The Earrings of Madame de…: Cyclical Semiotics

It’s unfortunately been awhile since this one. The opening shot is magnificent, panning in a sort of POV way across her wardrobe and accessories, not only foreshadowing subsequent events but defining her in character, values, and fabulousness. None other than Laura Mulvey herself offered some helpful thoughts in Film Quarterly on this one (Summer 2009, Vol. 62, No. 4). Mulvey observes how much of the film is about repetition/return and fetishization. Narrative elements are highly cyclical, particularly the earrings themselves. (Is this where the much cornier Somewhere in Time got its idea from?) Everyone in the film does some fetishizing. The general (Charles Boyer) fetishizes his wife even as, Mulvey notes, he is humanized by his sympathy for Louise. She fetishizes the earrings, but only one they signify the ambassador’s love (Vittorio de Sica) rather than her husband the general’s. Mulvey adeptly shows that in so doing, Louise fails to appreciate the initial symbolic value of the earrings: indicative of her husband’s love for her. When their symbolic power is merely this, she attributes to the earrings only monetary power, selling them in order to pay off her debts. Once they end up symbolizing the ambassador’s love for her, she embraces their symbolic value.

This shifting symbolism behind the earrings illustrates the cyclical nature of the film’s narrative and themes. They originally were a wedding gift from her husband, a token of his love for her at the time of their marital consummation. After Louise sells the earrings, they falls into the ambassador’s hands and, just before his intent to consummate intimate love with Louise, he presents them to her. This is an affront to the general but Louise ignores the insult, devaluing her husband’s love, embracing that of another man, and is thereby dehumanized. Max Ophuls achieves this by positioning Louise between “opposing iconographies of masculinity,” Mulvey explains: “…on the one hand, a ‘feminized’ man, a man who loves love, a ‘womanizer’; on the other hand, a husband who personifies the ‘law,’ a representative of military and aristocratic ‘order.’” The fact that de Sica’s character is an ambassador alludes to a “feminine” character in the same way that the general alludes to a “masculine” one. One is a peacemaker, a diplomat who is trained to see opposing viewpoints; and the other is an aggressor, one who takes the offensive to defeat an opponent. Ophuls exploits the classic love triangle in this way and in so doing displays the complex, dynamic interplay of fetishization, or, the politics of love.

Mulvey also does well to note the narrative progress in the film, and how it slows, pauses, and is threatened at various points by romantic interludes. The most renowned such sequence is the montage of a number of balls, picturing dancing, music, and a “blossoming of bodily and cinematic movement [that] slows down the forward movement of the narrative, suggesting that the ecstasy of love involves slowing and delaying time.” The figure of the general ultimately functions not only as a symbol of law, structure, and order, but an actual intra-cinematic law of narrative conclusion. Whereas the ambassador threatens the narrative, both in terms of slowing it and swaying it away from its lawful, orderly, inevitable conclusion, the general brings things back to the way they should be. Mulvey again: “From this perspective, the guardian of the law also acts as a guardian of narrative development, bringing both its delay and irrational passion back onto a linear path, the end of which will be figured literally and metaphorically by the stop of death.”

Most stills from DVD Beaver.

Quickies, Vol. XXIV

The War Wagon (dir. Burt Kennedy, 1967) – This is really all formula, all textbook Western – for its era, anyway. John Wayne is a slightly less upstanding character this time around (but there were hints of that even in The Searchers, weren’t there? Wayne and Kirk Douglas certainly make a fine pair, although one wishes they’d taken advantage of the opportunity and put more of a visionary director at the help. It’s been commented upon that the Native Americans are pure stereotypes here (savage pawns existing for the purposes of the white protagonist, until they are easily massacred while the Duke rides away into the sunset…unlike The Searchers), to say nothing of the Mexican women (buxom, and that is all). Still, an old, entertaining classic.

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (dir. John Sturges, 1957) – There has been a bunch of films about the notorious gunfight, about Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, those legends of the American West/Midwest that may as well have staged their lives in order to inspire one of the ideal Western narratives. Even the Westerns, old and Spaghetti, that have nothing to do with Earp and Holliday have everything to do with them. This realization of the story features a relatively inept Wyatt Earp, who needs Doc Holliday’s help even more than he’s usually willing to admit. He’s a rather poor judge of character, inasmuch as Burt Lancaster’s version of him allows for such an interpretation between the lines of the historical source. Contrast him with, say, Kurt Russell’s messianic version of Earp in Tombstone. Marks go to Sturges’ film, however, for subtlety and not being made in the 90s.

Snatch (dir. Guy Ritchie, 2000) – It’s still in style (as it probably always will be) to say that Lock, Stock… is better, so we must review it sometime soon in order to judge. To those of us who, in 2000, were not as in touch with broader cinematic trends, Guy Ritchie’s films seemed to come out of nowhere and carry tons of street cred by virtue of (1) being British and (2) being cool enough to lure Brad Pitt out of movies like Meet Joe Black and cameos in Friends for no paycheck (reportedly). Now, it’s easier to see Pulp Fiction all over it, along with plenty of other hipster-friendly, heist-driven, pop-and-roll-soundtracked, ecstasy-inspired editing before it. To be fair, though, it seems more than a little clear that Steven Soderbergh took a lot of hints from Snatch before delving into the Oceans series. What does Snatch say, exactly? What a confusing world we live in, with so many coincidences that mock humanity’s efforts to carry out their harebrained, get-rich-quick scenes. If you win in the end, it’s by sheer luck and despite the incompetence that undergirds the illusion of smarts you see when you look in the mirror.

Top Gun (dir. Tony Scott, 1986) – As gay as they get. So very many clichés fill this one up to the brim, but to be fair, it invented most of them. Tarantino’s rant in Sleep With Me gets some of the details wrong, and it certainly conflates everything else about the movie into subtextual homoeroticism (as so many are prone to do), but basically it’s all there. Buddy movies had existed for decades before this one, although they started to hit a real stride in the 70s. With Top Gun, it’s taken to a new level and given a man-love triangle to make it more interesting. Also, this is a big lesson in old-school morals, in the vein of Aesop’s Fables. Don’t be too cocky, or it’ll come back to bite you. Have fun in your job, but remember just what a high calling it is to be in the Navy. Hard to see much more in this through Tom Cruise’s perpetual grin.

The Limey: Pulp Non-fiction

 

Who are you?

 

It turns out that there is a lengthy and interesting backstory to the Steven Soderbergh-directed film The Limey. The numerous flashback sequences do not, in fact, carefully disguise Terrence Stamp’s age and recreate a 1960s London environment as it might at first appear. Soderbergh purchased the rights to Ken Loach’s 1967 film Poor Cow, in which Terrence Stamp starred as the much younger man that he was at the time. The inclusion of this footage creates an explicit intertextual element to a film (The Limey) that already is heavily referential to the 1960s in various other ways. There is the casting, perhaps most obviously: Stamp (Wilson), Peter Fonda (Valentine), Lesley Anne Warren, and Barry Newman. Within the film, these actors play characters whose heydays have passed, and who reminisce about happier times back in that notorious decade. The fact that the actors portraying these characters had famous roles that have since associated them with the sixties, too, makes the characters all the more believable.

 

Twilight of a has-been

 

In fact, attempts by these characters to live in the present – the nineties – come across as pathetic. Valentine’s key scene occurs in his bathroom. He picks his teeth in the mirror, reflecting the vanity of one who sees himself not as he is but as he once was. As he talks overtly about the sixties, about how they had their “own language” in which he was fluent, his much younger girlfriend sits nearby in a bathtub. She cannot relate to his memories whatsoever, as he speaks a language about a language, both of which go over her head. This girl relates about as well to Valentine as the young girl in Broken Flowers relates to Bill Murray’s character. The contrasting fact that Wilson is seeking out his daughter in the film’s narrative makes Valentine’s love life especially disturbing. Wilson at least recognizes the age difference in himself and young women; Valentine’s young girlfriend reminds Wilson of his dead daughter. Still, youth is an essential quality that eludes these men but that defines characters close to them. Wilson can no more revive his daughter than Valentine can make his girlfriend relate to him in any meaningful way.

Arguably the most important scene that sums up Wilson’s failure to belong in this new, post-sixties era, takes place in the driveway at Valentine’s residence in the L.A. hills. As Wilson and his friend Eduardo pull up, they see uniformed men lined up outside. They are valets, a fact that Wilson fails to comprehend. Eduardo is forced to explain in some detail what valets are. Wilson’s ignorance about this seems to have something to do with the fact that he has been in prison for much of the past thirty years and also the cultural disconnect: he is British and Valentine is an American – specifically, a southern Californian.

 

Confused

 

This brings up another very interesting aspect of The Limey: its depiction of the Los Angeles area. For as interesting as is Soderbergh’s cinematography, editing, and integration of feature film footage into the narrative, The Limey sticks to fairly commonplace tropes of the city, of L.A. in particular. This isn’t to denigrate the film, but to observe how its success is, in part, due to its connection with familiar motifs defining Los Angeles and its intrinsic connection with film history. Valentine is a dirty, once-was record producer living in one of those pretentious overlooks near Mulholland Drive. Eduardo, standing on a balcony with Wilson, says something like, “You could see the ocean from here, if you could see i.,” L.A.’s characteristic smog blocks the literal view and signifies a kind of man-made noetic fog clouding the vision and understanding of this space’s inhabitants. Houses like Valentine’s have always been associated in film history, from the Golden Age til now, with the nefarious, the sinister, the immoral. (See Twilight [1998], Mulholland Drive, Where the Truth Lies, Chinatown, Point Blank, Blade Runner, The Big Lebowski, Species, and so many others.) L.A.’s own morally dubious history of urban development spills over into morally dubious histories of its inhabitants. Cities have traditionally taken on the characteristics of their dwellers (think Sodom and Gomorrah), but L.A.’s own genesis as an urban environment forced onto a non-urban space, while depleting the resources (most notably, water) of towns and environs hundreds of miles away from itself reverses the pattern.

 

Artificial haze

 

 

Free fallin on Mulholland

 

A kind of hereditary tendency falls upon L.A. inhabitants, birthed by the city itself, to be L.A., to embody it in themselves as persons, or more specifically, as a people. This is the traditional space of film noir, that most pessimistic of all cinematic genres, in which individuals are pawns in a chess game played by the fates and “choices” are the cynical comedy corresponding to the plot’s inevitable tragedy. In The Limey, Stamp plays the outsider, the titular foreigner who invades the space of L.A. with the pretense to think he can fulfill his mission despite having to carry it out in such an unknown place. He is able to do so, more or less, precisely because L.A. is L.A., and its inhabitants, too, are L.A. The film mocks Los Angeles and all who dwell in it, from the warehouse thugs in the early scene to the Hollywood figures who funded the film itself, and who make an appearance during a film shoot within the film. (Surely it’s no accident that this film was shot by Steven Soderbergh, the notorious indie director who only dabbles in mainstream Hollywood fare in order to fund his own projects.)

 

L.A. as alternate prison

 

Wilson seems to have very little trouble at all both overcoming opposition from Los Angeleans as well as persuading them to let him go about his business. Even a confrontation with a higher-up narcotics officer ends with the cop looking the other way as Wilson points out that their interests are temporarily aligned: to take down Valentine. This is all quite curious, since no matter how adept Wilson might seem to us as we observe him on his L.A. mission, the fact remains that he has been a resident in British prison for much of the past thirty years. He’s not know for being that good at what he does, but somehow in L.A., he has much less trouble. As Wilson goes on to apply the slightest bit of force on Valentine (whose name itself connotes softness, and a surely-ironic angelic nature), Valentine crumbles completely under the pressure. He desperately clings to his young girlfriend, whose sheltered affluence makes her even less prepared than Valentine to respond to Wilson’s vengeance. The fact that, in the penultimate scene, it is Valentine’s ankle (read: Achilles’ heel) that snaps in half as Wilson catches up to him on the rocky beach illustrates that Valentine’s main weakness (which defines him completely – he hides behind his wealth) is, precisely, his weakness. This is no typo; Valentine is unable even to run away from a threatening force without his own bones breaking in the process. At least Achilles’ heel was compromised by the enemy and not by himself.

 

Ghost of youth

 

 

Intertextual youth

 

 

Old baby

 

 

Hangin loose in L.A.

 

 

Black & blue dahlia

 

 

Easy rider

 

 

Accessing Hollywood

 

 

Final compromise

 

 

Out of the past

 

Quickies, Vol. XXIII: In which Tony Curtis goes downhill

Sex and the Single Girl (dir. Richard Quine, 1964) – A Tony Curtis marathon was obviously in order, following the old fella’s death recently at the ripe old age of 85. (Held off on Some Like It Hot for now on account of a relatively recent viewing.) This one is, well, very sexy indeed. One must try not to think of Natalie Wood as the cute little girl from Miracle on 34th Street during this one, at the risk of feeling quite awkward indeed. They call this “the poor man’s Pillow Talk,” but I don’t see what’s so “poor” about it. Quite funny, quite amusing, albeit completely formulaic. These films rely on gender tropes, and also on undermining them just enough to entertain/surprise the audience. Thank you, Netflix Instant.

The Amorous Mis-Adventures of Casanova, or, Casanova & Co., or, Some Like It Cool (dir. Franz Antel, 1979) – Must admit to turning this off after only 20 minutes or so. Even worse, must admit to watching the first 20 minutes or so. Thus ends the Tony Curtis marathon, with an unfortunately abrupt conclusion at Curtis’ softcore stint in the late 70s. This one is so bad from so many different vantage points. The male fantasy here gets to have a complete heyday without an ounce of brains stitching together disconnected, pornographic scenes. Thank you, Netflix Instant.

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret (created by Shaun Pye & David Cross, 2010) – In a word, wow. In a few more, this pilot starts off about as great as a pilot can start out: love the courtroom scene followed by “14 days earlier” (or whatever). No one could play the clueless American as well as David Cross, who has made part of his living out of dissing the Larry-the-Cable-Guy-type American persona. Will Arnett’s character is Devon Banks (3o Rock) on crack. Some of this humor is distinctly “British” and not “American” (quotations tossed out there as an acknowledgment to problems with essentialism); the restaurant scene in particular just didn’t seem to end. Be reminded of this (and Monty Python) whenever we’re told that American humor is slapstick and British humor sophisticated.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1934) – It’s not an easy job to engage with these older British films, especially when the picture is so dark. Clearly, though, this is Hitchcock. Lots of little tools and frills are thrown out there for story cohesion, stylistic flare, and, of course, good old-fashioned suspense. The penultimate scene in a crowded theater is now so signature that you would know something’s about to happen there even without being told. Also, you have to appreciate the bookends of the mother firing a shotgun both for and in spite of her daughter. Will need to revisit the remake.

The Godfather: Morality, in all its contradictions

Some advice he can't refuse

There is shockingly little written about The Godfather in terms of critical textual analysis. There’s plenty about the film’s production, influence, and overall importance in film history. Nearly everyone loves it and can’t say enough good things about it, but the film is either strikingly simple to understand or strikingly difficult, eluding the comprehension of critics and academics to such an extent that they hardly bother to footnote it. Articles have been written about the role of music in the film – in the trilogy, really. Books have been written about how Paramount got it made, how Coppola finally got attached, how Brando and Pacino were eventually given the lead roles, how it draws from and departs from the gangster genre, and how it was integral to the formation of “New Hollywood” in the early 70s. These things are all interesting, but it leaves the interested viewer lacking proper resources to get down, simply, to what the film is about and how it achieves its meaning(s). Certainly there is no pretense that this medium will be able to pierce very deeply at all into the answers to those questions, but a modest attempt should be made.

Inside: hearts of darkness

It turns out that the gangster genre, so popular especially in the 30s and 40s, was largely about morality plays. Pre-code films like Scarface, Little Caesar, and Public Enemy may have been about morality as much as the later code films (White Heat, The Roaring Twenties), but the earlier ones tended to blur the line between condemning violence and glorifying it. What is interesting about The Godfather is the way that morality initially seems to be of little interest to the film but then becomes so intrinsic to its narrative and ultimate meaning. Why is Don Vito put in a positive light, or at least in a morally ambivalent light, from his first appearance in the film until his death, while Michael’s timeline of moral progress is what condemns him? Vito’s business may not be a legitimate one, but the film associates him with family and business equally. In his business life, he holds the obviously familial title that he embraces so much that he even chastises a man who asks a favor of him without addressing him as “Godfather.” Subtextually, it’s possible that Coppola means to critique Vito for pretending not to be about the business; for pretending to be the loving patriarch in a large family that is headed for certain destruction. Michael, on the other hand, initially distances himself from his family, citing business as the main problem with his family. Once he is drawn into the scuffle, he is shown to be far more ruthless and immoral than his father ever was. Though Vito’s mind dulls as he ages, he cannot be completely blind to Michael’s tendencies, and he allows Michael to lead with a brutal, iron fist even though Michael’s priorities are not the same as Vito’s.

Blinding blinds

To be sure, we’re confining this discussion of the (im)morality of Vito and Michael to the narrative, not to other, formal elements. Still, once form enters the discussion, the observations above become all the more apparent. The famous early wedding scene pits the Don’s family life against his business life, exposing the contradiction between the two worlds that he attempts to conflate. Outside, life is bright and cheery. People sing, dance, and drink wine while celebrating a wedding. Inside, people ask favors of the Don, who cannot decline a request on the wedding day of his daughter. But inside, it is dark and ominous. While Vito is able to look through the blinds at the happiness outside, no one is able to see into his darker life who is not permitted. Favors are asked, some with more respect than others, and favors are granted. There is no indication of unhappiness or problems from the outside, but on the inside the opposite is the case. Does the film mean to imply that Vito excels at separating two lives that can coexist as long as they do not overlap? Or does the film hint at a moral contradiction, and one that is bound to lead to problems?

Who doesn't belong?

Outside, only Michael dares to acknowledge the other reality of his family’s life. He does so with contempt, promising never to be a part of his family’s business. Even his attire sets him apart from the rest of the family, associating himself with another, larger organization: the US military. Ironically, perhaps, the film’s first line, from a business associate asking a favor of Vito, is, “I love America.” This statement is used pragmatically, as a means to persuade Vito that the man’s request does not clash with the nature of his request: the vengeful murder of men who violated his daughter. Incidentally, one of the first things out of Vito’s mouth in the film is a corrective response to this man, who insists that justice be served for his daughter’s sake. Vito tells him, “That is not justice.” This moral rebuke establishes Vito as a man who is not unaware of moral boundaries, but a man who, when catered to, is nevertheless willing to violate those boundaries. In this way, the film seems to be a moral test for the viewer. Knowing at the outset that Vito and Michael both have consciences, able to make ethical distinctions, how will the viewer respond to the fairly static, seemingly “positive” portrayal of Vito and to the more dynamic, negative portrayal of Michael?

Someone's watching

But, back to national affinity. The man requesting Vito’s intervention for his daughter’s sake associates himself with America and, by the nature of the appeal, identifies Vito with the country as well. The act of requesting a favor, using affection for the nation as a bargaining tool, associates one with the other. It is as if the man is saying, this is way things are done here, as we both know. The fact that Michael, too, appeals to patriotism in his attempt to set himself apart from the rest of his family exposes the contradiction not only in the Corleone family but also in the nation of America. One uses patriotism for one end, one uses it for another. However, the film’s narrative eventually takes the viewer to the place where the contradiction is uncovered and shown to be based on a single idea. When Michael makes the shift to the other side, we see how flimsy is the patriotic deference.

Someone else is watching

As the film progresses, national identity shifts to ecclesiastical identity. By the end, rather than the film using its tools to associate country with the family business (dialogue, wardrobe), it uses cross-cutting to expose the contradiction between church loyalty and the family business. And just as Vito, in the film’s early scene, transgressed a moral boundary of which he was fully aware, the editing at the film’s end shows that Michael’s religious vows to live a righteous life and renounce the devil is done in full rebellion to the ultimate symbol of morality in his universe: the church. The murders that are committed, one after the other, clash with each individual promise Michael makes to be godfather to his nephew. Willing to gain the title of his father at all costs, Michael begins his tenure as Don with as little moral integrity as is possible. The film’s form, through this cross-editing, more than anything else betrays Michael’s deeper vices in contrast with his father’s. The film does not offer the viewer the image of Vito fulfilling his promise. In Michael’s case, however, the editing betrays not only Michael’s inability to separate family from business as Vito at least attempted to do, but also Michael’s much more severe vices. The multiple murders, all cross-cut with his vows, being broken at the moment they are being made, emphasize that the family is getting worse and not, as Michael promised Kay, more “legitimate.”

She's no Waldo

Incidentally, it should be pointed out, if someone hasn’t already done so, that Michael’s wife’s name is interesting. “Kay” is a homonym of the letter “K”, and it is a letter that is not contained in the Italian alphabet. As if there were any doubt that this blonde-ish woman was not an Italian, even her name sets her apart from the culture and, by relation, sets Michael apart from his father’s traditions.

A sympathetic performance

Another concluding aside: Jon Lewis’ chapter on the film in Film Analysis: A Norton Reader is generally only an “analysis” in the terms described above that are so common for The Godfather. It mostly restricts itself to the production background of the film, relation to the gangster genre, and cinematic influence. Lewis does note that Marlon Brando’s acting style inadvertently injured the intent of Bertolucci’s film Last Tango in Paris, Brando’s follow-up performance to The Godfather that earned him another Oscar nomination. Brando’s somewhat infamous brand of method acting, Lewis suggests, ultimately created a character that was sympathetic to the audience – by virtue of his poetic improvisation and extremely detailed performance – when Bertolucci’s intent in the film had been to illustrate the vacuity of such a life and such a philosophy of life. Considering again all of the aforementioned contradictions in the character of Vito in The Godfather and the apparently different light in which Vito and Michael are portrayed, is it possible that Brando’s acting in the film subverts the film’s intended meaning? This could possibly account for the seemingly more positive character of the patriarch, or at least part of it. There can be no doubt that the film presents Michael as transgressing more boundaries than his father’s legacy would deem permissible. A possible answer to this question lies in the sequel. By going back in time and depicting a younger Vito, portrayed by Robert DeNiro rather than Brando, the next film presents two major moral possibilities. First, it may suggest that Vito is more evil than Brando’s performance led us to believe by giving us a different version of Vito. Second, and contrarily, it may show the underlying account of how Vito rose to such heights as the head of the biggest family in the Five Families and in so doing imply that Vito had good motivations for his life of crime or that the truth is grayer than simple black-and-white morality. A subsequent review of The Godfather, Part II is apparently in order.

The father-land

Ominous oranges

...more oranges...

American flag...and more oranges...

The final orange

Business...

...family

Evil...

...more evil still