CinéFemme Forum

Aline Tashjian: Lesbian Feminist Cinéaste from Paris

2011-09-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

Tribute to Aline Tashjian: Lesbian Feminist and Cineáste from Paris

Soft-spoken and articulate Aline Tashjian passed away in Paris on September 23 after a long illness.

She was an ardent supporter of lesbian feminism and feminist cinema through the years and regularly attended the Créteil Films de Femmes International Women's film festival and the Cineffable Lesbian Film Festival, both in Paris.These are ongoing festivals where women can meet each year and see images of women, made by women, and how women live in other countries. Festival goers also come to catch up with their own community. The festivals are the best places for political activism and social contact in an international atmosphere of solidarity for women.

Créteil, March 2011.

If you wanted to know the films that were worth seeing at these festivals, you could consult Aline's program and her selections. Wherever there was a choice between the petite or the grand salle, Aline was among the women that chose the most provocative films with the most potent themes.

Créteil Films de Femmes, March 2011.

Festival director Jackie Buet (right), 2011.

These choices included political films about oppression, strong portraits of women who have made important contributions to culture, global portraits of women and their conditions in the work force and films with an artistic content that combine intelligent narratives with good visual imagery.

Aline loved to travel with her life partner Manue and recently went on trips to China, Greece and to Armenia where part of her French family originates. Her concern about health and good nutrition made you always think of the importance of the quality of life. She was a hard worker and yet she took time to fill her life with valuable activities such as meeting good friends, sharing meals with fresh food from organic farming collectives, and demonstrating for just causes in Paris. Just for fun, she loved watching crime scene TV programs in the evening with Manue, who shared with her a dedicated interest in the Créteil and Cineffable festivals.

Fluent in English, Aline attended French university where she studied various subjects such as film and media. She worked full time in the IT aviation industry and was respected in her field.

It is hard to imagine a world without Aline Tashjian, for she was truly a remarkable person with respect and consideration for transformative ideas and the people she loved. She leaves her life partner Manue and a number of good friends in the French and international community. Her contributions to valuable discussions at Créteil and Cineffable were important. The quality of her life makes our experiences with her vital and memorable.

I came to know Aline through the Paris film festivals in the late 90's. I was immediately struck by her sincerity, intelligence and compassion for lesbian feminism and global women issues, and the inherent connections to issues of economics, the environment and pacifism - and how these all translated to the film medium. Conversations with Aline were always engaging and thorough. She and Manue introduced me to some of the internal discussions in French feminism, which are otherwise difficult for a French non-native. During the festivals we had many wonderful times together. I am grateful for this long lasting friendship, which is one of the most important ones I have.

Aline's Quartier

Little China in Belleville, Paris.

Belleville, March 2011.

In a video portrait (click above) by "Toxic Lesbian" created by Elena Toxico only last year (August 2010), Aline speaks of the beginnings of the lesbian feminist movement and the case of psychiatric treatment of lesbians. She explains that her political involvement did not begin as a lesbian feminist but with the pacifist movement and anti-war protests of the Vietnam war.

"Toxic Lesbian emerged in 2005 as a pure artistic language to virtual and live action, creation and investigation processes, including all kind of collaborations. An essential concept of the proposals is to generate works that do not have a commercial format but ephemeral and easy to disseminate ones. In this sense, all proposed projects strongly connected with art, are conceived like performances. Around them, video art productions are the link with the visual language that will generate documentaries about collective social interaction and other testimonies related to the project" (Toxic Lesbian).

Moira Sullivan
San Francisco, September 30, 2011.

Lars Von Trier's Other Comments

2011-05-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

Danish helmer Lars Von Trier surrounded by the women he doesn't seem to care very much about.

Lars Von Trier's Other Comments

64 Festival de Cannes
Published in Film International, May 2011.

He likes to run his mouth ... I think he dug himself in a deep hole today. Kirsten Dunst.

The press conference with Lars Von Trier after the screening of his film Melancholia in the Cannes Official Competition gave insights into the workings of the director's mind, not the film. It is clear that the Danish helmer does not like the press and turned every question against the journalists asking them. But he also doesn't seem to respect women by taking liberties in speaking for their behalf. There has been a lot of discussion about the comments which led him to being banned from the festival this year, but no one has really taken to him to task about what he said before the final two questions which took up five minutes of the press conference. The entire session on May 15 lasted 45 minutes.

In addition to his comments about Hitler, Jews and being a Nazi, he declared his next project would be a porn film with Kirsten Dunst (who immediately said no) and Charlotte Gainsbourgh. The two actresses smiled nervously and laughed away the alleged film that Von Trier kept on bringing up for 40 minutes until he launched into his German commentary. What do actresses need to do to stay endeared to their helmer? In this case, Dunst and Gainsbourgh tolerated albeit with forced good humor relentless comments on this porn film. By the time he launched into his standup about Germans and Jews, the actresses had already been worn down by the previous comments. The line had to be drawn somewhere and it was made in the last five minutes. Disrespect to women, Jews and Germans are one in the same.

"When accused of misogyny, filmmakers employ classic techniques of neutralization, concentrating on denials of injury and condemnations of their condemners. However, a few acknowledge having created movies that demean women, in which case they usually point out compensating virtues".

King, Neal. "Spinning Misogyny: Filmmaker Defenses Against Charges of Deviance"

The claim that Von Trier writes "great parts for women" is not altogether true. You might recall one of Von Trier’s student films about an old man who is a sex addict and preys on young women. Last year Charlotte Gainsbourg played a woman who was burned at a stake for being a women's studies professor in Antichrist. She said mother Jane Birkin was her biggest support on the set. For this, she won the best actress award at Cannes. Emily Watson allows herself to be sexually used by men at her husband's suggestion. Actually, women don't seem to hang around Von Trier for long, great parts or not. He doesn't have a stable of regular actresses like Bergman or Woody Allen. Where is Emily Watson? Björk from Dancer in the Dark refused to speak to him after the film was finished and at Cannes, and although he begged Nicole Kidman at the 2003 Cannes press conference to be in a sequel to Dogville as part of his so-called new trilogy she has yet to return. I can guarantee you that Gainsbourg and Dunst won't be back after this year. An interview with Dunst at Cannes yesterday was canceled by the Rothchild owned Mouton Cadet Wine Bar who didn't want to be associated with Von Trier. She was not welcome, said the owners. Who needs this reaction after working hard on a film for months? Fortunately Kirsten Dunst was awarded the best actress at Cannes but had to add "thank you Cannes festival for keeping the film in the competition."

Melancholia is about depression and the end of the earth. The title addresses not only an emotional and spiritual malady but also the name of a planet that is rapidly approaching earth and is on a fatal collision course.
“Melancholia is a good title used many times, in all art that I like and is part of all good art. It has to do with longing, which is special for this film," said the Dane.
Well, we are longing for Lars Von Trier to grow up. We are longing for him to get as real as his pictures. A real spirit-mind connection.

I link this stupid YouTube video to illustrate that beneath Lars Von Trier's comments about Nazis and Jews is a disrespect for women. It must also be added that no on seems to care about this, as the YouTube video illustrates, which ridicules women to make its point. No one is going to kick Von Trier out of Cannes for that. That kind of humor is accepted and invisible. Cannes is known for film "art" where women are tortured, burned or used: Irreversible, Brown Bunny, Antichrist. Often these films are singled out for awards.

The first question at the Melancholia press conference was about the female characters played by Dunst and Gainsbourg. Dunst said that coming out of depression makes you stronger. Von Trier interrupted to mention Kirsten's “knowledge of depression”, asking “Can I say that? Otherwise forget it”. Gainsbourg replied, “we are not women, we are Lars”, and saw nothing different from men and women experiencing depression. Oh but there is. Especially since a depressed Von Trier is clearly very different from how actresses interpret depressed women.

Dunst said she became friends with "Lars", whereas Gainsbourg after three films says she does not know the director very well at all.

In response to this "rejection" "Lars" added, “well I know you from every angle”. Gainsbourg laughed nervously.
Though Von Trier could not say for sure if he was going to make the so far unproduced Wasington, he said he had plans to make a porn film. He claimed that Kirsten asked for the “beaver” shot in Melancholia, and now she wanted more.
"Charlotte is behind it. I said there would be lots of dialogue, but Charlotte replied, 'We don’t give a shit about the dialogue'. So there will be a lot of unpleasant sex, a hard core film. Three of four hours long so I can sleep a little longer for the press conference”.
When asked about the "magic cave" in the end of the film, Von Trier launched into a monologue about the differences between Eastern and Western religion. The Western approach he called the "orchid" school with its emphasis on suffering and the crucifixion. He was all for the Eastern "orthodox" approach that believes in the holy spirit:
"If a film can bring this light, the other side of life, the light side of planet earth, the holy spirit side, I am going to exploit it in the porn film. The Eastern church is very important".
Orgasms would also be “very important in the porn film but they would all be fake, except Charlotte's", said the Danish melancholic. He explained that had to do with two ways of acting. "French" and for Kirsten it was the style she used in Spiderman. Dunst reminded him that he used of webs of lace and yarn in Melancholia.

Von Trier then announced that he had changed his photographer for Melancholia (Manuel Alberto Claro) who taught him that women must be younger and younger and get naked in today's films.
"Now they are going to be naked and extremely young."
Von Trier won't officially be around this year at Cannes anymore, but it's almost guaranteed that he will be back with his porn film The Nymphomaniac next year, and all will be forgiven.

But the Danish filmmaker already knows this. He actually did not leave Cannes and hung around to give interviews to apologize for his German remarks. In his apology he didn't mention anything about getting out of line about his porn film. He "thought he was doing well", (as this clip shows), since the jokes about the alleged film flew by unscathed by the women he mocked. But it went too far. Von Trier claims he won't give any more press conferences. In exonerating himself, the world was able to see who is really is, a man with the social graces of a toad.

Tribute to Maria Schneider

2011-04-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

Through the Years with Maria Schneider: A Visual Essay

Rethinking Last Tango

French culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand ("le conseil" in "Merry Go Round" (France 1977) paid tribute to Maria Schneider, February 3, 2011:
"She remains the singular image of today’s woman, one of those living conduits of female liberty who is eternally reconquering a new generation".


*Maria Schneider, Créteil 2001* *©Moira Sullivan*

"For me, cinema is closer to painting, and I like working with filmmakers who have a sense of the image. I like the idea that cinema remains a memory of our time, and when filmed, that there is a trace of it. Then I met Antonioni, who is closer to what I am in life. He chose not to sell his soul, and many actors also abstain . After the Bertolucci film, I had golden bridges to sub-Tango, roles of sex symbols ... I ended it very quickly. I also had problems because they said: "She does not want to undress, she will not do the love scenes ..." That's what we always ask young women, even in 2001, it has not changed one iota, however. I'm still shocked about the fact that men of sixty years, Serrault, Poiret, Noiret, have a continuous career, compared to women the same age. Even Girardot. Between the sex symbol and grandma, there are no other interesting roles. I'm a part of an association for those involved in difficulty called "La Roue Tourne" which has existed since 1956. I'm just their ambassador. The president is eighty years old and she helps those she calls "disasters of glory." The actors have no unemployment insurance and when they have an accident they are not covered by social security. It's incredible when you consider that this association has paid the rent for Marcel Carné in the last ten years of his life ... but also that of Abel Gance. The state did nothing. Me, I also see a time when I will have difficulty working. The president said: "But, my dear Maria, it has always existed, now you're old, you are forty ! She has known actresses of the silent era, like Jacqueline Delubac. All this has not changed, even with women directors. There is a terrible crisis of roles, and film seems locked up. Everyone has their place, and "family film" is an illusion".

- Maria Schneider, interview for Créteil Films de Femmes, 2001.

"With her face of the eternal child-woman and character of a small wild cat, she has conquered the world with the brilliance of a meteorite whose shower pulverizes everything in its path!"- Brigitte Bardot, 10 February 2011

Traversing the empty space of Last Tango

From this point on Jeanne takes back her power from sadistic Paul

"A passage brilliant but ephemeral where, offering her velvet body to Marlon Brando at the height of her fame, she shocked, scandalized with her shamelessness but forever marked by her insolence in an era that she personalized".
- Brigitte Bardot, February 10, 2011.

Maria Schneider, Chevalier - Ordre des Arts et Lettres, July 2010. Frédéric Mitterand, Ministre de la Culture.

With Michelangelo Antonioni, Cannes Film Festival, 1975. "Then I met Antonioni, who is closer to what I am in life. He chose not to sell his soul, and many actors also abstain".
Maria Schneider, Créteil Films de Femmes, 2001.

Maria with the Italian "cantautore" - singer-songwriter Cristiano Malgioglio. Disco-tribute to late "cantautore" Lucio Battisti: "Señor Battisti" (1998).

Io Sono Mio (1978).

Italy

The Passenger (1975)

With Jack Nicholson - The Passenger.

Mama Dracula (1980)

Spain


Disco-tributo a Lucio Battisti dal titolo "Señor Battisti" - Cristiano Malgioglio and Maria Schneider 1996

Crime of Honor 1985

With Martin Scorsese and Michelangelo Antonioni

Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth Taylor, Maria Schneider

Créteil Films de Femmes 2001

With photographer Joan Townsend where Maria voluntarily committed herself to support her partner. It should be noted this was at a time when visitation rights was prohibited for same sex partners not only in Italy but everywhere.

La Repentie 2002

With Cristiano Malgioglio

Cannes Film Festival: Au Pays des Juliets (1992)


Luigi Comencini Commander:Ordre des Arts et des Lettres

With Alain Delon

Le Nuits Fauve (Savage Nights) 1992

At ceremony for Meryl Streep, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 2000.

With Cristiano Malgioglio

What a Flash 1972

Cannes Film Festival Au Pays des Juliets 1992

With Jean Piere Léaud

What a Flash 1972

Hellé 1972

Hellé 1992

La Dérobade 1979

Maria Schneider says "to hell with it". She is going to abandon the (beautiful) set of "Caligula" to make a 100% percent feminist film.

A Woman Like Eve 1979

Cari Genitori 1973

Without a father who did not acknowledge her - which was the drama of her life - she was the prey of all the glittering lures so that she burned herself to escape the neglect she dreaded.
Brigitte Bardot, February 10, 2011.

With photographer Joan Townsend, Rome 1975.

Èglise Saint Roch, Paris, 10 February 2011.

"She is a new little star in the Milky Way, far, far away from the atrocities and suffering that has been imposed on her on her passage on Earth." Brigitte Bardot, February 10, 2011.

Créteil Films de Femmes Ends on a Controversial Note

2011-04-02T18:10:00.000-07:00

Créteil discussion after screening of Virginie Despentes' Mutantes.
© Photo:Moira Sullivan

Ten years ago at Créteil Film de Femmes, the programming of Shu Lea Cheang's lesbian cybersex narrative I.K.U. was criticized by festival goers. "Porn has no place in a feminist festival", argued women who boycotted the event.

Festival organizer, Virginie Despentes, Catherine Corringer, and Jackie Buet.
©Photo: Moira Sullivan

Ten years later, Mutantes (Féminisme Porno Punk (France 2009), a documentary on "porno punk feminism" by French filmmaker and writer Virgine Despentes was screened to a packed house at "Petit Salle" at "Maison des Arts" at Créteil. Ironically, footage by the Paris-based artist Shu Lea Cheang was included. The screening was the main event of the evening after the 33rd Créteil Films de Femmes Palmarès. The alternate event in the "Grand Salle", Donatella Maiorca's Viola di Mare (Italy 2009) projected to a small audience was about an early 20th century lesbian who dressed as a man in order to marry her childhood sweetheart.

Virginie Despentes thinking it over at Créteil: "the post-porn movement is a new stage of the feminist revolution." ©Photo:Moira Sullivan

Virginie Despentes came into the limelight in 2000 with her rape-revenge cult narrative Baise-Moi . In 2006 she wrote King Kong Theory about her experiences in the French sex industry, a pop culture treatise on the commodification of women and the aesthetics of "hooker chic". For the last four years Virginie has lived as a lesbian in Spain.

The screening of Mutantes followed a performance by Catherine Corringer based on the SCUM Manifesto by the late Valerie Solanas (1968). The parallel event was restricted by Corringer to a small group of spectators in the festival Satellite space. Both Despentes and Corringer attended the discussion following the screening of Mutantes.

According to Despentes, Mutantes is a film "about lesbians, for lesbians". It is superbly edited with images of lesbians and transgender artists working in performance art. It is not a "mass movement" on the order of 70's lesbian feminism and has no political agenda other than a reactive posture to radical feminist history glossed over with beguiling labels such as "feminist absolutionism".

Interviews* are made with "queer" academics such as Beatriz Preciado , lesbian and transgender artists and porn directors and stars such as Maria Beatty and Annie Sprinkle. Mutantes gives the impression that lesbian porno punk is rampant in society as the current focus of lesbian and transgender artists.

Mutantes begins with a collage of images of book covers of 70's radical feminist texts by the late anti-porn activist Andrea Dworkin and civil rights lawyer Catherine MacKinnon. This comprises the extent of the political overview. The filmmaker claims she contacted MacKinnon and Antoinette Fouque, founder of the French "Mouvement de Libération des Femmes" (MLF) for the film who declined to participate. Thereby, Despentes believes she gave "feminist absolutionists" a voice in her film.

Critics of Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon argue that the first anti-porn legislation in the US (later repealed in Minneapolis) was backed by ultra-right activists. The 1983 legislation and subsequent efforts to pass it in Indianapolis, Massachusetts and Washington was prompted by the experience of the late porn star Linda Boreman (Lovelace) who was sexually harassed in porn films made by her ex-husband. MacKinnon represented her until her death in 2002. The Minneapolis legislation specifically addressed pornography as a form of sex discrimination and a civil rights violation, and sought to give women the right to seek damages under civil rights law. It was not based on issues of morality or sexual obscenity as is often claimed by pro-porn advocates, and throughout Despentes' film.

In the Supreme Court of Canada anti-porn legislation was passed in 1992 but rather than upholding porn as a civil rights violation law it was used to target lesbian and LGBT pornography. The enforcement of the statute was unfairly credited to the drafters of the legislation. Despentes' documentary does not present this history.

Porn critics have drawn attention to what lesbian porn director Maria Beatty calls the "fast food" consumption of hardcore porn. According to film studies academic Linda Williams "pornography" is just "choreography". When it was pointed out that Linda Lovelace became an anti-porn activist at a film studies lecture Williams nonchalantly replied, "well she still made money off of porn".

Radical feminists such as MacKinnon and in the end Dworkin are heterosexuals who had no issue with lesbian porn made by lesbians since at the time they were trying to create anti-porn legislation there was little being made. The anti-porn agenda of radical feminism specifically addressed hardcore pornography and civil rights issues.

Lesbian Porno Punk is a reaction to the radical feminism of the 70's by claiming to be what it wasn't: a pro-sex, pro-pornography movement. It would be more accurate to identify "Lesbian Porno Punk" as a self-generating art form rather than a reaction to 70's radical feminism.

Historically, 70's radical feminism secured many freedoms denied previous generations of women. "Lesbian Porno Punk" appropriates some of these radical feminist inroads as "post-feminist discourse". For example, porn star - Annie Sprinkle seems to have invented the wheel for women's self-examinations in her performance art, which was an agenda of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective (BWHBC) in "Our Bodies Ourselves" 40 years ago.

When asked at the Créteil discussion if heterosexuals could achieve sexual equality, Dispentes claimed it was impossible. What is clear in "Lesbian Porno Punk" is that women and transgenders don't need men for sex and artificial sex organs eliminate the need for heterosexual sex entirely. The Situationists thought along these lines in the 60's since one of the agendas was to "demand better sex organs".

Sex organs aside, the concept of gender fluidity espoused by academics such as Judith Butler (Gender Trouble) enjoys wide currency in "Lesbian Porno Punk". The transformation from women's studies to queer studies was heavily influenced by her work.

Butler limits the meaning of lesbian as "desire", which excludes the political posture and woman-identification of lesbian feminism. "Lesbian" was historically stripped of meaning until 70s lesbian feminism. It still remains a provocation. According to Butler who speaks for lesbians and gay men alike - but not as a lesbian:

"Queer is not being lesbian. Queer is not being gay. It is an argument against lesbian specificity: that if I am a lesbian I have to desire in a certain way. Or if I am a gay I have to desire in a certain way. Queer is an argument against certain normativity, what a proper lesbian or gay identity is."

Lesbians of Lesbos claim exclusive rights to name.

The island of Lesbos initiated a legal claim in 2008 to restrict the use of lesbian for inhabitants of their island. But ridiculous actions from small Greek islands aside, the generic use of "queer" in academia as substitute for "lesbian" turns the wheel another notch making this a vacuous if not altogether redundant term. When lesbian is stripped of politics, of feminism, it is target for queer academic claims of "essentialism" or specific "natural" identity.

If gender is no longer "fixed", the choice of better sex organs, or specific gendered bodies becomes the practice. Tribe 8 musician Lynn Breedlove says in Mutantes: "I'm a guy but I am not going to change my gender".

Through all of this one can't but wonder why 70s radical feminism is systematically watered down to an anti-pleasure, anti-sex, and thereby anti-freedom movement. Susan Faludi's classic text Backlash (1992) has some answers, but is seldom implemented. ("Even the beauty magazines are saying it: Harper's Bazaar accuses the women's movement of having "lost us [women] ground instead of gaining it.")

When three semi-dressed women in high heels parade through the streets of an American city in Mutantes and are met by men who jerk off as they saunter by, the efficacy of lesbian porno punk activism comes to mind.

There are many questions to the discourses presented in Despentes' film. Mutantes is well made and technically proficient. It is an excellent documentary about lesbian and transgender artistry. Artists historically enjoy a freedom of avantgarde expression. The film is a rich tableau originating in San Francisco with echoes in France, Spain and Italy.

The anti-porn movement has a history that is absent in Despentes' film, some of which concerns civil rights, sexual harassment, trafficking, coerced prostitution, incest, and alcohol and drug addiction.Somehow all this history is equated with "feminist fundamentalism", if ever an intriguing oxymoron.

Mutantes is problematic if as a starting point for discussion it's conceit prevents a real discussion that tackles its premises. At times that is how the discussion at Créteil went.

Interviewees in Mutantes:

NORMA JEAN ALMODOVAR, MARIA BEATTY, BEATRIZ PRECIADO, LYNNEE BREEDLOVE, CATHERINE BREILLAT, SIOBHAN BROOKS, SONDRA GOODWIN, SCARLOT HARLOT, MARIA LLOPIS, LYDIA LUNCH, POST OP, BEATRIZ PRECIADO, CAROL QUEEN, QUIMERA ROSA, B. RUBY RICH, NINA ROBERTS, CANDIDA ROYALLE, ANNIE SPRINKLE, JACKIE STRANO, MICHELLE TEA, CORALIE TRINH THI, BETONY VERNON, DEL LAGRACE VOLCANO, LINDA WILLIAMS, MADISON YOUNG, ITZIAR ZIGA

Teresa Villaverde - "Transe" Screened at Créteil Films de Femmes

2011-04-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

Teresa Villaverde and festival director Jackie Buet, Creteil.
©Moira Sullivan

Amidst a couple of cries against the film in progress, Teresa Villaverde's Transe (Portugal 2006) unfolded: an epic saga about a young Russian woman who leaves her country in search of more opportunity and who winds up being trafficked as a sex slave in Italy. Its not sure if the grumbling in the Grand Salle at Créteil Films de Femmes on April 2 was consciously made because the subject was so disturbing, or because of the unconventional form of the film that may have put spectators on edge. When giant trees fall in the forest at a road stop for the woman in transit, the beginning of the loss of self is profoundly foreshadowed. After the trees hit the ground, the images are blurred; this begins Sonia's (Ana Moreira) trance: one that she is within the entire film, as are we as spectators of cinema.

There is nothing random about the way Villaverde frames each scene. Her creative use of the camera and editing to create a picture language that symbolically follows the narrative is brilliant. Villaverde sets the focal lengths, angles and mobility of the camera, arranges the shots, and tells a story not only in words but in symbols.

We should remember that Sonia is a young woman in her 20s who is exposed to the most vicious degradation and loss of personal freedom one can experience as a woman. Trafficking is a huge problem today and women are doubly at risk for being sex slaves but also illegal aliens and thereby are not free to speak out against their captivity. According to Villaverde, perpetrators are sophisticated in hiding the signs of physical abuse.

Why does Sonia not resist? Why did she allow herself to be put in the trunk of a car because of a supposed raid by immigration authorities in Germany? She told the perpetrator no so many times. At every no, there is a sigh of relief. Short lived as the seduction and entrapment wins. Why does she not jump out of the car when she has a chance? Why does she not run? The loss of self is so complete in this film that we cannot really expect any answers to satisfy these questions. We are not in her situation. What can we do about this barbarianism today? Does it continue so that prostitution can continue without any legal barriers?

We know that trafficking must stop and the buyers of sex, as in Sweden, must be prosecuted.

Is it a dream that Sonia envisions a young boy with a rifle in the room aiming at her, where she is forced to service buyers of sex? There are many facets of her trance to reconcile and Villaverde does not make this easy for us.

Sonia before leaving Russia.

First loss: Sonia loses her cloths.

The first tradeoff of Sonia in a wheat field.

The decrepit Italian site where women are sold as sex slaves.

The distraught mentally challenged man. His father bought Sonia for him.

Een Vrouw als Eva (A Woman Like Eve) with Maria Schneider and Monique van de Ven, Netherlands,1983.

2011-03-29T02:59:00.000-07:00

Maria Schneider in Merry Go Round (France 1977), with Joe Dallesandro.

2011-03-29T02:47:00.000-07:00

Maria Schneider, extrait Les Acteurs, Bertrand Blier ( France, 2000).

2011-03-29T02:36:00.000-07:00

Postcards to Maria Schneider

2011-03-18T05:46:00.000-07:00

On February 10, Maria Schneider's funeral was held at Èglise Saint-Roch in Paris. She was cremated at Père Lachaise, and her ashes will be scattered at
Le Rocher de la Vierge in Biarritz.
I was not able to be in Paris, so these photos this spring day in San Francisco at Golden Golden Park, Baker Beach and Stinson Beach are an homage to Maria.

Vibrant Betty Garrett Passes Away

2011-02-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

‘Ma, ... how do you really feel about the blacklist? Angry? Frustrated? How?’”

“That needed to be answered, and I thought about it a lot. Angry? No. To me, anger is a futile emotion. I think I can sum it up in two words: deep sorrow. Not for myself – I’ve survived, and my life is full of joy – but a deep sorrow for [my husband] Larry that will be with me in my heart for the rest of my life.”

– Betty Garrett

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

That's Betty Garrett on the far right, next to her is Gene Kelly, Ester Williams and Frank Sinatra. The film is Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and Garrett as Shirley Delwyn is hilarious in her pursuit of Dennis Ryan (Sinatra). Especially when she corners him by singing " It's Fate Baby, It's Fate".

Sinatra and Garrett in On the Town

In On the Town (1949) she gets to chase Sinatra again and plays the unforgettable pushy cabby Brunhilde Esterhazy (Hildy) who annoys Gaby (Sinatra) and tries to convince him her place is the only site he needs to see while touring New York. But she gets him in the end.

Archie Bunker and Irene Lorenzo

Garrett was also popular as Archie Bunker's neighbor Irene Lorenzo from 1973-1975 in All in the Family.

Betty Garrett and Larry Parks

Betty Garrett who died this week (1919-2011) was not only a fine actress but someone with a political conscience. Her husband Larry Parks was called to the House of Un-American activities (HUAC) in 1951 to testify if he knew any Communists in Hollywood. Parks thought that by telling the truth he would be cleared. He admitted to being a member of the Communist Party in 1941 but that he got disillusioned with it and quit in 1945. Parks said there was a big difference in being in the Communist Party in 1941 and 1951. This didn't matter to HUAC. He then pleaded to not have to name names of his colleagues who were in the CP but unlike the "Hollywood Ten," he became an informer. Even though he was considered a "friendly witness", like Walt Disney, he was still blacklisted. So from the lead role in The Jolson Story in 1946, where he was nominated for best actor at the Academy Awards, Parks soon found himself playing bit parts in the theater and no studio would sign him in Hollywood.

In an interview with Garrett, Monica Sullivan from Movie Magazine International asks her about this dark period of her life, and a dark chapter for all Americans, the McCarthy period. Garrett said that it was very hard for her and her husband because of the HUAC proceedings. It was common in Hollywood that directors, screenwriters and actors contributed to the Communist Party during the Depression. Years later, HUAC went after Hollywood because of the fear of making pictures that would threaten national security. But with the larger aim of making money and holding a tight rain on expenses, studio bosses were not interested in promoting "Communism" through film.
Garrett said that realistically speaking, the CP was the only party during the Depression which addressed issues of the poor and disenfranchised.
It worked to establish retirement funds, and labor unions. Garrett and Parks were young and like many other young people of their time wanted change. It was none of anyone's business what political affiliation an American chose to have, said Garrett. This chapter of her life, and many others are taken up in her autobiography aptly named Betty Garrett and Other Songs: A Life on Stage and Screen. In her first film Big City the child actor Margaret O’Brien says to her, “When you sing, you sing all over!” Garrett told Sullivan that she wrote the book because she said she wasn't going to live forever. For her 90th birthday in 2009, a montage was made of her work. Surely we realize that this wonderful lady of the stage and screen will live forever.

Maria Schneider's Arthouse: Beyond the Myths

2011-02-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

Note: This tribute to Maria Schneider was published in Senses of Cinema, March 13, 2011 and has been updated here.

Merry Go Round, 1977.

For most, the focus for Maria Schneider is on a film that is 40 years old, on a role that was written by Bertolucci for a young boy but was acted by a 19-year-old French woman. Can you imagine that film? Maria discovered the original story in Italy. A film that in auteur conceit could have been the second leg of a trilogy on fascism: The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, 1900.
In Last Tango Jeanne confronts her sadistic attacker Paul and shoots him. Schneider sums it up: “I must say that the murder in the end of the film did me much good”.
Few journalists having a field day with the film’s excesses knew of her work, her life, or her thoughts. David Thompson ("Remembering Maria Schneider: Did film ruin the controversial actress's life?", New Republic, February 2011) decided to impose his astute personal reading of a photograph of Schneider at 50 and anticipate the reaction of male gazers “gulping” in pimply faced immaturity at their goddess. Even though in the end, Thompson tips his hat to Maria, the patronizing gesture is as fresh as fermented Roquefort.

How can Thompson read so much into a picture or a life of someone he never met, having seen a few (English language) films out of the 50 Schneider made? This is par for the majority of Anglophile publications with catchy tabloid titles and short, shallow obituaries on Maria.

Luigi Commencini, Ordre des Arts et Lettres

Maria Schneider worked almost every year of her nearly 40 year career. Thompson and many other journalists would have us believe that "film killed her"; that after her debut in Last Tango, which made her become a drug addict, she never reached the same pinnacle of acclaim. That pinnacle for Thompson's "male gazers" is the voyeuristic love of explicit sex. The film with a graphic rape for the "gulpers". Was it film or paparazzi that "killed" Maria, if the metaphor is to be used? According to the actress, she was terrified of the instant success the film brought her and used drugs to escape. But by the 80's that was over. She met and stayed with the same woman to her death.

"I felt very sad because I was treated like a sex symbol I wanted to be recognized as an actress, and the whole scandal and aftermath of the film turned me a little crazy and I had a breakdown". Maria Schneider.

It should be noted that the widely publicized story about Maria Schneider checking into a mental hospital to be with her lover in 1975 was at a time when visitation rights for same sex partners was prohibited, not only in Italy but everywhere. It is one of the single most recurrent fallacies circulating about her.

There are other bio fallacies that need correction- she quit the set of Caligula to make a 100% feminist film (A Woman Like Eve) and she refused to make sexist films for Joseph Losey and Luis Bunuel and left those sets too. She could have had a much bigger career," observed director Penelope Spheeris, a close friend at the time. "But I have a lot of respect for her. Think about it: To be such a sex symbol, to be so profoundly beautiful and have so much charisma and then not be available to men? Hollywood just doesn't stand for that. I don't care what people say, this town is run by men. Always."

Maria continually worked as a fine actress with a solid and productive career. Even if you don't read French, its not hard to appreciate Schneider's impressive lineage of work.

I interviewed Maria Schneider two years before her 50th birthday in Paris. She was beautiful and radiant, the Créteil Film de Femmes guest of honor. We saw her films, and heard her words. They drown out the cacophony of the ignorant. They need to be remembered: how film is a tracing of memory, how women must be recognized as actors and directors. How senior actors must be supported when they are unemployed and impoverished. She was vice-president of "La Roue Tourne" for this purpose.

Q: How do you feel about the response to you-there is a lot of press in France about you being honored at Créteil? How do you feel you've been received?
A: Very interesting. Because finally after I've been doing this now for thirty years, finally I find some cheerful articles, and you know people kind of understand me better now today than they used to. Because the media threw stones at me. [See Time, March 3, 1975]. When you read the articles back in the 70s they were terrible back then. And now seeing the kind of choices I made, they kind of understand me better. And respect me better, maybe it's the age, I don't know. (laughter).

(Interview with Maria Schneider 2001 © Moira Sullivan, Movie Magazine International)

In the USA there is still stone throwing. But we know better with every stone unturned. Richard Corliss wrote about Schneider in Time, comparing her life work with two other actors Tura Satana and Lena Nyman. Compressing their life work into a singular film and shallow obituary. the article is entitled Dead Sex Kittens: Farewell to Three Icons of Movie Eroticism. (February 10, 2010).

Contrast sensationalized articles with interviews of Schneider and you will discover the truth that "male gazers" and "gulpers" ignore. Directors, writers, artists and actors knew her real work, knew her capability, in France and abroad. The yellow journalism of Corliss, Thompson and several mainstream film critics speaks for itself. Some journalists were kinder but almost everyone singles out Last Tango as the tour de force, of Schneider's career, a film Maria did not enjoy making, even less with director Bernardo Bertolucci for unrealistic dialogue and scenes. He fired her for 1900, which in hindsight was fortuitous for Schneider who said that after Last Tango the "sweaty palmed" Italian director never made anything of substance. In a twist his conceits in the film - costume, makeup, mis en scéne, are his failures: all unfairly accredited to Schneider. A full clothed Brando emerges unscathed for the wear and tear.

Ordre des Arts et de Lettres, 2010.

Its been a sad week since the news of Maria Schneider's death was announced on February 3. Few realized she was so ill with terminal cancer. The comments about how her looks had changed from the young woman of the film that gave her international attention were unkind. It was as if she was supposed to stay forever young in real life as in cinema. Like most young women when she matured, she was not interesting.

The pictures that contrasted the young Maria with the mature Maria in fact were taken when she was inducted into the Ordre de Arts et Lettres in July 2010, a mere six months before her death. Some of them featured her costar in Merry Go Round, (Frédéric Mitterand) who is the Minister of Culture in France. Maria was impeccably dressed in a smart blue coat, knee length, with blue slacks and crisp white blouse. On her jacket, the medal of knighthood was pinned.

Maria looked tired and must have mustered the strength to be present and honored, which she did with bravery. She was hailed by Frédéric Mitterand in a letter read at the ceremony at the Ministry of Culture in Paris. Few journalists outside France covered the story. The photographs from the event received worldwide currency only with her death.

Schneider protége of Bardot.

This was the French order that Brigitte Bardot refused to be inducted into in 1985. Brigitte Bardot was Maria Schneider's confidante and took the vagabond actress, the 15 year old daughter of actor and colleague Daniel Gélin under her wing. She introduced her to people in the cinema and modeling world: an agent and William Morris. The young Maria was impressed that already at 33 Bardot was planning on quitting pictures, which she did six years later.

"Dear MARIA SCHNEIDER
You embody, you too, a facet of the modern woman and her freedom. You're an audacious actress, able to play all roles, even including your own: thus we believe that you uncover who you are, or rather as the film makes you become in the the subtle abyss of implementation - realized by Bertrand Blier ten years ago in "Les Actors" where you hang out with many other "stars" of "the French seventh art". However, it is primarily through international productions that you have risen in the cinematic landscape and in the heart of each. At just twenty years, "Last Tango in Paris" was for you your first waltz in this world brilliant, too brilliant, perhaps, because of mysteries and appearances. Alongside the great Marlon Brando, you have "dared" to violate the proprieties of the time, and you deserved an Oscar nomination, along with all the insults and all the successes still attached to the scandal and the advances that art and artists know so often which take on the public of their time ...
Exponential artist, you hug the greatest legends of cinema.
Directors like Bertolucci, or in ANTONIONI "Profession: Reporter, like Bulle OGIER with RIVETTE, GARREL, SCHROETER or FASSBINDER. You share the stage with Jack Nicholson and many other giants. Altogether, no fewer than fifty films in just forty years. It is remarkable that this sustainability has earned you the honor of being in 2001 in Creteil, Festival International du Film de Femmes. Many are your appearances, both film and television, which marked the spirits and touched a wide audience, as in "Les Nuits Fauves" in 1992 whose success has been truly extraordinary. Always free, you do not hesitate to reject proposals when they lock you into the category of "Lolita", or when you do not feel comfortable with authors, as prestigious as they are, such as Luis Bunuel and Joseph Losey. Thus, you knew that it goes beyond the interests of your career to convey an authentic artistic personality. Always bold, you have roles that have marked a radiant spontaneity, an explosive vitality as in the Last Tango I mentioned, or in the role of the prostitute in "La Déborade" by Daniel Duval.
You too have been an artist that I am pleased today to honor, a singular icon of today's woman. Your presence, your voice hoarse and sensual, which seems to express wonderful powers of revolt, you were a model of emancipation for more than a generation. That too, I think, is the meaning of film, the image of our potential set before our eyes which reaches out to help us become ourselves. And you have succeeded, more than others, and embody our freedom, with a tangible vitality and especially of women at a time of exploration and conquest.

At this very imperfect sketch of your personality, I would add, in fact, finally, "commitment", not only because you give yourself on the screen, the rebellious woman, as I suggested in a few instances, but also because you're in solidarity with your profession, as evidenced by your investment in the association "La Roue Tourne"created a little over half a century, in 1957, for older artists whom fortune has overshadowed ... It is also you know, a cause particularly dear to me and which I wished to give my full support by participating in Gala d’Union of Artists recently held in Paris at the Cirque d'Hiver.

For all of your background and your fighting, for your charm and emotion that you inspire in the heart of each spectator, it gives me great pleasure, dear Maria Schneider, on behalf of the French Republic, to make you a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.

July 2010.

At the quiet funeral held at Èglise Saint-Roch, Brigitte Bardot was present through a moving letter read by Alain Delon, the woman who called Schneider every Sunday during her illness. Among Maria's friends in attendance was the director Bertrand Blier, actress Claudia Cardinale, the writer Jean-Henri Servat, actor Alain Delon, Manuel and Fiona Gélin, actress Christine Boisson, artistic director Dominique Besnehard, actress Farida Rahouadj, Deputy Mayor of Paris in charge of Culture, Christophe Girard, and actress Andrea Ferreol.
Maria's partner (compagne) since the 80s, Pia, spoke at the memorial. "Ciao Bella, Ciao Maria" and saluted her for her bravery in the long illness that took her life.
Maria's ashes were to be taken from Père Lachaise to later be scattered at La Roche de Vierge in Biarritz.

It may seem pointless to react to the media as if there is any conscience involved in paparazzi and yellow journalists who make a living by exploiting celebrities with a click of a camera or a quickly written paragraph dripping with sensationalism.

Maria Schneider was in the limelight from the beginning to the end. How she was remembered in France was moving where she received the genuine appreciation and affirmation she was seeking her entire career. That honor must be extended elsewhere within the international film community.

Salut Maria!

Èglise Saint-Roch, Paris

La Roche de Vierge in Biarritz.

From this point on the film, Jeanne takes charge.

Famous feminist film made in Holland by Nouchka Van Brakel

Bertolucci's odd couple: 47 year old Marlon Brando making a comeback, and 19 year old Maria Schneider.

Au Pays des Juliets

La Dérobade with Miou-Miou

Traversing the empty space of Last Tango

At Cannes Film Festival: Au Pays des Juliets

The Passenger

Maria Schneider

Merry Go Round with Joe Dallesandro

The Passenger with Jack Nicolson

Créteil Films de Femmes, guest of honor, 2001© Moira Sullivan

Créteil Films de Femmes, 2001, ©Moira Sullivan

Last Tango

The Passenger

Hellé, Roger Vadim

The Repentant: Isabelle Adjani, Maria Schneider

Last Tango

La Babysitter

The funeral of Maria Schneider, Èglise Saint-Roch,
February 10, 2011

Paris, February 10, 2011.

Maria Schneider: Forget Last Tango.

2011-02-04T23:17:00.000-08:00

Autoportrait: Maria Schneider

Interview with Maria Schneider by Jackie Buet, Elisabeth Jenny.Créteil Films de Films, 2001.

Maria Schneider - Belle et Rebelle
What had become of her? We left her, a child in the arms of handsome Marlon. In a role too overwhelming for her and she would not return unscathed. Descent into hell. Solitude. Chaotic career. With the sole bastion of acute lucidity of the mediocrities in the world. We find her today more beautiful than ever. Funny. Insolent. A little bruised. Waiting for a role of good measure, and we would be proud. We love her very much. Portrait.

A Precocious Rebel
"I wanted to paint, and I studied Latin and Greek. I was a good student, I wanted to make excavations and illustration for children's books, because it is an artistic craft. My mother was a librarian. I was living with her. Then there was May 68 and while my brother became bourgeois, a physician, and demonstrated with red flags, I cried because I could not study. I had quite a violent conflict with my mother, so I left home at fifteen and a half. I earned my living by selling drawings and illustrations for restaurant menus. I have also been a young model for jeans.

I was a cinephile. I went to see many films, like those of Italian neorealism. In 1969, while making the rounds I met Brigitte Bardot at a film by Jean Aurel, Les Femmes. She took a liking to me. I told her that I lived alone. As if Brigitte was not nice to animals and stray dogs! She knew my father, Daniel Gélin, who was an actor and who I did not know. She offered me a converted maid's room in her home in Paris, and I stayed two years. That's how I started in the trade. I met her agent who told me with his Yugoslavian accent: "You should make movies with the physique you have." I was fascinated by the personality of Brigitte Bardot, who was thirty-three years and was a dazzling beauty. She was already very clear about her work and began to want to quit. She taught me things that I subsequently was able to verify. I met Warren Beatty, Alain Delon, who made me do Madly (1970). After I did some little things like La Vieille Fille (1971), by Jean Pierre Blanc, with Annie Girardot and Philippe Noiret.

Last Tango ... first major role
In fact, it's a total coincidence. I was friends with Dominique Sanda. She would make the film with Jean-Louis Trintignant, but she was pregnant. She had a large picture with her of both of us. Bertolucci saw it. He made me do a casting. I read the script, I did not immediately understand. I did not really want to do it and everyone told me: "C'mon, with Brando! ..." I resisted until the last moment, because I had to make a film by Valerio Zurlini, with Delon, called The Professor, with the dancer Sonia Petrovna. I regretted my choice since the beginning of my career would have been sweeter, quieter. For Tango, I was not prepared. People have identified with a character that was not me. Butter, about saucy old pigs ... I think it's a film that has aged, style, form and speech. It's a film typical of the '70s, dated, unlike the films of Antonioni, Rossellini, that do not wrinkle. Bertolucci's very smart, he followed the fashions. Even Marlon with his charisma and class, felt a bit violated, exploited a little in this film. He rejected it for years. And me, I felt it doubly. Marlon was extraordinary, sympathetic with the technicians and generous. Bertolucci, who was a Communist, had the people with him and was working fifteen hours a day. Marlon said: "There they are - sandwiches for everyone," the Hollywood superstar that he was. There was a chemistry between us, a complicity. With other actors, the film would have been very different.

The 70s and the Sexual revolution
Last Tango is the And God Created Woman (Vadim, 1956) of the 70s. But I'll tell you a secret, it's a scoop that I found in Italy but not in France. In the original script of Tango, my role would be played by a boy, which obviously changes everything. They did not dare. Marlon always told me: "But you have more character than a boy! "[Laughs] It's still the first draft that would have broken taboos. The film, as it was filmed, was banned in Italy by a group of Catholics in Spain under the Franco regime. As in Lolita (Kubrick, 1962) the age difference is also a real taboo. Marlon me twenty and fifty years. In retrospect, this film is harder in the dialogue of the picture - since we have seen much worse - in the perversity of the text and the screenplay by Franco Arcalli, which rotates around zoophilia, pigs and all that ... There is also a deadly side, and I must say that the murder in the end of the film did me much good.

The True Nature of an Actress
I learned on the field, because I have not taken lessons. I was just at the Actors Studio, but I did not like it. I do not like drama. I go to the opera, but the theater is boring. There are very few actors who say that. For me, cinema is closer to painting, and I like working with filmmakers who have a sense of the image. I like the idea that cinema remains a memory of our time, and when filmed, that there is a trace of it. Then I met Antonioni, who is closer to what I am in life. He chose not to sell his soul, and many actors also abstain . After the Bertolucci film, I had golden bridges to sub-Tango, roles of sex symbols ... I ended it very quickly. I also had problems because they said: "She does not want to undress, she will not do the love scenes ..." That's what we always ask young women, even in 2001, it has not changed one iota, however. I'm still shocked about the fact that men of sixty years, Serrault, Poiret, Noiret, have a continuous career, compared to women the same age. Even Girardot. Between the sex symbol and grandma, there are no other interesting roles. I'm a part of an association for those involved in difficulty called “La Roue Tourne “ which has existed since 1956. I'm just their ambassador. The president is eighty years old and she helps those she calls "disasters of glory." The actors have no unemployment insurance and when they have an accident they are not covered by social security. It's incredible when you consider that this association has paid the rent for Marcel Carné in the last ten years of his life ... but also that of Abel Gance. The state did nothing. Me, I also see a time when I will have difficulty working. The president said: "But, my dear Maria, it has always existed, now you're old, you are forty ! She has known actresses of the silent era, like Jacqueline Delubac. All this has not changed, even with women directors. There is a terrible crisis of roles, and film seems locked up. Everyone has their place, and "family film" is an illusion.
Garbo's character interested me enormously. I did an interview with Frederic Mitterrand, referring to the interactive exhibit Ciné Cité, which was held at La Defense. To Frederick, with his kindness, his curiosity, I asked about the great actresses of the past, and I mentioned Greta Garbo's ambiguity [laughs], Anna Magnani for her strength and Vivian Leigh for her fragility. These three actresses I worship.

"I was rock’n roll"
About drugs, we did not know at the time, it was so dangerous. There was an ideal, to change society, and especially a thirst for novelty. Young people today do not take drugs at all in the same way. They are all paranoid, violent. But we have AIDS and unemployment. Drugs have become a matter of money. I have lost seven years of my life and I regret it bitterly. First, an image that sticks with you in relation to people who want to work with you. Fortunately, I have not deviated to alcohol or pills. I am one of the few who has been (an addict) and so far who is still alive. Nico, unfortunately, has not, she was suicidal. It all depends on the love we have of life, or not. Basically, I liked life and I'm out, but not alone. I started using drugs when I became famous. I did not like the celebrity, and especially the image full of innuendo, naughty, that people had of me after Last Tango. In addition, I had no family behind me, who protect you. I had no bodyguard like Sharon Stone, and so I was very exposed. I suffered abuse. People who come up to tell you unpleasant things on planes. I was tracked down, and I felt hounded. And then, we must put things into perspective. I adopted what Mastroianni said: "I am a craftsman." This is really what is best for me. I did not paint, but I paint with myself. Giving emotions to people is a pleasure. The money, fame, power, all that, it is better for protection. It takes years to understand, and it's called maturity.

Exploring the margins
When I had trouble, I was working in the more marginal routes, with Garrel, Rivette ... I made the film Le Voyage au jardin des morts (1976), a rare film that only the fans of Garrel saw. There was no money. Garrel did everything: sound, image ... He would film in the studios at night. Rassam gave us a thousand francs for it, a thousand francs to make the film. Nobody was paid. This film was really made for love of art. The image is beautiful, it was blown up 16 mm black and white. I am not made up and there are shots of extraordinary beauty. Then there was Rivette. He came to me and said, "Maria, I turn to you. "Completely out of it, already under the influence of Tranxene (drug). He made me go to Paris, his favorite cafe on the Champs-Elysees. I arrived I see a guy sitting in a suit who told me: "You know, I'm writing the script at the same time . What would you like to do? Me: "I dunno, a thriller, a thriller ..." He left "And with what actor would you do it with? "Well, I know, with my friend Joe [Dallessandro] [laughs]. It became Merry-Go-Round (1977). Now we do more movies like this. It was the new wave, anything was possible. I am a little nervous, because Rivette is really someone who does nothing in a movie. Lubtchansky did every camera movement, and another guy wrote the lyrics. The actors are in the middle. Rivette is the posture of the director. He especially has the gift of bringing people together.

The byways of cinema
I made L'Imposteur by Luigi Comencini in 1982. He's a wonderful gentleman, a great director, and his three daughters are in the business: Francesca, Peppe and Cristina. This film is a fable about Jesus and the Vatican today. The subject reminds me of a movie that I declined to do with Zeffirelli, where I interpreted the Virgin Mary, Jesus of Nazareth (1978). At the time, I said: "It's not my thing, the Virgin Mary, but I regret it very much. In addition, he emphasized he was not angry with me because he came to pick me up four years ago for a role in Jane Eyre (1994). I love Zeffirelli who is a great classic filmmaker.
For fifteen years, I went regularly between Italy and France. Citons La Dérobade, by Daniel Duval (1979), Balles perdues, by Jean-Louis Comolli (1983) which is a comic thriller, Ecrans de sable, by Randa Chahal Sabbag (1990), Au pays des Juliets, by Mehdi Charef (1991).I always go to the movies, but choose my films. My latest love Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ang Lee (2000). It is a brilliant lyrical ballet!


Maria Schneider, Créteil 2001 © Moira Sullivan

Un féminisme empreint de mystère (Feminism tinged with mystery )
"I prefer mystery. But at nineteen, when someone asks you about your private life, it's really painful. Questions like "Who is your lover? "Why you do not have children? At the time, I responded with a joke, I said that I had fifty lovers, men and women. It was terrible saying that. Newspapers such as Le Gay Pied responded immediately with the first degree. I think all this information interests only me. Coming out and stuff, what does it mean today? Even Jodie Foster hides. The witch hunt still exists in some quarters just as the Middle Ages. Cinema is still archaic. Among men, there is a solidarity, they look out for each other, produce among themselves, give themselves a hand, it's great.

Women are isolated, they claim less and the more they must spread their privacy. The actress who has a baby, it sells, but the one who lives very well in her corner, it is not possible. We all have ambiguous genitalia, but it is not written on the face.

One day, Delphine Seyrig came to see me in Los Angeles. She was forty years old, me I was twenty. She was more motivated than me by the feminist struggle. Me, I said: "We'll see, I'll do this perhaps more in two years. She made enemies and embarrassed journalists, but if it is sure to succeed, we must go in the direction of rubbing someone the right way, as Nathalie Baye, Isabelle Huppert".

Born in Flames Revisited

2010-08-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

When she received the Grand Prize at Créteil Films de Femmes in Paris in 1983, Lizzie Borden said that the film took over four years to make because they ran out of money. The total production cost for this 16mm film was $40,000. French feminists were so moved by the film that they called it a dream and believed it accurately reported their reality and the issues they were struggling with at the time. There has not been a film like Born in Flames since then at Créteil. It lives on as one of the best feminist films ever made.

Born in Flames takes up how class, race and gender affect working conditions and how women are treated, at home and on the streets. And because women are not treated very well in any of these areas, a woman’s army is created. Women on bicycles come to the rescue of women harassed or assaulted in the streets, and patrol the metro. All of this is reported on by the media and twisted and turned several notches. The sensational news that “men are being attacked by women” is the net result. The liberties that the media takes when reporting on attacks on power institutions has never changed. Alternative media has never been more important for getting truth out. This is one of many important premises of Born in Flames.

All of these occurrences take place ten years after the socialist (democratic, i.e. capitalist) revolution in the USA. But judging from the film, what kind of social democracy could there have been? Borden shows how collective bargaining leaves women with the short end of the stick. Unions do not stand behind women. The only policy change in this new government is a program to pay housewives for work. It is not safe for women on the streets or at work where they can show up and be fired in seconds. This contributes to a brewing anger among women. Men of color are also excluded from socialist equality in the labor force of this (futuristic)society. They loudly protest and are beaten by the police. The women’s army works to build alliances with them.

It is a misnomer to label this film feminist "science fiction" for it is an accurate report of the status quo in politics at the time the film was made and holds true even today. Radical feminism from the 70’s has been inaccurately called a "white women’s movement". Perhaps because only white heterosexual feminists were reported on by the media. White lesbians and lesbians of color were not. The media was not interested in them, and their stories did not make the papers like those of heterosexual white feminists such as Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer. Feminist superstars may seem to have spoken for women. But grassroots radical feminists did the hard work and battled the territory for far more than equal rights and took up issues that media feminists did not dare to. Rights that young women enjoy today and take for granted.

Born in Flames is about this grassroots movement. Two competing feminist pirate radio stations have dedicated followers. The Radio Ragazza spokesperson is of European descent. Isabel uses spoken poetry to bring up issues of disenfranchisement and standing united. Honey is the anchorwoman for Phoenix Radio and is African American. She also urges women to come together. It clear that the two stations with their fan bases are divided racially. Born in Flames is important as an historical document because it shows how interracial alliances evolved and co-existed during 70’s feminism. It is proof that this was not only a "white women’s movement", and as an historical document it is extremely valuable. Commentary by the police who investigate the women's army positions women in terms of color, and sexual orientation. Queer women of color were a threat and alliances made to unite queer women suspect. These women were forgotten and excluded and targeted for attack.

The women’s army is racially integrated. Hillary Hurst (interviewed by Movie Magazine, June 2007) who plays herself is a white captain , joined by African American Adelaide Norris (Jean Satterfield). She is inspired by the heroic efforts of an African leader from an unnamed country in armed struggle (Dolly Udemzue) and is invited there to learn combat skills. On the way back from guerilla warfare training she is arrested at the airport and later confined to a jail cell. Shortly after it is reported that she killed herself. Zella realizes immediately that this was no suicide but murder. The hushup of the event includes the "socialist" mayor. But the news breaks.

Monitoring the efforts of the women’s army is the "Socialist Youth Review" paper with three editors played by Becky Johnston, Pat Murphy and Kathryn Bigelow (best director Academy Award winner of 2010 and the first woman to win in this category). The editorial team comes to terms with how they are being duped by the party and also believe that Norris was executed in her jail cell. They see the connections between class, race and gender neatly suppressed by their sweet talking editorial boss, who later fires them for the Norris story.

The murder sets off a series of incidents. Radio Ragazza and Phoenix merge against their common enemy: an entrenched and omnipotent gender hierarchy within power structures. Later their respective headquarters are bombed but they continue to get on the airwaves in anyway possible. Several armed women go to news stations like CBS and demand at gunpoint that the technicians put on news of the cover-up of Norris’ murder on live TV. In the end a woman manages to get to the roof of the World Trade Center and plants a bomb for knocking of rooftop broadcasting antennae. This monument of commerce and media broadcasting has historically been targeted for political purposes.

Born in Flames is a visionary response to oppression and one that targets the media for twisting the truth.

The assemblage of images in Born in Flames is candid and provocative, serving as a time capsule of feminist politics of the time. And because nothing has really changed in the political analysis of gender politics it is important for today’s radical feminism. Especially that women of color must be at the center of any feminist struggle.

Ed Bowes is credited with the screenplay and who also worked with feminist director Sheila McLaughlin (She Must be Seeing Things, 1987). Al Santana and Bowes did the cinematography.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Ann Lister... and the Silencing of the Lithuanian Lambs - A Movie Review

2010-06-17T16:06:00.001-07:00

Opening Night Film at Frameline34 LGBT International Film Festival

See Review on Movie Magazine International, San Francisco.

Eurovision: A Phenomenon, Swedish Style

2010-06-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Sweden's ABBA's win in Brighton's 1974 Eurovision with Waterloo launched their career (the hit is on soundtrack for Muriel's Wedding). Almost every European cuntry had it as number 1, 2 or 3 on their hit list that year. ABBA's clothes by today's standards were ridiculous, but the song was very popular.This year for the first time in 17 years, Sweden did not make it to the Eurovision finals. The rules are changing to make more contests possible, and this year more semi finals than previous years thus more chances to be dissed. Each country is supposed to send their "folk music" or pop music favorite to the city of the previous year's Eurovision winner. Of course folk music has changed through the years and is more pop than folk. In Sweden one form of folk music is called "Schlager", basically a driving "hit" , and it has a real gay following and the songs are light, about love and hope. The form usually includes an obligatory key refrain that goes up one octave("obligatorisk tonhöjning". Schlager is a Scandinavian and to a lesser extent Baltic State music form, but is also common in Germany and Austria.

Sweden's popular Melodifestival which paves the way to Eurovision also has increased the number of regional semifinals before the final selection. Veteran Pernilla Wahlgren's (top photo) bouncy Schlager tune Jag vill om du vågar (I Will if You Dare) this year gave way to a young person's song of hope (17), Anna Bergendahl: This is My Life. Young people usually vote on their mobiles for the telecast. Wahlgren, and other established Swedish pop singers are trying to improve their ratings entering Eurovision, but the fans see through this as a comeback or self-promotion to an already decorated career. But Wahlgren's song and performance was better this year anyway than Bergendahl's even with her pink sneakers.

Eurovision is a national sport, a sit home event; the streets of Sweden are virtually empty, for everyone is at a "Schlager fest". It's the music of the people, it's the thrill of being young, although older programmers and promoters commercialize the event with all their gimmicks and angles. Countries in Scandinavia usually vote for their neighbors in the Baltic area, countries in the Mediterranean for their neighbors. Its not a really accurate tally but still it is, for competition ignites the passion of a country and her allies. Maybe what you get in the end is the best of block votes, but not necessarily the best. Since it is a phenomena it's not possible to analyse this song contest intellectually - popular culture is hard to dissect. Eurovision is huge, yet ratings went down in Sweden since their was no winner at the final.
These Eurovision winners should give you an idea of the vitality of the contest, the finely combed yet raw young talent, the uproar of the audience, and the feel for national singers that break their ass with ambition in their life's defining moment, intoxicating! Elena Paparizou - Number One, (Swedish born-Greek background) singing for Greece 2005, Kiev. The lyrics are queer enough ("you're my lover, undercover"), and Schlager in Sweden is a true gay art form. "Number One" was frequently played in gay nightclubs and remains a classic.

The torch to Elena was passed from Ruslana, Ukraine, Wild Dance, 2004. Ruslana was guest of honor at Gay Pride Stockholm 2004....this song is REALLY different from Number One, but yep, there she is Xena: Warrior Princess, subtext and all, without Gabrielle! But according to Eurovision enthusiast Adam Clack, this year the Ukraine sent Gabrielle! Aloyosha arrived on stage in a magical hood and belted out one of the strongest ballads of the contest singing Sweet People.

This year's winner comes from Germany and the upbeat pop song with a jazz beat shows exactly how, at least for this year, the Eurovision song contest is going and how far from the Schlager tradition. Lena Meyer Landrut had a hard time believing she won for Satellite, a song that describes the frenzy of new love and getting it, no matter what. Gone is any indication of German folk music, in this Euro vision of American jazz pop, sung in American English.

CAE: Daughter of the Dust

2010-05-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

« Daughter of the Dust » by vocalist Cae will be available on Spotify, Rhapsody, iTunes, Amazon on the 28th of May.

Cae has sung alongside Australian guitar virtuoso singer sonwriter Jeff Lang and Blue Note up and coming Blue Note artist Zahra Hindi. Now, French-Haïtian Berklee Alumni singer and songwriter Cae, releases her own music : "Daughter of the Dust" her first 7 track E.P. whose subtle pop material draws its strengh and authenticiy at the roots of soul folk jazz and blues influences.

Cae was a vocalist or the soundtrack to Little Senegal (2001) by French director Rachid Bouchareb starring Sotigui Kouyaté , who recently passed away on April 18. Bouchareb's latest film Hors-la-loi (Outside the Law) was nominated for a Palme d'Or this year at Festival de Cannes.

«Take a listen to « Daughter of the Dust », and find out why Cae just might be considered the spiritual sister of a Yael Naim, Emily Loizeau or Hindi Zahra, just to name a few of her talented contemporaries she could be compared to. »Mysoul.Fr

« A new soulful, jazzy and thrilling voice » Bintou Simporé, R.F.O, Cargo, Radio Nova

« Between philosophie and literature, between lyrics and words, between France and the Carebians, she sings her very groovy folk, and her blues and voice reveal African overtones »
Marijosé Alie, France Ô, Studio M

http://www.caemusic.net/
http://www.caemusicofficial.wordpress.com/
http://www.myspace.com/caemusic
http://www.youtube.com/CAEmusiq
http://www.facebook.com/caemusic
http://www.twitter.com/caemusic

63:e Festival de Cannes Ends Virtuous

2010-05-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

"When a film-maker, an artist, is imprisoned it is art as a whole that is attacked, and it is against this that we should react."

This statement was made by French actress Juliette Binoche in reaction to the incarceration of filmmaker Iranian Jafar Panahi for over two months. He was just about to go on a hunger strike and was released a few days ago. Panahi was to have served on the Cannes Jury this year for the official selection; his seat was vacant with his nameplate at the festival to protest this action.

Juliette Binoche won the best actress award at Cannes for her role in probably one of Iranian filmmakers Abbas Kiarostami’s most commercial films to date, Certified Copy.

During the awards ceremony Binoche held up Panahi’s nameplate.

Virtually no one tipped off the film that took home the Palme d’or winner this year: Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL from Thailand for  best film and screenplay - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, his fifth entry at Cannes. His film Tropical Malady received jury prize in 2004.

Here you have a director who has by made a fascinating tableaux of images from six locations, full of emotions and ideas that create a dialogue with the spectator.

The story is about Uncle Boonmee who is suffering from acute kidney failure, who wants to spend his final days with his loved ones in the  countryside. During this time the ghost of his deceased wife comes to comfort him, and his long lost son returns home as a spirit Boonmee goes with them to a cave on the top of a hill the birthplace of his first life.

Weerasethakul’s award is a tribute to experimental film among a terrain of traditional narrative features.

BONJOUR CANNES

2010-05-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

Official competition CANNES 2010:

Directors: Mike LEIGH, IÑÁRRITU, KIARSTOMI, TAVERNIER,

WEERASETHAKUL, BEAUVOIS, BOUCHAREB, LUCHETTI, MIKHALKOV MUNDRUCZO MUNDRUCZOKITANO, LEE, and WANG are all Cannes veterans.

OFFICIAL SELECTION

ANOTHER YEAR directed by Mike LEIGH
BIUTIFUL directed by Alejandro GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU
COPIE CONFORME (CERTIFIED COPY) directed by Abbas KIAROSTAMI
DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX (OF GODS AND MEN) directed by Xavier BEAUVOIS
FAIR GAME directed by Doug LIMAN
HORS LA LOI (OUTSIDE OF THE LAW) directed by Rachid BOUCHAREB
LA NOSTRA VITA (OUR LIFE) directed by Daniele LUCHETTI
LA PRINCESSE DE MONTPENSIER (THE PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER) directed byBertrand TAVERNIER
LUNG BOONMEE RALUEK CHAT (Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives)directed by Apichatpong WEERASETHAKUL
OUTRAGE directed by Takeshi KITANO
POETRY directed by LEE Chang-dong
RIZHAO CHONGQING (CHONGQING BLUES) directed by WANG Xiaoshuai
ROUTE IRISH directed by Ken LOACH
SCHASTYE MOE (MY JOY) directed by Sergei LOZNITSA
SZELÍD TEREMTÉS - A FRANKENSTEIN TERV (TENDER SON - The Frankenstein Project) directed by Kornél MUNDRUCZÓ
THE HOUSEMAID directed by IM Sangsoo
TOURNÉE (ON TOUR) directed by Mathieu AMALRIC
UN HOMME QUI CRIE (A screaming man) directed by Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN
UTOMLYONNYE SOLNTSEM 2: PREDSTOYANIE (THE EXODUS - Burnt by the sun 2)directed by Nikita MIKHALKOV

Mathieu AMALRIC makes his directorial debut with Tournée but several times at Cannes as actor.

Only , Doug LIMAN , IM Sangsoo, Sergei LOZNITSA and Mahamat-Saleh HAROUN are newbies at this year's Cannes official competition. (Above: Sergei LOSNITSA)

Out of competition at Cannes - Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, nor does Michael Douglas who keeps on and on like a Duracell battery. Oliver Stone explained that although the film would not be released until September, he did not feel the need to chase the press in lieu of recent economic setbacks. The film was actually planned for 2006.

Doug LIMAN, on the other hand, is Cannes newbie and Hollywood veteran, director of "Bourne Identity" and "Mr and Mrs Smith", now thriller "Fair Game", in official selection. Starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, based on "Plamegate", the CIA leak of uncover agent Valerie Plame after Joseph Wilson's OP-ED article in NY Times.

Grace Slick and the White Rabbit Society

2010-03-31T06:07:00.000-07:00

White Rabbit is a ballad about the hypocrisy of the American"establishment" and the disenchantment of the 60's. This is Grace Slick's song and lyrics, with riveting musical accompaniment by the other band members of the Jefferson Airplane.

Slick takes to task in this chanson one of the classics of children's literature. She is amazed how parents could read to their young children "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland" that reads like a surrealistic adventure not unlike an acid trip and still criticize the rebellion of youth during this time.

White Rabbit retells the story of Alice who grows taller - expands her mind and smaller - lack of power, and who envisions all kinds of magical creatures. It can also be seen as an allegory of American youth who were lost during the Vietnam War. Some went down rabbit holes and died and others protested. (Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call). There has been no similar student movement since. After the turmoil, a middle class was created and silenced by consumerism.
This was a battle cry to reconnect with mind and heart.

Slick's version of Alice is a box within a box. Just as everything is confusing to Alice and she distorts what she sees, she also becomes a distortion for readers. In Slick's rendition of the story she calls the Queen of Hearts “The Red Queen “(she is after all as red as the hearts, but has no heart). The "White Knight talking backwards" evokes the double speak of the time when war was rampant but was forged in the name of peace on earth. When "Men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go", this was the power of the presidency to initiate unilateral military intervention. Other examples were the disruption of the civil liberties of American citizens.

The dormouse in Lewis Carroll's "The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland" (1865) could not remember anything but probably would have if he had time to think, to learn, to improve his mind and slow down. Slick's ballad indeed spoke to a numbed part of American society that watched an infamous war continue. The mesmerizing White Rabbit is a battle cry for awakening. Student protests and civil liberation movements grew exponentially during this time. Corrupt forces of the status quo include the Johnson administration installed after Kennedy’s assassination, which pounded Vietnam with bombs. The futility of this military venture led many young people to "drop out", " sit in", burn their draft cards, and expand their consciousness in news ways of living that invigorated the culture with color, flowers, poetry, music, film and art. For some, the experimentation of psychedelic drugs to reach the fourth dimension was part of the journey. For others they were catapulted to it through poetry and protest.

Drugs are not what all the song is about, and it is limited to see it only as that. If one was unclear about whether to protest during this time, Slick says, "Go ask Alice" who she thinks should know that "logic and proportion had fallen slowly dead" in American society. The chessboard, the battlefield for white and black Kings, Queens, bishops, knights, rooks and pawns symbolize the military industrial complex of American society in the 60's.

White Rabbit is a Freedom Song, a rally call to transcend the patriarchal order of the time and enter the world of creativity and knowledge. Slick’s final message spoken through the Dormouse is “feed your head”= improve your mind and become aware.

Why should the FBI have this song out on their list of subversive music? ..."You'd laugh so hard you'd crack the walls!" The drug metaphors kept Grace Slick out of the White House when she ironically was invited to a (Mad Hatter) tea party. Could it have also been because Slick often performed in a green girl scout uniform to provoke the "decent people" of America? Or her solidarity with civil rights included painting her face in black and raising her fist on national television was too provocative?

The bravado of the Jefferson Airplane marching in time to Slick’s slick phrasing with drums, lyrical guitars and then solid soul piercing base tones, builds in momentum into a riveting and masterly mosaic of energy. Each stage of the journey is related in the cadence of a Spanish bolero with castanets, drums and electric guitars. Slick sticks to clear and powerful phrasing as she explains the need to get smart like Alice, or else. Although the "white rabbit" is not referred to in the song other than in the title, he is a messenger, for without him Alice would never have seen her own reality above ground.

The Jefferson Airplane(formed 1965) recorded White Rabbit in 1967 on the album Surrealistic Pillow:Marty Balin (vocals, rhythm guitar); Jack Casady (bass);Paul Kantner (rhythm guitar, vocals); Jorma Kaukonen (lead guitar, some vocals); Grace Slick(vocals, piano, recorder) and Spencer Dryden (drums).

White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane

One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all

Go ask Alice

When she's ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits

And you know you're going to fall

Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar

Has given you the call

Call Alice
When she was just small

When men on the chessboard

Get up and tell you where to go

And you've just had some kind of mushroom

And your mind is moving slow

Go ask Alice

I think she'll know

When logic and proportion

Have fallen slowly dead

And the White Knight is talking backwards

And the Red Queen's lost her head

Remember what the dormouse said;

Feed your head, feed your head

Xena: Warrior Princess, The Final Episode: A Friend in Need, Part I and II.

2010-02-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

Xena Redux
I first started watching Xena: Warrior Princess about a year ago. I can’t believe I missed the entire six seasons when they were broadcast from 1995 to 2001. I was in Boston for the first three seasons, and Sweden for the last three. I watched Xena now and then in Greece during summer vacations when the show was broadcast, dubbed in Greek. But I had no idea that Xena was Thracian and Mt Olympus was located on the very island of Lesbos where I was, the birthplace of Sappho. Women went to a particular souvlaki café to catch the show on the tavern TV, and I have finally understood their enthusiasm years later.

Once becoming hooked on Xena after a rerun in Sweden featuring an episode about Gabrielle and the Amazons, I rented Season 1 and 2 at the local video store. Soon after I ordered the complete six-season box set. The first set came from China which stalled a lot and some episodes were missing, but I received a refund and got to keep them. It became my portable Xena set for my travels. The complete set remains at home.

WARNING : SPOILERS!
I knew beforehand that Xena dies in the last episode. My sister told me and I was crushed when she revealed the ending. But knowing that made me pay attention to any premonitions of her eventual destruction during the seasons. Xena had died before and came back to life but nowhere as brutal as in the last episode. It is not only that Xena was killed, but how she was killed.

The relationship between Gabrielle and Xena was carefully established over the years. Watching Gabrielle come into her own power and learn to fight was remarkable, but it never ceased to amaze me how skilled Xena was as a warrior. She could take on more than several foes at once, and rescued Gabrielle countless times. In the final episode Xena asks Gabrielle where they should go next. Then in answer to her question, a monk arrives with a beautiful sword that once belonged to Xena and tells her that her services are requested elsewhere in the East.

Akemi and Yodoshi
Akemi is in danger, and Xena can set things right. The soul-eating demon Yodoshi has been snatching people’s souls right and left so Akemi sends for the “Warrior Princess”. Xena met her a long time ago and followed her home to get the ransom on her head from her family. Along the way Akemi stops by her grandfather’s grave. His spirit tells her that Xena needs a better sword. The warrior princess has to fight for a mighty one from sword makers who don’t want to make one for a woman. The monk delivers this to her with Akemi’s request.

Akemi’s father Yodoshi turned into a demon after she put “the pinch” on him that Xena taught her. The pinch causes blood to rush to the brain and death in 30 seconds unless the vein is reopened. Gabrielle is astonished that she would have taught Akemi that. Perhaps now we know why Xena always hesitated to teach it to Gabrielle. She told Gabrielle that Akemi broke her heart and was the first woman to teach her about love. Well talk about it anyway for Xena didn’t understand that Akemi’s rapidly beating heart was a sign of passion. It was hard to figure out what Akemi was up to from the very beginning. After Akemi puts the pinch on her father, she suddenly commits Harakiri with a sword. Her dying wish is for Xena to take her ashes to a special shrine for protection. This tragic event causes Xena to momentarily become an alcoholic, and stumble through the streets carrying Akemi’s ashes. The villagers have hacked off her hair. When they attack her again, the urn breaks into pieces and the ashes scatter. In retaliation Xena sets some of them on fire, a fire that spreads through the entire village. She learns later that 40,000 people lost their lives that day.

On her new visit to the “Land of the Rising Sun” (Japan), the soul-eating demon Yodoshi has prepared a welcome for Xena with a ton of soldiers. They first set fire to a village. Xena asks Gabrielle what she would do in this case, preparation for the new Warrior Princess. Gabrielle suggests using acrobatics to approach the water tower for extinguishing the flames. “Its not what I would have done”, Xena says afterwards, “but it worked”. Xena teachers her the pinch, and tells her that with only 30 seconds remaining in her life, feeling her love for Gabrielle was enough.

Akemi’s ghost lives in a teahouse outside of town with two other ghouls. When Xena visits, one of them stamps her foot bearing an ankle bracelet on the floor, and Yodoshi comes running. He warns Xena what he has in store for her and that she will lose her head. Akemi knows what she is in store for too, but doesn’t tell the whole story. Xena is told that she must die to enter the underworld and conquer Yodoshi. But Akemi doesn’t tell her there is no way back after her death.

Xena's Final Battle?
That this manipulative and child-like waif who teases monks and leads Xena to her death is allowed one more time to reek havoc on the warrior’s life is astonishing after so many tests and ordeals. The fire that took so many lives was started because of Akemi’s sudden death and Xena’s despair, and hardly an act of malice that the fire spread so quickly. Should this end the love she experiences with Gabrielle. Isn’t Xena smarter after all of these years? Isn't Gabrielle worthy of a life with her? Apparently not. Xena buries her copper breast plate, as she did in the first episode, and adorns a royal warrior outfit with silver and crimson trim. She strikes out on her own to conquer an enormous army, without Gabrielle and does well in the battle. She sets their ammunition on fire, which creates a huge mushroom cloud, and takes many of them out with her bow and arrow. Then the Captain instructs his warriors to unleash a barrage of arrows, several which hit her and wear down her strength. Next, the warriors attack her with swords. Xena cries out for Gabrielle, unable to hold her own alone any longer. Why would she have done this if she didn’t have the will to live. And why, for once does Gabrielle not appear. The Captain marches up to Xena and hacks off her head. The screen goes red, and fortunately we don’t have to witness the beheading. A bloody chakram lays on the ground, used only once when it could have saved her life. Later when Gabrielle finds Xena’s naked body hung up outside a shed and we see her devastated and tear stained face, we know the murder has been brutal.

The Underworld
The Captain tells Gabrielle that Xena was a worthy fighter, but she counters that she died dishonorably, was unfairly outnumbered and slaughtered. She asks to see her head, which is propped up on a nearby plank like a trophy. Gabrielle avenges her death by killing the Captain and refusing to cut off his head. She returns to the little teahouse and meets Xena, who has not yet understood she is dead. When she reaches for her chakram she cannot grasp it in her hand. She tells Gabrielle that death is the only way to conquer Yodoshi. Gabrielle believes her and burns her body. On the second sunset she is to take Xena’s ashes in a magic spring in order for her to return. When the Captain shows up again and attacks Gabrielle, the urn rolls away. After defeating Yodoshi and seeing that the souls he has captured will be condemned, Xena tells Gabrielle to forget about her ashes. She has to stay dead to atone for the 40, 000 dead souls and wants them to have peace. Gabrielle is stunned and crushed but accepts it, perhaps all too quickly.

Context vs Subtext Resolved
Writer RJ Stewart scripted the narrative. Throughout the series, and despite subtle hints, it finally sinks in how romanticized the “friendship” of Xena and Gabrielle has truly been (subtext) which fits with the ending. Having Xena by her side in spirit seems enough for Gabrielle. They have experienced being soul mates through declarations of love to each other, or when the frequently injured Gabrielle is held by Xena. In the end, Gabrielle attends to Xena’s corpse and must say farewell to her life on earth. Soul mates or not, enduring screen love is not for same sex mortals like Gabrielle and Xena.(context)

When commenting on the episode years later, director Robert Tapert does most of the talking in the video commentary. It is his creation. Lucy Lawless looks glum while Gabrielle is gushing. In the preceding episode “When Fates Collide”, both Lawless and husband Tapert reveal their interpretation of Xena’s love for Gabrielle. While hanging on the cross, Xena says, “ I love you Gabrielle”. Lawless says the declaration was "forced". "Yes, says Robert,” it was forced”. Did Lucy Lawless mean that she felt "forced" to say this? Or that she should have said it more convincingly. This is the MAIN TEXT, not SUBTEXT. For is it not appropriate to exclaim love after taking Gabrielle’s place on the cross. Alas, sacrifice is the stuff of Greek tragedies. Gabrielle gets to love Xena in spirit for the rest of her life after the final episode, as it pretty much has been all along. At which point with the chakram situated on her waist, Tapert exclaims, “Its Gabrielle; Warrior Princess, but we couldn’t sell it.

I don’t believe in endings where women atone for their past with their lives, where women are beaten and assaulted after kicking ass with superior skill for more than six years. It would be more honest to end in a manner more like Lawrence of Arabia and have Xena fall from a horse in an accident far removed from the battlefield.

Closure
So Sad to Fall in Battle is the story of the Japanese General Tadamichi Kuribayashi who lost the campaign at Iwo Jima during World War II. He refused to risk the life of his men in suicidal banzai attacks, but to fight defensively. Isn’t a suicidal attack what the Warrior Princess must do in the end? She has been on several during the years to clear away the wreckage of her past. How much is enough, and doesn’t Gabrielle’s presence deserve a life long commitment? Isn’t this what RJ Stewart put her through in the end? Should her demise so clearly resemble Akemi’s with an aborted scattering of ashes for the final rest and confinement to the underworld for sins? Why is Akemi’s fate and hers in greater collision than with Caesar or Alti or Ares? By ending in this way, the makers of Xena: Warrior Princess have done both heroines an injustice. Gabrielle is not allowed to persuade Xena to remain alive, as Xena so many times has done for her. Thank goddess for Xena fan fiction like“The Shipper: 7th Season”, more in truth with the characters. Well, let's face it, the final episode(s) of Xena Warrior Princess are epic, lots of spectacular events, but inconsistent and unfitting of a nine year grand finale.

Lucy Lawless has said previously said that “Xena is not real”. Perhaps not, but her character was made “real” through countless courageous and daring episodes affirmed by a dedicated following. Most of us did NOT think this ending was believable. Xena deserved an honorable death, and was not given one: it was this Xena who was not “real”.

Leftovers
One final compelling question remains: in their adventures, Xena and Gabrielle have met historical figures such as Caesar, Homer, and Hippocrates. Why in heading towards the end of the season did Gabrielle not get to go to a play by Sappho on her birthday and meet her, but only get a piece of her poetry?
It is erroneously claimed that Sappho died for the love of a younger man by Greeks who are ashamed of the poet who loved women. There have been legal battles to change the name of Lesbos to Mytilini, the capital city of the island where Sappho was born and had a school for women, and for Greeks to have exclusive rights to “Lesbian”, meaning inhabitant of Lesbos.
Sappho should have been in the Xena series. And Gabrielle and Xena should have experienced corporeal rather than only romantic love. As Sappho wrote, “Aphrodite crowned in gold, please let this piece of luck be mine”.
We'll just have to leave this one to fan fiction.

Moira Sullivan
Swedish Film Critics Association
February 23, 2010
Stockholm, Sweden

Anna Karinaland

2009-12-30T20:49:00.000-08:00

Welcome to a new European/San Francisco based Cinema Roundtable discussion form: Anna Karinaland
- a forum for HOW cinema is made and HOW critics evaluate it. Soon to be launched here!

Our Public Site is:
http://www.cinefemme.com

http://www.twitter.com/annakarinaland

C1: CRITICISM
F1- Cine-Club (Questions & Debate)
F2- Film Theory (Film form, Genre, Movements, Book Club)
F3- Interviews/Articles Review (Press & online)
F4- Analysis workshop (style, trends, culture, politics, lists)
F5- Filmmakers (Filmography, Interviews, style, themes)

C2: FILM TALK
F6- Current Releases (Festival/Theatre/DVD)
F7- Oldies (pre-1990)
F8- Documentaries
F9- Experimental Cinema (Avant-garde, Underground, Essay)
F10- Short Film

C3: WORLD CINEMA
F11- International Film Festivals (News, Schedule, Awards)
F12- Asian Cinema
F13- South American Cinema
F14- African Cinema

C4: OFF TOPIC
F15-Bulletin Board (Suggestions/OT/Questions/Feedback)

Revisiting Katherine Hepburn in Venice: Summertime

2009-06-24T22:20:00.000-07:00

Summertime
UK / 1955

Summertime was shot exclusively in Venice. And for those who have been to Venice, the film is a rare treasure; an historical homage to a city once enamored by tourists, with very few cameras, and mostly well dressed Italians. Today the dress is more casual, and the deluge of international tourists milling around removes a part of this floating museum with every step.

For David Lean, it was his favorite film starring his favorite actress. In her autobiography, Me, Katherine Hepburn remarked, “they called me and said that David Lean was going to direct it. ‘Would I be…’ they didn’t need to finish that sentence.” Hepburn said she first lived on the island of Murano, where the famous Murano glass is made, not Venice proper with its maze of narrow streets and bridges. Together with her entourage, she quickly moved into an apartment near the Grand Canale, the major water route, opposite the famous Gritti hotel where David Lean camped. (She even had her own gondola.) One of the most sought after Venetian tourist items is of course Murano glass: “glass, glass and more glass,” according to the dialogue. Given that Venice footed the entire bill of $36,000 for the film, Summertime is seen as pure tourist promotion.

Summertime is about Jane Hudson (Hepburn), a middle-aged “fancy secretary” from Akron, Ohio who saves up for a three-week dream vacation in Venice. Arriving by train to Piazza Roma via the Orient Express, Paris-Venice, complete with a hand-wound 8-mm camera, she takes the vaporetto, the public water bus rather than a gondola or water taxi. An American couple on board happens to be staying at the same boarding house, Pensioni Fiorini ( a set construction) on the Accademia vaporetta - water bus stop (the Peggy Guggenheim Museum is located here). Jane coyly indicates to the pensioni proprietress that she, like most girls under 50, is searching for something. On her first day out on the Piazza San Marco Jane meets a handsome middle aged man, Renato Di Rossi (Rossano Brazzi), an antique dealer, and enters into a romance which becomes all the more passionate because he is married although separated.

Lean had six shades of red goblets blown especially for the film. In one scene, Jane discovers Renato charged almost the same amount for 18th century glass as fresh imitations, a discovery that produces rage. It becomes quite clear that Jane is losing her rocker, displaying a passion that eclipses the bravura of Brazzi. She is hysterical, insisting people drink with her to quiet her loneliness, and has flash floods of intermittent tears. Hepburn actually had problems with Spencer Tracy and the film crew, despite the glass commercials, and she was considered an irritating obstacle to tourism.

Lean’s intention with the film was to capture a child at play: Jane’s awe of Venice and the excitement of new love. An Italian child becomes her escort, one that she at first rebukes — she is not that desperate, but she and Renato later play with wind up toys at a café. “You are like a hungry child that only wants beefsteak not ravioli. Please take the ravioli,” says Renato when she starts to question the affair. “I’m not that hungry,” says Jane. But Renato convinces her of the need for a Latin approach, “the ravioli approach” to love and sexuality. Her red goblets transform to a pair of sparkling red shoes, noticeably evocative of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, as fireworks fills the sky. The charm of Venice and typical Italian love songs give the film the aura of a melodrama, a woman’s weepie, but the storyline is too thin. The film also prods American and Italian stereotypes, such as the shock of promiscuous Italians to the more pristine Americans. (Keep in mind the film has a British director.) The travelogue veneer and the superficial story make Summertime a corny gem.

Hepburn claims Lean absorbed the city and had a photographic gift for conveying his impressions. Indeed, after every minute of dialogue a breathtaking view of the city is displayed, drawing inspiration from the play The Time of the Cuckoo by Arthur Laurents, which is made to fit his pictures.

In one memorable scene Hepburn falls into the Venetian canal, an action that would be repugnant today in the foul water, filled with industrial pollution from neighboring Mestre. Reportedly, the water temporarily blinded Katherine and today anyone who falls into the canal is advised to take antibiotics. (An urban legend about the incident claims that the fall contributed to Hepburn's Parkinsons illness). Medieval Venice was built on pilings and dead bodies were dropped into the canal to rot. A foreshadowing of the duplicity of the canal occurs when Jane first sets eyes on a gondola floating by, a view tainted by the dumping of sewage from an apartment. It is the also the water that carries her first flower from Renato, a flower that never quite stays in her possession even as she pulls away from the city. “Please help me Renato,” she begs, “let me go.” She has grown up, and if she stays a second longer she will never go. Brazzi actually first interpreted his role as a gigolo, (“another girl will arrive tomorrow”), a portrayal Lean thought too grim.

In the UK, the film was called Summer Madness, a far more appropriate title.

Revisiting Ingrid Bergman in The Visit

2009-06-24T22:17:00.001-07:00

The Visit
La Rancune / USA / France / 1964

From start to finish, The Visit is commanded by the presence of Ingrid Bergman. She was scorned by Hollywood for leaving her husband for an Italian director, and is here cast in a role that allows her to address the people that exiled her. As a young woman, Bergman was given virtuous roles that endeared her to the public, which was why her exile angered them. (Ernest Hemingway was prepared to take out a full-page ad in Hollywood Reporter in her defense.) Nevertheless, she had tired of superficial roles and was willing to accept low pay for challenging parts in Rossellini’s realist cinema, as in Stromboli, the first picture he invited her to make in 1949. Bergman received a standing ovation at the Academy Awards when she returned to accept an Oscar for Murder on the Orient Express, years after leaving Hollywood. Bergman’s role in The Visit is an irony, as she plays a woman who returns to face her past.

Bergman plays Karla Zachanassian, who as a young girl was beaten by her schoolmaster. Her father was a hopeless alcoholic and her mother the subject of town gossip. At the age of seventeen, she falls in love with Serge Miller, the local shopkeeper, and eventually becomes pregnant. He denies being the father when she files a paternity suit. Later she loses the child and is forced to leave town. She moves to Trieste, and because of her disgrace is forced to survive through prostitution.

Two decades later she returns, extremely wealthy and with a desire for vengeance from the people of the mythical Pan European village. (It is claimed that here Lord Byron wrote his poetry and Brahms composed his music.) She brings a lawyer and two witnesses who confess Serge bribed them years ago to testify that Karla had slept with them, casting serious doubt on her paternity suit.

Karla claims that with this deceit her spirit died, and offers two million dollars, one for the township and one to be divided among the citizens of the village upon the execution of Serge, Karla’s one condition for payment.

It is triumphant for Karla to witness how morals can be discarded for a price. The townsfolk and elected officials that ran a seventeen-year-old girl out of town equally turn against Serge, who says he was only human, asking forgiveness and understanding. As Karla dines in her apartment over the courtyard adjacent to his shop, she watches the town transform from self-righteous indignation over killing a man in vengeance to a demonstration that everything, even human life, is a commodity that can be bought. As in Casablanca, “human life is very cheap.” Yet, she cannot take comfort in the complicity of the townsfolk.

Karla’s secretary is a young woman named Anya, who might be the same age as her dead child, and who perhaps acts as careless as she had when she was young. Karla counsels her in an effort to prevent the same mistake, bidding Anya to leave the married man she is with and offering to take her on the road after her “visit.” This is perhaps Karla’s saving redemption.

Austrian Bernhard Wicki directed The Visit, a writer as well as actor (Wicki played Doctor Ulmer in Paris, Texas). His film, an international co-production made in Italy at Cinecittà, is embellished with well-constructed scenes, excellent camerawork, and outstanding performances, such as when Karla momentarily rekindles her love for Serge. The scene is shot at sunset on a dock with a delicate light hitting the two actors in an embrace in close-up. Karla marvels at how his hair was so black when he was young, how their whole life was ahead of them. For a moment, she loses herself in the past in a wild and passionate moment only to tragically discover Serge has grayed, recalling the life she was forced into. As she comes to her senses, there is an abrupt end to the lyrical scene.

Ingrid Bergman, at forty-nine, was at the peak of her career in this film, and is powerful and dynamic as Karla. She remarked in letters housed at the “Ingrid Bergman Archives” at Wesleyan College that her mature roles were more interesting than in her earlier (and more renowned) roles, such as in Casablanca. The choice of a property like The Visit demonstrates how well she lived out her conviction to evolve and transform as an actor.

Revisiting Bergman's The Seventh Seal

2009-06-24T22:06:00.000-07:00

The Seventh Seal
Det Sjunde inseglet / Sweden / 1957

The Seventh Seal is, in real time, a thirty-minute reprieve from the “apocalypse.” This is symbolized by the Black plague of the Middle Ages during the 13th century, a disease that spread between victims at eight kilometers a day. The Christian clergy randomly blamed people for its spread, in one case burning a young woman of fourteen at the stake. For Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, the film served as an allegory to the cold war of the 50s and the threat of nuclear warfare. Because the rapid advancement of the plague is abundantly featured in the film, the thirty-minute reprieve becomes an evolutionary and meditative journey.
Fourteen years after a Holy Crusade, Antonius Block returns to the south of Sweden. At that time it encompassed Denmark with the festival of saints at Helsingör and Roskilde as geographical references in the film. The most famous scene of The Seventh Seal opens upon Block at the eastern coast of Sweden. Death suddenly appears, covered in a black cloak from head to toe:
“Who are you”, asks Block.
“I am Death,” the figure replies.
“Have you come to get me?”
“Yes.”
“Wait a minute.”
“Everyone says that.”
“But I don’t grant any reprieves.”
“You play chess don’t you? I’ve seen it in paintings and heard it in songs.”
The game begins with moves on board, which serve as plot changes. A field trip to a church with frescos illustrates the story of the plague as a death ritual. The thirty-minute reprieve Block requests is for him to experience one meaningful deed before he dies. He tries to trick and is tricked by Death, who poses as a confessor at one point while Block reveals his game plan.
Block’s quest is for “vetskap” (knowledge), but he is also aware of his corporeality. At one point he holds up his arm exclaiming, “this is my hand,” as in the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion when the liturgy intones “this is the body and blood of Jesus Christ.” The knight meets a circus family: Jof, Mia, and their little two-year-old son Mikael. Jof predicts that Mikael will one day be able to suspend a ball in mid air, such supernatural powers providing allusions to Jesus and his parents, Mary and Joseph. It is Jof, however, who appears to have mystical powers — his visions indeed serve to save his family from death. Jof sees not only the Virgin Mary but his death, his family’s, and that of others.
Bergman’s films often depict the artist as an outcast and at one point in The Seventh Seal Jof is asked to dance as a bear, awaking superstitions of the people at an inn who need a scapegoat for the plague. Such a mime evokes the medieval custom of sacrificing a bear for atonement. Likewise, processions led by clergy carry not only witches for burning but a parade of flagellates paying for their sins.
The Seventh Seal is not only a medieval drama play. Bergman also manages to instill his film with references to his philosophy on women, elsewhere seen in Monica, The Story of a Bad Girl, Persona, and Cries and Whispers.
At one point an actor from the circus is seduced by Lisa, the wife of blacksmith Plog. They escape into the forest and are later discovered by Plog and Block's squire, Jöns. The forest is feared for bears, wolves and ghosts but primarily Death, symbolized by thunderstorm, lightning, and rain. Jöns and Plog converse about how Lisa should be killed, as all women, for their deception, harking back to the garden of Eden. “Lust is one thing,” says Jöns. He tells a woman he “saves from rape” that he is tired of “that kind of love.” Plog and Lisa are however reunited and cry out that the actor should be killed, shifting the burden to the artist as outcast. Death, like the church, has a thing to say about the adulterer, who fells a tree the actor has scurried up, leaving a squirrel to sniff at the fresh cut of its roots.

ONE HUGE QUESTION ABOUT THIS FILM IS NEVER BROUGHT UP IN FILM CRITICISM:
Upon meeting the young girl condemned to death, Block cannot help but ask why. He means to interfere and prevent the fate, but supposes she is half dead already. There is plenty of time before she is set on fire, so it is curious that he waits until the last minute. (Was that not a good deed?)

Convinced of “tomheten” (emptiness) Block wanders away to the circus family where he has a bowl of “smultron” (wild strawberries, offered to him by Bibbi Andersson as in Wild Strawberries, made the same year). The symbolism of the meal points to one other existential truism, that for the moment daily bread is enough.
When the travelers make their way to Block’s home they are met by his wife, who prepares the last supper. Death is welcomed into their home and we later together with Jof see them led by Death brandishing a scythe in a dance on the hill. The Seventh Seal is riddled with conventional metaphors about death and women, and the artist as outcast, a fate Bergman himself would experience two decades later when accused of not paying his taxes.
NOTE: Criterion features a new digital transfer special edition of The Seventh Seal, with loads of extras!
Used by permission for:

English 369:
Film History from WWII to the Present
Jefferson Hendricks
English Department
Centenary College of Louisiana Spring 2009 http://personal.centenary.edu/~jhendric/film_history/2009_369_syllabus.html

Revisiting Bergman's Persona

2009-06-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

Persona
Sweden / 1966

Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, filmed on Fårö (Sheep Island) where the Swedish octogenarian’s summer home is located, is enigmatic and pulsating. Even after multiple viewings it is persistently compelling, primarily because of its contemplative thematic structure, partially devoid of language that allows the spectator to inscribe meaning. Bergman, in a recent interview and screening of Persona on Swedish Television, said he was weary of all the interpretations. He also revealed that in the beginning shooting the film was extremely problematic.

Persona, the third joint venture between Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist, is renowned for its poignant use of close-ups. In the making of Fanny and Alexander, Bergman admits they had ongoing differences on how to move the camera. A tightly constructed mise-en-scene allowed minute control of rhythm and acting in his later films, in which Nykvist kept the camera still. This style was well suited to the director whose strongest suit is the theater.

Persona begins with a montage — what Bergman calls “dream imagery”: The notable rattle of a film projector and illuminated filmstrip moving through its machinery alerts the spectator to the art instrument of filmmaking. (Bergman as a child lived close to a movie theater called ‘Slottsbiograf’ [‘Castle Cinema’], located below the castle where Queen Christina planned her abdication in the 16th century.) There his love of film was cultivated and some of his favorite images are to be found in this montage. A caricature of an erect penis for one eighth of a second, an image typically found in books on ancient Greece, was cut by Swedish censors. (Bergman’s excitement for its reintroduction on the recent Swedish Television broadcast made the old master look pathetically immature.) Other sequences include actors brandishing devils and skeleton suits frightening a sleeping man in pajamas from a silent film. An old cartoon is projected upside down, momentarily caught in the sprocket holes. A spider stretching its deadly appendages, gutted sheep, and a nail hammered into a hand are other, more disturbing images.

A shot of a Swedish forest introduces clips of aging faces and feet, appended with the sound of water from a tap. The telephone rings and a boy lying on a bed covered by a white sheet sits up, puts on his glasses and reads Lermontov's Vår Tids Hjälte (Hero of our Time). He stretches his hand towards the projection of a woman’s face (Bibi Andersson). As the credits roll, a sequence of a self-immolating monk is shown, followed by the faces of Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann and Jörgen Lindström, the young boy. It is no accident that the images from the montage sequence precede the film and are later revealed visually or metaphorically; Persona is a meditation on martyrdom, heroics, fear, and sacrifice in personal relationship.

Persona is the story of a meeting between an artist (Liv Ullmann) and a nurse (Bibi Andersson). Elisabet Vogler is an actress who, during a theatrical performance of Electra, is suddenly unable to deliver her lines. She excuses herself for being “full of laughter.” This episode sends her into “an hysterical reaction” where she refuses to speak. Elisabet is admitted into the psychiatric ward of a Swedish hospital following three months of self-imposed silence (laced with laughter along with some humming). The psychiatrist brilliantly played by the late Margaretha Crook suggests that nurse Alma travel with Elisabet to her country house and dialogue with the actress for her rehabilitation. She believes that the actress is trying to seal herself hermetically from the world by refusing to speak and requires personal assistance in a natural setting. The stark austerity of the hospital room (a studio of the summer house at Fårö) with only a hospital bed on wheels, a night table, and TV might make anyone come unglued. The invitation is certainly a privileged one that not all Swedes can expect for convalescence. Bergman recalled that Persona was written following convalescence from an inflammatory illness that among other symptoms left him partially paralyzed in one arm.

Before the journey, Elisabet witnesses on her television news footage of the self-immolation of a monk protesting the Vietnam War. Bergman admits this was his first overt usage of politics in his films. Curiously, the footage in English with an American commentator and no subtitles goes against the practice of Swedish Television that must provide Swedish translation to all previously recorded broadcasts.

Bergman, in voice-over, announces how Elisabet and Alma go off to the doctor’s summerhouse. The convalescence on Fårö takes several twists demonstrating how the symbiosis in caretaking is precarious where the roles can suddenly reverse. Alma uses the silence to relate her experiences, flattered by a serious actress taking her to heart. She even envisions Elisabet coming to her bed at night in a homoerotic dream that is timelessly potent. ¹

Eventually, Elisabet sends off Alma with an unsealed envelope to town. Considering it her medical duty to read it, Alma is distressed to find that she is under the microscope of Elisabet and is outraged. Her tale of an orgy with teenagers that led to her pregnancy is first received with empathy and later is patronized by the worldly actress who confides in the letter to her husband that Alma may be infatuated with her. The roles reverse and Alma zeroes in on Elisabet with the acumen of a medical professional. Bergman is didactic with the revelation that neither Alma’s aborted child nor Elisabet’s abandoned boy was wanted. The manner in which Alma confronts her and describes how she probably perceives her boy could be in part a description of her own aborted fetus.

Alma is also visited at night by Elisabet’s husband, less memorable than the dream of the elegant actress flowing into her room with a long white nightgown. She denies being Elisabet to Mr. Vogler but later assumes her identity, perfunctorily exclaiming she is satisfied with their life together. However, by day, Elisabet is no more eager to return to her life with her husband and boy than the day she lost her ability to speak. This seems to send her further into “hysteria.” The discovered letter sets off a chain of events where Alma confronts Elisabet and brings up her neglected little boy that needs attention. During one scene Elisabet examines a photo of a boy being held at gunpoint by Nazi soldiers and looks away with horror.

For Elisabet and Alma alike, the introspection is overwhelmingly painful where shame and tumult are shared and mirrored. In one scene, Alma questions Elisabet, her face shown in close-up, and later the same dialogue is used with Alma in close-up. There are no easy answers to why the two are precariously balanced in complicity, their faces forming an incongruous whole after this scene. There is perhaps something for each of us to project into this unbalance, but Bergman, as in so many other films, believes that failed motherhood contributes to hysteria and that woman is ultimately and inextricably linked to her biology. In the end, we see Alma in her nurse’s uniform coming into the room to help Elisabet. Are they back again in the hospital or did they ever leave?

¹ – The scene where Elisabet stokes the hair of Alma is reminiscent of a classic scene from Maya Deren’s At Land where a woman strokes the hair of two women, a sequence which was determined "lesbianish" and as such described homophobically by The New Republic film critic Manny Farber.