XII. Additional Reading

A. ENCOUNTERING DIRECTORS

(Extract)

Ingmar Bergman – a famous Swedish film director, writer and theatre producer was born 1918. His psychological films are welt know all over the world. “Crisis” (1945), “Smiles of summer Night” (1956),”Seventh Seal” (1957), “Wild Strawberries” (1958), “The Silence” (1963), “Autumn Sonata” (1978) are only a few films made by him. I. Bergman himself wrote the scripts for most of his films and won awards for many of them. In the focus of his attention people’s fates are put. The people usually have a lot of problems. Bergman focuses attention on the fate of individuals, on their problems are their search for life’s meaning. Many of his characters are isolated people who suffer from the harsh realities of the cruel world in which they live. It is difficult to understand the majority of Bergman’s films since the distinction between reality and the world of the imagination is blurred.

Samuels: Mr. Bergman, I’d like to start with a rather general questions: If were asked to cite a single reason for your preeminence among film director, I would pint to you creation of a special world. You are, in fact, very much like a writer. Why didn’t you become one?

Bergman: When I was a child, I suffered from an almost compete lack of words. My education was very rigid; way father was a pries. As a result, I lived in private world of my own dreams. I played with my puppet theatre.

S.: And –

B.: Excuse me. I had very few contacts with reality or channels to it. I was afraid of my father, my mother, my elder brother – everything. Played with this puppet theatre and a projection device I had was my only form of self-expression. I had great difficulty with fictions and reality; as a small child I mixed them up so much than my family always said I was a liar.

S.: I want to interrupt you for just a moment. This description of your childhood resembles one classic description of the genesis of a writer. Was it only the accident of the puppet theatre that sent you the way of theatre rather than of books?

B.: No. When I began writing I liked it very much. But I never felt that writing was my cup of tea. And I always lacked words; it has always been very difficult for me to find the word I want. I have always felt suspicious both of what I say and what others say to me. I always feel something has been left out. When I read a book, I read very slowly. It takes me a lot of time to read a play.

S.: Do you direct it in your head?

B.: In a way. I have to translate the words into speeches, movements, flesh and blood. I have an enormous need for contact with an audience, with other people. For me, words are not satisfying.

S.: With a book, the reader is elsewhere.

B.: When you read, words have to pass through your conscious mind to reach your emotions and your soul. In film and theatre, things go directly to the emotions. What I need is to come in contact with other.

S.: I see that, but is raises a problem I’m sure you’ve often discussed. Your films have emotional impact, but since they are also the most intellectually difficult of contemporary films, isn’t there sometimes a contradiction between the two effects? How do you react when I say that while I watched “The Rite”, my feelings were interfered with by my baffled effort at comprehension?

B.: Your approach is wrong. I never asked you to understand, I ask only that you feel.

S.: And the film asks me to understand. The film continuously makes us wonder what the spectacle means.

B.: But that’s you.

S.: It’s not the film?

B.: No. “The Rite” merely expressed my resentment against the critics, audience, and government, with which I was in constant battle while I ran the theatre. A year after my resignation from the post, I sat downs and wrote the script in five days. The picture is just a game.

S.: To puzzle the audience?

B.: Exactly. I liked writing is very much and even more making it. We had a lot of fun while we were shooting. My purpose was just to amuse myself and the audience. Do you understand what I mean?

S.: I understand, but certain members of the audience can’t resist pointing out that Bergman is sending messages, he thinks, but what are they and why?

B.: Your must realize – this is very important! – I never ask people to understand what I have made. Stravinsky once said, “I have never understood a piece of music in my life. I always only feel”.

S.: But Stravinsky was a composer. By its nature, music is nondiscursive; we don’t have to understand it. Films, plays, poems, novels all make propositions or observations, embody ideas or beliefs, and we go to these forms –

B.: But you must understand that you view is distorted. You belong to a small minority that tries to understand. I never try to understand. Music, films, plays always work directly on the emotions.

S.: I must disagree. I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear –

B.: I must tell you before we go on to more complicated things: I make my pictures for use! They are made to put me in contact with other human beings. My impulse has nothing to do with intellect or symbolism: It has only to do with dreams and longing, with hope and desire, with passion.

S.: Does it bother you when critics interpret you through these items?

B.: Not at all. And let me tell you, I learn more from critics who honestly criticize my pictures than from those who are devout. And they influence me. They help me change things. You know that actors often change a film, for better or worse.

S.: May ask you how “The Touch” differs from the one you intended?

B.: I intended to paint a portrait of an ordinary woman, for whom everything around was a reflection. Bibi Anderson is a close friend of mine – a lovely and extremely talented actress. She is totally oriented towards reality, always needing motives for what she does. I admire her and love her. But she changed the film. What Bibi Anderson did made the film more comprehensible for ordinary people and more immediately powerful. I agreed with all her changes.

S.: You use music less in your films. Why?

B.: Because I think that film itself is music, and I can’t put music in music.

S.: If you could have shot all your films in colour, would you have?

B.: No. Because it is more fascinating to shoot in black and white and force people to imagine the colours.

S.: Do you work in colour now – to any degree– because you feel that the audience demands it?

B.: No. I like it. At the beginning, it was painful, but now I like it.

S.: Why do you use so much dialogue in your films?

B.: Because human communication occurs through words. I tried once to eliminate language, in “The Silence”, and I feel that picture is excessive.

S.: It’s too abstract.

B.: Yes.

S.: Some people have criticized your film for being too theatrical – particularly – the early ones. How do you answer this charge?

B.: I am a director.

S.: But aren’t the two forms different?

B.: Completely. In my earlier pictures, it was very difficult for me to go from directing in the theatre to directing films. I had always felt technically crippled – insecure with the crew, the cameras, the sound equipment – everything. Sometimes a film succeeded, but I never got what I wanted to get. But in “Summer Interlude”, I suddenly felt than I knew my profession.

S.: Do you have any idea why?

B.: I don’t know, but for heaven’s sake, a day must always come along when finally one succeeds in understanding his profession! I’m so impressed by young directors now who to make a film from the first moment.

S.: But they have nothing to say. (Bergman laughs.)

By Ch. Samuels

(Interviewing I.Bergman)

B. COMIC GENIUS OF THE CINEMA SCREEN

Sir Charles Chaplin was the last survivor from among the founding fathers of the American cinema, one of the greatest comic creators in film, and achieved greater, more wide spread fame in his own lifetime than perhaps anyone else in the history of mankind. The intellectual loved to theorize on the significance of his comedy, its social responsibility, its relation to the great tradition of circus clowning. But he also had to a unique degree the common touch – people of almost any culture were able to respond with laughter to his screen antics, and for generation after generation of children he was the first introduction to the magic world of the cinema.

Charles Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889, in London. His parents were music-hall performers and Charlie’s early life was spent touring England. Finally, he himself became a dancer in music halls. Chaplin joined Fred Karno’s Company and accompanied the Karno troupe in America, at which time he was starring in principal comedy parts. Chaplin soon entered the motion picture field (in 1918) and within one year became a world-famous star.

In 1916 he signed a contract with Mutual Company for what was, in those days, an unheard-of salary. But by now he was world famous, and was writing and directing his own films. More important still was the fact that the character of “the little fellow” had become firmly established in his mind.

For Mutual Chaplin made some of his best short comedies, including The Rink, and Easy Street. In 1918 he joined First National, and for them made eight films, including A Dog’s Life and Shoulder Arms. Then he built his own film studios and formed his own company, and in 1919 he joined with the other leading film-makers of the period – D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Piokford – in forming the United Artists Corporation.

The 1920s were the golden age of the silent cinema, and Chaplin entered this golden age with wealth, power, authority, and complete freedom as an independent producer of his own work.

The 1950s marked the beginning of an unhappy period in Chaplin’s life. When he left America for the European premiere the State Department banned his reentry (which they could do as he had never become an American citizen), and Chaplin took up residence in Switzerland. In 1978 he was at last received back with open arms into the American film establishment, given a special Oscar in recognition of his lifetime contribution to film art, and commemorated with a statute at his historic corner of Hollywood and Vine.

During the intervals of filmmaking Chaplin wrote My Autobiography (1964), a fascinating document which is of particular value for its memoirs of the London of his childhood and his early struggles in the theatre.

His old age was a satisfying crown to life of activity bringing honours and universal reverence for the man and his work. Whatever the ups and downs of tasted in the years to come, his greatness as a clown and his crucial love in the history and serious acceptance of the cinema as an art form are certain to stand the tests of time.

Charlie Chaplin has broken all records in making people laugh. No one has to set a whole world laughing as the little man with the bowler hat, the cane and overlarge shoes.

Much has been written about Chaplin’s art and his legendary career, opinions have varied widely. But perhaps the commentator who called him “The most universal human being in our life” came closest to the truth. Those who have called him a genius stress the timeless and universal qualities in his work. it is an art filled with tragic undertones and deep human feeling, with which an audience cannot help but become involved. It is for these reasons, I believe, that the figure of “Charlie” has kept its grip on generation after generation.

All his biographers agree that Chaplin’s miserable childhood in the London slums was the decisive influence in his development and in the type of films he made. Chaplin himself emphasizes it in his memoirs. The more one reads about his earliest period, the more one is inclined to agree. For Chaplin, his suffering youth has a lingering fascination: in gave him a world that he could transform with his imagination onto the movie screen.

Chaplin was never afraid to tackle controversial subject in his film. He released a parody on war (Shoulder Arms) only a few weeks before the American troops came home from the hell of the trenches in World War I (1918). This was regarded as sheer madness, but the parody was well received. So perfectly did it hit the nail on the head that even the homecoming soldiers found it irresistible and deeply appreciated this skit on what for them had been grim reality.

Churchgoers raged when Chaplin, in The Pilgrim (1928), attacked nonconformist religions. In City Lights (1981) he took his turn at mocking capitalism. Modem Times (1986) parodied the inhuman destruction of the machine age. The Great Dictator (1940) made fun of Hitler and proclaimed Chaplin’s views of word politics. Chaplin, in his comic satirical way, fought what he perceived as tyranny and injustice.

By V.Ivanova

(The USA and the Americans)

C. STEVEN SPIELBERG

“Once a month the sky falls on may head, I come to, and I see another movie I want to make.”

Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg’s first films were made at time when directors were the most important people in Hollywood, and his more recent ones at time when marketing controls the industry. That he has remained the most powerful filmmaker in the world during both periods says something for his talent and his flexibility. No ones else has put together a more popular body of work, yet within the entertainer there is also an artist capable of The Color Purple and Shindler’s List. When entertainer and artist came fully together, the result was E. T., the Extra-Terristrial, a remarkable fusion of mass appeal and stylistic mastery.

Spielberg’s most important contribution to modern movies is his insight that there was an enormous audience to be created if old-style B-movie stories were made with A-level craftsmanship and enhanced with the latest developments in special effects. Consider such titles as Raiders of the Loss Ark and the other Indiana Jones movies. Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E. T. and Jurassic Park. Look also at the films he produced but didn’t direct, like the Back to the Future series, Gremlins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Twister.

Directors talk about they master images, the images that occur in more than one film because they express something fundamental about the way the filmmakers see things. Spielberg once told me that his master image was the light flooding in through the doorway in Close Encounters, suggesting, a brightness and mystery outside. This strong backlighting, turns up in many of his other films: the aliens walk out of light in Close Encounters, E. T. ’s spaceship doors filled with light, and Indy Jones often uses storg beams from powerful flashlights.

In Spielberg, the light source conceals mystery, whereas for many other directors it is darkness that conceal mystery. The difference is that for Spielberg, mystery offers promise instead of threat. That orientation apparently developed when he was growing up in Phoenix, Ariz.

“My dad took me out to see a meteor shoved when I was a little kid,” he said, “and it was scary for me because he woke me up in the middle of the night. My heart was beating; I didn’t know what he wanted to do. He wouldn’t tell me, and he put me in the car and we went off, and I saw all these people lying on blankets, looking up at the sky. And my dad spread out a blanket. We lay down and looked at the sky, and I saw for first time all these meteors. What scared me was being awakened in the middle of the night and taken somewhere without being told where. But what didn’t scare me, but was very soothing, was watching this cosmic meteor shower. And I think from that moment on, I never looked at the sky and through it was a bad place.”

Spielberg heroes don’t often find themselves in complex emotional entanglements. One of his rare failures was Always, with its story of a ghost watching his girl fall love with another man.

Spielberg’s first important theartical film was The Sugarland Express, made in 1974, a time when gifted auteurs like Scorsese, Altman, Coppola, De Palma and Malick ruled Hollywood. Their god was Orson Welles, who made the masterpiece Citizen Kane entirely without studio interference, and they too wanted to make the Great American Movie. Bat a year late, with Jaws. Spielberg changed the course of modern Hollywood history. Within a few years, the Jams model would inspure an industry in which budgets ran wild because the rewards seemed limitless.

Spielberg can’t be blamed for that seismic shift in the industry. Jaws only happened to inaugurate it. If the shark had sunk for good another picture would have ushered in the age of the movie best sellers – maybe Star Wars, in 1977. And no one is more aware than Spielberg of his own weaknesses. When I asked him once to make the case against his films, he grinned and started the list: “They say ”Oh, the cuts too fast; his edits are too quick; he uses wide-angle lenses; he doesn’t photograph women very well; hes tricky; he likes to dig a hole in the ground and put the camera in the hole and shoot up at people; he’s to gimmicky; he’s more in love with the camera than he is with the story”.”

All true. But you could make a longer list of his strengths. Spielberg has always maintained obsessive quality control, and when his films works, they work on every level that a film can reach.

In the history of the last third of 20^th century cinema, Spielberg is the most influential figure, for better and worse. In his lesser films he relied too much on shallow stories and special effects for their own sake. (Will anyone treasure The lost World; Jurassic Park a century from now?)In his best films he tapped into dreams fashioned by our better natures.

By Roger Ebert

(Digest, 1, 2000)

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