Cinematic movie-going
A scene that I always loved and that I thought would make a good contribution to that Senses of Cinema study is the moviegoing (and tv watching) in Jarmusch’s “Stranger Than Paradise.”
Minnie and Moskowitz both watch Humphrey Bogart movies and find heroism and romanticism in Bogey. Then they meet and watch Casablanca with each other, only the filmic romanticism of the movie they are watching is nothing like their relationship, though they are frustrated enough to desperately believe.
The antihero of Breathless also wants to be like Bogey, but lacks the grace. His is a lack of self awareness between the heroes he sees on screen and his own mostly dull and unheroic life.
Woody Allen dreams of being Bogey in Play It Again Sam, only the dream is representative of singular narcississism in an already anxiety-laced man. It is only when he meets someone as neurotic as he is (Diane Keaton, basically playing the same role as she would later do in the better Annie Hall ) that he is able to actually give the ending speech of Casablanca to someone other than himself, and without irony, too.
In all cases Bogey represents a cinema of dreams that everyone wants to escape into, but their real-life imperfections create anywhere from sarcastic to horrifying twists on the image. Meanwhile, in Amelie, a movie that is also part of the cinema of wish-fulfillment, the real twist is that what she sees in the movie theatre is the mistake of a fly on the lens in Jules et Jim. There, the application isn’t in comparison to film world versus Amelie world, but a world that has delved so far into embracing film world that even small details like that mistake bring big Audrey Tautou grins to faces.
—PolarisDiB
The Purple Rose of Ciaro
Matinee
Have you ever seen Agnés Varda’s Cléo de 5 a 7 ? Honestly, I didn’t like the movie at all, but at some point of the movie Cléo goes with a girlfriend to meet her girlfriend’s boyfriend who works as a projectionist in a movie theater. They see a short called Les fiancés du pont mac donald (where Jean-Luc Godard appears) from the screening room.
I have. What’s interesting about that example is that the short, I believe, is directed by Varda as well. Her love of cinema and the apparati of it is shown often in her work, for instance in her play with the trucks on the road in The Gleaners and I.
Another short directed by the same director as the feature length it’s contained in is in May. May and this guy watch a short “he” directed where sex is satired by two lovers eating each other. May, the loner with little frame of reference to understand things, takes it literally and bites on him, hard, when they are about to make love. As a parody of student films the short itself was a humorous quip, but I think the best part of the satire comes from May’s reception of it since the guy thinks that she’s really impressed with his intelligence but she’s actually trying to learn from it. I consider May a horror parody of Amelie. The two leads are very similar in quirkiness, but one gets love from her stalking while the other gets a doll of sewn up corpses. Fewer people have seen May than Amelie, if you haven’t I highly recommend it.
This same mixing of fantasy and reality occurs in Sherlock Jr. Keaton falls asleep at the projection booth and lives inside an array of movies in his dreams. However, later he is awoken by his love interest, who has gone and done the actual investigating herself, saving the day while the hero dreams—an ironic twist on the movie hero. However, guy still gets girl and Keaton then turns to what he knows, the movie, to learn what to do next—he mimics the kisses, the holding, but then the movie fades into a family and Keaton’s stone face shows a bit of surprise and confusion. Many readings of that reaction shot out there—my pet theory is that he doesn’t understand the mechanism of how to get from one point to another, so that first he kisses the girl and now babies are supposed to be sprung into existence! Ultimately showing that the hero still lives in movies and the girl is going to have to lead that relationship, since he’s too naive to know simple facts of life.
—PolarisDiB
Taxi Driver
Amelie
Kiarostami’s Shirin
Aha. Taxi Driver would be another example of confusion between the material and its meaning, though from a whole other perspective than ones I’ve previously mentioned. Here is not a fantasy projected and a character’s use of that fantasy, but a character who literally cannot tell the difference between one fantasy and another, bringing the girl he likes into the same raw wasteland he himself is entering as he considers actions that will eventually result in bloodshed. One of the most interesting things about Taxi Driver is that he gets thanked by the parents at the end—meaning even after their daughter has gone through the disturbing and dirty side of street-life, they are still stuck in romantic notions of the world far removed from its actual grit. For Travis Bickle, the streets are covered in slime. For the unnamed parents, they only see White Knights.
—PolarisDiB
Another cinematic point of reference in Taxi Driver:
(appropriated from Glen Kenney’s blog)
Linklater’s character sees Gertrude, I think, in It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books.
Also, The Majestic, 500 Days of Summer, and Donnie Darko.
Oh….and Win a Date with Tad Hamilton, but that was just cheesy as hell. ;)
Savvy
I am not sure what Richard Kelly’s use of Evil Dead really did for the movie except set the story at a particular time in the 80s. I find the use of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in Gremlins to be very interesting in that fact, because it is so anachronistic. Then again, in all of the cases I mentioned above for Bogey movies, the movies were made and set in an era far removed from the date they came out.
—PolarisDiB
Fantasma
Where the film IS the film we’re watching.
dont remind me(:
Fantasma and Goodbye, Dragon Inn are probably the best examples. Absolutely perfect films, both taking place entirely inside a movie theatre.
I blind bought GDI the other day. Haven’t watched it yet.
Ah, you’re in for a treat. It has one of the saddest love stories ever told in it… Shiang Chyi’s devotion for Lee Kangsheng is so beautifully done… which is odd in a Tsai film because it’s a specifically heterosexual love… though almost the entirety of the rest of the film involves failed attempts at homosexual encounters.
A beautiful elegy on sexual alienation and the end of movie-going.
The only other Tsai I’ve seen is Vive l’Amour which I just loved.
OP: El Sur has a movie theater scene, as well.
-Fantasma and Goodbye, Dragon Inn are probably the best examples. Absolutely perfect films, both taking place entirely inside a movie theatre-
Except that, while it’s set in a movie theater, and despite everything else it is, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, isn’t exactly about watching films . . . at least not directly. It’s more about extra-cinematic goings-on during the film.
OH MAN. I love Goodbye, Dragon Inn! Has to be Tsai’s best movie, even though I put What Time is it There first.
Savvy
Goodbye, Dragon Inn is specifically about how we don’t watch movies anymore. One of the biggest story lines in the film is about the death of cinema in Taiwan. It’s kind of hard to portray that if you have a threatre full of people sitting in front of the screen, no?
In that regard no film mentioned on this list is just about watching films. All of them are much more about the “extra-cinematic goings-on” in the respective films so, I don’t know why you have a problem with my mention of Tsai’s film.
Somehow a single scene in Godard’s film is much more than a film that takes place entirely in a theatre? Okay, fine. What Time is it There? has a single scene in a movie theatre. Is that okay?
Afro, see, that’s EXACTLY what I thought Goodbye, Dragon Inn was mainly about… and then some people tried to disagree with me… ;)
Savvy
It’s only part of it. The film is much more about sexual alienation than anything else, but there is a specific comment being made on the death of cinema in Taiwan and the ramifications of the Taiwan New Wave on movie-going.
Afro, well, I assumed that wasn’t all it was about, too, even if that’s all I really brought to the table. I remember being told that limiting that notion to Taiwan was kind-of bogus, but I don’t think so…
Savvy
Well, of course specific comments can always be expanded. Many arthouses around the world are having a problem keeping customers and staying in business so Tsai’s comments about Taiwan are comments about cinema worldwide, even if that wasn’t his intent.
Afro, well then I guess I was just looking at his intent… HAHAHAHAHA. Nah, I don’t know. I had read an interview where he discussed his dismay at Taiwanese film-goers, how they only go see the really crappy movies, and how films like his don’t make any money. I guess that’s why I talked about it with such limiting nature. You, and every one else, ARE right, of course, because I was looking at the foreground. :/
Savvy
You can use your arguments of “thats just his taste, no reappropriation, adds nothing to the film” all you want, but as good as “Vivre Sa Vie” as, I’m not sure anyone ever portrayed/deconstructed/wrote a love letter to seeing movies in a theatre like Woody Allen’s screening of “Duck Soup” in “Hannah and Her Sisters”.
Cinema Paradiso, anyone?
- I don’t know why you have a problem with my mention of Tsai’s film-
I don’t. I was saying something about the film.
Goodbye makes an interesting contrast with something like Shirin, which deals almost entirely with individual viewers direct engagement with a film.
-that’s EXACTLY what I thought Goodbye, Dragon Inn was mainly about… and then some people tried to disagree with me… ;)-
It’s partly about that, yes, but it’s also about cruising, for one thing.
^Joseph: yes, I’ve been waiting for Cinema Paradiso to appear.
In Rivette’s Paris nous appartient, the characters are watching Lang’s Metropolis at some moment (just watched it the other day).
Inglorious Basterds contain lovely scene – a woman in red dress makind the screen burn. (And anyway, Melanie Laurent’s character is lovely linked with cinema in general.)
In The Doors, if I remember correctly, there’s a scene in a university screening room, where the students watch some Morrison’s experimental film, or something.
And it goes on and on, I guess.
Aha. Tampopo and The Muppet Movie. What ties these two movies together?
The movies themselves are being watched by involved characters as we’re watching it. We’re watching the movie with some of the key players.
—PolarisDiB
lachim
There’s an article in the latest issue of Senses of Cinema about the cinematic representation of movie-going. (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature-articles/the-film-we-had-imagined/)
The film being at the core of the discussion is Godard’s Vivre sa vie. There are some others mentioned in the article, not only Godard’s.
Does anybody have other ideas of films that do portray the act of going to cinema? Screening room itself might be the key here, but not necessarily (remember the scene in front of the cinema in Annie Hall, for example).
Any ideas are welcome, might end up by creating some nice list.