Film as a subversive art

344 Pages·1974·35.764 MB·English

by  Amos Vogel

Subvers
Art
Amos Vogel
$15.00
From its beginning, the cinema has been a
major target of censors, the state, and
traditionalists afraid of its powerful impact,
especially when manipulated by aesthetic
and ideological innovators and rebels.
As a result, public cinema has often found
it difficult to display openly some of man’s
most fundamental experiences. Today,
however, neither fear nor repression seem
able to stem an accelerating world-wide
trend toward a more liberated cinema, in
which subjects and forms hitherto
considered unthinkable or forbidden are
boldly explored.
The attack on the visual taboo and its
demystification by open display is
profoundly subversive, for it strikes at
prevailing concepts of morality and
religion and thereby at law and order
itself. Equally subversive is the destruction
of old cinematic forms and ‘‘immutable”’
rules by new approaches to narrative style,
camera work, and editing.
Amos Vogel places this subversion of
content and form within the context of the
contemporary world view of science,
philosophy, and politics. The aesthetic,
sexual, and political subversives of the
cinema are introduced to the reader as
catalysts of social and intellectual change.
There are special chapters on Nazi
propaganda, the early Soviet Russian avant-
garde, expressionism, surrealism, the
counterculture, and the “forbidden subjects”
of cinema (sex, birth, death, blasphemy).
Also analyzed are the massive assaults on
narrative, time, and space in modern cinema
and the effectiveness and containment
of filmic subversion.
Each chapter focuses on a major aspect of
this movement and is followed by a detailed
examination of representative films; these
include many banned or rarely seen works.
The text is rounded out with more than
three hundred rare stills accompanied by
unique, detailed captions designed to
invite their close “‘visual reading”.
Amos Vogel has drawn on the experience
of twenty-five years in film, exhaustive
international research, and personal
archives of over 20,000 titles and stills to
produce a thought-provoking, controversial
work that deals with areas of film rarely
covered by standard histories and is
simultaneously designed to test the limits
of each reader’s tolerance as well.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/filmassubversive0Q000voge
Filmasa
Subversive Art
‘But that the white eye-lid of the screen reflect
its proper light, the Universe would go wpm
flames.’
Luis Bufiuel
Film asa
Subversive
Art
Amos Vogel
Random House a New York
AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In various secret and endless ways, the following friends helped make this
work a reality: Rudolf Arnheim, David Bienstock, Luis Bunuel, Fabiano
Canossa, Carlos Clarens, Mary Corliss of the Museum of Modern Art Stills
Archive, Gary Crowdus of Tricontinental Film Center, Andy Angel of Politkino,
Kate Frankenthal, Jack Goelman, Erica and Ulrich Gregor, John Handthardt,
Nick Hart-Williams of The Other Cinema, Karlheinz Heinz of PAP Film
Galleries, Martje and Werner Herzog, Derek Hill, Hilmar Hoffman, Wolfgang
Klaue and Manfred Lichenstein of the Film Archive of the German Democratic
Republic, John Kobal, John B. Kuyper of the Library of Congress, Henry
Langlois of the Cinematheque Francaise, Jacques Ledoux of the Royal
Belgian Film Archive, Jay Leyda, Antonin and Myra Liehm, Adrienne Mancia,
Zelimir Matko of Zagreb Films, Rui Noguiera, Frances Novogroder, Enno
Patalas of the Munich Film Museum, Frieda Grafe Patalas, Donald Richie,
Donald Rugoff of Cinema V, Meyer Schapiro, Robert Shaye of New Line
Cinema, Kazuko Shibata of Shibata Films, P. Adams Sitney and Caroline S.
Angell of Anthology Film Archives, William Sloan of the New York Public
Library, Daniel Talbot of New Yorker Films, Jan de Vaal of the Dutch Film
Museum, Willard Van Dyke of the Museum of Modern Art Film Department,
Will Wehling, Ria Wenzel of the Deutsches Institut fur Filmkunde, David
Wilson of Sight and Sound, and the indefatigable Sheila Whitaker and her
staff at the National Film Archives of the British Film Institute. Also Columbia
Pictures, Connoisseur Films, Contemporary Films, Gala Films, Janus Films,
Lion International Films, Los Angeles Filmmakers Coop, MCA, Miracle Films,
Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and United Artists.
Very particular and special thanks are due to my wonderful and long-
suffering editor Jonathan Martin and the rest of the staff at Weidenfeld and
Nicolson; Paul Willemen, my tireless researcher in Europe; and my indes-
tructible and indispensable helper in New York, Rick Shain.
Special credit for their painstaking work in the preparation of stills for
publication must be given to Babette Mangolte and to Charles Woerter, Bob
Stevens, and Donald V. Velde.
For their kindness in letting me quote from my articles that here appear in
somewhat different form, | thank Daniel Wolf and Edward Fancher of the
Village Voice, Barney Rosset of Grove Press and Evergreen Review, Seymour
Peck of the New York Times, and Gregory Battcock.
FRONT JACKET: Subversion of content (politics and sex) and of form
(picture frame and rabbit as surrealist elements). Wilhelm Reich and Karl
Marx in a call for political, personal and sexual liberation. This film is
forbidden in its country of origin. (Dusan Makavejev, WR-Mysteries Of
The Organism, Yugoslavia, 1971). The young lady is Milena Dravic.
BACK JACKET: ‘The End’ — but not the end. The daring destruction of the
otherwise inviolable end-title subversively disrupts the illusion of cinema
and visually reaffirms the openness of experience. (René Clair, Entr’acte,
France, 1924).
The letter F appearing after a film title denotes that this is a feature film.
q rights reserved. Copyright 1974, under the International Union for the
Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
ISBN 394-49078-9
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73—16720.
Designed by Sheila Sherwen.
Published in the United States by Random House Inc., New York.
Manufactured in England.
Your order is meaningless, my chaos is significant.’
Nathanael West
| like my movies made in Hollywood.’
Richard Nixon
Only the perverse fantasy can still save us.’
Goethe, to Eckerman
‘Behind the initiation to sensual pleasure, there loom narcotics.’
Pope Paul VII
By the displacement of an atom, a world may be shaken.’
Oscar Wilde
Film is the greatest teacher, because it teaches not only through
the brain, but through the whole body.’
Vsevolod Pudovkin
The cinema implies a total inversion of values, a complete upheaval
of optics, of perspective and logic. It is more exciting than
phosphorus, more captivating than love.’
Antonin Artaud
Don't go on multiplying the mysteries, Unwin said. ‘They should
be kept simple. Bear in mind Poe’s purloined letter, bear in mind
Zangwill’s locked room.’
‘Or made complex,’ replied Dunraven. ‘Bear in mind the universe
Jorge Luis Borges
Contents
The Film Experience
The World View of Subversive Cinema
Part One
WEAPONS OF SUBVERSION:
THE SUBVERSION OF FORM
The Revolutionary Film Avant-Garde in Soviet Russia
Aesthetic Rebels and Rebellious Clowns
Expressionism: The Cinema of Unrest
Surrealism: The Cinema of Shock
Dada and Pop: Anti-Art?
The Comic Tradition
The Destruction of Time and Space
The Destruction of Plot and Narrative
The Assault on Montage
The Triumph and Death of the Moving Camera
The Camera Moves 102
Minimal Cinema 103
The Devaluation of Language 106
Straining towards the Limits 108
The Elimination of Reality
The Subversion of Illusion
The Elimination of the Image
The Elimination of the Screen
The Elimination of the Camera
The Elimination of the Artist
Part Two
WEAPONS OF SUBVERSION:
11¢
THE SUBVERSION OCF CONTENT
12¢
International Left and Revolutionary Cinema
122
The West: Rebels, Maoists, and the New Godard
136
Subversion in Eastern Europe: Aesopian Metaphors
156
The Third World: A New Cinema
166
East Germany: Against the West
The Terrible Poetry of Nazi Cinema 173
181
Secrets and Revelations