1975
documentary
cousin and aunt of Jacqueline Kennedy – Edith Beale Jr. Sr.
A disturbing collection of film showing 2 elderly women in a house in a decrepid state. Filmed in 1975, at the grand old (and decaying) seaside house (‘grey gardens’) where the two women live together. Jackie O. had been fairly recentkly before, to pay for basic repairs (plumbing and the removal of huge amounts of garbage) after the poor stste of the house was publicised. The 1975 state is stioll wretched. The younger Edith leaves wonderbread in teh attic rooms for racoons, and teh absic living areas are filthy. The younger Edith is clearly unstable. She is certainly over-dramatic, but one would suspect there is a more significant imbalance here, as her unfulfilled dreams have come to inturrupt too much her ability to cope competemntly with the present.
It is therefore very sad to see, as the ‘documentary’ style simpley shows these two poor women as they are, in need of assistance, but somehow treats them as if they were normal, and intereresting esoterics. Several of the online reviews suggest the same – that people find the disturbed state to be entertaining and somehow of artistic mertit, when clearly it is more a case of misfortune being turned into a sort of vague voyeurism. For that reason, I would credit teh filmm-makers themslves with very little to be proud – there is something wroing with their presentation. However, this failure on the part of the production does lend to it’s status as absolute deadpan observance of their poor lives. Not enjoyable to watch, not instructive, but interesting to discuss later, and to reflect on how their disaaranged lives are in ways eggerations of conditions we see in everyday society.
Viewed at the ICC (Institute for Contemporary Culture) at the ROM.
Filed under: 1970's, Audran, Stephane, Chabrol, Cinematheque, French, Huppert, Uncategorized
Violette
Claude Chabrol 1978
Isabelle Huppert and Stepahne Audren
Audran is the mother; Huppert is Violette – the notorious Violette – the daughter.
Her mother wishes her to be prim and sophisticated, and has ambitions for her. “You wish you’d married a train engineer, instead of a car man” says her husband, affectionately. Violette has affairs, sneaks out of her racy street clothes in the bathroom half way up the stairs to the apartment, and devotes herself slavishly to worthless me who bleed her dry for money. She is infinitely needy, but iron in her will for – something, at the same time.
Very good, like a still life on moving film. The two women are great, and the husband is a very nice backdrop. Their tiny apartment, which is nevertheless well furnished, embeds you in the frenzied psychological state of, in any case, two of the inhabitants. Violette wants more, but she does not know what it is she wants, she wants it too soon, and most of all, it is not a want a need, but a compulsive, dangerous, immediate need.
Chabrol as always, pulls no punches, and his knowledge of the hidden operations of the human mind is alarming because he makes no mistake, and makes it all natural, even when the results are so unexplained and disagreeable.
Dir. Michael Anderson
USA
1976
IMDB 6.7
Novel by William Nolan and George Clayton Johnson and TS Eliot ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’
Star Michael York
Borrowed DVD from Eric Barkey
Knox, 2008
In the future you are have a mark which shows at age thirty, at which point you are ’sent up’ in a ritual ceremony. There are police (Logan) there to stop – the runners, who try and escape. But Logan becomes a runner. Is it true that the ritual renews us for a better life, that it is for our protection – or is there a more sinister answer?
It is a utopian ideal story. The society has been constructed in a controlled way for maximum productivity, efficiency and happiness, at the cost of old age. Logan, of course, represents the human striving for freedom against models of society (and humanity) which are incomplete, and harmful, but which are enforced in the situation where individual egoism (for creating a new ideal world) overtakes the purported concern for the greater good.
It’s not a very good film, really, but it captures the imagination. The tagline is good, the actors and actresses are beautiful, and the concept is sound. It’s a little flat – the acting, the execution of the plot, everything. But it still stands as the prime example of a type.
One could judge it by the white-washed image above, and say it would be a beautiful film, or by the movie poster, and say, well, it’s not exactly art, is it? Clearly an ideology film, with a stiff but admirably clear approach.
