Me kicking literary ass.

Meanwhile, the Octopus wept.

That’s just how it goes down in Northampton.

In this photo, your eagle eyes may have descried, I am reading from a manuscript. That would be “Fever Visions,” a previously unpublished story that will appear in… drum roll… my forthcoming Whiskey Tit collection Divine In Essence. That’s right, this is the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT. Interestingly, it appears I already added this book to Ze Boooks and promptly forgot. Can I even coordinate with myself? Apparently not!

Fellow Whiskey Titters Samuel Kaye and Aina Hunter also read from their works at this event: Samuel Kaye’s novel Cinema and Aina Hunter’s novel Charlotte and the Chickenman.

All three of us are so different in style and substance, but UNIFIED, I think, in artistic commitment. That’s the Whiskey Tit Promise: ARTISTIC COMMITMENT. When you read a Whiskey Tit book, you get what the author INTENDED, not what the marketing department AMENDED. 100 Proof Unfiltered Literary Whiskey from THESE tits…. I don’t know if that’s a coherent metaphor, but I’m leaving it up, folks.

My estimable publisher Whiskey Tit plans to seize a prime piece of Northampton Real Estate (1 Amber Lane) for a pleasant hour or two starting at 6 PM on Wednesday, October 19.

The Main Event being Whiskey Titter Samuel Kaye, touring the States to promote his novel Cinema, and who else is going to be there? Moi, of course! And Aina Hunter, yet another Whiskey Titter…. Egads, there’s no end to us. It’s Whiskey Tit all the way down.

Bergman’s Dreams (1955) is a bit awkward in execution—mashing character psychology into an arbitrary mold, a THESIS… and, gulp, how many times have I been guilty of this myself—but moving and intriguing nevertheless, saved by the seismic acting talent of the leads.

How’s this for an artificial construction: the film’s “protagonist” is split into three people! You have Harriet Anderson, a young woman who is essentially a child; Eva Dahlbeck, a grown professional woman; and Gunnar Björnstrand, a tragically meaningless old man—three characters intertwined like a braid. The “development” of the character is shared among them in separate but linked storylines. Not only linked, but parallel. It all sounds so abstract, put this way, but the story itself IS well grounded and clearly presented. Bergman has the chops to pull it off, but it does feel forced in this film, or maybe I was just in the wrong mood? I got a paint-by-numbers vibe, but on the other hand, the actors were so impressive, it didn’t bother me.

The title presumably refers to the self-delusions of the characters. Dahlbeck is obsessed with her former lover, a businessman who’s just pathetic and unworthy on all counts. Anderson wants the sweet life, which she thinks her job as a photographic model will deliver her, and when that seems to fall through, she latches onto the opportunity afforded by Björnstrand, who is rich and wants nothing more than to spend money profligately on this gorgeous young woman who so closely resembles (as averred by the painting hung prominently in his lushly decorated parlor) his looney-binned wife in her pre-lunatic youth.

In each case, a hard-nosed third party steps in to set these softies straight:

The businessman’s wife shows up to splash Dahlbeck and her beau with the cold water of her own disillusionment, coolly retrieves her husband back into the fascistic bosom of their domestic bliss—which is HER domain, not Dahlbeck’s—and gives Dahlbeck to understand in no uncertain terms that HER particular Romantic dream is DONE.

Meanwhile, Björnstrand’s estranged daughter shows up to shake him down for a little dough and mercilessly pops the fantasy balloon that he and Anderson have hitherto been mutually inflating, leaving them both in a state of jittery shame, nauseated by the unseemly tawdriness of their shared dream. Anderson slinks away as Björnstrand peers miserably out the window.

Line up those dominoes and knock ’em down, it’s not hard, we’ve seen these tropes a thousand times before! What sets it apart from trite melodrama is the artistry of the acting and the sincerity of the dialogue, as well as the lovely cinematic flourishes: it seems Bergman is reliable for his sublime craft. Great stuff with mirrors again, he loves that shit, to the point where he’s literally splitting the screen at some points!

Harriet Anderson is Monika, by the way, from Summer with Monika. And it must be said, Bergman was romantically linked to her—indeed, left his wife for her! And the way he films her, you can understand why. This pair comes a decade before Godard / Karina, but it’s the same dynamic, each inspiring the other to new artistic heights. Both men were much older than their respective girls, who were both undeniable cataracts of youthful, feminine vitality overflowing all banks. Bergman hated Godard’s films, I know, but I wonder if he ever contemplated (or even perceived) the striking parallel between the muses Anderson and Karina.

I watched Vivre sa vie again, knocked me the FUCK out even more than the first time. I’d say that I wish I’d seen it earlier in my life, but I wouldn’t have fucking gotten it. I’m grateful that it waited for me. I wrote plenty about it behind that link, I don’t know that I have much more to say—or rather, the energy to say it—other than I LOVE this movie. Every now and then, I see a film that I understand to be “perfect,” and this is certainly one of those. That is a completely subjective assessment, of course, and I am content for it to be so. Other films I’ve thought of as “perfect” are The Hustler, Inherent Vice, La Dolce Vita, Solaris, and Mulholland Drive, off the top of my head. There are certainly others. 2001, of course. I should really sit down and make a list, someday….

Godard ended his life a few days ago, and I feel an uneasy connection to that event since I’ve been so strangely obsessed with him for the last few months… Him and Bergman. Slowly making my way through these fellas. And, absurdly, writing about them… why? That’s not my thing, never has been, and I haven’t really questioned it. You’re looking for meaning, idiot.

These guys, Bergman and Godard, were so different from each other in temperament—but in their sublimity the same. They transcended mechanical reproduction to put life itself into their films. It’s so rare to see, and only happens for a few moments even in these great films. I never understood, or even discerned, the value of that quality in cinema until so very recently. A light bulb went on, and suddenly I see the room I’m in…. I have so much catching up to do. What have I missed in the films I’ve seen over the years? So much….

YouTube threw me a curveball t’other night: La femme aux bottes rouges (1974) by none other than… JUAN Luis Bunuel. I performed a comical double take, thence aimed a sidelong glance at Google…. That’s not THE Luis Bunuel, it’s his SON. I did several Bunuels a couple of years ago and thoroughly enjoyed them. They were dry and arch, distancing in effect, but also, in their way, warm and enveloping. You don’t fall in love with them, and you don’t get inspired by their ideas, per se, you simply appreciate them and find stimulation in their provocations and witticisms. And the endless visual gags, the smirking parade of mockery, the droll compendium of humanity’s mediocrity and narcissism.

The son is no different. If I hadn’t caught the “Juan” in front of “Luis Bunuel,” I would easily have thrown this into his father’s oeuvre as an entertaining minor work. For one thing, it stars Catherine Deneuve and Fernando Rey, both of whom appeared in Bunuel Pere’s major works. For another, it displays his father’s sensibilities in every aspect: the surrealism, the decadence, the gags, etc. I’ve heard that Cronenberg and King both have sons who duplicated their respective fathers’ careers, keep meaning to check them out. Not so much to see if they’re any good, I’m sure they’re fine, but to see how they fare in the shadows of their legendary fathers. This Bunuel fella did fairly alright by his old man, methinks: he certainly didn’t outshine him, not by a longshot, but he didn’t make a howler, either—I really enjoyed it.

I found myself sinking into this film even though it was in French without subtitles. I was recently thinking how I’d like to learn French so I can enjoy all these New Wave films I’ve been marinating in with rather more direct engagement, so as an exercise in French immersion, I decided to simply watch this thing and not worry about understanding the words. As it turned out, the words were mostly ancillary to what I was seeing. I got the gist of it, shall we say.

Deneuve plays a character whom I think might be the author of the story we’re watching. She has supernatural abilities: she can fool people with illusions. For example, she makes Rey drop a 100-year old bottle of wine by making him think it’s a skull. Or brings another character to his knees by binding him in heavy chains. My favorite was making Rey chew on his pillow. He then carries it in his teeth like a retriever, unable to release it until the maid grips it with HER teeth and tears it in half in a tug-of-war.

Our Lady’s power renders her sociopathic: we see a flashback in which her childhood self murders her nanny by duping her (via her illusory magic) into diving out the window. This seems to have represented her moment of coming into being, realizing the extent of her mastery over human creatures. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the power of a woman’s beauty (Deneuve being one of the all-time examples), how it ensnares the gaze of others and deludes their faculties. A little shaky there, however, considering she exercises the power on women as well as men. So maybe the power of an artist to alter one’s perception of the world?

She’s a writer, after all, shown typing away—we even get to see Fernando Rey shooting her manuscript with a shotgun!—and I feel like what she’s writing may be what we’re seeing in the film, but I could certainly be mistaken, since I couldn’t understand most of the dialogue. Possibly the whole movie is a simple entertainment for herself. She and her lover exit the film by walking into his painting, so you could interpret that as the portal between art and reality. Impossible to say, really, which of those the painting is meant to represent!

Strangely, YouTube served up no ads whatsoever: I was able to watch uninterrupted from start to finish. I just don’t understand how the platform decides! If I watch a shitty 10-minute political video, they’ll serve up ads at the beginning, the middle, and maybe even at the end for good measure… but here I watch an entire 90-minute movie, not a single ad.

Ah, one more thing to remember about this film: Catherine Deneuve looks fucking incredible. Just a few years after Belle de jour (1967), and she looks even finer here, to my eyes. Sporting jeans and a sweater like no one’s business. (And red boots, of course.)