It apears there is a French DVD of this -- with German subs (but not English ones):
It looks a lot better than the old US video release...
Anyone actually seen this?
La Salamandre (Tanner, 1971)
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Michael Kerpan
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Michael Kerpan
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Wow, it looks nothing like the US video version.Kinsayder wrote:Some screen captures here.
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brunosh
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 5:47 am
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On 10 May, at one of a season of events commemorating May 1968, I saw Alain Tanner introduce a screening of La Salamandre and then follow the film with a brief Q&A. Tanner is a bull-like figure, but at 78 not very mobile, leaning heavily on a stick when walking. He introduced the film by singing (while theatrically waving his stick) a French nursery song which ended “the fields are full of flowers”; he added “of course, they are full of garbage now”.
In the Q&A, when asked how the film reflected May 1968, Tanner described his approach as attempting to capture “the spirit of the times” with plenty of humour thrown in, rather than showing the events of May 1968 themselves and addressing directly their politics. He felt that this approach now helps the film to seem less dated than some contemporaneously made films which concentrated directly on the events of, and surrounding, May 1968. He stressed the non-naturalistic nature of the film – its episodic structure, and use of quotation and voiceover, the serious tone and content of which are sometimes undermined and contradicted by subsequent dialogue.
When asked about John Berger’s role as co-writer, Tanner said that Berger merely read and commented on the script but was to collaborate much more fully on Le Milieu du Monde and Jonah…
He said that the success of the film owed a lot to Bulle Ogier who was virtually unknown at the time – she had previously appeared in L’Amour Fou but, he said, “almost no-one had seen that”. Ogier was brought up in a “bourgeois Parisian family” and he had reservations about casting her - “bourgeois” seems to be almost the ultimate insult in Tanner’s vocabulary and at another point he said something like “the rich, the powerful and the bourgeois make no image on film”. (Would it be overly ironic to wonder whether the invisibility on film of these bigger villains is why he settled for apparently petit bourgeois characters – the uncle; the shoe shop manager and his mother – as the easy targets of the film’s greatest scorn?) Ultimately he decided that Ogier’s look and her way of talking would suit the film (and I think he meant by “her look” her manner or way of looking rather than her appearance, although I can’t help thinking that the amount of time the camera lingers on her throughout the film owes as much to her appearance as to her way of looking). Anyway, he was proved right. She was good for the film, and the film was good for her as it brought her to the attention of the international film audience.
Tanner disagreed with the suggestion of one member of the audience that Rosemonde (the character played by Ogier) is schizophrenic and disabused another of the idea that the film is in some way about “the workers”. If it has a subject (beyond “the spirit of the times”), it is the contrast between fact-based rationality (exemplified by the character Pierre) and a poetic and intuitive approach (exemplified by the character Paul and by Rosemonde, and clearly favoured by Tanner).
When asked to comment on the view that Godard and he are perhaps Switzerland’s two greatest directors, Tanner said that he never much liked Godard’s films but believes him to have been film’s greatest innovator of the second half of the twentieth century. He shrugged off the suggestion that Jane Fonda using a sausage making machine in Tout Va Bien might have owed something to Ogier doing the same in La Salamandre (in each case, arguably a Freudian image not vastly less subtle than the train entering the tunnel in L’Avventura). Finally, Tanner confirmed that he is now definitely in retirement.
I hugely enjoyed seeing the film again, having last seen it on its initial release in London, having missed a couple of showings in London during the last couple of years and having been hoping in vain for a subtitled DVD release. (Any thought that the presence in the audience of the man who set up Second Run – I can’t remember his name - might be a prelude to a subtitled DVD of the film was not helped by a turnout of not more than 25 for this showing.) Anyway, it’s always good to have a chance to hear someone like Tanner. Sadly, I wasn’t able to stay for the subsequent showings of Charles Mort ou Vif and Jonah…
In the Q&A, when asked how the film reflected May 1968, Tanner described his approach as attempting to capture “the spirit of the times” with plenty of humour thrown in, rather than showing the events of May 1968 themselves and addressing directly their politics. He felt that this approach now helps the film to seem less dated than some contemporaneously made films which concentrated directly on the events of, and surrounding, May 1968. He stressed the non-naturalistic nature of the film – its episodic structure, and use of quotation and voiceover, the serious tone and content of which are sometimes undermined and contradicted by subsequent dialogue.
When asked about John Berger’s role as co-writer, Tanner said that Berger merely read and commented on the script but was to collaborate much more fully on Le Milieu du Monde and Jonah…
He said that the success of the film owed a lot to Bulle Ogier who was virtually unknown at the time – she had previously appeared in L’Amour Fou but, he said, “almost no-one had seen that”. Ogier was brought up in a “bourgeois Parisian family” and he had reservations about casting her - “bourgeois” seems to be almost the ultimate insult in Tanner’s vocabulary and at another point he said something like “the rich, the powerful and the bourgeois make no image on film”. (Would it be overly ironic to wonder whether the invisibility on film of these bigger villains is why he settled for apparently petit bourgeois characters – the uncle; the shoe shop manager and his mother – as the easy targets of the film’s greatest scorn?) Ultimately he decided that Ogier’s look and her way of talking would suit the film (and I think he meant by “her look” her manner or way of looking rather than her appearance, although I can’t help thinking that the amount of time the camera lingers on her throughout the film owes as much to her appearance as to her way of looking). Anyway, he was proved right. She was good for the film, and the film was good for her as it brought her to the attention of the international film audience.
Tanner disagreed with the suggestion of one member of the audience that Rosemonde (the character played by Ogier) is schizophrenic and disabused another of the idea that the film is in some way about “the workers”. If it has a subject (beyond “the spirit of the times”), it is the contrast between fact-based rationality (exemplified by the character Pierre) and a poetic and intuitive approach (exemplified by the character Paul and by Rosemonde, and clearly favoured by Tanner).
When asked to comment on the view that Godard and he are perhaps Switzerland’s two greatest directors, Tanner said that he never much liked Godard’s films but believes him to have been film’s greatest innovator of the second half of the twentieth century. He shrugged off the suggestion that Jane Fonda using a sausage making machine in Tout Va Bien might have owed something to Ogier doing the same in La Salamandre (in each case, arguably a Freudian image not vastly less subtle than the train entering the tunnel in L’Avventura). Finally, Tanner confirmed that he is now definitely in retirement.
I hugely enjoyed seeing the film again, having last seen it on its initial release in London, having missed a couple of showings in London during the last couple of years and having been hoping in vain for a subtitled DVD release. (Any thought that the presence in the audience of the man who set up Second Run – I can’t remember his name - might be a prelude to a subtitled DVD of the film was not helped by a turnout of not more than 25 for this showing.) Anyway, it’s always good to have a chance to hear someone like Tanner. Sadly, I wasn’t able to stay for the subsequent showings of Charles Mort ou Vif and Jonah…
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kneelzod
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Re: La Salamandre (Tanner, 1971)
Tanner is to be honored at Locarno with the Leopard of Honour this year. Maybe this portends some English-friendly DVDs of LA SALAMANDRE, DANS LA VILLE BLANCHE, JONAS..., and others.
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Fiery Angel
- Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:59 pm
Re:
Coming next month: Tanner retro in NYC at Anthology Film Archives:
April 15-22
THE FILMS OF ALAIN TANNER
A long-overdue retrospective devoted to the great Swiss filmmaker Alain Tanner, director of landmarks including THE SALAMANDER and JONAH WHO WILL BE 25 IN THE YEAR 2000