a question abt BRECHT (tracer hand to thread among others)

"what you can get away with" evolves into something very strong and evocative bcz it's outside the politically sensitive and policed zone of the overt story

also cf manny farber on certain below-the-line actors in hollywood movies: neither brechtian NOR psychological, just weird buzzy excrescences of their own specific material

(he didn't make it in east germany either: it would have exactly as radical a threat to the system there of course, had it been made)

Hollywood one, Brecht nil, in that case, as regards "anti-authoritarian" art. Hawks allows his audiences to interact imaginatively, FREE from having to identify with the demands of the story - Brecht requires you fit in with his (and Stalin's) programme of asking certain questions but not others.

(This was written before I got to your post):

The paradox is that Brecht's motto, 'truth is concrete', is still so shocking when you apply it. It still cuts away all the theory, all the swords and sorcery and just says, bluntly, 'food is the first thing, morals follow on / So first make sure that those who now are starving / Get proper helpings when we all start carving'. ('What Keeps Mankind Alive?')

My favourite anecdote about Brecht is that he visited the ailing Schoenberg in Hollywood. They talked for an hour or so, but found little in common. But one thing Schoenberg said appealed to Brecht. He described how he'd observed how donkeys climb hills in zigzags rather than by trying to walk straight up.

I agree it was almost certainly a gag suggestion, to not get made to prove a point: but the point it proves isn't a very amazing or political one - if you present something deliberately boringly, then ppl may be fooled into thinking the result will be boring.

Schoolboy Brecht, set an essay theme on 'What draws us to the mountains?' wrote 'funicular railways'. Would you prefer him to say (a la Leni Riefenstahl) 'Man's eternal quest to conquer the lofty peaks?'

Further proof that Galileo was right!

in vivre sa vie, i remember anna karina's (natural?) modesty when she was being interviewed in a cafe and in and around her rooms when she was working, but now that i think about it, maybe it had to do with where the camera was pointing: the sides of tables and chairs and mirrors in wardrobes and hallways and only obliquely on her (at those times, not at other times when she was not a prostitute: i just remembered her at her other job in a record store).

The Guardian

But did the actors use their whole bodies as they impersonated civil servants and executives? Michael Billington doesn't tell us.

caheirs wasn't known for its leftist sympathies; but i'm sure they liked 'hangmen also die' just the same. which irritating book is it you're reading? i nearly died reading colin maccabe's godard: sound: images: politics, but it was worth it in the end.

cahiers were v.anti the pcf line on aesthetics it's true: some of them were v.left themselves tho (kast for example, and rivette later on) (and bazin's entire pedagogic project was intrinsically v.leftwing i'd say)

sterl i wz bending the stick!! i think the interraction between artist and audience is much more complicated than that "if/then" post suggests - i don't like the audience part of the dealy being swept dismissively up into "reception theory"

haha i wd rather die than see a play by david hare - most boring playwrite evah!! - but i quite like his theoretical writing, he did a great piece on noel coward and subversion!

oh yeah, it came out just this year! the person who lent it me has removed the dust jacket (why?) (i'm v.careful w.books!) so it looks older

i don't really know much abt brecht, that's why i started the thread - i wz confused at the various difft ways 'brechtian' wz being thrown about, which didn't add up

haha, maccabe quotes someone as saying that godard only ever reads the contents page of any book, and maybe page one: same as RICHARD JOBSON then!!

brecht is as much a loser as williams/miller/stringberg, because, as mark rightly points out above, it's all about LOOK, THIS IS WHAT WE WANT YOU TO FEEL, whether this is by directly saying, "Look, man is sad, feel sad too" or "look i am a man. according to the script i am sad now, perhaps you'd like to think about feeling sad." it's all so controlling. the true joy of theatre (oh-oh, here he goes) is watching OTHER HUMANS DOING STUFF in front of you, hey! they could come and touch you and everything! and the reliance on character/plot/"naturalism" is so demeaning to an audience. this is why pantomimes are pretty much the only living theatrical form left for me...

(apols for gibberish, i hope it makes at least a little sense)

ooh, anyone fancy a fortnight in frankfurt? this is what i call performance, forced ents kick serious theatre ass.

but it was no 'cabaret'.

do you know tyler durden?

Directors cut of the relevant bit from the opening.

"Bertolt Brecht, Jarvis Cocker, Sizzla -- class war cabaret lives on. I suspect the Weimar antifa signification is long lost (since Nico sang "Deutschland Uber Alles" at least) but still there's the allure of the musical format itself: the implicit stage providing room for vocalists to stretch into the immediacy of artifice laid bare, for nuances opening into performatives of sleazy prole seduction. "

Also mark do you think "bent the stick" is an overused phrase and where does it COME from?

erm i don't think it's overused especially - i don't remember ever seeing it on ilx eg

it's actually a v.poor phrase, in respect of guessing the meaning anyway

Naturally I stand by all I said upthread.

i rewatched histoire(s) de la cinema (pt 1&2) and pierrot le fou last night, mostly on fast-forward

the book is annoying and i think slightly disappointing rather than bad - CM is aware of the thrall he's under and wriggles lots, but in the name of tactical aesthetic solidarity declines ever to "bend the stick", so his critique is really spasms of "oh i say" moralism rather than stepping back further and saying (eg) THIS BIT JUST FAILED ON ITS OWN PRECEPTS or whatever

on the other hand it is packed with info, biographical and theory-contexutal, and is interesting and clear (but to me if anything too scanty) on the various currents in french left thought in the 50s and 60s

i wish he had explored the godard <=> debord interface more, it gets half a page, and i always tht there was lots going on there, unspoken (debord i think basically considered jlg a rip-off artist, of his own ideas...) (also jlg announced himself a maoist, which guy wd have found contemptible...)

(i can see that he didn't want just to rehash the PRESENCE OF STRUCTURALISM IN FRENCH CULTURE dealy, so soft-pedals it, but what it actually needs is someone stepping in and taking it entirely outside the factional argts of the day)

(maccabe actually studied under althusser briefly so he probbly cannot bring himself to do this - he is still a bit identifying one side against another in feuds that have lost their meaning) (what brechtian techniques shd be unleashed in the academic critical biography haha)

you're ahem likely to be better read on currents in french intellectual thought at that time than most of the target audience (it was gonna be an academic rather than bloomsbury book i think) -- i mean as far as i'm concerned if a book got a few more godard films well known then that wd be sort of enough, because it's crazy that so little is out there.

given his place in film culture it's odd there's so very little about godard written from a position of knowledge on the different intellectual groupings of the time.

the maoist turn does look contemptible -- and within about six months j-p gorin, having taken up a juicy program of touring lecturing etc renounced it.

is the hollywood take on this to place greater emphasis on casting? mark mentioned reality tv upthread...

(this is a v.complicated process though which is increasingly often failing i think) (ie inadvertently getting MORE brechtian)

first-tier casting = "executive producing" = the actor gets final cut

i am v.pro reality TV as it fucks w.everyone's antennae

it's often a famous first role that sets the type for an actor, when the director may not have a complete grasp of what the actor will bring to the role. that might be an occasion for everyone to push each other - mike leigh's method, if it works. after that, maybe type-casting and minimalist directing: failure (or success?) all around. (but for a while (wrt hollywood films) i thought i heard something like the expression of the director's genius was all in the casting...)