Francesco Rosi: History and Realism

Illustrious Corpses (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

For over half a century the celebrated Italian filmmaker Francesco Rosi practised a highly-charged, politically-engaged cinema which earned him the title of Italy’s cinematic ‘poet of civic courage’. 

After working as an assistant director to Luchino Visconti, Rosi directed his first feature film in 1957, La sfida (The Challenge), the story of a young Neapolitan hood who challenges a local Camorra boss for supremacy. In 1961 Rosi established his international reputation with Salvatore Giuliano – based on the true account of a small-time Sicilian black marketeer who rose to become a legendary outlaw and was killed in mysterious circumstances.

Rosi’s film set out to investigate the mystery and to question the official version of events. Salvatore Giuliano became the first of Rosi’s ‘cine-inchieste’ (film investigations), what he characterised as not ‘documentary’ but documented films. These were, in Millicent Marcus’s words, ‘cinematic investigations into cases involving power relationships between charismatic individuals, corporations, criminal organisations and the state.’

Rosi would make several more films in the 1960s including Il momento della verità (The Moment of Truth, 1964). It was to be the 1970s, however—the decade that in Italy would be recalled as ‘the years of lead’, characterised by social instability, political discord and terrorism – which would provide Rosi with the opportunity to make what are regarded as his finest films.

Il Caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair, 1972), Lucky Luciano (1973) and Cadaveri Eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses, 1976) in varied ways harked back to the investigative cinematic style that Rosi had developed in Salvatore Giuliano.

In the following extract from an interview with Cineaste Magazine Francesco Rosi discusses his working methods, his cinematic style and his commitment to social justice.

Salvatore Giuliano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: Your films are political, it seems to me, as much because of the way they are structured as because of your subject matter.

Francesco Rosi: Yes, many of my films – such as Salvatore Giuliano, Hands Over the City, Lucky Luciano and The Mattei Affair – are structured as investigations into the relationship between causes and effects. When I devised this method in Salvatore Giuliano, this search for the truth became the narrative line of the film. I wanted to pose questions to the audience, questions I either didn’t know the answers to or did not wish to give answers to. My films are not policiers, or thrillers, but instead aim to provoke, to insinuate doubts, to challenge the official statements and certainties from the powers that be which hide real interests and the truth.

As the narrator, the storyteller, I communicate my impressions to the audience, whom I consider a traveling companion in my investigation into human feelings and into facts that cannot always be accepted for what they appear to be. These facts, these events, need to be interpreted, and this interpretation is what gives rise to ambiguity.

In some of the Italian mysteries that my films have dealt with, a single truth doesn’t exist, so I don’t want to offer a simple answer. The films are interested in the search for truth and in encouraging reflection. To be effective, the questions the films ask must continue to live in the viewer even after the film is over. After my first few films, in fact, I stopped putting the words ‘The End’ at the conclusion because I think films should not end but should continue to grow inside us. Ideally, they should grow inside us over the years, the same way that our historical memory grows inside of us – and films are our most vital historical documentation. This power of suggestion is what defines the greatness of a film, and what I would even say is its function.

Salvatore Giuliano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: What sort of political influence does the cinema, vis-a-vis television or the press, have in Italy today?

Rosi: Some films have anticipated what is currently going on in Italy. One example is my film, Hands Over the City, not because of any particular prophetic qualities or talents, but because films are a testimony to the reality in which we live and to a filmmaker’s desire to understand, to his or her ability to know how to see. Sometimes a filmmaker can see things before they’ve become clear to everyone else. Some things are just sitting there waiting to be seen by eyes that know how to see or by the political will to show these things to other people.

The political function of a film is to provoke and sometimes films produce results. I don’t think films can change politics or history, but sometimes they can influence events. For example, thanks to the public showings of Salvatore Giuliano in 1962, two Italian politicians – Girolamo Li Causi of the Italian Communist Party and Simone Gatto of the Italian Socialist Party – called for the establishment of the first Anti-mafia Commission. A few months after the first screenings of the film, Parliament agreed to establish the commission because, in the face of a film like this – which documented the cooperation between the Mafia, government institutions, and the various police forces in Italy – it could no longer deny to the public the existence of such activities.

Cineaste: Do you prefer to have your films shown in theaters or would you be more interested in having them shown on TV so as to reach a larger audience?

Rosi: I prefer theaters because the true destination of a film is movie theaters. The showing of a film on TV can naturally reach a large public, but it’s not the same thing. Films shown on TV tend to be seen in a very distracted manner because of all the interruptions that occur at home – the telephone ringing, talking to friends, going to the bathroom, whatever – whereas seeing a film in a theater requires concentration. The movie-going ritual is part of the mysterious power that films have. When I go to a movie theater, and sit down in the dark amidst hundreds of people I don’t know, I can feel their response to the film, and it becomes a social event.

Salvatore Giuliano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: One of the characteristics of classic neorealism that one sees continuing in your work is the prominent use of non-professional actors. Would you explain your reasons for that?

Rosi: Well, a film like Salvatore Giuliano was made almost entirely without professional actors because I wanted to make it, in a very real sense, as a psychodrama. That is, I wanted to shoot in the places where Giuliano had lived, in the town where he was from, under the eyes of his mother and family, in the courtyard where his body was found, and, above all, with the participation of many of the people who ten years earlier had known Salvatore Giuliano and who had lived with him.

I wanted to involve these people in my film because I was sure their participation would convey elements of their suffering. In the scene shot in Montelepre, for example, where the women rush from their homes to the town square to protest the army’s arrest of their husbands and sons, these women had been involved in the actual events. I knew that involving them in the film would provoke a huge emotional response, a remembrance of what had happened to them.

There were also only two or three professional actors in Hands Over the City. Carlo Fermariello, who played De Vita, the opposition councilman, and who became the lead actor in the film along with Rod Steiger, was not a professional actor. The guy who played the outgoing mayor in the film was a Neapolitan who had previously been a car salesman in Detroit before returning home. And the lawyer who was on the committee of inquiry was a real Neapolitan lawyer. I knew that their participation, because of their personal experience and sensitivity, would add a great deal to the film. When I chose Charles Siragusa to play himself in Lucky Luciano, I knew that by not using a professional actor for the part I would lose something in terms of the ability of an actor, but I was also sure I would gain something because of Siragusa’s involvement in the actual prosecution of Luciano.

The Mattei Affair (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: One sees a real continuity among the key technicians you work with from film to film.

Rosi: I always prefer working with the same collaborators because we know each other and our working methods well. Gianni Di Venanzo was the director of photography on my first five films, and, following his death in 1966, all my other films have been made with Pasqualino De Santis. But even on the films with Di Venanzo, Pasqualino was the camera operator on three of them, so we had already begun to develop an intimate working relationship. Pasqualino is a great cameraman. We were able to take shots with a hand-held camera for The Mattei Affair and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. De Santis is an extremely sensitive director of photography, but one who always likes to take risks, to try different ways of lighting a scene. He lights with very minimal means, with few artificial lights. He’s also a great connoisseur of film stocks and is always willing to try new things.

Cineaste: Who makes decisions regarding camera placement and movement?

Rosi: These are decisions the director makes and then with the cameraman you translate these decisions technically.

Cineaste: Do you do this in advance or on the set? Do you do much storyboarding?

Rosi: I decide the day before how I’m going to shoot a scene. The last thing I do in the evening, before closing up the set for the night, is to explain what I’m going to do the next day. I think this sort of work has to be prepared in advance, but obviously this can’t be a set rule, and many times I decide on the camera position when I’m on location. There are many circumstances in which you may have to change everything at the last minute.

Sometimes, for some sequences, I prepare a little storyboard, as in Illustrious Corpses or Chronicle of a Death Foretold, but I don’t use the American system of preparing a storyboard for the entire film before it’s shot. I do like to prepare the work in advance so I can explain it first to my cameraman and director of photography to assure that it will be done in the best possible way from a technical point of view.

Lucky Luciano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: How do you work with your editor?

Rosi: First of all, I only begin to edit a film after I’ve finished shooting. I never let the editor edit the film on his own. I sit at the moviola with the editor and we work together because I’ve thought about the editing while I’m shooting, so I already have the montage in mind. Nevertheless, while working at the moviola I might decide to change many things. With The Mattei Affair, for example, many changes were made right at the moviola. This is something you can tell because of all the different kinds of material I used in that film. I don’t often shoot a lot of coverage but many times I shoot with two cameras, not to have more choices but to have different perspectives on the same scene.

Cineaste: In many of your films, the Mafia is portrayed as a very powerful element of society, and so thoroughly entrenched as to perhaps be ineradicable.

Rosi: The Mafia has great power but it is not invincible. This has been proved in Italy over the last few years. For example, a so-called maxi-trial was instigated by a group of magistrates in Palermo – including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsalino – which showed that a lot can be accomplished in the war against the Mafia. This trial marked a turning point and recently the state has been hitting the Mafia very hard. This doesn’t mean that in a short period of time you’re going to achieve significant results against such a complex phenomenon as the Mafia, but it does signal a major change in public opinion. We must also recognize a fundamental change in the Mafia culture itself. The Mafia and the Camorra – the Neapolitan version of the Mafia – are not just criminal societies, they’re also cultures, certain mentalities.

When I made Salvatore Giuliano, they didn’t even say the word ‘Mafia’ in Sicily. But in Sicily today young people organize protest marches against the Mafia and civic society has responded very strongly to such protests. People are aware of the sacrifice on the part of many judges, policemen, journalists, and even politicians who have paid with their lives in this struggle, and so there is a growing public awareness that we can and must achieve results against the Mafia.

Lucky Luciano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: How do you evaluate the overall political situation in Italy today?

Rosi: Everything’s in movement in Italy today. On the part of Italian civic society, there’s a huge demand for change, a very strong protest against a system of political and economic corruption, in connection with organized crime. We can’t really say there are definite efforts today that will lead to conclusions, but I and many others believe that there is a movement of sorts that will lead to a second risorgimento, a second rising up, like the first risorgimento for Italian independence in the nineteenth century.

Cineaste: What political party is going to be able to take the lead here? Are we looking for a new Garibaldi?

Rosi: No, there is no new Garibaldi for now. But what is important is that there is all this movement, a very strong demand for change, and a rejection of a system of corruption that has tarnished, more or less, every political party.

– From Rosi’s interview with Gary Crowdus and Dan Georgakas reprinted in Dan Georgakas and Lenny Rubenstein (eds.), Art, Politics, Cinema: The Cineaste Interviews, London, Pluto Press, 1985.

The End of Innocence: Kubrick on Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon (Directed by Stanley Kubrick)

‘I’m not sure if I can say that I have a favourite Kubrick picture, but somehow I keep coming back to ‘Barry Lyndon’. I think that’s because it’s such a profoundly emotional experience. The emotion is conveyed through the movement of the camera, the slowness of the pace, the way the characters move in relation to their surroundings. People didn’t get it when it came out. Many still don’t. Basically, in one exquisitely beautiful image after another, you’re watching the progress of a man as he moves from the purest innocence to the coldest sophistication, ending in absolute bitterness – and it’s all a matter of simple, elemental survival. It’s a terrifying film because all the candlelit beauty is nothing but a veil over the worst cruelty. But it’s real cruelty, the kind you see every day in polite society.’  

                                                      - Martin Scorsese on ‘Barry Lyndon’.

Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon is a period drama starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter, and Hardy Krüger, that tells the story of a fictitious 18th-century Irish rogue and opportunist who ascends the social ladder by marrying a rich widow. 

After Kubrick completed A Clockwork Orange in 1971, he had intended to make a biography on Napoleon. However, due to the poor box office returns of the similarly themed Waterloo, Kubrick could not get the funding to make the picture. Kubrick turned to Barry Lyndon instead, a film set largely during the Seven Years' War, that enabled him to use the research and development that he had intended for the now discarded Napoleon project. Filming started in December 1973 and lasted for around eight months, in England, Ireland and West Germany. 

The film's cinematography is widely regarded as groundbreaking. Of particular note are the lengthy double shots, ending with a slow backward zoom, which were frequently placed in candlelit settings, inspired by works of the British artist William Hogarth. The interiors were largely filmed in London, with some location work done in Ireland, England, and West Germany. issues with logistics, weather, and even politics affected the production.

The film received four Oscars at the 48th Academy Awards for Adaptation; Costume Design; Art Direction; and Cinematography. Although the film's slow pace and restrained style were subject to some criticism at the time of its release, the film's reputation has only grown over time, with many critics maintaining that it is among Kubrick's best works and one of the greatest films of all time.

The following interview with Stanley Kubrick is excerpted from the book ‘Kubrick’ by Michel Ciment. It was conducted upon the release of ‘Barry Lyndon’ in 1975 and published in a partial form at the time. In 1981 Stanley Kubrick revised and approved the complete text of the interview for the English edition of Ciment’s book on his films.

Michel Ciment: Your last three films were set in the future. What led you to make an historical film?

Stanley Kubrick: I can’t honestly say what led me to make any of my films. The best I can do is to say I just fell in love with the stories. Going beyond that is a bit like trying to explain why you fell in love with your wife: she’s intelligent, has brown eyes, a good figure. Have you really said anything? Since I am currently going through the process of trying to decide what film to make next, I realize just how uncontrollable is the business of finding a story, and how much it depends on chance and spontaneous reaction. You can say a lot of ’architectural’ things about what a film story should have: a strong plot, interesting characters, possibilities for cinematic development, good opportunities for the actors to display emotion, and the presentation of its thematic ideas truthfully and intelligently. But, of course, that still doesn’t really explain why you finally chose something, nor does it lead you to a story. You can only say that you probably wouldn’t choose a story that doesn’t have most of those qualities.

Since you are completely free in your choice of story material, how did you come to pick up a book by Thackeray, almost forgotten and hardly republished since the nineteenth century?

I have had a complete set of Thackeray sitting on my bookshelf at home for years, and I had to read several of his novels before reading Barry Lyndon. At one time, Vanity Fair interested me as a possible film but, in the end, I decided the story could not be successfully compressed into the relatively short time-span of a feature film. This problem of length, by the way, is now wonderfully accommodated for by the television miniseries which, with its ten-to-twelve-hour length, pressed on consecutive nights, has created a completely different dramatic form. Anyway, as soon as I read Barry Lyndon I became very excited about it. I loved the story and the characters, and it seemed possible to make the transition from novel to film without destroying it in the process. It also offered the opportunity to do one of the things that movies can do better than any other art form, and that is to present historical subject matter. Description is not one of the things that novels do best but it is something that movies do effortlessly, at least with respect to the effort required of the audience. This is equally true for science-fiction and fantasy, which offer visual challenges and possibilities you don’t find in contemporary stories.

How did you come to adopt a third-person commentary instead of the first-person narrative which is found in the book?

I believe Thackeray used Redmond Barry to tell his own story in a deliberately distorted way because it made it more interesting. Instead of the omniscient author, Thackeray used the imperfect observer, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the dishonest observer, thus allowing the reader to judge for himself, with little difficulty, the probable truth in Redmond Barry’s view of his life. This technique worked extremely well in the novel but, of course, in a film you have objective reality in front of you all of the time, so the effect of Thackeray’s first-person story-teller could not be repeated on the screen. It might have worked as comedy by the juxtaposition of Barry’s version of the truth with the reality on the screen, but I don’t think that Barry Lyndon should have been done as a comedy.

You didn’t think of having no commentary?

There is too much story to tell. A voice-over spares you the cumbersome business of telling the necessary facts of the story through expositional dialogue scenes which can become very tiresome and frequently unconvincing: ‘Curse the blasted storm that’s wrecked our blessed ship!’ Voice-over, on the other hand, is a perfectly legitimate and economical way of conveying story information which does not need dramatic weight and which would otherwise be too bulky to dramatize.

But you use it in other way – to cool down the emotion of a scene, and to anticipate the story. For instance, just after the meeting with the German peasant girl – a very moving scene – the voice-over compares her to a town having been often conquered by siege.

In the scene that you’re referring to, the voice-over works as an ironic counterpoint to what you see portrayed by the actors on the screen. This is only a minor sequence in the story and has to be presented with economy. Barry is tender and romantic with the girl but all he really wants is to get her into bed. The girl is lonely and Barry is attractive and attentive. If you think about it, it isn’t likely that he is the only soldier she has brought home while her husband has been away to the wars. You could have had Barry give signals to the audience, through his performance, indicating that he is really insincere and opportunistic, but this would be unreal. When we try to deceive we are as convincing as we can be, aren’t we?

The film’s commentary also serves another purpose, but this time in much the same manner it did in the novel. The story has many twists and turns, and Thackeray uses Barry to give you hints in advance of most of the important plot developments, thus lessening the risk of their seeming contrived.

When he is going to meet the Chevalier Balibari, the commentary anticipates the emotions we are about to see, thus possibly lessening their effect.

Barry Lyndon is a story which does not depend upon surprise. What is important is not what is going to happen, but how it will happen. I think Thackeray trades off the advantage of surprise to gain a greater sense of inevitability and a better integration of what might otherwise seem melodramatic or contrived. In the scene you refer to where Barry meets the Chevalier, the film’s voice-over establishes the necessary groundwork for the important new relationship which is rapidly to develop between the two men. By talking about Barry’s loneliness being so far from home, his sense of isolation as an exile, and his joy at meeting a fellow countryman in a foreign land, the commentary prepares the way for the scenes which are quickly to follow showing his close attachment to the Chevalier. Another place in the story where I think this technique works particularly well is where we are told that Barry’s young son, Bryan, is going to die at the same time we watch the two of them playing happily together. In this case, I think the commentary creates the same dramatic effect as, for example, the knowledge that the Titanic is doomed while you watch the carefree scenes of preparation and departure. These early scenes would be inexplicably dull if you didn’t know about the ship’s appointment with the iceberg. Being told in advance of the impending disaster gives away surprise but creates suspense.

There is very little introspection in the film. Barry is open about his feelings at the beginning of the film, but then he becomes less so.

At the beginning of the story, Barry has more people around him to whom he can express his feelings. As the story progresses, and particularly after his marriage, he becomes more and more isolated. There is finally no one who loves him, or with whom he can talk freely, with the possible exception of his young son, who is too uoung to be of much help. At the same time I don’t think that the lack of introspective dialogue scenes are any loss to the story. Barry’s feelings are there to be seen as he reacts to the increasingly difficult circumstances of his life. I think this is equally true for the other characters in the story. In any event, scenes of people talking about themselves are often very dull.

In contrast to films which are preoccupied with analyzing the psychology of the characters, yours tend to maintain a mystery around them. Reverend Runt, for instance, is a very opaque person. You don’t know exactly what his motivations are.

But you know a lot about Reverend Runt, certainly all that is necessary. He dislikes Barry. He is secretly in love with Lady Lyndon, in his own prim, repressed, little way. His little smile of triumph, in the scene in the coach, near the end of the film, tells you all you need to know regarding the way he feels about Barry’s misfortune, and the way things have worked out. You certainly don’t have the time in a film to develop the motivations of minor characters.

Lady Lyndon is even more opaque.

Thackeray doesn’t tell you a great deal about her in the novel. I found that very strange. He doesn’t give you a lot to go on. There are, in fact, very few dialogue scenes with her in the book. Perhaps he meant her to be something of a mystery. But the film gives you a sufficient understanding of her anyway.

You made important changes in your adaptation, such as the invention of the last duel, and the ending itself.

Yes, I did, but I was satisfied that they were consistent with the spirit of the novel and brought the story to about the same place the novel did, but in less time. In the book, Barry is pensioned off by Lady Lyndon. Lord Bullingdon, having been believed dead, returns from America. He finds Barry and gives him a beating. Barry, tended by his mother, subsequently dies in prison, a drunk. This, and everything that went along with it in the novel to make it credible would have taken too much time on the screen. In the film, Bullingdon gets his revenge and Barry is totally defeated, destined, one can assume, for a fate not unlike that which awaited him in the novel.

And the scene of the two homosexuals in the lake was not in the book either.

The problem here was how to get Barry out of the British Army. The section of the book dealing with this is also fairly lengthy and complicated.

The function of the scene between the two gay officers was to provide a simpler way for Barry to escape. Again, it leads to the same end result as the novel but by a different route. Barry steals the papers and uniform of a British officer which allow him to make his way to freedom. Since the scene is purely expositional, the comic situation helps to mask your intentions.

Were you aware of the multiple echoes that are found in the film: flogging in the army, flogging at home, the duels, etc., and the narrative structure resembling that of A Clockwork Orange? Does this geometrical pattern attract you?

The narrative symmetry arose primarily out of the needs of telling the story rather than as part of a conscious design. The artistic process you go through in making a film is as much a matter of discovery as it is the execution of a plan. Your first responsibility in writing a screenplay is to pay the closest possible attention to the author’s ideas and make sure you really understand what he has written and why he has written it. I know this sounds pretty obvious but you’d be surprised how often this is not done. There is a tendency for the screenplay writer to be ’creative’ too quickly. The next thing is to make sure that the story survives the selection and compression which has to occur in order to tell it in a maximum of three hours, and preferably two. This phase usually seals the fate of most major novels, which really need the large canvas upon which they are presented.

In the first part of A Clockwork Orange, we were against Alex. In the second part, we were on his side. In this film, the attraction/repulsion feeling towards Barry is present throughout.

Thackeray referred to it as ’a novel without a hero’. Barry is naive and uneducated. He is driven by a relentless ambition for wealth and social position. This proves to be an unfortunate combination of qualities which eventually lead to great misfortune and unhappiness for himself and those around him. Your feelings about Barry are mixed but he has charm and courage, and it is impossible not to like him despite his vanity, his insensitivity and his weaknesses. He is a very real character who is neither a conventional hero nor a conventional villain.

The feeling that we have at the end is one of utter waste.

Perhaps more a sense of tragedy, and because of this the story can assimilate the twists and turns of the plot without becoming melodrama. Melodrama uses all the problems of the world, and the difficulties and disasters which befall the characters, to demonstrate that the world is, after all, a benevolent and just place.

The last sentence which says that all the characters are now equal can be taken as a nihilistic or religious statement. From your films, one has the feeling that you are a nihilist who would like to believe.

I think you’ll find that it is merely an ironic postscript taken from the novel. Its meaning seems quite clear to me and, as far as I’m concerned, it has nothing to do with nihilism or religion.

One has the feeling in your films that the world is in a constant state of war. The apes are fighting in 2001. There is fighting, too, in Paths Of Glory, and Dr. Strangelove. In Barry Lyndon, you have a war in the first part, and then in the second part we find the home is a battleground, too.

Drama is conflict, and violent conflict does not find its exclusive domain in my films. Nor is it uncommon for a film to be built around a situation where violent conflict is the driving force. With respect to Barry Lyndon, after his successful struggle to achieve wealth and social position, Barry proves to be badly unsuited to this role. He has clawed his way into a gilded cage, and once inside his life goes really bad. The violent conflicts which subsequently arise come inevitably as a result of the characters and their relationships. Barry’s early conflicts carry him forth into life and they bring him adventure and happiness, but those in later life lead only to pain and eventually to tragedy.

Why did you choose to have only one flashback in the film: the child falling from the horse?

I didn’t want to spend the time which would have been required to show the entire story action of young Bryan sneaking away from the house, taking the horse, falling, being found, etc. Nor did I want to learn about the accident solely through the dialogue scene in which the farm workers, carrying the injured boy, tell Barry. Putting the flashback fragment in the middle of the dialogue scene seemed to be the right thing to do.

Are your camera movements planned before?

Very rarely. I think there is virtually no point putting camera instructions into a screenplay, and only if some really important camera idea occurs to me, do I write it down. When you rehearse a scene, it is usually best not to think about the camera at all. If you do, I have found that it invariably interferes with the fullest exploration of the ideas of the scene. When, at last, something happens which you know is worth filming, that is the time to decide how to shoot it. It is almost but not quite true to say that when something really exciting and worthwhile is happening, it doesn’t matter how you shoot it. In any event, it never takes me long to decide on set-ups, lighting or camera movements. The visual part of film making has always come easiest to me, and that is why I am careful to subordinate it to the story and the performances.

Do you like writing alone or would you like to work with a script writer?

I enjoy working with someone I find stimulating. One of the most fruitful and enjoyable collaborations I have had was with Arthur C. Clarke in writing the story of 2001: A Space Odyssey. One of the paradoxes of movie writing is that, with a few notable exceptions, writers who can really write are not interested in working on film scripts. They quite correctly regard their important work as being done for publication. I wrote the screenplay for Barry Lyndon alone. The first draft took three or four months but, as with all my films, the subsequent writing process never really stopped. What you have written and is yet unfilmed is inevitably affected by what has been filmed. New problems of content or dramatic weight reveal themselves. Rehearsing a scene can also cause script changes. However carefully you think about a scene, and however clearly you believe you have visualized it, it’s never the same when you finally see it played. Sometimes a totally new idea comes up out of the blue, during a rehearsal, or even during actual shooting, which is simply too good to ignore. This can necessitate the new scene being worked out with the actors right then and there. As long as the actors know the objectives of the scene, and understand their characters, this is less difficult and much quicker to do than you might imagine.

- From ‘Kubrick’ by Michel Ciment.

Truffaut: The Whiteness of Carl Dreyer

Vampyr (Directed by Carl Dreyer)

“Consciously, I do nothing to please the public”, noted Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer. The singular calmness of Dreyer's approach may account for his reputation as a serious and uncompromising artist. In contrast to many other contemporary filmmakers, Dreyer's work appears to come from a different era, they have a monumental timeless quality that eschew contemporary “relevance”. 

Dreyer believed that realism was not a goal to strive towards — it was simply not art. In contrast, Dreyer sought for what he dubbed “psychological realism,” an approach that sought to represent the reality that lies behind the world that people see. Dreyer cut out anything that was redundant to his purpose, and so a minimalist, abstract style evolved. Initially alienating to those unfamiliar with his austere approach, it is however perfectly in character with his work. 

Dreyer's spiritual asceticism however is defined by a rather humanist approach. Dreyer's feature films frequently deal with issues related to discrimination and the role of women living in a patriarchal culture. In these films, Dreyer places emphasis on character above plot, especially when it comes to showing his concerns about human suffering. 

The picture that critics have most consistently ranked as Dreyer's greatest achievement, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), is an excellent way to see the major themes of his work. Because it has come to be regarded as one of the real masterpieces of the pre-sound era, the picture is justifiably believed to be the apotheosis of Dreyer's silent cinema technique. 

This picture was produced in France, and the Société Générale des Films, who were finishing work on Abel Gance's Napoleon, were involved in the process (1927). The Society of Genuérale offered Dreyer complete creative power and an unrestricted budget. While Gance delivered a decades-long spectacle featuring epic battle scenes, Dreyer went in a more straightforward direction, centering his film solely on Joan's trial and execution. Instead of telling the storey of how Joan led an army into battle in an attempt to drive the English out of 15th-century France, Dreyer made an effort to solely focus on her trial and execution. Dreyer condensed the events of Joan's trial into a single day, resulting in a film with a unity of time, place, and action which illustrates Dreyer's desire to explore inner conflicts, especially those involving the inner workings of a locale. 

Dreyer's shots throughout the film focus on Joan and her assailants, mainly in close-ups. They bring the players' faces closer, so increasing our understanding of their internal feelings, but this also reduces the space surrounding them to insignificance. Joan's sense of confusion is heightened by Dreyer's sparing use of cinematic style. And the picture shifts focus to Joan's inner spiritual dimension. Dreyer always maintained that the artist should focus on the internal aspects of a subject, rather than the surface aspects, and there is no better illustration of this concept than in Dreyer's masterpiece, The Passion of Joan of Arc. 

The Passion of Joan of Arc confirms Dreyer's previous demonstration of his skills in silent film, but Dreyer's later work demonstrates even more mastery in terms of dealing with sound. He made his first attempt into the new media by creating a dream-like mood of gothic dread in his film Vampyr (1932). Also contributing to its otherworldly aspects was the fact that Vampyr was created utilising experimental sound technology, which carried over numerous methods and artistic flourishes from the silent period. But with the film "Day of Wrath," Dreyer was firmly on the route to his mature style, which was characterised by an austere and languid pace. 

Dreyer used a pioneering arc-and-pan camera movement in addition to lengthy takes to allow him to remain at a distance from the players in Ordet (1955). An in-depth look at faith and family that leads to a thrilling, heart-wrenching climax. 

Dreyer’s career spanned four decades from the silent era to sound and included comedies and melodramas to the great chamber dramas for which he is best known.

Francois Truffaut wrote this famous article on the work of Carl Theodor Dreyer shortly after the great Danish director’s death in 1968:

When I think of Carl Dreyer, what comes to mind first are those pale white images, the splendid voiceless closeups in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc) that play back exactly the acerbic dialogue at Rouen between Jeanne and her judges.

Then I think of the whiteness of Vampyr, though this time it is accompanied by sounds, the cries and horrible groans of the Doctor (Jean Hieromniko), whose gnarled shadow disappears into the flour bin in the impregnable mill that no one will approach to save him. In the same way that Dreyer’s camera is clever in Jeanne d’Arc, in Vampyr it frees itself and becomes a young man’s pen as it follows, darts ahead of, prophesies the vampire’s movements along the gray walls.

Unhappily, after the commercial failure of these masterpieces, Dreyer had to wait eleven years, eleven years out of his life, before shouting ‘Camera! Action!’ when at last he made Vredens Dag (Day of Wrath), a movie that deals with sorcery and religion, and is a synthesis of the other two films. Here we see the most beautiful image of female nudity in the history of cinema – the least erotic and most carnal nakedness – the white body of Marthe Herloff, the old woman burned as a witch.

Day of Wrath (Directed by Carl Dreyer)

Ten years after Day of Wrath, at the end of the summer of 1956, Ordet overwhelmed the audience at the Lido Biennale. Never in the history of the Venice Festival had a Golden Lion been more justly awarded than to Ordet, a drama of faith, more exactly, a metaphysical fable about the aberrations dogmatic rivalries lead to.

The film’s hero, Johannes, is a visionary who thinks he is Jesus Christ; but only when he comes to recognize his delusion does he ‘receive’ spiritual power.

Each image in Ordet possesses a forrnal perfection that touches the sublime, but we recognize Dreyer for more than a ‘cosmetician.’ The rhythm is leisurely, the interplay of the actors stylized, but they are utterly controlled. Not a frame escapes Dreyer’s vigilance; he is certainly the most demanding director of all since Eisenstein, and his finished films resemble exactly what they were in his mind as he conceived them. 

There is no active mimicry from the actors in Ordet; they simply set their faces in a particular manner, and from the outset of each scene adopt a static attitude. The important actions take place in the living room of a rich farmer. The sequential shots are highly mobile and seem to have been inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Rope. (In a number of interviews, Dreyer has mentioned his admira­tion for the director of Rear Window). And in Ordet, white predomi­nates again, this time a milky whiteness, the whiteness of sun-drenched curtains, something we have never seen before or since. The sound is also splendid. Toward the end of the film, the center screen is occupied by a coffin in which the heroine, Inger, is laid out. Johannes, the madman who takes himself for Christ, has promised to raise her from the dead. The silence of the house in mourning is broken only by the sound of the master’s steps on the wooden floors, an ordinary sound, the sound of new shoes, Sunday shoes....

Ordet (Directed by Carl Dreyer)

Dreyer had a difficult career; he was able to pursue his art only because of the income he had from the Dagmar, the movie theater he managed in Copenhagen. This profoundly religious artist, filled with a passion for the cinema, chased two dreams all his life, both of which eluded him: to make a film on the life of Christ, Jesus, and to work in Hollywood like his master, D. W. Griffith.

I only met Carl Dreyer three times, but it pleases me to write these few lines as I sit in the leather-and-wood chair that belonged to him during his working life and was given to me after his death. He was a small man, soft-spoken, terribly stubborn, who gave an impression of severity although he was truly sensitive and warm. His last public act was to gather the eight most important men involved in Danish cinema to write a letter protesting the dismissal of Henri Langlois from the Cinematheque Francaise.

Now he is dead; he has joined Griffith, Stroheim, Murnau, Eisen­stein, Lubitsch, the kings of the First generation of cinema, the genera­tion that mastered, first, silence, and then sound. We have much to learn from them, and much from Dreyer’s images of whiteness.

– ‘The Whiteness of Carl Dreyer’ in ‘Francois Truffaut: The Films in My Life’

Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalking the Stalker

Stalker (Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky)

Geoff Dyer’s book ‘Zona’ (Pantheon, 2012) is a personal meditation on the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s ‘Stalker’ (1979) – a dystopian epic set in an industrial wasteland that takes in the mysterious journey of three Russians: the Writer, the Professor, and their guide, the Stalker, who wander through a blighted apocalyptic region called the Zone in search of the Room, where it is promised one’s innermost desires will be fulfilled.

Dyer outlines the film from first shot to last, while supplying his own informal annotations during which Dyer observes that, ‘The prominent place occupied in my consciousness by ‘Stalker’ is almost certainly bound up with the fact that I saw it at a particular time in my life … I suspect it is rare for anyone to see their — what they consider to be the greatest film after the age of thirty.’

In addition, Dyer recounts the film’s troubled production history – from the director’s bitter arguments with his wife, the health issues that sidelined Tarkovsky for several months during post-production, lost footage and damaged film stock, and the inauspicious earthquake during location shooting that forced the crew to relocate to a polluted industrial region in Estonia where it is suspected Tarkovsky, his wife, his leading actor and others involved in the film were exposed to toxic chemicals that induced the cancers that led to their premature deaths.

Dyer approvingly cites the critic Robert Bird who characterized the ‘Zone’ as the filmmaker’s essential space: ‘The Zone is where one goes to see one’s innermost desires. It is, in short, the cinema.’ Dyer claims that the Stalker who guides us there is ‘a persecuted martyr’ conveying the viewer to the place ‘where ultimate truths are revealed’. In other words, the Stalker is the artist himself. Although Tarkovsky vigorously resisted allegorical interpretations of his work, it's difficult not to read ‘Stalker’ as in some sense autobiographical. (Tarkovsky even wanted his wife, Larisa, to play the Stalker’s long-suffering wife).

As the Stalker’s expedition proceeds towards the Room, Dyer becomes increasingly personal in contemplating the nature of his own desires, recounting old girlfriends and acid trips, elaborating on failed sexual opportunities and his affection for dogs.

In the end, the film’s secret room is not revealed. The Writer cannot enter it for fear of facing his true desires, while the Professor has to be prevented from destroying it. ‘Stalker’, ultimately, is about a threshold that cannot be crossed, the forces that guard it, and the fears that prevent its crossing – although it remains open because the journey, like the film itself, is deemed necessary.

Andrei Tarkovsky discussed the film, its characters and their significance to him as an artist and filmmaker in the following interview from 1981:

Stalker does not enter the Room, that wouldn’t be proper, that is not his role. It would be against his principles. Also, if all this is indeed a fruit of his imagination then he does not enter because he knows no wishes are going to be granted there. For him it is important that the other two believe in the Room’s power and that they go inside. Stalker has a need to find people who believe in something in the world in which no one believes in anything. Why doesn’t Writer enter the Room? This is something we don’t know and neither does he. Nor where he is going and what he is searching for. We know Writer is without a doubt a talented man but he is already burnt out. He currently writes what is demanded of him, what critics, publishers, readers expect from him. In fact he is a popular writer. But he does not want to prolong this situation. In the first part of the film he seems to think that after entering the Room he would perhaps write better, he would again become himself and he would find relief from the burden he is carrying within himself. Later his thinking changes: if I change, if I become a genius, then why should I continue writing, as everything I’ll write is always going to be perfect? The goal of writing is to overcome oneself, direct others towards the goal and the path to its realisation. What should a man who is a genius a priori write for? What can he offer? Creation is an expression of will.

If a creator is a genius a priori, his creation loses all significance. Besides, Writer thinks about the story of Porcupine who hanged himself. He deduces from it that what is granted in the Room are not wishes but a kind of internal vision hidden within the human heart. Perhaps they are true wishes pertaining to the inner world. If, let’s say, I wish to become rich then I’ll probably obtain not the riches but something more compatible with my nature, depth, the truth of my soul – for example poverty – which is closer to what my soul needs in fact. Writer is afraid to enter the Room because his opinion about himself is rather unflattering.

And regarding the scientist, he has absolutely no intent to enter. He is after all carrying a bomb, he wants to blow everything up. For him the Room is a place that could be visited by those whose wishes might endanger entire human life on Earth. Yet Professor gives up his plan as it is silly to be afraid people would wish for unlimited power in the Room. They usually desire really primitive things: money, prestige, women... That’s why Professor does not destroy the Room. Another reason is that it’s necessary to preserve a place for people to come to preserve hope, express longing, fulfil the need for the ideal.

At the end of the film Stalker laments over the baseness of those who did not enter the Room, he considers their attitudes. They didn’t enter on account of their cowardice. Writer is more afraid than most. He has a highly developed sense of his own worthlessness but at the same time he says to himself: why enter if nothing special happens there and most likely no wishes are granted? On the one hand he understands that wishes cannot be fulfilled and that they won’t be fulfilled. And on the other, above all, he is afraid to enter. His approach is full of superstitions and contradictions. That’s why Stalker is so depressed – nobody really believes in the Room’s existence. Writer completely questions it. He says: ‘It probably doesn’t exist’ and he asks Professor: ‘Who told you this Room even existed?’ The scientist points to Stalker. So he appears to be the sole witness. He is the only person who can testify to the existence of a Room with the power to grant wishes. He is the only one who believes. All the stories about the Room come from him – one could imagine he has invented it all. For Stalker the worst thing is not that his clients were afraid but that they did not believe, that there was no room for faith anymore. Man devoid of faith has no spiritual roots, he is blind. Over the centuries different concepts were associated with faith. In these days of no faith it is important for Stalker to light up a spark within human hearts.

The Zone is in some sense a result of Stalker’s imagination. Our line of reasoning was as follows: it is he who invented that place to bring people there and convince them about the truth of his creation [...] I completely agree with the suggestion that it was Stalker who had created the Zone’s world in order to invent some sort of faith, a faith in that world’s existence. It was a working hypothesis which we tried to preserve during creation of that world. We even planned an ending variant in which the viewer would find out Stalker had invented it all and now he is heartbroken because people do not believe him.

Stalker is not a desperate film. I don’t think a work of art can be inspired by this sort of feeling. Its meaning must be spiritual, positive, it should bring hope and belief. I don’t think my film lacks hope. If this is true – it is not a work of art. Even if Stalker has moments of despair, he masters them. It is a kind of catharsis. It’s a tragedy but tragedy is not hopeless. This history of destruction still gives the viewer a glimmer of hope. It has to do with the feeling of catharsis. Tragedy cleanses man.

Every image, even the most expressive one (and this is precisely what it ought to be) possesses a very significant and very distinct intellectual content.

I like Stalker the most. He is the best part of myself and at the same time the least real one. Writer – who is very close to me – is a man who has lost his way. But I think he will be able to resolve his situation in the spiritual sense. Professor... I don’t know. This is a very limited character and I wouldn’t want to seek any similarities between him and myself. Although despite the obvious limitations he does allow a change of opinion, he has an open, comprehending mind.

– Interview with Andrei Tarkovsky (on ‘Stalker’) with Aldo Tassone in ‘Positif’, Oct. 1981.

Kelly Masterson: On ‘Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead’

Kelly Masterson started as a playwright in the 1980s with limited success. He wrote the original screenplay for ‘Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead’ in 1999. A powerful and bleak crime drama that meticulously reconstructs how an apparently perfect crime goes spectacularly wrong. Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an insolvent real estate agent. His younger brother Hank (Ethan Hawke) is falling behind on his alimony payments. To relieve their financial troubles they decide to rob their parents’ suburban jewellery store with tragic consequences. Their father’s (Albert Finney) relentless pursuit of the culprits brings everything spiralling towards a terrible climax. The script was optioned by a succession of producers until, after several false starts, the project was given the go-ahead with veteran director Sidney Lumet on board. A superb crime melodrama it was Lumet’s final and greatest achievement. The following is an extract from an interview in which Kelly Masterson speaks about his experience of writing the script: 

What was the inspiration for ‘Before the Devil Knows You're Dead’?

KELLY MASTERSON: I had read a novel I admired called Reservation Road by John Burnham Schwarz. I really liked the structure. It involved a terrible incident followed by an examination of the incident from the point of view of the various participants. I thought it would make an interesting structure for a movie.

I invented my terrible incident: the robbery and shooting of the mother. Then I took each character and followed them to and from the incident.

I also knew it was a tragedy and purposely gave each of the main characters a tragic ‘flaw’ – obsessive behavior they cannot break. For example, the father becomes obsessed with the notion of revenge and cannot stop himself even when he discovers it is his own son who must wreak revenge upon. Devil was the result of my structure and character choices.

Were you involved in any re-writing before or during the production?

KELLY MASTERSON: Fortunately, and unfortunately, no. The good news is I didn’t have to rewrite the script based on someone else’s vision or ideas. I wrote the script and tweaked it here and there over the years. Sidney did a rewrite to get his final shooting script but I was not involved nor consulted. I wish he would have come to me and asked me to make the changes he wanted. The end result, though, is terrific and I am very proud of the movie.

Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (Directed by Sidney Lumet)

What surprised you most about the transition from script to screen?

KELLY MASTERSON: Lots of things surprised me and most of them pleasantly. I was surprised by the casting of Brian F. O’Byrne as Bobby, the punk accomplice. I had written the part as a 22 year old, stupid kid. I had see Brian on stage in Doubt and thought him remarkably gifted but not right for Bobby. His performance, however, is spectacular and casting a 35 year old made him more pathetic and frightening. It was a stroke of genius on Sidney’s part.

I was surprised by the remarkable restraint and outer calm Philip brought to Andy’s breakdown late in the film. I wrote a cliché scene in which Andy trashes his apartment. Sidney and Philip came up with an eerie, fascinating, slow meltdown that is so much better. Most of all, I was most surprised by the deep, rich, tense and painful relationship between Hank and Andy – Sidney’s rewrite and the performances of Philip and Ethan took this to a level that surprised and enthralled me.

What did you learn in the process of writing ‘Before the Devil Knows You're Dead’ that you’ll take with you to other projects?

KELLY MASTERSON: Raise the stakes. I don’t mean, put the hero in more jeopardy or add a ticking clock. I mean dig deeper – make it more personal and more emotionally significant. Get right into the guts of the characters. While I often try to pull my characters in two or more directions, I think Sidney’s contribution took my material into richer psychological territory. This gave the wonderful actors great stuff to work with in which the emotional stakes were very high. When I am working on projects now, I ask myself the question: how do I get further into this character and really rock him?

What advice would you give to screenwriters who are still struggling to get their work seen and (hopefully) produced?

KELLY MASTERSON: Don’t give up. I wrote for 20 years before Devil got made. And find your voice. I tried for many years to imitate others or to write in ‘commercial’ genres and did not have any success. I wrote Devil from some original place within myself and never dreamed it would get made, let alone succeed. Keep at it.

 - Interview with ‘Kelly Masterson on “Before the Devil Knows You're Dead”’. From Fast, Cheap Movie Thrills.