Three Milestones in International Cinema
Auteurs: Antonioni, Rohmer, and Kieslowski
Melinda Uno
Gavriel Moses
Italian 170
Thursday December 16, 2010
Films are a unique medium that have specific narrative properties. In telling stories about people, the absence of a binary world creates a void where anything can happen- as long it exists in the world the auteur has established. Contemporary film theory birthed a contextual framework by which a film is to be understood. There is the concept of the auteur, the director in his compositional role as a choreographer of sorts, negotiating the social contexts of a storyline and how they affect a group of people: “by appropriating various elements in a way that leads to something different and, in that sense, new” (Moses 1). An auteur must establish the context of a film before proceeding to examine how relationships are formed and the intricacies of each character’s psychoses. Because of this creative power, certain directors stand out as individuals in the canon, who at the same time exist within the canon, as a result of the status quo, and serving as progressives of how people view film today. Three milestones in filmography are: Michelangelo Antonioni, Eric Rohmer, and Krysztov Kieslowski for their use of photography, dialogue, and music to expose the complexities of human psychology.
The first of the three directors on the scene, Michelangelo Antonioni has a personal history of respect and acknowledgement in the international film tradition. Inserted into the beginning of the Criterion Collection edition of “L’Avventura” is a frame: “This picture was honored at the CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 1960 Special Jury Award “‘For a new movie language and the beauty of its images’”. It is in these terms in which Michelangelo Antonioni’s reputation and success can begin to be understood. As a film, “L’Avventura” is acclaimed for stunning visual composition; as a director, Antonioni is credited with revolutionizing film in Italy in the manner in which he portrays almost ordinary people and everyday settings. Although the subject matter may not be overtly controversial, it is the subtleties and details in the characters’ dialogue and actions that are unique and serve as a microcosm of society in Italy during this time.
Michelangelo Antonioni’s distinct style can be understood in the terms of an analysis of the psychoses of the characters as a result of their environment. By environment, this can be understood physically as well as in the terms of an analysis of the socio-historical influences and their effect on the characters in the films and the style and visual composition of “L’Avventura”, “La Notte”, “L’Ecclisse”, and “Il Deserto Rosso”. These influences include, but are not limited, to political, cultural and philosophical conditions that premeditate the characters’ behaviors and conversations. Antonioni specifically utilizes setting and costume to establish the social context and the classes of the characters. For example, the beginning of “L’Avventura” takes place in a developing neighborhood and the exchange between Anna’s father and his subordinate, are portrayed visually by their costume. The worker whose uniform contrasts with that of the cleanliness and sharpness of Anna’s father’s suit serves to emphasize Anna’s background and are perhaps indicative of her motives for her disappearance. These elements affect everything about what the audience is supposed to perceive about the characters, for their modes of thought are affected by the social norms that surround them. Antonioni utilizes imagery to depict the internal nature of his characters. An analysis of these influences and how they are manifested in Antonioni’s films will help to understand and define Antonioni as an auteur, a distinct director and cinematic presence.
Antonioni’s films are noteworthy for a variety of reasons, including Antonioni’s predecessors, influences, critical reception, and contemporaries.. Antonioni is defined as an artist by his timeless popularity almost as much as he is defined by the works he has produced, as well as, their form and structure: “Thus, inventories of features (usually mostly formal, usually grounded in the work of the text) must be broadened to include the relationship between text and context: the context in which the films were made, the context in which they are received” (Moses 1). As an auteur, Antonioni is somewhat brilliant. Antonioni simply put things together that had never before been combined visually and psychologically (in the antagonized psychoses of his characters). This is obvious in “Il Deserto Rosso”, where Giulana’s alienation from her world is symbolized by the starkness of her artistic retreat.
“L’Avventura” is the launching point of contemporary Italian cinema. Produced in 1960, this is partially the result of the history of cinema in Italy and the time in which Antonioni produced his first works. Risorgimento, the 19th century movement to unify Italy, lacked intellectual representation of the interests of the working class/peasantry as contrastingly the Fascist regime in Italy sought to appeal to “high culture” intellectuals due to their role under fascism and suspicions toward a “conservative agenda lying behind mass culture” (Ward). This affected the means of the distribution of art; technologically newspaper and radio prevailed until televisions became more popular in the 1950s. Part of the history of cultural production in Italy was subject to the consequences of economic and political conditions. An analysis of cinema by P. Adams Sitney states: “At the end of the fifties and through the early sixties the Frankfurt school, the French nouveau roman, the aesthetics of chance operations, abstract art, and psychoanalyses attracted considerable attention in Italy” (Sitney). Undoubtedly Antonioni was influenced by this nouveau roman but claims a style his own visually and thematically.
European early 20th century Modernist tradition spurs a questioning of the relationship between art and politics. Because art and politics were ideologically united, these extreme consequences successfully censored art and the depiction of Italian society. Yet, seen with figures like Antonioni, the censorship of art did not castrate its evolution nor force it to disappear completely. Antonioni is a contemporary “intellectual”, assigned the daunting task of “Modernizing Italy” in the absence of a dynamic bourgeois class (Ward). Ward defines this role as one of “‘permanent persuasion’ within a civil society as agents for both the promotion of change and the maintenance of the status quo” assigned to people engaged in academic, writing professions and figures who have attained a certain position within civil society. This aids in the formation of consciousness with perception shaped by language and literature. By this logic, it is authors that contribute to the formation of a given society’s worldview as a result of their portrayal of the way the world works. This helps to understand the relations between politics and art in Italy: “Belief that the cultural activity resulting from an individual giving expression to his/her creative energies was also a political activity; and that free cultural activity was not and could not be subservient to politics” (Ward). Generally, those with access to the means of the production of culture are those with money, access to a variety of areas and situations. Ward cites Gramasci: “Intellectuals lay the cultural foundations on which moral and intellectual leadership are established in society” and culturally this is reflected artistically. Antonioni is a part of this canon because of the literary references the characters make in his films. This includes Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night and the Bible in “L’Avventura”, The Sleepwalkers in “La Notte”, and Hemingway and “the Snows of Kilimanjaro” in L’Ecclisse. A writer is even one of the main protagonists of “La Notte”, and Antonioni’s analysis of this profession is manifest in the discourse at the book party as well as Pontano’s ego and the comparison between him and a prize-winning racehorse as collectible commodities to a millionaire.
An analysis of Modern Italian culture depicts an antagonized state in Italy during and after the Second World War (Ward). Extreme political ideals concerning nationalism and liberalism in the Italian Fascist regime effectively censored the proliferation and distribution of entertainment and art. As cinema became more popular, there was a void in the cinematic representation of Italy because of the lack of foundational influences. Prior to Antonioni, romance was still romanticized; dramatic and flowery language was the primary focus between couples in settings of war. Antonioni begins to depict the psychoses of (young) Italians in these situations; situations of life and death as well as romance and how these situations are incorporated into daily Italian culture. The intellectual and social elite are highly articulate yet internally and emotionally conflicted to a point of hypocrisy and contradiction. Antonioni, however, seems to favor urban settings for their stark and majestic presence, at the same time invasive and destructive to the natural landscape yet aesthetically beautiful and awe-inspiring.
Antonioni in the neorealist fashion, simply portrays Italian life, seemingly without massive influence or interjection. However, everything about these films is a product of Antonioni’s vision. His personal projection upon Italian culture and society is the same as the film projection itself; his whole work is his commentary, but the beauty and irony is that it is presented realistically. Stylistically, Antonioni contrasts between short, quick bursts of dialogue concerning every subject and the characters’ general disinterest for news and politics, set against series of long shots and choreographed movement, the primary and sole instances of music and ambient sounds of industry or nature. The long shots have become characteristic of Italian cinema of the 1960s, as a source of criticism as well as praise. Photographically, these shots are stunning, almost empty stages where an actor steps into the frame. This motif reflects the relationship between a landscape and the people in it; society and a city and the way people interact with the setting although it seems the cultural space exists independent of the characters.
In a Cannes interview, Antonioni comments on “L’Avventura”: “in the modern age of reason and science, mankind still lives by "a rigid and stereotyped morality which all of us recognize as such and yet sustain out of cowardice and sheer laziness". This echoes the 18th century French aesthetic ennui, defined by Oxford Dictionaries as "a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement”. Antonioni’s characters evoke a constant sense of boredom and drama that would seem contradictory; yet the drama is possible because of the leisurely lifestyles of some of the characters. This can be seen in “L’Avventura” as Anna, who comes from a wealthy family, is distraught by her detachment from her friends and family. The friends go for a quick holiday to a seemingly deserted island, and Anna disappears, clearing the field for Claudia and Sandro to connect emotionally and physically. This contrasts with “L’Ecclisse”, where depressed and unexcited Vittoria forms a relationship with Pierro, who lives a fast paced stockbroker lifestyle. Vittoria and Pierro’s connection is short-lived but arguably no less authentic to the characters as the dramatic relationship in “L’Avventura”. In both films, the couples’ love is fleeting, a common theme in Antonioni’s 1960s films. Through the depiction of these couples, Antonioni is commentating on the nature of human interaction and values particularly in certain social settings such as parties and weekend trips.
Each of the main characters in Antonioni’s feature films is caught in some sort of emotional conflict; this is primarily due to the fact that the characters are drawn together as a reaction to a sort of trauma, such as Anna’s disappearance in “L’Avventura” or Tommassi’s death in” L’Ecclisse”; contrastingly, Giuliana is alienated as a result of an emotionally traumatizing event in “Il Deserto Rosso”. In each case, the men and women depicted are subject to events and conditions that they cannot control; but, it is how each person reacts to these unforeseen and uncontrollable instances that are the primary focus of interest. Claudia and Sandro are brought closer together in their search for Anna in “L’Avventura”, but this is also a source of emotional conflict, particularly for Claudia, who is at times rife with guilt and concern for her friend. Antonioni doesn’t try to make the subjects exotic; each person acts in a natural and normal fashion in scenes of daily activity, in everyday places, characteristic of western society. However, the psychological conflicts that result of seemingly mundane activity exoticize the relationships that exist in an otherwise conventional context. The point to which Antonioni’s characters are at the same time continuous as well as hypocritical is strange, making his movies feel like some sort of anthropological examination of strange people in strange urban and alien settings.
In these films in particular, Antonioni focuses on romantic relationships and the interaction between couples perhaps because of the amount of time that these people will spend together along with the ensuing conflict between emotions and the ways in which they are communicated. Other sorts of relationships Antonioni comments upon by depicting them in his films are that of friendships, families, or between socio-economic classes. The minimalistic dialogue Antonioni promotes in these situations is dense, ironic, and reflective of the interactions between different generations and social groups. For example, women and men seem to be joined primarily via sexual encounters and tensions. Giulia in “L’Avventura” is motivated by her distant lover and feelings of inadequacy in comparison to Claudia to encourage a tryst with the Princess’s 17 year old grandson. Similarly, the series of affairs in “La Notte” questions the longevity and authenticity of romantic relationships, as well as personal motivators of such interactions, primarily the sufficiency of Potano’s ego and Lidia’s insecurities.
Sometimes Antonioni will portray these encounters intimately, with the camera as a sort of invisible observer into a private moment; other times, Antonioni will insert a mediator into the situation - such as a third party observer or observers, or place a physical barrier and mediate through a space such as a window in order to further alienate the audience from the scenes that are shown on the screen. Antonioni does this explicitly as is the case in “L’Avventura” when Claudia and Sandro watch a young couple discuss radios on the train. The young woman is aloof while the young man eagerly tries to introduce her to technology. This scene is a small comment on Italian youth culture, a way of depicting an idea without actually incorporating it into the plot. Similarly, in “L’Ecclisse” Vittoria and Pierro mock a couple they observe, in a way mocking themselves and their courting behavior. Examining the structure of this writing only increases interest in Antonioni’s style. Antonioni continually uses meta-stories: stories within the larger framework that reflect the framework itself. Another case of this is in “L’Avventura”, where Sandro follows Claudia on a train and fawns after her, followed by a scene where a celebrity writer, a young beautiful ‘intellectual’ and vapid woman is followed by a horde of men. To the latter Sandro remarks: “To think, all of this for a woman. Disgraceful”. This subtle irony is a way for Antonioni to comment on what is going on with the characters. They are obtusely unaware of their own behavior, yet observe it in others and mock it to become a caricature of their own self. This highly bowdlerized image of the characters is reflective of the general film’s depiction of people in Italy.
Antonioni allows the elements of his films, the cinematography, the dialogue, and the characters’ behaviors to speak for themselves. It is almost as though Antonioni as a director lacks the desire to interject into these scenes when it is the very basic composition of his films that defines Antonioni’s style. This reflects the neorealist trends in literature and culture of Fascist Italy preceding the production of “L’Avventura”. This is an unobtrusive style, that, to some may be uninteresting and far too slow paced, particularly due to Antonioni’s tendency to use long shots and minimalist dialogue. However, Antonioni’s style is visually stunning as the composition of each frame could individually be viewed photographically. These constructive and psychological elements make Antonioni distinct and separate him from other directors and other Italian directors, but it is the beauty of the scenes and tragedy of his characters that make him profound as a cultural visionary.
A contemporary of Michelangelo Antonioni in the international film tradition, Eric Rohmer is of the later French New Wave directors, credited with bringing French cinema to the forefront of the cinematic stage after Italy. Eric Rohmer’s ‘Contes Moraux’ is a series of love stories, each tangent to the main character’s ‘normal’ lives and each new relationship is doomed. This is due to the basic structure Rohmer has outlined for the films: a man, committed somehow to a woman, meets another woman and proceeds to interact with her, only to return to the woman to whom he already committed. Because of the continuity of this structure throughout the series, Rohmer is free to play with the details. The evolution of Rohmer’s style as an auteur (Director, Screenwriter, Producer) is apparent due to the basic structural similarity of “Ma Nuit Chez Maud”, “Le Genou de Claire”, and “L’Amour l’apres-midi” and the evolution of complexity of psychology within this form. The beauty of the analysis of Rohmer as an auteur is the various means he communicates with an audience. Because of his literary past, Rohmer understands the importance of the tangibility of words, of language and text. Rohmer was first a writer but chose to make films (and was successful) because of the layer of perspective of the human psychosis that dialogue provides in addition to the things implied and acted out as images on a screen. Each film is a version of the same general structure, but distinct primarily as a result of the ways in which each character fills their role. Through the action of desire and rationalization of these desires, Rohmer explores the psychosis of the modern French bourgeois. Although the overall plot does not change and the affairs remain unconsummated, Rohmer shows that it is each person’s understanding of their desires and decisions that varies. It is the discourse that is the primary action in these films. Because of this, the very nature of desire and marriage are brought to light, portrayed in different forms and articulated in different terms; terms of philosophy, psychology, and religion. An examination of the dialogue as well as the verisimilitude evoked by Rohmer helps to understand the auteur’s importance to the evolution of modern western cinema.
Rohmer’s choice of subject is noteworthy. Bourgeois French society encourages a feeling of ennui (defined by OED online as: “listlessness or boredom out of lack of excitement”), and certainly the people portrayed in the Contes Moraux are acting in reaction to this feeling. The primary male protagonists of the ‘Contes Moraux III, V, VI’, the narrator of “Ma Nuit Chez Maud”, Jérôme, and Frédéric, are rarely seen working (although Frédéric is the only one shown at the law office where he works) and there certainly is enough leisure time to encourage conversation and facilitate an affair. Verisimilitude, according to the Oxford Online Dictionary, is defined as: “the appearance of being true or real”. Because of verisimilitude, it is already assumed that these characters exist, that they have some sort of predetermined function in the environment that the audience sees on screen. Rohmer does not waste much time with the characters back-stories, they are mentioned in passing. In other words, this verisimilitude is everything that the characters say among themselves in a given situation that is not concerned with informing the audience (10 Rohmer). Verisimilitude is the extra dialogue that infers the context of where the characters are and what they do on a day to-day basis without the direct dictation of that context. The three ‘Contes Moraux’ analyzed here are rampant with this sort of talk among the characters. The beauty of the portion of French society shown by Rohmer is that these people are educated and enjoy conversation; this modern culture is historically evolved from the tradition of the salon. However, because of the choice subject matter of these casual conversations in addition to the characters actions (direction of gaze, body language, etc.). The dialogue of the ‘Contes Moraux’ concerns every subject under the sun (except, of course, the weather as Aurora declares as a boring British tradition, in “Le Genou de Claire”) from religion to philosophy to romance to the character’s disposition and careers. To be discussed in greater detail later, despite the seeming triviality of the discourse, the true disposition of each character is exposed by a comparison of what they do and what they say.
It is perhaps because of the lack of need for action that these characters are tempted, out of boredom they search for some sort of excitement. Everything exciting and unconventional is embodied by the main female antagonists. It is merely the presence of these women that is the primary conflict. In “L’Amour l’apres-midi” Chloé surprises Frédéric at work and proceeds to make uninvited appearances at his office. Chloe is unlike Hélène in disposition, career choice, fashion, etc. She represents to Frédéric everything that Hélène could not, for Hélène is his wife and mother to his child. Perhaps that is why, at the very moment he must decide to sleep with Chloé he cannot - she would be evolving into a role that has, until this point, been occupied by Hélène. Chloé is a force of constant change, albeit transparently. She is explicit in stating her motives to Frédéric, although he merely takes what she says about having a child with him as an afterthought because of her dismissive tone until she is naked in front of him and he is forced into action.
Similarly, in “Ma Nuit Chez Maud” the narrator is (perhaps naively) deceived into spending the night with Maud. In this film, Maud is the dynamic opposite of the narrator as he is a devout Catholic and she an atheist. She is darker in complexion than Françoise and this has been argued to be symbolic of their spiritual connotations in relation to the narrator (57 Eric Rohmer). Each male protagonist’s passivity is implied in the dialogue and their surprised reactions at the brink of complete infidelity, but the camera captures a different perspective of the relationships. This is again, the advantage of film over textual description. In the opening to the Script for “Ma Nuit Chez Maud”, the narrator states “I will keep to a certain line, a certain order of events, a certain way in which one event succeeds another. But my feelings, my own opinions and beliefs, will not intrude upon the line of the story, even though they are at the forefront of the events described. I present them here without any desire to share them or justify them” (2 Rohmer III). Despite this narrative interjection about objectivity, it is apparent in the framework that the narrator is biased just by the very fact that he is an active participant in the story he is telling. Without attempting to justify anything, he does because of the fact that he is rationalizing his actions and behaviors based on his wants and needs. This does not translate directly to the film but is implied. The discussion about Pascal’s wager and the narrator’s emphasis on his choice to be a Catholic by acting accordingly reflects in the film, the contradiction of the text. The narrator’s general state of oblivion is also exuded by the body language of the other characters. Maud is obviously unresponsive to Valery’s hints at their past affair, but is flirtatious with her body movement as she sits near him. Because the narrator does not have sex with Maud it seems as though he has picked this up. However, when he is with Françoise, he is deluded by love and cannot see her obvious guilt until she is physically aloof on the hill-top.
Rohmer is distinct as an auteur because of his choice of manipulation of elements as well as the scope of his influence upon the film. Film can show more than one person’s behavior and attitudes without words. The dialogue and the words enhance what we see. Rohmer already had the images in his head and on paper in novella form; all that he had to do was get the equipment and actors to fit the parts (although the films were an evolution of the written texts, seen with “Le Genou de Claire” (60 Rohmer). As soon as the shift was made to film, the descriptive statements of the narrator (specifically of “Ma Nuit Chez Maud) were unnecessary. Instead, discussion could focus on larger issues such as politics and religion to make the characters more complex in their actions and their decisions more dramatic.
In France in the middle of the 20th century, these ‘Contes Moraux’ are set against a prescribed backdrop. In “Ma Nuit Chez Maud”, this is explicitly one of Provincial Catholicism and Pascal, outlining the film’s motif of reason pitted against faith. “Le Genou de Claire” is less explicit, set near a lake during the summer, although the cultural codes are implied in discussions of marriage, particularly Mme. W and Laura’s comments near the beginning of the film. Because many of the character’s foundational values and beliefs are indicated via verisimilitude, there is space for dialogue to be analyzed in terms of how the characters’ act in lieu of what they say. Of the three films, there is a different tone to the temptation. In “Le Genou de Claire” and “L’Amour l’apres-midi” the change to color from a black and white “Ma Nuit Chez Maud” changing the nature of the conflict; “here, for the first time, the focus is clearly set on the ethical and existential question of choice” (302 Rohmer).The act of desire has been repeatedly shown to be a vastly different action than an action based on that desire. Not intending to instigate a philosophical debate we will only mention that historically the relationship between passion and reason has never been successfully determined. Rohmer’s ‘Contes Moraux’ extrapolates this conflict into a modern French setting where the relationship between desire and rationality are antagonized by a conventional standard of time (times of work, vacation, meals, shopping, showering, etc.). Rohmer fails to make any ultimate assertions regarding this debate, but rather chooses to portray it in a setting familiar to him. Because of this setting each of the ‘Contes Moraux’ is a vignette of French bourgeois life and Rohmer is at liberty to play with the psychology of each character. One must understand how Frédéric’s understanding of his desire is different than that of Jérôme. The presence of Aurora helps to explain the difference. In “Le Genou de Claire”, Jérôme’s affairs with Laura and Claire are instigated by his friend Aurora, whom is enjoying manipulating her friend as though he was a character in one of her stories.
Each narrator expresses a sense of control over his actions and his desires, but is ultimately proven to be deluded. This is set against the narrator’s desire to relinquish responsibility for their feelings of infidelity. The narrator in “Ma Nuit Chez Maud” attributes his story to chance and coincidence but is conflicted by his sense of faith and religious righteousness. This is apparent in his introduction to Maud and their dinner discussion with Valery (who is a Marxist) as their reason and faith contradict his. In “L’Amour l’apres-midi” there is a sequence where Frédéric fantasizes about an amulet that removes women’s wills. Yet even in the fantasy Frédéric lacks complete control over all women. This dream is a parallel to the reality of his relationship with all women. This is understood when the shop girl sells him a shirt he didn’t know he wanted (until she told him how it suited him and was attractive). Like the shop girl, Chloe attempts to persuade Frédéric to love her. He relinquishes responsibility for the affair as Chloé’s sudden and unannounced appearances at Frédéric’s office relieve him somewhat of feelings of guilt. This aversion lasts until the moment of ultimate decision about his affair, the moment in which he is to sleep with Chloé. It is at this moment that Frédéric must realize that he does have control, but only of his own actions, despite everything he may have said up to this point. Jérôme likewise can relinquish responsibility for his desires because of Aurora’s manipulation of his view of Claire and Laura. Jérôme even plays the part and goes along with the ploy to play at love with Laura, until we see his desire truly manifest in obsession with Claire’s knee and his attitudes toward Claire’s boyfriend Gilles.
This calls into question the notions of narration. Consistently Rohmer proves that the person who tells the story is an unreliable interpreter of their own actions. This can be seen primarily in the conflict between what the characters in these films say and what they do. For example, Jérôme’s interpretation of his own desire, although projects sincerity, is ultimately ironic due to the nature of how his desire affects his behaviors when interacting with Laura and Claire. Rohmer explores this question dynamically in these films. Film allows essentially the same psychological conflict to be expressed from another perspective, although it is antagonized by different external factors (marriage, faith, age, class, etc). The narrator is perhaps not intentionally dishonest, but instead constantly negotiating a sense of morality, of right and wrong in lieu of their wants and needs resulting in a narration that is inconsistent. A character’s rationalization of their desire is an act that reinforces that desire up until the moment of decision. Despite his initiative, the narrator at Maud’s realizes that stating he has had affairs with women and actually having an affair with Maud are conflicting. By not having an affair he is reinforcing his status as a devout Catholic, but the audience can see the contradiction of his dialogue.
Only as a series can anything poignant about human nature (or Rohmer as an auteur) be mentioned because each film is a story and comparatively the same story. It is the continuity and digression of themes in the characters’ behaviors that reflects the behaviors of people outside the films. Rohmer evokes an existential debate regarding the nature of action, what is said, and what one wants versus reality and other external factors. Desires primarily exist in a void for the lack of what a person desires is exactly what fuels the desire. The act of desiring is reinforced by speech acts but the acquisition of the object of desire eliminates it. For as soon as Jérôme touches Claire’s knee he declares his hunger satiated, and now his engagement can progress as planned. The moment at which Frédéric is to sleep with Chloe he cannot – for his desires are conflicting. He desires what his wife cannot give him, and what marriage provides for him at the same time. In the end, he chooses that status quo. Because of the structure of the ‘Contes Moraux’ the greatest action is not an action at all. In these films the greatest acts are speech acts, in which the characters rant and rave about this and that but in the end do nothing except return to the path their life was on before. This is distinctly Rohmer. Rohmer’s status as an auteur is marked by this dialogue heavy series. It is in this series that the nature of everything is questioned: the nature of debate, of existence, of faith, of reason, of action, of marriage, of love, etc. etc.
Now the stage is set for Krysztov Kieslowski, a Polish director whose influence in the cinematic tradition has reached a Post-Modern America. Kieslowski’s style has obvious parallels to that of both Antonioni and Rohmer, but with a unique emphasis on music that his two predecessors discussed previously, lack . Kieslowski’s characters must negotiate their internal nature in spite of external factors, to varying degrees of success. For example, in the series “Dekalog”, based conceptually on the Ten Commandments, Kieslowski creates a framework that echoes that of “the Contes Moraux”. The characters are faced with conflicts of morality, although their desires and actions rely heavily on the actions of others. In “Dekalog II”, Dorota, whose husband is ill in the hospital, wages her pregnancy on his condition. In this case, the doctor makes the decision to falsely predict her husband’s death in order to save the unborn child. Whether the lie was right or wrong is uncertain, but the fact remains that the doctor took action to drastically affect the lives of the other characters.
In “Dekalog VIII”, the plot of II is narrated by a university student and drives the action for the two main protagonists. The professor states that the life of the child is the most important, sparking her visitor, a younger woman, to tell a story about a woman who turns away a child during the Holocaust. The professor discusses character types, or prototypes that are present in everyday life, but can be analyzed in such narrations. With a glance from a student toward the professor during her guest’s narration, the audience can infer that the woman of the narration is the professor who looks increasingly disturbed by the guest’s tale. Kieslowski is a master of the use of shots of such glances and pauses to communicate with the audience. The young woman explicitly invokes details about the evening of their first meeting, including the mismatched china and setting of the table, later shown when the women share tea together. The teacup collection is a symbol of the professor, who has few visitors and presumably few tea guests. Shots of the different cups in a single set are symbolic of the distinct individuals that drink from them, united by their location.The dialogue, in the style of Rohmer, reflects how the characters cope with their conditions. This is most apparent when the woman inquires about her past and buys the professor flowers. The flowers, which we see the professor buy earlier in the film and another bouquet that joins her gift, are a source of comfort and joy, something the young woman wants to encourage in the professor before discussing uncomfortable subjects. When the professor begins to talk about the flowers instead of continuing the conversation about why she denied sanctuary to the woman when she was younger, the latter simply asks another question in order to direct the conversation in a direction the professor does not want to go. The professor later reveals to the younger woman the context of her abandonment, changing her lifelong perspective of the experience, although the material elements of her memories remain the same, proving that a persons understanding of something is severely limited to their experience. Only when the experience of the young woman clashes with that of the professor, can the audience perceive what actually happened that night or the professor’s motives.
This is an example of how Kieslowski exposes the manipulative nature of his characters. Certain physical elements help to signify this theme throughout the series, such as Dorota’s destruction of a potted plant in her apartment in “Dekalog II” when the doctor will not give her a prediction of her husband’s fate. When the Doctor makes small talk, she is responsive, but the severity of her anxiety worsens, apparent when the Doctor asks about a cat that has fallen out a window and she is silent. Dorotea’s continuous questioning of the doctor juxtaposed with her silence to his questions draw the doctor out of his reservations until he asks the questions Dorota wants to discuss.
The theme of morality and manipulation extends to Kieslowski’s series “Trois Coleurs”, in which each of the three films is indicative of France’s national motto, “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. “Rouge” represents Fraternity and the screen around Valentine almost always has red in each shot. She accidentally hits a dog with a car and returns it to its master, Le Juge, whose attitude toward the dog is distant and apathetic. His distance from his dog reflects his disassociation with other people. This is later encouraged by the fact that he invites Valentine to discover his eavesdropping habits as he leaves the recordings playing loudly and inviting her in to collect a reward for the salvation of his dog. Valentine’s desire to act on the basis of her values ends in failure when she cannot expose an affair one of the subjects of the eavesdropping. Despite the man’s infidelity and deceit, Valentine cannot tell anything to his wife and daughter. Even though she knows what someone else is doing is wrong, it is not her place to do anything about it. Her respect of privacy combined with her conflicting sense of justice results in a friendship between Valentine and Le Juge. As a result of the accident, this relationship motivates Le Juge to confess to his violations of the privacy of his neighbors, and live his life according to the ideals he advocated before he retired.
In the series, the colors that share the titles of each of the three films are visually vibrant and consistently present in the majority of the frames. The colors are leit motifs, unconventional metaphors that signify the tonality of each film. This echoes the style of Antonioni, whose “Il Deserto Rosso” projects vibrant industrial colors to emphasize the severity of Guilana’s condition. “Bleu”, is the most obvious result of this influence, but Kieslowski adds his own flair of dramatic music to bombard the audience’s senses and invoke sympathetic emotions to that of the characters. The grand orchestral music combined with blue light and a close-up of Julie Vignon de Courcy to represent a wave of emotion as she mourns her dead daughter and husband. This visual and musical element is written into the plot with the fact that de Corcy- Julie’s recently deceased husband, was a composer, and blue is the color of a beaded chandelier that hung in her daughter’s room.
Although Antonioni’s films “L’Avventura”, “La Notte”, “L’Ecclise”, and “Il Deserto Rosso” have no explicit overarching structure, the four films remain united as a series because of their similarity of plot and main female lead, Monica Vitti. Like Rohmer’s “Contes Moraux”, and Kieslowski’s “Dekalog” and “Trois Coleurs”, Antonioni’s series exposes the variability of human nature, despite seemingly identical external conditions. In each of the worlds these directors create, there are prescribed rules and codes of conduct that regulate behavior in each society. The ways in which the directors establish this world vary; from the meeting of friends who have not seen each other for years to people conducting their everyday routine the audience gets to know who these people are and can, as a result, become engaged in the film. The relationships these people form and break are continually being developed and take a course of their own, one not even the auteur can predict, until the actors begin to make the characters come alive. The relationships of these films are antagonized by conflict and the result is the exposure of the characters’ notions of right and wrong, and how they adjust accordingly. This trio of auteurs is fundamental to the psychological cinematic revolution and cannot possibly be ignored when examining the history of film, the notions of storytelling, or the logic (or lack thereof) of people’s actions and behaviors.
Works Cited
Antonioni, Michelangelo,“L’Avventura”. Criterion Collection. 1988
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Moses, Gavriel. “Auteur Effect”. Film 151 Reader. 5 October 2010.
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Rohmer, Eric. III “My Night at Maud’s”. from Six MoralTales. trans by Sabine d’Estree.
Rohmer, Eric. V “Claire’s Knee”. from Six Moral Tales. trans by Sabine d’Estree.
Sitney, P Adams. “Vital Crises in Cinema”. 1995
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Ward, David. Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture. Ed. G Baranski Zygmunt and Rebecca J West. Cambridge University Press. 2001. pp 15-96.