’s own unconscious fascination with Hobart herself on celluloid. It is an experiment in recreating the unconscious on film.

This is why I don’t like Rose Hobart. It is a work of art that holds absolutely no interest for me. I am not interested in Joseph Cornell’s unconscious. Perhaps if I were stalking a celebrity, it would be easier to relate to. But I am not. Why is that a reasonable objection, you might then ask. It is of interest to someone else, therefore it is valid. Perhaps. But if it is going to be so intellectually restricted; that is, of interest to such a specific group and of no interest to anyone else, it cannot rank highly on my list of good art. It is deliberately obscure. It is deliberately obscure because the unconscious is by nature obscure. Moreover, it has absolutely no intrinsic beauty to it; it is a recutting and recolouring of someone else’s work, with new irritating music added.

The purpose of this class is not to review or place value judgments, I suppose, but as it may be of some incidental use in judging my analysis of the film, I’d give it half a star.

Manhatta

I apologise for the poor pictures, but it struck me when watching Manhatta that the manner in which much of the city was shot seemed to be relating the buildings to ancient monuments that have come to represent lost or at least very old civilisations; further reinforcing the 'elegiac' feel. The music very much did make a difference in watching the film.. on Google video it's set to a score that is something of a cross between Chopin's Funeral March and the Jaws theme, which made it far less relaxingly melancholic and more imminently doomed. Either way though, it remained elegiac.

The Problem With Alienation

I have no objection to techniques of alienation, in themselves. They are perfectly valid. I believe, however, that their proliferation in many of the Modernist/Postmodernist (particularly postmodernist) works that I have read or seen over the years is entirely out of proportion to the specificity of their aims. It seems as if most Modernists, and every Postmodernist, decided at some point that alienation was a pre-requisite for all new artworks. Like a council building code. As if, before even starting to write, they felt they had to put out a disclaimer that it would not in fact be real, and that they were making it all up, just in case someone slipped over on their narrative pavework and decided to sue.

The standard defense of alienation, verfremdungs-effekt, call it what you will, is that its purpose is self-contained. That is, we are allowed to see the elements of construction, in order that we might see them- or more specifically, not not see them, and thus that we might be made aware that we undergo a process of manipulation in viewing an artwork.

That is all very well and good. But that has been done again, and again, and again.

It also pre-supposes that we forgot it in the first place. The plays of Classical antiquity contain constant in-jokes, out of character references, and conventions that make it perfectly obvious that their audience was very aware of what a play was and how it worked. So does Shakespeare, so does Tristram Shandy, and on, and on. Perhaps around the time of Austen, when the narrator suddenly all but disappeared, and we lost a bit of our sense of meta-humour, things got more confusing. And indeed, there are subtleties of which we are not naturally aware in literature of most kinds.

But this is not a constant confusion, and it does not require a hundred years of artists proclaiming loudly from the rooftops that all is not what we think it is, and look at how I'm doing this, and this, and this, and giving away all of the magician's bag of tricks to people who- let's face it- don't actually want it.

But as I said, I have no objection to alienation. I have only an objection to this sort of misuse of it, that, once it has been seen or read in any form once by a person, loses all point and originality. Where it is useful, and where it is well used, it is often among the greatest acheivements of Modernism.

Take, for instance, Brecht. The standard example of alienation. All of his plays rely upon the manner in which they distance the audience from involvement with the standard construction of theatre. But they do not do this merely to point out that it is a play, and that there are lights, and a narrative, and so on. It has multiple practical purposes. They audience is distanced not only from the artistry, but from the narrative also- we know that it is false, we don't bother to suspend our disbelief, as we see Mother Courage is standing in front of a large spotlight, and the actor playing her has told us that she is not real.

And this, in its original purpose, was to strive for something more pure- less transitory than empathy for a single twisted soul, more objective- a philosophical meditation on death, on struggle, on the value of war, of life. The scale of human suffering unobscured by emotion, the absurdity of our actions, seen from an immense distance. That is alienation.

The lights on the stage are not there to distract from the narrative. They are to remove the distraction that is the narrative.

When Brecht alienates his audience, it is for a purpose, or multiple purposes. But when in the majority of cases, alienation is used for alienation's sake, it is irritating. That is what I mean by the misuse of alienation. And when that forms the substance of an artwork- and this is how I saw Rose Hobart- I find it immature, and unoriginal. Now, in the light of Cornell's boxes, and other deeper things, I will not proceed to trash the film. But I would note that it is only in the light of these, and not for the unitiated, that Rose Hobart's deeper themes are communicated at all.

Expressing my Frustrations

Don't expect these to be too evidentially based. They will also be generalisations. But that's generally how frustration is expressed, and it would be a shame to trifle with tradition.

Introduction

Welcome.

I was very tempted to add Serge Gainsbourg, just playing in the background, to this blog. But I've restrained myself. Nobody likes internet pages that play music to you. New age assessments are dangerous for the easily distracted, I'm afraid, as I believe the entire look of this thing demonstrates. If you can't gain some idea of my nature from that, I'm afraid no introductory note that I might write could hope to do more.

As regards the Cornell film:

Both the white morning coats and broad cut linen trousers were hugely impressive. Why is it that no one wears linen in Australia? Period films: new insight into the death of natural fibres. Of course, no one but a turbaned Raj type could really pull that particular look off, and certainly not anywhere but a country 'east of Borneo'; but it has a wonderfully '30s Subcontinental Cambridge Man feel to it.

Did anybody else have an indefinable sense that she must be English? It was hardly established from the film, but she just seemed so very British. Perhaps that, again, was the proliferation of white morning coats, determining my reactions.

Her dialogue with the monkey was very endearing. Prior to that, I didn't have any particular interpretation of her character at all. Animals are very humanising.

Was she considering seducing the Prince, while taking off that dressing gown? How far would she go to rescue her husband? Or, indeed, since we hadn't particularly seen the husband, perhaps she just felt that wearing a woollen dressing gown in a tropical climate was uncomfortable. Maybe the removal of all context induces us to indulge our judgemental natures.

Trance or inattention? Are they the same thing?