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Vital titles
The '30s was a GOLDEN AGE of titles, I tells ya! And that goes for logos too.
Continental films is probably the most infamous of these, since they were a German company set up in Paris during the occupation. Filmmakers like Marcel L'Herbier and Maurice Tourneur made films there — while Tourneur's son Jacques was making movies in Hollywood — but they were never political. Goebbels had said that French movies "should be light-hearted, frivolous and, if possible, stupid," which suggests that he really missed his vocation as a Hollywood studio executive (a stressful job, but if it all goes wrong you can "return to your roots in community theater" rather than feeding cyanide to the wife and kids). All the filmmakers who worked at Continental were tainted by the connection to Germany, although they were no more guilty of collaboration than anyone whose work aided the economy — most of them felt they were struggling not only for their own survival, but to keep French film-making alive. See Bertrand Tavernier's marvellous and funny LAISSER-PASSEZ for more details.
The biggest scandal was caused by Clouzot's LE CORBEAU, of course. A tale of a poison-pen letter campaign in a small town, it was actually hated by the Germans, since it made anonymous denunciation look like a bad thing (although the S.S. were receiving so many anonymous tip-offs from the French citizenry, they couldn't even investigate them all). London Radio pronounced a death sentence on Clouzot for this unpatriotic movie. After the war, as the denunciations continued, this time for collaboration (if you had annoying neighbours, the occupation and its aftermath was a golden opportunity to be rid of them) and LE CORBEAU was banned, with its director receiving a lifetime ban from film-making. This was later commuted to five years, and within three, Clouzot was back, with MANON — which is even more savage. "I directed it with my whole heart," said Clouzot.
29 Responses to "Vital titles"
Criterion's new logo bears a surprising resemblance to the Continental Films logo.
"Le Corbeau" is really a true film de resistance. Sartre and Cocteau went out to bat for it. It takes no comers and is totally against Vichy and Nazi conservatism. The hero is an abortionist(and atheist), the heroine is a nymphomaniac sexpot who genuinely falls in love with her man(and they get a positive outcome) and the whole town is a pack of unresolved tensions and repression. It's a really great film.
Comparable in some ways to "Judex" because of the way characters keep changing their appearances and designs. No way that's a collaborator's film. I've never seen Clouzot's "Manon", I always believed him to be a talented if highly monomaniacal humourless film-maker(though "Corbeau" is an exception as is "Quai des Orfevres", his most humanist film) but I wouldn't seeing anything else of his.
Goebbels had said that French movies "should be light-hearted, frivolous and, if possible, stupid," which suggests that he really missed his vocation as a Hollywood studio executive
I think you are far too harsh on the Hollywood studio bosses. Goebbels believed in dumbing down audiences by feeding them pap whereas the studio bosses of the old days believed in making different kind of films and reacted to the public mood and tastes. The production code wasn't something they asked for.
And then they were quite complex. Like Darryl Zanuck being a conservative personally produced two Pro-Union films like "The Grapes of Wrath" and "How Green Was My Valley" because he thought they would make good films. Then Harry Cohn had a signed portrait of Mussolini in his office but against the grain he financed "None Shall Escape" by Andre DeToth, a really powerful anti-Nazi agitprop which features the UN two years before it's existence. Then Cohn got Lang a job making films at Columbia ending his year long sabbatical after being gray-listed for suspicious ties with Leftists. he also gave Joseph H. Lewis his breakthrough and mostly gave him creative control as well.
Then Zanuck funded "The Ox-Bow Incident" even if he knew it would flop at the box-office because he liked the story, and he also produced "Leave Her to Heaven" which is far beyond Goebbels tiny brain.
Gremillion is a truly great filmmaker. Paul Vecchiali celebrates him, but few others. Lumiere d'ete is my favorite.
Dunno where to put this, but as you may have heard by now, it's so long, Donald E Westlake, Richard Stark and Tucker Coe (along with a plethora of other pseudonyms). He was 75.
I found a fascinating article about his little-known career churning out cheerful smut here:
As most obits point out, he wasn't well served by cinema, apart from the Parker novels. None of the Dortmunder books were filmed with any care or attention. I haven't seen Costa-Gavras' film of The Axe, but the first person I heard talking about filming it was Michael Lehmann, more than a decade ago, so I imagine there was a torturous history behind bringing it to the screen.
Made in USA is on YouTube complete in 10 sections.
Well apparently the joke about Continental Films was that they were not bound by the censorship that held back Vichy France so if anyone wanted to make films which differed from the same-old same-old run of programmer fodder, then they had to go there at that time. Obviously you had to keep hush-hush and go deep undercover in order so you don't let anyone in on what you are doing. So Clouzot and his writers would say, "we're making a suspense thriller or an Agatha Christie story" and no one's the wiser.
Roberto Rossellini always believed that it didn't matter where you got the money from to make your films. All that matters is what you do with that money and what films you make. Some would disagree(for a variety of reasons) but it's true enough.
Then Eisenstein made 'Ivan the Terrible' with Stalin's backing.
Oh and Godard famously came to Britain to work with either the Stones or the Beatles as a commision for a film defending abortion, the film "One + One"(or "Sympathy for the Devil") has nothing of any sort in that.
Oh and Bunuel made "Viridiana" and "Tristana" in Franco-Spain.
For many others, Godard above all, Bresson captured the beating heart with "Les Dames du Bois du Boulogne". I'll agree.
Carne's dilemma recalls Dreyer's "Day of Wrath". He made that when Denmark was facing occupation and it was seen for years as anti-Nazi allegory with the witches standing for Jews and other persecuted. Dreyer said that that was unintentional although obviously a work of art is a product of it's time and all. Denmark is famous and justly celebrated for the fact that it's citizenry valiantly defended, hid and protected many Jews from going to the concentration camps. An act of collective heroism like few others in history. "Day of Wrath" served as an influence on Miller's "The Crucible" which was an anti-HUAC allegory.
Anthony Mann's "The Fall of the Roman Empire" was one of the epics shot in Spain with Spanish extras and that film is a thoroughly anti-fascist, anti-totalitarian film with a supremely audacious ending. It was written by Philip "Johnny Guitar" Yordan.
Without a doubt my favorite French logo from the '30s is the one that opens Port of Shadows for Films Osso. The Eiffel Tower towers above a skyline while the rays of the sun throb behind and around it, accompanied by the haunting theme music that pervades the film. Sheer magic.
Le Corbeau is a brilliant film, but I think it probably took quite a whle for the dust to settle before most art house audiences might have agreed. It was a Janus Films release in the US, but I cannot remember ever seeing it in a repertory house (it would make a fascinating double bill with Warners 1942 "Kings Row", another less than idealistic portrait of small town life). Furthermore, its main titles, including the Tobis and Continental logos, are supported by a superbly attention-grabbing music score by the otherwise unknown Tony Aubin. Real tension-inducing stuff, as if it's saying "Here at last! A true Film Maudit that can only now be shown!"
How do you explain the misogyny and questionable racial attitude in "Wages of Fear"? I don't think Clouzot is a humanist, his interest seems to be in masochism and weird behaviour, a little like Tod Browning. He's more of a French Browning than a French Hitchcock, lacking the Englishman's sense of humour and vitality.
In any case I loathe humanists and the word humanist or humanism. For aesthetic reasons chiefly(I just think it's a silly stupid word that belongs in children's playpens). Clouzot doesn't seem to be a humanist at all. A monomaniac with occassional moments of generosity is more appropriate.
Renoir on the other hand isn't a simple humanist either(or whatever a humanist is supposed to be I have no idea, most self-calling ones I know seem like tree-huggers). People who quote "everyone has his reasons"(a partial quote for one thing, out of context for other) don't really understand Renoir. He said of "The Rules of the Game" once that no one in that film(including the character he plays) was worth saving, he said that it was about a society that he believed then persisted in believing was rotten to the core.
And in the TV interview with Rivette he summed up the society of the film as "one that needs to kill to survive. And then kill some more. It will kill, kill, kill and keep killing to extend it's survival always." Very scary moment. Available on Criterion DVD. That Renoir knows this and still shows his characters as humans doesn't mean he doesn't pass judgments just that their humanity makes their actions al the more damning. It's a worldview far beyond Clouzot's ken in sophistication. Not that there's any need to compare since they both sit fine in their own orbits. Like the "Grand Illusion" in the title refers to the idea that WWI would be the end of all wars or that there would end to war.
"I think Clouzot has real affection for his characters — but he likes to show them at their very worst."
Fascinating point, which I mostly agree with. I saw Le Corbeau earlier this year and was absolutely knocked sideways by it — a brilliant movie. When I wrote about the movie I compared it to a very earnest French telefilm about the fate of gay men during the Holocaust. So many Holocaust movies invite you to identify with the noble characters, a device that Clouzot would have despised as quite unearned, I think.
Le Corbeau absolutely refuses to play to the audience's desire to be superior to the worst deeds of the characters. Clouzot keeps you leaping to conclusions even as the townsfolk do, until at some point you realize you're another part of the mob. I agree with you, though, in that I don't think Clouzot is asking us to despise ourselves, he just doesn't want us to lie to ourselves. And certainly I don't think there is reason to think he endorses his characters' worst aspects, like the racism in Wages of Fear.
(this is my earlier piece, just in case you want to see it. I hope you don't mind the link.)
One might argue that Pasolini's Salò is a great humanist film.
Well Pasolini was humanist enough to make what is considered the greatest film ever made about Jesus Christ. Why is humanism opposed to religion anyway? And I don't mean organized or fanatical religion?
"Salo" is a humanist film in that it has enough faith to look at the absolute evil of human beings unflinchingly. But then why call it humanist – honest and brutally truthful is more apropos. Humanism originally applied to the Renaissance scholars like Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas Moore(both of whom were devout Catholics) and also I suppose Francis Bacon. To me the present variety of H-Organizations seems little more than a long self-indulgent pat on the backs to the tradition of European rationality(which coincided naturally with vast colonial holdings). "Salo" on the other hand deliberately questions and interrogates that ideology of rationality. Of course individually the H-Men might not be bad but as a group they are irritating.
Charlie Chaplin's "Monsieur Verdoux" is also a humanist film I suppose even if it concludes that mass murder is the foundation of any form of government. Eisenstein, leftist-darling doesn't have a humanist bone anywhere in his body. Rossellini was perhaps humanist in the classical sense. Personally my favourite humanist film-maker is Fassbinder, especially his "The Third Generation" and "The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant".
I think that Rossellini's The Messiah is at least as great as Pasolini's Il Vangelo secondo Matteo. The Rossellini Christ is a much more human figure.
Pasolini's Salò, apart from its clear-eyed depiction of evil, is also in my opinion a powerful statement about what it means to live without love.
Well definitions change as they are meant to. Humanism is technically an academic term, that's where humanities comes from. Referring to the great scholastic work done from the Renaissance downwards. The re-discovery of classical texts (by way of translations of Arab translations, the Renaissance would not have been possible without the Golden Age of Arabic Civilization and the Crusades initiated by the barbaric Middle Age).
Of course the fact is that the scholarship done during the Renaissance on non-Christian or pre-Christian works(where prior it was applied by the Church to it's own documents, lives of Saints, property records, Inquisition records) undoubtedly led to the current use of the term. And of course the discovery of the different sea-routes and the cartographic revolution in that period.
"resembling the values taught by Christianity but without a belief in God"
But that can apply to Catholicism. The whole "silence of God" thing that's all over Graham Greene, Luis Bunuel, Federico Fellini("La Strada" at least), Martin Scorsese, Robert Bresson, Flannery O'Connor. And among non-Catholics – Faulkner, Bergman(naturellement) and Dreyer and before that Dostoyevsky.
I've never Rossellini's "Il Messia". It was his last feature. He wanted to make a film about Jesus for the Marxists(which to his anger, Pasolini beat him to it) and a film about Marx for the Catholics. His never-done film about Karl Marx(which is a great, great loss) would have emphasized his spiritual side which Rossellini believed that most communists neglected.
I love Pasolini's film but I consider "The Last Temptation of Christ" the best film about Jesus, that bit with him on the deathbed in the fantasy is unforgettable as is his confrontation with Saul/Paul(the REAL founder of Christianity).
My favourite contemporary "humanist" film director is Aki Kaurismäki.


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Career Highlights
- Johnson was a rugged player in the trenches - one of the stars of the Bay City Central football powerhouse of the 1960s.
- At 6-foot-3, 230 pounds, he dominated the line of scrimmage while earning all-Saginaw Valley League and all-state.
- Johnson helped power the Wolves to an 8-1 record and a conference crown while being named team MVP in 1963.
- Johnson went on to letter for three seasons at the University of Michigan.
- He earned honorable mention all-Big Ten as the starting defensive tackle in 1965, playing alongside Bay County Sports Hall of Famers Clayton Wilhite and Ken Wright.
- Johnson later served as U-M freshman line coach under Bump Elliott and then Bo Schembechler while earning two master's degrees.
- He has since served on numerous committees for the Michigan State Board of Education and has been a key proponent for Native American education issues.