Kapo (1959) - Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

 

Once in a while I see a film that is deeply unsettling. In the case of Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1959 film called Kapo, I am not the first nor the last that will be troubled by it. In fact, in order to be respectful for the subject matter, I refrain from posting any screenshots from the film. I didn't feel right about searching through the film for artistic screen shots considering the subject matter. Kapo is about the Holocaust and is one of the first fictional films to deal with the subject in its entirety. There were a few films prior to it that dealt with parts of it, such as 1948’s The Search. In 1955, Alain Resnais made the documentary, Night and Fog which chillingly detailed the lasting horror of the event. In some circles, Night and Fog is the final and last word on the subject. In 1959, only 14 years after the Holocaust, two films would emerge in the same year. One was The Diary of Anne Frank, of course based on Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl and also on the dramatic stage play that appeared on Broadway in 1955. Pontecorvo’s film was an original work, with a screenplay written by Pontecorvo, who was Jewish, and Franco Solinas. In doing some research after watching the film, it turns out that Kapo is on the short list of the most divisive and troubling films in the history of cinema, not just for what's in it, but for what it started.

Pontecorvo brought his love of Italian neo-realism, and Rossellini in particular to Kapo, a film that concerns 14 year-old Edith (played by Susan Strasberg fresh from her stint on Broadway as Anne Frank), who is transported with her Jewish family from Paris to Auschwitz. Through some coincidences and unique occurrences, she obtains an alternate identity there and takes the name and number of a recently dead prisoner. She is now Nichole, a non-Jew with a criminal past. She gets sent to a work camp because of these events. While there, she does everything she can to stay alive, as a character suggests to her, but begins to break down morally and lose her dignity, as others warn her not to. Kapo concerns a very unique type of story that actually occurred throughout the Nazi concentration and work camps and one which I was never aware of until seeing the film. A Kapo was an inmate who was given a job by the SS to be barrack supervisor or warden and who dished out punishment to their fellow prisoners to keep them in line. A Kapo was treated better than most prisoners and had more access to food and other items of need. There are numerous cases following WWII in which Kapos were indeed charged with war crimes, much like the Nazis. In the film, Nichole, after selling her body and soul to achieve warmth and food, is offered the job of Kapo. She takes it.

What the film attempted to do, tell a fictional story replete with melodrama and martyrdom, was considered objectful in the worst sense. Famously, Jacques Rivette of The Cahiers du Cinema renounced the film wholeheartedly in an essay based on one specific scene. There’s a scene with a brief tracking shot where a woman named Terese (played brilliantly by Emmanuelle Riva) throws herself on the electrified barbed wire. Rivette wrote: "Look however in Kapo, the shot where Riva commits suicide by throwing herself on electric barbwire: the man who decides at this moment to make a forward tracking shot to reframe the dead body - carefully positioning the raised hand in the corner of the final framing - this man is worthy of the most profound contempt".

Famously French Critic Serge Daney was so in agreement with this paragraph at age 17 that he decided to become a film critic. Later in life, he wrote a fascinating essay on Rivette, Kapo (which he never even saw!!!) among other things regarding the limitations that art should take. He also highlights a scene in the well-known Rossellini film, Rome, Open City (1945). There’s a famous scene where Ana Magnani is gunned down in the street and the camera is at a particular angle where you can see her garters and underskirt as she lies there dead. Daney says regarding this scene: “(Rossellini) was hitting “below the belt”, but in such a new way that it would take years to understand towards which abyss it was taking us.” Both Rivette and Daney of course are referring to the "moral irresponsibility" of artistically framing up something that could or should be considered un-filmable, unless one wants to be considered sadistic or voyeuristic. Only recently, Quentin Tarantino was taken to task for his Inglorious Basterds (2009) both panned and praised, which contained highly objectionable material to some, regarding revenge related to Nazi atrocities. I think Kapo works on a similar but far more benign type of level, as I was less troubled with the dramatization and artistic sensibilities of the subject matter, and more over the morally troublesome portrayal of a Jew as the main antogonist of the film. Other Nazis in the film are at worst, faceless and at best, docile. Nichole is by far the perpetuity of evil in the way that she has turned into an animal, one which is capable of selling out her fellow prisoners in order to live. I struggled with this moral conundrum during the film and still do. This film stares you in the face and presents the viewer with a near unimaginable horror - that of the persecuted becoming the persecutor. I cannot deny that the film contains both potential to deeply move and infuriate. It’s both a masterpiece and a failed examination depending on your view. I don’t think it’s possible though to not be moved or troubled by it. It will definitely bring out a reaction to everyone who sees it. Pontecorvo would take the criticism from this film into his next film, The Battle of Algiers (1966), which is rightly praised for its hard-line, unsentimental look at the Algerian War.

I realize though, that I’ve spent an entire essay talking about a film that I cannot wholly recommend regarding its virtues. What I can say for sure, is that it is a landmark kind of film, one which film-viewers must see to determine what side of the argument they fall on. Is this melodramatic and objectionable exploitation or is it a vital and important work with commentary on one of the darkest periods mankind has ever known? For Pontecorvo, although he fails at times to get through the story without contrivances, he succeeds in telling an effective and engaging story that did occur in forms just like it. Morally troubling as it may be, Kapos existed. Their stories of the persecuted becoming the persecutors are some of the most morally difficult that I can think of. Perhaps this film’s greatest legacy then is telling a story that no one else has dared to tell ever since, for better or worse. I can't even imagine if someone tried to make this film today what untold numbers of people would put forth an outcry. I'm not sure any film on the Holocaust will ever be made without severe critiquing though. For me, the film’s unique place in history, its divisiveness and important centrality in the determination of whether art should bear a responsibility, make it essential.

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) - Directed by Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson's films seem to always balance a fine line between comedy and tragedy. Sometimes they spill over to one side or the other, but they usually remain well balanced. This one is about Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) who in his later years is trying to woo his wife (Anjelica Huston) back and reunite his pathetic kids (Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller) back into the fold.

I think the first half of the film plays more comedy. It's a very particular kind of comedy though. Anderson's actors are always trained at the Bill-Murray-Deadpan-Dry school of acting. Nearly every ounce of emotion is drained from the actor's faces and they deliver every line in a monotone, dry voice. This stone-faced acting can be referenced back to the "The Great Stone Face", Buster Keaton. He acted in his silent films with the driest, most stone-faced expression. Watch a film like The General and tell me there isn't a line drawn to Bill Murray and the others in this film.

What sets up the comedy is a mise-en-scene that is very manicured and perfected by Anderson. Everything about the sets, from the decor, the outfits, the hairstyles seems to add up to a greater purpose. Anderson sets up every shot in this symetrical fashion where he uses the entire frame to present us a picture, complete and an entity unto itself. Often he places several people across the frame in a row, or a single person in the middle of a wideshot. I think this creates an artificial appearance, a doll-house world in a way. So much care is placed to everything in every shot that we can't help but sense the artificiality of the world in which these characters live. It's this doll-house quality that sets up the comedy. But, it's an introverted comedy, not extroverted. Extroverted is The Marx Brothers, Dumb and Dumber. This is something else. Anderson's films remind me of the great Jacques Tati, whose "silent" comedies in the 50's and 60's are remarkable. I say silent in the fact that although sound is employed in the film, it's not dialogue that provides the comedy. It's the mise-en-scene and the actions and coincidences occurring in the scenes that are funny in a very amusing, whimsical way. I remember watching Tati's Play Time at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago several years ago in 70MM. I was awestruck at the massive use of widescreen to fill the frame with the set. Every inch of the frame was used to set-up the comedy and the effect of the whimsy. Tati was clearly a perfectionist in the way he created his artificial world. Anderson is similar in this way and took this "doll-house" approach to the extreme in his next film, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Anderson had a large set created of a side-cutout boat where the viewer can see all the rooms in the boat and everyone moving about. I think The Royal Tenenbaums is not quite to this extreme, but it's the way these characters move about within this world that creates both the comedy and the tragedy.

This is also a very self-aware and self-referential film, reminding me of the cinema of the French New Wave, particularly Jean-Luc Godard in films like Breathless, Band of Outsiders, and Masculin, Feminin and also Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating. These are films filled with in-jokes, cinema references, hipster moments of cool, and a pervading sense of self-awareness. That was what the The French New Wave was out to do. Break down the barriers of cinema and create movies for people who knew movies. They wanted to do things their own way and not follow the formulas. Anderson clearly enjoys making movies for people who like movies and doing it his way.



Some other motifs I noticed? One is the contant use of pink and red. It reflects the heart of the film and the emotions of the characters as they wade through the family garbage. At one point, one character actually bleeds his love for another. Everyone is pining for another and several hearts are either broken or will be broken throughout the film. Also there is the theme of the "place of respite". Characters retreat to closets, bathrooms, and even tents in order gain some peaceful moments away from the chaotic family dynamic. During the second half of the film, the tragedy comes more to the forefront and there's a pervading sense of melancholy. It's not like it turns on a dime, but the film does switch over midway through and changes tone.

I really love Wes Anderson's movies. I don't think any actor/actress will ever win an award in any of his films, but it's his sense of direction that I love to submit to. There's a sense that he has complete control of what his film is doing and where it's going.