Two Films by Philippe Garrel

 

The Virgin's Bed (1969)

Director: Philippe Garrel

Screenplay: Philippe Garrel

Cast: Zouzou as Marie / Marie Magdalène; Pierre Clémenti as Jesus; Tina Aumont as the Prisoner; Philippe Garrel as the Apostle; Jean-Pierre Kalfon as the Horseman

An Abstract Candidate

 

[Sung] Young Jesus goes to school carrying his cross under his shoulder.

Made after Le Révélateur (1968), but in sound, The Virgin's Bed imagines Jesus, already a grown man, born to a mortal woman and a God who he cries to about seeing the "shithole" below, his mother Marie scolding him for cursing, both of them on a beach on a bed, one which will return as a moving vehicle the camera and the characters ride on. Contrary to what you would presume from that description, this is not necessarily a blasphemous film, instead coming off as the most traditionally unconventional film in Philippe Garrel's filmography at this point.

Set in a vague non-time, the modern day in places but everyone dressed as still in old Nazareth, as psychedelic rock guitar jams score over the monochrome images, you feel sympathy for Jesus in the first hour of the film, or at least I did. This is a depressed Jesus who, even with a megaphone, is unable to talk or be listened to by anyone, only getting an apostle later who is the director himself. Even shouting "I am the saviour!" leads nowhere, as no on even opens a gate for him. Far from blasphemous, it is imagining Jesus Christ, with a crown of thorns, having to contemplate our era. Air raid sirens are heard, and gun fire and war is heard outside in the far distance. Shot in stark (beautiful) black and white, this reflects a very different world for the Christian figure to exist in, the film of the sixties but with a meaningful idea, even if played for moments of humour, of what the figure means if He came to a period like then.

This would have been fascinating if the film had stayed like this in tone. The Virgin Mary is now the disappointed mother who irons his shirts, but Mary Madeleine (or her stand-in) is there for him still, when he is cold and hungry, who exchanges sexual pleasures for stones but eventually bonds with him and joins him. A song, almost sounding like Nico (who Garrel dated) is heard at one point as he wanders outside in despair, and it is haunting. Far from feeling like an anti-Christian film, it feels, however, a film, regardless of Garrel's beliefs at the time, where he has a Jesus a figure out of time and imagines what His place would be in the then-current world.

Things take a left term when Jesus kills his mother, and this is not a film with a clear narrative more so afterwards, with Jesus wondering with a mysterious box onwards into the world. I admit to loving the "surreal" films of this era, the sixties and the seventies, even those which meandered like this one, but here, there would have been a greater interest if this had focused on its initial premise. Even when this tries to stray back to this, such as leading to a execution area in a cave with firing squads, where Madeleine ends up with, it feels unfocused to a detriment.

It definitely feels a strange outlier to Philippe Garrel, one of the few films too where there is a moving camera and long panning shots as well as he was clearly finding his technical side as well. This is a curiosity to see, but it does at the same time feel like an awkward match for a director, having seen other films from this era, who grew with L'enfant secret (1979), the start of his real career trajectory. This is a compelling piece - there is a striking image, with Jesus facing the camera on a crucifix, at night on the beach - but as with many auteurs, many have weird one-offs and dead ends in their career, and The Virgin's Bed is likely Philippe Garrel's. They are divisive creations, expressing flaws or their creator's personality even by accident. Here it is thankfully just a reveal that Garrel prodded at interesting ideas even here but, with the more intimate aspects with a depressed and human Jesus, he found more appeal and worth in drama and dealing with emotions than the surreal.

Abstract Spectrum: Surreal

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

*****

Les hautes solitudes (1974)

Director: Philippe Garrel

Cast: Jean Seberg; Nico; Tina Aumont; Laurent Terzieff

An Abstract Candidate

 

Les hautes Solitudes was the first Philippe Garrel film I saw, on a fuzzy VHS rip, and had a very negative reaction to. My younger self was not prepared for a film like this, so I am not surprised I once gave this a one out of five stars.

Another of the films with neither diegetic or non-diegetic sound, this feels closer to an art installation, snapshots of figures like Nico and Jean Seberg, a figure in cinema's history either portrayed in the shadow of Breathless (1960), her most iconic role, or her early death. She was a figure with a history of tragedy, mental illness and being affectively hounded by the FBI for her relations with the Black Panthers. This film for many is going to be more important in the context of Seberg - post Breathless, her career was halted greatly, is obscure with questionable sounding films, and effectively with her in exile from the United States baring occasional films like Airport (1970).

Everyone though - almost all women among the figures onscreen - are filmed in silence, all in the point of melancholia, the world around them mostly in close-up, dank and shrouded in darkness. It does feel like one is breathing in despair in the close-in or close-up shots. However, and whilst I have grown to now see the film's virtues, this is one case where a lack of sound personally distracts from the point even if the structure has incredible virtues. This is likely as much me as a viewer, feeling disconnect by this technical decision, but it does force one arms length too, where someone onscreen is actually crying in great grief, without previous context and without sound, to hear her voice, to which to care for her.

Les hautes Solitudes is not a film to express fully in text because it strips moving images down to basic images, human figures as figures, you need to see and think of in context to seeing them. It is a difficult film, and one whilst I admire feels "tough" and even obscure at times. It is a work I have gained finally an admiration for, but it strips away perceived markers in mainstream cinema of what it should present, something which would be installation art nowadays as mentioned, and could be allowed to breath if able to be seen constantly in such an environment. My coldness is that, to empathise with others, I perceive the world through more than my eyes and vision, whilst here it is a challenge to how one perceived another person with just the eyes, in itself a successful one but also one which raises questions of itself, as these moving portraits of people in silence, in their quietest and even bleakest moments, are cut off (for the most part) from outside and aspects within this that would increase emotional connection. Maybe that was a point, but Jean Seberg in particular offers this uneasy disconnect in her involvement as, with accidental prophecy, this forecast her own death in the closing images, perceived as suicide. Reality, and real history, forces this piece to have emotional relevance, but by itself, Les hautes Solitude is merely a reflection of emotion which is an issue to debate.

It is, without a doubt, a truly compelling piece, once which without trivialising it, went past in viewing easily for me in terms of time, showing how far I have come as a viewer of these films. It is truly abstract, but sometimes in experimenting with the visual form, you have to ask whether the results will cause one to question the film's purpose. This is a work I would likely grow even more appreciative of, but it is a film where it causes one to question its decisions as well.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Contempative

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

L'enfant secret (1979)

 

Director: Philippe Garrel

Screenplay: Philippe Garrel

Cast: Anne Wiazemsky as Elie; Henri de Maublanc as Jean-Baptiste; Xuan Lindenmeyer as Swann; Cécile Le Bailly as Chloé

Canon Fodder

 

I have a camera instead of a heart.

A man named Jean-Baptiste (Henri de Maublanc) meets a young woman named Elie (Anne Wiazemsky), who had a son with a male actor. By herself, Jean-Baptiste takes interest in her, and they fall in love. Influenced by his real relationship with the singer Nico, with L'enfant secret Philippe Garrel moved away from his earlier experimental films, where he would have films with no soundtrack let alone dialogue, to dialogue driven dramas.

Rather than a straight forward narrative however, L'enfant secret presents the daily turmoil of a wife and filmmaker husband, struggling in their lives. Randomness happens in this world as in real life, such as whilst abroad with Jean-Baptiste being beaten up on the street, having already had a sour moment with Elie where she left him alone. Some major events are also unavoidable, as Jean-Baptiste, working an independent filmmaker, has a mental breakdown at one point and ends up in an asylum as a result, even having shock therapy treatment which comes off as destructive as it is meant to help him before he is allowed out, continuing the narrative. Ultimately the pair will continue to fracture, partially due to his work but because they slowly drift apart. This is a bleak film without being morose or depressive however, least in the sense this is about everyone trying to cope with the world around them, be it even harmful in the end, and how life will continue even if sometimes it does not end happily. Drugs are a frequent factor in this world, be it taking too much LSD and ending up in the mental asylum, or a young working woman we briefly met who uses cocaine to get through the days. The film does not feel gloomy about the end of love either, merely that it is inevitable, and in one of the it's many lengthy takes, one is forced in contemplation sitting on a chair in a corridor. Garrel never feels miserable for the sake of miserable here.

What Garrel took from his earlier work as well, here also shooting in stark monochrome, is a very still style. In fact, he removed the moving camera shots from the likes of The Virgin's Bed (1969) and similar aesthetic flourishes, instead using very minimalistic shot compositions. He embraced dialogue fully, contrasting it with a precise aesthetic style, minimalist, which means the film still has a very slow and contemplative tone. It is, paradoxically, as difficult for me to experience as the more avant-garde films before this from Garrel were, yet still remains the most accessible in the end as, once I worked with its flow and mood, the emotional power combined with the developed directorial style is the deepest to embrace.

The influence of his previous work, which was without even sound for the likes of this, is still felt in that he has contemplative and long scenes which can become silent again.  A lengthy post asylum embrace uses this, for example, for meaning, as this has been a long separation in context, making sense throughout the film to have these moments. When music is actually used, it is good, used sparingly for moments of emotional desolation like how the central couple break up. It is an impressive piece, and this early in his career, Philippe Garrel would continue to perfect this style over his career. Working with his films, and find the virtues within them from contemplation, I have gained an admiration now for him as a filmmaker.

Le révélateur (1968)

 

Director: Philippe Garrel

Screenplay: Philippe Garrel

Cast: Stanislas Robiolles as The Child; Laurent Terzieff as The Father; Bernadette Lafont as The Mother

An Abstract List Candidate

 

Philippe Garrel, for better and for worse, lives in the camp of film directors who sustained a lengthy career, decades, beloved by cineastes in film festivals. Unfortunately, for worse this is a position, least in Britain, where his existence a vague thing as films like Le révélateur were not getting distributed here, let alone the later dramatically focused films. Like Hong Sang-Soo in South Korea, up until the recent streaming era a film may appear randomly as an attempt to distribute him Regular Lovers (2004) got an Artificial Eye distribution), and into the 2010s this is tried again when interest was taken as him as a great under seen auteur (Jealousy (2013) got a Studio Canal release). But there was not a real access to his work; even the streaming model, whilst offering more open access availability to these films is based on a limited license, more of a long term structured endless film festival than a permanent option, even if we have to thank MUBI for getting him more attention in their streaming of his career.

Another aspect that has to be addressed is that his early films are also not like the others. As with some directors, or any creator, it feels Philippe Garrel was trying to find himself, and having had seen at least one work of this era once in a fuzzy VHS rip, when it was insanely difficult to see any of them, Garrel had an experimental period early in his career that needs to be addressed differently. It is not the most difficult of work if you look at The Virgin's Bed (1969), the most overtly unconventional, but others like Le révélateur have one simple little change which really makes this abstract in a distinct and difficult way. Garrel's experimental period is fascinating as an outsider to his work as, from the influence of the likes of F.W. Murnau's Tabu (1931)¹, even when he goes to dialogue driven dramas which make up his main career, he kept aspects from these earlier films in style. Le révélateur is entirely without dialogue , but goes further than this in that it is not a silent film, as a pre-sound era film which had a musical track performed aside with the movie, but that it has no actual sound.

Initially you have a young couple onscreen in stark monochrome, the wife (Bernadette Lafont) clearly suffering from a trauma of the past as her husband (Laurent Terzieff) circles her, bearing in mind the obvious issue to address being how a viewer tries to "read" this film. They have a young boy, presumed in visual language to be their son, and as interpretation is going to be thing to lean on for this review, I can only wonder how much of this verging on a narrative of a child who watches his family collapse and is eventually taken away (metaphorically) into adoption. If this case, this is not even due to abuse or neglect, just the radiating ennui of the parents the cause.

That this also feels post-apocalyptic complicates the film. Later on this family will wander through field in the countryside, in a time before Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1979) was ever a glint in the Russian auteur's eye. You have, in a film of striking images in striking black and white photography, a scene of the young son wandering an underground tunnel, close to one for a nuclear bunker, only to find someone tied to a post outside he sets free. It is entirely abstract, undoubtedly, more as a film that it requires to be decoded. Whilst undeniably a film belonging of no other time than when it was shot, it nonetheless feels timeless, only that its type of cinema and the materials used to make it expressing a time of the past, all whilst Bernadette Lafont looks practically proto-Goth in her doll black dress. You as a viewer have to interject meaning for yourself, which is part of where the film takes a direction different from others.

I openly admit too that my eyes betrayed me a couple times during the viewing, in danger of closing to go to sleep. That is not an insult to the film - factors could be involved like tiredness - but as much of this is how my eyes struggled against an unexpected change that forced them to have to work harder. This film's biggest technical aspect has a challenging trait that is surprising. Considering how human beings visually communicate greatly, Garrel's films from this era with no soundtracks at all do force one to question how we process said information with our eyes. I will say right now that sound, or even music, would have been fascinating to have as it would have completely changed the tone of Le révélateur. As it stands, it does not necessarily draw a person towards these moving images as a film without sound, but has the potential to alienate them, or for me keep me at arm's length and view the film as more unconventional, forcing me to have to really think about the images or, if I merely let the images drift along, find them fed and influenced by the sound of even having sat still to watch a film play in front of me. Even memories and dreams for me have a perception of sound, whilst barring for someone born deaf or developing the condition, true silence is not a factor many people will experience, processing information of the world around them in sound as much as visually. Le révélateur caused the eyes to have to study the images without audio signifiers. Even the lack of music and extensive dialogue of a later Garrel film has its own information to unpack, whilst here this is a type of cinema which challenges in a different direction.

Even what is onscreen is a factor. One of the most famous figures who took this approach was Stan Brakhage, the American avant-garde filmmaker who had no soundtracks, but notably, whilst he shot films involving the people and world around him, not only were his films usually short features, but he constructed many around abstract visuals based on shapes and colour. Sometimes Le révélateur takes advantage of its mandatory silence. It is not subtle to have, as a scene, to have the child watching a stage play of the parents' breaking relationship, but subtly is not necessarily a good thing. The attempts to gain more from subtly are however effected for this viewer having distinct aspects of himself which effect perception, namely as an autistic person the senses are more alert and amplified, leaving a film like this entirely built around the eyes as having a more radical form to interpret. (Let alone the fact reading facial expressions and mood is drastically different from other people too). Even for other viewers where this is not the case, how you interpret these images is going to be radically different from mainstream cinema, as this does not follow these rules of interpretation following a technique that tells a clear narrative.

The silent structure, and that this becomes a series of vignettes, presents a challenge if you entirely stick to contrasting this to a mainstream narratively structured movie as an alien technique, even different from later Garrel films. Certainly, Le révélateur has a distinct style, the monochrome with many of his films having a striking aesthetic look, the film compelling even if the lack of any sound did alienate me from the intimacy of the images. Instead, it was spent considering them, even now as time has passed and memory plays with them, such as the young boy near a river with swans. The film, if it was indeed a metaphor for a broken family, does work in mind to its structure and what is presented. The scenes' length may prove distracting for some, but images do stand out that reflect a sense of coldness and sadness, such as two of the boy being moved on platforms, one on an unknown form and the other in the back of a van, with the camera by him moving with him, as his parents disappear from the side. Throughout this does present a couple in his parents who were not in a good shape to raise him, and for a film which I struggled with, images and thoughts come to me when composing the review that express admiration, and if a theme like this was the intention, that challenge proves a reward even if the film, ironically, has such an open form to allow some wildly varying attitudes to what it means intentionally or by accident. Even if this, truthfully, still is the experimental period where Philippe Garrel had to figure out the direction from his career, my appreciation of him as someone new to his work admires the experimentation and how, as mentioned earlier, traits of this film would appear in his later style still and find a place where he could design them fully. This felt necessary for him and sits as a film unique in the catalogue for its own sake too.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Contemplative/Distancing

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

 

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1) “Garrel is the last of the primitives –

He has always liked The Wedding March (Stroheim, 1928) and Tabu (Murnau, 1931)” –Antoine Rakovsky. [Taken from the following MUBI article HERE.]