Carnival of Souls (1962)

QFS No. 155 - The invitation for October 23, 2024
We go from low-budget drama for our previous selection to low-budget horror this week. This is going to be an incredibly short invitation, compared to the usual, because I deliberately know nothing about Carnival of Souls. I know that it’s a film that has been influential to filmmakers over the years, enough to be in the Criterion Collection, and that it from the 1960s. And maybe it has a carnival of sorts? Or perhaps its metaphoric!

Also, importantly – the film is originally in black and white. In my briefest of research, Amazon Prime is offering a color version. My suggestion is to eschew this colorized film and go for the original because we’re purists here at the Quarantine Film Society, as you know.

Okay, watch Carnival of Souls and join us to discuss this our 155th film!

Carnival of Souls (1962) Directed by Herk Harvey

Reactions and Analyses:
Although Carnival of Souls (1962) is not the origin point for person-is-dead-but-doesn’t-know-it-yet film, it certainly must be considered one of the first. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1961), a short film from around the time Herk Harvey was conceiving of his story for Carnival of Souls is perhaps the first – that film is based on a 19th Century short story so it wasn’t a totally new concept. The “Twilight Zone” was incredibly popular on television in the early 1960s and featured a number of episodes where a main character is not alive who may not know it.

And now, in 2024, after we’ve had more than 60 years of films with this premise – most successfully executed in The Sixth Sense (1999) – is the surprise ending of Carnival of Souls really a surprise at all? Most everyone in our QFS discussion group had determined that Mary (Candace Hilligoss) is likely dead and doesn’t know it.

Mary (Candace Hilligoss) emerges from the river after the car she was in plummeted off of a bridge in Carnival of Souls (1962). Or did she?!

So given that, the ending doesn’t really pack a surprise. But perhaps that doesn’t matter all these years later. A film, made on a miniscule budget by a director who worked in industrial and educational films primarily and never made another theatrical feature again – how does a film like endure the test of time?

Herk Harvey, bound by the constraints of the budget and what available locations and resources he had, leaned into his limitations instead of trying to mask them. And beyond that, he uses a true artist’s eye for unnerving and enduring visuals. Take for example an early scene. Mary plays a massive pipe organ in an organ factory. Harvey shoots much of the scene from high above, the long verticals of the pipes reaching upwards like rigid fingers. It evokes a queasiness too, the verticals accentuating the height and creating a sense of unbalance.

Mary surrounded by massive pipes from pipe organs at the factory where they’re made, early in the film.

On the one hand, this is a great premise – an organ player being hired to work in a church who doesn’t feel particularly religious and treats it as a job. On the other hand, we know now that Harvey had access to this particular location in his hometown of Lawrence, Kansas. He adapted his story to fit what he had.

One could say that about the actors as well. Candace as Mary is the only professional actor and the rest of the cast are “amateurs” which is a little generous. Many of them were Harvey’s co-workers, and their performances feel out of the ordinary. Something’s amiss with Mrs. Thomas (Frances Feist) the landlord of the home where Mary rented a room. John Linden (Sidney Berger) is extremely, perhaps extraordinarily, aggressive, ready and willing to sexually abuse Mary at the first chance. Dr. Samuels (Stan Levitt) is quite an aggressive doctor. No one acts in a manner that seems quite human.

Candace Hilligoss as Mary, the only professional actor in Carnival of Souls - something that director Herk Harvey turns to his advantage.

Now, on the one hand, this could be just the pitfalls of working with a cast of primarily amateurs. On the other hand, if you write and create a film to use your production’s weakness as an asset, you’re able to use the fact that no one acts quite human to help enhance the feel of the world you’re creating.

The abandoned (is it?) bathhouse occupies Mary’s mind and her nightmares for some reason.

And that’s the overall feel of Carnival of Souls – something is off. Nothing quite fits and that’s likely the point. Mary is in purgatory. And in purgatory, you’re neither alive or dead. Nothing is quite there and nothing is quite gone. In this purgatory, as opposed to Dante’s Divine Comedy where he’s attempting to pass through Purgatory, in Carnival of Souls we meander about throughout it. There’s no driving narrative, no main story in which the protagonist struggles to succeed. Instead, Mary is just mostly wandering around, trying to figure out why things are so off, why she’s obsessed with this abandoned bathhouse on the shore of the Great Salt Lake.

Mary exploring the abandoned bathhouse complex.

This uncertain feeling and mood allows for genuinely creepy imagery. I confess, the first time Mary sees the ghoulish man (NAME???) out the window while driving, I jumped in my seat. Mary looks forward, her reflection in the passenger window with the world going by as the sun’s going down, but then when she looks back it’s not her reflection she sees but our first glimpse of the man who haunts her throughout the film. Then he appears at night in front of the car as she’s about to hit him. It’s so effective at creating a sense of unease, and the film peppers these moments throughout.

This image was incredibly effective in creating an unsettling feeling as Mary drives to her new town.

This image, with a fast car-POV push in, punctuates the driving scene and is really effective in creating horror and suspense.

The man appears to be stalking her, but only she can see him. Then, she’s haunted by him so much that she is unable to sleep and has a nightmare with crash zooms and wailing organ music, images of the Saltair bathouse filling her minds. Later, when she’s playing the organ at her new church, she becomes possessed, playing decidedly un-spiritual music, seeing visions of the ghoulish man dancing with similar-looking people in fast motion, a danse macabre.

Later, she’s in the department store and suddenly no one can hear her or see her, as if she doesn’t exist. She’s driven out, crashing into the arms of a dubious medical professional who isn’t all that helpful. Mary, at wits end from seeing the ghoulish man stalking her, moves her furniture around to block her door, and the filmmakers shoot from outside her lit window – the only thing in the darkness, and her frantic movements inside with the organ music playing. All of these are low cost, high impact storytelling techniques that creates this unsettling feeling.

And Harvey accentuates this with clever filmmaking. His use of high angles makes Mary small and lost in her world, both in the street then later in the abandoned bathhouse. The abandoned bathhouse sequence itself, as many in our group pointed out, displays real cinematographic acumen, using the location and it’s emptiness in an effective way to enhance our sense of unease – especially later when Mary is there and sees all the ghouls with her, trying to pull her down into the afterlife. And they eventually do.

Harvey uses high angles very effectively to make Mary small and lost in the strange world she’s found herself in.

The film is, of course, flawed in many ways. The feeling we had as a group is that the rules of this world are not yet solidified in the way they do years later. For example, there are a number of scenes that Mary wouldn’t be privy to – when the doctor and the landlady talk about Mary’s decision to leave or even after Mary succumbs to the demons at Saltair. The sheriff traces her footsteps and says they know that her car is there and this is where she fell but then the trail disappears.

Mary’s final moments, chased down by the undead.

So… are these people real and Mary existed among them but is gone? Or was this entire extra, post-death life just in Mary’s head while she was drowning to death in the car? And what happened in the bathhouse retreat – were people horribly murdered? Why are they there? These are not major flaws but are story holes that get ironed out later on in films that feature the dead-but-doesn’t-know-it protagonist.

The undead, but … why are they here? What happened? Or does it not matter?

In the end, of course, Carnival of Souls succeeds despite much of its short comings. The fact that the filmmaker knew he had shortcomings all around him posed no obstacle. Instead, he embraced these limitations, wrote his story to fit what he had available to him, and used his meager resources to his advantage. Harvey created a film that should remain a model for scrappy, savvy independent filmmakers – and not just ones who work in stories of horror or fantastical realms. Embrace your limitations and find ways to make your disadvantages into advantages.

Low-fi scares through simple imagery abound in Carnival of Souls (1962).

Black Girl (1966)

QFS No. 141 - The invitation for May 22, 2024
A lot of "firsts" in these next few sentences. Black Girl will be our first ever selection from Senegal, and our first selection of a film by Ousmane Sembene. Sembene is considered the “dean” or father of African cinema. Did I know this before? No. Am I ashamed of that? Yes.

Sembene’s first film, Black Girl, has been on my radar for the last few years. I first discovered it when it arrived at No. 95 on the esteemed* BFI/Sight and Sound 100 Greatest Films of All Time list. (Tied with QFS No. 9 A Man Escaped, 1956). As you remember, just a few weeks ago we watched No. 48 Wanda (1970, QFS No. 138). Recently, some of the imagery from Black Girl has piqued my interest, including clips I’ve seen in the great montage on the second floor of the Academy Museum that introduces you to the main Stories of Cinema exhibition. And from what I’ve gathered, Ousmane is finally getting some newfound recognition and his due outside of Africa and France.

For those of you keeping score at home, this is our eleventh selection from the BFI top 100 list. We previously selected No. 1 Jeanne Dielman, No. 5 In the Mood for Love (2000, QFS No. 105), No. 11 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, QFS No. 104), No. 30 Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, QFS No. 114), No. 43 Stalker (1979, QFS No. 25), No. 48 Wanda, No. 60 Daughters of the Dust (1991, QFS No. 18), No. 67 The Red Shoes (1948, QFS No. 52), No. 72 L’Avventura (1960, QFS No. 116), and No. 95 A Man Escaped.

Also, at 66 minutes long, this will be the shortest Quarantine Film Society selection since our first Christmas in 2020 when we watched A Christmas Carol (1938) which clocked in at 69 minutes. So watch this week’s film because it’s only barely longer than an episode of Succession. Oh, and for all those other reasons too I guess.

*We’ve discussed at length how I both enjoy and also loathe the BFI list, so “esteemed” is of course sort of facetious. Yet, the list remains an important guidepost if for nothing else but to encounter great works of foreign cinema that I have overlooked.

Black Girl (1966) Directed by Ousmane Semebene

Reactions and Analyses:
Film as symbolism, film as metaphor. These were useful tools for me to finally get my grasp of Black Girl (1966). Recent crtitical revisiting of this early work from the Father of African Cinema Ousmane Semebene has placed this film firmly on the radar of people like us in the QFS viewing group.

But the film is challenging, despite its recent reclamation of glory. Before getting into all the production challenges – of which there were the usual kinds and the uniquely African kinds – we’ll delve into the narrative and the filmmaking craft.

From a purely story standpoint, almost all of us in the group felt the story contained numerous holes and an ending that was shocking, sudden and abrupt. And unearned. Diouana (Mbissine Therese Diop) appears in France, a new maid for a white French couple who also live in Dakar, Senegal – where they encountered and hired Diouana.

But it’s clear there was something missing in the arrangement. Diouana believes she’s arriving in the South of France to take care of children. Madam (Anne-Marie Jelinek) treats her, however, like a maid and not a nanny. Diouana develops a sense that she was duped, is trapped, and has no way out.

Diouana (Mbissine Therese Diop) didn’t sign up to be treated as a maid. But then… what did she expect? Perhaps a well delineated contracted could’ve gotten them all out of trouble in Black Girl (1966).

All of this is a perfectly fine set up. Diouana believed she was going to see France but instead sees darkness out the windows at night and has no encounter with the famous nightlife of the area near Cannes where she lives. France lacks the human vitality of Dakar. In France, it seems, people are stuck in their homes instead of out in the world together.

The strange thing, however, is that Diouana feels shocked that she has to do work at all. And here is where a variety of narrative questions being. Why is she surprised? Was she misled? Is she just young and naïve? Also, when she is actually paid, she says “I didn’t come here for the apron or the money?” But … didn’t she? Surely she didn’t think she was on vacation – she knew she was there for work?

This is not in any way meant to excuse the behavior of her employees. Madam is definitely demanding and it’s not clear why the children are suddenly gone. And for how long? Timelines are unclear in the film throughout – has she been there for a week, a few weeks, months? It matters only because of this – we need to feel as an audience that she is truly trapped, truly abused with no way out. That’s the only way the end is earned and worthwhile.

That’s the face of an irate employer prone to violence.

The end was a major topic of discussion. No one was quite sure what to make of the suddenness of Diouana’s suicide. To me, it’s was, of course, very bleak, but why was this her only answer? The film did not present that she was so trapped and desperate that death was her only way out. She packed up her things and was, seemingly, going to leave. But in the end, she does not and finds that suicide in the tub is her only means of escape.

The narrative is imperfect. But it’s not meant to be airtight as a direct story. It’s film as metaphor, as symbol. When I thought of it that way, and excused the narrative imperfections and some of the inexperienced filmmaker craftwork, the film takes on an importance that is clear in its recent rival.

All of it is symbolism, and what it symbolizes is clear from the start. The power dynamics between the white employers, extracting labor from Africa to do their chores with no cost to themselves. The tantalizing wealth and fun of France, luring poor Senegalese to toil and not experience the joy of the French Riviera in the way the white French are able. The liberal African-loving dinner guests, exoticizing the black girl who serves them food and openly talking about her when she’s mere feet away. Not to mention the extremely creepy guy who wants to kiss a black girl for the first time, treating her as a literal sexual object for his unwanted affection. And the dehumanizing slave market-style scene when Diouana first meets Madam on the street as the group of women are attempting to find work as maids or servants. The refusal of money – a symbolic gesture standing up to the West’s money and holding on to pride, even if it didn’t make sense in the narrative or in reality. 

Dehumanizing dinner featuring a creepiest of the creepy guys who just wants to kiss a black girl.

Dehumanize human marketplace for a maid/nanny.

Even the death – she dies alone, in a tub that, when we next see it, is wiped clean as if she never existed. She’s invisible to the world, and in death forgotten. For a film rooted in a kind of realism or neorealism to some extent, it’s entirely reliant upon symbolism for one to see its value and importance.

Take, for example, the mask. Which many of us felt was the most effective metaphor employed by the filmmaker. Form my perspective, when I first saw the mask on the wall of the French home, I applied meaning to it. I immediately judged the French couple as the type who “love Africa” and culturally appropriate their art in the way that I’m familiar with people who are enchanted by the exoticism of India, but have little care about the actual people and their experience there.

The mask’s origin.

The mask on the wall in France. a gift from Diouana.

The mask “chasing” Monsiur (Robert Fontaine) away in Dakar.

But I was too hasty; the mask evolves in the story, and we discover that it was actually Diouana who gave the mask to them as a gift. It’s genuine and authentic, whether the couple see it as anything other than a fascinating artifact. Then Diouana takes it down when she’s preparing to leave, causing a stir as Madam starts to get very upset with her but Monsieur (Robert Fontaine) says it’s hers after all, she can take it. This, too, is symbolic – is it a hope that Senegal and Africa will reclaim their indigeneity? Perhaps.

Then, the mask returns to Senegal after Monsieur brings it to the mother. A boy takes it and wears it, following Monsieur as he leaves but it has the feeling of dread – almost as if the boy in the mask is chasing the white man out. Out of the village, out of Senegal, out of Africa. This is where the symbolism in Black Girl is most effective – it’s thematic, it has a narrative push, and it’s active. 

It’s amazing this movie was made at all. In Africa, specifically in Senegal but also likely true elsewhere, Africans were banned from making movies due to a Nazi Vichy government law. Illegal! Such work was left to ethnographers, treating Africans as subjects of study instead of creating narrative work about their lived experience. The ban wasn’t lifted until 1960! Only six years before Black Girl is released. One can excuse any inexperience or amateurish filmmaking – by this point the West and Asia had been making films for sixty years. Without any production infrastructure in place, Sembene had to learn on the fly and scrape together the resources to make a movie.

Diouna arriving in France, wide eyed, but it will all go awry.

When you look at it from the production standpoint and look at the film as symbolism and metaphor, Black Girl is a stunning achievement. Sembene practically had to invent African film – hence his well-deserved title of Father of African cinema. Truly an incredible accomplishment, and Black Girl should be seen with all of this context to fully understand it’s value as a film.

High and Low (1963)

QFS No. 139 - The invitation for May 8, 2024
It’s been entirely too long since we’ve selected an Akira Kurosawa film here at Quarantine Film Society. It was way back in July 2020 when we were young and terrified, but watched the masterpiece Yojimo (1961, QFS No. 13). The offending parties to this nearly four-year gap have been reassigned to new minor roles within The Society.

High and Low has been on my list for a long time and I’m a little upset I haven’t seen it yet. Several months ago, I finally saw Ikiru (1952) in the theater at the New Beverly and though it instantly became one of my favorite films, I was simultaneously upset that it had taken so long before watching such a gem.

And so, lo and behold, the New Beverly just screened High and Low to come to my rescue. I was about to select it anyway (seriously – I have notes to prove it!) and so once again the stars align. I have not seen many of Kurosawa’s non-samurai period films, so it’ll be excellent to finally get a chance to see this one.

But also, excellent to watch at home! Then join the discussion of High and Low below if you can!

High and Low (1963) Directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Reactions and Analyses:
High and Low (1960) has two halves, almost two separate movies. This has long been discussed over the years and by our QFS discussion tackled this as well. But one of our members, a cinematographer, picked up on something I hadn’t noticed – a slight but deliberate change in camera use between the halves.

The first half deals with the kidnapping of Shinichi (Masahiko Shimazu), mistaken for the wealthy child of Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), and Gondo’s decision whether or not to pay a huge sum to this mysterious kidnapper. Shinichi is Aoki’s son, played with excruciating grief and torment by Yutaka Sada. This half of the film takes place all in Gondo’s home, with everyone awaiting the kidnapper’s next call and us as the audience, trying to determine what Gondo will decide.

The first half of High and Low (1963) showcases director Akira Kurosawa’s mastery of staging - wide frames and compositions with deliberate camera moves when necessary, and takes place entirely in the Gondos’ home. Body language becomes an important aspect of the storytelling when using wide frames.

The camerawork in the first half is composed as if on a stage, with actors blocked in ways where sometimes someone’s back is to us, but their body language speaks volumes. The camera moves, when they happen, are also steady, composed, operated on a gear head for smooth and precise movements. 

The second half – the camera is freed. We’re out in the world, on the case, trying to find the kidnapper and also Gondo’s money. It’s likely Kurosawa had seen many of the films of the burgeoning French New Wave movement where the camera is liberated from the tripod and thrust into the dirty, complex world. Kurosawa’s version is still precise and deliberate, but there’s a greater urgency and rapid movement that evokes a handheld style, if not deliberately handheld.

Kurosawa throws the camera into the world as the hunt for the kidnappers unfolds. The camera, too, is free - some handheld, moving camera that hand off from one detective to another in pursuit.

High and Low becomes an elevated police procedural.

Detectives stuck watching from the car as the suspect encounters Mr. Gondo in person.

Following the suspect through the seedy underbelly of Yokohama. The heroin den sequence evokes the imagery now found in modern post-apocalyptic movies and dramas.

These two styles mimic the change in style, change in movie, change in tone and the change in focus. The drama in the first half of the film is almost entirely internal, just as it is internal in this house. It’s Gondo’s furrowed self-exploration of what to do, whether to give in to the demands and destroy the career and life he’s built for one his personal staff members. It’s the visible anguish on Aoki’s face, at first pleading and then prepared to sacrifice his son in order to save his boss’s livelihood (and, also, his own). There’s his wife Reiko (Kyoko Kagawa) who acts as the moral compass, pleading with Gondo to save the child, that she doesn’t need this home and this wealth.

Reiko pleads with Gondo, and she’s ultimately proved right - even though it costs them both in the end.

But is that true? Gondo reminds her that she was born into wealth and has never had to live as he had to growing up so she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Which then in turn a revelation – that Gondo got a boost early in his career from a dowry from Reiko’s wealthy family.

All of these internal struggles mirror the setting and pace and blocking of the first half perfectly. Kurosawa exhibits his mastery of composition, placing some people in the frame looking towards us and others looking away to enhance their position. Or to have a small sliver of light come through the curtains to bring our focus to a certain place. Kurosawa places Gondo in foreground on the phone, for example, when in the background Aoki anguishes alone and small in the frame. Another moment, when Aoki pleads with Gondo, the two are on opposite sides of the frame – Gondo barely able to look at him.

Gondo, tormented, only his face is in darkness in this shot - a way to use light to tell the story of an internal struggle.

This deliberate staging allows Kurosawa to play with power dynamics – who is big in the frame, who is small? Who is forced at the edge and who is covered in darkness. It’s brilliant and textbook and requires care to execute. (Of course it doesn’t hurt to have the extraordinary Mifune as one of your chess pieces to play on the board.)

Gondo deciding not to pay the ransom. Body language, choice of staging, attention still brought to the center. Mastery in blocking for the camera.

High and Low goes from a story about executive-level business intrigue, to a hostage thriller, to a story exploring social dynamics and issues of wealth, power and poverty before becoming a detective and police procedural with stunning set pieces including the seedy underbelly of 1960s Yokohama.

Kurosawa somehow pulls all of this off without any sense of whiplash or asymmetry. The master clearly at the top of his game is able to balance all of these elements in just about the most seamless way a bifurcated story could be crafted. And he doesn’t abandon elements from first half into the second half – we are reminded of Gondo’s sacrifice when later we see him mowing the lawn. Or when Aoki takes Shinichi back on the path to find the kidnappers’ lair – the detectives catch up with him and Aoki reveals that Gondo told him they won’t need to drive to Gondo’s shoe factory any more, having been forced out as they all knew he would be. We are given glimpses into Gondo’s life changing, even though he barely appears in the second half and we’re more interested in hunt and pursuit of the wrongdoers.

Kurosawa uses this efficiency in his story telling throughout. For example, the bald, sweaty detective Bos’n Taguchi (Kenjiro Ishiyama) – he’s the detective who is rough around the edges but a joking, committed bloodhound. But he’s on the screen so little, how do we know that? Just in a few words, we learn he disdains the wealthy so when Gondo sacrifices we see Bos’n’s admiration. And in behavior – he’s always sweaty and rubbing his head – Kurosawa is a master of tagging a character with a physical tic (see Mifune as “Sanjuro” with the shoulder twitch in Yojimbo, 1961 QFS No. 13). So when this hardened detective breaks down when Aoki and Shinichi reunite, we understand this man and he, in some ways, is a stand in for us as the audience. It’s incredibly moving.

That scene in particular contains another example of Kurosawa’s brilliance. The detectives are in the foreground, their backs to the camera as Aoki runs full speed away from us, towards Shinichi in the distance who runs as well. But the camera stays with the detectives – we see Bos’n holding back tears as he turns towards profile, and Chief Detective Tokura (Tatsuya Nakadai) gives the command that kicks off the second half: “For Mr. Gondo’s sake, be bloodhounds!”

Father and son reunited and moments before Detective Tokura says “For Mr. Gondo’s sake, be bloodhounds!”

And so the second half they’re off, trying to get the kidnapper and recover Gondo’s money.

There are so many points of entry into this film that it’s almost overwhelming to analyze. The bullet train sequence is a masterpiece in suspense. Gondo’s secretary Kwanishi (Tatsuya Mihashi) and his double cross that backfires give us a sense that Gondo is right that his stature is perilous – and Reiko is right ultimately that Gondo’s sacrifice is the correct action ultimately. We also see Kurosawa’s version of a zombie apocalypse film as we explore a heroin den – dreary, seemingly dangerous, the shuffling feet of the addicted clinking on unseen glass vials and bottles. And the plot itself, the suspense and the central question of who is the kidnapper?

He must be the kidnapper! Who else would wear mirrored glasses indoors?!

Several of the QFS discussion members, myself included, were certain that the other board members of the National Shoe Company arranged for this attempted kidnapping of Gondo’s son. The beginning of the film sets up that premise, which is a great narrative device to send us down that path. But ultimately, it’s a psychopath (but is he a psychopath?), a poor medical intern who looks up at Gondos’ castle above his poor slum. The explanation is that it drove him crazy to see that every day, looking down on them, and that he wanted to teach the man a lesson.

This final scene in the prison between Gondo and Takeuchi (Tsutomu Yamazaki in the only scene where he speaks) gives the kidnapper a chance to explain to Gondo and to us the why. I asked our group the question is this scene necessary. Without it, the scene ends with Mr. and Mrs. Gondo in their emptying house, the auctioneers measuring the furniture for their upcoming auction. For me, that felt like the appropriate conclusion to Gondo’s story and several felt similarly.

However, we would be left wondering why and missing out on any sort of explanation. And though Taekuchi’s motives felt thin – how could he be driven so far when there are probably a couple thousand people in the same situation who saw that same house and lived all around him – who didn’t think kidnap and murder were the solutions. So we’re left with psychosis, something that’s born out by the final images of the film as he’s dragged away, the security gate comes down, and Gondo’s image reflected in the mirror of both lives forever torn.

Gondo meets the kidnapper face-to-face a second time.

The final image in the movie in a scene that arguably did not have to be in the film. Up for debate!

While I personally would have preferred a stronger rationale for the film’s antagonist, this is a minor story objection to what is one of the greatest films by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Much of Kurosawa’s work should be essential viewing for filmmakers, but High and Low contains it all – blocking, camerawork, pacing, framing, character development, performance, to name a few. It’s clear to me now that the master’s masterclass for all of us is High and Low.

The Color of Pomegranates (1969)

QFS No. 130 - The invitation for December 6, 2023
As I know you’re aware, this here is simply your standard Soviet-Armenian fare that we’ve been bombarded with in the cinemas over the years.

Truly, I know almost nothing about the film except that it is frequently included in filmmakers’ favorite movie lists. It’s even in the top 250 in the British Film Institute’s expanded Best Films of All Time list, clocking in at No. 122* (No. 93 on the Director’s Poll). For list lovers, The Color of Pomegranates is in a six-way tie at 122 with There Will Be Blood (2007), The Matrix (1999), Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), the French film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and Only Angels Have Wings (1939), which is a Howard Hawks classic.

Martin Scorsese compared The Color of Pomegranates to “opening a door and walking into another dimension, where time has stopped and beauty has been unleashed.” I am here and ready to walk into another dimension.

The only other thing I know about the film is that it is short (1 hour and 19 minutes) and will be the second-shortest QFS selection since A Christmas Carol (1938) that we watched over our first lockdown Christmas in 2020, a slender 1:09. So at the very least, this will take up only a small amount of your precious social media doomscrolling time.

 Anyway, do join me to discuss The Color of Pomegranates.  

*Interestingly, a four-way tie just before that at No. 118 includes three QFS Selections: The Thing (1987, QFS No. 115), Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972, QFS No. 40), The Conformist (1970, QFS No. 107) and to round it all out, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), which we haven’t selected… yet.

The Color of Pomegranates (1969) Directed by Sergei Parajanov

Reactions and Analyses:
A common question that we tangle with at QFS is what can you consider a film versus art? Of course, a film can be both. But when approaching an experimental or surrealist work made for the screen, it’s a valid question. Does a film require an overt narrative, or at least a narrative that can be interpreted? Or is a film anything you point a camera at, that a filmmaker assembles and showcases for an audience? Is it somewhere in between?

From our discussion, everyone agreed that The Color of Pomegranates (1969) is undoubtedly a work of art. One QFSer said that you could imagine seeing this projected or displayed at a museum of modern or contemporary art. Or even a selection of the images could be placed on display. Indeed, even the director Sergei Parajanov stated that instead of bringing “art to life” he was bringing “life to art.” And you can see in his compositions that they resemble illuminated manuscripts or two-dimensional artwork common to Persia and in the Transcaucasus region - Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan - where the story takes place. Select a frame from the film and you could imagine seeing it literally framed and in a museum.

Scene from The Color of Pomegranates (1969) directed by Sergei Parajanov.

But does that make it a film? There’s no answer to the question, and I personally have trouble tangling with distinguishing between a film and art and whether a line exists between then, fuzzy though it may be. For me, as I watch a film, my mind immediately tries to latch on to a narrative, a story, a character whose journey we’re following. I have tolerance for vagueness, but it’s on a scale. Ambiguity and vagueness are fine if I’m brought into the film through the craft, the style - dare I say, the art of the filmmaking. So when I watched The Color of Pomegranates, I had to actively suppress my desire to understand what it “means” or to tease out a story. And yet, I was transported into the tableaus and the world created enough to be brought along for the ride.

Early on in QFS we selected Eraserhead (1977, QFS No. 22), a film I hadn’t seen before (I was shamed to admit this especially since I share an alma mater with the director). When watching it back then, I remember having to turn off the part of my mind that was trying to find the story and instead I allowed myself to just experience. I had the same feeling while watching this movie. A QFSer pointed out, rightly, that Eraserhead teases a narrative enough to draw you in, but then pulls the rug out from you and you’re left with the film’s haunting imagery.

Others in the group brought up Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, QFS No. 98) - a film that required merely observing a life. One member of our group brought up the differences between how each Jeanne Dielman and The Color of Pomegranates grab your attention. In Jeanne Dielman, you’re brought into the film - a slow film with very few edits - because you feel like you’re a fly on the wall of a life that’s rooted in a familiar reality. In The Color of Pomegranates, you’re brought into the film because of the visuals and that it’s unfamiliar and surreal. You don’t know what’s happening next and even if you do, you don’t really know why or what it means. What’s fascinating is that this is enough to pull you along and to see what happens next.

After watching the film, I needed to learn more about the filmmaker, the poet, Armenia, early Christianity - basically everything. My curiosity was very much piqued. I highly recommend the Criterion Channel’s 40-minute visual essay by James Steffen about the film. He goes through shot-by-shot and helps give context and suggests meaning throughout. If you look closely, you can definitely see that it follows a boy as he grows up into a man and ultimately dies at the film’s conclusion, leaving behind only his muse and his work. I’m not saying I knew this when I watched it, but having a guide with me in this way was a boon. Much like a guided tour at an art museum.

How do you visualize poetry? Or how do you render the life of a poet - someone who looks at the world and tries to synthesize all around him or her and turn it into an exploration of existence. How in a film do you go about doing that? One way is a more straightforward biopic about the person’s lived life. Another way is Parajanov’s way - tell it as a visual poem, bringing the poet’s creative work to life. Parajanov’s telling is laced with Christian metaphors (which evoked, for me possibly because we recently watched it, The Seventh Seal, 1957, QFS No. 127) and imagery that evokes childhood (the books, his teachers), adolescence (spying on a woman bathing, the chicken-blood ritual), adulthood (learning the instrument, working as a priest), old age (surrounded by angels and holding a helmeted skull), and death (lying dead among candles… and chickens). It’s not a filmmaking style that comes naturally to me, but it’s something that I deeply admire and enjoy watching on screen - and will likely use as a visual reference in the future.

“Sergei Parajanov, the Serious Wes Anderson.”
Top: Asteroid City (2023) Directed by Wes Anderson. Bottom: The Color of Pomegranates (1969) Directed by Sergei Parajanov.

One final thought - a member of our group said that the filmmaking was like “a serious Wes Anderson.” Which is a terrific insight. When you see the film’s flat space framing and use of colors, you can seemingly draw a straight line to Wes Anderson, but through Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch. It’s easy to see why The Color of Pomegranates continues to inspire filmmakers even know. His imagery, abstraction and experimental surrealism carves out a unique legacy for a filmmaker - artist? - that keeps Parajanov relevant for us to study today.

Rocco and His Brothers (1960)

QFS No. 122 - The invitation for September 27, 2023
Another Italian* film, you say? Well, you longtime members of QFS will remember that Sharat is making his way through the film requirements he was supposed to be have finished before beginning as a grad student at the American Film Institute. We previously watched A Man Escaped (1956, QFS No. 9), Burnt by the Sun (1994, QFS No. 58) and Swept Away (1974, QFS No. 82). Rocco and His Brothers is another one of those films** that Sharat needs to complete 22 years ago.  

Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti is a favorite of Martin Scorsese, calling him “one of the greatest artists in the history of cinema.” Scorsese listed Visconti’s The Leopard (1963) as one of his favorite films from the Criterion Collection, and I was lucky enough to catch The Leopard at the Aero Theater recently in Santa Monica. The Leopard is a lush production with a great cast unfolding a story over nearly three hours.

 I can’t say if Rocco and His Brothers will be the same, but the length sure is. I really enjoyed The Leopard and need to expand my knowledge of Visconti more in order to be a more effective filmmaker at the AFI Conservatory circa 2001. So thank you for helping me complete my AFI coursework! Join me to discuss.

*With this selection, Italy vaults back into the lead with most QFS films from a single country with six, over taking India’s five. Related, the best restaurant in Los Angeles is Pijja Palace in Echo Park which is an Indian-Italian fusion sports bar. Pijja Palace is No. 1 on the QFS Restaurant Critic’s list of Best Places for Sharat to Attempt to Eat More Food Than He Can Physically Consume list.

**The remaining, since you asked: Intimate Lighting (1966) directed by Ivan Passer; Les Enfants Du Paradis (1945) directed by Marcel Carne; Blue (1993) directed by Krzysztog Kieslowski and part of his “Colors” trilogy; La Guerre Est Finie (1959) directed by Alain Resnais; Vagabond (1985) directed by Agnes Varda. Either my final boss to defeat in this game will be La Guerre Est Finie – not available online and French – or Les Enfants Du Paradis, which clocks in at more than three hours long and is also French. Stay tuned!

Rocco and his Brothers (1960) Directed by Luchino Visconti

Reactions and Analyses:
Early in the film, when the family has moved into their basement dwelling in Milan fresh their migration from the south, Nadia (Annie Girardot) seeks refuge in their home. We’ve barely met the brothers and they all are somewhat indistinguishable from each other. Each handsome in different ways, a couple of them seem a little younger. But they feel somewhat broadly drawn.

As the film unfolds, we get a gradual fleshing out of each brother, as if from a fog with a detail of one becoming clearer. And then another and another as the film evolves. This continues, interwoven, as each “chapter” introduces a brother one-by-one. But the narrative continues forwards as well and at some point, perhaps halfway through the film, I felt as if I knew each of these brothers intimately. I did, because Luchino Visconti makes sure of it.

This is a remarkable feat for a film that has five main male leads in it, a mother, a female lead, and a few supporting characters as well. Rocco and His Brothers (1960) is a thoroughly rich world created by a director who's known for creating rich worlds (case in point: The Leopard, 1963). If I hadn’t already known it going in, I would’ve guessed this influenced the likes of Francis Ford Coppola (his inspiration for the brothers in The Godfather, 1972) and Martin Scorsese. Scorsese in particular - the boxing sequences in Rocco and His Brothers are incredibly intimate, with the camera inside the ring right next to Rocco (Alain Delon) in his fight enhancing its intimacy. Scorsese goes even further in Raging Bull (1980) with his use of speeds and cutting. But in Rocco and His Brothers - the use of the crowd, the black and white cinematography, the lighting on the boxing ring, the cutting to the crowd - all of it feels like an origin story for Scorsese. For Coppola, it’s been well documented how he fashioned the Corleone brothers after the Parondi brothers. Not to mention hiring Nino Rota to create the score for The Godfather (1972). The Rocco and His Brothers score definitely gives birth to The Godfather’s.

Boxing sequences in Rocco and His Brothers (1960) Directed by Luchino Visconti. Twenty years later, Martin Scorsese makes Raging Bull (1980), influenced by Visconti’s work here.

What’s additionally fascinating for a film so long and sprawling is that Rocco and His Brothers has no central narrative. It is the tale of a family, an “immigrant” tale, and how a family evolves, fractures, and attempts to survive in the city. To tell a story about without a gripping plot, you need to have fully realistic characters - people who feel like real humans who you care about or at the very least are curious about.

Simone (Renato Salvatori) starts as sort of a lovable brute with base instincts, undisciplined, but when driven by jealousy or shame, he drops the “lovable” almost entirely - and yet, you understand him. Or at least, I feel like I’ve known “Simones” in my life. Rocco (Alain Delon) is selfless, blinded by loving his brother but also genuinely in love with Nadia. And Nadia genuinely falls in love with Rocco as opposed to using Simone. And she gets revenge on Simone by dragging him down by using his obsession against him - but it kills her too. It’s all sordid and when written out like that seems more like a soap opera. And yet, Rocco and His Brothers rarely feels overly melodramatic (caveat: this is a film from Italy; some melodrama can be excused).

The film, of course, takes an incredibly dark turn and features what is probably one of the most disturbing rape scenes in cinema history. Not the most graphic, but definitely among the most disturbing. And, I’d argue, perhaps one of the most disturbing knife killing in cinema history.

A QFS member brought up that this felt like a dark Grapes of Wrath. Which is a pretty spot on way to look at it. A family, driven by poverty, forced to migrate within their country and find shelter, comfort, and a living in a strange place.

I’ve noticed a common thread I’ve noticed in many QFS selections, that of this immigrant or migrant story. Human migration is a source of so much drama, such fascinating stories - and it spans eras and nations. Our most recent selection, How Green Was My Valley (1941, QFS No. 121), is in part about the causes of migration. America America (1963, QFS No. 87), directed by Elia Kazan only three years after Rocco and His Brothers, tells that tale from Turkey through poor Greeks leaving their homes. Apur Sansar (1959, QFS No. 16) is in many ways a story about what happens when a migrant from the impoverished countryside tries to make it in the city. And even L’Avventura (1960, QFS No. 116), made in a vastly different style by fellow Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni in the same year - there’s an undercurrent of class. The protagonists are wealthy but there are plenty of interactions with the poorer class and there an undercurrent of post-war Italy that both L’Avventura and Rocco and His Brothers portray in their own ways.

Close up of Alain Delon (“Rocco”) in Rocco and His Brothers (1960).

Rocco and His Brothers is a textbook in character portrayal, but it’s also a textbook in cinematography. The night work in this film are astonishing with big broad light and sharp shadows thrown against buildings. The close-ups are gorgeous (Pauline Kael criticized the lighting on Alain Delon: “who at times seems to be lighted as if he were Hedy Lamarr”) and the cathedral rooftop scene in particular could be a masterclass in blocking for actors and the camera. Rocco turns into a close up and a tear falls from his eye perfectly. I loved it - a QFSer who is an actor felt it was a little too much. He also felt that everyone in Parondi family needs therapy. Absolutely true, and yet it would’ve been a much shorter film had they done so.

As mentioned in the QFS invitation above, Rocco and His Brothers was on my list of films to see before starting at AFI. I’m more than a little upset it took me so long to finally see it. Not only is it historically important given how many filmmakers it influenced, but it is truly a spectacular film in all aspects - performance, cinematography, music, storytelling. One that AFI is right to require its incoming directors to watch. Rocco and His Brothers is, for me, an ideal balance of realism and artistry to tell a very true, human story of a family struggling to stay together.