A new translation, published on The Vulgar Cinema blog, of Martin Barnier's piece on John McTiernan's Predator. The first in a series of translations from the 1996 action cinema issue of French journal Admiranda/Restricted.
Renoir: The Grandeur of Primitives
The Grandeur of Primitives
by Jean Renoir
I often admire recent films but it's an admiration within reason. I rarely lose it and I remain sensible. I think: "My God, what a beautiful photographic effect…;" "That actor's performance is great…," "This dialogue is perfect…," "Great direction…," etc., and I bore myself to death.
Every art that isn't purely individual goes through this. They are only great—really great—in their primitive state… Low-warp tapestry is fascinating; Beauvais' and Gobelins' are, of course, amazing, but good for official receptions. Ceramics from Urbino are adorable and, with just one of those little, awkward vases on your table, you enrich your life. Look at what the art of ceramics became with Sèvres and Meissen. I can watch a film by Méliès, a Griffith, an early Tourneur or a Max Linder ten times in a row. I can only endure a screening of our latest masterpieces once.
For as long as they've existed, men have confused art with the imitation of reality. In primitive periods, either the limitations of the technical means or certain religious rules created by well-advised prophets prevent artists from following this bad tendency. In our time, that of so-called progress, no more limitations, no more rules; and we are witnessing a kind of debauchery. Individual artists—painters, writers, sculptures, musicians—can still pull through. Nothing prevents them from taking in nature as they understand it and rendering it for us in the most unexpected forms. But to make a film, tons of people are put together, and even if one of them vaguely has the idea that one of the characteristics of art is to be artificial, even if this person manages to communicate this point of view to his co-workers, the odious voice of reason quickly makes itself heard. By "reason," I mean the need to make a commercial work and to not shock audiences who are supposedly connoisseurs of that famous "reality." They are, anyway, and how could they not be after twenty-five years of the idiotic perfection of photographic reproduction? Out of this come today's ideals. An actor becomes a star because he looks like lots of people we see in the street. This way, it is believed, people will be happy to see themselves on screen, with just a few, minor improvements: better fitting costumes, smoother skin, and no hairs in their nose. From time to time, a film director looks innovative by keeping the nose hair or by showing a young beginner with rotten teeth. For my part, if I'm shown, in a movie, the same people I can meet at a cafe, I don't see why I wouldn't go to the cafe instead of the movie. It's more comfortable and I can drink there.
Those who came before us were really lucky: orthochromatic film that didn't allow for any nuance and forced the most timid cameramen to accept violent contrasts; no sound, which forced the least imaginative actors and the must pedestrian directors to use involuntarily simplified means of expression.
Happy were the Etruscan potters who, for decorating their vases, only knew two colors.
Happy was Queen Matilda who, for Bayeux's masterpiece, ignored the perfected craft of high-warp tapestry and aniline dye.
Happy were the filmmakers who still believed themselves to be carnies. But the golden age is over. And we must either become "true auteurs" in the classical sense of the word, with all the responsibilities it entails, or let the already wavering flame of our marvelous magic lantern die.
Originally published in Ciné-Club, no. 7, May 1948
Re-published in Jean Renoir: écrits 1926-1971
by Jean Renoir
I often admire recent films but it's an admiration within reason. I rarely lose it and I remain sensible. I think: "My God, what a beautiful photographic effect…;" "That actor's performance is great…," "This dialogue is perfect…," "Great direction…," etc., and I bore myself to death.
Every art that isn't purely individual goes through this. They are only great—really great—in their primitive state… Low-warp tapestry is fascinating; Beauvais' and Gobelins' are, of course, amazing, but good for official receptions. Ceramics from Urbino are adorable and, with just one of those little, awkward vases on your table, you enrich your life. Look at what the art of ceramics became with Sèvres and Meissen. I can watch a film by Méliès, a Griffith, an early Tourneur or a Max Linder ten times in a row. I can only endure a screening of our latest masterpieces once.
For as long as they've existed, men have confused art with the imitation of reality. In primitive periods, either the limitations of the technical means or certain religious rules created by well-advised prophets prevent artists from following this bad tendency. In our time, that of so-called progress, no more limitations, no more rules; and we are witnessing a kind of debauchery. Individual artists—painters, writers, sculptures, musicians—can still pull through. Nothing prevents them from taking in nature as they understand it and rendering it for us in the most unexpected forms. But to make a film, tons of people are put together, and even if one of them vaguely has the idea that one of the characteristics of art is to be artificial, even if this person manages to communicate this point of view to his co-workers, the odious voice of reason quickly makes itself heard. By "reason," I mean the need to make a commercial work and to not shock audiences who are supposedly connoisseurs of that famous "reality." They are, anyway, and how could they not be after twenty-five years of the idiotic perfection of photographic reproduction? Out of this come today's ideals. An actor becomes a star because he looks like lots of people we see in the street. This way, it is believed, people will be happy to see themselves on screen, with just a few, minor improvements: better fitting costumes, smoother skin, and no hairs in their nose. From time to time, a film director looks innovative by keeping the nose hair or by showing a young beginner with rotten teeth. For my part, if I'm shown, in a movie, the same people I can meet at a cafe, I don't see why I wouldn't go to the cafe instead of the movie. It's more comfortable and I can drink there.
Those who came before us were really lucky: orthochromatic film that didn't allow for any nuance and forced the most timid cameramen to accept violent contrasts; no sound, which forced the least imaginative actors and the must pedestrian directors to use involuntarily simplified means of expression.
Happy were the Etruscan potters who, for decorating their vases, only knew two colors.
Happy was Queen Matilda who, for Bayeux's masterpiece, ignored the perfected craft of high-warp tapestry and aniline dye.
Happy were the filmmakers who still believed themselves to be carnies. But the golden age is over. And we must either become "true auteurs" in the classical sense of the word, with all the responsibilities it entails, or let the already wavering flame of our marvelous magic lantern die.
Originally published in Ciné-Club, no. 7, May 1948
Re-published in Jean Renoir: écrits 1926-1971
LOLA 4
There's a new issue of LOLA with several articles on Brian De Palma including my translation of Alain Bergala's piece on Obsession: Time Denied: An Apotheosis of the Imaginary. Check it out.
Carpenter/Wellman
Positif: We've noticed an evolution in your work. At the time of Halloween, you didn't let yourself express any messages. But, since Escape From New York, your films clearly reflect a stand on the world we're living in.
John Carpenter: I don't think I express a message. The word "position" is more appropriate. Message films, they're like The Next Voice You Hear..., where God talks to people on the radio! That never works, that's not my style. But themes, yeah. A theme in a film is like a theme in music. It evolves, develops and underpins the emotions. That's not a political commentary. It's more of a poetic thread.
-Positif, no. 409, 1995
Mack Sennett: Liberator of Cinema
Robert Desnos
Robert Desnos
Admiral Dumont d’Urville, the same person who discovered the Venus de Milo, met death in the first railway accident.
The Marquis de Sade, imprisoned in the Bastille, having made a megaphone out of a gutter, stirred up the crowd at the beginning of July by announcing that prisoners were being massacred. On July 4th, he was transferred to Charenton; on July 14th, the Bastille was taken. He died in 1814, having spent almost all his life in prison.
Trelawney, who was lieutenant of De Ruyter’s privateer, lit with his own hand the log that consumed Shelley’s corpse. He was witness to Byron’s last days, married two daughters of barbarous kings, was the first to swim across the Niagara and Missouri and, at the age of 90, died in England in a calm rose garden.
All exemplary lives participate in this tragic slapstick, this lyrical humor, to the point that comedy is, definitively, only the most disconcerting form of lyricism.
Enemies of all poetry are not mistaken, in cinema as well.
The average critic, in general, listened to and respected, has only contempt for slapstick films and this qualifier is an insult from his pen.
This is why it is appropriate to place very high, on the same plane as Charlie Chaplin, this creator of lyrical and sensual slapstick: Mack Sennett.
Bathing beauties running along sandy beaches, lost sirens, tender lovers, mad inventions—he introduced a new element in cinema that is neither comedy nor tragedy but, to be precise, the most elevated form of cinema, on the plane of ethics, love, poetry and freedom.
The madness presiding over his scripts, we well know, is that of fairy tales and of those dreamers who the world despises and to whom the world owes the delights of life.
Without him, what would have become of Fatty Arbuckle (so admirable, moreover, and so unjustly forgotten, the incarnation of ferocity and hopelessness), Buster Keaton, Larry Semon or Al St. John?
The importance of the Mack Sennett Comedies in the evolution of cinema is immense. But must we not once again suspect American hypocrisy for having hindered his free development?
It is again Mack Sennett’s stunning influence that gives Harry Langdon—recently arriving on French screens—that inexpressible charm that, via a different route than Chaplin, knows how to deeply move us: Fatty Arbuckle, Larry Semon, Al St. John, Harry Langdon, as much as they remain poets, easily obtain an elevated ethics of life and passions, image and imagination powerfully serving their designs. As soon as they want to evolve on a purely moral plane, they are overburdened by psychology, which is the peak of horror.
While, in the suspended world in which he lives, Mack Sennett presides over the sensational encounter of love and sensuality, fairies—those inseparable sisters of both poetry and freedom, dead and deeply buried under twenty centuries of Christianity in the crypts of churches—are reborn and appear with their true faces and their pompous costumes. And we recognize seductive modern women, enigmatic smiles that delight us, eyes that make our own droop and, above all, love—our love—tormented by dreams, freedom, revolt and fear.
Originally published in Le Soir, April 15, 1927
Reprinted in Robert Desnos, Les Rayons et les ombres: cinema (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1992), 97-99.
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