A Rant

I recently got a book about Inglorious Basterds. It has an essay by Chris Fujiwara, about excess in the film. He says that the opening title, Once Upon a Time, in Nazi Occupied Europe (or whatever it exactly is) is excessive.

Yet, in all his discussions of excess here and elsewhere in the film, he never refers to Classical Hollywood Cinema as an excessively obvious cinema, as with its norm of doing something three times or conveying the same narrative point through multiple devices.

Nor does Fujiwara refer to Roland Barthes' notion of excess, in terms of a third meaning.

Nor does he mention how this specific once upon a time (myth) / in Nazi occupied Europe (concrete) relates to the models supplied by Sergio Leone with Once Upon a Time / in the West and Once Upon a Time / in America.

Nor does Fujiwara refer to how this intertitle might have translated in Italian, as Once Upon A Time: Nazi Europe.

Yes, Tarantino's direction is certainly excessive by the standards of classical Hollywood, but classical Hollywood is also excessive by the standards of the transcendental style of Ozu or Bresson, just as it is restrained by the standards of Bollywood.

All in all, I feel Fujiwara fundamentally fails to define his terms adequately and to situate them historically, given that contemporary Hollywood is largely excessive in relation to classical Hollywood.

A question, then: are the multiple angles on the explosion in Zabriskie Point excessive/redundant, in that they give us no new information, as only different but commensurable perspectives, and that there is no camera positioned, say, inside the building, or below it, or above it, or at a microscopic or macroscopic level.

This is not the first time I have read something by Fujiwara and felt his discussion was inadequate. There is another essay by him on boredom and the Umberto Lenzi film Spasmo in a collection on cult cinema, where he invokes some continental philosophy, but I suspect he has seen very little of Lenzi's work as a whole, so I feel his discussion is basically pointless intellectual wankery that is about imposing theory upon a convenient text. I may only have only seen 50% or so of Lenzi's films -- i.e. ~30 out of ~60 -- but the one thing I would say them, on balance, is that they are rarely boring. Rather they are very much driven by action. I would respect Fujiwara's discussion much more if he had, say, previously written an essay on images of masculinity presented by Tomas Milian and Maurizio Merli in Lenzi's crime films.

How does one get into a position of being able to get away with this sort of thing? Or at least being able to make money/a career from it? Are there only certain areas of cinema that are worth bothering about? Is it best to read up on theory (not necessarily film theory) and take some choice quotes from Bataille/Levinas/Heidegger or who/what-ever and then go to the films?

Or, a quote: "I ain't no white trash piece of shit. [...] I can out-learn you. I can out-read you. I can out-think you. And I can out-philosophize you. And I'm gonna outlast you. You think a couple whacks to my guts is gonna get me down? It's gonna take a hell of a lot more than that [...] to prove you're better than me!” 

Paranoia / Orgasmo

After her tycoon husband dies in an accident Kathryn West (Carroll Baker) retreats to an isolated villa in the Italian countryside to avoid the paparazzi and take stock. Her tranquility is interrupted when a young playboy type by the name of Peter Donovan (Lou Castel) turns up at the villa and charms his way in. Soon Kathryn is infatuated and cannot be without the man, who then reappears with his sister Eva (Colette Descombes) and the clear intent of driving Kathryn to breaking point…

With a straightforward psychological thriller style plot that is lacking many of the more obvious tropes of the giallo – the bodycount stubbornly remains at zero until the final five minutes; the motivations of the villains reassuringly yet disappointingly banal – perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of Umberto Lenzi's 1969 giallo is its convoluted history.

Originally known by the Italian language title Orgasmo (i.e. "Orgasm") the film was first given an X-certificate in the US for its amoral plot and some then-shocking full frontal nudity from Baker, who shares a steamy shower scene with Castel.

It was subsequently re-edited for an R-rating and television release, with a completely different ending. By this time, however, Lenzi and Baker had teamed up again for a not dissimilar tale of a menage a trois between a wealthy older woman and a younger couple, confusing titled Paranoia in the original Italian, which was then released as A Quiet Place to Kill in Anglophone territories.

All this makes it is difficult to fully evaluate the film from the version seen here.

Never the most stylish of filmmakers and at his most comfortable with straight-ahead action, it would seem that the writer-director managed to fashion a decent screenplay free from obvious plot holes and to draw the best from his leads.

In this regard Baker is especially impressive as she submits to the indignities of unflattering make-up, following her character's descent into drug and alcohol dependency, that many lesser, vainer actresses - I use the term deliberately, given the gender specific norms at play here - would likely have balked at.

Elsewhere, the normally reliable Piero Umiliani provides an unusually bland and unengaging score. This could also, however, be intentional, insofar as the same pop tune is utilised ad nauseum diegetically as part of Peter and Eva's scheme.

Thinking about Baker's role in films such as this, one wonders how familiar David Fincher was of the giallo when he cast her in The Game, featuring as it does a family plot not dissimilar to Lenzi's later Spasmo.