Stealing a stare at a face; it is a crime supplying particular appeal now.
In summer 2018, at NYC’s Metrograph, I watched three prints of movies by Gerard Blain (1930-2000). I was haunted by a persistent, pregnant dread in the eyes of his male subjects.
I’d read about the political edge to the Blain movies. Yes, as others have noted, his style and politics (insert hand shots!) indicate Bresson, but I found the movies more anthropological, like Nat Geo specials by way of Jean Rouch, with the psycho-sentimental eye of a weepy dreamer, i.e. Rossellini or Minnelli. The masculine men they track are revealed as suffering from holding back turbulent emotion-- Un Second Souffle (1978)’s Robert Stack, in jogging shorts, competing with young men for an actress a third his age until he is framed indoors, lost in thought repeatedly listening to the same record. Patrick Norbert in Le Rebelle (1980), an urban soldier against the world, but at his core, a big brother to a little girl...The multiple actors portraying the title role in Un Enfant dans la foule (1976), a WW2 orphan among the soldiers who yearns for a mother and father figure to love and protect him.
Blain maintains tight control over tone and action. In no short supply, Blain hands us male figures obscuring their powerful feelings, using unshowy, sudden insert shots and stolen glances to give away a wounded soul. With a nature documentary feel, many of his films start with the lead male subject traversing or being carried through physical space:
Un Enfant dans la foule, a car ride; POV from a car seat view as a young boy sees dirt roads mark the distance of his capture-from his home to the prison of the boys’ Seminary. Un Second Souffle gives us a woodsy run with an elegiac Robert Stack in command of his environment, yet foreshadowing subsequent runs, bike rides and workouts that are combative in nature with younger men and chaotic urban traffic. Stack’s breath and image are strong, yet pregnant with the possibility of collapse. In Le Rebelle’s opening, an explosive synth pop anthem scored to Pierre’s (Patrick Norbert) motorcycle jag (following his committing a crime) underlines a destructive streak born of boiling emotion and pain. All subjects share an impulse toward flight and forward motion.
A scene in Un Second Souffle give us sad Francis (Stack, alone in his den; aging animal in a cage of his own making)staring at his belongings as he plays part of a record he calls “his favorite movement”, one that renders him still, stirring something inside him.
La Rebelle’s seething Pierre, another subject as caged animal,is filmed in long quiet scenes in his room. Feeling cornered in by attempts to raise his little sister, he battles a society where he 's set up to lose. Studied in his private setting; reflective and meditative on his bed as he hits play on his cassette player. He stares intently at the cassette as we hear its the song he motorbikes to. Pierre utilises music as a theme song to compel him into forceful action and persistent forward motion.
Watching and rewatching more of the Blain directed movies, I see an echo of the pandemic year in how he frames these men as confined by rooms in a house, restricted by family dynamics and norms, boys lacking the sort of love that protects and builds character. The sore subjects seek private release in music or in looking for others to protect.
Eyes carry heavy bags, even among the young. The pain of being trapped inside - sometimes a physical space (a seminary/ a time of war) and sometimes trapped within one’s own body (the aging Robert Stack’s Francis, or the small child in a War) these are less polemical than they are a graphic chronology of psychic pain and desire for emotional and corporeal release.
In an arresting sequence in Un Enfant dans la Foule, culminating in an arresting shot, a young teenage woman is stripped nude and paraded around in public humiliation as a symbol of shaming Nazi participation. Our young boy protag has a quiet moment to exhibit the parental love that’s eluded him. Framed within a forbidden dynamic; a Nazi girl and French boy, but both children. As she shakes and sobs, the boy leaves the crowd of Allies to silently console her..
Her value, within our relationship as spectator to subject, is tied up in how her actions double back on our own: she actively looks at others, distanced from her own peers. Annie is not in step with women inside this illustrated universe. She can not refuse her interest in sex, and she can not accept that pregnancy is its irrefutable bi-product.
Happening has a self-consciousness in its own title -- it is not only an occurrence but something active; encroaching. There is no distance at which to reflect or exhale. This establishes a viewer/subject inquiry based upon the need for a closer examination of a figure's character. No longer a top academic contender as she becomes occupied with securing illegal abortion services, the narrative moves Annie into a peripheral figure. Finding an abortionist and evading arrest is the singular goal to attain and obsess over. It remains this way; overtaking the past goal of academic success, until her failed abortion attempts extend to physical consequence. The parallel goal and obsession to escape more injury shifts Annie's life toward a singular tracked forward motion. Each action that does not yet bring her to her goal has a subsequent action and corporeal mis-step, at quickened pace as attempts accumulate with a collapsing temporal possibility of success.
At 23 years old Annie is sexy, and in several sequences where the camera perches near but just behind and to the side of her face, the supple cheekiness of it reminds us her sensuality is bracketed by vestiges of childhood.This romance of Anne's sun kissed figure, dewy face and emotional registers is the camera's effort to equalize the threat of excessive reality intruding on the film's beautiful elements.
