The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained)

FEAR AND WONDER 149

What else to watch: Ninotchka (1939) ■ How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) ■ Sabrina (1954) ■ The Prince and
the Showgirl (1957) ■ The Apartment (1960) ■ Irma la Duce (1963) ■ The Fortune Cookie (1966) ■ Tootsie (1982)

As “Josephine” and “Daphne”, Joe
and Jerry hope to blend in with Sweet
Sue and her Society Syncopators on a
night train to Florida, but there’s no
mistaking who plays the ukulele.

describes her body. Yet Monroe’s
performance delivers something
truly magical. In one scene, during
a lull in the action, Monroe sings
I Wanna Be Loved By You straight
into the camera: she’s seductive,
sweet, and wistful all at once, and
she succeeds in transforming
Sugar’s cynicism into a childlike
vulnerability. When she kisses Joe
on the yacht, he is transformed,
too—from seducer to seduced.

While Joe cavorts with Sugar on In Some Like It Hot, everybody is Flaws and frailty
a yacht—in Curtis’s memorable desperate to get their hands on Some Like It Hot reputedly suffered
spoof of Cary Grant—the dress- something, and in Marilyn Monroe from behind-the-scenes tensions.
wearing, tango-dancing, but the movie has the most lusted-after Monroe was initially unhappy with
decidedly heterosexual Jerry gets star in Hollywood history—“Like being filmed in period-style black
engaged to an aging but genuine Jell-O on springs!” is how Jerry and white, and Curtis famously
millionaire, Osgood (Joe E. Brown). said that kissing Monroe was “like
“You’re a guy! Why would a guy kissing Hitler.” Whether the actor
want to marry a guy?” asks Joe meant it or not, this illusion-
when he finds out. “Security!” shattering jibe echoes Wilder’s great
replies Jerry, without missing preoccupation with human flaws
a beat, his eyes moony at the and frailties. Nobody’s perfect, it
thought of all that cash. seems—not even the legendary
Marilyn Monroe. ■
In the end, Jerry drops the act
and tells Osgood the truth. “I’m Jack Lemmon Actor
a man!” he admits with a growl.
But Osgood isn’t bothered. “Magic time” a star. He was often one half of a
“Nobody’s perfect!” he beams, was how double act; key collaborators
and Jerry shoots the camera a Jack Lemmon included zany comedian Ernie
“Well, whaddyaknow?” look as (1925–2001) Kovacs, actor Walter Matthau,
the movie fades out. described acting. He would and filmmaker Billy Wilder.
mutter this phrase to himself
before stepping onto a stage or Key movies
in front of a camera. Lemmon
worked in television and light 1959 Some Like It Hot
entertainment before finding 1960 The Apartment
his feet in movies, where his 1968 The Odd Couple
everyman qualities made him 1992 Glengarry Glen Ross

YOUR PARENTS

SAY YOU’RE ALWAYS

LYING

THE 400 BLOWS / 1959



152 THE 400 BLOWS M uch has been written I demand that a film express
by critics about The 400 either the joy of making
IN CONTEXT Blows. Indeed, the movie’s cinema or the agony of
director, François Truffaut, was one making cinema. I am
GENRE of France’s best-known film critics not at all interested in
Drama before he decided to show the world anything in between.
how he thought movies should be François Truffaut
DIRECTOR made. He and the other filmmakers
François Truffaut who led the French New Wave in the
late 1950s and early 1960s believed
WRITERS that a director was an author
François Truffaut, (auteur) and the camera a pen (a
Marcel Moussy “camera-pen,” or caméra-stylo).

STARS Semiautobiography essay, using the thoughts and
Jean-Pierre Léaud, Claire The 400 Blows is in part a painfully feelings to express his own
Maurier, Albert Rémy, personal memoir describing emotions, he is punished by a
Guy Decomble Truffaut’s Parisian childhood, with teacher. It’s an act of homage
certain names and events changed, condemned as plagiarism, and
BEFORE not to disguise the victims, but to Antoine’s response is an act of
1955 Truffaut’s first short, The express something new and true. delinquency: he steals a typewriter
Visit, is the tale of a bungled The young Truffaut becomes from his stepfather’s workplace.
proposal of love. It is screened Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Léaud),
only for a handful of friends. a fledgling troublemaker who is Recreating adolescence
constantly accused of distorting There is often romance in youthful
AFTER the facts. “Your parents say you are rebellion, but The 400 Blows is
1960 Jean-Luc Godard follows always lying,” says the psychiatrist not a nostalgic work. It does not
his colleague Truffaut into sent to figure him out. “Sometimes look back on adolescence from
cinema with À bout de souffle. I’d tell them the truth and they still an adult’s point of view, but rather
wouldn’t believe me,” replies the recreates it in the present tense,
1962 Truffaut’s Jules et Jim is boy, “so I prefer to lie.”
a story of a love triangle set at
the time of World War I. Antoine reads the works of
Honoré de Balzac, and when he
1968 Jean-Pierre Léaud adapts the author’s work for a school
reprises the role of Antoine
in Stolen Kisses.

François Truffaut Director

It’s a brave film critic who picks the director as a movie’s author.
up a camera and directs a movie Truffaut was critical of most
of their own. François Truffaut contemporary French movies,
did just that with The 400 Blows, earning the nickname “The
and his courage paid off—the Gravedigger of French Cinema.”
movie was hailed as a But after The 400 Blows, his
masterpiece, and Truffaut went reputation was transformed.
on to direct more than 20 movies
before his death in 1984. Key movies

As a journalist writing for the 1959 The 400 Blows
influential film magazine Cahiers 1962 Jules et Jim
du Cinéma, Truffaut pioneered the 1966 Fahrenheit 451
auteur theory, a controversial 1973 Day for Night
school of thought that identified

FEAR AND WONDER 153

What else to watch: À bout de souffle (1960, pp.166–67) ■ Shoot the Piano Player (1960) ■ Jules et Jim (1962, p.334) ■
The Wild Child (1970) ■ Two English Girls (1971) ■ Day for Night (1973) ■ The Story of Adele H. (1975) ■ Small Change (1976)

Minute by minute 00:35 01:07 01:24
Antoine’s parents turn After stealing a After a discussion
00:05 up at school after he has typewriter from Antoine’s with the judge, Antoine’s
Antoine is held back after lied to the teacher about stepfather’s workplace, mother agrees to send
class when he is caught with a his mother having died. Antoine and René try him to a detention center
picture of a girl. At the end of His stepfather slaps him. unsuccessfully to pawn it. for three months.
the day, he swears he’ll take his He decides to run away.
revenge on the teacher. 01:38
00:45
00:00 00:15 00:30 01:00 01:15

00:25 00:54 01:15 01:35
While playing hooky In French class, Antoine Antoine is locked up While the boys
with his best friend René, is accused of plagiarizing in a police holding cell are playing soccer,
Antoine sees his mother Balzac. He is sent to see after his stepfather turns Antoine escapes from
kissing a man in the street. the principal, but runs off him in to the police. the detention center.
to hide out at René’s house. He is fingerprinted
and photographed.

as it is felt, in all its agony, act of escaping. He heads for the the ocean, then turns back to the
uncertainty, joy, and heartlessness. sea, which he has never seen, and land and looks straight into the
The movie’s enigmatic English title runs down country roads until he camera. Truffaut freezes the image
comes from the French phrase arrives at the beach. The camera, and zooms in on Antoine’s face.
faire les quatre cents coups, which like the boy, is constantly moving,
mean “to raise hell,” which Antoine keeping track of his flight. Antoine It is a bold and ambiguous
certainly does. He doesn’t steal sprints into the surf, dips his toe in period at the end of the first chapter
the typewriter so he can use it— in Antoine’s life (Truffaut would ❯❯
he plans to sell it and finance his
escape from Paris. Truffaut is We’ll put him in an orphanage
unafraid to color his protagonist so I can have some peace!
as a mercenary as well as a lover
of literature. Gilberte Doinel / The 400 Blows

When Antoine has second Antoine
thoughts about the theft, he is caught
attempts to return the typewriter, as he tries
but is caught. His stepfather to return the
(Albert Rémy) decides to hand typewriter he
him over to the police, and the stole from his
boy spends a night in a jail cell stepfather’s
with prostitutes and thieves. workplace.
The police take a mug shot,
and the movie freezes for
the instant in which the
photograph—and Antoine—
are captured. “Around here to
escape is bad enough,” says
an inmate at the institution to
which Antoine is eventually sent,
“but getting caught is worse.”

Truffaut mirrors this freeze-
frame with the movie’s final shot,
which captures Antoine in the

154 THE 400 BLOWS

The poster
for the movie’s
cinematic
release shows
Antoine staring
back at the land
as he reaches
the shore and
can escape
no further.

FEAR AND WONDER 155

continue to chronicle the character’s common. Antoine doesn’t know The 400 Blows charts Antoine’s
adventures in a series of movies). who his biological father is, and he descent into delinquency, from
When he reaches the water’s edge, lives with a distant stepfather, just classroom jokes to imprisonment,
he can run no further. The final, as the director did in his youth. as the adult world rejects him.
frozen moment as he turns back Antoine runs away from home, as
seems to say that, far from having Truffaut did when he was eleven. Antoine fools
escaped, he will remain forever Antoine tries to convince his around in class
captured. The impression it makes teacher that his mother has died
is one of hope mixed with defeat. (one of his outrageous lies). The Steals from parents
young Truffaut claimed that his and classmates
Escape to the movies father had been arrested by (pens, money)
Antoine finds another means of the Germans.
escape: the movies. He slips into R.I.P.
a movie theater whenever he can, All movies comprise outrageous
to lose himself in the dark of the lies, and conjure worlds of illusion Lies that his
theater’s seats and the images on and pretense populated by people mother has died
the screen, much as the young acting as someone they are not.
Truffaut himself did. But Truffaut’s debut movie proves Runs away
that, when arranged for a certain from home
It is here that the character’s purpose and related with heart,
life crosses irresistibly into the life lies can reveal and illuminate
of his creator. There is the constant the truth in a way that the bare
sense that the director is trying to facts cannot. It was this truth,
explore or exorcise his own past, as well as the promise of escape,
redefining it with shots and scenes that excited those French
borrowed wholesale from other filmmakers who dipped their
movies, such as Zero de Conduite toes into the New Wave. ■
(1933, pp.50–51) and Little Fugitive
(1953), in the same way that After Antoine sets fire to his
Antoine borrows from Balzac to shrine to Balzac, his favorite
make sense of himself. It’s not just author, his stepfather threatens to
a passion for the movies that send him to a military academy.
Antoine and Truffaut have in

Plagiarizes Balzac
for a French essay

Steals stepfather’s
typewriter and
tries to pawn it

Spends the night
in jail before being
sent to a juvenile
correctional facility

REBEL
REBEL

1960–1974



158 INTRODUCTION

French New Wave The Berlin Wall goes up While America’s growing Musicals continue to
breathes new life into and the USSR takes the civil rights movement charm: The Sound
movies with À bout de lead in the Cold War fights racism, so too does of Music breaks
souffle, as does British New space race by sending lawyer Atticus Finch in international
Wave with Saturday Night the first man into space, the movie adaptation of box-office records.
and Sunday Morning. To Kill a Mockingbird.
60 years after A Trip
to the Moon.

1960 1961 1962 1965
1960 1962 1964 1966

Italian epic La Dolce Vita In the year of the Dr. Strangelove Shot in newsreel
spurns conventional Cuban Missile Crisis, satirizes Cold War style, The Battle of
narrative in following one spy mania runs amok as paranoia, while the Algiers exposes the
man’s search for love and 007, British secret agent Vietnam War escalates
happiness among the café James Bond, makes his and the US introduces brutal realities of
guerrilla warfare, in an
society of Rome. debut in Dr. No. the draft. era of decolonization.

R eleased in the last The film of tomorrow will of TV in Western homes during
moments of the 1950s, be directed by artists for the 1950s. Cinema’s response was
François Truffaut’s The thrilling. Many of the greatest
400 Blows was the bridge into the whom shooting a film movies of the era were born out
decade to come, and the seismic constitutes a wonderful of a mood of bubbling outrage. In
shake ups that would arrive with and thrilling adventure. the US, the young genius Stanley
it. From the very beginning of François Truffaut Kubrick took a jab at the ongoing
the 1960s, cinema was, like its insanity of the Cold War with Dr.
audience, set on breaking rules. witty, it immediately made Strangelove, in which Peter Sellers
everything that had come before paid homage to Alec Guinness’s
New Wave look hopelessly old-fashioned. multitasking in Kind Hearts and
The impetus came from Europe, Coronets by playing three different
in particular from France, where All this was at a time when characters. Later, as demands for
Truffaut’s colleagues from the many observers thought cinema change coursed around the world,
movie magazine Cahiers du was dying, doomed by the spread the Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo
Cinéma were creating a whole new would influence a generation of
language for movies. The era of the filmmakers with the incendiary
Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) would The Battle of Algiers.
be embodied by director Jean-Luc
Godard, a gifted ball of mischief Counterculture
who would release his own first Elsewhere, the politics were less
feature in 1960: À bout de souffle overt but the air just as thick with
(Breathless). Stylish and extremely restlessness and the rejection of

REBEL REBEL 159

Sex gets surreal in Luis New Hollywood hits Cinematic violence is Kung fu goes
Buñuel’s Belle de Jour, the road with Peter taken to new extremes global, and Hong
while Hollywood teases Fonda and Dennis by A Clockwork Orange, Kong actor Bruce Lee
social taboos in The The French Connection, acquires cult status in
Graduate, and smashes Hopper in Easy Rider, Enter the Dragon.
and Jon Voight and and Dirty Harry.
them wide open in Dustin Hoffman in
Bonnie and Clyde. Midnight Cowboy.

1967 1969 1971 1973
1968 1970 1972 1974

Space-age science fiction MASH and Catch-22 Francis Ford Coppola Chinatown’s neo-noir
thrills audiences in target the insanity of redefines the gangster goes head to head
2001: Space Odyssey war, while Le Boucher with The Godfather:
and in the erotically explores the impulses genre with the first of Part II, while Gene
charged Barbarella. The Godfather movies.
that lead to murder. Hackman eavesdrops
on The Conversation.

old orders. In Britain, another New Warhol’s Chelsea Girls (1966), cinema dazzlingly intricate use of sound,
Wave made hard-edged portraits of was in the middle of a creative free- while his saga of family and crime,
working-class life, such as Saturday for-all. It was hardly surprising to The Godfather, is an all-time classic
Night and Sunday Morning. And a find the ever-subversive Luis Buñuel that still holds audiences in its grip.
new, boldly unsqueamish attitude at large in such an atmosphere, as does The Godfather: Part II, the
to screen violence took hold as the filming The Discreet Charm of the prequel that follows Vito Corleone
decade went on. Taking its cues Bourgeoisie (1972) half a century from the Old World to the New.
from Godard and its story from the after Un Chien Andalou.
lives of two wild young outlaws in For an era that began with
the Great Depression, Arthur Penn’s New Hollywood Truffaut and Godard gleefully
Bonnie and Clyde set a benchmark In response to the prospect of losing riffing on Hollywood tropes, it was
of stylized bloodshed. young audiences to television, the fitting to close with a relentless
Hollywood that had once kept such crisscross of influence between
While the movies got on with a tight grip on its filmmakers now Europe and the US: visions of Boris
what they had always done best— handed over a measure of control Karloff amid the Spanish Civil War
entertaining mass audiences— to a new breed of singular talents. in The Spirit of the Beehive; the
some filmmakers also tapped into relocation of German-born Douglas
the avant-garde and upended ideas The results were American Sirk’s lush melodramas from
of what a movie was. From the movies shot through with cynicism Hollywood to 1970s Munich in
post-nuclear time-travel feature and irresolution. Some are best seen Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali:
La jetée (The Pier, 1962), made up as historical documents, but others Fear Eats The Soul; and Chinatown,
almost wholly of still photographs, to are enduring masterpieces. Francis a noir exposé of the black heart of
the teasing Last Year At Marienbad, Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is southern California, directed by the
(1961) or the split screen of Andy a mystery of surveillance with a Polish émigré Roman Polanski. ■

YOU ARE THE

FIRST WOMAN

ON THE FIRST DAY

OF CREATION

LA DOLCE VITA / 1960



162 LA DOLCE VITA I n April 1953, the partially The movie poster casts Marcello
clad body of a young woman Mastroianni as a paparazzo in the
IN CONTEXT was discovered on a beach shady underworld, searching for light
near Rome. Had Wilma Montesi in the form of his perfect Eve.
GENRE accidentally drowned or committed
Satire suicide, or had she been murdered? It’s a chilling image that is both
The police investigated, and so grotesque and sad—the final entry
DIRECTOR did Italy’s rapacious media. Gossip in Fellini’s catalogue of lost souls.
Federico Fellini and conspiracy theories snowballed
into a national scandal as the Seven sins
WRITERS corrupt, hedonistic underworld of La Dolce Vita was released seven
Federico Fellini, Ennio postwar Rome was illuminated years after the death of Wilma
Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, by the flash bulbs of the city’s Montesi. It takes place on the
Brunello Rondi, Pier paparazzi. Politicians, movie stars, seven hills of Rome, its narrative
Paolo Pasolini gangsters, artists, prostitutes, divided into seven nights and
fading aristocrats—they were
STARS living la dolce vita, “the sweet
Marcello Mastroianni, life,” a whirl of drugs, orgies,
Anita Ekberg, Anouk and general depravity that had
Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux spun tragically out of control.

BEFORE La Dolce Vita became the title
1945 Fellini cowrites Rome, of Federico Fellini’s satire of this
Open City, Roberto Rossellini’s turbulent period in the history
gritty Nazi-occupation drama. of his beloved Rome. The movie
contains a veiled reference to
1958 Marcello Mastroianni the Montesi affair in its closing
gets his big break in the scene, when a group of characters
stylish crime-comedy Big emerge from a beach-house orgy
Deal on Madonna Street. to find a dead manta ray washed
up on the shore, a metaphoric
AFTER reference to Wilma Montesi. They
1963 Fellini’s autobiographical gather around the corpse in the
comedy-drama 8 1⁄2 follows a dawn light, the sea monster’s eye
director (played by Mastroianni) staring back accusingly at them.
suffering from writer’s block.

Federico Fellini Director

Born in Rimini, Italy, in 1920, Fellini’s work combines baroque
Federico Fellini moved to Rome imagery with everyday city life,
when he was 19 years old. He went often depicting scenes of excess.
to study law, and stayed to make He was fascinated with dreams
movies that would immortalize and memory, and many of his
the city. His early adventures as later movies tipped into the
a reporter and gossip columnist realm of psychological fantasy.
exposed him to the world of show
business, and in 1944 he became Key movies
the apprentice of famed director
Roberto Rossellini. In the 1950s, 1952 The White Sheik
Fellini made movies of his own, 1954 La Strada
and established himself as one of 1960 La Dolce Vita
Italy’s most controversial artists. 1963 8 1⁄2

REBEL REBEL 163

What else to watch: The Bicycle Thief (1948, pp.94–97) ■ L’Avventura (1960) ■ Juliet of the Spirits (1965) ■
Amarcord (1973) ■ Cinema Paradiso (1988) ■ Celebrity (1998) ■ Lost in Translation (2003)

All art is autobiographical. cafés, and after-dark debauchery, and publicity, that Marcello
The pearl is the searching for happiness in the glimpses perfection. In the
shape of an idealized love. There movie’s most celebrated scene,
oyster’s autobiography. are several contenders, including Sylvia wanders into the waters of
Federico Fellini his suicidal fiancée, Emma (Yvonne the Trevi Fountain after a long,
Furneaux), and the mysterious carnivalesque night on the town.
The Atlantic, 1965 Maddalena (Anouk Aimée). But She calls to Marcello to follow her
it’s not until Ekberg’s Sylvia arrives in, and the viewer sees Sylvia
in the city, amid a riot of adulation through Marcello’s eyes: the ideal ❯❯

Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni)
is smitten with Sylvia, but they can
only spend one night together.

seven dawns. If you look hard
enough, you’ll also find that it
contains the seven deadly sins
and allusions to the biblical
story of the seven days it
took God to make the world.
Religion is core to Fellini’s
work. When the movie’s hero,
a nocturnal journalist
named Marcello Rubini
(Marcello Mastroianni),
falls for the beautiful
movie star Sylvia
(Anita Ekberg), he
tells her, “You are the
first woman on the
first day of Creation.
You are mother, sister,
lover, friend, angel,
devil, earth, home.”

It’s up to the viewer to
decide on the significance of La
Dolce Vita’s religious overtones
and apparent obsession with the
number seven. What is more
certain is that the movie is
concerned with the nature
of men’s relationship with
women. Marcello spends
his nights on Via Veneto,
1950s Rome’s street of
nightclubs, sidewalk

164 LA DOLCE VITA

woman, unearthly in her radiance, La Dolce Vita takes place over seven days, nights, and
a vision of light in the dark city. dawns. While day appears to offer Marcello hope, night
But then dawn arrives and the leads him into depravity, and dawn brings rude epiphanies.
magical spell of nighttime is
broken, just as Sylvia anoints • Marcello follows Christ • Meets Maddalena at • Finds fiancée Emma
Marcello’s head with water from statue flying over Rome club; sleeps with her overdosed at apartment
the fountain. The next day Sylvia
leaves Rome, and Marcello must • Climbs St. Peter’s • Dances with Sylvia • “Anointed” by Sylvia
begin his search again. dome with Sylvia at Baths of Caracalla in Trevi Fountain

The chaos of Marcello’s night- • Reports on children’s • Witnesses stampede • Observes mourning
wanderings is reflected in the vision of the Madonna at site of fake miracle for trampled child
movie’s meandering, episodic story
structure. His adventures take • Encounters Steiner • Attends Steiner’s • Hears Steiner has killed
him all over the city, from a field in playing Bach in church literary salon himself and his children
which two children claim to have
seen a vision of the Virgin Mary— • Sees angelic waitress • Sets up father with girl • Learns of father’s stroke
the archetypal elusive, idealized Paola by the sea
woman—to the domestic bliss of • Sleeps with Jane at • Spies matron at Mass
Steiner’s house. Steiner (Alain • Spots Paola beckoning aristocratic house party
Cuny) is Marcello’s best friend, to him from riverbank, • Reconciles with Emma
and the epitome of all that Marcello but can’t hear her • Argues with Emma
envies: Steiner is stable, happily • Discovers sea monster
married with two perfect children, • Instigates beach orgy washed up on beach
and enjoys a balance of materialistic
comfort and intellectual fulfilment. A man who agrees to live like this
When Marcello visits Steiner’s is a finished man, he’s nothing but
home, he ascends from the dark a worm!
underworld of the streets, clubs, and
basement bars, into a kind of heaven. Marcello / La Dolce Vita

Illusion of happiness like me. Salvation doesn’t lie within lapse, we see Marcello at the beach
But, just as Sylvia and the Virgin four walls.” That there is no comfort house in Fiumicino, owned by his
Mary turn out to be illusions, in either a sheltered, intellectual, friend Riccardo, where the all-night
Steiner’s domestic happiness is domestic life nor the hedonistic party descends into mayhem.
also a lie, as Marcello discovers “sweet life” is the existential As morning approaches, he finds
when Steiner tells him, “Don’t be conundrum Marcello wrestles with himself staggering across the
in the face of Steiner’s subsequent beach, where the staring eye of the
suicide. After an unspecified time dead manta ray is waiting for him.

Minute by minute 00:50 01:33 02:23
Sylvia wades into Marcello introduces his Marcello rushes to
00:17 the Trevi Fountain and father to Fanny, a dancer. She his friend Steiner’s
Marcello and Maddalena Marcello follows. They takes Marcello’s father back to apartment, where he is
make love at the residence of a return to her hotel, where her apartment, but he suffers a told that an awful tragedy
prostitute. He returns home to find her fiancé, Robert, slaps her minor heart attack. has occurred.
that his fiancée has overdosed. and punches Marcello.

00:00 00:30 01:00 01:30 02:00 02:30 02:54

00:33 01:29 02:02 02:48
On the balcony of the Working on his novel Marcello bumps into On the beach, a dead
dome of St. Peter’s, Marcello at a seaside restaurant, Maddalena at a party. ray is pulled out of the
gets a moment alone with Marcello meets Paola Drunk, she asks him to water. Marcello sees
Sylvia. He takes her dancing. and tells her that she marry her, but is soon Paola in the distance,
looks like an angel. distracted by another man. but he cannot hear her.

REBEL REBEL 165

The final scene of La Dolce Vita Marcello is repeatedly drawn to Marcello Mastroianni
contains a second allusion. The Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), but his love Actor
fisherman who hauls the ray out for her cannot lead anywhere. She asks
of the sea says the bloated, rotting him to marry her, only to fall into the Following a brief period
leviathan has been dead “for three arms of another man moments later. of theater work, Marcello
days.” In the Bible, this is the same Mastroianni became famous
period of time that Jesus spends in dangling benignly from a helicopter with a role in Big Deal on
the tomb. La Dolce Vita is a carnival with Marcello following it in a Madonna Street. He was
of Roman Catholic imagery and second helicopter, caused outrage Fellini’s only choice for the
symbols, much of it controversial when the movie was first screened. role of Marcello Rubini in La
in its use. The opening sequence, in Dolce Vita. The studio had
which a golden statue of Christ flies Although two Christ figures (the wanted Paul Newman, but
over an ancient Roman aqueduct, statue and the manta ray) bookend Fellini fought to keep his
the narrative, they fail to offer hope friend, and the pair went
In sum, it is an awesome or salvation to any of its characters. on to make six more movies
picture, licentious in content In fact, Fellini constantly connects together. Mastroianni often
religious myth with disillusionment. played a version of the
but moral and vastly Marcello is looking for his Eve, director in these movies.
sophisticated in its attitude the first woman on the first day
of Creation, an angelic figure A suave and darkly
and what it says. untainted by the corruptions of la handsome figure, Mastroianni
Bosley Crowther dolce vita or any earthly experience. became closely associated
“I don’t believe in your aggressive, with the glamour of Rome and
New York Times, 1960 sticky, maternal love!” he tells its beautiful leading ladies,
Emma during their endlessly especially Sophia Loren (who
recurring fight. “This isn’t love,” he shared the screen with him
screams at her, “it’s brutalization!” in 11 movies). He earned two
And so whenever he dives back into Academy Award nominations
the chaos of the Roman night, he during his career, one for the
knows that Eve doesn’t really exist; comedy Divorce Italian Style
all he is doing is trying to forget in 1961 and the other for A
what he knows. ■ Special Day in 1977.

Key movies

1958 Big Deal on
Madonna Street
1960 La Dolce Vita
1961 Divorce Italian Style
1963 8 1⁄2

166

DON’T USE THE BRAKES.
CARS ARE MADE TO GO,
NOT TO STOP

À BOUT DE SOUFFLE / 1960

IN CONTEXT J ean-Luc Godard’s À bout de Before he began directing, Godard
souffle (Breathless) marked was a critic for the radical movie
GENRE a turning point in cinema. magazine Cahiers du Cinema,
French New Wave Not everyone liked its hectic and he pays homage to earlier
cutting, loose plot, and disdain movies again and again in À bout
DIRECTOR for conventional morality. But even de souffle. For example, Michel
Jean-Luc Godard Godard’s critics were struck by idolizes Humphrey Bogart and has
his innovation, and directors such a giant poster of him on his wall.
WRITERS as Scorsese and Tarantino have
Jean-Luc Godard, François acknowledged their debt to him. But for all his references, Godard
Truffaut, Claude Chabrol and the other young filmmakers
In the movie, petty thug Michel of what came to be known as the
STARS (Jean-Paul Belmondo) shoots a French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave),
Jean-Paul Belmondo, policeman. He hides in the apartment such as François Truffaut and
Jean Seberg of American student Patricia (Jean Claude Chabrol, were determined
Seberg), who is unaware of what to overthrow what they saw as
BEFORE he’s done. Eventually, Patricia turns cinéma de papa (dad’s cinema)—
1941 Humphrey Bogart’s Michel in to the police, who shoot studio-bound productions with
performance in The Maltese him in the street. little to say about modern life.
Falcon provides the inspiration Rather, they saw themselves not
for the character of Michel in simply as directors but as auteurs,
À bout de souffle. who would create a new, personal
style of cinema, filming on location
AFTER and tackling tough social issues.
1964 Owing much of its style
to À bout de souffle, Richard Godard has spent his life A gun and a girl
Lester’s Beatles movie, A Hard confronting issues central Godard was adamant that a movie
Day’s Night, has a huge did not need a well-constructed
influence on British movies. to the future of cinema. plot. “All you need for a movie,” he
Derek Malcolm famously said, “is a gun and a girl.”
1967 Arthur Penn’s Bonnie The story of À bout de souffle is
and Clyde introduces the The Guardian, 2000 loosely based on the real-life story
French New Wave style to of Michel Portail, who shot dead a
mainstream US cinema. motorcycle cop in 1952 and who,
like the character of Michel in the

REBEL REBEL 167

What else to watch: The 400 Blows (1959, pp.150–55) ■ Last Year at Marienbad (1961, pp.170–71) ■ Jules et Jim (1962, p.334)
■ A Hard Day’s Night (1964) ■ Band of Outsiders (1964) ■ Bonnie and Clyde (1967, pp.190–91) ■ Pulp Fiction (1994, pp.270–75)

I don’t know if I’m unhappy
because I’m not free, or if I’m not
free because I’m unhappy.

Patricia / À bout de souffle

movie, also had an American transition between shots, splicing À bout de souffle was the first
girlfriend, but Godard wrote them together in a fast-moving movie of the French New Wave.
the script as he filmed. montage. In one scene that follows Its bold visual style and break from
Patricia driving in a sports car, the classic studio style were implied
He was deliberately chaotic the background jumps instantly in the movie’s poster.
in his shooting method, filming from one place to another as
on busy Paris streets, snatching different shots are spliced
shots on the run, and improvising together. The jump cut has now
dialogue. To work in this way, he become a staple of filmmaking,
needed to shoot with a handheld but at the time critic Bosley
camera and in low light conditions, Crowther complained that it
and this is partly what gives was a “pictorial cacophony.”
the movie its high contrast
monochrome look. It also led to It was not just the movie’s
a distinctive new cinematic jump cuts that created
technique: the jump cut. controversy, but also its coolness.
Its young hero’s self-obsessed
Jump cuts detachment and disdain for
Previously, one of the requirements authority became hallmarks of
for a well-made movie had always movie for the new generation. As
been complete continuity between the 1960s began, filmmakers and
clips shot from different angles or audiences embraced rebellion over
on different days. However, Godard the self-sacrificing heroism portrayed
made no attempt to make a smooth in previous decades. ■

Jean-Luc Godard Director

Jean-Luc Godard was born in (1965)—and politically, in movies
Paris in 1930. In his early 20s, he such as A Married Woman and
joined Paris’s ciné-club scene and Pierrot le Fou (1965). In the late
took up film criticism. Encouraged 1960s, Godard walked away
by François Truffaut, another from commercial cinema
young critic turned filmmaker, completely, but continued to
Godard began to make his own make movies that pushed the
movies. His first major movie, À boundaries of the medium.
bout de souffle, took the world by
storm with its new style. But Key movies
Godard’s work soon became even
more radical, both in look—with 1960 À bout de souffle
movies such as Contempt, Band of 1963 Contempt
Outsiders (1964), and Alphaville 1964 A Married Woman

168

THAT’S WHAT ALL THESE
LOONY LAWS ARE FOR
TO BE BROKEN BY BLOKES
LIKE US

SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING / 1960

IN CONTEXT K arel Reisz’s Saturday Night class not as victims, but as
and Sunday Morning individuals with their own
GENRE brought working-class aspirations and frustrations. Reisz
British New Wave Britain to the screens in a way that was a leader of the British New
had never been seen before. Based Wave of filmmakers that paralleled
DIRECTOR on a semiautobiographical novel the French New Wave. Both
Karel Reisz by Alan Sillitoe, who also wrote
the screenplay, the movie focuses Doreen and Arthur meet in secret.
WRITER on the story of young Arthur, who While they rebel against their parents,
Alan Sillitoe wants more out of life than a factory whom they consider “dead from the
job. This was one of the first British neck up,” they are not immune to reality
STARS movies to focus on the working when Arthur gets another girl pregnant.
Albert Finney, Shirley
Anne Field, Rachel Roberts

BEFORE
1947 Robert Hamer’s It
Always Rains on Sunday, a
gritty tale set in London’s
East End, is a precursor
of the British realist dramas.

1959 Look Back in Anger,
directed by Tony Richardson
and based on a play by John
Osborne, is the first British
“kitchen sink” drama movie.

AFTER
1965 Starting with his TV
docudrama Up the Junction,
Ken Loach makes a series of
movies mixing working-class
drama with documentary.

REBEL REBEL 169

What else to watch: Look Back in Anger (1959) ■ À bout de souffle (1960; pp.166–67) ■ The Loneliness of the Long
Distance Runner (1962) ■ Billy Liar (1963) ■ This Sporting Life (1963) ■ Alfie (1966) ■ Kes (1969, p.336) ■ Naked (1993, p.340–41)

portrayed by Albert Finney, is
determined not to be diminished
by the limitations of life as a lathe
operator at a bicycle factory in
Nottingham. He rebels against
the drudgery of his class.

The poster style was influenced in its inclusion of adultery, abortion, Bucking expectations
by that of the French movie À bout drunkenness, and violence as Despite his declaration “That’s
de souffle, made in the same year. everyday realities. Fifty years what all these loony laws are
on, such dramas are the staple of for, to be broken by blokes like
movements aimed for a more British television soaps, but in 1960 us,” Arthur is neither a political
authentic approach to filmmaking they were new. Arthur, brilliantly rebel nor a criminal. He simply
by venturing out of the studio and bucks expectations by having an
into real locations. affair with Brenda (Rachel Roberts),
the wife of an older colleague,
British New Wave filmmakers, while two-timing her with young
however, were less concerned with Doreen (Shirley Anne Field). Even
innovative cinematography than this small personal rebellion is
their French peers. The realism they brought low by reality when
sought was in their subject matter: Brenda becomes pregnant and
the personal lives of the working is forced into an abortion, and
class. The first of these “kitchen Arthur is beaten up by Brenda’s
sink” dramas on film was Look husband and his soldier friends.
Back in Anger (1959), adapted from Yet Arthur’s spirit is not crushed,
John Osborne’s play. It spawned the and although harrowing, the film
so-called Angry Young Man movie is ultimately uplifting. ■
genre of the 1960s, featuring
working-class heroes. What I’m out for is a good time—all
the rest is propaganda!
Yet while Look Back in Anger is
relatively theatrical, Saturday Night Arthur Seaton / Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
and Sunday Morning is matter-of-
fact, almost documentary, in its Karel Reisz Director
depiction of the troubled lives of
its characters. It pulls no punches Born in Ostrava, movement, which strived for a
Czechoslovakia, less class-bound, more politically
in 1926, Karel aware British cinema, and began
Reisz was sent to direct his own movies in 1960.
to Britain when
he was 12, just before Nazi Key movies
Germany invaded his country
in 1939. His parents died in 1960 Saturday Night
Auschwitz. He served in World and Sunday Morning
War II and studied chemistry at 1964 Night Must Fall
Cambridge, then became a film 1981 The French
critic. Reisz led the Free Cinema Lieutenant’s Woman

170

I HAVE NEVER STAYED
SO LONG ANYWHERE

LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD / 1961

IN CONTEXT B eautifully shot in black and agreed to leave her husband M
white and in widescreen, (Sacha Pitoëff) the following year.
GENRE Alan Resnais’ Last Year A denies his claims, but X persists,
Experimental at Marienbad has a glacier-paced in between playing rounds of the
coolness. Lacking any conventional mathematical game Nim with M,
DIRECTOR narrative, it deliberately challenges which M always wins.
Alan Resnais preconceptions about how movies
should work. This approach has For Resnais, the movie was an
WRITER influenced a generation of directors, exploration of time and memory.
Alain Robbe-Grillet including Stanley Kubrick, David The script, written by experimental
Lynch, and Peter Greenaway. novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, fuses
STARS past and present in a series of
Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio The movie is set in a palatial surreal, almost nightmarishly
Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff hotel in rural central Europe. Here, repetitive tableaux. Resnais turns
a handsome stranger known only these scenes into a dreamlike
BEFORE as X (Giorgio Albertazzi) insists to world in which all is reduced to
1955 Night and Fog is a beautiful fellow guest, known as appearances and games of mirrors.
Resnais’ contemplation A (Delphine Seyrig), that they met Life goes on in a seemingly ritualistic
of the memory of the Nazi and fell in love the previous year in way, full of allusions and symbols
concentration camps. the resort of Marienbad, where she that leave the viewer continually

1959 Hiroshima mon amour, Alain Resnais Director
Resnais’ first big success,
deals with memory and Born in Vannes enigmatic and poetic movies
forgetfulness in the wake in Brittany in about time and memory, which
of the Hiroshima bomb. 1922, French some celebrate as masterpieces
filmmaker and others find pretentious.
AFTER Alain Resnais Resnais died in 2014.
1977 Providence, Resnais’ continues to divide critics.
movie about the memories of Later in life he focused more on Key movies
an aging writer, is hailed in farce and comedy, but in the
France as a masterpiece but first half of his career he worked 1959 Hiroshima mon amour
panned by critics in the US. with leading modern writers 1961 Last Year at Marienbad
such as Alain Robbe-Grillet and 1977 Providence
Marguerite Duras to create

REBEL REBEL 171

What else to watch: Un Chien Andalou (1929, p.330) ■ L’Avventura (1960) ■ La Dolce Vita (1960, pp.160–65) ■ Pierrot le Fou
(1965) ■ The Shining (1980, p.339) ■ The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) ■ Open Your Eyes (1997) ■ Flowers of Shanghai (1998)

I must have you alive. Alive, as you This famous scene, in which the
have already been every evening, for figures cast shadows but the trees do
weeks, for months. not, highlights the dreamlike, unreal
nature of Last Year at Marienbad, and
X / Last Year at Marienbad of much of Resnais’ work generally.

unsettled, unsure whether it’s all matter of fact, is the The midnight chime that opens the
in X’s head, or A’s. The movie is a story of a persuading [une movie is heard again at the end,
continual interplay of reality and persuasion],” according echoing life’s endless loop of
illusion. In one famous scene, shot on to Robbe-Grillet. “It acceptance and rejection, as X is
an overcast day when the trees cast deals with a reality rejected by A, and vice versa. As A
no shadows, the people arranged which the hero creates says, “I have never stayed so long
elegantly along an avenue all project out of his own vision.” anywhere.” Famously, Robbe-Grillet
long shadows across the ground. To has stated that “the entire story of
achieve this effect, actors’ shadows There is no sense Marienbad happens neither in two
were painted onto the ground. of time or the story years nor in three days, but exactly
moving forward—the in one hour and a half”—that is, the
Story of a persuading plot, such as it is, is time span of the movie.
Resnais said that the movie’s circular and repetitive.
effects were an attempt to recreate Last Year at Marienbad has
the way the mind works, while Delphine Seyrig, been interpreted in various ways,
Robbe-Grillet insisted that viewers playing A, was in terms of Jungian or Freudian
will get lost if they look for a linear memorably costumed psychology, and using
narrative. “The whole film, as a for the role by fashion poststructuralist analysis, but
legend Coco Chanel. agreement on the movie’s meaning
is rare. Nevertheless, for many
critics, it is a high point of the
experimental fervor that drove
the French New Wave to expand
the possibilities and goals of
filmmaking in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, and it remains
influential to this day. ■

172

THIS IS THE STORY
OF A MAN MARKED
BY AN IMAGE FROM
HIS CHILDHOOD

LA JETÉE / 1962

IN CONTEXT L a jetée (The Pier), by the plans—the movie’s only dialogue.
enigmatic director Chris It is in this stillness and quietness
GENRE Marker, is a science-fiction that the terror lies.
Science fiction classic that retains its power to
chill and unsettle, despite being La jetée uses time travel
DIRECTOR overshadowed by its big-budget as a device to examine the
Chris Marker remake: Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys philosophical nature of memory.
(1995). The two movies could not, The protagonist witnesses and
WRITER however, be more different. participates in moments from
Chris Marker the past—a trip to a museum,
Less than 30 minutes long, and a romantic encounter, and, most
STARS with a narrative composed entirely importantly, the traumatic early
Jean Négroni, Davos from still photographs, La jetée is event that shaped his character—
Hanich, Hélène Chatelain, about a man traveling back in time yet feels that his awareness of the
Jacques Ledoux to witness a tragic and defining event dilutes its reality. The movie
event from his childhood. implies that once something is in
BEFORE the past, it only exists in a glimpse,
1953 Marker works with A half-forgotten dream or as a photograph, hence the
director Alain Resnais on The postapocalyptic world movie’s stylistic structure of using
the controversial movie about portrayed in La jetée disturbs still images. La jetée balances the
African art, Statues Also Die. with subtlety. A softly spoken emotional journey of its protagonist
voice-over narration puts the with this thematic intellectualism
AFTER viewer in the protagonist’s place to create one of the most distinct
1977 In A Grin Without a Cat, as he overhears amoral scientists imaginings of the end of the world
Marker documents political whispering and muttering their that cinema has ever offered. ■
radicalism in the aftermath
of the student revolts of 1968. The man doesn’t die, nor does he
go mad. He suffers. They continue.
1983 Marker stretches the
documentary genre with Sans Narrator / La jetée
Soleil, a meditation on world
history and the inability of What else to watch: The Omega Man (1971) ■ Soylent Green (1973) ■
the human memory to recall Mad Max (1979) ■ 12 Monkeys (1995) ■ The Road (2009)
context and nuance.

REBEL REBEL 173

GUY I LOVE YOU. YOU
SMELL OF GASOLINE

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG / 1964

IN CONTEXT T he second in a trilogy The beautiful Geneviève works with
directed by Jacques Demy, her mother in their failing umbrella
GENRE The Umbrellas of Cherbourg store. The music is by Michel Legrand,
Musical (1964) is an innovative movie that and all the dialogue is sung.
combines the fantasy of a Hollywood
DIRECTOR musical with the French New Wave’s and she is persuaded to marry a
Jacques Demy focus on the everyday. rich jeweler to save her mother from
financial ruin. Years later, she and
WRITERS Demy’s insight was to see that Guy meet by chance. By this time
Jacques Demy the ordinary people being filmed he is married and has a son. The
by New Wave directors had dreams pair’s exchange is almost mundane,
STARS and aspirations as romantic as but the swooning music creates a
Catherine Deneuve, anyone’s. He took a simple story of moment of true heartache for the
Nino Castelnuovo thwarted love in a small town, and life that might have been. ■
turned it into a musical fantasy.
BEFORE The story hinges on such New
1931 Marcel Pagnol’s trilogy, Wave concerns as teen pregnancy
Marius, Fanny, and César, and prostitution, but Demy tells it
inspires Demy’s trilogy of in song, on cotton-candy sets.
seaside movies.
Catherine Deneuve plays
1958 Vincente Minnelli’s Geneviève, the daughter of an
musical Gigi is an American umbrella-store owner. She is
view of France that Demy bursting with love for a young
cleverly parodies in The mechanic, Guy (Nino Castelnuovo).
Umbrellas of Cherbourg. When he is shipped off to fight in
Algeria, there is an extended train-
AFTER platform farewell, underpinned by
1967 Demy’s The Young Girls the movie’s soaring theme tune.
of Rochefort unites Catherine But Geneviève’s story is a story
Deneuve with Gene Kelly. of real life. She learns that she’s
pregnant, Guy fails to write back,
2001 Baz Luhrmann recreates
a French musical fantasy world What else to watch: Singin’ in the Rain (1952, pp.122–25) ■ Gigi (1958) ■
in Moulin Rouge! The 400 Blows (1959, pp.150–55) ■ The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

174

THERE’S GOLD IN
THE SEA BEYOND

BLACK GOD, WHITE DEVIL / 1964

IN CONTEXT Director Glauber This movie
Rocha once said is Glauber
GENRE that “Everybody Rocha’s
Drama wants to kill Glauber fictionalized
Rocha. They did not account of
DIRECTOR forgive me for making the adventures
Glauber Rocha Black God, White Devil at
the age of 23.” It was not of real-life
WRITER simply his precociousness bounty hunter
Glauber Rocha or lack of humility that put Antonio
his life in jeopardy; a fierce das Mortes.
STARS pioneer of social realism,
Geraldo Del Rey, Yoná Rocha saw movies as a tool Brazil. A humble ranch hand named
Magalhães, Maurício do of change and an integral Manuel (Geraldo Del Rey) believes
Valle, Lidio Silva part of the working man’s the preacher is the incarnation of
struggle. Indeed, shortly Saint Sebastian, but his wife, Rosa
BEFORE before his movie was (Yoná Magalhães), is more sceptical
1962 In Rocha’s debut feature, released in his native Brazil, and frequently challenges Manuel’s
Barravento, a man struggles a coup ushered in a military belief in the man he follows.
to rid his home village of the government whose actions later
reactionary mysticism he drove him into self-imposed exile. Manuel tries to improve his and
thinks is holding it back. Rosa’s lot in life by selling his cattle
Committed cinema to his boss, but several die on the
AFTER Rocha despised Hollywood, and it way to market, and the boss
1966 Italian director Sergio shows: it’s hard to believe that this refuses to pay. In a fury, Manuel
Corbucci’s Django, a bleakly abrasive movie was released in the kills his boss with a machete,
savage spaghetti Western, same year as Mary Poppins. Like and he and Rosa go on the run,
owes a clear debt to Rocha. his debut, Barravento, it is more following the charismatic and
concerned with ideas than action increasingly powerful Sebastião,
1970 Chilean director or character, and it continues the the “black god,” who promises
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s earlier movie’s exploration of religion.
El Topo features a gunslinger
on a transformative journey Sebastião (Lidio Silva), a
across the desert. preacher, is rallying the poor of the
sertão, the barren outback of north

REBEL REBEL 175

What else to watch: Barravento (1962) ■ Barren Lives (1963) ■ Soy Cuba (1964) ■ Entranced Earth (1967) ■
Antonio das Mortes (1969) ■ El Topo (1970) ■ City of God (2002, pp.304–09) ■ Carandiru (2003)

Glauber Rocha Director influence on Rocha. As the movie
draws to a close, the black-clad
Born in Bahia, Earth and Antonio das Mortes. figure of das Mortes has the almost
Brazil, in 1939, Exile in the 1970s saw Rocha totally insane Corisco in his sights.
Glauber Rocha shooting in Africa and Spain,
discovered and though his views and Rallying cry
movies, politics, his experimental style were Sadly, time has not been too kind
and journalism in his teens, controversial, he remained a to Rocha’s movie. The acting often
quitting law school to pursue hero at home. Within a year of seems mannered or, worse, simply
filmmaking at 20. Inspired by his final movie, The Age of the amateur, while the undoubted
the French New Wave, he led Earth (1980), he died of a lung passion of the director’s vision boils
Brazil’s Cinema Novo (New infection at 42. over into moments of thundering
Cinema) movement of the 1960s, melodrama, hammered home by a
and competed in the 1964 Key movies sometimes overly bombastic score
Cannes film festival with Black by composer Heitor Villa-Lobos.
God, White Devil. This was the 1964 Black God, White Devil But in his strange compositions,
first in a class-conscious trilogy 1967 Entranced Earth complete with crash zooms and
that continued with Entranced 1969 Antonio das Mortes jump cuts, Rocha created a unique
rallying cry for land and liberty,
salvation and the day when “the changes dramatically, and what exposing the way that workers
dry lands will turn into sea and the began as a neorealist drama are manipulated by church and
sea into dry land.” Rosa continues mutates into an increasingly state alike.
to question the preacher’s banal experimental and surreal polemic,
utterances, but Manuel follows more in the absurdist vein of “A man is a man when
blindly, carrying out ever more playwright Samuel Beckett than he uses his gun to change
mindless and brutal tasks to satisfy the politically committed drama his fate,” says Corisco.
his new master. The Church of Bertolt Brecht, who was a big “Not a cross [but] a dagger
hierarchy, alarmed by Sebastião and a rifle.” ■
and the massacres that are engulfing
the region, turn to bounty hunter
Antonio das Mortes (Maurício do
Valle) to eliminate him.

Absurdist turn
Sebastião is killed, and the fugitive
couple press on, stumbling into a
camp run by the vicious Captain
Corisco (Othon Bastos), the movie’s
“white devil,” who rechristens
Manuel “Satan” and folds him into
his shambolic army of bandits.
At this point, the style of the movie

Manuel (Geraldo Del Rey) carries a
rock on his head as he climbs Monte
Santo on his knees, in thrall to the
preacher Sebastiaõ (Lidio Silva).
The rock is loaded with symbolism.

176

GENTLEMEN YOU
CAN’T FIGHT IN HERE.
THIS IS THE WAR ROOM!

DR. STRANGELOVE / 1964

IN CONTEXT I n 1963, Stanley Kubrick out on the big screen—and he
decided to make a movie expected them to laugh. Originally,
GENRE about the Cold War, which was the filmmaker had intended to
Black comedy heating up at the time. The West produce a straight thriller based
and its enemies in the Eastern on Red Alert, Peter George’s 1958
DIRECTOR Bloc had been locked in a staring novel about a US Air Force officer
Stanley Kubrick contest for almost two decades, who goes crazy and orders his
and the superpowers were getting planes to attack Russia. But, as he
WRITERS twitchy; if either side blinked, worked on the screenplay with
Stanley Kubrick, Terry everybody died in a thermonuclear writer Terry Southern, Kubrick
Southern (screenplay); holocaust. This was the basis of found the politics of modern
Peter George (novel) “mutually assured destruction,” warfare too absurd for
the military strategy for peace that drama; he felt that the only
STARS was beginning to sound like a grim sane way to get across the
Peter Sellers, George C. promise of oblivion. The Cuban insanity of accidental self-
Scott, Sterling Hayden, Missile Crisis had been averted a destruction was a farce.
Slim Pickens year before, but only just—surely
the apocalypse was coming? In Kubrick and Southern’s
BEFORE screenplay, the plot of Red
1957 In Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, Cold War satire Alert is given a nightmarish
a World War I officer defends When Dr. Strangelove opened to comic spin. The novel’s madman
his men from false charges. an unsuspecting public in January becomes Jack D. Ripper (Sterling
1964, Kubrick invited audiences to Hayden), an American general who
1962 Lolita is Kubrick’s first see this doomsday scenario played blames his sexual impotence on a
collaboration with Peter Sellers. communist plot to poison the water

AFTER Gee, I wish we had one of
1987 The military’s absurdities those Doomsday Machines.
are again targeted by Kubrick
in Full Metal Jacket. General Turgidson / Dr. Strangelove

REBEL REBEL 177

What else to watch: Paths of Glory (1957) ■ The Pink Panther (1963) ■ A Clockwork Orange (1971, p.337) ■
Being There (1979) ■ The Shining (1980, p.339) ■ The Atomic Café (1982) ■ Threads (1984)

The War Room, vast, impersonal, and
punctuated by the ominous circular
table with its hovering ring-shaped
lighting, was designed by Ken Adam
as an underground bunker.

supply with fluoridation. Ripper
sends a fleet of bombers to destroy
the Soviet Union, and then sits
back to wait for Armageddon.

Sexual metaphors which sets off the Russians’ This is a man’s world, in which
Dr. Strangelove is a political satire, Doomsday Device. Kubrick’s stark everyone gets off on mass
but it’s also a sex comedy about the black-and-white imagery bristles destruction. The shadowy Dr.
erotic relationship between men with man-made erections, from Strangelove (Peter Sellers again)
and war—the “strange love” of the nukes, gun turrets, and pistols to wields a tiny cigarette, which may
title. The movie, which is subtitled General Ripper’s thrusting cigar. tell us everything we need to know
How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb, opens with “I do not avoid women,” he about his motivations.
the romantic ballad Try A Little explains to the RAF’s Group Formerly known as
Tenderness and ends Captain Mandrake (Peter Dr. Merkwürdigliebe,
with Vera Lynn Sellers), blowing mushroom
singing We’ll clouds of smoke, “but I do Strangelove is a
Meet Again over German émigré
an orgasmic deny them my essence.”
montage of scientist. The models
atomic for Strangelove
explosions, were Nazi rocket
ignited by the scientists now in
nuclear bomb the US, such as
ridden by Major Wernher von Braun.
“King” Kong He has a mechanical
(Slim Pickens), arm with a mind of its
own—whenever talk
General “Buck” turns to mass slaughter
Turgidson (George or eugenics, it rises
C. Scott) imitates involuntarily in a Nazi salute.
a low-flying B52 Strangelove has trouble keeping
this particular erection under
“frying chickens control, and at the prospect of the
in a barnyard.” world blowing up, he jumps out
of his wheelchair with a shriek of
joy. “Mein Führer,” he ejaculates, ❯❯

178 DR. STRANGELOVE

Dr. Strangelove’s sinister black their tryst is put on hold due to the (Marquis de Sade). The bombs,
glove, worn on his errant right hand, crisis, she is instructed to wait: too, have been named “Hi There”
was Kubrick’s own, which he wore “You just start your countdown, and “Dear John,” signifying the
to handle the hot lights on set. and old Bucky’ll be back here beginning and ending of a
before you can say... Blast Off!” romantic relationship.
“I can walk!” He is literally erect:
sexually awakened, potent, and Many of the characters’ names Superpower egos
about to see his Nazi plan for a refer to themes of war, sexual In addition to Mandrake and
supreme race of humans, where obsession, and dominance, from the Strangelove, the mercurial Sellers
there are 10 women for every obvious Jack D. Ripper (prostitute plays a third role: President Merkin
man, put into action. murderer Jack the Ripper) to Muffley (another sexual innuendo),
Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky who attempts to manage the crisis
There is only one female from his war room. In this vast,
character in the movie, Tracy Reed, Dr. Strangelove outraged the echoing forum, the US leader meets
who plays Miss Scott, General Pentagon, though it was with an all-male cabal of diplomats,
Turgidson’s mistress-secretary and unofficially recognized to soldiers, and special advisers to
also the centerfold “Miss Foreign be a near-documentary. decide the future of humanity.
Affairs” in the June 1962 copy of Frederic Raphael
Playboy, which Major Kong is seen The movie’s central comic set
reading in the cockpit at the start The Guardian, 2005 piece involves Muffley telephoning
of the movie. In what was one of Kissoff, the Soviet Premier, to
a number of “insider” references warn him about the imminent
throughout the movie, the issue attack; Kissoff is drunk at a party,
of Foreign Affairs draped over her and the conversation descends
buttocks contained Henry Kissinger’s into petty squabbling. Sellers’
article on “Strains on the Alliance.” monologue is hilarious, but
The mix of sexual and military also terrifying, because the
connotations persist between Miss “red telephone” had only recently
Scott and General Turgidson. When become a reality. The hotline

REBEL REBEL 179

I’m not saying we won’t get our
hair mussed. But I do say no more
than ten to twenty million killed, tops.

General Turgidson / Dr. Strangelove

between Washington and Moscow you can’t fight in here,” says a Stanley Kubrick
had been set up in 1963, and horrified Muffley, “This is the War Director
Kubrick’s movie nudged the Room!” It is silly, clever, and, deep
concept toward its logical down, full of rage. Kubrick clearly Born in New York in 1928,
conclusion: a Cold War reduced hated these characters; the men Kubrick spent his early years
to the vying for dominance of two in Dr. Strangelove are a bunch of as a photographer and a chess
men’s wounded egos. “Of course clowns, pathetic and deluded, hustler. These two interests—
it’s a friendly call,” Muffley pouts and the director originally intended images and logic—would
into the receiver, “if it wasn’t to end his movie with an epic inform his career as a movie
friendly then you probably wouldn’t cream-pie battle. He filmed the director, which began in 1953
even have gotten it.” These jokes sequence, then changed his mind, with Fear and Desire. Kubrick
must have chilled the blood of and swapped the pies for nuclear cast his analytical eye over
contemporary viewers, and they warheads, in case anyone thought several genres—historical
still unnerve today. these clowns might be harmless. ■ epic (Spartacus), comedy (Dr.
Strangelove), science fiction
A less sophisticated spat occurs The poster for the movie shows (2001: A Space Odyssey),
later in the movie, between the the presidents of the two most period drama (Barry Lyndon),
gum-chewing General “Buck” powerful countries in the world, horror (The Shining)—giving
Turgidson (George C. Scott) and the who squabble over the telephone them a unifying theme of
Russian ambassador (Peter Bull): like children. They are powerless human frailty. He was perhaps
the Cold War reduced even further, to prevent the nuclear catastrophe. less interested in humans
to a schoolboy scuffle. “Gentlemen, than he was in machines, not
just the hardware of cinema
but also society’s obsession
with technological progress.
His unrealized final project,
the science-fiction epic A.I.
Artificial Intelligence, would
have offered his last word on
this subject. It was filmed by
Steven Spielberg in 2001, two
years after Kubrick’s death.

Key movies

1964 Dr. Strangelove
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
1971 A Clockwork Orange
1980 The Shining

180

I CAN’T SEEM TO
STOP SINGING
WHEREVER I AM

THE SOUND OF MUSIC / 1965

IN CONTEXT T oday, screenings of The and, gradually, the captain’s
Sound of Music are often heart. Set in 1938, and based on
GENRE billed as sing-alongs, at a true story, the movie continues
Musical which audiences who know every to resonate, perhaps because
lyric enjoy a sense of shared it represents values that were
DIRECTOR nostalgia for the songs. Yet behind almost extinguished in one of
Robert Wise the fun there is a significant movie. Europe’s darkest periods.

WRITERS The story of a misfit postulant, Vulnerable innocence
Ernest Lehman Maria (Julie Andrews), who leaves The movie’s first half focuses on
(screenplay); Maria von her abbey to become governess Maria’s acceptance into the von
Trapp (book); George to the seven unruly children of Trapp family and the dilemma she
Hurdalek, Howard a stern widower, Captain Georg faces when the captain begins to
Lindsay, Russel Crouse von Trapp (Christopher Plummer), fall in love with her, despite his
(stage musical) unfolds in the bucolic, chocolate- engagement to an aristocratic
box setting of the Austrian Alps. socialite, Baroness Schraeder
STARS Maria’s good humor and musical (Eleanor Parker). Distraught at
Julie Andrews, Christopher inventiveness win over the children
Plummer, Eleanor Parker
Robert Wise Director
BEFORE
1956 Ruth Leuwerik stars in Born in 1914 in Still (1951) and The Haunting
The Trapp Family, a German Winchester, IN, (1963). Later in life he worked
adaptation of von Trapp’s book. Robert Wise on musicals, most famously
was 19 when he making West Side Story and
1959 The Sound of Music got a job as a The Sound of Music. Wise died
opens on Broadway, composed sound and music editor at RKO at 91 in 2005.
by Richard Rodgers with lyrics radio pictures, and he eventually
by Oscar Hammerstein II. became Orson Welles’s editor on Key movies
movies such as Citizen Kane
AFTER (pp.66–71). Wise’s first directing 1945 The Body Snatcher
1972 The musical Cabaret job was on The Curse of the Cat 1951 The Day the Earth
is set in Berlin at the time of People (1944), and he went on to Stood Still
the Nazis’ rise to power. direct many notable B movies 1961 West Side Story
such as The Day the Earth Stood 1965 The Sound of Music

REBEL REBEL 181

What else to watch: Singin’ in the Rain (1952, pp.122–25) ■ From Here to Eternity (1953) ■ Gigi (1958) ■
West Side Story (1961, p.334) ■ The Haunting (1963) ■ Mary Poppins (1964) ■ Cabaret (1972) ■ Les Misérables (2012)

Captain von Trapp is bemused to
find his seven children dripping wet
and dressed in loose-fitting clothes
made by their governess, Maria, out
of the floral drapery in her room.

the situation she has created, in several instances the songs are The movie’s overwhelming
Maria flees back to the abbey, used to overcome fear or to ward optimism does not simply derive
but the abbess encourages her to off danger. My Favorite Things from the hills being “alive with the
return to her new home. To the is sung when Maria tries to calm sound of music” (in the words of the
children’s delight, the captain the children during a violent storm, titular song), but from its message
marries her, and the movie might and in the final set piece, when that honesty and goodness are
have ended happily there. Instead, the family performs on stage at defenses against evil. When
however, it continues in a markedly a festival in Salzburg, they are Captain von Trapp rouses the
different tone, its focus shifting singing to buy time as danger festival audience to sing Edelweiss,
from the family’s domestic situation closes in around them. While Nazi a tender song about the Alpine
to its place in the wider world. As officers watch from the front row, flower that symbolizes Austria, he
the Nazi Anschluss of Austria there are soldiers waiting in the is affirming his loyalty to a country
threatens to sweep away all they wings to prevent the family’s that has been annexed by a ruthless
cherish, their fate becomes linked escape and to force Captain von foreign power, and standing up in
with that of the country. Trapp into military service the defense of everything that he sees
moment the show is over. as decent and good.
The danger is most poignantly
represented by Rolfe (Daniel In a sense, then, Maria and the
Truhitte), a local boy who is in love captain are protecting not only
with von Trapp’s eldest daughter their children, but a whole way of
Liesl (Charmian Carr). Rolfe’s arrival life, and their final escape over the
one day in a Nazi uniform shocks mountains carries the hope that
both the family and the audience, this way of life will survive. ■
and serves to demonstrate the way
in which innocent youth can be
corrupted and turned to malign
ends. The captain tells him, “They
don’t own you,” revealing his fear
of what is happening to the country
and its people, and reminding
Rolfe that he has free will. But Rolfe
nevertheless betrays the family.

Songs of comfort
Much of the singing in The Sound
of Music is about finding joy in the
ordinary and the commonplace, but

When the Lord closes a door,
somewhere He opens a window.

Maria / The Sound of Music

IT’S DIFFICULT TO

START

A REVOLUTION

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS / 1966



184 THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

IN CONTEXT T here are With its use of documentary-style
many ways filming techniques, the movie’s
GENRE to tackle war large crowd scenes resemble
War, political and political strife in real newsreel footage.
fiction. Filmmakers
DIRECTOR can approach it from a as the title suggests, the story
Gillo Pontecorvo humanist perspective, of the Battle of Algiers. Director
following civilians as Gillo Pontecorvo’s camera mimics
WRITERS the external conflict that of a photojournalist on the
Gillo Pontecorvo, escalates around them, streets, capturing events from
Franco Solinas or follow rank-and-file an objective remove.
soldiers as they carry out
STARS their duties, and examine
Jean Martin, Brahim the moral crises they face
Hadjadj, Yacef Saadi in doing so.

BEFORE The majority of movies
1960 Pontecorvo’s movie Kapò about conflict tend to
is one of the first attempts take one of these two
to depict the horrors of the perspectives. The Battle
Holocaust on screen. of Algiers, however,
adopts a journalistic
AFTER perspective instead to
1969 Pontecorvo’s Burn! stars follow Algeria’s attempts
Marlon Brando as a British to gain independence from
agent who manipulates a the French. That is to say,
slave revolt on a Caribbean it approaches the conflict
island to pervert it in the forensically, its narrative
interests of big business. following the progression of
significant events. While it does
2006 Ken Loach’s The Wind have prominent figures in its
that Shakes the Barley tells the narrative, particularly Ali La Pointe,
story of Republican fighters in one of the leaders of the Algerian
the Irish War of Independence. resistance, it is not the story of
any one individual. The movie is,

Minute by minute 00:36 00:55 01:44
In response to Colonel Mathieu arrives The FLN leader
00:10 the killing of police in Algiers to take charge Djafar surrenders.
While in prison in 1954, by the FLN, the of the operation against the However, Ali La
Ali La Pointe witnesses the police chief plants FLN. He plans Operation Pointe is still free.
execution of a man who a bomb in the Champagne to take place
shouts out independence casbah, which kills during a strike called by
slogans. Five months later, a number of children. the FLN.
he joins the FLN.

00:00 00:20 00:40 01:00 01:20 01:40 02:02

00:18 00:41 01:32 01:52
It is 1956 and the FLN Following the bombing of the At a press conference, After Ali La Pointe refuses to
announces bans on alcohol, casbah, three FLN women in Western Mathieu praises FLN surrender, the Colonel blows up
drugs, and prostitution. It clothing plant bombs. One is in a bar, fighters, including arrested the house he is hiding in. He
enforces the new rules another at a disco, and a third at the leader Ben M’Hidi, for declares that “the head of the
within the casbah. airport. They kill scores of people. their commitment tapeworm has been destroyed.”
to their cause.

REBEL REBEL 185

What else to watch: Battleship Potemkin (1925, pp.28–29) ■ Kapò (1960) ■ All the President’s Men (1976) ■ Reds (1981) ■
Waltz with Bashir (2008) ■ Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Give us your bombers, and you can and ends with an Algerian man,
have our baskets. tortured beyond comprehension,
dressed humiliatingly in a French
Ben M’Hidi / The Battle of Algiers military uniform. Colonel Mathieu,
the ranking officer in charge of
The cost of terror their hijabs and remove any trace bringing down the resistance
In its depiction of the horrors of of their cultural and religious movement, chastises one of the
conflict, The Battle of Algiers raises identity for the greater good as soldiers when they mock him for
questions about right and wrong they would see it. They kill random his appearance. This moment
in war that are still relevant today. Europeans, upon whose faces the mirrors the later bombing, where
Pontecorvo portrays both sides camera dwells before the blasts, Mathieu indicates that something
very evenhandedly. The Algerian but there is no triumphalism from of themselves—their pride, their
independence fighters, the FLN the women—in their eyes, they moral high ground—has been given
(National Liberation Front), lack are committing a necessary evil. up in pursuit of victory. The movie
the means or manpower to views both sides’ losses with ❯❯
confront the occupying French The French military make their
military police in direct battle, so own compromises with morality, as Ali (Brahim Hadjadj, right) is
instead they resort to guerrilla they resort to violent interrogation recruited to the FLN by Djafar (Yacef
warfare and terrorism. They employ and torture in order to obtain the Saadi, second left). Saadi fought with
children as messengers and have information required to bring the FLN, and the character Djafar was
devout Muslim women Westernize the FLN down. The movie begins partly based on Saadi himself.
their appearance in order to gain
access to the European quarter.
Their targets are not military,
but rather civilian areas such
as cafés and airports that are
frequented by Europeans.

The sequence with the women
is particularly telling as to the cost
of the fight, as we watch while they
cut off their hair, rid themselves of

The Battle of Algiers
is a training film for

urban guerrillas.
Jimmy Breslin

New York Daily News, 1968

186 THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS

How to win a battle against equal regret, as the same mournful decides that their next move will be
terrorism and lose the war of music is played over the massacred a strike, in which all operatives are
ideas. Children shoot soldiers French civilians as the dead to lay down their weapons. The
at point-blank range. Women Algerians after military raids. It restless Ali questions this action,
plant bombs in cafes. Soon asks the question: what matters but is informed by his superior that
the entire Arab population more in warfare, winning or to win the freedom they desire,
keeping your soul in the process? they must make the transition in
builds to a mad fervor. And it asks the same question of the world’s eyes from terrorists to
Sound familiar? both sides. freedom fighters.

Poster for screening at The role of the media Mathieu’s approach is similarly
the Pentagon, 2003 The Battle of Algiers poses several media conscious, and he confronts
questions about the role of the a room full of journalists about
media in modern warfare. Both their “have their cake and eat it”
sides seem to understand that attitude to the conflict. They
just as important as winning disapprove of Mathieu’s methods,
the physical battles is winning the
hearts and minds of the media and Colonel Mathieu (Jean Martin) is
thus the world. After a series of sent to Algiers to defeat the FLN in
violent and terrorist acts, the FLN the wake of an escalation of violence
from both sides.

REBEL REBEL 187

but believe France should remain Key incidents in the Battle of Algiers
in Algeria. He points out that
his methods are the only way to Barberousse Ali La Pointe’s
achieve that. He understands the prison hideout
pyramid cell structure of the FLN,
and that torturing suspects is the CASBAH Rue de Thèbes
only way to move up that pyramid
to the leadership—as he puts it, to Milk Bar Cafeteria KEY
“cut off the head of the tapeworm.” Stadium
FLN attack
The 20th century saw the world EUROPEAN CITY
become a global community, in French attack
which advances in communication Special Centers of French
technology meant that no war interrogation military operation
could pass out of sight, no violent (torture) unit
act be hidden. The Battle of Algiers
proposes that winning a modern questions it poses about the lines right to independence, but at the
conflict is not necessarily about people cross for what they believe same time has respect for Mathieu’s
might. Mathieu is a stronger are still extremely pertinent and honesty, dignity, and competence.
tactician than the FLN and difficult to answer. It is also In the end, it even allows him a
gradually defeats the group on the perhaps the most clear-headed moment of decency as he pleads
ground, and yet, ultimately, Algeria movie about war ever made, not with Ali to allow the teenage boy in
still gains independence, because swayed by the emotions that might his company to leave the field of
the FLN’s action ignited public cloud the issue, interested in the battle. This moment defines the
opinion about the country’s right to cold tactics of both sides without whole movie. War is not simply
self-determination. Mathieu won overtly demonizing either side. The about having a just cause. It is also
the battle in Algiers, but ultimately movie clearly believes in Algeria’s about what we do in its name. ■
the French lost the war.

The nature of war
The Battle of Algiers is a movie
about the Algerian struggle for
independence, yet it is also a movie
about the nature of conflict. Its
themes are universal, and the

Gillo Pontecorvo Director

Gillo Pontecorvo was born in remained true to his
Pisa, Italy in 1919. His first job documentarian principles,
in the movie industry was in Paris however, hiring mostly
working as an assistant to Joris nonprofessional actors, including
Ivens, a Dutch documentary the ex-FLN leader Yacef Saadi.
filmmaker with Marxist views. Pontecorvo died from heart
Pontecorvo shared Ivens’ politics, failure in Rome in 2006.
becoming a member of the Italian
Communist Party in 1941. He Key movies
was primarily a documentary
filmmaker, and The Battle of 1960 Kapò
Algiers was one of the few times 1966 The Battle of Algiers
Pontecorvo ventured into more 1969 Burn!
overtly dramatic work. He 1979 Ogro

188

WHO WANTS TO
BE AN ANGEL?

CHELSEA GIRLS / 1966

IN CONTEXT S oon after Andy Warhol naturally—talk, bitch, do drugs,
and Paul Morrissey’s have sex, listen to music. This
GENRE experimental movie Chelsea eccentric clique became known
Experimental Girls was released in 1966, critic as the Warhol Superstars. They
Roger Ebert wrote, “Warhol has included singer Nico, photographer
DIRECTOR nothing to say and no technique to Gerard Malanga, and actor Ondine.
Andy Warhol, say it with.” But few movies have The title of the movie comes from the
Paul Morrissey ever reflected so strongly the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan where
moment in which they were made. many of them hung out. Other
WRITERS locations included Warhol’s Factory
Andy Warhol, Chelsea Girls was a provocative studio and various apartments.
Ronald Tavel look at New York’s counterculture.
To make the movie, Warhol and Voyeur viewing
STARS Morrissey filmed the lives of his The camera was a deliberately
Nico, Brigid Berlin, friends as they did what came intrusive presence, and the movie
Ondine, Mary Woronov, captures its subjects’ narcissistic
Gerard Malanga It’s the movies that have relationships in an unsettling way.
really been running things The shooting is rough, so we are
BEFORE always aware that they are being
1963 Sleep, one of Warhol’s in America, ever since filmed, a technique Warhol called
first experiments with “anti- they were invented. “anti-film.” Warhol and Morrissey
film,” consists of five hours of Andy Warhol ended up with twelve 33-minute
footage showing his friend movies, half in color, and half in
John Giorno sleeping. monochrome, which they joined
together into a single split-screen
1964 Warhol’s Empire is an movie. As the audience’s eyes flicker
eight-hour-long movie of the between the screens, the effect is
Empire State Building at night. to reinforce their role as voyeurs
watching these people during their
AFTER moment in the spotlight. ■
1968 Lonesome Cowboys
is Warhol and Morrissey’s What else to watch: Scorpio Rising (1963) ■ 8½ (1963) ■ Blow-Up (1966) ■
raunchy take on Romeo and Performance (1970) ■ I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) ■ The Cremaster Cycle (2002)
Juliet, satirizing Westerns.

REBEL REBEL 189

LET’S SEE
THE SIGHTS!

PLAYTIME / 1967

IN CONTEXT F rench comedian Jacques At the time it opened,
Tati combined a gift for Playtime was the most expensive
GENRE sight gags and silent French movie ever made, due mainly
Musical comedy with a unique and to its huge, purpose-built set.
eccentric cinematic vision. His
DIRECTOR comic character Monsieur Hulot At one point, Hulot looks down on a
Jacques Tati inspired huge affection. vast floor of identical office cubicles.
It looks at first like a nightmare
WRITER There is little plot in Playtime, vision. Yet Tati shot this movie on
Jacques Tati the third Hulot movie, and for many high-definition 70-mm movie, to
of Tati’s masterpieces. It simply be seen on a big screen, and if you
STAR follows the encounters of Hulot and a look very closely, you can see here
Jacques Tati group of American tourists during and there in the cubicles a few
a day in Paris. But the Paris in the other Hulots with their trademark
BEFORE movie is Tati’s own vision—he trilby hats. Hulot is not alone. ■
1949 Jour de fête, about a created it with a gigantic futuristic
mailman who stops his rounds set that came to be called “Tativille.”
to enjoy a fête, is Jacques
Tati’s first major success. Lost in Tativille
Tativille is a supermodernist view
1953 Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday of the city, with mazes of straight
introduces Tati’s most famous lines and shimmering glass and
character Monsieur Hulot. interchangeable office spaces, in
which the bumbling Hulot is lost
1958 Mon Oncle is Tati’s first again and again. In some ways, it is
color movie, and wins him the a satire on the dehumanizing effects
Best Foreign Film Oscar. of the cities of the future. And yet it
is also a delightful celebration of the
AFTER irrepressibility of the human spirit,
1971 Traffic is Tati’s last and that spark of oddness that
Hulot movie. knocks uniformity a little out of line.

2010 Sydney Chomet’s The What else to watch: The General (1926) ■ Modern Times (1936) ■
Illusionist is based on an Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953) ■ Mon Oncle (1958) ■ Being John Malkovich (1999)
unproduced script by Tati.

190

THIS HERE’S MISS BONNIE
PARKER. I’M CLYDE BARROW.
WE ROB BANKS

BONNIE AND CLYDE / 1967

IN CONTEXT Bonnie and Clyde marked Arthur Penn’s story of a young
the arrival of a new couple on a bank-robbing rampage,
GENRE generation of American based on the real-life crime spree
Crime thriller directors whose freer style of of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker
filmmaking was a departure from between 1932 and 1934, exhibits
DIRECTOR the old studio conventions of a more realistic violence than had
Arthur Penn classical Hollywood. Expensive previously been seen on screen.
productions such as Cleopatra It also treats its outlaw protagonists
WRITERS had flopped, bankrupting the sympathetically, giving them
David Newman, old Hollywood studio system, an innocence and a naivety that
Robert Benton which loosened the studios’ grip represented a new way of telling
on production. Desperate financial stories about bad people.
STARS times meant greater creative
Warren Beatty, Faye freedom, and everything about Tabloid stars
Dunaway, Gene Hackman Bonnie and Clyde, from the movie’s The movie frames its characters as
frequent use of unsettling close-ups tabloid newspaper stars, who are
BEFORE to its jagged editing style, was first glamorized and then vilified.
1965 Arthur Penn and Warren designed to upset the status quo As each of their escapades is
Beatty team up for the first of traditional filmmaking. reported in the next day’s press,
time with the Chicago-set
thriller Mickey One. Arthur Penn Director

AFTER Arthur Penn and blind activist Helen Keller
1970 Faye Dunaway stars discovered an that he had previously directed
opposite Dustin Hoffman interest in on stage. Penn’s most prolific
in Penn’s Western Little theater when years came in the late 1960s.
Big Man. stationed in He died of heart failure in 2010,
Britain during World War II. on his 88th birthday.
1976 In Penn’s The Missouri His first movie was The Left
Breaks, Marlon Brando stars Handed Gun, a Western Key movies
as a ruthless lawman on the starring Paul Newman, but
trail of a gang of horse rustlers his first major success came 1966 The Chase
led by Jack Nicholson. with The Miracle Worker, an 1967 Bonnie and Clyde
adaptation of a play about deaf 1970 Little Big Man

REBEL REBEL 191

What else to watch: The Defiant Ones (1958) ■ À bout de souffle (1960, pp.166–67) ■ Easy Rider (1969, pp.196–97) ■
Badlands (1973) ■ Taxi Driver (1976, pp.234–39) ■ True Romance (1993) ■ Natural Born Killers (1994)

Bonnie (Faye Dunaway), Clyde situation becomes increasingly Bonnie and Clyde pose for a photo
(Warren Beatty), and even Clyde’s desperate, the barrage of lies told with their hostage, Captain Frank
brother Buck (Gene Hackman) see about them in the newspapers Hamer (Denver Pyle). In real life, Hamer
how the papers sensationalize the begins to wear Clyde down, most did not meet either of them until the
facts and exaggerate the crimes. noticeably when an article falsely day his posse killed them.
accuses him of robbing the Grand
At first, Clyde laughs off the Prairie National Bank—which leaving them powerless to present
attention, and he and Bonnie enrages him so much that he their true selves to the world. Only
take playful, gun-toting photos of promises to actually do it. as the movie nears its bloody end are
themselves for the press, playing they given a reprieve of sorts, when
along with the media game and The relentless attention of a short, charming poem Bonnie
enjoying their celebrity. But as the media ultimately robs the has written, telling of her pride in
the law closes in, and the pair’s two thieves of their sense of self, knowing a decent man like Clyde,
is published in a newspaper. Their
They’ll go down together / They’ll side of the story is told, just once.
bury them side by side / To a few, it’ll be
grief / To the law, a relief / But it’s death Like other movies of the time,
for Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde makes it hard for
the viewer not to root for its amoral
Bonnie Parker / The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde protagonists, sympathizing more
with their media manipulation than
the victims of their robberies. ■

192

I’M SORRY DAVE.
I’M AFRAID I
CAN’T DO THAT

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY / 1968

IN CONTEXT All science fiction is about the Completed a year before the first
unknown, but few movies Moon landing and 30 years before
GENRE have embraced it as fully as a chess computer beat the world
Science fiction 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley champion, Kubrick’s space-age vision
Kubrick’s journey to the dark side of remains extraordinarily compelling.
DIRECTOR the solar system. While he and
Stanley Kubrick cowriter Arthur C. Clarke draw on The movie is loosely structured
familiar science-fiction story around a series of turning points in
WRITERS elements—the dangerous mission, human evolution, but despite the
Arthur C. Clarke, the homicidal supercomputer, grandiose five-note fanfare of
Stanley Kubrick humanity’s first contact with alien Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake
intelligence—Kubrick arranges Zarathustra—the movie’s famous
STARS them in an unfamiliar way to give musical motif—these moments are
Keir Dullea, Gary audiences something unique and not epiphanies. They only serve to
Lockwood, William unforgettably strange. deepen the mystery of humankind’s
Sylvester, Douglas Rain
Its origin and purpose are still
BEFORE a total mystery.
1964 Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick’s
Cold War black comedy, shows Mission Control’s last words / 2001: A Space Odyssey
man’s self-destructive nature.

1968 Franklin J. Schaffner’s
Planet of the Apes sends an
astronaut (Charlton Heston)
into the future.

AFTER
1971 A Clockwork Orange is
Kubrick’s darkly comic vision
of a near-future dystopia.

1984 2010, Peter Hyams’
sequel to 2001, returns to
the mystery of the Monoliths.

REBEL REBEL 193

What else to watch: Destination Moon (1950) ■ The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) ■ Planet of the Apes (1968) ■
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) ■ Alien (1979, p.243) ■ Gravity (2013, p.326) ■ Interstellar (2014)

Douglas Trumbull Special effects supervisor

The picture that science- Douglas Trumbull was just to win Oscars for his work on
fiction fans of every age and 23 years old when he started Close Encounters of the Third
in every corner of the world working on the special effects Kind, Star Trek: The Motion
for 2001. He had come to Stanley Picture (1979), and Blade Runner.
have prayed (sometimes Kubrick’s attention for his work
forlornly) that the industry on a documentary about space Key movies
might some day give them. flight called To the Moon and
Beyond. He was one of four 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
Charles Champlin special effects supervisors on 1972 Silent Running
2001, and was responsible for 1977 Close Encounters of the
Los Angeles Times, 1970 creating the psychedelic star Third Kind
gate sequence. He went on 1982 Blade Runner

role in the universe. 2001’s opening Bowman when given an order. “I’m and is then transformed into the
scene centers on Moon-Watcher, a afraid I can’t do that.” Here Kubrick Star Child, a strange, fetal being
prehistoric ape whose tribe is is showing the audience another floating in space—and this is where
fighting another for water and comes turning point in humanity’s the movie ends. As a final image, the
into contact with a mysterious black evolution—the point at which the Star Child is both obscure and
object known as the Monolith. The tools begin to turn on the apes. crystal clear. We don’t know what it
appearance of the Monolith triggers is, or how it came to be, or where it is
a shift in the apes’ culture; they turn Mystery and meaning going, but we know what it means:
old bones into tools—and weapons— As Discovery’s mission descends hope, and the beginning of another
and the human race’s long journey to further and further into disaster, journey for our species. ■
the stars begins in earnest. the Monolith appears again. What
can it mean? Is it the emissary of an
From ape to astronaut alien race? Proof of the existence of
This odyssey is represented by God? The scientists are baffled, and
a now iconic cut from one image so is the viewer. Kubrick refuses to
to another, as a bone hurled by supply any easy answers; he’s more
Moon-Watcher becomes a spaceship interested in taking the audience
twirling through the void. Suddenly on a journey than he is in revealing
the action shifts to the future, where the destination.
astronauts Bowman (Keir Dullea)
and Poole (Gary Lockwood) are on The final act of 2001 abandons
a mission to Jupiter in the spaceship conventional storytelling as the
Discovery. Their lives are in the care audience follows Bowman through
of Discovery’s computer, HAL 9000 a tunnel of light and into an
(voiced with chilling detachment by otherworldly chamber, possibly the
Douglas Rain), who malfunctions construct of an extraterrestrial host,
and grows politely mutinous. When where the Monolith is waiting for
the crew try to shut him down, HAL him. He sees himself as an old man
fights back. “I’m sorry, Dave,” he tells
Bowman finally finds himself alone
in the space pod. Time appears to
become warped as an older version of
himself appears, followed at the end
of the movie by the fetuslike Star Child.

194

WE’RE GONNA STICK
TOGETHER JUST LIKE
IT USED TO BE

THE WILD BUNCH / 1969

IN CONTEXT T he Wild Bunch gleefully machine gun at the center of the final
deconstructs the ethos shootout, presaging the slaughter
GENRE of the traditional Western. that was to come in World War I.
Western The lines between heroes and
villains are blurred, and characters In awe of violence
DIRECTOR are not always rewarded for doing Each time a character is hit with
Sam Peckinpah the right thing. a bullet, no matter how minor, the
moment of impact is filmed in slow
WRITERS Set in 1913, the story contains motion. We see the blood spurt out
Walon Green, Sam certain motifs of the traditional of the back in close-up, as the body
Peckinpah (screenplay); Western. The aging thieves—the contorts toward the ground. The
Walon Green, Roy N. “bunch”—arrange one last bank sound drains out of the scene until
Sickner (story) job, which inevitably goes horribly all we hear is the character’s death
wrong. They are chased into Mexico rattle. Slow motion does not appear
STARS by their old comrade Deke Thornton in any other context.
William Holden, Ernest (Robert Ryan), who has reluctantly
Borgnine, Robert Ryan, switched sides and is leading a The violence of the old West
Warren Oates group of hopeless bounty hunters. was notorious, but The Wild Bunch
The old West is fast disappearing, is the first movie to stand back and
BEFORE a fact made clear by the German look on it with such awe. The movie
1961 Peckinpah’s first movie
as director is The Deadly Sam Peckinpah Director
Companions, a classic,
low-budget Western. Sam Peckinpah earned himself a reputation
was born in for bad behavior on set. He
AFTER California in suffered alcohol problems, and
1970 Peckinpah’s next movie, 1925. After died of heart failure in 1984.
another Western, The Ballad of serving in the
Cable Hogue, shows a change US marines in World War II, Key movies
in pace with far less violence. he worked as an assistant to
Don Siegel on movies including 1962 Ride the High Country
1977 Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron Invasion of The Body Snatchers 1969 The Wild Bunch
is an unflinching portrayal of a (1956). His first movie as director 1971 Straw Dogs
soldier’s life in World War II. came in 1961 with The Deadly 1974 Bring Me the Head
Companions. Peckinpah soon of Alfredo Garcia

REBEL REBEL 195

What else to watch: The Searchers (1956, p.135) ■ The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) ■ Bonnie and Clyde
(1967, pp.190–91) ■ Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, p.336) ■ Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

“We gotta start thinking beyond
our guns,” one of the bandits observes;
“Those days are closing.” The movie
celebrates male bonding, but the sun
is setting on this bunch of outsiders.

begins and ends with anarchic in these scenes, just a struggle The Wild Bunch questions the
set pieces of violence. In each to survive. This was perhaps a motives of the law while also
scene, innocents are caught in more honest portrayal of the West displaying sympathy for the
the cross fire as both sides shoot than the moralizing take of the outlaws, their loyalty and self-
almost blindly at anything that previous generation of Westerns, in reliance. The movie’s final
moves. There is no right or wrong which the good prevail in the end. confrontation is set in motion by
the bunch’s decision to try to save
their captured comrade, Angel
(Jaime Sánchez). Many of the law
enforcers that trail the bunch,
by contrast, are shown to be
incompetent and corrupt. The
movie becomes a humane
exploration of the cost of living in
amoral times, presenting outlaws as
a product of their surroundings. It
finds a compassion for its characters
that the Westerns of old could not. ■

Tector (Ben Johnson),
Lyle (Warren Oates), Pike
(William Holden), and Dutch
(Ernest Borgnine) walk out
to save Angel. They will
stick together to the end.

We’re after
men. And I
wish to God
I was with
them.

Deke Thornton /
The Wild Bunch

196

THEY SEE A FREE
INDIVIDUAL IT’S
GONNA SCARE ’EM

EASY RIDER / 1969

IN CONTEXT F ew movies seem Easy Rider helped to
to capture a spark the New Hollywood
GENRE moment in time phase of filmmaking in
Road movie more completely than the early 1970s, in which
Dennis Hopper and directors took a more
DIRECTOR Peter Fonda’s Easy Rider. authorial role, and
Dennis Hopper It’s the quintessential innovative publicity
American road movie,
WRITERS with two youngish men, techniques were used.
Peter Fonda, Dennis half hippy, half Hells
Hopper, Terry Southern Angels, setting off on a big commercial
journey to freedom on their successes with the
STARS Harley-Davidson motorcycles. younger generation. It seemed only
Peter Fonda, Dennis natural to combine the two themes,
Hopper, Jack Nicholson End of the 1960s biker gangs and drugs, in one movie.
There’s no real plot or emotional Fonda brought in screenwriter
BEFORE journey, and the movie’s vague Terry Southern to help with the
1953 The Wild One, in which symbolism may seem dated now. writing and hired Dennis Hopper
Marlon Brando smolders as But there’s no denying its cultural as his co-star and director.
a motorcycle gang leader, was status at the time. The year it Hopper may at first have
the first movie to focus on the was released, 1969, young people seemed like a disastrous
idea of outlaw bikers. were proclaiming their rejection choice as director, as the
of the values of the old generation shoot threatened to
1960 Jean-Luc Godard’s by growing their hair long and
À bout de souffle prefigures dropping out to listen to music and
Easy Rider with its couple of take drugs. Easy Rider reflected
young outlaws on the road, this mood, but it went further.
and jump-cut editing.
Peter Fonda, the producer and
AFTER star, came to the project from
1976 Easy Rider inspires playing the rebellious leader of a
a number of road movies, gang of Hells Angels in the movie
significant among them Wim The Wild Angels (1966), and a TV
Wenders’ Kings of the Road. ad director who takes LSD in The
Trip (1967). Both movies were

REBEL REBEL 197

What else to watch: The Wild One (1953) ■ À bout de souffle (1960, pp.166–67)
■ Pierrot le Fou (1965) ■ Woodstock (1970) ■ Kings of the Road (1976)

mire in drug binges and shouting drifting drug dealers heading east Dennis Hopper
matches. Fonda even threatened to because there’s no longer a Wild Director/Actor
abandon the project. But it may be West. Their bike bags are stuffed
that very anarchy that made Easy with money made from selling A multitalented actor, writer,
Rider an icon of its time. Hopper felt drugs to Mr. Big, and when they are director, and photographer,
he was part of a revolution. The joined by a sharp-suited drunken Dennis Hopper carved out a
disorganized nature of the project lawyer (Jack Nicholson), he ends up name for himself as one of the
was a rude gesture of rebellion. seeming far more rebellious than wild cards of Hollywood. Born
them. The title conveys an image in 1936 in Dodge City, Kansas,
The rough cut is said to have of chilled-out bikers, but it actually he showed early promise as
run for over three hours. Hopper comes from the slang for living off an artist, but was soon drawn
chose to cut out story details to the earnings of a prostitute. to acting and studied at the
leave behind a series of loosely Actors Studio in New York
linked images and moments, held Easy Rider’s bleak violence under the legendary Lee
together by a pounding sound track. ensures that the movie is no hippy Strasberg. He initially made
trip, but rather an incoherent blast his name with television work,
West to east of frustration. In reality, it signaled but it wasn’t until he directed
In some ways, the two bikers seem a disillusioned end to a previous and starred in Easy Rider that
like modern-day cowboys, riding generation’s idealism. ■ he became a celebrity. In later
off to find freedom, and their names years, Hopper’s problems with
Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy Wyatt and Billy hide the cash alcohol and drugs stalled his
(Dennis Hopper) recall the Western they’ve made from drug smuggling progress, although he did
heroes Wyatt Earp and Billy the in the stars-and-stripes-adorned direct and star in the excellent
Kid. In fact the bikers are nothing fuel tank of a chopper, and head to punk drama Out of the Blue.
so noble. Rather, New Orleans for Eventually, after entering
they are a pair of Mardi Gras. a rehab program in 1983,
his career took off again
with riveting performances
in such movies as Blue Velvet
(pp.256–57), and numerous
Hollywood bad guy roles.
Hopper died in 2010.

Key movies

1969 Easy Rider
1979 Apocalypse Now
1980 Out of the Blue
1986 Blue Velvet

198

ARE YOU FOND
OF MEAT?

LE BOUCHER / 1970

IN CONTEXT I n French director Claude Hélène (Stéphane Audran) first
Chabrol’s thriller Le Boucher meets Popaul (Jean Yanne, on her left)
GENRE (The Butcher), the stark title at a wedding. They strike up a close
Thriller immediately raises expectations relationship, but it remains platonic
of brutality and gore. Played by the despite his clumsy efforts to woo her.
DIRECTOR curiously sympathetic Jean Yanne,
Claude Chabrol the Butcher is Popaul, a veteran not least because the woman has
of the French colonial wars of the been stabbed to death with knives,
WRITER 1950s in Indochina and Algeria, who the tools of his trade. And when a
Claude Chabrol works at a butcher shop in a rural second body is found, discovered
town. At a friend’s wedding, Popaul by one of her own pupils during
STARS meets Hélène (Stéphane Audran), an idyllic picnic, Hélène finds a
Jean Yanne, who becomes strangely fond of him. lighter that she herself gave Popaul
Stéphane Audran Popaul is open and sensitive about as a present. But instead of
his past, talking of an abusive father handing it to the police, Hélène
BEFORE and the cruelty of battle. keeps it, and she is relieved when,
1943 Alfred Hitchcock’s later on, Popaul lights one of his
Shadow of a Doubt tells the When a woman is killed in the many Gauloises with what appears
story of a young girl who forest, however, Hélène begins to to be the original lighter.
discovers a terrible secret. think of Popaul a little differently,

1968 Chabrol’s Les Biches
stars Stéphane Audran and
Jacqueline Sassard as two
women who form a lesbian
relationship before both
falling for the same man.

AFTER
1970 Chabrol’s next movie,
La Rupture, features Audran
as a woman whose husband’s
family is hatching a deadly
plot against her.