Basic plot:  Frederic Stockheinz, the owner of Trans Allied Silver, hires a banker, Byron Levin, to work for him to convince the President of Costa Salva (Byron’s former room-mate at Harvard) not to nationalise his country’s silver. But instead Byron embarks on an affair with Catherine Stockheinz, Frederic’s wife, and he doesn’t want to get involved in his old friend Lorenzo’s running of his country – what will happen to Byron when Frederic Stockheinz finds out?

Cast: Frederic Stockheinz – Klaus Kinski; Byron Levin – Ray Sharkey; Catherine Stockheinz – Ornella Muti; Lorenzo Prado – Armand Assante; Walter Klein – King Vidor; Vicky – Susan Heldfond; Blair – Tom McFadden

Filming location: Marina del Rey Hotel, California?

Release date: 12 February 1982

Availability:   This film is available on a Warner Bros Archive Collection DVD although it’s an NTSC region 1 only issue.  There are no extras but it’s not too pricey (you can get a copy for about £10 including postage); it’s not that good either, sorry to say. Buy it for Klaus – because Klaus is worth both your love and money.

The film – *SPOILER ALERT*:

In my previous item about Love and Money I already said that I found the DVD cover misleading.  On the front cover it says: “Only one will win” – I’m not even sure what that means in the context of the film and its conclusion.  But it was the text on the back cover that made me buy the film in the first place and this is even more misleading:

“Byron Levin (Ray Sharkey) has two sides. One is Byron the workaday L.A. banker quick to defend a harassed co-worker. The other is a pent-up employee who’ll say something outrageous to a stranger for shock effect. Increasingly, Byron’s risk-taking nature takes hold. And it becomes a stranglehold when Byron is seduced by the deadly allure of Love and Money in this tantalizing thriller from James Toback (The Pick-up Artist, Bugsy). Byron accepts a million-dollar deal with a global silver magnate (Klaus Kinski). His reason says no but his passions say yes: he’s begun an illicit affair with the tycoon’s exotic wife (Ornella Muti). In return, he must persuade a former college roommate, now a Latin American strongman (Armand Assante), to stop nationalizing the silver mines. And if words fail him, bullets will do.”

Don’t believe it – there’s only one side to Byron Levin and it’s not very nice.  And the bullets thing?  He only touches a gun once (it’s not his, he finds it in a drawer) and even then he has it confiscated before even taking one pot-shot.  Whoever wrote the summary for the film had clearly not seen it; lucky them.

I know I’m shooting myself in the foot here (you see, even reviewing the film I get closer to a gun than Byron does in Love and Money) by saying these bad things about Love and Money – I doubt I’d get an interview with James Toback after slagging the film off this much, would I? – but I don’t care.  I just cannot lie and pretend I’ve enjoyed it; as hard as it is to believe I cannot find any redeeming quality in Love and Money that could make me rustle up some grudging admiration.  And this is despite the fact that Toback wrote the screenplay and directed the film (Fingers) that the rather wonderful De battre mon cœur s’est arrêté (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, dir Jacques Audiard, 2005) was based on.  Toback also wrote the screenplay for the award winning Bugsy (dir Barry Levinson, 1991) and was a creative writing teacher for some time.  But this is so hard to believe when you look at Love and Money.  What went wrong?  From my point of view, it looks like everything.

Anyway, as painful as it may be (for all of us) I am reliving my experience of Love and Money for you:

The first problem for me is Ray Sharkey.  There are no two ways about this: he is an absolutely appalling actor.  He looks like a cross between James Caan and Robert Downey Jr, but a poor man’s version at that; a James Caan’t, if you will.  He can’t help that, I suppose, but what he can help is his rather mannered way of acting.  When Sharkey is acting out the scene where he is meeting Catherine Stockheinz at Casey’s bar, he walks into the bar and immediately is behaving like he does not believe she will turn up.  As soon as he walks in he grabs a stranger’s arm to check the time on her wristwatch; he repeatedly taps his thighs with both hands; he takes another look at the woman’s wristwatch; he calls the hotel to check on Catherine; when Catherine refuses to take his call he stares at the telephone.

Now, I understand that this is all to indicate impatience and nervousness but it’s an acting style that is unacceptable if the viewer is to attempt to suspend their disbelief.  I wonder if Sharkey thought he was being “quirky” but as far as I’m concerned it’s just eye-rollingly embarrassing.  And the less said about his impersonation of Frederic Stockheinz (Klaus), the better – since when did Klaus have an Italian accent?!!

The next things I find problematic with the film are the characters of Vicky (Byron’s girlfriend) and Walter Klein (Byron’s grandfather).  Well, I’ve already illustrated Vicky as just rummaging around piles of books and doing nothing more than this (and I’m not exaggerating on that point at all) in my previous Love and Money article but the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that I didn’t even bother mentioning Walter Klein in that article.  Why?  Because his character is absolutely superfluous.

The only thing in his favour is that Walter Klein is played by the wonderful film director King Vidor (who directed Marion Davies in Show People and The Patsy, and directed The Big Parade, Stella Dallas, Duel in the Sun and the Kansas sequences in The Wizard of Oz, amongst many other things).  This was King Vidor’s first real acting role and sadly it was a poor choice of films to take part in; really he should have stuck to the directing.

I think Toback included the character of Walter Klein to indicate that Byron is loving and caring, although there are only actually a couple of instances to indicate this (making cream of wheat for Walter; cutting his hair; explaining things to him when he becomes “confused”).  For the most part Byron is just as selfish with Walter as he is with anyone else – he says he won’t ever leave Walter but he does abandon him twice, first when he goes off unannounced to spend a few days with Catherine Stockheinz and then when he goes to Costa Salva with Frederic Stockheinz.  In fact, it is when Byron is sleeping off his visit to Costa Salva that Walter wanders off alone and gets lost in the streets of LA.  None of this indicates that Walter is at the centre of Byron’s world, so why bother with the character at all?  You could totally eliminate the character and it would not affect the narrative one little bit.  Well, it would because if you were to eliminate Walter Klein you could also eliminate Vicky – after all, she herself says: “You are the joy of our lives.  If you weren’t here, I don’t think I would be either.”  Let’s get rid of ’em both then!

The next thing I can’t abide is the singing – for some unknown reason three of the characters in the film feel the need to break out into song at certain points: (i) Walter Klein makes an appalling (and slightly self-referential) joke about Vicky looking like a Biblical beauty, “Delilah… Bathsheba… Marion Davies…” and then he starts singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot; (ii) when Byron is trying to concentrate on getting an erection he asks Catherine to recite the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner and then he starts singing it in a dissonant fashion; (iii) even though Byron says he does not want to hear it, Lorenzo sings a dirge-like thing that he says is the new national anthem he has written for Costa Salva – it’s awful; (iv) and Lorenzo is a repeat offender, after making out with a lady in the bushes he emerges singing Carlos Puebla’s Hasta Siempre really badly.  All of this singing could be edited out and this would instantly improve the film (a tiny bit).

The next problem though is the big one: the story, the narrative, the dialogue.  We’ll start with the story.  The story is crap and here’s a summary to prove it: Byron Levin was roommates with Lorenzo Prado back at university.

If Ray Sharkey is a poor man’s James Caan, Armand Assante is a poor man’s Paul McCartney

He now works at a bank and shares a flat with his book-dealer girlfriend Vicky and his grandfather who suffers from dementia; meanwhile Lorenzo is President of a country called Costa Salva.

Byron is contacted by the owner of Trans Allied Silver, Frederic Stockheinz, who offers him $1 million to convince Lorenzo not to nationalise Costa Salva’s silver.  Byron is not interested in Stockheinz’s offer of $1 million for one weekend’s work but he is interested in his wife Catherine.  Byron starts to fantasise about Catherine and she seduces him to ensnare him into helping Frederic.  Byron is easily taken in and ends up going to Costa Salva with Frederic Stockheinz just so he can see Catherine again.

He meets up with his former roommate and tells him what Stockheinz has asked him to do.  Lorenzo tells Byron that he has misunderstood what Frederic has asked of him and that he is certain that Frederic means that he will pay $1 million for Byron to kill him not just to convince him about the silver.  Byron is shocked, but not as shocked as when he realises that Lorenzo is as bad as Frederic.  Byron is heartbroken when Catherine says that she only seduced him to get him to help Frederic.

When Stockheinz suspects that there is something going on between his wife and Byron, he orders his assistant Blair to shoot him but Blair turns his gun instead on Frederic Stockheinz.

Byron realises that Lorenzo has paid off one of Frederic’s men to kill Frederic and he fights off Blair and stops him from shooting.  Frederic shoots Blair and leaves Byron at the roadside with the dead body and then he and Catherine flee the scene.

Byron is arrested and is faced with the firing squad.  At the last moment Lorenzo arrives and stops his men from shooting Byron.  But Byron is disappointed in his old friend’s behaviour and says he won’t join Lorenzo and work for him.

He goes back to California and immediately tries to call Catherine Stockheinz but there is no answer.  When he gets home, Vicky is in the middle of packing all her belongings as she has decided to leave Byron.  Byron makes no attempt to make things up or to explain to Vicky (thinking he’s funny, he just tells her that he cut himself shaving) and he simply falls asleep.

When he wakes up she has gone, and so has his grandfather.  Byron runs out into the streets looking for his grandfather and eventually finds him listening to a brass band and wearing a visor  in the street.  He takes him home and they pack up their few belongings to leave the house now that Vicky has gone.  Byron gets into the car and is about to drive off when Catherine arrives and asks if she can come with them.  Byron asks her if she thinks they stand a chance of lasting together and she says no.  Byron does not think they do either but they drive off together anyway.

Of course the story would be far more interesting if Byron really did have two sides as the DVD cover suggests – a film about someone who is absolutely torn between doing what’s right and being seduced into committing immoral acts with the promise of vast amounts of money and a very attractive woman would at the very least allow Byron to be a two-dimensional character rather than the one-dimensional idiot that he is.  But that is all – I doubt Byron could ever be a complex or believable character, not with Ray Sharkey playing him…

If the story is crap, then the dialogue is absolutely dire.  Here are a few of the most appalling low points:

Seconds after meeting Catherine Stockheinz, presumably because he’s fallen in love instantly, Byron says to her:  “If you ever touch [your husband] again, or any other man, I’ll kill ya.”

The whole section where Byron and Catherine are arguing about Byron manhandling her is cringeworthy:

Byron – I’ll never touch you again.  Until you ask me to.
Catherine – You must think I’m as insane as you are.  Answer me!
Byron – What’s the question?
Catherine – What is so special about me that you do all these things that I could have you arrested for?
Byron – Your eyes, yours smile…
Catherine – I didn’t smile at you.
Byron – Okay, I guess it was your eyes then… It’s just that when I saw you, I knew… that God had put his elbow in my ribs.
[Catherine opens car door whilst the car is moving and tries to get out]
Byron – I said if you ever made love to your husband…
Catherine – I did.
[Catherine gets out of the car but leaves the door open as she walks off, Byron reverses the car and continues talking to her]
Byron – Come on! Come aaahnnn!
Catherine – Why?
Byron – Because we’re gonna fall in love and last together.
Catherine – I couldn’t hear what you say.
Byron – I said…
[Catherine makes out she is not getting back into the car but then she does anyway and they drive off together] 

When Byron tries to get it on with Catherine and encounters some problems:  “I can’t believe it, I can’t get a hard-on.  Five minutes ago outside I had a hard-on I coulda hung a towel on it, now…”

When Byron and Catherine argue again, he says to her:  “Don’t say that.  We’re going to be everything to each other… I’m your father; you’re my mother; I’m your husband; you’re my wife; I’m your chauffeur; you’re my car…”

I could go on but I am certain you don’t want me to at this point.  Aside from the dire-logue (Hey! If Toback is going to make bad jokes, I will too), I really have a problem with the lazy method of story-telling that Toback utilises throughout the film.  If you’ve ever read an interview with Toback you’ll understand what I mean but I think he’s full of a large amount of BS, so my guess is he would say that he didn’t want to go for the classical filmmaking style and that he wanted something a bit more punchy, a bit more fast-paced, a bit “different”.  But what we’re left with is, in my opinion, an unsatisfactory narrative discourse – given what story and dialogue there was to work with I guess you could not hope for anything better.

What I object to more than anything is the way Toback provides story information to the viewer by either including long-shots of Byron and Catherine on car rides with what seems to be a voice-over of them chatting to fill in the narrative, or alternatively having them carry out lengthy conversations whilst sitting in their hotel room.  Whole chunks of something resembling their back-stories are provided during these conversations in the most unsubtle way, presumably in order to do away with actually showing things or revealing things in a more natural fashion.  And this always seems to be done with Catherine and Byron either not in shot at all (the long-shots in the car) or with them both facing the camera (and therefore not facing each other) – is this a stylistic device?  I think not as there is no interesting cinematography to speak of in Love and Money.  Further adding to the unnatural method of story-telling Byron and Catherine always carry out what are essentially very intimate conversations without once looking at each other.

That said, Toback includes a couple of scenes that are clearly choreographed – for example, the sequence where Byron arrives at Catherine’s hotel room and appears to force his way in (even though he is actually invited) and then paces dramatically towards Catherine as she paces away from him.  This is closely followed by the sequence in the car park where Byron tries to kiss Catherine and she turns her face away and then they kiss seemingly forever as the camera circles them from above.

What with the lazy story-telling sequences and the numerous telephone calls (I really think Toback was influenced by Herbert Ross/Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam in this respect, although the constant telephone calls were used with humour by Ross/Allen) there is hardly any need for any of the characters to look at each other let alone interact in Love and Money.

So what role did Klaus have in this pile of poop?  Well, let’s not pretend that Klaus was ever anything other than familiar with filmic piles of poop, so working on Love and Money would not represent a problem for the great KK.  He was, however, sadly under-used in the film and we only ever seem to see him barking down the telephone, telling his people to “Just do it!”, “Do it!” or “Let’s go!”, or ordering food and wine for his guests.  There is not even a love scene with the lovely Ornella Muti who, unbelievably, for the most part manages to keep her clothes on and is only ever seen naked from behind (Sorry boys! And this despite the fact that Toback filmed lots of nude sex scenes…).  There is the just the one big KK scene with the dinner party where Lorenzo arrives 90 minutes late and then tells a crappy story whilst Klaus wrings a napkin in his hands, rolls his eyes and then demands to know “What is so funny?”  It’s the only scene worth watching in the film and Klaus manages to offend just about everyone around the table by shouting at them all in turn.

Klaus looks great in his stylish suits and the standard issue beige and white he so liked to wear.  He also manages to be a bit cheeky (talking to Catherine in Italian in a section which is not subbed but you know he’s being naughty anyway) and gets to put his hands in his pockets a few times along the way as well.

Look at the guy in the background with the combover.  I didn’t realise Arthur Scargill had a supporting role in the film…

I wish I could say something more favourable about Love and Money but for once I am at a loss.  Toback clearly thinks that playing a bit of Bach over the film somehow makes it arty but he is sadly mistaken.  I enjoy such a wide variety of films and can usually see something good in most of them but this was really hard work and I still cringe now as I recall it.  This one is for the most committed Kinski fans only, I’d say.

Other information about the film: 

Well, there were no extras on the DVD and there seems to be very little out there about this film (possibly with good reason, of course) but I have tried my best to find out more information.

You can always rely on our friend Christian David for a little more information, as ever the source material is Kinski die Biographie (Aufbau, 2008, pp278-279).  Klaus was paid $75,000 for 3 weeks’ filming which Christian David says was relatively low at that time, but he also seems to have been offered a further 5% of the film’s profits which would have been a good thing if the film had been a success but unfortunately that was not to be the case.  Klaus worked from the end of November to the middle of December 1979 on the film.

Other than this, pretty much all I found was a couple of articles about Toback and Love and Money in Film Quarterly, both written by Michael Dempsey (presumably not the bass player who used to be in The Cure, Associates and The Lotus Eaters…) in 1980/1981/1982.

The first article Love and Money, Ecstasy and Death: A Conversation with James Toback (Film Quarterly, Vol 34, No 2, Winter 1980-1981, pp24-35) indicates that the film critic Pauline Kael was going to leave her job at The New Yorker to work on Love and Money with Toback directing and Warren Beatty starring.  This ties in with other reports I have seen of Kael accepting an offer from Beatty in 1979 to act as a consultant at Paramount Pictures, which she initially took up only to leave a few months later to go back to writing reviews.  According to Dempsey, Kael left the project after “differences of opinion” with Toback (p24).  My guess is she told him the film sucked a big fat one and he did not like it; this could also explain why Beatty was no longer attached to the project either.

Dempsey also says that Henry Miller had been Toback’s original choice to play the role of Walter Klein but that he was not well enough to take the role on, so it was offered to Harry Ritz who took the role on but became ill after the first day’s shooting.  At this stage it was offered to King Vidor (p24) who unfortunately for him was not sick enough to turn the role down!

In line with my earlier comments about Toback being full of bull, Dempsey quotes Toback as saying this about directing:  “After a certain point, a film takes its own direction, and what it means to direct it is not just to impose and lead but also to steer.  It’s something mysterious that I don’t quite understand.  But there is a point when you just realize that you’re in the rapids, and the most you can do is kind of guide it around rocks.  And reversing course becomes the analogous mistake to forcing an actor to say lines he can’t say or forcing a scene into the film that doesn’t work in the film or forcing a scene to be shot in light that isn’t suited to it.” (P31)  Somehow I think Toback couldn’t see the rocks for looking…

The most disturbing part of the interview comes when Michael Dempsey asks Toback about the sounds of the punches in the fight between Blair and Byron, which he says sounded strange.  To this Toback says: “They were real punches.  I punched myself in front of a microphone.” (P32)  I can only conclude that Toback realised he deserved to be punched in the face for making such a bad film.

The most interesting thing about this all for me is that in the first article Dempsey seems to give the film a very favourable review for reasons I could not begin to fathom, but in the next issue of Film Quarterly there seemed to be some kind of withdrawal of this in what was described as Postscript on Love and Money (Film Quarterly, Vol 35, No 3, Spring 1982, pp61-63).

The article seems to outline several problems with the film, most prominently that the version he reviewed was not the version finally released or available to us today, aside from anything else the cut reviewed by Dempsey was 90 minutes long (and IMDB states that the film runs 90 minutes) but the version he refers to in his second article and the version on the DVD is just 84 minutes long.

Love and Money, according to Dempsey, was originally to be premiered either late 1980 or early 1981 following the release of two other Ray Sharkey vehicles as (rather misguidedly, I’d say) Sharkey had been tipped for the top, but as both films bombed Love and Money did not get released on schedule.  Then problems followed at the film company and Paramount finally decided to prioritise other films above Love and Money.  It seems that there were many factors at play here and Dempsey outlined another one: “Another story alleged that Frederick Stockheinz, Klaus Kinski’s character in Love and Money, bore an unflattering resemblance to Charles Bluhdorn, the boss of Gulf and Western, which owns Paramount.” (P61)

Even if that sounds unlikely (just because Bluhdorn had a strong Austrian accent and Klaus had a strong German accent?), there were lots of other reasons that the film had to be edited prior to release, according to Dempsey:

“Some Southern California viewers disliked the film, partly because they recognized Los Angeles area locations which had to stand in for Central America because of Toback’s tight $3 million budget and 30-day shooting schedule.” (PP61-62)

But considering the way the film was shot – largely in hotel rooms, otherwise in cars or outside community centres covered in bunting (my guess, not a fact) – and Klaus’ low salary (he was, of course, the star of the show when all’s said and done), a $3 million budget back in 1979 would not exactly have been “tight”.  I’m struggling to work out what Toback spent the budget on if I’m honest.  But little wonder that Klaus did not get his 5% of the profits as Dempsey says that when the film eventually opened over a year late in 1982, it opened “in one New York theatre, the only booking announced at that time and this writing.”

Welcome to Costa Salva?  Welcome to a community centre somewhere in Los Angeles, more likely!

The list of catastrophes continues:

“Moreover, a 1980 preview in Seattle yielded cards indicating that 81% of the audience objected to the ending: a frozen frame of Byron Levin as he runs along an LA street in search of his grandfather, followed by another of Catherine Stockheinz at the instant Byron first saw her.  David Picker, the (now former) Lorimar executive whom Toback credits with letting him make the film in the first place, then stated that it could not be released without a more “upbeat” ending.  Despite the credit “A Film by James Toback”, Toback did not have final cut and so, rather than letting Lorimar recut the film, he returned to the editing room himself.  Now Byron does succeed in locating his grandfather, Catherine does return to him, and they all prepare to drive off together into a new life – one of several possible conclusions that Toback had shot, considered, and discarded.  He also put back several scenes.”  (P62)

Apparently Toback tried to get some money out of Paramount to fix the ending later but did not succeed (p63) so the ending we see now is the one as described in the edited version.  None of this can have helped Love and Money but I doubt that it could have warranted the glowing review Dempsey gave it in his earlier review; no matter how much cross-editing Toback had in the first version, the dialogue and Sharkey would still have been there thus for me the film could hardly have been saved.  However, it seems that the scenes with Klaus had originally been longer so somewhere out there Toback (or Paramount, or Warner Bros) has some deleted scenes which could surface at some point.  Only the promise of more Klaus could get me to watch that film again, I’ve seen it three times now and that’s two times too many already…

One final thing, why does there appear to be purple ink stains on the closing credits photograph?  Shoddy!

Teen (November 1964)

19 (August 1969)

We have many nice film magazine from the 1950′s forward, here are a few:

Film Culture (Summer 1960)

Film Quarterly (Winter 1967-8) Still from Aurthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde"

The French sure love their cinema. 

An early edition of L’Esprit Créateur: The International Quarterly of French and Francophone Studies.

L'Esprit Createur (Winter 1968)

A couple titanic Fortune Magazines (of which we have many from the 1940′s on).

Fortune (August 1969)

Fortune (June 1964)

A couple of our Graphic Design and Art covers:

Graphis n. 113 (1964)

Art International (1965) Photograph of Yaacov Agam's mural, Double Metamorphosis, on the S.S. Shalom, flagship of the Zim Lines.

Art International (March 1964) Cover by: Rollin Crampton

Industrial Design (November 1969)

Realites (1967)

A trio of the ever elegant Met Bulletin Covers:

Met Bulletin (February 1968)

Met Bulletin (October 1968) A North African Hanging from about 1600, woven silk with metal thread, 18 feet 8 inches x 4 feet 4 inches.

Met Bulletin (February 1969) Water Color by Jacob Marrel.

Met Bulletin (October 1969) Front (aka: right) The Thorn of Charity. Back: David with Two Musicians, and David and Goliath. Miniatures, enlarged three and a half time (per the original cover), from a psalter and prayer book made for Bonne of Luxembourg by Jean Pucelle, French. About 1345. Colors on parchment, 2 1/8 inches x 1 7/8 inches and 2 1/16 inches x 1 3/4 inches. The Cloisters Collection.

And an exceedingly shiny Harper’s Bazaar cover:

Harper's Bazar (December 1969)

It’s unfortunately been awhile since this one. The opening shot is magnificent, panning in a sort of POV way across her wardrobe and accessories, not only foreshadowing subsequent events but defining her in character, values, and fabulousness. None other than Laura Mulvey herself offered some helpful thoughts in Film Quarterly on this one (Summer 2009, Vol. 62, No. 4). Mulvey observes how much of the film is about repetition/return and fetishization. Narrative elements are highly cyclical, particularly the earrings themselves. (Is this where the much cornier Somewhere in Time got its idea from?) Everyone in the film does some fetishizing. The general (Charles Boyer) fetishizes his wife even as, Mulvey notes, he is humanized by his sympathy for Louise. She fetishizes the earrings, but only one they signify the ambassador’s love (Vittorio de Sica) rather than her husband the general’s. Mulvey adeptly shows that in so doing, Louise fails to appreciate the initial symbolic value of the earrings: indicative of her husband’s love for her. When their symbolic power is merely this, she attributes to the earrings only monetary power, selling them in order to pay off her debts. Once they end up symbolizing the ambassador’s love for her, she embraces their symbolic value.

This shifting symbolism behind the earrings illustrates the cyclical nature of the film’s narrative and themes. They originally were a wedding gift from her husband, a token of his love for her at the time of their marital consummation. After Louise sells the earrings, they falls into the ambassador’s hands and, just before his intent to consummate intimate love with Louise, he presents them to her. This is an affront to the general but Louise ignores the insult, devaluing her husband’s love, embracing that of another man, and is thereby dehumanized. Max Ophuls achieves this by positioning Louise between “opposing iconographies of masculinity,” Mulvey explains: “…on the one hand, a ‘feminized’ man, a man who loves love, a ‘womanizer’; on the other hand, a husband who personifies the ‘law,’ a representative of military and aristocratic ‘order.’” The fact that de Sica’s character is an ambassador alludes to a “feminine” character in the same way that the general alludes to a “masculine” one. One is a peacemaker, a diplomat who is trained to see opposing viewpoints; and the other is an aggressor, one who takes the offensive to defeat an opponent. Ophuls exploits the classic love triangle in this way and in so doing displays the complex, dynamic interplay of fetishization, or, the politics of love.

Mulvey also does well to note the narrative progress in the film, and how it slows, pauses, and is threatened at various points by romantic interludes. The most renowned such sequence is the montage of a number of balls, picturing dancing, music, and a “blossoming of bodily and cinematic movement [that] slows down the forward movement of the narrative, suggesting that the ecstasy of love involves slowing and delaying time.” The figure of the general ultimately functions not only as a symbol of law, structure, and order, but an actual intra-cinematic law of narrative conclusion. Whereas the ambassador threatens the narrative, both in terms of slowing it and swaying it away from its lawful, orderly, inevitable conclusion, the general brings things back to the way they should be. Mulvey again: “From this perspective, the guardian of the law also acts as a guardian of narrative development, bringing both its delay and irrational passion back onto a linear path, the end of which will be figured literally and metaphorically by the stop of death.”

Most stills from DVD Beaver.

Thanks to The Auteurs Daily, Film Studies For Free heard about the new issue of Film Quarterly (Vol. 63, No. 1, Fall 2009) which comes with a wonderful, freely-accessible article by V.F.Perkins: ‘Reconsideration: Le Plaisir: “The Mask” and “The Model”‘. It’s a fabulously illustrated study of Max Ophüls’s 1952 film Le Plaisir, an adaptation of three short stories by Guy de Maupassant: ‘Le Masque’, ‘La Maison Tellier’, and ‘Le Modèle’.

Other freely-accessible items in this issue include: Rob White, ‘Editor’s Notebook: Against Nature’; Joshua Clover, ‘Marx and Coca-Cola: The Future in Labor’; Danny Birchall, ‘Talking Point: The Avant-Garde Archive Online’

Film Studies For Free brings you a little Friday round up of just-out-now scholarly links.

• There’s a truly bumper new issue of the journal JUMP CUT: A Review of Contemporary Media (issue 51), with 45 new freely accessible articles, including the following:
  

Imagining torture by Chuck Kleinhans; Torture documentaries by Julia Lesage; A Simple Case for Torture, redux by Martha Rosler; The Wire and the world: narrative and metanarrative by Helena Sheehan and Sheamus Sweeney; “Don’t Just Watch It, Live It:” technology, corporate partnerships, and The Hills by Elizabeth Affuso; Postmodern marketing, Generation Y and the multiplatform viewing experience of MTV’s The Hills by Amanda Klein; The past isn’t what it used to be: the troubled homes of Mad Men by Mark Taylor; Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica reviewed by David Greven; Global formats, gender and identity: the search for The Perfect Bride on Italian television by Michela Ardizzoni; A nightmare of capitalist Japan: Spirited Away by Ayumi Suzuki; The curious cases of Salma, Siti, and Ming:representations of Indonesia’s polygamous life in Love for Share by Ekky Imanjaya; Gender and class in the Singaporean film 881 by Brenda Chan; Cinenumerology: interview with Royston Tan, one of Singapore’s most versatile filmmakers by Anne Ciecko; Visible “waves”: notes on Koreanness, pan-Asianness, and some recent Southeast Asian art films by Anne Ciecko and Hunju Lee; Asia’s beloved sassy girl: Jun Ji-Hyun’s star image and her transnational stardom by JaeYoon Park; Pornography and its critical reception: toward a theory of masturbation by Magnus Ullén; Real sex: the aesthetics and economics of art-house porn by Jon Lewis; Documentary and the anamnesis of queer space: The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman by Nicholas de Villiers; Documentary investigations and the female porn star by Belinda Smaill; The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene reviewed by Catherine Clepper; Documenting and denial: discourses of sexual self-exploitation by Leigh Goldstein; Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood by Kirk Boyle; The exceptional darkness of The Dark Knight by Todd McGowan; The Dark Knight of American empire by Randolph Lewis; Post-Iraq cinema: the veteran hero in The Jacket and Harsh Times by Justin Vicari; WALL-E: from environmental adaptation to sentimental nostalgia by Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann; Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino: the death of America’s hero by Robert Alpert; Interpreting revolution: Che: Part I and Part II by Victor Wallis; The cold world behind the window: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Romanian cinema’s return to real-existing communism by Constantin Parvulescu; Retrieving Emir Kusturica’s Underground as a critique of ethnic nationalism by Sean Homer; Dimensions of exile in the videos of Silvia Malagrino by Ilene S. Goldman; No parking between signs: on Sadie Benning’s Flat is Beautiful and early works by Burlin Barr; Sex versus the small screen: home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también by Caetlin Benson-Allott; Torture, maternity, and truth in Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica: Land of My Dreams by Caroline Koebel; Culture wars: some new trends in art horror by Joan Hawkins; Misogyny as radical commentary: Rashomon retold in Takashi Miike’s Masters of Horror: Imprint by William Leung; The dangers of biosecurity: The Host and the geopolitics of outbreak by Hsuan L. Hsu; The return of horror to Chinese cinema: an aesthetic of restraint and space of horror by Li Zeng; Cross cultural disgust: some problems in the analysis of contemporary horror cinema by Chuck Kleinhans; Media salad by Chuck Kleinhans; Racing into the Obama era by the editors; Remembrance against manufactured amnesia: on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident by David Leiwei Li. Plus several book reviews.

• The new issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture is available, including the following articles:

‘Gypsy Stars in the New Europe’ by Aniko Imre; ‘When Satellites Fall: On the Trails of Cosmos 954 and USA 193‘ by Lisa Parks; ‘Towards a Typology of Dance TV Contestants’ by Christine Quail; ‘No Rerun Nation: Canadian Television and Cultural Amnesia’ by Serra Tinic; ‘And the winner of Britain’s Got Talent is . . .’ by Lisa W. Kelly.

• The summer 2009 issue of the high quality journal Film Quarterly (Vol. 62, No. 4) has just come out, offering the following freely accessible columns:

Rob White, ‘Editor’s Notebook: Heaven Knows We’re Digital Now’ ; Joshua Clover, ‘Marx and Coca-Cola: Cinema for a New Grand Game’; Laura Mulvey, ‘Reconsideration: The Earrings of Madame de . . . ; Michael Colvino, ‘Ecosystem: La malavita: Gomorrah and Naples‘. As it is celebrating its 50th anniversary, it is also still offering free access to ‘Da Capo,’ a history of FQ written by founding editor Ernest Callenbach.

• The UK Film Council today launches its detailed research report Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Cultural Impact of UK Film 1946-2006 (also see HERE).

[According to its press release,] it’s a timely and stimulating report, confirming that film has been one of the most powerful cultural and social agents of the last 100 years. Taking 200 iconic films from the past six decades, it traces how British cinema has upheld some traditional British values – and mocked, challenged and undermined others. It shows how important film has been in sustaining and developing the identity of the UK’s nations and regions, and in reflecting the changing face of Britain’s different communities. And it charts the extraordinary power British film can wield at home and abroad – even more so with the massive economic and technological evolution film has experienced in recent years. This study highlights the cultural impact of British film. It calls on us to acknowledge and appreciate the strength, the diversity and the rude health of our film heritage and to acknowledge its increasingly vital role in contemporary culture.

Gentry: All that business years ago, about Harry being a right winger or a neofascist, as some critics said, it seems to me that they were failing to see Harry in the larger context, this pattern where conventional references for morality is rather obscured.

Eastwood : Well, yeah, there were no conservative over- tones. Actually, it was just critical people who took everything in political terms at that time. We weren’t telling a conservative story. We were just doing a story that involved victims, victims of violent crime. Harry asks the authorities, How come you let the guy go? And they say, Because that’s the law. And Harry answers, Then the law is wrong. That doesn’t mean you’re a fascist. If fascism is blind obedience to authority, then Harry was really the opposite of fascist. He differs with the law in this case. And a lot of people differ with the law, have questions about it. We read about decisions every day that make us ask, How could they do that? There must be some kind of balance there where you can pre- vent a psychopath from going back out on the street and potentially committing another violent crime, which in the story he does. The times have caught up with Harry to an extent. Nowadays there’re organizations for the victims and the families of victims of violent crime. But in those days, when Dirty Harry was first released in theatres, there wasn’t any of that. The tendency was to look at it in terms of the rights of the accused, Miranda and all that. We were merely suggesting that this was a case, an extreme case, where no one was taking the victim into consideration, and there was a serious time factor pertaining to her survival. I don’t think anybody really believes a police officer would go that far for somebody in trouble. I mean, that’s kind of going overboard. Most of the time you figure, Well, you’re off the case. It’s closed. But here was this guy who lived alone and was obsessed with following it through. That was the romance, I think, be- cause who believes there’s some guy out there with that kind of tenacity? I don’t know necessarily agree with Dirty Harry’s philosophy all the way down the line. I don’t disagree with the importance of rights for the accused, either. But we were telling a story, an incident in one man’s life. It was a story worth telling. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t turn around and do a story about someone who’s been falsely accused or something.1

1. Ric Gentry, ‘Clint Eastwood: An Interview’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3 (Spring, 1989), pp. 12-23. p. 23.

The popular literature out there has deeply mixed feelings about Blood Simple, with half of the reviewers quickly concluding that the Coens’ first work was, simply, an overhyped B-movie. Thankfully, better thinkers have noted that this is the inaugural work from an important filmmaking duo that deserves careful attention. It would be difficult to argue now that the Coens are not at least talented, or better. They have established themes and motifs in their films that give them the status of auteurs (if you’re into that). Blood Simple contains most, if not all, of those themes and motifs.

The Mortimer Young introduction is almost as delightful here as it is on The Big Lebowski. The rest of that speaks for itself. Within the first couple frames, the film establishes itself as a fusion noir/western genre film, and soon it will display major signs of the thriller/horror genre. Here already is a great stumbling-block to viewers, who have seen in Blood Simple nothing more than a mash-up of long-established movie clichés, as if the Coen brothers are just a less-creative Quentin Tarantino. The camera slowly moves in on towns and factories in a way that The Big Lebowski will later do more overtly, and the noir/western/thriller/horror/comedy feel of this film is repeated to grand effect in No Country for Old Men.

After the beginning shots of the landscape, the camera is placed in the back seat of a car, behind and between two characters as they drive. It is dark and rainy, and the headlights and windshield wipers ineffectively attempt to dispel the darkness and blurriness. It seems that the Coens are emphasizing the noir-nature of the film: what is ahead is unseen and most likely sinister in nature. The character of Abby, even early in the film, reminds one of other Coen brothers women, as in Fargo, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and No Country for Old Men. Ray may also be a foreshadow of Josh Brolin’s character in the last film. In classic noir form, Ray is introduced after some dialogue by protruding his face from the shadows toward the camera and into violently bright light. The mood is one of uncertainty and despair.

To counteract, or counterbalance, the noir opening, the following scene has country music playing, with a close-up of boots on a desk and a cowboy hat placed beside them. The laughing of the P.I. works out to be a chiasm; he is a cliché at the beginning and the end of the film, sandwiching some very dark humor that is devoid of laughter. Though a major character (arguably the most important one), the P.I. is never given a name. He is the source of both truth and lies, giving Marty true and false evidence of his wife’s affair. The prevalence of photographs and voyeurism in the film feeds the intersubjectivity of the characters and what they believe to be true. In many ways the film is about misunderstandings. One person is mistaken for another, a photograph is altered, a gun is misplaced and misinterpreted, a dream is thought to be reality, and a living man is considered dead. After the early meeting between Marty and the P.I., the camera moves through the “window” separating the office from the bar to reveal that it’s a mirror on the other side. While not the most jaw-dropping of effects, it illustrates both the uncertainty within the film and its voyeuristic theme.

Little effects such as the camera crawling down the length of the bar toward its subject (and going over a sleeping drunk like a speed bump) have led some to conclude that Blood Simple is a style-over-content film. I don’t feel a strong need to spend time rebutting this. Suffice it to say, it seems clear that (a) the content of the film is on par with its style, as this essay hopes to make clear; and (b) style is a very important aspect of the content, since this is in many ways a film about film. Its amalgamation of genres and weight given to the visual image contribute to this.

Not sure what to do with Marty’s recurring vomiting. He always seems to be either throwing up or supressing the urge. Neither he nor the other characters seem to notice what must be a foul stench from the dead fish on his desk, though all the major players enter his office while the fish are there. This more superficial cause for potential puking is usurped by the gravity of death and getting knocked in the groin by Marty’s eloping wife, which seems appropriate. And I suppose that someone is bound to point out the innuendo of emasculation: when Abby kicks Marty where it counts, she also breaks his finger, which is seen in the following scene in a closeup in a splint. From that point, whatever manhood Marty had left is history, along with his marriage.

The significance of the four dead fish is perhaps complex, not sure. They appear when the P.I. is showing Marty altered photos implying a double homicide. Presumably, the fish foreshadow the death of all four main characters, though they are all still alive at this point. Not all four characters die in the end, in the physical sense. The Coens are likely playing with the viewers heads by tying the fish with the characters, and at the same time rejecting what would have been another stylistic cliché.

As usual, the Coens seem to be portraying something moral in this film without making a moral statement. The P.I. accepts Marty’s proposal for a job that’s “not strictly legal,” but tells Marty, “You’re an idiot.” The P.I. can’t bring himself to commit the crime, but instead misleads Marty into paying him for the job, then offs him. As Marty sits there slouching, bleeding to death, the P.I. says, “You look stupid now.” The P.I. associates ignorance with evil, is disgusted, and becomes an administrator of justice. That Ray is not actually dead, we find out a bit later, confirms the dishonesty of the visual image that has already been a theme. In the first instance, the altered photo seemed just fishy enough to have been fake, the audience infers. Marty is fooled, but the audience isn’t sure. When Marty is “killed,” the audience apparently sees it clearly and has no reason to doubt the murder. The viewer is as surprised as Ray to discover Marty gasping for breath later on. This takes the film from being merely a mystery-thriller to something in the category of “a film about film.” The Coens know that their viewers are fluent in the language of film and know cinematic clichés. By deceiving the audience, the Coens are turning the clichés on their head, so to speak. This seems a perfect use of such clichés: make lazy viewers of the audience so that they stop thinking about the possibilities of the story, then show them their laziness.

Once Ray is shown late in the film sitting on a chair with one cowboy-booted leg up on a table, the connection with Marty is clear, along with the implication that Ray will share in Marty’s fate. Abby’s defense, “I haven’t done anythin’ funny” may be honest, but they are precisely the words Marty promised Ray she would utter, and they further tie Ray and Marty’s fates together. Twisted clichés, stupid characters, and a hastiness to violence make Blood Simple a film of blood spilt by simple people who are incapable of seeing the complexity that the viewer is cursed to witness.

The sinister voyeur

Took in the wonderful Wall-E a few nights ago with my sister-in-law. (Note: avoid 11:40 p.m. showings on days when you arise at 6:30.) Parentheses aside, it is a testament to a film when you felt yourself nodding off in the middle of it out of sheer exhaustion, but still enjoyed it so much that you wouldn’t leave the theater or let your eyelids meet for anything. This was a great film.

Digression. Among other interesting articles in this month’s Film Quarterly, one (I believe on No Country for Old Men) makes the case that critical analysis notwithstanding, it is important, nay essential, that our essays on films contain a measure of evaluation. For the masses, this is the first and usually only step of responding to a film. For the elit(e/ists), it is the dreaded final step that is often never taken. How much easier it is to give illumination, explanation, and comparison with other works than actually to go out on a limb and say if something is good or not. (Incidentally, the aforementioned article made the provocative case that No Country for Old Men elevated style above content and, therefore, was not that great. See how gutsy that is?)

That being said, the bottom line concerning this film is the bottom line of the top paragraph. The structure of the film was not what I expected; it was much better. The sandwiching effect of beginning and end made for a simple but deeply profound story with a moving resolution. The visual beauty of it is unsurpassed in anything ever done in animated cinema. Nearly any still in the film is worthy of framing and wall-mounting. So much detail, such excellent use of the widescreen format; like Ratatouille, you would think that Wall-E was filmed, not drawn. Who in animation’s earliest days would have thought that animators would become some of he best cinematographers in the art of film? As for the design of Wall-E himself, Pixar has done what was heretofore impossible: created a robot who is loveable, cute, and remarkably animated (in the other sense). The last time someone tried to do that, the result was a movie called Robots that repelled even airline passengers (I know this firsthand).

Then there is the subtlety factor. The Incredibles and Ratatouille were fabulous, but simple they were not. The latter in particular is known for breaking Pixar’s streak of films that could be basically described in one word (if the former didn’t already do that). For all its visual complexity and richness of content, Wall-E is about two robots, one of whom shows the other their mutual need for one another. These characters speak hardly three words total in the film, but they are far wiser than the human refugees floating around the stars getting fat off of the technology to which they have become enslaved. Herein, too, lies the great irony of Wall-E. This film, perhaps more than most, owes its existence to technology. Within the film, Earth is an abandoned dump with only a forgotten robot to compact and stack the trash. As the only sign of life on the planet, Wall-E becomes strikingly human – more human than any of the humans in the film. He is curious, longs for relationship, and is utterly devoid of cynicism despite his circumstances (though cynicism is perhaps a quintessentially human problem). The humans, by contrast, are bored with everything, mindless, and self-centered. A film like this could have easily missed the mark and simply poo-pooed human beings. Wall-E, however, easily avoids preachiness, never forgets who the real subjects of the film are, and somehow still prophecies a stern warning to all of us humans: human laziness is nurtured and fed by self-congratulatory technological progress. The film is biting in its criticism, but more prominent than the frightening picture of what humans could become is the beautiful illustration of simple love that takes all of the technical wonders of Wall-E to the status of masterpiece.