Why read/ watch plays? (P.3): Plays vs films

Before we begin, I’m going to say that I’m talking about plays in the broad sense: not only live performances but also texts and filmed plays and audio recordings (“Let’s hear a play”); I however exclude musicals.

If we compare cinema and theatre (in the sense of live performance), we can all name the advantages of theatre: the nearness of the audience to the actors, the interaction and immediacy, the fact that no two performances are the same. But if we compare cinema and drama (in the broad sense), I’m afraid most people would only talk about the advantages of cinematic language: the language of image, large scenes, visual effects, and above all, editing and the close-up. It is derogatory when a film or TV series is described as “stagey”; what’s the equivalent for the other way around? 

I myself have loved literature and cinema all my life—my interest in drama is relatively new—but I love Shakespeare. That’s why I want to examine these questions: are films actually superior to plays, or is cinematic language superior to the language of drama, as the derogatory use of “stagey” seems to suggest? What do plays do better than films?

Now you may argue that the word “stagey” only suggests that a film should use cinematic language, but let’s look at the word when it’s used for TV. In the past, TV series, especially TV adaptations of classic novels, were modelled after theatre; now they’re modelled after films, meaning that they’re now meant and expected to be cinematic. Look at the 1972 War and Peace or 1977 Anna Karenina for example. Some people disparage them as stagey, and in some ways these TV series are closer to plays—lots of dialogue and minimal camerawork—but this also means that the screenwriters and directors pay more attention to dialogue and let the scenes unfold. Both series are excellent adaptations that take Tolstoy’s novels seriously and convey the complexity of the characters. Now if you look at the 2013 TV adaptation of Anna Karenina, you can see that it’s modelled after cinema and dialogue is devalued. And I can’t help asking, why do they keep moving the camera? Why do they cut every 4 seconds? (I counted) Why do they not let the scene unfold? I couldn’t even watch beyond 5-10 minutes of the 2018 King Lear for the same reasons, despite my admiration for Anthony Hopkins and Florence Pugh as actors. 

I’m not saying that screen adaptations of classic novels should be closer to plays, nor that they shouldn’t employ cinematic language. I’m also not saying that I’m mainly interested in drama driven by dialogue, driven by words (as my friend Himadri would probably say, who loves plays more than films). But dialogue is increasingly devalued in our mainly visual world—the word “stagey” reflects that—and that I find very sad. 

Films and plays do different things and have different strengths—I love both. In a film, the story and conflict are driven by many things, including dialogue (which some filmmakers unfortunately seem to forget). In a play, drama is driven by dialogue: what we say and what we don’t say and how we say it and how we hide or deceive with words. 

Persona or Cries and Whispers for instance has to be a film—it would not work as a novel or a play or an audio performance. Conversely, Rosmersholm has to be a play—you could of course turn it into a film, but its ambiguity and intricacies cannot be communicated by image or cinematic language. 

And when I watch Shakespeare, which I can’t watch live all the time (I’m just a poor girl, from a poor family), the choice would more often be a recording of a live performance, or a filmed play (like the BBC Television Shakespeare from the 1970s-80s), than a film adaptation. Sometimes a Shakespeare film respects the text, such as the 1993 and 2012 Much Ado About Nothing. Very often, Shakespeare’s words are heavily cut. Chimes at Midnight on its own is probably a passable film, but Orson Welles condenses into two hours the two Henry IV plays, with some bits from Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. The result is a Falstaff—Welles—film with lots of supporting characters: all the others are underdeveloped, but even Falstaff is sentimentalised and simplified. 

Some Shakespeare films also indicate something like a fear of words. The 2015 Macbeth—perhaps I’m being unfair as I didn’t watch all of it—breaks into pieces the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech, mixing in flashbacks and battle scenes and special effects and drowning music. The main actors, Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, also don’t know how to speak the words. 

Even when we look at Kurosawa’s adaptations of Shakespeare, Ran is a masterpiece, a work of art on its own separate from King Lear, but Throne of Blood is shallow compared to Macbeth: stripped of much dialogue, it is an exciting film, but doesn’t have the complexity of Macbeth; the main characters are reduced to a weak man urged on by an evil wife. Now you might say Throne of Blood uses cinematic language and I should judge it as a film, so I would say that it is not a profound, thought-provoking film. 

Now I have seen many film adaptations of plays, it would be interesting to watch play adaptations of films. 

Chimes at Midnight and the BBC 1979 productions of the Henry IV plays

Before commenting on these productions, let’s talk a bit about the plays. 

I love Henry IV, Part 1. I also love Henry IV, Part 2. It seems that many people only like, or much prefer, Part 1—an exciting play, full of banter and witty exchanges between Hal and Falstaff—whereas nothing seems to happen for a large part of Part 2. It is a play of disease and decay and death. The jokes are stale. The jester is jaded. But I love them both, and love the Henry IV plays as one unified thing, inseparable. In Part 1, Shakespeare depicts the friendship, the bond between Hal and Falstaff. In Part 2, he depicts each one alone, their wit unmatched and unappreciated by other companions, and builds it all up for Hal’s reconciliation with his father and banishment of Falstaff at the end of the play.

From the tetralogy, we can separate Richard II or even Henry V, but the Henry IV plays must go together.

At the heart of the Henry IV plays is the Henry IV-Hal-Falstaff triangle. Chimes at Midnight is a Falstaff film. Orson Welles uses material from the Henry IV plays (about 5 hours), with some bits from Richard II, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and Henry V; moves things around, changes the order of some scenes, gives some character’s lines to another; and creates a 2-hour film focusing on Falstaff. Perhaps I may have liked it if I hadn’t known the plays, but I know them. Chimes at Midnight is essentially an Orson Welles film with lots of supporting actors. The BBC’s Henry IV productions from 1979 have all the characters fully developed and well-acted. I especially love David Gwillim as Hal, Anthony Quayle as Falstaff, Tim Pigott-Smith as Hotspur, and Jon Finch as Henry IV. 

The only case in which I prefer a performance in Chimes at Midnight is Michael Aldridge as Pistol. 

I also think that Keith Baxter and Orson Welles don’t have chemistry as I see between David Gwillim and Anthony Quayle, and Keith Baxter isn’t very good as Hal (though to be fair, he doesn’t have much to work with).

More importantly, the greatest flaw of Chimes at Midnight is that Orson Welles sentimentalises Falstaff, removing much of his nasty side and turning him into a harmless fun-loving old man. Falstaff is one of Shakespeare’s greatest creations: he is full of life and warmth and charisma, with lovable qualities, but he’s also a robber, a braggart, an alcoholic, a coward, a man of no principles. The greatest challenge of staging or adapting the Henry IV plays is conveying that Hal’s banishment is necessary and inevitable, but at the same time showing why Hal is so fond of him and how much it costs Hal to reject him. It’s a delicate balancing act. I do think the 1979 productions succeed at it, largely thanks to Anthony Quayle and David Gwillim. 

David Gwillim is brilliant in the scenes with Anthony Quayle, Hal and Falstaff exchanging insults and witticisms at lightning speed. He is also brilliant in the scenes with other characters, showing Hal’s ability to adapt to different environments, to adopt the lingo of different interlocutors, to transform. 

I especially love the banishment scene. I watched Chimes at Midnight first and thought the banishment scene was perfect—the best part of the film—the look on Orson Welles’s face was haunting. But the scene in the BBC Henry IV, Part 2 is even better: the look of pain and shock on Anthony Quayle’s face is heartbreaking, as Hal says “I know thee not, old man”, you can understand why Falstaff would later die of grief and heartbreak, yet at the same time you can see on David Gwillim’s face that he’s killing a part of himself as he banishes Falstaff. 

Wonderful, wonderful productions.

It baffles me that the BBC Television Shakespeare from the 70s-80s is not widely available to the public. Is this not Shakespeare’s country? 

A darker note: I increasingly feel at odds with modern culture. I’m indifferent to contemporary music, contemporary literature, contemporary art, most contemporary cinema. My interest in Shakespeare feels like a niche. And when people now stage or adapt Shakespeare, they either fuck with the plays and impose some trendy ideologies, to be “inclusive” and “subversive”, or butcher the plays, removing vast chunks of text, to be “more accessible” to “modern audiences”. 

I’m afraid that the kind of things I love will no longer be produced, and the things I love from the past will one day be lost. 

My 10 favourite films (2023 list)

One film per director. 

Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman)  

Sunset Boulevard (dir. Billy Wilder) 

Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa) 

Casablanca (dir. Michael Curtis) 

A Star Is Born (dir. George Cukor) 

The Conversation (dir. Francis Ford Coppola) 

The Phantom of Liberty (dir. Luis Bunuel) 

The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (dir. Yasujiro Ozu) 

Raise the Red Lantern (dir. Zhang Yimou) 

F for Fake (dir. Orson Welles) 

Brief thoughts on Orson Welles’s Macbeth

The first thing that needs to be said is that Orson Welles makes quite a few changes: he removes blocks of text (making the film 107 minutes), reassigns lines to other speakers or moves them around, adds an element of voodoo to the witches, brings them back at the end of the film, depicts things that happen off-stage in Shakespeare’s play (such as Lady Macbeth’s suicide), lets some characters appear in scenes in which they aren’t present in the play (such as Macbeth in the sleepwalking scene), and so on.

Many of the changes work fine, better than the way Joel Coen plays around with the character of Ross in the 2021 film.  

The most significant changes are to do with the character of Lady Macbeth. In the play, we can see that right from the beginning, Lady Macbeth thinks of murder in abstract terms and isn’t as strong as she seems—that’s why she has to summon spirits to “Unsex me here/ And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direct cruelty”, that’s why she doesn’t do the killing herself and tries to justify it to herself—Lady Macbeth starts to break when she realises the enormity of what they have done. Macbeth and his wife gradually lose their minds as they’re further and further stepped in blood, and suffer torments of hell whilst on earth. 

In the 1948 film, Welles establishes a closer relationship between Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff, and has both the Macbeths present when the Macduff family is getting killed. It seems as though the horrors of watching Lady Macduff and the children getting murdered are the final thing that pushes Lady Macbeth over the edge. 

This is an interesting choice and could work, if not for Jeanette Nolan. Judi Dench spoils you for other performances, but Jeanette Nolan really is not good as Lady Macbeth and has no intensity in her performance—after all, it’s her film debut. I can’t help wondering what Vivien Leigh would have done with the role, as she was Welles’s first choice though he didn’t ask her because he thought Laurence Olivier would not support it. And Vivien Leigh was a Shakespearean actress. 

As for Orson Welles as Macbeth, he’s quite good. He’s not on the level of Ian McKellen (who is?), but he’s conflicted, tortured, tormented—much better than Denzel Washington in the 2021 film.

One thing I find particularly interesting about the film is its clear influence on Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. Both films are in B&W; Welles’s film is in a studio and looks like a stage, Coen’s is filmed on a soundstage; both films take the expressionistic approach and embrace artifice; both films play with shadows, smoke, and water. Any more comparison would be unjust to Welles and his crew, as they had a relatively small budget and shot everything in 23 days, but I do think the atmosphere of the film is good. They make up for it with the use of sound.

Overall, this is an interesting film, with sadly a weak Lady Macbeth. 

Mank

Mank is a film by David Fincher about Herman J. Mankiewicz and his development of the screenplay by Citizen Kane. It got 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.

Before talking about the film, I should mention the controversy over the authorship of the Citizen Kane screenplay. This is the summary on Wikipedia:

“In February 1940 Welles supplied Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes and put him under contract to write the first draft screenplay under the supervision of John Houseman, Welles's former partner in the Mercury Theatre. Welles later explained, "I left him on his own finally, because we'd started to waste too much time haggling. So, after mutual agreements on storyline and character, Mank went off with Houseman and did his version, while I stayed in Hollywood and wrote mine." Taking these drafts, Welles drastically condensed and rearranged them, then added scenes of his own. The industry accused Welles of underplaying Mankiewicz's contribution to the script, but Welles countered the attacks by saying, "At the end, naturally, I was the one making the picture, after all—who had to make the decisions. I used what I wanted of Mank's and, rightly or wrongly, kept what I liked of my own."” 

A lot has been written about the subject, like this article in Variety:

https://variety.com/2020/film/columns/who-wrote-citizen-kane-orson-welles-herman-mankiewicz-pauline-kael-1234841438/

Or this article in the Smithsonian: 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-really-wrote-citizen-kane-180958782/ 

The latter mentions a book called Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey: 

“Analyzing two overlooked copies of a Kane “corrections script” unearthed in the archives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the University of Michigan, the journalist-turned-historian Harlan Lebo found that Welles revised the script extensively, even crafting pivotal scenes from scratch—such as when the aging Kane muses, “If I hadn’t been very rich, I might have been a really great man.” Lebo also saw notes by Welles’ assistant, Kathryn Trosper Popper, who recorded the director’s and writer’s reactions to changes in the screenplay (“Welles: Loves it. Mank: It stinks!”).” 

In David Fincher’s film, not only does Orson Welles not write a single word but Mankiewicz is also the one to come up with the concept and the story, drawing on his own personal experience with William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. The film also shows that Mankiewicz writes Citizen Kane based on Hearst because of his grudge over Hearst’s smear campaign against Upton Sinclair, but apparently there’s no evidence of the real Mankiewicz supporting Sinclair, and his politics were complicated but leaned conservative. It was Welles who was a leftist.   

Here’s an article fact-checking Mank: 

https://slate.com/culture/2020/11/mank-movie-accuracy-david-fincher-upton-sinclair-netflix.html 

Here’s a review about the problems with Mank:

https://thewire.in/film/mank-netflix-review 

You may say that this is a fiction film, not a documentary, and historical fact doesn’t matter, but can you say so about Anonymous, admittedly a more extreme case, a film about Edward de Vere being the true author of Shakespeare’s plays? There’s also a delicious irony when Mank is about fake news, the dishonesty of Hollywood, and the naïvete of the audience for believing that King Kong is 10 stories tall and Mary Pickford is a virgin at 40 (a line said twice by Mank), but the film itself is full of untruths.

To leave all that aside, I don’t really share lots of critics’ enthusiasm for the film either. For example, Mank got an Oscar nomination for Best Cinematography. Its B&W is better than the B&W of Roma, which is not a very high bar, but if you place Mank next to Citizen Kane, you’ll see that the cinematography of Citizen Kane is so much better, especially the lighting. 

Mank:

Citizen Kane: 

There is a huge gap between Erik Messerschmidt’s flat lighting in Mank and Gregg Toland’s expressive use of light and shadow and the use of deep focus in Citizen Kane. People who praise the B&W of Mank, like those enthusing about Roma a few years ago, probably have never seen a proper B&W film. 

I’m not going to talk about Tom Burke’s performance as Orson Welles—Welles has a strong, dominating presence that is hard to match. 

Gary Oldman is good in the role of Mankiewicz, as always. The film as a whole, however, isn’t as good as people say. It isn’t compelling. Some people say Citizen Kane is boring, which I’ve never understood—the only thing that may be dry about it is the newsreel at the beginning about the life of Charles Foster Kane, but after that point, the film becomes utterly captivating and often funny. Mank is the opposite, interesting at the beginning but soon tedious. 

I’m going to cheat and put up this passage from Eileen Jones’s review in The Wire: 

“The film’s lax flashback structure from Mankiewicz’s point-of-view seems to be in contrast to Citizen Kane’s dynamic flashback structure from multiple, contradictory points-of-view, just as Mank’s blah cinematography could be run alongside Citizen Kane to demonstrate what not to do with black-and-white film. Weird gimmicks like the “cigarette burns” in the upper right corner of the frame and soundtrack pops which characterised the movie projection process in 1941 are included in Mank to no real purpose other than to make you think momentarily that there’s been some mistake.

Both Mank and Citizen Kane feature legendary, tormented, contradictory men at the centre of the narrative. But Mank is so insistent that its hero was a total mensch maddened by the vile power politics of Hollywood that it undercuts the fascination of Mankiewicz’s obsessive drinking, gambling, and wisecracking.”

That’s another problem with Mank, the film seems to present Mankiewicz as the only mensch in Hollywood. There are some other nice characters such as the typist/secretary (played by Lily Collins) but she is outside Hollywood—everyone else in Hollywood is dishonest and selfish and corrupted in some way. 

Owen Gleiberman’s review says “Mank is a tale of Old Hollywood that's more steeped in Old Hollywood – its glamour and sleaze, its layer-cake hierarchies, its corruption and glory – than just about any movie you've seen, and the effect is to lend it a dizzying time-machine splendor.” (source) 

The poor man probably has never seen Sunset Boulevard. 

If you haven’t seen Mank, go ahead and watch it if you want to. Or you can (re)watch Citizen Kane, and Sunset Boulevard instead, and have a better time. 

Russian Ark: a one-shot film

Every review of Russian Ark starts with the same point: it is a 90-minute film (without credits) that comprises of a single unbroken shot.
The story is of an unnamed narrator (the camera), who wanders around Winter Palace in St Petersburg with a character called The European (meant to be Marquis de Custine), who is contemptuous of Russians and Russian culture. They wander around and in each room meet fictional and historical people from different periods of the city’s 300-year history.
Russian Ark, to me, is less of a film than a formal experiment and a challenge. It is impressive, especially in the 1st 5 or 10 minutes—at some point, the camera seems to fly above the orchestra and land on the seating area and then follow the character to another room. Filmmakers and anyone interested in the technical aspect should watch it. 



I’m glad I’ve seen it, but personally I don’t like it. As a viewer, I agree with Stanley Kauffmann “What is there intrinsically in the film that would grip us if it had been made--even excellently made--in the usual edited manner? […] We sample a lot of scenes that in themselves have no cumulation, no self-contained point... Everything we see or hear engages us only as part of a directorial tour de force.” (source) As someone who loves 19th century Russian literature and has some interest in Russian history, I’m indifferent to the film—Russian Ark is not devoid of ideas, it may even have interesting points about Russian culture, but it didn’t have my interest beyond the making of the film itself.
As a filmmaker, I would say that Russian Ark is against everything I believe in, about cinema. 1st of all, I love editing—it was editing, or the power to cut and put together different shots to tell a story, that gave birth to cinema. Editing is the main strength of cinema, compared to theatre—the use of different shot sizes (ability to show things in detail—close-up, or in context—wide shot), juxtaposition of images/ ideas, manipulation of time, structure and the ability to restructure a story. A film is made 3 times—in the script, during the shoot, and on the editing table. 
The filmmakers of Russian Ark therefore deny the most interesting tool of cinema.
To make a feature film in a single unbroken shot is a fascinating task, but it is a challenge and an achievement for the crew rather than something for the audience. It is no more than a gimmick—an impressive one indeed, but still a gimmick. As I was watching the film, there was no interest in the story and ideas—all of my attention was for the technical aspect, especially when some image looked weird, probably because they reframed something in post-production or stabilised it and created a warped image.
In addition, I like a good frame. On this blog, for example, I have singled out the most interesting shots in Citizen Kane and Jack Clayton’s The Innocents. In Russian Ark, because the entire film is in a single shot and the camera is constantly moving, to follow The European and/or go around a room, there is hardly a single frame that looks good. Russian Ark is not cinematic.
I’m surprised when some people name Russian Ark among the most beautiful films they have seen. The film has a magnificent location, and gorgeous costumes. It’s more interesting when the film looks beautiful even though there’s nothing remarkable about the location. The Double Life of Veronique, for instance, has mediocre locations, but it’s one of the most visually beautiful films I have ever seen, thanks to the lighting and framing (and the charming actress). Stalker, which was filmed in desolate, ramshackle buildings and deserted factories, is breath-takingly beautiful 
Overall, Russian Ark is an impressive challenge, something I would not attempt myself. It’s worth watching for that alone. But honestly, it’s not cinematic.

On Sidney Lumet (and other directors)

I’m reading Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies, which I think is a very good and enjoyable book, especially for aspiring film directors. 
Look at this: 

Isn’t that such a good “defence” of dialogue? The writer-director who has created the most memorable lines is Billy Wilder, who has 3 contenders for the best closing lines of all time—The Apartment (“Shut up and deal”), Some Like It Hot (“Nobody’s perfect”), and Sunset Boulevard (“All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up”). Dialogue is not uncinematic. It is only uncinematic when it is superfluous exposition, and worst if it’s the director’s way of explaining the film to the audience (which is common in Christopher Nolan’s films). 
Now look at this passage: 

That is fascinating and scary at the same time—would I be able to tell? 
The book offers some invaluable insight and advice about directing. I admire Sidney Lumet immensely, and now love him even more as I read the book. He is not an auteur, he might not even be seen as a stylist, but does it matter? I would say that 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon are masterpieces, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a great, heartbreaking film that should be better known. Many of his other films are also highly acclaimed, such as Serpico, The Verdict, Network, Murder on the Orient Express, Long Day’s Journey into Night... Why are some other directors ranked higher just because their films are more stylistic or technically more impressive? 
That leads me to another point: is the ability to work with actors not important? The directors who I think are masters at getting the best performances out of actors are Ingmar Bergman, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, and Francis Ford Coppola. And perhaps Roman Polanski (Adrien Brody never had anything remotely as good as his performance in The Pianist). 
Some other directors who are also good at working with actors are Billy Wilder, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Zhang Yimou, Krzysztof Kieslowski… (I don’t include Kurosawa and Mizoguchi because Japanese acting is a different style). 
As you follow a director’s work, you realise what their main strengths are—they are better at some aspects of filmmaking than others. Fellini’s main strengths, for example, are in blocking/staging, cinematography, and visual storytelling. Billy Wilder’s are in story, structure/ pacing, dialogue, and working with actors. Orson Welles’s are in cinematography (especially lighting), structure, editing, and sound. Luis Bunuel’s are in story/ plot, ideas, and pacing. Andrei Tarkovsky’s are in ideas, cinematography, sound, and atmosphere. 
You also notice, not weaknesses, but that some aspects don’t interest a director as much as others. There isn’t much to say about cinematography and lighting in Luis Bunuel’s films, for example; or editing in Tarkovsky’s; or story in Wong Kar-wai’s.  
It is not without reason that I think Ingmar Bergman’s the best director of all time, because his films do have everything—good story, interesting idea, depth, pacing, great cinematography (especially lighting), great sound, great editing (most notably in Persona), good production design (at least in Cries and Whispers and Fanny and Alexander), wonderful performances, good visual storytelling, experiments… But usually, directors have their strengths, and they may be weaker, or at least not as spectacular, in some other aspects of filmmaking, so why is it that directors who are good at techniques valued much more highly than directors who are good at drama (emotional complexity in a scene, and pacing for the film as a whole) and working with actors? 
When a film looks good, it is visually pleasing, but at the end of the day, so what? I like good acting. I like touching stories. I like films that make me see life differently and learn something about myself. I never use the word “great” for directors like Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson—they’re good at what they do, and their films are entertaining, but have no depth and offer no more than that. But even if we talk about Stanley Kubrick, a director I admire very much when it comes to techniques (especially the production design, cinematography, and use of music), none of his films has ever touched me on an emotional, personal level like 12 Angry Men or Dog Day Afternoon has. In Dog Day Afternoon, people talk a lot about Al Pacino, who indeed delivers a fine performance, one of the best in his career, but we should also talk about John Cazale—for some reason, I can never forget the incredibly sad look on his face when Al Pacino asks where he wants to go if he could go anywhere, and he says “Wyoming”. 12 Angry Men shows Sidney Lumet’s talent at working with actors, and also his ability to make an engrossing film in an enclosed space. I’d choose Sidney Lumet over Kubrick anytime. 
But that’s enough. Get Making Movies. It’s a good book. Even Roger Ebert said: 

“Invaluable… I am sometimes asked if there is 1 book a filmgoer could read to learn more about how movies are made and what to look for while watching them. This is the book.”

The most significant things that happened to me in 2018

1/ Losing my grandma: 
In April. 
Before, my family was only her and my mom. Now she’s gone. 
This is a short film I made in the summer about her: 
https://vimeo.com/284810414
Death is a strange thing. It seems natural and expected, until it happens to someone really close to you. 
2/ Making Footfalls in spite of grief and obstacles: 
Footfalls is the 2nd short film I directed at the Northern Film School, after Bird Bitten. I lost my grandma the week before filming, and it was probably the most difficult shoot I’ve ever had. But I completed it, and later, on the editing table changed it completely and gave it a rebirth, so to speak. In spite of its flaws (for I know it is a flawed little film), it means a lot to me personally and I’m proud to say that on the editing table, the editor and I created the best version of the film possible, with the footage we got. 
3/ Having Footfalls screened at Viet Film Fest in California: 
And then it was mentioned on Vietcetera as the most surprising or unusual Vietnamese film of 2018 (near the end): 
http://vietcetera.com/viet-film-fest-presents-the-best-vietnamese-films-of-2018/ 
I don’t take it too seriously—as a film student and aspiring filmmaker, I know my own strengths and weaknesses, and I don’t see that as a testament to my abilities or anything. But that does mean a lot, because Footfalls feels very personal to me, not only because of the hard time when it was made, but also because it’s loosely based on a tragic true story, and that could have easily gone wrong and become cheap, exploitative, or corny, but it didn’t. At least I know that I could tell a story completely with feet and shoes, without faces, and without words—the feet show the actions, express the emotions, and say something about the characters. 
4/ Moving in with my bf: 
Which makes him my partner, but I’m used to referring to him as bf. Things became much better. 
My mom also lives with us—she no longer wants to live in Norway after the loss of my grandma. 
5/ Creating a Vimeo page and a Youtube channel: 
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/haidinguyen
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/joyceannenguyen/videos?view_as=subscriber 
Also, I’ve made the 1st video essay, about Persona. 
6/ Regarding books, this year I read 2 books by Nabokov: The Gift and Speak, Memory. 
Another great book I read in 2018 was The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. 
7/ Here are the 10 best films I watched in 2018: 
The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton 
Yojimbo (1961), dir. Akira Kurosawa 
F for Fake (1975), dir. Orson Welles 
Thelma & Louise (1991), dir. Ridley Scott
Sideways (2004), dir. Alexander Payne 
Eyes without a Face (1960), dir. Georges Franju 
The Third Man (1949), dir. Carol Reed 
The Last Detail (1973), dir. Hal Ashby 
Trainspotting (1996), dir. Danny Boyle 
Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), dir. Max Ophuls 
Special mention is La Jetée (1966), dir. Chris Marker, which is a 20-minute film. 
All of these are important, but the 3 films that have a greatest impact are The Innocents (blocking and framing), F for Fake (narrative and editing, as well as the themes), and La Jetée (the ideas and the form, which is a film told in still images). Because of The Innocents, I’m currently reading Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. 
I watched some more Bergman films, but I think the 2 most significant directors this year, to me, are Luis Bunuel and Orson Welles. Orson Welles, because of his enormous talent and fearlessness—I watched F for Fake, The Trial, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, and The Stranger. As one of the masters, he has very few great films, in fact, I think only Citizen Kane and F for Fake are truly great, among the ones I’ve seen, but they are always fascinating in terms of blocking and cinematography, especially lighting, and have some magnificent moments, offering a lot to learn from. 
With Luis Bunuel, I rewatched the last 3 films—The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire; and also watched again Belle de jour, which I now perceived differently and started to really like. Bunuel is a favourite director that I would hesitate to call an influence, because I can’t say what his style is, but he does make me realise what kind of films I want to make—mixture of reality and dreams. My current project Non-Person is a surrealist film. 
8/ Directing my own script for graduation film: 
This includes 1st time of pitching on a stage (at a cinema), 1st time making a film about a Vietnamese character, and 1st time pitching to the camera. 
I started writing the script of Non-Person in the summer, and pitched in October. My script got greenlit (only 12 scripts out of 29), then recently the production also got greenlit, and we’re filming in February 2019. 
We are crowdfunding at the moment because our budget from the film school isn’t enough. If you want to have a look, this is the link: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/non-person-short-film--2/x/19967365 
Please donate if you can. That would be greatly appreciated. Or you could share it on social media. 

How was your year?

The most interesting shots in Citizen Kane

To steal in the future. 
Orson Welles is probably the best director to learn from, in terms of staging and framing. 

On The Masters of Cinema: Stanley Kubrick and Stanley Kubrick

I’m still reading the Masters of Cinema series of Cahiers du Cinema. 
Bill Krohn’s book about Stanley Kubrick isn’t particularly good. There is more praise than analysis, and when the author analyses a film, he often does on Freudian terms, which doesn’t quite work. Strangely, he talks a lot about repetitions, especially self-repetitions—when Kubrick’s different films have the same theme or a similar scene or image, as though you couldn’t find that in other directors. Most important of all, though perhaps personal, it doesn’t make me like Kubrick again. 
The only thing I like about the book is that Bill Krohn mentions several times the influence of Orson Welles and Max Ophuls on Kubrick. Will that make Kubrick’s fans turn to Welles and Ophuls? I don’t know. But I like that Krohn points out, and talks at length, about the influence of Welles and Ophuls. Even though I used to admire Kubrick highly, his fans get on my nerves—they act as though Kubrick’s the 1st and only master of cinema, the best director of all time who changed cinema and influenced everyone. Lots of these people watch only new, contemporary films and Kubrick’s films. They call Kubrick the best because they don’t know of anyone else. 
Another thing that annoys me about Kubrick’s fans is the way they read a lot into his films and develop crazy theories, because of the assumption that his films have no mistakes and no random coincidences—everything, even a continuity error, is a code or hidden message. 
To clarify, I recognise Kubrick’s influence and still admire the technical aspects in his films, and I’m sure I will still enjoy The Killing and Dr Strangelove (2001: A Space Odyssey is something I admire more than enjoy, as I don’t get it). But his works lack the human aspect, so to speak, and the performances are always drained of life. The flat, deliberate, monotonous delivery of lines, and the clear enunciation of every single word, may work for certain kinds of characters and for certain kinds of films, but are always in his films, as though a trademark. The performances feel flat and contrived. 
Humanity in Kubrick’s films is humanity in the general sense, the abstract sense; the most acclaimed performances in his films are for the caricatures, satires, and embodiment of ideas, as in Dr Strangelove or A Clockwork Orange, instead of the realistic performances. Kubrick doesn’t seem to be particularly interested in people as human beings, nor in emotions, relationships, and conflicts between people. 
His Lolita is a failure, a ridiculous adaptation of Nabokov’s novel. His Spartacus has faded into oblivion, for a good reason, even if there are some good moments—the good and bad characters are too black and white and have no complexity. His Barry Lyndon is among the most beautiful films I have ever seen, each frame is like a painting, but it is cold and detached, and leaves me cold. His The Shining has excellent cinematography, production design, and mood, with some unnerving moments, but the performances don’t quite work, especially Jack Nicholson’s—and I don’t like how the character already seems to have some evil in him from the start. 
I don’t remember Eyes Wide Shut. 
Kubrick’s best films are the ones where he doesn’t deal with emotions and realistic performances, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr Strangelove, and A Clockwork Orange (though Anthony Burgess’s fans probably disagree about the last one). 
(To get an idea of my aesthetics: the directors that I think are best at working with actors include Ingmar Bergman, Elia Kazan, Clint Eastwood, and Francis Ford Coppola). 

Personally, I’ll pick Billy Wilder over him any day.

Citizen Kane and deep focus

Now that I’ve discovered my university library has several books from the Masters of Cinema series of Cahiers du Cinema, I’m reading the one about Orson Welles, by Paolo Mereghetti. 

See what he says about Citizen Kane and deep focus (i.e. foreground, middleground, and background are all in focus): 

“The depth of field Welles and Toland wanted to achieve would offer the viewer a larger expanse of clearly visible space, and consequently a greater choice of objects contained in the same shot. Previously—and even subsequently—the image on the screen had tended to highlight the person or object to which the filmmaker wanted to draw attention, leaving everything surrounding it or behind it indistinct. Welles, however, wanted to experiment with different spatial shots. Toland therefore worked mainly with a Cooke 24mm lens with a very short focal length, which captured a far greater amount of light and gave him a far greater depth of field. The use of Eastman Kodak Super XX film (4 times more sensitive than conventional film stock) and a reliance on powerful arc lamps rather than the softer tungsten lamps, substantially enhanced the deep focus effect of a scene.” 

To most people, that is probably too technical and provokes nothing, but to me, it is delicious. 
 Mereghetti goes on: 

“This revolutionary approach to lighting brought about other changes, because wide-angle lenses such as the Cooke 24mm enlarged the image both horizontally and vertically, thus forcing the filmmaker to concentrate on the ceilings as well as the other parts of the set. This led to a totally new conception of scenic spaces and camera angles; Welles could use ceilings not only to conceal a larger number of microphones (which enabled him to obtain an unprecedented depth of sound), but also to enhance the dramatic power of a particular scene. A low ceiling that appeared to be ‘crushing or ‘imprisoning’ the characters heightened the impression of their spatial confinement.
However, the experiment with deep-focus photography should not be interpreted as a quest for greater realism or an opportunity to adapt the camera lens to the human eye, which always brings into focus the space that surrounds it. Welles regarded it as an essential tool for devising a new way of reading the spaces within the shot, for creating an articulated system of spatial references, a new ‘symbolic form’ with which to subvert the conventions of the medium. This is apparent at the beginning of Citizen Kane, where the narrator (Welles), describing the approach to Xanadu and then the discovery of Kane’s death, immediately puts the viewer on his guard and provides a clear demonstration of a new ‘form’ of cinema.” 

The deep focus not only creates a richer image, with everything in frame sharp and clear. It also allows Welles to view space differently, so he might keep everything we need to see in 1 shot instead of breaking up the action into a series of shots; he also has greater freedom with staging and blocking, and plays with the z-axis.
My friend Himadri places Billy Wilder above Orson Welles, but the passages above explain why Welles belongs to the top rank of directors whilst someone like Billy Wilder doesn’t. Much as I love Billy Wilder’s films, he was using the tools and techniques that were already there, to tell great stories, whereas Orson Welles, like Bergman or Fellini, was exploring the possibilities of cinema, pushing for new ways of telling a story, and challenging conventions, and he changed cinema. Style is not more important than substance, I doubt that I’d get along with auteurists, but directors are not mere storytellers. I might feel more about Billy Wilder’s work (especially Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment, Witness for the Prosecution, and perhaps also The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes), but rank Orson Welles more highly. 
Having said that, I love Welles not only because of his style and revolutionary techniques, but also because of the content, the complex, multi-faceted characters, and the themes.

A few films that have influenced or inspired me

Which is different from my list of favourite films. 
Persona (1966), Wild Strawberries (1957), Hour of the Wolf (1968), and Cries and Whispers (1972) by Ingmar Bergman 
Citizen Kane (1941) and F for Fake (1973) by Orson Welles 
The Exterminating Angel (1962), The Phantom of Liberty (1974), and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) by Luis Bunuel 
La Jetée (1962) by Chris Marker 
8 ½ (1963) by Federico Fellini 
The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola 
Bicycle Thieves (1948) by Vittorio De Sica 
Three Colours: Blue (1993) by Krzysztof Kieslowski
Ivan's Childhood (1962) by Andrei Tarkovsky 
Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese 
Dogville (2003) by Lars von Trier
3 Women (1977) by Robert Altman 


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Every filmmaker is influenced by other filmmakers. Sometimes we may even be inspired by some aspect of a film we don’t like, like how I feel about Dogville. 
As a filmmaking student, I’m still learning the skills and techniques, and exploring the form, I have yet to find my style, but it’s still nice to make a list to acknowledge the influences and have something to compare to in the future.
Or maybe I just really like lists. 

My 10 favourite documentaries

Man on Wire (2008) by James Marsh 
Searching for Sugar Man (2012) by Malik Bendjelloul 
Deliver Us from Evil (2006) by Amy J. Berg 
Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012) by Alex Gibney 
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008) by Sacha Gervasi 
The Most Hated Family in America (2007) and America's Most Hated Family in Crisis (2011) by Louis Theroux 
Tickled (2016) by David Farrier and Dylan Reeve 
The Imposter (2012) by Bart Layton 
The Cleaners (2018) by Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck 
Blackfish (2013) by Gabriela Cowperthwaite 
And F for Fake (1973) by Orson Welles, if it counts as a documentary

My favourite films from the 1970s

The 50s: http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/08/my-favourite-films-from-1950s.html
The 60s: http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2018/03/my-favourite-films-from-1960s.html 

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) by Billy Wilder
Harold and Maude (1971) by Hal Ashby
The French Connection (1971) by William Friedkin 
The Godfather (1972) by Francis Ford Coppola
Cries and Whispers (1972) by Ingmar Bergman 
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) by Luis Bunuel 
Last Tango in Paris (1972) by Bernardo Bertolucci 
Cabaret (1972) by Bob Fosse 
Solaris (1972) by Andrei Tarkovsky 
Play It Again, Sam (1972) by Herbert Ross 
Amarcord (1973) by Federico Fellini
The Last Detail (1973) by Hal Ashby 
Mean Streets (1973) by Martin Scorsese 
The Sting (1973) by George Roy Hill 
Sleep (1973) by Woody Allen 
F for Fake (1973) by Orson Welles 
The Godfather Part II (1974) by Francis Ford Coppola
The Conversation (1974) by Francis Ford Coppola
Chinatown (1974) by Roman Polanski 
The Phantom of Liberty (1974) by Luis Bunuel 
Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) by Martin Scorsese 
Dog Day Afternoon (1975) by Sidney Lumet
Scent of a Woman (1975) by Martin Brest
Love and Death (1975) by Woody Allen 
Taxi Driver (1976) by Martin Scorsese
Network (1976) by Sidney Lumet 
3 Women (1977) by Robert Altman 
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) by Luis Bunuel 
Annie Hall (1977) by Woody Allen 
Autumn Sonata (1978) by Ingmar Bergman 
The Tin Drum (1979) by Volker Schlöndorff 
Manhatttan (1979) by Woody Allen 
All That Jazz (1979) by Bob Fosse

On The Magnificent Ambersons, directors’ freedom, Welles and Kubrick

Anyone who knows about Orson Welles’s career knows that The Magnificent Ambersons is widely hailed as another masterpiece, “culturally, aesthetically, and culturally significant”, but a tragic thing for Welles, as the film was taken away from him—changed, re-edited, re-shot, and replaced with a new ending. Welles said “They destroyed Ambersons, and the picture itself destroyed me”. More than 40 minutes was deleted from Welles’s original footage, and everything is gone forever. We now only have the film in its mutilated form.
As a film student aspiring to be a film director, I have always believed that a film should belong to the director—not the producer, not the studio, not the distributor, and not anyone else. I also think that a film should have only 1 director, unless you’re as close as the Coen brothers. Of course a film is a collaborative effort, and everyone is important, but the director should be able to have a unifying vision for the film and make all the creative decisions without being controlled or dictated to by someone else, such as a producer. The tragedy of The Magnificent Ambersons feels to me a lot more personal. 




Some days ago, I watched the film. In its bastardised form, The Magnificent Ambersons has many wonderful moments. Visually, it’s great to watch, especially the mise-en-scène and cinematography. Take the scene in the kitchen, George eating, aunt Fanny talking: Welles uses deep focus, everything in frame is in rich detail, from all the food on the table, the 2 actors, the pots and pans in shadow in the background, and the curtains far at the back. Instead of breaking it up into a series of shots and jumping back and forth between CUs of the 2 actors, as lots of directors would do, Welles covers the entire conversation in 1 continuous shot, which runs on as Isabel’s brother comes in, and he and George tease aunt Fanny about Eugene. The disadvantage of such a scene is that we can’t see each person’s face in CU, but we can see everyone in the frame reacting to each other at the same time. 
That leads to another point: the performances are 1 of the main reasons I would always choose Orson Welles over Stanley Kubrick. There was a time I very much loved and admired Kubrick, which has now cooled down. Looking back, I was mostly dazzled by the technical aspects, particularly cinematography and set designs, and in love with his choice of music. But even then, I saw that Kubrick wasn’t very good at working with actors and getting subtle performances from them, or he didn’t particularly care about acting. His actors always have a way of speaking very slowly and enunciating every single word that I don’t like, and they seem to lack something. Today I still see Kubrick as a giant, but I’ve discovered other directors and my taste over time has changed. To me, Welles has everything that I once admired about Kubrick, and more—his films have feelings. The Magnificent Ambersons have great performances and some wonderful moments—when the spoilt brat George realises that the weird looking duck he has been talking to Lucy about is her dad; when Eugene is hurt by George’s rude remark about automobiles but tries to be calm; when George knows he has offended Eugene but pretends not to notice; or when Lucy hears George’s farewell and keeps smiling and pretends not to care, and George keeps trying to get a reaction out of her but fails; or most of the scenes of Agnes Moorehead as aunt Fanny. 
However, as a whole, the film is uneven, especially in the ending. George is introduced from the start as a brat—spoilt, thoughtless, lazy, snobbish, self-centred, who never notices or pays attention to anything. He also has an inexplicable hostility towards Eugene. To me, there’s nothing particularly good or likeable about George, it’s hard to see how Lucy might like him and why they get engaged. Then in the later part of the film, there is a change. I’ve read that when Isabel is in her deathbed and Eugene wishes to see her, what Welles got is that George refuses to let them see each other and tells aunt Fanny to get rid of Eugene, and Fanny alone harshly tells Eugene to leave. In other words, George remains an arsehole till his mother’s last moments. What we have in the film is that George and Fanny don’t let Eugene in because the doctor has said that Isabel should rest in quiet, and they appear less awful, even more sympathetic. Then later when they are all in ruin and George gets a job, any risky job, to get money for himself and to take care of Fanny, somehow it feels abrupt, like he’s now a different person. 
And then we get to the ending, a Hollywood-style happy ending that is completely wrong in tone, and out of place. One wonders what The Magnificent Ambersons would have been like if Orson Welles had had complete freedom. 
In short, it’s an uneven film with a weak ending, but a Welles film is always visually satisfying, and always has much to learn from.

On Orson Welles

I love Citizen Kane. I have never understood how Vertigo could replace Citizen Kane as the greatest film of all time, but that label is also a curse—many people choose not to watch it, for fear of being disappointed, or because they expect it to be boring; people who love it, like me, are accused of being pretentious, or conformist, or both.
Citizen Kane is 1 of those films that opened up to me the possibilities and powers of filmmaking—like 8 ½, Persona, or Cries and Whispers. The film is great in many ways, containing and exemplifying everything essential to learn about cinema, but to me, the 2 most important aspects are about blocking/ shot composition and editing. With shot composition, Orson Welles makes me rethink staging and framing completely, especially with deep focus, the z-axis, the brilliant use of the long take with characters in foreground, middleground, background, and camera movements, instead of a series of shots, and the use of blacks or shadows. Citizen Kane has changed me so much that now when watching a film, I always notice if the director depends on the conventional triangle system of master shot, shot, reverse shot (pity, if only I had watched Citizen Kane before making my 1st film Bird Bitten).
Regarding editing, apparently critics tend to talk about the breakfast montage and the jigsaw puzzle montage, which are both wonderful, but I’m more interested in the pace, which is fast in the newsreel and gets slower and slower over time because of the mood of the film, and in the structure, which is not only unusual and revolutionary for its time but also perfect for the story about the multifacetedness of a human being and the inability to understand a person completely. If Persona or 8 ½ makes me realise that film is not only external but can also explore consciousness, Citizen Kane makes me realise that film can have different narrators, with conflicting points of view.
 (At the risk of sounding self-centred and ridiculous, I’d like to add that Citizen Kane helped save my 2nd film Footfalls on the editing table).
My 2nd favourite Welles film is F for Fake. The film is about Elmyr de Hory, a professional art forgery, and his biographer Clifford Irving, notorious for the hoax biography of Howard Hughes; and also about the director Orson Welles, as a magician and liar. The film is an investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, of forgery, fraud, and fakery; it is a damning mockery of (art) experts; it is also a playful joke on the audience, whilst suggesting more of the deceitful nature of filmmaking, specifically editing. By the last point, I’m referring to creative geography and the Kuleshov effect, especially in the sequence in which Elmyr and Irving appear to be reacting to, and arguing with, each other, about Elmyr’s signatures, whereas in reality they were not in the same location.
The editing of F for Fake is also fantastic in terms of structure, as analysed in a video above. To film students and aspiring filmmakers, Welles is showing how he can hold the audience’s interest whilst telling 5-6 stories at the same time and jumping from one to another.
Among the other films by Orson Welles I’ve watched are Touch of Evil and The Lady from Shanghai—good examples of what a great director could (and couldn’t do) with mediocre material. They are not great films, but the Hall of Mirrors sequence in The Lady from Shanghai and the opening shot of Touch of Evil, the 3-minute crane shot, are among the most ambitious and impressive sequences in the history of cinema, without exaggeration, and I can understand why the films are popular among the auteurists. (After all, I’ve read André Bazin’s book about Orson Welles).
I prefer a less known film, The Trial. It is understandable, but a pity nevertheless, that the name Orson Welles is always associated with Citizen Kane, and Citizen Kane only. His adaptation of Kafka’s novel is, like the book, unsettling, bizarre and nightmarish. Welles himself said “Say what you will, but The Trial is the best film I ever made… I have never been so happy as when I made this film.” I personally prefer Citizen Kane, but The Trial does have a grand visual style, with expressionistic lighting and extreme camera angles, and Welles successful depicts a terrifying, surrealistic world in which you wake up 1 morning to find yourself accused of something you’re not told, and no matter where you run, you always find yourself back in the Court. The wide-angle lens and camera angles are not a means unto themselves—they help depict a distorted world, a claustrophobic world that is like a giant python that squeezes tighter and tighter around Josef K’s body. My main complaint is about the changed ending, which rather ruins the film.
On a final note, between Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles, I have more admiration for Bergman, and also feel closer to him. But I feel sadder for Welles—after Citizen Kane, he never had the immense freedom that Bergman had. He was always making films with 1 hand tied behind his back. 

My new 10 (+1) favourite films; 30/7/2018

Persona by Ingmar Bergman 
Citizen Kane by Orson Welles 
Nights of Cabiria by Federico Fellini 
Yojimbo & Sanjuro by Akira Kurosawa 
Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie by Luis Buñuel
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring by Kim Ki-duk 
Taxi Driver by Martin Scorsese
The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola
Casablanca by Michael Curtis 


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Once in a while I make a new list of favourites to see what has changed and to keep notes over time. 
Now there have been only a few changes since last year: http://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/06/my-new-10-favourite-films.html 
Ran is replaced with Yojimbo and Sanjuro. Choosing a favourite Kurosawa is difficult. I love Ran. I love The Bad Sleep Well. I love High and Low. The Bad Sleep Well is a perfect film, and a great example to learn from about the geometry of the scene—about staging and creating a shape in the frame. But finally I chose Yojimbo and Sanjuro (for how do you separate them?) for their dynamic quality and humour, and Toshiro Mifune’s charismatic hero, over the tragic The Bad Sleep Well.  
Persona and Citizen Kane, I love to the point of obsession. They are masterpieces, and I keep coming back to them for inspiration. Citizen Kane has everything you need to learn about cinema, especially in terms of blocking, cinematography, and editing; whilst Persona in particular and European art films in the 1950s-60s in general have changed my view of the possibilities of cinema and had a huge influence on me, especially with the idea of film as dream.


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On this date in 2007, Ingmar Bergman passed away. 
Today is also Emily Bronte's 200th birthday.