The Purple Rose of Cairo: Subverting Cinema

Discontent in "reality"

It was awhile ago when we watched this one, which came via the lovely Netflix Instant feature streaming via Nintendo Wii. (Somewhere Jack Donaghy is drooling over the synergy.) So, the screenshots here will undoubtedly be inferior to the norm. Needing a little refresher, enlisted the assistance of Arnold W. Preussner, whose helpful article “Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo and the Genres of Comedy” sufficiently brought the film back to mind and productively expanded on it. His thesis revolves around Allen’s use of (what Preussner identifies as) “three of the four primary types of comedy identified by Northrop Frye” in some essay Frye once wrote. The discussion of comedy becomes more interesting when Preussner gets into its concrete manifestations in and ramifications upon the film’s diegesis. The bottom line is that Woody Allen utilizes different and contradictory comedic modes that undermine viewer expectations while simultaneously engaging the viewer with Mia Farrow’s character Cecilia.

The blue pill

One mode is evident in Cecilia’s ability to extract the character of Tom (Jeff Daniels) from the screen in the theater into her own “real” world. This is “Arostophanic Old Comedy.” the second type is “Roman New Comedy,” seen when Gil (also played by Jeff Daniels), the actor who had played Tom in the film within, intercedes in order to confront Tom and persuade him to return to the screen. Finally, Preussner observes “Shakespearean ‘green world’ comedy” always on display on the screen within the film, filled with confused and quarreling thespians upset that one of their own has defied unwritten conventions by departing the celluloid. Preussner points out that the film presents a certain contradiction setting the viewer up for disappointment even while acknowledging the silliness of giving into the gag. The film is largely about a pathetic woman’s escapist existence, fleeing into the unreal world of Hollywood artificiality to negotiate her sad life as an inept waitress and unappreciated housewife. The viewer pities Cecilia, even while letting the different types of comedy overtake the rationality that such pity should reflect. So instead of taking a logical view of the film, the viewer sympathizing with Cecilia who also takes part in the film’s comedy is shocked by a relatively tragic ending. Instead of getting a traditional Hollywood conclusion, the film confirms its consistent critique if Cecilia’s pitiful embrace of artificial stories by avoiding such a shallow finale.

She needs the third pill

What the film calls into question, then, is the notion of viewer engagement. Films can’t succeed on a popular level without it, a fact that’s been true since the earliest days of film. Allen acknowledges this by planting the setting of Purple Rose in Depression-era New Jersey, a sad time and place if there ever was one. Cinema is escapist by its nature, and Cecilia gives into its temptations head-first. Allen relies on viewer engagement as much as Astaire and Rogers did (which he acknowledges at the film’s finale when Cecilia escapes back into the theater and Fred and Ginger are on screen). Still, Allen chooses to punish the protagonist for this essential truth about the movies. So while Allen subverts the nature of cinema, the nature of comedy, and the guilty pleasure that cinema arouses in its real participants (versus non-real figures on the screen), the narrative is wholly consistent with itself by not resorting to a melodramatic Hollywood ending.

The End.

Quickies, Vol. XXIX: Fantasies

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1977) – At this point, Spielberg hadn’t quite mastered his balance between grand scope and human interest; it’s overly big with not enough emphasis on the small. It’s good and well to offer a regular joe as your main protagonist, but don’t dwarf him too much. E.T., Indiana Jones, etc. do a better job with this. Still, lots of nice images of children, with the juvenile elements of humanity most likely to connect with the extra-terrestrial.

Ghostbusters 2 (dir. Ivan Reitman, 1985) – An old, guilty pleasure. Not as classic as the original, but still with its moments. It’s all Murray’s show as far as comedy goes, and all Aykroyd’s show as far as the occult stuff goes. There’s a lot of postcolonialism going on here, a la The Exorcist. All that is paranormal and weird seems to originate in the third world, reflecting all of our “Western” anxieties about the other/Other/mother. Whereas in the first film we have a symbol of Western capitalism terrorizing Manhattan – in a fundamental departure from the Godzilla rampage in Tokyo – this one flips to the “other” side: what we have most to fear is no longer ourselves, positioned here as we are halfway through the Reagan era, but the other, more netherworldy hemispheres.

Everything You’ve Always Wanted To Know About Sex…But Were Afraid To Ask (dir. Woody Allen, 1971) – Didn’t finish this one…didn’t make it halfway through, to be truthful. The idea of a series of vignettes about sex is worthwhile enough, and one would think that if anyone had something interesting and humorous to say about the subject, it would be Woody. It suffers from lengthy periods of either complete silence (intended as humorous awkwardness) or painful attempts at jokes. So many setups, so few coherent witticisms.

Femme Fatale (dir. Brian De Palma, 200?) – A pleasant surprise from the very techie, very senses-minded De Palma. He likes his cinema, too, as Blow-Out and this one clearly demonstrate. He’s playing with cinema’s tools, almost theorizing with them, and it comes off as exploratory and experimental rather than flashy and pretentious. By using such a classical form and narrative (noir) and toying with it and injecting it with modern thriller tropes, he whips up an interesting and bold mash-up that is, in its way, a very cool novelty. (Each of these films was screened via Netflix Instant, so screenshots suffer.)

I Live in Fear, or, Record of a Living Being

Family counsel(ing)

It had been too long since a Kurosawa viewing, and certainly too long since a first-time viewing. Hadn’t seen the alternately titled I Live In Fear or Record of a Living Being on account of its exclusion from Criterion’s standard-disc collection and subsequent inclusion in the Eclipse set “Postwar Kurosawa.” Ultimately, this is probably more fitting, as the film is distinctly “postwar”; it’s not only situated in that era, but its narrative revolves around psychological fallout from wartime trauma. One forgets how tight, cohesive, and technically flawless are most of Kurosawa’s films, and this one is no exception. The director believed that a good film should be interesting and easy to understand. Kurosawa had a remarkable ability to make films that fit those terms without being simplistic. I Live In Fear is, in one sense, Kurosawa’s most Ozu-like film; the camera work is static and the spatial settings are contemporary and largely restricted to the domestic sphere. Unlike many Ozu films, however, the family patriarch is not well-respected, although here the question of whether he should be respected is central. (Ozu tends to take it more for granted that the older generation is getting the shaft from their kids.)

Beyond invididual identity

Other postwar Kurosawa films  interact with similar themes as I Live In Fear, but they do so much less overtly. The threat of nuclear annihilation and its accompanying myopia is confronted head-on in this film. The question essentially is whether it’s insane to worry about it or insanely ignorant not to worry about it. The film begins and (basically) ends with the viewer sutured to Takashi Shimura’s character, an everyman, a dentist, a typical but upstanding citizen who does his community a service by working in a judicial role on a family court. In the film’s background is his son, a fellow dentist working at his father’s practice who embodies the film’s worry that the younger generation lives for the moment and doesn’t take responsibility beyond the individual level. This is a major Kurosawa theme, one that he visits directly in films like Stray Dog and High and Low. Individual moral responsibility is critical; however, part and parcel to it is collective, national responsibility, a characteristic that the Japanese people arguably neglected or lost following (and arguably as a result of) the postwar US occupation. At one point the son of Shimura’s character explicitly verbalizes his rejection of community responsibility. He stands opposed to his father, whose willing participation on a family council sets him apart as something of a quiet postwar hero of Japan. Kurosawa maintains a strikingly consistent balance in his films of this period (and perhaps beyond) between individual moral responsibility and greater social ethics.

The Everyman

There’s no heroic figure in this film, though, although Shimura’s character comes closest. His ultimate questioning as to what to do and how to live puts him in rather neutral territory. While we are witness to the family’s despicable treatment and disrespect of their father, he is certainly no saint. Aside from his obsession with the threat of the bomb, he openly has children with three mistresses, two of whom remain part of his life. He even insists on bringing his illegitimate families with him to Brazil, an arbitrary destination that, he is convinced, is safe from the bomb threat. While not a primary focus of the film, this aspect of the father’s life openly and clearly keeps the viewer from pitying him too much or viewing him as an essentially good person. The unwanted kindness that he forces upon his family seems ultimately self-centered. He is more concerned with how he is perceived and with maintaining his status as a successful patriarch than he is of what is reasonable or best for his family. This ranges from his marital infidelities to his refusal to listen to his sons and daughters. Moreover, the fact that most of his children do not respect him suggests that his parenting hasn’t commanded respect from them. Lest we get the wrong idea, Kurosawa doesn’t romanticize the past. It’s not as if prewar Japan is an Eden to regain. As for the future, it’s left open and uncertain. Concerns are raised, but no actions are taken. On the contrary, inaction itself seems to drive the family patriarch literally insane. Would they only have heeded his original fears, whether legitimate or not, the family may have retained its integrity. The role of well-meaning citizens acting as judges in family courts may be inept, as some of them are willing to admit. Still, this doesn’t answer the lingering question of what to do in response to this numinous threat. The film ends by turning the question toward the audience, and expanding it past the mere question of the bomb. Even more overarching questions of individual social and moral responsibility become central, in classic Kurosawa fashion.

Bomb's-Eye View

Family paperwork

Heated strife

Guilty til proven insane

Ominous

Pater familias

Lost it

Out of the silent planet

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Images of Anxiety, or, Paranoia Pics

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: New Testament Imagery

Idiot disciples

Taking up his cross

Exiting the tomb

Lion foe

Whipped

Coronation

Calming the storm?

Sermon on the mount

Let the children come to me

The law was given through Moses

Preview of drinking damnation

My Father's house

Pharisee

Kiss of Judas

Dead

Resurrected

Leap of faith

Drinking judgment

Master healer

Kingdom divided

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: Colonialist Imagery

Takeout (the) Chinese

Firing blanks

Ominous

Indy-Divinity

How civil

How savage

Spoonfed stereotype

Nothing in common

Sidekick

Face of the Other

Possessed by the Other

Liberator

Sadistic Other

To the rescue

We rock, they roll

No autographs, all the credits

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Old Testament Imagery

Joseph and the well

Shekinah glory

Solomon's temple

The Fall

Temptation

He will crush the serpent's head

Levitical

David & Goliath

Jonah

Exodus of Evil

When the king assumes the priesthood

Wrath of YHWH

Sodom: Don't look back

He will spare a remnant

Intertestamental silence