MetaKnigel If the Rule is Broken–Break It.

Quick Thoughts on The Battleship Potemkin, Casablanca, and 8½

Following up from this post, last night I watched 3 great classic films. They were Sergei Eisenstein's 'The Battleship Potemkin', Michael Curtiz's 'Casablanca', and Federico Fellini '8½'.

Eisenstein’s ‘The Battleship Potemkin’ amazed me with the montage film work. The movie gave me many ideas for photography because his shots really focused on key, but irregular, points such as elbows to demonstrate motion and power. This movie really shows how art echoes itself, but always changes.

Remix and evolve.
Remix and evolve.
Remix and evolve.

Going back to this 1925 movie brought me to elements that I have seen repeatedly in films since then; for example, [SPOILER ALERT START] derivatives of baby carriage rolling down the stairs is in many later scenes of comedy and action in movies such as Speed, Ghost Busters, Naked Gun, and Nation's Pride / Stolz Der Nation (from Inglourious Basterds) . Even though I have been corrupted by the comedic images and likely that it would be hard to take the scene seriously, the scene did retain it’s power and intensity. Even though the limits of technology are obvious, the narrative and the scenes are done so well that they live beyond their date. The ideas and form retain their essence as an art piece. Many films lose their essence as their technology becomes dated. They simply become artefacts to be mocked. This Eisenstein movie, however, is more akin to paintings that live more as they age. Like Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’, Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les Demoiselles d'Avignon’, and Hokusai’s ‘The Great Wave’, Eisenstein’s film is a singular piece that lives in a timeless vacuum. It doesn’t matter how far technology moves forward, his film will maintain its own awe. While the Odessa Steps scene is iconic, my own three favourite scenes are the matched cut of the maggots with the officers, the hellish priest, and the Bolshevik, Grigory Vakulinchuk, on his deathbed with the sign “Killed for a plate of soup”. [SPOILER ALERT END]

Michael Curtiz’s ‘Casablanca’ followed my war theme. Whether we like to admit it or not, one of the benefits of war is its contribution to film making since the propaganda machines of various countries such as Nazi Germany, The U.S., and Russia spawned so many techniques, narratives, and popularity. Of course, this is also where contemporary advertising took its first steps into persuasion and manipulation. Casablanca filled me in on the source of so many expressions that I’ve heard before such as “Here’s lookin’ at you Kid”. Having not seen Casablanca before, I was not aware where many quotes originated, nor did I know their context. Now I’ll be in on the many inside jokes that modern culture uses based on these quotes. One bit of dialogue that I enjoyed and had not heard before was this:

“Rick: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for.
Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: Well, what of it? It'll be out of its misery.
Victor Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart.”

Perhaps I was still inspired by the patriotic fervour from Potemkin; however, this connected me to the idea of why we do things that go against our own self-interests. Why risk ourselves? We just do it because it is natural. Of course, this idea and dialogue comes before postmodern analysis that, while perhaps not debunking, deconstructs these notions. Around 1942, us versus them binaries were still quite easy to comprehend even though we were getting tastes of contradictions such as antiheros such as Rick Blaine played by Humphrey Bogart. This archetypical Byronic hero contrasts heroes that we see in wartime propaganda such as Grigory Vakulinchuk in Potemkin or Pvt. Fredrick Zoller from Inglorious Basterds.

The “La Marseillaise” scene was pretty ingenious; however, the aspect that I liked the most was that they used the French national anthem instead pro-U.S. schlock that I am so used to seeing in film. I’m sick of seeing the U.S. flag in films.

Fredrico Fellini’s 8½ took me way off the war theme of the evening which is very appropriate for the more absurdist metafilm. The selfreferential dialogue explains the film more than I need to:

"You see, what stands out at a first reading is the lack of a central issue or a philosophical stance. That makes the film a chain of gratuitous episodes which may even be amusing in their ambivalent realism. You wonder, what is the director really trying to do? Make us think? Scare us? That ploy betrays a basic lack of poetic inspiration. "

Fellini’s film is spectacular. I have to say that the opening scene is one of my favourites that I’ve ever scene. I can’t say why; however, there is something in the Mise-en-scène that draws me to that scene. Perhaps it is a combination of the cinematography, the suspense, the music, the sounds, and the confusion. It is visually appealing while also being creepy.

After watching these films, I am encouraged to watch some more. To be honest, watching older films sometimes feel as if they are going to be more work than pleasure, and that is sometimes true; however, these three films were pleasurable even for my short attention span built up through a lifetime of multitasking. These three movies maintained my attention and compelled me to keep watching.