German American actor-screenwriter-producer-director Ernst Lubitsch gained notoriety in Hollywood for his string of sophisticated silent comedies during the mid-1920s with the moderate commercial successes The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925), and So This is Paris (1926). However, the emergence of Lubitsch’s signature visual and thematic design, along with his ability to convey great significance through witty metaphors or tactfully constructed moments, would not solidify until his first foray into sound film with the critically acclaimed box office behemoth The Love Parade (1929). His next two films—Monte Carlo (1930) and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)—cemented Lubitsch’s lifelong association with the romantic comedy and musical genres and a definitive style that would eventually be dubbed “The Lubitsch Touch.”

Though these and his later works, including Trouble in Paradise (1932), The Merry Widow (1934), and The Shop Around the Corner (1940) remain staples of his legacy, Broken Lullaby (1932) stands out as an enigmatic entry in Lubitsch’s filmography due to its serious subject matter and somber tone. Generally well received by critics at the time of its release, Broken Lullaby performed dismally at the box office, which may explain why Lubitsch never returned to serious drama for the remainder of his career. Nevertheless, many scholars have since reexamined this resolutely antiwar film, noting it as an “undoubtedly important work in his filmography”¹ and “one of the most revelatory films he ever made.”²

Screenwriters Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda adapted Reginald Berkley’s 1931 play The Man I Killed (itself adapted from Maurice Rostand’s 1925 French play of the same name). Production for Broken Lullaby began in September 1931 and wrapped shooting within six weeks. The film underwent multiple title changes and a last minute publicity overhaul because Paramount feared that the darkness of the material would turn audiences away. However, these attempts to rebrand the film ultimately did little to bolster its box office returns.

Broken Lullaby follows Paul Renard (Phillips Holmes), a young French veteran who is burdened with guilt after killing a German soldier in the trenches during World War I. Inescapably distraught, Paul seeks out his victim’s family in an attempt to find peace of mind. Though the vast majority of the film focuses on the effects of war, nationalism, grief, and guilt, there are unmistakably Lubitschian moments of comedy peppered throughout this pensive drama.

The engaging interplay of image and sound in the film demonstrates Lubitsch’s aptitude for sound cinema only a few years into its existence. Broken Lullaby also serves as an excellent showcase of his characteristically mobile camerawork. Multiple scholars point to the film’s opening as one of the most powerfully crafted sequences of Lubitsch’s career because of its symbolic use of image and sound to crystalize the essence of his message within minutes; Jean Mitry praised it as “a perfect example of a total image, film expression in its highest form.”

Special thanks to Janet Bergstrom, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, and the Program in Cinema and Media Studies.

If all the talk about directors and auteurs didn’t make the point clear: screenwriters, once again, were left out in the cold. Indeed, coverage of the results might lead one to assume that Vertigo emerged from the mind of Alfred Hitchcock fully formed, rather than from a screenplay by Alec Coppel and Samuel A. Taylor, itself adapted from a novel (The Living and the Dead) written by Pierre Boileau and Pierre Ayraud. To be fair, this oversight isn’t entirely the fault of bloggers and journalists. Directors are so feted by Sight & Sound that they have been invited by the magazine to vote in their own poll since 1992. Screenwriters aren’t afforded the same opportunity (nor is anyone else involved in the filmmaking process, for that matter). Worse, screenwriters aren’t even credited on the Sight & Sound website, which has an entry for every film to place on both the critics’ and directors’ polls but only indicates the films’ directors and most prominent actors.

Given the information provided by the magazine’s website, then, it comes as no surprise that although the results have been dissected by director, release date, and country of origin (all of which Sight & Sound provides), little attention has been given to dissecting the results by writer (or other characteristics that Sight & Sound does not provide).

To begin to correct this oversight, I have put together a list of every writing credit for the top 252 films in the critics’ poll. What I imagined would be a relatively simple exercise quickly revealed itself to be a complicated one, and I had to set a few guidelines to keep this project from becoming totally unmanageable. In service of time, I focused my attention on the critics’ poll, which seems to have drawn the majority of online attention out of the two polls. I only credited writers with the screenplay or story when they were recognized for their contribution on-screen, except in the two cases of documentaries that credited no screenwriter. For those films (Shoah, #29, and West of the Tracks, #202), in order to avoid writer-less titles on the list, I deferred to online sources that credited the films’ directors with screenwriting duties. Because I was interested in the ratio of original to adapted works in the poll, I allowed for the writers of uncredited (but widely acknowledged) source material to be included on the list. Such cases included uncredited adaptations such as 2001: A Space Odyssey (based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story “The Sentinel”) and Apocalypse Now (based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness).

The list I’ve compiled is far from comprehensive. There are undoubtedly unauthorized and uncredited adaptations that I have missed. By deferring to on-screen credits, I have surely ignored countless screenwriters who were denied credit for a multitude of reasons. As a starting point, however, I think it is perfectly suited to this exercise, the results of which were illuminating.

On the Sight & Sound website, which sorts the poll by directors, the myth of the individual film author appears tenable. Directing teams such as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger are an exception to the rule; indeed, nearly all of the films in the poll have a single director. Sorting the poll by writers, the collaborative nature of filmmaking becomes much more apparent. Of the 252 films in the critics’ poll, only 120—fewer than half—are the work of a single credited screenwriter. Of those 120 films, 37 were adapted from source material by another writer, which leaves only 83 films on the list written by a single person. In all, the top 252 films in the critics’ poll involved 385 different writers.

Among the top 252 films in the critics’ poll, there are 23 directors who appear at least four separate times:

Seven films: Robert Bresson
Six films: Luis Buñuel, Jean-Luc Godard, Howard Hawks, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Five films: Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Carl Dreyer, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick
Four films: Charlie Chaplin, Francis Ford Coppola, John Ford, Federico Fellini, Terrence Malick, Kenji Mizoguchi, F. W. Murnau, Yasujirō Ozu, Jean Renoir, Roberto Rossellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Orson Welles

Looking at the top 252 films through the lens of writers rather than directors, the list of people appearing on the list four or more times is a bit different:

Seven films: Robert Bresson
Six films: Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Five films: Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Carl Dreyer, Tonino Guerra, Stanley Kubrick
Four films: Charlie Chaplin, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, Yasujirō Ozu, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Yoshikata Yoda

By tracking the writers who contributed to the most films in the critics’ poll, one discovers a list that is as notable for whom it leaves it out as for whom it includes. Notable directors but infrequent screenwriters John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Kenji Mizoguchi, F.W. Murnau, and Andrei Tarkovsky each have fewer than four writing credits among the top 252 films in the critics’ poll (indeed, Ford, Hawks, and Hitchcock do not have a single writing credit on the list). On the other hand, Federico Fellini, as the cowriter of Rome, Open City and Paisan, improves his standing in the poll as the writer of six films (but the director of only four). Tonino Guerra, an Italian screenwriter, appears on the list as a writer of five films (four of them collaborations with Antonioni, one a collaboration with Fellini).

On the subject of adaptations versus original screenplays, the originals are in the majority. Of the top 252 films in the critics’ poll, 108 are adapted from another source and 144 are original screenplays. Of the adaptations in the critics’ poll, 54 are based on novels, 20 on short stories, 10 on plays, and 24 on other material (ideas, poems, novellas, memoirs, articles, and nonfiction).

What I am suggesting by this blog post is not a radical rethinking of film authorship along the lines of David Kipen’s Schreiber Theory. Rather, my point is that organizations like the British Film Institute (publisher of Sight & Sound), which focus in part on establishing a film canon, do the appreciation of films a disservice by erasing nearly everyone but the director from the process of creation. With any luck, by the time the 2022 polls roll around, Sight & Sound will provide users with a much wider tool set than it currently offers to compare the results.

To accompany this post, Michael Kmet compiled a spreadsheet detailing the Sight & Sound poll results in terms of the films’ screenplay and story credits:

Click to download “SightandSoundTop250.xlsx” (48.6 KB)

NOTES

1. ^ http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/02/showbiz/uk-hitchcock-greatest-film-poll/index.html
2. ^ http://www.wtop.com/541/2976747/Hitchcock-dethrones-Welles-as-Vertigo-tops-Kane
3. ^ http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/sight-and-sound-by-the-numbers-and-the-auteur-with-the-most-films-is-20120817
4. ^ http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-sight-and-sound-poll

Author bio:

Michael Kmet received a B.S. in Cinema and Photography and a B.A. in 
Politics at Ithaca College, and an M.A. in Cinema and Media Studies at 
UCLA. His research interests include early American science fiction
 television, audio-visual film and television marketing, product
 integration strategies for “Quality TV,” and developing digital 
teaching tools for cinema and media studies.

When Jean Renoir viewed a print of The Man on the Eiffel Tower, he said, “These are pictures of Paris you can never photograph again.” Upon its release, Burgess Meredith’s directorial debut was lauded for its equally unique and unprecedented images of postwar 1940s Paris. Whether exploring the city streets, scrambling upon rooftops, or balancing atop the Eiffel Tower, the cat-and-mouse game between Charles Laughton’s Inspector Maigret and Franchot Tone’s devious Johann Radek provides a thrilling story set against a picturesque background.

While Meredith is credited as the sole director of the film, his role as a knife-grinding murder suspect allowed for others to take the helm. A friend of Meredith, Laughton took up direction when he stepped in front of the camera. Likewise, in the few scenes where both Laughton and Meredith appear, it was Franchot Tone who sat in the director’s chair. While the multiple directors brought the risk of creating a hodgepodge of styles, the common vision of the three friends, along with the always collaborative pre-planning created a consistent, fun, and thrilling picture.

It is fitting that such a visually striking film would be made during what Meredith calls “one of the most colorful experiences of my life.” Meredith’s feelings toward production seem to be in spite of the fact that he was in the middle of a divorce with Paulette Goddard, along with production difficulties that can only be described as absurd. Filming in France resulted in a two-week delay in all of the rushes. However, Meredith, with the help of Laughton, carefully pre-planned every scene, minimizing the technical issues. What made production truly problematic, though, was the location shooting. There are no green screens and no extravagant effects in The Man on the Eiffel Tower. There is only a balancing act upon Paris’s iconic structure. Yet the chase we see on film only alludes to the legitimate danger the cast and crew put themselves in in order to create the climactic final scenes. Meredith recalls the experience: “Most of it was filmed on various levels of the Eiffel Tower, and vertigo became a serious problem. Laughton couldn’t go near the outside rails—it made him dizzy—and after a few days, all of us felt the same. Only Franchot was immune—he could walk along the outside handrail with no fear at all. I couldn’t watch him, let alone direct him. Down below, the automobiles looked smaller than beetles.”

While the high-flying stunts may have all been worth it in the end, the film was almost never seen. The Man on the Eiffel Tower is based on the novel La Tête d’un homme (A Man’s Head) by Georges Simenon. Likewise, Tone, actor and friend of Meredith, put up the money for the entirety of the production’s budget, meaning that he would be the one to strike a deal with Simenon. As Meredith puts it, “Although Tone was not afraid of heights, he was a bad business man.” A part of the agreement between Franchot and Simenon allowed for the author to destroy the film prints at any point in time he desired. Assuming a good film would prevent this outcome, Tone consented to this deal. Unbeknownst to the crew, Simenon was a bit of a wild card and did indeed seek out and destroy many of the final prints. Fortunately, some copies eluded the crazed author.

While the praise for this film’s depictions of Paris after World War II may overshadow the plot itself, The Man on the Eiffel Tower proves to gain only more recognition for its unique place in the crime-thriller genre. Laughton’s performance continues to be wildly entertaining, and the “man’s” final ascent of the Eiffel Tower is equally intense and exciting. This is made all the more incredible through the use of Ansco single-strip color film stock and technicolor processing. The poor quality of available home copies of The Man on the Eiffel Tower make this beautiful 35mm print a rarity and a treat to see.

—Michael Potterton

Special thanks to Janet Bergstrom, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, and the Program in Cinema and Media Studies.

Following the box office disappointment of The Scarlett Empress (1934) and the political controversy of The Devil is a Woman (1935), director Josef von Sternberg parted ways not only with Paramount but also with his frequent collaborator and muse, Marlene Dietrich. According to von Sternberg, he was “liquidated by Lubitsch,” an ironic musing since the latter did little to interfere as production manager on the film except change the title.

Luckily, Ben Schulberg, who had just signed a production deal with Harry Cohn at Columbia, enlisted von Sternberg after his ousting at Paramount, offering him a two-picture deal and a fresh start. Soon von Sternberg’s fortunes became tied with another European émigré signed with the studio, the Hungarian-born actor Peter Lorre. Known primarily for his theater work in Germany with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Lorre had left his mark as the murderer in Fritz Lang’s M (1931) and had just starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much (1935) in London. Eager to establish himself in Hollywood, Lorre presented Cohn with the idea of adapting Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment as a vehicle for him to star in as its conflicted and murderous criminology student, Roderick Raskolnikov. As Hollywood legend has it, Lorre had his secretary type a monosyllabic synopsis to prove to Cohn that translating Dostoyevsky’s novel from page to screen was possible. Allegedly, Cohn, who was enraptured with the idea, only had one question for Lorre: “Tell me—has this book got a publisher?”

After being assured that the novel was, in fact, in the public domain and securing a deal with MGM that would loan Lorre to the studio for Karl Freund’s Mad Love (1935), production could begin on Crime and Punishment. Tasked with the enormity of translating Dostoyevsky’s novel to the screen, von Sternberg later boiled it down to a genre film in his autobiography, stating, “At best it can be no more than a film about a detective and a criminal.” While setting itself apart from its epic source material, the film also exemplified Hollywood’s trend of adapting classic works of literature to lend an air of prestige to motion pictures.

Throughout filming Crime and Punishment faced myriad challenges. Sam Lauren, who collaborated with von Sternberg on Blonde Venus (1932), rewrote Joseph Anthony’s screenplay to make it more cost-effective as well as more universal by relocating the story from St. Petersburg. The cast was composed of both Columbia contract players and inexpensive freelancers, reflecting the film’s modest budget. Character actor Edward Arnold, who clashed with von Sternberg, assumed the role of Inspector Porfiry, the inquisitive cat to Lorre’s cornered mouse. In another instance of notable casting, eccentric stage actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, on whom George Bernard Shaw based Pygmalion’s Eliza Doolittle, came on board to play the callous pawnbroker and also proved a handful. Despite these obstacles, Sternberg immersed himself in every aspect of the production, including rudimentary tasks such as moving equipment and touching up sets. The minimalism on display in Crime and Punishment almost serves as a penitent response to the characteristic excess in von Sternberg’s earlier work.

After its premiere, Crime and Punishment was largely overshadowed by Pierre Chenal’s French adaptation, which was also released in 1935. Nevertheless, as Andrew Sarris notes, “Chenal’s tantalizing theatrics hardly compared with the mood and feeling generated by the more reflective style of the von Sternberg version.” Despite being eclipsed by Chenal’s effort, von Sternberg’s film received praise for Lorre’s intriguing acting. The New York Times commended the actor, remarking that “Mr. Lorre gives a fascinating performance, revealing once again his faculty for blending repulsion and sympathy in the figure he projects to his audience.” In several scenes, Lorre also displays a notable comedic talent, heretofore unseen on the screen.

While often overlooked, Crime and Punishment marks a turning point for von Sternberg as he set out to establish an identity separate from Dietrich. The film serves as a reflection of the director himself with, as Sarris observes, “von Sternberg display[ing] his own stylish bravado through the Napoleonic and Nietzschean poses of Peter Lorre’s” character. Moreover, as von Sternberg approached the later stages of his career, his male characters began to reflect not only different aspects of his personality but also different stages of his life. As von Sternberg aged, “a paternal and magisterial attitude toward his own youth emerges through the characterizations of Lionel Atwill in The Devil is a Woman, Edward Arnold in Crime and Punishment, and Walter Huston in The Shanghai Gesture [1941].” Consequently, the film is as much the story of von Sternberg as it is of Raskolnikov in how both men ultimately strive for reinvention and redemption.

Special thanks to Janet Bergstrom, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, and the Program in Cinema and Media Studies.

When Let It Be finally premiered in 1970, subtle interpersonal tensions on display throughout the film had already burst into public knowledge. The Beatles were over. Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg’s film captures a month of one of the band’s final recording sessions at Twickenham Film Studios and Apple Studios in London, and culminates in The Beatles’ final public performance in January 1969. Instead of matching the festive tone of earlier Beatles movies, Lindsay-Hogg’s film presents them in a more sobering light, making their eminent dissolution all the more apparent.

Let It Be has a rough, disorganized quality to it that is matched by its production history. Lindsay-Hogg shot on 16mm film for an intended television special to accompany The Beatles’ new album Get Back. Lindsay-Hogg worked in television and had directed TV promotional performances for The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. When he began filming, The Beatles were planning an internationally televised concert that the “behind the scenes” documentary would accompany. George Harrison, however, threatened the leave the band for a variety of reasons, including the concert. As the footage grew and television plans dissipated, the idea for a 35mm theatrical feature began to form.

United Artists brought The Beatles to American audiences with Richard Lester’s sensational comedies A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965). Although both films were successful, the group’s following television specials, including Magical Mystery Tour (1967) and Yellow Submarine (1968), were critically reviled. Despite the band’s lack of interest in making another narrative film, United Artists had originally signed them for three theatrical releases. After the group jettisoned their broadcasting plans for the material, it became the third and final Beatles/United Artists theatrical film. The album and film were renamed Let It Be and released in May 1970.

The film took a year to edit, mainly due to Lindsay-Hogg’s difficulty in capturing genuine reactions from the different band members. Later some of The Beatles admitted that the recording session was one of their worst experiences together, and Lindsay-Hogg added, “I don’t think I got them when they were their most charming.” Despite these later admissions, actual conflict in the film is rarely apparent. George Harrison’s departure from the sessions was removed from the film, which creates an atmosphere of unexplained and unresolved frustration throughout the recordings. At the same time, there was a push to call this an authentic Beatles experience despite the melancholy. Advertisements refer to the film as “intimate” and The Beatles’ representative Allen Klein claimed that the film is the band’s “own original idea.”

Many critics caught on to the reality of Let It Be, arguing that it felt disjointed and thrown together. Some were critical of Lindsay-Hogg’s direction, as critic Gene Siskel called his cameras “unimaginative hangers-on.” Even Siskel admitted, however, that when the film showed The Beatles playing it became “electric” and “exciting.” Other critics such as Howard Thompson instead claimed, “The very helter-skelter unstudied nature of the picture provides a revealing close-up of the world’s most famous quartet, playing, relaxing and chatting.” Even critics that dismissed the film in part all admitted that it became a “memorial” to the phenomenon of The Beatles and their enduring talent. History would prove them right, as it is one of the last records of the four together.

Let It Be was not the sensation of The Beatles’ earlier films, but United Artists gave it a relatively significant release for the time in 225 theaters. Variety called the opening weekend’s box office receipts “impressive” and the film continued to find an audience. The Beatles even won an Oscar for Best Original Song Score. Whether or not Lindsay-Hogg set out to make a film of the direct cinema movement, it still had the same aura, as one critic called it a 16mm cinema verité film. The film debuted only two months after Woodstock (1970), and the Maysles Brothers’ Gimme Shelter (1970) followed later the same year. Although Let It Be may not share these films’ prominence today, it ushered The Beatles out of cinematic history and gave them a farewell of appropriately mixed emotions.

Special thanks to Janet Bergstrom, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the Department of Film, Television, and Digital Media, and the Program in Cinema and Media Studies.

Download audio file (TheMediascapeRoundtable_CloudAtlasAndRace.mp3)

Click to download “TheMediascapeRoundtable_CloudAtlasAndRace.mp3″ (38 minutes, 34.2 MB)

Moderator: J.M. Olejarz

Mediascape Blog: Hi, and welcome to the Mediascape Roundtable. I’m Josh Olejarz, coeditor of the Mediascape Blog. Today we’re going to be talking about Cloud Atlas and its race issues, or maybe it’s more accurate to say the role and portrayal of race in the movie, and whether that is an issue. Before we begin, why don’t I let our other participants introduce themselves, and then we’ll get started.

Todd Kushigemachi: My name is Todd Kushigemachi, and I’m a first-year MA student in the [Cinema and Media Studies] program.

Olga Desyatnik: And my name is Olga Desyatnik. I’m also a first-year master’s student [in the Cinema and Media Studies program].

MB: All right. Todd, when we say the race issues of Cloud Atlas, what exactly are we talking about?

TK: I think the race issue is that we have several actors playing multiple roles across race, and those transformations are done using makeup and prosthetics. I know for me personally, as an Asian American, the first time I saw several actors in makeup to be, supposedly, Korean characters, it stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t know how to react to it; it was sort of shocking. But as the film went on, I found myself working through those feelings and seeing a tension between the horror of those images and the overall effect of the film. And I think it’s working through issues of race in a way that’s slightly more complex.

MB: Olga, what was your experience when you saw the movie?

OD: I think I was focusing more on the reincarnation aspect of it. I was a little bit surprised when Halle Berry plays a white Jewish woman, because it’s pretty clear that it’s her. And I think what—if I may speak to Josh’s experience—I think what Josh found disturbing about it was that the makeup was seemingly not done well. My position is more that whatever so-called flaws exist are there for a reason, and are interrelated with the themes that the Wachowski brother and sister are trying to portray.

MB: Yeah, when I saw the movie, I felt kind of uncomfortable with the fact that people were playing across race this way, especially because so many of the major characters and actors are white and they’re playing other races. But it’s been a couple of months since I’ve seen the movie now and I’m not sure exactly why I felt uncomfortable. I’m wondering what you guys think. Is it inherently a problem, can we say, to play across race that way? This is not a Hollywood movie, it’s a German production, but certainly in American movie history there are some really famous examples—Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s—of the way actors play across race. Is it inherently a problem, or can it be OK in some circumstances? And what’s the deciding factor there?

TK: I think you bring up a good point about the idea of the history of Hollywood cinema and those sort of representations. I think the idea of whether it’s inherently offensive is a very difficult question to answer. You’re right, as with yellowface, there’s this history, so when we see these sort of representations, I think there’s a tendency for us to go, “How has this been used historically?” Well, it’s been to perpetuate negative, buffoonish stereotypes, as you mentioned with Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Or you have the desexualized other—I’m thinking of the protagonist in D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms. Yellowface also has the effect of erasing Asian and Asian American actors from the cast. Basically, all we see are white actors and actresses in the film. Interestingly enough, the yellowface [in Cloud Atlas] does not work in those ways. We don’t see, necessarily, those exaggerated stereotypes. There are Asian actors—actresses, at least—in this film, and so it’s a little bit different. I don’t know. It’s interesting.

OD: I think a salient aspect is there are no Hispanic or Latin American actors in the film. And that, I think, is one of the biggest criticisms. As far as African American actors, Halle Berry is a big name, so she gets a lot of attention in this film, and she partakes in every single sequence. The actor who plays the slave in the first sequence, for some reason, doesn’t show up again. That does make me question why they wouldn’t have utilized him more, especially if the film is a departure from the way that this reincarnation principle is depicted in the book. However, I do think that the variety of ethnicities that each actor portrays, including Halle Berry, who, yes, unfortunately, is the only African American actor in the film who plays a variety of characters—

MB: There is a black actor—I can’t think of his name. But he plays a couple of different roles, too.

TK: She’s the definitely the most prominent, though, I think, to play—

MB: Definitely the most famous, I think we can say.

TK: Yeah.

OD: Right, OK. Wait, who is the black actor?

MB: Well, go on with your point. We’ll try to figure it out as we go.

OD: My point is just that—

MB: Oh, sorry, it’s Keith David. That’s who I’m thinking of.

TK: That’s correct.

OD: My point is that because there is a variety of crossing races for every person in the film, it equalizes to an extent. Certainly it’s not the same process that was occurring in blackface being used in The Jazz Singer, or Mickey Rooney, that you were mentioning.

MB: After I saw the film, I read an article by Michelle Dean that had a big influence on my early thoughts about the movie. She was essentially saying that she thought if the actors were going to play across race and get at the connectedness of all people, they should do without makeup—that that would be a braver choice than trying to put people in, especially bad, Asian makeup. What would you two say to that?

TK: That’s an interesting question: if we’re criticizing this, well, what are the alternatives? I think one of the difficult things is that although it was, technically, independently financed, it is a major studio release, I think trying to reach as broad of an audience both domestically and internationally as possible. And if we were to either have different actors in each period or have the same actors but without makeup, I don’t think that’s the sort of film that would do well. I think audiences would be even more confused. I feel like a lot of the response to this film has been, “I wasn’t sure what to make of it and it was confusing.” But I thought it was relatively straightforward. And just to imagine it with different actors, I think it would have been, perhaps, even more confusing.

OD: Right. And the other aspect of the confusion is that, for me, the most important thing is getting across the message of the film, right? In the thematic sense, the whole purpose is to talk about interconnectedness between human beings throughout different time periods. And the only way that they can represent that this is the same soul—because they are talking about souls, and actually the Wachowskis have made this comment in interviews, that they’re portraying souls throughout time. So, Tom Hanks is being reborn. Every time he plays a new character, he’s still the same soul. Cinematically, it’s impossible to represent that concept without having the audience recognize the actor. And that also plays to the fame of the actors. If these were not faces that we’re accustomed to seeing, then we might not get that point either. Which is why, for example, we weren’t able to name Keith David, or notice some of the other transformations from the less-famous actors. But, most importantly, this interconnectedness and reincarnation would be impossible to convey without having the same actor play different people who happen to be of different races. And I think the idea of a soul transforming its race in new rebirths is—what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s a unifying rather than a divisive concept. It goes against whatever critique we are making, sitting here, about the representation of race in the film. We’re saying that it’s marginalizing, whereas the whole purpose of using different races for each time a soul is reborn is to say that we are all the same. And so that’s really why I don’t view their use of race as critically as others do, because I think that it serves this thematic purpose.

MB: Todd, you had mentioned, before our talk, an Asian group’s response to the Asian makeup. Can you talk about that?

TK: One of the main things they talked about is that yellowface has this negative response. The organization was Media [Action] Network for Asian Americans, I believe is the correct name. Media Action Network for Asian Americans, led by Guy Aoki. His criticisms, of course, had to do with the yellowface. He believed that the yellowface makeup was the most poorly done of all the racial transformations, that when we see Doona Bae changed from an Asian to a white character, that makeup was done better than yellowface. I don’t know if I agree with that, but that was definitely one of the criticisms. Another thing that they brought up was whether or not this was an opportunity to have more Asian male actors. I think one of the big things about representations of Asian Americans is that Asian males are often desexualized. They’re generally not the heroes. Even a film like The Replacement Killers is a famous example where the action protagonist is an Asian male, but at the end of the story he does not end up with the girl. There’s this odd, almost asexual nature to these characters. I think that for the Neo-Seoul story that took place in the year 2144, a lot of them saw that as an opportunity to cast Asian actors into these heroic roles. My response is that I think that’s a good point. But I also wonder if—playing devil’s advocate—was the implication there that we would have these Asian characters then transformed into white characters in the other timelines? It speaks to this broader question: is this something that’s inherently racist? And I think that’s a tricky issue.

OD: I think that’s a really good point to bring up, if we could focus on Neo-Seoul for a minute? First of all, Jim Sturgess plays an Asian male, right? So, I suppose you could say that we could have cast an Asian actor to play that role. But, again, then you wouldn’t have the connection to his previous incarnations, right? So that’s my response to that. But—

MB: Can you say more? Why couldn’t an Asian person play a white character for the role?

OD: Why couldn’t an Asian person play a white character?

MB: Right.

OD: That role is supposed to be an Asian man. What do you mean?

MB: Jim Sturgess, in terms of chronology, his first occurring character is white, and he has a couple of other white characters.

OD: Right.

MB: And he also plays Asian characters. So why not just have it the other way? Cast an Asian character who is going to play white characters for the earlier timelines.

OD: That’s definitely a good point.

MB: Initially, when I saw the movie and I felt really uncomfortable, as a white person seeing these white people play so many more roles than the actors of other races, that was what I was thinking: Why are there so many white people? Is it just that there are famous white actors that they used or is there more to it?

OD: Right. Well, that’s something that we’ve all discussed, too: unfortunately, the nature of Hollywood is still such that we have a majority of white actors, especially ones that are famous. The reasons for that are a separate issue that we could talk about, but for the purpose of the film, if you’re looking to make a profit on it—if you’re looking to get a wide audience—then yes, you’re going to have actors that are recognizable, which happen to be, mostly, white people in Hollywood. And, well, you mentioned this is a German production, but I think we can agree that the Wachowskis are Americans. And the actors are Americans. It’s just a circumstance that they got German funding. They actually funded some of it themselves—$7 million, apparently.

TK: But we should also remember that Tom Tykwer did direct a number of the segments, and he is German, if I’m not mistaken?

MB: Well, I don’t want to let them off the hook just because it’s a German production. Certainly they’re very well-known filmmakers at this point in their career, as they’ve done a lot of big-budget movies, but I really feel strongly that the higher-profile you are as a director, the more responsibility you have to think about these things. One of the challenges of adapting this book from the novel was to figure out how to portray these characters who have connections to each other across time, and so they did this by having the same actors play different versions of the characters, or different incarnations, however you want to say it. Certainly the box office and recognizable faces are a part of it, but I feel like they could and/or should have done more to diversify the cast. I just can’t really get away from that feeling.

TK: I think another possible issue is—I think the Wachowskis and Tykwer adapted this well, but I think the original question, the original text, is, “Is the story of essential human-ness a Western story?” And I think that’s part of the reason why there are so many white characters in the stories to begin with. If we’re going to tell a story about human oppression throughout time, is it going to be the story of the slaves, and then you have a composer, and then you have a corporation in America, you have Jim Broadbent—these are all stories of oppression, but in Western civilization. So I think it’s another question of is the issue at the adaptation level, or was it our understanding of history in general that leads us to a very narrow focus?

OD: That’s actually a really good point. I did make this point before, that a lot of the earlier sequences take place in America or Scotland, like with Jim Broadbent, and they’re white characters. But I guess I hadn’t thought about the fact that you could have had other races playing those white characters. There’s also the crossing gender, with Hugo Weaving in Scotland, which is an interesting choice.

MB: And Ben Whishaw does it, too. That may be it. A couple of people do it, though.

OD: When does Ben Whishaw do it?

MB: He plays someone’s wife, I believe, in one of those stories.

OD: Interesting. So, if we’re talking about author’s intent, Lana Wachowski certainly wouldn’t have wanted to represent transgender people negatively—

MB: Let’s not necessarily attribute things to her that she may not agree with, but that’s certainly an angle on the story.

OD: I’m not attributing anything, I’m saying if you’re talking about intention, she would not have intended to denounce her own being, right? And that character is actually comedic, and kind of laughable, this woman that’s played by a man. So I don’t know what the intent there was, but…

MB: Speaking of intent, I want to get back to the narrative and thematic purpose of having the actors play across races. I don’t think anybody would argue that if there’s a reason for doing that, that that is not better than something like The Jazz Singer. But does that make it OK, I’m wondering.

OD: The question of “OK” is maybe the wrong question. Or, not really the wrong question—I think it’s a question that takes a position, which is to say, “Doing this is inherently offensive, but can we defend it?” And I’m not sure that that’s necessarily the perspective we should be taking. I think we should first ask whether it’s offensive, and in asking that we need to examine exactly how it’s done and whether it could have been done differently, as Todd pointed out. You actually made a great point about the fact that you could have had Asian characters in Neo-Seoul, Asian actors that would have played white people in earlier scenarios. My one comment for that was I defended that because I took the Neo-Seoul scene as representing—well, it is in the future. I have heard of this theory that we will become like Pangaea again in the future, and that all the races will mix and become one mixed race. There’s evidence that that’s happening. And so this “bad makeup” that they did for Jim Sturgess, for example, is actually, potentially, on purpose—they wanted to show him as a mixed-race person. And then Sonmi and all the clones are representative of what we know now as Asians. There are class questions there, because, obviously, that’s the lowest class in that society. And so, potentially, whomever they cloned wasn’t mixed race. Maybe it’s an older DNA pool. There are a lot of fantasy elements that we could interpret from the back story of that whole history, which is a fake history—it’s obviously not something we can pin down. So I think that there are reasons that can be invented for the choices they made there as well. I think for pretty much every choice, I could invent a reason for why they did it.

TK: I think it’s always tricky when we’re talking intent, you know? It’s always, how do we measure intent? And when we talk about “offensive,” does intent matter? And I don’t think so. I think representations can be offensive without intention. But Olga brought up the point earlier about Lana Wachowski’s operation, and she has talked about that in reference to the films and its themes. But, again, does that excuse a lot of the things in the film? I think that’s another question. But that’s the idea of intent. And I think some people have said that this is a film about how we are all one, and I think that’s part of it. But I think what I would just say was the takeaway for me, personally, it was about the persistence of human oppression throughout time. On a number of those occasions, it’s racial. There’s also oppression in terms of sexuality. There is also age. There’s—I don’t know how you would put it—in form of conception—whether one is naturally bred or cloned. But, regardless, there are these different forms of oppression and prejudice that take place, and I see that as the intent of the film. And one of the issues of race with makeup—particularly things like yellowface and all these other transformations—is that it denies race, or says it doesn’t matter, or it’s insensitive to the injustices that happen in each time. But I would like to say that the film at least indicates the persistence of those very oppressions of race. So I think it’s a film that, in essence, attempts to transcend race while still acknowledging the reality of oppression throughout time. So, again, here, that idea of intent, whether it justifies the yellowface and these other racial transformations, and how that plays out in the film. I don’t know.

OD: That was a point that we had discussed earlier, the persistence of oppression. For me, you have to divide the intent and the method, and again, unfortunately, the method that would be most effective for conveying a message is the one that draws the largest box-office sales, right? I don’t know if everybody would necessarily see this as a good defense for utilizing methods that aren’t in themselves transcendent of race. But you do get a better result by using these famous actors who happen to be white. That’s one side of it. The other side of it is the fact that we’re representing stories of oppression, in itself, villainizes the white people in those stories—for example, slavery or the ageists in Scotland—I can’t think of another example. But the point being that because the message of the film is one that denounces oppression of any race or of any group of people, that its methods are, then, a little bit more defensible, perhaps. I don’t necessarily think that there always needs to be a complete coinciding of form and function. In terms of activism, I think if you care about your message, then the most important thing is getting it out there the most effective way possible. And I think that it does carry a great message. To me, artistically, it’s more important whether the message gets across. Whether the work, within itself, achieves its purpose thematically, by conveying its morals—to dissect casting choices, in general, is always, I think, a little bit self-defeatist.

TK: That idea of getting the message out there is really tricky. For instance, I mentioned Broken Blossoms earlier. For those who don’t know, it’s a film essentially about the relationship between a Chinese man and a young white girl, played by Lillian Gish. The Asian character is played in yellowface, and this comes four years after The Birth of a Nation. I think the character in Broken Blossoms is played relatively sympathetically, as opposed to The Birth of a Nation, which is a film that is pretty universally rejected as racist and as an egregious representation. You see something like Broken Blossoms and it’s not as dismissed as widely, because I think it’s relatively progressive, or relatively racist. The question is whether that is a step up. Looking back now, we can still see Broken Blossoms as offensive in how it looks at the “Orient,” but it’s a question of, “If we’re still having to say it’s not quite as racist, is it still racist?” And I think that’s a question I’m working through myself.

MB: The idea of the film being a step up is a good one. In preparing for this talk, I was looking back at a lot of critical reactions for the movie, and I was surprised to find that not a lot of people seemed to think that the race makeup was that big a deal—more just that it was done badly, particularly with the white actors and the Asian makeup. But, again, I think the idea of the film being a step up is key, because I don’t think we can just dismiss this film. The idea of filmmakers—especially high-profile filmmakers like these—having a responsibility to think through these issues ahead of time—I don’t think it’s good enough to…well, the issue is that if someone doesn’t take a stand and try to do better than the people who came before them, then who is going to? This movie’s budget, I think, was $100 million. That’s huge. If someone on this scale can’t do better than what’s come before them, then how is anybody else going to? That’s my question.

OD: The fact of their budget—it’s true, it was a large budget, but they also almost got shut down many times. And apparently Hugh Grant signed on a couple of days before filming started. Anytime you’re making a film—and especially when you’re making an independent film—you need to secure those names, or you’re not going to have a movie at all. So I think it’s really difficult for people to judge their production process. You can plan lots of things ahead of time, but when you’re making a movie it’s really difficult for everything to come together just the way you want it. It’s also a casting practice now, in everything—in theater, on Broadway it used to be that theater actors were separate from film actors. Now every single Broadway musical has to have a famous film actor or nobody buys tickets. If they stopped putting film actors into the lead roles, would people still come back and buy tickets? I don’t know what the difference in their sales would be, but that’s the common practice now. And then we had a movie like New Year’s Eve that had 30 famous actors all in one film, and it was a terrible film, but people came to see whoever their favorite actor was. If you have 30 instead of two, then you have that many more people, that many more opportunities for fans. With a film like this, again, I can’t necessarily read this into the Wachowskis’ thoughts, but I think they were worried about getting it off the ground. And so the more famous actors you get, the better chances you have. Also because it’s such an, as everybody says, ambitious film, because it’s such an experimental way of storytelling, and it’s a fairly uncommon story, in itself, with these visions of the future. I don’t think that there was a certainly that it would do well without these names.

TK: Yeah, the idea of whether this is a step up, and the responsibility, the thing that makes this really difficult to characterize is there’s nothing quite like this film. There’s nothing we can compare it to. I would say that with most things, there’s a step up. There’s a precedent before that it’s either improving on or perpetuating or making worse. And Cloud Atlas, I can’t quite put my thumb on any other racial transformation that worked in this way, at least with the makeup and prosthetics, so it’s part of the difficulty of whether or not this is a progressive or a regressive representation. I think it’s difficult to characterize.

OD: Right. And isn’t that—you know, isn’t that an accolade in itself, to say that it’s a novel type of film, right? That they’ve created something original, which, artistically, again, is something that I think we should admire. Because it’s different, it’s given us so much to talk about. At the very least, we can say that it provides so much ground for discussion. And, problematic or not, we’ve agreed that it’s not completely egregious in its representation of various races. There are definitely issues with percentages and equal representation in the casting of different actors, but at the very least, the message that it’s conveying is a positive one, and the means are innovative, and that’s what we look for in what makes a film good, right?

MB: OK, I’d like to start to wrap up by bringing up the idea of a post-racial America. Or, since this isn’t an American movie, maybe just the idea of being post-race, or, somehow, past race, and what exactly that means, and how that fits in with Cloud Atlas and what it’s trying to do.

TK: I sort of mentioned this before. When I think of the term “post-race,” I think that means that, now, it’s post-race, we’re done, and there’s no more preference and there’s no conflict. And I think this is a film that at least stresses that conflict. It’s a film that strives towards a post-racial ideal, without being naïve about whether or not we’re there. And by suggesting that this is where we want to go, does that mean it’s just being naïve? By taking all these stories of social conflict and turning them into stories of individual character’s uplift, is that offensive? You know, I think it’s difficult. But overall, I don’t think this film fits into a post-racial mindset, as much as it strives towards that.

OD: Well, I think the entire theme—I keep coming back that word—of the film is the fact that they need to say that we are all one, the fact that they need to portray these stories of oppression in order to impress the viewer with some kind of obligation to act otherwise, to take Sonmi’s words—that message wouldn’t need to be conveyed were it true that we are in a post-racial era. I mean, nobody is claiming that we are. I don’t think the Wachowskis are claiming it, I don’t think Cloud Atlas claims that we are. I don’t think any of the three of us are claiming that we are. In terms of taking a step towards that, that’s my argument—you have to start somewhere. Although it’s not perfect, it’s better to take an imperfect step. But take some step, rather than denouncing any attempt at reconciling racial issues by saying that, “Well, it’s not good enough.” Because if we say that every time, we’re never going to make any progress. So I think that it should be lauded for its effort. And maybe it’s not an A for result, but it’s an A for effort.

TK: The name of the scholar escapes me at the moment, but in terms of Asian American representations, somebody once said if we want our representations of race to be nuanced and contextualized, similarly, our arguments about race need to be nuanced and contextualized. A lot of that is in considering past representations, production, and that speaks to Olga’s point of “Where are we going?” Is this a step, or—I just think it’s an interesting way of looking at this issue.

MB: All right. Any final thoughts, anybody?

TK: I will say that I’ve had, on Facebook, some pretty engaged conversations about this film, not only among cinephiles that I usually have conversations about film with, but with Asian and Asian Americans who were offended by this film, but also talking about these issues. It’s interesting just how this film has really sparked conversation. It’s polarizing in almost every single aspect of it, both in its quality and its racial representations. So I just think it’s interesting that people are really engaging with this film, and I think it’s something that deserves further study down the line.

OD: I think it’s interesting that what we talk about most with this film is makeup. If we’re talking about it misrepresenting various races, I don’t think there’s ever been such a big conversation about makeup before, with any film, right? You talk about the script. You talk about the acting. You talk about the directing, the lighting, etc. But makeup has never had such a big platform. And so, I wonder…I totally lost my thought. [Laughter]

TK: [Laughter] One thing I want to bring up also is on the idea of makeup. The one transformation that is missing from this is a white-to-black transformation, what we know as blackface. Some people have talked about if that’s an absence that speaks to just how offensive that would have been to lots of people. I just think it’s something that’s worth mentioning, the absence of blackface from this film. That’s an example where makeup really does matter, because the makeup was the issue.

OD: I just remembered my point as well. [Laughter] My question is whether we are actually criticizing the way the makeup was done—the fact that it was done poorly—or whether it’s the question of actors playing across race in general. If we had said that the makeup was done well, would we not be so offended by the actors playing across race? Or if we were saying that the makeup is not done well, asking was that intentional or not? I’ve probably expressed this position already, but I do believe that it was. For example, Halle Berry playing the white Jewish wife of the composer—I barely recognized her as it was, and her skin was still somewhat dark. If they had completely transformed her, would we have totally missed the point about her being the same soul? Because you have the lightning bolt scar, but if you just keep showing the lightning bolt scar, then that’s going to become tiresome. It’s going to be, artistically, visually, either uninteresting or annoying. So I think we need to understand the intention of the makeup in this film, where they’re purposely making us recognize the actors across time. I suppose that we can all agree that there could have been some better casting choices. But I think the makeup is intentional.

MB: All right. I want to thank you both for being here today. This has been the Mediascape Roundtable on Cloud Atlas.

Special thanks to Olga Desyatnik and Todd Kushigemachi for participating.

Participant Bios:

Olga Desyatnik is a Master’s student in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA. She received her Bachelor’s from Cornell University in Comparative Literature, with minors in International Relations and Spanish. Studying film, for her, fits into a broader curiosity about dominant ideologies and how social and political zeitgeist come to be. Other interests include her work at the Center for the Study of Women and a research project on the Russian immigrant population in Hollywood during the first half of the 20th century.

Todd Kushigemachi received his BS in Journalism at Northwestern University, where he also minored in Film and Media Studies. He is currently a first-year MA student in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA. With a background in entertainment journalism, he still writes features for Variety as a freelancer. His interests include the work of Woody Allen and trends of nostalgia in both classical Hollywood cinema and contemporary visual effects.

J.M. Olejarz is a film student at UCLA and a coeditor of the Mediascape Blog. He has written two books of poetry, had a letter to the editor published in The Amazing Spider-Man #588, and won a Vulture haiku contest whose prize was Season 3 of True Blood on DVD. For more of his thoughts on movies, TV, and a glut of miscellany, see mangetstowherehesgoing.tumblr.com.

Image 1: James D’Arcy and Ben Whishaw, Cloud Atlas

In breaking through the boundaries of conventionality, as referenced during a dream sequence voiceover that marks the film’s most poignant moment of self-reflexivity, Cloud Atlas employs a sprawling range of storytelling scope in its creation of six interrelated narratives that span centuries of human existence. Unlike David Mitchell’s 2004 novel from which it was adapted, the film capitalizes on the capacity of its medium by applying a multithread narrative structure to simultaneously shape each story rather than containing them within individuated sections. While these distinct plotlines are independently functional, it is the manner in which they intersect and coalesce that generates the film’s impact. A consistent use of crosscutting allows each of these narratives to unfold with internal linearity as parallels between the circumstances, characters, actions, and thematic issues are highlighted. This multithread framework allows each of the six parts to function as individual, yet essential, components of the whole, with the film’s totality deriving its significance from the interplay of the complementary layers of narrative.

Due to the necessity of the multithread structure dividing its focus, there is a sense of ambiguity concerning the typical signposts found in cinematic storytelling. Though each of the six plotlines has a clear protagonist, with equally visible antagonizing forces, the film as a whole offers no one central character or narrative. Thus, the protagonist and antagonist may be broadly described as one and the same: humanity. The dichotomous extremes of human belief and behavior, which may be boiled down to the cliché contrasts of good and evil, are manifested in different characters throughout different eras. This approach allows the primary characters to fulfill different roles during each reincarnation. Evil is typically embodied in the establishment or reigning power and the upholding of a depraved status quo, as seen with the institution of slavery in 1889, corporate corruption in 1973, and the system of fabricant labor in 2144. While some characters—such as the slave trader Haskell Moore, assassin Bill Smoke, abusive Nurse Noakes, and demon Old Georgie (all played by Hugo Weaving)—are consistently malevolent in every era, others—such as Tilda Ewing and Sonmi-451 (both played by Doona Bae), are benevolent in each era in which they appear. However, the narrative structure allows most of the characters to fluctuate in their moral dispositions in different incarnations, which not only highlights humanity’s capacity for both good and evil but also facilitates an extensive form of individual transformation and redemption throughout multiple lifetimes.

Image 2: The reincarnations of Tom Hanks

This multithread means of transformation and redemption is most visible in the character who begins as Dr. Henry Goose in the earliest narrative during 1889 and eventually becomes Zachry (both played by Tom Hanks) in 2321. While the character oscillates in his positioning along the spectrum of good and evil, embodying agents of both virtue and venality, such as scientist Isaac Sachs and the thug Dermot Hoggins, respectively, it is the bookends of his journey that conjure the character’s most significant metamorphosis. Dr. Goose is unmistakably aligned with the antagonizing powers of his storyline, demonstrating the depravities of humanity through his support of the “natural order” of slavery and murderous cruelty spurred on by his greed for individual wealth. He declares that “the weak are meat and the strong do eat” while attempting to murder Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) after slowly poisoning and stealing from him throughout the storyline. This identical line of dialogue is whispered to his later incarnation, Zachry, by the malicious demon, or hallucination, Old Georgie, who still haunts him over 400 years later.

The use of symbolic objects, such as Zachry’s green emerald necklace, which is identical to the button that Dr. Goose steals from Adam in the 1889 storyline, also reinforces the sentiment of continuation. Zachry can be seen playing with the emerald just before cowardly watching his brother-in-law Adam, who is not coincidentally the reincarnation of Adam Ewing, and nephew being slaughtered by Kona warriors. Here, the multithread structure is used to recycle key dialogue and objects to convey a sense of continuation between characters. These subtleties suggest that the residual essence of one’s previous lifetimes, such as the individualistic inclinations or guilt felt by Zachry from past actions, carry over into the future, which allows for a more dramatic redemption of the character once he finally overcomes his “demon.” This extended form of development through a continual process of reincarnation and sense of virtuous variability among the primary characters is a product of the multithread structure, which also utilizes its framework for thematic recurrence without reverting to overt repetition due to the diversity of the narratives’ extremely divergent settings and circumstances.

Image 3: Neo-Seoul

Throughout each of the six narratives, compassion and defiance under oppression surface as paramount motifs, as there are always agents of good who willingly risk themselves for others. As explicitly revealed in a voiceover that suggests our desire for survival often impedes our ability for courage, the film implies that humanity’s capacity for compassion is the remedy for the evils of individual greed. In 1889, Adam’s compassion leads him to befriend a runaway slave who later not only saves his life but also gives him the courage to denounce the institution of slavery. Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw), in 1936, daringly defies his employer when his musical composition is threatened, ultimately giving his life to ensure the completion of his masterwork. Likewise, in 1973 Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), Rufus Sixsmith (James D’Arcy), Napier (Keith David), and Isaac Sachs all suppress their survivalist instincts, resulting in death for some, compelled by their compassionate courage to uncover the truth of corporate corruption to save the lives of others. In 2012, as Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent) and his fellow inmates attempt to break out of a nursing home, it is their decision to turn back and save Mr. Meeks (Robert Fyfe), which is purely motivated by compassion and jeopardizes their strategic getaway, that in turn allows them to escape when he incites a riot at a pub just before their capture. The 2144 narrative also employs a similar thematic structure, as Hae-Joo Cheng (Jim Sturgess) and other members of The Union sacrifice themselves in a defiant rebellion against the oppressive governing power of Unanimity in an attempt to liberate sentient fabricants from enslavement. Though each of these events consists of wildly dissimilar settings and stakes, the multithread structure permits their juxtaposition to reveal thematic commonalities in service of presenting the panoptic intentions of the whole.

The film utilizes its structural approach not only to create an extremely expansive overarching narrative that allows for a complex web of interconnection between different characters and eras, but also to reinforce the underlying themes of redemption, compassion, and defiance under oppression. Familiar settings and situations from the past, such as slavery and corporate corruption, are used to highlight real-world occurrences in which severe ethical injustices were overthrown through the triumph of individuals who neglected to endorse an immoral status quo. The fractured framework’s fluctuation of characters’ statuses as protagonizing and antagonizing forces suggests humanity’s capacity for both good and evil as a source of constant contention. The re-appropriation of similar themes and storytelling devices attribute a sense of infinite recurrence to this struggle between the vices and virtues that humanity endlessly produces. Thus, Cloud Atlas employs a multithread narrative structure to achieve a sense of scale and complex interplay between storylines, while also servicing its thematic messages of humanity in a manner that would be unattainable without the composite impact of its storytelling sextet.

Image credits:

Image 1: http://www.welikemovies.com/?p=1908

Image 2: http://themovieblog.com/2012/cloud-atlas-and-the-many-faces-of-tom-hanks

Image 3: http://cgcalero.blogspot.com/2012/12/cloud-atlas-2012.html

Author bio:

Michael D. Hollins is currently an MA student in the Cinema and Media Studies program at UCLA. He received his BA in Anthropology, Philosophy, and Film Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Gangster Squad (2013)

Historical fealty has never been Hollywood’s strong suit (as this year’s Oscars crop reminded), and even classic exposés of La La Land such as Chinatown and L.A. Confidential played fast and loose with the facts. But at least these period pieces covered their tracks with allegorical subtext, composited characters, and pseudonyms. Ruben Fleischer’s crime drama Gangster Squad (2013), which shoots holes as wide as the Arroyo Parkway in its realistic backdrop, not only purports to play it straight but flaunts authenticity like nobody’s business.

The bait and switch begins with the opening establishing shot of Los Angeles in 1949, highlighting a seemingly spanking new “HOLLYWOODLAND” sign—indeed, the sign’s original spelling since 1923, when it served as a billboard for a residential development. By 1949, however, literally fallen into disrepair with letters crumbling and keeled over, the sign was renovated and resurrected in its present iconic form. The abridgment expanded the sign’s purview to reflect, and rebrand, the larger Hollywood district, film industry, and frame of mind—all of which were themselves in desperate need of refurbishment due to a disastrous postwar decline in movie attendance and the rise of Las Vegas as a rival nightlife hub to Hollywood’s Sunset Strip.

A little knowledge may not be a dangerous thing in the sign’s case, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. The film’s plot is set in motion by police chief William Parker’s launching of a clandestine guerilla war against mob boss Mickey Cohen in 1949, leading to Cohen’s arrest and (seeming) career-ending incarceration on a murder charge after a fraught and lengthy quasi-vigilante campaign. In reality, Parker only became chief in mid-1950 and Cohen came to grief a few months later, and not for a spectacular gangland murder but for mundane tax evasion. Moreover, after serving a four-year sentence, he resumed his organized criminality until a second conviction, again on tax evasion, in 1961, from which he was released in 1972 (he died in 1976). As for Cohen’s gangster moll providing the eye-witness testimony that put Cohen away, as the film asserts, the actual moll, Liz Renay, herself went to prison for three years for refusing to inform on her mob-king beau.

Cohen himself, while accurately (if incongruously) identified as a Jewish boxer, was not a wealthy boozer and druggie enamored of the high life, as Sean Penn’s scenery-gobbling performance would have us believe. In actuality, Cohen was a modest-living teetotaler and germaphobe who could give Howard Hughes a run for his paranoia.

Most disturbing ideologically is the whitewashing of Chief Parker. Nick Nolte portrays the legendary chief as appropriately gruff and bombastic, but the lone serious critique of his character, as ruthlessly sadistic, comes from the Marquis de Cohen. More authoritative is our hero, Sgt. John O’Mara’s (Josh Brolin), voiceover tribute to Parker for helping keep the city mob-free. Left undisclosed is the bigoted chief’s substantial role in not helping keep the city free from racial conflict but instead raising (and razing) it to Watts Riots levels. Attempts to maintain the Parker Center name for the new LAPD headquarters in 2009 ran aground owing to this troubled legacy, which Gangster Squad strives to wipe clean.

Even the film’s characterization of Burbank as L.A.’s then-best answer to the Deep South only gets it half right. Although the once-redneck burg’s police chief comes across as a proto-Bull Connor, he might have reminded the black South Central cop he has hauled into custody that Burbank was a “sundown town,” meaning that African Americans were allowed within city limits—but only from dawn to dusk, and for menial employment.

All in all, though not as outrageous as having, say, Osama Bin Laden taken out under Bush II’s rather than Obama’s watch in Zero Dark Thirty, or Honest Abe survive a would-be assassin’s bullet in Lincoln, Gangster Squad does stretch the historical record to the breaking point. Which begs the question of how the film managed to get away with murder, historically speaking.

Beyond its unabashed positioning as guilty pleasure, does Gangster Squad’s comparative impunity stem from the greater leeway granted a city’s history (especially one allied with Hollywood) to that of the nation’s at large? Or were Fleischer and company simply ascribing to the newspaperman’s cynical conclusion in John Ford’s 1962 western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (updated in Ben Affleck’s rehabilitation of the CIA in Argo): “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”?

Image credits:

http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/gangster-squad-five-film-facts-233106970.html?page=all

Author bio:

Vincent Brook teaches at UCLA, USC, Cal State LA, and Pierce College. He is the author, most recently, of Driven to Darkness: Jewish Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir (Rutgers Press, 2006). His newest book, on Los Angeles, is due out in early 2013.

While Streible points out in “The Role of Orphan Films in the 21st Century Archive” that the causes of neglect are many (apathy, reticence, obsolescence, etc.), the “orphan” label indicates that their products have found a common identity as objects precious for their scarcity. Sure enough, I’ve been to highly-anticipated and well-attended screenings of films that were widely unavailable due to “lost” status (The White Shadow at the Goldwyn Theater in Fall 2011), copyright issues (The Constant Nymph at TCM Fest 2011), commercial inviability (So This Is Harris at AMPAS’s Film-to-Film Festival 2012), technological obsolescence (Napoleon at the Oakland Paramount Theatre in Spring 2012) and even a concerted effort of the filmmaker to eradicate all copies of the film in question (Stanley Kubrick’s Fear and Desire at the Egyptian in 2010). Whatever the reason for their marginalization, each of these films made a celebrated return to an eager audience. The psychology underlying this cottage industry is unmistakable: reclaimed knowledge, when presented as such, not only becomes infallible (its miraculous recovery seeming to promise a superior form of truth) but also immortal: having made the mistake of neglecting it once, we surely will not make the same mistake again.

In Los Angeles (and even in its rather remote exurb of Oakland) it’s easy to see how hard-to-find films serve a niche market. However, when I mentioned a “value-producing system,” I meant something more than just economics. Canonization (and the idea of scarcity producing value) pertains to history, just as much as it does to any database of sufficient size. Two of the most frenzied note-taking experiences of my life took place at the screenings of Fear and Desire and The Constant Nymph. In both cases, I frantically scribbled down onto loose scraps of paper every visual or narrative detail that struck me. It was distinctly possible that these notes and my faulty memory would be all I’d ever have to go on for any future discussion of either title. Thanks to my intense charting of my thoughts and reactions to the films, I’m probably better equipped to discuss them than any single viewing I’ve had of any film. The rediscovery of a film can allow for a bout of concentrated interest that could probably never accumulate around an always-extant film, and the more fragile or ephemeral its availability is, the more intense the attention seems to be—almost like an adrenaline rush of historical interest. It is this focus of attention that permits room for new perspectives on established ideas, and thus it is a cycle that will never be exhausted. The replacement of the “lost” mentality with the “orphan” mentality in film preservation speaks to this, evoking the idea that there isn’t a simple binary of extant/lost, but a spectrum between known and forgotten—one that we will forever cycle through. Like continental plates, all living (that is, periodically updated) canons will ultimately devour themselves, shedding old titles and accruing new ones in our restless search for new perspectives.

The prospect of reclamation as a value-producing process accords well with Oakeshott’s claim that all events, including errors, are productive; however, I don’t claim that this phenomenon is quite benign. The idea of reclamation as a producer of value is complicated by a consideration of the future. Two issues trouble me in this regard. First, the infallibility and immortality of a reclaimed historical artifact are both fallacious, since new information can always be added at some point in the future, and of course the artifact can be forgotten, enfeebling or thwarting any argument around it. Second, the entire issue of historical bias is predicated on the favoring of certain facts over others, and I wonder if it is possible to conceive of a film history that is not beholden to the politics of revision and rediscovery, or if they are an intrinsic property of the act of history writing. With both concerns in mind, I want to identify a method by which a historian can designate stable reference points within a history that are necessary to impose any form of organization upon the indifferentiable sea of data—in other words, how can one establish solid precepts to a historical argument?

NOTES

Oakeshott, Michael. “Historical Continuity and Causal Analysis,” in Philosophical Analysis and History (Greenwood Pub Group, 1978), 193-212.

Oregon, Devin, Marsha Oregon, and Dan Streible. “A History of Learning with the Lights Off,” in Learning with the Lights Off: Educational Film in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

Author bio:

Clifford James Galiher received his B.A. in Film and Television Production and M.A. in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA, and he is currently a Ph.D. student in Critical Studies at USC. His research focuses primarily on film production in classic Hollywood, including a current project on the history of pre-digital visual effects. His other interests include animation, narrative studies, and digital media history, and he wishes he had the money to pursue his dream of ushering full-time.

In 2012, a different trend emerged. If a desire to turn back time is implicitly rooted in a fear of impending death, then last year’s visual effects–driven cinema offered an alternative: transcending time and death. All released within months of each other, the big-budget features Cloud Atlas, Life of Pi, and Prometheus explored issues of faith and religion and asked questions about our existence.

The intersection of visual effects and spirituality is nothing new. Stanley Kubrick’s visual effects milestone 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) explores the entirety of humankind in relation to a higher, monolith-ic power. Both What Dreams May Come (1998) and The Lovely Bones (2009) employ cinematic trickery to imagine life after death. Historically, though, these films have been exceptions rather than norms. What makes 2012′s releases so interesting is its unprecedented number of effects-heavy major studio releases dealing with death and religion. Three films might not seem like much, but it is truly remarkable considering the resources and labor that went into them. Cloud Atlas, Life of Pi, and Prometheus all use their computer-generated images to show the impossible, to explore where we come from and where we are going. These releases suggest an alternative response to the accelerated rhythms of life, made by and for people examining their place in a rapidly evolving digital world.

The visual effects of Cloud Atlas might be the most conventional of the three films I have mentioned. It was the only one shot in 2D and on film, and the film’s images of the future are stunningly rendered but hardly original. The Neo Seoul of 2144 echoes the dystopic science fiction of Metropolis and Blade Runner, while the post-apocalyptic story set “106 winters after The Fall” largely resembles “primitive” civilizations of days past. Instead, Cloud Atlas distinguishes itself by intertwining six stories of human resistance throughout time. Its crosscutting seems borrowed from D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance, but it takes further steps to narrativize reincarnation, venturing into the distant future and reusing actors in all of the individual stories.

As if simply turning back time weren’t enough, Cloud Atlas positions itself as a master of time, moving forward and back across centuries at will. And by moving forward into the future, with the same souls reincarnated in different bodies, the film suggests how human spirits echo ahead into the future. Much of this is achieved by simple editing, but by recontextualizing two effects-enhanced visions of the future, the film works through anxieties of mortality. Maybe our stories and our actions might someday be preserved in a book, a movie, or a renewed faith, like those of Halle Berry’s Luisa Rey, Jim Broadbent’s Timothy Cavendish, and Doona Bae’s Sonmi-451. It is an existential fantasy of life after death, looking to the future not in fear of mortality but anticipation of the possibilities.

Digital effects more directly visualize spiritual fantasy in Ang Lee’s Life of Pi. The end of the film questions the truth of Pi’s epic story, which details his survival on an emergency raft in the lone company of a Bengal tiger. Young Pi tells an alternative story, featuring murder, cannibalism, and humans instead of animals. His fantastical story of the tiger becomes a metaphor for religious faith. The tale is a kinder, more optimistic choice compared to the more “realistic” story, and as Pi himself suggests in the present day, there is no concrete evidence of either account. In this film, visual effects are used to animate the incredibly lifelike tiger and the beautiful sites of the journey—lighting striking the sea, jellyfish floating through the ocean. While the events of this story are certainly possible, they are not probable. Lee’s story helps to make the improbable tangible, bringing a religious parable to life.

Both the Wachowski-Twyker collaboration and Lee’s film present an alternative worldview to explain the tragedies of reality using special effects. Cloud Atlas explores the persistence of prejudice and oppression throughout all time, but by presenting six unique stories from different time periods it offers a sense of hope. The battles of the past and the present might not be won, but there’s continued hope for our future lives, imagined with the aid of stellar CGI. And similarly, Life of Pi sidesteps humanity’s more violent, animalistic impulses in favor of a tale of interspecies cooperation, one that gives us permission to believe in miracles and perhaps even an afterlife. With the aid of visual effects, these two films seem to suggest that we need not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself.

But if these two films offer optimistic visions, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus presents something a bit more sinister. A Christian with a cross around her neck, Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw goes looking for answers about the origins of humanity. But it is the ship’s android David (Michael Fassbender) who stumbles upon the star map of the engineer giants who created human beings. A large 3D hologram reveals to both David and the audience how the universe came into existence. Possibly the most impressive visual effects of the film, this computer-generated imagery allows the movie to visualize a fictional answer to our most profound existential questions.

Ultimately, the crew of the scientific vessel Prometheus discovers that the engineers fully intend to destroy their creations. Elizabeth had misinterpreted the invitation of the engineers as one of love rather than profound disappointment. And yet, she is still not contented. Neatly setting the stage for a sequel, Elizabeth ventures off to now learn more about the engineers and determine why they want to destroy humanity. Dissatisfied with the answer to her question of her species’ genesis, she clings to her faith and continues to search. If Life of Pi affirms religion when there is no evidence to the contrary, Prometheus suggests that humans continue to search even after finding proof of an ugly truth.

Prometheus conveniently provides a closing exchange that very bluntly articulates the odd relationship between digital effects and faith in these big-budget spectacles. David simply cannot understand why Elizabeth still continues her search, even though the answers to her questions are ultimately irrelevant for her everyday existence. She replies, “I guess that’s because I’m a human being and you’re a robot.” On-the-nose but telling, this line posits the constant search for answers as fundamentally human. With this in mind, the thematic parallels, intersections, and contradictions among Cloud Atlas, Life of Pi, and Prometheus seem more inevitable than surprising. And just as Elizabeth needs the technological David to help her continue her soul-searching journey, the filmmakers of the movies discussed here needed digital tools to project the future, reimagine present lives, and see our creation in days long past.

Author bio:

Todd Kushigemachi received his BS in Journalism at Northwestern University, where he also minored in Film and Media Studies. He is currently a first-year MA student in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA. With a background in entertainment journalism, he still writes features for Variety as a freelancer. His interests include the work of Woody Allen and trends of nostalgia in both classical Hollywood cinema and contemporary visual effects.