WAY OF A GAUCHO (Jacques Tourneur, 1952)

A film where humans don't emote for a second longer than needed.

The story itself...Martin is the titular gaucho, who embodies the gaucho way to its core. After his father died, he was taken in and raised by the father of Miguel, a more educated gaucho who has embraced the Europeanization of Argentine society. The film opens with Martin and Miguel's seeming reunion, but quickly picks up Martin's story once he kills a man while dueling at Miguel's party (for his friend's honor no less). Miguel arranges for Martin to join the army as a way out of jail, gently pushing for Martin to accept the inevitability of social change in Argentina and to give up his antiquated gaucho code. Martin is naturally resistant, but finds a different variation of anti-gauchoism in Major Salinas, his commanding officer, who wants to take Martin's gaucho instincts but refashion them into those of a disciplined soldier. This is equally unappealing, so Martin deserts, seeking out the supposed gauchos who exist in the mountains, but actually running into Teresa, a wealthy friend of Miguel's who has been taken by an Indian while out riding. Martin saves Teresa and the a romance quietly begins to ensue. Nonetheless, Martin brings Teresa back home, where the army is somehow waiting for him. Salinas doesn't execute him, but continues with his goal to break down his wild spirit, now through more torturous means. Martin escapes yet again, leaving Salinas with one arm as a parting gift, and decides to take the name Valverde as the leader of a new band of gauchos committed to defending their land from development.

Much more happens, but an extended explanation seems not worthwhile frankly. Like in other Tourneur films, a character is possessed. Martin's obsession with his gaucho identity propels him on an almost solipsistic quest to reclaim the fading past of Argentina. In the vein of the cangaceiros of Antonio Das Mortes, the gaucho is a practically transcendent force that exists outside the ecosystem of so-called development.

The fatalism here seems displaced, falling much more on those who try to subvert Martin's mission than Martin himself. Take the early party scene, where he jumps into the duel almost absurdly undeterred by all the politicians and police officers surrounding him. Or when Martin is compelled to confess his sins so the priest will marry him and Teresa, only to immediately kill a passing soldier who has become suspicious. Doom appears to converge onto Martin at every turn in the story, especially when he tries to (re)unite with Teresa, but it is rarely successful and actually seems to hang more over the head of someone like Salinas.

After reading Chris Fujiwara's chapter on the film in his excellent Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall, I am rather unsure how to read the ending. Fujiwara reads the ending as the culmination what he saw throughout the film- an emphasis on the futility of the gaucho way. He argues that Martin gives himself up, his surrender seemingly resolute and signifying his willingness to embrace a civilized life with Teresa and child. I don't know. The film consciously ends with Martin marching past Salinas to get married, rather than surrender itself. Again, if anything Salinas is the one looking disappointed or defeated. It felt to me like an inverse of the near ending of Ozu's The End of Summer, where Setsuko Hara's boss smiles and looks out his window, saying something to the effect of "Isn't Tokyo beautiful?" Ozu cuts to the tiny street he's looking at and then the reverse shot as if someone were on the sidewalk looking up at the office's tiny window among many identical tiny windows in its building. What is this world we live in? it seems to ask.

A TALE OF WINTER (ERIC ROHMER, 1992)

"Nevers is a big, lively city"
"Sometimes I lie"

Felicie is torn between two men: Maxence, a hairdresser with refined taste, and Loic, an intellectual librarian. Yet neither compares to Charles, the cook she fell in love in five years ago on her summer vacation. By a stupid slip of the tongue, she gave him the wrong address during their parting- she to Paris and he to America- and never heard from him again. Now she tries to pursue a reality to which she can resign herself, while not so secretly holding out hope that Charles will somehow reappear.

The paradoxical tone of the film may be best described as something like "fairy tale realism." Rohmer employs a fairy tale-like narrative, but refashions it so that it still looks and sounds like a simple, talky Rohmer film (excluding his more experimental projects).

There is Elise, for example, Felicie's daughter born out of her summer fling with Charles. She is in some ways a physical remnant of the dreamy prologue where we see the two lovers bond on the beach. But the relationship between Felicie and Elise is all but dreamlike. Felicie clearly loves her daughter, but she is by no means a great mother. She certainly doesn't project her love for Charles onto Elise the way one might expect. There is some intrusion of reality, in terms of Felicie's financial situation that forces Elise to live with her grandmother. But one senses that Felicie's concerns about romance and identity clash with her will to care for Elise.

The conclusion of the film also falls under this mode of fairy tale realism. Charles actually appears! Seated across from Felicie on a bus in Paris! Even more, he's single, dealt with some amicable breakups like Felicie, and jumps right into the daddy role when he learns that Elise is his daughter. Yet Rohmer never sensationalizes this "twist." He even leaves the happy ending open-ended, as Felicie realizes that she needs to think over Charles' offer to live with him before she makes another rash decision. She is surely thinking of her brief, ill-fated time in Nevers with Maxence, which strained her relationship with Elise.

So Rohmer concludes with the realistic manifestation of what seems like fantasy. And it just so happens that this is the most directly religious film I've seen of his, in spite of how often he is distinguished from his peers by his Catholic background. The key scene here is the brilliant car ride between her and Loic after the two see a production of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (which is moving by virtue of how much Felicie is moved by it), of which Rohmer shows the end where the statue of Hermione- thought dead- comes to life. Loic (a lapsed Catholic) wonders aloud if it was magic that brought the statue to life or just logic- perhaps she was never even dead. Felicie, who was affected by this scene for obvious reasons, points out that Loic is ignoring faith (that of Hermione's husband) as an explanation. Faith here isn't totally religious, but it is not faith in magic or reason. If anything, the spiritual mode Felicie operates under is faith in her dreams. Rohmer never quite unravels the dreamlike reality Felicie finds herself in. He seems to take pleasure in showing the mundanity of one intruding on the other.

THE STRANGER WITHIN A WOMAN (MIKIO NARUSE, 1966)

The best of my 'poorly chosen introductions to Japanese masters' series. Ozu's Tokyo Twilight was almost frighteningly bleak and I don't even remember Mizoguchi's Osaka Elegy. I anticipate that The Stranger Within a Woman is similarly atypical of Naruse, but it stands as good film nonetheless.

Fort those interested in something insightful, I will refer you to Dan Sallitt's excellent comments on the film, which can be found on page 45 (51 of the document itself). He points out that it's derived from the same source material as Claude Chabrol's Just Before Nightfall. Without seeing his take on it, it's pretty easy to see why Chabrol would be interested in the story.

Tashiro, a respectable family man from the suburbs, has killed his best friend's wife, Sayuri, with whom he was having an affair. This is somewhat of a spoiler, since it's not confirmed until a bit of time has passed, but it's virtually obvious from the moment we learn of the murder.

The film is mainly about how the three central characters- Tashiro, his wife Masako, and aforementioned best friend Sugimoto- deal with the situation. Wracked with guilt from the beginning, Tashiro slowly realizes the need to come clean to Sugimoto and Masako. Their responses only intensify his guilt however. Sugimoto figures out quite early on that Tashiro was responsible for his wife's death. But he puts that knowledge aside and in fact seems more caring toward Tashiro and his family. His kindness doesn't even relent when Tashiro admits his guilt to him. Masako seems conspicuously happy, first thinking that Tashiro just ended the affair, and later learning the truth about what happened. She wants their lives to return to normalcy at all costs and hopes for the murder to fade away as a distant dream.

The never-arriving punishment for Tashiro proves overwhelming. He can't seem to escape the sight of death and justice, yet is never touched by them himself. Sayuri, the victim, meanwhile fades from everyone's memory. Tashiro's determination to see himself punished, perhaps even by his own hands, ultimately tests Masako's ability to face the truth.

SHE WAS LIKE A WILD CHRYSANTHEMUM (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1955)

A tale of young love, like The Girl I Loved from nine years earlier, but even more pure and heartrending. The film is comprised mostly of the flashbacks of an elderly Masao (played by Chishu Ryu) as he visits the village of his youth, but by the end there are some ambiguous shifts in point of view. In either case, the flashbacks scenes are framed by a fixed white iris shot (it doesn't move in or out). Five years later, Truffaut would use irises in Shoot the Piano Player as a playful homage to silent film. Here though, the effect is more of the viewer piercing Masao's soul through memory-flooded eyes.

Per normal, Kinoshita is working with a simple narrative. Masao's flashbacks tell the story of the shared love between his 15-year-old self and Tamiko, his 17-year-old cousin who lives with his family. Everyone seems to know about and disapprove of their love; Masao and Tamiko even try to deny it, but silently they gesture toward a different truth.

Masao's mother has always been conflicted about the relationship between the young cousins and eventually decides to speed up Masao's departure for school, so as to break up any romance. While he's gone, Tamiko is forced home by a relentlessly unpleasant sister-in-law. There, she finds herself in an arranged marriage and becomes depressed. Masao's mother seals Tamiko's dark fate by telling her that there is absolutely no chance she would ever allow a relationship between the cousins.

But all that comes after the beautiful centerpiece of the film. Masao's mother allows the two a rare day working in the fields together. The cousins come closest to articulating their love here when they pick flowers that represent one another. Tamiko is like wild chrysanthemum (She asks "why?" to which Masao replies that he does now know) and Masao like a bellflower.

So often Kinoshita seems to just film nature and by chance capture the human lives and drama that pass through it. He seems to find the perfect amount of wind to gently rustle the flowers and wheat so that we're left with the resonant feeling of souls stirring beneath the empty words that society forces out of us.

ANTONIO DAS MORTES (Glauber Rocha, 1969)

Antonio das Mortes, legendary killer of cangaceiros, is hired to kill what is apparently the only cangaceiro he hasn't yet slain. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy who loses duels, especially in films where he's the titular character, so he does in fact kill the alleged bandit in front of the singing crowd of peasants that rally around the cangaceiro.

However, the killing throws him into existential despair. He is particularly affected by the presence of the female Santa (spiritual leader) who arrives with the peasant crowd and seems to make Antonio conscious of the exploitative nature of his employers. Meanwhile, the wealthy landowners who hired him are preoccupied with trying to murder one another. Development and land reform are on the horizon, so that probably informs Rocha's (a radical leftist) absurd representation of them.

The crowd of peasants, in contrast, are depicted as a mass that is less human and more spirit. Their songs (and dance) are quite incredible in fact; I immediately went back to listen after I finished the film. There is no doubt where Rocha's sympathies lie.

Everything in the film feels staged and the political dialogue has an essayistic quality. If that sounds like a Godard film, that is indeed the comparison my unsophisticated mind would make, though if I cared to watch an Oshima film, maybe I would say him. The political complexity of those two directors led to them only flirting with "organized" leftism before disilluisonment. The ending here perhaps signifies something similar for Rocha, as the landowners and their hired men are killed in a political and spiritual victory. But Antonio is last seen dazed, wandering by the side of the road as trucks drive by, and we aren't left with any sense that development in Brazil will bring hope.

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)

Like Out of the Past, this was simply not a film I could enjoy. Here I pose two theories...first, Tourneur's films that stick closer to genre are not as good as those that defy them. Second, and relatedly, I am bad at watching great films. In particular, great horror films? I had a similarly disappointing experience watching Eyes Without A Face. But in that I could see the good film that wasn't reaching me. In Night of the Demon, I saw a visually striking film that, in the end, probably could have been good camp if it had tried. My mind shouldered that responsibility as, for whatever reason, I found myself replacing Peggy Cummins' face with a face-masked Edith Scob. An amazing seance scene (the highlight of the movie maybe) helped too.

Three aspects of this film that are fun to think about yet nonetheless made it bad:

1. In somewhat of an inversion of Cat People, Holden/Dana Andrews seems surrounded by people who are quick to believe in the demonic powers of Karswell. It's almost laughable but it makes Holden's skepticism grating somehow.

2. In case we did not grasp that Andrews is a rational guy, he gives a moving speech (at least in form and placement) where he reveals that he's been that way since he was a young boy. He tells Cummins that while his friends walked around the ladder, he defiantly walked right under it. Well.

3. Karswell's supposed satanic cult exists? Maybe- we only meet Hobart who dies almost immediately. Does Mrs. Karswell play both sides because she doesn't want to crush the fanciful imagination of her strange son who has never quite grown up?

I also came up with a dream-related theory after watching Hong Sang-soo's Woman Is the Future of Man, so maybe I'm just into that right now. But Night of the Demon, unlike the great Tourneur films, offers no such space for mystification, in spite of a seemingly perfect opportunity.

NENETTE ET BONI (Claire Denis, 1996)