* (restored)

 

‘Beginning in the 1950s, golden-age Hollywood created a new film genre: the Big Bug Movie, a cross between science fiction, which mixed in pseudo-technical explanations to account for invasions of whatever giant insect happened to be the movie subject (ants, slugs, wasps, grasshoppers), and sheer horror. Although Hollywood had throughout the 1930s and 1940s given us horror and sci-fi flicks, those usually concerned creatures that were not real, such as giant apes or man-made monsters or tuxedo-clad vampires. (OK, raise your hands, everyone who’s met a real, honest-to-god werewolf; and we don’t mean the kind that whistles on sidewalk corners).

‘But bugs are different. Bugs are real. Bugs are common. Bugs are always with us (ask anyone who lives in a New York City apartment). And bugs are—not pretty. All right, maybe butterflies; we’ll grant you that. And little kids think ladybugs are cute. But what about spiders? Or a big, buzzing, blue-bottle fly? Do you really want those guys hanging around? And, truly, is there anyone who feels the slightest bit of empathy for a roach? No doubt about it—bugs are not warm and cuddly. But, we add with a sigh of relief, at least bugs are small. They may be nasty, but it’s not like dealing with a ravening horde of great, big—oh, say, brontosauruses. No, that’s not right; brontos may be big, but no one thinks they’re scary. All right, at least bugs are not like great, big, ravening hordes of—well, for instance, BIG bugs…

‘That, basically, was the concept behind the Hollywood Big Bug Movie: take a bug, make it the size of a brontosaurus, and see what fun results. And the results could be shockingly unpleasant. It’s one thing to pick a slug off a rose leaf; it’s another thing entirely when the slug picks you for breakfast. What was innovative about the Big Bug genre was how it went beyond mere horror; it brought in the Ick Factor. That’s not just the moment when viewers scream with fear. It’s when viewers squeeze their eyes shut and shriek, “Ewwww!” And what could cause an audience to do that? Obviously the sight of something…icky. And what could be ickier than Big Bugs? Bring on something that’s already cringe-inducing, like a tarantula; blow it up to three hundred times its size; let it loose in a populated area; throw in a close-up of slavering, buggy jaws; and what have you got?

‘But there was also the Horror. In just about every Big Bug Movie, we come to the scene where a white-jacketed scientist explains the Law of the Jungle: bugs live by eating everything in sight, including each other; Big Bugs will do the same, only on a much larger scale; this means that Big Bugs are going to eat—us. That’s right, we, the poor, innocent viewers, sitting passively in the theater, are the prey. To heighten the horror, the scientist often shows a film-within-the-film, of actual bugs actually eating—allowing our already overtaxed sensibilities to imagine that being done to ourselves. As one cinematic scientist explains, Big Bugs “use their mandibles to hold, rend, and tear their victims,” not a phrase to send us out into the sunshine thinking happy thoughts. The unfortunate reality is that Big Bugs are not our friends. No use protesting that, Uncle-Toby-like, you’ve never done any bug any harm and that you’ll gladly sign the anti-Raid pledge; the bug would merely pause, thoughtfully flick a six-foot long antenna, then scarf you down (and it would only pause because it was mentally calculating whether it could engulf you in one bite or two).

‘Why, though, did the Big Bug genre come of age in the 1950s? One reason, of course, was the Big Bomb. After the testing and use of the atomic bomb during World War Two, America became bomb-conscious. “When man entered the atomic age,” says one movie scientist, “he opened the door into a new world”—though he probably wasn’t thinking of giant grasshoppers being part of it. The development of the A-Bomb, and then the H-Bomb, as well as nuclear testing in the New Mexico desert, made Americans acutely aware of radiation and its effects. So many of the big bugs in Big Bug Movies become big due to mutations caused by radiation exposure. Giant insects can easily be interpreted as a metaphor of post-war nuclear anxiety: This is what happens when science goes too far. Although the irradiated Big Bug is always defeated by movie’s end, we’re still left with the uneasy feeling that, as many a bug-filled film darkly hints, who knows what may still lurk Out There, in the radiation-soaked Unknown.

‘But another reason for Big Bugs, however, may have been the 1950s emphasis on bigness itself. As a victorious military power enjoying a post-war economic boom, America seemed obsessed with Big Things: big business, machines, cars, houses, highways, movies (this, after all, was the age of Cinemascope)—even, ah, ladies (Mamie van Doren, Alison Hayes, Jane Russell, Jayne Mansfield, on an ascending scale …). So why not Big Bugs? After all, 1950s Hollywood was already giving us other big creatures, such as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Giant Behemoth, The Amazing Colossal Man, and Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman. So why not bring some of those scurrying critters from out under the sink and into the imaginative landscape of cinema, where even the lowly ant can conquer the world, at least temporarily.’ — GRAND OLD MOVIES

 

 

Gordon Douglas Them! (1954)
The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization. Stars: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness

 

Jack Arnold Tarantula (1955)
A spider escapes from an isolated desert laboratory experimenting in giantism and grows to tremendous size as it wreaks havoc on the local inhabitants. Stars: John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G. Carroll, Nestor Paiva

 

Tony Randel Ticks (1993)
A group of troubled teenagers are led by social workers on a California wilderness retreat, not knowing that the woods they are camping in have become infested by mutated, blood-sucking ticks. Stars: Rosalind Allen, Ami Dolenz, Seth Green, Virginya Keehne

 

Frank Darabont The Mist (2007)
A freak storm unleashes a species of bloodthirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole up in a supermarket and fight for their lives. Stars: Thomas Jane, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurie Holden, Andre Braugher

 

Lorenzo Doumani Bug Buster (1998)
Killer oversized cockroaches swarm a small lakeside community. Stars: Randy Quaid, Brenda Epperson, Katherine Heigl, James Doohan

 

Tibor Takács Mansquito (2005)
A scientist and her subject turn into mutant insects. Stars: Corin Nemec, Musetta Vander, Matt Jordon, Patrick Dreikauss

 

J.R. Bookwalter Mega Scorpions (2003)
Residents of a half-way house are bombarded by 6 foot long killer scorpions. Stars: Nicolas Read, Marcella Laasch, Sewell Whitney, Sarah Megan White

 

Nathan Juran The Deadly Mantis (1957)
A giant prehistoric praying mantis, recently freed from the Arctic ice, voraciously preys on American military at the DEW Line and works its way south. Stars: Craig Stevens, William Hopper, Alix Talton, Donald Randolph

 

Kenneth G. Crane Monster from Green Hell (1958)
A scientific expedition in Africa investigates wasps that have been exposed to radiation and mutated into giant, killing monsters. Stars: Jim Davis, Robert Griffin, Joel Fluellen, Barbara Turner

 

Edward Ludwig The Black Scorpion (1957)
Volcanic activity frees giant scorpions from the earth who wreak havoc in the rural countryside and eventually threaten Mexico City. Stars: Richard Denning, Mara Corday, Carlos Rivas, Mario Navarro

 

Arnold Laven The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)
Giant mollusk monsters attack California. Stars: Tim Holt, Audrey Dalton, Hans Conried, Barbara Darrow

 

Bernard L. Kowalski Attack Of The Giant Leeches (1959)
A backwoods game warden and a local doctor discover that giant leeches are responsible for disappearances and deaths in a local swamp, but the local police don’t believe them. Stars: Ken Clark, Yvette Vickers, Jan Shepard, Michael Emmet

 

Peter Paul Basler Big Bad Bugs (2015)
After a convoy of American soldiers disappears, a special ops team is deployed to rescue them. They soon encounter an army of gigantic scorpions, spiders and snakes that have come to Earth from another dimension. Stars: Jack Plotnick, Sarah Lieving, Ted Jonas

 

Brett Piper Arachnia (2003)
When a small research plane carrying a group of science students and their professor crash-lands in the middle of nowhere, the survivors go to a nearby farmhouse to look for help but soon find themselves besieged by giant mutant spiders. Stars: Rob Monkiewicz, Irene Joseph, David Bunce, Bevin McGraw

 

Clark Brandon Skeeter (1993)
As the result of a corrupt businessman’s illegal toxic waste dumping, a small desert town is beset by a deadly swarm of huge bloodthirsty mutant mosquitoes! Stars: Tracy Griffith, Jim Youngs, Charles Napier, Jay Robinson

 

Gary Jones Mosquito (1995)
A violent massacre caused by human-sized mosquitoes forces the lone survivors to band together in a fight for survival as the mosquitoes continue their onslaught. Stars: Gunnar Hansen, Ron Asheton, Steve Dixon, Rachel Loiselle

 

Ed Raymond Glass Trap (2005)
When an army of radioactive ants are unknowingly carted into a skyscraper, a group of people have to find a way out before they’re eaten one by one. Stars: C. Thomas Howell, Stella Stevens, Siri Baruc, Brent Huff

 

Bert I. Gordon Empire of the Ants (1977)
A con artist tries to sell bogus real estate deals in an area overrun by giant ants. Stars: Joan Collins, Robert Lansing, John David Carson, Albert Salmi

 

Gilbert Gunn The Strange World of Planet X (1958)
A friendly visitor from outer space warns against conducting experiments with the Earth’s magnetic field, that could mutate insects into giant monsters. Stars: Forrest Tucker, Gaby André, Martin Benson, Alec Mango

 

William Fruet Blue Monkey (1987)
Detective Jim Bishop and Dr. Rachel Carson must find a way to stop a giant monstrous insect that’s eating people in her quarantined hospital before it procreates and spreads a deadly infection it’s carrying. Stars: Ivan E. Roth, Steve Railsback, Gwynyth Walsh, Don Lake

 

Ellory Elkayem Eight Legged Freaks (2002)
A variety of horrible poisonous spiders get exposed to a noxious chemical that causes them to grow to monumental proportions. Stars: David Arquette, Kari Wuhrer, Scott Terra, Scarlett Johansson

 

Bill Rebane The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
Giant spiders from another dimension invade Wisconsin. Stars: Steve Brodie, Barbara Hale, Robert Easton, Leslie Parrish

 

Gregory Gieras Centipede! (2004)
A group of cave explorers are menaced by giant centipedes. Stars: Larry Casey, Margaret Cash, Trevor Murphy, George Foster

 

J.P. Simon Slugs (1988)
Killer slugs on the rampage in a rural community. Stars: Michael Garfield, Kim Terry, Philip MacHale, Alicia Moro

 

Bert I. Gordon Beginning of the End (1957)
Audrey Ames, an enterprising journalist, tries to get the scoop on giant grasshoppers accidentally created at the Illinois State experimental farm. She endeavors to save Chicago, despite a military cover-up. Stars: Peter Graves, Peggie Castle, Morris Ankrum

 

Paul Wynne Tail Sting (2001)
A pack of massive genetically altered Scorpions escape containment on an airplane, turning passengers into victims and forcing one ordinary woman to confront her worst fears. Stars: Laura Putney, Robert Merrill, Shirly Brener, Gulshan Grover

 

Tommy Withrow Scorpius Gigantus (2006)
Geneticist seeks to make a name for herself by saving the planet from disease by using eons-old antibodies, harvested from enlarged six legged creatures. The creatures don’t like being big and escape. Send for help. Stars: Jeff Fahey, Jo Bourne-Taylor, Hristo Mitzkov, Evgenia Vasileva

Watch the trailer here

 

Roger Corman The Wasp Woman (1959)
A cosmetics queen develops a youth formula from jelly taken from queen wasps. She fails to anticipate the typical hoary side- effects. Stars: Susan Cabot, Anthony Eisley, Barboura Morris

 

Jim Wynorski Wasp Woman (1996)
In this remake of the 1959 classic,the owner of a cosmetic company works with a Dr. that has been experimenting with a miracle cure for aging. He has extracted an enzyme from queen wasps that eventually change Janice into a giant insect. Stars: Jennifer Rubin, Doug Wert, Daniel J. Travanti, Melissa Brasselle

 

Tibor Takács Ice Spiders (2007)
When a young ski team training for the Olympics arrives at the remote and isolated Lost Mountain Ski Resort to focus on training… Stars: Patrick Muldoon, Vanessa Williams, Thomas Calabro, David Millbern

 

Kyle Rankin Infestation (2009)
A slacker awakes to find himself weak and wrapped in a webbing; after realizing that the world has been taken over by giant alien insects, he wakes a ragtag group of strangers and together they fight for survival. Stars: Chris Marquette, Brooke Nevin, Kinsey Packard

 

Joe Knee Dragon Wasps (2012)
A scientist enlists the help of the US army to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her father… Stars: Corin Nemec, Dominika Juillet, Nikolette Noel, Benjamin Easterday

 

Jeff O’Brien Insecticidal (2005)
Cami is a dedicated student of entomology that is researching insects in her sorority  house. When her sorority sister Josi sprays insecticide on her bugs, Cami becomes upset. But sooner she learns that the insects had grown bigger and bigger and she and her sisters are under siege by the insects. Further, Josi is the host of the breed of mutant insects that are very hungry. Stars: Meghan Heffern, Rhonda Dent, Travis Watters

 

Jack Perez Monster Island (2004)
Six friends win a vacation to the Bermuda Triangle and become trapped with only an MTV Crew to help keep them alive. They have to rescue Carmen Electra escape while they all battle the monsters on Monster Island. Stars: Carmen Electra, Daniel Letterle, Mary Elizabeth Winstead

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yes, France is making sure that we’re all aware that the World Cup is imminent and that France intends to kicks the rest of the world’s ass too, of course. Since I feel rather detached from the whole thing, I’ll join you in saying, ‘Go Wales!’ ** h now j, Hi. It’s very interesting: his book. It’s true that the sunlight in LA is very particular and special. I forget that until everything is bathed in it again. Very happy to hear you’ll soon have time for your own things. And I hope it’s at least somewhat extensive time. Happy birthday to Jean Painlevé, whom I should really make a post about. I hope your weekend rules, or you rule it. ** Daniel James Taylor, Hi there. Welcome! Ha ha, thank you. If I could retroactively slap that sentence on the cover of ‘The Sluts’, I would. How are you? What’s up? ** Tosh Berman, Oh, I somehow missed your commentary on the Clementi book. Awesome, on it. Everyone, The eminent Mr. Everything Tosh Berman wrote about Mr. Clementi’s book of yesterday on his Substack, and you can (and surely should) read it here. ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. As I’ve just now passed out of my jet lag, your welcome back is actually still current. I trust you greatly enjoyed that mega- double bill last night. ** David Ehrenstein, Indeed! ** T. J., Hey, T. J.! How are you? How have you been? There’s a DVD compilation of Clementi’s directorial films put out by Re:Voir that I highly recommend if you do DVDs. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, yes, I guess that isn’t a surprise, come to think of it. There was this website for a while that published only one sentence reviews of books, and it was great, but I think it got killed off. Do let me know how (and what) ‘82189: Confessions of a Prison Bitch’ is once you’ve read it. Love wishing my QAnon believing, Trump loving, anti-vax, conspiracy theory ranting younger brother happy birthday for me today so I don’t have to, G. ** Bill, Hi. Clementi’s a superhero. I saw a screening of the newly restored ‘In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal’, introduced by his son Balthazar, while I was in LA, and it’s amazing, and its score is incredible. ** Jamie, Hi. Big support for your plan to watch Clementi’s films and read him, natch. Oh, hm, as to which of my novels would make the most sense to me as a board game, … well, ‘TMS’ would require an insanely difficult to realise board, but that is quite an idea there. Otherwise, maybe ‘Period’ for some reason? It’s true if I had come to Herzog’s work after he became the kooky pop culture icon he is today, I might have had a real trepidations. No, I didn’t see the Marclay yet. The Pompidou is doing a Simon Leung film retrospective, so I’ll try to time my visit with a screening. Yay, victoire, about your novella turnover. Best feeling ever, no? Um, this weekend I have my biweekly Zoom ‘book club’, and I’m going to hang with Stephen O’Malley, I think, and I might try to work on some fiction, and we just set up a Notion workspace for our film that I need to fill in, and whatever else. I hope we both come back from our respective two days flush. 90% gluten love, Dennis. ** Sypha, Worth your time. I’m honestly wishing I could go back in time and make a documentary film about you and your family playing that corrupted ‘LotR’ board game. Wow. ** Steve Erickson, As I said above, I saw a screening of ‘In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal’ in LA and adored it. It’s Clementi’s most narrative film by far. Your Clementi playlist link led to Brockhampton, which was kind of trippy. Curious to read you on ‘Bones and All’. Everyone, Steve has weighed in on Timothee Chalamet’s cannibal movie here, and on Brockhampton’s new, final album here. ** Robert, Hi, Robert! I’ve been allergic to the New Yorker since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. With notable exceptions, the kind of ‘literary’ fiction it promotes could die a gruesome death, and I’d be fine with that. Well, I probably don’t need to tell you that it’s a lot easier to live a life as an artist in France than it is in the US. They have government artist subsidies and stuff here. I don’t know how to advise you to ace that heavy work schedule vs. writing conundrum, but I hope you find a way. Your addiction to writing will surely help if not even eventually tip the balance. Helluva dream there. I never remember mine, and, when I do, it’s always just me being chased by someone who’s trying to kill me. I’m doing okay. No, I hated Thanksgiving even when I was living in the US, and it’s persona non grata here happily. Are you doing it up? ** Paul Curran, Thank you, Paul! Trip was all it was meant to be. Do I have #1? Maybe. I bet Michael does. And I bet he didn’t bury it in a chateau’s walls, the bastard. Love from me. How’s your J-Pop novel? ** malcolm, Hi, m. I went in a shoe store here the other day with a friend who was buying shoes, and I recognised the guy who helped my friend pick out her shoes as an escort from my escort site trawling, and I tried not to let my face reveal that I recognised him, but I think he could tell I had because he gratuitously gave me his card when we were leaving with a wink. I always wanted to work in a record store. I’m very romantic about that job, and you’ve only reinforced that. Nice. However, those are a lot of work hours to work around. And yet you’re so productive. Awesome about the film progress and scoring the mom. Is the dad a complicated character? We have a complicated dad in our new film, but I think we’ve got our dude to be him. Wasn’t easy. We shoot ours in March. How long is your shoot? We’re hoping for 25 days for ours, funds allowing. I hope your weekend is supreme, sir. ** Right. I think maybe it was my recent bout with jet lag and its consequences on my brain, but I decided it was a good or at least fun idea to restore this big, silly old post for you this weekend. See you on Monday.

 

‘One of the great faces of cinema, Pierre Clémenti was a darling of the 1960s European arthouse, often working without pay if the project appealed to him. He would create a career and star persona steeped in a revolutionary spirit, drawn to characters who would challenge the status quo and beliefs of the bourgeoisie, either as chaos agents, as in Belle de jour, or as the locus of change. His life, and career, were disrupted in 1972 by an arrest in Italy and then 17 months split between two prisons, Regina Coeli and Rebibbia, for drug possession. He wrote a memoir of his time in prison, A Few Personal Messages (1973), which has only now been translated into English by Claire Foster. It’s striking, and discouraging, to read a book published almost 50 years ago making the same points about prison abolition that’s continued to circulate now. It’s a stark and moving text, with a sharpness of language formed from anger and grief, grounded in Clémenti’s radical politics and ethos as an artist. He is always a poet, even as prison takes away his language. …

‘From the beginning Clémenti was adamant about the importance of the immediacy of art, and the rejection of more commercial avenues, eschewing offers from talent scouts. Born the illegitimate child of a maid, Clémenti’s turn to acting was entirely by chance. He spent most of his youth working odd jobs in Paris, including as a telegram delivery boy and bellhop-cum-poet. One day he was spotted in the street and asked to join a theatre troupe. He took acting classes at the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier and the Theatre National Populaire, working in cafe-theatres for the next few years with Jean-Pierre Kalfon, who spotted him initially, Marc’O, and Bulle Ogier, who’d all become life long collaborators in film and theatre. He would later write, “I always thought that in order to be an actor, one must answer to some higher order, to a rule of life and thought, a quasi-religious Asceticism,” the driving force behind his artistic choices. This quest for the sacred, would be, for him, something he would then need to share with an audience. His work as an actor was tied to various artistic communities, from the cafe-theatres to the filmmaker collective the Zanzibar Group, and the wider political upheaval of May ‘68—he flew back from Italy to France in order to film and take part in the protests—are all grounded in a desire to change the world around him, liberating the audiences from the chains of normalcy.

‘In 1967 Clémenti picked up a 16mm film and regularly began filming. The films he would make from this footage, all self-funded and made over a number of years, are a mix between diaristic and lyrical, heavily influenced by the American underground movement. They’re an exploration of how human psyches are shaped by the radically changing cityscape around them, but always return to Clémenti’s politics. Visa de censure n° X (1967) begins with a naked Clémenti coming out of a cave—the dawn of man, and later he and his wife would climb cliffs by the oceans, their naked bodies exalted by the sun. He would reuse his diaristic footage throughout his few films, of figures in the Paris underground like Tina Aumont and Nico, of his family in nature, of his own face. These films are constantly moving, superimposing the neon lights of nightlife or people on the streets of Paris onto whatever else he was filming. He would film the protests of the May ‘68 movement in The Revolution Is Only a Beginning. Let’s Continue Fighting (1968), but would juxtapose images of his family. His only feature film, In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal, made in 1986, is a sci-fi punk film about the after effects of a failed revolution. After a criminal gang is given control of the city of Necropolis to quell the revolutionaries, the ones that survive have been institutionalized and tortured with drugs. The film braids in moments from Clémenti’s life, including his arrest. He would work through this again in the 1988 short Soleil, a film specifically about his time in prison, recreating his arrest and weaving in text from his memoir. In this short he would always return to footage of his mother, son, and wife, the figures that, while imprisoned, would always ground him.

‘Due to this trajectory, Clémenti was famous, but not wealthy, and a key figure of various counter-culture movements. When he was 28 years old he was awoken the morning of July 24, 1971 by the Roman police for a charge of drug possession. He was arrested and would spend 17 months in prison, until his charges were thrown out due to insufficient evidence. He was alone in this, with no help from the French government due to his involvement with May ‘68. This incarceration in Italian prisons changed Clémenti, and his memoir non-linearly focuses on life in prison, the oppression of the State, and his own life, all now inherently linked. The book begins and ends with a direct address, first to a warden of the prison, and ending with one to a judge, asking them to experience the prisons as he did. Clémenti’s desire to undergo something transcendental and make it communal, which formed his acting career, shapes this text just as much.

‘Fascism, Clémenti writes, “takes root somewhere in the back of the brain and never leaves.” The Italian prison system at the time of his arrest grew directly from Italy’s fascist regime, with the same men working under Mussolini now police officers and judges. In Italy, prisons would function as a means of absorbing the masses of unemployed men from the south of Italy and anyone who deviates from the norm. Clémenti was initially housed in Regina Coeli, as a “preventative” detention for his charge of drug possession. In Italy the minimum sentence was two years for drug possession, the same amount for trafficking. People would spend months in prison simply for being caught smoking a joint or looking suspicious, Clémenti writes, with no idea when they would have their trial. This, he writes, was punishment for people rejecting the bourgeois society that the judges upheld. Traffickers were businessmen, which could be understood; users were a sickness that needed to be stamped out. “It wasn’t my trial being held here: it was a trial about drugs and addicts,” Clémenti wrote. He would later add, “The addict isn’t the only person being targeted; it’s through his image that all of society’s bastards, bands of outsiders, and any others who don’t conform to the norms of the moment are also targeted. And any departure from the norm is then judged and stifled.”’ — Madeleine Wall, MUBI

 

_____
Further

All of Society’s Bastards: Pierre Clémenti and “A Few Personal Messages”
Soundtracks for the Movies of Pierre Clementi
Boxset DVD & Blu-ray with the complete film works of Pierre Clémenti as a filmmaker
Pierre Clementi @ Letterboxd
PIERRE CLÉMENTI: THE UNRELEASED REELS
An Evening With Pierre Clementi
Pierre Clémenti, Rebel With a Cause
Pierre Clementi, Handsome Devil, Sacred and Profane
The Films of Pierre Clémenti
Buy ‘A Few Personal Messages’

 

____
Extras

Soleil (1988) – Pierre Clémenti

clip of Visa de Censure n°X by Pierre Clémenti. 1967-1975

Extract from Pierre Clémenti ‘s The Revolution is Only A Beginning. Let’s Continue Fighting (1968)

In Focus: Pierre Clementi

 

________
Conversation with Pierre Clémenti, Miklos Janscó, Glauber Rocha et Jean-Marie Straub (1970)

 

Pierre Clémenti: When people discover cinema, they will change, creating their own cinema.

Jean-Marie Straub: And that’s exactly why they’re not allowed to find out at the moment. Because those bastards smell good, they have a good sense of smell. And it is also because of this that it is dangerous for intellectual critics to start saying that we are making films for a minority, etc. They line themselves up with this prohibition. But when the people – I don’t like the word “masses” – discover cinema, then something will happen…

Miklos Jancsó: It’s almost the same betrayal as when intellectuals were confronted with Nazism. It is clear that the critics, the intellectuals, are on the side of…

Straub: Unconsciously. Without realizing it, they support the system by spouting the same old nonsense…

Clémenti: When people see a film, they experience a sort of identification, they are influenced by the star of the film. I think that when people start filming with their own cameras, when they point them at their families, their homes, their jobs, something will click in their heads, they will discover that in films there is nothing see …

Straub: They’ll find that everything shown in the movies is completely irrelevant, it’s just rhetoric. Rhetoric that turns into a complete void. What I call “pornography”. People are going to find that under the name of “art” it’s pornography thrown in their face, that commercial cinema is nothing but rhetoric, pornography, illusion.

Glauber Rocha: This terrorism directed against cinema is unfortunate. Unfortunately the moment when we classify a film as “artistic”. Because nobody talks about “artistic” paintings, or “artistic” novels, or poems – but they talk about “artistic” films. This is already a pejorative judgement… And contradictions end up emerging from this terrorism that has been imposed for reasons of economic interest. And then there is something even worse: the total ignorance of producers and managers. They are completely illiterate – not all of them, but 99% of them. They don’t know the basics of how things work…

Jancsó: No, that’s not it. For these people, cinema is a completely different thing. It’s power, it’s…

Clémenti: For people, cinema is what they don’t see on TV. As TV brings them what they usually find in the cinema, sooner or later they won’t move from home. They will go directly to the factory. Television will be the new divine machine that will satisfy them, that will satisfy all their desires. Cinema will disappear. It’s a possibility, because I’m sure if very smart people get hold of TV, it will become something very powerful, fabulous, colossal. When TV regains all its power, everyone, everyone who works will be taken back to their ghetto. It will alienate entire nations, people will no longer go out except to go to the factory – they will be completely alienated by a machine, which will take the place of religion, stories, big stories. I believe that the only art capable of combating this today is cinema. At least cinema as a logical extension of what is happening today.

Hartog: A lot of young people today are making films outside of industry structures. They argue that the idea of ​​a 90 minute film is a commercial idea. They do underground movies or newsreels or things like that. Do you think this is a good direction or not?

Clémenti: When people see an underground film, they suddenly realize that they could do the same, or even better. And that’s the stimulus it takes to make them buy a small camera. These young filmmakers who spend one or two years finding the money to finish their films… A super 8 or 16mm camera allows them to make the film they want, and just for that, underground cinema is revolutionary. And underground cinema also has something positive in that it awakens something in people’s minds.

Rocha: I generally agree with Pierre, but there are two ways of seeing cinema. One as a means of expression, like literature, to which everyone has access, and the other as a profession. When cameras are as easily purchased as typewriters or pens, people will use sights and sounds to write letters. But in literature, there are those who write poems, essays, novels, plays… Me, I’m a professional.

Straub: And that’s exactly why I wanted to make my last film (Othon, 1970) in 16mm. Just to show that it’s not someone who plays this or that role in the cinema, but anyone can do it. It’s not complicated – anyone could have made a film like this.

Rocha: You absolutely have to see this film. Its very important. It’s an evolution of technology…

Straub: There was no set – we shot everything on location. The only danger of underground cinema is that it is underground cinema. There are already trusts and monopolies planning to grab hold of it, transform…

Clémenti: But it has already happened. Books are over. Books will disappear to make way for libraries of super 8 films. In America now there are super 8 cameras that develop 1000 ASA and are inflated to 35mm. So I am convinced that the film industry will completely change, and that it will expire…

Straub: It will colonize the underground…

Rocha: You can’t show an underground movie on Broadway, the same way you can’t bring a Hollywood movie to American campuses. Because the underground market is already there…

Clémenti: On all American campuses, you can show underground films.

Rocha: But, you see, it’s already a system, an industry…

Clémenti: It is an alternative society which is only at the beginning, and which attacks the system – whether it is positive or negative does not matter. So far, it’s positive…

Rocha: No, at the moment I feel like everything is against Hollywood. It’s very positive…

Clémenti: I think giants like Paramount are falling apart right now. Because of what ? Because people have made low-budget movies and made millions. The big studios don’t know what to do anymore. They are finished.

Rocha: But I feel that the crisis in American industry is only illusory, and that underneath they hold everything very well…

Clémenti: No, American cinema is screwed…until it finds, reinvents a filmic language. But under the current conditions, all the major studios are disappearing.

Straub: They’ve been screwed for five years. And it will take ten more for them to let go.

Jancsó: This is a very serious problem for us – we are always bothered by international distributors. It’s true, it’s obvious. I don’t know what we can do, something has to be done. We must destroy…

Rocha: At the end of the day, it’s a political problem.

Clémenti: At the moment I can tell you that we are making ten million copies from a single recording, and there will be…

Rocha: Next year, with the arrival on the market of cassettes, there will be a distribution system for films on the same model as books.

Clémenti: Yes, there will be such a system, but only for films to be consumed, that is to say films that have contaminated everyone, all of human nature. More and more cinema is becoming an enterprise of cretinization. Except for the cinema linked to film clubs and that sort of thing, where everything that is projected is completely useless, where the sound is not heard, where the image is painful, the copies are terrible. Why ? Because young distributors don’t have the money to make good copies or don’t believe in it. And so we will have libraries of Super 8 films, with millions of copies of each. I think it’s the end of the film industry… There have been all these revolutionary upheavals. The cinema in France is more and more alienated, in harmony with television, with the TV channels. And I have the impression that the cinema which tries to relate to people, to change their consciousness, will be put aside. The worker who wants to buy a book will buy a film. But it will be circumscribed, because society knows very well that…

 

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Book

Pierre Clémenti A Few Personal Messages
Small Press

‘Pierre Clémenti’s refusal to conform may have been his undoing. On July 24, 1971, Italian police raided the apartment where he was staying in Rome. As his five-year-old son, Balthazar, looked on, the actor was arrested on dubious drug charges (a possible result of his leftist politics and long-haired aesthetic) and thrown in jail without trial for 18 months. This harrowing experience became the subject of his memoir, A Few Personal Messages, which has just been expertly translated into English for the first time, by Claire Foster. The book is equal parts a manifesto and a reflection on the years leading up to his confinement; it decries the inhumanity of prisons, daring politicians, wardens, and religious leaders to create a better world. Foster’s rendition of the French is precise, tracking closely with Clémenti’s original sentences while maintaining a fluid, natural English cadence and the revolutionary power of his message. Clémenti’s is, essentially, an abolitionist narrative.’ — Hyperallegric

Excerpt

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p.s. Hey. It’s rare if not unprecedented that the blog rolls out its red carpet function twice in one week, but here’s an unmissable occasion. Today the blog helps welcome the long, long awaited English language publication of visionary filmmaker and daring-est actor Pierre Clementi’s prison journal into physical reality. Clementi is one of my great personal heroes and a total role model for other artists if there ever was one, and the book is fascinating. The blog and I hereby urge it on you. ** Charalampos Tzanakis, Hi. He also looks boring, if you ask me. I can’t recommend Paris as a destination much less place to live strongly enough. I like Lyon, yeah. I wouldn’t want to live there necessarily, but, yeah, it’s nice. As is Athens, as I recall from my one and only visit there forever ago. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Ha ha, I think your board game wins, actually. Oh, cool, happy that I magically landed on your fave. I assume you’re not actually writing a one sentence review of ‘Club Atlas’? But if so, what is/was it? Love writing a million word review of your dog, G. ** David Ehrenstein, Top of the morning to you, sir. ** Sypha, Yeah, the Warhol clouds struck me as being way too overfamiliar. Cool about the pen-and-paper Zelda role play game of your invention. Were you ever a D&D guy? I wasn’t, but, as I’m certain I’ve said before, I went to university with the guy who invented it and who was inventing at the school while he was there. ** h now j, Hi! Great to see you! My trip to LA was very productive. It sounds like yours did its job magnificently too. Me too, I hardly did anything on my trip but work, and I missed a ton of things I’d wanted to see/do. But now you’ve broken the ice. Happy day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Ha ha. Granted I’m not the most familiar Queen E person but how is it that that cloud has even the merest resemblance to her? Is it supposed to be her head, or … Wow. ** politekid, Hi, pal. I know those Goosebump games, or, rather, there’s a store here that sells rare board games, and they were on display there. In my childhood’s generation, relief board games were rather few and far between. ‘Candyland’ and ‘Snakes and Ladders’ and such. I kind of exaggerated about liking pop-ups more than normal books, but you know what I mean. I looked into doing a pop-up book once, and it looked too hard and expensive to do, sadly. But I haven’t given up. Zac and I plan to go back to LA for the next work spurt in late December. We don’t start filming until mid-March, but there’s still a lot left to do before that. I almost put a Peanuts cloud(s) in the post believe it or not. I can’t remember why I didn’t. Helluva a dream you had there. I envy it, or, wait, envy you, although your imagination and id would certainly be interesting to illustrate. I used to have a recurring nightmare as a little kid of this ghost of a dead dog raised up on its hind legs chasing me through a forest, and then, in the dream, I find a wooden shed to escape into but then the dog ghost, naturally, just floats through the wall, and I’m trapped, and then I wake up in terror. I had that dream a million times. ** Jamie, Politekid gives great comment, that is very true. But yours aren’t too shabby whatsoever either, dude. I think I would like to make a board game, come to think of it. I’m not so into my novels being adapted as films, but maybe adapted as a board game? I feel sparkly imagining it. The jet lag seems to have found the exit and is slowly leaving through it. No, I’m watching the Herzog doc today. Actually, it turns out he didn’t direct it, just produced it, which makes me think whoever assigned it made a mistake, but I will watch it. I actually love his documentaries a lot, or the ones up until, oh, the early 90s at least. Today? Mm, continual catching up on emails, Zoom film meeting, maybe a trip to the great After8 Books, maybe go see the Christian Marclay retrospective at the Pompidou if I can find someone who wants to go with me. Stuff like that. You + Friday equaled … ? Ha ha, seeing photos of current, bald Art Garfunkel makes me sad for some weird reason. Explaining why Ritz Crackers aren’t widely available for sale in France love, Dennis. ** malcolm, Hi. Yay, creating obsession is the best. Well, in most cases. What makes your one retail job fun and the other one stupid? But, yes, water under the bridge of an artist’s rich, rich life. I don’t know that Raum album. Thank you, I’ll snag it. Have the ultimate today. ** Okay. I do hope you are enjoying your visit with Pierre Clemente’s book, and I bid you a fond farewell until tomorrow.