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Toby Dammit (1968) & La Jetée (1963) film notes by Tova Gannana for the Lynwood Theatre

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Toby Dammit (1968) feels like a hangover, a warning. In the future there will be fog machines, an airport filled with forgotten passengers, film producers as the only reliable adults, an awards show with fake sentiment, alcohol and barbiturates, a devil who wants to play catch with a white ball, a fast car that can’t get you where you want to go. Toby Dammit takes place in Italy. Everyone speaks French. Toby Dammit is an actor. He is famous; he doesn’t want to comply. “You swore you’d leave me alone,” he says to one and all. The film is specific and general. Everyone a stand in is replaceable, forgettable. Toby arrives by plane. The multicolored sky is peaceful. Toby enters an airport that no one is meant to leave, as though the building was their destination. Photographers huddle and snap photos of Toby. He cringes. Life in this film is weird. Toby acts weird, throwing his blonde hair around like a pair of hips. He is an icon who doesn’t want attention. A capitalist who is an anarchist, a nihilist who is a believer. He contradicts because he is the future. A wet rag squeezed dry, he is a personality not a person. Toby is making a film because he was promised a Ferrari. He is a guest on a TV show without an audience. Two men in lab coats turn dials for fake laughter. The host of the show crawls on hands and knees out of the frame. Toby is interviewed by a woman sitting off camera. He enjoys answering her questions. This is how he sees evil and temptation. The devil is not a black cat but a little girl in a white dress. Never alone, Toby is driven from one event to the next. His first night in Italy ends at an awards show he can’t wait to leave. The room is filled with the grotesque and bloated. A door to the netherworld has opened. Toby may have once been a great actor, but no longer. He’ll work for the keys to a car. He leaps from the stage before his acceptance speech. Like a maniac Toby drives his Ferrari through an Italian town all tucked in for the night. The only people out are a crew of electricians hanging a street light. Toby can’t find the road back to Rome. The road he is on wraps around the town from one dead end to another. Toby pulls over and cries. No one hears him. He yells louder. There is no life left in Toby. Toby Dammit is like the day after, a day that never ends.

La Jetée (1963) - The Criterion Collection

La Jetée (1963) begins at the airport with a family waiting on the tarmac. La Jetée, shot in black and white, is mostly still photographs. Toby Dammit, shot in carnival colors, is all movement. Watching one after the other is like switching channels. In both these films the future is already here. La Jetée takes place in Paris with people speaking German. The narration is in English. The people who have survived WWIII live underground and perform experiments. They are not actors and producers. They are scientists and their subjects trying to time travel. The action in La Jetée is memory. To remember is an act itself. There will always be a nostalgia for the time before. In Toby Dammit, Toby knows he is doomed and drives towards his death. In La Jetée, a man with no name is given a choice. When does he want to live, in the past before the war or the future? He is dangerous to the scientists because his memories are strong. Toby Dammit is dangerous only to himself. As humans we think of ourselves or of others, our personal impact or how we are doing as a collective. Both films are about not being able to escape the present. No one can put their life on pause. Time simply moves on.


La Strada (1954) film notes by Tova Gannana for the Lynwood Theatre

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Water represents life and death, hardship and fortune. La Strada (1954) begins at the beach. A young woman, Gelsomina (Giulietta Masina), carries kindling on her back. She wears a cape.  The wind blows it open as she walks alone with the sound of the waves. Running to meet her, Gelsomina’s little sisters call out, “Gelsomina! Mother says to come home right away. There’s a man here. He came on a big motorcycle. He says Rosa is dead.” She follows her sisters, running towards her fate. Zampanò (Anthony Quinn) doesn’t look at her. Smoking a cigarette, he leans against their house. He looks as poor as they are. His jacket and hat are rough, his face lined from scowling and squinting. He doesn’t need to do any convincing. Gelsomina’s mother’s speech sounds prepared, “Gelsomina, you remember Zampanò who took Rosa away with him? My poor daughter. I’ll never even see where they buried her. She’s dead, poor thing. She was so beautiful, so good. She could do everything.” One daughter is the same as the next. Not because this unnamed mother is unfeeling but because she has to make do without. She says to Zampanò, “See how much my daughter Gelsomina looks like her? We’re so poor. I told you, she’s not like Rosa. But she’s a good girl, poor thing. She’ll do what she’s told. She just came out a little strange. But if she eats everyday, maybe she’ll get better.” Her faith in Zampanò is medieval. He has not returned one daughter to her safe and sound, and yet she sends off another with him. She turns to Gelsomina, “You want to go with Zampanò and take Rosa’s place? He’ll teach you a trade. You’ll earn some money. And one less mouth to feed around here wouldn’t be bad. Zampanò’s a good man. He’ll treat you well. You’ll travel the world. You’ll sing and dance. And look what he gave me: 10,000 lire.” A sister stands behind Gelsomina while her mother talks. Not far away is the sea. There is no way out for any of them but through Zampanò. He is the road. Gelsomina’s mother isn’t asking if she wants to go; she is already holding Zampanò’s money. Gelsomina’s mother is promising her daughter a future that neither of them has a hand in or any power. Zampanò listens, unfazed as Gelsomina’s mother talks. 

Best Actor

Zampanò doesn't show Gelsomina the world; he shows her the outskirts of Italy. He doesn’t teach her a trade; he beats one into her. He doesn’t pay her; he lets her eat the food she cooks for him. Gelsomina is like a circus bear though her ankle chain is invisible. She cares for him because she has no one to care for. She is loyal to him because that is her character. Like Rosa, Gelsomina will have a breaking point from which she will not return. The road is not linear. It is circular. We go forward, and we go back to where we came from. Gelsomina takes Rosa’s place on the road, and she ends with Rosa’s fate. 

Zampanò repeats his act in every town. He sleeps with women and drinks too much wine. He is all instinct and no thought. Gelsomina wants to unshackle herself emotionally and spiritually. Chains are part of Zampano's act. He breaks them across his chest by flexing his muscles and pulling the chain apart. What chains him to his nature he can’t unhook. He is hooked on his physical strength. He doesn’t question; he acts. Gelsomina tells him, “You have to think.” She means that he should think of her as valuable not only for the coins her clowning brings in. Once she runs away from Zampanò only to be found by him. He won’t give her up. The road they travel never arrives in any center but circumvents, keeping them on the edge. They are outsiders, foragers with no place to bathe or wash their clothes. The dust and dirt of the road accumulates. Zampano and Gelsomina carry the road with them. People who come to their shows are ordinary. Willing to laugh, they share their food with them and pay them for their comedy. The townspeople are also outsiders. They are poor and have no road to travel. They have children, they own taverns, they survive their husbands' deaths. They are happy to be entertained. They sympathize and offer help. They don’t pity. 

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Zampanò and Gelsomina join a circus. Gelsomina wants Zampanò to teach her how to play the horn. She begins to get her footing. When she goes in front of an audience she feels that all the world's a stage. She asks Zampanò about Rosa. Her ghost haunts the road. Life is about change. Zampanò resists and is taunted by a tightrope walker, the Fool (Richard Basehart) who makes fun of his one act. Zampanò is chained to the past. Connections with women are shallow and brief. Gelsomina picks up the Fool’s melody, a melancholy tune. The Fool plays it on his violin. Gelsomina masters it on her horn. As she plays it everywhere, that tune becomes how she will be remembered. The Fool picks on Zampanò in a way Gelsomina never could. Zampanò is brutal but not inhuman. The Fool tells Gelsomina that Zampanò must like her or he would have left her. She tries again and again to show him her value. His vision is only as far as the next town. Gelsomina is the most adaptable to the road. She changes with each experience. She learns what she can, she makes friends, she easily loves. Zampanò is rigid. He has his act. He is unable to listen to anyone or share anything of himself. This is his mistake. There is an end to every road. In La Strada the road ends at the water, the place where the road began. Gelsomina is no longer with Zampanò. He has lost her like he lost Rosa. No other human beside him, he is alone with the sound of the waves licking at the shore. He has eroded his life. He clutches at the sand.


Eyes Without A Face (1960) by Tova Gannana for the Lynwood Theatre

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In Andre Bazin’s 1952 essay on Italian Neorealism we read,“Indeed, art aims to go beyond reality, not to reproduce it. And this is even truer of film because of its technical realism, its ability to reproduce reality so easily.” Stories taken from real life are rendered as fiction; they are a re-creation of events. We know all this and yet what we see on the screen we believe. The early German films relied on lighting. Casting shadows created the feeling the film itself was alive. Films like art are one of humankind's great creations, a contribution back to the universe for being created. Bazin began his 1951 essay, “Cinema and Theology,” with the line, “The Cinema has always been interested in God.” Bazin wrote about the relationship between man and God depicted in film, about power and punishment, miracles and being saved. In Eyes Without A Face (1960), Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) has a reputation in Paris. He may not be known at the Café de Flore, but where there are titles and money he is. Like a vulture, Génessier circles high above in the highest Parisian circles. No surprise when he spares no one in order to get what he wants, a new face for his daughter whose face was disfigured in a car crash caused by him. Godlike to himself, he doesn't see the humanity in other people. Genessier values the ways others can be of value to him.

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Eyes Without A Face begins at night with a car on the road and a nervous driver behind the wheel. Louise (Alida Valli) wears a pearl choker at her throat. In the back seat is the body of a young woman disguised in a fedora and a trench coat. The young woman, with no face, has on no shoes. The way she is dragged to the river by Louise once the car is parked shows how important she must have been. Eyes Without A Face is about the faceless, the nameless, the ones whose bodies throughout history have been used and discarded when no longer useful. It is about a father not motivated by love but obsessed with control. Determined to fix what he has broken, he takes without asking. Eyes Without A Face is about how a body can turn into just parts. Génessier and his secretary Louise work as a team. She is indebted to him for fixing her face. Her debt allows her to do horrific things. At his estate Génessier keeps dogs of many breeds in concrete cages. White doves are kept in the basement. These animals who want long walks and fresh air are denied their freedom. He keeps them because he can. Society assumes Genessier is a great important doctor, a respected citizen. A mother asks him to save her young son's eyesight. Genessier saves his true character for his personal operating room where he uses his scalpel to remove the faces of the young women Louise has kidnapped for him and etherized on his table. 

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Edna Grüber (Juliette Mayniel), a student with no connections arrives in Paris. She needs a place to live and is picked up by Louise with the promise of a room to rent. Edna’s friend noticed that Louise wears a pearl choker; she later tells this to the police. As Louise drives Edna farther out of Paris the tension builds. Louise last drove with a dead girl in the backseat. In front, Edna senses that something is not right. She says nothing because she is polite. Instead, Edna turns her fear to hope. Her fear was founded. Edna ends up dead. Doctor Génessier’s experiment is successful for the short time that his daughter Christiane’s (Édith Scob) tissue accepts Edna’s face as her own. Christiane wastes away in her room. She can’t leave because of the state of her face and what her father has told Paris about her fate in the car crash. Génessier does not raise his voice or his fists. His violence is in his mind. Christiane is his property the way his dogs are, the way Edna became. 

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One can’t participate in society without a face. One doesn’t need limbs, hair, some organs or even teeth. A face is like a heart or a brain. Like style, a face signifies individuality. Our faces are one of God’s greatest gifts. The idioms, eyes are the windows to the soul and the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body, tell us the significance of a face. The horror of Eyes Without A Face is that these young women could lose their faces and survive. Doctor Génessier doesn’t care if they live or die. One ends up in the river. One leaps from a window. To him, their fate is that he wanted their face. What happens to them after makes no difference. In 1960 plastic surgery as a cosmetic enhancement was taking off. To have a pointy nose, ears that were flat, eyelids that didn’t droop, were things people saved for and splurged on. What made us ourselves wasn’t celebrated. This too is a way our bodies are treated as parts. Today, advertisers use computer generated faces to sell us things. Sometimes we spot these fakes. They look too perfect, without warmth and style, faces without eyes. They are corporate tools; blood doesn’t flow through their veins


Gimme Shelter (1970) film notes by Tova Gannana for the Lynwood Theatre

Gimme Shelter (1970 film) - Wikipedia

1969, The Rolling Stones were young, their audience was younger, the decade was almost over. The light on Mick Jagger on stage is red. He is impossibly thin-hipped, chiseled, with a long haired sensuality. Look too long and you’ll start to fall under some kind of spell. 

Gimme Shelter (1970) – Journeys in Classic Film

Since the 1950’s we have been raised by television. Shown who we are and who we can become, the box makes people famous like the Rolling Stones. Gimme Shelter (1970) by Albert and David Maysles is an experimental film about a rock 'n' roll band and their audience. The Maysles knew they wanted to make a film experience. The audience watching the film sees what the audience watching the Rolling Stones in concert is seeing. All that goes right, the surge of energy felt through the music, and all that goes wrong, the drugs and the violence, can be felt by both the crowd in the film and the film audience. Time is erased through the shared experience of the viewer inside the film and outside. Albert Maysles  said, “Everytime I see it, my primary feeling is oh my god those poor kids. Youngsters with all kinds of possibilities of youth. What’s happened to their idealism. So much of it seemed to be washed away in drugs. So it’s a sad story.”

There is the concert that goes well at Madison Square Garden and the concert that is a disaster at Altamont. There are the kids who are on drugs and in love and the kids who are on drugs on a bad trip. Altamont is compared to Woodstock, a movement claiming love, sex, peace, drugs, and rock n’ roll. There is the illusion that Woodstock was without violence and the illusion that Altamont could be peaceful. The Stones and the other bands who perform at Altamont fly in by helicopter, the kids who come as the audience to Altamont arrive by car, drivers snaking across the landscape, caught on film by a camera in the Rolling Stones’ helicopter. There are the known faces in the bands and the unknown faces in the crowd. The film takes place in public and is littered in moments that feel lonely. Mick Jagger on stage falling apart at the microphone clearly in distress over what he is seeing in the crowd before him, singing the last lines to Under My Thumb, “I pray that it’s all right,” just before Meredith Hunter is murdered by the Hells Angels.

Goodbye to Love: Gimme Shelter (1970) — Talk Film Society

Gimme Shelter shows people who were ordinary. Who knows what happened to them? There are people loving, entwined on a blanket, a woman blowing bubbles, a man walking with an American flag, a child being held by an adult who looks like he cares about him. There are the people who are freaking out. A scaffold looks unsteady above the crowd where concert goers have climbed to get a better view. A man in white, streamers hanging from his hair, dances violently atop a speaker. The scene feels nothing like a peaceful gathering, but like something witchy brewing in a caldron. Everyone wears a uniform, divided by the Hells Angels in their namesake vests and the hippies who wear what they wear. A naked woman barrels like a bear towards the stage, exposed and out of her mind like she has no mind of her own. We don’t know her name or anything else about her; she represents a movement of Americans on drugs, a reminder that LSD didn’t fix anything. In the October 1966 issue of Playboy Hebert Gold wrote, “In America we now live in a drug culture. It is estimated that six dozen mood pills were consumed per person in 1966. Dracula is blurting chemicals into our blood streams, not sucking the blood out.” At the end of the sixties Psychedelia had gone mainstream, sold at Macy’s and bought by suburbanites. 

Gimme Shelter (film 1970) - Wikipedia


Gimme Shelter asks questions rather than narrates. It captures rather than dictates the story. We are aware of the camera as we are aware of the Rolling Stones. There is a surrealism to the reality of the film. The Maysles and the editor Charlotte Zwerin film the Rolling Stones watching the dailies on Zwerin’s Steenbeck, “Can you slow it down?” Jagger asks in order to see the murder at Altamont which took place while he was onstage. The Maysles show the Rolling Stones perform in slow motion, the crowd in a trance as the song “Love in Vain” by Robert Johnson is sung by Jagger. The film is full of parallels. Madison Square Garden inside feels orderly. Altamont outside is utter chaos. On arrival at Altamont, Mick Jagger takes a punch to the face. Why this happened is not explained. The axis of the film is the end of the decade; the band and the concerts are the reason and the excuse. The film absorbs everything in its path. There are people the masses want to emulate without knowing who these people are, without knowledge of self in order to not lose oneself to those you emulate. Rock 'n' roll is the perfect set up. The stage above, the crowd below. Drugs and alcohol passed around in both circles. On stage there is money being made, in the crowd is youth and inexperience. There is no wisdom because there isn’t time for that. Gimme Shelter captures all of this on the cusp. Change was happening. The American lifestyle would shift again out of one decade and into the next.