Post War Films

Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa

Umberto D.: Vittorio De Sica

Enigma of Kaspar Hauser: Werner Herzog

I did a quick search on both Google Books and Amazon.com, but I couldn't find any titles that suggested a comprehensive look at the film industry of Japan, Germany and Italy following their defeat in WWII. There are books that look at each individual country, and some that are concerned with post-war world cinema, but - as film is a powerful document of time and customs (even inadvertently so, sometimes) - a concerted effort to compare and contrast films from these three countries seems like an obvious topic. While no one movie or filmmaker can sum up the entire output for any of these countries, these are three examples I've seen within the last year.

It's hard to think of another face that represents Japanese cinema better than Akira Kurosawa's, or perhaps, by proxy, Toshiro Mifune's - at least until it was replaced by this one in 1954. I feel somewhat like the boy who pointed out that the Emperor doesn't have any clothes on when I say that I don't think Rashomon deserves its continued reputation as the best from this time period, but that's another subject for another post. I do feel as though both Kurosawa's own Throne of Blood and Kon Ichikawa's The Burmese Harp are more challenging films that hold up better over a half century later, and though I have not seen it yet, a highly trusted source recommends Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition as a personal favorite.

From the handful of Japanese films from this time period that I've seen, a couple of observations without conclusions. Several seem bent on reclaiming the samurai reputation, by either presenting positive representation (Seven Samurai), or with morality tales of power's rebuke (Throne of Blood, and Sword of Doom). The other intention is spiritual - either turning away from falseness (Rashomon) or from war (The Burmese Harp). My objective isn't to claim that the decade following the war was only concerned with these ideas, and so Floating Weeds, Tokyo Story, and Ugetsu are all on my list of films to see in order to broaden my comparison base.

Umberto D., on the other hand, is the only Italian film I've watched from this same time period, which, I discovered after some research, is thought of as a classic of the Neorealist movement, maybe even the best. The parallels between this movement and Rashomon are interesting, as both are credited with being hugely influential and affecting directors from all over the world. A parallel between Rashomon and Umberto D. is that while I recognize them for being important when released, I'm ambivalent about them both today. No matter really - what is noteworthy is the Neorealist movement itself, and what one might deduce from the country it came from. Whereas the Japanese focus on historical legend, or else on the disintegration of their traditions in the modern world, the Italians go 180 degrees in the opposite direction and point their camera lens directly at their rubble filled streets. Again, without drawing conclusions, I wonder exactly what the fascination was, both for the directors and the audience. For a short time, they were fixated on their reflection, but apparently there was little left to look at after Umberto D. Everything that could be done with Neorealism had been done, and the filmmakers moved on.

Which brings me to Germany, which will eventually lead to Herzog. In comparison with the film industry of Japan and Italy, I'm unable to find much to distinguish Germany immediately after the war - certainly no group of directors like the Japanese produced, and no movement like the Neorealists. There were notable films (The Murderers Are Among Us is on my list to be watched), but I can't find a coherent trend such as a fond look at the dim past, a wistful regret for fading traditions, or an obsession for looking in the mirror. This could be because the Nazis had seized the past and tradition for their own use, and there was no relief there, or that a frank look around them or in the mirror was still to ghastly to contemplate. Surely the division of East and West played a part too.

The New German Cinema, to which Herzog belonged, didn't really get its start until about the same time I did, in the late '60's. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser may not be indicative of Werner Herzog's output, let alone his contemporaries, but I think it does reflect a theme inherent in the work that I've seen of Herzog's, Rainer Fassbinder and Wim Wenders - and which might aptly be summed up by Herzog's translated German title for Kaspar, "Every man for himself and God against them all".

What sort of medium is film, anyway? Is it how we wish to see ourselves, or is it a reflection of how we really are? Both, I suppose. These particular country's films, given their unique positions in history, I think are worth examining in tandem to shed more light on social trauma. It's entirely possible I've skipped over important connections due to my limited exposure to the film heritage of these countries. If so, feel free to discuss.

Being In-Between

César Aira: Ghosts

André Aciman, Editor: Letters of Transit

Adam Zagajewski: A Defense of Ardor - Essays

César Aira is an Argentine author, perhaps better known for An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter due to its favorable mention by John Leonard in Harper's Magazine. Ghosts, published in 1990 but not translated until 2008, is one of the most peculiar books I've ever read. Essentially it is the story of Patri, a teenage girl whose stepfather is the security guard for a partially constructed condominium. Together with the girl's mother and her four step-brothers and sisters, they live atop the building in a makeshift apartment, and the book describes the events of the afternoon and evening of the last day of the year.

Aira's book is about the in-between. The building is skeletal and still open to the air - there and not there. The tenants own their apartments, but do not live there yet. The construction force is made up of Chilean temporary workers who are from Chile but no longer live there, and who reside for the moment in Argentina but aren't from there. The girl, Patri, is 15 - not a child and not an adult. She is not the security guard's real daughter, and so she is part of the family, yet apart also. The family does not really live in the building, but on top of it. On the afternoon and the evening the book describes, the family is hosting relatives for a New Year's Eve party - the one moment of the year that is in-between time. Of the relatives that come, one is the sister of Patri's mother, who is not single and not married, but engaged. She has no children, but is pregnant.

And presented matter-of-factly throughout the book are the ghosts that populate the building's upper floors, creatures completely made up of the In-Between, whose motives are un-guessable, but who invite Patri to a party that will last eternity. Aria has a plain, unvarnished style which suggests a bit of irony then within the context of the story, where it seems as though each element is a symbol of the in-between, although the author uses few if any similes or metaphors or other literary tricks. I'm afraid I haven't yet grasped the purpose behind Aira's description of this middle state (evidently I'm in-between myself), other than as a reflection of our continual state of becoming.

Letters of Transit (which was selected at random right after I finished Ghosts) is also about becoming, as each essay is from an exiled author, exiled from his or her birth country and who has had to make their way in foreign lands and foreign languages. With Aira's ghostly ruminations about the transitory nature of even daily life, Letters of Transit illuminates lives that are defined by their in-between character.

These related aspects must have only been simmering, because I didn't make the connections - truly didn't even recognize the links within Aira's book - until the next random selection, which was Adam Zagajewski's collection, A Defense of Ardor. Though Zagajewski's intentions are slightly different, the experience of reading these three books was like cinching up the drawstrings of a leather bag when he broached the subject of metaxu. Metaxu is the summation of the human condition that is perpetually 'in-between' - one that is reaching for beauty and transcendence, yet also required to perform the necessities of daily existence. For instance, it is difficult to concentrate on the sublime when changing a flat tire or washing the dishes. Likewise, while in the presence of great beauty, or perhaps on the verge of a spiritual revelation, no one would want to stop and take out the garbage. Zagajewski defines the human then as "a being who is incurably 'en route'". (page 9)

It is interesting that I habitually assign a value judgment to the ends of this spectrum - that I equate transcendence and beauty with Good, and the quotidian as Bad. One may certainly be more pleasurable than the other, but neither are intrinsically Good or Bad. Actually, the transcendental and the everyday seem to have the seeds of one another planted firmly in the middle of each others opposite - if they can even be considered opposites. This would lend them a yin/yang appearance. A stable flux? A contained transubstantiation? Hmm, perhaps too complicated, but from experience, it seems to me that there is merit in the idea that these mundane requirements for daily living are fundamentally necessary to experience beauty as beauty. Otherwise, beauty is the new mundane. Hence, the mundane, instead of a necessary evil is a necessary good. Perhaps an apt analogy would be the canvases that Monet used to paint on. Or the foundation stones at Monticello. Our daily drudgery is the bony interior that allows beauty to stand up and walk around.

To think that the everyday, the sublime, and the 'in-between' are laid out like a straight line map route seems limiting, and it reminds me of Edwin Abbott's characters from Flatland, who were un-equipped to conceive of any other dimension.

Biblionaut is my father's word - let me get that in up front - though he's been gracious enough to let me borrow it. Never mind that he created this particular neologism under a bit of duress - as I considered possible titles for this blog, his creation kept floating to the top. Finally I just called him and took it out on intellectual loan.

I think it's apt though. The Biblionaut - the book sailor, or book traveler; except for my purposes here, I'd like to expand the definition to include film and music and art. And it is while traveling through these different mediums that, at times, I'm impressed with certain connections to other works, either directly implied by the text I'm reading, or suggested as my mind wanders down other tangents only indirectly related. Oftentimes I'd like to examine these connections, to talk about them, but unfortunately, sometimes the opportunity for conversation is limited. And so - the origin of this blog. Contribution and conversation welcome.