John G. Cawelti, in his essay " 'Chinatown' and Generic Transformation in Recent Films", provides an insightful analysis of how Roman Polanski takes the popular genre and American myth of the hard-boiled detective, and twists it around in his film "Chinatown". Cawelti states:
"A film like 'Chinatown' deliberately invokes the basic characteristics of a traditional genre in order to bring is audience to see that genre as the embodiment of an inadequate and destructive myth. We have seen how this process of demythologization operates in 'Chinatown' by setting the traditional model of the hard-boiled detective's quest for justice and integrity over and against Polanski's sense of a universe so steeped in ambiguity, corruption and evil that such individualistic moral enterprises are doomed by their innocent naivete to end in tragedy and self-destruction."
By this point in the essay, Cawelti has already fleshed out the hard-boiled detective structure, and how 'Chinatown' follows it closely (and even pays homage to 'The Maltese Falcon' by way of the similarities between Nicholson & Dunaway to Bogart & Astor), but then severely veers off the structure and ends in chaos and destruction. Instead of solving the crime and going back to a justice-driven, "marginal situation" and being "basically unchanged by what has happened" as the traditional structure would dictate, Detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) in 'Chinatown', cannot overcome what has occurred, and remains emotionally and psychologically scarred.
Cawelti hits on such a great truth about 'Chinatown' when he talks about how Polanski demythologizes the hard-boiled detective story with this film. Polanski shows an underbelly of a corrupt city, and does not package his narrative up by following the structure. He shows what lurks beneath the surface, and what he reveals is evil. As the character of Hollis Mulwray states before his murder in the film, what is beneath the city of Los Angeles thematically matches up with what Polanski is getting out: there is a giant, dark empty nothingness that has been caused by the movement of tectonic plates in California. Mulwray refuses to build the dam because he knows it might lead to the death of many people; instead it, along with his investigation and realization that Cross is manipulating the city's water supply, leads to his own death.
The other main point associated with this theme that Polanski gets across is the dangerous nature of the myth itself. If people believe myths, and the structure of myths, they might end up as Gittes does: confused, overwhelmed, lost. Gittes witnesses pure evil and pure chaos at the end of the film, and Polanski, by paralleling the detective myth, and then contradicting it at the film's end, attributes some of the guilt for Gittes' end to the creation of myth itself.
Rick Altman, in "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre", talks about how as more scholars "come to now the full range of individual Hollywood genres, we are finding that genres are far from exhibiting the homogeneity" that has been attributed to genres. Essentially, Altman begins to see how it is becoming more and more difficult to pin a film down into one genre. In Polanski's opinion (I would assume), which I would agree with, it seems that the less films that support these film myths the better. As we see with Gittes in "Chinatown", believing in the rigid structure of a myth makes it all the more difficult when your narrative strays from the structure. It is much harder to accept the reality of a life of chaos if you believe so strongly in myth.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Caché and L'Absent
When reading Daniel Dayan’s “The Tudor Code of Classical Cinema” I was struck most by the terms and ideas with which he closes his essay. Dayan, chanelling many of the ideas of Jean-Pierre Oudart. states:
“When the viewer discovers the frame... the triumph of his former possession of the image fades out. The viewer discovers that the camera is hiding things, and therefore distrusts it and the frame itself.”
This immediately reminded me of the opening scene of Michael Haneke’s “Caché”. The camera shows a home, and, despite a few passer-bys on foot and in car, the image could pass for a still one. The spectator feels that triumph of entering a new film and visually taking everything in. But the feeling quickly turns ominous. Is the house going to explode? Is someone going to come screaming out of the house, with a dead baby in his hands? Because of this eerie stillness and all the attention Heneke immediately places on this house, the spectator expects the worst.
Then, when non-diegetic sound in the form of calm dialogue between two people is heard, the audience is thrown for a loop. Are they watching this first hand or is the spectator watching this through someone else? Turns out the film’s two protagonists are watching a videotape of their own home being filmed. Phew, no bombs, no bloody babies. But, however, the audience learns it has been tricked. As Dayan says: “the spectator discovers that his possession of space was only partial, illusory.” The spectator was not “where” he thought he was originally. Heneke immediately derails the viewer, and takes what Dayan says to an extreme.
Haneke continues to keep the audience uncomfortable and confused throughout the film by employing a calculated filming technique. The reasoning behind this technique matches up with the narrative of the film itself. The film’s two protagonists Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), receive videotape after videotape of mundane shots of their home and of insights to Georges’ past. The couple goes to the police, as they feel their lives are in danger and they are being terrorized. Haneke gives the spectator clues about who is filming this family as the plot unfolds, but never reveals who the culprit actually is. Thus, for the entirety of the film, the couple (and, thus, the spectator) feels haunted by this imaginary “person” that the film is truly about. Dayan introduces and explains one of Oudart’s terms, which I believe connects to Haneke’s visual style. Dayan states:
“He [the spectator] discovers that he is only authorized to see what happens to be in the axis of the glance of another spectator, who is ghostly or absent. This ghost, who rules over the frame and robs the spectator of his pleasure, Oudart proposes to call ‘the absent one’ (l’absent).”
This idea of “the absent one” directly connects, as Dayan explains, with the shot / reverse shot technique. In film, characters are often speaking to the right or left side of the camera, thus speaking to this “absent one” who is occupying that space. The spectator learns (because of the ingrained language and vocabulary of film) that this character is speaking to another character (one who probably was in the previous, establishing shot). It is interesting to note that Heneke does not employ the shot / reverse shot often in “Caché”, which makes the spectator incredibly uncomfortable. At the dinner table discussion, for example, the camera does not shoot who is speaking at the table, but rather shoots the characters head on without much regard to whom each character speaks. Haneke does not relieve the audience with familiar shot patterns. He does not let the camera occupy the point-of-view of a specific, known character, and keeps the spectator on edge (and also keeps him paying attention). By doing this, Haneke reinforces the idea that the absent one is in control of the film. He gives power to the unknown videotape-sending silent stalker by going against the grain of the typical filmic enunciation. This makes his film all the more effective, eerie, and powerful.
“When the viewer discovers the frame... the triumph of his former possession of the image fades out. The viewer discovers that the camera is hiding things, and therefore distrusts it and the frame itself.”
This immediately reminded me of the opening scene of Michael Haneke’s “Caché”. The camera shows a home, and, despite a few passer-bys on foot and in car, the image could pass for a still one. The spectator feels that triumph of entering a new film and visually taking everything in. But the feeling quickly turns ominous. Is the house going to explode? Is someone going to come screaming out of the house, with a dead baby in his hands? Because of this eerie stillness and all the attention Heneke immediately places on this house, the spectator expects the worst.
Then, when non-diegetic sound in the form of calm dialogue between two people is heard, the audience is thrown for a loop. Are they watching this first hand or is the spectator watching this through someone else? Turns out the film’s two protagonists are watching a videotape of their own home being filmed. Phew, no bombs, no bloody babies. But, however, the audience learns it has been tricked. As Dayan says: “the spectator discovers that his possession of space was only partial, illusory.” The spectator was not “where” he thought he was originally. Heneke immediately derails the viewer, and takes what Dayan says to an extreme.
Haneke continues to keep the audience uncomfortable and confused throughout the film by employing a calculated filming technique. The reasoning behind this technique matches up with the narrative of the film itself. The film’s two protagonists Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche), receive videotape after videotape of mundane shots of their home and of insights to Georges’ past. The couple goes to the police, as they feel their lives are in danger and they are being terrorized. Haneke gives the spectator clues about who is filming this family as the plot unfolds, but never reveals who the culprit actually is. Thus, for the entirety of the film, the couple (and, thus, the spectator) feels haunted by this imaginary “person” that the film is truly about. Dayan introduces and explains one of Oudart’s terms, which I believe connects to Haneke’s visual style. Dayan states:
“He [the spectator] discovers that he is only authorized to see what happens to be in the axis of the glance of another spectator, who is ghostly or absent. This ghost, who rules over the frame and robs the spectator of his pleasure, Oudart proposes to call ‘the absent one’ (l’absent).”
This idea of “the absent one” directly connects, as Dayan explains, with the shot / reverse shot technique. In film, characters are often speaking to the right or left side of the camera, thus speaking to this “absent one” who is occupying that space. The spectator learns (because of the ingrained language and vocabulary of film) that this character is speaking to another character (one who probably was in the previous, establishing shot). It is interesting to note that Heneke does not employ the shot / reverse shot often in “Caché”, which makes the spectator incredibly uncomfortable. At the dinner table discussion, for example, the camera does not shoot who is speaking at the table, but rather shoots the characters head on without much regard to whom each character speaks. Haneke does not relieve the audience with familiar shot patterns. He does not let the camera occupy the point-of-view of a specific, known character, and keeps the spectator on edge (and also keeps him paying attention). By doing this, Haneke reinforces the idea that the absent one is in control of the film. He gives power to the unknown videotape-sending silent stalker by going against the grain of the typical filmic enunciation. This makes his film all the more effective, eerie, and powerful.
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