Promoting Intellectual Film Culture Since 1973
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The Politics of Mediterranean Identity
France is the land of cinema for different reasons. Not only was motion picture technology invented there; to this day the French population constitutes the most intensely concentrated national group of film aficionados in the world. Everyone knows of the Cannes film festival; what is less well understood is that almost every French city and a great many towns have their own annual film festivals, each focusing on some topical, geographical or cinematographic aspect of film production. The Mediterranean Film Festival, held in Montpellier, France, is important in this regard because its vocation of uniting films that form a collective identity from an area of the greatest geopolitical importance, one fraught with conflict at the heart of global preoccupations, cannot be ignored. The thirty-first edition of the Mediterranean film festival in Montpellier more than ever featured a sense of common identity and internecine political conflict.
This year, from 23 October to 1 November, the festival included 239 films of all types — full-length features, short films, documentaries and experimental films — carefully selected for their contemporary social significance. As in previous years, pre-release showings of major films, the films of promising young directors and retrospectives of important films or the work of directors that have become difficult to see in commercial circuits were prominently featured.
The festival was opened to great effect by the projection of Alejandro Amenábar’s new film Agora (Spain - USA, 2008, 141 min.). Whatever the merits and defects of this controversial return to the genre of Roman and Christian epic, it must be said that its depiction of life in cultivated Alexandria at the end of the fourth century — that is, just some years before the fall of the Roman Empire — is impressive both in terms of its visual reconstitution of the historical period and, especially, for its contemporary relevance. This is a film about religious intolerance and sexism. Centered on the life and (gruesome) death of the female philosopher Hypathia, the conflict between scientific inquiry and religious fanaticism is revealed within a context of imperial real politik, male chauvinism, and social oppression. Any relation to people or places today is wholly intentional.
Clearly, these themes reveal the antinomies of culture and society in the Mediterranean basin today. The festival organizers were concerned (consciously or not) to present aspects of how universal concerns are given particular expression that are peculiar to the region.
In addition to the films selected for competition in different categories, assiduous cinéphiles (cinema connoisseurs) were treated to several special thematic programs attesting to the organizers’ pedagogical seriousness. For example, an attempt was made to stimulate a renewal of interest in the work of Elio Petri, arguably the best of Italian “political” filmmakers. Petri, spawned by the post-war wave of Italian neo-realism (he was Giuseppe De Santis’ directing assistant), made and released his first feature film in 1961 (Il Assasino / The Murderer) starring Marcello Mastroianni. Over thefont size="2" style="font-family: Tahoma;"> Chibnall/Petley states in the introduction to British Horror Cinema that horror is one of the most popular and talked-about genres and yet has received little critical attention. During the last five years there have been some books concerned with the genre, but most of them are concentrated on more thematic aspects of the genre. Ken Gelders (ed.) The Horror Reader ( Chibnall/Petley says in “The Return of the Repressed? British Horror’s Heritage and Future” that the canon has become pretty limited and they welcome the development of genre magazines to broaden the perspectives of the genre. Mark Kermode takes a closer look at the British censors in his text, beginning with the strict chief censor from 1960 John Trevelyan, and finishing with Andreas Whittam Smith. When Smith took over the post as president of BBFC (The British Board of Film Censors) in 1998, the Board was more concerned with sexual activity in films than horror. Julian Petley examines the British critics and their relation to horror cinema, and sees that they are judging films with wholly inappropriate standards, and condems them for being something they never set out to be in the first place. He also states that the films are criticized for being too explicit in their depiction of physical detail. In short, the horror films are being condemned for being too horrific. The critics also seemed to be disturbed by the fact that the director wasn’t “distanced” from his material and the relationship between the reader and the text were too intimate. Petley also sees a dislike, from both the left and the right, for the genre’s way of presenting the class issue. Petley finally concludes his text by stating that the gap between the critics and the censors is smaller than the former would like us to believe. Brigid Cherry looks at the way women consume horror and analyses the result from an open-ended questionnaire with 109 participants. According to Cherry, there is in general a low participation rate of women in traditionally organized fandom. Women don’t feel welcome and are marginalized within horror fan culture. She studies the different kind of fans and what they are interested in. Their main interest, according to this survey, is vampires and the Goth subculture. Cherry states that many female fans are still “in the closet,” and thus horror is a guilty pleasure, like romance reading or soap opera viewing. Ian Conrich studies the horrific films and the 1930s British cinema. BBFC introduced the H-rating (for horrific) in 1933 and it existed between until 1951. The term referred to was, subsequently, not “horror films” but “horrific films”. Conrich suggests that there was in fact no British horror cinema of the 1930s. There were instead British productions of a “horrific” nature, like comedies, thrillers, musicals and melodramas with “horrific” elements. In Kim Newman’s text “Psycho-Thriller, qu’est-ce que c’est?” he looks at a sub-genre overlapping the crime film and the horror film. He deals with the horror of madness, murderers driven by a lust to kill, human monsters instead of supernatural menaces. He mentions Psycho and Peeping Tom (both from 1960) and the recurrent archetype of The Ripper. He states that these maniacs are not estranged from the familiar of the cosy British cinema, but are nestled in its very heart. Hammer’s psycho-thrillers shows, according to Newman, the trouble within the family, and uses the decaying mansion settings to represent a decadent, evil and psychotic milieu. Leon Hunt says is in his text “Necromancy in the UK: Witchcraft and the Occult in British Horror” that some of the British horror film’s most memorable images deal with the occult, “black magic,” witches, and warlocks. He defines two periods, one from 1957-1964, that emerges as a counter-tradition to the dominant Hammer Gothic in its play on the unseen and unrepresentable. The other period is from 1966-1976, which saw the occult take its place more securely in British horror’s imaginary. The occult is, under this period, much associated with sex, drugs and psychedelia. There are, according to Hunt, three strands of particular significance for the British occult film. One is the figure of the black magician Aleister Crowley, the second the figure of the female witch and the third the conflict between ”old” and ”new” religions. John C. Tibbetts looks at the old dark house and the architecture of ambiguity in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1898) and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961). He is referring to all literary old dark houses with their specific rooms, like an attic or a locked and bolted upstairs room. He studies how the balancing act between rational and supernatural trappings is supported both on the page and the screen. He stresses the importance of the sound track and concludes that the sound in many ways is more upsetting than the visuals. Steven Jay Schneider diagnoses female madness in British horror films of the 1960s and 1970s. He studies five films: Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), Bryan Forbes’ Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964), Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), Roy Ward Baker’s Asylum (1972), and Richard Loncraine’s Peter Hutchings studies “The Amicus House of Horror” and points out that Amicus mainly turned to Marcelle Perks looks at the American filmmaker Gary Sherman’s seminal cannibal film Death Line (US: Raw Meat, 1972) and sees it as an British equivalent of the American classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1978). She examines the film’s overwhelming negative response and points out (as did Julian Petley in his contribution) that horror film simply did not fit into the valorized tradition of social realism in British cinema. The horror in Death Line is not implied, but made explicit and linked with incest, something that didn’t help the development of British horror cinema after 1972. Steve Chibnall, in “A Heritage of Evil: Pete Walker and the Politics of Gothic Revisionism,” discusses the British horror cinema during the 1970s. He compares In an interview with horror director Clive Barker and Doug Bradley, author Paul Wells presents Barker as someone who has resurrected a notion of “British horror,” and added a significant myth to the canon of horror monsters with the invention of Pinhead (Doug Bradley). Barker dismisses the term “Gothic” in the interview since the term, according to him, brings with it an entire redundant theological machinery. The whole horror genre is in some way very British, according to Barker, since the basis for many horror movies are major British novels. He thinks that British horror is a bit more psychotic and brutal than the American style, which is directed toward a more reactionary social model. Finally, the British horror director Richard Stanley, in his personal text “Dying Light: An Obituary for the Great British Horror Movie,” tells us about his experiences of filming in British Horror Cinema is a very important contribution to the studies of the horror film genre. It shows how these films are produced, circulated, regulated and consumed. It is essential to look at these elements to understand the genre. The critics’ and censors’ reaction is, for example, crucial to what the forthcoming films will deal with and how they will look. The horror genre is perhaps more dependent on audience reaction than any other genre, and it is therefore extremely important to investigate it as they do in this book. As an extra bonus, the book also contains a very ambitious filmography of British horror films of the sound era. Many of the contributors refer to the Gothic and how it is the quintessence of both “Britishness” and horror. Marcelle Perks writes in her contribution that the critics, press and distributors have mishandled the Gothic heritage. She thinks that the reception of the British horror film is as interesting as the films themselves. I agree. British Horror Cinema is an excellent example of this, and I read it with great pleasure. Anna Arnman is a contributing editor of Film International.
When Frankie Went to Hollywood: Frank Sinatra and American Male Identity, Karen McNally, (2008)
“Frank Sinatra was the best male popular singer who ever lived.” Few knowledgeable music fans who lived through his era would dispute this statement. But to say he was the best is misleading, because Sinatra, in a sense, created the popular music genre; he defined it as he lived it. We are fortunate that we can still trace his evolution as a singer through his gigantic recording catalogue as a band singer with Tommy Dorsey (RCA Victor) in the late 1930s, his emergence as a soloist with Columbia Records in the 40s, in the albums recorded during the pivotal Capital years of the 50s, and finally with his own Reprise label in the 60s to the present. Indeed, Sinatra has been credited with developing the 33 1/3 RPM LP record, introduced during the 1950s, as an art form for popular music. It is unfortunate that few video recordings or DVDs of his legendary live performances exist – the technology was not yet available. But we still have his movies.
As a committed Sinatra fanatic, I had totally dismissed his film career as being largely unrelated – in fact, irrelevant – to his career as a singer. Karen McNally’s book When Frankie Went to Hollywood: Frank Sinatra and America Male Identity has changed all that. McNally provides structure and definition not only to his film career, but also to his music career, as well as the relationship between the two. The book, published at the 10th anniversary of his death on May 14, 2008, therefore, further enhances Sinatra’s legacy as a complete, multimedia performer.
As an example of this relationship between film and music, I had always considered Young at Heart (1954) to be just a return to his musical roots after his successful foray into drama in the Oscar-winning role as Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). Through McNally, I have discovered a deeper meaning: that Young at Heart is pivotal to Sinatra’s film career; it marks a significant change in Sinatra’s film image (to a more masculine screen persona). Simultaneously, he had launched a rejuvenated recording career with Capital Records. And finally, playing Barney Sloan, he was able to integrate the two by playing and singing two of his most popular “saloon songs ” (2) from his albums. To the Sinatra aficionado, Young at Heart, Pal Joey (1957), and The Joker Is Wild (1957) provide the best opportunity to see “live” performances of his music from his most popular recordings of the 50s.
The subtitle of the book, Frank Sinatra and American Male Identity, however, reveals that McNally’s objective for her consideration of Sinatra is broader than just his films and his music:
"With Sinatra’s cinematic performances as its central focus, this book explores the ways in which Sinatra’s star image consistently challenges postwar notions of American male identity through its engagement with contemporary debates in Hollywood and the wider culture and by exposing limitations on the ways in which American masculinity is defined." (11) She makes a convincing, well-documented case supporting her thesis that Sinatra’s screen image, derived from his film roles, provides a standard against which to compare the American male in the postwar era. She arranges her book and names her chapters after a particular aspect of his persona that can be connected to his films, his music and male society in general. (Examples: working class alienation, Italian-American cultural identity, Civil Rights, damaged veterans, swinging bachelors).
One can appreciate McNally’s book without necessarily agreeing with all of her conclusions. For example, I have trouble accepting the “feminizing vulnerability of [Sinatra’s] 1940’s persona” as a fact. I mean he was small in stature and very thin in those days, but I wouldn’t call him feminine. It is interesting how powerful an actor he became after World War II, in spite of his physical |
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