Saturday, April 21, 2012

Saturday commute lxiii: we would, all, have said so




A thing that has unquestionably influenced my develop-
ment as a creator of films is water. I cannot conceive 
of cinema without water. .. Lying on the bottom of the 
skiff with Godefer, with the branches brushing our 
faces, I had a thrill very near to what I feel when 
watching a film which moves me deeply. I know we cannot 
go back upstream, but I am free to relive in my own fa-
shion the sensation of leaves stroking the end of my 
nose. For me that is what a good film is, the caress 
of foliage in a boat with a friend.


The "all" I have in mind were spilled out in clusters on the carpet of a college club library beneath the crackle and whir of a Pathé projector to see a bouncing box of light play images before them, that they would never forget. This was before this text was written, and they'd have said they'd known it all along, because of him.







              
                When you get
                to be grateful,
                you don't stop.

                The acquisition of
                gratitude is so
                different now, I
                wonder about its
                longevity, the dur-
                ability of meaning.
              
                How full is grati-
                tude now, how firm,
                how does it fare?





















Jean Renoir
Ma vie et mes films
1974
Norman Denny, translation
Atheneum, 1974©


ii  Water study series, Venice
     Lionel André, April, 2012






Friday, April 20, 2012

Like you, I do not wish this to be a posting on Jean Renoir






Like you, I am alerted to wince these days, when I encounter a passing reference to genius, for dread that the comment will be generically negligent and simply unwashed, a de facto slap in the face which is so characteristic of our post-Reagan culture. There is nothing like an arduous physical convalescence to restore one's belief in pillars - Normandy butter, scorched crusts of pungent San Francisco sourdough, slowly scrambled farm fresh eggs. I cite for you its turbulent model, the dreamer and a face that he had trusted, to signal it is safe to think of Jean Renoir.



Skinnysailors and their Bernese dog may spare us the portrait of Michel Simon from Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning, 1932) lest it fail to match our memory of this sweetest of Renoir's masterpieces. Hopefully, the 'clumsy' jests of Simon's scourging bête-noir of the bourgeoisie will suggest themselves in analogous mirth and warmth.

I "screened" a scrubbed facsimile of this film the other night, right here on this little laptop, completely stripped of those clicks and pops and the humane gathering with others beneath a 16mm projector of Janus reels which would so disturb the cinéaste of our time; and I must say, the perfectly buffed textures of the medium did not detract from the vividness of the underlying art. Whether new viewers will respond to Renoir's genius for modeling the clay of pure poetry in imagery, I can't guess, but they will see the work revealed more clearly than I ever did.


We don't do bouquets for guys in Virginia, confined to surgery's penalty box for weeks on end. One can get by surprisingly well on a well-stocked library of French cinema and French cuisine; and in case any reader might be fancying a new bloodstream, may I commend the endless antidotes of the Larousse Gastronomique, now in a new edition, which stood me so well through a collegiate sophomore year, when the appetites and pains of incarceration converge in classic concentration. I had ample time, just now, to ransack these sublime temptations of France in perfect peace, quite as much as Boudu trashed the household of the Lestingois, to its betterment through play.

Ultimately, the reason we don't wish this posting to be about Jean Renoir is that there is probably nothing less polite than a patient who has exploited his agonies to his advantage. I recommend the wearing of any restored sense of confidence in the loosest-fitting way, so that when clarifying butter with friends, for example, the presence of mind to make it a crisis will not have been lost. At the same time, the mention of either Renoir conjures, in its very sound, an affront of dangerous awareness, so perhaps it is just as well that our former "pleasure dome" of the cinema has been balkanised into laptop sequestrations. It doesn't mean that one may not heal, I don't suppose. 


And by the same token, to lie patiently, perfecting the invalided posture is only to cultivate a sound defense, against the canard of strengthening oneself in ostracism. It's only natural for society to object if one should be restored by enduring the very bêtise of discomfort it cannot bear to observe; and so only the most asymmetrical of tanlines can be countenanced on one's return. A disorderly T, a baggy speedo are just the things to shape the new complexion as one basks as Boudu did, in the comforts of the floor over the bed, the outdoors over the shelter. Let the hypocrisies of misery work both ways, Renoir proposes genially, and let the night be Friday if it must.


How it can be, as Renoir shows repeatedly in his cinema, that the turbulence of satire can resolve itself as the image of trust, is not a question to detain us from admiring that it is done. But, having begun with it as our model it is only seemly to conclude with statistical confidence in its proof. A handful of Friday evenings stored up in consec-utive deprivation gathers a great pressure upon the odds in favour of burnishing the night's reputation. It may even be, that the natural balance of things will usher remark on Renoir toward us, as if the blush of health might bear his signature in the margin. If nothing else, he is great for the smile.  






























Boudu sauvé des eaux
Les Film Sirius, 1932
Jean Renoir, direction
Jean Renoir, screenplay
  with Albert Valentin
René Fauchois, original play
Criterion Collection, 2005©



Thursday, April 19, 2012

Unknown knowns and sweet known unknowns

  



Men don't write what you find here very much. I think I understand, but any account for it would echo the chaffing heresy of Lorca's King of the Crickets. I'm glad to have been blogging in this no-man's-land, I've been fortunate in Laurent's habillement. Nobody suggested to me that I would draw the welcome of readers who are happy women. I'm rewarded. I am touched, and I learn, as from a drop of water.







Monday, April 16, 2012

A blog like this


A blog like this, of high periodic absorption and proportionately low public interactivity, is not a setting for a casual resort to personal privilege. That said, for the past 5 weeks the production of the blog has been taking place under incongruous physical and pharmaceutical distractions of a frustratingly lingering nature, and has proceeded more or less as if they were not present. They happen to be relevant, and it isn't in their nature to abate sud-denly. I have determined, therefore, to adopt a pub-lishing schedule more consistent with occurrences of diminished distraction, to what is hoped may be general approval.


Readers of any special needs - being Jeremy Young, not being Jeremy Young, living with the United States - should not hesitate to let them be known to the undersigned. Fine things have been done, in certain instances.

       





Meanwhile, we shall
always have coffee.









Small things





     first day
     no binding
     bandages
     so glad










Sunday, April 15, 2012

Family silver





            .. Ah!
reader! you open the page
my poems stare at you you
stare back, do you not? my
poems speak on the silver
of your eyes your eyes repeat
them to your lover's this
very night. Over your naked
shoulder the improving stars
read my poems and flash
them onward to a friend.

..







Frank O'Hara
A Pleasant Thought from Whitehead
1950
Donald Allen, editor
The Collected Poems
  of Frank O'Hara
op. cit.




Hurting by yourself, you say, at least is quieter





       but how
       would you
       know