THAS: "Architectural Brace" Week: Day 3: The Pillars of the Sensual Cathedral

(For the original description of the "Architectural Brace" concept, please see the "Exhibition 2" post)

The Space Vampiress is never failed to be propped up against the stone columns of the sacral palace, she and femininity almost literally vindicated by the film as the upright, stone-solid foundation/load-bearer of human's divine nature.

Tomorrow: The decrepit wood bolsters a decrepit father in The Funhouse.

 

THAS: "Architectural Brace" Week: Day 2: The Meat Hanging Room's Wooden Beams

(For the original description of the "Architectural Brace" concept, please see the "Exhibition 2" post)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2's L.G. is made a quasi-threatening (the mislead is almost the mark - the final, extra burden - of the martyr) Christ-figure amongst beams of wood of the slaughterhouse.

Tomorrow: The Space Girl is the pillar of civilization.

THAS: "Architectural Brace" Week: Day 1: The 'Poltergeist' Stairs

(For the original description of the "Architectural Brace" concept, please see the "Exhibition 2" post)

That fantastic staircase in Poltergeist is the very vision of Dr. Lesh's perception of the afterlife and persisting being (its spiral shape not only seeming to reach up into the household heavens at an almost total verticality, but also liken to our human DNA - the make-up of her beliefs becoming our very own, very shapely DNA).

Tomorrow: L.G. the Possibly-Dangerous Christ

 

THAS: Exhibition 2: #1 - The Architectural Brace / #2 - The Poignantly Seating 2 / #3 - Odd Formations

A new THAS initiative: the visual exhibition.  Liken to as if in a museum (to see an image or two), which is what the internet will be... For our purposes.  A spare image wall, emphasizing the sheer degree to which Hooper works on a level of the delicate, meaningful image. 

These will come in in batches of three, to foster the gallery effect of surveying comprehensively an artist's work.  Three an exhibition.  An exhibition a time.  In an ever accumulating testament to our most subtle, delicate aesthetician.

(#1)

Description: Our architectural surroundings as a sort of physical, coeval representation of (implied is its - our external world's - having a distinctly causal lineage, existing now as present corollaries, with) our noumenal, itself-representational beings and distinct places (geographical and symbolical) of being.  Our existences (as part of a long history) are what make the architecture around us, and the architectures (or simply the materials of our structures) thus, with involuntary naturalness, brace the backs of Hooper's  figures.

* I would like to leave these "Exhibitions" to as much of the images themselves as possible.  So I'll withhold the explication for now, and look for the further musings on these images in independent posts that will be made for each individual film.

 #2

The visual exhibition.  Liken to as if in a museum (to see an image or two), which is what the internet will be... For our purposes.  A spare image wall, emphasizing the sheer degree to which Hooper works on a level of the delicate, meaningful image.  

Description: The Seating poignancy.  The form-fitting landscape of surroundings and the camera frame forming around humans in the conscripted arrangement of seating, emboldened by scales, sizes, and every now and then the majestic commonality of our upholstery (furniture and otherwise).

The poignantly seated comes perennially in slants.  Slants of forms that convey pressing diagonals of engagement.

Who is the engaging party in the Spontaneous Combustion images above?  Unlike the party being harangued in Eaten Alive, the parents being consoled in Poltergeist, or the unconscious boy being caressed in The Funhouse, here, the level of engagement between parties is about even, and so a strange new "car door configuration" is conceived.  In the film, Sam Outside-the-Car is previously the put-upon party, yet the tables seem to turn (or the seats seem to switch) in this moment of seating engagement, in which Sam the Oppressed is now suddenly the looming presence.  He is now in a position of both holding up the car and making squirm his icy ex-wife, and congenially putting time in for his infirm former foster guardian (his ex-wife's grandfather) - bridging the gap of estrangement in this evening out dynamic of engagement-dominance.  It's a strikingly lovely reconfiguring of the seated dynamic, not quite an over-the-shoulder - i.e. a straight-forward one party distinct from another opposite-facing party - since the two parties lie on the same plane.  A beautiful variation on Hooper's seating engagements.  It is in keeping with the more obscure, more profoundly unusual dynamic being played out here, in which all characters here become alternately powerful/sympathetic/suspect/vulnerable.

Meanwhile, in The Funhouse, the suspect man keen with young boys must but only beam glowingly as he dips down to bedside-level, must but keep a distance before he does, indeed, venture a touch (the young boy's parents safely watching over them).
 

#3

The visual exhibition.  Liken to as if in a museum (to see an image or two), which is what the internet will be... For our purposes.  A spare image wall, emphasizing the sheer degree to which Hooper works on a level of the delicate, meaningful image. 

Description: Slightly askew are the proportions.  Almost meaningless is the purpose behind the almost-defiances of gravity, in which floating outliers of the predominant subjects and established scale seem to weigh the frame into a whole new egalitarian direction, where the miniscule diversity of the arrangement - the range of the distances to the camera, the intangible weight given over to the figures of the outliers - adds up to an elegance in an anti-parallelism, an off-balance painterly harmony. 

THAS: Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Makoto Shinozaki Talking Hooper (An Excerpt from Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Mon effroyable histoire du cinéma")

Rouge profond French publication, 2008, original Japanese edition published in 2003.  Mon effroyable histoire du cinéma (Entretiens avec Makoto Shinozaki) [Interviews with Makoto Shinozaki] by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, translation from Japanese by Mayumi Matsuo and David Matarasso.  An excerpt.

Pgs 143 - 145

(The bolded is Makoto Shinozaki speaking, the plain text Kurosawa.)

Vouz avez écrit une belle critique de Poltergeist dans Eizono Karisuma.  Se l'on remplaçait ‹‹Tobe Hooper›› par ‹‹Kiyoshi Kurosawa››, elle constituerait la meilleure analyse de votre oeuvre!  À l'époque, je trouvaise que l'on s'attachait trop au fait qu'il s'agissait d'un film produit Spielberg.
J'ai l'impression que les goûts de Tobe Hooper et ceux de Spielberg ont fusionné dans ce film.  Il n'y a pas beaucoup d'éléments horrifiques mais l'on retrouve la touche de Tobe Hooper dans le scène finale, avec les squelettes qui jaillissent et la maison qui s'autodétruit.  Il ne s'agit pas à proprement parler de ce que j'appelle une mécanique fatale, mais il y a sans sa façon de s'écrouler quelque chose d'irréversible.  Hooper travaille dans un registre un peu plus fantastique et gai que d'habitude, conformément sans doute aux exigences de Spielberg.

[Online translation, gaps intuitively filled in when necessary (probably a bad idea and a crime against the translating profession, but I offer the original text as recompense):]
[You have written a beautiful review of Poltergeist in Eizono Karisuma ("Charisma of the Image," a previous Kurosawa book of writings).  Replace "Tobe Hooper" to "Kiyoshi Kurosawa," it would be the best analysis of your work!  At the time, I thought it was too attached to the fact that it was a Spielberg film production. 
I feel that the flavors of Tobe Hooper and those of Spielberg merged into this film.  There are not many horrific elements but we find the touch of Tobe Hooper in the final scene, with the skeletons that spout up and the house that self-destructs.  It is not, strictly speaking, what I call a mécanique fatale [a concept Kurosawa fleshes out elsewhere in the book, largely pertaining to The Mangler and The Funhouse], but there is no way its crumbling is something irreversible.  Hooper works in a register somewhat more fantastic and cheerful than usual, probably in accordance with the requirements of Spielberg.] 

La première fois que j'ai discuté avec vous de façon approfondie, c'était après la sortie de Sweet Home. À cette occasion, vous m'avez dit que les séquences de Poltergeist qui ressemblement à du Spielberg avaient peut-être été filmées par Hooper et que la scène la plus hooperienne avait vraisemblablement été exigée par Spielberg.

En effet.  J'avais lu quelque part que la séquence d'apparition des fantômes dans la lumière brillante, qui avait l'air d'étre du Spielberg, était un souhait de Tobe Hooper.  À l'inverse, l'irruption des squelettes venait de Spielberg.  Je suppose que Hooper a dû être ravi quand on lui a présenté ce projet.  Sa filmographie recèle pas mal de films d'horreur mais L'invasion vient de Mars est une sorte de comédie parodique et Lifeforce un film de science-fiction.  Il s'essaye à divers genres, même se l'horreur est sa spécialité.

[The first time I spoke with you in depth, it was after the release of Sweet Home.  On this occasion, you told me that Poltergeist sequences that resemble Spielberg had perhaps been filmed by Hooper and that the most Hooperian scene was likely required by Spielberg. 
Indeed.  I read somewhere that the sequence of the appearance of the ghosts in the bright light, which seemed to be of Spielberg, was a desire of Tobe Hooper.  Conversely, the emergence of the skeletons came from Spielberg.  I guess Hooper had to be thrilled when he was presented with this project.  His filmography contains a lot of horror movies, but Invaders from Mars is a sort of parodic comedy and Lifeforce a science fiction film.  He tries various genres, although horror is his specialty.] 

J'ai vu Lifeforce par hasard à Shinjuku, le jour de sa sortie.  Il m'a touché.  Je me suis dit qu'il y avait un autre amoureux du film de Mario Bava, Le Corps et le Fouet (La frusta e il corpo, 1963).  Personne n'a écrit sur le lien entre les deux films à part vous, je crois. 
Le Corps et la Fouet, avec Christopher Lee, est l'un des films qui m'ont le plus influencé.  Il date de l'époque du Moulin des supplices.  Sa fin ressemble à celle de Lifeforce, avec un couple transpercé qui meurt enlacé.  C'est une fin heureuse, l'amour et la mort arrivent en même temps.  En quittant la salle, j'ai failli crier : ‹‹Hey, y a-t-il des gens ici qui ont vu Le Corps et le Fouet?››  Lifeforce est une sorte de film sur un amour impossible.  Au moment où le couple réussit à s'unir, le monde disparaît.

[I saw Lifeforce by chance in Shinjuku, on the day of its release.  It affected me.  I thought there was another lover of the Mario Bava film, Le Corps et le Fouet (La frusta e il corpo, 1963) (US: The Whip and the Body). No one has written on the link between the two films apart from you, I think.
The Body and the Whip (The Whip and the Body), with Christopher Lee, is one of the films that has influenced me the most.  It dates from the time of Moulin des supplices (US: The Mill of the Stone Women).  Its end resembles Lifeforce, with a pierced couple who die entwined. This is a happy ending, love and death come together.  Leaving the room, I almost cried: "Hey, are there people here who have seen The Body and the Whip?"  Lifeforce is a kind of film on an impossible love.  When the couple managed to unite, the world disappears.]

C'est le même principe dans Kaïro, avec la scène des fumées qui s'élèvent de la ville.

Oui!  Dans Lifeforce on pressent la catastrophe et c'est en voyant les zombies courir dans le Londres désert que l'on comprend son ampleur.  Pendant ce désert que l'on comprend son ampleur.  Pendant ce temps, dans les caves d'une église, l'amour tente de s'accomplir.  J'en ai été ému aux larmes.  Combustion spontanée (Spontaneous Combustion, 1990) reprend ce principe sur un mode plus épuré et plus fort.  L'idée du corps qui s'embrase rejoint le cinéma d'horreur mais ils s'agit d'une romance impossible dans laquelle cette fois, les personnages meurent sans s'embrasser.  J'aime ce film. [...]

[This is the same principle in Kairo, with the scene of smoke that rises from the city.
Yes!  In Lifeforce we sense the disaster and it is seeing zombies running in the deserted London that we understand its magnitude.  Meanwhile, in the basement of a church, love is trying to accomplish.  I was moved to tears.  Combustion spontanée (Spontaneous Combustion, 1990) takes this principle to a purer and stronger mode.  The idea of the body in flames joins the cinema of horror, but it is an impossible romance in which this time, the characters die without kissing.  I love this movie. [...] ]

[...]

Il s'agit de l'un des premiers films à avoir abordé de front le problème des essais atomiques, un sujet assez délicat à une époque où le nucléaire était déjà répandu partout. Un homme qui en a été victime devient fou et c'est la fin du monde.  Kubrick en a parlé aussi, à sa manière, avec Docteur Folamour ou comment j'ai appris à ne plus m'en faire et à aimer la bombe (Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1963).

[This is one of the first films to have tackled head on the issue of atomic testing, a rather delicate subject at a time when nuclear power had already spread everywhere.  A man who was victim goes mad and that's the end of the world. Kubrick also spoke, in his own way, with Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.]

Films also of an impossible love: The Funhouse (or an impossible siblinghood).  Eaten Alive, Judd and the alligator (Judd and himself).  Eggshells, hippies and their ideals.

Possible loves (normative, acceptable loves): Mother and daughter in Poltergeist, a boy and adventure in Invaders from Mars (I suppose not without some repercussions, considering the ending), the landlord and his tenant, Chad Lowe and Fay Masterson, in The Apartment Complex.