Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1967)

In 1963, one could say that the world was truly going to hell. The United States was in chaotic turmoil as it tried to keep the world together while fighting communism from the Soviet Union. The Cold War had almost turned into a blazing hot one the year before with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Schools were still practicing the classic “duck and cover.” Nuclear arms had suddenly advanced faster than almost any technology in the world. Worst of all, no one could make a large enough statement to reach the masses.

Until Stanley Kubrick came along.

Kubrick, considered the greatest filmmaker of all time by many (including myself), has directed some of the most thought provoking and visually engaging films ever made, including A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Full Metal Jacket. His films manage to be precise in shots and structure for every single second.

In 1963, Kubrick began working on a script about the danger of nuclear arms. He was going to adapt the novel Red Alert from Peter George -- a serious, quick-paced thriller about the possible breakout of World War III. But as Kubrick worked on the script, he apparently found the situation “too funny” and began to create his film as a comedy.

It’s this ingenious trait of Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb that makes it such a successful film. For one, it’s ridiculously hilarious. Roger Ebert states in his 1999 essay on the film that the comedy is effective not because these people are trying to be funny, but because they don’t know they are being funny. Sterling Hayden’s Jack D. Ripper seems convinced he is protecting America by stopping the fluoridation of water. It’s a straightforward performance, but it’s hilarious to hear.

For another, Kubrick has the comedic genius Peter Sellers in a triple role. Each one of his characters are put in situations that none can comprehend, yet because their characters are so shallow-- save for the good doctor – their timid reactions come off as funny. There’s a preposterous scene in which Sellers plays the president of the US and has to call the Russian Premier to inform him that his country is about to be bombed to hell and back. It’s an improved conversation that feels so contradictory to a possible reality that it is side-splitting. Then there’s George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson. Scott’s performance is just a marvel to behold. His laid back attitude to the whole thing just couldn’t feel funnier. In one scene, Scott explains how good his pilots are, reaching almost insanity, only to back up and have his realization.

Kubrick directs this as a Cold War thriller. At no point does the film feel like it’s comedy is comic. It’s simply presented accidentally on screen. The paranoia should take over in the viewer’s mind -- but the absurdity of the comedy keeps the viewer distanced from the reality. It’s this use of the Verfremdungseffekt (a distancing of the audience from the characters) that makes us realize the utter disconnect of the situation and the Cold War in general.

Satire is a brilliant way to get a grip on a situation that seems beyond individual control. As you view the comedy of Mr. Kubrick’s work, realize what he is saying about the Cold War. This was a direct attack about America’s first instinct to use the bomb But even with the Cold War over, Strangelove’s satire is still relevant in America today: just turn on the news. The film’s continued relevancy is also a product of its genius, its ability to simultaneously caution us and entertain us. A frightening tale about those in power and human nature, a powerhouse warning about the dangers of nuclear arms, Dr. Strangelove, like all good things in life, also makes us smile and laugh.

Peter Labuza
Film Club

Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

"Bonnie and Clyde is a milestone in the history of American movies, a work of truth and brilliance. It is also pitilessly cruel, filled with sympathy, nauseating, funny, heartbreaking, and astonishingly beautiful. If it does not seem that those words should be strung together, perhaps that is because movies do not very often reflect the full range of human life."

-Roger Ebert

Bonnie and Clyde is just one of those movies that comes along and shakes things up. Although it first premiered as a B-rated movie and was only shown in a few drive-in and alternative theaters, the movie rose above the concerns associated with it and quickly rose to immense status and critical acclaim, grossing over 50 million dollars.

It easily could have been a sappy, forgettable love story about a misunderstood couple who try desperately to rebel against a society that ultimately will put them down for good. But while Bonnie and Clyde does portray love, its portrayal is brutally honest, and the relationship between Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow is juxtaposed with scenes of melancholy, doubt, humor, and appalling violence. Two young lovers who brutally riddle people with bullets and rob banks may seem like quite a bizarre happening, but the combination of two such opposite concepts is really quite honest commentary on the many contradictory layers of American society.

Peter Politis
Film Club

One of the great things about a film series is that one gets the chance to compare multiple works by film-makers. In Bonnie and Clyde, we have the opportunity to consider the growing talent of Robert Towne. Towne is not acknowledged in the film credits, but it is widely known that he contributed to the final script. In February, the Academy Film Series will screen Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), perhaps Towne’s most famous (and credited) script. When you watch it, reflect on Bonnie and Clyde and ask yourself whether you can hear any similarities in the writing.

What does that mean? We tend to focus on the surface of the dialogue when we first think about screenwriting, but a little deeper we find an opportunity to consider naturalistic speech vs prosaic speech, the meaninglessness of speech that supports action vs the glory of language that transcends action, or the role of language in shaping and defining human experience. Listen to Towne. What does his writing tell us about the characters? About the time the movie was written? About the movie’s tone? What philosophy does it suggest?

You probably know Towne even if you’re not the kind of person who can rattle off how many Academy Award nominations every movie in 1974 garnered. Towne wrote Brian DePalma’s Mission: Impossible and John Woo’s Mission: Impossible II. The world is full of connections. Try to make some; go to Towne.

Randall Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Ricky Lau's Mr. Vampire (1985)

Zac: Hi, I'm Zac Lutz, co-President of the SPA Film Club.

RF: I'm Randall Findlay, adviser of the SPA Film Club.

Zac: And we're here to discuss Mr. Vampire, a 1980s Hong Kong martial arts vampire comedy horror flick starring Ching-Ying Lam, who has made over 90 martial arts films including Gui Meng Jao, Mi Zong Cheng Long, and Huang Fei-hong Xi Lie Zhi Yi Dai Shi.

RF: Wow. I didn't know you spoke Chinese. What's Mr. Vampire about?

Zac: Mr. Vampire is a movie that is both exciting and funny while still trying to be nothing but itself, something that seems increasingly rare in modern film. It is about a man, who is a sort of vampire-expert priest guy in charge of the morgue and who sports an aggressive uni-brow. It's also about his two assistants, whose names are strangely very American. The two assistants are quite easy to relate to, as they keep on trying to do their work right, but constantly mess up or fool around, and yet the morgue master guy keeps them around for some reason.

RF: Man, you're right about that uni-brow. I see that the sequel to this movie, and there are five, is entitled One-Eyebrow Priest. And he's a great martial arts master. But he does leave a lot be desired when it comes to hiring employees. The whole plot in Mr. Vampire is moved along by the incompetence of the people who work for him.

Zac: In a way, this seems to be a sort of underlying idea, that despite the comically bumbling nature of the assistants, the morgue master guy still sees how they try so hard to please him, and most of the time they manage to do things right. All of the characters in Mr. Vampire work together very well, and their relationships to one another are definitely believable.

RF: It is interesting that you would say that. After all, the genre of this film is fantasy. I mean, hopping vampires, seductive ghosts, bumbling servants who release zombies because they're screwing around rather than doing their job! Realism is a noun I wouldn't have applied to this film, or the others in the same genre, like Sammo Hung's Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind.

Zac: As far as that goes, there aren't really any parts that seem cheesily unrealistic except for the ghost lady who shows up a bit later and a bit randomly.

RF: Point taken. I remember the first time I saw the film. I saw the vampires hopping, and I started laughing out loud. I thought it was so funny. But at the same time, it's a little creepy. How would you rate this film?

Zac: The vampires themselves are actually fairly menacing, and their stiff hopping seems quite natural as far as how a dead person might move. Overall, the story is easy to follow, although the beginning is a bit confusing, as well as the introduction of the ghost lady, and some of the translations are rather abrupt.

RF: Speaking of abrupt, that's all the time we have. Enjoy the film!

Zac Lutz and R. Findlay
Film Club

Jeunet and Caro's City of Lost Children (1995)

THE PLOT: A twist on the typical fairy tale, The City of Lost Children is the story of an evil genius named Krank (Daniel Emilfork) and his henchmen of mechanically-enhanced Cyclops, six identical Clones (all played by Dominique Pinon), the tiny and bossy Miss Bismuth (Mireille Mosse), and a disembodied brain (voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant) which provides the philosophical foundation for the group. The band of genetically-engineered characters live on a man-made island off shores of a coastal city, and it is from this city that Krank's thugs kidnap children. Why? Because Krank is unable to dream, he attempts to steal them from the children's minds.

When the adopted brother (Joseph Lucien) of a circus strongman named One (Ron Perlman) is stolen, One goes on a crusade to save him. On his way, he hooks up with a nine-year-old ingenue/street punk named Miette (Judith Vittet), and they develop a symbiotic bond in their quest to destroy Krank's plot.

Christopher Null
FilmCritic.com

ANALYSIS: In The City of Lost Children, Jeunet and Caro have presented another gloomy world where "normal" life is no more. The film is saturated with atmosphere and features some of the most imaginative set construction of the year. The picture works in part because the film makers have taken the time and effort to frame a strange land where all their quirky characters can live and operate. Jeunet and Caro's movie is thematically and stylistically inspired by such diverse sources as Frankenstein, Dracula, Brazil, Time Bandits, and The Wizard of Oz. Like Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children is characterized by dark, twisted humor, yet this movie is more of a fantasy than a macabre comedy.

James Berardinelli
ReelViews Movie Reviews

INTERVIEW with Jeunet and Caro: Freudian Dreams

You were thinking of a world depopulated of dreams, dark and gloomy.

Jeunet: It was the idea that we had. That someone who didn't dream but, just the same, lived very well, yet would want to see, in dreams, a greater dimension of the imagination. For us, someone who is deprived of that is condemned to die. That's part of what we wanted to say...If one cannot dream and imagine things, and if one is sentenced to the everyday, to reality, it's awful.

Can we find, in "The City of Lost Children," a parable on the desperation of modern man, who is progressively losing the ability to dream?

Caro: We never have "messages" of that sort, merely the desire to tell a simple story.

Jeunet: I think of men incapable of dreaming...There have always been men to put on fantasy festivals, or to make films, to make others dream; and there are others who have never dreamed.

Caro: Dreaming is also having the ability to preserve the spirit of childhood. It's true that it's a little metaphorical in the framework of the film, but there's no message.

What is your own definition of the world of dreams?

Caro: In every way, in this film, our vision of dreams is not at all realistic. We've read all the books about dreams, their significance, etc.; but, while it was thoroughly interesting, it wasn't necessary to take it into consideration for the story that we wanted to tell. One takes a greater risk in the realm of fairy tales than in dreams, in the proper sense. So we went in that direction, letting our imagination manifest itself.

Jeunet: The Freudian side of dreams is very interesting, but it's not at all our subject. That would have made for a tedious film, more of a mediocre parable...

Alain Schlockoff and Cathy Karani
Sony Pictures

INTERVIEW with Jeunet: Like a Fairy Tale

In all of your films (besides "Alien Ressurection"), there's this idea of people's secret lives and the crazy schemes they come up with to get what they want, like the elaborate ways Aurore tries to kill herself in "Delicatessen" and the kids in "The City of Lost Children" using a cat and a mouse to break into a safe. What's the fascination there?

Jeunet: I don't know. I think this film is a little bit different. It's also talking about destiny, but not this kind of chain of events. I tried to avoid that. I remember one scene I cut a lot because I did not want to repeat myself, the scene where they make love and the objects are moving. I am not very proud about that, because it's too Delicatessen. But I do the same thing in my own life. When I give a gift, for example, I put arrows on the floor: You have to open the refrigerator. Inside you have an artichoke. Inside you have a paper [saying] you have to turn on the TV. I am on TV. I explain that you have to open a book, etc. I love this.

I was thinking about "Delicatessen" and "The City of Lost Children." While they are dark, they also have happy endings for the characters who deserve them. So, in that sense, maybe you've been sentimental and optimistic all along?

Jeunet: For us, The City of Lost Children wasn't dark. It was like a fairytale, and in a fairytale everything is dark: the little children, the dark forest, they are lost. But it is so good to be afraid when you are a kid. And when I saw it again last year, I thought, "Oh yes, it is dark." For the first time I felt it was dark.

Andrea Meyer
indieWIRE

INTERVIEW with Jeunet and Caro: A Certain Cruelty

For some people, the film seems to be meant for children as well as adults...

Caro: Absolutely, but, as always, at the outset, the film was made first of all for ourselves. It's true that we've stayed very childlike...

The paradox is that the film, at moments, seems a little too dark for children...

Caro: But if you look at Pinocchio, Dumbo, Snow White, Bambi, there are some awful enough scenes that make an impression...I think that an audience member, whether big or little, wants to feel afraid, to have fun, to be moved, to cry -- in short, to be surprised. There has to be a little of all those emotions...

Jeunet: The idea is to rediscover, a little, childhood fears -- those in tales that were told to us. This is far from being gory. Yet, in the tales, when you read Grimm or Perrault, there's a certain cruelty.

Alain Schlockoff and Cathy Karani
Sony Pictures

Stuart Rosenberg's Cool Hand Luke (1967)

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a new hero arrived in American cinema: the anti-authority hero. Cool Hand Luke was one of the first films to portray this new type of hero, as portrayed by Paul Newman in one of his greatest screen roles.

Newman plays Lucas Jackson. We see right as the film begins how "Luke" represents anti-authority. He's drunk and cutting the tops off parking meters. We can't tell if he's doing it for the money or because he's angry, just that he's doing it because he can.

Luke is shipped off to a Southern prison camp, which is one of the film's major highlights. In the camp, a world of its own, secluded from society or real world existence (or just from any David Lynch film), prisoners must conform to the rules of the strict captain (played by Strother Martin). One of the many things that have come into pop culture from this film is the chain gang working o the roadside asking the prison guards' permission for trivial tasks like "wiping the forehead, boss" or "taking the shirt off, boss."

When Luke first enters, you can already tell he can't conform to this way of life. It isn't him. It's against everything he stands for. At first Luke is mistreated by the other prisoners, led by their somewhat leader Dragline (George Kennedy in an Oscar-winning role). But the thing is Luke doesn't mind. He keeps on living how he lives, and he eventually wins them over. (He gets the nickname "Cool Hand Luke" after winning a huge poker hand with absolutely nothing.)

But Luke also becomes an inspiration to the others on the chain gang. In one particular scene, Luke rallies his fellow prisoners to quickly finish a tar road in order to have a break. It's this sort of power, to rally others into defiance, which establishes Luke as this anti-authoritarian hero.

Yet Luke doesn't just get everyone to go along with him and have a happy ending. The captain and the bosses can't let their power be undermined. The guards realize that if the prisoners aren't suffering, they no longer have power over them. But the one who Luke runs into trouble with is boss Godfrey. Godfrey, hidden in the shadows or wearing dark sunglasses, represents the silent power that has tried to destroy these anti-heroes.

The guards finally make sure to stop anything Luke might or might not do after the death of his mother. Luke is put in "the box" until after his mother's funeral. One of the guards argues with Luke: "Just doin' my job. You gotta appreciate that." Luke's response -- "Aw, callin' it your job don't make it right, boss." -- underscores one of the film's themes, that law and authority does not always mean the same thing as justice. For a country still coping with the aftermath of watching mounted police attack civil rights marchers in 1965 (and just three years away from the horrifying killing of four Kent State students by the Ohio National Guard), Cool Hand Luke captures the human side of a very disturbing direction in national politics.

But the film is not a one-sided polemic. We feel bad that Luke is being punished for something he hasn't done. Yet we can sympathize with the guard who has no choice but to follow orders. Even the film's most famous line, "What we got here is ... a failure to communicate" (inspiring generations of bad Strother Martin impersonations), speaks to a larger social, generational, and political concern the United States found itself facing.

Cool Hand Luke remains one of the greatest films ever made about non-conformity. It's supremely acted, brilliantly written, includes plenty of wit and humor, and remains one of the first films of the time to create this memorable character type.

Peter Labuza
Film Club

Brad Bird's The Incredibles (2004)

Occasionally we get into conversations about the "best" superhero movie made since Richard Donner got the whole thing started in 1978 with Superman. Folks throw around your Spider-man 2, your X-men, your Batman Begins. But really, Brad Bird's computer-animated The Incredibles has to be near the top.

For one, it solves the paradox of the superhero movie. What is the paradox of the superhero movie, you ask? Well, that's what we at Film Club are here for, to answer your questions. The paradox goes like this: The comic book, from which most of the superhero films are derived, is the perfect form for adaptation to film. Film, the physical thing that one shines light through to make the pictures you watch in the theater, is almost identical to the panels you read in a comic book. Both are essentially a series of static images which, when viewed in sequence, produce the illusion of narrative motion. With a comic book, your mind provides the motion between the panels; with a film, a flickering light illuminates each panel (in negative form on a strip of celluloid) very quickly (24 frames per second) to impress in your mind the idea that the images are moving. In fact, many film-makers will make storyboards of scenes before they shoot them, and the storyboard is essentially a comic book.

And there it is -- you have a comic book with a rich visual tradition and content that focuses on heroes faced with persistent physical, emotional, and social challenges -- the perfect fodder for adaptation to film.

So, you ask, if the comic book is the perfect source for film material, why is it that so many superhero films are so ... well ... bad? And you may be thinking to yourself: Hulk, Fantastic Four, Catwoman (oh my, Catwoman).

Glad you asked. That's the paradox. Here's why: The other aspect of the superhero comic that film must contend with is its melodramatic mode. Once a character is established, for example, character development continues to occur only incrementally. Character is sort of like Clark Kent to plot's Superman, totally wimpy. This is not to say that characters like Peter Parker are bad; they are anything but. In the individual comic story, however, Peter Parker doesn't change or grow much. To be great, film needs strong character development.

Second, the plots themselves tend to revolve around exaggerated crises and resolutions. And when transferred to the more realistic genre of film (and most comic book heroes end up in live action films), it comes off looking, understandably, cartoonish. Now if you're on a steady diet of Star Wars movies, it's easy to look past this problem. But if you like even moderately more complex films, this melodramatic exaggeration can seem annoying after a while.

The Incredibles avoids the paradox. After all, it is a cartoon. And what makes it a wonderful film is the very stuff that many other superhero films fail at. It has great character development. Just look at Bob Parr sitting at the insurance agency where he works. The ironic juxtaposition of his hulking form in a tiny cubicle mirrors the conflict of his principles -- he wants to save mankind in its hour of need, not rip it off one poor soul at a time.

On the larger canvas, The Incredibles also challenges our hypocrisy about diversity. As a culture we struggle with inclusion and tolerance. We work hard to support and make room for the disadvantaged. The Incredibles turns this idea over, suggesting that we still need to work on inclusion of the abled and gifted. It's a subtle political message, but it raises the film above the usual superhero melodrama and good vs. evil conflect. (X-men, and its blatant metaphors of governmental fascism, homophobia, etc, does the same.)

Above all, The Incredibles remains fun, high quality entertainment. It's a movie you can watch over and over without tiring of it. And, to our minds, that is truly super.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser

Michael Lehmann’s Heathers (1989)

Set in the late eighties in a stereotypical high school in Ohio, Heathers follows the story of Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder), a student who identifies herself with the notorious clique called The Heathers. The Heathers pride themselves on being the four prettiest and most popular girls in school; they are also the most powerful, a characteristic they maintain often through the humiliation of others. Veronica, however, wishes to detach herself from this exclusive clique and, in doing so, soon finds herself caught up in a dangerous relationship with loner Jason Dean (Christian Slater) that leads to a series of murders.

With its dark comedic humor, Heathers asks us to re-evaluate our attitudes about individualism, conformity, and the high school social structure as metaphor for all society. It is a satire, and satire, as it often does, forces us to look at something from two points of view – first as an object of satire and ridicule and second as a reflection of a real-world institution that we cannot treat the way the satire does. When Stephen Colbert tells the president, sitting not 10 feet from him at the 2006 Washington Correspondents Dinner, that having a 32 percent approval rating means that 68 percent of the people approve of the job he’s not doing, we scowl or laugh – nervously – because the powerful is being held up to ridicule. But we also reflect on what approval ratings and the office of the presidency mean. Heathers forces us to look at adolescent cliques the same way. Do we laugh at the demise of the popular “bitches” who make everyone’s life hell? In doing so, are we just as shallow as they are because we fail to see them as complete human beings? Does Heathers want us to laugh?

In addition, Heathers directs us to confront our fetishistic obsession with death. Held up for inspection and ridicule are our generation’s many odd responses to shocking and untimely death – from hypocritical eulogizing to group trauma therapy to the uncomfortable idea that we often pay more attention to an individual who has died than we do to the same person while alive.

Heathers is a film that bears watching repeatedly. The first time through is comic absurdity, but its messages, which become clearer with each viewing, are iconic, transcending its time period and the subject matter, and rendering Heathers a true classic.

Sonya Aziz-Zaman and R. Findlay
Film Club

Fernando Meirelles’s Cidade de Deus (2002)

2002’s Cidade de Deus (City of God) follows the adolescent years of a boy named Buscapé growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The housing project in which he lives, Cidade de Deus is known for being one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro.

The time frame of the film ranges from the 1960’s to the early 1980’s and shows the progression of the increasing violence of the neighborhood throughout these years. As young Buscapé is born into this neighborhood, he is forced to deal with the many challenges Cidade de Deus has exposed him to including severe gang violence, poverty, and drugs. However, Buscapé’s talent and passion for photography provides him with a chance to detach himself from a destructive future he sees many of the adolescence around him living out.

Sonya Aziz-Zaman
Film Club Co-President

Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967)

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Lasse Hallström's My Life as a Dog (1985)

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Wes Anderson’s Rushmore (1998)

Rushmore is the story of a boy in high school who is struggling to find his place in life. Although that sounds cliché, the movie certainly is not. Wes Anderson, who directed and co-wrote Rushmore with Owen Wilson, tells the story of Max Fischer, played by Jason Schwartzman. Although seemingly a bright person, Max Fischer’s grades are just not up to par. Because of his love for extracurricular activities such as language clubs, the school newspaper, and yearbook, he has found little time for his school work. He is placed on sudden death academic probation and must get his grades up to snuff or lose his scholarship to Rushmore High School.

Max has a very eccentric personality, which brings him to compete head to head with Herman Blume (Bill Murray) for the affections of Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), a first grade teacher at the school. Herman Blume, a rich man of similar eccentricity, has been seeing Rosemary, and Max becomes especially angry when Rosemary tries to turn him down. Max becomes a scheming, wicked character with revenge on his mind, and the side of him that is shown earlier by his chronic lying habits is brought out into the open. Rushmore is a great film about an outsider with everyone out to stifle his creativity, but also about an adolescent coming to terms with his place in the world.

Charlie Driscoll
Film Club

Hal Ashby’s Harold and Maude (1971)

The first time I saw Harold & Maude was a film editing class. My teacher told me that this film represents everything you need to know about life, death, and everything in between. >

At first glance, Harold & Maude's premise sounds more disturbing than enjoyable. Harold, played by Bud Cort (The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou), is a young teenager obsessed with death. He commits fake suicides that look surprisingly real. When asked by a psychiatrist about how many he's committed he replies "A rough estimate? I'd say about fifteen." He also attends funerals where he has no business being and drives a hearse. We never really are given any straight answer about why Harold finds himself intrigued with death, but we can guess. He lives alone with his commanding mother, who shoves off his suicides with little care.

But when he meets Maude, played by Ruth Gordon (Rosemary's Baby), at a funeral, he and the audience learn the real celebration of life. Maude, a woman who’s "seventy-nine years young," lives each day to the fullest. She has no respect for any authority as she has almost in a way given up on life. In one scene, she completely abuses a cop in a hilarious way.

It's these ideas of life and death and how similar they end up being. By the end of the film, we have celebrated death, celebrated life, and once again celebrated death.

Many people list Harold & Maude as a classic 70s film. With its hip and spunky characters, great music, and 70s look, the film kind of sits as one of those classic 70s cult films that are hard to ignore. Others compare it to Wes Anderson films (He has called it his favorite film before) as it easily compares to the feel, both narratively and visually, of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore.

In the end Harold & Maude is just a wonderful story about issues teenagers face. Do we want to choose life? Or does our interest in death create a more compelling situation? The questions are up to you to answer.

Peter Labuza
Film Club

An Evening with Coleman Miller

USO JUSTO
An Artist's Statement

Throughout my filmmaking career I have made a conscious effort to remind the audience they are watching a film. Uso Justo came about from an almost ridiculous idea I had to make a “foreign film”. After viewing an old 1950’s Mexican dramatic film I realized there was gold in this footage that had to be mined. I started with virtually no story and simply wrote new subtitles for my own entertainment. My only objectives were to make it smart, incongruous and funny.

It was while working on a separate project, 27 Short Videos About Film, that Uso Justo began to develop. I was constructing a series of short chapters all interrelated by the filmmaker’s quirky takes on working in video and film and how the two affected each other. After editing some of the Mexican narrative scenes into this longer piece I realized that Uso Justo began to standalone. It was stronger and more to the point of what was on my mind at the time - which was showing a film that is keenly aware of itself. I wanted to make people laugh at the same time they were getting thrown concepts from left of center. For instance, the film dicks telling two characters early on in the film, “Well you better start telling a story quick or we’ll be back.” This is a direct result of my desire to develop my narrative storytelling after years of purely visual filmmaking. I enjoyed revealing the film's intents and processes, and therefore my own, to the audience.

Later in Uso Justo, the doctor takes the nurse into an experimental film world – this section is a good example of many of the films I produced while working as a film printer in San Francisco in the 1990’s. Many of the elements used in that particular section are taken directly from some of those films, in particular Step Off A Ten Foot Platform With Your Clothes On (1990). At that time I was turning film around on itself in a purely visual way – showing the sprocketholes, edge numbers, dirt and frame lines, etc. Attempting to reveal the film through narrative dialogue, for me, is a natural progression. Also, using my own work within my work is self referential, and a parody of myself and others in the experimental genre.

I was deeply inspired by Bruce Conner and in particular his short film Take the 5:10 To Dreamland. His use of found footage from various educational films along with his editing style of using black in between these seemingly unrelated shots was deeply inspiring to me. At the time I was shooting a lot on super 8 and blowing it up to 16mm. I was using sound in a very contrapuntal way. Examples are the sounds of children playing over shots of a car driving too fast down the road and cricket sounds over the shot of an empty rocking chair rocking.

I have found that I use whatever tools are given me. While working as a printer in a film lab in San Francisco I was able to use equipment most filmmakers didn’t even know existed. Use of a continuous contact printer, which I used every day (and on weekends I was given carte blanche to use them as I saw fit.) was particularly inspiring. The film lab turned into a ten-year experimentation fest. I was able to invent many new printing techniques, which I continue to build on today. By manipulating found footage I was able to create a body of work which turned the medium of film back around on itself.

Since leaving the lab I have had to find new tools. Fortunately, I have found these tools are everywhere. I love finding ways to use ‘non-film’ tools to make film. While working as a temp I used a microfiche printer to make animation pieces. Xerox machines, I found, could print directly onto film for beautiful results. Currently, my tools lie in the digital realm, but I still think of non-traditional methods to produce films by manipulating these tools. History is not forgotten, though, as found footage, sprocketholes, edge #’s, and framelines continually appear and reveal themselves freely in my work to this day. In this way my art thrives on the unexpected. The joy in the discovery for me is as important as the finished product.

Coleman Miller
Film-maker. Director. Writer. Producer. Editor.

Hettie Macdonald's Beautiful Thing (1996)

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Cédric Klapisch's L'Auberge Espagnole (2002)

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Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

In the mid-1950s, rebellious youth were running rampant on the screen. Brando had terrorized small-town America with his motorcycle gang in The Wild One (1954). Sidney Poitier had played one of the troubled city high school students in The Blackboard Jungle (1955). Such was the climate when Nicholas Ray cast James Dean in the title role of Rebel Without a Cause. Ray took his title from a book published by Robert Lindner in 1944, the story of an imprisoned juvenile delinquent who could give no reasons for his crimes. As a sociologist, Lindner had studied the postwar generation of youth – often violent and inarticulate – which he believed was rebelling against conformity. Ray was intrigued by Lindner’s views; he talked to law officers and young offenders, then wrote a short synopsis for the film. He created the roles of Jim and Judy with Romeo and Juliet in mind because he considered Shakespeare’s play “the best play about juvenile delinquents.” … For [Ray] the central focus was “the problem of the individual’s desire to preserve himself in the face of overwhelming demands for social conformism.”

If Nicolas Ray became a kind of cult hero among film critics and directors, James Dean (1931–55) became an even greater idol among young viewers. When Dean was killed in an auto accident at the age of twenty-four, he left a legacy of only three feature films. For two of his performances, both directed by Elia Kazan (East of Eden, 1955; Giant 1956), he had won Academy Awards for best actor. … Francois Truffaut described Dean’s acting as “more animal than human,” noting how “he acts beyond what he is saying; he plays alongside the scene.” Yet off the set, Dean could be articulate about his philosophy of performance: “In the short span of his lifetime an actor must learn all there is to know, experience all there is to experience, or approach that state as closely as possible.”

From the first shot of the film, Dean’s talent is at work. While the credits roll, we see him playing on the sidewalk with a windup toy monkey. It is a whimsical moment – the youth is a bit tipsy – but it reveals the sensitive child within. On the soundtrack, a discordant jazz piece mingles with the strident scream of sirens. Amid the sounds of discord is a cry for help. In the police station, Jim mimics the sirens. His tie and jacket barely cover his emotional dishevelment.

Later in the film we are introduced to the [characters’] families, and we see their large suburban homes. In the planetarium, the context becomes cosmic. “The problems of man seem trivial indeed,” intones the professor of astronomy, while a cataclysmic ending of the earth is enacted on the dome overhead – a movie within a movie. … Back on earth, the issues acquire Freudian overtones. Jim’s father, wearing an apron, appears weak and foolish; he fails to be the male authority his son is yearning for.

These teenagers adrift are left to work out their inner tumult in knife fights, gangs, and chickie fights. They rebel with reasons, but without a cause.

William Constanzo
Reading the Movies (p.105-108)