Two Takes on the Same Subject

The bureau chief freely admits to having teared up while watching the last scene of Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946). It's easy to do so, particularly after a cup of wassail. The film has become part of the American Christmas ritual and the American film canon . The chief has probably seen it five or six times. It's a wonderful mix of comedy, fantasy and sentimentality, with a solid substrata of New Deal populism and post WW II optimism. It asks the question, "What is the worth of a person's life?"

Akira Kurosawa's "Ikiru" (1952) asks the same question but from an entirely different perspective. The American occupation of Japan ended in 1952, the year of "Ikiru's" release, but there's still a sense of residual economic anxiety in the film. Unlike George Bailey (James Stewart) of Bailey Building and Loan, who in the end realizes how many people's lives he's touched,  Kanji Watanabi (Takashi Shimura) is part of a city bureaucracy dedicated to passing the buck. After thirty years of work, his only accomplishment is to have stamped thousands of papers and sent them on to other offices.

"Ikiru" is not a Christmas tale and has no supernatural elements so I will end the comparisons except to point out that George Bailey, in despair, learns he has already accomplished many good things while Kanji Watanabi, in despair, realizes that he has to accomplish one. He has fatal stomach cancer. He's estranged from his son whom he has sacrificed for. He makes a brief attempt at hedonism but is badly suited for it. He decides he will accomplish one thing before he dies, he will get a children's playground built in a working class neighborhood where there in currently an insect-ridden cesspool.

The story of how he does this is shown in flashbacks during his wake. This is a wonderful scene where as the city officials and bureaucrats get more and more drunk, the truth about Watanabi's accomplishment emerges. This is a great film, wonderfully written, acted and directed. I was led to it by a review by Roger Ebert which is well worth reading.

Art Inconnu

The bureau chief followed a link from Metafilter (cool in its own right) to Art Inconnu (Unknown Art), which is a beautiful site. Its purpose is stated thusly, "Collected here are works by artists who are forgotten, under appreciated, or little known to the mainstream". If you follow the link today, the works of an anonymous 15th Century Italian artist are displayed first but if you scroll down or click on any of the collections on the right of the screen, you will find that most of the works are from the 19th and 20th centuries. Also, almost everything in the collection is figurative.

A commenter on Metafilter pointed out that a lot of the "unknown" artists might be quite well known in their own countries and the bureau chief can testify that John French Sloan (1871 -1951) is in the collections of the biggest art museums in the US. Here's his "Six o'clock, Winter" from 1912.

On the other hand Zinaida Serebriakova (1884 - 1967) is new to the bureau chief but apparently well known in Russia and France. A self portrait from 1909.

Heinrich Maria Davringhausen (1894 - 1970) was driven out of Germany by the Nazis and his paintings were suppressed for being decadent. When he switched to an abstract style after WW II he changed his name to Henri Davring. The bureau chief knew none of this. This is his most famous painting, "Der Schieber" (The Black-Marketeer) from 1921.

The bureau chief had also never seen the work of the Scots artist Joan Eardley (1921 - 1963) who died way too young. One of her two subjects was the urchins that swarmed through the streets of the poor neighborhood were she had a studio. This is "Little Girl with a Comic".

Her other subject was the fishing village where she had a cottage. This is "Catterline in Winter".

Sometimes when you think the internet couldn't get anymore craptastic, you come across something really nice.

Ivan's Childhood

The bureau chief freely admits there are numerous holes in his knowledge of film history. This is a side effect of having been a graduate student in an English department with a small and, in retrospect, rather eccentric film program. The emphasis was on "Experimental Films", films as fine art, films meant to be shown in museums and other noncommercial venues.  Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle (which I've never seen) would be a current example of this genre, although Barney's films seem much grander and much more expensive to produce than anything by his forebears like Hollis Frampton or Stan Brakhage.

Actually, these film historical empty spots are good things. Being in English graduate school, where one's job is reading and having opinions about great works of literature, can have a deadening effect on one's enjoyment of same (for decades). Having never been marched through the canon of great films (if such a thing could be agreed on) has left me with nothing but discoveries ahead of me.

This is all a preamble to Andrei Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood"(1962) which I just watched on DVD. It is as beautiful as any object in a museum and terribly grim. Set in WW II, it tells the story of a 12-year-old Russian boy whose family has been killed by the invading Wehrmacht and who has become a scout for the Soviet Army. The film was shot in pristine black and white by Vadim Yusov and Criterion has done their usual amazing job of finding the best looking print on the planet.

The film is divided between dreams set in a sunlit summer and the shadowy reality of the war. Death lies over the film but Tarkovsky does an interesting thing. We see the dead bodies of various characters but, unlike in current American films where endless energy is put into killing people off in cool ways, we never see the actual killing, just the aftermath.

The film was done on location next to the Dnieper river in Ukraine but the shots are so rigorously composed that it sometimes looks like it was shot on a multi-million dollar set. It has echos of Eisenstein and Bergman (who apparently loved it). I highly recommend this film but not for a first date.

Panic!!!!!

When the DVD of "A Town Called Panic" ("Panique au village") arrived from Netflix, Mme Le Chef was skeptical that a stop motion animation made with off the shelf, mass produced little figures could be funny but I assured her that numerous critics swore it was. They didn't lie. It's very funny.

True to the name of the film, everyone is in a perpetual state of PANIC, particularly Cowboy and Indian, our hero Horse's two idiot sidekicks. The film was made by Belgian animators and is in French. The polite nature of that language adds to the amusement, "Bonjour Cheval, ça va?   Ça va, Facteur". The plot is wonderfully absurd and becomes even more so as it advances. Horse's romantic interest is the town's music teacher, Mme Longray, a lovely mare with a sexy voice. Horse keeps trying to have a lesson with her but is always being interrupted by things like thieving fish creatures from the center of the Earth.

The film is only 75 minutes long but reaches its peak of comic frenzy about a half hour into it. It slows down a little towards the end but is a delight all the way through.

French Finale, Bits and Pieces

There are extensive vineyards on the plateau above the town of Montsoreau. This windmill is in the middle of one of them. It looks like it was designed by Hieronymus Bosch.

This is the front of the church of Notre Dame la Grande in Poitiers. It dates from the 10th and 11th centuries. It's profusion of statues seems almost Hindu in its exuberance.

This is a detail of some of the statues. They've had their heads removed. This was probably done during the French Revolution when stone saints were being beheaded, along with kings and aristocrats.

This statue is in the Cathedral in Nantes. It is one of four wise virgins guarding a tomb. How having an old man's face on the back of your head, makes you wise, is not clear to me.

This is a very serious conversation which cannot be interrupted by a brass band in Nantes.

Madame Le Chef, myself and two friends were forced to consume this plate of charcuterie and cheese in order to keep body and soul together while we waited for a late dinner reservation at another restaurant in Nantes. Travel can be rough.

The Locks on the Pont des Arts

If you faithful and much appreciated readers are getting tired of our French trip, there are just two more posts on that subject, including this one. The Pont des Arts is a pedestrian bridge that crosses the Seine between the Louvre and the Institut de France. The only panoramic shot of the bridge I could find was taken in winter 2005. At that time of year it's almost empty.

On summer evenings, however, it is covered in a very well behaved crowd of people (mostly young), sitting on the deck of the bridge, eating, drinking and hanging out. In the picture below, from this summer, an intense heat wave has just been broken by a storm, which is why people are wearing jackets.

You'll notice things on the wire mesh behind the people. They are locks.

Since we were last on the bridge in 2008, this ritual has become really popular. Lovers write or incise their names on locks and fasten them to the wire.

The Bureau Chief thinks this could be tempting the Fates, but supports the optimism of the young. "Only time will tell", the old farts say.

Mother Superior Jumped The Gun

Fontevraud Abbey is a beautiful and interesting place.

During its almost 700 year history as a religious institution, it always had an abbess in charge of it. From early on these women were from very powerful noble and even royal families. In the Middle Ages and later, if noble women did not marry, their only other option was to become a nun. Various of the abbesses did not worry too much about the virtues of humility as demonstrated by these wonderful murals from a chapel at the abbey. Where's mother superior?

She's there when Judas betrays Jesus.

And another mother superior.

Is there at the descent from the cross.

The abbey became a prison during the French Revolution and remained so until 1963. Now it's a secular cultural site. Some contemporary artists used the image of the nuns in conjunction with other things in a piece described as, "Chimera of yesterday, chimera of today".