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)

UNDER CAPRICORN (Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)

"A person’s reconquering of their own self is carried out under the double sign of deliverance and redemption providing the film its internal, dramatic progression, a victory over self-contempt and fear of the contempt of others."

So says Jacques Rivette in his piece on Hitchock's Under Capricorn. It's easy to project certain elements of this film onto those subsequently made by Rivette. I'm thinking of Duelle, Gang of Four, The Duchess of Langeais. There is the unsettling artifice of the setting for one. A "queer" Gothic mansion, as it is described, in which the strangeness seems to be less about the architecture or design and more about the people who reside in it. The house isn't dark in the grim sense, but it certainly has a deathly quality to it. And is Charles Adare not a Celine and Julie type figure? Not really, I know. But he is a good-hearted meddler who treats the Flusky home as a stage where he seems to come and go as he pleases.

In fact, what are we supposed to make of the main trio? Wilding in his screwball comedy, Cotten seeming so noirish, and Bergman in her melodrama. The film has elements of all these styles, so it works, but it's important to remember how disconnected these characters are, and how much the film is the project of their reconstruction- in spite of the essential phoniness of their environment. There needs to be some constitution of the self in order for it to be transcended and for human bonds to then be built.

Rivette so beautifully captures the nature of this trio that I'm not inclined to say much more:

"The transfer of responsibility for the sin had previously split the couple, the one assuming the punishment, the other the bad conscience. This first sacrifice, wrongly consented to, obliges them to abandon themselves to the euphoria of other incessantly renewed mutual sacrifices. In the end, it is not possible for them to abandon the sacrifice and accept happiness without the third person in turn taking it on before departing—the carrier of evil, bringing in her wake the drama’s Erinyes, far from Australian land."

Milly as the villain stands outside the triangle because her self-hatred manifests as the urge to destroy another. But to love like the Flusky's, one needs to suffocate under the weight of love. Charles realizes the impossibility of this and moves on, while Milly stumbles blindly until the end.

Imperfect, but a masterpiece.

*Watched at Film Forum so I have no screenshots.

THE GIRL I LOVED (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1946)

Jingo is home from the war and expects the girl he loves to be waiting for him and his proposal. The girl is Yoshiko, who was abandoned as a baby before her mother's suicide and adopted by Jingo's family. She, in fact, did not wait for him, having apparently fallen in love with Mr. Noda. Noda is a veteran of the war who somewhat embarrassingly walks with a limp, but plays the violin and reads, while the townspeople play the harmonica and appear to be illiterate.

The film teases us with the possibility of romance between the quasi-siblings, reveals Yoshiko's plans to marry Mr. Noda, and, at the end, leaves us wondering if she truly has no feelings for Jingo and if he truly accepts the role of brother (-in-law). In my reading, no and no. Her preference for Noda over Jingo is not because the latter is too much of a brother, but because the former is an outsider in the village like herself. This connection was fostered through circumstance, but with Jingo's return, Yoshiko's feelings are ambiguous, like her identification with two mothers- one living and one dead.

The theme of outsiders in an insular village reappeared years later in A Legend or Was It? and it's interesting to compare the two. For the most part, the later film isn't sympathetic towards its villagers who come across as stereotypically provincial and irrational. Here, Kinoshita shows more of a humanist touch and one senses that he loves or at least respects his characters. He emphasizes the differences between the educated Mr. Noda and farmers like Jingo, but also their shared qualities. Mr. Noda points out how war gives their lives urgency, underscoring the fact that he simply got to begin living his before Jingo. But then we're shown Noda, in a distinct low-angle shot, playing violin for a seated circle of confused and bored boys used to the harmonica and folk songs. Tellingly, Yoshiko is seated among them with Jingo, and the two walk out on the performance to discuss his secret. But Jingo is too embarrassed to reveal his love now, and too good a person to ruin the happiness of others, so he returns home, where, without any conviction, he tells his mother that they need to embrace Yoshiko's marriage.

Once again, Kinoshita demonstrates his ability to capture the poetic beauty of wherever he films. The pastures of The Girl I Loved lend an innocence to the film that makes the war something of a distant memory. There is a transcendent shot of Yoshiko blissfully running through the pasture that is later echoed when Jingo chases his quasi-brother through the fields in tears. Also memorable is a rapid succession of cuts between Yoshiko applying lipstick and her mother's dress flowing in the wind, which now seems quite Kinoshita-esque. Overall, the film is simplistic in its story, but memorable for its poetic style and ambiguity.

A LEGEND OR WAS IT? and WOMAN (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1963 and 1948)

My introduction to the world of Keisuke Kinoshita and two films I won't soon forget. A Legend or Was It? and Woman reveal a director relatively unconcerned with original or complex stories. Instead, Kinoshita takes two simple premises and shows his incredible ability to ratchet up the melodrama and insanity. Marked by a frenetic camera with intense close-ups and quick cuts, these films never really let up once the action is set in motion.

And that takes no time at all. In my limited repository of film knowledge, A Legend or Was It?, the superior of the two discussed here, might be comparable to something by Samuel Fuller, like 40 Guns. In 1945, a family (the eldest brother and sister shown above) escapes from Tokyo during the war to a secluded, insular village in the mountains. The village is safe geographically, but has felt the effects of war, relinquishing both men and food to the Japanese army. There is a mutual dislike between the new family, who find the townspeople hostile, and the townspeople, who seem to distrust outsiders from the city. The family does receive support from the mayor, whose son is set to marry their daughter Kieko. But when her brother, Hideyuki, who is returning from the war, meets the mayor's son, he recognizes him as a soldier he witnessed raping and killing innocents in China. Hideyuki tells Kieko, the wedding is off, and all hell breaks loose.

The two young woman at the center of the story- Kieko (Shima Iwashita) and Yuri (Mariko Kaga)-  dominate the film every time they appear on screen. They deliver amazing performances that propel their characters' vilification at the hands of the simple and pathetic men who surround them. Another  highlight is Kinoshita as an image-maker. The dynamic camerawork makes this melodrama quite a thriller. Kinoshita mixes intense close-ups with long shots that incorporate the beautiful landscape of the mountains the way great Westerns do. And lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the music, which I can only describe as if a drone artist appropriated carnival-type music (maybe like The Savage Young Taterbug?). It's bizarre and sometimes in tonal opposition to what's going on narratively, but it adds a distinct nightmarish quality to the film. This is really one of the best I've seen in some time.

Woman, though an inferior film, only added to my opinion of Kinoshita. The premise here is actually more bare-bones and the running time shorter (67 minutes). Toshiko, a dancer, gets asked by Tadashi, with whom she has a conflicted romantic history, to run away with him. Tadashi has just committed a highly publicized burglary and is already on the run. Toshiko at turns goes along with him and tries to ditch him.

Until an explosive conclusion, much of the film is just a back-and-forth psychological interrogation between the two, largely centered around whether Tadashi can really change his criminal ways (he can't). We're somewhat sympathetic because he says his problems all began when he returned from the war. Their interplay is engaging on a performance-level, but Kinoshita's formal inventiveness makes it extra noteworthy. The close-ups are even closer than those in A Legend or Was It?, as Kinoshita zeroes in on characters' mouths and teeth (alongside a peculiar interest in their feet). In the middle of dialogue, he will suddenly cut to shots of the sea (both of these films make good use of their location). And he uses some low-angle shots, especially during a musical performance, that are reminiscent of Orson Welles. Woman doesn't leave the same impression as A Legend or Was It?, but Kinoshita already strikes me as a filmmaker who struggles to make films that aren't worthwhile.

THE TIME TO LIVE AND THE TIME TO DIE (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)

About a quarter of Hou Hsiao-hsien's film of his childhood passed before I became ensnared in its soft rhythm and transfixed by its emotional depth. The experience was much like watching Cafe Lumiere (a less dramatic film) and slowly realizing how much lied under the quiet exteriors of its characters. I wonder if I was more ambivalent toward Millennium Mambo because it begins with such a masterful, hypnotic shot that even articulates a possible rhythm to the film- Vicky's dreamlike inability to leave Hao-Hao- but ends up being dull and quite lifeless.

The Time to Live and the Time to Die is dark but honest, unobtrusive, and humanistic. Character motivations are so unemphatic that familiar coming-of-age tropes seem to take place naturally. As I've seen in other Hou films, scenes are sometimes constructed in a way that makes it unclear where the main characters are fixed or if they are present at all. This could speak to the family's history as emigrants to Taiwan from China (the grandmother perpetually getting lost trying to walk back), or perhaps to the modest ambitions- to be teachers or members of the military- that seem to lie on the fringes of their everyday concerns. In a film where dying is so inevitable and assured, living seems to be far more uncertain.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT LOVE (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)

I like when recently watched films unexpectedly resonate with one another. Rather than watch the Hou Hsiao-hsien film I've had queued up for the past two days, I watched what is apparently one of his favorites. But more than Hou maybe, Tsai Ming-liang's Vive L'Amour (six years later) and Edward Yang's The Terrorizers (two years prior) struck me as spiritual brethren to this fantastic effort from Kieslowski. 

Of course, no one can spy on their neighbors without evoking Rear Window. And not knowing anything about A Short Film About Love, I had been curious about the Hitchcock influence on Kieslowski's Red. There is voyeurism abound in these three films, sure- the peepers, eavesdroppers, and us, the viewers. But A Short Film and Red are highly memorable in their emphasis on the spatial geography that connects and distances its characters.

Red is masterful in its omniscient view of Geneva, especially the street corner where Valentine and the young judge live. Long shots highlight near encounters and two lives intertwined. The windows of their apartments, through which the camera regularly moves, make their lives seem frighteningly vulnerable.

Traces of Rear Window can't be overlooked in this regard, but- to return to him- Hou Hsiao-hsien's Cafe Lumiere (a film whose status grows in my mind the more I think about it) also has some Red-like qualities. There is an incredible scene in Hou's film where the two main characters (friends or maybe more) are both shown riding trains and gazing out the window. Suddenly, we see the trains pass on adjacent rails, but Yoko (the female lead) is no longer gazing and slightly hidden from the window, so they never see each other.

Cafe Lumiere

Valentine in the background in Red

Is there ever anything but loneliness and emptiness behind this attention to spacial proximity? 

A Short Film About Love doesn't really play any beautiful serendipitous games for the sake of the audience because the peeping construct is, to some extent, dismantled very quickly. When Tomek and Magda meet, the film even flirts for a bit with being an uncomfortable sexual coming of age story in the vein of Skolimowski. But the climax of the film (a climax in itself) proves that it is indeed a film about love, which is more than sex. 

If not sex, what is love? When Tomek utters the word, he explains that he wants nothing. His love comes from her presence (even across the street), his visual access to her, and their overlapping routines. Tomek's innocence is underscored when we learn he no longer cares for Magda's sex life, just the banality of her everyday routines. She mistakenly tries to provoke some sexual response from him by having him caress her hands in the cafe and touch her thighs in her apartment. But the most important physical contact is clearly what begins and ends the film- Magda trying to touch the sleeping Tomek's bandaged wrist. It's a purely emotional gesture to frame this film of reverse sexual awakening.

OBSESSION (Brian De Palma, 1976)

Naturally, I'll begin this blog with a film I dislike.

Brian De Palma generates divisiveness on a number of levels. There is debate over preference for his Hitchcockian thrillers vs. his crime films vs. his divergent efforts (most of which seem to be commercial failures). There is probably just as much debate about whether his films are trash or goofy referentialism/overblown satire or something more (intellectually demanding I guess).

I tend to approach De Palma films within that second category. For certain cinephiles, this might create the tendency to project some postmodern game onto these movies, where the goal is to catch the reference and evaluate based on how well that reference is complicated or played with. I don't consider myself a cinephile, but I've felt this impulse to varying degrees.

But is there any play in Obsession? On first viewing, I would answer no. At least it is not play on the level of Blow Out, Body Double, Sisters, or Hi, Mom! In other words, if there is play in Obsession, it's not fun or enjoyable. All of these other films are vastly superior in this regard. You do have a little humor in waiting for LaSalle's (Lithgow) unscrupulous nature to reveal itself. I also found the film lighthearted in its sudden reveal that Courtland's (Robertson) obsession is actually ruining them financially. But is there any exploration of the self-reflexiveness of the film beyond what can be summarized by its premise? Not really.

I should give the ending credit for being ambiguous and inviting some different readings. Not until the very end does Courtland realize this is not a typical happy ending, but an incestuous one. He learns Sandra is his daughter Amy (Bujold) and cheerfully goes along with their embrace, whatever that might imply. Is Courtland just a daydreaming cinephile who is at last awoken from the movie playing in his own head, with its insular language of cinematic reference? Is this revelation the final act of De Palma's hand unraveling the cloak of Hitchockian signifiers to remind the viewers that this is in fact, his own original invention (as well as Schrader's (and Herrmann's) who I should have mentioned probably)? Maybe if you found yourself caught up in the drama of the film it worked like this. But I was just happy for it to be over.

Is a sense of play necessary to make a referential film worthwhile? Can the absurdity of it all be excised? As far as Vertigo tributes (See how I'm just bringing this up now?) go, I much prefer André Téchiné's Barocco, which lacks the flair of American postmodernism. Amazingly, it and Obsession never get brought up together despite the fact that they were both released in 1976.

To Hitchcock's credit, the two are incredibly different films that both seem to capture some essence of their point(s) of reference. While De Palma weaves in pieces from multiple Hitchcock films, Téchiné (originally a critic) draws from French film and even includes word-for-word dialogue from Johnny Guitar for good measure. I faintly remember reading a quote from Téchiné that said his early films were so referential because they were all inspired by the cinema. In other words, he needed to work through his cinematic language to find an original voice (something that seems fairly common among auteurs). But that statement undersells the originality and beauty of a film like Barocco. It's obviously fair to say that De Palma is more interested in humorously underscoring the fucked-upness of Hitchcock characters than revealing some underlying beauty. But Obsession, in some ways, represents the worst case scenario of where cinematic language limits rather than expands the possibilities of expression through reference.