See all the Fishing with John posts.

See all the Fishing with John posts.

See all the Fishing with John posts.

Franz Biberkof has just been released from prison, after serving four years for killing his girlfriend. The first chapter of his story, as its title suggests, catalogues Biberkof’s readjustment to a society to which he’s afraid to reintegrate. It launches into a relatively difficult scene with a Jewish man telling a parable which we take to more or less summarize the next fourteen hours we’ll be watching. This, of course, would be a mistake, as the film points out the second the man’s brother-in-law comes in during one of the most portentous thunderstorms ever captured in film (maybe that should be capital). So he attends to the red light district for a whore, to prove his manhood this side of jail. It doesn’t work of course, and he’s ridiculed. This scene is particularly effective with its carnival-loop of player-piano music streaming in from the bar below.

Nevertheless, Franz is a sweet man, hopeful for the future and generous, but emotional. He returns to his apartment and the murder scene of Ida, the aforementioned girlfriend. It seems not much has changed in his absence, and the landlord welcomes him home with equal parts motherhood, worry and suspicion. Franz attempts to make peace with Ida’s sister by getting her flowers and nearly raping her. There are plenty of hints that the sister and Franz carried on prior to Ida’s death, but it seems more that Franz is invested in re-establishing his manhood with something that is familiar.

Ultimately, Franz runs into an old friend whom he goes drinking with, where he meets a young, impressionable Polish woman who moves in with him, and is instructed by the Berlin police department that as a convict he is not allowed to live in many neighborhoods of Berlin as a convicted murderer. The scene where Biberkof reads off the districts is the most effective and moving scene of the first chapter, as you can see not only the effect on Franz, but on the polish woman and his friend as well. Enrolling with a charter called Prisoner’s Aid allows Biberkof to stay in Berlin, provided he do work for them and check in once a month.

It must be said that the story of Biberkof resembles in more ways than one that of McTeague by Frank Norris. Considered the first “Gothic” American novel, both Alexanderplatz were constructed into monumental films of gargantuan length (McTeague as Greed by Erich von Stroheim). Both are about simpletons, big hearted men found to be in circumstances above their heads. I’m sure Biberkof’s struggle lands him in a metaphorical desert, with something a lot more guilt-inducing than a briefcase of money handcuffed to his wrist. Leave it to the Germans to obfuscate something so pure as a golden tooth outside your shop.

Use this link to find all posts about Berlin Alexanderplatz as they become available.

See all the Fishing with John posts.

See all the Fishing with John posts.

Last Year at Marienbad is Alain Resnais’ follow-up to Hiroshima, mon Amour, and its beguiling quality at first turned me off, seeing it as nothing but the predecessor to the aimless, unfocused meandering of David Lynch’s insufferable Inland Empire, which too, repeats phrases and scenes relentlessly and has shifting points of view. But the great part of Resnais’ work here (Alain Robbe-Grillet, the writer, likely bristles at the notion of this being Resnais’ work, given the outlandishly detailed script he provided, noting music type, camera movement and cinematography leading Resnais to call himself a “robot” early on, according to Criterion’s accompanying essays) is the relaxed and studied ways he’s able to merge elements of a play (long, repetive and retrospective monologues and Eugene O’Neill’s still players, for example) seamlessly into the concept of a film, without losing their effectiveness or losing the sense of closeness (which is something that’s really alarming with most filmed plays). Here is a piece of film-making that would be an absolute sin to see in any other format than 2.35:1. It is completely stunning. The drifting camera lends the proceedings a dreamlike quality that never achieves the “dark underbelly” pathos of Lynch’s approach to the same techniques.

The interplay between the film and the dialogue is also fascinating, as the film circles around the same relationship (at different points, at different times, replaying the same conversation, the same encounter) but subtley switching and undercutting the narrative, which – at least in my case – brought me deeper into the questions it asked. The painting above the fireplace was what, exactly, when we saw the foreplay take place, but in reality seems to be a recreation of a scene from later in the film. That this duality can exist and not seem forced is a marvel, and it’s recreated over and over again.

Resnais has said that the whole film is a recreation of “rape”, and there are no doubt several more interesting interpretations of the film that both take into account his wry sense of humor and swing with all their might at its coy reversals and shifting narrative (dare I use the word diegeses?). But look at the scene in particular when finally it seems these two characters are going to join together, and the way the mirrors are placed to give you a sense that you’re standing right in the room (Pasolini did this in Salo), and how the film seems to grind to a hault while she raises her arms up and cannot speak.

What this film is to me is the burrowing into memory that Proust does, and that’s probably the reason why it ultimately was so effective (I’ve been on a summer project to reread all of the new Penguin translation; it’s not going well). But just to witness the same narrative circling, the same chipping away at what could be memory spliced and splintered together into a seamless dream is a marvel, and I can’t believe I had to wait 28 years to see it.

There’s a lot of the same sweet extraction of stillness that seems to linger at the margins of the frame, which is far more prevalent in In the Mood for Love than it is here, but there’s the same feeling of longing that can be so present you can almost touch it. But there’s a tendency for Wong Kar-Wai to attach weird metaphorical resonance to concrete objects that makes things a little too pat — expired pineapple, I’m looking at you. This reminded me almost verbatim of the conversation about keys/pie in My Blueberry Nights which is liked only by idiots and apologists. The difference might be that the pineapple thing is supposed to be funny in addition to its tinged-with-loneliness thing, whereas the pie/keys thing was outrageous because it was so earnest. I’m also having the thought thought that I might be tending toward giving the pineapple thing a pass because I read it in subtitles, where that kind of thing can seem a little more cheesy when read, versus how its spoken in Chinese and the dreaded disconnect between knowing what was originally written and how it was translated, though Criterion states they’ve added a new and improved subtitle translation.

The essay that Criterion provides, by Amy Taubin, examines the extent to which Wong Kari-Wai is indebted to Godard, and the music recalled for me Breathless and to some extent Masculin Feminin (pop!), but instead of mixing the tragedy with satire, Wong Kar-Wai seems to going for a cute Audrey Hepburn type aloofness that carries it along. The ending of both sequences leaves a little to be desired, I think – there’s certainly something to be said for abandoning one love for another you may never think you’ll get to see if you come go through with the one you have, but when she comes back from America things start getting conflated in weird ways that artifically tie together the two sections of the film (her sunglasses, her outfit, etc.).