• Bible Films Blog

    Looking at film interpretations of the stories in the Bible - past, present and future, as well as preparation for a future work on Straub/Huillet's Moses und Aron and a few bits and pieces on biblical studies.


    Name:
    Matt Page

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    U.K.












    Sunday, September 30, 2018

    La vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ (1898)


    The first biblical films date all the way back to 1897. Albert "Léar" Kirchner's La Passion du Christ and The Horitz Passion Play by Mark Klaw and Abraham Erlanger, are now, sadly, considered lost, as is Siegmund Lubin's The Passion Play from the following year.1 In a similar manner almost all of the 1898 silent The Passion Play of Oberammergau, which was famously shot on a New York rooftop rather than in Bavaria, has been lost, though a fragment has survived.2

    The earliest remaining Bible film, then, is La vie et la passion de Jésus-Christ (The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, available online here) by George Hatot and Louis Lumière. Shot in France 1898 when most moving pictures were little more than short slices of real life (les actualités) it retains something of that documentary feel - is this a film about Jesus or the filming of a real-life play about Jesus? Any audience is kept off screen, but the sets retain the feel of an amateur stage production. Furthermore, the placing of the camera in several scenes feels as if it is placed at the side of an audience. These aspects are perhaps most obvious in the crucifixion scene where the shadow of the cross falls not across the ground, but against the back wall. Strangely the scene that feels most like it has been made with the camera in mind - the Garden of Gethsemane - is the one shot outdoors in the most natural setting. At the time documentary footage was commonly shot outside. Drama tended to be set indoors.

    Louis Lumière, of course, was the man who, along with his brother Auguste, "invented" cinema, by being the first to display moving pictures to a paying audience. The company the two founded for a while specialised in these actualités but also made comedies and the occasional reconstruction of historical events. Hatot was one of their key early collaborators, first on early documentary footage, but around this time also began to specialise in reconstructions of famous deaths including Mort de Robespierre (1897) and the execution of another religious martyr in Exécution de Jeanne d'Arc (1897).3

    Whilst the title of this film is The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ, very little of Jesus' ministry is actually shown. The film starts with the Magi and the Shepherds worshipping Jesus as a baby in a manger, and is followed by a flight to Egypt scene where Mary, Joseph and Jesus stop to rest between the paws of a/the Sphinx. It's a scene that would be reproduced almost fifteen years later in From the Manger to the Cross, only that time shot on location in Egypt.

    All that lies between that and Jesus' Passion is a solitary miracle - the raising of the Widow of Nain's son. This scene is rare in Jesus movies, providing neither the human interest of the raising of Jairus' daughter, nor the prophetic resonance of Lazarus breaking out of his tomb. Here though is is handled in a relatively low key manner. The adult son is brought out to Jesus on a stretcher. Jesus (Gaston Bretteau) simply raises his arm and the man sits up, his sheet falling away as he does so.

    The lack of spectacle at this point is made all the more interesting by the inclusion of an invented miracle slightly later on. The Last Super scene, shot statically, from slightly close up, starts focused on Jesus' empty chair whilst various preparations are made. Suddenly there's a cut and Jesus appears in their midst. The disciples react with astonishment.

    Such jump-cut reappearances were relatively common at the time. Georges Méliès was in his prime and produced numerous short films making use of the technique that same year. These included the religious picture  La tentation de Saint-Antoine (The Temptation of St. Anthony) which featured the titular saint desperately trying to keep his mind on his prayers whilst young women keep materialising to tempt him, including including a moment when a statue of Jesus comes to life. Not only did this make him a forerunner of all those directors who entertained their audiences with a potent mixture of sex and religion, but when the following year he used his camera tricks to portray one of Jesus' miracles in Le Christ marchant sur les flots (Christ Walking on the Water, 1899), he became the first filmmaker to create both a reverent film about Jesus and an irreverent comic depiction of the crucifixion.

    More to the point, Georges Hatot himself, having started his career making actualité films of every life such as street scenes and military parades, began elaborating on the jump-cut technique. Whereas it is absent from his 1897 film Mort de Marat, and only used once in Métamorphose de Faust (1897). Having made La vie et la passion the following year, he then moved to Gaumont with Bretteau (who had played Jesus) to remake the Faust story. The resulting Les métamorphoses de Satan (1898), which Bretteau both starred in and co-directed made repeated use of the tec"hnique to portray as Mephistoles, Satan and a young woman continuously appear and disappear.

    It's more than possible, of course, that the jump-cut scene in La vie et la passion was at one stage intended as the episode in Luke where the resurrected Jesus miraculously appears amongst the disciples, but the resulting scene here is quite clearly The Last Supper: not only are their echoes of Leonardo's painting, but Jesus distributes the bread and wine and Judas kisses him on the cheek.

    The success of this film did little to dissuade other filmmakers from producing their own versions of Jesus' life and death. In particular, Pathé brought out their own tableaux-style Jesus film called La vie et la Passion de Christ in 1899 which gradually expanded (in both number of scenes and title length) through three new versions around up to 1913. There are a few posts on these films (now including this one) on this thread. The relationship between them itself is fairly complex. Hopefully I will be able to expand on it some point, but if you can't wait until then I encourage you to look up Boillat and Robert's article as detailed below.

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    1 - Boillat, Alain and Robert, Valentine. (2016) "La Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1902–05)" in The Silents of Jesus in the Cinema (1897-1927); ed. Shepherd, David. p. 27

    2 - According to Kinnard and Davis, a 35mm fragment of the film remains in the George Eastman House archives. The film was produced by Rich G. Hollaman despite the fact he had never actually seen a movie before. He proved so inept at the task that the rest of the cast and crew teamed up to shoot it in the early evening once he had left for the day. These days Henry C. Vincent is credited with being the director, but this marked the first time the roles of producer and director had been separated (The Guinness Book of Film Facts and Feats).

    3 - Abel, Richard (1994) The Cine Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914, Berkeley: University of California Press. p.91 The observation about famous deaths is thanks to Luke McKernan.

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    Sunday, September 23, 2018

    The Bible: In the Beginning (1966)


    The Bible (John Huston, 1966) has come to be known, somewhat unfairly, as the film that killed the biblical epic. It's a charge that somehow persists despite three major objections. Firstly, it hardly makes sense to blame a single film for destroying a genre, and even if did, that accusation should surely be pointed at The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) which blew £25 million for very little return, rather than at this. Secondly because rather than being an example of the worst of the genre it is surely one of it's best. Indeed, in concluding his masterful survey of the films of the Hebrew Bible, Jon Solomon cites it as one of the three "most representative and iconographical Old Testament depictions of the twentieth century" (175).

    More significantly, of course is the fact that rumours of the genre's demise turn out to have been greatly exaggerated. Whilst Jesus Christ, Superstar, released just seven short years later, is not exactly an epic, it would have seemed hard to argue in 1973, that the Hollywood Bible film was enjoying anything other than reasonable health.

    Huston himself was one of the greatest figures in Hollywood. He burst onto the scene in 1941 with the brilliant PI flick The Maltese Falcon before heading to the front line of World War II and creating a series of documentaries for the army. Key Largo and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (both 1948) reunited him with Bogart, as did The African Queen (1951) and the spoof, Beat the Devil (1953) and his catalogue of famous films extended all the way beyond Prizzi's Honor in 1985. In between times he found time to continue the Hollywood dynasty founded by his father Walter, with three of his five children (Anjelica, Tony and Danny) going on to have prominent roles in Hollywood, as well as his grandson Jack, who had the lead role in the 2016 version of Ben-Hur.

    Houston acted too., Most famously in Polanski's Chinatown (1974), but also here as an amiable Noah. Both Alec Guinness and Charlie Chaplin had initially been considered for the role, but Huston brings a cheerful sense of purpose to the impending destruction of humankind.  All this however is only after a masterful creation sequence and the sight of Michael Parks and Ulla Bergryd cavorting in the altogether behind a series of strategically-placed plants.

    For the opening sequences, Huston narrates the opening chapter of Genesis over a series of stunning collection of images of the natural world: molten lava bubbles and flows as the land is separated from the sea; a gigantic sun rises, and moves across the skies, as the greater light is brought forth; and swarms of fish burst through the waters of the deep, as the creatures of the seas are created.

    What is impressive about the creation sequence, in addition to the jaw dropping beauty of the images, is the way they so skilfully plot a course between a seven-day type literalist interpretation on the one hand, and more metaphorical readings on the other. Just like the written text, the viewer looks at the raw material and is able to apply their own interpretation. Furthermore, even after numerous nature documentaries and a number of cheap rip-offs the sequence still creates a sense of awe, even if Huston's use of the archaic King James Version and one of the more conventional parts of the soundtrack date things a little.

    The soundtrack excels elsewhere however. Following the creation of Adam, and then Eve the fall and the scenes where Cain (Richard Harris) kills his brother are accompanied by more atonal music. This combined with the bizarre poses Harris strikes, and the low and then high camera angles make this whole sequence strange and disorientating. Whilst the narration is rigidly literal to the text, the film uses the more cinematic elements of image and sound to suggest this more mythical reading.

    The one exception to this is Huston's Noah segment, which goes for more of a light-hearted family comedy feel. Gone is the slavish dependence (or at least the appearance of it) on the biblical text. Instead get other characters get to speak, such as Noah's wife who doesn't quite understand what is happening and Noah's disbelieving compatriots insulting him and calling him "stupid".Noah himself gets to use words and phrases not found in the text of Genesis such as when he suggests that the tigers are "only great cats" who can survive on milk from the other animals. Interspersed with this we get Huston mugging for the camera, visual jokes about the tortoises being last on to the arc and the slapstick spectacle of Noah sticking his foot in a bucket of pitch and sliding down the top deck. It's not that these homely touches are necessarily that bad, just that they feel somewhat out of place with the broody, otherworldly tone struck by the rest of the film. Huston rarely appeared in his own pictures, and perhaps this misstep gives a suggestion as to why. With that on top of having to manage an on-set zoo, it's hardly surprising he was repeatedly heard to quip "I don't know how God managed, I'm having a terrible time" (Huston 320).

    In some ways, however, the film's episodic and inconsistent nature does mark it as a film of transition. Following the poor box office performance by both The Bible and The Greatest Story Ever Told, big studios seemed more reluctant to outlay immense budgets for biblical epics. Instead the 70s were featured the broadcast of numerous made-for-TV series marking the "migration of biblical narratives into the medium of television" (Meyer 232).

    The rest of the film returns to this more pre-historic feel, aided by some fantastic high contrast lighting with gives so much of the film this eerie aura. Stephen Boyd's Nimrod, complete with a painted on mono-brow, shots his arrow to the sky and quickly finds there is no longer anyone who can understand his orders and then we swiftly move on to the sight of George C. Scott's Abraham leaving Ur.

    Again the film does well presenting the main stories here (birth of Ishmael, visitation of the angels, the fall of Sodom and the aborted sacrifice of Isaac) in biblically faithful fashion whilst also questioning the legitimacy of that presentation. Particularly strange is the sight of Abraham's three ethereal visitors interchangeably using Peter O'Toole's head and an orgy scene dreamed up for Sodom that is more creepy than it is titillating.

    The way these scenes pan out leaves Abraham's story, which comprises almost the film's entire second act, as some sort of hope for humanity, even as it hints of the rocky, even traumatic road ahead. The jump from a scene of he and Isaac walking stealthily through the chillingly charred remains of Sodom, to preparing for Abraham to kill his child, provokes anger rather than reverence. Abraham is troubled, but also haunted by the temperamental God who commands him. His willingness to sacrifice his son is more an act of fear of what might happen if he refuses than one of faithful service.

    It's a fitting end to what is - in contrast to the majority of epics that went before it - "a personal film on a gigantic scale (Forshey 146). In some ways that is far more reflective of Genesis itself. Whilst chapter one paints of a broad scale, from there on in it's the story of God with a string of individuals - Adam, Cain, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Huston's film not only gets this, but its highly literal narration, in tandem with its dark and primitive feel, underlines the mythological nature of the texts giving much of the film a strange sense of the dawn of time, and the primitive nature of the cultures involved. Whilst the change of tone in the Noah section is a little misplaced, it's hard to deny to boldness of Huston's artistic vision.
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    - Forshey, Gerald E. (1992) American Religious and Biblical Spectaculars Westport CT: Praeger.
    - Huston, John (1981) An Open Book. London: Macmillian.
    - Meyer, Stephen C. (2015) Epic Sound: Music in Postwar Hollywood Biblical Films, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
    - Solomon, Jon. (2001) The Ancient World in the Cinema, (Revised and expanded edition). New Haven: Yale University Press.

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    Thursday, September 20, 2018

    Giuda (Judas, 1911)


    Earlier in the year South West Silents organised an event called Treasures from the Turin Film Museum at the Watershed Cinema in Bristol which featured five silent Italian films with an ancient world theme including Pastrone’s Fall of Troy (1911) and two films produced by Arturo Ambrosio, The Last Days of Pompeii (1910) and Giuda (Judas, 1911)

    None of the main texts from which I would expect to find something about the film even mentioned it. Neither David Shepherd's "The Bible on Silent Film", nor Campbell and Pitts' "The Bible on Film", nor Giorgio Bertellini's "Italian Silent Cinema" even mention it. Thankfully Carol O'Sullivan was kind enough to provide the summary she wrote for the screening notes for the afternoon in Bristol:
    Giuda (1911), 10’
    The courtesan Priscilla is fascinated by the preachings of Jesus of Nazareth. She tries to seduce him but he resists and invites her to abandon her sinful ways. In revenge, she prompts Judas to betray him, only to repent at the last minute when it is already too late.
    The repentance is missing from the surviving copy of the film.
    Despite the paucity of information about the film it seems likely that it was directed by Luigi Maggi. Maggi began as an actor but had been directing for several years by the time Giuda was produced. His most notable credit is probably Last Days of Pompeii (1908) which I watched last year. Whilst I didn't find the time to review it, I did post a couple of tweets at the time on that film's use of the depth of field in two particular shots, one of a discernible object in the background and another of a character staggering past the camera.

    Interestingly the depth of field used in Giuda is even more striking, and once again we get another character, in this case Judas, who starts the centre of the frame in a typical (for the time) intermediate shot before staggering towards the camera and then past it. Whereas the character in Pompeii was drunk, here is is driven crazy by his love for Priscilla.

    As interesting as that shot is on it's own, it's the camera's use of depth elsewhere that is of most interest. Whilst the first Jesus as a cameo film is probably 1909's L’aveugle de Jérusalem, this film is surely the first to deploy the strategy, which would become so prominent in later Roman-Christian epics, of keeping Jesus in the scene but minimising his presence in the shot.

    Of the eight surviving scenes Jesus is in five of them, but in each he is placed in the distance towards the top of the scene. Whilst these shots are clearly only portraying the human side of Jesus, this positioning of a slightly detached skyward figure also conveys something of the divine Christ in heaven whilst life continues on Earth below.

    What is striking though is how little reverence the camera treats him with. In the opening shot (above) Jesus preaches in the background, but the focus is on Judas and Priscilla the woman whose very presence has captured his attention (and ours). This dynamic is extended even further in the next scene, the Triumphal Entry. Normally this is one of the emotional high points of any Jesus film but here it's almost a sideshow. Jesus passes through in the background, the crowd cheers, but the camera moves from tracking him to focusing on Judas and Priscilla's second meeting. Jesus passes off to the side of the shot. Judas and Priscilla remain front and centre.

    The next scene is shot in Priscilla's house where Judas has followed her. He suggests he will be able to get Jesus to come to Priscilla's house and goes off in search of him. When he arrives (in scene 4) Jesus is already preaching, but almost immediately the view of him is obscured by Judas talking with one of the other disciples. Even more remarkably Jesus begins to move forward and performs two miracles in slightly different locations, but both times the miracle is obscured by characters between him and the camera (above). Whilst this undoubtedly made life easier for the special effects department, its significance lies in the way it again keeps Jesus out of the picture.

    When Jesus does arrive at Priscilla's villa (scene 5) he arrives at the back of the stage and does not descend down inside (like everyone else) and so remains at the centre, once again 'over' everyone. There's a hint of the ascension here, not least because there's a great use of a matte screen here with a painting of the countryside with a mountain in the background. His final appearance (in the surviving footage) is in the Garden of Gethsemane (scene 6, above). Again he remain top centre, this time he is eventually obscured by the stumbling Judas as described above.

    From a technical angle, it is perhaps the penultimate scene (of the existing footage) which is the most interesting. One of the reasons the matte paintings work better here than they do in Last Days of Pompeii, is that they are used more sparingly, relying for the majority of the film on outdoor, location shooting. The scene, briefly introduced by the intertitle "The agreement", takes place alongside a pond, with the water itself forming the right of the picture towards a vanishing point on the horizon. Judas appears on the bank on the left hand side of the screen, but his attention is focused on someone behind the camera and to the right. At first he just glances in that direction, then he looks with more earnest, before ultimately gesturing and shouting. Eventually the character with whom he has been communicating (Priscilla) comes onto the screen from behind the camera on the right hand side of the screen. Far later films have been credited with creatively breaking the fourth wall, here we see almost the reverse. Compared to the relatively static and limited presence of the camera in most films up to this age, here the intention is to give the world that is being presented an extra dimension, (perhaps this could be called making the fourth wall).

    The final scene (cropped at the very top of this post) shows a furtive looking Judas looking around and then ascending the steps to the temple. It's notable that the costumes of the various groups of soldiers are quite distinctively Roman in character, not Jewish (as if temple guards), which may reflect the films Italian origins, but in any case is less problematic for an angle on the story which could so easily lead to anti-Semitism. It's also notable that the scene where Judas has agreed to betray his master occurs after (or rather during) Jesus' prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane.

    I've discussed the film's formal links to Last Days of Pompeii above, but there's more there in terms of plot summary etc. Both films are, on the surface, stories about an historical phenomenon (Jesus/Eruption of Mount Vesuvius), but instead of focusing on that directly they take a more oblique angle, foregrounding the historical referent with an invented love melodrama. As a result both films feel a little bit flabby, though Giuda is tighter than Last Days which even at under 17 minutes feels a little bit bloated.

    What this love subplot does do is present a more human Judas and refuse to demonise him. Yes, his motivation is horrifyingly mundane, but he is a more rounded character and there's no indication that the devil has entered him, or that he is driven by greed. It could be argued, I suppose, that this makes things worse, but somehow lovestruck fool kills for his lover seems better to me. But then I've always loved Noir.
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    I have been able to assemble some information about the film from various other sources so should anyone be researching it in the future it might their lives easier. Firstly, whilst IMDb doesn't contain a great deal about this film only the name of its three main stars (Oreste Grandi, Gigetta Morano, Mario Voller-Buzzi) and to report various dates of release including the UK on the 22nd October 1911 and the 1st November 1911 in the US, it does, include the following synopsis from Moving Picture World:
    The picture opens with Christ preaching to the multitudes. Priscilla, a wealthy woman of great beauty, tells Judas to request the Messiah to rest at her house. Christ rebukes her with the words: "Woman, your thought is sinful: the Son of God will not stay beneath your roof." With his disciples, he then proceeds on his way, working miracles, healing the sick, etc. Priscilla, full of hatred, persuades Judas, who loves her, to go to the Romans and betray the whereabouts of Christ for a sum of money. Christ is taken by the soldiers, and Priscilla, from her balcony sees him pass to Calvary bearing the cross upon which he is to suffer. Remorse seizes her, and when Judas comes to claim the reward of his treachery a sensational scene takes place in which Judas is spurned. Rushing to the place of execution, Priscilla casts herself before the cross and begs forgiveness of the suffering Christ. Judas sees her, and filled with horror at the terrible act he has committed, he is so overcome by his accusing conscience that he ends his life by hanging himself to a tree.
    The best source of information on this film is Museo Nazionale del cinema in Turin. It was Stella Dagna of MNC who brought the films to the Bristol showing and talked a little about them and their database contains the following synopsis.
    Giuda
    Judas (1911)

    Production: Società Anonima Ambrosio, Torino. Original length: 390m – Length: 197m – Intertitles: English – Availability date: 09/1911

    Cast: Oreste Grandi (Judas), Gigetta Morano (Priscilla, the courtesan), Mario Voller Buzzi (Jesus Christ)
    The film preservation:
    The preservation of Giuda was carried out by the Museo Nazionale del Cinema di Torino and the Cineteca del Friuli of Gemona in collaboration with George Eastman House and the National Film and Sound Archive of Canberra, based on an incomplete nitrate print which was donated by the Archive of Canberra to the Cineteca of Friuli. From the nitrate print, a dupe negative and positive color prints were printed on safety film, using the Desmet method.
    The restoration was conducted at the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna in 1997.
    You can also scan through the Museum's scans of related film materials. You have to search for the film by name, but there are a few pieces related to this film which you can view online including a number of fascinating stills from the set including the one below takes from a scene in Priscilla's house.

    The archive apparently also contains a "sceneggiatura" for the film which might be a script, but may just be a description of the scenario. That and a piece from the magazine “La vita cinematografica”, (vol. II, n. 15, 10 Sept. 1911, p. 7) though neither is available to view online. What can be viewed online, however, is a brochure publicising the film which contains it's own more colourful summary which I've written out in full below and translated (with more than a little help from Google Translate)
    Come il Messia predica alla turbele parole di fratellanza e d'amore, Priscilla, la cortigiana, sente d'improvviso una fiamma arderle le vene e i polsi. Ordina ai lettigheri di portarla a casa e manda Omar a offrire ospitalita al profeta e ai suoi apostoli. Omar va, trova il Messia sulla piazza del Mercato tra gli sciancati e i lebbrosi e fa l'ambasciata. E il Messia viene, al tramonto. Ma non mette piede nella casa della cortigiana. S'arresta oltre la soglia e dice: Donna il tuo pensicro è peccato. Il figliuol di Dio non puo restare sotto il tuo tetto.

    Priscilla impietrisce. Questa parole sono risuonate al sup orecchio come scoppi di folgore e hanno percosso l'anima sua come colp di verghe. Poi a poco il cuore le si gonfia e le lacrime le riempiono gli occhi.

    Priscilla nella notte va all'uliveto.

    Il Messia e in orazione nell'ombra. Dintorno a lui gli apostoli dormono distesi sull'erba. E Priscilla sente un alito sfiorarle la faccia e una voce mormorare piano: Ti amo! - Chi sei? chiede Priscilla. E risponde la voce: mi chiamo Giuda. L'apostolo e la cortigiana parlano nella notte e il suono delle loro voci si confonde collo stormire degli ulivi.

    Il giorno dopo Giuda vende il Messia al principe dei Sacerdoti e guida i soldati a compiere l'arresto.

    Ora Priscilla é vendicata. Guarda dalla bianca terrazza, ghirlandata di grappoli. Com'e pallido il Messia, com'è cosparso di sangue! E nell'anima della cortigiana, invece del piacere della vendetta, nasce a poco a poco un senso di pieta infinita e un cercare il premio del suo tradimento, Priscilla gli grida in un riso: Maledetto! Maledetto! e corre a piangere ai piedi della croce.

    Respinto, avvilito, in preda alla disperazione Giuda sparisce nella notte a cercare la morte del traditore...

    "As the Messiah preaches with a torrent of words about brotherhood and love, Priscilla, the courtesan, suddenly feels a flame burning in her veins and wrists. She orders the lawyers to take her home and sends Omar to offer hospitality to the prophet and his apostles. Omar goes, finds the Messiah on the market square among the crippled and lepers and makes the embassy. And the Messiah comes at sunset. But he does not set foot in the courtesan's house. He stops over the threshold and says: "Your thoughts are sinful. The son of God cannot remain under your roof.

    Priscilla is petrified. These words resound in the air like bursts of lightning and strike her soul like lightning rods. Then her heart swells up a little and the tears fill her eyes.

    Priscilla in the night goes to the olive grove.

    The Messiah is in prayer in the shadow. Around him the apostles sleep lying on the grass. And Priscilla feels a breath touching her face and a voice murmuring softly: I love you! - Who are you? asks Priscilla. And the voice answers: my name is Giuda. The apostle and the courtesan speak in the night and the sound of their voices gets confused with the rustling of the olive trees.

    The day after, Judah sells the Messiah to the Chief Priest and leads the soldiers to make the arrest.

    Now Priscilla is avenged. She looks from the white terrace, wreathed in grapes. How pale is the Messiah, how he is sprinkled with blood! And in the soul of the courtesan, instead of the pleasure of revenge, little by little a sense of infinite pity arises and a search for the prize of her betrayal, Priscilla shouts at him in a laugh: Cursed! Cursed! and she runs to cry at the foot of the cross.

    Rejected, dejected, in despair Judah disappears in the night to seek the traitor's death ..."

    Whilst the BFI Archive does not hold a print of this film, it does contain three articles about it from The Bioscope as follows: vol.13 n261 (12 Oct 1911); vol.12 n257 14 Sep 1911; and vol. 12 n257 (14 Sep 1911).

    Lastly, the ever reliable Hervé Dumont's "L'antiquité au cinéma" is practically the only published volume which actually mentions the piece, though it's unclear whether he has seen it or is just paraphrasing an existing summary.
    1911 Giuda (Judas)(IT) Arrigo Frusta ; S.A. Ambrosio, To-rino (« Série d’Or »), 390 m. / 8 min. – av. Oreste Grandi(Judas), Gigetta Morano (Priscilla, la courtisane), Ma-rio Voller Buzzi (Jésus-Christ). –

    Priscilla, une courtisane de Jérusalem, est émue par les paroles du Christ et l'invite chez elle. Jésus refuse de pénétrer dans la maison de la pécheresse et cette dernière, humiliée, cherche à se venger. La uit, sur le mont des Oliviers où Jésus prie, elle se donne à Judas. Au petit matin, poussé par Priscilla, Judas trahit son maître. La courtisane repentante se jette au pied de lacroix tandis que son amant se suicide. Un Judas égaré parl’amour.

    (Priscilla, a courtesan of Jerusalem, is moved by the words of Christ and invites her to her home. Jesus refuses to enter the house of the sinner and the latter, humiliated, seeks revenge. On the Mount of Olives where Jesus prays, she gives herself to Judas. In the early morning, pushed by Priscilla, Judas betrays his master. The repentant courtesan throws herself at the foot of the cross while her lover commits suicide. A Judas lost by love.)

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    Thursday, September 06, 2018

    History Lessons (1972)


    Geschichtsunterricht (History Lessons, 1972) was the second of three films Huillet and Straub released in the early seventies that blended elements of the ancient and contemporary worlds together. It was seemingly produced with such relative speed that whilst Richard Roud in his 1972 book on Straub (and Huillet) includes a brief statement of intent from Straub about Moses und Aron, it fails to mention Geschichtsunterricht, despite the filmmakers' obvious involvement with Roud's book.

    As is typical with Huillet/Straub films, Geschichtsunterricht is an adaptation, this time of Bertholt Brecht's "The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar" (Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julis Caesar).(1) So, as with their previous project, Othon (1969), the film is set, in a fashion, in ancient Rome and in similar fashion it also not only refuses to hide the fact it is filmed in the modern day city, but uses that fact as a key feature of the film itself. Indeed Geschichtsunterricht goes even further than Othon by not only including an interviewer in modern dress, but also having his various interviews interspersed with footage of him driving round the backstreets of twentieth century Rome.

    There are three such sequences throughout the film, which last for around ten minutes each and resulted in critical derision when the film first played to festival critics. Each is a single shot, taken from the back seat of the man's car, looking over his shoulder through the windscreen. The effect is rather curious providing three "screens" at once: a tracking shot of the action that is taking place outside of the car, as seen through the windscreen, sun roof and the side windows; a static shot of the inside of the car, including the man himself; and a reverse shot of part of his face in the rear view mirror.(2) This visual 'triptych' is similarly accompanied by three distinct sources of sound: the fleeting sounds of the action on the street that drift in through the car's open window; ever present drone of the car's engine; and the occasional sounds made by the interviewer and his contact with the controls of his car.

    As is usual Straub and Huillet's reliance on natural sound give these sequences a very distinctive sound and heighten the film's sense of the interviewer as one who is moving among the people, but not quite part of them. He is distinct from them but they continue their lives on the 'screen' almost entirely unaware of his presence. In the interviews themselves, the camera creates a similar dynamic, primarily using one-shots of the interviewee. The shot above is the only one in the film to show the faces of both interviewer and interviewee together. On a couple of occasions we see the back of the man's head, or his hand, but the majority of the interview footage is primarily a close up of his subject's face. In contrast, in one part of the film the interviewer recants a story of his own, but the man he is speaking too resolutely remains off screen.

    This is a fairly familiar technique in Huillet and Straub's films, deliberately keeping one or more of the primary characters in a scene off camera for a considerable amount of time. In their 1982 short film En Rachachant, for example, a schoolboy's behaviour is being discussed by his teacher and his mother. The scene continues for many minutes before a cut reveals, somewhat shockingly, the the boy's father is also present. Here the interviewer's presence is not in doubt, but his is similarly excluded. Indeed, the filmmakers compose these shots somewhat awkwardly, deliberately drawing attention to the interviewers absence from the frame, but presence in the scene.

    Brecht's incomplete novel concerns a young Roman intent on writing a biography about Caesar a few decades after his death. His quest takes him to the estate of Caesar's banker, Mummlius Spicer in attempt to access the diary written by Caesar's secretary, Rarus. Two of the four parts of the book that Brecht's work consist solely of long sections of these diaries, and excerpts appear also appear elsewhere. Spicer is more than happy to share his own opinions on Caesar, as are his acquaintance the lawyer Afrainius Carbo and the poet Vastius Alder. The man also meets an unnamed former soldier that had served under Caesar.

    In contrast to the more straightforward adaption of Moses und Aron, Straub/Huillet make significant cuts to Brecht's novel and rework the material in a similar fashion to their treatment of Böll's Machorka Muff. All of Brecht's narrative is cut such that the film is essentially a series of interviews interspersed with the 'driving' sections described above.

    It is the sound of one of these driving sections with which the film starts. The noises accompanying the opening credits. Then, as the sounds continue there is a short shot of each of series of three bronze maps showing the Roman Empire progressively retracting. Huillet/Straub often start their films with a shot, which is usually static. which gives a major clue as to their focus for the rest of the material. Here is no exception. The maps are products of Mussolini's Fascists which can still be seen today on the walls outside the 4th century AD Basilica of Maxentius.(3) However they are shown in reverse chronological order with the most recent of the three images first. Whilst on a gut level this gives the sense of the collapse of the Empire following what many think of as its high point under Caesar, this is more like the winding back of a clock, peeling away the layers of history back to the third century under Trajan, through Augustus' Empire circa 14 CE. back to the shape of the territory at the end of the Punic Wars in 146 BCE.

    In a sense then the stage is set for Caesar, yet he and his achievements are also absent from this historical overview. his ties in with the way both the book and the film, concern the history of Julius Caesar, but also never really feature the man himself. Brecht's biographer sets off to track down the truth about Caesar but ends up unable to find a coherent picture that corresponds to the ideas he started with. Straub/Huillet go a step further, the only image of Caesar that appears is in another static shot, this time of the statue in Rimini (around 200 miles directly north of Rome). Again we find layers of meaning here. Not only is this another Fascist monument, but the one depicted is actually a reproduction of the original which remains secured away, somewhat appropriately, in Giulio Cesare barrack. The image is recognisably Caesar but it is a long way from the real Caesar.

    In a nutshell these opening four shots encapsulate so much of what both book and film are about, namely "subverting the narrative form given to history" as a way of undermining the concept of the "great personality" (Byg 119). Clearly a central concern to Brecht was the rise of Nazism and so whilst the novel is not, on the surface, about Hitler, it is very much in the subtext. Given Huillet and Straub's previous work re-examining Nazism in Machorka Muff (1962) and Not Reconciled (1965) this seems like a natural extension. Brecht's broader intention however was not "merely to tarnish Caesar's image, but to expose the process of creating such an image" (Byg 119). Rather than seeing Caesar's (and by extension Hitler's) rise as an inevitability, he sought to bring to prominence factors in the background which contributed to Caesar's rise and other routes that might have been taken with better results.

    Following the first of the driving scenes (a nod to the biographer's journey to Spicer's home) we then see the Spicer character (in full Roman dress) speaking to the interviewer (in modern dress). Straub and Huillet's use of a modern character to conduct the interviews, rather than an ancient biographer as in Brecht's novel, is not the first time such a device has been used, but it has subsequently become far more popular subsequently, not least in sketch comedy where it's been used in everything from Monty Python to Horrible Histories. Whilst Python is absurdist, much of the message of Horrible Histories and the series of book that inspired it, is similarly Brechtian with its undermining of the traditional presentation of history.

    This initial conversation lasts for around 25 minutes and consists primarily of shots of Spicer. As an expert in commerce, Spicer is critical of the path that the Roman armies had taken during the Punic Wars,
    They didn't fetch the corn, they fetched the plough. Our generals said proudly, 'Where my legions set foot, grass grows no more'. But what we'd wanted was exactly that grass. From one of those grasses bread is made. What was conquered in the Punic War, at immense cost, was wastelands. These territories could well have fed our entire peninsula."
    He also talks at length about legal wranglings in the senate only really mentioning "C" (as he is mainly referred to here) to highlight his failed lawsuits. The focus on Spicer shifts for a few minutes when he asks his interrogator to recount the famous story about Caesar and the Cicilian Pirates.(4) The interviewer obliges, only for Spicer to turn the story on its head. "C" was illegally smuggling slaves into the area run by the Cicilians in the middle of a trade dispute. They captured him, but treated him civilly onto be butchered when he returned to pay his (relatively small fine). Spicer notes how Caesar had somehow transformed his brutal threats of crucifixion into a "reputation for humour with the historians" tersely adding how that was "(t)otally unwarranted. He didn't have a grain of humour".

    In the novel the young man is frustrated and disturbed by the way that the stories he is encountering contradict not only his own views, but also each others. However, one of the problems with the novel is that by making the young biographer the narrator, the novel still maintains an authorial point of view. The establish truth about Caesar might be challenged, but the novel still retains a degree of primacy.

    Huillet/Straub's adaptation of this progresses beyond where Brecht was able to take things. The initial driving scene not only places the viewer effectively in "the driving seat", but by running this shot for so long, it strongly encourages viewers to realise that they need to be active in their interpretation of the images on screen, rather than passively accept those images as is typical in much consumption of cinema. Furthermore, as the accounts begin, and conflict both with each other and perhaps with what the viewer has been told before, the interviewer's lack of emotional response means that we have to think for him/ourselves instead. In his recounting of the accepted version of the pirate story he is voicing the most popular account of that story, only to have his/our view of what happened immediately challenged.

    Of course there is an inherent contradiction in all of this, namely that whilst presenting our stand in as non-responding neutral does not force an opinion on us, it does mean the viewer is adopting an essentially passive persona, the opposite of what Brecht, Straub and Huillet are intending, and whilst their attempt to minimise their authorial influence is admirable and important, it is still nevertheless present to a small degree.

    The interviewer speaks next with a former Roman Legionary. In the novel the biographer is hoping for something more inspiring than the account he received from Spicer, but again he is disappointed: instead of talking about fighting and glory the soldier gives a more mundane account about provisions, indemnities and the price of wheat. He never really got that close to Caesar and his motives for joining up were primarily financial. Again the film does not allow the interviewer any responses, we have to sift the 'facts' for ourselves. More driving ensues, as do more interviews, but the rooftop discussions with the lawyer Afranius Carbo and his talk with the deckchair-bound writer Vastius Alder yet again come down to discussions about politics and trade and the ways in which they can be just as bloody as war.

    Alder in particular articulates this perspective. As the summary for the recent English translation of Brecht's novel puts it, "Was Caesar an opportunist, a permanently bankrupt businessman who became too big for the banks to allow him to fail – as his former banker claims? Did he stumble into power while trying to make money?"

    Indeed for Marxists such as Brecht, Straub and Huillet such perspectives lie close to the heart of the ideas that they are exploring. One of the most telling lines in the film is Carbo's statement that "when Caius Julius again raised the Democratic banners, every paving stone of Rome was drenched with the blood of the people." Again Huillet and Straub's interest in the history of the land - in this case Caesar's blood-soaked paving stones which have become the tarmacked streets over which the interviewer drives - comes to the fore. Again we are confronted with questions that eat away at the myth of Julius Caesar. Rather than being a great, but tyrannical man rising to the top on the force of his personality, he is presented as more of an opportunist, who was driven more by his desire for personal wealth than the for the glory of Rome.

    So for a film about the process of history, rather than simply its events, it is a very interesting piece of work. If Brecht's piece is about the importance of critical suspicion in looking at history, particularly that surrounding "the great personality", then Huillet and Straub take this a step further, wrenching their characters almost entirely out of their original contexts and using a modern character to interrogate them in such a way that he himself does not obscure the picture, to any significant extent, at least. The driving scenes not only emphasise that sense of the continuity of the "blood-soaked" land, but also encourage the viewer to take a critical and discerning look at the history that they think they know. Those taking such an approach, however, should beware. They may find that, like the film's driver / interviewer, challenging new perspectives may lie just around the corner.

    =============
    1 - The novel is incomplete comprising of only four of the six sections Brecht originally envisaged. He started writing in 1937, but little further progress was made after the start of the Second World War in 1939.
    2 - The observation that these shots create "a series of frames...on the screen" originates with Walsh (65) though he considers the sunroof to be a different frame from the windows. Byg expands this further by considering the side window to also be distinct from the front window resulting in five frames (128).
    3 - You can read more about these images as well as see a photo of them together at Jonathan Rome and Gretchen Van Horne's "Rome on Rome" blog.
    4 - You'd be disappointed if I didn't mention that there is a 1962 Italian peplum about this incident called Giulio Cesare contro i pirati (Julius Caesar Against the Pirates).


    - Brecht, Bertholt (1957) Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julis Caesar (The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar). Trans. by Charles Osborne, ed. by Tom Kuhn (2016). London: Bloomsbury-Methuen.

    - Byg, Barton (1995) Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    - Roud, Richard (1972) Jean-Marie Straub. New York: The Viking Press.

    - Walsh, Martin (1981) The Brechtian Aspect of Radical Cinema. London: British Film Institute.

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