AMERICAN SNIPER (2014)

"The auteur theory is out of fashion today". E o que era elogio há trinta anos ("os grandes autores fazem sempre o mesmo filme") tornou-se em enxovalho. Nada pior do que ser predictable. Nada pior do que demonstrar um "estilo consistente e reconhecível", uma "visão temática". Nada pior do que fazer filmes que sejam parte de uma obra e em que o conhecimento da totalidade desta ajude à compreensão. 

João Bénard da Costa, sobre Escape from L.A. 

Se Clint Eastwood está nisto do cinema há sessenta anos e já fez um punhado de filmes extraordinários (Honkytonk Man, Sudden Impact, Unforgiven, A Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County, Blood Work, Changeling…), não nos faria mal nenhum pensar se o que continua a fazer será tão simples, reaccionário e servil como tem sido descrito. Para não dizer mesmo partir do princípio que não é, de todo. Mas pensemos, é melhor. O que é que há de simples nas primeiras cenas de American Sniper, que são totalmente despojadas do acessório? Duas décadas descritas em parcos minutos e com cortes bem arrojados, generosamente dependentes de toda a atenção de quem as vê - esse tal elogio à inteligência do espectador. Elipses que de simples têm só a aparência. Tornámo-nos tão letrados em dramaturgia que já nada nos impressiona ou (mais provável) continuámos a tomar a verdade pelas aparências? Quem vê caras vê corações? 

O que é uma elipse? E falo agora da mais terrível: porque é que naquele último plano na porta dos Kyles fica tanto o pressentimento da ruína de Chris como a certeza de que ele já não era de Taya e por isso ela o olha desalmadamente. Ele quis salvar toda a gente menos a família e ela odeia - pode-se ver - todos os momentos que o marido passa com os veteranos de guerra e sem ela e os filhos. Os próprios veteranos se ressentem com isso. Eles não têm nada, ele tem tudo. Talvez por isso um o tenha morto. Mas nem só isso. Se a sociedade americana a partir de certa altura começou a ver a guerra do Iraque como um tumor, mas em vez de o tratar o quis esconder, talvez fosse inevitável algo explodir. Se há tantas incertezas e tantos "talvez" como é que American Sniper é um filme simples? Ou muito melhor dito (e cito mais uma vez Carlos Melo Ferreira), "que uma lenda viva da guerra, texano e membro dos SEAL, equiparável ao "Sargento York"/"Sergeant York", de Howard Hawks (1941), tenha um fim diferente do deste põe imediatamente todos os americanos (e todos nós) a pensar no que mudou desde então no país." E pensar não faz mal nenhum. 

Vou divagar um bocado e escrever que não há como ir para uma sala de cinema e ver aquele logo prateado da Warner com o som já lançado na acção, como normalmente acontece nos filmes de Eastwood. É como entrar num mundo e já não poder sair dele. Ora aí está uma forma de trabalhar a ficção. Lembram-se de In The Mouth of Madness e Videodrome? Tentem separá-los dos logos da New Line e da Universal, quando as guitarras e os sintetizadores criam a atmosfera que fica a ressoar e nos faz querer acreditar nas coisas que depois vemos à nossa frente. Mas já ninguém vai ver os filmes às salas de cinema? Nem de propósito, é disso que fala Eastwood na sua primeira obra como realizador, The Beguiled: The Storyteller, associando o trabalho de Don Siegel ao de Edgar Allan Poe e descrevendo essas atmosferas e esses mundos. Haja quem ainda pense que o cinema é uma experiência, um belo acidente no fim do dia ou no início da noite, ainda possível para quem decida lá ir por não ter nada que fazer e, no fim, achar que pagou o preço por inteiro. Mas alguém acha que se fazem estes filmes para críticos e connoisseurs? Não, é para inúteis que não têm que fazer ao tempo e que por os verem podem passar melhor os dias. Já no genérico de Jersey Boys íamos do logo da Warner Brothers para o da RatPac Entertainment e daí para a frase semper fidelis e origem de toda a saudade e todo o trabalho feito para trás, A Malpaso Production, portanto aí não há dúvidas, é consciência (mas inevitável) de toda uma obra que precede o filme.

Quando Tarantino escolhe músicas de spaghettis obscuros para os seus filmes, não há quem não faça a vénia e reconheça homenagens, genialidade e o diabo a quatro. Quando Clint Eastwood, que entrou nuns quantos (já ninguém se quer lembrar), sem levantar ondas, termina American Sniper com a marcha fúnebre de Una Pistola per Ringo, de Ennio Morricone, fazem-se ouvidos moucos e olhos vesgos. E que belo é esse final, com as imagens da auto-estrada e do veterano sem pernas a abanar essa bandeira americana de que só Eastwood, como Cimino, parecem saber o segredo e os mitos. As mil aventuras e os mil martírios, eu sei lá. Sem me dizer nada a bandeira, diz-me a ondulação dela ao vento, a imobilidade sepulcral dela em cima dum caixão ou a forma como personagens se encontram e desencontram nesse e noutros filmes. Já se sentia isso com a marinha e o exército de Ford, como com os heróis despedaçados e cheios de falhas de Lang (entre dezenas de exemplos). Todo o Homem merece a sua canção. Dizer-nos isso alguma coisa é só prova do engenho e do talento de quem no-lo conta.

E se falasse ainda dessa tempestade de areia, isto não acabava. Ou de Bradley Cooper e Sienna Miller, do primeiro encontro no bar à porta que se fecha para o abismo. Ou do irmão que quer que "tudo se foda" e dessas primeiras imagens no bosque da infãncia de Chris e as hesitações e as respirações quando se tem os alvos na mira. American Sniper é um grande filme. Peço desculpa à "boa consciência".

O CINEMA DO FILHO

por Jorge Silva Melo

à memória de um amigo Benoit Régent

1. Terá sido num dos primeiros "Cahiers" depois da série amarela, lá por 1967, que vimos uma fotografia de página e meia da Zouzou, cabeça para baixo, olhos fechados, no que penso ser a imagem final (mas não garanto) de Marie Pour Mémoire. E quando digo "vimos" falo da gente que, nesses finais dos anos sessenta, conspirava, sufocava, intrigava, ria, corria, se espraiava, preguiçava, adiava, preparava, falhava ali pelo Saldanha, entre a deliciosa cassata do Monte-Branco, "madeleine" de todos nós, e a bica do Monte-Carlo, fornecendo-se de livros na Livraria Divulgação que então havia na Estefânia, de filmes nos cinemas de bairro ou nas sessões das seis e meia, de uns Marx mal lidos, Herberto acabadinho de sair na Guimarães e uns Bobby Lapointe mal cantados.

E quando começámos a ver os filmes de Philippe Garrel (foi em Avignon 1968, a Eduarda Dionísio, o Luís Miguel Cintra, o Luís Filipe Salgado de Matos, o Nuno Júdice, a Helena Abreu que uma meia noite sob os plátanos da Provença, vimos o Marie Pour Mémoire), confirmámos o lirismo daquela fotografia tantas vezes olhada, tão comentada.

Não queríamos histórias no cinema, nem personagens, queríamos homens a filmar as namoradas, queríamos o amor nu, o louco amor, queríamos a poesia, queríamos aquele incerto segredo dos rostos (será verdade o que diz?) que aprendêramos em Fritz Lang mas sem a intrigalhada do aconteceu-isto-e-depois-aquilo, apenas o "mover de olhos brando e piedoso" que o Luís Miguel leria pouco depois no Snack do Florida, nosso envidraçado Montparnasse sobre o Marquês de Pombal, à Paula então-Ferreira-agora-Bobone nesses belíssimos Sapatos do João César, queríamos o lirismo e nele víamos a libertação das almas e dos entupidos corpos dominados pelo Salazar, besta que não havia meio de esticar a bota.

E Garrel surgiu-nos, de câmara empunhada como bloco de notas, diário, caderno de encontros, agenda, frágil, sonâmbulo, errático, disperso, filmando ao acaso a namorada em êxtase, Anémone ou Zouzou, nas tintas para enquadrar personagens no perfil narrativo, colhendo o desabrigado gesto, montando uma sequência infinda de sonhos, vigílias, espasmos, visões, alterações da consciência, um abandono sentido e sensível que aprendêramos naqueles poetas - e só nos poetas - do absinto e do outro fim do século, Isidore Ducasse que invocávamos, Maldoror-Garrel, filmando desde o início o seu próprio pai, esse actor moral, austero, modesto e empenhado combatente da Resistência e de todas as lutas, o estóico Maurice Garrel.

Era a libertação.

Era, contra o "cinéma de papa", um cinema do filho.

E nós éramos filhos, seus irmãos portanto, do mesmo lado da genética, sonhando com a saída de casa e a partida para o mundo, um mundo feito de liberdade e da queda das estreitas responsabilidades burguesas. Drogámo-nos no seu cinema, sonhámos sonhos de sexo e noite, de natureza e corpos, nós os filhos serôdios do salazarismo, que já nada queríamos nem de deus, nem da pátria, e da família apenas aguardávamos a mesada.

Depois de Rossellini, depois de Godard, o cinema rasgava os cânones da teia dos sentidos, da mecânica narrativa, das motivações psicológicas, recuperava do par de namorados esse beijo que é o intenso desejo de filmar, a câmara possuindo a rapariga abandonada, pintor e modelo presos pelo rolar da película, prazer consentido e desvendado.

As descobertas que fizémos nesse Verão de 1968, imenso verão em Avignon entre pide e suspeitas, Jean Vilar e o Living, foram dois filmes, Crónica de Anna Magdalena Bach de Jean Marie Straub e este Marie Pour Mémoire, febril, ferida ainda por cicatrizar. Outros vimos, que a história apagaria e eram belos, The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean de Juleen Compton e um Alice de François Weyerganz a partir de Ramuz mas também de Bresson, delicado, cerebral talvez, rigoroso.

Era a libertação.

E destes filmes falámos cem cessar pelo soturno Monte-Carlo ao Saldanha durante todo um ano. Logo com o Rui Diniz na noite de Agosto em que cheguei de Avignon e depois da qual nunca mais o vi, ele sem ser capaz de dizer que no dia seguinte, dia 15, partiria para a América para não mais voltar. Com a Alda Taborda que eu queria filmar como Garrel filmara a bela Zouzou, sem história, flores ou coroas, filmar só. Com a Paula Caeiro, talvez actriz de um filme que eu faria, curta-metragem informal que nunca cheguei a escrever, é certo, mas que prometi em inúmeras reuniões de produção na Média Filmes, do outro lado do Saldanha. Com o José Mariano Gago, entre livros e abraços, ele que não gosta dessas coisas do cinema, ou não gostava então. Com a Antónia Brandão, com a Elsa. Com o Luís Miguel. E voltávamos a vê-lo na Quinzena do Cinema Francês organizada pelo Letras & Artes, com o António-Pedro, o Seixas e a Solveig de Vokswagen azul.

Falavam-me dos Velvet e nós falávamos de Garrel, de Londres, da libertação das formas e de Burroughs, aprendíamos o nome de John Cale, apostávamos com Pasolini no imparável avanço da história até à poesia. O Nuno Júdice sorria, lançando de quinze em quinze dias a frase sibilina. E nós acreditávamos no venenoso lirismo de Garrel, na doença de Terzieff em Le Révélateur, filme mudo em 1968, no aparecimento desse serpentino anjo que foi Pierre Clémenti em Le Lit de La Vierge filmado em Marraquexe e na Itália, ousando o scope. Nada o faria parar, parecia-nos, ao Garrel e à sua quadrilha com casacos afegãos e olhos húmidos da muita erva.

E olhámos Nico, a bela Nico, a insuportável Nico, a amada Nico na Cicatriz Interior e pensávamos também poder um dia ir filmar ao México, ao Egipto, na Itália, onde nos levasse o vento, fazendo explodir as formas como rebentam, belas, hugolianas, as ondas do mar, anos a fio, sem plano de trabalho, sem obrigações financeiras, vivendo à boleia da vida como os santos de Assis, em inocência comunitária.

Havia de ser o João César quem mais recolheu esta semente lírica, esta flor que entrevíamos mais do que víamos, a partir da qual efabulámos mais do que analisámos, a propósito de quem mais histórias se contaram, havia de ser ele, o marginal, o João César, o escritor, quem mais herdou o invisível gesto de um cineasta que acompanhámos inventando ("sabes que agora partiu para a Islândia, é maluco!", "sabes que está a fazer um filme mudo)", "como é que arranja a massa"?, "parece que vão fazer uma retrospectiva", "o fulano de tal é burro que nem casas mil, diz que o Garrel é um impostor", etc), mais à mesa de café do que sentados nas salas de cinema. Também com a sua trupe, a Manuela de Freitas entrando e saindo, o Carlos Ferreiro, nosso Lazlo Szabo, o Luís Miguel inventado a tremer como Clémenti ou Léaud nos Sapatos. E um filme como A Sagrada Família do João César, com a sua ideia de happening e de cerco, de manipulação e extrema liberdade, de improvisação e loucura, até com a cena dos pais (Luso Soares e Dalila Rocha), com a sua rodagem em quatro dias e o rosto apocalíptico da Manuela de freitas, aqui anjo e aqui morte, é o supremo eco das infindas cavaqueiras que íamos tendo, tantos nós, pela Fontes Pereira de Melo abaixo, anos a fio, noites e noites. Como naquele plano de Veredas, filme-cicatriz, o plano que deu o cartaz, em que vemos a cabeça de Margarida Gil deitada para trás ecoando, agora a cores e noutro amor, a bela fotografia da Zouzou com que toda esta história toda terá começado.

Mas não foi só o João César, francófono, quem acolheu no seu jardim a carnívora planta, o letárgico perfume de Philippe Garrel. Também o Alberto Seixas Santos panoramicou em espiral à volta das personagens nos Brandos Costumes lembrando A Cicatriz Interior. E há planos no Perdido Por Cem do António-Pedro Vasconcelos, uma maneira de filmar a Marta Leitão (tão linda, tão ferida e morreu tão nova, actriz que poderia ter sido de Garrel!) que, encerrada embora dentro de minelliana intriga, se liberta dos porquês e dos comos para só estar, isolada, abandonada, como as belas solitárias de garrel, perdida no fundo.

2. A pouco e pouco, vivia eu em Paris, nesses anos 80 e foram os meus amigos actores que me trouxeram notícias de Philippe Garrel. Os realizadores tinham-se esquecido dele, acontece. Eu tinha-o perdido de vista, os seus filmes sumiam-se nas cinematecas, em circuitos muito marginais, em instituições de caridade artística.

Mas pelo mundo do teatro parisiense que eu frequentava, começavam a aparecer telefonemas, convites para filmes. Garrel precisava de actores mais novos do que ele, ia fazer filmes sobre a sua vida, actores com trinta anos. Já não filmava com os seus mortos, os mortos tinham morrido, precisava de intermediários agora, de actores, de mediums para contar as suas histórias. Como me impressionou o Lou Castel, vindo de Bellochio, ferido e sólido, reaparecer no universo de Garrel. E a maravilhosa Christine Boisson, essa febril, frágil, nocturna lua vinda da Gaivota do Bruno Bayen e da Identificação de Uma Mulher de Antonioni com aquele desenho de testa à Pollaiolo e a sua ferida.

E um dia estava eu ao lado do Benoît Régent quando ele recebeu o recado: se podia encontrar-se com Garrel para fazer esse tão bonito J' Entents Plus La Guitarre. E ele pôde. E fez a que seria uma das mais verdadeiras, nervosas, erráticas, extraordinárias, magoadas, fantásticas representações que conheço, meu querido Benoît que a morte arrebataria, a maldita!, uma madrugada num hotel da Suíça, morte solitária e acidental como num destes secos, determinados, desamparados, angustiantes, cinzentos mesmo que a cores, metropolitanos filmes de Garrel.

É que, imperceptivelmente, Garrel começa a afastar-se do bloco de notas inicial que tanto nos fascinara na sua imprevisível liberdade. E a precisar de actores. Envelhece, está mais só, já se foram os do bando. Os seus filmes não sei se começaram agora a contar histórias, traziam era personagens escapadas do delírio. E ao filmar a vida desgarrada com que tanto nos surpreendeu na sua delicadeza inicial, sucedeu-se, no seu cinema, filmar a representação.

Pois o que ficou foi a memória. O tempo foi-se indo. E a morte avançando sobre os copains, o ingénuo bando que prometera entrar na negra noite.

E estés filmes que se seguem regularmente desde L'Enfant Secret são filmes da vida representada, da memória encarnada, filmes da re-presentação, filmes filmados ao de leve como quem ordena as notas dispersas e as passa a limpo, filmes já de pai e não de eterno filho, filmes escritos (determinante a relação com Cholodenko), filmes com rugas e dor, filmes já narrados, a pouco e pouco narrados. Das esparsas notas do seu início passou Garrel à elaboração de uma dolorosa autobiografia, fazendo reviver os seus amores passados, actores também, e fazendo entrar no seu mundo, não a presença, mas a re-presença, essa vida em diferido que os actores fazem sua, a vida de novo nua.

E continuou a filmar o pai, Maurice Garrel. Filmou-o como pai, filma-o agora como actor, magoado actor, tão modesto, tão extraordinário. Como volta a filmar como actor essa sua outra sombra tutelar, a ferida viva que é Laurent Terzieff, actor-poesia, mágoa moral, essa cicatriz, esse osso.

Os seus filmes continuam a ser meteoros, vêm do coração, passam-nos pela vida, como acidentes celestes. Acidentes de câmara, surgindo aqui e além, com ele filmando Johanna Ter Steege como já tinha filmado Anémone ou Nico, filmando a minha muito querida amiga Évelyne Didi (que contente que ela ficou quando ele a convidou para ingressar naquela sua tropa fandanga!), fazendo entrar o genial Luís Rego no seu mundo de sobreviventes entre o falhanço e o sagrado, entre o apartamento e o hospital como já andavam as suas personagens-sem-personagem na Marie Pour Mémoire.

Também o João César, a pouco e pouco, foi abandonando o lirismo irracional de filmes como Veredas para se emparedar no seu teatro falso, lúgubre, avançando na sua representação burlesca, fazendo W.C. Fields vencer a sombra narcísica de Lautréamont.

E entre os dois há Eustache. Eustache que, com o seu Père-Noel está nas margens dos Sapatos e a quem Garrel dedica sentido documentário, depois da morte, Eustache o mais pobre da Nouvelle Vague, o suicida, o lírico sem pieguice, o sem-pai, aquele que não foi filho, que só levou a Françoise Lebrun ao Train Bleu com o dinheiro ganho em trabalhos ocasionais e não em casamentos, Eustache o ferido de morte pelos amores.

O cinema de Garrel, nas duas fases magoadas que imperceptivelmente se aproximam, é o cinema de um filho, o filho que sai de casa com as muitas raparigas, os copains, a guitarra, uma volkswagen e o mundo inteiro como destino, Marrocos e a liberdade, um bando de saltimbancos ao relento, franciscanos da arte e do sexo, um pouco de erva e música a olhar as estrelas e a vida a passar num beijo, o luxo da imensa beleza a desfazer-se, consumptiva.

E que um dia volta a casa, filho que nunca foi pródigo pois sempre nessas aventuras à beira do delírio, levou o seu maravilhoso pai, volta a casa o filho para começar a arrumar, para ver o pai morrer, e ele começar a limpar, a ter filhos, levá-los à escola, tratar da baby-sitter, começar a pôr em ordem a imensa cicatriz que lhe ficou de tantas mortes que a vida lhe foi trazendo, Nico, a bela Nico, Pierre Clémenti, o belo Pierre Clémenti, Jean Seberg, a bela Jean Seberg, os adeuses, a tristeza, Eustache, as mulheres, Paris, tudo foi-se indo e ele fica, testemunha, narrando, testemunhando agora que é pai, deixando ficar para os que "nascerem depois de nós" este vai-vem que tanto nos libertou, que tanto libertou o João César desde as noites de Monte Carlo, aberta na mesa a página e meia dos Cahiers em que vinha a belíssima foto da Zouzou no Marie Pour Mémoire.

Como quem (e foi o pobre Brecht quem primeiro o pediu) diz "Olhem depois para nós com compaixão".

Dizem-me que não se encontra nos "Cahiers" essa fotografia imensa que juro ter visto e revisto nas noites do Monte-Carlo. Tenho a memória assim tão frágil? Lá se me foi a argumentação? Sonhamos essa fotografia? Mas vimo-la e era de página e meia, segredos de Maria, memória quebradiça.

in Philippe Garrel - uma alta solidão - Cinemateca Portuguesa - Museu do Cinema

A PERFECT WORLD (1993)

por João Bénard da Costa

A excepção e a regra. Uma reconciliação com o mundo e com os homens. "Voltei a acreditar que um e outros podem ser perfeitos."

Quando fui ver A Perfect World estava num daqueles dias em que se tende a exagerar a natural imperfeição do mundo e dos seus habitantes. Um daqueles dias em que se toma a parte pelo todo ou uma dor de cabeça por um cancro no cérebro. Um daqueles dias, por exemplo, em que, quando presenciamos tristes figuras, de quem as esperávamos e de quem as não esperávamos, generalizamos que só há figurações tristes nestes tristes tempos deste triste espaço. Que "faz frio pensar na vida". O que a vida faz às pessoas. O que as pessoas fazem da vida. De associação em associação, de recorrência em recorrência, tudo ou muito (mas um muito que é demais) nos começa a parecer sinistro. "Há qualquer coisa de sinistro no olhar daquele carneiro", dizia Nuno Bragança quando não gostava ou desconfiava de uma pessoa. Em dias, como o dia em que vi A Perfect World, descobri "qualquer coisa de sinistro" no olhar de quase todos os carneiros, mesmo daqueles que têm lã quentinha e a quem gostamos de passar a mão pelo pêlo ou que nos passem a mão pelo pêlo. Os amigos não são para essas ocasiões.

Antigamente, um bom filme de Capra, um bom filme de Ford, eram o antidepressivo ideal para essas ocasiões, que provavelmente têm mais que ver com coisas nossas de que com coisas vossas. Hoje - Capra morreu, Ford morreu e não há ninguém com muita saúde - é mais raro achar filmes com essas virtudes. Mas, no ser humano, a capacidade de bem é tão espantosa como a capacidade de mal e, mesmo que a moral vigente não seja mais a moral edificante, há sempre excepções à regra. A Perfect World (título que não deve ser lido ironicamente) é uma dessas excepções. De resto, num diálogo do filme (e dos mais importantes) é de regras e excepções que se fala.

T.J. Lother, o miúdo que Clint Eastwood descobriu (decalcado a papel químico de 4700 miúdos análogos do cinema americano) confessa a Kevin Costner que roubou o fato do fantasminha e a máscara do "halloween". Pergunta-lhe se está zangado com ele, pergunta aliás recorrente na boca de uma criança educada por Testemunhas de Jeová e por muitas proibições. Costner responde-lhe que não se deve roubar, mas que quando uma coisa apetece muito e não há dinheiro... E acrescenta, à laia de moral, "todas as regras têm excepção". É quase no fim do segundo grande "travelling" de acompanhamento, no caso em questão de acompanhamento do carro em que o adulto e a criança por duas vezes permutam estatutos: o adulto faz-se criança (para o bem e para o mal, nunca tinha deixado de o ser) e a criança torna-se adulto. Nesses dois "travellings" (muito longos e admiravelmente filmados) Kevin Costner e T.J. Lother ligam-se um ao outro e ligam-se a nós.

No cinema americano, abundam exemplos de histórias de crianças que foram parar às mãos de bandidos. Ou se divertiram muito, ou ficaram, para sempre, vacinadas contra o maniqueísmo dos "bons" e dos "maus". A Perfect World, a esse nível, é só mais um filme desses e não destrona o arquétipo de todos, Moonfleet, de Fritz Lang. Como não destrona, em termos de imagem emblemática, a oposição corpo grande - corpo pequeno, ou pai-filho, que explicou a adesão das gerações do pós-guerra a uma parábola como Ladrões de Bicicletas. Por alguma razão, a imagem publicitária do filme (Kostner, enorme, e T.J. Lother, pequenino, de mãos dadas) reenvia imediatamente ao filme de De Sica.

Mas, em A Perfect World, dão-se passos muito consideráveis para questões morais bastante mais complexas. Centro-me numa sequência e num adereço: a sequência em casa da família negra e a utilização do fato e da máscara do "halloween".

Se, algum dia, o mundo pareceu perfeito ao miúdo chamado Philip foi na manhã que passou em casa dos velhos negros e do neto. A amizade com Costner selara-se quando este interrompeu o que estava a fazer com a dona do restaurante e seguiu viagem com o miúdo, sem - novamente - se zangar com ele. Depois de terem sido acordados na floresta (pelo negro) tudo pareceu a Philip (e digo a Philip, porque a sequência é subjectiva) a perfeita celebração dessa amizade: o velho disco, a velha música, Costner a dançar com a velha, ele a dançar com o miúdo. Neste momento, o bem pareceu estar do lado mau, definitiva e pacificamente. Se a polícia tivesse entrado naquela casa, naquele momento, o miúdo ficaria a odiar polícias e a adorar ladrões pela vida fora.

Mas o que aprendeu, e o que aprendeu de repente, foi que não há simplicidades dessas. Determinado por um valor ("adultos não devem tratar mal as crianças") Kevin Costner estraga a festa e, como todos os fundamentalistas, assume por razões éticas um comportamento monstruoso (a tortura e a ameaça de morte à família negra). E o que o miúdo descobre naquele momento é que o amigo é também um monstro e que nenhuma amizade justifica o pacto com a monstruosidade ou com a ignomínia. Por isso dispara e mata o amigo. Esse tiro é, por isso mesmo, um dos tiros mais belos da história do cinema.

Mas Clint Eastwood ainda foi mais longe. Costner diz ao miúdo, depois, que se calhar não ia matar ninguém (é irrelevante, a tortura fora mais grave) e, em campo aberto (na sequência final), dá muito mais dados para ser compreendido e amado. E quando manda Philip embora, pede-lhe que ponha a caraça e vista o fato do fantasma. É nessa altura que essa caraça e esse fato adquirem a dimensão mais obscura e sacral. Porque com elas, o miúdo não é miúdo mas uma aparência construída para meter medo. Passa de criança a homúnculo e dissolve-se-lhe, sob a máscara, a infantilidade. Como máscara, pode enfrentar as outras máscaras (os polícias) num mundo por igual mascarado, num mundo em que sem máscara ou se é criança ou se está perdido.

Num filme de 1932 - Blonde Venus -, Sternberg fez aproximável uso de uma caraça e de uma criança para dar a Marlene um terceiro homem mais forte do que o marido e do que o amante. Em A Perfect World, desde a sequência do armazém e sempre que o miúdo tira ou põe a máscara, são dadas as pistas para a transformação daquela criança no adulto que um dia será, e, eventualmente, no monstro que um dia pode vir a ser. Quando foi ele que deu o tiro tinha a cara e os olhos transparentemente nus. Quando a polícia deu o segundo tiro - o tiro da abjecção - o contracampo é a máscara.

No fim, já o miúdo vai ser levado para a sua "nave espacial", Clint Eastwood dá o soco no agente federal e Laura Dern atira-lhe um pontapé aos tomates. Esses dois actos violentos são o equivalente (adulto e "legal") do tiro que a criança dera. A criança não a vemos nem a ouvimos mais. Clint Eastwood ouvimo-lo dizer (e são as últimas palavras do filme): "Já não sei nada de nada". Alguma vez, alguém, pensou ouvir semelhante confissão da boca de Clint Eastwood?

Mas foi por causa dessas palavras, do tiro do miúdo, do soco de Clint Eastwood e do pontapé de Laura Dern que me reconciliei com o mundo e com os homens e que voltei a acreditar que um e outros, às vezes, podem ser perfeitos. As estrelas do céu por cima de nós e a lei moral dentro de nós? Professor Immanuel, é mais ou menos isso.

in As Imagens Recorrentes, crónica no Suplemento "Vida" do semanário "Independente", 23 de Dezembro de 1993

EXPERIMENT PERILOUS (1944)

por João Bénard da Costa

Noite na Alma. O título português deste extraordinário Tourneur - um dos cumes da arte do cineasta, para vos dar, desde já, a minha opinião - será tão parvo como à primeira vista parece? (em Espanha chamaram-lhe também Noche en el Alma e não sei quem copiou o quê de quem). Pensando bem, o que Tourneur chamou "a vertente crepuscular do espírito" e que sempre disse fasciná-lo, pode ser essa noite na alma, ou essa noite da alma, como diziam os místicos. 

Reparem bem nos protagonistas, em George Brent, em Hedy Lamarr, em Paul Lukas, ou nessa fabulosa "Cissie" do comboio (Olive Blakeney). As almas deles não estarão tão às escuras como os corpos, esses corpos que não têm sequer o desejo de desejar, para lembrar o título da obra clássica de Mary Ann Doane sobre o melodrama e o "gótico" no cinema americano dos anos 40? Acaso algum deles, nesta história que é também de casamentos e adultérios, desejou alguém? Alguma vez vemos desejo em Hedy Lamarr, quer na sua relação com o marido, quer na sua relação com esse estranho Alec, o escritor que deu nome ao filho dela, quer na sua relação "fraternal" com Hunt? E citei-a a ela - "Lamarrvellous", a quem tanto se chamou por esses anos "a mais bela mulher do mundo" - por duas razões. Porque é ela o único personagem a quem conhecemos vários casos (o marido, o escritor, o médico) e porque ela, a mais desejável das mulheres, nunca faz estremecer qualquer desses homens, ou só faz estremecer o marido, associando-o à morte. Introduzida por um quadro (já lá vou) em que ela é como que o fantasma dela própria, de negro vestida diante do tabuleiro do chá, sentada na cadeira do alto espaldar, em posição que, incessantemente, ao longo do filme, Nick a obriga a repetir, como que não lhe consentindo outra existência se não a que ficou imobilizada no retrato.

Normalmente, Experiment Perilous é comparado a Gaslight, o filme de George Cukor do mesmo ano, com Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer e Joseph Cotten. Resumindo o argumento: "mulher casada com homem muito mais velho que tenta convencê-la que está louca e a quer matar", é certo que as "histórias" são semelhantes, embora, como Tourneur notou orgulhosamente, o filme dele seja anterior ao de Cukor. Mas quando vemos os filmes nada de mais diverso (se descontarmos a imensidão dos forties). Em Gaslight tudo é romantismo e excesso romântico, tudo é erotismo e segredos de alcova; em Experiment Perilous tudo é teatro de sombras e nenhuma força identificável move aqueles personagens, movidos sempre por forças maiores do que eles, como o dizia já o Leopard Man, e como bem sublinhou Michael Henry. Em Gaslight, o que contava era o momento em que as luzes baixavam e se ouviam os passos no sótão. Em Experiment Perilous o que conta é mesmo essa experiência que George Brent, como médico, decide fazer e o perigo associado a ela, perigo que nenhum deles imagina ainda, nesse momento, ser tão perigoso. Depois, só muito depois, é que vem, no filme de Tourneur, o que chamei a imensidão dos forties: os temas recorrentes em tantos filmes dessa década: as flores do mal (aqui são as margaridas), a imagem fixa no vórtice da imagem movente (a pintura no filme), os comboios, as mansões vitorianas, as carruagens na neve, os espelhos e reflexos, as jóias malditas. Pensem em Laura, em The Woman in the Window, em Scarlet Street, em The Portrait of Dorian Gray, em Rebecca, em Shadow of a Doubt, em The Portrait of Jennie, em The Two Mrs Carrolls, em Dragonwyck, em The Locket. Se ainda não viram vão ver e pensem em Experiment Perilous. Não admira que, ao falar do filme, Tourneur fale sobretudo dos décors, de Albert d'Agostino e de Darrell Silvera e diga que o look se deve ao maravilhoso departamento artístico da RKO. "Cheira" a cinema dos anos 40, pode-se dizer.

Mas se esse cheiro nos entra pelo nariz, como nos entra pelos olhos o esplendor da cada dos Bedereaux (da casa de Nick e Cissie em crianças, da casa de Nick e de Allida em crescidos) ou dos vários décors a que estes se pegam (do atelier a Paris) há qualquer coisa que vai crescendo, à medida que o filme cresce, que não é espírito do lugar nem lugar do espírito. Jacques Tourneur levou os zombies de Val Lewton para o frio inverno nova-iorquino de 1903 e, numa linha paralela mas subterrânea, outros fantasmas perseguem aqueles corpos, esvaziando-os e aspirando-os.

Fantasias, fantasias? Venham então comigo rever o princípio do filme, depois do plano inicial com as margaridas e o céu escuro, que voltará tantas vezes, quase como um "leit-motif". Estamos num comboio, um daqueles fabulosos comboios do início do século, onde tanto apetece viajar em noites como aquelas em que a borrasca é forte e o vente se mete por todas as frinchas. Estamos com uma voz off (voz off de George Brent, outro elemento indissociável dos "forties") que nos fala de "something terrific in her eyes". E surge então, como se só estivesse ali para o chamar, Cissie Bedereaux, que, durante a noite, e no almoço do dia seguinte, lhe vai contar parte da história dos tempos e vezes de Nick Bedereaux. Mas a certa altura (ainda não se falou de chance meeting, ainda nada a bem dizer começou) a câmara larga o luxuoso compartimento do comboio e, cá fora, na tempestade filma o comboio a passar. Mero plano de ligação? Porque é que então há um movimento que nos aproxima dos rails e em que vemos a linha do comboio como que a desabar (literalmente, a afundar-se). Aproxima-se um descarrilamento? Nada disso. A câmara volta para o interior do compartimento, onde Cissie continua a contar parte da história da sua vida ao médico que por acaso conheceu naquela noite. Depois marcam almoço para o dia seguinte. A tempestade passou. Mas aquelas duas pessoas não passaram e vão ficar para sempre ligadas uma à outra. Porque Cissie morreu à chegada a Nova Iorque? Porque as malas de Cissie foram parar a casa de Hunt? Porque Hunt, acometido por essa morte e por essas malas, se decide a conhecer o irmão e a cunhada dela? Não faltam pretextos narrativos, mas falta a razão para nos ter faltado o pé durante a noite (para lhes ter faltado o pé durante a noite) para a narração quebrada e sincopada de Cissie e para que os diários de Cissie entrem em casa de Hunt. Entre os planos, a vertigem.

Morta a "irmã que sabia demais" (e que desaparece do filme num arco nevoento) entram nele os artistas que vão dar a Hunt as pistas que lhe faltam. Conhecemos então - primeiro em retrato, depois em carne e osso, se tal se pode dizer - essa "very strange woman" que é Allida. Belíssima mulher? "But I don't like beautiful women. Make me nervous". Muito, muito mais tarde no filme, Nick conta ao filho que as mulheres muito bonitas de dia se transformam em bruxas à noite. Os dois homens de Allida têm medo da beleza e da noite. E têm pesadelos com tigres. "life is short. Art is long". Quem o diz é o frustrado Clag, quando mostra a sua obra-prima, essa estátua a que chamou só "Mulher" e que faz medo e o mesmo frio do retrato de Allida. O mundo feminino é embruxado. Aproxima-se a "experiência perigosa" associada, como no genérico às margaridas e aos céus carregados. E o movimento do filme empurra-nos para o flashback que surge primeiro quando Nick fala da loucura de Allida, sempre associada a terrores da noite e a terrores na noite. Ou às margaridas, flores do mal. Mas na aparente linearidade da narração, continuam os mistérios: quem é aquela mulher, no atelier que, em primeiro plano, por duas vezes acena a Hunt como se houvesse qualquer coisa que lhe quer dizer e não pode dizer? Será a que depois lhe vai telefonar do armazém? Porquê tal relevo para personagem indecifrada e indecifrável? Quem é o homem de sapatos pretos e brancos que persegue Hunt na neve e de quem só vemos esses mesmos sapatos? Será o detective final? Mas quem, então, perseguiu os Bedereaux ou o cúmplice deles? E porquê?

Os exemplos podem multiplicar-se pois que não conheço outro filme que, num esquema narrativo aparentemente "clássico", introduza tamanha ambiguidade, tamanho mistério, tamanho vazio. "Do you not dare to open", escreveu Cissie no diário dela sobre a vida e os tempos de Nicolas Bedereaux. Talvez seja idêntica ameaça a que nos vem desta experiência perigosa. Um "no trespassing" muito mais forte do que o do filme de Kane, pois que o grande flash-back correspondente à leitura (há aquele grande plano de Hedy Lamarr reflectido no lago) se nos vão revelar alguma coisa das psicoses de Nick, deixam inviolável a mulher das margaridas que, perdido o colar, e o louro amante, cedo voltou às tílias do chá.

"We all have tigers under our beds", diz-se no filme. Mas se sabemos - a cada passo, a cada plano das margaridas, ou das rosas amarelas atiradas ao chão - que são tão reais esses tigres como as bruxas em que se transformam as mulheres bonitas, onde se escondem eles e donde vêm eles?

Alguns perguntam-se, no final de Experiment Perilous, quem é o pai de Alec ou porque razão a criança tem o mesmo nome do escritor que Nick mandou matar. Outros acham inverosímil que só Nick tenha morrido entre as chamas e as vagas do incêndio diluviano que ele próprio desencadeou (genial sequência que só por si justificaria a visão deste filme). Há quem pergunte a que vem o detective do final.

Eu, neste filme, hoje, como há 56 anos, pergunto-me tudo.

Volto, para acabar com Michael Henry, à "estética da inquietação" que, para mim, tem o paroxismo neste filme. E foi Tourneur quem disse que "o verdadeiro terror consiste em mostrar que inconscientemente todos vivemos no medo".

Quem é capaz de se levantar da cama e ir acordar o tigre que dorme debaixo dela? E não será o mesmo tigre o que dorme debaixo das camas de Nick e de Hunt? Se assim for, percebe-se melhor que Hunt, no final, devolva Allida aos campos de margaridas donde Nick a trouxera tantos anos antes. A experiência mais perigosa é a do eterno retorno.

in AS FOLHAS DA CINEMATECA - Jacques Tourneur

JACK IS BACK!

by Bill Kelley 

During the fifties at Universal, Jack Arnold interpreted the monster folklore of the 1930s for an atomic age. Today, he looks back on it all with great affection. 

Although he occupies a fairly lofty tier in the pantheon of fantasy film directors, published discussion of Jack Arnold is surprisingly rare. His films are some of the most famous science fiction and horror thrillers of the 1950s - among them The Incredible Shrinking Man, Tarantula! and The Creature from the Black Lagoon -and still hold up well today, yet critical appraisal of Arnold's contribution to them is widely divergent. His achievements are overestimated in the chapter devoted to them in John Baxter's Science Fiction in the Cinema, while other writers have bypassed him entirely, except to pay an occasional backhanded compliment. (Indeed, Carlos Clarens mentions Arnold only once in his celebrated An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, and even there the reference is lukewarm.) 

The reasons for this oversight are understandable, if insufficient. As a contract director for Universal, Arnold worked on a variety of projects ranging from star vehicles like The Lady Takes a Flyer with Lana Turner to modest programmers like the western Red Sundown - not just fantasy thrillers. He directed them all with economy and skill, and it is likely difficult for the casual viewer to discern whether Arnold put any more effort or enthusiasm into the horror and science fiction pictures. Also, Arnold hasn't directed a film with even the vaguest element of fantasy since The Mouse that Roared in 1959, which can lead one to presume that he may have regarded those early classics as nothing more than routine assignments. 

However, a few introductory minutes of conversation with Arnold reveal just the opposite to be true. As a youngster, he was strongly impressed by the films of Fritz Lang and James Whale, and maintained a collection of Weird Tales magazine and other pulp periodicals then in their heyday. He consequently jumped at the chance to explore similar themes and concepts when Universal offered him his first science fiction assignments. 

Largely due to extensive television exposure during the past ten years, Arnold films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space are familiar today to even the most casual audiences, while Arnold's role in them remains somewhat buried. No one would dare consider Dr. Strangelove without extolling Stanley Kubrick's vision in the same breath, or Rosemary's Baby without praising Roman Polanski for his skill in faithfully transferring a complex book to the screen - and rightfully so - but Arnold, because he was operating within a strictly commercial framework, conveyed a less salient personality, and his point of view is not as readily perceived. Nonetheless, an examination of the complete Arnold filmography to date reveals themes and preoccupations which recur with surprising regularity (despite the disparity of subjects in the various screenplays) and can usually be assessed (especially recently) as the strongest element in the films. Like Siegel, Aldrich and Corman, Arnold has managed to broach challenging ideas and concepts in a subtle fashion despite the restrictions of the low-budget melodrama: unlike them, he has not attained the greater freedom of expression which brings a filmmaker's philosophies closer to the surface and provides a gauge for studying early works. 

With the exception of Richard Matheson's adaptation of his own novel in The Incredible Shrinking Man, the scripts handed to Arnold in his Universal period were all relatively simplistic. And it was clearly the director's contributions that made the resultant films work as well as they did. The Creature films (the original and its first sequel, Revenge of the Creature) were, after all, little more than a reworking of the Universal monster folklore of the 1930s: Arnold provided the new 1950s feel of technological recklessness and impatience, and gave the monster's attraction for the heroine a more lustful bent. Indeed, considering the restrictions imposed by producer Albert Zugsmith, even The Incredible Shrinking Man would likely have become a conventional thriller had a director without Arnold's intuitive flair for expressive mise en scène been entrusted to the task. 

Clearly, Arnold's chief gift - beyond a command of the principles of editing and an understanding of actors, which are expected of any intelligent director - is his ability to create and sustain mood. More specifically, he imbued his films not merely with atmosphere, but a pervasive undercurrent of psychological and physical danger. This quality, employing frequent allegorical nuances, gave these films a narrative power which was maintained without showing a monster or a mutation every third scene - an attribute few fantasy films of the 1950s could match. Unlike most of these minor potboilers, where actors were set-pieces going through motions contrived for the filmmakers' convenience, Arnold's films were organic entities, wherein the characters' behavior was determined by a carefully established setting - not a series of crude stimuli - and all of the action developed logically from that point. One can find this strain in Arnold's work as recently as 1974, in Black Eye, which would have been simply another black exploitation drama were it not for a cleverly cynical depiction of urban life and morality on its various strata, and the manner in which a bemused detective-hero traverses a posh but inherently seedy milieu. 

This contemporary appraisal of Arnold's early films would be no more than a nostalgic recollection were it not for the fact that Arnold, who now heads his own independent production company, Jack's (its first feature, Boss Nigger, a black western starring Fred Williamson, was released earlier this year by Dimension Pictures), is preparing to embark upon a new fantasy film, his first in more than fifteen years. Tentatively titled A Circle of Wheels, it has been scripted by Arthur Ross (who co-authored the screenplay for The Creature from The Black Lagoon) and is described by Arnold as "a science fiction satire" about the corruptive influence which big business works upon the ambitious college graduates who are dehumanized by their climb to the top of the corporative hierarchy. The director hopes to sign Tony Randall and Cloris Leachman for the leading roles of a man and wife who are transformed into robot-like machinery by their assimilation into the business labyrinth. 

Much has transpired in the field of cinefantastique since Arnold directed his initial, groundbreaking efforts, and it will be intriguing to see how the director fares against the precedents set in the 1960s. Certainly A Circle of Wheels appears to hold relatively few surprises on paper. But then, most of Arnold's previous excursions into the genre illustrate a history of triumphs over limited material. At least this time Arnold, whose social and political commitments have always guided and strengthened his directorial style, will be dealing with a project in which the ultimate statement is an intrinsic part of the storyline. If this film is successful, perhaps Arnold will be encouraged to return to the fold, and give fantasy filmmaking the shot in the arm many afficionados believe it needs.

Jack Arnold was born in New Haven , Connecticut in 1916. He attended Ohio State University for two years, then transferred to the American Academy of the Dramatic Arts in New York City, where he studied acting. Originally a vaudeville dancer, he became a Broadway actor in 1935 and continued on the stage until 1949, with an interruption for war service as a pilot. While waiting to be called for active duty in 1942, he took a job as an assistant to famed documentarist Robert Flaherty, then shooting a film for the state department at the old Paramount Studios in Ansonia, Queens. "It was quite an education for me," Arnold explains today. "That's where I really learned the film business." Arnold worked with Flaherty for nine months, and the filmmaker was so impressed with his young protege's progress that he tried to have him deferred from service when the Air Training Command called him to duty. The attempt was unsuccessful. In 1948, while acting under Frederic March in the Broadway adaptation of A Bell for Adano, Arnold and an associate formed a documentary film company, a move which soon led to a Hollywood career.

Arnold himself is a friendly, articulate man whose interests cover a broad range of subjects. He lives with his family in Woodland Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles which is also the home of Richard Matheson. The interview which follows was conducted in February, 1975, shortly after Arnold had completed work on several segments of the Archer television series. He is currently in Munich, Germany, shooting The Swiss Conspiracy for producer Maurice Silverstein. The interview discusses only Arnold's genre films, actually a small percentage of the director's film work. In addition to the films listed below, one of the segments Arnold directed for It Takes a Thief dealt with devil worship.

1953 - It Came from Outer Space

1954 - The Creature from The Black Lagoon

1955 - Revenge of the Creature / Tarantula! / This Island, Earth (uncredited)

1957 - The Incredible Shrinking Man

1958 - Monster on the Campus

1959 - Space Children / The Mouse that Roared

1969 - Hello Down There

Cinefantastique: How did you get started with Universal?

Jack Arnold: I had made a documentary film in New York in 1949, when I had a documentary film company. The film was called With these Hands, and it starred Sam Levene, Arlene Francis and Joseph Wiseman. It was made for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union as a 50th Anniversary film. In those days, documentary films were a big thing, and it got great critical acclaim, was released commercially and nominated for an Academy Award. This was at the end of 1949, and Universal offered me a contract when I came out here for the Academy Awards. I was with them the duration of one seven year contract, and then I signed another seven year contract with them. Between those contracts I went to England and made a film which I consider my best work. The Mouse that Roared, for Carl Foreman's company and Columbia Pictures. I was very proud of that film. I returned to the States, worked for Fox and MGM, and then I got into television for a while, working for CBS, for whom I did some shows such as Gilligan's Island, which I liked as an amusing juvenile program, and then I finally returned to Universal. For three years I was executive producer and director of It Takes a Thief with Bob Wagner and Fred Astaire. Then i formed my own company, Jack's. Our first film was Boss Nigger, a western with Fred Williamson. Our second will be later this year, a science fiction comedy called A Circle of Wheels, written by Arthur Ross.

CFQ: That will be your first science fiction film in over fifteen years. Why such a long hiatus?

Arnold: It's partially because I was busy with other projects, partially because I didn't encounter anything that appealed to me. 

CFQ: How did you feel about the science fiction films when you were making them?

Arnold: Oh, I loved them. Those were the films I had the most fun with.

CFQ: How much creative freedom did Universal give you?

Arnold: I had complete freedom, because the studio knew nothing about the making of science fiction films. They didn't know which end was up. So I exercised total control, final cut, everything, as long as I kept within the budgets.

CFQ: What were the budgets of some of them?

Arnold: They were fairly high for those days, about $800-900.000. In the '50s and '60s, that was a lot of money. And the pictures made a great deal of money, so there was never any reason to reduce the budgets.

CFQ: Richard Carlson has said that with It Came from Outer Space you were attempting to top the Warner Bros hit House of Wax. Is that true?

Arnold: We made It Came from Outer Space in 3-D, I suppose, because Warner's had just made House of Wax and it was a new fad and Universal wanted something to compete with it. They felt a science fiction film would be the best vehicle for a 3-D film.

CFQ: The first two Creature films were also in 3-D. What problems did that present?

Arnold: It was a pain in the neck technically. When we used it for It Came from Outer Space, that started the renaissance at Universal of science fiction films. Since it was one of the first 3-D movies of the fifties, no one was really an expert in the field, so I worked very closely with the special effects and the camera departments on it. We had to find out where the lines of conversion were and where in the frame you would get the three-dimensional effect. So it was a challenge, and fun in that respect, but difficult. I thought it was a very successful film, visually, in 3-D. Wearing the red and green glasses posed no problem if the audiences' eyes were all right, but if you had a stigmatism in one eye, you could come away with a pretty huge headache. But I thought it was very exciting, seeing a landslide falling upon you and all the other various devices. It helped create an atmosphere.

CFQ: Why was it necessary to bring in another writer and redo Ray Bradbury's screenplay for It Came from Outer Space?

Arnold: When I was assigned the script to direct it was already in final draft and I really don't know why they brought in another writer, except that Ray Bradbury at that time I don't think had written any screenplays. He was strictly a novelist and had written many science fiction short stories and they felt that a screenwriter should adapt his material into a scenario, and they assigned Harry Essex to do that. I think he did a fairly good job, a very good job as a matter of fact. I remember at the opening of It Came From Outer Space I met Ray Bradbury for the first time and I asked him what he had thought of the film - he liked it. And I asked him how he felt it came out in regards to his material and he said, "I think you've achieved about 85%." And I thought that was a fairly high percentage, coming from a writer. I know I was pleased, and I believe Ray was pleased.

CFQ: The settings in your films often show as much character as the people who inhabit them - particularly the desert in your It Came from Outer Space.

Arnold: I tried to do that with all of them, to make the locale a part of the atmosphere. That was a deliberate effort. The first thing I did was establish the atmosphere, so the audience would feel something before anything else was shown. And then, of course, I would continue to build on it as the story progressed.

CFQ: The central character, the alien in It Came from Outer Space, you show only for an instant.

Arnold: I debated whether I should show him at all. I had one brief cut, about a foot of film, but I knew there was nothing that supplied what the imagination would think was there. No matter how horrendous, scary or bizarre you wanted something to be, you couldn't duplicate what an audience would imagine the creature to be. Finally, I used the cut in a flash, just once. Which is really a departure from most of the films of the period, which featured the alien and made him the focal point of the story. My focal point was what happened to the people, not what happened to the alien, who landed inadvertently on earth because he ran into trouble. I concentrated on our innate repulsion, hatred and paranoid fear of anything that's different from us. Good or bad, if it's different, we're afraid of it, and we hate it.

CFQ: That's true of The Creature from the Black Lagoon too.

Arnold: Yes. I set out to make the Creature a very sympathetic character. He's violent because he's provoked into violence. Inherent in the character is the statement that all of us have violence within, and if provoked, are capable of any bizarre retaliation. If left alone, and understood, that's when we overcome the primeval urges that we all are cursed with. Man's inhumanity to man means not only man's inhumanity to his own kind but to anything else, especially something that's very different from himself. You can trace the roots down to the primitive tribes, one against the other, in the cities to this block against the next block, or the Jew against the Arab, the Protestant against the Catholic, the black against the white. We have not progressed as human beings to differentiate between what is superficial and what is not. Of course, the sooner we learn the lesson, the better off we'll be, and that's what I tried to point out in my science fiction films, in a manner in which an audience would accept it. I don't think they would accept a polemic. They'd walk out on it, or it would be under investigation by the House of Un-American Activities Committee or some such animal. My objective was primarily to entertain, but I also wanted to say something. If ten per cent of the audience grasped it, then I was very successful.

CFQ: What was it like working in the McCarthy era?

Arnold: Very bad. Everybody was looking for Reds under the beds. Red could mean anything, anybody who had any ideas about social progress.

CFQ: Your films don't reflect any of the anti-communist preachings that a number of the fantasy films of the period do, such as Red Planet Mars, for example.

Arnold: And, I must say, deliberately, on my part. I thought the greatest blight on this country's history was the McCarthy period. Not that I'm a Red; I'm far from it. But McCarthy ruined a lot of lives, a lot of people I knew were affected. It was terrible out here, just unbelievable. People couldn't get jobs and didn't know why, people who were in no way communist. All you had to do was be a liberal. I'm left of center politically, a registered Democrat. I guess I was just lucky.

CFQ: Getting back to the original Creature film, I'm curious about the Creature's apparent sexual lust for Julie Adams. There is a very strong erotic motif, particularly in the deep-focus shot of him swimming under her.

Arnold: I tried to give the Creature all the basic human drives, but down at the most elemental level. I shot that sequence at Silver Springs, Florida. The parallel to sexual intercourse was that strong but was never that specific. It was symbolic, and I was trying to represent it in that manner. It was meant to affect the audience subtly.

CFQ: There is one scene where one of the characters tosses a cigarette off the side of the boat into the water, and the Creature, underneath the surface, stirs. Today, it's easy for someone to perceive that as a statement on ecology, but at the time, what were you thinking?

Arnold: Well, in those days we were not as conscious of environment as we are today, but here is certainly a strong point being made that these people, although they are scientists, are still ignorant of what they are doing to the balance of nature that exists in this lagoon. They wreak all sorts of havoc, destroy and pollute the environment trying to capture the Creature. Occasionally I would insert a scene such as you mentioned to make the point stand out. I loved making science fiction films because they enabled me to say things which could not be stated openly in other films without seeming obvious. I think adding these other levels of meaning gave the films a little something extra. And, as I said, I was completely alone, because Universal did not know how to deal with science fiction. I said that I did, so I was regarded as the expert by them. Not that I was, but I didn't tell them that.

CFQ: Had you seen a lot of fantasy films?

Arnold: I was brought up on them. And as a teenager I bought Weird Tales and the science fiction magazines. The movies that impressed me most were The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis. Some of the German UFA films were done with such a great flair and created such a mood. They were marvelous. And I loved Frankenstein, The Invisible Man and other quality American films.

CFQ: How would you account for this perennial popularity of cinefantastique from Frankenstein to The Creature from the Black Lagoon to The Exorcist?

Arnold: I don't know. I just think that there is a great audience for these films, and I think there will continue to be a great audience for these films. I think more should be made. I hope, one of these days, to start making some myself.

CFQ: The Creature is never conclusively killed off, you just see him drift away into the darkness.

Arnold: That was done for two reasons. The studio wanted to keep him in there for a sequel, and I also loved him - I used to call him "The Beastie", when we were making the films - and I wanted to leave it a little open, not to show him destroyed. I thought he was very sympathetic, due in no small way to the work of Ricou Browning*, who played the Creature in all the underwater sequences. We had gone down to Silver Springs to scout locations, and I was interviewing swimmers for the part. Ricou was a marvelous swimmer and his attitude about the part was right. He was amazing underwater and could stay under for almost five minutes without taking a breath. He had to wear that costume, and the only way he could take a breath was to stop when he needed air, swim over to an air hose and stick it in his mouth until he was OK again, then go back and play the scene.

CFQ: How long did it take to create the costume?

Arnold: It was a good month before we settled on the idea of it. We built a tank that still stands in the studio for testing it. We tested all kinds of things until we finally came up with the suit he liked. I remember one day I was looking at the certificate I received when I was nominated for an Academy Award. There was a picture of the Oscar statuette on it. I said, "If we put a gilled head on it, plus fins and scales, that would look pretty much like the kind of creature we're trying to get." So they made a mold out of rubber, and gradually the costume took shape. They gave him some human characteristics, which helped make him sympathetic. I tried to give that quality to the creatures in all of my films.

CFQ: However, the monster spider in Tarantula! is not sympathetic at all.

Arnold: No, but the scientists are, the scientists who are afflicted with that disease.

CFQ: Were you influenced by Them! in your handling of Tarantula!?

Arnold: No. I like the film, but I can't say there was any connection between Them! and Tarantula!, which I wrote. I tried to use the scientific discoveries the botanists were making in growing larger vegetables, the work of Burbank, just taking it one or two steps further, using it on living animals. But I don't think it was very much influenced by ants.

Because of the success of It Came from Outer Space Universal wanted another science fiction story. I wrote it, and I was assigned to direct it. We put a screenwriter on it and I worked very closely with him, and they left me quite alone. It was assigned to the same producer, Bill Alland, who produced most of the science fiction films I did. His function was more on the technical and business side of it, although we did work on the creative end together. He was very helpful, and he was a very good producer, I thought.

CFQ: Did you try to say anything in Revenge of the Creature that you weren't able to get to in the original?

Arnold: I tried to carry the concept of "civilized" man's misunderstanding of him a bit further. They take him to the marina and make a freak out of him because they don't understand him. Again, it illustrates our own failings as sensitive human beings. We don't know what to do with something that's a bit different than we are. At the end, they manage to communicate with him a little, so at least they've maybe learned something.

CFQ: Why didn't you direct The Creature Walks Among Us?

Arnold: They asked me, and I turned it down. I thought I'd just be repeating myself. There was nothing more I could add to it. John Sherwood had been my assistant director, and I thought it was a good opportunity for him to step up and become a director. I didn't particularly like the film: I thought it was the weakest of the three. It wasn't John's fault, but we had already explored every area of the Creature's personality and his relationship with the humans.

CFQ: I was also surprised that you weren't chosen to direct This Island, Earth, which was financially the most ambitious of the Universal science fiction films of the '50s.

Arnold: I had to go in and re-shoot a great deal of it. I was on what the studio called an "A" picture; it was either The Lady Takes a Flyer with Lana Turner or The Tattered Dress with Jeff Chandler and Jeanne Crain. They'd finished the principal photography of This Island, Earth, cut it together, and it lacked a lot of things. So they asked me if I would help them. I went in and re-shot about half of it, but I didn't take credit for it. Specifically, I re-shot most of the footage once they reached the dying planet.

CFQ: So that classic sequence where they're in the tubes and the mutant attacks them is your work?

Arnold: Yes, and also the escape, through the tunnel and back to the ship. It could have been a hell of a better film right from the start, I thought. They didn't approach it the way I would have approached it. I think the whole atmosphere should have been explored. The whole idea of going back in a primeval time, into the depths of this planet and its ruins. It should have had an eerie, mystic kind of feeling, a whole tempo and atmosphere that contrasts the beginning of the film, when they begin their exploration. All the director was going for were the obvious tricks, and the obvious tricks aren't enough.

CFQ: Actually, they don't spend much time on Metaluna at all.

Arnold: Which was a mistake. They really should have allowed more of an opportunity to get into the atmosphere of that planet and what was happening to it. I still think science fiction films are a marvelous medium for telling a story, creating a mood, and delivering whatever kind of a social message should be delivered. I've been trying to find a story that I like. I did find this A Circle of Wheels which deals with a problem in a comedic way, but I shy away from the genre of the feature monster kind of thing.

CFQ: Did you turn any such films down?

Arnold: There were a couple of films they wanted to do which I rejected. They wanted to make The Incredible Shrinking Woman, which was to be a sequel to The Incredible Shrinking Man, in which his wife shrinks. I said I didn't want to do it, and consequently it was never made. And I avoid the strange planet expedition sort of picture.

CFQ: One hears so many horror stories of director's films being re-cut after the fact that I'm amazed you never had that trouble in all your years at Universal.

Arnold: The only fight I had with them was on The Incredible Shrinking Man, and I won it. They wanted a happy ending. They wanted him to suddenly start to grow again, and I said, "Over my dead body." So they said, "Well, let's test your ending." And at the previews it went over so well, they agreed it was best to keep it. But I had something of a to-do with them at first, and I had to explain that this was not a film suited to a happy ending.

CFQ: In a way, it was a happy ending, because at least he rationalized his predicament.

Arnold: But to a studio executive, a happy ending means he starts growing again, reaches his normal size, its reunited with his wife and everything is fine. I wasn't about to stand for that.

CFQ: How do you feel about the ending now, the impact of which is conveyed not so much in visual terms but by philosophical narration backed by stirring religious music?

Arnold: I felt it had a kind of religious significance. I don't think it was uncinematic. I thought that the impact and the mood created as he climbed through this little grill that he couldn't climb through before was good. The way Grant Williams played the scene and what we did with it I felt was cinematic, but that's my opinion.

CFQ: This ending has been termed "heavy-handed" by some. Would you agree with that assessment?

Arnold: No, I don't agree. As a matter of fact, I think it was visual. If you look at the film again and look at the end, the whole atmosphere is religious and he looks Christ-like, deliberately so. I may be in a minority of one, but I think it was cinematic and effective.

CFQ: Matheson denies responsibility for the ending of the film as it now appears. Who deserves the credit?

Arnold: I will take the credit or discredit. The ending was my idea.

CFQ: Why was it necessary to bring in writer Richard Alan Simmons to rewrite portions of Matheson's script for The Incredible Shrinking Man?

Arnold: I was assigned the film, it was about the third draft of the screenplay that I got, and I worked on it with the producer. I don't know why they out Simmons on.

CFQ: How did you try to compensate for the inability to show the sexual disintegration of his marriage so strongly expressed in Matheson's book?

Arnold: It became part of the character development. As he grew smaller, the stress between the two of them increased, and it became obvious what was wrong. I didn't consciously say, "Now we have to show this", but it was part of the determination of the character. The counterpoint to it is his affair with the midget.

CFQ: The fact that you didn't use a real midget was visually jarring.

Arnold: I couldn't use one. My leading man was six-foot-one.

CFQ: You didn't think of using some form of optical trickery?

Arnold: It was much easier playing them against oversized furniture. I used real midgets in the scene in the barroom. They were projected from behind onto a process screen, while the couple was seated in the booth and the midget walked up to say the girl was wanted at the circus. In the park scene, I had an oversized bench and sprinkler. It was easier doing that than using split screen with a real midget and Grant Williams.

CFQ: To what extent did you direct the special effects and what was your working relationship with the special effects department?

Arnold: I drew a storyboard myself on practically every frame of the film, and I worked very closely with the special effects department and Cliff Stine, who was my cameraman, on all the travelling mattes and process photography that was necessary to make the film.

CFQ: How do you feel about the extensive use of special effects in a film? Do you find it a valuable tool in the creation of mood and atmosphere?

Arnold: Yes, but I think it's only part of the atmosphere. The atmosphere must be created in toto, not specifically by the special effects, but by the sum of it all together.

CFQ: The public in the film is depicted as unthinking and unfeeling. When they come to the house, it's as if they're going to the zoo.

Arnold: Well, isn't that true? People want to look at things as a circus. Look at the kind of curious onlookers who rush to a fire or a disaster. It's entertainment, in a macabre way. That is, unfortunately, part of our personality. There was a strange incident recently here in Los Angeles, of a woman whose car skidded down an embankment, and a man saw her trapped there for six days and wouldn't report it. It's unforgivable. He didn't want to get involved. Well, to live on this earth, you have to be involved. It's like living on a spaceship, and the balance can only be changed so far without having a disaster. I think people are more aware of this today than they were ten to twenty years ago, and in no small measure due to the influence of some of the fine science fiction films that have been made. Not particularly mine, but others, like Kubrick's films. The point of Dr. Strangelove is unmistakable. The Incredible Shrinking Man gave me an opportunity to say some things about society.

Incidentally, we had an amusing incident during the making of that film. There is a sequence in which he's trapped in the cellar. He's now about an inch and a half or two inches tall, and he makes his home in an empty match box. The match box is under a heater, and the heater begins to leak. I was confronted with the problem of getting drops to fall in proportion to the size of the man. We tried everything, but no matter how we spilled the water, it didn't look like an oversized drop. Then I remembered how in my ill-spent youth I found some strange rubber objects in my father's drawer, and not knowing what they were, I filled them up with water, took them to the top of the building where we lived in New York, and dropped them over the side. I recalled that they looked great when they hit, and that they held a tear shape. So I asked the crew, "Has anybody got a condom on him?" With much reluctance, one of the guys finally confessed that he had one. We filled it with water, tied it at the top, and dropped it. It had a tear shape, exactly in the right proportion, and it splattered on impact. So we ordered about 100 gross of them. I put them on a treadmill and let them drop until the water pipe was supposed to burst, and it was very effective. At the end of the picture, I was called to the production office. They were going over all my expenses and they came across this item of 100 gross of condoms, so they asked me, "What the hell is that for?" I simply said, "Well, it was a very tough picture, so I gave  a cast party." And that was all I told them.

CFQ: Your next horror film for Universal was Monster on the Campus.

Arnold: Joe Gershenson was head of music at Universal. He was a wonderful man, and he wanted like mad to produce. The only thing they'd let him have was this film, and they asked me to direct it. Because I liked him, I did it. It's not my favorite.

CFQ: David Duncan, who wrote the script for the film, also wrote the charming, imaginative fantasy The Time Machine. Did you work with Duncan at all during the scripting stages of the film?

Arnold: I didn't work with Duncan. The script was assigned to me. I didn't particularly like it. I tried to do the best I could with it, but it was very difficult.

CFQ: Couldn't it have been written or re-written well? Say for example as a personal story from the POV of Arthur Franz, with subjective camera, akin to your handling of The Incredible Shrinking Man?

Arnold: Yes, it could've been, but we were up against a schedule. They decided to go ahead with the film rather quickly, and the "powers-that-be" liked the script although I didn't. They insisted that I go ahead, and since I was a contract director, I could either turn the script down and be put on suspension, or do it, and because of my relationship with Gershenson I decided to do it. You have a point, and if I had it to do it over again I would probably handle it much differently than I did.

CFQ: It's one of your lesser films, but the staging of some of the violence is pretty frightening. Toward the end, instead of just carrying off the girl, the monster grabs her by the hair, drags her back and then brutally carts her away.

Arnold: It was a case of doing as much as I could with a mediocre script. When you have a standard situation like that - the monster carrying the girl away - you put as much power into it as you can to make it work one more time.

CFQ: Except for this film, all the science fiction films you directed at Universal were produced by William Alland. Then, several years later, you did another film for Universal with him, The Lively Set.

Arnold: Right. Alland was still producing at that time. Today he is no longer in the business, and hasn't been for years. I believe he's involved in the stock market now.

CFQ: Space Children is an interesting departure for you, thematically.

Arnold: I tried to use the beaches and the ocean in that of the way I used the desert in It Came from Outer Space.

CFQ: The children are shown as being very pure and guiltless.

Arnold: Well, children are. They haven't grown that shell of callousness and their values haven't been corrupted yet. They see more clearly and are more sensitive. As we grow up, our exposure to civilization causes us to lose the ability to look at something that's different and evaluate it for what it is. I like that film. It was fun working with those kids, because they were into the whole experience. It was make believe for them and they could understand exactly what I wanted. They had no hang-ups in any department.

CFQ: The late fifties brought an end to studio production of horror, fantasy and science fiction films at Universal. What brought this about?

Arnold: That happened because a lot of other companies like American-International started making very inexpensive, cheap, copies of what we were making and the market was glutted with not only their films but the whole Japanese era of science fiction films with these big monsters coming out of the sea and doing all those crazy things, crushing cars and buildings. There was a rash of those films and the market became glutted. When you have a rash of bad films on the same topic, the studio shied away from it and thought it was time to stop making them. That's the reason Universal stopped.

CFQ: At the time you were directing fantasy films, were there any pictures from other studios that you particularly liked?

Arnold: I admired The Day the Earth Stood Still very much, and also The War of the Worlds. That's about it. I hated the Japanese ones, as well as the cheap American-International imitations of the films I made. They tried to capitalize on the success of The Incredible Shrinking Man and all the films we made at Universal. They made them at a very low budget - they looked it - with no imagination. They were just exploitation films, pictures like The Amazing Colossal Man. I resented them, and thought they were just bad. Even when a film is made under the best conditions, there's a fine line between the frightening and the ridiculous. I like to inject wit and humor, and at the same time inject suspense and above all atmosphere. Most important, you must create a mood. If you establish the right mood, you can get the adrenalin going by doing a tight shot of someone as a hand comes in and grabs the shoulder. The audience screams if you do it right; if you don't do it right, it means nothing. You don't create mood by showing the monster all the time, and you also don't create it by not showing him if nothing of interest is going on in the film in the meantime.

CFQ: You call The Mouse that Roared your best work. Why?

Arnold: Because I think it gave me a chance to say something important, to deliver a social message in a form that would be acceptable to an audience without being preachy. Also, it was amusing, and I like comedy. I had a very good producer in Walter Shenson who was responsible, really, for getting the film made. We had a great deal of difficulty getting anyone to buy the film. They thought it was satire, and satire was something that closed on Saturday night. They shied away from it. Carl Foreman's company did it because Carl had just finished The Key and was just in the midst of preparing The Guns of Navarone and he wanted something to charge his office expenses to and he thought this little film would do the trick nicely. That's how Walter Shenson got Columbia through High Road, which was Carl Foreman's company, to produce the film. I'm very happy about it, because for that reason I think they left us alone and we made it the way we wanted to make it.

CFQ: It's clearly a fantasy film, even a science fiction film, but done for laughs instead of fright. Do you see the film as being thematically similar to your earlier work?

Arnold: It's thematically similar, although much more direct. I could say things a little more directly because I handled the theme comedically, rather than in a more serious vein as my other science fiction films. But they all had some kind of message.

CFQ: Ir really pre-dates films like Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove. Are you in favor of the use of more pronounced political and ideological themes in science fiction films?

Arnold: Yes. I'm in favor of it, but the operative word is "pronounced". I think to be effective it must be subtle, and it must not be an overt propaganda film. I think a film should have social significance, and if it has social significance it must have political significance, one goes hand-in-hand with the other. But I think you have to treat it subtly and with taste. A film becomes important because it says something, not only by being entertainment, but by leaving you with something to think about.

CFQ: Both The Mouse that Roared and your future project A Circle of Wheels are comedies. While this approach was fresh and unique in 1959, science fiction as comedy satire is now a popular if not predominate mode of use. Does this concern you?

Arnold: No. I'm only concerned about whether it's a good film or a bad film. I happen to think that the story of A Circle of Wheels is good, and I think the screenplay is very good. I think it says something that is very important about our lives and what can happen to us in our mechanized and computerized society and it says it in a comedic way. Because it says it in a comedic way it has much more power to influence an audience. I think it's a very important kind of a film to make and I'm not dismayed because other films like Dr. Strangelove have been made. All it's got to be is a good film.

CFQ: As you mentioned earlier, "there's a fine line between the frightening and the ridiculous". Is it as effective to play the genre for its absurd, comedic aspects rather than walk the fine line to achieve the frightening and the dramatic aspects? Which is easier?

Arnold: But there's also a fine line between being funny and not funny. Both are difficult. Neither is easier to achieve.

CFQ: In an otherwise glowing report in his book Science Fiction In the Cinema, John Baxter concludes by saying: "He (Jack Arnold) was in the movies for money, and because it was what he did best. Any art is incidental." Is that a fair assessment of your involvement in filmmaking, and is it a fair generalization about contract directors?

Arnold: I must say that I was flattered by the book, but I'm hardly objective. I was taken aback by his quote that you mentioned. I am egotistical enough to say that it's not quite true, but one sees himself differently than others see him. I approach my work to do the best I could artistically, and not because of the money, although that was an important thing - that was what I did. Filmmaking is my job, my hobby, and my life. If it turns out well, so much the better. If it turns out badly, it is my fault. But I didn't do those films because of the money, and I don't think it's a fair generalization about contract directors. There were a number of us at that time, maybe seven directors who were under contract to Universal, and we were assigned films, some of which we liked, some of which we didn't. We did the ones we didn't like to be able to do the ones we did like. Universal was run very businesslike, and they were in the business of making films that would make money. To them, good films were the ones that made money, bad films were the ones that didn't make money. That was their yardstick, I must tell you it wasn't mine.

* Ben Chapman played the Creature in the original film, Browning in the follow-up.

in CINEFANTASTIQUE, Volume 4, Número 2, 1975