Blackboard Cinema: Notes on the Underground.
Tom Sutpen
offered up what they billed as the 'World Television Premiere' of Stan
Brakhage's Avant-Garde Epic "Dog Star Man" (1964). Years ago I'd seen the
'Prelude' and I'll have to admit I was somewhat eager to see the rest of the
thing (despite an inveterate bias I have against American Avant-Garde Movies in
general). Not because of any real fondness for what I'd already seen, to be
sure, but mostly out of a kind of Twisted Nostalgia for the period when lots of
well-meaning Cineastes thought that Filmmakers like Marie Menken and Gregory
Markopolous and Kenneth Anger and the Kuchar Brothers and Maya Deren and Jack
Smith and Ed Emshwiller and Ken Jacobs and (lest we forget) Stan Brakhage --
along with about a dozen or so others who had to slip out of Obscurity before
they could slip back into it -- represented the Vanguard of a Movement that was
going rewrite the History of American Cinema (if only on Paper). Some called
them Experimental or Avant-Garde Filmmakers; others called them the
Underground; but their most fervent admirers (such as their principal
Cheerleader, Organizer and Propagandist, Jonas Mekas) called them 'The New
American Cinema'.
And today they are almost totally forgotten.
*****
The 'New American Cinema' is now more than Fifty years old (depending of
course on what particular Work you choose as it's point of embarkation), and
exactly where it started is debatable. There are those who think it all began
out on the West Coast with Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid's "Meshes of the
Afternoon", but I don't agree with that. "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1943) is a
relatively intelligent, well-made bit of Surrealist Filmmaking (even if it does
borrow rather heavily from Jean Cocteau). What's missing is the fatal
combination of Self-Indulgence and Amateurishness, something that hangs like
Spanish Moss off of most of the Works that followed. To me, if there is a
specific Film that inaugurated everything that the New American Cinema was, it
has to be that Bird-Brained Kenneth Anger Psycho-Drama, "Fireworks".
Shot for about a dollar and a half in his own home while Ma and Pa Anger
were away doing God knows what, "Fireworks" (1947) is the tale of a Raw Youth
(played unconvincingly by the Director) who yearns to be stomped and torn to
pieces by a bunch of Sailors. It's a rough-trade "On the Town" and, like every
other Kenneth Anger Picture, the whole thing is prohibitively hokey; Cocteau on
Horse-Tranquilizers. That it was seen by some as a groundbreaking, daring,
landmark in Avant-Garde Cinema is an indication of the depths to which
Cineastes in the 40s would sink in order to locate 'Art' (aka European
sensibilities) in the American Cinema. It might've been a 'landmark', sure, but
that's an empty Honorific when you come right down to it. Fact is, the Picture
was so ineptly made (he worked on it for three whole days) and so stupid that
one wonders why anyone took it seriously.
What choice did they have? American Cineastes who went weak at the knees
over "Fireworks" and the dozens of Films and Filmmakers who followed it into
the Storefront Cinemas and Classrooms over the next Thirty-odd years were
Intellectuals (both Pseudo and Genuine) who felt stranded in what they regarded
as a vast Cultural Desert from which they saw no hope of escape. In all
respects, American Culture in the early 1940s was to them irredeemable; a
debased, benighted cesspool in which swam the lowest of the
lowest-common-denominator. To them, American Movies, American Literature,
American Music were an embarassment beyond Human Comprehension. Particularly
Movies. After all, how could any self-respecting Pedant wade through that
endless Parade of Musicals and Westerns and Comedies and Soap Operas and Crime
Dramas and not hate themselves in the morning? Where were the Bunuels and
Cocteaus and Bartoks and Stravinskys and Camuses and Sartreses-ses of Our Land;
the 'Real' Artists who would deliver us from all this Commerce and give Future
Generations something they could point to with Pride the way you might point
out to a guest that Picasso Print you've got hanging over your Couch? Dammit,
when was something going to be produced in this country that you can Teach in a
Classroom?
*****
Their Deliverance came at the end of the Second World War. At least it
sure looked that way. Whatever it was, something broke loose in the U.S. after
the War and every Medium -- with the exception of Radio -- seemed to undergo
the Labor-Pains of Modernity; and all at the same time. And what a relief to
Intellectuals it was! Abstract-Expessionism; 12-Tone Music; 'Beat' Literature;
and last but not least, 'Experimental Film'. What riches! A torrent of not only
Art but Theory (Hallelujah!). Now the Prisoners of Academe had something
Homegrown that they could talk to their Students (or Teachers) about. It may
not have been Popular Culture (Popularity would have spoiled the Party,
anyway), but at least it wasn't aesthetically inferior, Praise God.
But here a question obtains, a question they all knew the answer to
without giving voice to it: If American Culture was embarassing, then before
whom was it an embarassment? To what was it aesthetically inferior?
The great Artistic and Intellectual Traditions of Europe, of course; the
Eyes and Ears of the Old World. In Europe, Art and Museums are inextricably
linked. One only existed in relation to the other; whereas in this country,
Institutions of Higher Learning become an inescapable Third-Party. Why large
numbers of Americans felt that our Culture was inherently inferior to that of
the Continent which produced Adolf Hitler has always been a Mystery to me. But
a lot of them felt that way. Some still do. There's something about that place
that sends certain Americans into a frenzy of Swooning. Its the sole reason why
the Bauhaus School gained a foothold in American Architecture in the 1930s that
it has yet to relinquish; its why so many Americans hung around Paris in the
20s to soak up some of that 'la vie boheme'. The 'New American Cinema'
Filmmakers were themselves severely afflicted with the creeping Europhilia that
characterized so much of the Arts in America during and after the Post War
period. They all bought into the notion that they were not mere 'Filmmakers',
that they were standing for something far more Iconoclastic and 'Important'
than all that Decadent Storytelling going on out in Hollywood. The
Psycho-Dramas of Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren and Gregory Markopolous had such an
enormous impact on Avant-Garde Cinema in the late 40s that they started --
without intending to, I suspect -- a real, Honest-to-God Movement that would,
over the course of the next few years, inspire not merely a gaggle of
Navel-gazers and outright Frauds, but some really Talented Artists as well. By
the mid-50s, before anyone began to think in terms of a 'New American Cinema',
most of it's leading figures had begun work on their separate ouvres and the
Revolution appeared to be On Schedule. But they were blissfully ignorant of an
ugly reality they were about to confront head-on; a calamitous circumstance
that would require the unsleeping efforts of some transcending Visionary to
lead them out of their own private Wildernesses and into the light of day.
*****
The single most indispensible figure of the 'New American Cinema' was born
in Lithuania in 1922. Jonas Mekas, a Holocaust Survivor who, after a stretch in
a Displaced Persons Camp at the end of the War, arrived in the United States in
1950 and hit the ground running. He quickly began his life in America by making
Movies -- "Grand Street" (1953), a documentary; "Silent Journey" (1955), not a
documentary -- and just as quickly fell into the role of 'Underground' Cinema's
most hotheaded and influential Journalist/Critic (though he continued to make
Movies infrequently throughout the 50s and 60s).
But Jonas Mekas was not just any Journalist/Critic, he was the closest
thing to an Impresario (or a Governess) that American 'Underground' Cinema had;
a man who assumed the awesome responsibility of being it's Tireless Publicist.
Through his semi-Paranoid writings in "The Village Voice", he gradually
developed the Us-Versus-Them rhetoric that was such an integral part of their
imaginary struggle against the 'Poisonous' influence of Hollywood (part Agee;
part Stalin; part Aimee Semple MacPherson, his Columns read today like the kind
of 'Letter to the Editor' that Newspapers don't print but keep in the Files for
the occasional horselaugh). More importantly, in 1960, he and Producer Lewis
Allen formed a loose confederation of 'Underground' Filmmakers into "The New
American Cinema Group", a New York-based outfit which -- coupled with the
establishment in 1962 of "The Film-makers' Cooperative" -- provided these
Filmmakers with a Financing and Distribution foundation (however paltry) on
which to mount their assault upon an American Film Industry in Hollywood that
forever -- despite Mekas' best efforts -- remained steadfast in it's
indifference to them. On a few occasions, Fortune also smiled upon him. In the
1960s, New York City Police were good enough from time to time to confiscate
'Underground' films on some vague pretext of Obscenity. This only gave Mekas a
Golden Opportunity to scale New Heights of self-righteous Hysteria in his
Columns.
But Mekas' most crucial achievement was the Inauguration in 1955 of a
Quarterly Journal called "Film Culture" whose significance to this Epoch in
American Cinema cannot be underestimated.
*****
The 'Ugly Reality' I made reference to before could be called the
'Publicity Imperitive': A Movie That No One Sees May As Well Not Exist. It's as
simple (and brutal) as that. Now, as much as you or I might accept this as a
rather Elementary Fact of Cinematic Life, the 'Underground' Filmmakers of the
40s and 50s were not only blissfully unaware of it, they never -- even after
it began to stare them in the face -- completely understood it. Half of this
was Posturing (Real Artists Don't Resort to Hucksterism), but half of it
wasn't. There was an Innocence about most of these Filmmakers when it came to
the Practical Realities of the Art in which they toiled that is almost
mind-boggling. Most of them really believed that they could conduct their
Careers in a Vacuum, and couldn't (or wouldn't) fathom the Publicity Imperitive
to save their lives. They were all running headlong into Mainstream American
Futility (aka The Groves of Academe) and they didn't give a good GodDamn.
Jonas Mekas sure did, though. And anyone who's had life experiences
comparable to his isn't going to approach Futility without something of a
Fight. If these Filmmakers weren't going to Promote themselves, he would step
into the breach with a Vengeance and do it for them. Which is where "Film
Culture" comes in. It served the same function for American Avant-Garde Cinema
that Magazines like "Photoplay" had done years before for the Industry in
Hollywood.
Mekas, however, despite his Raging Crackpot posturings, was smart enough
to know that engaging in the Methodologies of Publicity in the manner of
Hollywood was a recipe for disaster. If "Film Culture" focused on Personalities
(Personalities? Stan Brakhage??) and 'Stars', the whole enterprise would sink
like an Iron Duck. They didn't want "Modern Screen" in New York, they wanted
something a little closer to "Paris Review" (although in the late 60s, when the
'New American Cinema' was on it's last legs, Film Journals like Andy Warhol's
"INTER/view" began covering the Underground as if it WERE Hollywood -- which in
a sense it would becoming). The readers of "Film Culture" were, in the main,
Academics (and Intellectual Tourists). They wanted Theory. Lots of it. Like the
Character in Whit Stillman's film "Metropolitan" who doesn't read Literature,
only Literary Criticism, they didn't want to know if the latest Robert Breer or
Kuchar Brothers Clambake was worth going to see (you think they actually wanted
to SEE these Movies?), they wanted to know how it stood athwart the Tide of
Commerce from Tinseltown; they wanted Essays on Modernity gussied up as Essays
on Film; they wanted these Movies EXPLAINED to them. Of course, "Film Culture"
was not the first Journal to focus attention on so-called Underground
Filmmaking. "Film Quarterly" wrote about the stuff on occasion, and "Canyon
Cinema News", a Mimeographed Monthly out of Berkeley, kept the Underground
Audiences abreast of the Scene on the West Coast (such as it was). "Film
Culture", unlike those other Publications, was deliberately designed from the
outset to draw attention not just to Individual Films and Filmmakers, but to a
vast, teeming Movement poised to redraw the History of Film. It would be a
mistake, though, to accuse Mekas of Cynicism in determining the Editorial
Policies of "Film Culture". He was merely servicing what he knew was his
Readership (Schoolteachers. Amateur and otherwise), and if they really wanted
Rank Scholasticism and Theory and Explanation, he'd give it to them (It's what
they were paying for). And one of the most relentless Explainers was (and still
is) Stan Brakhage.
*****
No Filmmaker in History has ever showed less reticence when it comes to
asessing his Vision than Stan Brakhage. In this sense, he is the Charlie
Chatterbox of Avant-Garde Cinema, and the antithesis of the Hollywood
Filmmakers who came before him. Try as one might (and there were many who gave
it the Old College Try), you couldn't get a single halfway-illuminating
observation on anything connected with Cinema (or anything else) from Directors
such as John Ford or Howard Hawks or Raoul Walsh, even if you held them at
gunpoint. They didn't talk about it. Their unspoken Credo (paraphrasing a line
from a recent film) may as well have been "The First Rule of Cinema is, You Do
Not Talk About Cinema".
Stan Brakhage can't shut up about it, though. A chronic self-analyst, he
may well be the Paradigm of the 'Underground' Film Artist of that period, one
who puts almost as much work into explaining his Movies as he puts into the
Movies themselves. I don't mean to suggest that Brakhage is all lip and no
substance; he has made a few notable films (not just "Dog Star Man"), and there
probably isn't anyone else who can do what he does in quite the same way (which
is why his films are the embodiment of a style that refers to nothing but
itself). I just don't think that what he does is particularly relevant.
Born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1933, Stan Brakhage commenced his Life in
Film in the early 1950s. His earliest films -- "Interim" (1953); "Desistfilm"
(1954); "Flesh of Morning" (1957) -- were knock-offs of the Surrealist
Psycho-Dramas so popular at the time. In 1958, he made "Anticipation of the
Night" which was a debut of sorts for the Fragmented, Impressionistic approach
to Filmmaking that would characterize his entire output from that point on. In
1959 came a pivotal work, "Window Water Baby Moving", wherein the not terribly
alluring Mrs. Brakhage gives Birth up close. I mean REAL close. It inaugurated
an awfully uncomfortable precedent in Brakhage's films, one where We on the
Business End of the screen were accorded repeated glimpses of The Brakhages
doing...well...just about everything. Warts (for starters) and all. I wouldn't
go so far as to call these things 'Vanity' Productions (at least not in the
conventional sense). he really is engaged in something serious. Something
Conceptual (which means schoolkids can get Extra-Credit for analyzing it). And
if you can't tell what that is from watching his Movies, he'll tell you all
about it. As many times as you want. Stan Brakhage's films are Blackboard
Cinema at it's most vigorous; Movies that are meant to be Taught, not seen.
*****
There's a moment in a recent Documentary on Brakhage where he is seen
parodying the lyrics to "Old Man River". Casually, and with a not-bad voice, he
sings: "Old Man River/ That Old Man River/ He don't know Nothin'/ But they
Interview him anyway..." I don't think when he did that, that he knew he'd just
given away the Whole Ballgame.
Of course, he's been giving away the Ballgame for years. The problem with
Stan Brakhage is that when he opens his Mouth about his Vision, he blows the
Whistle on American Avant-Garde Cinema (and it's dubious Foundation) without
realizing it. The following was quoted by Jonas Mekas in an Essay that appeared
in "Film Culture":
"By deliberately spitting on the lenses or wrecking its focal
intention, one can achieve the early stages of impression-
ism. One can make this prima donna heavy in performance
of image movement by speeding up the motor, or one can
break up movement in a way that approaches a more
direct inspiration of contemporary human eye perceptibil-
ity of movement, by showing the motion while recording
the image. One may hand hold the camera and inherit
worlds of space. One may over- or under-expose the film.
One may use the filters of the world, fog, downpours,
unbalanced lights, neons with neurotic color temperatures,
glass which was never designed for the camera, or even glass
which was, but which can be used against specifications,
or one may go into the night with a specific daylight film
or vice versa. One may become vice versa, the supreme
trickster, with hatfuls of all the rabbits listed above breed-
ing madly."
"...the early stages of impressionism". Is it any wonder that Brakhage
wound up Painting on strips of Film? If all this guff had been said in 1947, it
wouldn't be worth mentioning. But Stan Brakhage said this in 1962, when
Impressionism in all the other Arts was mostly a Thing of the Past. The
revolution in American Art that was the Most Devout wish of Academics in the
Post War era -- and all it's manifestations in Painting, Music and Literature
-- was disappearing fast by 1960, and it was finding a Home (however
temporarily) in the Cinema. Trouble was, the LAST place for this stuff was the
Cinema. A Medium that has the Raw Power of Film is the wrong territory for
Academic Exercises. They look great on Paper, sure, but projected onto the Big
Screen, they're puny. And irrelevant. For all the talk of Revolution, the 'New
American Cinema' was nothing more than the Modernity of the late-1940s finding
a Last Refuge of sorts in the 1960s before it was consigned to the Walls of Old
Ivy to be ignored. Forever.
You can't rewrite the History of Film on the Blackboard and expect anyone
to pay attention. Most of us aren't in School anymore.
T. Sutpen.
"Cinema is Truth, 24 times a second." -- Jean-Luc Godard
"Movies lie 24 times a second." -- Brian DePalma
"Kill Ugly Cinema!" -- Tom Sutpen
no...@webtv.net
This is Very Interesting.
And causes my interest in you at least as much, if not more, than in
your subject.
Do you publish in print as well as here?
Queryingly,
---
norton shawn
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