On film critic Glenn Kenny’s filmblog this morning is a link to a clip from the old Dick Cavett show in which the non-professional actor stars of the then current Antonini film Zabriskie Point are, well, attempted to be interviewed by not just Cavett, but by fellow guests Mel Brooks and Rex Reed as well.
Antonini is, of course, the old Italian director who, long before Seinfeld, made films that appeared to be about nothing (most famously, Blow Up, which I think most folks these days know from seeing the poster, posted to the right, in college dorm rooms and post-college apartments).
The only Antonini film I’ve seen is Blow Up, and truth be told I need to see it again. The most that I can tell happened are these things: Jane Birkin (muse of Serge Gainsbourg, mother of Charlotte Gainsbourg) was (from what I’ve read) the first to show full frontal nudity in an english language, non-blue film; and in a non-sequitur of a scene in a swinging London night club, a Yardbirds live performance climaxes with Jeff Beck tossing his guitar into the audience, and the audience tearing it apart. Or did Jeff tear it apart first? Like I said, I need to see it again.
Not to blather on too long, since the point of this post is the Dick Cavett clip, but at the time of the release of Zabriskie Point – just released on DVD last week – it was apparently the apex of Antonini’s international fame. The couple interviewed actually do NOT endorse the film, and Reed asks a question about Antonini’s supposed comment about actors deserving to be treated as cattle (which Kenny points out is actually a quote Hitchcock made).
Anyhow the clip is interesting on many levels, not the least of which is being from the age before PR mavens and star handlers tightly choreographed almost all guest appearances, forcing us to these days only be able to count on Mike Tyson, Joaquin Phoenix, and Crispin Glover for those awkward, unpredictable (and usually the best) talk show appearances:
Charlotte Gainsbourg best actress winner at Cannes 2009
As an avid filmfan I do like a lot of different genres and look for all sorts of different things in the films I view. Everything from “edgy” indie dramas to teen sex romps with lots of fart jokes and boobs to cool sci fi films to deep, introspective period pieces to spaghetti westerns to mel brooks to french nouvelle vague to samurai and kung fu flicks and genre pics to, well, you get the idea.
I admit, too, that I do enjoy cinematic provocateurs – those trying to freak out or even offend the more tender sensibilities of their audiences. Think Takashi Miike’s Audition or Eli Roth’s Hostel or Alexandro Jodorowsky’s whole career. However, that doesn’t mean I enjoy all provocateurs. My filmloving friends are often surprised to find how much I tend to hate David Lynch (who, for all of his apparent true weirdness and obvious psychological damage, seems to me to almost always be trying too hard to show how weird he is on film. “oooh check this out – didn’t expect that did ya? pretty weird, huh?”). And Lars Von Trier, the danish filmmaker perhaps most famous on these shores for creating the whole Dogma ’95 “genre” (more a strict set of rules that the films must adhere to than a true genre) and creating a trilogy of films on america that seem to profess a deep rooted hate american culture, while having never actually set foot on american soil (dude is apparently afraid of flying), is another non-favorite of mine.
My dislike of Von Trier stems largely from one of his Dogme ’95 films (for those unfamiliar with the idea, quickly it basically means films without frills – no special effects, no special lighting, no incidental music that isn’t actually heard by the characters, etc), Dancer In The Dark (starring Bjork – who claimed she would never do another film again after the battles she had with Von Trier), and Breaking The Waves (while not a Dogme 95 flick persee, it uses many of the same techniques plus is shot on grainy digital video). Both films that used rather stark filming techniques to tell brutal stories of how awful man is to man. They felt to me much like slowly stabbing and scraping my arms with pointed wooden sticks for 90+ minutes . So I’ve always been leery of attempting another Von Trier film.
However, I do peridocially revisit music and film that, while I may have previously greatly disliked, friends and/or artists I admire dig, just to find out if I can hear/see what these folks do in these works and maybefind out if I missed anything.
For example, despite my avowed hatred of Lynch, I will eventually go back a review Dune, Blue Velvet and some others once more, to see if my opinions change. (One of the great things, in my opinion, on music, film, literature, art in general, is that even though a completed piece of work is generally static, our opinions, reactions and general view of them are constantly changing, as we ourselves constantly change. The problems in the production and marketing of mainstream film and especially modern music culture these days, I think, can be largely attributed to the fact that thecorporations that run the film studios and record companies do not take these constantly changing perceptions into account, and market the stuff much like one would market a dish washing detergent or a deodorant or a car.)
All of this is a rather long introduction to the fact that Lars Von Trier’s new film, Antichrist, premiered at Cannes this month and apparently caused quite a stir. I’ll let the words of Mike D’Angelo – who wrote a pretty damned good daily blog of his attendance at this years’ Cannes for the AV Club – fill you in on why I find it intriguing, and am actually now, in fact, quite eager to see this:
I’m pretty sure I kind of despised your new movie, Antichrist, but that doesn’t remotely matter. Thank you. Thank you for having the guts to make something as insane and offensive and wholly uncompromising as this. Thank you for not caring whether people laugh at you, and for smacking the international press corps with a much-needed dose of cognitive dissonance. Most of all, thank you for lighting a bomb underneath the perfectly respectable, largely forgettable efforts of your fellow Competition entries. You may have whiffed huge this time, but movies like yours are what the Festival de Cannes should ideally be about.
Combine this with my recently gleamed knowledge that, long before Dogme 95, Lars was apparently a very visually imaginative director (I’m now also dying to check out his supernatural hospital miniseries for Danish TV The Kingdom he produced way back in the ancient 90s) who wanted to do more than make movies his audience would just have to endure.
The story, as far as I can tell, of Antichrist, involves an unnamed couple (Willem Dafoe and British/French actress/chantuese Charlotte Gainsbourg) who lose their toddler in the opening scenes. They then retreat to their remote cabin in the woods, charmingly called Eden, to try and cope. And apparently it spins waaaay out of control and becomes very twisted and insane – notoriously including some scene of backwoods masturbation/genital mutlation (mutilations?) that is supposed to be very difficult to view.
Gainsbourg, daughter of late french singer/provocateur Serge Gainsbourg and brit Jane Birken, has been upping her profile quite a bit in recent years. After a role in 21 Grams, she played the romantic female lead in Michel Gondries offbeat follow up to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, and then last year released her own debut record, 5:55, on which Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker wrote the songs and french mondo cool mood duo Air played backing band. And now this movie, in which she’s been praised for playing such a brave role. uh oh.
Apparently Von Trier caused quite a stir at the post screening press conference, proclaiming himself the best director in the world and being hit right away with a question demanding that he justify himself and his movie.
I will probably hate this film, but somehow it doesn’t make me want to see it any less. It will, at the very least, surely be a more interesting experience than most of the remakes and sequels hollywood is offering us this summer.
A few weeks ago I introduced something that I said would be an occasional regular feature, called Francophile Friday, in which I’d post something about french music or film. Last time I posted about modern french pop star M… today a brief post about a french icon who, while I am a fan, I’m far from any sort of expert on…. the late singer/songwriter/enfant terrible Serge Gainsbourg (1921-1991).
Born in 1921 in Paris to russian-jewish parents who’d fled the bolshevik revolution, Serge started out as a bar pianist and singer/songwriter. His early work (of which I am unfamiliar) from the late 50s/early 60s was apparently very jazz influenced, but sold poorly. He was more successful writing songs for the likes of Petula Clark and Dionne Warwick. In the late 60s, this short, homely, big nosed frenchman became a Bridgitte Bardot’s lover, and she his muse. They recorded a few songs together, including Bonnie & Clyde.
Soon after they separated, Gainsbourg took up with another beauty, the british Jane Birkin (who famously became the first woman to show it all on british mainstream film, in Antonini’s Blow Up)… like his earlier collaborations with Bardot, their duets consisted of Jane’s breathy – and not always solid – singing and much french banter back and forth. Becoming a hit all over europe, Gainsbourg scored a minor (and his only) hit in the states with Je T’aime… Moi Non Plus – a track which caused a bit of a furor over Jane’s heavy breathing on the track, simulating an orgasm. The track was banned in several European countries and even in France was heavily edited (the link above is to an edited version of the track… it cuts out about a minute of heavy breathing).
Serge made two records in which Jane had a prominent role, 1969’s Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg and 1971’s Histoire de Melody Nelson. The latter record was a concept record in which, I’ve gathered from reading various accounts, Gainsbourg plays the rich man who’s Rolls Royce hits teen Melody Nelson (Jane of course) and eventually seduces her. And this being a french record, there is a tragic conclusion of course.
Where Jane Birkin/Serge Gainsbourg was more of a 60s pop/rock record, Melody Nelson adds more psychedlia to that sound. Serge would continue to explore this sound further through two more records, 1975’s Rock Around the Bunker(apparently another concept rock record, this time using black humour on the suject of Nazis) and 1976’s L’Homme à tête de chou (literally Cabbage-Head Man). While I’ve not heard the former I’ve heard the latter, and it might be my favorite Gainsbourg record.
Gainsbourg went on to record some reggae records in Jamaica with Sly and Robbie, and then some electro-funk records in the 80s. All the while causing scandal after scandal with his boozing, his womanizing, and his outrageous public & TV behaviour. Among these was recording a duet with his then very young daughter with Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg (an actress who’s been in 21 Grams and The Science of Sleep and in 2007 released her own record, 5:55, on which Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker wrote the songs and french group Air was the backing band) called Lemon Incest.
Famously, Gainsbourg also appeared on a live TV show in 1986 with Whitney Houston, where he told her he wanted to fuck her, and then proceeded to creepily keep touching Whitney’s hair and face (Whitney’s public persona has gone through such a radical change in the last 15 years or so that it’s almost hard to remember how much grace and poise she had initially on the world stage).
While I’m still exploring the eccentric Gainsbourg catalog, I’ve been told by several Gainsbourg fans with much more knowledge than myself that while his records are remarkable for how different they are between his various musical phases, they can be wildly erratic in quality.
So, if looking for an entry point, the aforementioned Histoire de Melody Nelson & L’Homme à tête de chou are excellent places to start. Love On the Beat, from the 80s, has also been highly recommended to me.
There is also a tribute record from wacko saxophonist John Zorn, and his NYC downtown scene buddies, on his avant garde Tzadik label’s Great Jewish Music Series (the series includes tribute records to Burt Bachrach and T-Rex’s Marc Bolan). Bon Appétit!
On film critic Glenn Kenny’s filmblog this morning is a link to a clip from the old Dick Cavett show in which the non-professional actor stars of the then current Antonini film Zabriskie Point are, well, attempted to be interviewed by not just Cavett, but by fellow guests Mel Brooks and Rex Reed as well.
Brenda Garcia
dr vorhees
joeonlyone
Moses Tewk
Van Hammersly
Sophie
The Limits Of Science 