Seagulls only feature briefly in this landmark Flemish feature, which played at the 1956 Cannes Festival, but their presence provides an important metaphor. Our protagonist is a baby-faced vagrant who emerges mysteriously from the harbour in Antwerp, wandering the streets with little apparent purpose but to find sanctuary. Dressed in a dark body-length jacket, he cuts a sinister figure and many of the city’s residents distrust him based on image alone. During his travels, he manages to establish connections with a few women and a young Francophone orphan. As the city gradually warms to his presence, we learn secrets from his past, and how he ended up as he is.
Considering its aesthetic merits, it is a surprise to learn that this film was helmed by relative novices in the field. The lighting – sfumato in the daytime and chiaroscuro at night – adds great depth to the photography and mirrors the protagonist’s state of mind. Antwerp is more than just the backdrop, and the camera takes every opportunity to drink in its unique architecture – at one point the camera rises above rooftop level to present the city as a whole. Though the film is ultimately about the individual, a whole host of characters is featured to create an understanding of the protagonist’s isolation, and this makes his search for a sense of belonging so poignant. Suave but sensitive, Seagulls Die In The Harbour might not be a particularly vital film, but one would do well to file it under ‘hidden gems’.
The first and only film created by count Henri d’Ursel, The Pearl opens with a Méliès-style sequence of a diver retrieving a pearl from the seabed. It is this gemstone that becomes so sought-after throughout the film, as our unnamed protagonist seeks to procure a pearl necklace as a gift for his fiancée. When he breaks the necklace in a bike accident, his expressionless fiancée tucks a loose pearl into her stocking, leading our hero to chase her through the woods, eventually strangling her and removing an oversized pearl from her mouth.As he washes the necklace in a stream, blood appears on his hands. The man regains consciousness again, his hands now clean, and he leaves the woods for a hotel, where he finds his fiancée creeping from room to room as a thief. A somnambulist roams the rooftops.
Though not as boisterous or even as technically competent as his surrealist contemporaries, novice filmmaker d’Ursel has created a subtly subversive objet d’art here, seducing the viewer with a tale both dreamlike and realistic. The film creates a rhyme with spheres and circles (hot air balloons, wheels and tears), all evocative of the object in question. Kissa Kouprine, in the role of the thieving fiancée, imbues the film with a muted eroticism, not dissimilar to French cult actress Musidora who was known for portraying duplicitous villainesses. The film’s major weakness comes in its impatient pacing: at times we race through scenes, at others we might as well be sleepwalking ourselves.
A brazen, unsubtle satire of war, religion and gender issues, Le Big-Bang concerns a Third World War seemingly born out of aimless idiocy (whether Luxembourg could conquer England or not is still up for debate). An all-out nuclear war leaves the planet with just two large landmasses: the U.S.S.S.R., populated by barbaric, buttockless Soviet-Americans, and Vaginia, the territory of the triple-breasted females. Severe mutations have left both genders unusually fragile, the males prone to losing limbs and gonads. As tensions build between the genders, a simple garbage man named Fred is employed as a mediator. Quickly falling for Liberty, the girlfriend of the U.S.S.S.R.’s commander-in-chief, Fred takes her away to Vaginia where he hopes the two can live in peace.
Replete with childish slapstick, sexist caricatures and rudimentary animation, Le Big-Bang is not a particularly hard-going film. As one would expect of a cartoon, the satire is paper-thin, and there is more than enough vacuous sexual comedy to satisfy your average Nuts subscriber. But as dunderheaded as the film is, it does have its moments. The age-old battle of the sexes is given a peculiar new twist as each gender begins to exhibit traits of the other (the male prostitutes in drag being particularly surreal). The film is even bizarrely prophetic – at one point, the Vaginians release a hostage video to the U.S.S.S.R. showing one of their spies being humiliated by a woman. Not one to be remembered, but those looking for a European Ralph Bakshi may be marginally satisfied.
Stuck somewhere between a serious documentary and a mischievous video presentation, Johan Grimonprez’s unconventional Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y investigates the nature of skyjacking and the questionable necessity for large-scale disasters. An infrequent narration tells us an unrelated, Don DeLillo-inspired story. Written statistics and historical events appear on screen, occasionally unrelated to the images they lie on top of. We see and hear personal accounts of passengers from hijacked flights all over the world – Japan, Cuba, the States. Grimonprez punctuates the film with self-filmed, comical interstices to contrast with the solemnity of the news reports. The same situation happens with the soundtrack – disco hit The Hustle is heard playing over a still of hundreds of dead bodies at an airport.
Grimonprez puts forward an interesting counter-argument, suggesting a return to the visible revolutionary terrorist, rather than the anonymous suicide bombers and unpredictable attacks on the public we have grown accustomed to today. It’s less focused than most other films on the subject, and terribly inflammatory, but it does feature some great footage. A psychoanalyst characterises skyjackers as childlike personae, people who still hold on to the dream of being able to fly at whatever cost. Skyjack victim Herbert Brill buoys the film with a quote that sums his experience up as: “running the gamut of many emotions, from surprise to shock to fear, to joy, to laughter, and then again, fear”. However, for all the transparent attempts to crystallise an argument, Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is horribly inconclusive, making the film a somewhat pointless exercise.
One of the more testing cinematic experiments, Chantal Akerman’s magnum opus concerns Jeanne Dielman, a woman who simultaneously fulfils all three “feminine roles”: the virgin, the mother and the whore. By day, Jeanne is the paradigmatic housewife, silently and dutifully going about her chores, a near-colourless cardigan primly draped around her shoulders. Later in the day, we see her interact with her adolescent son, mostly feeding him and assisting with his homework, but also patiently answering some personal questions. In the evenings, we learn that she is prostituting herself from home as a means of income. During these diverse errands, Jeanne gives away almost nothing of her emotional state. After witnessing a few days of this routine, we start to see the influences that upset and liberate this seemingly unshakable structure.
Those expecting this film to succumb to the conventions of cinema may be bitterly disappointed. At 201 minutes, each shot lasting several minutes and the camera never moving, it requires more than a little patience and broadmindedness. Akerman revels in the muted dramas of woman’s existence, creating from them not a story but a diorama. Throughout the film, an electric blue light flickers on reflective surfaces, reminiscent of a static television, or a police light. This conjures ideas of surveillance and objectification, two activities in which we as viewers are complicit. It’s an exceptionally brave and influential piece – Michael Haneke surely picked up a few lessons on suspense from it – but sadly unlikely to touch the people it should.
What drove me to watch this film? Morbid curiosity. A Belgian farmer falls for a sow and engages in several sex acts with her. As a result, she falls pregnant and bears a litter of pig-children (supposedly mutants - it isn't instantly clear). When the pig-children favour their mother for affection, the farmer is devastated and hangs them all. The sow, on discovering this, drowns herself in mud. Remorseful, the farmer hangs himself, feeling he has nothing to live for. The end. No, really.
Many suggest that this is set in the future and that our protagonist is the last remaining human on Earth, although it is really a timeless piece. What matters is that this man is incredibly isolated and is, perhaps as a result, chronically depressed (this may explain his romance with the pig, and the coprophagia). Throughout the film, we see him forcing dolls' heads on pigeons and arranging various substances in jars, maybe to pass the hours, maybe as an obsessive mania, nothing is for certain. What is certain is that this man is a sad case (the actor too if some of the more unsavoury moments are played out for real), and we as viewers have a disturbing experience intruding on his life. In conclusion, this film is in no way rewarding or enjoyable; nonetheless it stays with you and I will defend it on the basis that it is not exclusively exploitative and that there will never have to be another film like it.
Breakfast is an important meal. It sets you up for the day and gives you the required nutrients, no more, no less - it's a square meal. And this, in a way, is what this film review blog is meant to do. No matter what sort of film it is, every review gets exactly 250 words - just enough to get your RDA of plot, background info and critique.
I try my best to watch and review films from all over the place, in the same way I might have French toast one morning, and Coco Pops the next. Anyway, I'll leave you to get stuck in. Feel free to give me feedback, ask me where to find films, tell me off for unfair comments... I'm all ears. Bon appétit!
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