Viennale 2015: Singularities of a Festival: SEIDE

2. November 2015 • Patrick Holzapfel • Festivals, Festivals 2015, Texte, Viennale 2015

Notizen zur Viennale 2015 in einem Rausch, der keine Zeit lässt, aber nach Zeit schreit. Ioana Florescu und Patrick Holzapfel gehen in die letzte Woche mit dem Gefühl ihrer eigenen Animalität und der immerwährenden Bewegung des Festivals, das mehr und mehr einer fernen Insel gleicht, die nichts und doch alles mit dem alltäglichen Leben zu tun hat. Dabei kann es nicht um einzelne Filme gehen, obwohl diese bereits ein ganzes Leben in sich tragen können, sondern es muss um die Wahrnehmung als solche gehen.

Mehr von uns zur Viennale

Ioana

Filme, nach denen man sagen kann, dass man die Textur von Dingen so stark spürt, dass es sich so anfühlt, als hätte man die Dinge berührt, gibt es bestimmt viele, aber bei The Assassin werden die Sinne so wach, dass man sogar das spüren kann, was nicht spürbar ist. Ist habe das Geräusch von unbewegter Seide gehört. Ich bin erschrocken von der perfekten Schönheit. (Hier die Besprechung von Patrick)

Es ist mir sehr unangenehm Menschen im Kino darauf aufmerksam zu machen, dass sie ruhig sein müssen. Bei The Assassin habe ich es so lange vermieden, dass ich es sich so sehr aufgestaut hat, bis ich letztendlich geschrieen habe, statt es zu sagen. Das Pärchen hat erst gelacht, als wäre ich verrückt, aber dann haben die zwei bis der Film aus war (es ist kein Film, der aus ist), nicht mehr gesprochen und nicht mehr ihre Newsfeeds gecheckt. Nach dem Film haben sie mir gesagt, dass ich dafür ungeeignet bin, Filme im Kino zu sehen (wo man natürlich sprechen, Handys verwenden und Bier verschütten darf…der Vorspann gehört nicht zum Film; wer will den ganzen Text über das 9. Jahrhundert lesen? ) und dass ich alles zu Hause auf DVD anschauen sollte, wenn ich so asozial bin. Ich habe mich dafür geschämt, dass ich etwas gesagt habe und mich dann dafür geschämt, dass ich mich geschämt habe.

Dieser Rauch, der Menschen die Kraft wegraubt. Meine Sinne waren durcheinander.

Francofonia – und Hitler bewundert eine Gerade.

Patrick

Wo ist der Louvre?

Du hast mir ein Buch mit Kurzgeschichten von Julio Cortázar geschenkt. Darin finde ich die Geburt von L’aquarium et la nation von Jean-Marie Straub und jene von Visita ou memórias e confissões von Manoel De Oliveira. Zunächst eine Geschichte über ein Aquarium, in dem man sich selbst findet (in der Obsession eines Deliriums, in das man nicht schneiden darf, in den Grenzen, die vielleicht nur durch den Bildausschnitt existieren) und dann wie bei De Oliveira in einem Haus als Träger der Zeit. Es ist berührend, wenn man diese Texte in den Filmen sieht und diese Filme in den Texten.

Eine Sache, die mir auf der Viennale besonders imponiert, ist die Tendenz der Filme hier zu Zeigen statt zu Erzählen. Selbst wenn es große Unterschiede und Filme aus allerhand Genres gibt, zeigen die Filme in 90% der Fälle etwas.

Ich trage auch eine Maske. Sie ist ein weißes Tuch in der Luft, in der man Blut atmet. Wenn ich huste, entzündet sich ein Feuerzeug. Eine Leinwand kippt in meinem Wind und sie wölbt die leidenden Gesichter bis sie reißen. Jemand ruft nach der Sinnlosigkeit der Dinge, die uns im zeitgenössischen Kino umgeben. Ich trage nur eine Maske. Wer erzählt nicht von seinem Film?

Das Tier, das ich also bin.

Wieder Doppelgänger: Nach Pierre Léon und seinem Deux Rémi, deux ging es in The Mad Fox von Uchida Tomu wieder um die unheimliche Kraft der Verwechslung. Dabei verwandelt nicht die Kamera, sondern man verwandelt sich vor der Kamera.

Viennale 2015: Singularities of a Festival: NEONRÖHREN

31. Oktober 2015 • Patrick Holzapfel • Festivals, Festivals 2015, Viennale 2015

Notizen zur Viennale 2015 in einem Rausch, der keine Zeit lässt, aber nach Zeit schreit. Ioana Florescu und Patrick Holzapfel sind am neunten Tag des Festivals endgültig im Traumdelirium angekommen, weil die Filme es ihnen gleichtun. Es herrscht eine Beruhigung bezüglich der Verunsicherung durch Bilder, als wolle man 24 Bilder jede Sekunde sehen, die es nicht gibt.

Patrick

Zu Joe/Cemetery of Splendour: Für mich ging es sehr stark um diesen Moment vor dem Einschlafen, der gleich dem Moment des Aufwachens ist und das ganze gilt auch für das Sterben und die Geburt. Diese Ebenen waren ineinander verschlungen, ebenso natürlich Traum und Realität. Ich wusste nicht, ob diese Träume eine Flucht waren oder eine Offensive. Es geht auch um den Stillstand zwischen Geschichte und Gegenwart.

Diese Passage mit dem Kino, den Rolltreppen und den Lichtern war unglaublich. Ich werde mehr darüber schreiben müssen.

Marco Bellocchio und sein Sangue del mio sangue gehört zu den Überraschungen für mich. Diese Mischung aus spirituellen Spiegelungen zwischen Fragen des Berührens und der Unberührbarkeit beziehungsweise des Innen (Blut, Tränen, Sperma) und Außen (Blicke, keine Blicke, Oberflächen) sowie dem Komischen und Satirischen, ja bitteren Blick auf eine Welt habe ich so noch nicht gesehen. Für mich ging es sehr stark, um einen Verlust und die Schuld dieses Verlusts in einer patriarchalischen Welt.

Es gibt rotes Licht vor dem Gartenbau, das ähnliche Lichter wirft wie die Traumneonröhren in Cemetery of Splendour; Neon Dreams/Neon Bull, Diego Garcia will eine Neon Vague starten.

Ein weiteres Delirium gibt es bei Jean-Marie Straub und seinem L’aquarium et la nation; das laut Cutter Christophe Clavert “un-coupable” Aquarium, in dem man sich verliert…man schwimmt gegen eine Wand oder man schwimmt nach draußen, aus dem Frame, aus dem Gefängnis? Was ist die Nation, ein Cadre oder der Hors Champs?

Ein solches Publikumsgespräch wie nach Straub kann es eigentlich nur auf der Viennale geben.

Ioana

Es war bislang der beste Tag des Festivals, an dem ich Cemetery of Splendour, den zweiten Teil von As mil e uma noites, Sangue del mio sangue und L’aquarium et la nation sehen durfte.

Cemetery of Splendour ist ein großes Werk der Dazwischenheit. Der Film findet zwischen zeitlichen und räumlichen Dimensionen, zwischen Zuständen (wach sein und schlafen), zwischen dem, was man sieht, und dem, was man sich vorstellt (Schlafende, die in den Körpern eines Mediums aufwachen, Paläste) statt. Schon bei einer Schlafkrankheit, die davon kommen könnte, dass begrabene Könige, bettlägigen Soldaten die Kraft aussaugen, kann man Weerasethakul lieben.

As mil e uma noites wird so viel intensiver im zweiten Teil, es liegt vielleicht daran, dass man mehr bei den einzelnen Geschichten bleibt, die in sich genau so viele Abweichungen haben, aber auch immer weniger verspielt scheinen. Ich fand Ähnlichkeiten zwischen der ersten Geschichte und Japón, Gomes und Reygadas waren bislang nie gleichzeitig zusammen in meinem Kopf.

Bellocchios Sprung zu Vampirismen (nicht nur politische), Isolation und Berührungslosigkeit war so überraschend, dass ich zum zweiten Mal während des Festivals während eines Films überlegen musste, was ich bis zu dem Zeitpunkt eigentlich gesehen habe.

Youth Under The Influence (Of Pedro Costa) – Part 2: The Mysterious One

13. September 2015 • Patrick Holzapfel • Dialoge, Texte

Michael Guarneri and Patrick Holzapfel continue their discussion about the films they have seen after meeting with Mr. Costa in Munich, in June 2015. (Here you can find Part 1)

Michael: […] Which might be a good starting point for discussing our cinematic guilty pleasures… Do you want to start?

Patrick: Sure! But first I want to state that, for me, something that is recommended and liked by people like Mr. Costa or Straub can never be guilty. Maybe I’m too weak in this regard. I really don’t know about your mysterious childhood experiences. I think you underestimate a little bit the power of some of those films, and the differences within the evil machine, too. The craft also has some poetry that sometimes is bigger than the whole package… but we have discussed that already, I do not want to insist. Let’s talk about my guilty pleasures.

It is very hard for me, as I am living in a city where the expression “vulgar auteurism” was defined, and the mantra “Everything is Cinema – Cinema is Everything” gets repeated over and over. Now, for the first time, I see a connection with the Marquis, and that makes it even more attractive. Furthermore I think that, in a sense, watching cinema must be guilty.

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

But still, I just love many Ben Stiller/Will Ferrell films, I became a man (did I?) watching films like Old School, Zoolander, Anchorman or Semi-Pro. The same is true for Judd Apatow, which somehow feels even guiltier. Then there is Christopher Nolan. I hated Interstellar, but I would defend almost everything he did before Interstellar without arguments. I don’t remember a single outstanding shot, cut or moment in his films, but I remember the movement between shots (maybe there is an argument in the making…). I love agents, almost all of them. I like self-seriousness because I am very self-serious myself. But I cannot say that, during the last couple of years, there was anything I liked for its color like one could (but needn’t) like The River by Renoir, or for its dancing and singing. It has become harder to have guilty pleasures, because now they don’t sell you a box of candies, they just sell you the box.

But what’s even more interesting for me is what one doesn’t like despite one maybe should. We can call it “guilty failings” if you like. Do you have those failings?

The River

Casa de Lava

Michael: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to skate over my guilty pleasures, and maintain a façade of very serious (self-serious?), austere intellectual. Yes, let’s talk about “guilty failings”! The River by Renoir – which you have just mentioned – is a film I cannot stand. It feels somehow too childish for my taste, as if somehow Renoir was trying to push people to watch everything with big watery eyes (the main characters are the kids/teenagers, it makes sense that Renoir does so: I just do not like it). This tear-jerking super-melodrama feeling is probably why I cannot take it seriously, especially in the big “the child is dead” monologue.

Another big guilty failing for me is The Third Man by Carol Reed. The movie has everything to be an excellent one: a genre I love, great casting (not only Welles but the always awesome, awesome Joseph Cotten), intriguing story and great dialogues, all the package. Yet, when I watch it, I just find it unbearable to sit through. To paraphrase David Foster Wallace, every shot is like “Look, mom, I am directing!”: the film is bizarrely baroque throughout, with lots of weird angles and convoluted tracking shots, a total show-off for basically no reason. For most of the film I was saying to myself: “Can’t the director just keep that camera straight?”… The Third Man is probably the one and only 1940s US noir I don’t like.

Was there a specific film or a director that you couldn’t stand, like, five years ago, and now you appreciate?

Patrick: I have to think about it. This issue basically leads me back to many thoughts I had in the beginning of this conversation. Ernst Lubitsch is a director I didn’t like a few years ago, but now I like him very much. Why is that? First, I hope and know, it is because I have watched more films by Lubitsch. I also re-watched the ones I didn’t like at first (To Be or Not to Be, for example), and found them much better. Maybe my eyes have sharpened, I am pretty sure they have, they should have. I suddenly recognize the movement, the way he builds his shots, the way he works with motives and eyes and the way everything feels always wrong in the right way. But there is also a suspicion. It’s the way people like Mr. Costa talk about Lubitsch, the way Lubitsch is dealt with in certain cinema circles, the way he is a legend with a certain flavor (don’t call it “touch”, it is not what I mean), a certain secret around all those screenshot of Lubitsch films posted on the Internet. I am afraid that those things seduced me, too… or did they teach me? Perhaps they just told me to look closer.

Design for Living

Maybe what I am searching for is an innocent way of looking at films. But one must be careful. Many confuse this innocence with being against the canon, which is always a way of living for some critics. But that’s bullshit. I don’t mean that I want to go into a cinema without expectation or pre-knowledge. It is just the way of perceiving: it should be isolated, pure. It’s impossible, yet it happens. Or doesn’t it? What do you think? Are there still miracles happening in contemporary cinema? I ask you because I want to know if we are talking about something gone here, like Mr. Costa says it is, or something present.

Michael: Thanks for mentioning Lubitsch. In a very good interview-book by Cyril Neyrat, Mr. Costa talks a lot about Lubitsch being a major influence for In Vanda’s Room. He also says that one of the first times he saw Vanda, she was doing some plumbing job in Fontainhas and she reminded him of Cluny Brown, from the homonymous Lubitsch film. Cluny Brown is indeed an amazing film. As all the US production by Lubitsch, it is very witty and some very spicy (at times downright dirty) sexual innuendos are thrown in in a very casual way, which is absolutely fantastic. It is somewhat sexually deranged, but in a very controlled and seemingly proper way, hence (for me) the feeling of vertigo that makes me catch my breath. Plus, of course, in Cluny Brown there are a lot of very intelligent remarks on working within a cultural industry: in this sense, the last 5 minutes of the film are worth 1000 books on the subject. In my view, Lubitsch is one of the very few who managed to use “the Code” (the production code, the Hays Code) against itself, to make every shot a bomb that explodes in the face of the guardians of morality. In this sense, another masterpiece – in my view even superior to some Lubitsch films – is Allan Dwan’s Up in Mabel’s Room. If you haven’t already, please check it out: it is WILD.

Cluny Brown

Vanda

Now, to answer your question… Well, it is a hell of a difficult question, and it requires my making very strict and arrogant statements, for which I apologize in advance. Personally, I do not believe in miracles of any kind. In particular, I do not like to think of cinema as a miracle: I try to think of it as a machine that people use to do/get stuff, and I resist with all my strength to qualify this stuff that cinema produces as a miracle. I prefer to think of films as the result of hard work that might or might not reflect an idea, a feeling, a question, a search, or whatever you want to call it – something on which the audience has to work on, too. I guess I am the typical skeptic character, like Dana Andrews in Tourneur’s Night of the Demon. I guess I still have to meet my doctor Karswell to chastise and convert me to a more “mystical” perspective.

I don’t know if something in cinema is gone, or dead, but I tend not to be too apocalyptic. What do you think?

Patrick: Victor Kossakovsky once said that if he puts a camera at some place, something will happen there. Therefore he does not put it on a crossing.

Concerning miracles (now I am supposed to apologize in advance, but I won’t…), I think it is a question of how willing you are to let them in. Of course, films are fabricated, films are machines. But in my opinion this is a very simplistic way of seeing things, one that certainly is true and was very important at some time, but it has become to dominant. The Bazin-view seems to be out of fashion, I mean the theories about the camera as a recording device, something in touch with reality, with a life of its own. I don’t know if this is mysticism. It is very hard work to be able to let those things in. It goes back to the simple importance of perceiving some stuff around you and then getting the right angle, and so on, for these miracles to happen. It is obviously simplistic too, yes, but it is often ignored nowadays. We might translate miracles as life (those miracles are more often cruel than beautiful)…

About the whole cinema is dead business. I think it is an inspiration. For me cinema is always great when it reflects its own death, the art of dying so slow that you do not even recognize it, it is not only death at work, it becomes already-dead-but-still-seducing-at-work. You know what I mean? Cinema becomes like this girl you meet with too much make-up on it, she is drunk and exhausted, maybe she is coughing like Vanda or shaking like Ventura. But still there is movement, lights and shadows, there is cinema. For me cinema is always more alive when it is like that, not when it tries to shine bright, those times are over. Limelight by Chaplin is a perfect title for a perfect film for what I am trying to say.

Mr. Costa said in Munich that there are no cinematic qualities in a person, it has to do with something else, with getting to know someone, spending time with each other, understanding and trust. But then he somehow came back mentioning qualities in Ventura. What I am trying to say is that cinema for me is a way of perceiving the world. You can see it in a tree or in a person. Of course, it has to be fabricated and consumed and all that after it, and there is a high death rate in that, but as a way of life, as a way of seeing with one’s own eyes it will not die as long as someone is seeing it in things. So for me, Mr. Costa – though he might not agree – was seeing cinema, was seeing miracles (Gary Cooper in Ventura or Cluny Brown in Vanda…) though from a more distant point-of-view there was no cinema in his friends or Fontainhas at all. It was brought to life like a demon in the night, this is why I tend to speak of cinema as the art of the undead.

I completely agree about your remarks on Lubitsch. Do you recognise Cluny Brown in Vanda?

Michael: To be honest, no, I do not recognize Cluny Brown in Vanda, just like I do not recognize Cooper in Ventura. I understand why Mr. Costa makes the comparison, it makes sense and I respect that, it’s just that I – from a very personal point of view – do not really believe in Cluny Brown or Cooper. I accept them as characters in a film, and as a remarkable, at times even sublime abstraction of certain aspects of “humanbeingness”. But I do not really believe in them, I simply suspend my disbelief: because the dialogue is so cool, because I want to have fun, because I want to lose myself in the story, in the screen-world, whatever. Then the film is over, and that’s it for me. Cluny Brown, Cooper, they all die, I tend to forget them and move on with my life, and so did they when their job was finished, of course. What I mean to say is that they do not leave me much, I have the feeling that we live in two separate worlds.

With Vanda and Ventura (or the super-fascinating Zita, or Vitalina, or the incomparable, magnificent Lento) I feel a little different. It’s not a fiction versus documentary thing: I find the distinction between the two very boring, and of course one can tell at first glance that Mr. Costa’s post-1997 digital films are as carefully crafted and staged and enacted and performed as any other fiction film ever made. It’s just that, when I watch or listen to the Fontainhas people, I get in contact with something that it is here, that is not just a film, just a thing I am watching. It is something that watches me back as I am watching, and stays with me forever. It’s life, it’s their life, it’s Mr. Costa’s life and in the end it’s part of my life too. How was it? “This thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine.”

And now a one-million dollar question: if anyone can be in a movie, can anyone be a filmmaker?

Erich von Stroheim

Patrick: You have some great points here, so this is going to be a long answer. For me the whole documentary/fiction debate that has been popping up for almost a century now is best solved by Gilberto Perez in his bible The Material Ghost. There is the light and the projector and together they are cinema. So, why bother? It is so stupid of a film magazine like Sight&Sound to make a poll of the Best Documentaries in 2014… In the words of Jia Zhang-ke: WTF! I still can’t believe how many serious filmmakers and critics took part in this awful game. At least people like James Benning or Alexander Horwath used the opportunity to point at the stupidity of such a distinction. It is not boring, it is plainly wrong to do so.

Then, I find it very curious that you talk about “life”. I think your “life” is what I earlier called “miracle”. And here I find a strange clash of opposed views within Mr. Costa’s recommendations. On the one hand, there is someone like Straub. Straub clearly is against the idea of using real life circumstances, of doing something for real in cinema. He said so more than once. On the other hand, there are people like Von Stroheim and Godard: both of them tried things with hidden cameras, both of them were fascinated by the idea of their picture becoming “life”. The most famous incident is surely when Von Stroheim tried everything he could to have a real knife in the finale of Greed as he wanted to see real pain in the eyes of Jean Hersholt, who played Marcus. (We can imagine what happened in the lost Africa sequences of Queen Kelly now). So this is not the “life” you are talking about… This “life” or “miracle” has to do with seeing and not-seeing, light and darkness and so on. I am completely with you there. But what about this other definition of “life” I have just mentioned? For you, when you see the weakness of a man confronted with his inner demons like Ventura in Horse Money, is it something like the pain in the eyes of Hersholt or something different? I am not asking if it is real or not which would be very strange after what I said before, I merely want to know if Von Stroheim was wrong in trying to have a real knife… I want to know what makes the pain real in cinema.

I am also glad you brought up Vitalina, Lento and Zita. They show me exactly what you mean, as all these comparisons with actors are something personal: it is a memory, a desire, maybe also a trick our mind plays on us. Our common friend Klaus, for example, told me that while looking at the picture of Gary Cooper in the first part of our conversation he suddenly recognized a similarity with Mr. Costa. Material Ghosts.

Concerning your last question I will just quote Renoir from his interview with Rivette and Truffaut in 1954: “ (…) I’m convinced that film is a more secret art than the so/called private arts. We think that painting is private, but film is much more so. We think that a film is made for the six thousand moviegoers at the Gaumont-Palace, but that isn’t true. Instead, it’s made for only three people among those six thousand. I found a word for film lovers; it’s aficionados. I remember a bullfight that took place a long time ago. I didn’t know anything about bullfights, but I was there with people who were all very knowledgeable. They became delirious with excitement when the toreador made a slight movement like that toward the right and then he made another slight movement, also toward the right – which seemed the same to me – and everyone yelled at him. I was the one who was wrong. I was wrong to go to a bullfight without knowing the rules of the game. One must always know the rules of the game. The same thing happened to me again. I have some cousins in America who come from North Dakota. In North Dakota, everyone iceskates, because for six months of the year there’s so much snow that it falls horizontally instead of vertically. (…) Every time my cousins meet me, they take me to an ice show. They take me to see some women on ice skates who do lots of tricks. It’s always the same thing: From time to time you see a woman who does a very impressive twirl: I applaud, and then I stop, seeing that my cousins are looking at me severely, because it seems that she wasn’t good at all, but I had no way of knowing. And film is like that as well. And all professions are for the benefit of – well – not only for the aficionados but also for the sympathizers. In reality, there must be sympathizers, there must be a brotherhood. Besides, you’ve heard about Barnes. His theory was very simple: The qualities, the gifts, or the education that painters have are the same gifts, education and qualities that lovers of paintings have. In other words, in order to love a painting, one must be a would-be painter, or else you cannot really love it. And to love a film, one must be a would-be filmmaker. You have to be able to say to yourself, “ I would have done it this way, I would have done it that way”. You have to make films yourself, if only in your mind, but you have to make them. If not, you’re not worthy of going to the movies.”

Jean Renoir

Michael: Wow, awesome and inspiring words from Renoir, I have to seriously think about them now! You don’t get the one million dollar, though, since you answered with a quote by someone else.

Back on the life-miracle issue… A certain dose of mysticism is always healthy, it is good that you insist on this point to try and break my stubbornness. As you know, Mr. Costa made Où gît votre sourire enfoui? to destroy a critical stereotype about Straub-Huillet, namely that they are purely materialist filmmakers: as Mr. Costa’s shows, there is something in their daily work with machines that cannot be put into words, something mysterious… a smile that is hidden, or just imagined. And so is in Mr. Costa’s films, from O Sangue until now: there are always cemeteries, there is voodoo stuff going on all the time.

Night of the Demon

Where does your hidden smile lie?

About the Hersholt-Ventura comparison: in my view, yes, the pain in the eyes of the former is different from the pain in the eyes of the latter. Very different. But allow me to make another example, and be more controversial. Are the sufferings of Chaplin’s tramp and the sufferings of Ventura the same? Are they both real? Well, they both are choreographed and made more intriguing by heavy doses of “melodramatization” (a cinematic treatment, or fictionalization, of reality that aspires to make human feelings visible and audible). But we must never forget that one of these two “screen personae” is a millionaire playing a tramp. In the end of his tramp films, Chaplin walks towards the horizon, and I always have this image of him in mind: the camera stops rolling, the tramp wipes off his makeup, hops into a sport car and drives away to bang some hot girls or something like that. Unfortunately, there is no such “release” for Ventura and the others. This is not to diminish Chaplin. He is one of the greatest – not only a total filmmaker but also a total artist: actor, director, musician, producer… It is just that I do not believe in him, in his films, in the world that he shows. I like the films, I enjoy them, I think that their humanism is heart-warming and powerful, and that many people should see them. I just do not believe in the world they show. I do not see life in it, I do not recognize this world as mine. It is a world that I cannot connect to. Maybe it’s an Italian thing, an Italian take on poverty, but when I asked my grandparents about Chaplin’s films, they said something I find very interesting: “Yeah, I remember the tramp guy, very funny movies, I laughed so hard… but being poor is another world entirely”.

Please mind that I have consciously chosen Chaplin as he is one of Costa’s favorite filmmakers. Is Chaplin a traitor, in your view?

TO BE CONTINUED

Youth Under The Influence (of Pedro Costa) – Part 1

5. September 2015 • Patrick Holzapfel • Dialoge, Texte

How is it that we find cinema? This might be a rather big question, maybe too big for any satisfying evening among cinephile friends, maybe one of those existentialist questions that seduce us from time to time, to make it short: We can’t answer such a question and we won’t try to. Nevertheless there are moments when we clearly feel inspired. Such a moment sometimes occurs because of a memory, something we see in an image, a color or an actor, something we want know more about. It may also occur when we read about something we haven’t seen, we feel an urge to see, to know, to feel. Sometimes it is just the idea of something provoked by the name of a director, a title or a prize. And sometimes it is someone we talked to, someone whose opinion is valuable, someone we trust or someone in whose eyes we see the fascination, the struggle and joy we also want to have.

In June, during the Fontainhas-Retrospective at the Filmmuseum in Munich, Michael Guarneri and I had the chance to talk with Pedro Costa about cinema. Naturally we talked a lot about his cinema, but there were also occasions when Mr. Costa before or after a screening or while talking about his own work dropped names, mentioned films and filmmakers with a sudden blink of fever (almost invisible) in his eye and made us thirsty for more. It could happen that during a Q&A, while he talked about gangsters being the most sensitive characters in cinema, he just wandered in his thoughts, whispered “Nicholas Ray?”, looked calmly into the audience and went on after a few seconds. Later while we had a drink he would just face anyone and ask: “Have you seen Foolish Wives?”, in this case the answer was positive which made Mr. Costa smile in agreement. Additionally his whole confidence concerning his view on cinema must necessarily be seducing for young film-lovers, it sometimes feels like there is a secret in cinema, a secret people like Mr.Costa tell you with their blinks and nods, their smiles and adjournments.

Mr. Costa at the Filmmuseum in Munich

Knowing what you like or dislike seems to be a religion in cinema circles. The ability to bring on a strong opinion sometimes seems more important than actually being able to talk about a film. Of course, such empty words are not what Mr. Costa is all about. He is very well able to tell you about the details and ideas behind certain filmmakers and their work which makes his attitude even more seducing.

A few weeks after meeting Mr. Costa, Michael and myself found that we were still under the spell having watched many films that Mr. Costa recommended or just mentioned, following his taste and discovering new plants in the garden of cinema. We then decided that – in order to deal with our experience and make it more profound – we should have a conversation about the films and filmmakers we discovered due to Mr. Costa. This way we could also check if the secrets of cinema are really secrets, if smiles were entitled and if the desire to see and find is matched by the actual experience of watching the films. Of course, our conversation which will be published in parts went into many directions and is therefore also a testimony of the certainties and uncertainties of different kinds of cinephilia.It might entirely fail as what it was supposed to be, but still, it is something we tried with honesty and passion.

Patrick: I just give it a start. First of all, I want to say that I don’t recall Mr. Costa mentioning any filmmaker I haven’t heard about at all, which kind of reassures me. But he created a sort of appetite in me for people like Jacques Tourneur, Erich von Stroheim, Ernst Lubitsch, João César Monteiro, the Straubs (naturally), Godard (naturally) and anything with Gary Cooper in it. I think the first film I saw at home after the retrospective was Canyon Passage by Tourneur. I expected a Western and somehow got a film that didn’t really want to be a Western, it wanted to escape to some other place, somewhere where it can just rest. I pretty much liked it, though it did not blow me away as other Tourneur films like I walked with a Zombie or Cat People did. Can you remember what your first Costa-inspired screening was, after we met?

Canyon Passage

Days of Glory

Michael: I think it was Days of Glory by Tourneur, or, as Mr. Costa dubbed it, “Gregory Peck in the cellar”. At that time, I was finishing up this piece about Tourneur’s The Flame and the Arrow , and reflecting a lot about Tourneur’s role in the US propaganda machine before and after the end of WWII, so it was either anti-nazi Days of Glory or anti-communist The Fearmakers.

From Days of Glory I kept on exploring the anti-nazi genre with Lewis Milestone’s The North Star; whereas The Fearmakers led me to William Wellman’s The Iron Curtain and Robert Parrish’s Assignment: Paris. Suddenly, with the last four films I mentioned, a common denominator began to emerge: actor Dana Andrews playing an average guy – exhausted, trapped in planes, taxis, hotel rooms, prison cells, bureaus, offices, embassies, at the mercy of higher, hidden powers. Through the course of these four films we can really see him turning from idealistic war hero to a brainwashed, breathless, paranoid, insomniac war vet; a chain-smoking compulsive drinker tormented by splitting headaches. Canyon Passage might just be one of the few all-round hero roles in his career…

Patrick: I am not so sure about Dana Andrews being a hero in Canyon Passage. Well, there is a whole bunch of arguments speaking for it, of course, but something in his face aims to be the average guy you described. The way he sits on his horse, there is exhaustion in it, too. He always leans to the left or right, there are always wrinkles in his shirt. Furthermore, he is not really active in pursuing the two ladies of the film, oh, I think he very much would like to be an average guy there, just like Tourneur didn’t really want to make a Western like a Western.

In terms of anti-nazi films (I am hesitating calling it a genre because I am very much against taking ideology to arrange movies), I had only one experience in the wake of Mr. Costa’s recommendations: Man Hunt by Fritz Lang. Thinking about this film and the ones you mentioned, as well as some others I watched like Distant Drums or The Strawberry Blonde by Raoul Walsh, I recognize a certain tiredness and exhaustion everywhere… just like with Dana Andrews. In Man Hunt there is this middle part where the film doesn’t want to be paranoid anymore,there is always a flirt with those tormented headaches.

Michael: If you liked Man Hunt, you should try Ministry of Fear and Cloak and Dagger. In the latter, Gary Cooper is the lead. Anyway, what’s the reason behind your fascination with him?

Dana Andrews

Gary Cooper

Patrick: I have seen Ministry of Fear and I like it. Will check out Cloak and Dagger as soon as possible, thanks for pointing it out. It would be too easy for me to talk about Gary Cooper’s exhaustion now, wouldn’t it? But just look at his tired face…

It is something Mr. Costa mentioned when he compared Ventura to Cooper, the way he acts as himself and as something completely different while being there for the camera, for the other actors in the scene and for himself at the same time. There is sensuality in his acting that clearly comes from presenting itself as acting; it is like a Kiarostami and maybe also a film by Mr.Costa just with acting. The illusion comes when you know it is an illusion. But I think my fascination derives from his movement, his gestures. They way he beckons in Morocco by Von Sternberg, the way he marches in Distant Drums, the way he navigates his carriage in Friendly Persuasion and so on. It is different with Ventura for me though. I can understand why one can compare them but Ventura is something emerging from the shadows whereas Cooper is in broad limelight. They meet each other in the power Ventura shows despite the shadows and the shadows Cooper shows despite the fame. Something like that… Haven’t you had your Gary Cooper phase sometime? It somehow feels obsolete describing my fascination with him because after all, it is Gary Cooper…

Michael: No, I must confess that I have always felt very little attachment or sympathy to the big Hollywood stars, and to Hollywood cinema in general (except maybe for Bogart in High Sierra, for reasons I don’t want to disclose). In watching the films, I enjoy some of them, I like some of them… Of course, I am not immune to their power, or spell… They are made to be liked, aren’t they? Still there is always something very sneaky about them that troubles me, keeps me on my toes and even frightens me. A voice inside my head saying: “Woah, this is dangerous, they are trying to sell you something; watch out, don’t buy all the things they show and say”. So I never fall 100% in love with them. It must be because I come from a certain tradition of studies that sees Hollywood cinema as a sort of brainwashing machine at the service of an evil empire. Throughout the years, and thanks to wise people like Mr. Costa, Chris Fujiwara, Tag Gallagher, and so on, I have softened this approach, but I do not want to let it go completely. It is good to always be suspicious of the products of the cultural industry, I think.

Let’s take Night of the Hunter, for instance – a big influence on Costa’s O Sangue, and a personal favorite of many, many people. I watched it a couple of times in the past, and I rewatched it recently… Well, the movie is gorgeous, Mitchum is great as a deranged psycho and all that, but, man, all that Lillian Gish talking about children as little lambs who must abide and endure… it just pissed me off. I was like: fuck you, old lady! I guess I am more a “If the kids are united” kind of guy…

Patrick: I know exactly what you mean and I’m glad you have brought it up. First things first: Night of the Hunter. It’s a fragile one for me because my girlfriend loves it so fucking much (her way of whispering “Lillian Gish” when talking about this films resonates like an eternal echo in my ears)… but I’m more with you. I have seen it only one time and despite its obvious merits it left me cold. But it is certainly not a film I would like to bash, there are much, much worse. But I really don’t get the point of all those people mentioning how beautiful it is and so on. Yes, it looks great, but why don’t they talk more about Jean Vigo for instance? Is it childhood memories? Or is it because there is a certain romanticism about beautiful things appearing in the middle of this evil empire you are talking about? I don’t know. I know that it is not very simple.

With Mr. Costa I always had the feeling that it has to do with the craft. Hollywood after all means daily business, means going to work on a regular basis, it means living a life with certain restrictions, but still trying to build something personal or maybe poetic. And then you can start looking at some shots, some cuts, some gestures, and you will find them there with guys like Walsh or Lang. But you can also find them in a film by Jean Epstein or early Renoir (who Mr. Costa also loves, I think) and I always will prefer them because of the whole package, because of the testimony of their work as artists.Of course, a Hollywood film can also be art and an independent or European production can very much be part of the evil machine. As I said, it’s not so easy.

Last year we had this John Ford retrospective in Vienna. Mr. Costa was also there, he was talking a lot about it, I tried to watch as many films as possible and there were moments I really believed in Ford, in Ford as the peak of cinema… When I think of films like The Long Voyage Home or The Lost Patrol, I’m still shaking. But sometimes I found myself thinking of filmmakers like Bresson or Tarkovsky (to name the cliché) and I was thinking that I respect them more, the way they worked, the way they did not compromise with the machine, the way they don’t want to sell… Because after all you can always look at entertainment from two different angles. You can watch how they try to sell you something all the time, or you can look how sometimes a soul appears while selling you something. It’s the same with Ford and there is something in those films I always forget, it just slips through my mind. I think I want to forget it.

And while forgetting I am able to love certain things like an actor or a shot. It’s very naïve but I think this is what cinema is all about in the end. And there was a time in Hollywood when they were selling beautiful things. Gary Cooper is one of them because there is a soul visible sometimes… Maybe just in one shot, but then it is true. It is as true as it is in Dreyer or Dovzhenko. What do you refer to when you say “a certain tradition of studies”? I am always afraid of categorizing, I somehow have the feeling that cinema is wiser and richer than I will ever know. I feel that there are things in cinema beyond selling and not-selling, and therefore I would not speak of evil empires though I have a similar tendency as you. If cinephilia means loving cinema then sometimes you have to be blinded by love and if we hesitate here than it is maybe a problem of cinema, maybe we come from a generation where cinema has already betrayed us too often?

The Long Voyage Home

Stagecoach

Cavalo Dinheiro

Michael: I don’t know about this betrayal business, I really have to think about it. Let’s come back to it later.

When I said “a certain tradition of studies”, I meant Adorno, Horkheimer, and all those who – to paraphrase Laura Mulvey – analyze pleasure or beauty in order to destroy it, so that beauty won’t blind us anymore. But we are not in a class, so let’s skip that. Here are two provocations.

First, you mentioned a girlfriend: aren’t cinephiles supposed not to have girlfriends?

And, secondly, you have the feeling that cinema is wiser and richer than you will ever know. In your view, who makes cinema wise and rich? Filmmakers or spectators? Most of the times, I have the feeling that, in order to make a very interesting movie, filmmakers just have to be vague or mysterious or “lazy” or ambiguous or contradictory enough so that spectators have the opportunity to make their own, custom-cut, “good film” in their heads. Take the ending of Stagecoach: ok, typical saccarine happy end from Hollywood, the couple of outcasts falls in love and they flee towards their new life; but wait a minute, they flee from the US, this rotten society ironically named “Lordsburg”… this doesn’t sound like a happy end at all! Choose one option, choose both, make up a third one, stay in the shadow of doubt, do as you please, please yourself as you please. Ford was not only a great storyteller but also a clever businessman… It is not by chance that they call it “narrative economy”!

Patrick: Then there was beloved president Nixon who said: I prefer Hollywood films.

I don’t know about your first provocation. The point is: I wouldn’t love cinema if I didn’t love that woman who knows so much more about it than me. And she knows a lot about the mysteries and vague things in cinema, a lot of things I wouldn’t understand otherwise. Mr.Costa spoke a lot about the Straubs… just to name an example (I don’t smoke as much…). And having four eyes helps a lot. Maybe she is writing to you now… it’s very mysterious.

Which leads me to your second provocation… I have some problems with it. First: Sharunas Bartas is also a clever businessman, so is Mr. Costa. The problem, I think, is not the selling, it is what they sell. They can sell me cinema as dirty as they like. As long as they don’t sell in order to sell. In my opinion cinema as an art form is beyond its makers and its spectators. I am very much opposed against intelligent people giving meaning or finding deep things everywhere. I know that one can do that, I have seen and read it but I often find it to be intellectual masturbation, worthless for anybody except the one who is masturbating and those who just like to watch (thinking of Giraudie now). There is a difference in filmmakers trying to be ambiguous and filmmakers finding an ambiguous truth. There are certain things cinema embraces and rejects and it is the task of viewers (critics, scientists and also filmmakers) to detect those aspects, to serve cinema, to use cinema, to play with cinema, to respect cinema. That might sound rather emotional but my point is that cinema just IS rich. Nobody needs to make it wise and rich. And this is also why in the first place it needs to be filmmakers that use this richness.

Is a good film for you something that is in accordance with your political believes only? Is it, to use Amos Vogel’s famous title, a subversive art?

Mes petites amoureuses

Michael: Let’s say that, as an act of “intellectual honesty”, I try to like movies that are not right up my alley, and to dislike movies that are right up my alley. And, of course, I always fail. I guess I don’t really try that hard: too much pride and prejudice, not enough sense and sensibility.

I like a lot the expression “film as a subversive art” – this idea that cinema can take the world upside down. It is a wonderful mantra, it really gives me courage and strength when I think about it and repeat it in my head. But I cannot really think of a film that actually managed to subvert the status quo, right now. Can you?

Patrick: I think a single film didn’t, but maybe the idea of cinema as the only modern mystery like Breton said, had a few moments. What is your explanation for filmmakers like Mr. Costa, Godard or the Straubs liking a certain kind of Hollywood so much? I ask you because they seem to be right up your alley without having your dislike for the evil machine.

Michael: I think that, for Mr. Costa and the Straubs, it is like you said – the love for the craft, the production side, making ends meet, how can I do this with this much money. At least, this is how they rationalize it these days. But I suspect it also has to do with more mysterious things, like having seen these film at a young age, the dark theater, the giants on the screen, details in their personal biographies, and all the stuff you see in Mes petites amoureuses by Jean Eustache.

For Godard, I really don’t know. I read some of the things he wrote as a critic in the Cahiers, and I understood very little. But I don’t want to give you the impression that I reproach people who like films I don’t like. On the matter of taste, I agree with the Marquis: “Je respecte les goûts, les fantaisies: quelque baroques qu’elles soient, je les trouve toutes respectables, et parce qu’on n’en est pas le maître, et parce que la plus singulière, la plus bizarre de toutes, bien analysée, remonte toujours à un principe de délicatesse“.

Which might be a good starting point for discussing our cinematic guilty pleasures… Do you want to start?

TO BE CONTINUED

Viennale 2014: Glaser, Straub, Farocki

11. November 2014 • Rainer Kienböck • Festivals, Texte, Viennale 2014

Ich habe Georg Glaser zugehört, wie er mit Pfeife im Mund mit seinem Hammer das Kupfer dazu „überredet“ eine neue Form anzunehmen. Anders als die Maschine, die stanzend das Metall in seine Form zwingt, übt Georg Glaser keine Gewalt aus. Georg Glaser ist Schmied. Er ist auch Schriftsteller und hat Bücher geschrieben mit sozialkritischem, teils revolutionärem Inhalt. In seiner Jugend war er Kommunist und ist aus Deutschland geflohen. Die längste Zeit seines Lebens verbrachte Georg Glaser in Paris, zuerst als Fabrikarbeiter, später als eigenständiger Kunstgewerbetreibender.

Ich habe auch Jean-Marie Straub zugehört, ihn aber weniger gut verstanden, weil er seine Zigarre nicht aus dem Mund nahm. Straub nuschelte also ein wenig, weil er gleichzeitig sprach und seine Zigarre im Mund balancierte. Ist es obligatorisch für einen Filmemacher eine Zigarre rauchen zu können, ohne seine Hände dazu zu benützen? Das sollte man an Filmakademien als Aufnahmekriterium einführen, vielleicht würde es dann mehr Straubs auf dieser Welt geben. Vielleicht auch nicht.

Jean-Marie Straub und Danièle Huilet bei der Arbeit an einem Film nach Franz Kafkas Romanfragment „Amerika“ von Harun Farocki

Jean-Marie Straub nuschelte also vor sich hin, gab seinen Schauspielern Anweisungen. Es wurde geprobt. So undeutlich er selbst zu verstehen war, so viel Wert legte er auf die richtige Betonung der Filmdialoge, jeder Satz, jedes Wort musste sitzen, keine Nuance durfte verloren gehen; nicht im Sinne von Buchstäblichkeit – wenn bei Kafka ein Komma steht, ist es bei Straub ein Doppelpunkt, aber die Werktreue Straub liegt in seinem Verständnis für die Verantwortung, die der Filmemacher übernimmt, wenn er einen literarischen Text für die Leinwand transformiert. Das ist Ehrlichkeit und Respekt. Neben Jean-Marie Straub sitzt seine Frau Danièle Huillet. Huillet und Straub zusammen scheinen eine einzelne Entität mit zwei Körpern zu sein. Ihr Blick und ihre Gesten zeugen von einem tiefen Verständnis davon, welche Akzente gesetzt werden sollen, welcher Film entstehen soll.

Jean-Marie Straub ist gebürtiger Franzose, aber 1958 nach Deutschland geflohen um dem Militärdienst in Algerien zu entkommen. Später ist er nach Rom übersiedelt, Danièle Huillet mit ihm. Auch über den Algerienkrieg hat Jean-Marie Straub jetzt einen Film gemacht. Er dauert bloß zwei Minuten und zeugt vom selben Gespür und derselben Geduld für die Nuancen der Sprache, wie seine Arbeit an Klassenverhältnisse zwanzig Jahre zuvor.

Georg K. Glaser – Schriftsteller und Schmied von Harun Farocki

Glaser und Straub, zwei Geflohene, zwei Künstler, deren behutsame Bearbeitung von Metall und Sprache erstaunliche Parallelen aufweist. Ein dritter Künstler ist Harun Farocki. Er hat die beiden gefilmt. Jean-Marie Straub und Danièle Huilet bei der Arbeit an einem Film nach Franz Kafkas Romanfragment „Amerika“ und Georg K. Glaser – Schriftsteller und Schmied heißen die beiden Kurzfilme, die in dieser Reihenfolge als Teil des Tributes für den kürzlich verstorbenen Farocki auf der Viennale liefen. Farocki musste nie fliehen (zumindest nicht im wörtlichen Sinne wie Glaser und Straub), er war jedoch immer eine Art Fliehender. Auf der Flucht vor dem sozio-politischen Alltag, den er so nicht hinnehmen wollte und an dem er ihm Großteil seiner Filme Kritik geübt hat. Immer wieder spiegelt sich in diesen beiden Filmen Farockis eigenes Filmschaffen in den Aussagen und im Verhalten der Porträtierten.

James Benning hat eine Wolke gefilmt für Farocki. Sein neuester Film, der den Namen des Verstorbenen trägt besteht aus einer einzigen 77-minütigen Einstellung einer Wolke und ist Teil eines Projekts, in dem Benning einunddreißig Kunstwerke für einunddreißig Freunde und Bekannte geschaffen hat. Der Film erinnert an Bennings früheren Film Ten Skies, ist aber noch radikaler in seiner Konzeption, verzichtet sogar auf eine Tonspur und stellt so einen Kulminationspunkt seiner Arbeit der letzten Jahren dar, in denen er zunehmend mit dem observierenden Blick beschäftigt hat. Wie Farocki ist auch er kein Geflohener, aber auch kein Fliehender, sondern ein Erforschender. Farocki hat auch erforscht auf seiner Flucht. Farocki vereint beides: er ist Fliehender und Erforschender.

Touch the Invisible Truth: Où gît votre sourire enfoui?/Sicilia!

14. Oktober 2014 • Patrick Holzapfel • Besprechungen, Texte

Ein programmtechnischer Glücksfall wollte es, dass ich sehr kurz nach einem Screening von Pedro Costas Où gît votre sourire enfoui? in den Genuss von Jean-Marie Straubs und Danièle Huillets Sicilia! kam. Der Film über die Heimkehr eines Auswanderers nach Sizilien wurde in Wien im neu-eröffneten Metrokino anlässlich der Peter Handke geht ins Kino-Schau gezeigt. Basierend auf Elio Vittorinis „Conversazione in Sicilia“ entfalten die Straubs einige dialoglastige Vignetten voller Witz, Philosophie und Würde. In seiner Dokumentation, die zunächst im Rahmen der Serie Cinéastes de notre temps entstanden ist, begleitet Costa das Filmemacherpaar im Schnitt von Sicilia! Den Film nach der Arbeit daran zu sehen, war ein besonderes Vergnügen. Die Sätze über die Straub-Huillet fühlbare Stunden grübelten, fliegen wie ein Echo an einem vorbei, wenn man das Endprodukt sieht. Aber vielleicht ist Echo allgemein ein guter Begriff, um zu beschreiben was diese beiden Filme miteinander machen.

Womöglich muss man an einer anderen Stelle beginnen: William Lubtchansky, seines Zeichens häufig Kameramann bei Jacques Rivette und damit auch Bildermaler im unglaublichen La belle noiseuse. Er führte die Kamera bei Straub-Huillet: Blitzweiße Wände, in schwarzen Stufen davor die Menschen, wir studieren ihre Gesichter. Schon die erste Einstellung ist von einer solchen kontrastreichen Notwendigkeit, dass man seine Augen nicht abwenden könnte. Ein Mann sitzt mit seinem Rücken zu uns am Ufer. Diese Einstellung sieht man auch in Où gît votre sourire enfoui?. Gewissermaßen brennen sich die Bilder in das Gedächtnis. Jeder, der schon einen Film geschnitten hat, kennt die unterschiedlichen Erfahrungsebenen, die man mit den Bildern hat: Man lernt sie kennen, man vergisst sie, man lernt sie neu kennen, man lernt sie besser kennen, man kann sie nicht mehr sehen, man wird von ihnen überrascht, man versteht sie nicht, man lernt sie kennen, man vergisst sie, man glaubt ihnen nicht mehr, man lernt sie neu kennen bis man sie ignoriert oder stirbt. Der Film, also jener der Straubs folgt einem Rhythmus. Jenem seiner Montage und seiner Sprache. Mit Costas Film im Kopf kennt man die eigenwilligen und in sich bewegenden Regeln, denen Straub-Huillet im Schnitt folgten. Der Schnitt erfolgt wegen eines Echos im Dialog oder wegen dem Geräusch eines Vogels. Wer schneidet sonst deshalb? Manchmal wird der Ton aussetzen, eigentlich wird fast immer geschrien. In einem bemerkenswerten stilistischen Kniff werden die Figuren am Ende ihrer langen Dialogpassagen manchmal einfrieren. Es ist wie bei Brecht oder wie in den Fassbinder-Posen. Die Kamera liest dann auf ihren Gesichtern. Das Unterfangen ist von einer bewegenden Künstlichkeit beseelt. Diese Künstlichkeit ist bewegend, weil sie der Armut im Film eine noble Stimme gibt, weil sie die Poesie des Hungers malt. Der einzige Filmemacher, der sonst derart gekonnt das Notwendige, das Existentielle und das Schöne verbindet, ist Pedro Costa. Die dezentrierten und von jeglichem Schnickschnack befreiten Einstellungen von Menschen vor Wänden hat er vor allem in Juventude em Marcha erforscht. Man denke an den hilflosen Ventura in der neuen Wohnung. Man denke an diese seitlichen Nahaufnahmen, in denen die Figuren mehr auf der rechten Seite stehen und somit mehr mit dem Offscreen als dem sichtbaren Bild verbunden sind. Lubtchansky lässt die Schatten mitsprechen, Costa auch. Die Wahrheit wird in diesem Unsichtbaren gesucht. In Où gît votre sourire enfoui? gibt es diese Schatten. Es ist vor allem der Schatten der nüchternen Danièle, die stur ihre Arbeit erledigt und Straub beschimpft, wenn er seinen Mund nicht halten kann. Costa hat gesagt, dass dieser Film ein Liebesfilm und eine Komödie ist. Das bringt einen zu Chaplin, ein Mann, der ebenfalls das Arme mit dem Würdevollen, das Licht mit dem Schatten verband. Straub redet und bewegt sich tatsächlich ähnlich wie die Figuren in Siciia! Er steht auf und hält Monologe, spricht laut, verschwindet aus dem Bild und kehrt zurück.

Wie La belle noiseuse ist auch Où gît votre sourire enfoui? ein Film über Arbeit. Sicilia! Dagegen ist ein Film über die Spuren der Arbeit. Aber das sind die anderen beiden auch. Man könnte sagen, dass Huillet bei Costa für die Arbeit steht und Straub für die Spuren der Arbeit. Sie bedingen sich gegenseitig. Arbeit ist für Costa genauso wichtig wie Blinzeln. Ein Blinzeln mag ein Lächeln sein. Straub-Huillet suchen nach einem solchen unsichtbaren Lächeln, einer kleinen Regung, dem Unkontrollierbaren. Hier wird die Kunst des Filmemachens und insbesondere die Konstruktion einer Montage als Prozess aufgefasst, als Arbeit. So wie in La belle noiseuse immer wieder neu begonnen wird, immer wieder radiert wird, immer wieder aufgegeben und angefangen wird so wird für Sicilia! auch geschnitten. Ganz Ähnliches interessierte Costa auch in seinem Wunder Ne change rien, indem er die Sängerin/Schauspielerin Jeanne Balibar in ihrem Arbeitsprozessen begleitet, im Schatten, vor Wänden, hartes Licht der Einsamkeit und Würde. Costa und Straub-Huillet sind Rockstars, nur falls es daran Zweifel geben sollte. Ihre Wiederholungen und ihre Konsequenz, ihre Persönlichkeiten und ihre Kunst ergeben ein Gesamtbild das in den Prozess, in die Arbeit fließt. Damit erinnern sie allesamt an einen anderen Prozess-Film, nämlich Jean-Luc Godards One Plus One, indem Godard in einem Strang die Rolling Stones bei Probeaufnahmen beobachtet.

Costa sucht nicht nur nach dem Lächeln in einem gesonderten Moment. Er sucht nach der Bedeutung der Zeit für dieses Lächeln, er sucht nach diesem Lächeln in der Zeit. Der Schnitt bei Straub-Huillet wird dann kommen, wenn die Zeit reif ist. Das Lächeln kann auch existieren, wenn es versteckt ist, weil die Zeit es entblößt. Ein Funkeln in den Augen, das nicht in einem einzelnen Frame erkennbar ist. Einige Male wiederholt sich ein totaler Schwenk in Sicilia!. Er betrachtet eine felsige Landschaft, ein Dorf am Horizont und schließlich einen verlassenen Weg mit einem Busch. Hier verlangsamt sich der Film fast, denn ansonsten scheinen Schnitt, Bewegung und Sprache einem ganz eigenen, für das Filmemacherpaar durchaus schnellen Rhythmus zu folgen. Denkt man beispielsweise an die Eröffnungsszene in Juventude em Marcha so kann man die Parallelen im Zusammenspiel von Ton und Bild, Klang und Rhythmus hören, die Costa mit Straub-Huillet verbindet. Der Schwenk öffnet unseren Blick auf die konstruierten Welten. Er ist ein Dokument in der Zeit. Zudem wird damit die Bedeutung des Lands für die Figuren betont. Die Wiederholung spricht vielleicht von einer Unveränderlichkeit, wie der immer gleiche Weg zur Arbeit. Man denkt an Rossellini, man denkt an Rivette und man denkt an Kiarostami, dessen Film Where Is the Friend’s Home? Im Anschluss im Metrokino zu sehen war.

Sowohl Straub-Huillet als auch Costa behandeln die Bedeutung von Sprache im Film. Sie finden beide Wege (und das Ausrufungszeichen beziehungsweise Fragezeichen in den jeweiligen Titeln sprechen bereits davon), Sprache in ein filmisches Ereignis zu transformieren. Zum einen geht es um Sprache in der Zeit, zum anderen um die Adressierung der Sprache. Die Figuren, sei es der Sohn oder die Mutter in Sicilia! oder Straub in Où gît votre sourire enfoui? sprechen mit etwas Unsichtbaren. Sie adressieren nicht direkt die Kamera und sie sprechen auch nicht wirklich mit den Personen in der diegetischen Welt. Vielmehr sprechen sie um zu sprechen. Darin liegt neben einem Verfremdungseffekt und einer tragischen Komik auch die Geschichte einer Einsamkeit, von wahrhaftigen Seelen.Es ist auch bezeichnend, dass in beiden Filmen in Nicht-Muttersprachen der Filmemacher gesprochen wird. Für sie geht es nicht um die Information durch Sprache sondern das Wesen, das dahinter sichtbar wird, in der Zeit, versteckt, wie ein Lächeln in den Augen.

Zwei essentielle Filme für alle, die noch darüber nachdenken wollen, wo man eine Kamera positioniert, wann man schneidet und warum man einen Film zum Sprechen benutzt.