Bruno Schleinstein, a musician, actor and painter known more widely as Bruno S, died in August 2010 at the age of 78. Born in Berlin in 1932, the illegitimate son of a prostitute, he was left in an asylum for children with learning difficulties at a young age and narrowly escaped being put to death during the Nazi era for being an undesirable. Despite lacking a formal education, he taught himself how to play musical instruments including the piano, accordion and glockenspiel. After being released, he would busk and sell his own paintings in the street at weekends, an artistic career that he supported by working full-time in a steel mill.
If you’ve heard of Bruno, then it’s probably thanks to Werner Herzog, who spotted him in a 1970 documentary, Bruno der Schwarze – Es blies ein Jä;ger wohl in sein Horn, and cast him in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974). Bruno’s obituaries have rightly tried to reflect his entire career as an outsider artist, but here I want to concentrate on his role in Kaspar Hauser.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is being re-released in UK cinemas by the BFI on 5 July 2013, screening at BFI Southbank, Filmhouse Edinburgh & selected cinemas nationwide. For more information on screening dates and times visit the BFI website.
Based on a true story from 19th-century Nuremberg, Kaspar Hauser tells the story of a man who has spent his entire life locked in a dungeon, with no contact with the outside world. Dumped in the town square by his (un-named) captor, he becomes an object of local curiosity, until he is taken in by a kindly old gentleman who tries to civilise him through education. This is ripe material for Herzog to thumb his nose at conventional social mores, Kaspar’s naive questions illuminating the absurdities of 19th-century bourgeois life (‘why are women only allowed to cook and knit?’), but perhaps more surprising is how emotionally raw and tender it is.
What makes the film so interesting is that to do this, Bruno, as Kaspar, has to establish a completely original way of communicating feeling to the viewer. He enters the film as a character who has been completely cut off from normal social contact; his actions are jerky and unpredictable at first, his eyes stare; he utters his brief lines in a slow, deliberate way, as if plucking the words from the distant reaches of his memory. As we follow Kaspar’s progress through a world in which he is treated first as a criminal, then as a freak, then as an object of intellectual curiosity, we are drawn into seeing the world on his terms. Kaspar begins with complete trust of others, yet he comes to see people as ‘wolves’ and is frustrated by the failure of life outside the dungeon to live up to his expectations. ‘Why is everything so hard for me? Why can’t I play the piano like I can breathe?’ he exclaims at one point. Despite an acting style that follows none of the usual conventions for emotion, this is an almost unbearably poignant outburst.
Herzog is famed for his choice of social misfits as documentary subjects or lead actors for his films – to the extent that an attractive mythology now surrounds the director’s work. It’s one that Herzog has encouraged; his own tussles with wild nature (recorded in the book On Walking in Ice, or the diaries he kept while making Fitzcarraldo) mirroring his struggles to work with uncooperative and unpredictable actors like Bruno, or the better-known Klaus Kinski.
In the case of Kaspar Hauser, though, all this threatens to obscure what is a subtle and controlled collaboration between actor and director. This is best illustrated by a scene in which Kaspar recounts a dream he has had about the Caucasus, using an odd grammatical construction: ‘Mich hat geträ;umt’, which literally means ‘it dreamed to me’. This is immediately followed by flickering cine-footage of a strange land. You can interpret this sequence in a linear way: perhaps this is the land Kaspar has dreamed of. But perhaps it is also a metaphor for the way films present us with dreams that in the real world will always be tantalisingly out of reach.
The 67th Venice Film Festival pulled off the difficult trick of presenting a diverse roster of films while simultaneously maintaining a thematic consistency. Mental instability, for instance, featured large as film after film was populated by psychopaths (13 Assassins and Homeland), suicidal depressives (Norwegian Wood), the institutionalised (La pecora nera), Gilliam-esque dream animations of brawling psychiatrists (Surviving Life) or the encroaching depredations of age (Barney’s Version). The opening film by Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan, is a portrait of a ballerina (Natalie Portman) on the edge of a nervous breakdown, a jangling mix between The Red Shoes, Cronenberg-like body horror and Repulsion. The film is almost as mad as its subject matter, and whether it’s any good or not seems beside the point. The madness inherent in art was also applied to filmmaking itself in Sofia Coppola’s airless Somewhere, in which Stephen Dorff looks like Bryan Adams. Initially setting off to attack the pressures of fame, Coppola pulls her punches so much she ends up hitting herself in the face. Her Hollywood is far from the horrific excesses of Italy, which replaces Lost in Translation‘s Japan as the defining and mitigating other — movie people are basically decent people who just need to realise how much they love their daughters. Dorff’s angst is never credible and his meltdown feels like an Oscar clip, rather than any genuine torment.
Far from Coppola’s sleepy indulgence, I’m Still Here, Casey Affleck’s ferocious mockumentary, deconstructs the celebrity in the form of Joaquin Phoenix, only to reserve its genuine ire for the culture that elevates only to destroy. A bloated, chain-smoking Phoenix produces the most courageous performance since Andy Kaufman stepped into a wrestling ring.
Alongside the insanity there were tales of sexual awakening (the Greek gem Attenberg, which won Ariane Labed a best actress award) or adventuring (the French film Happy Few and Tykwer’s brilliant Drei). The latter two were both refreshingly intent on the normalcy of sexual adventure, setting acutely observed comedies in comfortable yuppie households, where a more open idea of sexual love can be possible, at least until they run out of steam.
East Asian Cinema was well represented with Tran Anh Hung’s aforementioned Norwegian Wood, films from Tsui Hark, Andrew Lau and Takeshi Miike, as well as a lifetime achievement award for John Woo (there was also a screening of his co-directed production, the intricate Reign of Assassins) and a surprise entry into competition of Wang Bing’s The Ditch, a harrowing account of the experiences of forced labour camp in the Gobi desert. Miike’s film 13 Assassins merits a mention as a blood-soaked samurai epic that is amusing without ever being silly (except for the scene with the bulls).
Of course, there were films that don’t fit into any easy parallel or thematic schema. Vincent Gallo annoyed the hell out of everyone with his indulgent tosh Promises Written in Water (which he wrote, edited, produced, scored and directed) before infuriating everyone even more by turning in an excellently intense performance in Essential Killing, elevating what is an implausible Taliban version of The Fugitive into something hypnotically special. There were two slick entries from veteran French cineastes, Le Bruit des glaçons by Bertrand Blier and Potiche from François Ozon, the latter, a political comedy from the 1970s featuring crowd-pleasing turns from Gérard Depardieu and a phenomenal Catherine Deneuve as a kind of Sarah Palin with brains (that is to say…).
Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff was the kind of Western Kubrick might have made. As slow-paced as the century in which it is set, the film tells the tale of a nascent America, in the form of three families split off from a wagon train, trying to find their way. Full of possible contemporary analogies, (ie to Bush’s legacy in the figure of the bloody-minded but hopelessly lost Meek), the film is rich in historical detail and is enduringly compelling to it. Similarly paced and equally powerful is the Russian film (also showing in competition) Silent Souls, which relates the journey of two men transporting the body of a loved wife through Russia to be burnt by the river in accordance with their Merjan culture: a magical film on the persistence of difference in what seems to be, on the surface, a globalised and homogenised culture.
The disaster of the festival was Julian Schnabel’s Miral, which championed the Palestinian cause via the history of an orphanage so cack-handedly as to make one wonder if it wasn’t financed by Mossad. The odd visually striking set-piece was hopelessly marred by tin-eared dialogue (much of it, nonsensically, in English), Mrs Merton wigs and a rushed pace that forced the audience to give up any hope of caring about the characters despite the cloying prodding of the soundtrack.
Writers: Dario Argento, Frranco Ferrini, Peter Koper, George A Romero
Based on short stories by: Edgar Allan Poe
Cast: Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins, Bingo O’Malley, EG Marshall, Harvey Keitel, Sally Kirkland, Martin Balsam, Julie Benz
Italy/USA 1990
120 mins
Horror cinema thrives on the authorial stamp of the especially skilled filmmakers who work within the genre; from the independently-produced shockers of the 1970s, to the video rental boom of the 1980s, to the genre revival in the late 1990s, the names of certain directors have served to guarantee a high level of quality to loyal audiences, and also to critically legitimise films that would otherwise not be taken seriously within the cultural mainstream. It may seem strange that the Italian director Dario Argento has struggled to succeed in the American market as his name arguably carries as much clout in genre circles as those of John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, Sam Raimi and George A Romero. Aside from his lack of familiarity with the workings of the studio system, or the commercial requirements of independent financiers specialising in horror fare, Argento’s apparent inability to cross over to the American market is partially due to the distinct differences between the interrelated genres of the giallo and the slasher film. The giallo, as exemplified by Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) and The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), is the cinematic extension of Italian literary thrillers and, as such, places an emphasis on mystery, keeping the identity of the killer hidden until the final reel, while the violence is heavily stylised and vividly realised. The slasher film, which came to commercial prominence with Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Sean S Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980), is comparatively realistic, tapping into fears of physical violation as victims are dismembered in a crudely calculated manner by a masked maniac with a backstory that is briskly established before the mayhem begins. These differences aside, Argento has also had the misfortune of working with American production partners who have simply wanted to cash in on his name value rather than to act as ambassadors for his undeniable artistry.
Although his films had received attention outside of Italy and often featured American or English actors as a means of enhancing their international appeal, Argento’s first conscious effort to court the American market came with Phenomena (1985); Jennifer Connelly was cast as Jennifer, a student at a Swiss boarding school that is being terrorised by a serial killer. After discovering that she has special powers that enable her to control insects, Jennifer tries to uncover the identity of the murderer with assistance from a wheelchair-bound entomologist (Donald Pleasance), eventually summoning a swarm of flies to defend herself against the killer. When Phenomena received an American release through New Line Cinema, it was re-titled Creepers and 30 minutes of footage was cut, notably a scene in which Connelly’s character talks about being abandoned by her mother on Christmas Day, a reference to Argento’s childhood. To add insult to injury, the home video edition of Creepers was marketed with cover art that depicted Connelly’s heroine as a one-eyed zombie, an image that had no relevance to the content of the film. Argento’s version was well-regarded in European territories and remains one of his most popular titles at the Italian box office, but the American cut was treated as an exploitation item and was granted a drive-in, rather than art-house, release before making a swift trip to video stores.
Following the fairly successful Two Evil Eyes (1990) – the portmanteau collaboration between Argento and George A Romero that was financed by Argento’s company ADC but filmed in Romero’s home town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – Argento would return to the United States to shoot Trauma (1993), a $7 million co-production between ADC and the US-based Overseas Film Group. Argento’s production partners had dabbled in the horror genre with the unpleasant possession shocker Retribution (1987) and the unnecessary franchise entry Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (1993), but had yet to work with a filmmaker of significant stature. Although the screenplay for Trauma was written by regular Argento collaborator Franco Ferrini and Gianni Romoli, it would be re-written at the insistence of Overseas Film Group by the horror novelist ED Klein, who has yet to achieve another screenwriting credit. The plot is pure giallo, with anorexic teenager Aura (Asia Argento) going on the run after witnessing a serial killer decapitate her parents with a portable guillotine; she becomes romantically involved with sympathetic television news sketch artist David (Christopher Rydell) who links the murder of her parents to other killings and tries to warn those who may also be on the killer’s list. The protagonists of other Argento films have been afflicted by a variety of ‘conditions’, but Aura’s anorexia has little relevance to the plot and is explained in awkward passages of expository dialogue delivered by one of David’s co-workers. Trauma was shot in Minneapolis, a location that could best be described as nondescript, meaning that many scenes have a televisual look despite Argento’s trademark roving camera. Argento’s operatic tendencies are largely reined in, with the exception of a séance that comes complete with thunder, lightning, and a tree that crashes through a window, although this sequence is rendered unintentionally hilarious by the hammy performances of Frederick Forrest and Piper Laurie. Although Trauma was conceived with the American market in mind, it would only emerge as a straight-to-video release in April 1994, more than one year after its successful theatrical run in Italy.
Argento would return to Italy to alternate between projects with international appeal, such as his surprisingly faithful version of The Phantom of the Opera (1998), and thrillers for his domestic following, such as The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) and Sleepless (2001), even taking a detour into television with Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005), but remaining wary of involvement with American financiers. However, his curiosity was piqued by the screenplay for Giallo (2009), which concerns a Turin-based serial killer who uses an unlicensed taxi cab to abduct beautiful women; when a model falls into his trap, her sister Linda (Emmanuelle Seigner) teams up with Italian-American detective Enzo Avolfi (Adrian Brody) in order to locate the killer’s lair before her sibling becomes his latest victim. As the title suggests, Giallo was conceived as a tribute to the Italian thrillers of the 1970s, but its narrative machinations, and the style that they force the director to adopt, suggest that American screenwriters Jim Agnew and Sean Keller merely have an awareness of the genre, rather than an actual understanding of it. There is little sense of mystery as the identity of the killer is revealed relatively early on and the killer’s modus operandi (mutilating his victims before murdering them) forces Argento to go slumming in the realms of torture porn, thereby entailing that Giallo has more in common with the gratuitous gore of Saw (2004) than it does with the vibrant violence of Deep Red (1975). Argento walked away from the $14 million project following post-production arguments with American backer Hannibal Pictures and has subsequently disowned the producer’s cut.
Argento has expressed mixed feelings about working on American productions; he has praised the work of the cast and crew of both Trauma and Giallo, finding them to be very professional and receptive to his methods, but has expressed contempt towards the producers who have denied him final cut. Despite the director’s efforts to maintain control over the material, post-production interference ultimately forces Trauma and Giallo to conform to the American realist model in which any sense of the bizarre or the unexplained is jettisoned in favour of a perfunctory narrative and death scenes that have been trimmed within an inch of their cinematic life to secure the all-important ‘R’ rating. The essence of Argento’s work is his visual style, his emphasis on atmosphere, sets, locations, décor and the extravagant manner in which the victims in his films (often entirely innocent, as opposed to the sex equals death principle of the American slasher) meet their demise; Trauma and Giallo are diluted to the point that play like imitations of Argento, lacking sufficient visual flair to compensate for their frequent lapses in logic. While the presence of Dario Argento’s name above the title usually promises something special, in terms of his American misadventures, it is merely a case of false advertising.
John Berra
A Deviant View of Cinema – Features, Essays & Interviews
