Lion's Love

 

Director Agnès Varda

LION’S LOVE          B-                                                                                                              aka:  Lion’s Love (…and Lies)                                                                                                        France  USA  (112 mi)  1969  d: Agnès Varda

Actors are like lions.  Indeed, they used to be called lions.                                                      —Agnès Varda, Agnès Varda: Interviews | T. Jefferson Kline | download, edited by T. Jefferson Kline (272 pages), 2014

From a small sample of Varda’s California films, arguably the weirdest film in the Varda repertoire, this is a dated film that doesn’t hold up well over time, where the promoted idealism was passé in the span of a decade, already recycled into new ideas and concepts, yet it is a paean to a golden era referenced in song, “This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius,” Hair the Musical - The Age of Aquarius at West End LIVE ... YouTube (2:55).  Using a bunch of transplants from the East coast art scene, Varda creates a time capsule for the 60’s American counterculture when Vietnam and Civil Rights protests dominated the headlines, while taking the country by storm was the anthem-like rock musical Hair, with Varda using the two original Broadway stars in this movie, James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who created the music and starred in the original production, while also adding Viva from Andy Warhol’s staple of underground performers.  The 60’s was the era when Andy Warhol became a pop art superstar, creating an environment for free-spirited artists in his New York Factory, making underground films where dozens of Warhol superstars improvised in front of cameras, usually on drugs and often unclothed, where the prominence of nudity was pushing the envelope of social acceptability, usually playing in tiny underground theaters that could barely pass the health codes.  Additionally, there were regular appearances of The Living Theatre, the oldest experimental theatrical group in the country, where their claim to fame was touring college campuses around the country creating scandalous appearances, as inevitably the show would end with all the performers stripping naked, asking audience members to join in, and then they’d march out the theater spilling out into the streets where they would immediately get arrested.  It would be hard to fathom that kind of lewd activity occurring today, but in the late 60’s when this film was made, it would have been hard to miss.  Equally representative of the era was a decade of political assassinations, first with President Kennedy in November, 1963, Malcolm X in February 1965, Martin Luther King in April 1968, and then two months later Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles during his political run for President in June 1968, the same week this film was being shot and in the same town.  Varda was in Los Angeles when her husband Jacques Demy was invited to Hollywood to make MODEL SHOP (1969), an often misunderstood and underappreciated film, with Varda incorporating newsreel footage into this film, where politicans are viewed as particularly wealthy and well-versed actors, who come and go in the nation’s conscience like movie stars from a distant era that fade from memory, recusitated each time we see them again onscreen, gaining resonance with each new generation, as the characters sit around and watch the political tragedy unfold on television, a medium that dominates American life, holding them all transfixed for a brief moment in time.  Like many of Varda’s films, it’s a work about different things all strung together, combining the transience of Hollywood and politics through an intersection of mixed mediums, like surrealist painting, portrait photography, avant-garde theater, experimental film, and television, combining audio and visual, even introducing a few songs, given a Godardian twist for good measure, offering elements of contradictions, exploring what Varda describes as themes of historical truth and lies (television) along with collective mythomania and truth (Hollywood).  The icing on the cake, perhaps, is the presence of independent film director Shirley Clarke making a brief visit to Los Angeles, serving as a stand-in for the director, finding it difficult to raise funds for a new film, “I’m supposed to be making a movie using movie stars as real people,” but it comes with restrictions on the final cut, with the studio insisting upon retaining their rights to make changes, a compromise she’s not willing to make, as she insists on making her own films.  The story was actually a proposed Varda film about American hippies entitled PEACE AND LOVE which was never made, with Varda claiming it might have been easier if she’d compromised, but she would have lost her autonomy and the films would have looked nothing like her own.  “I didn’t have a career,” she reflected recently in an interview, “I made films.  It’s very different.” 

The film takes place in a rented villa in the Hollywood Hills, a very loosely structured film with Viva in a ménage à trois with her two boyfriends offering a reverie on sexual relationships, viewing themselves as the Holy Trinity, each loving the other two in an attempt to expand and redefine the terms of a relationship.  Blending documentary with fiction, the film opens and closes with bits and pieces of Michael McClure’s avant-garde play The Beard, The Beard by Michael McClure - Warholstars (Jim Morrison can be seen in the audience), an imagined fictional confrontation between Jean Harlow (Billie Dixon) and Billy the Kid (Richard Bright) that was viewed at the time as lewdly obscene, with the police bringing obscenity charges that were later dropped, but the playwright and the actors went to jail, while the subject matter generated demonstrations outside the theater by conservatives, and the Los Angeles theater was ultimately burned to the ground.  What’s shown, however, leaves out the crude sexual language and is completely harmless, more of a battle of the sexes, an exaggerated farce veering into a misogynist melodrama.  The use of dolls and puppets mysteriously given voice lead to our human threesome who engage in lighthearted banter throughout the entire movie, all of which feels improvised, so if there was a script it is only a scant outline.  Even Varda intrudes into her own picture, seen behind the camera at one point, referred to directly by Viva, calling her by her first name, heard again in the final scene, even making two brief appearances in front of the camera.  Broken down into equal thirds, the film accentuates a dizzying absurdity to their Southern California lifestyle that borders on comical, with Dr. Pepper the cure for all their ills, yet nearly every attempt at cleverness or originality falls flat on its face, as they each demand to be the center of attention, literally spilling all over themselves to be seen by the camera, mostly behaving like uncontrolled little children, which turns especially detestable when they actually bring in children, stuffing them with candy and sweets and soda, where their permissiveness is pretty sickening, as their full-fledged narcissism couldn’t be more obnoxiously offensive, yet perfectly represents the pot-consuming vacuous airhead culture of Los Angeles, dressed up in a bohemian flair, but feels utterly tiresome, seemingly going nowhere, drudging up empty banalities.  The introduction of Robert Kennedy giving a stirring victory speech the week he won the California Presidential primary, his most significant primary victory, combining progressive anti-war politics with a burgeoning youth movement, boldly awakens the film to a different reality, offering the significance of political promise and its quick demise, as an entire movement was lost with the June 5th assassination of Robert Kennedy.  He provided aspiration and garnered great hope that the Presidential campaign could be re-energized with new ideals and values that were altogether missing from the campaign.  Those dreams died with his abrupt death, offering pictures of yet another televised Kennedy funeral where the stoic family once again shows extraordinary strength and grace, with kind words of condolence offered by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King.  And finally the film offers a nostalgic history lesson of Hollywood, as narrated by Carlos Clarens, a Cuban film historian who takes us through a magical mystery tour of Hollywood, at its birth “an orange grove with breakfast served by the Ritz,” where streets have the name of former movie stars in a town where actors used to be called lions, even an unseen chorus chimes in out of nowhere, viewed through the lens of the Larry Edmunds Bookshop, Book Store | Larry Edmunds Bookshop | United States, which serves as the epicenter for classic movie history in the absence of an existing Hollywood museum, located midway between Hollywood/Vine and Grauman’s Chinese Theater (renamed TCL Chinese Theater), not far from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with a brief cameo by Peter Bogdanovich holding up his own book on John Ford to hide his face.     

From the maker of Cléo from 5 to 7 (Cléo de 5 à 7) (1962), made a year earlier than Antonioni’s infamous Zabriskie Point (1970) that showed the radicalization of America, both are European comments on the American youth movement, where even the magazine covers bear a strange resemblance, with Antonioni’s stars gracing the cover of Look magazine while Varda’s appear naked on the first issue of Warhol’s Interview magazine.  The film is basically a series of impressions that are amusingly self-indulgent, combining early elements of the French New Wave with the evolving Underground movement in America, but is short on substance, with suggestions that too much freedom can be just plain irritating, where one character (James Rado) bleakly utters, “There are no messages, only mistakes.”  A recurring theme in the household is waking up in the morning, as they have no shades or blinds, so they cover the window each night with a brightly colored cloth that allows a filtered sunlight to seep through, but someone inevitably rips the cloth down, where an overwhelming burst of sunlight overtakes them in short order, which may be a metaphor for too much light, where their habitual indolence of never leaving the house leads to an all-consuming decadence, hardly the cultural trendsetters they aspire to be.  They frolic in an outdoor pool, with Viva laying naked atop a raft while the two men flirtatiously compete with each other to gain her attention.  It’s mostly silliness, though when the histrionic Viva gets going it’s hard to get a word in edgewise, where they actually have to yell at her to shut up at one point, where their theatrics can be a bit overwhelming, spiraling into anarchy and chaos.  Similarly, when the three of them read The Confessions of Thomas Aquinas, an early autobiographical appeal to convert to Christianity, they literally speak over one another, creating confusion, where all content is lost.  The presence of Shirley Clarke shifts from a stand-in for the director to a fictionalized portrayal, where Varda asks her to portray a director taking an overdose of sleeping pills in a suicide attempt, which she initially refuses to do, forcing Varda herself in front of the camera, but Clarke finally agrees to do the scene, creating a montage of the paramedics coming to rush her to the hospital (where she quickly recovers), coinciding with the June 6th early morning death of Robert Kennedy and a June 3rd assassination attempt on the life of Andy Warhol by Valerie Solanas, an unstable member of the Warhol fringe (reports have Viva on the phone with Warhol while having her hair done at the time of the shooting), and after two months in a hospital Warhol recovered from a gunshot wound, but his health deteriorated significantly after that, turning him into an overly frail recluse, dying 19 years later.  The promise of freedom in the hippie peace and love movement just a year or so earlier was undermined and eradicated by America’s right-wing gun violence that simply eliminated the most potent American voices of the left.  The whimsical opening is met by a theme of tragedy and violence, followed by what is arguably the most coherently entertaining aspect of the film, delving into the history of Hollywood with a joyous panache, filled with plenty of Varda color and spectacle, making it her own take on the city she is only temporarily visiting, uniquely blending the mythologies of Hollywood with the American counterculture, ending on Viva in an extended shot that amounts to a Warhol screen test, where even a perplexed Eddie Constantine makes a cameo appearance.  This whole thing is tediously overlong and so frickin’ crazy that it has an endearing quality about it.  There’s a Brechtian aspect of theatrical artificiality, where the German playwright Bertolt Brecht had his own dealings with Hollywood, with well over 200 movie and television writing credits to his name, including THE THREEPENNY OPERA (1931), but his apt description for the industry was a “marketplace of lies.”  When asked to describe what this film is all about, she offers (Agnès Varda: Interviews | T. Jefferson Kline | download), “I could give you twenty different answers that would all be more or less true and more or less limited.  I wanted my film to express two great currents in America:  sex and politics.  The film, which I’d prefer to call a collage, is about:  nostalgia for the stars of yesteryear and, as I’ve already said, the political stars; my attempt to make a film in Hollywood; a certain mysticism, the mysticism of the hippies; Hollywood, the magical city with its typical streets, enormous boulevards and enormous studios; the end of youth since the characters are too old to be hippies, too young to be adults; and contradictions—between political events and private life.”

Alphaville

ALPHAVILLE                      A                    

aka:  Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution

France  (100 mi)  1965  d:  Jean-Luc Godard

And because I love you everything moves--
One need only advance to live, to go
Straight forward towards all that you love
I was going towards you
I was moving perpetually into the light

―Paul Éluard

Sometimes reality is too complex for oral communication.  But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world.

―Alpha 60 opening the film

Science fiction film noir, creating an eerie atmosphere where form is the content and technology destroys the essence of what is human, the prototype of many stylized films that have followed.  Shot in black and white almost entirely at night by Raoul Coutard, the film perfectly encapsulates the subterranean feel, a decade ahead of the paranoid conspiracy thrillers of the 70’s in America, complete with sleek, super modern exteriors that reveal an architectural affinity for glass reflections, creating a futuristic, apocalyptic world reminiscent of Mike Hammer in Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), particularly the low down and dirty aspect, where behind every door is a sinister presence, someone out to take your life, as people are constantly eliminated to eradicate rebellion and disobedience, creating a worker state completely beholden to a super authority, which is little more than a massive computer, like the HAL 9000 computer in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  In this advanced technological universe, a perfectly programmed robot is the ideal life form, as it flawlessly obeys what it’s programmed to do.  It’s incapable of thinking for itself, as it’s not human and doesn’t have a human conscience, which can establish the difference between what’s wrong and what’s right.  The limitations of technology are obvious, as the body count of those put to death for authoritative disobedience continually rises in a futile search for perfection, or allegiance, like an ethnic cleansing, with absolutely no remorse shown afterwards, but we don’t live in a completely rational world, nor would we choose to, yet that’s the ideal portrayed by the authoritative state that assumes power through absolute control, eliminating anything that disagrees.  It’s an absurd portrait of a false utopia, where nearly everything that matters is forbidden, and anyone showing signs of emotion or memory are viewed as damaged goods that must be eliminated.  Using no constructed sets or special effects, Godard creates a futuristic world in the cold manner in which this is filmed, using a gun-toting, trenchcoat-wearing 40’s style gangster prototype in a fedora as the hero, like a creature out of time, yet his mission is similar to that of Martin Sheen in Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW (1979), sent into the heart of darkness to eliminate the high command that is deemed too dangerous and unstable to continue in a position of authority, having elevated his status to that of a god, with legions of followers carrying out his every request, subject to death if they refuse.  In this case, it’s a mad scientist on the loose in command of his network of computers that have all but eliminated free will. 

At the time Godard associated modernization in France with the government’s conservative push for more absolute control, which President de Gaulle sought with his new constitutional amendment in 1962 consolodating executive power, hoping to ride a wave of popularity, which Godard associated with the robotization of the French people, where commerce and technology were emphasized over human values.  Godard’s faith in the values of love, culture, and individual liberty over the dehumanizing effects of the modern world forms the thematic crux of the film, which he viewed as a fight for humanity.  Godard was actually proven right, as a year after the film was released the government censored many New Wave films, including most famously Jacques Rivette’s THE NUN (LA RELIGIEUSE) in March of 1966 before its first public screening, reportedly because of its cynical views of the Catholic Church, allowing an exception to premiere at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival where it was received to great acclaim, yet even a mention of the ban was banned from television reporting, with Godard writing a stinging denunciation of de Gaulle’s minister of culture André Malraux for his cowardice in allowing this to happen, describing the censorship as the “Gestapo of the spirit,” lifting the ban after more than a year in September 1967.  This was followed by the ministry of culture (still presided over by Malraux) removing Henri Langlois from the Cinémathèque Française in March of 1968, an icon and cultural fixture in the preservation of film, resulting in the cancellation of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival that year in protest, with filmmakers around the world like Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Fritz Lang sending telegrams in support, leading to the infamous Parisian riots of ’68, including Godard and Truffaut on the front lines, with French police seen beating students and artists alike.  In April 1968, 75 days after Langlois was ousted, he was reinstated as head of the Cinémathèque.  By that time Godard had already embarked on a new career of political activism.

Eddie Constantine plays secret agent Lemmy Caution, riding into the heart of Alphaville in his white Ford Mustang that he calls a Ford Galaxy, assuming the name of Ivan Johnson, posing as a journalist in town to cover a convention, continually snapping flash pictures, which seem to startle the locals who do not have a high opinion of journalists, as their existence is counterproductive to the will of the authority to control residents by forbidding free access to information.  This is a repressed state interested in programmed mind control, not free thinking, where Lemmy represents an ancient tradition from the “Outlands” that has all but been outlawed in Alphaville.  The initial sign of the hotel hospitality is to provide a programmed robotic “seductress” to keep him occupied (Christa Lang, who married American director Sam Fuller a few years later), who caters to his every whim, even providing sleep sedatives, though in typical tough guy, Bogart style, this will never do, as he’s perfectly capable of choosing his own girls, finding her a distraction and throwing her out.  But she’s soon replaced by another one, none other than Ana Karina as Natacha von Braun, daughter of Alphaville’s authoritative leader, Professor von Braun (Howard Vernon), the creator of the Alpha 60 supercomputer, the man he’s been assigned to capture or eliminate, almost always seen wearing a lab doctor’s smock and dark glasses, leading a contingency of scientists (otherwise known as Professors Heckell and Jeckell, amusingly played by two Cahiers critics) through a labyrinth of computer rooms and empty corridors, interrogating subjects by the minute, many left dazed and crawling the walls afterwards.  Natacha sparks Lemmy’s interest immediately, not just because of her family name, hoping she can lead him to her father, but she exhibits a quality unlike the rest, retaining human habits and characteristics, showing signs of vulnerability, though she’s obviously been trained exactly like the others, finding a strange attraction to Lemmy as well, as he speaks his own mind and demonstrates a stalwart resistance to authority, believing he’s the last of a dying breed, still capable of imparting wisdom, making him someone to pay attention to.  Karina stands out as a revelation in this mass of uniformity, as her female charms are on full display, providing warmth in this arctic blast of frigid air, becoming adorable throughout (often shot in extreme close-up), even as she plays a mixed-up and confused “seductress” who’s been programmed to forget, yet still remembers words and phrases that have been outlawed, including the barest outlines of personal memories―in other words she still shows signs of being human.  The film drags a bit when she’s not in the picture, allowing Lemmy to get lost in this myriad of drab corporate offices, getting interrogated by the robotic voice of Alpha 60, the lead authority in Alphaville, who wonders what his actual intentions are, believing he’s hiding his true identity and does not conform to their ultimate mission, which of course is an absolute and unhindered totalitarian control where computers run the world. 

Like Antonioni’s RED DESERT (1964), the film concerns itself with alienation and the threat of dehumanization in a technological society, using an exaggeration of Paris in the present as a kind of science fiction depiction of the future, but really it’s only Lemmy Caution who is out of time, a product of the past, seemingly immune to the adverse effects of computerization and the accompanying indoctrination that removes all human instincts, as his life includes love and poetry, with constant references to literature, all of which provide a foundation for what is essentially the unanswered existential question, wondering why we exist, a question that’s been asked for centuries.  In Alphaville, however, “One should never say why; but only because,” believing there is a logical explanation for everything, creating a mathematically precise universe where everything makes sense, eliminating all irrational thought, effectively becoming a police state, rounding up all dissidents and outlaws who violate the rules, where men are killed at a ratio of fifty to every one woman executed, condemning them to die in an unusual ceremony at a swimming pool, all lined up along the deep end, shooting them in unison by machine-gun fire as they fall into the water, with mermaid-like girls in the pool collecting the remains in an Esther Williams style Hollywood tribute, yet they’re armed with knives to finish off any survivors, while specially invited bored guests politely applaud.  Easily as memorable an execution style as any in memory, this grisly ordeal provides graphic evidence of how this society devalues human life, yet only the invited few ever get a chance to see it, headed by Professor von Braun himself (a reference to World War II German rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun), who explains that they are being executed for “behaving illogically” (One man was observed crying after his wife’s death), providing ample reason to rebel against the state.  Alphaville is making strides to become a super intelligence, advancing far beyond the norm, but at what cost, with Lemmy Caution resolutely declaring, “I refuse to become what you call normal.”  The film opens with a flickering white light turning off and on, with an overdramatic musical theme by Paul Misraki that sets up the suspense, allowing the perfect entrance for Lemmy, lighting his cigarette in the car that allows his face to appear, a recognizable icon in France at the time, already appearing in half a dozen different films as a private detective under the recurring character’s name of Lemmy Caution, a popular role that made him a star, with that weather-beaten look of a gangster, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a cigarette in the other, developing a reputation as a charming womanizer.  Here he’s the only one in town who seems to sense any impending danger, finding himself at risk under interrogation, but he coolly and calmly speaks in metaphors, not really answering direct questions, leaving the computer to search for any cryptic meaning. 

At the outset, Caution comes across a billboard designed to keep the population in tow, marked by direct imperatives, “ALPHAVILLE:  SILENCE. LOGIC. SECURITY. PRUDENCE,” a coercive reminder of what is deemed “correct” behavior within the city.  Sometime later he comes across a book that is viewed as subversive, likely banned as well, Capitale de La Douleur (The Capital Of Sorrow, 1926), perhaps the best-known book of poetry by Paul Éluard, one of the founders of the French Surrealist movement launched in the 1920’s, with the title seemingly standing for the gloomy town of Alphaville.  Natacha, in particular, finds the book fascinating, as it uses words she can barely recall that have been outlawed, where she no longer understands their meaning, words like tenderness, consciousness, love, and why.  Each hotel room is provided with a Bible, which is little more than a dictionary of acceptable words, continually updated, suggesting the embrace of technology results in an alteration of the way of thinking, distorting memories, making individuals forget large portions of their personal identity.  Yet when Alpha 60 asks Caution what illuminates the night, he responds, “la poésie (poetry).”  Among the more intriguing scenes is a suggestion of lovemaking, never really showing any signs of sexual activity, yet Natacha spends the night, filled with poetic description that she rapturously speaks aloud.

Your voice, your eyes, your hands, your lips.  Our silences, our words.  Light that goes, light that returns.  A single smile between us.  In quest of knowledge, I watched the night create day while we seemed unchanged.  O beloved of all, beloved of one alone, your mouth silently promised to be happy.  Away, away, says hate; closer, closer, says love.  A caress leads us from our infancy.  Increasingly I see the human form as a lover’s dialogue.  The heart has but one mouth.  Everything by chance.  All words without thought.  Sentiments adrift.  Men roam the city.  A glance, a word.  Because I love you.  Everything moves.  We must advance to live.  Aim straight ahead toward those you love.  I went toward you, endlessly toward the light.  If you smile, it enfolds me all the better.  The rays of your arms pierce the mist.

 

This is accompanied by unique hand and face gestures, blending both faces into the same shot, using a choreography of movement that resembles another film that had yet to be made, Ingmar Bergman’s PERSONA (1966), released the following year, also including a long monologue spoken by Bibi Andersson, yet both are distinguished by a blending of two distinct personalities merging into one, forging a completely new identity, beautifully realized simply by the way they are photographed.  This sequence has a way of intensely connecting Natacha to Lemmy, actually shedding a tear when he is arrested, a startling realization, as she begins to see how she’s transforming back to being human again.  This film, however, is not without moments of humor.  A young Jean-Pierre Léaud, famous for working with Truffaut, now appears in a Godard film, making an uncredited cameo as the hotel clerk who brings breakfast to Lemmy and Natacha.  When asked why he carries a gun, Lemmy responds “I’m too old for discussions―I shoot first.”  Yet perhaps the most subtle use of humor occurs in the darkened hallways of the central offices of Alphaville, when suddenly the florescent lights turn on, alighting the entire hallway, when a voice can be heard remarking “Ah, dawn is breaking.”  While the plot is silly, and the grand finale never in doubt, much of this film’s charm is simply the look of the film, with Godard accentuating modernity in existing Parisian structures, including a vast industrial network of office buildings, neon signs, shots of electricity towers, dual glass elevators in the hotel, featuring a marble lobby, elegant winding staircases, and buildings shot in total darkness illuminated only by the lit windows, yet creating a shadowy darkness that pervades throughout the film, exhibiting signs of German Expressionism, including dramatic contrasts in neon and total blackness, where Alphaville is perceived as a city of darkness, a gloomy, claustrophobic world, beautifully contrasting darkness and light, even incorporating this into the poetic themes on the elusive nature of love and freedom.  Borrowing heavily from Jean Cocteau’s depiction of the darkened underworld in ORPHEUS (1950), including an open acknowledgment in the humanizing power of poetry, Lemmy’s rescue of Natacha from the dark city is reminiscent of Orpheus rescuing Eurydice from the hellish depths below, similarly instructing her not to look back as he liberates her from the dead, bringing her back to the land of the living, recalling the memory of something long forgotten, anticipating the climax of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982).