His pain is our pain: Mamoun Hasan on Bill Douglas

Originally published in the Guardian in 2008, Mamoun Hasan--who was head of the British Film Institute at the time Bill Douglas began filming his trilogy--recalls what is was like to work with the director.

It is accepted now that Bill Douglas's trilogy of films - My Childhood, My Ain Folk and My Way Home - are landmarks in British cinema. What's less known is that there wasn't originally a trilogy to make. It only became a trilogy after a piece of political sleight-of-hand that changed the name of the first film from Jamie, in order to ensure that Bill continued to make films.

In the summer of 1971 I was asked to hold the fort as head of production at the British Film Institute, while it found a replacement for Bruce Beresford. It was only meant to last a few months--I had trained as an editor, and had directed and written screenplays, but I had not run a department and I was wary of producers. I did not relish the role. Since then, I have done quite a bit of administering and producing, and I blame Bill.

When I began my stint, Bruce had left two piles of applications for the scant money the BFI had to support film-making, all of which went to short films. There was a tall pile of rejections, and a smaller one of maybes. Bill Douglas's script, with the title "Jamie", was in the smaller pile. It took 10 pages of reading for it to go from being a maybe to a must.

Bill's screenplay was different from any I had read. One could see the film immediately. He eschewed the convention of scene headings (ext/int, location, day/night); there was no generalised description and no emotional padding. It was lucid and concretely imagined. It unfolded in a series of descriptions, some deliberately ungrammatical, that without the use of technical terms evoked the shot, size of frame, and who and what was in it. Dialogue was spare. It was almost a silent movie. It was also a fine piece of writing - poetic even. The script was the film. Or so I thought.

We awarded him £3,000 (out of the £5,000 that we had). Bill's fee was £150. I gave him the best crew that lack of money can buy: raw talent with passion and verve. At first everything went well. Bill was affable, intelligent and good company. Once shooting started, it all changed. He was a man apart. Banter and joking - normal during a shoot- irked him. Maybe the story was too close to him. He said he was resurrecting old memories, but it was more than that. He was setting the record straight, grieving, settling scores, forgiving and much else. His vision came at a price.

Before Bill started shooting, I told him he would make an important film. But even I was startled by the first set of rushes. They were intense, stark and distilled to utter simplicity. The images were individual and distinct, but with hints of Soviet cinema, Bresson and early neo-realism. His storytelling was also particular. If classical narrative is like light in Newtonian physics, in that it travels in a straight unbroken line, then Bill's narrative is akin to quantum physics, where light moves in discrete packages of energy. Never show the audience something, he said, that it can imagine better than you can show it. In Bill's work, the gaps would make another film. The audience has to work to fill the gaps; it has to participate. It is exhilarating. This was not British cinema. It was something else. It was alien.

That unique quality raised a problem: I could not see our industry backing him. Politics, these days, is extra-curricular to film-making; in the 70s it was the only subject. Narrative cinema was considered old-fashioned and in pursuit of a new, non-bourgeois cinema, the BFI Action Committee was trying either to take over the Institute or dismember it. The committee favoured collective film-making with no hierachies. Applicants for funding, I learned, should spend half a day discussing the economic, social, political and aesthetic aspects of their project. Presumably they got to spend the other half talking about what the film itself would be about. It was not going to be easy to get Bill funding for a second film in this climate.

So I came up with a wheeze. Jamie was clearly about Bill's childhood, so I pretended that Bill had always intended to make a "childhood" trilogy - with its echoes of Mark Donskoi's Gorki films and Satyajit Ray's Apu trilogy. We were not, I said, backing three films, but one film in three parts. Bill went along with this. Jamie became My Childhood and the trilogy was born.

In competition with star-filled films that cost millions, My Childhood won the Silver Lion at Venice in 1972 . Its success helped the BFI to move into feature production. It represented, I argued, the beginnings of an alternative cinema in Britain. Denis Forman, then chairman of the BFI, pointed out to the government that the BFI was doing what the National Film Finance Corporation, the quango responsible for film funding, was not interested in. Minister for the Arts Lord Eccles was persuaded. The BFI went into features and the budget was increased twentyfold. I stayed another two years and we backed, among others, My Ain Folk, Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's Winstanley, Peter Smith's A Private Enterprise, David Gladwell's Requiem for a Village and Horace Ove's Pressure.

It would be wrong to say Bill was difficult. I know directors with a tenth of his talent who are more egotistical. He was not a prima donna. He was, however, exacting - at times beyond reason. He would "remember" a scene, imagine it anew, write it down and then want it exactly like that. I believe he was persecuted by those images that had the power and hold of dreams. If he couldn't get it to work, it hurt him. Bill made people work for him through pain. His pain became the crew's pain. Peter Harvey, who was sound recordist on My Ain Folk and now a well-known cinematographer, said of him: "I could flatten him with one punch, but he terrified the life out of me." What was terrifying was how much it mattered to Bill. In return, the crew gave him more than their best - they over-achieved.

Still, we had our dramas. Just after midnight on the first day of filming My Ain Folk, Peter rang to tell me that Bill had finished only one set-up; the producer had left the picture; and Bill was having a nervous breakdown. I arrived in Newcraighall just outside Edinburgh late the following morning. I wanted to hear from Bill himself, and nobody else, what had gone wrong. Ashen-faced, he sat down and pointed at Peter. "I want Mr Harvey to pay for my typewriter. He made me throw it at the bedroom wall." I asked how. It transpired that, though Bill hated shooting more than one take, for one crucial scene he did six. Unfortunately, the tape had got twisted during the perfect take. "He ruined ma shot," he screamed. "He's ruining ma film!" He waved wildly: "I won't work with them." I replied: "That's the best crew I can find. If they're not good enough, I'll cancel the film. I'll ring the chairman." I got up. I am not sure, but I think I was bluffing. I walked slowly down the corridor to the public phone in an alcove. I picked it up - and heard a stampede. Bill was running towards me, followed by the crew. He snatched the phone from my hand and tied the cable round his neck. Luckily, he didn't go through with it.

After the trilogy, Bill waited 10 years before making his next feature, Comrades, when, as managing director of the NFFC, I persuaded my board to commit the largest sum in its history. Channel 4, under Jeremy Isaacs, matched us, as did Roger Wingate of the Curzon cinema. It is another classic. After that, Bill wrote a screenplay for me entitled Justified Sinner, based on the James Hogg novel. But we could not get any production funding either from public or private sources. He did not make another film.

Bill Douglas FilmFest: Day 2

Movie: My Way Home
Year: 1978

Christmas-time in a local authority home in Edinburgh, a few years after the Second World War. Mr Bridges, who runs the home, attempts to bring some festive cheer to the children--through harmonicas of all things!--but his efforts are resisted by Jamie. When Jamie's father arrives to take his son back home to Newcraighall, Mr Bridges warns the boy that he is unhappy about his returning, but Jamie doesn't respond, and leaves with his father and the woman friend he has brought along, and who is dropped off before they reach Newcraighall. Jamie leads his father to the 'pearls' he had previously hidden, but they are revealed to be valueless, and his father throws them away.

Escaping from the scene of marital discord that greets them on their return, Jamie returns to his paternal grandmother's house. His grandmother, who now lives alone and in squalor, gives him a copy of David Copperfield, which Jamie reads, but then tears to shreds when she accuses him of removing her name from the inscription she has written. Jamie's father attempts to get Jamie to go down the pit, while his wife is horrified when Jamie says he wants to be an artist. He returns to the home, where Mr Bridges makes an unsuccessful attempt to find him work, and then to arrange a foster parent for him--Jamie abruptly leaves the foster parent's home after she falls asleep by the fireplace, an obvious emotional trigger in that both of his grandmothers did the same thing.

After a miserable time in a Salvation Army hostel, Jamie returns to Newcraighall, only to find strangers and a deserted house where he used to live. A few years later his National Service takes him to an RAF base in Egypt, where he meets Robert, an educated Englishman. Jamie retains his solemn demeanor, and much of the time is taken up with menial or seemingly pointless tasks, but Robert's friendship shows signs of awakening in him an interest in life in general and the arts in particular. They visit the Pyramids, go to the cinema, and admire the architecture of a mosque. It's also understood that Robert (Joseph Blatchley) has romantic designs on Jamie, but not special emphasis is placed on that. It's just part of the overall fabric of the story, another detail in Jamie/Douglas' complex and trying road to adulthood.

Talking about what they will do when they return, Robert says that he'll probably go to university, while Jamie repeats his desire to be an artist, adding maybe a film director. When they are about to leave Robert gives Jamie his address, telling him that he can call it home.

Bill Douglas FilmFest: Day 1

Movie: My Childhood
Year: 1972

and

Movie: My Ain Folk
Year: 1973

Bleak, desolate, almost unceasingly grim--"My Childhood" is the first installment in the Bill Douglas Trilogy. It's the shortest of the three--clocking in at just under 50 minutes--but it pacts enough pathos and bare-naked emotion to fill a running time twice as long.

It's 1945. Jamie (Stephen Archibald) and Tommy (Hughie Restorick) live a meager and isolated existence with their maternal grandmother in Newcraighall, a Scottish mining village. The frail and permanently beshawled grandmother is given to wandering outside, and when she appears at the gates of the local school, Tommy, the son of one of her daughters, walks her home. Meanwhile the younger Jamie, the son of her other daughter, scavenges for coal.

Jamie's affection is reserved for a black cat, and Helmuth, one of a group of German P.O.W.s who he visits while they work in the field. Tommy alternates between hostility towards the boy, who appears to be his brother, and friendship. When Jamie asks after his mother and father, Tommy tells him of his own mother, now dead. Back in the fields, Jamie uses a children's book to teach Helmuth English.

Tommy visits his mother's grave, exchanges hostile glances with a neighbour walking a dog, and is visited by his father, who brings him a canary as a birthday present. The grandmother orders the man to leave, and he cycles away as Tommy chases after him. In her anger, the grandmother tries to destroy the birdcage, and Tommy is forced to conceal it. Jamie is given sixpence by the neighbor with the dog.

Discovering that Jamie's cat has killed his canary, Tommy kills the cat. Having been told that the neighbor with the dog is his father, Jamie follows him to the house next-door to where he lives, which is occupied by the man's doting and possessive mother (Jamie's paternal grandmother). Jamie and his maternal grandmother take a bus to visit a woman he discovers is his own mother, who has been committed to an asylum, and who gives no sign of recognizing the visitors.

The end of the war is marked by a village bonfire, but it also leads to the departure of Helmuth. Tommy attempts to comfort the despondent Jamie, but then discovers that their maternal grandmother has collapsed and may be dead. Jamie runs out of the house until he reaches the railway, seems to contemplate suicide, but when he jumps from the railway bridge he lands in one of the open carriages of a goods train. The train takes him away from the village and in a final act of defiance, Jamie spits.

For those of us who have grown up in the relative luxury of the last few decades, it's hard to imagine the type of existence that Jamie and his brother had to grow up in. Absent parents, compounded by desperate poverty--it's positively heart-tugging to watch them try and go about their way. Jamie especially, who broods for his parents, is seen as an afterthought--except in his friendship with Helmuth. And even that has to end; for Jamie, what is there to look forward too? Why even try?

"My Ain Folk" picks up the the narrative after the death of the boys' maternal grandmother. An attempt is made to take Jamie and Tommy, who we find now is not Jamie's brother but his cousin into care, but Jamie tales shelter in his paternal grandmother's house. She tells a welfare officer that the boy is welcome to stay, then subjects Jamie to an angry tirade about how his mother ("a hooer") ruined her son's life.

The complex patterns of family relationship only gradually becomes clear: Jamie's grandmother lives next door to the house where her favourite son (Jamie's father) lives with Agnes, who the grandmother hates, and the couple's son. The grandmother's house is also occupied by her other son, just returned from the war, who is himself carrying on an affair with Agnes. When his grandmother attacks the neighbouring house while brandishing a knife, Jamie runs away, but is brought back by a policeman. His ill-treatment includes being forbidden to use the toilet and being shut outside in the snow, and his misery is compounded when he learns from his grandmother that his mother has died in the asylum to which she had been committed.

Like his cousin, Jamie appears to gain some solace from visits to the cinema, and does finds a companion when an ambulance brings his paternal grandfather home from hospital. However his grandfather is too weak to stand up to his wife, his longstanding relationship with a woman in the village makes him the constant subject of his wife's taunts, and the old man becomes increasingly despondent himself.

Having received a letter from Tommy, Jamie visits him in the Edinburgh care home in which he has been placed. He is accompanied by Tommy's father, who uses the occasion to justify himself for not taking his son home with him. Jamie is given the key to his old house by his grandmother, and told to look for the pearls apparently hidden there by his mother. He finds what he believes to be a set of pearls hidden in a pillow, but buries them in a coal heap, earning him a beating from his uncle when he denies finding anything. The uncle is later thrown out the house by Jamie's grandmother, the antagonism between the grandmother and Agnes culminating in a night-time fight between the two women. Having met another woman, Jamie's father drives away with her. Jamie's grandfather dies, and Jamie is taken away to the Edinburgh care home.

FilmFest 3: The Bill Douglas Trilogy

William Gerald Forbes Douglas, known to you and me as Bill, was born on April 17, 1934 in Newcraighall, a suburb of Edinburgh, Scotland. His early childhood years were spent under the care of his paternal grandmother. Following her death, he was raised by his father and his father's mother. After growing up in abject, bleak poverty in the immediate aftermath of World War II, Douglas joined the National Service and was posted to Egypt. It was there in 1955 that he met fellow film enthusiast Peter Jewell, forming a friendship that would last the rest of his life and profoundly influence it.

After some time in the 1960s working as an actor, Douglas enrolled in the London International Film School in 1969. While there, he made some student shorts and wrote the screenplay for an autobiographical film called "Jamie." He pitched his project--which would eventually become "My Childhood"--to Films of Scotland but his bid for funding was rejected on the grounds that his project failed to present Scotland as a forward looking nation. Fortunately, the newly-appointed head of production at the British Film Institute, Mamoun Hassan, took an interest in the project and "My Childhood" was filmed in 1972.

Douglas' reputation as a filmmaker is largely based on the excellent films that make up the trilogy. He was also an intensely-devoted collector of materials relating to the early history of cinema. Douglas died of cancer on June 18, 1991 at the age of 57 in Devon, England. His collection formed the basis of the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture, which was opened at Exeter University in 1997.

Reflections on Rohmer

Here's an interesting take on the "Six Moral Tales" by Andre Aciman, a professor of comparative literature at City University of New York. It was originally published in the New York Times on the occasion of Rohmer's death in January of 2010.

To those of us who have seen all of Eric Rohmer’s films it is impossible not to remember when, where, with whom we saw each one. I even remember the second and third time I saw his films. “My Night at Maud’s,” “Claire’s Knee,” “Chloe in the Afternoon” are grafted onto my life. Something happened between me and these films at the Thalia, at the Brattle, at the old Cinémathèque, or at the old Olympia Theater on the Upper West Side. But I can no longer isolate what that something is. I don’t even care to know what was exclusively Eric Rohmer’s and what was mine, what he was ever so cautious to convey and what I most likely misunderstood completely. The mix, as sometimes happens, becomes the work of art.

But then with Mr. Rohmer, who died this week at the age of 89, the mix is not incidental; it is essential. To see an Eric Rohmer film is not to escape from the drudgery of our daily lives; it is to sit quietly and have someone show us lives that are not entirely different from ours but different enough, situations we’ve all been in and couldn’t wait to get out of but could have learned from, if only we’d had the patience and the courage to sit through them.

Mr. Rohmer was the master of tact — tact in the way his characters behave with one another, tact in the way he himself, as a director, spun his tales, and ultimately tact with truth and fiction. In his hands, sex could be suspended, and passion, without ever boiling over, seldom went cold.

I can’t forget the scene in “My Night at Maud’s” when the very pious engineer in the business suit decides to sit on Maud’s bed while she is lying under the covers with only a T-shirt on, determined to seduce him. They stare at each other, and they talk, and she tells him things, and he tells her things, and still they talk, and it’s clear to everyone, including the characters themselves, that though this strange couple has just met hours earlier and may not share a sliver of love between them, what we’ve just witnessed is one of the most intimate scenes in movie history.

It is impossible to watch this scene or certain moments in “Tale of Autumn,” “A Good Marriage” or “Full Moon in Paris” and not envy the candor of Eric Rohmer’s men and women, their impulse to dissect each nuance of desire and then turn around and confide it right away to those who’d aroused them.

With my friends we used to call these situations Rohmerian. You meet A, you are drawn to A, but neither you nor A wish to rush things. You simply want to stop time a bit, and because neither of you cares to hide what you’re really doing, you decide to confess your maneuvers and are wildly grateful when told they were by no means unknown to the other. Rohmerian. What comes after this is seldom the business of art; it is the stuff of humdrum prose.

Since his death, the usual clichés about Eric Rohmer are once again pullulating on the Internet. He was talky. He was a mannerist. He was a classicist. Eric Rohmer — whose men are more into themselves than the women they are allegedly trying to seduce. Eric Rohmer — whose films, in the words of the character played by Gene Hackman in “Night Moves,” are like “watching paint dry.” Eric Rohmer — for whom courtship is a conceit for how people jockey into position vis-à-vis the things they want and seldom believe they’ll get.

What the commentary has missed is that Eric Rohmer was above all things a “moraliste.” The word is difficult to translate. All the men in his “Six Moral Tales” are either married or engaged to be married but, through a series of accidents, find themselves tempted to betray their beloveds. Each therefore is faced with a “moral” quandary.

It’s worth remembering that Mr. Rohmer was playing with words, using the word “moral” in a way that harks back to the French Moralists of the 17th century. Despite their emphasis on morality, men like Pascal, La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère were urbane and disabused analysts of manners, mores and the human psyche. They were perpetually on the lookout for every insidious motivation in others and every instance of self-delusion in themselves. In the hands of a moralist, even sex becomes a conceit.

For all their self-analysis, Eric Rohmer’s men and women are not as penetrating as they wish to be. No one is evil, no one is too good either, and no one suffers, or at least not for long. They all muddle through courtship, never get their hands dirty; and the hard truths they must face are always given obliquely enough and never hurt. There are ugly facts enough on the outside.

With Eric Rohmer, as with Mozart, Austen, James and Proust, we need to remember that art is seldom about life, or not quite about life. Art is about discovery and design and reasoning with chaos. If there is one thing I will miss with Eric Rohmer’s death, it is the clarity, the candor and the pleasure with which one human can sit with another and reason about love and not forget, in Pascal’s words, that “the heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.”

Eric Rohmer FilmFest: Day 5

Movie: Love in the Afternoon (aka Chloe in the Afternoon)
Year: 1971

In his negative review of "My Night at Maud's," Christopher Null of the web site filmcritic.com state that "I'd wager virtually no one has them all." He is referring, of course, to all of the "Six Moral Tales," and as of today, I can proudly and happily say that I have. In fact, I wouldn't have missed them and if I'm really good for the rest of the year, maybe Santa will leave the Criterion box set under my tree (hint, hint!). Of course, and my wife and friends would argue this point, I don't feel like it actually makes me a better human being that I've done this. I do think it makes me a better cineaste (budding one though that I am). I learned a lot from watching them--I think it's fair to say they are certainly films for thinking people. You can't check your brain at the door, and I think that's a good thing. I like to think, to be challenged and not have to work a little bit for the payoff. The "Six Moral Tales" one and all accomplished that, and that's the reason I will keep returning to these films for years and years to come.

Frederic (Bernard Verley) is living a charmed life. He has a wife named Helene (Francoise Verley, his real-life wife) who besides being beautiful is smart, successful and obviously devoted to him. You can just see in her expressions the love she feels for him. Frederic has a good job, a young child and another on the way. Frederic loves Paris; he feels stifled by the suburbs and feels truly alive in the streets of the city. What excites him the most are the Parisian women he sees daily. He is conscious of their presence everywhere--at the office, in stores or in cafes--and they flit about like so many butterflies. In the voiceover, Frederic tells us that their beauty is emblematic of his wife's beauty and that their beauty is a positive affirmation of his choice. Still though, he fantasizes and in the best scene of the film imagines that he has a magic amulet that will allow any woman to fall under his spell.

The women in this fantasy sequence are played by actresses from the other Moral Tales (Francoise Fabian-Maud; Marie-Christine Barrault-Francoise; Haydee Pollitoff-Haydee; Laurence de Monaghan-Claire; Aurora Cornu-Aurora and Beatrice Romand-Laura) and the scene is a fun nod to the other films in the series. The funniest exchange takes place with Aurora who tells Frederic she charges 10,000 francs. When Frederic replies that HE charges 20,000 she doesn't blink ("that's a bargain.") Even more clever I thought was that the only woman able to resist was the headstrong, determined Laura, still clearly her own woman.

But back to reality and all at once, Frederic's life is thrown for a loop with the arrival of Chloe (Zouzou). Frederic and Chloe have a shared past and after time abroad and a failed relationship, Chloe is back in Paris trying to get her life back on track. She is determined to make Frederic a part of that and sets out on a gradual course of seduction. She plants the seeds little by little--questioning whether Frederic's love for his wife is genuine and calling upon him for favors and company. As they continue to see more and more of each other, Frederic finds himself tempted to stray from his wife and sleep with Chloe (Chloe, for her part, has no problem with this and indeed has picked out Frederic to be the father of the child she so desperately wants). And there's the moral question--to cheat or not to cheat? Of course, depending on where the morals of the viewer lie, Frederic may or may not have cheated before the time comes to make the decision on the act. It's interesting--and up to each person to decide. The movie--and the series--ends with a big emotional wallop that lays bare the feelings of the characters involved.

Want to discuss "Love in the Afternoon?" Leave a message.

Eric Rohmer FilmFest: Day 4

Movie: My Night at Maud's
Year: 1969

and

Movie: Claire's Knee
Year: 1970

I had some free time last night so I made it a double feature. How do you like them apples, Gene Hackman? Two Rohmer films in one night? Actually, the count is three in two days because I watched the amazing "My Night at Maud's" twice. A nice surprise from Netflix too. After being told it would be a "long wait" for "My Night" to arrive, it instead showed up promptly along with the others in the series. So I'm really happy to be able to have seen this one along with the other films in the series. I am really enjoying watching the evolution of Rohmer's work as it unspools during the viewing of the "Six Moral Tales." I've done this before with music, listening to, say, Sonic Youth from their early days and moving forward chronologically. It's not always the easiest thing to do, but I really get a greater sense of the artist's impact and development doing it this way. So thanks to Netflix for making a "long wait" actually a very reasonable one.

I can't get enough of "My Night." After seeing it twice over the course of two days, I still feel like I want to see it again and again. There's just so much there, so much to observe, digest and think about. It goes so much deeper than just a canned synopsis of the film ("three people meet to discuss the nature of philosophy, religion and love over the course of an evening.")

The film begins in a beautiful old church, the kind of which seem to be found practically on every street corner in Europe. Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) spots the blonde-haired student Fracoise (Marie-Christine Barrault) during the service and is immediately smitten. He follows her after the service but loses her. Nevertheless, this brief encounter is enough to convince Jean-Louis that he will one day marry Francoise. His pursuit is interrupted when he chances upon Vidal (Antoine Vitez), an old friend (and a Marxist) he has not seen in 14 years. It's Christmastime and Vidal is going to visit his friend Maud (Francoise Fabian), a beautiful divorcee. Vidal clearly has feelings for Maud, but their relationship is destined to remain just friendly ("we don't get along well on a day-to-day basis.") Vidal implores Jean-Louis to come along and the three spend the evening in animated, deep conversation.

The philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal is almost a co-star during the night at Maud's. Jean-Louis takes a dim view of Pascal's condemnation of Christianity and marriage. There is also much talk of Pascal's wager. This probably a really simplified explanation but it goes a little something like this: If facing long odds against something (say 10 to 1 against the existence of God) you must stake everything on that one chance. Because if God does not exist and you lose your bet, then your loss is minimal. But if God does exist, then our reward will be great and eternal.

After some impressive verbal sparring all around, Vidal leaves, leaving Jean-Louis alone with the beautiful Maud (truly one of the more amazing female characters you will ever see on screen). Maud comes "from a family of free-thinkers" and is an atheist. Her views on marriage and love are diametrically opposed to Jean-Louis', who holds traditional Catholic views of faithfulness and devotion. Maud is clearly taken with Jean-Louis and the moral conflict arises when Jean-Louis is tempted to "cheat" on Francoise, whom he doesn't even speak to until after leaving apartment the following morning, and sleep with Maud. Jean-Louis does eventually get to talk to Francoise, and she is open and receptive to his advances. Icy roads provide a convenient excuse for Jean-Louis to give her a ride home and when the car becomes stuck on the narrow streets near her home, Francoise advises him to spend the night. Francoise clearly shares Jean-Louis' feelings, but, much like the title character in "Suzanne's Career," Francoise is different from what she appears to be on the surface.

This film is excellent across the board. The characters are fascinating. Jean-Louis is guided by his Catholic teachings and seems genuinely sincere in his desire to live a godly life. But, like many of us, he is torn between that and his earthly desires. It is also interesting to watch Jean-Louis' transformation of the course of the film. At first, he is quiet and retiring, but as the night at Maud's progress, he grows in confidence and poise. He never grows cocky, like some of the other male characters in other "Six Moral Tales" movies, but does show more assertiveness and confidence during and after his association with Maud. Vidal is a riot, fast-talking, good with the quips and in love with Maud (even though he never outright says it). His motivation for wanting Jean-Louis and Maud to meet one another in the first place and then be together is interesting and is something those two characters debate during their time together. And Maud, well, what can you say? She has it all--beauty, brains, charm, confidence--in short, the kind of woman every guy would be glad to call his own. And yet there is a sadness to her just below the surface--it is very subtle and doesn't show itself all the time. But it is there and it caused me to look at her character with a lot of sympathy and affection.

The film is in fabulous black-and-white, with the snowy December streets of Clermont providing the backdrop. Everything is wonder to look at--the huge church packed with celebrants at the Christmas Eve mass, the tight, trafficky streets where Francoise rides her bike and the brightly-lit bookstores filled floor-to-ceiling with philosophy texts and math primers. All credit to the cinematography of Nestor Almenderos, whose exquisite work helps makes this--and the other Moral Tales--the memorable works they are.


So too, is "Claire's Knee," which (to me) suffers only in comparison because I saw it right after seeing "My Night" twice. Not many films can match up to that one and "Claire's Knee" does indeed fall a bit short. However, there is still plenty to recommend in the fifth of the Moral Tales.

Our hero is Jerome (Jean-Claude Brialy) a dapper cultural attache who is engaged to be married to Lucinde. Lucinde is only seen in the form of a photo Jerome has with him, and it's commented upon that the photo makes her look "severe." Yet despite his flirtatious relationship with Aurora (Aurora Cornu), Jerome is happy with Lucinde and is looking forward to getting married after a sometimes strained six-year courtship. With a few weeks to kill and some business to attend to before his nuptials, Jerome re-kindles his friendship with the wise Aurora, who is lodging at a country home owned by the twice-married and now single Mrs. Walter (Michele Montel). Mrs. Walter has teen-aged daughters by two different men--the precocious Laura (Beatrice Romand), who is all knees and elbows, and the beautiful Claire (Laurence de Monaghan). Laura immediately takes a shine to the urbane Jerome and soon puppy love is in full bloom. Aurora playfully urges Jerome on, chiding him, scolding him and telling him what to do in regards to Laura. Jerome feels Aurora is trying to use him as her "guinea pig" and provide her with material for a story.
Against his better judgment (and despite the considerable age difference), Jerome slowly but surely finds himself attracted to the almost 17-year-old Laura. While on a hike together in the mountains, he kisses her. Instead of building from that moment though, the relationship starts to wane, and indeed Laura begins spending more time with a school friend her own age. This irritates Jerome to no end and he confides in Aurora, who is having quite the good time observing and listening to her friend's conundrum. On the rebound, Jerome spots Claire (who doesn't make her appearance until about 45 minutes in). He is immediately attracted to her--more specifically her knee (and a nice knee it is too.) Jerome feels that her knee is the entry point to his desire and if he could only touch it, he would be a happy, contented and fulfilled man. But Claire has a boyfriend too, who may or may not have her best interests at heart (and who may or may not be completely faithful). The remainder of the film centers on Jerome's pursuit of that goal, which ultimately is achieved but not in the way that perhaps he had intended. Claire's response too, is quite different from what Jerome may have been hoping for.

This movie has the typical beautiful Moral Tales scenery (this time the setting is Annecy, located near Switzerland in the mountains). There is some great natural sound here (birds chirping, dogs barking) which is reminiscent of "La Collectionneuse." The dialogue is--as always--punchy, sharp and witty and the cast is excellent (in particular Cornu, a real-life novelist and poet, and Romand). To me, "My Night" was a home run. "Claire's Knee" is a booming double off the wall in centerfield. And there's nothing wrong with that (forgive the baseball metaphor, it's late, I've been trying to get this post written for several hours and I am starving!).

Want to discuss "My Night at Maud's" or "Claire's Knee?" Leave a comment.

Eric Rohmer FilmFest: Day 3

Movie: La Collectionneuse (The Collector)
Year: 1966

Far from being like "watching paint dry"--the now-infamous quote spoken by Gene Hackman's character in the film "Night Moves" describing what it's like to watch a Rohmer film--these films that comprise the Six Moral Tales series are small masterpieces. It's a shame that virtually all the obituaries I read about Rohmer (and I did read quite a few as I was educating myself in preparation for starting this FilmFest) makes note of that quote. It's unfair that many will know Rohmer only through that quote. Certainly his films are not for everyone, and they are not typical of mainstream movie-making today (or even at the time they were made). There is talking--a LOT of talking--and lots of voice-over narration (at least in the three that I've seen so far). Not a heck of a lot happens. The characters can be maddening at times, annoying at others and somewhat self-absorbed. Their motivations aren't always clear (which for someone like me, who is continuing to learn and grow in his appreciation of cinema, is a good thing. I think watching these Rohmer films is helping me learn better the art of "watching" a film). But, so far, my interest hasn't waned and my admiration for Rohmer's work is growing with each film. It's easy to see what all the fuss was about--he is working on a whole, 'nother level.

Moving away from the urban settings of "Bakery Girl" and "Suzanne's Career," "La Collectionneuse" takes place in at a magnificent country home in St. Tropez. The ocean's nearby, the sun is bright and warming and the air is thick with the sounds of birds chirping, roosters crowing and dogs barking? Ahh, life--what else could you want from a vacation? If sounds pretty good to Adrien (Patrick Bauchau), an antiques dealer who wants to do absolutely nothing while on holiday. Also sharing the home are his friend Daniel (Daniel Pommereulle), a wacked-out artist and Adrien's partner-in-crime and a young girl named Haydee.

The smoky-voiced Haydee (Haydee Politoff) is the most interesting character in the movie. We first see her in a prologue, walking back and forth along the beach in a sexy bikini. The camera lingers on her legs, her neck and her shoulders, giving us a good, long look at her beauty (I'll say again and I don't want to beat this point into the ground because I don't want to end up sounding obsessed, but the main women characters in Rohmer's films have a "something" that is just hard to put your finger on. They are beautiful sure, but not in the traditional way, but there is something more that makes them almost impossible to resist. Both to the male characters and to the male viewer. I would go so far as to say Rohmer's representation of female beauty in this series is one of the strongest ever on screen). It's really hard not to be riveted by Haydee--in one scene she is making a call and has to spell her name. In the time it takes to say H-A-Y-D-E-E, I was smitten forever.

But I digress, and that's easy to do when Haydee is around. She is a sensual hedonist--her every move just screams "sex." She also has no shortage of male suitors, a fact that quickly gets on Adrien's nerves (especially when the giggling from her room keeps him awake at night). Haydee's carefree ways are making it hard for Adrien to do the nothing he so desires and he and Daniel soon start ganging up on her, calling her names and generally acting boorishly. Even the way Adrien addresses her, drawing out the name "HAAAAYDEE," sounds like a taunt. They dub her "The Collector," because of all the fellows she collects. Soon though, she and Daniel begin a short-lived affair. Adrien though, interprets this act as Haydee's way of going after HIM. He reasons this out thoroughly in the voice-over narration and does quite the job of convincing himself that Haydee is desperately wanting to bed him. Haydee, for her part is indifferent to pretty much everything. She smiles enigmatically and it's impossible to know what wheels are spinning in her head.

Daniel eventually puts an end to the affair (in a petulantly, over-the-top fashion) and soon leaves for the Seychelles. Adrien and Haydee continue to spar and things taking another turn with the arrival of Sam (Eugene Archer as Seymour Hertzberg), an American who is a potential business partner for Adrien. An antique Chinese vase comes into play too. The ending is probably inevitable, given the actions of Adrien and Daniel and totally believable too, given the motivations and personalities of the characters.

This is a subtle, gorgeous movie. Gorgeous in the sense of physical scenery--the South of France backdrop is stunning and is stunningly photographed by Nestor Almendros. The film fairly shimmers and the tones and textures are really quite remarkable. I liked this a lot--it made me work a lot more as a viewer than "Bakery Girl" or "Suzanne's Career" did, but I enjoyed the right. Not to mention the views.

Want to discuss "La Collectionneuse?" Leave a comment.

Eric Rohmer FilmFest: Day 2

Movie: Suzanne's Career
Year: 1963

After releasing some classic material in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul," disappeared into the wilderness. She returned full-bore though in 1985 with what was, surprisingly enough, the first-million selling album of her career. The title was "Who's Zoomin' Who?" and that's the thought that kept running through my head after twice watching the second film in Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales series, "Suzanne's Career."

Suzanne (Catherine See) is certainly not what she first appears. Much like Jacqueline, the girl at the Monceau bakery, Suzanne is not beautiful in the classic sense. But she is a charmer, does have a good heart and is certainly not unappealing to look at. She wears glasses, which add to her imperfect good looks, is smart and sweet-natured. As the film opens (after some brief opening narration from the character of Bertrand, another similarity to "Bakery Girl") Suzanne is in a cafe across the street from her office at the Tuberculosis Institute. Immediately she is set upon by the womanizing Guillame (Christian Charriere). Guillame represents the kind of guy that I have disliked all my life--smarmy, disingenuous and willing to say or do whatever it takes to bed his latest conquest and add another notch to his belt. In tow is his best mate, Bertrand (Phillipe Beuzen), the narrator. While Bertrand is altogether more likeable than Guillame, he is not without fault himself. Shyer and more retiring, he allows himself to be, as one character puts it later in the film, "led around the nose" by Guillame. It's an understandable position--Guillame represents what Bertrand is not (confident, glib, urbane) and has what Bertrand undoubtedly would like to have (the power to make women swoon, even when he is treating them pretty deplorably).
Soon, a triangle of sorts develops. Guillame, who successfully got Suzanne into bed early on, seemingly can't wait to dump her. She detests him but is drawn back into his arms. Bertrand, meanwhile, has obvious feelings for Suzanne too but is also carrying a flame for the true object of his desire, the tall, willowy Sophie (Diane Wilkinson). The boys are quite glad to let Suzanne pick up the tab on their nights out. Soon though, the gravy train runs out of steam and Suzanne informs Bertrand that even though it's only the 12th of the month, she's quite tapped out. As luck would have it, Bertrand has been given 400 francs by his parents, which he secrets away in the pages of a book in his room at the Hotel L'Observatoire. Three hundred eventually goes missing--and both Guillame and Suzanne had the opportunity to steal it. The movie never makes clear "whodunnit." Bertrand is sure he knows and it's left to the viewer to decide. I suppose your choice will be predicated on how you feel about the particular character and Rohmer leaves the resolution wonderfully ambiguous.

The ending is pure class too. Like I said above, Suzanne is not what she appears it first. She can handle her own business. Like the kids say now days, "you can't play a player," and Suzanne definitely knows how to play the game. The ending--well, I didn't see it coming to be honest--but I was really glad to see it. Rohmer strikes again!

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FilmFest 1: Eric Rohmer's Six (well, five) Moral Tales

When I first came up with the idea for this little venture, I thought one of the fun things to do would be to arrange some mini-film fests for myself. The goal is to take some works by one director, or some works that are linked thematically or by country, and watch them back-to-back. Since I most likely will never get to a real film festival and I don't live in a city with ample opportunities for doing something like this, this is my way of enjoying the film festival experience. So, I am pretty pumped about getting this one going--hopefully there will be a lot more in the future.

I am starting with the works of the French New Wave master, Eric Rohmer. Why? No reason, other than the "Six Moral Tales" series seemed like a nice, easy group of pictures to pull together for my viewing purposes. For now though, we'll have to settle with five--according to the giant online rental company that I am using, "My Night at Maud's" will be available only after a "long wait" (whatever that means). It's ironic, in that "Maud's" is probably Rohmer's best known work in the U.S. But I'll catch up to it eventually and there are still five other great works to enjoy in the meantime.

Rohmer was born in Tulle, a city in southwestern France on March 21, 1920. He lived to the ripe old age of 89, passing away in January of this year. Rohmer's name was a pseudonym, his birth name was Maurice Henri Joseph Scherer. According to Wikipedia, he came up with the name by combining the names of two famous artists: actor and director Erich Von Stroheim and writer Sax Rohmer, author of the "Fu Manchu" series. The pseudonym fit his modus operandi; Rohmer was by all accounts an intensely private (if not reclusive) individual. He said that that was the way he preferred it, that by keeping such a low profile it allowed him to maintain his anonymity and leave him free to film in the streets of Paris as he wished.

Rohmer worked as a teacher, journalist and writer before turning his hand to directing. He also served as the editor of the groundbreaking French journal "Cahiers du Cinema," which was also the breeding ground for other legendary New Wave directors such as Jean-Luc Goddard and Francois Truffaut.

Compared to his colleagues, Rohmer was perhaps the most conservative member of the movement. His style focuses on people, situations and dialogues. His obituary in the New York Times noted that "his films are as much about what does not happen between his characters as what does, a tendency that enchanted critics as often as it drove audience members to distraction." His style was famously criticized by Gene Hackman's character in the 1975 movie "Night Moves" who says, “I saw a Rohmer movie once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.”

Another word frequently associated with is "morality," which is the central theme of the films in our first festival. In each of the "Six Moral Tales," a man, either married or otherwise committed to a relationship, finds himself tempted by another woman. Despite a really strong desire to stray, ultimately, he is able to resist. And while on paper, that doesn't sound like a winning formula for an interesting film (let alone a series of them), Rohmer makes it work. I think the Moral Tales may even be more relevant today than they were 50 or so years ago when Rohmer started his work. Morality is in such short supply nowdays and I would think a film about characters doing the "right" thing (tempted though they may be), would elicit yawns from the movie-going public. In a world where there are web sites devoted to helping you set up an affair and cheat on your spouse, wouldn't it be a good thing to have a little old fashioned commitment? It's not wrong to fantasize but the mind and the body need to remain separate where relationships are concerned. I don't know what Rohmer would make of our society today but I think it's fair to say that he'd probably be regarded with disdain by some. And that would be a shame, because doing the right the thing should never go out of style.

And yet it's interesting to note that in the first film of the film of the cycle, 1962's "The Bakery Girl of Monceau," the line between what's right and not is kind of blurred for me. Obviously for the main character, it is a clear-cut choice and you have to respect him for that. But his choice is based not necessarily on "what is" but instead on "what might be." In this case, the young man (played by the future filmmaker Barbet Schroder) is indeed committed to one girl. But only in his mind--they have spoken only for a few seconds after he arranged to "accidentally" bump into her on a busy street. The rest of the "relationship" has consisted of a passing glances. But the young man is pretty sure he has this one sewn up, because her reaction after their "chance" meeting was not at all negative.

But as luck would have it, things don't go quite that smoothly--they never do when you are chasing your dream girl. The girl, Sylvie, (played by the luminously beautiful--honestly, they just don't make movie stars like they used too--Michele Girardon) abruptly disappears after being pretty much omnipresent around the neighborhood. The young man (who is never named, I wonder if there is a message behind that) wanders the streets looking for her. One day, he chances upon a bakery staffed by 18-year-old Jacqueline (played by Claudine Soubrier, another beauty--but in a completely different way, more "downhome"). The young man eventually starts dropping in each day to buy cookies and pastries and chat up Jacqueline. Eventually (she is very reluctant, probably because of her age and her strict parents), they agree to a date. But when Sylvie unexpectedly turns up, the young man is forced into a choice.

And that's it. Far from watching paint dry, "The Bakery Girl of Monceau" packs a lot of impact into its 24-minute running time. It's a good little film and it was the one that got Rohmer's career moving forward in earnest. The characters are real and (mostly) likeable. They are certainly understandable and I think most of us guys can relate to the young man's mindset throughout this film.

Want to talk about "The Bakery Girl of Monceau" or Eric Rohmer? Leave a comment.

Death of a dream

Movie: Chile, Obstinate Memory
Year: 1997
Director: Patricio Guzman

Imagine if everything you knew about your country was a lie. If not an outright lie, then at least a lie of omission. Imagine friends, family members, teachers, classmates who simply "disappeared" at one point, never to be seen again. Imagine asking questions and never getting any answers. The truth is out there, but how to get it? How to know?

That is the crux of "Chile, Obstinate Memory." Twenty-plus years on from the making of the epic political documentary "The Battle of Chile," Guzman returns to his native land to screen the film and see what has changed. Frighteningly, in some cases, not much. We are told early on that even 25 years after the coup that ousted and murdered president Salvador Allende, Chilean distributors are afraid to touch "Battle." The movie is almost like a myth in its own country--often heard of but rarely seen.

We see the impact that the coup has on Chilean society today through the people we meet. Guzman himself is an central character as we see him returning to the Estadio Nacional soccer stadium were he was interred for a time after the coup. We meet the doctor friend who treated Guzman ("I remember you asked me to reassure your wife.") We meet one of the guards who survived the death battle at La Moneda on Sept. 11 and watch as he returns to the palace disguised as a member of Guzman's crew.

Strikingly, we meet Allende's widow Hortensia Bussi (who died in July of 2009 at the age of 94), who shares her sadness. All she wants is for her family keepsakes to be released, perhaps so that she can give her grandson a sweater or a tie belonging to his grandfather. Predictably though, the release will never come. We meet the 80-year-old father of cameraman Jorge Muller Silva, who was "disappeared" like so many others and whose despair is palpable.

Perhaps most interesting are the reactions of the younger generation, those who weren't even born or who were too young to remember the events of Sept. 11, 1973. We see a group of female students arguing whether the government was right or wrong to overthrow Allende, while their teacher confesses her shame at having been a member of the right back then. We see the profound despair of another student, who breaks down in uncontrollable sobs while recounting that for him, Sept. 11 was just a day to miss school. In a film with many powerful images, perhaps he is the most vivid, the most haunting.

The central question in "Chile, Obstinate Memory" is what is a memory, exactly? Is it what we are told or what we know? If you come from a dysfunctional home, you will easily recognize this conflict. And in a sense, Chile is a dysfunctional home, with some covering up the truth while others scream to be heard. Just 58 minutes in length, the film powerful reminisces with the dark, troubled Chilean past. Ultimately, we are left feeling hopeful though as the students who finally get to know what really happened seem determined to keep fighting the good fight so that dictators like Allende's successor, Pinochet, and his torture rooms and prison camps are never allowed to flourish again.

Want to discuss "Chile, Obstinate Memory?" Leave a comment.

The Battle of Chile: A further look

Not an analysis as such, but an interesting article on Patricio Guzman's epic documentary, originally published in The Guardian in 2002 and written by Andy Beckett.

Three years ago, when I started researching my book on the arrest of General Pinochet and its underlying causes, one of the first things I did was go and see The Battle of Chile. The famous but little-shown documentary about how the dictator seized power in 1973 and destroyed the unique socialist government of Salvador Allende was being screened at a small film festival in south London.

It was a Saturday afternoon, the first sunny one of the spring, but the screening was sold out. As soon as I walked into the cinema, I began to understand why. Half an hour before the film was due to start, the gloom of the auditorium was alive with chatter: some in Spanish, some in fast, Spanish-accented English, some in the earnest murmur of London's politically engaged classes. In the seats and in the aisles, arguing, clustering and greeting each other, were middle-aged men and teenagers, women with immaculate make-up and men with straggling beards, people in new suits and people in old hippie scarves. About half were Chileans and half were Britons, but everyone was expectant, like a devout church congregation. In the front row, a grey-haired Chilean man just sat, hands clasped, staring silently at the blank screen and waiting for the film to start.

This three-part, four-and-a-half-hour documentary, which is to be shown in full tomorrow at the Conway Hall in London to mark the 29th anniversary of Pinochet's coup in Chile, remains the sacred text of the general's opponents at home and abroad. It is also the source of many of the images by which the wider world has, intermittently, tried to understand Chile ever since its famous political convulsions in the 70s. Lastly, the film is an example of a valuable but increasingly rare kind of political film-making, which links the rise and fall of ideologies and politicians directly and dramatically to the society around them. It is hard to watch The Battle of Chile and still see "politics" in the modern way, as just an unappealing abstract noun.

Part one begins with the burning hulk of the presidential palace in Santiago on the day of the coup, smoke pouring through the balustrades - the perfect metaphor for Pinochet's termination of a century and a half of almost continuous Chilean democracy. Other scenes soon appear that were replayed on the news around the world throughout the 70s, and again after Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998: white-faced civilians running for cover during the coup; tanks crawling up Santiago's avenues like great, malevolent beetles; roaring jets beginning their bombing runs overhead.

But The Battle of Chile is a more complex work than its title and climactic sections suggest. After a few minutes, the story switches back to 1972, the year before the coup, when Pinochet was just another general in the Chilean army and the Allende administration was an experiment with an apparent chance of success. There are interviews with ordinary-looking Chileans accosted in the street. At first these seem conveniently pro-government ("Thanks to Allende, I've got a lovely house," a smiling woman says). Other interviewees have no feelings about Allende one way or the other; a socialist revolution may be sweeping the country, but they are not even reading the papers.

Yet some people are openly furious. Businessmen, taxi drivers and middle-class housewives lecture the camera about how Allende is ruining Chile. They are not challenged; instead, the camera wanders with irreverent curiosity away from their faces and over their respectable, buttoned-up clothes and tensed bodies. The film becomes, in part, a study of conservatism and what happens when it is threatened.

As 1972 turns into 1973, and Allende's opponents move from rhetoric to parliamentary sharp practice to plotting to overthrow democracy altogether, the film-makers still move freely among them, but the ominous glances they now receive at meetings of right-wing politicians and at military gatherings suggest that the freedom to make probing documentaries may not exist for much longer.

Everything about the style of the film - the restless camera, the short scenes, the present-tense voiceover - indicates that its makers suspected this as well. Patricio Guzmán, the director, was a young left-wing Chilean who had been studying film in Europe and arrived back in Santiago in 1972 with a year's supply of film stock and the conviction that history was being made in Chile and could be captured. This sense of great but fleeting possibility was shared by the government: in one scene here, the bookish-looking Allende, in his thick spectacles, grips the lectern at a massive outdoor rally, as flags flutter above the absolutely silent crowd, and he shouts: "We can feel history here!"

Part of the lasting appeal of The Battle of Chile, and of the Allende administration, has always been the vivid but beleaguered quality of the Chilean revolution. At the same time, the look and structure of the documentary act as reminders of a more risk-taking, expansive time in film-making. Often Guzmán will show an image for many seconds before the voiceover comes in and explains its relevance; sometimes he does not explain it at all. At one point, a line of white-coated street vendors pedalling white food carts and blowing through paper cones suddenly appears. The context and their defiant expressions suggest this is a pro-Allende demonstration, but no one says so. You can relish it as a revolutionary metaphor, or simply as a droll piece of cinema.

In between its moments for aesthetes and romantics, the film makes more specific political points. Pinochet's slyness is well illustrated by a glimpse of him a few months before the coup, sunglasses on, helmet pulled down, dressed like an ordinary soldier as he saunters amicably along with some other officers, who are still loyal to the government and have just put down a premature army rebellion. Meanwhile, the difference between Allende's "Chilean road to socialism" and more authoritarian, Soviet-inspired versions - a difference denied to this day by Pinochet's supporters - is made disarmingly clear by a confrontation between Allende and a crowd of left-wingers, who are chanting for him to close down parliament. He refuses, and the protesting whistles are fierce for a time. Then the crowd goes quiet and listens.

Stretches of the documentary are closer to orthodox leftwing polemic. Trade unionists and factories are sometimes filmed from heroic angles. The final part, which focuses on everyday life under Allende as if the coup had never happened, includes lines of voiceover such as: "By mid-October the workers' organisational capacity has surpassed all expectations." There are scenes of people distributing sacks of onions in poor areas - the less photogenic side of the revolution. But even these sections have an intriguing instability to them: people are always stopping to argue about the way forward for Chilean socialism. Disputes are not neatly resolved for the camera.

The film ends with a shot of the Chilean desert, as two workers wonder off-camera about the likely fate of the revolution. Barren dead-end or boundless opportunity - you can interpret the film's final verdict on the Allende period as you wish. Just don't expect the audience to leave the Conway Hall quietly tomorrow.

Power to the People

Movie: The Battle of Chile
Years: Part 1: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (1975); part 2: The Coup d'Etat (1976); part 3: The Power of the People (1979)
Director: Patricio Guzman

For Chileans, the date September 11 has the same tragic resonance as it does for us in the United States. It was on that date back in 1973 that the democratically elected Marxist president of the country, Salvador Allende, was killed when a military coup (backed by the red-fearing U.S. government) storm La Moneda palace in Santiago and overthrew the government. This film, rarely seen in Chile and still something of a mystery in most of the world at large, chronicles Allende's death and the events that led up to it. It was a heady time in Chile and Guzman and his brave crew--who were often themselves on the front lines--do a superb job in chronicling the turbulent times. In fact, one cameramen, the Argentine Leonard Hendrickson, was killed filming a street skirmish between troops and protesters, capturing the face of his killer--a hard-assed military type--in the final flickering seconds of his life.

The film begins with in March of 1973. Citizens of all stripe are questioned as to their opinions on the upcoming election. Allende--having been elected fair and square--has already been in office two years by this point and has been trying to reorganize Chilean society along democratic socialist lines.

The opposition, consisting of the right-wing Partido Nacional (National Party) and the more centrist Christian Democratic Party defined the elections as a plebiscite on Allende's government and are hoping to emerge with enough seats in Parliament to impeach the president. The opposition did indeed make strides but not enough. So therefore a change in strategy was needed--force--to unseat Allende.
Part 1 ends with a failed coup attempt from June, 1973. At this point, the military wasn't entirely on board with the idea that it should be the one to overthrow Allende. The death of Hendrickson is incredible--both for the cold-bloodedness on the part of the military man who kills him and for Hendrickson's unflinching devotion to his duty as a filmmaker. How could he stand in the line of fire like that, possibly (probably?) knowing what the consequences were? Bravery and courage somehow seem like insufficient words to describe Hendrickson's act. And it was important too in the sense that it foreshadowed much of what was to come in Chile as the military gained more and more power and bloodlust.

The second part picks up at that point, and is equally gripping. One of the highlights is a debate between General Carlos Prats and Jose Toha, the Minister of Defense (both of whom were murdered by the military following the events of Sept. 11.) about how to proceed. It is a fascinating exchange--how often are we allowed to see the inner workings of a government, any government, at the highest levels?--and is another of the many examples of stupendous work by Guzman and his crew. Really, it can't be stressed enough the dedication they showed to seeing their project through. They were seemingly at every rally, every protest and every government meeting.

The key question in part 2, though, is this: Knowing, as many people then did (at least theoretically) that the opposition and the U.S. government were planning a coup, what was to be done? The film accurately presents the debate that existed within the left. Should it accelerate the process and prepare for an armed confrontation or, alternatively, should it attempt to build an alliance with the PDC and prevent it from siding completely with the right? The filmmakers' sympathies for the former option are clear.

In interviews with individuals and through footage of the mass, pro-government demonstrations that punctuated the months prior to the coup, the filmmakers convey the impression that the majority of base level supporters wanted a mano dura (firm hand) against the "momias" (literally the mummies or the bourgeoisie, the dead and dying class). As they march the people chant "crear, crear, milicia popular" (create, create, a People's Militia). In interview after interview, workers question the government's timidity and make it clear that they want weapons to defend themselves.

A second theme of this and the other two sections is poder popular (popular power). In the industrialized sections of Santiago workers took over their factories and set up "cordones industriales," organizations which united workers in the same industrial belts, specifically Los Cerillos, Vicuna Mackenna, and Puente Alto. The "cordones industriales" were both an expression of workers taking control of their work situation and a means to defend themselves against attacks from the opposition. The workers' initiative and development of the cordones industriales led some party and government officials to ask whether or not the workers were forming parallel organizations, a possibility that much of the government and CUT (Central Unica de Trabajadores, the Central Workers Union which grouped together the unions supportive of the government), disagreed with.

In one memorable scene, a CUT official meets with workers to discuss the issue of the workers taking over their factories and initiating the cordones industriales. One worker challenges the CUT official's disapproval of the workers' actions by asking, "Don't you have faith in popular power? Doesn't the president have faith in the organizations we create?"

In one particularly powerful scene, we witness the memorial service for commander Araya Peters, Allende's naval aide-de-camp, whom the right most likely murdered. As the camera pans the faces of the top military officials gathered for the service, a dirge plays. The film clearly conveys that we are watching the death of the Popular Unity government, not just that of one loyal military officer. Part 2 concludes with Allende's final speech, the bombing of La Moneda, the presidential palace, and the Junta's declaration upon seizing power.”

Part 3 changes the pace in a sudden and interesting way. The first two parts followed the events leading up to the coup chronologically; in the third section, Guzman--who was in this point in exile in Sweden having spent time interred at infamous concentration camp set up at the Estadio Nacional--instead chooses to honor the achievement of Allende’s government by backtracking in time and documenting in greater detail the mechanics of popular power within. This is the shortest and in my opinion weakest of the three sections, but only because the immediacy and potency of the first two sections is so overwhelming.

In her famous review in the New Yorker, the legendary Pauline Kael makes an interesting point about "Battle:" "How could a team of five - some with no previous film experience - working with ... one Éclair camera, one Nagra sound recorder, two vehicles ... and a package of black-and-white film stock sent to them by the French documentarian Chris Marker produce a work of this magnitude? The answer has to be partly, at least; through Marxist discipline..The young Chilean director and his associates had a sense of purpose. The twenty hours of footage they shot had to be smuggled out of the country ... the cameraman, Jorge Muller, hasn't been heard of since his imprisonment. The others fled separately, assembled in Cuba, and together with a well known Chilean film editor Pedro Chaskel, ... worked on the movie ... Aesthetically, this is a major film, and that gives force even to the patterning of its charges ... It needs to be seen on public television, with those (U.S.) government officials who formed policy toward Allende explaining what interests they believed they were furthering."

I agree; it is impossible to view this film without reflecting on the dedication and courage of the filmmakers. We hear of those who "sacrifice for their art," but what does this really mean? Does it mean putting your neck on the line or does it mean a few less nights out because funds are low? Whose side are you on? For Guzman it's simple, in every frame, with each magnificent shot, he strives to bring Allende's persona and the dedication of the people, the workers and the "good guys" in the government to the fore. As a chant heard throughout the movie says: Allende, Allende, el pueblo se defiende! (Allende, Allende, the people will defend you).

A better political documentary you will never see. Honest, brave, passionate filmmaking that would be very hard to surpass in these self-indulgent times.

Want to talk about "The Battle of Chile?" Leave a comment.

Long distance runaround

Movie: Run Fat Boy Run
Year: 2007
Director: David Schwimmer

I approached this movie a little hesitantly because it doesn't fit in snugly with my "I'm more obscure than you" view of the arts. I mean, look at the director--you can't get anymore mainstream than one of the "Friends." Nevertheless, I felt compelled to watch it because I too, am a fat boy.

As a child, a wore the "Husky Plus" sizes from Sears. In my teens, I grew out of it but by the time I got to college I had porked up again. Living alone in a strange city with a grocery store literally 50 feet from your apartment will do that for you. In my adult life I've weighed anywhere from 330 (an estimate because my scale only went up to 320) and 170 pounds. It is a constant battle and something I will always have to be mindful of. I can literally go from fit to fat in the course of a day. I have also been a runner. In fact there was a time not so long ago when I was hammering out 20-30 miles per week, just for the exercise (I was not training for anything.) I'll always remember the bemused expression of the security guard who worked at my building went I went out for my nightly torture sessions. Rain, sleet, snow, freezing cold--you name it and I was there and he would always shake his head and chuckle at my dedication/stupidity. Like the non-running characters in the movie, I often asked "why?" Like I said, I wasn't training for anything so why throw perfectly good free time after work? I didn't truly WANT to do it--I never enjoyed it much and I never really got any better at it. Who knows--maybe it was some sort of penance for my earlier heavy days? Punishment? Whatever the reason, I can certainly relate to the characters in this movie who ask why but still try.

The main character of the movie is Dennis (Simon Pegg in a really funny role). The movie starts five years in the past--in a huge upset, Dennis is engaged to marry Libby (Thandie Newton), who is already pregnant. Something gets to Dennis on his wedding day (fear of commitment, fear of failure, lack of confidence, all of the above) and he takes off like Usain Bolt leaving his fiancee at the altar. Flash ahead to the future, Dennis is a lowly security guard at a Victoria's Secret-type store. He's going nowhere fast in life but has one redeeming quality--he's a kind and caring, albeit somewhat irresponsible, dad. Libby has a new man in her life, corporate hot-shot Whit (Hank Azaria). Whit is everything that Dennis isn't--successful and wealthy but also arrogant and condescending. When it becomes apparent that he's losing Libby for good, Dennis hits upon a half-baked plan to win her over--he'll run and complete the same marathon that Whit is training for. Of course complicating this fact is that Dennis is, as he says, "unfit."

With the aid of his best mate Gordon (Dylan Moran) and neighbor Mr. Goshdashtidar (Harish Patel), Dennis sets about training for the race of his life. Both Gordon and Mr. G. have a vested interest in Dennis' success and their scenes together are the funniest and also most moving of the movie. There's really no suspense here--if you can't see where this one is going then you've probably seen even fewer movies than I have. But that's fine, the ride is really enjoyable, the characters are warm and likable (except for the obnoxious Whit) and it's all good clean fun.

Want to discuss "Run Fat Boy Run?" Leave a comment.

Cool Hand Look: An analysis

Here's a thorough analysis of "Cool Hand Luke" by Tim Dirks of Filmsite.org.

"Cool Hand Luke" (1967) is the moving character study of a non-conformist, anti-hero loner who bullheadedly resists authority and the Establishment. One of the film's posters carried a tagline related to the character's rebelliousness: "The man...and the motion picture that simply do not conform." With this vivid film, director Stuart Rosenberg made one of the key films of the 1960s, a decade in which protest against established powers was a key theme. One line of the film's dialogue from Strother Martin is often quoted: "What we've got here is...failure to communicate."

This superb, crowd-pleasing film was based upon a screenplay co-authored by ex-convict Donn Pearce (and Frank R. Pierson), from Pearce's own novel of the same name. The main character Luke (played by Paul Newman) was inspired by real-life convicted safecracker Donald Graham Garrison. Telly Savalas was originally considered for the role, and Bette Davis was also considered for the part of Luke's mother.

The chain-gang prison film (e.g., I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) has a long history in American films, and this one also provided entertaining performances, especially with Paul Newman in one of his best roles as masochistic Luke, after playing similar anti-heroes in The Hustler (1961) and Hud (1963). Other stars who played convicts in the chain gang in smaller roles included Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton, Ralph Waite, Wayne Rogers, Joe Don Baker, and Anthony Zerbe.

Rich religious symbolism, references and imagery are deeply embedded within the narrative, with some critics arguing that Luke represents a modern-day, messianic Christ figure who ministers to a group of disciples and refuses to give up under oppression. The film's theme - of an outsider-protagonist who transforms the occupants of a Southern chain gang institution and tragically sacrifices himself at the end - resembles the anti-hero character in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Actor (Paul Newman, who lost to Rod Steiger in In the Heat of the Night (1967), Best Supporting Actor (George Kennedy in a break-out role), Best Adapted Screenplay (Donn Pearce and Frank R. Pierson), and Best Original Music Score (Lalo Schifrin) and won only for Best Supporting Actor.

In the opening scene, set in the South in 1948 [the film was shot on location in Stockton, California], Lucas "Luke" Jackson (Paul Newman) is arrested for the minor offenses of being drunk and destroying two long rows of parking meters in a defiant act of rebellion. As he lazily cuts off the heads of the meters with a pipe cutter, the red, two-hour time limit VIOLATION warning pops up, foreshadowing his own imminent arrest. Luke is detached toward police when they arrive at the scene and arrest him for social defiance - under a streetlight's glare, he laughs at them with a big grin. The next scene, playing under the credits, is of the typical, grueling road work forced upon prisoners - an imprisonment which reflects the authentic horrors of life on a chain gang in a Southern prison.

The vehicle bringing Luke and three other prisoners to a correctional Southern prison is reflected in the mirror-lens sunglasses of one of the guards. In a lineup in front of the main prison guard, the authoritarian Captain (Strother Martin), the new inmates are taught obedience: "You call the Captain 'Captain'...and you call the rest of us 'Boss', you hear?" [The scene has been compared to Christ's appearance before Pontius Pilate.] Luke is there for "maliciously destroyin' municipal property while under the influence." The soft-voiced Captain is astonished at the uniqueness of Luke's irreverent crime: "We ain't never had one of them before." Luke describes his own feelings about destroying bureaucratic, regulatory property: "I guess you could say I wasn't thinkin', Captain." Although he performed well in the war, a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a couple of Purple Hearts, and attained the rank of Sergeant, he "come out the same way" he went in: "Buck Private." Ultimately alienated, Luke had often fought the system - and lost: "I was just passin' time, Captain."

The reticent loner is given a two year sentence to work on a chain gang (Division of Corrections, Road Prison 36) with forty-nine other prisoners. He is instructed in the preliminary line-up:

You gonna fit in real good, of course, unless you get rabbit in your blood and you decide to take off for home. You give the bonus system time and a set of leg chains to keep you slowed down just a little bit, for your own good, you'll learn the rules. Now, it's all up to you. Now I can be a good guy, or I can be one real mean son-of-a-bitch. It's all up to you.

Luke is placed in an isolated environment with strict rules, guards, and regimentation and his fiercely individualistic spirit immediately clashes.

In the bunk house, a litany of rules are delivered by a strutting, cigar-chomping, broad-waisted, white-uniformed guard-floor walker named Carr (Clifton James). Each infraction is rewarded with "a night in the box":

Them clothes got laundry numbers on 'em. You remember your number and always wear the ones that has your number. Any man forgets his number spends the night in the box. These here spoons, you keep with ya. Any man loses his spoon spends a night in the box. There's no playin' grab-ass or fightin' in the building. You got a grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any man playin' grab-ass or fightin' in the building spends a night in the box. First bell is at five minutes of eight...Last bell is at eight. Any man not in his bunk at eight spends a night in the box. There's no smokin' in the prone position in bed. If you smoke, you must have both legs over the side of your bunk. Any man caught smokin' in the prone position in bed spends the night in the box. You'll get two sheets. Every Saturday, you put the clean sheet on the top and the top sheet on the bottom. The bottom sheet you turn into the laundry boy. Any man turns in the wrong sheet spends a night in the box. No one will sit in the bunks with dirty pants on. Any man with dirty pants on sittin' on the bunks spends a night in the box. Any man don't bring back his empty pop bottle spends a night in the box. Any man loud-talkin' spends a night in the box. You got questions, you come to me...Any man don't keep order spends a night in the box.

Carr immediately senses Luke's cool contempt: "I hope you ain't gonna be a hard case." Hulking boss convict Dragline (George Kennedy) bullies one of the new convicts with his own top-dog attitude: "Boy, you're new meat. You're gonna have to shape up fast and hard for this gang. We got rules here. In order to learn 'em, you gotta do more work with your ears than with your mouth." Luke soon draws the attention of Dragline and is eyed suspiciously as a con-artist - he is treated as a hostile, spirited and flippant outsider. The newcomer is advised: "You don't have a name here until Dragline gives you one." As the acknowledged leader of the gang, Dragline has a preliminary name for Luke and they have their first sparring:

Dragline: (About Luke) Maybe we ought to call it No Ears. (To Luke) You don't listen much, do ya, boy?
Luke: I ain't heard that much worth listenin' to. There's a lot of guys layin' down a lot of rules and regulations.

At dawn, the shackled men quickly assemble to be driven to work. During the drive in the van, Dragline continues to belittle Luke, the "war hero," about his crime:

Dragline: Tearin' the heads off of, what was it, gumball machines? What kind of thing is that of a grown man?
Luke: Well, you know how it is. Small town. Not much to do in Eaton. Mostly was just settlin' an old score.

In the searing hot sun, the road-gang convicts endure back-breaking physical labor - chopping dusty weeds by the side of the highway. The men must ask permission, e.g., "Takin' it off, boss," when they want to do something out of the ordinary, such as remove articles of clothing in the heat. They are closely eyed by one of the impassive, impersonal yet sadistic guards - the 'man with no eyes' Boss Godfrey (Morgan Woodward) - a nameless boss with reflective sunglasses who never speaks. Their main mid-day meal is a pile of beans and a slab of cornbread. Even Luke's eating habits are distinctively non-conformist - he takes a bite and leaves the spoon sticking out of his mouth.

One of the new inmates, Gibson complains about his job assignment (after being promised to switch to an easier job in a set-up) - he is given "a chance to think about it" with an overnight stay in the box - "a very valuable lesson." Dragline disavows responsibility for the cruel joke, but Luke is tersely sarcastic:

Dragline: He ain't in the box because of the joke played on him. He back-sassed a free man. They got their rules. We ain't got nothin' to do with that. Would probably have happened to him sooner or later anyway - a complainer like him. He gotta learn the rules the same as anybody else.
Luke: Yeah, them poor old Bosses need all the help they can get.
Dragline: You tryin' to say somethin'? You got a flappin' mouth. (His words are drowned out by the last bell). One of these days, I'm gonna have to flap me up some dust with it.

Carr accounts for all of the 50 prisoners after the last bell: "Forty-nine, one in the box, Boss."

One day while the men are digging a ditch in the scorching sun, a blonde-haired, shapely and sexy young woman (Joy Harmon) in a neighboring house prepares to wash her car, sending the men into a voyeuristic frenzy. She brings out a radio and turns it on, signalling the beginning of her sexual act. One of the convicts asks permission to clean his glasses: "Wipin' off here, boss." As she opens up the nozzle on her watering hose, a particularly-apt phallic symbol, the men perk up and attentively spy "the scenery." One of the prisoners can't endure the lustful suffering she is creating: "Oh man, oh man, I'm dyin'." One man can't endure the lustful suffering she creates: "Oh man, oh man, I'm dyin'." The woman wets down the car and then lathers and caresses white, frothy soap suds over the car's surfaces. She tempts and stimulates the men even further in the symbolic simulation of the sex act. She looks into the car's rear view mirror and into one of the tire's shiny hubcaps to look back to see how the men are being pleasured.

Her loose-fitting blouse with well-endowed breasts begins to open up and taunt them. Gambler (Wayne Rogers) observes: "She ain't got nothin' but, nothin' but one safety pin holdin' that thing on. Come on safety pin, POP. Come on baby, POP." The men dig more vigorously as she heightens her own cleansing activity. Dragline prays to the heavens to sustain his eyesight just a little longer for the girl he names Lucille: "Hey Lord, whatever I done, don't strike me blind for another couple of minutes. My Lucille!...That's Lucille, you mother-head. Anything so innocent and built like that just gotta be named Lucille." Knowing that she has a ripe and attentive audience, the blonde rubs the car harder and harder. In the most blatantly sexual act of all - the orgasmic conclusion to her show - she squeezes the white foam out of her sponge and rubs the soap suds across her abdomen. Luke (Paul Newman) knows what she is doing:

Convict: She don't know what she's doin'.
Luke: Oh boy, she knows exactly what she's doin'. She's drivin' us crazy and lovin' every minute of it.
Dragline: Shut your mouth about my Lucille.

She gently drinks from the end of the penis-shaped hose. While washing the roof of the car, her soaped-up, ample breasts are squeezed as they rub back and forth across the car's window.

Later that evening while the men take a communal shower, their frustrated and already-heightened sexual-aggressive tendencies flare up. In the hot-house barracks as the men lie in their bunks, they sweat profusely. Dragline remembers the afternoon's entertainment and fantasizes while frustrating the other prison-mates: "Did you see how she was just about POP-in' out of the top of that dress...And down below, man, that thing didn't reach no higher than...She liable to catch cold runnin' around like that. It was stretched so tight across her bottom, I do believe I saw one of them seams bust loose. And the openin' got wider and wider and wider." Luke brings him back to reality, causing Dragline to take a particular disliking toward him:

Luke: Forget it, man.
Dragline: Whaddya mean, forget it?
Luke: Stop beatin' it into the ground. It ain't doin' nobody no good.
Dragline: OK, new meat. You get some sleep. And save your strength, cause you're gonna need it. Tomorrow.

The ventilation fan in the bunkhouse spins and cuts to the next day's weekly boxing sparring, where Luke is challenged to a showdown - the weekly knock-down, drag-out boxing fight in front of the other men. Characteristic of his indomitable spirit, in the middle of a circle of convicts, Luke is severely bloodied and beaten by Dragline but won't stay down. The other convicts sensibly advise him to stop and survive the epic pounding: "Just stay down, Luke. He's just gonna knock ya down again, buddy...It's not your fault. He's just too big...Let him hit you in the nose and get some blood flowing. Maybe the bosses will stop it before he kills you." Mockingly, strong-willed Luke replies: "I don't want to frighten him."

Ignoring their suggestions, Luke taunts Dragline as he doggedly keeps fighting without surrendering. In the bloody fray, he takes the brutal punishment upon himself, suffering for their entertainment at first, and then taking the blows that could lead to his own death. Repelled by Luke's mindless, 'who-cares' attitude, Dragline eventually implores Luke to drop and quit so that he won't be killed:

Dragline: Stay down. You're beat.
Luke: You're gonna have to kill me.

By not submitting his spirit, Luke 'wins' the fight when his opponent walks away, although Dragline convincingly overpowers him physically. Luke's iron will earns the grudging respect of Dragline and other convicts.

He also proves himself a hero and endears himself to the inmates during a poker game. With a winning hand of 'nothin', easy-going, stone-faced Luke successfully bluffs his opponent. After winning the pot, Luke is anointed with his prison name:

Dragline (laughing): Nothin'. A handful of nothin'. (To the losing, card-playing convict) You stupid mullet-head. He [Luke] beat you with nothin'. Just like today when he kept comin' back at me - with nothin'.
Luke: Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real Cool Hand.

[Luke's dependence on "nothin'" and the many parallels between Luke and Jesus Christ recall the Biblical reference in Luke 1:37: "For with God, nothing shall be impossible." Luke's prisoner number was also 37.]

Dragline begins to establish a friendship, luxuriating in the reflective glory of Luke's exuberant victories. He develops a nickname for Luke - while sliding over near him: "Move over. I'm gonna sit in here next to my boy - Cool Hand Luke." The label signifies Luke's cool-headed, independent, individualistic spirit that won't submit to the powers that be.

Luke's sickly, dying mother Arletta (Jo Van Fleet) visits one Sunday afternoon to say goodbye, stiffly and painfully propped up in the bed of the pickup truck - it is presumably their last time together. Driven by her respectable son John, Sr. (John Pearce), she is chain-smoking a cigarette while coughing [with lung cancer or consumptive TB?]. Arletta still cares and expresses warm affection for her wayward yet favored son - but with guarded words. Although she is disappointed about how he turned out (and feeling guilty about her role as caregiver), Luke tells her that she'd done her best raising him as a single mother. In the tragic scene which implies much about her son's broken childhood and upbringing, the terminally-ill Arletta expresses regrets and resigns herself to "let go" of her independent-minded son who tried to live like she did - "free and above board." In the poignant conclusion to their conversation, she plans - after her death - to give her inheritance to her less-loved son John:

Arletta: I always hoped to see you well fixed. Have me a crop of grandkids to fuss around with.
Luke: I'd like to oblige you, Arletta, but uh, right off, I just don't know where to put my hands on it.
Arletta: You know, sometimes, I wished people was like dogs, Luke. Comes a time, a day like, when the bitch just don't recognize the pups no more, so she don't have no hopes nor love to give her pain. She just don't give a damn...(She hands him the pack of cigarettes)
Luke: You've done your best, Arletta. What I've done - myself is the only problem.
Arletta: No, no it ain't Luke. You ain't alone. Everywhere you go, I'm with you. John too.
Luke: You never thought maybe that's a heavy load?
Arletta: Aw, why, we, we always thought you was strong enough to carry it. Was we wrong?
Luke: I don't know. There are things just never the way they seem, Arletta. You know that. A man's gotta go his own way.
Arletta: I guess I just gotta, gotta love you and let go, hmm?
Luke: I guess.
Arletta: Well, I ain't askin' what ya gonna do when you get out because I'll be dead and it don't matter.
Luke: You never did want to live forever. I mean, it wasn't such a hell of a life.
Arletta: Oh, I had me, I had me some high old times. Your old man, Luke. He wasn't much good for stickin' around, but dammit, he made me laugh.
Luke: Yeah, I would have liked to have knowed him, the way you talk about him.
Arletta: (after coughing) He'd have broke you up. Luke?...What went wrong?
Luke: Nothin', everything's cool as can be. Arletta, I tried. I mean, to live always free and above board like you. And, I don't know. I just can't seem to find no elbow room.
Arletta: (takes his hand) Oh now, you always had good jobs. And that girl in Kentucky. Oh, I'd taken a shine to her.
Luke: And she sure took off - with that convertible fella.
Arletta: Well, why not? Idea of marryin' got you all, all bollocksed-up. Tryin' to be respectable. You, you was borin' the hell out of all of us. I'm leavin' the place to John.
Luke: That's good. He earned it.
Arletta: Ain't nothin' to do with it. I just, I just never give John the, the kind of, you know, feelin' that I give you, so I'm, I'm gonna pay him back now. Oh, don't feel you have to say anythin'. The way it is, you see, sometimes you just, just have a feelin' for a child...with John, I just didn't.

As Luke is told his time is up for the visit, Arletta encourages him: "Laugh it up, kid. You'll, you'll make out." Luke's nephew John, Jr. (Eddie Rosson) asks why his uncle doesn't have chains, and Luke answers with experience:

John, Jr.: Why can't you have chains?
Luke: ...You know, them chains ain't medals. You get 'em for makin' mistakes. And you make a bad enough mistake and then you gotta deal with the man - and he is one rough old boy. OK?

John, Sr. presents his brother with his last remaining possession - a banjo: "Now there ain't nothin' to come back for." [The Tramp (Harry Dean Stanton) sings the religious song Just a Closer Walk With Thee on the front steps of the bunk house, accompanying himself by strumming a guitar.]

One of the detestable jobs the prisoners must perform is to shovel sandy dirt onto a newly-tarred country road that stretches out into the distance. It is hot, back-breaking work but rebellious Luke makes a frenzied challenge out of it, spurring the prisoners on to work faster and shovel harder. Dragline urges the men to follow Luke's lead: "Use that shovel like it was your spoon...shag it, mac.. Hah!" Boss Godfrey can't walk fast enough down the center of the road to keep up with their progress. Dragline discovers that their enforced labor is fun: "I don't know whether to smile, spit, or swallow." After Luke's sabotage of the system, the guards are embarrassed that the work is completed in record time and there is nothing left to do for the rest of the day. The scene fades out on a red STOP sign.

Dragline: Where'd the road go?
Luke: That's it. That's the end of it.
Convict: Man, there's still daylight.
Dragline: About two hours left.
Convict: What do we do now?
Luke: Nothin'.
Dragline: Oh Luke, you wild, beautiful thing. You crazy handful of nothin'.

As a prelude to the film's memorable, comic egg-eating contest scene, Dragline bets on his boy Luke: "He can eat busted bottles and rusty nails, any damned thing." Luke boldly wagers that he can eat fifty hard-boiled eggs in one hour. [The number 50 becomes significant - since there are 50 prisoners' souls and 50 eggs, Luke's ingesting of the eggs parallels Christ's taking upon himself the sins of the world and bringing about a rebirth. Eggs, the celebration of Easter, and the resurrection are symbolically tied together.] The men exuberantly bet against him, disbelieving that he can perform the miracle without throwing up: "Fifty eggs gotta weigh a good six pounds...A man's gut can't hold that. They'll swell up and bust him open....They're gonna kill him." Remarkably, Luke takes the challenge - it's raining and the activity will pass the time: "It be somethin' to do." After a period of preparatory training, stretching his stomach's skin to make room for the eggs ("What we gotta do is stretch that little ol' belly of yours. Get all this stuff out of the way. Them eggs are coming down!"), and eating speed tests, Luke is about ready. He sits on his top bunk with a towel draped over his head [another Christ image].

Dragline readies the crowd for the contest: "All right. Stand back you pedestrians, this ain't no automobile accident." As Luke's trainer, he peels the eggs before they are eaten, arguing that Luke doesn't have to peel his own eggs within the hour limit: "When it comes to the law, nothin' is understood...I'm his official egg-peeler. That's the law!" The big event begins with Luke's entrance, the removal of his shirt, and his kneeling down in front of the men who surround a table in front of him. One of the convicts observes how quickly Luke pops each egg in his mouth: "He's gonna lose a finger eatin' eggs like that." After 32 eggs, Luke's bloated stomach bows out: "Just like a ripe watermelon that's about to bust itself open." Some of the men bet against him as Luke anoints his forehead with water. Dragline, with Luke in cahoots with him, encourages everyone to wager everything against Luke: "I wanna hear from some big money men. Where's all the high rollers?" Society Red (J.D. Cannon) replies that everything has been bet: "I believe you've got it all, Dragline. Every cent in camp is riding."

As time is running out, and Luke approaches the elusive goal of 50 eggs, Dragline coaxes him on: "Just nine more between you and everlastin' glory...Just little ol' eggs. They pigeon eggs, that's all." The men mimic his chewing action. Up until the last second, it is uncertain whether he has swallowed the last egg. After his winning victory, Luke is laid out on a table strewn with egg shells. The men quickly forget about him and abandon him after using him for their own amusement. Luke is left alone - from an overhead shot, his arms are outstretched, his legs are crossed at the ankle, his eyes are closed, and his head is tilted toward the left - [a symbolic Christ-like crucifixion pose]. An enigmatic grin crosses his face.

When a poisonous rattlesnake in the thick grass along a country road threatens the men as they chop weeds in a ditch, Luke boldly grabs for it and holds it up. The 'man with no eyes' shoots the head off the rattler with one shot from a shotgun. Luke reflects back the boss' expertise in his dark sunglasses: "Man, you sure can shoot." A booming thunderstorm breaks open the skies above the men. While the convicts are permitted to scamper to the truck for cover from the rain, Luke looks up and gestures toward the heavens. In a conversation with God, he challenges God's power over nature and his own life, but he concludes that God's existence is questionable:

Luke: Let him go. Bam, Bam.
Dragline: Knock it off, Luke. You can't talk about Him that way.
Luke: Are you still believin' in that big bearded Boss up there? You think he's watchin' us?
Dragline: Get in here. Ain't ya scared? Ain't ya scared of dyin'?
Luke: Dyin'? Boy, he can have this little life any time he wants to. Do ya hear that? Are ya hearin' it? Come on. You're welcome to it, ol' timer. Let me know you're up there. Come on. Love me, hate me, kill me, anything. Just let me know it. (He looks around) I'm just standin' in the rain talkin' to myself.

Dragline pays off the bets following the egg-eating contest and he brags about Luke, his deceptively cool, witty performer: "That's my darlin' Luke. He grin like a baby, but he bites like a gater." When Luke receives notice in a telegram that his mother has died, he is given space by the inmates to pay his last respects to her in the privacy and quiet of his cell bunk. He strums on a banjo and sings a requiem for her - it's a parody of a raunchy pop-gospel tune "Plastic Jesus," a song that is about finding temporary solace with a plastic Virgin Mary:

Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, sittin' on the dashboard of my car.
Comes in colors, pink and pleasant, glows in the dark cause it's irridescent
Take it with you when you travel far.
Get yourself a sweet Madonna, dressed in rhinestones sittin' on a pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I ain't scary [sic - 'wary'], 'cause I've got the Virgin Mary, assurin' me that I won't go to Hell.
Get yourself a sweet Madonna, dressed in rhinestones sittin' on a pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I ain't scary, 'cause I've got the Virgin Mary, assurin' me that I won't go to Hell.

Early the next morning, the Captain orders that Luke be put in the isolated, windowless prison "box" to keep him from getting "rabbit in his blood" and running to his mother's funeral to pay his last respects. As Luke is led to the cramped box, the guard is sympathetic and apologetic: "I wanna say a prayer for your Ma, Luke...Sorry, Luke. Just doin' my job. You gotta appreciate that." Luke reminds the man: "Aw, callin' it your job don't make it right, boss."

He is let out after his Ma is "in the ground" and advised: "You best forget about it, Luke. Got a day and a half lay in. Tomorrow's a holiday." That night, the men dance to loud radio music during the holiday - Luke can no longer endure confinement and rebels against the system. He saws a hole in the wooden floor of the bunkhouse. Between the first and second bell, his cohorts distract Carr with a trashy novel while Luke escapes - he's counted as missing: "one in the bush." The bloodhounds are given pieces of Luke's clothing for the scent. He eludes and confuses the dogs by wading through water, jumping fences, traversing land by wires, and criss-crossing. He is pursued into a railyard and down train tracks, but escapes by jumping off a train trestle into water.

Dog Boy (Anthony Zerbe), one of the prisoners who religiously tended the bloodhounds, reluctantly returns to camp without his prey, but with a dead bloodhound in the trunk of the Sheriff's car: "He run himself plum to death." But soon, Luke is quickly captured and returned to the road gang. To make an object lesson of the runaway, the Captain of the prison is determined to admonish and break Luke 'for his own good' in front of the other men:

Captain: You're gonna get used to wearin' them chains after a while, Luke, but you'll never stop listenin' to them clinkin'. 'Cause they're gonna remind you of what I've been sayin' - for your own good.
Luke: (back-talking) I wish you'd stop bein' so good to me, Captain.
Captain: (enraged) Don't you ever talk that way to me. (He savagely lashes out at Luke with his stick.)

The Captain, who has now become the authoritarian object of Luke's rebellious will, foreshadows Luke's doomed future. He observes, in the film's most familiar line, that Luke demands more disciplinary rehabilitation:

What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach. So you get what we had here last week - which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you men.

The men idolize Luke's escape and congregate around him during a lunch break. They learn that he went a mile and a half and then stole a "shiny new buggy" (with keys in the ignition) in a supermarket parking lot. He was pulled over at a stoplight by an inquisitive cop wondering about his incongruous "state-issued" clothing: "That's top-flight police work. That's all there is to it. The fella's probably a lieutenant by now." Dragline advises Luke to 'lay low' for a while: "We're just gonna lay low and build time. Before you know it...everything will be right back where it was. Right, sweet buddy?" Luke eats with a piece of bread sticking out of his mouth - his non-conformist way of answering.

Almost immediately after his first running off, Luke escapes again from the chain gang while having "privacy" behind some bushy trees. To prove he's there in the bushes, he repeatedly calls out while shaking the branches: "Still shakin' it, boss, still shakin'. I'm shakin' it, boss." He tricks the guards by tying a string to a branch and tugging on it from a long distance away. After escaping, Luke speaks to two curious black boys (James Bradley Jr. and Cyril "Chips" Robinson) who ask about his leg-iron chains: "Whatcha got them on for?...How do ya take your pants off?" He dares one of the boys to be strong enough to heft and bring him a heavy axe. The other boy encourages him to take the incriminating stripes off his pants. With a few strokes, Luke chops off the leg irons, and he leaves a lot of "chili powder, pepper and curry" in the path of the bloodhounds on his trail.

After a few days, Dragline receives an issue of Outdoor Life magazine (sent from Atlanta) during mail delivery - inside is a black and white picture of a well-dressed Luke surrounded by two female bar companions [the opposite page has an article on hallucinations titled: "A THING CALLED EARLY BLUR," subtitled "The Illusion That Kills" with a hunter aiming a gun right at Luke's heart]. Society Red reads Luke's writing for the illiterate Dragline: "Dear Boys: Playin' it cool. Luke." Dragline envies his friend's freedom: "Look at that! My baby. We're in here diggin' and dyin'. He's out there livin' and flyin'." Later, he calls the picture: "a true vision of Paradise itself with two of the angels right there prancin' around with my boy."

To their surprise, the inmates turn and see a recaptured Luke dragged back into the bunkhouse - after a second failed runaway attempt. The Captain threatens the lost soul on the floor:

You run one time, you got yourself a set of chains. You run twice, you got yourself two sets. You ain't gonna need no third set 'cause you're gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT. (To the other inmates) Take a good look at Luke. Cool Hand Luke?

The inmates haul Luke's broken and beaten body over to a table and while gathered around him, they glowingly admire and idolize him for his daring escape and dalliance with two women: "You really can pick 'em, Luke...Come on, tell us, what were they like?" Luke tells them the truth, shattering their illusions about his adventure and good times: "The picture's a phony. Cost me a week's pay...The picture's a phony. I had it made up for you guys...Nothin'. I made nothin', had nothin'. A couple of towns, a couple of bosses. I laughed outloud once, they turned me in." He yells at their dumb ignorance, praise, and their insistence that the picture is real:

Oh come on! Stop beatin' it! Get out there yourself. Stop feedin' off me. Get out of here. I can't breathe. Give me some air.

On the road gang the next day, Boss Paul (Luke Askew), one of the guards mistreats Luke, kicking him for his indolence and weakness. At night, he is isolated in the box, and Dragline still boasts about his companion: "That old box would collapse and fall apart before Luke calls it quits." Society Red qualifies Luke's qualities - he has more nerve than brains: "Your Luke's got more guts than brains."

Luke's battered and tired spirit are put to the test when he is given a full plate of rice for dinner - an amount that would be impossible for him to eat by himself. The other inmates take spoonful portions of his food so that he doesn't break the rule: "You gotta clean your plate or go back in the box." [It is an apt metaphor for the way the inmates have vicariously taken pieces of him and fed off him.]

After a full week of work, Luke is humiliated and tormented by being forced to submit to the authority of Boss Paul. To systematically break his spirit in front of the other prisoners, he is ordered to dig a "graveyard-shaped" ditch on the prison grounds. When he has completed the grueling task of emptying the Boss' ditch, he is told to fill it back up again - and then after it's filled to re-empty it again! The men sing "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down" in full view of his tortured, groveling humiliation.

To symbolize his own death and the genuine end of his ferocious individuality and defiance, the guard slashes Luke across the head at the end of one end of the ditch, and he is tossed backwards into the open "coffin." Broken and tired, he begs the bosses to accept his cracked will and tarnished pride:

Luke: Don't hit me anymore...Oh God, I pray to God you don't hit me anymore. I'll do anything you say, but I can't take anymore.
Boss Paul: You got your mind right, Luke?
Luke: Yeah. I got it right. I got it right, boss. (He grips the ankles of the guard)
Boss Paul: Suppose you's back-slide on us?
Luke: Oh no I won't. I won't, boss.
Boss Paul: Suppose you's to back-sass?
Luke: No I won't. I won't. I got my mind right.
Boss Paul: You try to run again, we gonna kill ya.
Luke: I won't, I won't, boss.

When Luke returns to his bunk house, the men begin to abandon and turn away from him - one of them rips his phony picture into four pieces now that he is no longer their hero. After confessing to them, "I got my mind right," the prisoners contemptuously ignore him and refuse to help him - and he cries out at their betrayal: "Where are ya? Where are ya now?"

On the chain gang, Luke is forced to slavishly run errands for the guards and to become the water-carrier for the other prisoners. When he fetches a large turtle shot by the boss with no eyes, Luke pulls up the jaw-clenching beast: "Here he is boss. Deader than hell but won't let go." Playing the beaten fool, an instant later, Luke regains his rebellious nature and drives off in one of the boss' dump trucks - with Dragline hopping on the running board. He craftily stole the keys out of all the trucks so that pursuit is delayed.

Dragline admires Luke's bravado and remembers how Luke 'fooled' them about being broken. Without embellishment or heroic pride, Luke accepts and admits that he was broken:

Dragline: You're an original, that's what you are. Them mullet-heads didn't even know you was foolin'.
Luke: Foolin' 'em, huh? You can't fool 'em about somethin' like that. They broke me...
Dragline: Aw. All that time, you was plannin' on runnin' again.
Luke: I never planned anything in my life.

A fugitive one more time, Luke has decided to lay low, remain on his own, and not join Dragline for worldly pursuits: "I've done enough world-shakin' for a while. You do the rest of it for me. Send me a postcard about it." As Luke wanders toward an abandoned country church to take refuge, Dragline calls out: "You're a good ol' boy, Luke. You take care. You hear?"

In a memorable scene as Luke sits on one of the plain wooden pews, he delivers a rambling monologue and repeatedly talks to God and asks for guidance and an answer, occasionally looking up toward the empty rafters - his entreaties are met with silence:

Anybody here? Hey, Ol' Man, You home tonight? Can you spare a minute? It's about time we had a little talk. I know I'm a pretty evil fella. Killed people in the war and got drunk and chewed up municipal property and the like. I know I got no call to ask for much but even so, you gotta admit, you ain't dealt me no cards in a long time. It's beginnin' to look like you got things fixed so I can't never win out. Inside, outside, all 'em rules and regulations and bosses. You made me like I am. Just where am I supposed to fit in? Ol' Man, I gotta tell ya. I started out pretty strong and fast. But it's beginnin' to get to me. When does it end? What do ya got in mind for me? What do I do now? All right. All right. (He kneels on his knees and cups his hands in prayer.) On my knees, askin'. (pause) Yeah, that's what I thought. I guess I'm pretty tough to deal with, huh? A hard case. I guess I gotta find my own way.

A few police cars drive up in front of the church. Dragline calls out to his friend from the church door: "Luke?" Luke looks up and addresses an aside to God: "That's your answer ol' Man? I guess you're a hard case too."

They are cornered and Dragline [like Judas the Betrayer], in exchange for a promise of clemency, reveals where Luke has been hiding - in the church:

Luke? You all right? They got us, boy. They're out there, thicker than flies. Bosses, dogs, sheriffs, more guns than I've ever seen in my life. You ain't got a chance. They caught up with me right after we split up. And they was aimin' to kill ya. But I fixed it. I got 'em to promise if you give up peaceful, they won't whip ya this time...Luke, you gotta listen to me. All ya got to do is give up nice and quiet. Just play cool.

Luke opens up one of the church windows and looks out on the Captain and other sheriffs in an eerie red light reflected from the cherry-tops. Ultimately unbroken and with a cocky, assured but cool smile, he mocks the Captain with the famous film line:

What we've got here is a failure to communicate.

He is tragically shot in the throat and silenced forever by the crack-shooting Boss with no eyes. Dragline supports and carries his mortally-wounded friend to the vengeful bosses, and then hysterically charges toward the killer - he grabs at the man's throat with an iron grip. The reflective glasses that have never left the boss's face topple to the ground. Weakened and sliding in mud, the boss gropes for his glasses. As Luke is put in a vehicle and taken to his sure death at the prison hispital, Dragline encourages him: "You hang on in there Luke. You hang on. There's gonna be some world-shakin' Luke. We gonna send you a postcard." Flooded by a reddish glow, Luke dies in the back seat of the boss' car - his face wears the familiar grin - a sign of the victory of his spirit over death. The tires of the vehicle smash and grind the sunglasses into the mud. In the distance as the car drives away, a stoplight turns from green to red - his spirit leaves his body.

In a final montage sequence, Dragline favorably remembers and resurrects his martyred hero while telling the story of his death to his convict-compatriots outside the church during a work break in the chain gang. Images of Luke's legendary, unbreakable smile from scenes in the film are flashed back on the screen:

Dragline: They took him right down that road.
Convict(s): What'd he look like, Drag?...Yeah, what'd he look like?..He had his eyes opened or closed, Drag?
Dragline: He was smiling...That's right. You know, that, that Luke smile of his. He had it on his face right to the very end. Hell, if they didn't know it 'fore, they could tell right then that they weren't a-gonna beat him. That old Luke smile. Old Luke, he was some boy. Cool Hand Luke. Hell, he's a natural-born world-shaker.

The camera pulls back from Dragline, now in leg-iron chains himself, chopping weeds at a cross-roads - a crucifix symbol. Luke's picture (torn cross-wise) is superimposed on the cross-roads where the chain gang works.