Les mistons

Francois Truffaut’s second film Les Mistons (France / 1957) - after his silent debut Une Visite three years earlier – had initially been planned as a feature-length project that should have featured several episodes concerning themselves with the way how children view the world. As Truffaut stated on numerous occasions, at the time he was filming Les Mistons, he saw the role of children presented in contemporary french films as clichéd and marginal. Because of his own difficult childhood, it is understandable that such a topic lay close to Truffaut’s heart. What he wanted to achieve through his depiction, was an uncensored and raw feel of childhood, an observational distance that wasn’t judgmental per se, but which instead would be able to give the viewer an authentic portrayal that could lead him to draw his own conclusions.
Luckily, if I might say so, the whole project didn’t evolve as imagined, with only one episode remaining, which now comprises the seventeen minutes long short-film Les Mistons ultimately became. I say luckily, because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have his subsequent film Les Quatre Cents Coupes (1959), as its storyline should have been included as one episode of the compilation, and who knows how film history and The Nouvelle Vague would have developed without it.

Les Mistons was made on a shoestring budget and is overall an uneven film of a young director who is still searching for his own voice. The film is jam-packed with cross-references and a specific agenda Truffaut developed earlier in his critical writings for “Les Cahiers du Cinéma”, but while similar films could seem overburdened, the fragmented approach doesn’t hide the films deficits, but points to a richness which one would wish to have been further explored. So the opposite of most student-films is happening here, with the film not being too long, but instead far too short. Though it still works as a coherent whole, to me it seemed more of an appetizer for bigger things to come.
The plot is a deceptively simple one, concerning itself with the pursuit of a beautiful woman by a group of five kids, who try to play tricks on her and her lover because of their inability to approach her on a personal level. Curiously it is an adaptation of a short story by Maurice Pons, with the literal text being used as a voice-over throughout most of the film.
What makes Les Mistons a rewarding experience is the enthusiasm that can be felt from all people involved. Truffaut’s love of cinema and its possibilities is evident in every frame, with his references to film-history and the filmmakers he was previously championing in his writings all over the place. The poetics of people moving through nature obviously from Renoir while Cocteau is honored through various slow motion shots and a resurrection scene that could have come straight from Orphée (1949).

My favorite moment of the film appeared when Truffaut was paying hommage to the Lumiere brothers with almost a film within the film. Complete with a “silent” piano score and the accelaretad movements of people on-screen (wich were common when silent films were screened throughout most of the sound-era, because of a wrong projection speed) the famous L’arroseur arrosé (1895) is recreated, with a slight but important difference. While the camera in the earliest films remained static, hindering the comic impact of some films, through the insertion of a singular close-up, Truffaut shows how the lessons on suspense taught by Hitchcock can be successfully applied to achieve a comical impact. In the end, thriller and comedy are the two genres which are most dependent on timing.
The exit from this unrelated scene to the main narrative is also remarkable, in that it doesn’t happen through a mere cut-away to the storyline, which would have - with someone less experienced in film history - merely resulted in a perplexed viewer. Instead Truffaut chooses to connect this small event with the rest of the film through a zoom-out and the entrance of Bernadette Lafont into the frame. But this is not only one more example of his concern and respect for the audience, which would in his later career lead to accusations of pondering to the masses, but much more importantly the one essential gesture which links Les Mistons symbolically with the whole past of cinematic history. In this moment the present and the past lose their preliminary importance. The same goes for the films voice-over which tells of the past when the film is rooted in the present of France in the 50s, while the stylistics and ideology of the filmmaker are pointing to the new Wave of the 60s. Time becomes meaningless, interchangable as can be also witnessed in the films fragmented approach towards the narrative.

The storyline is itself told in a casual, seemingly unrelated manner, when events are merely lined-up like pearls on a string and causality loses its importance. If one counts the times in which Bernadette Lafont is shown riding on a bicycle even the argument of this scenes importance as Leitmotif can’t help to illuminate why it is featured in this large extent. Maybe Truffaut was as fascinated as the “mistons” with Lafont in her first acting role. Though she is the main focus of attention, her character is the least developed one and one could complain about her being used merely as a projection screen for the male fantasies if that wasn’t exactly what the film is about.
Nevertheless the film shows one weakness of Truffaut as a filmmaker which would become exemplary in his later work. He seems somehow to mistrust the image, shortening its impact through the voice-over. While in some scenes a welcome edition, as the film unfolds the unnecessary nature of the narrator becomes more and more obvious. At times the text feels almost forced on the images, having nothing to do with it, when the disharmony between the precise language and the liberated images doesn’t enrich the two but brings the whole film down to a level where accident and the viewers taste overshadow the films intentions. Though the structure was clearly an inspiration for later filmmakers like Jean Eustache - Les mauvaises fréquentations (1963) and Le père Noël a les yeux bleus (1966) - I feel that the voice-over wasn’t used in favor of the film. Some of this uncertainty and mistrust can also be felt in the humorous dialogue which sometimes feels forced and arbitrary. Truffaut is clearly more at home with the control a narrator can offer. The more satisfying associative part the viewer has to handle, finds its most successful outlet at the end of the film. When the death of Bernadette’s lover during a climbing session is revealed through various newspaper articles, it is clearly the effects of the Algerian war we are witnessing.

But the main attraction was for me the camera. Its freewheeling movements, twisting and turning in every direction, static shots contrasted with fast pans, sometimes filming from a great distance and sometimes remaining close to the characters – it is always interesting and surprising, with an eye for compositional detail. The viewpoint is never merely the children’s, the narrator’s, or that of the lovers, but keeps alternating between the three and an added third of an omnipresent observer/manipulator.
The cinematography by Jean Malige is vibrant and colorful, piercing the b&w material in away that it comes to life through the interplay of shadows in light, much in the fashion of Jean Vigo’s films. He would later also add his mastery with images to Paula Delsol’s La dérive (1964), one of the best and most neglected films of the Nouvelle Vague period. Vigo is also omnipresent in a scene which shows the kids sharing a cigarette, as well as some of the scenes between the two lovers, while his usage of silence and sound must have been a clear blueprint for Les Mistons. Ironically the fragmented approach to sound and image with its rapid-fire editing techniques and the shifting rhythm made me recall early soviet sound films and especially Dziga Vertov and his experimentations on this field in Entuziazm: Simfoniya Donbassa from 1930. As I don’t suppose Truffaut at this time was overtly familiar with Vertov, given the dislike of André Bazin towards this kind of formalism, the soviet filmmakers nevertheless had a huge impact on the construction of Jean Vigo’s own films. On a sidenote this would make an interesting discussion on the different appreciation of formal techniques regarding their deployment in avant-garde films as opposed to a “traditional” narrative. But whatever Truffaut’s own thoughts on this matter, it is a sad fact that his more experimental nature seemed to somewhat get lost in the course of his development as a filmmaker.

If we come back to Bernadette Lafont and Jean Eustache, we will see more of her beautiful eyes in his La maman et la putain (1973), and some scenes and places as well as some arrangements from Les Mistons, will be revisited in Eustaches following masterpiece Mes petites amoureuses (1974). To this day Francois Truffaut keeps influencing other filmmakers around the globe, and although his reputation among cineastes through the years has suffered considerable damage when compared to his contemporaries, that shouldn’t stop us from seeking out his films. Maybe you will find that it’s time for a re-evaluation.

A marginal complaint about german television

As I was holding a german TV- magazin in my hands (name omitted by the author), I was wondering about the quality of films presented on german Television. Let's see the schedule for Thursday, June 1st: 19 films are listed to be screened on all german TV-stations you can get via satellite without further payment. Considering the fact that this specific magazine has 19 of these channels listed it is an unusually small number. But again considering the fact that this is during the week, where people in Germany are expected to not be so keen on watching movies if they can watch series, tv-magazines or talkshows, this small amount of film-offerings becomes more acceptable.

But if we look at the films themselves, what a surprise, what a delight!! Who needs DVDs if he is able to choose just on this single evening between such films as There's something about Mary by the Farelly brothers on one channel, while another is offering a film by Laurence Olivier starring Laurence Olivier (and Marilyn Monroe), The Prince and The Showgirl? And on yet another channel, starting only 30 minutes later you have Robert Bresson's second feature Les dames du Bois du Bologne at your disposal. Or you can tape that one, and watch a Leone-inspired american Western featuring Burt Lancaster on NDR. Michael Winner's 1971 Lawman. After this not so specific time-slot - which has also a drama with Kevin Bacon and a german cult-comedy to offer - you can enjoy a small spanish film about cubans and their dreams of Spain, Manuel Guietérrez Aragón's 1997 film Cosas que dejé en la habana. If you are more into american stuff, you can choose at the same time between Philip Kaufman's sensual study of Henry Miller's private life featuring not only a young Uma Thurman alongside the now almost forgotten Fred Ward (Tremors anyone?), but to my personal delight also the only five years older Maria de Medeiros - the movie I'm referring to is of course 1990's Henry & June) - or you can watch John Huston's own late take on the noir film he helped to establish. Asphalt Jungle is one of the great nihilistic caper movies that was an inspiration for such later classics as Jean-Pierre Melville's Bob le flambeur, or Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. And it also features a very young Marilyn Monroe, what might be of interest for the people who watched The Prince and The Showgirl two hours earlier. Not much of the glamour and talent of the later Sex symbol is on display in the marginal role she is given. Instead she plays a somewhat strange mixture between a dumb blonde and a femme fatale. Although today best remembered for her more lascivious, "body-oriented" roles, maybe she's already defying easy categorization - something she would be trying to accomplish the rest of her short-lived career. As if these films weren't enough already, you can also turn your back on Hollywood and instead enjoy a film from a seldom explored scandinavian country. The Norwegian Eva's øye (loosely translated as "Eve's Eye") for which the lead actress was nominated for an Amanda Award (a national norwegian award ceremony that,like the Oscars, takes place once a year).

But the real surprise follows roughly one and a half hours later. You have not only playing Julain Schnabel's debut feature Basquiat, one of 1996's finest films about the young painter of the same name who shook the art-scene during the 80s, (and the film features, amongst others, supporting roles by the likes of David Bowie, Gary Oldman, Willem Dafoe, Benicio Del Toro, Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper), but also Arthur Penns notorious anti-western The Missouri Breaks from 1976, with a confrontation between Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando in the leading role. Beside the highly eccentric performance of Brando - as a head-hunter who not only talks to himself but also like to wear female dresses - the film is actually pretty remarkable on its own terms. A film which calls for re-discovery (like has already been the case with Brando's own - then much despised - directorial debut One-Eyed Jacks) Although overshadowed by its controversy (Brando who was also producing the film fired Kubrick who was initially supposed to direct him!) it flopped immensly in 1961, and remained Brando's only directorial debut, it is now more and more hailed as a masterpiece. The same could (and maybe should) happen to Arthur Penn's swan song for the old West.But the icing on the cake takes yet another film, screened roughly in between these two. Jerzy Skolimowski even more neglected 1971 masterpiece Deep End. Hailed in Molly Haskell's famous feminist film-study From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies as one of the rare exceptions of 70s films in which women were given a cliché-free, individual and emancipated treatment, the film (and sadly its director) have, since then, dwindled into oblivion. As of this writing, the film isn't readily available on any format, though this may change when Skolimowski's next feature - after an absence of 15 years - will finally hit the festivasl circuit. If you don't want to wait so long....
And after such an exhaustive but informative evening, what could be better than a Hollywood comedy. You can choose between Ernst Lubitsch's 1943 Heaven can wait starring Gene Tierney and Don Ameche - the picture that got Lubitsch his third and last Oscar-consideration and a classic if there ever was any, or Mike Nichols' 1986 effort Heartburn which unites Hollywood Megastars Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep for the first and only time on screen, along with a young Jeff Daniels and (I'm not kidding) Milos Forman!

So what was the title of my post meant to express you might now ask yourself. Sadly there is a reason I won't watch any of these films besides the commercial breaks - which are anyway less frequent than in the US, and which are only featured during five of the films listed. The fact still remains that after a period of experimentation in the late 20s and early 30s, in large parts due to the coming of the Third Reich, dubbing became the common standard in Germany. And it has remained so until this very day! Not only is this historical break usually disregarded in most books dealing with the cinema of the Weimar Republic, but it is still common practics amongst most German-situated reviewers to watch their films in German. And then they go on and write a review, claiming to have been accurate enough to capture its spirit! Dubbing is such a wide-spread vice that it would appear unusual, even eccentric to some, if a critic in Germany would insist on watching a film in a proper, that is subtitled, fashion. But as a true cinéaste I will naturally stay away from such sacrilege, waiting either for the world to change, or - more simple - an international DVD release. Meanwhile I am still able to browse the TV magazines, and marvel over the eclectic tastes of our local and national editors.

A cinema of interaction

At the beginning of Ni neibian jidian “What time is it there” (Ming-liang Tsai / Taiwan, France / 2001) we are confronted with an old man sitting in an abandoned apartment. Quietly smoking a cigarette, he seems like he’s been left behind. At one moment he stands up, calling out the name of his son, Hsiao-kang (played by young Taiwanese director Kang-sheng Lee). Finally he walks to the balcony, while the camera lingers on a bit longer. This is the last time the viewer will see him alive, the last moment the director allows him to experience. Framed through a series of doorways, we see him in the distance, a solitary, inaccessible figure. To me he seemed waiting for something he actually didn’t expect to happen anymore. Waiting, more as a habit than an expression of actual hope, and the probability that this person hadn’t articulated such feelings before - at least not openly. The call for his son thus becomes a symbolical gesture, a mixture of desperation and capitulation. The whole scene is shot from one single camera-position, the angle carefully chosen. A living tableau, in which the actor is as important as his surroundings. Carefully we are led in and out of a seemingly unimportant event, though what is actually happening is a lot. No editing interrupts the flow of time.
The beauty of this moment lies as much in the execution of the scene as in the event itself. Through the whole arrangement, the viewer is able to observe and feel the character at the same time. And this feeling of responsibility for the character depicted is exactly what separates Tsai from similar filmmakers. While their films often seem cold and detached, Tsai never loses a sense of intimacy and tenderness, making his protagonists instantly accessible, and the viewer able to relate to them. Though we might not always know what’s going on, or why the characters are behaving in a specific way, we can always feel the urge that is driving them.

To anyone familiar with Tsai’s previous films, the depiction of urban loneliness is an established theme. Its reverberations in space and time are shown through a number of isolated moments, which at first seem to have little in common. But in the course of the films, connections are established, characters fleshed out, meanings revealed. His cinema, is a cinema of patience. But not the patience of a viewer who is waiting for something to happen, but the patience of an observer who is aware that life means every moment, which always has a meaning of its own. While your expectations are altered, and your prejudices challenged, you get the chance to experience the world anew. The difficulty that the characters are presented without background and without a psychological or sociological profile, is thus turned into an actual strength, heightening the intensity of our experience. But experience may not be the right word, as you are forced to participate in the film in order to unravel its secrets. The interaction of the viewer with the image, as well as the characters, becomes a crucial point in the cinema of Tsai Ming-liang. The irony of it, lies in the fact that the people themselves seem at first oblivious to this necessity. Staggering around in the Taipei, they are usually unable to form even the most basic connections with their environment.
The characters, through which Tsai tries to analyze this state, have remained the same throughout most of his films. Besides Hsiao-kang, we also have his mother (played by Yi-Ching Lu), his father (Tien Miao), and his love interest Shiang-chyi (Shiang-chyi Chen, who first appeared in “The River” (1997)). The same set of characters is also featured in “What time is it there?”, the directors fifth feature film.

After the introduction, Tsai abruptly cuts to Hsiao-kang who is riding in a Taxi with the remaining ashes of his father. The death that happened between these shots isn’t shown for at least two reasons. Firstly it illustrates the fleetingness of time itself, and the abruptness in which our lives can be altered. Secondly (and more importantly) it underlines once more what we were able to witness in the first scene. Death can already happen in life. Compared to this, physical death seems like a minor occurrence. Nevertheless it is this earthly passing that sets the following events into motion. After the ceremony, Hsiao-kang’s mother waits for her husband to be reincarnated. After various rituals she discovers one night that the time on the clock in the kitchen has been readjusted. Believing this to be her husbands work, she starts adapting to this new time-frame, having dinner at night, and shading the apartment in the mornings. While his mother keeps drifting more and more into this mindset, Hsiao-kang has an experience of a different kind. While selling watches on the street, he meets a Christian girl on her way to Paris. She insists on buying his watch, and after he gives in, he becomes obsessed with her. He first starts adjusting all of his watches to Parisian time, until he completely abandons his work, devoting his time to modifying all the clocks he encounters in Taipei. In one scene he is shown breaking into a control center, while in another we can observe him trying to alter an enormous clock from the top of a skyscraper. In addition he becomes scared to leave his room at night, and because he is thus unable to reach the toilet he starts urinating into plastic bottles. Seemingly unaffected by the death of his father, he is mourning for the absence of the girl, watching films about Paris and drinking red wine. Nevertheless his longing for the girl mirrors the state of his mother. Both keep trying to escape from reality, from their present lives and their loneliness, while the girl in Paris also seems to be fleeing from something. Wandering aimlessly around the city, she tries to phone somebody several times without success. Yet, those three persons’ lives become strangely intertwined. At one moment we see Hsiao-kang crying in his sleep, only moments after his mother had been crying in the kitchen. In another scene, the girl in Paris has a chance-meeting with the aged protagonist from a French film Hsiao-kang has been watching. He cheers her up when he gives her his phone-number, after having observed her unsuccessfully searching for one.

The protagonists of the film are all trying to contact somebody who isn’t there, who doesn’t answer, reacting to situations they have constructed in their minds. Unable to deal with the problems in a rational manner, their ways of finding relief keep throwing them back on themselves. Thus their behaviour keeps spiralling further into the absurd.
The structure of Tsai’s films is often built on such a premise. A simple event triggers a progression of events, linking the character’s lives until a connection has been achieved. The filmmaker keeps sending his protégés on an intricate voyage towards self-discovery, his compassion being a ray of light leading them out of the dark, and his films a symbol for the necessity of hope. Despite the long takes and the heavy topics, the films rarely appear gloomy or ponderous, instead keeping a distinct sense of humour. A poetic sense of the absurd, that is delivered in a light-handed fashion which is constantly aware of its own presence. Tsai’s techniques are never calling attention to themselves, but are put into the service of the overall structure. In a way, Tsai remains a storyteller in the traditional sense. His films always lead to a conclusion that urges us to reconsider our situation along with the characters. And despite the open endings, the chain of events which has been set into motion makes its own claims that cry to be resolved. Without pointing a finger at us, through his unflinching way of posing the problem Tsai heightens our awareness of situations that are a pressing issue in our modern times, challenging us with a concept of cinema, which defies easy solutions.

The culmination in “What time is it there?” happens during three simultaneous sexual encounters, after which the characters all reach a decision. The girl in Paris packs her bags and departs from the hotel. Hsiao-kang gives away his bag of watches, abandoning his profession, and his mother starts to accept the death of her husband. When Hsiao-kang comes home in the morning, he finds his mother asleep in the kitchen while the light is shining into the room again. He lies down beside her. At the same time the girl is shown asleep on a chair in the open. When her suitcase is stolen by a bunch of kids that throw it into a nearby pond of water, the dead father appears in the frame and fishes it out.
In order to come alive and affect the lives of some people, he had to be dead first. His wife comes into contact with her emotions, confessing in a crucial scene her difficulty in coping with his absence. When his son displaces his grief onto another persons’ absence, a possible feeling of love is rekindled. In the end, after his son and his mother have come closer to each other, the father, like a good spirit, prevents a further loss for the girl, appearing at the desired time and space, the “there” from the title of the film. But this happens only after both were able to let him go and while all characters are asleep. During this state the boundaries which separate dreams from reality become meaningless, this world and the afterlife coming together. Maybe Tsai wants to tell us that though only in dreams and in art wishes are instantly granted, life has a way of arranging itself that can also fill us with hope. Coincidences don’t necessarily produce negative results, when every event opens the doors to a new experience, when fate and the free are resulting out of each other. His films are always a voyage, from the closed to the open, from a determined position into the possibilities of life. Creatively exploring new ways of experiencing and coping with established situations, he inspires us to rethink our position, and stay on the move. But looking at his characters, who though often on the move, seem locked inside of themselves, we are reminded that the movement has to be inward first.
While the light is now shining on the protagonists, and the paths they can take have been expanded, the film ends on an optimistic note. The father, who seemed caged in the small apartment at the beginning, is now moving into open space. And the wheel of life starts turning again.

The wind will carry us

Bad ma ra khahad bord
(1999 / Iran, France / Abbas Kiarostami)

When I saw The wind will carry us again after three years, its lyrical beauty seemed even more obvious to me than the first time.
The Film is about a man who has an inner struggle which he is unable to perceive. Only at the end of the film he can aknowledge it, though he remains unable to solve it. The small village he came to, 700 miles away from Teheran, awakens his senses, his lust for life, even though he came initially looking for death. When in the end the old woman, the protagonist and the film crew have been waiting to die for, finally passes away, the by then already unexpected event takes on a new significance. Like the character himself, the viewer has experienced a journey from the inward to the outward, from the determined to the unexpected, and from the enclosed spaces of the mind, to a wider perception of the world. Whatever the protagonist will do with his future, wether he will stay at this place that has given him a second chance or not, he is changed for life.
The title of the film is taken from an iranian poem, and when it is recited in one scene in the darkness of a cave, one can feel all the beauty that surrounds us, even if we are not always able to appreciate it.
Life needs living says this film, almost shouts it in your face, but with such warmth of breath, that you go with it. Along with the estranged character the viewer starts to rediscover the world, and out of the endless flow of time, compassion starts to arise - compassion for the flowers, the trees, the earth, and the people, with all their beauty and shortcomings.
The worst disease is death says a character in the film, when we`ll have to leave this earth. One day, the wind will carry us away.

Who was Otto Preminger?

When I first saw a film by Otto Preminger, I didn’t notice it. Watching River of no Return (1954), I thought it was a vehicle for Marylin Monroe, although a strange one. Something else was also going on, but at that time I couldn’t grasp it. What stayed with me though, were vivid recollections of vast landscapes, of vibrant colors, and of man, somehow lost in them. Robert Mitchum’s solitary figure cutting wood, framed by overwhelming forces of nature. A majestic river in the front, and the Rockies in the back. Mitchum stolid as a rock in the middle, while his love for Monroe becomes a force of nature itself – the river which will ultimately sweep him away.

My first real encounter with him, was through the original trailer for Anatomy of a Murder (1959). There he introduces the film himself in a courtroom, fascinating mostly with his own presence and his rhetorical articulation. What struck me most was the resemblance with the only other trailer’s I knew that took the same approach – those of Alfred Hitchcock. In a similar fashion Preminger featured as a sinister host clad in a dark suit who shows us the lifes and crimes of ordinary people, revealing what’s usually hidden beneath the surface. But while many would have dismissed this presentation as a gimmick, or a mere imitation, to me it seemed immediately clear that what we really have is an independent and strong personality that is probably on the same level with Hitchcock, possessing a unique creative vision of his own.

Preminger didn’t direct River of no Return all by himself. Some scenes were apparently by Jean Negulesco, though he wasn’t credited for it. As a studio director coming from the old Hollywood system, Preminger was at first obliged to work with what he was given. Contrary to Hitchcock who was already a famous movie director in the 30s before moving to Hollywood, Preminger had to fight his way towards independence all through the 30s and 40s, until he could emerge with his own distinct style and philosophy and the power to shoot his films the way he wanted. But in the end he achieved a comparable degree of independence through the commercial success of most of his films and the fact that he was often producing them himself. And like Hitchcock, it can be argued that he made most of his best films during the 50s, and in the end also became something of a victim of the advance of “New Hollywood”. Though he continued to make films until the end of the 70s, the films he’s best known for are from this earlier period.

Like Hitchcock he had a spellbinding presence, which he achieved at first through his outward appearance. But while Hitchcock dominated in breadth, Preminger focused on height. With 6' he was bigger than most of the people at this time. With this stature and the fact that he was originally from Austria, Hollywood did indeed use him as an actor during World War II, portraying Nazi villains most of the time. But the fact that he had had experience as a an actor himself, and was coming from a theatre background in Vienna enabled him to work with actors in a different way than they were usually used to. While in Hitchcock’s films the acting usually isn’t the strongest department (in some cases it even becomes a weak point), Preminger always gets first rate performances when he needs them, and he can stage even a conversation in a way that it doesn’t become boring. A great example is Anatomy of a murder, where the camera is often on the move, almost negating the fact that the film is a “court-room” drama that relies heavily on dialogue. In his mise-en-scene he could rival the best. Relying like Hitch on elaborate camera-movements he seems even more interested in longer takes and plan-sequences in contrast to the mastery of editing Hitchcock developed. Thus his films also seem to run along in a more moderate pace, the images having more space to breath, but without becoming boring or redundant.

While he worked in almost every genre, he said that each film tiggers its own style, its own way to be filmed. This may also be a key when trying to figure out why his name isn’t as famous today as Hitchcocks. Not imposing a singular style on his work and working on different topics didn’t help securing him an immediate “auteur” status. If you’re not easily to be pinned down, that is obviously the price you have to pay with your critics. But when the term first came to be used frequently among the “Cahiers du cinema” critics in the 1950s, Premingers name was equally present as any other studio directors’, who had achieved bigger eminence. Especially Jean-Luc Godard held him in high esteem with at least two of Premingers films being his all-time favourites (Bonjour Tristesse (1958) and Angel Face (1952)). Unfortunately, unlike his colleague Francois Truffaut, Godard didn’t embark on a lengthy interview session, and the audience often has to wonder how Preminger intended certain things. But when you have to give the answer yourself, it is probably closer to what Preminger would have wanted in the first place.