Why should you go to the International Film Series?

By BRAD WEISMANN

Don’t get Pablo started.

Actually, do, it’s very entertaining. Any question regarding the state and future of the cinema will trigger an intense and articulate stream of thoughts and observations that could lead us anywhere. In this way, he’s like the film series he’s been the director of for 17 years now. At the University of Colorado’s International Film Series, in action since 1941, dedicated attendance will teach you everything you need to know about the movies.

I called him right after Sundance, with a side trip to a multiplex. For him the latter exemplified the problems with mainstream cinema-going, and his solution:

“Juuuust a little rant. I just got back from Sundance, saw 30 films. Strong in the docs, as usual. Saw no 35-millimeter films and only one 16-millimeter.

“I promised my brother we’d go see ‘American Sniper’ – I just wanted to see how many minutes of trailers there were. We guessed 3 to 4? 5 to 6? EIGHTEEN MINUTES of trailers! And before that there were tons of ads for TV shows. The multiplexes are whoring themselves out for commercials that tell people that they should stay home and watch TV.

“What I do is more relevant than ever. We preserve a real filmgoing experience – no commercials, no more than two trailers. We have ushers, who will make you turn off your phone. Hey, I’m no better – we are already our own worst enemies. I will pause a film between one and two dozen times while watching it, just to discuss it. We are Cuisnarting our films at home. But you need to get into a darkened theater, with uninterrupted viewing. A film deserves the mood and the spell. It’s more challenging for people to sit still – but it’s more important than ever before.”

All this before I got to my first question. See what I mean? This is the kind of person you want programming films. This is the kind of person you love to have pie and coffee with after (OK, beer for Pablo), and argue movies with for hours. This guy and his ragtag crew are filled with evangelical light – they are on a mission to keep the art form, in all its permutations, alive.

If Pablo’s statements above don’t whet your appetite, think of it this way – he is providing the last true arthouse film experience in the region. When I say arthouse, I mean a theater that maintains a constantly changing marquee of films from all parts of the world -- short, feature, documentary, fiction, experimental – the all-too-obscured and completely unpublicized world of cinema. (If you ask “What about Landmark Theatres?”, look at their slate of films. While they do specialize in thoughtful-liberal-adult films that most multiplexes wouldn’t book, they can’t maintain profitability with just those, so you will find a healthy soupcon of populist crap in its venues as well.)

Film theorist Andre Bazin called for a kind of knowledge that would constitute a geology as well as a geography of cinema, providing depth as well as scope. This the International Film Series provides, as well as a thematic dimensions, and even nights based on technological parameters – for instance, its Thursday night 35mm revival series this spring.

True, this freedom is partly attributable to IFS’ non-profit status – but rest assured, empty auditoriums would soon bring an end to that. “I have to strike a balance between funky and quirky, between films people should see and films they want to see,” even describing one or two choices on the current schedule as cinematic “cod-liver oil.”

Good! We need roughage in our aesthetic diet. Given the extremely intelligent and film-savvy demographics of Boulder, the audience is up to the challenge. For instance – without IFS, I would never have gotten the chance to see “Infernal Affairs,” the Hong Kong film that Scorsese adapted into “The Departed.” Guess what? Even though “The Departed” won Best Picture, it is vastly inferior to the original. How would I ever have known otherwise?

Here’s a rundown of some highlights on the current schedule:

1.      LIVE INTERACTION. I was lucky enough to see director Ramin Bahrani (“Man Push Cart,” “Chop Shop”) in person at IFS earlier this week, showing a number of his short films, discussing his work, answering questions, and culminating with a screening of “Chop Shop.” FOR FREE.

Director Ramin Bahrani takes questions at the International Film Series on Feb. 3 (yes I am the world's worst photographer).

Other guests upcoming include Tom Shadyac introducing his documentary “I Am” on Feb. 24; Hitchcock expert Paul Gordon intro-ing “The Birds” on March 12; Nile Southern (Boulderite and son of screenwriter Terry) intro-ing the documentary “Burroughs” on March 31; CU prof and great director Alex Cox intro-ing “The Beguiled” April 2; animator Kelly Sears appearing at a program of Sundance Animation Festival Shorts April 3; history professor Patti Limerick interviewing director Alex Warren at a screening of his “Losing the West” April 7; and director Margaret Brown showing her “The Great Invisible” April 14. (OK, THESE shows aren’t free – they are a whopping $8 each. $8! Such a deal.)

You see how this works? You can learn something, go deeper.

2.      Tuesday night documentaries – “Citizenfour,” “The Hunting Ground,” and the aforementioned personal appearances.

3.      Thursdays – 35mm Festival! You can tell the difference. A selection of gems such as “The Bride of Frankenstein,” “Imitation of Life,” “Lonely Are the Brave,” “Jaws” and “Do the Right Thing.”

4.      Catching up on Oscar noms – special programs for completists will allow them to see all the live-action, animated, and documentary shorts.

5.      Just good stuff – Godard’s new “Goodbye to Language” in 3D, the controversial Russian film “Leviathan,” Hal Hartley’s “Henry Fool” trilogy (yes, there is a trilogy!). We’re talking movies with some balls here.

This is where movie exhibitors need to go, if they are to survive. Keep the blood pumping, don’t underestimate the crowd, throw them some curves. Use the performance space to make a more complete experience, go beyond just dimming the lights and showing stuff. A movie can be a launching point for the kind of thought and discussion that needs to happen in order to train a new generation of filmmakers and filmgoers.

In other words, go. Go go go go go. Are you there yet?

'Pepe le Moko': Shading into noir

Jean Gabin as Pepe -- he'll never have Paris.

This essay originally appeared in Senses of Cinema in November 2013.

By Brad Weismann

“Come weez me to zee Casbah!”

This famous Hollywood misquote, and the amorous adventures of the animated skunk Pépé le Pew, might seem to constitute the only lasting bit of cultural fallout from Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le Moko (1937). However, this classic film resonates in much less obvious and more far-reaching ways. It stands as the place of origin of several vital archetypes, not the least of which is Jean Gabin himself.

The film’s international success prompted MGM to buy the American rights for it immediately. In keeping with studio policy of the time, the original was kept from American distributors while the US version, Algiers (1938) was cranked out less than a year later. Such is the strength and coherence of the original that Algiers director John Cromwell, in a rare and unusual move, is purported to have kept a copy of Pépé le Moko on a Moviola on the shooting stage so that the original’s setups and camera moves could be replicated as closely as possible. Ironically, this approach would garner Oscar nominations for the art director and cinematographer of Algiers.

Even 1942’s Casablanca was conceived of as another exotic vehicle for Hedy Lamarr, who took on a role strongly resembling Mireille Balin’s original performance of Gaby, Pépé’s amour fou. When trying to “borrow” Ingrid Bergman from producer David Selznick for the key role of Ilsa in Casablanca (MGM wouldn’t lend Lamarr to Warner Bros.), it’s claimed that writer Julius Epstein ended his pitch meeting with, “Oh, what the hell! It’s going to be a lot of shit like Algiers!”

Duvivier’s original film is one of five starring Jean Gabin during 1935-37, a string of hits that established him as the number-one male star in France. La Bandera (1935), La Belle équipe and Pépé le Moko were all collaborations with Duvivier; the actor also made Les Bas-fonds (The Lower Depths, 1936) and La Grande illusion (1937) during that time with Jean Renoir.

In all these movies Gabin is the epitome of the (French) common man. He’s a regular fellow, a tough guy with a touch of poetry in him. After a generation of brilliantined, toothy leading men, Gabin was “natural” – almost studiously unaffected, impertinent, slangy. This incredibly appealing persona – a man all women want to bed, and all men want to have a beer with – rapidly became as rigid as those inhabited and crafted by Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. Gabin films became a subgenre in themselves, featuring the same archetypes, plot points, and even a contractually obligatory, pivotal emotional outburst by Gabin for every finished product. No wonder François Truffaut despised him, as the emblem of a “Tradition of Quality” that Truffaut saw as a dead hand on the throttle of mainstream cinema.

In Pépé le Moko, Gabin is a kind of Noble Savage: the equivalent of a robber chieftain, skilled and highly regarded, but still outside the pale of polite society. He is the King of the Casbah, but also its prisoner – he has left a string of busted banks and dead policemen after him, and will go to the death house if he is ever taken. Like Napoleon on Elba, or King Kong on Skull Island, he is extraordinary and powerful, but also circumscribed. Indeed, his end bears echoes of “Beauty and the Beast” without the redemption (1).

The Casbah, with its narrow, twisting streets, multiple terraces, hidey-holes, secret passages, and trapdoors – the insularity that only a polyglot population of outcasts can provide – is impenetrable to the police (2). Pépé must be drawn out into the logical, Europeanised space, where he can be arrested. Inspector Slimane (Lucas Gridoux), a cross between Javert and Iago, baits the trap with the lovely Gaby, a Parisienne slumming in the native quarter when Pépé encounters her.

Nevertheless, it’s not desire that kills Pépé, but nostalgia. In many ways, Pépé is a perfect bourgeois. His impeccable wardrobe, his fatherly concern for his gang, his “respectable” trade (robbery is the white-collar work of crime, requiring planning, capital investment, and proper staffing) – if he were on the right side of the law, he would probably be a pillar of society. (His wholeness and complexity are foregrounded by the fragmented, two-dimensional characteristics of his gang members – it’s a joy to see such regulars of the era as Gaston Modot and Marcel Dalio populate the film.)

But Pépé is literally circumscribed, and he is suffering from a malaise so prevalent to the French that they gave it an idiom – “avoir le canard”, a mixture of disconnectedness and self-pity found in exile. Gaby is not fascinating in and of herself, really not much more than a high-priced call girl, but she embodies everything about his beloved Paris for Pépé. He wants to turn back the clock, to walk the streets of Montmartre, to assert a freedom he no longer possesses. This dream leads him to his doom.

In its bleakness, Pépé le Moko fits into the classification of 1930s French poetic realism (or is it more accurately populist melodrama?). In most of these films, a proletarian protagonist is slated for inevitable destruction – absolutely reactionary in that it typifies the struggle for positive change as hopeless.

Like the other romantic heroes he played, Gabin’s Pépé will not accept the fate that keeps him down – of course, the racist correlative to this is that he refuses to share the contemptible status of a native, an outcast, or an unfortunate. He wants what he feels is his due as a white Frenchman.

Unlike Milton’s Satan, Pépé doesn’t choose to reign in Hell. As he races out of the Casbah to the docks to find Gaby, his surroundings fade away and are replaced by matte shots of Montmartre. Whether labelled as childish romanticism or ego, Pépé is surely the first film character to die because he couldn’t have Paris. (Conversely, in Casablanca the ill-fated lovers are redeemed because they discover they’ll “always have Paris”.) He’d rather be Pépé le Parisien than Pépé le Moko.

Duvivier’s creation spins high culture out of low. A key aspect of poetic realism is its insistence in finding beauty in the mundane, a hallmark of all of Duvivier’s films. Duvivier isn’t generally perceived as an auteur and, like Michael Curtiz and Victor Fleming, he can be regarded as a master of the Golden Age house style favoured by the major studios – “invisible” editing, tricky but unobtrusive camera movement, and an obsession with lighting and extracting the values of the human face.

For all its air of gritty realism, Pépé le Moko is a highly controlled, stylised production. After the story’s construction, colloquial expert Henri Jeanson worked up the hardboiled dialogue. Duvivier did almost all of his principal photography in the studio, creating extensive set work that allowed much more precise lighting. Marc Fossard and Jules Krüger’s cinematography is meticulous and worthy of the Oscar notice its imitation stirred. It illuminates the mise en scène created by art director Jacques Krauss with genuine interest and inventiveness.

All of these elements would migrate into French and American film noir especially as the aesthetics of black-and-white began to reemerge in contrast to the conservative, evenly lit colour film palettes of the time. Instead of heroic deaths, though, the generations of noir protagonists to follow were suckers, playthings of dark forces, who frequently wound up dead for no reason at all.

This unique intersection of talent, mood and theme gives us a perfectly pitched movie; enjoyable simply as an adventure in itself, with fascinating overtones for those whose vision goes deeper (3).

ENDNOTES

1. There is a cornucopia of derivations of the nickname “Moko” in film, few complimentary. It’s instructive to note that the name of the villainous drug lord in Robert Rodriguez’s 1992 feature debut El Mariachi is Moco – Spanish for booger.

2. The idea of it being an organic, anti-linear, female space is explored, along with much else, far more completely and eloquently in Ginette Vincendeau’s invaluable book-length examination of the film, Pépé le Moko, BFI, London, 1998.

3. The following sources were also consulted in the preparation of this article: Colleen Kennedy-Karpat, Rogues, Romance, and Exoticism in French Cinema of the 1930s, Farleigh Dickinson University Press, Madison/Teaneck, 2013; Michael F. O’Riley, Cinema in an Age of Terror: North Africa, Victimization, and Colonial History, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2010; David Henry Slavin, Colonial Cinema and Imperial France, 1919-1939: White Blind Spots, Male Fantasies, Settler Myths, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 2001; Ginette Vincendeau, The Companion to French Cinema, BFI, London, 1996; Ginette Vincendeau, Stars and Stardom in French Cinema, Continuum, London, 2000.

Pépé le Moko (1937 France 94 mins)

Prod Co: Paris Film Prod: Robert Hakim, Raymond Hakim [both uncredited] Dir: Julien Duvivier Scr: Henri La Barthe, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Constant, based on the novel by Henri La Barthe [as Ashelbé]; dialogue by Henri Jeanson Phot: Marc Fossard, Jules Krüger Ed: Marguerite Beaugé Art Dir: Jacques Krauss Mus: Vincent Scotto, Mohamed Yguerbouchen

Cast: Jean Gabin, Gabriel Gabrio, Saturnin Fabre, Fernand Charpin, Lucas Gridoux, Gilbert Gil, Marcel Dalio, Charles Granval, Mireille Balin

Review: Patton Oswalt's "Silver Screen Fiend"

Silver Screen Fiend

Patton Oswalt

2015

Scribner

New York City

Review by BRAD WEISMANN

It’s riveting to be made to understand late in life that you are nuts. Such was the initial fallout of my reading comedian Patton Oswalt’s second memoir. Gee, I would never have characterized my arts obsessions and need to see all of every subject’s work, my snotty cineaste pretentiousness, as counterproductive. Ulp.

In “Silver Screen Fiend,” Oswalt hits the trifecta – he takes a life-sapping obsession and simultaneously exorcises it, celebrates it, and exploits it. It’s like this: Oswalt went through a four-year period of compulsive movie-watching, during a period when he added comedy writing for television and sitcom acting to his resume, finding his way through the entertainment ecosystem. We get to sit through hundreds of nights of weird flicks with him, and track him as he stumbles through Hollywood.

“Silver Screen Fiend” is well-written and entertaining, chock-full of the baroquely couched and erudite observations that are Oswalt’s trademark. He zooms in and out of significant events, deftly analyzing the social dynamics of the key comedy venues that enabled his growth as a performer, and cracking so wise about his errors and delusions that you feel a friendly, kindred spirit is talking to you through the pages.

And, film junkies, there’s more! Oswalt has the gonads to throw in a program he concocts of films that never got made, but wouldn’t it be cool if they had? Nice. Along with the four-year list of all the movies he saw, and when and where he saw them. Hey, he acknowledges he had a problem. It’s still fun to riffle through it.

Caveat: I was a comic for years and I still report extensively about film, so both parallels of narrative here fascinate me. He has a lot of wisdom to share with young and/or aspiring artists – basically, quit bitching and do your work. We could all use that little reminder from time to time.