The Avant-Garde

Author(s): David Bordwell

Source: The Wilson Quarterly (1976-), Vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer, 1986), pp. 70-75
Published by: Wilson Quarterly
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40257025
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THE MOVIES

THE AVANT-GARDE
byDavid Bordwell

If LouisB. Mayer,the Hollywoodmogul,had lived untilthe late

1960s, he would have been startled by some of the changes in the
tastes of movie-goingAmericans.
True, the lines would have been longest at theaters offering
such easily recognizableHollywoodfare as Dr. Dolittle or Paint
Your Wagon.But in the largercities and college towns, a good many
movie fans would have been elsewhere. Some would have been
thronginglocal "art"theaters to see IngmarBergman's TheHour of
the Wolfor Luis Bunuel's Viridiana. Otherswouldhave been at the
museum watching experimentalworks by Stan Brakhageor Andy
Warhol.And the local campusfilm society might have been packing
them in with Jean-LucGodard's Weekend,a savage denunciationof
bourgeoislifestyles.
Most Americanswere (and are) still going to the movies to be
entertained.But the emergence after WorldWar II of a big new
generationof college graduates- some of them with film apprecia-
tion courses undertheir belts, manywith some exposureto modern-
ism in the arts- created a sizableaudiencein the United States for
experimentalfilms.
Such films were nothing new. Almost as soon as it was born,
cinema encounteredmodernism.The meeting occurred not in the
Hollywoodstudios but, duringthe 1920s, in the cafes of Paris and
Berlin and the chilly meeting rooms of Moscow. Painters were at-
tracted to cinema by its capacityto become what one artist called
"drawingsbroughtto life." Composersfoundits dynamicmovement
and montage a counterpartof musicalrhythm.For artists in many
fields,the new mediumrepresentedmodernityitself. "Mostforms of
representationhave had their day," declared AntoninArtaud, the
French poet and founderof the "theaterof cruelty,"in 1930. "Life,
what we call life, becomes ever more inseparablefromthe mind.The
cinema is capableof interpretingthis domainmore than any other
art, because idioticorder and customaryclarityare its enemies."
It was thus not simplythe technicalside of cinemathat appealed
to modernistartists. Cinemawas an ideal vehicle for the modernist
urge to question the solidityof reality,to probe the way the world
seems to the beholder.
Among the first film-makersto take this approachwas Germa-
ny's Robert Wiene, in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). With

WQ SUMMER 1986
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 THE MOVIES

In a scene from Robert

Wiene's hallucinatory The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1920), Caligari 's hypnotized
servant, Cesare, looms over
one of his victims. Many
film critics argue that
Cesare represented the
"enslaved" German
working class.

remarkablesets paintedin the expressioniststyle, the film conveyed

the hallucinatoryvision of a madmannamedFrancis.Onlyin the end
is it revealed that Dr. Caligariis the warden of the insane asylum
where Francis is an inmate. Yet the audience is led to wonder
whether there is some larger metaphoricaltruth aboutsociety in the
hallucinationsof the madman.This theme is well-worntoday,but it
was novel in its time. Not until after WorldWarII did the probingof
psychic ambiguitybecome a commontheme for movie-makers.
And there were other ambiguities.A samuraihas been killed
and his wife raped; a bandit has confessed. So much is fact. Yet,
throughflashbacks,the wife, the bandit,and a witness each present a
differentversion of events. Was the rape resisted?Did the samurai
fight bravely,or did he try to flee?That is the substanceof Kurosawa
Akira's Rashomon (1951), which inaugurated the illusion-reality
theme in post-WorldWarÛ cinema.Althoughconsidered"too West-
ern" in Japan,the film had an enormous impact in the West- not
least for its refusal to answer the riddles it posed. The audience
never learns the truth; Kurosawasuggests that each version is the
truth, at least to each character.
The inquiryinto the relativityof perceptionpreoccupieda whole
generationof Europeanfilm-makersduring the 1950s and '60s. In
Wild Strawberries(1957), Sweden's Ingmar Bergman used flash-
backs to detail an old man's nostalgic revision of his past. Later, in

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THE MOVIES

Persona (1966), Bergman merged almost seamlessly the chaotic

dreams of a nurse on the edge of a nervous breakdownwith his
portrayalof her reality.Bergmansuggests that film-makingitself is
as mysteriousand impenetrableas the lives he portrays:"The illumi-
nated face, the hand raised as if for an incantation,the old ladies at
the square,the few banalwords, all of these images come and attach
themselveslike silveryfish to my net; or, more precisely,I myself am
trappedin a net, the texture of which I am not aware."
Empty Spaces
FedericoFelM's lively 8V2(1963) advancedthe theme further
with its hero, a harriedmovie directorwhose memoriesandfantasies
are filtered throughfilm conventionsand cliches. Fellini thus intro-
duced a reflectionupon cinema itself, the machinefor producingre-
alistic-seemingillusions.Just as Pablo Picasso's work questionedre-
alistic conceptionsof painting,so such films as Rashomon and 8V2
challengedthe "customaryclarities"of the Hollywoodfilm. As Alain
Resnais,co-directorof Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), put it, "My
aim is to put the spectatorin such a state that a week, six months,or
a year afterwards,placed before a problem,he would be prevented
from cheatingand be obligedto react freely."
But Resnais and his colleagues clung to the belief that a film
shouldtell a story. Other modernists,not only in film, were going a
step further,de-emphasizingstory-telling,or even eliminatingit alto-
gether. They aimedto draw the audience'sattentionto the medium
itself, to the tangiblepatterns of words, gestures, scenes. The idea
originatedin modern painting.Some painters, such as the Soviet
constructivistVladimirTatlin (1885-1953), held that doing away
with "stories"wouldreturnthe spectatorto a state of innocentper-
ception,allowinghim to see the elements of art clearly.Artists of a
more mysticalturn believedthat the puristapproachcouldprovidea
glimpse of the ineffable- what KazimirMalevich (1878-1935), in-
ventor of the school of abstract geometric painting known as
suprematism,called"the semaphoreof light across an infiniteabyss."
Malevich'sideas were echoed after WorldWarII in the work of
young directorsinfluencedby abstractexpressionistpainting.In the
films of Missouri-bornStan Brakhage,perhaps the most important
Americanavant-gardistof his generation,the "story"is no more than
David Bordwell, 39, is professor of communication arts and director of the
Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madi-
son. Born in New York City, he received a B.A. from the State University of
New Yorkat Albany (1969) and an MA. (1972) and a Ph.D. (1974) from the
University of Iowa. He is the author of several books, including Film Art: An
Introduction (with Kristin Thompson, 2nd éd., 1985) and Narration in the
Fiction Film (1985).

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 THE MOVIES

Andy Warhol'sposterfor the

1967 New YorkFilm Festi-
val. Avant-gardefilm-mak-
ers exhibittheir worksat
dozensof majorfestivals
heldaround the worldevery
year in hopesof winning
critical acclaim- or gaining
the attention of a commer-
cial distributor.

an episode from his personallife or a sketchy mythicformula,trans-

formed into a purely cinematic vision of flickering hues, flowing
shapes, and endlessly changingviews of mundaneobjects. In Scenes
from under Childhood(1967), Brakhageproducedthe most poetic of
home movies. He interspersedphotos from a familyalbumwith im-
ages of domestic activity, as well as with superimpositions,reflec-
tions, and other distortions,to suggest the lyrical deformationsof
memory. In The Text of Light (1974), he put an ordinaryashtray
close to his cameralens to create a startlingplay of color and shape.
The classic exampleof the "purist"avant-gardeis probablyMi-
chael Snow's Wavelength(1967). Wavelengthtells a "story,"but it
is completelyfragmented.The scene is a New Yorkloft:People come
and go, play a radio,answer a phone call. Perhapsa murderis com-
mitted. But the film is organizedarounda camera technique. The
camera is in a fixed position. Snow's zoom lens begins with a long
shot inside the loft and jerkilyenlarges the room little by little until
the distantwall fills the frameto reveal a photographof ocean waves.
The film's 45-minute durationis thus revealed as a "wavelength."
As the frame enlarges, the audienceis invitedto play a percep-
tual guessing game. How will the shot's compositionchange?Willthe

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THE MOVIES

fragmentsof story ever coalesce?Snow's explanationof Wavelength

shows that his intentionswere purely abstract:"The image of the
yellow chairhas as much Value' in its own world as the girl closing
the window.The film events are ... chosen from a kind of scale of
mobilitythat runs from pure light events, the variousperceptionsof
the room, to the images of movinghumanbeings."
To which playwrightBertolt Brecht (1898-1956), another fa-
ther figure of modernism,would have repliedthat art is about soci-
ety, not just light andfigures.The politicaland rhetoricaluses of film
techniquehad been pioneeredduringthe 1920s by a groupof young
Soviet film-makers,notablySergey Eisenstein in Strike (1925) and
Potemkin (1925). Four decades later, it was to Brecht and the Sovi-
ets that young leftist film-makersturned to merge experimentation
with social criticism.

Beginning at the End

From the Soviets they adoptedthe notion that film should not
passively copy reality but challenge it through disjunctiveediting,
explicit commentary,and by allowingaudiences to see that scenes
have been staged. From Brecht came the "estrangementeffect,"the
notionthat by callingattentionto the mechanicsof presentationin-
stead of concealingthem Hollywood-style,actors and directorscould
make audiencesthinkcriticallyabout what they were seeing.
This trend shows clearlyin the work of the West Germanfilm-
makingteam of Jean-MarieStrauband DanièleHuillet.In Not Recon-
ciled (1965), they depicted a fascist specter hauntingGermanyby
interruptingscenes from the dailylife of a contemporaryfamilywith
an ellipticalseries of flashbacksto Germanyduring the two world
wars. The charactersare barelyidentified;the chronologyof events
is unclear.The cameradwells ominouslyon empty spaces, as if wait-
ing for the hidden meaning of history to emerge. History Lessons
(1972), adapted from a Brecht novel, uses anachronismto make
viewers thinkaboutthe links between economicand politicalpower.
Set amidthe ruinsof imperialRome, it is a portraitof JuliusCaesar,
busilyjugglingstate businesswith the pursuitof privateprofit,drawn
largely throughfake TV interviewswith his toga-cladcolleagues.
From Soho to Paris, today'sfilm-makersare still experimenting
with these three modernist "traditions":the illusion-realitytheme,
the purely cinematic statement, and the politicalcritique built on
innovativefilmtechniques.RaulRuiztraces the convolutionsof mem-
ory and misunderstandingin such elusive films as Three Crowns of
the Sailor (1983). The American film-maker Jim Jarmusch, in
Stranger Than Paradise (1984), dramatizeshis portrait of three
wanderingdown-and-outers with a rigorous,almostmathematicaluse
of framingand editing.Hans-JurgenSyberberg'sOur Hitler: A Film

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 THEMOVIES

from Germany (1977) uses Brechtiantechniquesto trace the links

between Germany'sWagnerianromanticismand the rise of Hitler.
In recent years, many avant-gardefilm-makershave trimmed
their sails a bit. During the late 1970s, younger directorslike Wim
Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1946-82), raised on a
steady diet of Hollywoodclassics, created a more popular"art cin-
ema."Withhis recent parodiesof the early FrankensteinandDracula
movies, Andy Warholhas moved into straightforwardfeature film-
making, and several experimentalistshave followed. Even Bruce
Conner,master of the surrealcompilationfilm, now makes commer-
cial music videos for Devo and other rock groups. And many direc-
tors with a politicalmessage have set off in search of larger audi-
ences, a trend best seen in such films as the popularNight of the
Shooting Stars (1982), about Italy's internalwrestling with fascism
duringWorldWarH, by the brothersVittorioand Paolo Taviani.
The relationshipbetween avant-gardeand popularcinemais, as
always,complex.The Hollywoodclassics of the 1930s and '40s, for
example, inspiredthe experimentsof the French New Wave direc-
tors of the 1950s, which influencedthe young directorswho began
arrivingin Hollywoodduringthe late 1960s. The makers of popular
horrorand science fictionmovies, alwaysin search of new cinematic
shocks, are quickto exploit new avant-gardetechniques.
At the moment, the avant-gardeis in a bit of a lull. But there
remainsa large and growingaudience,ready to welcome all manner
of films that would have been unthinkableduringthe heyday of the
Hollywoodstudio system. The experimentalistsare sure to thrive.
The work of Jean-LucGodardperfectlyexemplifiesthe fluctua-
tions and adjustmentswithin the alternative cinema. From New
Wave cinephiliaduring the early 1960s, he shifted to strident and
forbiddingMarxist works later in the decade, and then to serene,
voluptuousstudies like Passion (1982). Last year, he released Hail
Mary, a mysticalretellingof the VirginBirthin contemporarytimes.
It is anythingbut conventional.
To many film connoisseurs,Godardis the symbol of cinematic
modernism'svitality.The twisting path of his career suggests that
there is alwaysa new avenuefor experimentation,that manypossibil-
ities remainopen to avant-gardefilm-makersimaginativeenough to
seek them out. An exasperatedinquisitoronce demandedof Godard:
"But surely you will admit that a film must have a beginning, a
middle,and an end?"
"Certainly,"he replied. "But not necessarilyin that order."

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