TOE thread - continued from TOSOTW thread.

[jaime marzol]

dan:
ever see huston's KEY LARGO?

we at first hear about the e.g. robinson character, "he is rich, or he thinks he is the way the others jump when he talks," "he's a lady killer," "he only comes out at nigh." we, the audience, know they are gangsters.

we finally see mr big. he is bathing in aa tub. he stands up and his image reaches the top part of the frame. he steps out of the tub and shrinks in size. he steps off a podium the tub is on and shrinks some more. he stands in front of a mirror and his reflection only covers the bottom quarter of the mirror. the average person thinks nothing of it, or thinks the mirror is high. once you read books about film enterpretation, you know the director is telling you that this is a small man, and if he dies in the end, he will die a cowards death.

the gangsters being in key largo instead of NY, is a sign that their day is over. this is later underlined when under duress, curly hoff gives the same schpeel about the good old days that the e. g. robinson character gives his old pal ziggy, who he hasn't seen in years.

ever watch UNDER THE VOLCANO? next time see how many signs you can find that the director hid in the work, that tell you that this main character will die in the end.

those are the types of things i enjoy in film watching. and this gives you new avenues of understanding to look for in old favorites. these are the types of things that my book will teach the reader, without the reader ever suspecting he is being taught something.

[jaime marzol]

the other thing i don't dig about carringer's books is that he focus on anything but the work. you read the book he wrote on kane but it did nothing to help you understand why this film is so high up on lists. he says not one word about style, form, narrative meaning. it's all production fact driven, and then i don't feel he's honest there, so his books don't turn my screws like naremore's book does. i can find more worth in a single chapter of naremore's book than i can find in carringer's collected works on welles.

i would also put that single naremore chapter against keal's, and higham's collected works on welles.

but this is only my opinion, which i'm posting to an opinion forum, not attempting to piss off any one.

(i have to tread carefully around here these days. if i have to come back into this post and insert a happyface i will, but i hate using happy faces)

[Jeff Wilson]

Carringer asked "where is the Hamlet in the Welles canon?" He should check out Welles' two-part Columbia Workshop radio broadcast of Hamlet from the fall of 1936, which he adapted, starred in, and supervised. Hamlet was hardly a role suited for Welles anyway, and I'm sure he knew it. Can you imagine Welles dying his hair blond for a film version?

[jaime marzol]

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jeff, that was carringer's feeble attempt at essay. it was laughable. that was the rosebud key to the unraveling of the ambersons.

when the carringer ambersons book arrived it was very dignified looking, not many pics, looked very academic, even the color of the pages pointed to an academic study-----------------> it was a lie. when i looked at it it could have been steak. when i finshed the carringer essay, it was popcorn.

what about that chronological history on the ambersons family that explains nothing about the film, or the unraveling, but carringer shoved it in anyway. i wonder what he was thinking.

[Welles Fan]

Jaime, I wouldn't dispute that the sexual imagery you allude to is in Welles' films. I just thought earlier on you were implying that it was some sort of unconscious phallic/breast fetish of Welles' that led to those bits being included. I think Welles' films (and other people's-like the Huston ones you mention) are richer for the many layers that make up the film, but I think they consciously incuded those bits.

I've always thought that Jed Leland's character was gay in Kane, or if he wasn't gay, he was latently gay because his reactions to Kane are more along the lines of a scorned lover. How many guys in movies of that era talk about love on their terms to each other? It is very subtle, but makes the film more interesting as the motivations of Kane's two closest associates are contrasted -Bernstein the toadying yes-man with Leland the friend of Kane's youth whose connection with Kane is stronger than anyone realizes.

The mistake that remake of Ambersons made in relation with Georgie and Isabel is it tried to make a subconscious Oedipal situation a conscious one. Georgie may behave the way he does because of Oedipal tendencies, but in the remake Georgie's and his mother's attraction was right up front and just made the story kinky.

BTW-I agree that Carringer does tend to credit everybody but Welles when possible, but I enjoyed the 'visual essay' he did for Kane on the old Criterion LaserDisc in the mid 80's, and the commentary for Ambersons (as to where the film was cut and re-shot, etc). It has been a long time since I listened to the Carringer Ambersons commentary, and since Christopher Banks corrected my recollection of it, I have to say he seems to be pretty accurate in his comments about what is missing and where it belongs, re-arrangement of scenes, etc.

[Fredric]

I'm with Welles Fan on the conscious/subconscious concept. That said, I am looking forward to Jaime's book eventually being published. The different critical approaches, ranging from sexual connotations to, let's say, elephant metaphors, sounds extremely original and intriguing.

[jaime marzol]

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welles absolutely put all that stuff in consciously. he was amusing himself. huddling with metty and tamiroff, giggling like school kids, inserting bathroom humor. and he did it within the frame of a picture largely considered a masterpiece. but then you take all this stuff that he intentionally put in, add it up with the subconscious drives and obssessions, and you come up with a new equation.

case and point:
early welles interview, interviewer asks, "in othello, when iago helps othello remove his armor, did you intend to let the viewer know that othello trusts iago." welles replied, "no, i hadn't noticed that." [not verbatim] that was put in as just a place to go and something for the actors to do and be interesting.

years later i hear welles/bogdanovich interview, bogdanovich asks same question, and welles replies, "oh, yes, it's that type of instant metaphor."

so you take all the clues you can gather on reocurring motifs, nuances, motions, the way one actor always leaves, or enter the frame. you collect and isolate these clues, you formulate a theory, and follow them till the end and see if it adds up. and sometimes it pays off.

i noticed that all visits to rancho graande never give us an establishing shot. each interior visit is covered from a different angle, at different times of day, the bar activity representing correct bar activity, making it look like different bars, and having no establishing shot, obscuring our sense of place.

imagine if welles had inserted that beautifull shot of the corridor where we see linnaker and zitaa. wwhy didn't welles use thaat? that would have made it a very comfortable film to watch, and add to the labrythine effect.

i follow this line of theory casting till the end of the film, and i find that vargas' rampaage through rancho grande is covered from many of the same angles that we were given on earrlier visits. i felt like it paid off. that recaping of angles told me that the director was aware of the elliptical landscape the film turned out with.

when i cast the theory that guns in touch of evil are penises, i follow that thread through the film and see how maany clues i can findd to support my theeory. i found tons of clues that aalloed me to make linkss to my theory. the biggest one being, after quinlan's verility is questioned at the whorehouse, when he gets his hands on a younger man's penis/gun, the first place he heads is the whorehouse. then i find welles quote that that gun was every cock in the world the way tamiroff looked at it. again i found the pot of gold.

the guys in the trial having sex with that court room scrub woman, enter scenes in the extreme foreground, and travel towards the camera; the price of having sex with the courtroom scrub woman. maybe welles was aware, maybe not.

i don't know what all this stuff means. i'm not offering any aansweres of judgemeent. i'm just digging up the clues, cataloging, illustrating, let the viewer make up his own mind.

nothing in a movie can be exxcluded from a reading. everything that eends up on the screen comes into plaay.

now that i'm through with tthat raambling answer, i will trash lellaand.

have never liked cotten in anything, though i havbe liked some films he was in. lelland, very gay. school marm. sappy character. that is not to say that all gays are, just jed lellaand.

carringer did some good research, that i have been guiding myself by on the running times of the different cuts, on what was cut out, on what is missing, on wwhat was reshot. he completely cheesed out on the diagrams for the set designs, which is one of the things i was very interested in.
his essays other than what i just mentioned about i found pretty worrtthless.

i saw in houseman book the set welles designed for the stage production of 5 KINGS. it's only a simple diagram, but it shows an engenious design.

i would buy a book analyzing and diagraming the sets for ambersons, trial, 5-kings, faust.

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new keyboard, putting in more letter than i need. takes too long to fix.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

i did always wonder why jed leland didn't get hitched

as for books, sorry, just interested in the pictures. cant even understand the first sentence of the first page in most of them. then when i find out what it does mean, turns out to be a insult towards him anyway.

in some articles, just the headline tells me whether i'll want to read it or not.

bye now

[jaime marzol]

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jed lelland never got hitcheed because he was looking at the boys, then he was tossed out to a place where they never heard of lobster newberg.

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after steeler told me about houseman being attrated to welles and welles being such a lout to houseman to break sexual infatuation houseman had with welles. i never read the book that was in. but it sounds interesting, and possible. that angle of their relationship never occured to me. i kind of look at things a bit different now. maybe some of that houseman thing went into lelland.

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[dmolson]

Jaime,
I've always found your theories/opinions fascinating and many have steered me to looking deeper at a scene or film; looking at a piece of art objectively is a near impossible task when one is 'sparked' to it on some level, whether the surface or because of the artist. Attaching ourselves or our own impressions to it make it personal and alive, enriching the experience. You're right, some of the better ways to enjoy these pieces is by falling into them, finding and devouring moments that sate our appetites. I've never seen Quinlan's virility disputed except in the scene with Tanya, and that is also the typical 'lost/distant love' that every man has some experience with to me, not any overt sexual expose. It's all there, but whether we choose to search for it, interpret it and accept it, if it enriches our appreciation or becomes a turnoff is the true issue. My nature isn't to analyze things much if it might hamper my instinctive appreciation, tho on some occasion my enjoyment has been multiplied by a little more light and subjective viewing. But I'm always on your side, just lagging behind in the interpretive stage, that's all :")
On Cotten, I really believe he's one of those truly undervalued actors, who had standout efforts working with the right director in well-carved, average-joe parts. Welles, Hitchcock both took his bland/resolved face and brought incredible growth in both Kane and Shadow of a Doubt. He belongs on the same level as a Melvyn Douglas and John Malkovich, semi-leading men who were capable of pathos and defeat, more sympathetic, delicate characters, not suited for the manly romantic leads... Fredric March and Henry Fonda were the next level, who were able to cross into 'romantic/emotional' characters yet were not thought of as physical/heroic/sexual. Dustin Hoffman fits the 'Fredric March' line, but modern agents insist every actor should have a starring/heroic/sexual role... Can you imagine William Demarest or Dan Duryea as Roger Thornhill or Holly Martens? Who's to say they couldn't play the role, only it wouldn't be Cary Grant or even Jo Cotten. In the Third Man, you see an 'everyman' who knows his niche, accepts it yet dreams of stretching beyond it, earning the love of Anna. Frankly, I can't imagine anyone else as Martens, half defeated when he arrives yet willing to stand on his head and tell funny stories to win his girl's heart... But I digress. Yeah, Jed leland was probably gay, and I think Cotten played it perfectly. Just one man's opinion, damn it!! :p

[jaime marzol]

quote:
Jaime,
I've always found your theories/opinions fascinating and many have steered me to looking deeper at a scene or film.

dan, that's great. that is the whole reason for an analyzation. if only 20% of it you beleive, and adopt into your film watching, that is a lot of extra enjoyment. and once you start watching a film from a different perspective, you begin to look at other films the same way. it's just a method that helps us re-enjoy the films we enjoy watching over and over, and we also get to know the director better.

quinlan's veritity comes into question when tanner tells him her chilly may be too hot for him. uncle je's verility comes into question when he has to ask pancho for the gun; he doesn't carry his own gun. notice pancho's attitude at having to hand the gun over. no one gives uncle joe a holster, he has to shove the gun down the front of his pants. when uncle joe shoves the gun down the front of his pants leigh's eyes follow the path of the gun, looking at uncle joe's crotch.

who was responsible for pancho's attitude in handing the gun over, for uncle joe not having a holster, for leigh eyes following the path of the gun to uncle joe's crotch? welles was.

the film is rich with clues to be excavated.

dan:
in the next few days i'm doing some work on that uncle joe/susan scene, i will zero the counter and write down the times off all the clues i mentioned a few posts up. you will be able to zero your counter and arrive close enough to each instance of deviant, hidden sex welles inserted in this great film.