Love Is Blonde

by James Hansen

With his stature becoming more and more mythic with each passing year (and each new film), 101-year-old Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira has become something of a godfather of contemporary cinema. Active in filmmaking since 1931, his career has persisted while cinema searched for (and found) its foothold throughout the world. Meanwhile, various other art forms have redefined and recontextualized themselves in light of the rise (and fall) of the moving image, modernism, post-modernism, et al. The few Oliveria films I’ve seen have all centered around a conflict between competing art forms, art and reality, representation and actuality. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl does the same. Eccentricities’ complex peculiarities – from the title, to the cinematography, to the 58-minute running time, to the ambiguousness of its storytelling – help contain its expanses and expand its containment. Replete with contradictions and anachronisms, Eccentricities plays like a photo-painting projected onto a cinema screen – several things all at once and each element is instantly isolated and united, beautiful and repellent, true and false, past and present, now and forever.


It starts with the Blonde-haired Girl whose hair color is one of the only things Eccentricities makes clear about her. Eventually her name is dropped – Luisa – but from the interactions seen with the protagonist, Marcario, she exists predominantly as a figure of the imagination. Marcario gazes into her room from across the street in his accounting office. Her window serves as a canvas into another world, one with a beautiful blonde-girl who waves her enchanting Chinese fan and stares longingly (but for what?) across the street. She fans herself and smiles. She fans herself and frowns. No matter for Marcario – he is completely under her spell. We never know very much about her or their relationship, but Marcario quotes romantic poets when speaking about her so there is little reason to doubt his honest sentimentality. Marcario, blinded by his love, misses the several, all be them brief, clues as to the true nature of his blonde.


Soon, Marcario pleads with his uncle to allow him to be married. His uncle, with no explanation, rejects the request and fires him from his accounting work. With his economic future in shambles, marriage is out of the question. Determined nonetheless, Marcario leaves in search of other work in hopes of becoming sound enough to marry his would-be goddess. Though the moral fabric of the story is undoubtedly 19th century (the film is based on a short story by Eça de Queirós), Oliveira fills the frame with eccentricities of its own. Macario recalls the fated story of the blonde-haired girl on a high speed train, his office has a computer, he does a goofy dance when he discovers a friend of his knows the family of blonde. Even more oddly, perhaps, Marcario visits the estate of Eça de Queirós with Luisa. Eccentricities shows Eça de Queirós in alternating forms – sculpture, figurine, and modernist painting (not to mention the film itself as a further extension of Eça de Queirós’ work). This sense of historical presence exists ambiguously (no one in the film mentions the oddity of the situation or winks towards the existence of contemporary objects) but is undoubtedly a primary concern for Oliveira. Michael Sicinski wonderfully summarizes, “Oliveira is implicitly asking his audience to lend a 21st century ear to works in a classical mode, to admire their beauty and present-day resonance, despite but perhaps in some ways even because of their temporal alterity to our world.” And, of course, this works both inside and outside of the film. Oliveira’s role as a contemporary cinematic figure shadows the historical presence within Eccentricities, while the film creates characters as figures with inescapable pasts and futures.


In the opening sequence of the film, voice-over narration advises, “If you can’t tell it to a friend, tell it to a stranger.” The voice-over then shifts to a conversation between Marcario and a stranger on a train, which ultimately functions as extended voice-over narration in conversation form. Thus, the romantic Maracario’s relationship with the blonde is fated (as always), but what is more interesting about Eccentricities is how the characters, the camera, and the film text itself serves as mere figures or identifiable objects rather than being entrenched, definable characters. However, this isn’t to say the choice leaves the film and its characters empty. Quite on the contrary, it allows Eccentricities to double back on itself and extend the characters and the film’s ideas in multiple ways. The stilted, awkwardly staged conversation between Marcario and the stranger seems almost as if the actors are reading from cue cards beyond the frame. They rarely look at one another, instead gazing at a strange angle off screen. Perhaps the mark of Oliveira’s translation, Marcario and the stranger may as well be holding his novel and reading from it. (Later, a man does exactly this with a book of poetry). The scenes on the train seem like cameos for the source text, where the characters suddenly exist as mere actors reading the narration. The actors are playing parts in a new artistic dimension, which may be understood as a piece of its own, yet – like the sculpture, figurines, and paintings of Eça de Queirós, or the harpist who plays Debussy, or the poet who recites Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa) – they embody the livelihood and existence of these "dead" artists.


On a more narrative level, even in this opening scene, Marcario doesn’t refer to Luisa but rather “the blonde.” While this may contain different national signifiers, but she fits the Western bill and serves as a traditional figure of unfathomable beauty and mystery whose downfall, in the end, is vanity (and perhaps a dash of poverty). The blonde functions simultaneously functions as everything the sentimental romantic ever wants and the last thing he should ever have. Her inability to fulfill Marcario’s initial expectation of the mystical blonde-haired girl with the Chinese fan, precisely because of the flawed assumptions in defining her as such without any details, leaves her broken and rejected, possibly forever. Unlike the artists kept alive through the arts, she becomes a dead symbol by destroying her own "meaning." Her chief sin seems rather slight, but, for Marcario and the film, once her iconography is shattered she slumps over, as Keith Uhlich argues, and becomes an “animate still life” – stunningly real, almost alive, yet always already disintegrating.

B+
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The Holy Grail- My Second Dirty Dozen

Wow, it has been a busy month! Between attending press screenings for the New York Film Festival, researching/reading/writing for my MA Thesis, working 30 hours a week/weekend, and working for Columbia University Seminars, I have been swamped and am, for the first time ever, finding myself unable to balance all I have going on and what I need to do. Of course, Out 1 is really what I want to spend the most time with, but my longer writing has dwindled. This should end soon with a slew of posts covering the films from NYFF (I plan on seeing all of the new films and will catch up on the repertory titles soon, as they all open in NYC in the next month). Amidst my busy-ness, I totally forgot to thank The Dancing Image for using us as a source of inspiration for his Holy Grail entries, which have spawned quite a following and response around the blogosphere. Despite mentioning me as a source of inspiration, I never actually made my list of films to be added to the ever-growing list of holy grail films. So, at long last, here they are!

For longtime followers of the site, some of these titles will look familiar from our All I want For Christmas series from last Christmas. However, many of the titles are new and even though I have seen one of these films since the initial Christmas list (that being Oliveira's Doomed Love, a film I traveled to the National Gallery of Art in DC just to see), I thought it should be included as it is not on the list from any other blog thus far. Thanks again to The Dancing Image for citing us as a source of inspiration. If you haven't checked out his site yet, it is quickly becoming a must-visit on a daily basis. I hope these titles can get added to the complete Holy Grail list that is being compiled!

One final note...as I haven't seen 11 of these 12 films yet, I don't really have much to say about them other than that I have read about them and would do backflips to see them. Better start training to do that now...

24 Hour Psycho (Douglas Gordon)
L’Amour Fou (Jacques Rivette)
Beauty #2 (Andy Warhol)
*Corpus Callosum (Michael Snow)
Doomed Love (Manoel de Oliveira)
Dyn Amo (Stephen Dwoskin)
Inquietude (Manoel de Oliveira)
Khrustalyov, My Car! (Alexei Gherman)
NOEMA (Scott Stark)
Shit Film (Martin Creed)
Under Satans Son (Maurice Pialat)
Any/All Dardennes Brothers film pre-1996
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James Hansen's 12 Movies Meme

I'm a little late on posting this (sorry!) but better late than never. I'll assume everyone remembers the rules of this 12 movie meme, started by Lazy Eye Theatre. This is my list of 12 movies for a week of programming at the New Beverly Cinema. It may not make any money, but hey...a boy can dream, right?

MONDAY

The Flicker (1965) and Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (1969)

There isn't a better way to start the week than a couple films that explore and deconstruct the medium. Tony Conrad's The Flicker uses alternating black and white frames to create a 45 strobe-like effect that goes right to your brain. Ken Jacobs's work analyzes Thomas Edison's short film and discovers all the details that can be found within any given frame. All the flickering may cause some headaches (anyone with epilepsy should probably not attend), but these films would highlight the distinctiveness of the medim of film; a great starting point for the week.

TUESDAY

Side/Walk/Shuttle (1992) and D'est (1993)

The messages of these two "travelogues" are quite different, but seeing the similar, yet distinct, method each film takes in evoking sadness, memory, and (de)construction within the different locations (whether San Francisco or the whole of Eastern Europe) would be breathtaking. Ernie Gehr and Chantal Akerman are masters of form; these films could work as an introduction to each artist, but are also key (if not the best) works from each director.

WEDNESDAY

Flaming Creatures (1963) and Pink Flamingos (1972)

After two nights of serious meditation, the festival's halcyon days are over. It's time to have some fun with these manically hysterical works from Jack Smith and John Waters. Smith's film is an admitted inspiration for Waters, so it seems fitting to place the two side by side. And really, what is a film festival without flaccid penises and incestual blow jobs?

THURSDAY

Blue Movie a.k.a. Fuck (1969) and Crash (1996)

Continuing on Wednesday's sexual themes, these works from Andy Warhol and David Cronenberg use sexuality as a means to identify and explain other elements of human existence. Warhol's Blow Job could also work here, but for its mundanity and placement within the violence of the Vietnam War, Blue Movie is a compelling partner to Cronenberg's better known, highly controversial film.

FRIDAY

Cache (2005) and Numero Deux (1975)

Made 30 years apart, these video works are definitive statements on the changing landscapes of cinema in the face of (post)modernism and new technology. Michael Haneke and Juc Luc Godard are keen observers of people, families, and politics; these work highlight these similar obsessions and provide, at least to a small extent, a thematic counterpoint to the filmic works of Conrad and Jacobs.

SATURDAY

Doomed Love (1978) and L'Amour Fou (1969)

At a combined 517 minutes, Manoel de Oliveira and Jacque Rivette's almost completely unseen masterpieces may create an incredibly long, draining double feature, but I am convinced that it would be the best day of my life. The titles create a double feature pairing and so do the filmmakers. Always on the edge between theater and cinema, Oliveira and Rivette playfully explore convention while taking cinematic art to new heights. What a way to end a week.

Thanks to Piper from Lazy Eye Theatre and Jeremy from Moon in the Gutter for connecting us to this great meme! It was a lot of fun. Hope another one this fun comes along soon!

by James Hansen

PS- Please let me know if this post has a strange format or something. I am posting it from a really old computer at my work, so I'm slightly worried...

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