Movies as the Splice of Life

Charles Jensen’s Splice of Life is not the first book I’ve ever read that tells a personal story by way of the films that have shaped the author’s life. I remember with affection John Manderino’s Crying at Movies. In that charming book Manderino admits learning how to kiss through watching the Swedish art film Elvira Madigan, and divulges that his apparent physical resemblance to The Graduate’s “rodent-like” Dustin Hoffman won him an unexpected bed partner. But Jensen’s new work, subtitled “A Memoir in 13 Film Genres,” is both the smartest and the most complex example of the genre that I’ve ever encountered.

 I know Charles Jensen as the highly dedicated director of the Writers’ Program, offered both “on-ground” and online through UCLA Extension. Before I read his new book, I was aware that he is a serious poet, as well as a man deeply committed to providing learning opportunities to students of every stripe. But Splice of Life has given me new insight into the fellow who oversees the screenwriting classes I offer twice a year. It’s a deeply personal look at Charlie’s in-depth fascination with movies, and how films intersect with the high and low points of his own sometimes complicated life. 

The early chapters detail Charlie’s awkward acknowledgment of his own sexual leanings by way of films like Mean Girls (which neatly parallels his high school years) and Fatal Attraction. I love his smart close reading of the latter film, in which he views not the sexy seductress Alex (Glenn Close) but the philandering husband Dan (Michael Douglas) as the villain of the piece. His take on Fatal Attraction led me to think hard about how the “victim” label in movies is sometimes used to excuse what he calls “peak male fuckery.” He has also taught me a new key term—“queer coding”—that indicates how (in popular films like Scream) gay subtext is partially concealed, except for those with eyes to see.

One of my favorite chapters goes back to classic Hitchcock: 1943’s Shadow of a Doubt.  Charlie’s analysis of this great film (in which the seemingly amiable Joseph Cotten secretly dispatches wealthy widows) uncovers more “queer coding,” but it also plays against the startling real-life story of a member of Charlie’s extended social circle, who was ultimately convicted of murder.

 As Charlie shows himself evolving into a relatively happy and productive Angeleno (following the awkward years in the upper Midwest and the formative ones in Arizona), his film pairings sometimes become more lighthearted. He matches Get Him to the Greek with the poignant but also rather wacky story of the burial of his grandmother’s cremains. We also, in various chapters, learn about his hair-loss anxiety, his body-image issues (he deals here with the obsessive ballerina in Black Swan), and—somewhat climactically—his semi-successful appearance on Jeopardy! To capture the emotion of his big moment on the tube, he writes about the raw competition spelled out in The Hunger Games. It all leaves me wondering how the UCLA Writers’ Program will figure in his next book, and what film he’ll choose to illustrate the complexities of his current job.

 Charlie opens Splice of Life with three wonderful quotes from master filmmakers. I can’t resist quoting them here, because they all figure into what he’s achieved between his book’s covers:

 Cinema is a mirror by which we often see ourselves. —Alejandro González Iñárritu

 Anything that is not autobiography is plagiarism. —Pedro Almodóvar

 A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. —Orson Welles

 Congratulations, Charlie!

 

 

“Third Man” Out

The Third Man is a tricky little movie, one that’s full of surprises for the unwary. For one thing, the title is deliberately misleading. The identity of that mysterious third man is, in the scheme of things, quite beside the point. And the zither theme that continues throughout the film is so jaunty that you suspect you’re being prepared for a joyous romp. Something Fellini-esque, maybe? (Hardly true, as it turns out.) 

Finally, The Third Man is usually considered an Orson Welles tour-de-force. In fact, he didn’t direct (Carol Reed did), though he’s given some kudos for unbilled contributions to the screenplay written by British novelist Graham Greene. And his role in the film, though pivotal, is fairly small in terms of screentime. Still, he makes an indelible impression, and The Third Man’s intensely dramatic stylistics owe much to such Welles masterworks as Citizen Kane and The Stranger.

 One thing Welles apparently did contribute: the film’s most famous line. During a key conversation with Joseph Cotten on a Viennese Ferris wheel, he quips sardonically, as only Welles can, “In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Bingo!

 The Third Man, released in 1949, goes beyond the Americana of Citizen Kaine and The Magnificent Ambersons to cast a cold eye on post-Nazi Europe. Its view of a Vienna awash with occupation forces and petty criminals is totally chilling: almost everyone in the cast seems on the take, or suffers from conflicting allegiances Like, for instance, the leading lady (Alida Valli), who in continually switching sides proves herself to be a true femme fatale. And Americans in this world don’t come off any better than their European counterparts. Joseph Cotten’s character, a two-bit novelist visiting from the U.S., is almost terminally naïve. And then there’s the ominous Harry Lime. Today I suspect we’re particularly sensitive to the enormity of Lime’s shenanigans, watering down penicillin for his personal profit, and shrugging off the fact that children are dying – or worse.

 The world of The Third Man is that of film noir, international-style. There’s no question it looks fabulous. If the origins of film noir tend to connect with Raymond Chandler’s prematurely seedy L.A., this movie proves that the Old World is even more decadent and down-at-the-heels than the New. Vienna, in The Third Man, is a heady combination of dilapidated grandeur and police state. We see, usually by moonlight, the rococo buildings and twisty streets of the old city, as well as the shadowy depths of its sewers. (The film’s one Oscar went to Robert Kasker for his moody black-&-white cinematography, which take full advantage of location shooting.)

 I also commend the filmmakers for their wonderful collection of faces. The bit players in The Third Man are often wonderfully eccentric, even macabre, to look upon. They frequently speak in untranslated German, so that we share with Joseph Cotten a sense of displacement and being the odd man out. The dapper Cotten, one of the original Mercury Players, seemed to specialize in being a foil to Welles: in films like Citizen Kane he was the nice guy who both admired and ultimately couldn’t help resisting Welles’ powerfully physical presence. He plays that role here as well. But let’s not forget Hitchcock’s 1943 Shadow of a Doubt, in which the sinister side of Cotten comes fully into the ligh.

 

 

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