Editor’s Note: I’ve decided to begin posting some reviews of films screening at Hot Docs 2009 early, hopefully helping anyone attending make some decisions about what to see.
Paris 1919 is screening on Friday May 1 at 7:00pm and Sunday May 10 at 11:00am at the Isabel Bader Theatre.
Paris 1919 (Director: Paul Cowan): Having read the book by Margaret MacMillan on which this documentary is based, I was a little dubious upon hearing that director Cowan would be using re-enactments to create the atmosphere of the Versailles Peace Conference. But wisely, he chose to use these strictly as atmosphere, letting the archival footage and especially the strong narration by Canadian actor R.H. Thomson carry the weight of the story.
In the early months of 1919, the world, weary of fighting, gathered in Paris to hammer out a peace accord. But the Great War ended in an armistice, not a surrender, and so there was much at stake for all the parties. The old empires had collapsed and into the vacuum stepped a man promising self-determination for all the peoples of the world. US president Woodrow Wilson offered his own version of Obama-like hope, especially to the smaller nations of the world who had heretofore been the pawns of imperial powers. The defeated Germans also hoped that Wilson’s steady hand would deliver peace with justice. Alas, it was not to be.
Instead, Britain and France were determined to bleed Germany dry for war reparations. Both countries had suffered enormously, especially France, and they had little regard for the sufferings of Germany. Voters in both countries were putting enormous pressure on their leaders, David Lloyd George of Britain and Georges Clemenceau of France, to bankrupt Germany as punishment for her guilt in starting the war. In contrast, Wilson was obsessed with the idea of establishing a League of Nations, a body that would arbitrate disputes between nations in the hope of preventing war. His idealism and naivete were soon challenged, and gradually he made many compromises in order to secure support from the other leaders for the League.
The end result was disastrous for Germany and ultimately for Europe and the world. Maps were redrawn displacing millions of people, assets were seized and monetary damages demanded. The German delegation went home angry and humiliated. In the years that followed, the German people’s resentment was ripe for exploitation and rising nationalism soon engulfed the whole country, leading to Nazism and another world war.
Cowan’s film couldn’t have encompassed all the various negotiations that went on at Versailles, and huge chunks of MacMillan’s book are simply passed over, including the fate of countries like Poland and Turkey. But he captures the essence of the power struggle between the leaders, and makes some great choices in the re-enactments. By focusing on minor characters like Harold Nicolson and especially economist John Maynard Keynes, we get a real feel for what it was like for the bureaucrats labouring in smoky rooms to untie the Gordian knot of European grievances, especially when they felt their leaders were pursuing the wrong course.
I think the best compliment I can pay to Cowan’s film is to say that it left me wanting more, and for that, I will return to Margaret MacMillan’s excellent book, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World.
Official web site of the film
(8/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs09,
history,
war,
worldwar1
I’ve been dipping into Pauline Kael’s Deeper Into Movies lately and came across this delicious quote:
There’s a good deal to be said for finding your way to moviemaking—as most of the early directors did—after living for some years in the world and gaining some knowledge of life outside show business. We are beginning to spawn teen-age filmmakers who at twenty-five may have a brilliant technique but are as empty-headed as a Hollywood hack, and they will become the next generation of hacks, because they don’t know anything except moviemaking.
She said that in 1969 in the context of reviewing documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman’s High School. Wiseman had come to film after a career as a law professor and urban planner, and definitely came to his films with some ideas about the world. Kael would probably have a lot to say about some of today’s young directors, many of whom grew up comfortable with the tools of filmmaking but who have yet to find anything distinctive to actually say about anything.
What do you think? Can you give me some examples and counter-examples of young filmmakers with nothing (or something) to say?
UPDATE: Oh wait, there’s more! From a rather unfavourable review of Canada’s own Alan King’s A Married Couple:
[Y]oung filmmakers, who are rarely writers but are hooked on technology, love an approach in which the thinking out in advance is minimal—an approach in which you shoot a lot of footage and then try to find your film in it. Young filmmakers generally know almost nothing about how to handle actors, but probably all filmmakers have unhappy or “unfulfilled” friends eager to have a movie made of their lives; fame is probably the cure they seek.
Tagged as:
paulinekael
I came across the writing of indie director Alex Cox about a year ago in Film Comment magazine, where he writes a regular column. I’d only seen a couple of his films and had no real idea of what his filmmaking principles were, so to speak. But reading his writing about what films he liked made me want to know more about him. He is also a fine writer, so I knew reading a full-length book from him would be a pleasure, no matter what the topic. But another event occurred recently that made me want to read this even more.
In early 2008, Criterion released his film Walker in a packed special edition DVD. Though I’ve still not seen it, this project fascinated me for many years. Made in Nicaragua with the full support of the Sandinista government in 1987, Walker was about an American who, in 1855, invaded Nicaragua with the intention of annexing it for the US. Considering the political climate of the time, with American-backed “contras” trying to overthrow the Sandinistas, Walker was never going to be a commercial success. But something about Cox’s steadfast and sometimes quixotic support of left-wing causes made us kindred spirits and so it was always on my list of films to see.
In X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, he recounts stories from the making of ten feature films, including Walker. Beginning with his film school days at UCLA, Cox talks about how he acquired his lifelong resistance to the big studio way of making films. I especially love that in true indie style he draws inspiration nowadays not so much from filmmakers but from hackers and other culture jammers:
Today, an independent filmmaker is a revolutionary fighter, in a prolonged popular war. This is the same war that Free Software and GNU/Linux activists fight against Microsoft; that the Slow Food movement fights against McDonald’s; that independent musicians fight against the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and the Apple Music Store; that Fairtrade activists fight against WalMart and the WTO; that the Zapatistas fight against patriarchal systems of control in Mexico. There are no spoils to be had on this battlefield, and no prospect of a quick and easy victory. Yet, buoyed by belief, and by the lack of a sustainable or sane alternative, the guerrilla soldiers on. In the case of feature films, the battle for an independent, personal art form is already won (thanks to the Mini DV tape and the DVD), lost (thanks to the studios and their admirers), but irrelevant anyway.
Irrelevant because the feature film was the original art form of the twentieth century. It can’t be the original art form of the twenty-first as well. Something that goes beyond it will displace it—some medium equally visual and visceral, but interactive, with multiple narrative possibilities. It’s already being born: out in the same uncharted territory as the computer game, the “readjusted” corporate web site, and the home-made CD of “illegal” MP3s. But the birth won’t be easy, and the new form is destined for a long and hard-fought war.
It’s not all quite that provocative, but I like where he’s coming from. And in his anecdotes from a lifetime making films, you can see how he’s come to embrace the new technologies while continuing to believe in the power of a good story.
Liverpool-born Alex Cox’s directorial credits include Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, and Walker. He also wrote the script for Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and has acted in many of his own and other directors’ films.
If you buy from Amazon using this or the above links, you’ll help support Toronto Screen Shots.
Tagged as:
alexcox
I’ve been reading Kevin Kelly’s True Films site for a while now. Kevin was the founding executive editor of Wired magazine and is a former editor of the Whole Earth Catalog. He’s well-known for his incredibly useful Cool Tools weblog. So he’s a smart guy, and he loves documentaries. He’s also a generous guy, and has just announced that readers can download a free copy of the third edition of his True Films book in PDF format. The book contains 200 reviews of documentaries that have appeared on his site, and it’s free because there are some ads embedded in the PDF.
The book is available from Kevin’s site, but if his bandwidth runs out, comment here and I can host it as well.
Thanks to Kevin and Andre for the tip.
Bearing the unwieldiest of titles, Conversations with The Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute nevertheless deserves a spot on your summer reading list. AFI founder George Stevens Jr. collects interviews with many of Hollywood’s great directors, plus a handful of cinematographers and writers, and a few foreign directors as well. Drawn from the AFI’s renowned seminars, each is a delight. And I’m only thirty pages in so far.
I’d buy the book just for a particular gem from Raoul Walsh. While making In Old Arizona (1928), a freak accident resulted in the loss of his eye. When doctors asked if he’d like to have it replaced with a glass one, he snapped, “Hell no. Everytime I’d get in a fight, I’d have to put it in my pocket.” He wore a black eyepatch for the rest of his life. (Note to self: track down his autobiography, Each Man In His Time. He’s got a lot of great stories. Sadly, the book is currently out of print.)
Check out this great list of interviewees:
- Harold Lloyd
- Raoul Walsh
- King Vidor
- Fritz Lang
- Frank Capra
- Howard Hawks
- James Wong Howe
- Mervyn LeRoy
- Rouben Mamoulian
- George Folsey
- William Wyler
- George Stevens
- William Clothier
- Alfred Hitchcock
- George Cukor
- Billy Wilder
- John Huston
- Ray Bradbury
- Elia Kazan
- Fred Zinnemann
- David Lean
- Stanley Cortez
- Robert Wise
- Ernest Lehman
- Gene Kelly
- Richard Brooks
- Stanley Kramer
- Hal Wallis
- Jean Renoir
- Federico Fellini
- Ingmar Bergman
- Satyajit Ray
If you buy from Amazon using this or the above links, you’ll help support Toronto Screen Shots.
Senses of Cinema article on Raoul Walsh by Tag Gallagher
Tagged as:
Books,
Directors,
Interviews
