Directed by Barbet Schroeder Screenplay Paul Gégauff, Barbet Schroeder Cinematography by Nestor Almendros Edited by Rita Roland, Denise de Casabianca Music by Pink Floyd With Mimsy Farmer Estelle Klaus Gruenberg Stefan Heinz Engelmann Wolf Michel Chanderli Charlie Georges Montant Henry Louise Wink Cathy. Produced by Barbet Shroeder Production Company Jet Films/Films de Losange Runtime 110 minutes.

DVD, UK 2003: Distributed by British Film Institute Video (region 2) Aspect Ratio Widescreen 1.66:1 Sound Mix Dolby Digital Mono 1.0 Extras Interview with Barbet Schroeder. Director biography. Trailer. Poster.

General Idi Amin Dada (A Self-Portrait)
France 1974

Directed by Barbet Schroeder Cinematography Nestor Almendros Music Idi Amin Dada With Idi Amin Dada Produced by Jean-Pierre Rassam, Charles-Henri Favrod Runtime 90 minutes.

DVD, USA 2002: Distribution (region 1)The Criterion Collection Aspect Ratio Academy 1.33:1 Sound Mix Dolby Digital Mono 1.0 Extras Timeline of Ugandan history. Documentation of Amin’s cuts to the film. Interview with Barbet Schroeder.

Barbet Schroeder has proved one of the more interesting figures to have traversed the divide between art cinema and mainstream Hollywood. The release of these two films should be welcomed, as they bring film aficionados pristine prints of both Idi Amin Dada, one of Schroeder’s noted documentaries, and More, a notable ‘sixties period piece.

More is about a young German called Stefan (Klaus Gruenberg) travels through France to Ibiza, and becomes enchanted by an American woman called Estelle (Mimsy Farmer), who has a drug habit. He meets her first in Paris and fails to be warned off her. His relationship with her in the Spanish island of Ibiza is fraught but exciting for him. There is a shady ex-Nazi who appears to have a hold on Estelle. Despite misgivings about her secrecy, Stefan’s desire for her leads him to join her in taking heroin, which ultimately leads to his demise.

This sounds like a fairly gripping film and might conjure certain dramatic moments in the reader’s mind. The film refuses such an obvious path. Schroeder eschews dramatizing charged scenes, lending a detached emotional sense to the film. His character delineation is also not conventional, giving only merest details to the main characters and rarely showing them in conventional close up shot (both literally and figuratively). Estelle is supposed to be a manipulative siren but Farmer is too detached an actress to fully convince. In fact, the love between Stefan and Estelle is so underplayed as to be unconvincing, and manifesting part of the dislocated, indifferent character of the film.

The film really feels very detached overall: summed up by the cold scene at the film’s conclusion where Stefan’s body is removed from the alley. Schroeder does not want the audience to identify with the characters and feel for them the way we might for a mainstream Hollywood film. It is about as far from the spectacular death of Hollywood s one can get. There is no drama, no ‘He had that Luke smile’ montage like we get after the death of Paul Newman’s protagonist in Cool Hand Luke (1967). This is detached almost to the point of being a faux-documentary.

The film’s detached character is reinforced by it taking an ambiguous position about drugs. The film, like the characters it depicts, is amoral. It does not push a clear message about drugs, although ultimately it shows heroin and users as doomed. If it had been a Hollywood film, it would have had a very solid position toward such subject matter. But is it a film about drugs? Or are the drugs merely incidental to a film about something else? On another level, More is about the doomed optimism of the 1960s generation, who desired to go further, to be more free than previous generations, but ended up failing in many of their largest aims. The film opens with Stefan’s voice over about how he wanted more: “I imagined this journey as a quest. … If I got burned, it was OK too. … I wanted the sun and I went after it.” This, added to the startling shots of the sun over the opening titles, suggests something of the myth of Icarus and Daedalus. Stefan is intoxicated with his ability, and his freedom to do and go where he wants, but, like Icarus, he flies too close to the sun, and thus to his doom.

Stefan is right that the film depicts a quest of sorts, from the dark of Paris, with dirty streets and cluttered interiors to the bright openness of dazzling Ibiza. I have heard this described as a ‘road movie’ - it starts with Stefan hitching a lift. But there is little physical travel, although the film comprises Stefan’s journey from ingénue to lover to drug addict to death.

More is striking for the spontaneous character of its action. There are few traditional camera set-ups, and hardly any of the tight big close ups of mainstream cinema, added to an overall impression of ‘caught action’, or improvisation. The film’s visuals are memorable. It was shot impressively by respected cinematographer Nestor Almendros. Some choice moments include Estelle in a thin, loose shirt in the brilliant sunshine, the dramatic sunbursts over the opening titles (and reused as the DVD menu backdrop) and pretty much all the scenery at the sea. The film appears at times as if it is an experimental succession of mirages, within an atmosphere of dryness and ultimately.

The film is most famous these days through having a score by Pink Floyd, or ‘the Pink Floyd’ as they were known in those days. The album More has been constantly available since 1968. The music is not outstanding, and rarely prominent in the film, often being played quietly on radios or at parties. It hardly has a sustained presence and differs from the music on the album. Pink Floyd’s music for More is transitionary in their career, marking a point between the group’s outstanding debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in 1967, where the mercurial Syd Barrett was leader of the group, and setting the definition of progressive rock in the 1970s with albums such as Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and Wish You Were Here (1975). Their relationship with Schroeder must have been successful, as they scored his later film The Valley (aka The Valley Obscured by Clouds, 1972). This film was another ‘quest’ film, also about hippies in an exotic location, looking for something.

More freezes a certain attitude of the late ’sixties, showcasing a European version of hippie culture, drug use and youthful idleness, that has been more prominently depicted in American films. The film is like a time capsule, very much of its period, and interesting these days because of its unselfconscious picture of the time as much as for its narrative. However, More is ambiguous about its depiction of libertines and the notion of free love that was prominent at the close of the 1960s. Despite the characters’ intoxication, the freedom seems illusory. Throwing off the yoke of western society comes against a backdrop of ignored locals and a shady German character, who appears to have been a Nazi. Remember, this is General Franco’s Spain that is the setting for 100 minutes of this film. Despite the seeming freedom of the hippies, there is an unseen repression, partially expressed in the film’s bleak detachment.

More was Barbet Schroeder’s directorial debut, although he had already been working in the French cinema for a few years. His career has included producing some of Eric Rohmer’s films (including My Night at Maud’s/Ma nuit chez Maud, 1969, and Claire’s Knee/Le Genou de Claire, 1970) and Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau, 1974). He also produced Wim Wenders’ The American Friend and worked with both Fassbinder and Godard. He also was a sometime actor, including appearing in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! (1996). Although he has worked primarily in the French and American film industries, Schroeder is a global citizen, being Swiss and born in Iran. His film career started as an occasional film critic for Cahiers du cinéma, after which he worked as assistant director for Jean-Luc Godard. The influence of Godard and the Nouvelle Vague is traceable in some of his films.

He has been attracted by the exotic and the remarkable. For instance, the rainforests of New Guinea in The Valley (1972), a speaking African gorilla in Koko qui parle (Koko, the Gorilla Who Spoke, 1978), and sado-masochism in Maîtresse (1976). His films often evince a dialectic between documentary and drama, between reality and fiction, which culminates in moments where ‘the real’ appears to erupt within film dramas. Schroeder’s Hollywood films have included Barfly (1987), Reversal of Fortune (1990) for which he received an Oscar nomination as best director, Single White Female (1992) and Desperate Measures (1997), among others. Remarkably, More was made while he was still in his twenties.

Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, the star and focus of General Idi Amin Dada (A Self-Portrait) (1974), was unhappy with the film when it was released. He threatened harm to French citizens living in Uganda unless director Barbet Schroeder agreed to make certain cuts to the film. The director agreed and made three short cuts to the film whilst appending ‘A Self-Portrait’ to its title. Amin allegedly was very happy with the film.

In terms of style, the film is strikingly limited and austere. It consists almost wholly of frontal shots of Amin addressing the unseen interviewer (Schroeder) to the side of the camera, apart from a handful of scenes of the military and Amin swimming and playing the accordion on stage with a music troupe. The swimming sequence appears illustrative of the dictator, where he jumps into the pool for a race with a number of cronies, all of whom slow or stop to allow him to win.

This is a film that it is almost impossible to see in a vacuum. It is a portrait of a leader of an African country who was mercilessly derided in the current affairs stories of westerns countries, and was even ridiculed as a joke figure. One cannot help but suspect that behind some of this posturing were the remnants of a colonial attitude to an African leader. At times, it is easy to wonder if some remains here. For example, the voice-over narration informs us that Amin’s incoming minister of Foreign Affairs was a ‘former model’ but neglects to mention that she possessed a degree from Oxford University.

Amin attempts to present himself as a reasonable if highly remarkable figure. On its own terms, and if the viewer were unaware of Amin’s record in a decade as dictator of Uganda, they might be left with the impression that he had been a highly successful leader, who had managed to elevate himself not only to the premiership of his country but onto the international stage, which was indeed a remarkable achievement for such a poor country, one which has slipped back into international obscurity since Amin was deposed. Schoeder’s documentary does not quite leave us with impression greatness that Amin desired. There are some bizarre discussions about the Holocaust and Amin wheels out The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that old forged standby of Anti-Semites worldwide. Yet almost as bizarre is the way that Amin sees nothing strange about his volte face, from being a supporter of Israel to being an anti-Israeli supporter of the Palestinian cause. Stranger still, Amin informs the interviewer about how he ‘dreams reality’ and how these contacts from the ether shape his policies.

Amin is charming, but also a pompous, self-prepossessed megalomaniac. He makes for compulsive but unnerving viewing, although some have suggested that the film might be a comedy. Schroeder knows that his vanity is his undoing, and he is given enough rope to hang himself but does not realize it.

These two films arguably mark the highpoints of Barbet Schroeder’s career in making films outside Hollywood, and, although there might have been more inspired DVD extras, it is good to see two high quality digital transfers that give these interesting and challenging films the image and sound they deserve.

Kevin J. Donnelly