NFR Project: 'Glimpse of the Garden' (1957)

NFR Project: “Glimpse of the Garden”

Dir: Marie Menken

Premiere: 1957

5 min.

Marie Menken (1909-1970) was an experimental artist, a kinetic painter, and a pioneer of making cinema out of something as simple as a handheld camera. Not only handheld, but hand-cranked – a 16-millimeter Bolex.

Already established as a painter, she picked up a camera and began messing around with it in the mid=1940s. She produced Visual Variations on Noguchi in 1945; she would make 18 films all told through 1968. She taught Andy Warhol how to use a handheld camera. Stan Brakhage was inspired by her work.

Glimpse of the Garden is just a poetic meditation on the subject of the film. Purposely crude in technique, accompanied acoustically only by birdsong, the camera sweeps, pans, and runs alongside a field of varied flowers. In closeup, petals and stems glisten with rain. The film races, swoops, pauses, examines, and runs on. The film’s clarity is not strong; there are under- and over-exposed pieces, a rough hand-hewed feel. But in a scant five minutes, Menken delivers the evocation of a certain place on a certain day.

The film has no agenda. Its blunt simplicity celebrates the flowering world. It’s Whitmanesque. It preserves some sunny and quiet moments forever. Maybe that’s enough.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Hunters.

In praise of Peter Medak

 

Film director Peter Medak has passed away. Little-known today, he managed to direct 27 feature films between 1968 and 2018, along with numerous television projects, including The Wire and Breaking Bad, and many documentaries as well.

I believe he deserves a critical examination. He plainly loved film, and had daring. He directed a film that could not be made today, The Ruling Class (1972), a black comedy in which Peter O'Toole plays an English nobleman who thinks he is Jesus Christ. Later, he directed Zorro, the Gay Blade (1981), but there's no accounting for taste.

He directed one of the most effective of horror films, The Changeling (1980). He later specialized in crime dramas, creating the excellent The Krays (1990), Let Him Have It (1991), and Romeo Is Bleeding (1993). He got to do adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and David Copperfield. Not too shabby!

Born in Budapest in 1937, Medak survived World War II and escaped West from Hungary during its 1956 Uprising. He worked his way in the industry from the bottom up. He was a magpie; he could seemingly tackle any genre thrown at him with grace and skill. He is worth a closer look.

NFR Project: 'A Face in the Crowd' (1957)

NFR Project: “A Face in the Crowd”

Dir: Elia Kazan

Scr: Budd Schulberg

Pho: Gayne Rescher, Harry Stradling

Ed: Gene Milford

Premiere: May 28, 1957

125 min.

The relation of fascism to capitalism has never been so distinctly illuminated as in this film. The combination of a charismatic, ruthless would-be cultural figurehead and the entrepreneurial, martial, and political systems that use him for their own ends results in a scenario frightfully akin to our present national circumstances. It’s a terrifying film.

Kazan, of whom we have written before, is one of American cinema’s flawed geniuses. A Red Scare informer, he defended his position adamantly throughout his career, even as many despised him.

Here he nails Budd Schulberg’s brilliant script, largely due to the amazing performance of film neophyte, standup comedian Andy Griffith, who had recently starred in Ira Levin’s No Time for Sergeants, first on TV and then on Broadway. His embodiment of a villainous character could not be more compelling.

It seems a tragedy that he didn’t reel off any similar film projects – later becoming the familiar Sheriff Taylor in TV’s long-running The Andy Griffith Show. Here he plays Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, a no-good drunken bum with a talent for recycling corny down-home sentiments with a big, fake grin. He draws the attention of radio journalist Marcia (Patricia Neal, never lovelier or more capable as an actress) in the county jail, where he sings some songs and tells some jokes.

 Everyone loves him, and soon he has a spot on the radio station, which grows and swells into fantastic career opportunities. He soon becomes a regional TV star, then a national figure. A raging egomaniac, he wreaks havoc as he rushes blindly forward, accumulating wealth and a fearful respect seemingly overnight. Marcia loves him, but he resolutely indulges in wine, women, and song.

Eventually he marries a 17-year-old (Lee Remick in her first film role) and plans on dispensing his supposed wisdom on political issues in a new nationally broadcast TV show that highlights his musings around a cracker barrel, surrounded by stooges. Marcia finally has enough; she throws open a studio microphone during the end credits of the show, capturing Rhodes as he calls his viewers “idiots” and “sheep.”

Now, in this case, the public rejects him immediately. He loses his show, his influence,, his money, his respect, again overnight. Distraught, he threatens suicide. Marcia’s forlorn suitor Mel (a top-notch Walter Matthau) tells him that he won’t kill himself; he’ll go out of the spotlight for a while but will return in some lower-grade productions. Mel and Marcia walk out.

It’s a corrosive fable that doesn’t fail to lacerate all the players in the drama – the sponsors, the generals, the politicians. Everybody here is out to make a profit – and by attaching themselves to Rhodes’ rising star, they succeed admirably. All is forgiven to those who earn high ratings. The corruption of the system is spelled out plainly. And Griffith makes for a memorable monster.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Glimpse of the Garden.