Film (film)

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Movie
German title Movie
Original title Movie
Country of production United States
Publishing year 1965
length 22 minutes
Rod
Director Alan Schneider
script Samuel Beckett
production Barney Rosset
Evergreen Theater
camera Boris Kaufman
cut Sydney Meyers
occupation

Film is a 1965 American short film based on a script by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett . It is a black and white film with no dialogues or accompanying music. Its simple plot is based on the fact that the camera is included in the film as an observing actor. Beckett designates the protagonist, played by the aged silent film star Buster Keaton , with O for object , and he designates the camera following the protagonist with E for eye . The film plays with both perspectives and is ultimately about the inevitability of self-awareness and the fact that one cannot escape one's own existence.

action

The first shot shows a close-up of an elderly person's eye that has just opened. An elderly man, referred to as O, hurries away from the camera, which Beckett refers to as E, through an inhospitable urban area. He walks along a large wall in the blazing sunshine over uneven, stone-strewn ground. O tries to avoid being observed by the camera and contact with two other passers-by whose path he is crossing. When the passers-by look at the camera, E, after Os disappears, they react indignantly and horrified, the man starts to talk, the woman leaves him with a 'shhhh!' fall silent.

When he arrives in his apartment building, O first hides from an old woman who comes towards him in the entrance area. When the woman looks up and looks at E, i.e. looking into the camera, her expression changes from mild to horrified and she collapses. O sneaks past her up the stairs.

In his barren, run-down apartment, O sets out to destroy, cover up or remove everything that could observe him or make it possible to observe him, even by himself: the window, a picture of a figure on the wall, a wall mirror. He also has to take care of various pets that O keeps in his apartment: he carries the cat and dog out of the apartment one after the other. The parrot cage and fishbowl are covered with fabric. Even objects that only vaguely resemble eyes attract O's attention, such as the carving on a rocking chair.

After O has wandered around the room for a while and comes to rest after eliminating all possible glances at him, he sits down in the rocking chair and looks at some photos from different phases of his life one after the other. Then he tears them up in reverse order and drops them to the ground. When he then falls asleep in the rocking chair, E moves slowly around him and finally gets a look at O's face: the old man wears an eye patch over one eye. O awake. In the opposite shot , the viewer recognizes what O is seeing: He sees himself standing on the wall opposite, looking at himself. O is therefore identical to E. Horrified, he covers his face with his hands. The last shot is identical to the first: a human eye that opens.

production

Idea and pre-production

The cornerstone of the project was an idea from the film's producer , Barney Rosset. He has published plays for his publisher Grove Press since 1951 . Together with two employees from Grove Press , Richard Seaver and Fred Jordan , and the theater director Alan Schneider, he founded the film production company Evergreen Theater around 1962 . Her goal was to adapt film scripts written specifically for the cinema by well-known dramatists. However, some of your requests to various authors were rejected. B. by Jean Genet , other playwrights wrote screenplays for feature films, including Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet . In the end, Evergreen Theater decided to make shorter film scripts by Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco and Harold Pinter as one episode of a full-length feature film. Beckett's film was the only one of these three works that was actually made into a film. Ionesco's script could not be implemented at the time due to the high requirements for the special effects, Pinter's script, according to Rosset, was only later filmed by the BBC .

The then 58-year-old Samuel Beckett embarked on a long-awaited trip to the USA for the project to accompany the production of the film. His one month stay there was his only visit to the USA. Beckett had shown an interest in cinema before and even wrote a letter to Sergei Eisenstein at a time when he was looking for a job , but the script for the film and his collaboration in the production remained Beckett's only work in the cinema. Afterwards, however, he worked a few more times for television, and Beckett's plays were also filmed several times.

Cast and staff

Main actor Buster Keaton

As a director of film of at was Evergreen Theater involved theater director Alan Schneider elected, among other things, several plays of Beckett had staged in the US and successfully on Broadway worked in New York. Film was Schneider's first and only film director.

Boris Kaufman was chosen as the cameraman . Rosset disliked his work under Jean Vigo on L'Atalante and behaved poorly . Shortly after the death of his brother Dsiga Wertow , Kaufman received an Oscar and a Golden Globe for his camera work on Die Faust im Nacken in 1955 .

For the main role of O, the former silent film star Buster Keaton was hired. He wasn't the first choice for the lead role; the part Charlie Chaplin , Zero Mostel and Jack MacGowran had previously been offered, but were not available. Years earlier, Keaton had turned down an offer to play the role of Lucky in a production of Waiting for Godot . At the time of film production, his silent films were rediscovered and received late acclaim from critics and audiences.

There are different versions of how Keaton got the role. The theater and film actor James Karen , who plays a passerby in the film, knew both Schneider from a theater production and Keaton from a joint tour with the play Merton of the Movies in the 1950s. Since Karen “talked incessantly about Keaton” to Schneider , he suspected that this was one of the reasons why Keaton had started talking about the role of O. Beckett's biographer Knowlson, on the other hand, reports that Keaton joined the project at Beckett's suggestion after Beckett's preferred MacGowran accepted another film engagement. A short time later, Beckett was able to realize the television game He Joe with MacGowran .

Filming and implementation

The shooting took place in New York in the summer of 1964. Many reporters and onlookers accompanied the external shooting of the opening scenes on a wall near the Brooklyn Bridge , including Allen Ginsberg , Alain Resnais and Delphine Seyrig . These outdoor shots, in particular, were a major challenge for newcomers Beckett and Schneider. The summer heat was great, and the inexperience of the team, particularly director Schneider, meant that the outdoor shots on the first few days of shooting did not turn out as expected. The budget did not allow a repetition. Beckett was satisfied with the successful parts, especially since the interior shots ran better afterwards.

Schneider and Beckett hardly wanted to deviate from the precise script, which precisely described the actions of the people and in particular the furnishings of O's apartment. This left Keaton little room for improvisation that would have approximated his style of making films. The script also required that the main character of the O should be seen almost exclusively from behind. Keaton always has his back to the camera and constantly turns away when the camera tries to look around him. Keaton's face cannot be seen until shortly before the end of the film. Beckett let him wear the hats he had brought with him, pork pie hats . This trademark makes the identity of O's performers recognizable from the start.

Beckett, Keaton and Schneider collaborate

While Schneider was nominally the director, Beckett played an equally important role in the production of the film. According to Schneider later, he had precise ideas in mind and tried to implement them.

The collaboration between Beckett and Schneider on the one hand and Keaton on the other turned out to be difficult. On the one hand, this was due to the fact that both Beckett and Schneider were luminaries in their respective fields, but newcomers to film. The almost seventy-year-old Keaton, on the other hand, had made films decades earlier that are now considered to be among the best of their time. In the words of a film employee : “The film was written by a great poet who knew nothing about film, directed by a man of the theater who knew nothing about film, the star of the film was a man who knew everything about film. “It was clear to Samuel Beckett that Keaton was ahead of him here. Beckett also perceived Keaton as withdrawn and arrested in the past, describing the conversation between them as monosyllabic. Nevertheless, Beckett praised and admired the professionalism of Keaton, who carried out the stage directions without complaint even in the summer heat.

Film analysis

Beckett's idea

Beckett's film is based on the perception of the Irish philosopher George Berkeley , that being perceived the existence constituted of man: Esse est percipi (dt .: His is perceived ). Even when others no longer notice you, you still notice yourself. A complete negation of one's own being would therefore have to include the fact that one ceases to perceive oneself or to be perceived by divine, omniscient observers. When O faces himself at the end of the film, he realizes that in the end he cannot hide from himself. Although Schneider initially had the impression Buster Keaton could not do much with the concept, Keaton summed up the essence of the idea, however, aptly thus: "A man may keep away from everybody, but he can not get away from himself." (Dt : A person can stay away from everyone else, he cannot escape himself. )

O as the name of the otherwise nameless protagonist is object ( object ), the camera if they pursued as observing camera setting Os ways described Beckett as E for eye (eye). The Eye was originally intended to be the title of the film. Beckett conceived two different cinematic representations for O and E. The optics of the picture alternates between an observer's perspective and a subjective camera, which represents O's view and appears slightly blurred, as if O were defective .

The film is not revealed by sight alone. Ruth Perlmutter points out in an essay on film that some technical and textual aspects only become apparent when you read the film script parallel to the film. Beckett noted there that the picture on the wall that O destroyed is an image of God. In addition, Beckett explicitly included the possibility that O was in his mother's room, which allows further oedipal interpretations. Beckett is said to have a tense, ambivalent relationship with his mother.

Ernst Wendt points out in a film review that the rocking chair, “Beckett's beloved prop”, also appears in other works and can be viewed as a kind of “death swing”. In Beckett's first novel Murphy from 1938, for example, the title character sits down on a rocking chair, ties himself to it and sets himself on fire. Further references to Beckett's work can be found: The scarf that O wears in front of his face at the beginning can be seen as a parallel to the blood-stained scarf that Hamm wears at the beginning of Beckett's play Endspiel from 1957. And the images that O destroys also find a parallel in Beckett's oeuvre, in the theater play The Last Tape (Krapp's Last Tape) , published in 1959 , as a form of viewing memories of oneself. They represent the “fulfilled moments of his life optical pose frozen ”, but unlike Krapp, O is not able to endure these memories.

Keaton's contribution

Buster Keaton tried to bring in his interpretation of the O gag. For the most part, this was not accepted by Beckett. The only sequence that is visibly influenced by Keaton is the one in which O takes the pets out of the apartment: O carries the cat out first, then the dog, only to find the cat is back in the apartment. When he brings her out again, the dog sneaks back inside. So it goes back and forth a few times , to O's despair . Beckett thought the sequence ended up being too long. Robert Knopf states that the scene is not too long, but that the cut did not do justice to the whole thing - it does not savor the comic moment, but breaks off in several shots too early, which disrupts the rhythm of the comedy. Beckett said the scene was, in his opinion, the only one Keaton enjoyed filming.

Publication and reception

publication

The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival on September 4, 1965 a year after the shooting was completed . The film collector Raymond Rohauer, who is responsible for saving many of Keaton's silent films from decay and oblivion, had advocated the showing of films with the festival director . The silent film legend Keaton was celebrated for minutes in Venice with a standing ovation. Only a few months later, on February 1, 1966, Keaton died of lung cancer.

The producers had previously had massive difficulties getting the completed short film to screen in the United States. This only changed when Amos Vogel, the director of the New York Film Festival at the time, agreed to show the film at the festival in autumn 1965 as part of a small Buster-Keaton retrospective.

However, the short film did not get into the regular film distribution. Only a few performances z. Subsequently, for example, at universities or in short film programs, Beckett and Keaton fans became a kind of underground audience at the end of the 1960s . Accordingly, the film was not a commercial success. The producer Rosset states that, firstly, they may have spent too much money on the film, and secondly, they had almost no income from the (meager) theatrical exploitation.

Film review for the release of the film

For its European and US premieres, there have been several publications by film critics in European and US newspapers and film magazines.

Its premiere on September 4, 1965 at the Venice Film Festival received a very positive review by Karl Kern in the FAZ on September 6, 1965. Even Ernst Wendt commented in the journal film positive. He described the film as a kind of "silent endgame " and wrote that "Beckett's clairvoyant despair" was communicated in it. Wendt praised the “optical asceticism” of the camera, which he distinguished from the “fashionable attitudes of an over-emancipated camera”.

The film critic Frieda Grafe , however, could film in their criticism for the magazine film critics not interesting to you. Grafe, who was positive about Keaton's earlier work, complained above all that Keaton was chosen for the film. She writes: “Above all, one seems to have overlooked one's past, an extraordinarily lively past. It does not fit into Beckett's concept, it cancels it. ”The figure of Buster Keaton seems like“ a magnet that alone determines the field of metal chips ”. She misses Beckett's strength, his language and experiences film as a film of an empty room.

When it premiered in the US at the New York Film Festival on September 14, 1965, the film also met with rejection. The film had been included in a night-before-night program in honor of the absent Buster Keaton and was shown between The Railrodder and Seven Chances . According to his own admission, the film's director, Alan Schneider, foresaw that it would not be a good idea to run film with other Buster Keaton films: people expected slapstick , the film could not offer. In fact, the criticism that appeared in the New York Times the following day was anything but positive. The Railrodder , a short film from 1965 with Keaton as the only actor, in which he crossed Canada in a small rail vehicle, was well received by the audience. Film as the second part of the program disappointed the moviegoers. Keaton was only shown from behind and the story of the film was rather sparse, the typical Keaton humor was only present in a few scenes. The feature film that concluded the program was shot by Keaton in 1925 at the height of his film career, when he had his own studio under Joseph Schenck . Seven Chances was in stark contrast to film and enjoyed by the audience. Schneider, who attended the performance, confirmed the audience's reaction to film as very negative.

Reception in the 1990s

The author Jim Kline wrote in 1993 that he saw Keaton as the perfect cast for the role, because he was implementing Beckett's bleak view, but was still maintaining his independence as a character. Kline sees the film as a “perfect combination of two different styles that complement each other”. If the two artists had tried to work together more closely, the end would have been different. The “bogeyman” that O faces at the end might have got a cream cake, or O and E would have let themselves be carried away to a dance together, as Keaton did with other doppelgangers of himself in his short film The Playhouse .

Robert Knopf wrote about the film in 1999 that Keaton and Beckett had only a few points of contact, but that their work together turned out to be strangely powerful. In the end, the film is perceived more as a Buster Keaton film than a work by Samuel Beckett, especially since the character Keaton is recognizable from the start.

Awards

Film received an award at the Venice Festival in 1965, as well as awards from the London 1965 Festival, Oberhausen 1966 and Tours 1966.

literature

  • Film: Complete Scenario, Illustrations, Production shots , Faber & Faber, ISBN 0-571-09942-4 . (With an essay by Alan Schneider, "On directing Film")
  • Al McKee: Buster's Hat . In: Film Quarterly . No. 4, Volume 57 (2003/2004), pp. 31-34.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Description by Barney Rosset, from Lost & Found: On Samuel Beckett's FILM ( February 25, 2008 memento in the Internet Archive ), accessed on February 18, 2008
  2. ↑ a b c d James Knowlson: Samuel Beckett. Eine Biographie , Frankfurt am Main, 2001, pp. 654–660
  3. ↑ James Knowlson: Samuel Beckett. Eine Biographie , Frankfurt am Main 2001, p. 294
  4. ^ A b c Marion Meade: Cut to the Chase . New York 1995, pp. 294-297
  5. ↑ cf. Archived copy ( Memento of July 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved February 18, 2008
  6. ↑ a b c d accounts by Samuel Beckett and James Karen, from http://www.iol.ie/%7egalfilm/filmwest/22brown.htm, accessed on February 18, 2008
  7. ↑ a b c d e f g cf. Robert Knopf: The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton , Princeton 1999, pp. 143-148
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h Alan Schneider: On directing Film (1969), essay accessed from http://www.ubu.com/papers/beckett_schneider.html on February 18, 2008
  9. ^ "Film (1965) by Samuel Beckett" ( Memento from August 29, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ a b c Jim Kline: The Complete Film of Buster Keaton , Citadel Press, New York 1993, pp. 211-213
  11. ↑ a b Ruth Perlmutter : “Beckett's Film and Beckett and Film”, in the Journal of Modern Literature 1977, No. 1, pp. 83-94
  12. ↑ Gaby Hartel, Carola Veit: Samuel Beckett , Suhrkamp BasisBiografie, Frankfurt am Main, 2006, p. 14
  13. ↑ a b c Ernst Wendt: Invocation of the Great Bear and Salto in the Desert , in Film No. 10, 1965, pp. 16-29
  14. ↑ David Shepard's report on Keaton's films saved ( Memento April 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ^ Marion Meade: Cut to the Chase . New York 1995, p. 300
  16. ^ Karl Kern, film review on film , in the FAZ from September 6, 1965
  17. ^ A b Frieda Grafe : Film , in: Film criticism from October 1965, p. 591 in the annual collection
  18. ↑ cf. z. B. Frieda Grafe, Enno Patalas: Buster , reprint of a text from the film review from 1964, in Im Off. Filmartikel , Munich 1974, p. 178 ff.
  19. ↑ a b cf. Review by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times September 15, 1965, p. 41
  20. ^ Robert Knopf: The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton . Princeton 1999, p. 35
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on November 18, 2008 in this version .