Category: Uncategorized (Page 431 of 1088)

 

‘We can summarize the lesson of How to Write by saying that it forces one to be conscious of language as language, not as a transparent means to a “referent.” The book does more than that, that is, it takes the implications of this way of looking at language to greater lengths than I have indicated. How to Write makes one aware of words as signs by means of heaping together a great many “referentless” sentences and phrases with the result of gradually reducing the importance of the referent, and gradually increasing the importance of the sign. It also forces one into a consciousness of the formal structure of the sentence, by including groups of words which are not sentences among ones that are, and by repeatedly reminding one of sentences by using the word “sentence,” until one feels a conscious relief and sense of solidness when a balanced sentence appears.

‘Although she has achieved “opacity” of sign by destroying the referent, I do not think that a sign’s drawing attention to itself necessarily means that it will do so at the expense of the referent. Actually, I think that the contrary conclusion would more nearly follow, since being aware of the sign only means that one is consciously aware of a correspondence of two things, whereas before he might only have been aware of the one — the referent. And when Stein herself desires to use language as a means to a referent, she very successfully achieves a one-to-one relationship between sign and referent and at the same time draws attention to the sign itself.

Those who are creating the modern composition authentically are naturally only of importance when they are dead because by that time the modern composition having become past is classified and the description of it is classical. That is the reason why the creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic, there is hardly a moment in between. . . . (“Composition,” What Are Masterpieces?)

‘The highly specialized, but very clear, use of “classical” and “classified” is a good illustration.

‘However, if one does become in the habit of noticing the sign, and I think that every student of literature arrives at this kind of awareness, it also becomes possible to read only on the level of sign, or at least with very little concern for the referent. Recently a friend of mine delighted herself, and an entire group of word-conscious ones, with the sentence: “There is, then, no unanimity of sundials.” The phrase “unanimity of sundials” not only elicited an immediate joyful response, but also became a phrase that could be mumbled to oneself with pleasure. Most of us have also known the pleasure of repeating lines from, poetry until they become only a chain of words. We do not exactly remove the meaning entirely, nor listen to them only as sounds, we simply enjoy them verbally. I think that the sentence from Stein that I have already quoted is an example of this sort of thing: “They are found and able and edible. And so they are predetermined and trimmed.”

‘This is certainly not the end of a study of literature, but it is a common by-product of a serious and intensive study, and is perhaps a more important by-product than we usually admit. I would even go so far as to take the position that without having had the experience of recognizing language in this way, and of finding delight in the recognition, one is seriously hampered in the study of literature, whether he puts his study to use as a critic, an author, or simply as a reader. For if one of the characteristics of literature is that it tends to draw attention to its signs, and I think that this is undeniable, then being conscious of this is a very important part of the sensibility of reader, critic, and writer. It is not enough simply to be “told” to watch for this characteristic, one must have had the experience of noticing it, and of finding delight in the noticing.’ — Lew Welch

 

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Further

Gertrude Stein: Resources
A Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Virgil Thomson
‘How to Write’ @ goodreads
Words as Objects
Gertrude Stein on Writing and Belonging
Understanding Steinese
Making Sense: Decoding Gertrude Stein
“It might be a portrait but in any case it is for you”
You are never yourself to yourself
With Pleasure: Gertrude Stein and the Sentence Diagram
Gertrude Stein: Collage and Code
How to Have a Conversation with Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein: Letters to a Friend
‘All I Know About Gertrude Stein’, by Jeanette Winterson
CULTIVATED MOTOR AUTOMATISM; A STUDY OF CHARACTER IN ITS RELATION TO ATTENTION.
THERE USED TO be something known to all readers as “Steinese.”
Gertrude Stein’s Radical Grammar
Gertrude Stein: Unlikely Comp Teacher
Writing and Merriment: Gertrude Stein’s Erotics of Language
Gertrude Stein: Nonsense with a Social Conscience
Buy ‘How to Write’
Download ‘How to Write’ for free @ zLibrary

 

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Extras

Gertrude Stein home movie, circa 1927

Gertrude Stein, American writer, speaks and reads from her libretto

Gertrude Stein: The Enigma

Gertrude Stein reads If I Had Told Him a Completed Portrait of Picasso

Gertrude Stein reads from The Making of Americans

 

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Interview

 

Q: How do you do.

A: Very well I thank you.

Q: Would you care to make a statement?

A: Gladly. “If we say, Do not share, he will not bestow they can reiterate, I am going to do so, we have organised an irregular commonplace and we have made excess return to rambling.”

Q: You will not mind if 1 ask what an irregular commonplace is?

A: Not at all, since the answer is anything. That is, anything is the answer. Or anything is an answer. But to back to the question. Anything is at once typical and unique. And so anything is what “everybody knows and nobody knows,” an irregular commonplace, and Miss Stein was always writing the portrait of that, and of anything.

Q: Do go on.

A: I always do. It is just as well to ramble on about it after all. Anything, as I was saying, that comes before the normal mind in the normal life can be identified by name, and that aspect of it which has to do with our habitual practical purposes is obviously and clearly seen. But that same anything contains or involves a great many other aspects and qualities that everybody knows are there, even though everybody keeps his mind pretty well fixed on the single practical aspect and is only vaguely aware of the others, and strictly speaking does not know them.

Q: Can you give an illustration?

A: Everything is an illustration, but take any piece of land. Let alone the farmer and the real estate agent or the picnicker, one painter will see it fiat, another painter will see it in depth, another as structure, another as fluffy, another as dark and light, another as spots and lines, another as still, another as changeable, another as full of its detail, another as a general expression or mood, and so on. But it is all the time the same commonplace piece of land. Likewise people and ideas are normally just as commonplace, but they are irregular since they do contain what is from the practical point of view an excess of aspects and qualities. If it were not for this excess nobody probably would go on living, because in it is all possibility and all novelty and all freedom. I think it was Voltaire who made that irregular commonplace, that paradox, that the superfluous is a very necessary thing. Which would remind me of the natural necessity of paradox, but it would be an excess to venture into it lust now.

Q: Thank you very much. But why make excess return to rambling, as you say? Where has it been and what has it been doing?

A: It has been mainly in suggestion, exclaiming. As in, what a woman! What a piece of land! Ah, Paree! But there has been a more sustained and exhaustively organized way of giving simultaneously a fairly large number of aspects, giving the commonplace a particular iridescence and a sonority, a harmonics, and that was the method of symbolism and of the 19th century impressionists, of Proust and Joyce and Pound and T.S. Eliot.

Q: And Dante. And Virgil. And Milton. And so on. Can you really complain of them?

A: No, not unless for a change you like a hard focus, and simplicity, and seeing things all in one plane or singly. Even then one does not so much complain as get interested in something else. Impressionism is fine but after you have had a lot of it you suddenly want something like cubism.

Q: And after cubism something like impressionism.

A: Or like Francis Rose or Eugene MacCown or the neoromantics. No doubt at all. Not after fifty years or so of something like cubism. That pendulum has been swinging and swinging since the caves of Altamira. Shall we return from rambling now and keep to the subject?

Q: Yes, though I am beginning to think any subject naturally rambles around by itself and to keep to it one has to ramble around after it. But we can return to the text. How does “Do not share, he will not bestow they can meditate, I am going to do so” organize an irregular commonplace? I appreciate that we had returned to rambling and excess, but what kind of organization is that?

A: Well, suppose you have a commonplace group of people before you and you wish to describe them, as a painter would wish to describe a piece of land in front of him. The painter can select out of it and isolate certain shapes or accents on which to arrange a composition in shapes or accents, rather than a composition in depths or effects of light and texture or as a setting for figures, and so on. Just so, out of your group of people you can select certain active attitudes to make a composition of them, rather than record the differences in the color of their eyes and hair, or in their political views, or tell a story involving all of them. You can say, Do not share, he will not bestow they can meditate, I am going to do so. Or you can apply the method to the universal and variable drama of grocers, and say:

First grocer. I am sincere.
Second grocer. I believe in service.
Third grocer. I love my mother.
Fourth grocer. I am rich?

Or you can color the drama by giving the characters pleasant names and broaden it by making the objects of their attitudes anything at all, that is, “it,” and say:

Harry. Should it be known.
Ashley. Could it have come
Amelia. Would it be known
Nuna. Or would it have come

And there you are.

Q: Where? Let us ramble back to the first example. It could have been done in the way you say, and I see that we have a set of statements abstracted from a reality, but all I see in it is a loose set of abstractions. Oh I do see that the postures, the dispositions and relations of the characters of four people in one moment have been “tenuously” conceived, and registered in an irreducible outline, as if Picabia were drawing. That much I can see and I think I like it. But I don’t recognize, in that much, an organization.

A: But any sentence is in itself an organization of experience, and in that little passage there is also the pictorial organization of simple juxtaposition, the verbal situation changes from the imperative to the third person singular to the third person plural to the first person singular. We have rhythm and rhyme, we have a style that is compact, simple, decisive. It is all, both in the manner and the literal sense, full of a vital tension. This tension is stabilized by the fact that Do not share, he will not bestow, they can meditate, I am going to do so, all, as sentences, express a relation between the present and the future, a relation that is modulated from sentence to sentence through several degrees of immediacy and closes in its highest degree of immediacy, its major or tonal center, so to say: I am going to do so. It is, to be bright about it, a tension of tenses. Also, the vocabulary is harmonized to the tenses: the laxer “bestow” and “meditate” to the negative and potential futures, the sharper and monosyllabic “share” and “do so” to the more present futures. All the aspects of the passage are informed with a single intention, or, if you like, sustain a contihuing vibration. As a verbal plastic one might almost say it is overorganized.

Q: Yes, but it is not very organized toward telling me anything about the group of people. As a vehicular organization I question it.

A: How much do you want conveyed? Actually the passage conveys enough, like an outline drawing or silhouette or X-ray or snapshot. Yet from the point of view of its intrinsic organization, its internal coherence and entity, the very small percentage of information it carries is mere courtesy, like the eggs and apples in arithmetic or the rubber balls in topology.

Q: Then it is not really about people, that is, some four actual people once?

A: Not quite. Four people once did, by being together, bring into being, for Gertrude Stein, that thing.

Q: So, as a matter of fact, it is about people?

A: It was once, in a way. But it is now complete in itself. Its “about” relationship, which was never essential, is now cut off or atrophied. Even the original relationship of these abstractions and the quality of their organization to the actual people was more a matter of ahere” and “out of” than “about.” If it were “about” anything still and essentially, if its meaning depended on that relationship, it would not be complete. The completeness of “two plus two equals four” does not now depend on being about apples or dinosaurs or whatever originally led to it as an observation.

Q: But “two plus two” can be applied in many cases of quantity, even if its completeness is in itself.

A: Of course. Literature is not quite arithmetic but it comes close to it in proverbs and some poetry, particularly quotable poetry. One counts apples by referring them to numbers, and one can count the quality of a situation or of what not by referring it to proverbs or a quotation or for that matter a word. But these have a reality of their own which does not depend on their occasional use of being referred to or on the experience that first occasioned them. Nursery rhymes, advertising slogans, the declensions and conjugations in grammar books, all have to some degree this disconnected reality. The four sentences quoted can- not be universally applied, but often enough to make them a commonplace a group of people will demonstrate them. A group will present variously the peremptory, the reserved, the competent, and the determined together, and just barely outside the central focus of what they consider they are there for. The four sentences moreover reproduce exactly the tension and animation produced by several different personal intentions together. It is what everybody knows, since the way one sits, the tone of one’s voice, all of one’s behavior in such a group is qualified by one’s apprehension of it. But nobody knows it articulately or in isolation because it has not been put directly into words that are more than a historical account of a particular occasion or a contribution to the academic study of group dynamics. This little passage does put it in durable words.

Q: Does it really imply all that? Is art that long? I mean, am I, in reading some four short sentences, to read all that and more into them?

A: No, not unless you care to. All that or something like it goes into making the sentences solid and complete and possessed of themselves, into sustaining their quality to the utmost. Just as a great deal of climatology and aeronautics goes into the simplest flight. But that is nothing, or need be nothing, to you as a passenger.

 

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Book

Gertrude Stein How to Write
Lume Books

‘Dispensing with traditional form and structure, some of the most challenging works of English literature emerged from this era, and its authors Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and Ezra Pound.

‘Gertrude Stein was herself a modernist writer and playwright who spearheaded the movement, developing her ‘continuous present’ style of narration. Among her many dense works is How to Write, a work that still challenges and provokes today’s readers.

‘In the book, Stein uses the English language in ways that seem unorthodox. Her syntax and grammatical control is loose, and there is no real message in what ‘proper writing’ should be. It remains a sort of text for her way of writing, with a repetitious style that delights in the abstract nature of words and of language.

‘The book is split into eight sections, including ‘sentences’, ‘forensics’ and ‘a grammarian’, but the 120,000 words blend into one absorbing whole.’ — Lume Books

Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Lovely paean to the maestro. ** David, Hi. In the research I did on Kinkel when I was working on ‘My Loose Thread’ it seemed pretty certain that he wasn’t into Marilyn Manson and that kind of transgressive clickbait stuff, or he barely was, and that was one of big the reasons why I was drawn to him as an inspiration. So I hope he wasn’t. I don’t think your accusation against my work would hold up in court, ha ha. I like your Kinkel pic. It more than captures him. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yes, and I still haven’t gone to The Real McCoy. I was going with Zac, and he hurt his back, so we’re supposed to go today, but don’t count on it given my American junk food-related inadvertent flakiness. I’m guessing you’re the one who turned your love onto that TV series, and I’m assuming it was good since you wouldn’t lead your love astray. Love getting so bored he spends three hours looking for interesting artist-made chandeliers for one of my future blog posts, and the happy ending is that he succeeds, G. ** Tosh Berman, Yeah, that interview was sad indeed. Oh, wow, I think I remember that your dad did a Heliczer cover. That’s wild. I’ll go see if I can hunt it (or at least the cover image) down. Hope you’re doing really well, Tosh. ** Misanthrope, Hi. I remember David being very sympathetic when we all hung out that time, and it’s good to know he still can be ‘cos your reports on him here have painted a more damning portrait. I think you should see your GP, yes. Mm, I’m a pretty trusting person. I feel like I have good instincts about people, and usually they’re proven right, and I’m not one to get angry very often, but when someone betrays my trust, watch out. Anyway, granted I’m in France, but I find most people pretty trustworthy. Bad eggs seem pretty rare. ** Maria, Isabella, Camila, Malaria, Gabriela, I’m happy to have caused you betterment. Stress is the fucking worst. Mine is usually about money, which I assume is pretty normal. Sleep tight. ** Verity Pawloski, Yikes! ** Shane, I do have a guilty pleasure kind of thing about that song ‘Oh L’Amour’. ** -l@rst, HI, bud. Happy to be of service. Oh, wow, awesome about the spoken word album! I’ll imbibe in a short bit. Everyone, d.l. -l@rst is better known IRL as a fine writer and purveyor of other fine stuff named Laurence Lillvik, and he has two poems on a new spoken word collection that you can hear and even buy on bandcamp, and I certainly recommend that you click this and find him and listen. Sweet! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Sirks are pretty easy to find, I think. A surprising number are freebies on youtube. Ever so much love and strength to you and your dad, maestro and dear comrade. ** Bill, Hi. Ooh, ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’ looks very fun! Huh. I’ll figure out where it’s hiding. Thank you! ** Brendan, Me too. I saw tons of Fassbinder films long before I ever saw a Sirk film. I’m glad you loved it. Love fucking rules! ** Brian, Hey, Brian. Yep, there he is, all blog throne-ensconced. You know,I’ve only seen two or three Sirks for no good reason. I think ‘Written on the Wind’ was my favorite. So far. Ha ha, well, I looked into ‘Moonfall’, and as I probably have mentioned before, I’m a disaster movie addict, so I am, for better or worse, very excited to see ‘Moonfall’, but I seriously like every single disaster movie no matter how terrible. So I think Zac, a fellow addict, and I will be rushing to a theater here to see it in the next day or so. Ridiculous, I know, but addiction is addiction. And, hey, you got some laughs out of it, so all is not lost? We can compare notes, ha ha. What did Monday do to you, sir? ** Okay. Do you want to learn the secrets of writing from the one, the only Gertrude Stein? Then check out this post, and maybe even get the book it circles around. See you tomorrow.

 

‘Douglas Sirk is a tough sell in a cynical age. Perhaps he would be in any. His plots are often shallow and seeped in wish-fulfilment; the performances are overwrought and slightly archaic; his sets, despite being deeply expressive, are purposefully synthetic. Known for his run of lush, indulgent melodramas in the mid-to-late fifties, he was dismissed by contemporary American critics as a creator of superficial “weepies” or “woman’s pictures”. Yet, owing to his fluent visual style, its searingly satirical lens, and the vibrant strains of expressionism throughout, he has since been reclaimed as one of Hollywood’s greatest artists.

‘Born Claus Detlef Sierck in Hamburg, 1900, Sirk had a prolific and exciting career even before his most famous films. As critics are keen to point out, he studied (and cared greatly for) philosophy and art history before becoming a prolific theatre director. His parents were Danish but he only spent a little of his childhood there, and so his first outings on stage and screen were in Germany. He made nine features in the Nazi period, leaving in 1937 due to his disgust with the ideology as well as the obvious fears he shared with his Jewish wife.

‘Upon moving to America he made some notable melodramas (Summer Storm, A Scandal in Paris) and noirs (Lured, Shockproof) which showed his supreme talent with actors and his constantly moving, subtly emotive camerawork – an aspect that is overlooked but always brilliantly in tune with the most nuanced of character’s feelings. Something like Shockproof suggests how his ironic sensibility differs from Sam Fuller’s, who wrote the film. Sirk is less acerbic and far more sensitive. He lulls us into the conflicts and the discomforts of modern bourgeois life and then explodes them.

‘While he may have lacked some of his key tools at this stage – Technicolor, for instance – famous traits such as blocking the frame with screens and windows and shooting through mirrors are present. This tendency to capture trademarks of modern American life as though they were a prison is one of the reasons Sirk is now heralded as a genius of irony. However trite or repetitive his scripts, he consistently provided symbols and subtextual hints that challenged or perfected the desperate characters of his domestic landscapes.

‘Yet this was not always the case. He was originally viewed as nothing more than a director of ‘women’s pictures’ and given little respect by the male-dominated critical establishment as a result. Later viewers saw his ironic gaze and elevated his status accordingly, but this reclamation has its own problems. The focus on irony in Sirk’s work has bordered on obsession in some critical circles, to the point where his original wave of admirers had to label everything in his films as such. Tag Gallagher criticises this impulse as essentially forcing a distinction between those who ‘got’ the films and the original audience (mainly women) who were too naïve to see the subtext of social criticism and Brechtian detachment. He writes that his irony operates rather in the Aristotelian sense – less a kind of bitterness and more a set of complex contradictions seeking to “clarify and anneal” society’s own. His approach to Sirk denies any cynicism and argues that original audiences experienced, or “felt,” the great ironies and contradictions of his work all along.

‘While I agree for the most part, I don’t think we can wholeheartedly say that these elements are never framed through bitterness or a more subversive gaze. When Bob Merrick (Rock Hudson) restores the sight of the woman he has blinded in Magnificent Obsession (1954), for example, are we not constantly aware of the very lurid psychodrama of this power imbalance? The fact that this could only happen in cinema points to the absurdity of these narratives, though the emotions are achingly real. This is not to say that viewers didn’t understand, however. The beauty of Sirk is that neither a moviegoer nor a hardened critic can really explain the strange, dazzling undercurrents of his melodrama. No one definitively “gets” it.

‘The famous deer in the window at the end of All that Heaven Allows (1955) is much the same – a slightly too artificial sign of reconciliation; we cannot quite believe it. As a director of peerless visual acuity, Sirk cannot resist bathing his romantic scenes in shadow, or undermining “good” characters by highlighting their banality. His endings may seem to exist as either happy or sad, but there are always aspects of the mise-en-scène clouding this view. The joy of watching his films comes from a position between these critical perspectives, embracing artifice while also recognising melodrama’s unique capacity to articulate our most passionate desires and fears.

‘Magnificent Obsession was the first of his ‘50s masterpieces, and, though it introduces two of his greatest stars as well as the opulent style of his Technicolor experiments, its ludicrous plot may be off-putting to some. The amount of operations and injuries sustained through Hudson’s quest to love Jane Wyman’s character Helen is astounding. As far as it concerns a rich brat trying mercilessly to mould the future (and people) to his needs, it is unsurprising that someone like Pedro Almodóvar found it just one step away from gothic horror, clearly taking a little influence for his The Skin I Live In (2011).

‘Hudson and Wyman’s next collaboration, All That Heaven Allows, may be Sirk’s best film. Wyman stars as Cary Scott, a respected widow in suburban New England who falls for her gardener, a handsome young man played by Rock Hudson. Reinforcing the strained passion of the relationship through complex red and blue lighting schemes, Sirk suggests the somewhat irreconcilable differences between Cary’s class and that of her poorer, more freewheeling lover. The satire here is at its most blatant and sincere, as Cary’s children and friends despise her new relationship, making the prison of middle-class womanhood seem utterly inescapable.

‘Playing Hollywood conventionality against societal critique is not always an easy sell, and the director’s last movie is either a white saviour story or a damning indictment of them depending on who you ask. What is inarguable however is that Juanita Moore’s stunningly layered performance as a black mother raising a daughter who passes as white really makes Imitation of Life (1959) special. Though she is a maid in Lana Turner’s affluent household (which is given more time), the horror of racism pervades the film. When Sirk left the industry shortly after its release, it took about a decade for a critical reappraisal of his filmography to occur. A constant spring of viewers willing to puzzle over his densely packed melodramas formed in recognition of his greatness. They haven’t left since.’ — Joseph Bullock

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Where to begin with Douglas Sirk
Video: ‘The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk’
Sirk, Douglas @ Senses of Cinema
Douglas Sirk’s Glorious Cinema of Outsiders
The Artistry of Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk @ MUBI
Douglas Sirk: From the Archives
The Films of Douglas Sirk
THE FLAMBOYANCE OF DOUGLAS SIRK
Distanciation and Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk Revisited: The Limits and Possibilities of Artistic Agency
Book: ‘Douglas Sirk, Aesthetic Modernism and the Culture of Modernity’
Podcast: ‘Douglas Sirk and Representation’
The Essentials: Douglas Sirk
Douglas Sirk @ Letterboxd
All That Hollywood Allows: Douglas Sirk’s Brilliant Melodramas
The Case for Douglas Sirk as the First Postmodern Filmmaker
DOUGLAS SIRK’S OPPRESSIVE AND BEAUTIFUL WORLDS
Tragic Surfaces: The Alluring World of Sirkian Melodrama
Sirkus Maximus
Bruce Hodsdon on the Cinema of Douglas Sirk
Sirk/Fassbinder: Melodrama Mutations
In authenticity: Douglas Sirk and the Sirkian Melodrama

 

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Extras

Douglas Sirk interview

Rock Hudson – On ” Douglas Sirk ” – 1980

Video Essay: “Sirk/Anti-Sirk”

Fassbinder and Sirk filming together

 

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Interview

 

Sirk: I never saw my films after I finished the final cut. I never went to a preview. Universal of course did not favor re-takes. And I can’t recall that any of my pictures was affected by the results of a preview. Not long ago Mrs. Sirk and I watched Has Anybody Seen My Gal on television. It was in Italian. And I recently saw A Scandal in Paris—which I think is an excellent picture. Though it was no success, you know. It just barely got back its money. I saw Summer Storm about five years ago. Oh yes—and All I Desire too, after Halliday spoke of it.

But you go to Sirk retrospectives now and again—you don’t watch the films?

No, you don’t watch them. No.

Why not?

Because you don’t like them. Because you get depressed.

I see.

Because you are dissatisfied with anything once you finish it. But a poet, even a playwright, can re-write. Not a filmmaker. And in the studio days you were tied down beforehand by the script. You can change things but mostly in such a hidden way that the studio won’t object.

But as a writer you must know—you are writing a paragraph, you set out in one direction—then you write a sentence or get an idea that changes your whole conception. But if you’re making a picture and you shoot scene eighty-four and you find your conception changing, you are just stuck. You can’t start over, you can’t change those eighty-three other scenes any more.

Take Written on The Wind. I show the climax of the action even before the story begins. The audience sees Kyle coming to that house with the gun and so on, all under the opening titles. Now this I did because my conception of the film changed in the midst of shooting. I couldn’t re-shoot the scenes but I could re-arrange them.

How had your conception changed?

The continuity looked too regular to me. Too linear. I decided to play against the tension of the story—which I always like to do. What can I say? As a director you are building instinctively, almost musically at times.

Did you work with the writer before shooting that film?

Yes, but I’m not sure how regularly. Remember, I was doing three pictures a year at that period.

Anyway the writer is always your comrade, he is your friend. Often he is the only intelligent guy in the whole crowd, the only one you can really talk to.

Certain scripts you get, of course, you just feel hopeless. So you must try to do something with lighting, acting, décor, pace…all those elements. Or else the material is too usual, so you try to find an element of strangeness. In All That Heaven Allows, that scene where Jane Wyman sees herself in the TV set. Or the mechanical man walking across that table in There’s Always Tomorrow.

It’s usual to have a victimized heroine, as you do with the Lauren Bacall character in Written on the Wind. But there is some suggestion, isn’t there, that she is not as innocent as she imagines herself to be—that she was indeed attracted by Kyle’s money?

Definitely. She is ambiguous. That’s exactly why I cast Bacall. Because she has this ambiguity in her face. She has almost a designing quality at times. And people asked me why I didn’t cast a nice American girl type. But I wanted what Bacall has. She has this wavering light about her—and she is not a lover. The whole relation between her and Stack remains ambiguous then. I explained to them both that Kyle must constantly feel that he is losing her. And he is uncertain of her because she really is ambiguous.

You described yourself yesterday as a kind of handicraft worker: But surely it’s an odd sort of handicraft, when you so often worked to subvert what you were given. You functioned a lot as an ironist and a subverter.

Yes, yes…

What you do to the message of Fannie Hurst in Imitation of Life for example.

Yes. We played what was between the lines, so to speak.

Were the screenwriters in on that intention? Were they in on the satiric slant?

No. Yes, some of them—yes.

Did Laura Turner or Sandra Dee know that their characters were at all unsympathetic, that the film viewed them ironically?

No. No, actors you shouldn’t tell about technical matters. They lose their innocence. If you tell an actor the character is unsympathetic, he’ll tell you he’s sorry but he can’t do that—strange, but he never has been able to do that, and so on. No no, you should never tell an actor such things. In some ways a director is a bit of a doctor—and he must have a helpful manner with his clients.

Turner’s costumes are very garish; they often seem to be a joke. Was that intentional?

Yes, of course.

Did she care? Or didn’t she notice?

She was very compliant through the whole shooting. She trusted us. And I might add that she wasn’t sorry—she was very happy with the picture.

The producer, Ross Hunter, had a great manner with everyone. He was tremendously successful—very charming. “Oh, but it’s a crude charm,” someone said. Yes, but in Hollywood who will notice if you have a subtle charm? There is one word in the English language, and without this word you couldn’t have an American. This word is wonderful. Now, this was Ross’s word. He used it to everyone, and everyone loved it. He could get anything he wanted.

Some of the sentimental scenes in Imitation of Life seem very surefire to me, very effective in soap-opera terms. They seem devoid of irony. And so I’m not sure at those points what your attitude is.

What scenes?

When Annie finds her daughter at the Moulin Rouge night club and then has to pretend not to be her mother in front of the white roommate. It’s their final farewell scene. And as pathos, if I may say so, it’s extremely adroit.

[Shrugs]

Or the funeral scene.

The funeral itself is an irony. All that pomp.

But surely there is no irony when Mahalia Jackson sings. The emotion is large and simple and straightforward.

It’s strange. Before shooting those scenes, I went to hear Mahalia Jackson at UCLA, where she was giving a recital. I knew nothing about her. But here on the stage was this large, homely, ungainly woman—and all these shining, beautiful young faces turned up to her, and absolutely smitten with her. It was strange and funny, and very impressive. I tried to get some of that experience into the picture. We photographed her with a three-inch lens, so that every unevenness in the face stood out.

You don’t think the funeral scene is highly emotional?

I know, I know but I was surprised at that effect. When I heard how audiences were reacting to that…But that was the reaction of American audiences. When it was dubbed into German, all they got was the Negro angle. It’s true the picture wasn’t a great success in Germany—far from it. Recently a friend of mine was it and he said, “But it’s such a cold film—and there are no sympathetic people at all in it.” So I was surprised at the American reaction…. It may be—I have no talent for sentimentality, so perhaps I simply don’t recognize it.

The style of Magnificent Obsession is ironic then?

Yes. Overplaying can be underplaying. In Magnificent Obsession I often did this. When I have Otto Kruger’s face appearing in the glass above Rock Hudson during that operation—that is parody, of course. As I told Halliday about the novel, it’s a crazy plot and that saved it for me in a way. But in the film then, there has to be some parody going along with the sincerity. And that was true of a number of pictures of mine. But Magnificent Obsession has never been one of my favorite pictures.

A whole picture which I kind of liked was Written on the Wind.

Some critics talk about Written on the Wind as if it were a realistic film.

No, it’s even a kind of surrealism. The people are heightened versions of reality—not realistic characters. [Laughs] A European would say, “Strange people these Americans”—if he took it as naturalism.

Above all in its lighting and colors, it is a non-realistic film. Fassbinder wrote a very perceptive thing about my style—he spoke of the craziness of my lighting. He points out that my lighting is never realistic, almost never from where the real light source would be. I was pleased that he saw that.

Remember—Written on the Wind is basically one set. By this very fact then, I am investing—I am contriving to paint with a strange brush, so to speak. Imitation of Life. on the other hand, is much less compact, much richer in scenes and details. But in fact, with Written on the Wind, I had even more opportunity to furnish rooms and interiors lavishly. The studio expected it. But I determined to do the opposite. This material, I decided, is poster material—what you call placatif. And the whole picture is in a kind of poster-style, with a flat, simple lighting that concentrates the effects. It’s a kind of expressionism, of course like Wedekind, or the late Strindberg, or the early Brecht. And I avoid what a painter might call the sentimental colors—pale or soft colors. Here I paint in primary colors—like Kirchner or Nolde for example. Or even like Miro. I have the flashing red of a car and I want that to be just as red as possible.

Some people have commented on the blatancy of some of your symbols. In Written on the Wind the symbolism too is rather poster-like. One critic argues that this blatancy occurs because it is appropriate to the characters—it is they who turn the objects around them into symbols. For example, the boy on the mechanical rocking horse whom Stack sees just after the doctor has told him that he can never have children.

That was not a symbol. Some things in this film are meant to be symbols but not that. No no, I remember—the art director had put a horse in front of the drugstore. So I put a boy on top of it, and he was there when Stack came out of the doctor’s office. That’s all. I never saw any meaning to it at all until Halliday pointed it out to me.

Your films were never taken seriously in their own time by critics. It must have been astonishing to you to find the career that you’d abandoned taken seriously at last and so many years later.

I didn’t even know that Godard had written about me until Halliday came here. Of course while I was making films I didn’t read reviews. You can’t read them—everyone is saying something different. The first time I had any notion of what you call serious attention was when a French friend sent me a clipping from L’Express in the late Fifties. It said the Academy Awards as usual had slighted the two most important films of the year—Touch of Evil and Tarnished Angels.

When I was directing Ionesco’s Le Roi Se Meurt in Munich, in the mid-Sixties, I got this phone call. Two men from Cahiers du Cinema—could they come to the theatre and interview me? That whole interview took place while I was rehearsing actors, in between the scenes.

You said before that the real satisfaction comes from knowing you’ve succeeded. Do you recall having that satisfaction while you were in Hollywood?

I don’t think so. I believe the satisfaction being felt was by Mrs. Sirk mostly. I’m a skeptic—by temperament I’m a pessimist. Of course there are rare moments. Certainly I felt some satisfaction of a kind when the president of Universal told me they were all indebted to me—for giving them the biggest moneymaker in their history. How almost a whole people could switch from one moment to the next, almost completely. The younger people one could forgive perhaps—the attraction of something new, etcetera. But the older people—and the intellectuals. Because without the intellectuals, Hitler might never have made it to power.

 

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17 of Douglas Sirk’s 48 films

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Imitation of Life (1959)
‘Living a lie is a poor substitute for living the truth sometimes it takes the harsh realties of life to help us discover who we truly are. The legendary Lana Turner stars in this 1959 version of Fannie Hurst’s emotionally-charged drama, which chronicles two widows and their troubled daughters as they struggle to find true happiness amidst racial prejudice. Lana Turner plays Lora, a single white mother whose Hollywood starlet ambitions come at the expense of any meaningful relationship with her daughter, Susie (Sandra Dee). Lora’s black housekeeper, Annie (Juanita Moore), has troubles of her own as she faces the rejection of her own fair-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), who abandons her heritage for a chance to be accepted as white. As years of selfishness and denial pass, tragedy strikes and forces the women to come to terms with their own identities. Juanita Moore and Susan Kohner were both Oscar-nominated for “Best Supporting Actress” for their stirring performances. This lavish production, directed by Douglas Sirk (Magnificent Obsession), was a critical and commercial success, and today remains both a testament to its time and a beloved Hollywood classic.’ — UM

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958)
‘Douglas Sirk — the master of the Hollywood melodrama — turns back to his native Germany at the time of the Second World War for the film that would stand as his penultimate American feature: A Time to Love and a Time to Die. A CinemaScope production staged on a grand scale, Sirk’s picture nevertheless pulsates with an intimacy that has known longing for too long, and seethes with the repression of emotions poised to explode like bombs.’ — Eureka!

Trailer

 

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The Tarnished Angels (1957)
‘In this spectacular adaptation of Faulkner’s Pylon, Roger Shumann is a disillusioned WWI ace eking out a living as a barnstorming pilot/parachutist during the early 30s. New Orleans newspaperman Burke Devlin meets Shumann at a two-bit carnival and becomes fascinated with his fall from grace.’ — MUBI

the entirety

 

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Interlude (1957)
‘I thought it was boring for the first hour but then in the last act you realize you’ve been watching a horror movie all along about making someone disappear so that life can be simple and beautiful. But she’s there all the time in the extravagant tapestries and wallpaper and upholstery that are bursting with a gorgeous, scary energy against which June Allyson’s white dresses don’t stand a chance.’ — irmavep

the entirety

 

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Battle Hymn (1957)
‘In what Sirk maybe lacks from a weaker script, he makes up for in his extraordinary visual prescence, peak melodramatic sincerity, and continued efforts in bringing the best out of a familiar lead. The newer directions he takes aren’t always successful, but when they are, it only further distinguishes Battle Hymn as a unique and interesting film for Sirk. Far from essential, but a nice addition to his work, falling in line between his masterpieces.’ — Puffin

the entirety

 

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Written on the Wind (1956)
‘The film includes such sordid subjects as nymphomania, alcoholism, murderous jealousy and rage, phallic power and infertility, miscarriage, back-stabbing emotional blackmail, and illusory materialistic happiness. It has often been noted that Sirk’s film came at the same time as George Stevens’ epic Giant (1956) – another tale of a Texas family with Rock Hudson. And TV’s popular Dallas (on CBS-TV from 1978-1991) and Dynasty (on ABC-TV from 1981-89) – two prime-time soaps in the 80s, owe their heritage to Sirk. This great film was nominated in three Academy Award categories, including Best Supporting Actor (Robert Stack who should have won, but lost to Anthony Quinn for Lust for Life) and Best Song (“Written on the Wind”), with Dorothy Malone taking home the Best Supporting Actress Oscar (her sole career nomination and win) for an overacted slinky, catty role as a sex-obsessed, wild, nymphomaniacal, provocative member of the Texas oil dynasty’s family.’ — Filmsite

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There’s Always Tomorrow (1955)
‘Douglas Sirk is best known for his highly stylized Technicolor melodramas, but he also did superlative work in restrained black and white. There’s Always Tomorrow is a virtuoso study in tones, ranging from the blinding sunlight of a desert resort to the expressionist shadows of the suburban home where Fred MacMurray lives in unhappy union with Joan Bennett. Barbara Stanwyck is the old flame who turns up by accident, rekindling for MacMurray the dangerous illusion that happiness is still possible. Between his twin masterpieces All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind, Douglas Sirk created this razor-sharp study of male crisis, both a glittering testament to love’s labours lost and his most unforgiving vision of suburban conformity.’ — Dave Kehr

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All That Heaven Allows (1955)
‘This heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores by Douglas Sirk follows the blossoming love between a well-off widow (Jane Wyman) and her handsome and earthy younger gardener (Rock Hudson). When their romance prompts the scorn of her children and country club friends, she must decide whether to pursue her own happiness or carry on a lonely, hemmed-in existence for the sake of the approval of others. With the help of ace cinematographer Russell Metty, Sirk imbues nearly every shot with a vivid and distinct emotional tenor. A profoundly felt film about class and conformity in small-town America, All That Heaven Allows is a pinnacle of expressionistic Hollywood melodrama.’ — Criterion Collection

Trailer

Excerpt

 

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Captain Lightfoot (1955)
‘This won’t get mistaken for All That Heaven Allows or The Tarnished Angels but it shouldn’t be overlooked either. Sirk’s melodramatic/romantic impulses here are complemented by some action and adventure. This was a studio showcase for young Rock Hudson who comes through with all the necessary star ingredients. The Irish locations also play their part. The film doesn’t have enough substance to make it memorable but it is a rather gorgeous diversion.’ — CinemaShadow

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Magnificent Obsession (1954)
‘Sirk’s intriguing application of disciplined technique to ostensibly schmaltzy material continues to stimulate curiosity bringing to this effort the same combination of overblown, indulgent melodramatics and distanced perspective in which realizing how important directorial discretion is when communicating the essence of a story on where to place the right touches — a hint of music here, a pained expression there — to draw the reactions without ever being false or manipulative. The film pays it forward, and unlike the karmic build-up it simulates, it’s pleasures are never used up, that’s all the more bolstered by the pleasant performances from Wyman, Rush, Moorehead and in particularly, Hudson in this quasi religiously spiritual affair of an emotional and melodramatic tearjerking gem.’ — Scott Anthony

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All I Desire (1953)
‘Douglas Sirk’s 1953 melodrama “All I Desire” (which I discuss in this clip) launched the German-immigrant filmmaker (who had arrived here during wartime) on a new and decisive creative arc. The movie is a romantic melodrama set in an American town—at once a compact city and a preordained suburb—that looks lovingly at the underlying spirit of freedom and community while confronting the narrowness of shared values and the shattering risks of free-thinking. It stars Barbara Stanwyck in the first of two films they made together (the other, “There’s Always Tomorrow,” co-stars Fred MacMurray in one of the great dramas of frustrated manhood) and, in both of these films, she conveys the burden of the past, of a personal history that has burned painful wisdom into her soul. She comes off as a woman who has lived; and, in both, she utters the word “No” with a distinctive, unforgettably round-pointed vowel that she tears from her throat like a worldly, dignified, ladylike cry. Her performances in these films, and in others of the era, by Samuel Fuller and Gerd Oswald—like Joan Crawford’s, in films of the forties and fifties by Otto Preminger, Nicholas Ray, and Robert Aldrich—suggest the power of age-honest casting over the commercial lure of the ingenue. Would that filmmakers of today took that lesson to heart.’ — Richard Brody

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Take Me to Town (1953)
‘Apart from the story feeling like a comedic, perversely reverse version of Sirk’s own All I Desire the same year — a traveling-performer woman gets seduced by domesticity rather than runs away from it to be one — I don’t detect much of the director’s trace here. Doesn’t matter much though, as Sirk stages a mostly full-fledged comedy and (to me) nails it, with Ann Sheridan selling both the various physical comedy gags and the character arc of falling for this family/community. Slight but charming.’ — Peng

the entirety

 

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Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952)
‘Whilst not generally considered one of Douglas Sirk’s better films, Has Anybody Seen My Gal? is an enjoyable morality play that makes a superb introduction to this director’s work. With its authentic 1920s sets and costumes and jaunty period music (which include the title number and the original Charleston), this is one of Sirk’s most vibrant and life-affirming works, a feel-good romp that is not weighed down by the darker undertones, subtle ironies and scathing social critique of his later films. For his first colour film, Sirk employs a bold feminine palette (dominated by pinks, greens and blues) that both emphasises the Art Deco design elements and evokes something of a kitsch fairytale – a distinctive visual style that the director would employ to great effect in his subsequent melodramas.’ — James Travers

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Week End With Father (1951)
‘After Douglas Sirk had gotten the hell out of Nazi Germany but before he had found his auteur vision as the author of lavish Technicolor melodrama dreams, he had a fairly conventional career as a director. He made a handful of war films, some noirs and a couple of romantic comedies, this being one of them. A Sirk project in black and white seems like a hard sell but to view it only as that would be unfair, not everything needs to be held the lofty standards of All That Heaven Allows. Besides seeing what he did before his masterworks could be interesting and reveal some insight into what his oeuvre would ultimately become.’ — opusinthecinema

the entirety

 

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The Lady Pays Off (1951)
‘Douglas Sirk’s romantic comedies are sweet and weirdly pure, even when they try to be cynical and a little hard-boiled, like this one does. That said, it’s pretty fluffy and probably not worth watching unless you’re a Sirk completist, or are in the tank for either of the stars.’ — sakana1

the entirety

 

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Thunder on the Hill (1951)
‘Coming at the start of the 1950s, Douglas Sirk’s Thunder on the Hill kicked off the, tragically, most successful period of his film career. A man who would wind up ending his film career by the end of this decade due to the lukewarm reception to his films, Sirk is obviously continuing to get a major reassessment as the years go on. However, this reassessment largely applies to his melodramas which have risen from being, as the introduction by Robert Osborne on the TCM release of the film states, women’s pictures and matinee-quality films to being classics. His early career noirs have not experienced such a switch, largely because few people have seen any of them.’ — Kevin Jones

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The First Legion (1951)
‘One of Sirk’s most abstract works. A film in which everyone is locked into his/her private world, and in which change doesn’t come easily, if at all, because everyone fortifies him/herself against his/her surroundings. The one thing everyone shares is the obsession with “miracles” – a term which only in the beginning can be defined as an absolute outside stepping in to solve all problems. In the end, the spell is broken by a breakthrough towards intersubjectivity – although the happy end seems a bit forced, if only because of Lyle Bettger’s rather weird acting (the only real problem of the film, imo).’ — dirtylaundri

the entirety

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yay, soul and booty balm thanks to Mr. You. Everybody, High alert to venture sideways and do your ears and whole bods a world of wonders aka … _Black_Acrylic: ‘New episode of Play Therapy is online here via Tak Tent Radio! Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson has in store Russian Dungeon Synth, S&M-themed Italo and some good wholesome Acid for you too.’ Thank you for the vast weekend upgrade, B. ** David, Yeah, I don’t buy the ‘influenced towards evil by music/videogame/etc.’ propaganda thing at all. Kip Kinkel didn’t listen to that kind of music. His favorite album was the ‘Romeo + Juliet’ soundtrack. I don’t think he should still be in prison. I don’t think he should have ever been in prison. That’s my angle. ** Jack Skelley, In-the-Box! I loved your LARB essay. So good! I shared it on FB and it got a world of likes. Kudos, bud. Everyone, Jack Skelley has written a fantastic essay on new writing/ publishing and ‘auto-fiction’ and other stuff, and I extremely highly recommend it to you. And it’s called ‘The Descent of Autofiction … and the Rise of the Literary Thrill-Seeking Industrial Complex’. And it’s here. Dude, if you’re even remotely serious about that essay vis-a-vis the blog, I will waterboard you to get it if necessary. See you this morning (you)/this evening (me)! ** David Ehrenstein, I wondered if you’d met or even known Heliczer. The book is thorough and terrific. ** Maria, Isabella, Camila, Malaria, Gabriela, Hi, gang. I certainly hope so too. At least they’re not hungry lions? ** Misanthrope, Oh, I bet you say that to all the posts. Oh, man, American medical rip off nightmare. I’m sure I told you I had root canal which took three separate dentist visits to complete here in France, and it cost me $14. Sure hope that pain is historical by now. Ouch, been there. Nice of David to inquire. Uh, fundraising for the new film, fundraising to further develop the haunted house video game-like thing, writing some fiction, bundling up, going out and about. Iow, nothing that will interest him very much, I fear. Dare I ask what he’s up to? ** Dominik, Hi!!! The Real McCoy trip got delayed until today. So I can share my junk food investigations and acquisitions on Monday. I thought of you immediately when I saw there was a new RHCP song. Love adding Budapest to the RHCP’s upcoming European tour if they’re not already scheduled there and SMSing you a VIP/backstage pass and passing along the band’s request that you curate their setlist for the concert, G. ** Shane, I remain steadfast in my support for erasure. (The concept, not the band). ** LC, Hi. Welcome back. Far west Texas … I’m not sure if I’ve been there. Bad geography on my part. My parents were from Texas, so I was there as a kiddo seeing relatives. Mostly Corpus Christi, but I think that’s south. Anyway, … I’ve always wanted to go to Carlsbad Caverns. I love caves. I don’t know why I never have since it’s close-ish to LA. Have fun, no doubt. Was it? ** Steve Erickson, Did I miss another band camp Friday, Jesus. Excellent Poly Styrene-related interview. ** Brian, Hey, Brian. That porn is most definitely better in theory. I mean, it’s kind of campy semi-fun. I think it’s called ‘Ghost of a Chance’, or something to that effect, but don’t hold me to that. Little films, yeah, much better. My sewer trip got delayed to today. I’ve only never gone because people I know who went tended to say, ‘Ugh, stinky, boring’, but Zac went recently and said it was glorious, and he and I have fraternal twin brains, so that’s good enough for me. Our Sirk is ‘Imitation of Life’. Believe it or not, the coincidence of us talking ‘IoL’ on the very day this post launches is a total accident. ‘Moonfall’, I don’t know it. I want to see the new ‘Jackass’ too. Sounds like there’s a real chance your weekend will fall into the green zone. Even bright green. Seems possible that I might find a secret treasure in the sewers, but possibly one that should have remained secret. Excellent next 48, man. ** T, Hi. Yes, the very same bookstore I mentioned is also a little publishing house. Great store, really, very worth a visit next time you’re in the 10th. My sewers trip was delayed until today, so I guess I can be its travel agent or the opposite come Monday. Wow, weird about your heart and my wish for it. That’s kind of spooky. But … if I eat my weekend’s heart, it’ll die, won’t it? But if I wait to eat it until Sunday night, it won’t matter. So I’ll do that. Thank you. I hope your weekend is a donkey and you’re a little blindfolded kid holding its missing tail with a pin sticking out of it. ** Okay. Thanks to, I think, a suggestion or hint or something from someone here in the recent past, you get a post this weekend given over to the maestro of 1950s cinematic melodrama, Mr. Douglas Sirk. See you on Monday.