Tetro: Familial Inscriptions & Dying Lights

Young Frankenstein: Undermining Filmmaking, Celebrating Film-Faking

Maddening

The umpteen-thousandth viewing, and still worth revisiting. Noticed this time how extensively the film pokes fun at film itself. The process of film is inherently deceptive: actors pretend to be what they aren’t, cuts cover up countless takes and sew together some truly nasty seams, cliches are simply everywhere, etc., etc. By drawing the viewer’s attention to the filmmaking process, Young Frankenstein makes a joke of film history. Conveniently, it borrows its story from one of the most classic films from Hollywood’s early sound days, Frankenstein.

Reminiscent of...

...Citizen Kane.

The film begins with Wilder’s Dr. Friedrich Frankenstein teaching what would appear to be an advanced class in medical school, only to have to explain the most ridiculously elementary aspects of brain function and be barraged with questions like, “What’s the difference between reflexive and voluntary nerve impulses?” The silliness of the question sidesteps the need to create a clever way to introduce the film’s subject matter. And when the doctor insists on an unconventional pronunciation of his name, the student gives another ridiculously lengthy question about the doctor’s background, confirming with comedic overtness to the audience that, yes, this fellow is related to the famous “Frankenstein” we all know about.

Trans-Atlantic train

To point out every such example of the film’s attention to filmmaking conceits would take too long, so here are a few. Eyegor’s hump moves back and forth, to comedic effect. This acknowledges the fakeness of the hump and its obligatory presence based on faithfulness to the source material. Sexual double entendres are everywhere: “What knockers!” “Would you like to have a roll in ze hay?” “Elevate me.” Nearly all of them seem to involves Teri Garr’s character Inga, the predictably buxom, and blonde, laboratory assistant. The presence of the blonde in film is so often merely sexual, and a threat to the more stable, conservative, and win-able brunette, who typically wants to restrain the sexuality of the (male) protagonist rather than let it thrive in the here and now, disrupting the narrative to the gratification of the audience.

Sank you, doctor!

At one point, Eyegor draws a ridiculous (hard to avoid using this word a lot) hypothetical picture of a figure Dr. Frankenstein can use for the great experiment. While showing it off, he hangs it on a hook clearly prepared for it, inexplicably set in the middle of the wall. Holding it crookedly, he releases it and lets it swing as the film dissolves to a body hanging from a noose, also swinging from side to side. There are numerous tools of humor being used in all of this, but the sheer absurdity of this contrived transition mainly draws attention to the artificiality of the filmmaking process. Nothing is so smooth in reality, so Mel Brooks exaggerates cinematic tools and achieves a humorous result.

Staging the dissolve

Others. When Frankenstein and Eyegor lift the coffin out of the grave, they are underneath it. This joke is so subtle, really, that it would be easy to miss. It makes no sense whatsoever, and it celebrates the fact that it doesn’t need to make any sense. When the doctor complains, “What a filthy job!” Eyegor state that it could be worse: “Could be raining.” Of course, thunder and lightning are the immediate effect, and the rains come pouring down on them. Again, utterly artificial and impossible, but doable in the filmmaking process and typically used for suspenseful effects, but Brooks undermines this and turns it into comedy. Similar to the grave-lifting, Frankenstein’s initial trip to Transylvania from the US is via railway. Various wipes draw viewer attention to a squabbling couple that argues in different languages as the train car’s interior reflects the changing local regions. In the meantime, the absurdity of a trans-Atlantic train goes nearly unacknowledged. By refusing the rational requirement to take a boat or plane across the ocean, the film again acknowledges its own fakeness, and its freedom to violate the rules of filmmaking.

Could be worse

Echoes of Old Hollywood

Breaking the 4th wall has consequences

Further maddening

Playful horror

Winking at the audience

Who's the real monster?

Woof

All's crazy...

...except for the monster.

The Notorious Bettie Page

At the endorsement of a former advisor, took in this one for the sake of its worth with regard to the male gaze, et al. But does anything distinguish it from everything else that’s out there? Perhaps one thing, at least. The film makes a fairly strong division between its form and content; while the content certainly revolves around the male gaze, objectification of the male body, male dominance over the woman, etc., the film avoids a formal parallel. Certainly some scenes frame Bettie (Gretchen Mol) as a pinup, but the film is largely shot from her POV, at least attempting (though not always succeeding) to give Bettie the formal agency. Since her life was devoid of any kind of narrative agency, the effort made to suture the viewer to her is admirable. Still, the film falls into the trap of the biopic, often wallowing in the image of the person, in this case the visual image of Bettie (i.e. the female form), rather than doing something more formally experimental and interesting and withholding that image from the viewer. What if we did not see Bettie during the photo shoots any more than Bettie saw herself? What if we were given a taste of the POV on the other side of the camera? The film at times attempts to do something like this but struggles to make the trip to the other side.

Quickies, Vol. XXV: Catch-up

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (dir. Blake Edwards, 1961) – Been way too long since this one. It’s hard to watch it “objectively,” largely on account of its status as the origin of Audrey Hepburn’s ultimate and most everlasting image. This is interesting, considering how different her character here is from those in Roman Holiday, Sabrina, My Fair Lady, and Charade, to name a few. She is arguably at her most complex here as a solo woman living with an unnamed feline, milking men for all that they’re worth before expending them and moving on. Of course, it’s much more complex than that. She has a divided nature and deeply conflicted desires, unlike her characters from the aforementioned films. While this doesn’t necessarily maximize viewing pleasure (nor does her anorexic frame), it gives her more humanity than many of her films, which left her at the mercy of male narrative catalysts.

The Sound of Music (dir. Robert Wise, 1965) – This largely happened thanks to Oprah, whose reunification of the original cast was just enough of a novelty to warrant a watch. Was struck watching the film, prior to the show, how cohesive are the images with the words, the form with the content, the themes with the narrative. Land is important to the narrative, which features an imminent exodus from the domestic terrain and into a new one that we no more see than Moses go to see Israel. The shots embrace Austria, the songs celebrate it, and the narrative clings to it despite holding family as a higher ideal.

Ivan’s Childhood (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1962) – How perfect, and, as usual for Tarkovsky, how ripe for analysis. Have watch four of his films, and two of them have here appeared in “Quickies,” which is a bummer. But if you can’t do something right, do it just barely at all. How do you put these images into words, anyway? A child in wartime trauma: openness contrasted with claustrophobia. A boy forced to live in the foolish world of men. The maternal: ever elusive, ever evasive, ever lovely. He dreams of her from the beginning; she fuels his every thought, word, and deed; in the end she is his heaven.

Gold Diggers of 1933 (dir. Mervyn LeRoy, 1933) – These pre-codes are so interesting, particularly in their initial display of female agency, which often swirls the bowl before getting flushed. This one has lots of little parallels with a later, code musical like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in which the lovely showgirls dupe the rich men into giving them exactly what they want, whatever that may be. In both films, women belong to different types: one wants money, the other wants “love,” or something like it.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (dir. Mel Stuart 1971) -What a beaut. It may give priority to Wonka, unlike the book and the exponentially inferior remake, but when it’s Gene Wilder, how could you not? So many elements of horror are here, which any child can tell you. It’s hard, too, to deny the (biblical) allegory going on. This is about creation, beauty, free will, election, sin, death, and grace. Let’s be real: it ends with an ascension and authority extended from the creator to the one plucked from a tragic existence. Enough Genesis tropes are live and active here that, conscious or not, Roald Dahl/Mel Stuart were clearly influenced by them.

Hostel (dir. Eli Roth, 2005) – Thought it was worth a brief look into the modern slasher film, but this was too much even to finish. It certainly did well to exploit the American-youth fear of the other and turn the European fantasy vacation on its head. In the same way that classic horror tropes punish any display of sexuality in the narrative, so also is this manifest at the level of horror film history itself. This is a film defined by sexuality taken to an extreme with an extremely violent parallel. Brings new meaning to the term “horror porn.”