Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Thu Apr 23, 2015 4:25 pm 
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These are provided as previews of a memorial retrospective (SEE PROGRAM) presented by David L. Brown of the Maysles brothers' documentary classics, shown May 8-14, 2015 at the Vogue Theater on Sacramento Street in San Francisco. Many Q&A's with informed figures are included, and several rarely seen films, as well as the classics, Salesman, Gimme Shelter, Grey Gardens, and the five films of artist couple Christo & Jeanne-Claude providing a comprehensive image of their worldwide projects spanning a thirty-year period. We begin with two short films made in the early Sixties. Next will come their devastating and diamond-sharp debut feature, Salesman (1968), which, right at the outset, sealed the Mayeles' reputation as humanistic masters of Direct Cinema.

MAYSLES BROTHERS: ORSON WELLES IN SPAIN(1963)

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STILL FROM THE MAYSLES' WELLES IN SPAIN

A glimpse of Orson pitching a project

ORSON WELLES IN SPAIN was made in 1963 and is a 10-minute film in which Welles pitches a film to well dressed people, that was to have been a fictional narrative about important, chic -- and obsessed -- bullfight aficionados. It was to be entirely improvised based on Welles' predetermined structure as laid out in his own written script. The film, like so many Welles projects, apparently did not finally see the light of day. It's very experimental nature may have been a drawback. Welles' eloquence and fluency are much in evidence. Spanish music is included at the beginning and end along with some images of a major Spanish Plaza de Torros. The film seamlessly edits together several different moments, as they will do at greater length in the longer Marlon Brando film they made a couple of years later. An online commentator suggests that a lot of the idea pitched by Welles here, including the character of Jake Hannaford, he transferred to his The Other Side of the Wind, a hitherto unreleased film whose cast includes John Huston, Robert Random, and Peter Bogdanovich, which is listed on IMDb as coming out 5 May 2015.

A print of this little early 16mm color Maysles film portrait of Orson Welles can be found on the Welles.net website here.

The Maysles brothers did some commercial work at the outset, starting in the late Fifties to make films together. A notable effort was a promotional film for IBM, for which they were apparently handsomely paid.

MAYSLES BROTHERS: MEET MARLON BRANDO (1965)

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BRANDO INTERVIEWED IN MEET MARLON BRANDO

Marlon turns on the charm, jousts with interviewers

MEET MARLON BRANDO (1965) is an amusing, (sort of) revealing 28-minute film, apparently mostly shot in and around a New York hotel, sequencing and overlapping several short interviews with Brando, some of them intended to be plugs for the movie Morituri, directed by Bernard Wicki (who Brando says smoked bad-smelling cigars). Brando dodges questions, kids around with men, and flirts with the women. One of the latter is 22, another 21, one who was a former Miss USA. Brando is in good humor and amusing and light-hearted, except when he's asked about the "plight of the American Indian," when he turns serious and cites grim statistics.

Meet Marlon Brando is sort of informal, certainly tongue-in-cheek, and shows Brando managing to seem himself while performing behind a good-natured persona, while not really cooperating or revealing anything he doesn't want to reveal. Television journalists (apparently) are interviewing the star about a then new film, but Brando counters their futile questions, a blurb says "with wit and insight, a man unwilling to sell himself." "It's a wonderful show," one woman comments about the new project. "Did you see it?" he asks. "No, I haven't seen it yet." "Then how do you know?" Always smiling and never modest, Marlon Brando shines in one of his most revealing performances. One may compare this with the young Bob Dylan's relentless baiting of interviewers in Don't Look Back, the classic doc shot about a year later by the Maaysles brothers' close colleague D.A. Pennebaker. Never, it would seem, was here a time like the mid to late Sixties for finding naive interviewers and celebrities unwilling to be manipulated.

The film premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1966, and has been telecast "with much acclaim" (the Maysles site says) in France. Brando shows off his speaking knowledge of French here, which would be observed later in Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris. Reactions to this short film were gushy. The NY Times said "the actor was never morea appealing than in this candid camera cameo." The Post goes further: "possibly the best and most appealing personal portrait of a major film star ever made." And the pull quotes from Variety are "enchanting. . . clever. . . delightful. . . beguiling."

He is all that, and Brando in his dazzling early career was unmatched for youth, sex appeal, and charm. A clip from this film, one of several where he turns back the questioning to the pretty interviewer to interview her and draw attention to her looks, is used in the new comprehensive feature-length documentary biography by Steve Riley, Listen to Me Marlon (New Directors/New Films 2015), where Riley is showing Brando's dodgy sexual playfulness. It should be noted, though, that there's nothing particularly "candid" in these interviews. Brando shows both shyness and a desire to enchant, without revealing anything. But he is so good humored that he succeeds in making the American male interviewer seem to want to be in on the fun, and the French male journalist to be quite respectful.

This, like the Welles film, shows its famous subject performing as himself in public, but even here we can see the Maysles' uncanny ability to get up close to their subjects unnoticed and keep them relaxed. Behind this performance there is a certain sexism toward the ladies, since he is unwilling to let them do their job for very long. There is a hostility to commerce, because he clearly wants to act and not promote his films. There may be an awareness that the new movie is very far from his best work. And there is the constant desire to charm the public without revealing anything much or being forced to act serious, except when he wants to.

In the most unusual moment, Brando interrupts the interviewer in French, who has asked him to speak about the situation of black people, to call attention to a pretty woman walking on the sidewalk with a small child in tow. "C'est fantastique, cette femme!" Marlon exclaims. She is brought over, and turns out to be black. He then declares that he is not qualified to comment on the situation of Negroes in America, but she is. He asks her if the government is doing what it needs to do for the Negro, and she quickly and emphatically declares that it is not. Brando's flirtatiousness vies with his nimbleness in conversation here, not to mention his gameness in making his way in French. What a guy! And he was a pretty damn good actor, too, I've heard.

In 16 mm. black and white, Meet Marlon Brando is identified as edited by long-time collaborator Charlotte Zwerin. Actually the Maysles were to use the 28-minute length again, to remarkably powerful and epic effect, in their first Christo film, Christo's Falley Curtain (1974).

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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