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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: 8½ WOMEN (1999)

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DIRECTED BY: Peter Greenaway

FEATURING: John Standing, Matthew Delamere, Polly Walker, , Toni Collette, Amanda Plummer, Shizuka Inoh

PLOT: A wealthy businessman’s son attempts to bring his widower father out of his grief by introducing him to the pleasures of libertinism.

Still from 8 1/2 Women (1999)

COMMENTS: Probably the most quoted line from Peter Greenaway’s exploration of high-class sexual adventurism comes when father and son watch Fellini’s classic 8½. “How many film directors make films to satisfy their sexual fantasies?” Philip asks. “Most of them,” his son replies. It’s a noteworthy piece of art that coughs up its mission statement so readily. Greenaway is already renowned for his treatment of sex as an artistic endeavor. By aligning himself with one of the acknowledged greats of the cinema, he would seem to be making a definitive statement on the primal urge.

It’s important to remember, however, that Greenaway really doesn’t think much of the male of the species. The two weirdest elements of 8½ Women—how much humiliation men are willing to endure to get their base needs met, and what women deem important enough to lead them to assent—are opposite sides of the same coin. Blinkered, selfish, easily distracted by carnal matters, men are always getting in their own way, and so it goes with Philip and his son Storey. These men possess staggering wealth (their fortune was built on debt collection), so much so that they can usually ignore the niceties of culture or propriety, and even then, they can think of little but their next gratification. No surprise that women recognize them for the pathetic, hollow beings they are. 8½ Women feels like an argument for mutual benefits: the men get the sexual gratification they crave, and the women get to fulfill their own needs, be they professional or psychological.

Those needs, to be certain, are kinda peculiar. Gioconda wants to be pregnant at all times, but Clothilde just wants permission to wear her old mistress’ hats, while Beryl has a thing for farm animals, a fetish that lands her in the world’s most perverse body cast. Lording over them all is Palmira, the most powerful person in the house (and probably in any room she enters) by virtue of having the most control over her reason for being there: the pleasure of shagging Philip until he drops, a fact which is completely lost on Philip’s son, who petulantly expects to be next in line.

Walker is electrifying in her power, which highlights how deliberately unsexy this movie about men who keep a harem is. This spiciest scene in the film features novice nun Griselda (played by Colette) leading the Emmenthal boys to her chamber; they are enraptured, she is paying off a debt. She’s not the only one. It’s noteworthy that when one of them actually needs something from the men–such as Mio, a Japanese woman who wants to take on the qualities of a Kabuki female impersonator–they come up pathetically short. 8½ Women never stops reminding you that these relationships are transactional, and is surprisingly cruel to anyone who dares think love has anything to do with it. (One woman is even bludgeoned over the head with a roof tile for her mistake.)

8½ Women is implicitly weird because of what Greenaway brings to any project, but it ultimately doesn’t add up to much. People come, people go, those who understand the rules get what they want. Philip and Storey may get to the root of Fellini’s imagination, but never get anywhere near the magic found there.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Like all other Greenaway movies, 8 1/2 Women transpires in a surreal setting that reflects our reality as seen through a looking glass darkly… traditional cinematic elements exist primarily to provide a framework in which Greenaway can operate to present a variety of outrageous sequences… unless you like the offbeat simply because it’s offbeat, 8½ Women may not be the best choice for an evening’s entertainment.” – James Berardinelli, Reel View (contemporaneous)

(This movie was nominated for review by Caleb Moss, who described it thusly: “”Peter Greenaway presents Marquis de Sade, complete with father/son homoerotic subtext, a giant pig, a woman with an odd sexual predilection for horses and swine, inexplicable earthquakes, self-aware parallelisms with Fellini, and as you may of guessed, literally half of a woman, to name some of the very least of strange, detached debaucheries in this film.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE DRAUGHTSMAN’S CONTRACT (1982)

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DIRECTED BY: Peter Greenaway

FEATURING: Anthony Higgins, Janet Suzman, Anne-Louise Lambert, Hugh Fraser

PLOT: At the finale of the 17th-century, the wife of a boorish aristocrat contracts with a draughtsman to contrive a series of drawings; unexpected pictographic clues appearing in the artist’s renderings suggest a deadly conspiracy.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Greenaway tackles his first feature-length narrative with such structure, symmetry, and formalism that it might conceivably collapse into its own pretentious confinement. However, regular spikes of ornate bawdiness and cryptic banter, alongside Nyman’s jaunty film score, render the whole affair so baroquely flippant that the inclusion of a living garden statue is merely the ultimate, strange garnish on this eccentric appetizer to Greenaway’s impending career.

COMMENTS: “It has been fancifully imputed that Mr. Neville saw you as a deceived husband.” If that withering—and scandalous—insult vexes you, I strongly recommend against attempting to endure Peter Greenaway’s high-falutin’ whodunnit. On the other hand, if you wish to pry, peep, poke, and peek at the behind-closed-doors (and at times, on-the-lawn-somewhat-obscured-by-a-parasol) doings of the sickeningly wealthy and witty, the droll and devastating—veritably, the very cream of late-17th-century excess—Greenaway’s soufflé of mannerisms, ostentation, lines, lists, longitudes, and lasciviousness baked into this country-house mystery will not only fit the bill, but fit it perfectly with a stretch of laced linen that will leave you petrified to touch it with your coarse peasant hands.

Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins), whose observations Mr. Noyes infers from prior insinuations and sketch-work, is a draughtsman by trade, and a haughty rake by inclination. On the eve of Mr. Herbert’s departure, Neville attends a soirée hosted by Mrs. Herbert, who wishes, she claims, to furnish her husband with a set of exterior drawings of their estate as a gift upon his return, in hopes of salvaging, at least, some civility in their marriage. Initially disinclined, Neville agrees only after much pursuit by Mrs. Herbert (and her daughter, Mrs. Talmann), and the inking of a curious contract which delineates recompense both financial and sexual. Mr. Herbert leaves for business, and Mr. Neville ensconces himself as he begins his work—and play.

I beg your indulgence for what is, even for me, an excess in flowery language; but such is the overwhelming effect of this strange matrix of conflicting impulses and shifting conspiracies. Greenaway kicks the door down for this one (doubtless because its vertical line displeased him) and comes swinging in full force with his painterly mise-en-scène and artful dialogue thronging the screen and speakers. Frames within frames, within frames; candlesticks joining and isolating conversers, sometimes positioned as an extension of a phallus-above-the-table (Neville’s, naturally); ordered chaos—there is nothing, it appears, left to ill-rendered whim nor faith in dreamscapes.

The “conflicting impulses” mentioned play out primarily between the pristine structure of the film (pacing, staging, scoring, framing, &c.) and the often-hilarious, invariably biting dialogue, which itself is masked with powder-splotched cosmetics and finery that could pass for a migraine. And Greenaway looooves sex on shameless display. As if imitating the outward prudish mien of its characters, The Draughtsman’s Contract conveys all manner of carnality, some of it extreme, while only ever exposing a single breast on screen. Anthony Higgins—witness to this breast, among other parts and places—is perfectly cast as the cocksure draughtsman, believing he is outwitting the conspiratorial axis of Mrs. Herbert and her daughter. Though doomed from the start, he careens toward his fate on a cloud of magniloquent artistry, wit, and lasciviousness.

As far as I could determine, the extras on Kino Lorber’s 40th anniversary, 4K release of The Draughtsman’s Contract were lifted straight from the preceding UK-only disc. Though they are scant, the included introduction from Peter Greenaway is a delightful and informative ten-minute essential, outlining the director’s intentions and providing a brief history of the film. The even briefer interview with Michael Nyman succinctly and charmingly relates how these two lovers of lists began their collaboration. Last, and by no means least, the video and sound are perfection in itself—and as Greenaway would observe, it is the deft combination of those elements that filmmaking is all about.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Agatha Christie this ain’t, but it is weirdly wonderful… the film shows a unique talent getting to grips with narrative cinema to create something which is as engaging and alluring as it is baffling and perplexing.”–Mark Kermode, BFI

Apocryphally Weird

14*. THE BABY OF MÂCON (1993)

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DIRECTED BY: Peter Greenaway

FEATURING: Julia Ormond, Ralph Fiennes, Philip Stone, Jonathan Lacey, Frank Egerton

PLOT: A passion-play performed in 17th-century Florence tells the story of a child born to a geriatric woman. The old woman’s daughter claims to be the child’s virgin mother and makes brisk business selling the “miraculous” infant’s blessings, while the local bishop’s son suspiciously observes her. Meanwhile, the local nobles in the audience interact with the onstage proceedings.

BACKGROUND:

  • The film was partially inspired by an uproar surrounding an advertising campaign that featured a newborn baby still attached to its umbilical cord. Greenaway was perplexed by the public’s reaction, and set out to create an unflinching depiction of the actual evils of murder and rape.
  • The Catholic Church revoked permission for the film crew to shoot in the Cologne Cathedral after Greenaway’s previous film, The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, & her Lover, aired on German television two days before shooting was to begin.
  • The Baby of Mâcon premiered at Cannes, but was seldom seen after that. Although it booked some dates in Europe, no North American distributor would agree to take on the film due to its subject matter. To this day it has still not been released on physical media in Region 1/A, although it finally became available for streaming in the 2020s.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: It is a perennial challenge to choose one image from a Greenaway picture; he regards film as a visual medium, not a tool to adapt literature. The shot of the bored young aristocrat, Cosimo de Medici, knocking over the two-hundred-and-eighth pin, signifying the end to the erstwhile virgin’s gang-rape, best merges Greenaway’s sense of mise-en-scène, his disgust for authority, and his undercurrent of odd humor.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Body secretion auction; death by gang-rape

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Fusing the most ornate costumes this side of the Baroque era with organized religion at its worst, The Baby of Mâcon is a lushly beautiful, sickening indictment of a fistful of humanity’s evils. Stylized stage performances integrate increasingly seamlessly with the side-chatter of (comparatively) modern viewers’ commentary who concurrently desire to take part in the make-believe. Greenaway moves his actors and their audience around each other with an expertise matched only by the growing moral horror developing onscreen.


Short clip from The Baby of Mâcon

COMMENTS: As the audience for The Baby of Mâcon, we bear witness to its iniquities. As witnesses, we bear responsibility: responsibility for the fraudulence of the baby’s aunt when she alleges she’s Continue reading 14*. THE BABY OF MÂCON (1993) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

340. A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS (1985)

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“The film contains three absurd propositions that aren’t impossible but are highly improbable: 1) Siamese twins who don’t want to be reunited; 2) a woman fascinated by zebras who dreams of being raped by them; and 3) a crippled woman who gives birth to twins whose fathers are also twins. These are deliberately bizarre notions that we’ll be trying to render believable using all the artifices of cinema.”–Peter Greenaway on A Zed and Two Noughts

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Brian Deacon, Eric Deacon, , Frances Barber, , Agnès Brulet

PLOT: The wives of two zoologist brothers are killed when a car driven by their friend Alba Bewick strikes a swan outside the zoo where they work. The grieving brothers question Alba, now missing a leg and bed-ridden, trying to find answers to the tragedy, while simultaneously documenting the decomposition of various animal corpses with time-lapse photography. Eventually both brothers fall for Alba, forming a strange menage a trois.

Still from A Zed and Two Noughts (1985)

BACKGROUND:

  • This was Peter Greenaway’s second theatrical feature, after The Draughtsman’s Contract (1980’s The Falls was made for television). It was partially filmed at the Rotterdam Zoo.
  • Zed was the first (of an eventual eight) of Greenaway’s collaborations with cinematographer Sacha Vierny. Vierny’s other projects included Last Year at Marienbad, Belle de Jour, and The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, making him arguably 366’s favorite cinematographer.
  • In keeping with the alphabetic sub-theme, Greenaway and Vierny worked out twenty-six different ways to light a set.
  • Painter Johannes Vermeer inspired the film’s look. The character named Van Hoyten is a reference to van Meegeren, the famous Vermeer forger.
  • On its original American release A Zed and Two Noughts was sometimes screened alongside “Street of Crocodiles.”

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Peter Greenaway films each scene like a painting: static, with characters arranged in precise visual relationships, moving very little. That technique creates a multitude of memorable tableaux: two children dragging a dog past the enormous blue ZOO sign at the Rotterdam Zoo, Alba with her head sticking through the car windshield while a swan’s hindquarters decorate the hood, the twins flanking the legless woman in bed. For something with a bit of motion to it, you could pick one of the slightly nauseating time-lapse experiments, such as the decaying  zebra corpse (which heaves as it is swollen with scurrying maggots, then deflates as they consume its guts). We decided on the image of the legless man standing erect on crutches, a character who suddenly shows up in the film for no other reason than to provide a masculine symmetry to maternal amputee Alba.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Accident on Swann’s way; sex for corpses; snail suicide sabotage

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Greenaway’s highly structured, artificial movies often come off as strange simply because of the complicated intellectual conceits behind them; but this tale of amputees, carcasses, and cages played out in the stylized zoo of his mind might be his weirdest, right down to its decaying bones.


Brief clip (opening) from A Zed and Two Noughts

COMMENTS: A Zed and Two Noughts begins with death and climaxes Continue reading 340. A ZED & TWO NOUGHTS (1985) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

322. THE FALLS (1980)

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“I have often thought it was very arrogant to suppose you could make a film for anybody but yourself… I like to think of The Falls as my own personal encyclopedia Greenaway-ensis.” -Peter Greenaway

DIRECTED BY:

NARRATED BY: Colin Cantlie, Hilarie Thompson, Martin Burrows, Sheila Canfield, Adam Leys

PLOT: Some years after a “Violent Unknown Event,” the biographies of its survivors whose surnames begin with the letters “F-A-L-L” are filmed and released as one edition in an intended series of documentaries cataloging all those afflicted. The documentary presents ninety-two survivors’ stories, describing their lives in brief and detailing including the (invariably) bizarre symptoms each has suffered from since the Event. The scope of the endeavor and the unreliability of the source material results in the repeated derailment of the flow of information.

Still from The Falls (1980)

BACKGROUND:

  •  Peter Greenaway assembled The Falls over a five-year period from found footage and snippets filmed for other, mostly aborted, projects.
  • Various references to the fictional “Tulse Luper” pertain, indirectly, to Peter Greenaway himself: Luper is Greenaway’s self-made alter-ego.
  • Composer Michael Nyman provided the score for The Falls, marking his second (after the short Vertical Falls Remake) of eleven collaborations with Greenaway. They fell out over the director’s tampering with the composer’s Prospero’s Books recordings.
  • At three hours and fifteen minutes in length, Greenaway never intended the viewer to watch the film in one sitting. Many have done so nonetheless.
  • While The Falls was compiled for a number of reasons, one of its goals was to expand upon what Greenaway considered an unsatisfactory ending for Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds.
  • An early biography features, in photographic form, the twin Quay brothers, who at that time had not yet established themselves as masters of stop-motion animation.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Oh boy. In a three-plus hour Greenaway opus consisting of hundreds of shots, stills, interviews, and intertitles, this is tougher than usual. Still, I’m leaning toward a striking image that has stuck in my mind even months after watching The Falls. One of the victims of the V.U.E. sings forcefully at the camera to a tune familiar to those who’ve heard Michael Nyman re-working it for the bulk of his career. Among the ninety-two vignettes, she provides perhaps the most disorienting moment, with her staccato operatic performance and brazenly inscrutable expression, illuminated as if she were in a Rembrandt painting.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: Avian flu; Dreamers of Water, Categories 1 to 3; Sympathetic Tinnitus and other syndromes

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Peter Greenaway cranks up his love of lists as high as the medium of film can reasonably take him in his first feature. Posing as a documentary assembled by a governmental information bureau, the list of ninety-two “V.U.E.” victims acts both as a long series of (sometimes very short) short stories and as an insanely thought-through running gag. It turns the notion of documentary on its head, undermining the authoritative voiceover and ostensibly pertinent footage (photos, interviews, documents, etc.) through the sheer volume of absurdity, whimsy, and subversive wordplay.


Spectacle Theater’s trailer for The Falls

COMMENTS: With virtually all of his movies, Peter Greenaway Continue reading 322. THE FALLS (1980) →