ART BY DIRECTORS - Part Three

PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS AND STORYBOARDS BY EIGHT FILM DIRECTORS

Written by Karl French
Published in GRANTA magazine #86

 

John Huston (1906-1987)

Before his directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon (1941), the film that confirmed Humphrey Bogart as a tough-guy star; Huston had been making a good living as a screenwriter; notably for Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra (1941) and Howard Hawks’s Sergeant York (1941); later he would script Orson Welles’s post-war thriller The Stranger (1946). The collaboration with Bogart was the most important in Huston’s long career, and together they would turn out The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), The African Queen (1951), and the underrated oddity Beat the Devil (1953).
    Although the 1960s began well with The Misfits (1961), the pessimism of the film was appropriate, with its three stars (Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift) all close to death and its director set for a dismal run throughout the decade. His career was reborn with Fat City (1972), and remained on a reasonably even keel (the notable low point, in 1981, of Escape to Victory notwithstanding) for the rest of his life.
    But things could have been very different. After a serious illness as a ten year old, he was all but bedridden for several years. He emerged with a determination to live an intellectually and physically full life. At fifteen he was introduced to the sport of boxing for which he shared a passion with his father, the actor Walter Huston, who would later co-star in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Soon afterwards Huston developed an equally strong passion for painting. ‘Nothing,’ he wrote in his autobiography, ‘has played a more important role in my life.’
    He was fascinated by the Cubists, and by the American school of Synchronism. He enrolled in the Smith School of Art in Los Angeles but was soon disillusioned with the aridity of the teaching and what he saw as the pointless discipline of the life classes there. Within months he had dropped out of art school and fallen in with a group of like-minded artists in the Art Students League. He continued to paint throughout his life. Huston had studios in each of his homes, notably St Clerans in Galway, Ireland, a house that also contained much of his art collection, ranging from Paul Klee paintings to his impressive hoard of Pre-Columbian art.

'The Spirit of St.Clerans' (1960s)

Extracts from John Huston's sketchbook, 1956, the year he was making 'Moby Dick' (pen on paper)

Extracts from John Huston's sketchbook, 1956, the year he was making 'Moby Dick' (pencil on paper)

Extracts from John Huston's sketchbook, 1956, the year he was making 'Moby Dick' (pencil and coloured pencil on paper)

Martin Scorsese (b. 1942)

Scorsese’s twin passions as a child and adolescent were the cinema and the Church and for many years he planned to enter the priesthood. But the movies won out and he studied film at New York University, where by the time he graduated he had made a number of short films. Through the 1960s he worked as an editor and also directed his first feature film, Who’s That Knocking on My Door? (1968), a labour of love starring Harvey Keitel, who would become, along with Robert De Niro, one of Scorsese’s favourite actors.
    He got his big break, as did Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovitch, under Roger Corman, who assigned him to direct Boxcar Bertha (1972). The film was a modest success, but a key moment came when Scorsese screened it for his idol, John Cassavetes, who praised the style but pleaded with Scorsese to go for more personal material. Heeding that advice, Scorsese dusted off an old idea of his based around the characters who had populated his own neighbourhood of Little Italy, in downtown Manhattan, in his youth. Mean Streets, released in 1973, co-starring De Niro and Keitel, made Scorsese’s reputation and established his trademark themes—men, often violent men in crisis, with religion generally in the background or foreground—and a signature directorial style, involving flashy, imaginative visual flourishes, long or otherwise complex takes, and pervasive pop music on the soundtrack.
    While occasionally working on more mainstream material, Scorsese turned out a succession of great films, including Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), and Goodfellas (1990), all of which bear his personal touch. Many have been script collaborations—Scorsese and Nick Pileggi co-wrote Goodfellas and Casino (1995)—or written wholly by others, most notably Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver.
    Throughout his career Scorsese has carefully storyboarded his own films. With their urgent, primitive stylelessness, these 'storyboards may stretch the definition of art; indeed they may look uncomfortably like extracts from (Taxi Driver’s) Travis Bickle’s illustrated notebooks. But they show Scorsese’s innate understanding of the medium and his talent for framing shots and building sequences—in the examples featured here, sequences that have been etched forever into the minds of a generation of film-goers.

Storyboards for one of the fight sequences in 'Raging Bull' (1980)

Some of Scorsese's storyboards for 'Taxi Driver' (1976)

ART BY DIRECTORS - Part Two

PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHS AND STORYBOARDS BY EIGHT FILM DIRECTORS

Written by Karl French
Published in GRANTA magazine #86

 

Mike Figgis (b. 1949)

Mike Figgis has been taking photographs for more than four decades, a passion made all the stronger by the possibilities of digital photography. As well as being an obsessive note-taker and filer of his notebooks, sketches and other art works, Figgis takes his camera everywhere he goes. The result, aside from serving as an alternative diary, is an exceptional body of work. He spent much of his early childhood in Kenya, returning to north-east England at the age of ten. The upper-class accent he had picked up in colonial Africa set him apart from his peers and he sought refuge in, among other things, photography. Around the same time he fell in love with music—jazz, blues, and rock and roll—and began to play trumpet and guitar. Rejected by the National Film School, in the 1970s Figgis joined the People Show, an avant-garde musical theatre group with which he stayed for more than a decade and where he was able to write, direct, act, compose and perform. Also during this time he played with a number of jazz bands. In 1980 he formed the Mike Figgis Group, and staged various theatrical shows relying heavily on music that he composed and film footage that he directed.
    Figgis made his debut in 1988 with Stormy Monday, a stylish, Newcastle-set neo-noir which showed a sureness of touch both in the film’s visual style and his ability to handle a star cast. His first Hollywood film, Internal Affairs (1990), again proved his talent for handling actors, drawing from Richard Gere possibly his finest and certainly his most unsettling performance. The next three films suggested he was still struggling to fit his talent for erotically charged examinations of the human psyche into Hollywood-style moviemaking. Liebestraum (1991) was a low-key thriller, Mr Jones (1993) a disappointing reunion with Gere, The Browning Version (1994) a rather straightforward Rattigan adaptation. But for his next film Figgis stripped the budget to a minimum and shot on 16mm. The result was Leaving Las Vegas (1995), the masterpiece of his career so far, with fine performances from Nicolas Cage as the doomed hero and Elizabeth Shue as his hapless lover.
    From then on, Figgis has become ever more experimental, with the dazzling split-screen experiment of Timecode (2000), and Hotel (2001) both exploiting the potential of digital video technology.

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers arresting suspects, Los Angeles, 1990s

Pen sketch of a friend, Steven, dying from Aids at the Middlesex Hospital, London (1992)

Figgis's mother at his father's funeral (1976)

Satyajit Ray (1921-1992)

As his friend Kurosawa had done for Japanese cinema, so Satyajit Ray was responsible for establishing an international interest in Indian cinema in the 1950s. He achieved this with his serene, wise and assured debut Father Panchali (1955) which, alongside Aparajito (1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959), became known as the Apu Trilogy—one of the greatest works in world cinema. Again like Kurosawa, in childhood Ray had seemed destined to become a professional artist. He received years of training and achieved some success as an illustrator.
    He was born into a well-off Bengali family in Calcutta, and in 1940 he bowed to his family’s wishes and agreed to attend Shantiniketan, the university run by Rabindranath Tagore, who would inspire Ray throughout his career: he adapted several of Tagore’s stories for the cinema and produced a documentary to mark the centenary of Tagore’s birth.
    At Shantiniketan, Ray was introduced to Eastern art—Japanese and Chinese as well as Indian. He enhanced his studies by travelling through the country, scrutinizing and sketching traditional Indian sculptures, statues and shrines. He also visited nearby villages to make sketches. This introduced Ray to the humble ways of life that he would explore in his first films.
    After university, Ray returned to Calcutta in 1942 and joined a British-owned advertising company. During the next decade (which included a six-month stay in London where he furthered his cinematic education), Ray worked regularly as a freelance illustrator, designing book jackets and posters. He was also a film critic, which is how he came to meet his idol Jean Renoir. He had dreamed since childhood of breaking into movies, and it was while working on the designs for a new edition of Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay’s novel Pather Panchali that he became passionate about making it into a film, which he did, coming close to bankruptcy in the process. As his fame grew—and he continued to direct films up to the late 1980s—Ray would still draw illustrations, regularly providing the covers for the children’s magazine Sandesh that had been launched by his father.

A watercolour from 1942, after the Japanese master, Ogata Korin (1658-1716)

Ray's wash-sketches for his first film 'Pather Panchali' (1955)

Ray's woodcut illustration for a 1944 edition of 'Pather Panchali' by Bibhuti Bhusan Bandhopadhyay, the novel on which the film was based

Peter Greenaway (b. 1942)

Greenaway grew up in Wanstead, east London, and after Forest Hills, a minor public school in Essex, went to Walthamstow Art School, which he later described as ‘a breath of fresh air—the novelty value lasted for years, and there I tried to make some sense of an accidental discovery—Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). That film changed everything.’ The other seminal film in his development as a director was Alan Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and if Greenaway fits into any tradition it is that of the 1960s European auteurs, Bergman, Resnais, Godard, through whose work he gained his education in cinema.
    This education continued through the 1960s, when he found work at the British Film Institute (BFI) and then at the Central Office of Information, where he picked up experience in film-editing. For years he made small, self-financed, experimental films, until the critical success of The Falls, in 1980, led to The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), the film that most obviously owes a debt to Resnais. With his template established, he continued to turn out playful, obscure, erudite, and always controversial films at the rate of roughly one every two years.
    The central tension in his films is between the human capacity for, and attraction towards, chaos, ugliness and violence, and the ability or desire to impose order on the world through elaborate taxonomy or game-playing. His films are filled with arcane jokes and references and are often broken down into discrete segments—sometimes numbered, as with the dark and and ludic Drowning by Numbers (1988), or colour-coded, as in the case of his gross-out masterpiece, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). So while his films all contain sex, death, decay, violence, and characters who are either ciphers or loathsome and sometimes both, this is all set within a meticulously realized structure containing a sense of order and attention to detail that is equally crucial to his paintings, sketches and 3-D assemblages. The actor Tim Roth summed up Greenaway’s obsessiveness when he said, only half-jokingly, that during the making of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover the only significant direction he received was to move a couple of inches this way or that to restore the essential symmetry of the composition.

 

'Gaming Board', 1968 (oil on wood)

'Icarus Falling into Water', 1997 (mixed media on card)

'The Frames', 1981 (mixed media on card)

Un tratamiento a cuatro cuadros. Entrevista con Mike Figgis

A juzgar por su apariencia bohemia, uno pensaría que Figgis es un chaman, un profesor universitario o, mas acorde con sus verdaderas habilidades, un jazzista. De hecho, en tanto director y compositor consumado, Figgis a menudo ha tornado el camino menos transitado componiendo la música de sus películas. Y mucho antes de que Adiós a Las Vegas (1995) lo convirtiera en un director ingles con éxito en Hollywood, Figgis estuvo experimentando con producciones multimedia que combinaban acción viva con música y cine.
Time Code, su primera película en video digital lo hizo volver a esas raíces. Filmada en tiempo real con cuatro cámaras Sony DSR-1 (adaptadas a sus necesidades) durante 93 minutos de manera ininterrumpida (la duración de la cinta digital), es un audaz experimento que aborda la película como si fuera una compleja composición orquestal. Mientras improvisaban sus diálogos, los actores principales utilizaron relojes sincronizados para ver donde estaban en el desarrollo de la historia, el cual Figgis había planeado y registrado de manera meticulosa en hojas para partitura.

¿No se corre el riesgo de fomentar cierta falta de cualidades artísticas al recomendar a los realizadores que trabajan con video digital que se sientan con la libertad de experimentar en todo sentido?

Sin duda, estan por hacerse miles de peliculas de calidad inferior que puede que encuentren o no un mercado. Algunas realmente malas, meramente comerciales y burdas se volveran grandes exitos. Y las obras geniales seran ignoradas. Pero eso pasa en cualquier medio.
A mi simplemente me gusta la idea de que, asi como cualquiera puede escribir un libro si tiene lapiz y papel, ahora todo mundo puede hacer una pelicula. Esto abre posibilidades de un medio menos elitista y menos basado en la tecnologia.

Dices que no tienes muchas ganas de hacer otra película en 35mm. Me imagino que es menos por la imagen que por el proceso.

Adquiri mi propia Super 16 Aaton y puedo usarla en combinación con un enfoque digital. Me he hecho de un par de camaras digitales con las que me siento muy feliz. De modo que ahora tengo herramientas suficientes para decidir como filmar. Me encanta el cine. Me gusta el celuloide. Pero el Super 16 me funciona perfectamente. De hecho prefiero la estetica del 16mm a la del 35mm. Te da una imagen con una apariencia un poco menos fina, menos nitida, mas impresionista. Ahora el 35mm me parece demasiado clinico; en realidad tiene la apariencia del video de alta definition. Siento que es como si hubiera una correspondencia entre ellos.

¿Podrías haber hecho Adiós a Las Vegas en video digital?

En este momento, de haber tenido las camaras con las que filme Time Code, lo habria pensado. Adios a Las Vegas fue un proyecto tan dificil en cuanto al presupuesto, que cualquier forma de bajar el presupuesto sin perder calidad me habria interesado. Pero creo que el Super 16 fue perfecto para la pelicula.

¿Por que decidiste hacer Time Code en video digital?

Siempre ha sido una fantasia de muchos cineastas filmar en tiempo real, sin cortes. Antes uno estaba limitado por la duracion del rollo. Ahora por primera vez es posible rodar una pelicula durante 90 minutos sin un solo corte. Empece a jugar con la idea en mi cuaderno de notas. Uno de los problemas es que si filmas una pelicula de 90 minutos con una sola camara, estas restringido al hecho de que la camara solo puede estar en un sitio a la vez. Desde Iuego, lo grandioso del cine convencional es que la edicion te permite cortar cuando quieras y en cualquier lugar. Asi que pense que la unica manera de conseguir ese efecto era tener un formato de varias pantallas.
Dado que la necesidad es la madre de la inventiva, comence a hacer diagramas y se me ocurrio la idea de filmar con cuatro camaras y tener en pantalla cuatro acciones paralelas que presentaran todas las facetas de una misma historia. Me senti sumamente entusiasmado cuando pense que, por lo menos tecnicamente, era perfectamente posible.
Lo mas complicado era la regrabacion. Era verdaderamente dificil, pues para ello tenia que tomar decisiones acerca del dialogo de las diversas pantallas. No fue facil. Si en las cuatro pantallas tienes mas de diez personas, digamos, hablando todo el tiempo, simplemente enajenas al publico y no es posible escuchar claramente lo que estan diciendo. Si, por otra parte, subes un poco uno de los dialogos y estas usando las bocinas ambientales y ecualizas todas las voces de manera un poco distinta, encuentras que puedes dife- renciar lo que esta diciendo la gente, como si estuvieras en el vestibulo de un hotel. Pero tienes que orientar sutilmen- te el ojo, sin que sea obvio, mediante un enfoque muy sofisticado del audio, procedimiento que se acerca mucho a como es en la realidad.

¿De que te serviste para ayudar a los adores a aceptar el reto?

Sin duda lo que mas sirvió fueron las ventajas tecnológicas. Si grabas en video y estas filmando 93 minutos en tiempo real y comienzas en la mañana, para el almuerzo ya terminaste, y el técnico de video inmediatamente hace cuatro copias, transfiriendo con un aumento de la calidad de la cámara digital a DigiBeta con el mismo código de tiempo. Entonces reproduces las cuatro cintas en cuatro monitores dispuestos a diferentes alturas en un cuadrante, con cuatro salidas hacia una mezcladora. Lo importante para ellos era ver la dinámica en la que participaban, el verse en contexto. Si un actor realmente se esta pasando de la raya -pues todos están improvisando ?%94 y esta siendo egocéntrico, no hay nada mas contundente que verte frente a los otros 27 actores sentados juntos. Yo no podría decir nada a un actor que tuviera la misma fuerza ni el mismo efecto que el hecho de que ellos vean lo que están haciendo. Nos sentamos en circulo y los invite a todos a hacer comentarios. Yo puedo decir: «Bien, esto es lo que yo creo: funciona, pero en el minuto 1:43 se traslapan sus diálogos, de modo que tenemos que reorganizar un poco la secuencia.

¿El titulo de Time Code alude sobre todo a ese proceso?

Si, este film se basa completamente en la tecnología del código de tiempo. Usamos micrófonos de radio de veintisiete canales, además de los micrófonos de las cámaras y los que fueron instalados, pues no había posibilidad de usar canas en ninguna parte porque estábamos usando cuatro cámaras. Por tanto tenia que hacerse que la imagen y el sonido casaran por algún medio, y para ello utilizamos el código de tiempo. Pienso que en todo caso es una frase provocativa.

Como compositor, prestas mas atención a la musicalización que la mayoría de los directores. ¿Hizo alguna diferencia tu enfoque musical en este proyecto particular?

Una diferencia muy interesante, pues no solo permitió que los actores abordaran su ejercicio actoral sobre una base diaria, sino que, como estuve realizando cada noche estas mezclas en vivo, también introduje un gran numero de CDs y probé diferentes maneras de abordar la música. Esto fue inspirando cotidianamente su actuación. Por ejemplo, utilice algunas piezas de música de cuerdas realmente lentas y con cierta fuerza, y los actores comenzaron a ajustar su estilo a sabiendas de que esa era la forma en que se iba a desarrollar la escena y así era como podría salir con la mezcla final. Se volvió una especie de ejecución a dos manos entre los actores y la música. Lo cual también es interesante si luego cambias de opinión, pues puedes ir contra esa tendencia con la música, cosa que he hecho en un par de casos.
De igual modo, la manera en que se escribió el film en tanto historia es realmente como una composición musical en papel pautado. Cada una de las cuatro cámaras tiene un pentagrama musical y cada barra representaba un minuto, de modo que todo el film fue planeado en cierto sentido como si fuera un cuarteto de cuerdas. Debido a mi formación musical, esa fue la única manera en que pude registrar la operación de las cuatro cámaras.

¿Has pensado en integrar la red al proceso de desarrollo de una película?

Lo he pensado, pero tengo la teoría de que la red es una especie de renacimiento de la literatura y la palabra escrita. En realidad yo me siento feliz con una pluma fuente y un cuaderno, y la red es una forma de hablar e intercambiar ideas e investigar. Para mi Internet es en cierto modo algo pavoroso: demasiadas posibilidades, demasiadas opciones.

¿Alguna idea de que viene después de Time Code?

Solo quiero ir a la cama y dormir durante un año

 

 

Entrevista realizada por Marco Masoni en Febrero del 2001.