Hold you is, folks, It show time. People pay good money to
see this movie. When they go out to a theater. They want cold
sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters. In the projection booth. Everyone
pretend podcasting isn't boring of Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host.
Mike White joined me once again. Is mister Rob Saint Mary. It's all
section violins front and center. Also back in the booth is mister Robert Bellissimo.
Hello everyone, bonjou and olah for the French and Spanish fans. We
conclude French Month with Louis Bunol's nineteen thirty film Las Or. Released in the
wake of the Sound Revolution, the film straddles the line between silence and sound,
presenting a series of stories that represent the five prismatic segments of a scorpion's
tale. We will be spoiling each of these as we go along, So
if you haven't seen las Or, turn off the podcast and come back after
you have, we will still be here. So, Rob, when did
you first see the movie? In what did you think? Sir? My
entry into Bunol was probably discreet, charm and, as I said on the
discreet charm episode and I've talked about but well before. When I first saw
his I didn't understand it. It was in my late deads. It didn't
connect with me at all. When I went back a few years later and
we rewatched it and then became obviously one of my favorite films of all time,
if not the number one. It then led me down the path to
try and watch everything that I could get my hands on. Working at Thomas
Video was good because I could gets at the time, which was mostly what
you had to get. So I think I may have seen this originally on
a VHS tape. It wasn't a very good dub, subtitles, garbage trags,
it parts, and I don't think that I really appreciated it the first
time I saw it because I was expecting something more in line with the later
work. Not that his stuff is narratively heavy at times, but at least
had something that felt more together. Shan and delous. These images that stick
in your head, there's some in here that's stick in your head for different
reasons. Like I said, I just thought it was okay. It was
only in later years that I went back and looked at it and said Jenna
Andaloo gives you sort of visual hence later work. This gives you a lot
of thematic. This is a proto version. This is Stooges to punk rock
or something. It's yeah, I go listen to that stuff and then you
can understand where it comes from. So it's only grown in years, but
it's not one that I watch on the regulars. One i'd probably see maybe
once every five years or more. And Robert, how about yourself. I'm
new with boon Well. Part of the appeal for doing this episode on your
show, Mike was just because he's a director I've been meaning to get to,
and I just I've seen Baldejore and Tristan, I had seen The Milky
Way, but he's just someone I hadn't got into yet. And so you
don't have to know much about boon Well to know what he was interested in.
His films, which are making foot of the bourgeois sexual fetishes and tearing
the religious Catolic Church apart, and so you certainly see that in this film.
But I knew it was gonna be toff watch. I just had an
instinct, so I thought, I'm gonna have to watch us a few times.
So what you do with any really any great artists, you go back
time and time again. But when I first saw it, just maybe a
month ago or so, my initial feeling was that is this is fucking crazy,
but in a good way. And I just immediately took to it.
I just let it hit me, and I could clearly see those themes we
mentioned, it mentioned, and what he was getting at. And when I
watched it again about a week ago, I was able to then appreciate it
much more. And it's a film that I feel invites you to participate in
having your own takes, in opinions and possibilities, and those things may change
with each of you doing. But it's a challenging watch but at the same
time is very funny. And see just his audacity and boldness and just not
caring what anyone thinks or worried about anyone criticizing him. That's ultimately from what
I read him. And Daddy wanted that wants to shock people, wants to
wake people up, wants they showed up at the movie theaters with rocks in
their pockets just because they thought I was for their short film. There might
be some protests, so let's make sure we're armed. But I don't know,
I just took to it. I just really loved it. I just
really felt I could feel what he was getting to. And I know some
people hate things that don't make sense on a narrative level, but if you're
trying to make sense out of this and some kind of traditional story, you're
gonna be lost. You're gonna hate it. You can't watch it that way.
But I don't know, I just loved it. So I'm looking forward
to just really diving in with the two of you to see really what we
think of what's going on here. Now. I can't remember if I said
this during our discrete Charm episode or not, but the first Bunwal film that
I watched was Lu and shen Andalu, and I watched it this interesting colorized
version that they had for MTV. It would show it as like a break
which was weird because the movies twenty some minutes long. And then I saw
the original and I was like, this is pretty much the movie that I
saw. But my first exposure to him was seeing this and not really knowing
what I was looking at, and was starting off with the cloud across the
moon and the eyeball getting slice that was all right there on MTV for me
to enjoy throughout the years. And occasionally there'd be a shot where was somebody
looking at the camera and then background would blow out in this animation thing.
So it was actually very well done in the way that they did this,
and then the constant music going through the entire thing. So that was my
first exposure to moonwal even not really connecting that this was a director of many
things and that's something I needed to look out for. Probably ninety one,
I was in David's books up in ann Arbor and I found a look at
the script of Lodge Door and I remember reading on the back how it talked
about this movie caused riots, and I was just like, how could a
movie cause riots? I just didn't understand. That was my first idea,
my first concept that a movie could have that much power that it would cause
riots. I still didn't watch the movie. It took until twenty nineteen when
I went to the Nitrate Film Festival out in Rochester where they actually showed at
night rate print of Lodge Door, and they didn't have it was the original
French so they didn't have subtimes its burned onto it. And they didn't do
over titles or anything. Was actually one of the organizers of the festival,
our friend Jared Case, who's been on the show several times, him with
a microphone, reading the translation as we were going through, so like the
title cards, the dialogue, any of that. He's up there reading this
as the movie's going along. Very unique experience for me and seeing this beautiful
print from I can't remember if it was from the actual cinema attack or where
it was from, but it was gorgeous the sea, and as soon as
I saw it, I was just like, I have to do an episode
on this. So that it's been been the backlog for a while as far
as okay, yeah, we're going to get to this. And then when
I was like putting together this year and there are all these French films and
like, okay, cool, fine, they going to do last or this
will be great, and yeah, revisiting this it's of course it doesn't make
a whole lot of sense, but that's what I love about it. And
then like you were saying, where this is that almost like a Rosetta stone
as far as translating these obsessions and things from the early days, all the
way up until his later films. It's funny because last week we talked about
Rules of the Game and there's guest On modou in there as the game's keeper.
I forgot that he was also in Building a Paradise, which we talked
about two weeks ago. So he's shot through this entire month pretty much.
So him as the man back in this nineteen thirty film because there are no
real character names, so it's basically like your roles. He's terrific and he
makes me want to see more films with him in it because he's just wonderful,
especially how angry he gets through this whole thing, and especially when he
kicks that dog. It's probably one of my favorite things. That was the
thing I put in my notes. I go, yeah, I'm sure Peta
loves this film. Oh God, between the dog and the scorpions and the
rat and how the blind man. It don't care if humans get hurt,
it's just the animals. He had such a great look, looks like a
football player or like an athlete or a hockey player. You just don't see
those kinds of faces. And he's really compelling this and Rules of the Game.
I'm gonna have to seek out more of his films performances. Yeah,
I forgot. He's in Peppe the Moco, which I've been wanting to do
a rewatch of that. So yeah, I'm probably going to be having a
guest on the Dope Film Festival over here at some point. But he doesn't
even show up in the movie until we have two of these sequences where we've
got this Nature documentary about scorpions and talking about scorpions, and of course it's
one of those even though I was saying joking, lad, this movie doesn't
make sense, there are reasons for all of this. I feel like there
are reasons for every single thing that we see on screen, and so starting
it off with the scorpions, I'm just like, Okay, what do scorpions
represent? And that's scorpio? Are we talking about this? We're talking about
just what are we think about these scorpions and this Nature documentary all about scorpions,
and how do we see that playing through the to this film. Other
than the idea of the five segments of the tale with the venom sack,
we've got a very venomous ending to this film. The whole thing was scorpions.
To me, plays into when you learn about Budwell's biography. He was
a I may say word versus bugs, so anthropologists people who study bugs.
So he had an obsession books, Like I think if he had to become
a filmmaker, he probably would have became a scientist of study books, because
there's like a lot in his biography where he talks about collecting samples and collecting
bugs and so he so I think there's some of that. But I would
also say that kind of delicateness venom it gets damned in for humanity in some
way that it's like he's saying, look at this thing. It can be
very destructive. A lot of the things that run through the film is this
question of appearances and how do we make appearances within society and what society expects
of us, and how far will society go to forces into these positions,
the most obvious being, the most over the top being the literal sex on
the beach. So we could talking about that a bit. Like I say,
the first time you see it, you're like, okay, the eat
your documentary, and then it's never brought up again, so you have to
think of what is it signifying We're no different than these scorpions who can be
destructive. Shows that he's swallowing up a rat. I love that he shows
one of them going that doesn't like this. They don't like the sun.
They like to be isolated, and they like to be alone. And then
one of them goes under a rock and the other one is trying to follow,
and you see it just obviously was getting pushed aggressively kicked back. I
didn't get a chance to read all of that BFI book that you shared,
Mike, but the writer mentioned I don't know how obvious it is, but
two of the scorpions look like they're having sex, and one of them just
rams through them, which, of course, as we see time time and
time again in this film, so he could be I think he's saying a
combination of this. We are basically we are animals, but we still have
this kind of behaviors, and people hate to think, oh, how can
you compare a human too behavior of an animal. But I think what he's
saying is, no, we do behave in this ferocious manner that scorpions do.
Or perhaps it's a warning in the sense that if you keep oppressing people,
they're going We're going to go back to the Neanderthal times and start to
it's just going to be total destruction. So I really saw it as a
simple metaphor what he was getting at there. The other aspect that I was
thinking of that you brought up there, Robert, is the Surrealists were about
trying to make friends with or accept that which was thin us and the passions
that we have and as human animals. And so I can see that reading
as well, where it's fine by itself. It's only when the outside world
comes in and starts playing with it that it's kind to attack. So it's
if you allow the creature to live as it is, to be in its
natural state, it's fine. It's just don't hit it in that way.
And which brings me to I actually learned to read. So if anyone,
it's amazing almost three years of college will do for you. In the past
three years during COVID. This is an ongoing joke for those who haven't listened
my previous appearances on the show, Mike would always read the books. I
didn't ever have time to read the books, so notoriously slow reader. I
want to thank. Al Gore said to me many years ago this is a
book from the late seventies, Virginia Kicking Bottom, and I think that to
me when I read analysis here she said that basically A Shennanalou was a personal
vision of erotic obsession and anxiety will lodge door when on to indict social institutions
and beliefs that repress the individual spotanity. That's the difference between those two early
films and how one builds on the other. And I think this is maybe
to the point even in those early frames talking about those scorpions pressing the spotaneity.
Yeah, from what I've read, scorpions are symbols of protection, transformation,
independence, solitude, and intelligence, but they're also the symbol of death,
raybirth, a symbol of power, and also lost sex and fertility.
In the commentary, the commentator talks about how scorpions are more the symbol of
genitals and the anus, and I'm just like, Okay, that's got Dally
written all over him, which is wonderful. Dolly didn't really have that much
to do this one. According to what you read is sometimes people say yes,
he had a ton to do with this, and other times no,
he didn't. There's this whole falling out between Bunwell and Dolly at some point,
and I guess he didn't like Gala. Bunol didn't like Gala at all
and was just like, get this lady out of here. I want nothing
to do with you. Maybe this little jealous I don't know, but it's
not as in your face with some of the ally stuff. Even though when
we move on to the next segment, we've got all of these consider them
bandits. I suppose there's this whole crutch thing. There's least one that has
a crutch, and I'm just like, okay, because you see those like
crutches inside of Dolly's paintings a lot, like holding up different things. So
I was seeing that as being a Dolly touched to that. But yeah,
with these scorpions, yeah, I definitely agree. The whole idea of the
bitis interrupt us trying to push the other scorpion out of the way, very
pushy with this stuff, and embracing that animal nature and seeing the rest of
the people in this movie as scorpions and just to them of the behavior,
I would say, is what I'm getting from this early segment. And I
like how poorly framed this nature documentary is quite a few times. There's like
a lot of times where you can barely see the scorpions, they're down at
the bottom of the frame. And then you get this very dry not necessarily
David Attenborough, but these intertitles in here, and I like that. The
last inner title that you see is what's it saying? It says some hours
later, and that takes us to the next section of the film, and
that totally reminds me of when shen Andalou and just all of those time transitions
last week on Sunday in the Spring, just all of those different transitions that
he has, and he does that a few times in this one as well,
where you're just like, wait, how much time has passed? Because
we move on to that next section where it's all taking place at the shore,
you have one of the bandits coming across this group of I guess they're
bishops, these religious figures, and they're all chanting on the soundtrack, and
he leaves, and then in the subsequent sequence we see them and they're all
skeletons and we're just like, wait, how much time has passed here?
And we see the cornerstone for Rome being laid down, and then we cut
to quote unquote imperial Rome and it's basically the modern city. So I'm like,
what can't really trust to Time in this at all? I think he's
it's partly a joke and then partly just to say here were these beggars,
and we see these few religious people begin to come and then they clearly took
over the land, and then we see these boatloads of bourgeois and the religious
figures coming and finding the bones there. So I think, ultimately what that
is really what he wants you to take from it. So I think the
Time thing was just a way to mess with you. Even in the short
film, it's sixteen years earlier and then it's no one looks any different.
This is what happened, and only had built up to Rome, and slowly
it came these old loads of people taking over. I guess that's what he
was getting at with the Time. That was the thing that I liked.
And some of the readings was talking about how the censors originally just thought it
was a big joke. They couldn't understand why anyone this is of that kind
of ridiculousness that you're talking about. Yeah, that whole thing with this group
of beggars, bandits, hunters. I'm calling them bandits because they looked like
beggars. They all have guns, so I'm like, Okay, maybe they're
out robbing people or maybe they're just hunting. I don't know, but they
are all hold up like they're starving too. They're like on their deathbed.
Yeah, so they're terrible hunters. Yes, they don't have a lot to
choose from, and this very desolate shoreline that they're on. Maybe they're members
of PEDA. Like they said that, they seem to be accepting their feets
because they're like, oh, we know it's over for us, but we're
gonna go anyway. So it was almost like they were going to fight it
out. And then I don't know if you guys saw, I could have
swore that when the boatload of people came and they found their bones, you
see the hats of the religious figures, I could have swore one of the
hats that the beggar who found the bodies, he's just like this big farmer's
hat. So I don't know if if he's getting at that. There was
some fight that broke out and that and they all died right there together.
But I don't know if you guys have picked up on that. They look
to me, like, what the hat that guy's hat was? With all
of those bishops there, there's so much detail and times that it's you have
to watch it several times to get certain things, and if you have like
attention problems, you may have to rewind it. Watch the sea, you
can't figure out what the hell you just saw because you moved from one segment
to another a lot of times without any warning. It's just okay, we're
off to this new thing. Yeah, we're bored trying to move on to
the next thing, which I think is why it's so important. I won't
say is a fellow movie YouTuber that I know he reviewed it and hated it
because it doesn't make sense. And I'm like, again, do your dreams
make sense? I don't know about you guys, but I have that have
vivid dreams and they make no sense, and you could take something from it,
but I think it's much more valuable to just look at what do the
people do and what does that say about the story? What is actually forget
about traditional narrative. I don't understand why people get so hung up on that
there was a great I mean, I think it was like just two or
three images of Dart. And I don't know if this was from an actual
interview that was translated or not. I can't say where it was, but
it was something like Goddard saying, you're married and you don't like same movies,
you're bound to get divorced. So talking about my ex wife, I
was a putting well fan. She was like, I have enough ambiguity in
my life. I don't want it in my art. So this was a
lady like to watch in no offense to anyone. He enjoys it, just
arathods of like Coulkeye files. Yeah, I'm a side life on the streets
in one order. So she wanted, oh, structured work. She couldn't
get her head into it. She was just like, no, She's like,
how don't mind watch Ford film? Jesus don't make me watch another foot
in. Wilson could tell that our relationship at the end. At that point,
Robert, you mentioned that BFI book, The Paul Hammond One, and
I had to say, I haven't been doing a lot of drugs lately,
but my god, I felt like I was high when I was reading his
book. I was just having such a hard time understanding what he was saying
a lot of times because he would flip from talk about the movie and then
he would flip to the making of the movie and then go back into the
movie, and there was no real again talking about transitions, there was no
transition between I'm like, oh, now we're talking about the movie again.
Okay, now we're talking about the making of again, all right. But
it just all flowed from one to the other. And there were so many
parentheticals where I was just like, what are you doing here? What are
you trying to talk about here? I was so confused. He would wrote
it like a Boonwall film. Baby, I think that's what you're going to
stay Rob, I go, So it appears to book structures by the film.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are all I don't know if you've
read a lot of those, be if I bye. I find them all
a little hard to read. They're not easier to read. I've read some
good ones, but they're extremely intellectual. I've gone back and reread passages,
got my dictionary handy. They're definitely very dense. But I've read some good
ones, but yeah, they're that this one in particular was very challenging.
The one thing I liked that he did was he would go through some of
the actors and talk about who they were, Like, I recognize Max Stearns
as the bandit leader inside of the little hunting lodge hideaway type thing that he's
doing, and I think he's the one that has the first line of the
film where he just yells at the rest of them to stop it. That's
cool, But then Hammond would go through a lot of the other actors in
the film and tell you, oh, it's this person, was this,
and this person was. Then gave you like a little bit of a biography
of each surrealist that was showing up in the film, which I thought was
pretty cool. But then again, I'm just like trying to make sense of
it. We're already talking about a movie that doesn't hould together a lot more
narratively, But then the book itself has that weird structure where I'm just like,
what the house happening? So I'm glad that I wasn't the only one
that was a little confused by that one, to the point where I was
looking for reviews to be like, is it just me? Am I just
being dumb or what's happening? So rus partly why I put it down.
I'm like, I'm just gonna go watch it again and read other things on
it. There's spoken dialogue in this, and it reminds me of Hitchcock.
Like Hitchcock's first sound silent film was Blackmail, where he shot it silently and
then he went back and he added sound bits to it. You already have
him using like subjective sound. So when the murder us, here's somebody talking
about a knife, Like she doesn't hear the rest of the conversation. She
just hears the word knife over and over again after she had stabbed this artist.
And in this one, here we are it's a few years after the
sound revolution is starting, but we've got straight dialogue, people just talking,
okay. You've got unsourced sounds, so you have things that are on the
soundtrack where you're just like, I'm not exactly sure where that's coming from.
You have sound effects like when you see those bishops the first time, you
hear them chanting, but you can't really make out what they're saying. Necessarily,
you've got thought conversations later on in the film where people are just thinking
things and we're supposed to think that the other person can almost hear them,
and then you even have at one point there's a telephone conversation and it just
sounds like cartoon voices and they are not matched up to mouths whatsoever. And
it's just what am I seeing? But I love that he's playing was sound
so much in his first sound film, that he's just doing all of these
different things with it. And that was the first time when I watched this
movie in Rochester, I was just like, am I supposed to be hearing
something? Was this added later on? You know? What was the life
cycle of this movie? Was it all silent at first but then they added
sound. It's really tough to tell, but I think that he was just
like, Okay, I've got this new tool. I'm just going to mess
around with it as much as possible. The thing that's interesting here about that
use of sound as when you think about the fact that it's not only his
first sound film, but it's my understanding, it's like one of the first
sound film out of France, and at the same time, also consider the
use of sound experimentation outside of a theater context. There really wasn't a lot
because radio. It only started less than ten years before, and a lot
of that was just live music and live read so you didn't have a ton
of special sound effects and different things like that. They were just starting to
get into those kind of radio play dramas and things like it would come later
into the thirties. When we watch it now as a modern audience, if
we don't understand that historically, guess it's the same as watching I don't know,
maybe like Passion Joan of Arc going oh the deal close ups, but
you have to understand it in context at the time, as opposed to now
where it's shit close ups all day long, like TikTok so what So It's
one of those things where you have to have a historical understanding in order to
get something. It's funny because I didn't find these Nothing in the sound was
throwing me unless it maybe I've seen enough old the older films that it doesn't
necessarily pop out as being unusual. I did. The fact that he was
using very like music, was very happy, which I love, which was
such an interesting that hitch good Dad sometimes as well. Sometimes his music was
very direct, but the imaged necessarily always match the music was using but again,
is that mess with people? Is that a joke? Is that to
make it feel like these things could happen to you do? And so we're
used to seeing there's happy music on films, so it brings you a little
more into it as opposed to being something from a distance or out of an
over film. On YouTube, someone remixed the sound of it, like uploaded.
On my second viewing, I was like, I don't remember these sounds,
and the whole time that someone coughing and moan was and I was like,
this is really interesting. I don't even remember this. And then I
and then in the car I was like, I don't think this is it.
And then in the comments someone said, the hell remixed? You could
find it on YouTube. Bizarre, but it's really good. Like I would
not recommend anyone do that to anyone, touch anyone's movies, but in this
case it was bizarre. It was really unique. This is a couple of
things in there. As someone who worked in radio for a long time that
I'm just like, this stuff is not like sound effects. We're not trying
to be seamless in a way. They were not trying to be naturalists,
but they were not mixed at a particular level in order to make them seem
normal, quote unquote, to bring you into a realism. There were a
lot of them were heightened, a lot of them were you could tell that
they were not from that scene, they were from somewhere else. In that
way, the use of the music, as you were saying, could be
early form of musical commentary. Like we often think about Tente Banger or Martin
Scorsese using ironic music. I can't think of anyone who was doing ironic music
in nineteen thirty film. She was saying, Yeah, that was that would
take another thirty years, but there's all that in there, and I think
that's a really interesting thing, Like you say, for an early soundship,
I did find her scream and they were a big sex on the beach there.
At first I thought someone screaming, like it sounded like someone was being
kit or killed. And then I'm like, are they what's kind of like
is he raping her? Like? Are they having sex? Is it?
I'm like, is he hitting her? I don't know if that was intentional,
because it's not like it obvious sex sounds. It sounds maybe that's because
of the oppression that it's just like coming out in Screams and Pleasure at the
same time, that to me was a little jarring. When you think about
one of the big influences, and this is later in the film that influence
really shows up was Marquitisad. So the idea of on the surrealists they discovered,
They saw it and just thought he was great and a kind of liberator
type. So when you're talking about, okay, well maybe there's like this
violent screaming sexuality that might not be too far removed from that idea within the
Surrealists in that period. One thing that I picked up on the first time
I watched this and was I thought it was in there a lot more,
but it's only a few mentions, but they're in enough sections that I thought
it was interesting. Is the bandism. One point they say the Majorcans are
here, and then we've got references to Majorca throughout a lot of this movie.
And that was one thing that I was glad that Hammond talked about,
was this what treaty that was signed in Majorca. And that's maybe this is
commentary on that because Majorka, I mean, it's just this tiny little island
out there in the right off the coast of Spain. We'll probably not right
off the coast, but off the coast of Spain. And yeah, there's
Majorkans come throughout this whole movie. There are little references to Majorca on them
because apparently all of these people that are arriving on the shore are all from
Majorca, and there's a lot of them. Like you said, they do
feel like very much an invading force and they all feel very bourgeois. And
that's where we get introduced to Guestan Madoe and Leah liss Is the woman's same.
I believe all of these people are walking across these kind of barren dscapes
by the shore. See the bishops their skeletons, They give them a salute,
and off they go. I guess they're there to dedicate this kind of
cornerstone to child our land now. And that's where we meet the man and
the woman and them in the mud having sex. And you mentioned that screen
that we have that even sages us seeing them, people around them having to
pull them apart and take them away. She gets taken away first, he's
there in the mud, and then they finally get him up. And these
two men just march him off, and then really, for a long time,
this movie is cutting back and forth between her and what she's doing,
kind of fantasizing about him, and then him being marched by these guys.
And yeah, he sees this dog and this dog is just bothers him.
And the way that he breaks away from the men to go up and kick
this dog. Oh, and he breaks away later to smash a bug,
and he breaks away again and he kicks a blind man. He's just the
spont of rage. Yes, that's the meat cute, I guess, because
the rest of the film is really a romatic comedy. They want to get
back together, so it's like, how did we be? We were fucking
on the beach in front of everyone and we got really dirty and then people
came but said, no, I can't do that. So trying to get
together ever since. There's one thing you didn't mention is the toilet sea And
I was thinking about this, and granted we don't actually see it flush,
but we hear it. So I remember thinking like, like, oh,
Psycho showed a toilet flush of the innovation, so I'm like, maybe boom
Well was thirty years ahead of that. You hear the toilet flush and he's
cutting to it looks either like mud or shit, just spiraling down. And
I saw that as the interim how they were both feeling. It's like,
you're just making our life shit and crap and flushing it right down to it.
And what I liked about the fact that, again, how he's playing
with time is it's okay. So the major gains came, it took over,
and then we see this couple there having sex on the beach, and
it's just like, this feeling of this has happened right away, right away
they started to tell people what to do, how to control people. He's
just he doesn't gradually work its way up to it. It's like it's happening
right now, and it doesn't even feel like they just met there. It
just feels like they've they've been together for years. And I think that's why
he had this rage of not being allowed to have sex with this woman and
so kicking the dog, kicking the blind man, squashing the beatle. This
has been happening forever, and I think that's why it goes all the way
back to the major gains in the Ancient Rome. And he's making you feel
like This isn't just a few scenes a month or a week, his years
and years of oppression. And what I also really I didn't spotted until this
third time I stopped, was the other people that he cuts to gives you
the impression. And it's not just this couple, it's everybody, Like the
one guy he comes out of a cafeer at bar and he also has like
mud or dust all over his jacket, and then they follow him and he's
kicking the violin and I'm thinking, yeah, so I took that as okay,
So it's not just this couple for whatever reason, it's everybody, down
to that conductor at the end who suddenly stops and he's got this throbbing headache
again. I think he's say, this is what oppression does. It's like
people can't get on with their lives. It's like with the what you said,
rob with the scorpions. If you stop them from their natural state of
being in spontaneity, they're gonna, they're gonna bite, they're gonna they're gonna
get aggressive, but they're not gonna be able to do what they need,
what they want to do. And down to that conductor at the end with
that brobbing headache. I really like that. I really like that he doesn't
just make it all about these two people. It's like everybody, everybody's experiencing
this. That's also part of it is that when people watch this, if
they're used to conventional narrative, they may go, Okay, who is he
and who is she? And what are their names and what is their backstory?
And it's no, They're just man and woman. They're just humanity.
They're not characters through symbolic ideas of alerture issue. I love how we have
different views of the toilet scene in certain ways. Because I thought that was
lava. So there was part of me that thinks, oh, this is
lava, This is passion inside that's being pushed down or submerged. We have
to submerge these things. We have to hide these things. We have to
get rid of these things, these things that the outside world says are filthy
or dirty, we have to hide them and be clean and respect. Yeah.
I thought that was also lava or mudflow or something. Yeah, And
it almost seemed like it was reversed out the way that the footage was being
shown. I think there might have been another reverse shot as far as that
goes, But like we see the negative image and I forgot that they are
there too. That only that cornerstone, but it's also it's a dedication to
the Majorcans who died there in nineteen thirty, which is the year that this
movie is coming out. And also while the man is being marched through the
city, feels like they're going to take him to jail or something. He
sees man with a placard and there's a set of legs on there. So
of course he's thinking of his girlfriend, thinking of the woman, and just
thinking of her legs. But there's also another moment where we have this picture
of a hand and then he imagines the hand becoming her hand, and this
we're going to talk about wigs and hair and stuff, but we have this
kind of mound of hair all so in that image, and it's so completely
a masturbation image. It's undeniable. Even when we see that placard with the
legs, and it's more like the crotch than the legs is what I'm seeing
when it comes to that, And I'm going to get her crotch much later
on in this film as well. He's just so obsessed with her sex.
I think it would be very easy for a filmmaker to have male masturbation,
but for it to be female masturbation with the way the fingers are being Like
in nineteen thirty, it's like people were really uptight about talking about men at
alone, how a woman would here's your Dolly reference, because when you read
anything about Dolly, he was guilt ritten constantly, shame and guilt ritten over
the amount of masturbation. And it comes out in his art like it's all
over the place, it is work. So I'm like, Okay, that's
definitely a Dolly. It's all the masturbatorist. She's planning this party that we
see later at this chateau. If you notice I didn't spot this to the
third time, but she has a bandage on her finger, and I think
it's her sister. I think that was her sister, and who says,
oh, I was Jerry. I think she asks like, oh, the
your finger or whenever she's like, oh yeah, it's been like this for
a weekik or so, And I was like, Okay, if he has
her finger bandage, just gotta be a reason. So I took that as
she's been massed, he's been bores the mass only masturbatedge. She's been masturbating
so much that she injured herself. I was like, that must have been
what he was getting at, but I just thought that as hilarious. That's
one other thing that I liked about that Hammond book was that he could translate
the French and also talk about how words and French have different meanings. Those
French have a different word for everything, but just like the word bandaged also
refers to like sexual stuff. So when her mother says bandaged, she just
asked that rather than says anything else, just that one word and you know,
oh, yes, it's been sore four weeks as the woman. Bandage
has us different context over there. And there's a few other times where he
would point out things that would have devil sometimes triple on andres and almost owe
us related to sex. So it's us having different critical code words for sex
as we talk about things, and the French are the same when it comes
to this word could also mean this, and this one could mean this.
A Cleveland steamer could be a hot dog, or it could be something completely
different. It was also interesting there because you don't even have to think about
this too much. But in terms of the time we talked about gay cutting
back and forth between time and messing with does. But the guy gets hauled
off of her and arrested, and she, you assume, goes home.
It seems as if more time has passed. With her, she's in different
Wardjobe. She's planning this party again the bandage, whereas with him, it's
like the next shot is what we just saw, So it's for him,
it's like the next half an hour. It seems like for her it's like
the next week at least. So why he did that, I don't know,
but I like it again, it's surrealist nature of it all. But
this thing with time, I want to go see it again, just to
see if there was be something I'm missing about that. There's the one inner
title that says sometimes on Sundays and then we have this looks like a tidal
wave or something. All these buildings are collapsing, and they show that a
few times, and it's just okay. Sometimes on Sundays. This happens Sundays,
which, of course people go to church, which I must have been
intentional. It's like he would obstruction them to society, knock down some buildings,
why not once they pull him off the beach. I always got this
feeling that they were like going to take him to jail ors, because there's
the two guys, he's handcuffed, he walking between him, and he never
ends up there. He ends up actually free of them. So there's part
of me that goes Maybe it's just the idea that he's saying there is that
we hold each other together, like we in a way kind of force each
other into this position where we're trying to get these needs met, we're interested
in these other things that we're talking about. He has these images of the
posters coming to life and things like that. That's where we go if we
weren't held in literal bondage in cuffs by those who are around us. One
that amazing thing that he's doing again was sound like at one point, the
woman goes into her bedroom and there's a cow on the bed, and the
cow gets off, and you don't see the cow anymore, but you hear
the cowbell. But then you cut back to the man and you hear the
cowbell over the soundtrack, or he's there walking and there's a barking dog,
which probably makes them very angry because they probably want to kick that dog.
And then you cut back to her and you hear the dog on her soundtrack,
or then it's very windy where he's at, and then you cut back
to her and her hair is blowing in the breeze, as if she is
experiencing the same wind. It's like they are so tied together that they even
experience the same sounds from one to another. It's almost like this huge psychic
connection that they have. Those sound elements didn't pop out to me as much
clearly they did because I was thinking about that as well, why are we
hearing these sounds she can only hear and then seeking hear what you mentioned with
the cow bows. How can he suddenly be hearing that if we're cutting back
to him. But that's how I took it. It's like they are they
are one almost, They're thinking the same thoughts, they're they know what each
other are thinking or what each other is, what they're both experiencing at the
same time. So just interesting because it feels like he's not even separating yet,
and as sense, even though people are trying to separate yet, it's
like they have this spiritual connection. So yeah, that's it's really interesting how
either that with the sounds, the use of sound. Yeah, and then
we have a flashback because suddenly, I don't know where, I don't know
why the man hasn't done this before, but he's just hey, wait a
second, and he hands them these papers, and then we have a flashback
to when he got the papers. The international good Will Delegate has given him
their decree that he's on now on a good will mission. And so great
because the guys are reading this and the man just basically just walks away from
them, breaks away just like, hey, I'm not a good will mission,
leaves his papers with them. He goes over. There's a taxi that's
pulling up. There's a blind man who's I guess maybe waiting for the taxi
or whatever. But he goes over and he has to kick the blind man
before he sent in a taxi. This guy's good will mission isn't working out
so well. Yeah, that was the great hire Nye. And what I
liked was like it seemed he says something about politics there too, like how
privileged they are. It's like they're arresting this guy for what he did.
But because it seems as if he has some kind of political position. Oh,
it's like you're work for the government. Yeah, no problem, you
can if you can be corrupt, you could abuse your power. No worries.
I was thinking of it. And maybe this is just because, as
I was saying, I've been in school too long during COVID, that there's
a certain amount of respectability that comes with having degrees or education within the society.
So I saw it as he must have passed something, he was given
this honor, so therefore he is a higher status than just an average person,
and therefore he can get away with certain he's allowed to have a certain
amount of freedom within the context of the box that they've given him, which
includes being able to basically hate on the people who are lower than him,
which obviously a blind man would be because he's of course he's a blind man.
So why not kick the blind man? Why not kick the dog?
Why not? Oh, be shitty to the people that have it worse than
you. That's acceptable. There's there's actually a document there's a documentary on YouTube,
and he's his personality shines in his movies. Certainly, if anyone who's
watched him in interviews, he mentions his I hope I'm getting to someone right.
I probably should have went back to say what he said, but he
mentioned something about not trusting anyone blind or not liking anyone blind. Just think
about it. If they're the ones cutting your meat in the Delhi He's like,
would you trust He's like, that's a surrealist image right there, blind
man cutting the meat. I'm like, okay, yeah, the blind butcher.
So I was as as funny as just when he said that. I
thought, Oh, no, wonder he's got Maybe he didn't like dogs either.
I don't who knows. Oh. I love that we've been talking about
this movie longer than this movie has been running, because we're about halfway through
the film, just at this point where we get to meet the Marquis of
X and the first time we see him, he's got all of these dead
flies all over his face. I love it. And this is the party
scene, and the party is really going to take us through pretty much the
rest of the movie other than this day New Mob the Venom Sack, as
I mentioned earlier, but this whole thing of this big party. You've got
this car pulling up and these guys coming out, and there's this I just
described as a symbol. I wasn't exactly sure what this thing was that they
take out of the car that people get out, they put the symbol back
in the backseat of the car. I think it was a reliquary, which
ir reliquary is a looks like a frost. It stands up and it usually
has like raised to come out of it, and in the center there's usually
a piece of flesh or clothing or something that is related to a saint.
So this is part of Catholicism in which reliquaries are that are given adoration,
they are prey to in that way. So that's what I saw that as
maybe something else, but that's what it looked like to me. Makes as
much sense to me as anything else. And it did feel like it had
a religious symbolism to it. And yeah, it felt like rays of the
sun coming out from this thing. I wasn't sure if it was that or
fell off the ark of the Covenant or what it was. This is the
hunter actually finally gets a chill or something. I don't know. It's like
somebody finally learns how to shoot the damn gun. Ah. I didn't connect
that. Yeah, that's the best part that's just this little shit eating kids
a hunter outside. We cut to him. He's outside of the party and
there's this little kid that comes up, and this little kid's being a jokester
and knocks this thing out of the guy's hand. Guy just fucking shoots him.
More than that, he fucking shoots his corpse, which is fantastic.
Oh my, again, I saw what I said with the man kicking the
violin, right, it's again it's like, here's another character who's maybe experiencing
what the man and woman in this film are experiencing him. So every little
thing that pisses him off is gonna come out in a ferocious, violent manner,
kicking a dog, kicking a violin, and even shooting this poor kid.
God, and you get those shots in here where we're in the ballroom
and you've got these two guys drinking wine or whatever driving their wagon through the
middle of the ballroom. Or the poor woman who comes out of the kitchen
looks like a maid and she's smoking and the fire, yeah, just shooting
out of the kitchen. Oh I love the fire. No one notices,
which again is the appathe from all of the bourgeois. And that's what I
took from the flies on the face. This guy can't even notice that there's
flies on his frigging face, just like is it noticed a fire? And
again just no one carrying or feeling for another. And when they all look
at the kids shot, they're like, oh, okay, back to the
party. Nobody cares. That's all I saw that sequence, which was again
funny and certainly audacious, that that kitchen sequence after the jump. I want
to talk about how I see that influenced another scene that I know. This
a great moment too, where the man finally shows up at the party and
he's got this dress and I'm guessing it's the woman's dress, and he is
dragging it on the floor, and then through trick photography through backwards shooting,
he throws the dress onto this chair and it lends perfectly there, and then
we do a nice dissolve between that dress and the woman who's wearing that dress
in the main part of the ballroom, or going back and forth before he
goes into ballroom itself and sees her across the room and see the lust on
his face. He's trying to get over there, but her mother stops him.
Her mother gets to him a drink spills a little bit on his hand,
and that's the only time where the bourgeois really react is when he stands
up and smacks her in the face. Yeah, yeah, you don't touch
one of ours. Everyone else is okay. But again, I see this
whole thing where they're like looking at each other, and then I think there's
like a woman or something that comes over to the woman and starts talking to
her. So it's like, this is the polite way in which we keep
you away from each other. Well, this isn't the forest. This is
oh, it's pleasant trees and conversation, all this stuff, like, how
do we mollify you to keep you from the thing, How do we keep
you socialized amongst each other? This goes back to the scorpion, right,
Like the people coming in at the scorpion is scorpions pushing out of my old
And I saw the dress as another tink, as another fetish. It's like
when you're when you're having sex, you always have these fantasies. Wouldn't it
be great if you wore this? He knew she was going to be there,
and here's the dress he wants her to wear. But that's all I
took that. So he gets kicked out of the party because of smacking your
mom, but then he just doesn't really leave. He comes back, and
when he comes back, nobody says anything. There's some unpleasant looks that he's
getting. There's at least one guy who's shooting daggers at him with his eyes,
but they just let him go along. And that's when they end up
going out into the I guess it's like a rock garden or a topiari or
something. It looks like there's a little bit of a edge maze happening here.
And then so much of the rest of this film is them in this
area and then going back and forth because that's also where we've got the music
is starting. And you talked about the violin being kicked down the street.
There's this whole thing about this looks like some sort of like a munk or
a priest or something that he's really good with the violin. But then there's
pick. There's four of them in the band itself. They all are dressed
the same. Reminds me of those two priests that are being pulled on the
was it the back of piano and Shenandalude? There there, and we keep
getting close ups of these figures in the orchestra, going back and forth between
them and then the conductor, and yeah, we'll definitely talk about that conductor
in a bit, but we've got that amazing scene of them, the man
and woman sucking down each other's hands, and this bird trilling on the soundtrack.
And then the one thing that I when I saw this the first time,
it was I was in a theater, so I couldn't say, oh,
I got to rewind that when suddenly the hand is caressing her face,
but then you realize it doesn't have any fingers, and I was like,
oh, okay, did she eat his fingers? But later on he's got
fingers again. It's kind of like how that bandage appears or reappears. I
saw that as he couldn't eat because they've been separated for so long at it's
now it's not working out, it's not gonna feel good. It's like he's
down to the fact that he's lost fingers. I mean, maybe that goes
back to the sore of dumb. He's had to now masturbate himself, masturbate
too much that he's lost his hand. Could be a castration fear. They
have their fingers in each other's mouths, and then the fingers aren't there.
It's vagina than Tata kind of thing. Oh she's want this, but I'm
afraid that she's going to take away my power. So there's this way in
which they have to negotiate themselves outside of the context of what the society says.
Then their own their own mental issues. And then right after this,
I go, I know it's Wooden Wells foot of the statue. I go
extra quint and Tarantino wouldn't well thinking of the foot fetishes sun filed throughout its
films. It starts here. I can't remember of a foot scene in the
Shennanalu, but it definitely starts here. It goes on and on through his
entire work. I love that scene because it's relatable in the sense of I
don't know about you guys, but it's sometimes you're just trying to get with
someone and so it's building in your head, and it's the imagination is so
strong that you think it's going to be the greatest sex of your life.
And then when they finally have the time together, they're disappointed because again the
oppression. It's like has been now as a result, that has been built
up in their heads so much so they at first can't even get comfortable.
Their heads are hitting together, they hear the music, which stops them,
and even when they are kissing, it's like, oh, this is a
little disappointing, and so that's when oh, look at this toe. Maybe
we'll bring this into this and it's just again it's outrageous, but I think
he was really getting at something at the core. It was very emotional.
I found dan just the power of the imagination of how when who particularly would
sex when it's you're waiting and waiting, and finally it can be disappointed because
it's, you know, always the fantasy is always stronger sometimes whereas if it
had sex right away that maybe it would have been the best sex ever.
But it goes down to that being forced to hurt. Yeah, him staring
at that toe, and I appreciate that he seems to be so fascinated by
that toe. But then she's the one that starts shrimming it. Yeah.
I love that he gets called away. The Minister of the Interior is on
the phone for you, sir Yea, to improvise with what's around it,
and I love that she clearly masturbated and got herself off. So when he
comes back, she's I'm tired. I just want to go to bed.
Even that image of suddenly he's seeing her old and it's means it was just
like his fear of God, I'm never gonna have this a little bit,
We're gonna be We're gonna be old by the time we can be together.
He's eating at something there. Just in terms of relationships, it's when you
really want to be with someone, it's that fear that it's not gonna happen,
or it won't happen under an ideal circumstance, and then before you know
what, you're dead or you're at that's door. That was really a really
powerful shot. I really memorable. I felt that call from the Minister of
Interior where you have just that. This is where I was talking about the
cartoon voices, because feels very much these are just and I know this is
strange to say, we're not coming from the actor's mouths whatsoever. They just
feel like they are really overdubbed on here, and you've got this voice like
you're entirely to blame. No child survived and I'm just like, what is
happening? And then we go to a black screen. We hear a gunshot
and a thump, and then we see the minister and he's dead, but
he's on the ceiling. He's not on the floor. Just that's a great
image. Yeah, I'm wrestling with that one. It reminded me of Exorcist
three, when I forget which character it wasn't suddenly crawling on the ceiling.
The fact that whatever the hell this guy's job was, that he couldn't focus
on it to the point because of because that he was so focused on epic
sex with this woman that he wasn't allowed to sleep with it. Now everything
has just blown up and the world. I think he was getting at something
that it's like if again, like with the Scorpion, if you take them
away from their spontaneity, shit gets ferocious, right, and then this things
are gonna blow up, and to the point where he doesn't even care.
He's like, I don't give a shit about those kids. You even see
that when he hits her mother, she's like pleased by it or she's like,
oh wow, this is she takes pleasure from it. I just took
that as these warped reactions that we have. When you know, when if
someone beats you down and beats you down and beats you down and then you
see them get beat up, feels good and look, which is why she's
like even like what the kids getting killed? She has a line about it
where she's, yeah, this is just so great. It's just it fucks
people right up. He even mentions later on, when they're having these kind
of thought discussions, I think he says, what joy and having killed our
children? This is twenty nine, nineteen thirty, and as we've talked about
a few years later, when we get into the universal horror cycle, there's
all of that residue of World War One. You know, what a joy
it isn't killing our children? Sending these young kids to die in a trench
out in the west of Eastern fronts that wasn't too far removed from people's minds
at that point in the interwar before the Second World War kicks off in another
ten years. Maybe that's what that comment is. It's just basically, we
can't accept ourselves, you can't accept our nature. We repress it, and
then we just destroy all the good. It's if we till the buildings,
the children ever, all of them talking to each other via their thoughts.
We've got that amazing shot of him with all the blood on his face and
it looks like one of his eyes is really screwed up, and that's just
a momentary thing before we go back to him looking the way that he did
before, and that says right around the time where we've got the climax of
the music going on, and then the conductor, like you said before,
he just stops and he holds his head like it was going to burst open
or something, and just wanders off, and he wanders down that same path
and wanders to where the couple is, and when the woman sees him,
she's just like oh and just runs over to the conductor and starts French kissing
this guy, making the man a little angry. But then he stands up,
and he's a great comedy moment. He stands up and hits his head
out a potted plant. So then he starts grabbing his head and wandering back.
And I thought he would go up and start conducting the music again,
because it just feels like they're switching places with the whole thing of the hands
on the head and walking blindly down this path. That's why I felt he
was another character who clearly was also experiencing this oppression, who can't then do
what he wants to do or needs to do. These headaches come and so
when she kisses him, it's a little like medicine. For now he's okay,
but these headaches are going to probably come up again, and so it
gets transferred over too, because he poses in the exact same way. He
walks away with his hands on his head, and it's been now transferred over
it to him. And then it gets even worse as he goes home and
rips the pillow apart, throws the frigging the bishops out the window. I
just like, again, it's just this destruction, and from one person to
the next, it's just the violence being transferred over and over again. And
I can see the conductor's position and as he's another one who is not just
oppressed by things, but he's also the manager of the culture. So I
look at him and go he's been given position of authority, but at the
same time, he still asked to play the music that they want, like
he's got to follow the sport. There there's a script that he has so
bebe. At some point it just becomes I'm battling between my position and myself,
and that's why my head is the way it is. That's why I
had to go off, and I couldn't do this anymore. I was looking
at conductor and classical music as being this representation of what high culture was supposed
to be, but was expected as though, of course, if you're an
educated person, if you're the lead person, of course you would love this
stuff because it's considered the pinnacle of European music. You've got him going back
to that room, tearing up that pillow, and then and there's a I
guess it's like a plow wars something on the floor. He's getting angry at
that before he starts to tear up the pillow, and then he goes and
after he's tearing up stuff, he decides that he's going to start throwing things
out the window. He mentioned he throws the bishop out the window. He
throws that plow out the window. To get that very obvious miniature shot where
he throws a giraffe out the window. Looks like a flaming Christmas tree.
Yeah, that starts it all off. Yeah, the whole thing with the
giraffe. I'm just like, Okay, that's totally Dolly right there. He
was obsessed with giraffes. His script for The March Brothers was called Giraffes on
Horseback Salad. There's the burning giraffe painting. Giraffes just show up in a
lot of his work. It's one of those no offense to giraffes that are
listening to this, But giraffes are ridiculous looking animals, and I think he
just really got off on just how crazy these things look. It's just almost
like a surrealist animal. I think that's part of it. But I also
read again this maybe masspiratory thing in match Dolly had erection issues, So I
think maybe the long neck of the giraffe sitsider stand in for a very well
and outdirection. I saw that as a connection to the cow in a sense,
because here's these people took over the land and built up all these chateaus,
but now these poor animals can't even be in their own habitat that they
got to live in this fucking chateau, and we don't give a shit about
these animals. Throw these girafts out the window. I like that read as
well. Yeah, I would have loved to have seen the producer of the
day. The cow had to be filmed, guys, do we really need
this? How are we going to get this cow in the room on the
bed, off the bed that must have been. I could just see them
fighting, like, no, we must shoot this, and I'm glad they
did because it's love it. I love that of all the images from this
movie, the cow on the bed and the woman's sucking on the toe,
those are like the two things that I remember seeing for years before I ever
saw the film. The woman sucking on the toe was on the front of
that screenplay or book about Lodge to War that I saw way back in ninety
one, even before the BFI book came out. Like I know you said
you saw this in a movie theater or people laughing or were they just what
the fuck? Or both. Everybody that was there was a film fan so
if not a film fanatic, and it was people driving from or flying from
all over the world to come to this nitrate film festival. We are there
for these movies. And even my friend Jeff, who isn't into movies that
much, but he goes with me to this night trate Festival, which I
really love him for doing that. He was just absolutely fine with that.
He was just like, yep, he's there for it, and yeah,
I know what the hell was that when we left the theater, which was
nice. And plus they do that little speech before they show any movies to
put it into context as well. Oh we didn't get the screen like they
did in nineteen thirty. I would love to see this in a movie theater.
I actually regret they showed it recently here in Toronto at a movie theater.
I fucking wish I had went. I didn't realize how any Obviously,
any movie in a theater is going to be a much different, richer experience,
but this particular, I feel like seeing this when people would be really
valuable and so hopefully I'm sure it'll happen again. But they I was curious
what it was like to see it with an audience. Yeah, it was
really good. Like I said, everybody was there for it, so it
wasn't like some little old lady walked in from off the street and it's just
what is this and no one's yelling scandal or shaquies or anything. There were
no right wing French extremists there to try to burn down the theater. Film
is really in three parts, if you think about it, is that what
you think Mike I was saying. I've the assumption that this is told like
a scorpion's tale is a good way to read it. And some of the
parts are smaller than the Obviously this party sequence is probably the longest sequence of
the film. But then we get to that poison sack that we'll talk about
in a second. Mean, yeah, I figure five, but I could
see three. I saw a three scorpion, a couple and then the last
like the saylo Jesus orgy. That's how I saw it. Yeah, I
saw it more and more as three. Yeah, we are right at the
title card that talks about how the survivors are emerged in a returning to Paris,
and there's a miniature of this castle up on the cliff. And if
we get more of this title card and actually get to scroll now at this
point and it talks about how one hundred and twenty days earlier, these four
godless scoundrels locked themselves in a castle to indulge in bestial orgies. We are
right there in decd territory with this, and I love how the door opens
and the first person to leave is fucking Jesus Christ himself, just this beatific,
has that kind of far away look in his eyes, as if mess
have really gotten his rocks off really well in that orgy he had a great
time, which, oh my god, but I can't bring myself to see
the Passoweni. I love Pasomini, but it looks like really disturbing. I
can't bring myself to say, but that's the same story, right, and
I to take it from the same story. It's one of our favorite episodes,
or as I like to call it, on our episode Children's Programming.
We'll make sure to link that one. Listen. Apparently Roger Edberg died without
ever he couldn't bring himself to watch it. He just thought it looked like
I think he didn't think it was going to be good. But I think
he was afraid of it, that's all. I feel like. I'm like,
I can't go there. I can't the clips I've seen him look,
oh god, it's definitely afraid of it for a long time. And that
I watched it and then it as I talked about in the episode, It
reminds me of Francis Bacon painting, or there's another painter, Jerome Wicken,
who does these really dark scenes, and I'm like, I don't mind going
to museum to see those paintings, but I don't want them over my couch.
That's basically want to each it every so often. I don't. That's
not everything, No, But the thing that's really funny about one hundred twenty
Days is sodom I actually read a large portion of it, is that it's
so over the top, so ridiculous in terms of the stories, that you
can't help but to laugh at it. It's so ridiculous. Dasad's writing is
just over the top in terms of his description. Even though it's like horrific
things, it's just done in such a way that it's such a burlesque that
it just I don't think anyone could take it seriously but in the hands of
pastility. And what he was trying to do is to take that idea and
say, this is fashion. This is the core of what it is in
here. I think what Bunwell is because that's why I asked about the three
segments is to me, with the scorpions, you can say, okay,
that is about humanity or animal nature. This is about man and woman nature.
And then this is about what happens when the aristocrats, that the bourgeois,
go too far, when they become so nihilistic that nothing matters anymore,
literally nothing matters. That it becomes they sub will be that it will be.
This nihilism is really what I always use if Day sad by both and
then also Pessolini, you're certainly onto something there, and he down to like
the last shot of the crucif things with the scalps. At first I was
like, what the hell is that? Is that some arth? But it's
that, and then I just that's that's when people in saying it is.
I'm like, wow, women scalps on a crucifix. Jesus Christ literally so
yeah, So Jesus comes out, three libertines follow him from out of this
chet or castle, and then a survivor comes out, this poor girl who
is just very worse for wear, so they have to take care of her.
And other than it being one of the three other libertines, it's Jesus
that goes back into the castle quote unquote, takes care of her, comes
out, he's missing his beard now, but he still has that same beatific
look on his face. And then yeah, we cut to that cross and
that cross, so you talked about how it's like women's scalps on there.
I was also thinking of the hair we saw earlier with the masturbation sequence Jesus's
beard as well. I'm just like, okay, maybe that's up on this
cross, but what an amazing way to end this movie with this real middle
finger of Jesus being one of these libertines. I even took it one further
and that maybe when Well was saying, Okay, it's one thing to be
destroyed by a bunch of libertines, it's another thing to be destroyed or taken
over the church, which Jeeus represented, that's the final absolute assault on the
individual for him being an atheist. Thank God, as he would say that
is hopefully the worst thing is not so much that violence under you by man,
but the violence by the church that's a level higher. It was still
wrestling with what this was, why he suddenly went to this, But what
you're boat sitting makes a lot of sense to me. And again just the
audacity in a good way. Des Boon Well and Dally to do that.
Even if someone did this now, it would be and I think you'd get
the same reaction. It's not worse, it's quite something. All right,
So let's go ahead. We're gonna take a break and we'll be right back
after these brief messages. Build your collection of cinematic classics, now available for
the first time in studying four K Ultra HD Academy Award winner Humphrey Bogart and
the Multese Falcon Academy Award winner Paul Newman and cool Hand Luke and Iconic James
Dean and Rebel without a Cause. Be sure to go to www dot WB
one hundred that's WB one zero zero dot com and pick up the four K
Classic Movie Bundle today. All right, we're back, and we were talking
about Lage Door and Bobby mentioned before how this is the opening salvo here from
mister Boonewell. Of course we had to win Shenandalu, which had a lot
of stuff, But I would say that's really more Dolly and Boonewal, whereas
this one feels more I would say, like ninety percent Boonewell and ten percent
Dolly. But what are your thoughts on that? I definitely see a lot
of the through line sing here. In terms of his later work, there
is party scenes in those clue things such as Discrete Charmigel, even some of
the other films. You could look at the whole thing with Jesus with the
beard, without the beard. It's the milky way. You can see.
There's different things in here that come up again and again. Foot stuff,
It's all over the place. There's so much foot fetish stuff, like we
talked about, like I was joking about Tarantino and his love of feet.
WoT well was there before and he did it in a much out of your
weight at Tarantino did it for no reason other than that he likes But I
actually think when well like feet two. So I'm not knocking it for it.
It's just that it was more subtle to me to actually notice it in
I had had to go back. I was watching it and go, okay,
there's that again. There's the shoes again. There's there's all these but
me a lot of the early kind of proto social commentaries, he obviously taking
apart the bourgeois, the church clergy, all the way up until his last
felt you look at that obscure objective desire is all about people wrestling with sexuality,
people wrestling with their attractions. How do they engage those This was made
nineteen thirty. For the next forty seven years, the man basically was making
you want to talk about tour theory. It's in there in terms of thematics.
One of the things I thought was interesting, Like I said, since
I learned how to read over the course of COVID, went back over my
last side, and there's a couple of things in here. You were talking
about Gala in Dali, and he talks about here, and he says how
basically when Gala came into his life, just everything is over, says our
ideas clashed to such an extent we finally stopped collaborating on Lajdor. It was
complete metamorphosis. I'll he would talk about with Gala, he echoed or every
word utterance, and you just got more and more tired of dealing with him.
The thing that I like here is so Lajdor was actually made at a
gift by account nobleman basically a member of the bourgeois, as a gift to
his wife. And he would do this every year, where he would hire
an artist to make something and typically for this some sculpture, paints, whatever.
So he started making these films and he was invited to this dinner where
he met this guy and he was told, okay, here's our proposal.
He said, you can make a twenty minute film. We'll have complete freedom
to do whatever you want, only one condition. Stravinsky has to write the
music for it. Sorry, I replied, you can imagine me collaborating with
someone who's always falling on his knees and beating his breast. That's what I
was saying about Stravinsky. His reaction totally unexpected. He goes, you're right,
you and Stravinsky would never get along. Choose your composer, make the
film you want, we'll get something else for Igor. So basically he was
left to go do whatever he wants. Now, I think, to a
certain extent, maybe the conductor character is also boun well, poking at Stravinsky
as well. That's interesting that you say that, right, because when I
was talking way back at the beginning of this episode, when I read about
lajd War causing a riot, the other piece of art that I thought of
was the Right of Spring. How that also caused a riot. So that's
funny that they almost worked together at least two very controversial figures. Yeah,
and Stravinsky in that period was like the punk. He was like the rock
star. He was this guy who was taking classical music in a direction at
the people who thought, oh you would changed to that, He's just taking
it in directions. I mean, go listen to the Right of Spring,
which was actually a ballet as well. One of my favorites is the Firebirds,
amazing piece of modern classical music. So it's interesting to me, like,
how, like I said, Struvinsky is mixed up in this and I
go, maybe he's making fun up Servinsky in subway with the conductor. The
other thing here, it says in its final version, the film ran about
an hour bunch longer than shen Andalou. Dolly gave me several ideas. One
of them they found its way into the film was a man with a rock
on his head walking through a public garden. He pauses that a statue that
also has a rock on its head. Oh yes, I forgot about that.
Looks like in America, he told me. Is was Dolly's idea of
a compliment simply, undoubtedly from a technical point of view, that it was
more put together. Keith later says his intentions in writing the screenplay were to
expose the shameful machinations of contemporary society for me, and the film was about
passion, an irresistible force to thrust two people together at about the impossibility of
ever becoming one. Oh yeah. After they made the film, it said,
apparently the church threatnecks communicate him, this was the aristocrat, and gave
them money. His mother had to go to Rome to negotiate. Oh like
sen. Lajador opened at Studio twenty eight, where a play to packed houses
for six days, and then the right wing press, however, attacked the
theater in full battle dress, lacerating painting, surrealist exhibit in the foyer,
smashing chairs, the annuals of Paris history. The episode was known as the
Lajador scandal. A week later, police Chief Chef closed the theater. The
film was centered who remained so for fifty years. So this book was written
and released in nineteen eighty two or three. It was only seen in private
screenings and in cinema techs, and then eventually opened in New York in nineteen
eighty and in Paris in nineteen eighty one. He said that he would go
back and see this nobleman from time to time, and everas in Paris,
he said he never blamed me for any of the trouble of the film.
In fact, he was actually delighted. Three lists received, three lists received,
and so enthusiastically. I remember one of the parties in nineteen thirty three
where all the artists were invited, were told to do whatever they wanted.
Fearing trouble, Dolly and another friend declined the invitation. So he was just
saying that I just love the fact that the guy made for it. Was
like could have got excommunicating from the church and then really wasn't like, yeah,
it's fine, like you pissed off about that happened, Hey, it
happens. Documentary. I saw you mentioning that people didn't see this for forty
fifty years that they showed on the documentary. Maybe you guys saw it,
but some of the people worked on it, they brought damn to see it,
and it was so fascinating to see them watching it after a fifty years
for the first time, because they literally cut from the movie to them just
watching it, which must have been like surreal in a sense. To now
like they probably never thought they'd ever see it again, and how they commented
on to them how well it still stood up. So it's an interesting documentary
that you could find on YouTube. And I don't know it when Well actually
ever saw the film again, because he said in the book, which for
those who don't know, the book was basically it was written by Jean Claukerrier
his collaborator, but he didn't take credit. He basically just interviewed Well and
then wrote it. But it's said in there in that section unlashed or that
basically he he has memories of it, he members of making it, but
he I haven't seen it since the premiere and so and this book came out
right around the time he died. So there's part of me to think of
me being never saw it again after it came up and then was banned.
One of the things that I think it's funny when we talk about also again
influence I'm going well is in Diary of the Chambermain which he made in sixty
three sixty four. I believe that the final scene because this takes place in
the twenties, right around the time in twenties and thirties right around the time
Flash Door is the final scene or the fascist marching, and he's got this
guy who's screaming Viva Ship, Viva Ship over and over again, which is
the name of the police commander who ultimately banned Flage Door. So to me,
I think that's been well like having fun and giving the finger to the
suit who censured in most of many years ago. Always there's a great film.
Also, I just saw it and loved it. That's a film you
got to go back again it again because it's there's so much going on.
It's a tough watch also. But I was also thinking about beyond influence of
you can trace back to this film. Everything that kind of comes after for
him is the influence of this film onto other pieces of film that we may
know. And the first one that kind of stuck out to me is the
fingers and the fingers sucking scene feels like John Water's toe sucking scene in Pink
Flamingos. Oh God, yeah, I haven't seen that yet, but I
could now. I haven't seen that one. Oh you are in for a
treat, my friend. He's another guy I don't know very well, but
it just reminds you of that same kind of something that's not typically sexual being
sexualized in that way. The other thing that I was thinking of is that
scene with the kitchen the fire. It's almost beat for beat, the same
as in Brazil where he goes to have lunch with his mother and that the
boom the bomb goes off in the kitchen. Doors fly open with the big
blast of fire, and then it's like, oh, everything's fine, we'll
clean that up. So to me, it almost feels exactly the same staging,
like it could even be shot or shot against each other, because the
framing really reminded me of that last of fire out the kitchen. I feel
like we are probably missing so much of the context of this movie from it
being what ninety three years old. How I talked about the whole majorcan thing
Terry Jones, We did a whole thing Canterbury Tales, and he said,
Canterbury Tales are fucking hilarious. The problem is most of us don't know what
the hell the references are too, so it's not funny to us. They
thought they were a spree for us being able to get as much as we
can, and then also having the historical thing. When I think about movies
like this when we talk about historical references or the jokes or whatever. It's
almost like back in the day we were talking about watching the version Vishinna and
the Loo on MTV. One of the things I always like, because I
was a fucking was pop up video over on beach one. I always thought
it was interesting put the little things in a point at various things, but
annotated look at things. It almost feels like he would need something like that
for this. The only connection between these two was to putt Well edited a
version of this film when he worked at almap Is. I was thinking about
the Triumph with Will. I own a copy of Triumph of Will, that
is copy that was fundraising for the Holocausts in the US, and there is
a historian commentary track, and there's also sub there's like a subtitle I think
that can come up that will point to you as to who certain people are.
Because if you're not that hip to understanding who all of these guys in
the fucking Third Reich are and what the positions were and why they fucking matter,
all you know is you're like, Hey, there's Hitler, and there's
Curing, and there's sucking the Hibler. Yeah, like you might know,
like the top five, and so him going Okay, this guy is this
is why he and this is when he's talking about this, he's talking about
this history. So there's all of these things that just an average person watching
it just may not yet and so maybe hope would be good. Sadly,
like I said, I watched this on YouTube and I know that I used
to have a version that I think Keno put out maybe twenty years ago on
DVD, and to be honest, the YouTube version didn't look much better than
the Keno version. Is I would love to see them take that copy.
I'm willing to bet maybe that's almost copy or something that you saw at the
Nitratee Festival. And to have someone really transfer this and cleaned it up.
I know there's no money in it, because there isn't, but it would
be great if somebody could do a really nice version, really cleaned it up,
beautiful scan and to have someone do that context to really give us an
understanding a little bit more in it. At the same time, do you
think that bun Well a lot of times was very much against explaining his own
work. He hated that. He was like, don't ask me what it's
about. You figure it out. It's the eye of the duck, the
not to put anybody down. But the commentary track for this off of that
keynote disc, it only runs approximately twenty six minutes, so it's not the
first twenty six minutes either. He just dips in and out throughout this whole
thing, and you're just like, this movie's only sixty seven minutes long.
He does a good job with what he says, but it's just no,
I want talk the whole time. Like I feel like I would get fired
if I did a commentary track for an hour long movie and only handed in
twenty six minutes. That just doesn't work. Give me the stuff that we've
talked about. Give me you his future stuff, how this influenced things later.
Give me more of that relationship with Dali and Gala. Give me more
of this is Max Stearnston. This is this person and this is this person
and how they all relate. We get a little bit of that story of
Is, but we don't really even get the whole thing of the reaction to
it. As I was watching it again yesterday and listening to the commentary,
I'm like, is he going to talk about the riots. Is he going
to talk about the reception of this film? It never does, just kind
of ends go, Okay, there's a place not only just for a film
whole story, and but also for the story and art movements and surrealism,
because one of the things that you read about when you talk about this film
is the shift for surrealism when from the internal to the extra, and there
was a lot of debate on that. There was a lot of splintering in
the late twenties and into the thirties where there was a lot of people who,
I think this is give you a similar movement that I know a decent
amount about for my own research, is like punk rock, where there were
those who go, now, punk is your own thing, it's for you.
Fuck the establishment, fuck the order, fuck everything cares about that.
We're not engaging, that this is just about me and my own thing.
And then there were those that go, no, it's about this, and
then being political, it's about this to fix that out there. So there
were these splinterings within surrealism where there were those who were like, no,
we need to maintain what the purity of the surreal surrealist movement was, and
then there were those that say, no, we need it because we're seeing
the rise of fascists, we're seeing authoritarianism, we're seeing all of these things,
and that those comments on the rich and the powerful in the church and
all of these things can be the way to wake people up so that we
don't go down these horrible paths, which eventually they did, which eventually led
to If you read My Last Sight, Well talks about the death of Lorca,
and Lorca it was Lrcadali and when Weld who were all in school together
and Lorca was killed by the fascist Spain and Francokine. So that loss for
him was so profound. Don't think it plays into his work so much,
but it definitely plays into his life, and that he lost this great trend
of his who was amazing quot an artist. And there's a lot of conjecture
as to why he was killed. Was he killed just because he was an
artist and a poet. Was he killed because he was gay? Was some
combination? But two that's another aspect of when I read Glenwell's book, that
I go for a guy who was so evolved and fuck you to the system.
He still couldn't accept that Laura was gay. It bothered him. So
there was all of this and there too, so it interesting, Like I
say, I look at that movement and say, I don't think it kept
it Obviously didn't keep Europe from becoming fascist takeover, but I think he definitely
poked the air a bit and got some people to think and had an influence.
He said something in this documentary I saw which was interesting was that he
didn't care that he had artistic success, Like he wanted these his worked and
Daly and these people to change the world, and so he saw them he
saw it as a failure. He could care less that people liked the movies,
which again is really should stay where we live in a world where people
mostly put myself in that or care about six succeeding in their own lives.
And here's a guy who had this success, but it's like he didn't kiddy,
wasn't enoughs not, didn't have the value that he wanted, which was
to change the world with these films. I was pretty impressed by, pretty
admirable. I felt, all right, let's go ahead and take a break
and we'll play preview for next week's show. In my lifetime, I have
recorded some sixty cases demonstrating the singular gift of my friend Sherlock Holmes. But
there were other adventures which, for reasons of discretion I have decided to withhold
from the public until this much data date. They involve matters of a dedicate
sunt sometimes scandalous nature, as will shortly become a film. Why did you
bring her here? I found this inner end two hundred twenty one beat Bake
Streets. One of you is Sherlock const whose We've never had a case like
this. We don't know who the woman is, we don't know what the
problem is. Don't you find that challenging? Quine as you like to put
it in your chronicles, The game is a foot. There's more to this
case than meets the eye. Has come to my attention that you are interested
in the whereabouts to a certain engineer. When I said drop this case,
it's not merely a suggestion, Kiowe from Rocknation, I swear to you I
saw it as clear as any blots are you clients? That's right. We'll
be back next week when they look at the private life of Sherlock Holmes,
which kicks off a whole month of discussions all about Sherlock Holmes's career vas seventies
Incarnations of the Master Sleuth till then I want to thank my co host Robin
Robert. So, Rob, what is the latest with you, sir?
I'm just finishing up my third degree in three years, Masters and nonprofit administration
should be done in August. After that, I don't know, but it
is my understanding that beyond this episode you may be hearing me speak again about
movies on the show. And I always love coming on and hanging out with
you. Of course, my kid whomever whoever you have as a guest co
host, which is great. So it's I think is the first time I've
done on with Robert, so it was a lot of fun. And remembert
how about yourself. I have my YouTube channel which keeps me busy on my
exploration of films. So if people want to check out the podcast I suppose
or vodcast I suppose you call it if it's a video, it's www dot
YouTube dot com slash Robert Bellissimo at the Movies and I'm also on Twitter at
rb at the Movies, a little different and Instagram and Facebook is the same
as the YouTube channel at Robert Bellissimo at the movies. So I do about
six episodes a month with guests where we just do deep dive explorations similar to
Mike and just exploring storytelling on film in general is the focus of the podcast,
as well as interviews with people who work in film and television and theater.
Yeah. So I'm also an actor and an acting teacher, and I
teach virtually still even in the what post pandemic world, So if you're looking
for a class, you could go to my website our Bellissimo dot CAA.
So this has been a treat, This has been great. Thanks so much
Mike for having me on, and Mike Rob it was nice to meet you.
I learned a lot and got to explore such a fantastic filmmaker. So
thanks for having me, Thank you, and thanks everybody for listening. You
want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of
the other shows I work on. They're all available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com.
Thanks especially to our patriarch community. If you want to join the community,
is it Patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the
Projection Booth take over the world. M M. Y