Piccadilly greatly disappointed me. Not just because of its failure to live up to its DVD cover art’s promise of partial nudity, but for its failure to live up to the promise of energy delivered by the first few scenes. This establishing journey from the cityscape to the bowels of the “club” gave me an incredible sensation of momentum, each iteration (from the skyline, to the street, to the foyer, to the dance hall/restaurant, to the kitchen, and finally to the scullery) amplifying this ominous feeling of moving deeper into the belly of some machine. It may sound excessive to say that the hygiene-conscious nightclub owner looking for the wrench in the works reminded me of a Philip Marlowe tracing leads to some nuclear truth, but my sense of progression and expectation of revelation was roughly on par.
This trajectory terminated, of course, at the scullery, where Victor finally discovered Shosho. I was relieved by this inertia, finding the austerity of the room and the dance a soothing contrast to the excess of booze and jazz in the public areas of the club. The indolent, transfixed workers, the Oriental dancer, and the thin smoke rising around her gave the scullery an opiate quality relative to the alcoholic one made by dizzying images of Western patrons ordering and downing drinks. Also satisfying was the realisation that those same patrons, by turning their attention to the fat diner’s dirty plate, were more interested the maid’s dance than the professional’s. This theft of the show by proxy was like a wormhole that smashed through all the layers of space carefully established in the previous scenes.
But this climax occurred way too soon (oh grow up), the remainder of Piccadilly failing to match the kinetic energy of these first few scenes and becoming, like Claire said, slow and predictable. Marlowe, at least, had the good taste to solve the puzzle at the end of the movie. Perhaps restitution was sought by the murder and trial thrown in towards the end, but this seemed so arbitrary and hackneyed that I was amazed to find myself less intrigued by the mystery of the dead dancer than the mystery of the dirty dish.
Still, I found this symmetry of plot interesting. The immediate introduction and ending of the film that surround the two mysteries also act very similarly, smoothing out the transition between physical and cinematic realities: the opening credits appear naturalised in the cityscape, reproducing on screen the advertising and transit that would have brought audiences to the theatre in the first place; while the final shots of the human billboards (what do you call those guys again?) and their message of transience provide an egress back to the physical world. Of course, this effect may have been a little lost on me and anyone else who did not go out to see Piccadilly but brought it home with them, but I believe that even when watching movies in private we tend to keep in mind the archetype of the public screening.
Mona Lisa in motion
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Relieved of the duty to follow plot and dialogue as I watched the first film of this course, my mind was left to wondering just what Joseph Cornell was trying to convey through a film like Rose Hobart. Initially, I decided that his disruption of the narrative order was supposed to undermine cinematic tradition by revealing the flimsiness and secret subjectivity of the narrative structure, but this seemed a pretty frivolous point. I mean, I could probably turn a romance novel into a spy-fi simply by rearranging the words, but demonstrating that a text is simply a sequence of signs doesn’t devalue the chosen sequence.
In spite of, or because of, my daydreaming as an avant-garde novelist, I secondly decided that Cornell was trying to uncritically reproduce the subconscious on screen, emulating our desultory, aphonic dreams and memories in hope of communicating with us on a purely subliminal level. Such escapism seems to be Cornell’s more likely intention – he’d have chosen a better-loved film than East of bloody Borneo if it was polemical subversion. At any rate, I proved immune to his method, my consciousness staying more or less on the forefront of my mind throughout.
I suggest a few reasons why I failed to fall into the intended trance. Firstly, there was the colour filter. Drenching the film in a purple hue no doubt creates a nocturnal effect that connotes dreaming, but this is only due to audiences recognising it as a cue they’ve learnt from more conventional films. In my case – which is relatively inexperienced with black and white movies – the result was starkly reminiscent of carbon copy paper. Either way, this reminder of the film’s artifice seems at odds with its oneiric intentions: I’m less inclined to slip into a dream when I’m constantly reminded that it isn’t real. The same goes for the slowed projector speed, which might evoke drowsiness if our critical impulses weren’t stimulated by its obvious reference to the silent era; and for the alert to our own spectatorship that introduces the film by deliberately trying to arouse self-consciousness.
In spite of, or because of, my daydreaming as an avant-garde novelist, I secondly decided that Cornell was trying to uncritically reproduce the subconscious on screen, emulating our desultory, aphonic dreams and memories in hope of communicating with us on a purely subliminal level. Such escapism seems to be Cornell’s more likely intention – he’d have chosen a better-loved film than East of bloody Borneo if it was polemical subversion. At any rate, I proved immune to his method, my consciousness staying more or less on the forefront of my mind throughout.
I suggest a few reasons why I failed to fall into the intended trance. Firstly, there was the colour filter. Drenching the film in a purple hue no doubt creates a nocturnal effect that connotes dreaming, but this is only due to audiences recognising it as a cue they’ve learnt from more conventional films. In my case – which is relatively inexperienced with black and white movies – the result was starkly reminiscent of carbon copy paper. Either way, this reminder of the film’s artifice seems at odds with its oneiric intentions: I’m less inclined to slip into a dream when I’m constantly reminded that it isn’t real. The same goes for the slowed projector speed, which might evoke drowsiness if our critical impulses weren’t stimulated by its obvious reference to the silent era; and for the alert to our own spectatorship that introduces the film by deliberately trying to arouse self-consciousness.
There’s something similar to be said about the kitschy music. It was clever of Cornell to play it across scene changes, smoothing out cuts and levelling the structure of the film; but the incongruity of the sunny sound and moony picture didn’t help lull me into relaxing my grip on convention or expectation of narrative (as discussed in class). Again, it had the opposite effect, this contrast startling me awake rather than immersing me. If Rose had been composed a few decades later some cool jazz might have been more in keeping with its bluesy aesthetic and given it a more seductive cohesion. In particular, some modal John Coltrane or the wacky time signature in Brubeck’s Take Five would do this while still eschewing convention (but my ultimately bad taste would probably choose Purple Haze just for its title’s articulation of the colour scheme and the fun that could be had in timing “scuse me while I kiss the sky” with that eclipse).
Having said all that, I truly enjoyed Rose Hobart for its devotion to a singular theme. It’s a moving portrait of an enigma, a Mona Lisa in motion. And although it failed to bridge the gap between its artefact and my subconscious, I accept that that could just be me (a stage hypnotist once returned me to my seat for not “surrendering” myself). Otherwise why would Dali have accused Cornell of stealing his dreams?
Having said all that, I truly enjoyed Rose Hobart for its devotion to a singular theme. It’s a moving portrait of an enigma, a Mona Lisa in motion. And although it failed to bridge the gap between its artefact and my subconscious, I accept that that could just be me (a stage hypnotist once returned me to my seat for not “surrendering” myself). Otherwise why would Dali have accused Cornell of stealing his dreams?
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