A spiffy new Blu-ray of Melville’s undeniable Le Cercle Rouge inspires some thoughts on the film and on the catch-as-catch-can characteristic’s of Studio Canal Collection’s high-def program, in this week’s Foreign Report, at The Daily Notebook.
"Cercle" game
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My very favoritest Melville film. Watching the billiard scene for the first time, I thought, “Okay, this proves it: Melvilles’s the greatest director of all time.”
Great review, Glenn. I really like your defense of Melville’s use of the zoom.
Unfortunately, it seems there is a lot of anti-Studio Canal bias around. (A sentiment I’ve heard more than once is “I’ll buy it when Criterion gets back the rights.”) This is understandable given the problematic nature of SOME of their discs but when they do good work, as with Belle de Jour, Mulholland Dr. and this Red Circle release, I hope those same people take notice. Ultimately, it’s a good thing for both Studio Canal and Criterion to be putting out blu-ray discs because we’re going to get many more that way and the best of world cinema deserves to be seen in hi-def.
My review of The Red Circle, one of my favorite releases of the year, is here: http://michaelgloversmith.wordpress.com/2010/09/24/a‑blu-red-circle/
Unfortunately the site is down. I’m a big fan of the film up until the ending, which somehow felt rather flat and empty to me the last time I saw it.
My favorite Melville as well (along with ARMY OF SHADOWS). When Barnes & Noble had its first Criterion sale of the year earlier this year, this was my first purchase.
I never finished watching this one. I watched a handful of Melvilles a while back and basically concluded that he was all-style no-substance.
So…Melville is now coming in for the same kind of criticism normally reserved for the Scott brothers?
Mr. Bravo: even if that was true (and I don’t think it is), with style as glorious and moody as Melville’s, why complain?
Move along, fellas, don’t feed the semi-troll. I mean, wow, “all-style no-substance,” wish that I woulda thought of that turn of phrase. As a Mario Bava fan I can’t say that argument ever meant anything to me (and Tim Lucas would likely argue, and convincingly, that it doesn’t credibly apply to Bava anyway), but if you’re looking for “substantive” or maybe “moderately statement-making” Melville you could always go to “Le silence de la mer” or “Army of Shadows.” But why bother to give such direction? This is Castle Bravo we’re talking about/to here. Even more than Jeff Wells, he KNOWS what plays…
My, my… Such hostility. Heaven forbid I should actually say something controversial like: Au Hasard Balthazar is more manipulative than E.T.!
BTW/ Glenn, I’m not a troll or “semi-troll.” I like to question circle jerk critical orthodoxy – which is a good thing, since it forces holders of certain opinions to think through and defend those opinions.
As for Melville, I’ll take a semi-contemporary like Dassin any day.
CB, what you do is not challenging, it’s just gadfly behavior and it’s lazy. When you say something like “Au Hasard Balthazar is more manipulative than E.T.!,” that’s not a critical provocation, it’s a fucking bumper sticker. And when you say “My, my… Such hostility,” it’s clear you know exactly what you’re doing and enjoy it. So not only are you a troll, you’re also a liar.
These are not ad hominem attacks since they are based on the tone and content of your posts here and elsewhere. Goodbye.
Yeah, guys, come on. He’s only trying to help us be better people.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think the sensibilities of Melville are a world away from someone like an Antonioni. Like all great “genre” directors, he used as a platform for other themes, like isolation, alienation and subjectivity. All a term like “style over substance” is (I agree with Jim Emerson anyway, style IS substance) is just the same snobbery that kept the greatness of Melville under the radar for so long. Even Rivette said in an interview that he felt that they (French New Wave) undervalued him.
Surely that should be ‘cercle’ jerk?
“I agree with Jim Emerson anyway, style IS substance”
Sometimes and sometimes not. I don’t want to start an argument about the Coens, whom I know many people around here are fans of, so take Curtiz. Quite a stylist at times – even MISSION TO MOSCOW is really watchable because of how interestingly photographed it is – but the style often feels unmotivated. DOCTOR X, his first of two experiments with two-strip Technicolor, is one of the most beautifully photographed films I’ve ever seen, but so horribly performed, written and otherwise directed that it works vastly better with the sound off. On the other hand, certainly the respective styles of a Minnelli, a Preminger, a Sirk, a Hitchcock, or a Melville, whose style almost feels like a moral philosophy, are quite substantive. Which is to say, in responding to someone who dismisses Melville as an empty stylist (as a few respectable critics have, not just this silly commenter), you can’t just say great style’s automatically substance, you need to make a claim about what the style’s saying.
Melville was an early ally for Godard (of course he has that famous appearance in BREATHLESS). Regrettably the two had a falling out that was never repaired.
To me, “style is substance” is a useful thought because it is too often assumed that movies are only as good as they are transmitters of a satisfying narrative. Since many great films rely heavily on narrative, and many do not, and there are countless in-between, I don’t accept this assumption. In the hands of the story-above-all partisans (who are often screenwriters or aspiring screenwriters), the assumption is often argued using flimsy yet relentless logic, usually of the self-fulfilling kind (i.e. if you name a great film that is not story-dependent, such as Brakhage’s PSALM 23RD BRANCH, they will counter by saying it’s not a “real film” or that it’s bad on principle, etc).
What works best for me is to think of art (cinema included) as a means to use form to transmit the artist’s personal vision of the world in an exciting way: if I get the sense that this is happening with a film, I do my best to get in sync with it. Sometimes this requires no effort, sometimes a great deal of effort (and faith). It *can* be my failure, not the film’s, if I remain on the outside. Anyway, it can be a time-saver to reject films that work “poorly” in story terms, but it seems close-minded to do so.
@Jaime:
Yeah, to me the notion of “style over substance” has always been something of a misnomer. I think that cinema is closest to music than any other art form in that it is a compositional, rhythmic art (how long a shot lasts, how the shots are put together, how the camera moves or doesn’t move, how sound is used in conjuction with image,etc. etc.), and it is how the director composes the film that is important above all.
It’s only really in movies that some people insist on narrative as being the ultimate “substance”.
So do you two think it’s meaningless, or nonsensical, to say that Hitchcock is saying more with his style in VERTIGO than in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT? I would say that in VERTIGO, the filters, the Technicolor, the compositions, serve an expressive function, while the very impressive style on display in the umbrellas scene in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT isn’t saying much. On the other hand, the windmill scene a few minutes later feels quintessentially Hitchcockian in that it’s an instance of one of his great themes: evil lurking beneath the surface of the everyday.
Asher, I think both FC and VERTIGO rank among Hitchcock’s great films (and they are listed as Top Tier on “Unexamined/Essentials”), but it’s clear that VERTIGO exists on another, higher level, and that by using form (the ingredients you mention, and more) and its relationship to the story, themes, performances, etc., it attains something close to the cosmic. Depending on what you mean by “saying,” it “says” more, to my understanding.
Re: VERTIGO. I agree with Dave Kehr, who wrote in the Chicago Reader: “One of the landmarks—not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art.”
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/vertigo/Film?oid=1150935
I don’t agree with his FC capsule, which downplays it:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/foreign-correspondent/Film?oid=1056758
When I saw it again recently I found it surprising and moving. The plane crash into the sea is particularly brutal.