Stuck Between Two Different Parts of the World: Kung Fu Hustle

This film was my first Kung Fu Cinema. Unless you would really Call Rush Hour 1 and 2, Kung Fu Cinema…I guess so. I always heard about Bruce Lee and I definitely know Jackie Chan, and now here are some new names for me. I was leery about watching this film, with the mentality in mind that it may be cheesy, but I was actually wrong. I really enjoyed this film! It was one of my favorites in this class this semester. It had comedy, drama, romance, action…basically it was a blockbuster. However, it was not a predictable blockbuster that can be really annoying. I believe that I enjoyed this movie so much is because of the familiar plots and aesthetics it has evoked. 

Dumas believes Kung Fu Hustle “detaches “kung fu from many of its associations with main land politics in an attempt to appeal to a more progressive, cosmopolitan generation that the one before” (Dumas). We clearly see Western style/plot: the “ten-gallon” hat, shoot-offs, music, “city-life.” Fulfilled 21^st century action cinema: “high budget, stylish, and action-packed” (Dumas). Mixed with that is the genre Wuxia Pian—new and wildly popular literary genre characterized by fantastic depictions of local space of the past, superhuman feats, and dramatic/dangerous romantic liaisons. It is large and in charge! Though being a blockbuster, it links to Hong Kong identity. It represents China in the present and past, and kung fu heroism. However, all of this connects to Western ideologies. We all, especially me, link between Chinese martial arts and popular entertainment. This film reminded me of The Matrix, Rush Hour, some John Wayne westerns, and probably a bunch more! When I think of Chinese films, I think of martial arts…nothing else. That is what probably most of Western culture thinks. Foreign films cater to what we preconceived, and they show exactly that and more. Dumas explains this well in the reading:

“Though this merging of Eastern and Western spaces and aesthetics might be viewed, to some extent, as a reflection of Hong Kong’s own unique experience as a “third” nation, the unnaturalness of Chow’s synthesis of prevalent conceptualizations of China and America’s past seems haphazardly composed not in any sincere attempt to explore Chinese or Hong Kong identity, but rather in order to appeal to some preconceived notion of the national sentiment and sensibilities of potential viewers worldwide” (Dumas).

Now after filtering that through our brains…what do you think? Should films, whether Western or foreign, should cater to the audience not from their country to their preconceived notions, and their ideologies? Or should they stick to their roots?

Driving through Dreams: Mulholland Drive

This movie is crazy…but crazy good! I have never watched a David Lynch movie, and I am kind of glad this one was the first one. I knew that Lynch’s auteur style is more on the non-mainstream style, and I definitely saw that. I had to go into a surrealist mindset to sort of understand this film. This film is very “dream-like” and not everything I watch I will fully understand. This may be frustrating for some of the audience members, but it is not really for me. It wasn’t until the reading; I sort of understood/explored the possible meanings behind this film. 

I really feel that this film takes the perspective of the dreamer being Hollywood. Dreams are “learned habits of the mind” that usually “fail to support our needs, but often loom as frightening adversaries in our struggle to cope” (Nochimson). This dream we see reveals a sad, horrific, confusing, grotesque results, such as Betty/Diane’s suicide (Nochimson). Usually the Hollywood we see isn’t always happy ending.  This dream seems mechanical, a “mass-market machine that feeds on genuine, not imaginary, creative impulses and turns them into waste products” (Nochimson). Life and death. Lynch also plays on those usual Hollywood stereotypes, but then twists them to the unordinary, not seen personas. Hence the artificial acting (at first). We root for Betty and her success, but as soon as she has everything, she loses everything in one moment. A missed opportunity of meeting with Adam, the famous Hollywood director, which later results to a “butterfly effect”. It was from the moment on that things started going downhill. 

This dream we are watching is created by a culture industry, Hollywood, which has a lot of power and control. It is filled with life and death, defeat and hope…we see all of that in various films, especially the classic ones (Nochimson).  There are lots of illusion, and void within this dream-like film, especially when Betty and Rita go to Club Silencio. We hear the band, the singing, but there is nothing there. The film ends with Club Silencio, with a woman saying “Silencio” (which means silence in Spanish). This phrase resonates on the audience, hence the long black screen before the credits…”full of signs of both empty illusion and fullness of possibility” (Nochimson). I agree with the reading, this brings a questionable future not for the characters, but for Hollywood/popular culture (Nochimson). But also for us. Possibilities can come out of this dark void, but also death.   

The Deepened Roots of Daughters of the Dust

Daughters of the Dust at first caught me off guard. I was annoyed that most of the movie, I did not understood what any of the women and men were saying. Without knowing what the characters were saying, I did not know the plot. Yes, I understood that these women were going to the Americas, learning about the modern times, and having conflicts with new ideas such as religion…that was basically it. It wasn’t until I read the reading that I began to understand the context of the narrative, and the reasoning behind this film. This is a film about family, and passes the Bechdel Test: 1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it, 2. Who talk to each other, 3. About something besides a man. 

In addition, this film is not the ordinary mainstream film, it breaks a lot of barriers. First, it has “intentionally broken with mainstream filmmaking approaches that too often reduce the complexities of black life to homogenized, ready-made film commodities...” (Everett). Second, “Her goal was to tell a story as an African griot would, with an unfolding, like women’s weaving” (Everett). Third, it is not plot driven, but “heavily influenced by foreign films…” (Everett). Fourth (and fifth), she experimented with film speeds and speculative fiction. This film isn’t supposed to be easy for the audience to watch, because it is not the norm…especially if the audience member is white. Dash desires to “rewrite cinematic images of black women and break completely with traditional film stereotypes” (Everett). We are watching these women through a different lens, not an urban setting with gangs, poverty, etc. or a civil war/slavery in America context. We are like the character Trula. Dash says, “Trula was the vehicle used to represent the audience. This is why she does not speak. She is like the audience—she does not understand the dialect [nor] the religion” (Everett). We don’t understand this film because it breaks away from the usual film portrayal of African Americans. 

Daughters of the Dust is a “more accurate representation of African disaporic cultural traditions”, filled with Gullah dialect which “reflects the dislocated Africans’ retention of remnants of their language” (which we have to really listen while watching), and the influence of African American jazz/blues on the visual aesthetic (Everett). What we see and experience in this film is ancestry/roots. Dash describes this film as “a film that was like a heirloom itself… I wanted to create these tableaux images like frescos in your mind…” (Everett).  I hope the next time I watch a film like this, I do not get frustrated at the abnormality, but embrace it, because Dash really reveals a whole new outlook on African American women.

A Stream-of-Consciousness Blog about Do the Right Thing

After watching parts and pieces of this film and reading “A Theater of Interruptions”, there were many small thoughts involving this film, Do the Right Thing, which sparked my interest. So this blog may seem very “stream-of-consciousness”…so bear with me.

Do the Right Thing has a lot of juxtaposing ideas jumbled up in a hot and tense atmosphere (literally and metaphorically). Radio Raheem blasts Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” on his boombox and wears two four-fingered rings that say “love” and “hate”. Also, Smiley has pictures of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. –quotes from both of these figures end the movie. The idea of whether or not to act in love or in hate is one of the main turmoil’s in this film. Tolerance can be seen in some of the characters, but most of the characters at the end of the film result to acts of hate and violence. Not only in this fictionalized world have we seen this conflict, but also in our reality. Should we love everyone, and not act out in violence, even those who hate our race, gender, sexual orientation, etc? Or defend ourselves with violence? 

Sharon Willis describes Spike Lee has “always provoked discord” (Willis). He has! Especially being in an artistic position of “representing the communities from which [he has] come [from]” (Willis). The audience, like with other directors such as Hitchcock and Woody Allen, are not sure the role the director plays as a director and as a character in his film. Lee in most of his films “circulates his own image…whose roles from film to film vary dramatically” and this disturbs the “on-screen and off-screen realities” (Willis). This film disturbs this reality even more because Lee also casts his own sister as a character. Breaking the fourth wall and having the director in the film makes the audience aware that the film is fictional, but also makes the “directedness” of being addressed more personal/involved with the film. We see this in the scene when the characters are “sharing some thoughts on ethnicity”. The camera zooms in close; the characters are looking directly at the camera, and they share their thoughts to the audience not the other characters. These “soliloquies” that “interrupt dramatic action and verbal exchange” through a series of vignettes makes this film seem not part of the Hollywood conventions of cinema (Willis). I really enjoy that!

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Mess around with different lenses (such as the fish-eye), personify the camera, montage editing, break the fourth wall…have fun! Be creative! It is not like I oppose the some conventional Hollywood films, but I give and extra “kudos!” to the directors who mess around and go away from the usual. Hitchcock, Lee, and Allen are all defined auteurs; it is because of their unconventionality. I just wish more of the popular films today didn’t always follow the conventions and changed it up a bit (not the same song and dance)…well maybe that is why there are called “mainstream”.     

Argento's Alluring Ambience

Argento has no interest in realism whatsoever; Suspiria is self-consciously stylized, and artificial. Suspiria is about intense color as much as it is about anything. Maitland McDonagh describes Argento’s colors as “aggressively unnatural, perhaps like stained glass—saturated yellow and deep cobalt blue—perhaps artificially limpid, glittering plane turquoise and green. And always red, rich and clear” (McDonagh). Argento’s phantasmagoria goes for the exact opposite of the usual vivid and colorful film, disrupting every inch of the way and graphically visualizing the bodily violence and dismemberment, like a Grimm fairytale...it is not “kool-aidesque”. 

This film is based around gothic spaces, childhood fantasies of something horrific “out there” in the dark come true, such as a room may be inexplicably full of sharp wire coils, a bat may suddenly attack, and maggots may drop from the ceiling into your hair as if to suggest a state of rotting within the house. There are themes of instability and disorientation within the lusciousness and beauty of Argento's destabilized world. Throughout the film we are held captive(well I really was) by every image—whether the drive from the airport, a walk up or down the gilded school staircase, or a subjective traveling shot through the red corridor of the dance school. The audience experiences these aesthetically beautiful images more than the narrative itself. McDonagh explains such criticisms: “Even allowing for the degree to which narrative is made deliberately subordinate to  mise-en-scene, it must be conceded that Argento can be a sloppy writer” (McDonagh). Each room of the school is highly ornamental, as are the film's other gothic locales, such as the irises by Madame Blanc's desk, and the geometric stained glass windows. Many frames have a painterly composition, with characters positioned in doorways or mirror frames that set them apart graphically from other characters. Indeed, spatial aesthetics connects to story when the key to the narrative mystery turns out to be a reference to design and color, such as the iris. 

The various murder scenes functions in two crucial ways: thematically and stylistic. This early double-murder sequence is typical for the film, in that our attention is drawn to graphics, such as the squares of the grid Pat is stabbed against. Here and everywhere in the set decorations we see these shapes, especially the first murder. In this first murder, the geometric orders of angles with the random formlessness of bloodstains resemble nothing more than an expressionist painter's messy, colorful pallet. 

Even through Argento creates a beautiful environment surrounding these brutal murders, he “murders and main and splatters blood with abstract abandon” in a “hedonist” way (McDonagh). This creation may be a reason why this film is a favorite with many people, particularly women…we are all enthralled with the mise-en-scene. In the words of McDonagh: “The imagery is bizarre, almost surreal…” (McDonagh). Personally, I dislike slasher films especially scenes of brutal murder/gore involving a woman. Why would we watch and enjoy voyeuristically viewing something like that? Now that can be a never-ending debate that may never be answered. All I know is that “the world of Dario Argento is one of twisted logic, rhapsodic violence, [and] stylized excess…” (McDonagh).

"This is no dream! This is really happening!"

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is a Gothic spectacle deep with controversy. There is “violence, deceit, and misappropriation of a woman’s body by people she trusts…” (Valerius). Most importantly, there are the concerns about abortion. During the 1960’s, women (not just the feminists) argued for “repeal of abortion laws on the grounds of a woman’s right of self-determination” (Valerius). This film by Roman Polanski helps build mainstream public support for abortion reform through the expression of a literary and cinematic convention of horror. Rosemary’s Baby revolves around witchcraft, the idea of the un-dead (seen in Stoker’s Dracula), and Immaculate Conception/demonic pregnancy.

Many thoughts and questions come to mind to the audience. The audience views a frightening situation of Rosemary’s body being violated, then dealing with the pangs of pregnancy, to the birth of a monster. Polanski places the audience amidst Rosemary’s mind and perspective, to bond the audience to her. For example, when Rosemary looks at her sick reflection in a shop window or when she is running away from the doctor and her husband trying to escape. This subjective camera makes things very personal. We are invited to identify with her and to provoke our fear on her behalf (Valerius). Rosemary is violated physically and even in her privacy. She becomes entrapped, and the audience cannot help her even though we are feeling the same feelings, especially when she is between reality and a dream-like state. When being raped, she finally comes out of a dream-like state and realizes that it was not a dream: “This is no dream! This is really happening!” (Rosemary’s Baby). The camera angles during this experience alternate which “produce the effect of shifts in perspective” (Valerius). Rosemary protests and acknowledges the distinction between reality and fantasy and delivers this protest into the camera and makes a direct address to the audience. This implicates the audience as voyeurs, warns the audience that the situation is not fantasy, and seeks the audience as witness of her rape/potential allies (Valerius). Unfortunately, she later fails to differentiate her experience as real. 

 The audience is scared for Rosemary and wants her to escape from such patriarchal dominance and deception. Everything happening to her is not right! So if this is not right, then this brings back to the question and idea of abortion. Is that right? Should that be legal? That is really the backbone of this film—the historical context of the current events of the 1960’s. This issue is still argued over today, and I do not think there will ever be a clear answer.

The Strong Struggling Sarah Connor

Sarah Connor. Now she is not the ordinary societal woman and mother. Well, she was at first until Reese came amidst her life in the 1980’s. Over the years, she has transformed herself from the mousy, timid woman seen at the beginning of the first movie into a muscled, ferocious warrior, trying to let humanity know about the upcoming apocalypse. We at first see her in the confines of a mental institution, doing chin-ups. She is determined to escape and destroy Skynet before they complete their most powerful creation, a cyborg. From watching scenes of being tazed, tied-down to the bed, abused by the guards, and nightmares of children on swings being destroyed by a blast—the audience feels sympathy for her.  However, her fixation on the disaster, and also her obsessive desire to keep John safe has made her a little mentally unstable and very violent, which is only aggravated by her fear and hatred of the T-800.

Her anger drives her…which helps but really hurts her. Even when she is escaping from the hospital, she encounters the T-800. Fear ultimately overtakes her, but later anger. She does not believe that this particular terminator is benevolent, no matter how many times her son pleads with her. The past events have really influenced her view of the machines—she thinks they are just plain evil. The audience can feel and view her frustration  with the ignorance of society, her distrust with the T-800, fear of the T-1000, anger with the difficulties of destroying Skynet, and the worry of protecting her son, John. That is a lot of weight to carry for one person. I feel this film focuses on Sarah more than anyone else. Yes, Arnold with a giant gun, and the “Hasta la vista baby!” is cool, and the CGU effects as well, however, most of the shots in the film focus on Sarah Connor. Her character is crucial in the series (and later John Connor). She had to deal with the terminators coming back time and time again most of her life. Plus, taking care of John! She embodies the ultimate empowered woman. Feminists must love her. She is wearing the “pants” (literally and metaphorically) and knows how to shoot a gun (well, various ones that are also huge). Optimistically, after all the struggle, anger, and finally destroying everything from Skynet that will connect to the future destruction (fingers crossed!), she can sit back and relax. Or maybe not.

A Voyeuristic Love Life

“Men, are you over 40? When you wake up in the morning, do you feel tired and run down? Do you have that listless feeling?”—Rear Window (playing on a radio)

            After the radio announcement, the camera returns to the apartment where it slowly reveals that the man, a photojournalist, L.B. Jefferies, is immobilized. He is alone and confined in a wheelchair. His “castrated” left leg is in a cast - inscribes:

Here lie the broken bones of L. B. Jefferies

On the wall are enlarged photos, smashed camera equipment, other various photographs, a negative of a woman’s face, and then the positive photo of the same woman on a magazine. This is a man whose perspective of life is through a camera lens…a voyeur. This voyeur is bored and confined to his wheelchair and can emerge from his “plaster cocoon” till the following Wednesday. So what does he do? Well, look at his neighbors of course! But he is bored! He begs his editor to get him back on the job:

Jeff: You've got to get me out of here. Six weeks sitting in a two-room apartment with nothing to do but look out the window at the neighbors. ..If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something drastic...like what? I'm gonna get married and then I'll never be able to go anywhere.

Editor: It's about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome, bitter old man.

Jeff: Yeah, can't you just see me, rushin' home to a hot apartment to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal, the nagging wife.

Editor: Jeff, wives don't nag, they discuss.

Jeff: Is that so, that so? Maybe in the high rent district they discuss, in my neighborhood they still nag.

Editor: Well, um, you know best.

Jeff’s confinement to his wheelchair (being castrated and all metaphorically speaking) and not being able to be a powerful when it comes to his job, and possibly marriage…Jeff becomes bitter about love and marriage. Especially when he is peeping on the neighbors: Thorwald and his nagging wife, Miss Torso, the newlyweds, Miss Lonelyheart, the music composer, etc. Elizabeth Cowie describes these series of vignettes in Rear Window form “a kind of filmic essay on love, desire, and marriage that is alternately humorous, sardonic, and tragic, while acting as a counterpoint to the central conflict of Jeff’s own relation to love, desire, and marriage” (Cowie). He uses a back-scratcher to alleviate an aggravating feeling inside his cast, his nurse, Stella, notes his sexual impotence and notes that he has a “hormone deficiency”, and he is having lukewarm feelings and attitude towards his girlfriend (who is a fashion model) Lisa. SHE IS FREAKIN’ GRACE KELLY! This man has problems!

Hitchcock based part of Rear Window on exploring “the dilemma of a man who cannot desire a desirable woman who desires him” (Cowie). Desirous Lisa wakes Jeff up with a fairy-tale kiss, she passionately kisses and hugs him, dresses in a silky pajamas, basically…she loves him! However, his voyeurism and impotence are inherently linked. They are on totally different wavelengths: he is more attentive in his theories of Thorwald’s suspected murder and in telling her about what he witnessed the previous night. Jeff views marriage “as a form of disempowerment—castration—of the male” (Cowie). And Jeff does not need to be castrated again. The only empowerment for Jeff is his camera with a long telephoto lens, and only through that he can feel powerful and masculine.

Eventually Lisa realizes that through the lens of the camera she can receive love and be desirous in Jeff’s eyes. Significantly and expectantly, their relationship is suddenly sparked into life and transfigured, and she joins him in his charade. Lisa concludes that his insane and imaginative conclusions may actually be accurate: “Let's start from the beginning again, Jeff. Tell me everything you saw...and what...you think it means.” Throughout the film, Lisa is being transformed, “her desire for marriage no longer threatens him with loss” (Cowie).

In a thrilling scene, Lisa makes a bold and reckless decision to enter and search Lars' apartment while he is gone. Her goal is to find the incriminating evidence, the wedding ring (the MacGuffin), that will prove Jeff's theory. This moment, Lisa has entered the field of Jeff’s fantasy world/desire “by stepping into the space of his gaze not as an image but as a subject who acts, and desires” (Cowie). She eventually finds out Mrs. Thorwald’s ring, places it on her finger, and signals/points to the ring to Jeff. Pointing to the wedding ring on her finger, she daringly reveals that she has discovered the vital evidence, and it is also “a symbol of Lisa’s own desire” (Cowie). Her risk-taking escapade caused Jeff masochistic excitement, which inspires Jeff toward love, commitment, concern, and marriage in multiple ways, as he watches her through his long telephoto lens. Later after Thorwald’s discovery of Jeff’s peeping and then pushing Jeff being out of a window, Lisa cradles Jeff's head in her lap as he tells her: “I'm proud of you.” Finally, Jeff loves Lisa.

In the final scene, a doubly castrated Jeff is smiling while he rests in his wheelchair. Nearby him is Lisa, dressed in blue jeans/pants and shirt…she is the one “wearing the trousers”! After noticing that he is asleep and not watching her, she casts off her male image by putting down the “boring” and “masculine” book and assertively substitutes her own preferred reading material—Harper’s Bazaar. Lisa is giving “the last laugh” (Cowie).

Il sogno di Fellini vestito - Fellini's Dream Dress

The sack dress. Fellini’s muse behind La Dolce Vita. Who would have thought that fashion can inspire a director, and be the basis of a film. The image of Anita Ekberg emerging from Trevi fountain in a sack dress is one of the most iconic scenes in film history. Cristobal Balenciaga, the designer behind the sack dress, favored fluid lines that “allowed him to alter the way clothing related to a woman’s body.” Balenciaga contributed to the world of la moda (fashion) a “new silhouette for women.” Now woman of any shape and size can “show-off” their natural curves and look beautiful.

However, it is more than just a beautiful dress, it also conveys a meaning. One of the reasons for Fellini was a “poke at the Catholic Church and a wink at the fashion industry” (Variety.com). According to Jay Weissberg, a film critic based in Rome, Italy, he says that the dress is “[the] transparent mesh at the décolletage and the back makes it incredibly sexy and restrained…Roman women tend to love clothes that create an impression of strength as well as femininity” (Variety.com). The sack dress in La Dolce Vita sets “a new aesthetic standard and a statement of liberation from a repressive political regime and a dying culture” (Pasolini). Brunello Rondi, Fellini's co-screenwriter, explains that "the fashion of women's sack dresses which possessed that sense of luxurious butterflying out around a body that might be physically beautiful but not morally so; these sack dresses struck Fellini because they rendered a woman very gorgeous who could, instead, be a skeleton of squalor and solitude inside" (Wikipedia).

Marcello moves in a world of conspicuous semi-celebrities and their “hangers-on”, drifting cheerfully through the high class society and becoming the norm. The emerging post-war “sweet life” in which Rome is depicted as a moral wasteland is filled with a directionless self-indulgence. The iconic scene of Anita Ekberg wading in the Trevi Fountain, acts as a counterpoint to the empty lives of the characters in later scenes. They all drift into emotional and moral listlessness. Hence this film is referred to as a neo-realistic film. Italian director, Pasolini, explains La Dolce Vita as an “exhibition of the Italian pretty bourgeoisie in its own ambience with exaggerated its traits and which burns it in a revealing and gloomy light” (Pasolini).  This sack dress embodies this ideology: external and exaggerated beauty, however internal ugliness. All the characters are all cynics, egotistical, spoiled, silly, frightened, miserable, etc. However, no one sees that…all they see is beauty and glamour. A beautiful dress.

Lost in Marienbad's Surrealistic Labyrinth

“There were always walls—everywhere, around me—smooth, even, glazed, without the slightest relief, there were always walls…Always walls, always corridors, always doors—and on the other side, still more walls.”

That is how I felt while watching this movie...walking around an endless maze…seeing more doors, walls…
Everyone would have to agree that, at first, this movie was confusing and ambiguous. The plot is complex and twists every time you are starting to understand what was going on. Why is everyone frozen like statues? Why don’t we know their names? What is up with the relationships between the three main characters? We just keep questioning every moment of this film.

After all the questioning and confusion, I concluded that this film is more an artistic (avant-garde) film. In the interpretation of Last Year at Marienbad, the author describes the film as “a formalistic experiment in the medium of the film—in the sense in which cubist paintings have been described as formalistic studies”. He or she continues the connection by describing this film as a “landmark of artistic cinematography”. Most importantly, Marienbad as “an artistic presentation of the inner dialectic of the Cartesian mind”. A Cartesian paradise.

I focused on the cinematography and mis-en-scene more than the narrative/plot itself. Those aspects of the film were beautiful. The jump cuts between various conversations/scenes, the long and lingering takes, contrast of light and dark, use of reflections and shadows (oh I love using mirrors in filming!), the geometric garden, juxtapositions of shots/narration, etc. Everything I mentioned speaks volumes! They set off a surrealistic aura. All our questions of the narrative are unanswerable: “The film never provides the viewer with the means to tell what is real and what is fictitious”.

From reading Wikipedia’s article of this film and the one from class, seems like there are various interpretations of this surrealist film…a story of: persuasion, dream-like state, Cartesian mind, and relationship between patient and psychoanalyst. We’re not sure. All I know is that this film boils down to one thing: a continuity of thought. Like the characters, the audience is trapped in their thoughts…we can’t distinguish what is real or not, we can’t escape the geometric labyrinth full of walls, doors, and corridors. We’re stuck in our “French Gardens”—artificial, geometric, human controlled. No matter what: “there is no possible way of getting ‘outside’ of our minds to determine in what state we actually are; inescapable we remain imprisoned in our minds”.

Rita Hayworth: The Twenty-Four Hours a Day Gilda

Gilda. A Film Noir that is most famous for the one star…Rita Hayworth. In my book, she places the number one spot for the femme fatales in Hollywood history. In dramas, Hayworth’s roles usually consist of the “other woman”, archetypal evil seductress, and a femme fatale.  Dyer refers to her as “the object of desire [that] is unknowable and treacherous” (93). Certain elements in Rita Hayworth’s image, such as her long wavy hair, elongated legs, rouge lips, fit the generic femme fatale. A “positive charge” is given to the character of Gilda by the actress Rita Hayworth. Overall…the gal has charisma. She is a “Love Goddess” of Hollywood. However, this film and the many before & after, has influenced her image towards men, and her life.

"I think all women have a certain elegance about them which is destroyed when they take off their clothes."-Rita Hayworth

Margarita Carmen Cansino trained as a dancer in early childhood, and later danced with her Spanish father, Eduardo Cansino. Her knowledge and skill of Latin American style of dance became part of her image—“It is not just her star status that gives Hayworth her presence in the film. It is also her position as an identification figure, and her dancing” (96). This style of dance was viewed “primitive” and “authentic erotic expressivity”(97). Hayworth’s solo numbers in Gilda: “makes it possible to read her dancing in terms of eroticism for herself as well as for the spectator” (97). Every heterosexual man during this time must have been hooting and hollering at the screens when the famous “Put the Blame on Mame” performance was occurring. It was a soft strip tease. In the film, Gilda, “…her dance numbers are important movements in which the film dwells on her, sexuality” (98). This sexuality can be viewed as a praise of her own body and others rejoicing in it too, or “male heterosexual enjoyment of the character (surrender rather than control)” (98). Did this film, and possibly other’s too, make Hayworth viewed as a sex object for the male viewer?

“Gilda: I can never get a zipper to close. Maybe that stands for something, what do you think?”

-Gilda (1946)

Rita Hayworth behind all the glamor and praise was longing for someone to love her…for her.  Rita Hayworth, referring to men, said "They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me." The character of Gilda never left her shadow throughout all of her life. Every man, whether husband or not, viewed her as that sexualized femme fatale. She admitted herself, “No one can be Gilda 24 hours a day”. In Adrienne L. McLean’s book, Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom (2004), Hayworth’s childhood abuse and influence from her father demolished the areas of love, sex, and motherhood in her life. Her father told her to use “sex to get and hold attention” and “play sexually provocative roles” (67). Added onto that, she played roles that fit those criteria. From femme fatales roles, pin-up, and photographs…people only “saw her only as a sex goddess or as an object of men’s manipulation” (67). Hayworth once said, "Basically, I am a good, gentle person, but I am attracted to mean personalities." It was part of her nature.

This view and lifestyle took a toll on her life. Barbara Leaming writes in her biography, Hayworth If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth (1989) “despite the artfully applied make-up and shoulder-length red hair, there was no concealing the ravages of drink and stress. Deep lines had crept around her eyes and mouth, and she appeared worn, exhausted, older than her thirty-eight years." Mentioned in Wikipedia article on Hayworth, her daughter, Yasmin Aga Khan wrote about her drinking problem: “‘Well, there's not much I can do. I can just, sort of, stand by and watch.' It's very difficult, seeing your mother, going through her emotional problems and drinking and then behaving in that manner; her condition became quite bad. It worsened and she did have an alcoholic breakdown and landed in the hospital.”

It all winds down to this:
“All I wanted was just what everybody else wants, you know, to be loved.” -Rita Hayworth
To be loved as herself.

"The world doesn't make any heroes outside of your stories..."

America. The country that is viewed as the underdog. All American heroes, valiant and true, out to serve justice and save the helpless. Once their deed is done, order is restored. However, not in this story.

Reed's The Third Man (1949) twists this stereotypical character in American film. Holly Martins, ironically a pulp Western author, tried to solve the crime case involving his friend, Harry Lime. The use of the Dutch angle, harsh contrast of lighting, close-ups, and especially the mise-en-scene (post-war Vienna), brings uneasiness and questioning to the audience on the character of Holly. Usually the audience roars and cheers for the main protagonist, however in this case, we are all not sure about Holly. When watching the film, my favoritism for Holly was indecisive. I was actually annoyed most of the time with him--the professionals did not need any help!

Holly's character reveals an ignorance of Americans during this time. World War II never really affected the United States in comparison to Europe and the Pacific. Vienna is in rubble and divided into four because of our causalities and bombing. Pulling one individual, such as Holly, from the the United States and placing them out of their comfort into another "world" that is in shams, caused a twist in outcomes. Holly (our supposed hero) did not get Anne, Lime ended up dead (shot by his friend Holly) because of his bad behavior, Vienna was not restored to its former glory by Holly, and Holly was not proud of his accomplishments in the end...basically he did not ride off into the sunset on his white horse.

Overall, this movie I enjoyed--mostly for the undercover meaning, cinematography, and unexpectedly its sarcasm. A jolly British gent introducing the prominent and lavish Venice, at its height of age? Nope, it is “bombed about a bit” that is all. The last shot in The Third Man, is beautiful. All vectors, the trees and road, leading to Anne. Similarly, the livelier natural lighting and the graceful descent of the leaves from the trees. A romantic moment the audience anticipates in this exquisitely crafted shot…however, like throughout the movie, it twists to the unexpected. I love the use of the Dutch angle, and shadows. Film noir lighting brings an eerie and haunting ambiance…the unknown figure on the wall…it is a man selling balloons? Oh boy!

The Third Man is a movie that questions the ideal of how the typical Hollywood movie and looks into a mirror that most of the audience members would not like. Once you look in the mirror…all you see is rubble…caused by our own doing.

P.S. to the Reader: The article that describes the relationship to Holly and Lime homoerotic (and Anne is just a cover-up)...did any of you get that same vibe from the two characters? Cause I think not!