[Babaouo] An unpublished, Unfilmed Scenario by Salvador Dali

Introduction by Dontrell Lovet't




Salvador Dali was a surrealist painter from Catalonia, Spain. Best known for the "Persistence of Memory," Dali was known as one of the most influential painters of the 20th century. In 1929, he collaborated with the surrealist filmmaker and fellow Spanish artist Luis Bunuel on the masterpiece "Un Chien Andalou," Though contracted to do another film with Bunuel the following year "L'age D'or" due to personal disputes with Bunuel over a married mistress, Dali resigned from the film as a co-writer. The following is an excerpt from an unpublished film script first printed in 1958 by Gideon Dachmann in the hand-typed collection [Cinemages, Unfilmed Scenarios]




[Babaouo] Translated from the French by Jaume Miravitlles





Before the film begins and while the titles and credits are being shown, the tango "Renacimiento" is heard. This will be repeated from time to time during the film as a sort of leit-motiv.

 The corridor of a large hotel. The camera follows a bellhop, who appears to be in a great hurry, as he looks for a room. He finds it at the end of the corridor. He starts to knock, then stops in surprise as he hears coming from the room a veritable concert of strident, hysterical laughter, punctuated by the sound of violent shocks, as of very heavy objects being thrown against the walls and furniture. The laughter quickly becomes convulsive, giving the impression that about ten people are in the room.

(For laughter use Pathe sound effects record X 6285)


 After hesitating, the bellhop takes advantage of a moment when the noise subsides somewhat to knock politely on the door, but the laughter and blows are heard again with even greater violence. The bellhop, who should give the impression of continual impatience, begins to bang loudly on the door, but in vain.

When the noise dies down again, the voice of a woman is heard. Through bursts of laughter she articulates with difficulty, "Just a second, you can't come in now."


After an interval during which the laughter rises again and two even more violent blows are heard, the door opens slightly, just enough to reveal half of the figure of a woman in transparent negligee. Camera pans from rear view of the bellhop to the woman, who is extremely young and beautiful, with somewhat dishevelled hair and an open countenance. Her looks, in the artificial light of the room, form a sort of nebulous aura about her, an impression accentuated by the soft lens which is customarily used in such scenes. In an infinitely soft voice she asks, "What do you want?'

"I have an urgent letter for M. Babauo. to be delivered to him in person."

"I will tell him," answers the woman, and closes the door again. The noise and laughter, which have not ceased, now grow louder than ever. The door shakes under the blows it sustains, opens suddently as an object is hurled out, and shuts with a bang. The object is a decapitated chicken, which flutter down the corridor and finally collapses, its blood tracing its course across the floor. Close-up of the chicken in a sea of blood.

The bellhop who has paid no attention to the chicken, grows more impatient then ever.

The door of the room opens and M. Babaouo appears. He is extremely insignificant in appearance, yet not without a certain distinction. He is in his shirt sleeves and has just finished wiping his hands on an absorbent towel. He shakes off the straw with clings to his trousers and removes the bits which are tangled in his hair.

He takes the letter from the bellhop and without the slightest show of emotion beings to read it.

Text of letter; "All alone in the Chateau de Portugal for three days, I can't stand it any longer. Help. Your adored, Mathilde Ibanez."

Babaouo tosses the towel away, looks at the time, gets his jacket and hastily leaves the hotel. He is constantly followed by the camera.

As he crosses the hotel lobby, a grand piano falls down the elevator shaft from the third story, crashing loudly on the marble floor.

He has no sooner reached the street than he meets a friend with whom he has a long conversation, as follows: (1) about the transformation of certain rooms in a former "agricultural syndicate" in Figueras, a small town in Catalonia (Spain), in the Province of Gerona, three hours from Cerbere; (2) about the difficulties which has risen in connection with a certain book-binding firm, which are such that they agree the only solution is to rebind all or at least three-quarters of the catalogues in question; (3) he and his friend decide on a rendezvous, in turn dependent on the very precarious situation of certain of his associations.

During this conversation the two men, who are walking slowly and stopping often, are followed by the camera, after panning, the camera stops, at which point the men, still walking, come back into full view. A veritable deluge covers the street, and the two friends are seen walking in water up to their ankles. The torrent brings with all sorts of debris and dead animals (donkeys, cows, horses.) In order to advance, the two men are frequently obliged to kick these objects and animals out of their way, and to protect themselves from them are at times forced to climb up onto benches or embankments, which hinders their conversation and prolongs it. Finally they take leave of each other.

Babaouo then proceeds along with absolutely dry street and reaches a large square which is covered with cyclists slowly weaving in and out. Their eyes are bandaged and they each carry a heavy stone on their heads. The celebrated little white cape, very clean, hangs from their shoulders.

Babaouo, threading his way carefully among the cyclists, crosses the square.

He goes down a subway entrance, not falling to greet with a familiar wave of his hand a woman of mature years, in her chemise, who is loudly sawing wood at the top of the stairs.

The camera follows Baraouo, who is shown in a long sequence descending the stairs. A pair of tango dancers several times cross the stair in a single exalted glide.

Baraouo reaches the platforms, where a large crowd is waiting for the train, mingled with the members of an enormous orchestra which has assembled and it about to begin playing the Overture of "Tannheuser."

The music starts, the members of the orchestra ignoring the crowd, who walk among them and talk audibly, oblivious to the presence of the orchestra or the music.

The musicians show exemplary self-control in the face of the annoyance caused by the incessant coming and going of the indifferent crowd. The faces of the musicians and especially the conductor, as well as their slight gestures and expressions, reveal their perfect training and patience, a resignation, which is not without dignity and even pride. The people in the crowd as they move back and forth knock over the music stands, and the musicians, already forced by the continuous jostling to play wrong notes, restrain their understandable anger and meekly bend down, with bitter smiles on their lips, to pick up the sheets of paper soiled and crumpled by shoes of the crowd. With the utmost sincerity and professional discipline they begin to play again, taking up at the point in the score which their colleagues have managed to reach with scarcely less difficulty and annoyance than they themselves have endured. This spectacle is prolonged until the arrival of the subway. The crowd stampedes to get seats, running over the musicians, who are almost obliged to stop playing altogether. Some of them are even forced to clutch their instruments to their chests to protect them, while others look for their instruments to their chests to protect them, while others look for their under the feet of the crowd, which kicks them around like footballs. Others try desperately to continue playing, turning to the wall to protect themselves from the chaos. The conductor on his podium; towering above the disorder, grips his baton as though he were about to resume conducting at any moment; from time to time he impatiently raps the desk. Whenever the confusion and tumult become particularly unbearable, he shuts his eyes and bites his lower lip.

The train leaves and the musicians regroup almost instantly to begin playing where they left off. But before they are able to do so, at the very moment when the whole orchestra is waiting for the signal to start, another train pulls into the station and a new crowd, as heedless as the first, pours headlong out of the cars and swarms over the orchestra, creating the same confusion and deplorable incidents as before.

Baraouo is seen sitting in a subway car. He frequently consults his watch (soft). Among the passengers, at the far end of the car, a woman is standing, entirely nude. Next to Babaouo sits a mailman, his legs are crossed, his hands in his pockets. On his shoe, which does not reach the floor, are poised two "eggs on the plate"* (without the plate). At a sudden stop the eggs onto the floor. This scene lasts three minutes.

Babaouo gets out to change trains. He is seen for five minutes waiting for the next trains arrive. The only other persons on the platform are two or three women, each carrying a child in her arms. Babaouo sits down on a bench, gets up and walks around, sits down again, etc...Finally he notices a small legless cripple in a wheelchair advancing with difficulty between the rails and stretching out a hand for alms. Babaouo gives him a franc, but, as the beggar's hand is already holding two eggs on a plate (without a plate), the franc punctures one of the yokes. The beggar, closing his hand around the coin, squashes the two eggs. Beyond, in the darkness of the tunnel, several seals can be vaguely discerned.

Arrival of the subway trails. Babaouo gets on. He is shown for two minutes traveling on the train.

Babaouo comes out of the subway station and walks for several moments towards a taxi stand. He gives a driver the address of the Chateau de Portugal and gets into the taxi, checking to make sure that his revolver is loaded.

The taxi is seen driving through a rural landscape, when suddenly the driver stops and gets out of the car without a word. He puts on an Indian feather headdress (from this point the film is in color and approaches a large fir tree. He beings to climb the tree slowly and when he reaches the point where the trunk divides he sits down meekly, turning up the collar of his jacket as though to say "What do you want me to do?"

After a brief outburst of anger, Babaouo realizes that there is no time to lose, and seizing the wheel of the automobile, drives away.

Babaouo reaches the town where the Chateau de Portugal is situated. He is seen driving the taxi. The streets are absolutely deserted.

Babaouo stops the car, gets out, and goes into a cafe which is completely empty. The camera follows him.

He comes out of the cafe and walks through several long streets, all deserted. Large sheets hang from the house-fronts as though deposited there by a strong wind, which picks them up and sends them whirling down the street again. The tango "Renacimiento" is heard faintly, Babaouo penetrates farther and father into the city, which appears to be immense. His footsteps ring loudly on the pavement. Dusk is beginning to fall. Babaouo hastens his steps, turning frequently to look around or behind him. His face, which expresses growing anxiety, is covered with sweat. He finds himself once again in front of a large cafe, which he enters. He looks intently, one by one, at the hundreds of absolutely deserted tables and suddenly emits a piercing cry of terror. Covering his face with a convulsive gesture, he rushes toward the door. It becomes apparent that his fear is caused by the discovery he has made on one of the tables of a coffee cup containing a neatly folded napkin. When he uncovers his face, he sees in the window across the street the upper part of the body of a standing woman, her naked, beautiful arm hanging in an attitude of fatigue, moving slightly. With a gesture of relief Babaouo goes toward the window, but as he approaches it he seems again to be frozen with fear. After a long hesitation, he is seen rushing into the house, and almost immediately comes out again in the same attitude in which he was seen at the cafe, his face in his hands, uttering a cry of terror. The tango "Renacimiento" fades out and the lights grow noticeably dimmer.

Babaouo, followed by the camera, now proceeds along a street almost entirely covered with flowers. Seeking to avoid treading on them, he hugs the wall, for the roses grow more abundantly in the middle than along the sides. At a crossing he has a choice of two streets. One is a continuation of the rose-covered street, the other is without flowers. In spite of himself, he takes the street covered with roses, which leads to the open door of a large theatre.

He climbs to the fourth floor of the theatre following the roses, which are strewn along the stairs. From a window on the fourth floor Babaouo contemplates the panorama of the city with its deserted streets. The sheets blown along the streets by the wind are again seen; Babaouo, his eyes wide with terror, draws back, biting his hands. He backs into the door one of the boxes, which gives way under the impact so that he falls into the box.

When he picks himself up he sees that the theatre is empty. In the center of the dimly-lighted stage he sees a violinist literally transfixed in the impassioned attitude of a virtuoso, balancing on his head a wardrobe of medium height out of whose open doors and drawers linen is tumbling in tumultous disorder. The violinist in his fanatic pose should be balancing his entire body on one legs; the cuff of his other trouser-leg should be carefully rolled up, the bare foot plunged into a plate of milk.

Brusquely Babaouo looks at his watch (soft), rushes headlong back down the stairs, and goes out into the city. From the outskirts he begins to discern the Chateau de Portugal, which should be of as nondescript an appearance as possible, but enormous.

As Babaouo approaches the Chateau a rhythmic sound is heard which suggests some monstrous, exhausted breathing. It grows louder.

Coming near and nearer, the sound is deafening, terrible and Babaouo is assailed by fright. Covered with sweat, advancing in almost total darkness, he reaches the end of a long, high retaining wall.

Huge waves are breaking on a pebbly beach which has been hidden by the wall. The sound that suggested anguished breathing is produced by these waves. It diminishes gradually as Babaouo moves away from the water on a road which is seen to lead to the Chateau de Portugal.

Babaouo reaches the gate of the Chateau which is adorned on either side by a work of sculpture placed symmetrically, each representing a chicken with its head cut off. Inside the garden gate, on a lawn, a bed fifty feet long is seen, on which is lying a cypress almost as long as the bed. In the background, the Chateau; through its half-open main door a coffin is silently passing.

Babaouo hastily crosses the garden and enters the chateau.

Mathilde, a very beautiful and distinguished woman, throws herself into the arms of Babaouo, who consoles her and assures her that she is no longer alone, that he is with her. Then he turns toward a room the entrance to which is covered by a large curtain. But Mathilde, with a supremely tragic gesture, throws herself in front of him to prevent him from entering.

Babaouo, shaking Mathilde, forces his way into the room.

On the bed, something considerably larger than a corpse is lying under a white sheet. Babaouo tries to draw back the sheet to see what is underneath but Mathilde stops him with a coquettish laugh, saying "You musn't do that. It's too horrible. It's been there for six days." Babaouo, won over by Mathilde's coaxing tone, gives in to her with an affectionate smile.

Mathilde informs him that her mother is probably arriving, as well as several friends who, she hopes, have been notified. In any case, in the likelihood that no other people will come tonight, it would be best for him to take off his clothes and make himself comfortable.

Babaouo and Mathilde go back into the other room and begin to undress. Mathilde puts on a luxurious pair of pyjames. Suddenly a handerkerchief falls from a dresser onto a black armchair, and Mathilde, uttering a piercing cry, almost faints.

Before Babaouo has time to take care of her, someone is heard running mechanically in the neighboring room where the object under the sheet is lying.

Mathilde and Babaouo runs toward the room, and at the same time an aged woman with white hair appears from behind the curtain. She throws herself into Babaouo's arms, crying horribly. It is Mathilde's mother, who has just arrived.

At this point a group of friends enters, men and women dressed in evening clothes, who crowd around the old woman lying almost unconscious in the armchair. Some of them seem alarmed, others perfectly calm and indifferent. One of them starts the phonograph and several couples begin to dance.

The old woman, her head resting on the chest of the kneeling Babaouo, recovers her senses and says in a plaintive tone "I want to see him just once more." She seems to be about to go into the room where the strange object is lying.

Mathilde and Babaouo rush toward the room, and at the same time an aged women with white hair appears from behind the curtain. She throws herself into Babaouo's arms, crying horribly. It is Mathilde's mother, who has just arrived.

At this point a group of friends enters, men and women dressed in evening clothes, who crowd around the old woman lying almost unconscious in the armchair. Some of them seem alarmed, others perfectly calm and indifferent. One of them starts the phonograph and several couples begin to dance.

The old woman, her head resting on the chest of the kneeling Babaouo, recovers her senses and says in a plaintive tone "I want to see him just once more." She seems to be about to go into the room where the strange object is lying.

Babaouo, his eyes filled with tears, tries to dissuade her, but Mathilde, with a roguish wink, advises him to let her pass if he wants to see something amusing. Going ahead of him, she runs into the mortuary chamber with a young man who has been embracing her in a corner a few minutes earlier.

Babaouo, whose tears have been succeeded  by an indulgent and mocking smile, gives in to the old woman's pleas, and leading her gently toward the room, he parts the curtain himself.

Mathilde and the young man are seen swinging the object, one by the head, the other by the feet. When it has gained enough momentum they throw it at the old woman, who utters a mournful cry and sinks to the floor under its weight.

The ensuing confusion is indescribable. All of the guests are present, running hither and thither. Two individuals seize the object and throw it at a group of guests who are trying to flee. This act, which adds enormously to the general excitement, seems to have a contagious effect and is repeated several times.

When the confusion reaches its height, Mathilde and Babaouo, taking advantage of the wild disorder that reigns in the Chateau, take flight in a car driven by Babaouo.

Along the road patrols of communist soldiers pass at regular intervals.

The car now crosses an immense public square which is absolutely deserted. The sound of machine-gun fire is intermittently heard. On a small street leading downward from the main road is seen an enormous bus, five times life-size, filled with water, on which can be seen a little boat. In the boat three tiny legless Japanese singers with white eyes are giving a sensual rendition of the rumba "The Peanut Vendor." Babaouo stops to look at them.

The singers, embarrassed at being observed, burst out laughing, putting their hands to their faces, and in spite of their efforts they are utterly unable to go on with their song.

After a friendly wave and smile from Mathilde, Babaouo, very pleased with himself, starts up the car again.

The car is now seen going down a hill boarded by a thick forest.

Suddenly, without warning, Mathilde throws herself at Babaouo and ferociously buries her teeth in his neck.

Babaouo lets go of the wheel. The car crashes into a tree.

The car is completely smashed. Mathilde, thrown a distance of ten feet, is inert. Babaouo pulls himself with difficulty from under the wreck. He rubs his eyes. He is blind; He feels about him with his hands, veinly calling from Mathilde.

"Renacimiento" faintly is background.

Babaouo crawls on hands and knees, feeling trembling for the body of Mathilde.

Finally he comes upon a shoe ten feet away from her, which he supposes is still on her foot.

Sure that he has found Mathilde, he feels farther, and coming  upon a tire which has been out in half, he thinks it is her leg. Hardly daring to touch Mathilde's body with his hands, trembling at the thought of feeling her head and discovering, as he fears, that she is not breathing, he caresses a cushion which he mistakes for her stomach and breasts.

Then he grasps what he thinks is her head with its hair; but it is only the stuffing coming out in handfuls from a torn cushion in the middle of which are burning coals.

Overcome with emotion, Babaouo draws towards his lips the object he believes to be Mathilde's head, passionately uttering her name. Through his tears he murmurs all the endearing words he knows. "You are alive,' he says "I feel the warmth of your body." Suddenly with all this strength he clasps to himself the coals of the cushion, which is beginning to catch fire.

Horribly burned, he throws away the cushion, which is now all aflame and cries "Merde!"

[The Miscarried Might-Have-Been] on Truffaut's [Two English Girls, 1971]

by Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]







In the stylism so akin to the French New Wave Film revolution, Truffaut's 1971 romantic drama, [Two English Girls] is a film adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roche's 1956 novel of the same title.

The film sets in Paris around the turn of the 20th century, when Claude, the male lead portrayed by Truffaut's "artist fetish" Jean-Pierre Leaud, is invited by Anne (Kiki Markham), an old family friend to spend the summer with her family on the coast of Wales. But in quick succession and turn of events, Anne is not interested in Claud as a lover for herself, rather one for her introverted, bashful sister Muriel (Stacey Tendeter). The match becomes a fit, Claud and Muriel becomes closer, begins to grow on one another and with hopes of being married, both Muriel and Claud's mother agree that the couple should spend a year apart, Claud returning to Paris and Muriel remaining in Wales.

Now this is where Truffaut takes shape with his adaptation, do due-in-proper justice to Henri-Pierre Roche. Claud begins to meet very attractive women and begins to stray, which eventually led him to the bed of Muriel's older sister Anne, who came to Paris to study art. Claud then becomes hopeful of a relationship with Anne, until she leaves him for a publisher, going on a vacation with him to Persia. Muriel then learns about the betrayal of her fiance and her older sister (the responsible party which introduced the two initially), which whom Muriel forgives, once Anne is returned home by the publisher, as she dies in Wales.

Muriel, who had since accepted a job in Belgium, spends a night with Claud and upon waking, revealing to him that now they must part forever, only to later write of her pregnancy. Claud, believing now the door for a happy life with Muriel again open, is shocked and despondent when a second letter arrives from Muriel, confessing of the miscarried fetus and that she would not be returning to him again.

The film leaves Claud, just Claud, no wife, no child, a writer with only dreams, shattered ideals, scuttled hopes and fanciful fantasies never to have bore fruit. He, Claud, is a representation of all of humanity, of most who have lost and wondered on the "What ifs."

For Claud, as is for most today, the sunken dream is one swallowed by irreversible timescapes, scientifically improbable revivals. A single mistake by Claud set off the chain reaction, a rattle of senses to once and for all set in stone Muriel's aforementioned disposition of introverted aloneness, untrusting of anyone other than her own interior.

Truffaut, together with Roche, are two artist brought together by novel and by film, by sentiments and by personal experience, the Auteur Theory in full measure as the pen of the writer in full, broad stroke. What cannot be taken from the experience, the love triangle and deception between Claud, Anne and Muriel? One thing we can truly count on is that our actions tend to inflict upon us consequences we are seldom ready for and most of which we spend the entirety of our lives yet trying to endure.

[Composites] on the Documentary & Documentarian

by Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]






 Nothing in history escapes memory; misadventure, happenstance, mirrored-images, bliss- this is the stain upon memory in which we want to escape, or savor. But the human brain, as effective as it is in its 10% functional capacity, it is fragile, plagued by degenerative disease, fractured by communicable disease, compromised by retrograde amnesia. So we photograph every inch or moments that are memorable to us, those we know we may never forget and those we know we may and in someday, be in need of a reminder. The Documentarian is the photographer evolved....and their art,doomed star-crossed lovers, destined to wonder for eternity.


....this evolved artist has gone from the still images formed in our minds far before the camera has capture an instance and transmogrified the stillness into motion, transgressed the black and white to color and regressed once again to black and white. As an adult in stress of their lives, regression is pertinent to the origin as the origin is the axis of the celestial sphere of art itself.

Subtle art demands only subtle attention; art must become radical if its demands is to be the same. With the documentarian, everything exists around memory, around what happens in our human history that needs to be remembered and brought to light. Figurative or abstract, it painstakes its claim to the documentarian in a haunting manner, until no longer they can ignore that the dream demands to be born from idea, from ideal.

 We confront time as we do the object, and the independent , intervening distances flowing from event into lens is not missed; every moment capture is captured intentionally, as in the dream, nothing is a mishap. If the documentary is to capture what the dream has, then both the composition and the documentarian must become a double of it, the devout agent who carries out a task and analyzes and asks not why it must be undertaken. In one form or another, silence comes over the auteur, a disquieted spell that removes them from actual time. The dream then is no longer the dream, there is no more dream. It has now become, stained itself in motion for the next thousands years. If it is not dreamed then it is no recorded, if it happens in the dream, then it is from an authentic, aesthetic stance that it must become, upright past the crawl, an embryo develops without chromosomes. The documentarian who lives in art is privy to the beginning and end of a dream, a specific dream, as one who lives in art becomes aware of their own demise.

 It is not clear whether the documentarian can explain the dream or the documentary can fully capture the dream as it becomes reality; what is clear is that the documentary is savors the integrity lost upon the major motions film. And slowly, a cult audience is eroding the mainstream zealous, bringing limelight
to a truth that some embrace while most deny and prefer their complacency in denial.

[The Continuum of Film] a byline

by Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]





            Scenes overlap, sequences invert, a few minutes are capture to relative vastness, relative relation to human reality, transformation, transgression and transmogrification; the film is then relevant.

            The original purpose of the motion picture was to enhance the art of photography. Somewhere in the silent film era, film begin to serve its own purpose, seek its own means to an end beyond the stillness of captured moments.

            If “the entire purpose of life is that there is no definite purpose other than to be and become” then the clarity that film can hold serves in a flank, innuendo to a detached reality, another dimension taken from the image of man and given over to the image of the artist.

            The theory of film’s self-recognition, self-awareness is perhaps a preface to the effectiveness of the French New Wave. When the motion cinema was still on its course of evolution, filmmakers were in tandem step, not only with the becoming of technology but with the parallel creation alongside literature. The adaptation of obsolete and obscure novels became the inspiration for screenwriters, for auteurs seeking to not only advance man’s perception of this world but challenge film as it was known.

            Francois Truffaut, the French filmmaker and critic, noted for his 1951 classic “The 400 Blows” was as feared an arbiter of the new wave as Roger Ebert was in the 20th and 21st century. “A poet must be cruel to be kind;” in such a notion, both Truffaut and Ebert begin to “bury” mediocre and monotonous film in the hopes that filmmakers may develop into auteurs, to lose the fear of the leap, take a chance to experiment rather conform, thus cease catering to the public’s paradigm image of what film was and begin defining from the terror of the heart and mind what film could be.

            The true splinter in the public image of mainstream and pornographic film came with the release of Just Jaeckin’s 1974 controversial film “Emanuelle,” adapted from the novel by Lowell Blair, that depicts a young lady in Paris who flies to Thailand to discover her sexual identity. Despite offending and violating mainstream obscenity laws in modern nations, Emanuelle was a success, not solely due to its vivid, sexual imagery but its solidity, which was harvested from a salon of artist unafraid to push the set limits of the time. Though dismiss by most critics as obsequious pornography, Emanuelle is underrated as one of the films to shape-shift the world of film today and is the grandmother of fearless filmmakers the world over.


            If film ever fluctuates in depth, it is because the filmmaker lacks depth and courage, forfeits themselves the full scope of dimension that art is. The attitude of film shapes the attitude of the public, but the public wanders if filmmakers fear to roam in directions never before roamed, adapt novels never before adapted, take the time to understand fully what has been consistently dismissed.

[Ciao Manhattan, 1972] film review

[Ciao Manhattan, 1972]




by Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]








Director John Palmer & David Weisman







Perhaps the most chilling account of a downfall, told in the voice of Edie Sedgwick herself, the 1972 short film "Ciao Manhattan" is a haunting prologue just before a fatal addiction would take the life of perhaps the greatest underground actress of the 60's and 70's. With accounts of a unadvised pregnancy, inhibitions from the time of losing her virginity, to hospitalization in psychiatric treatments, falling love and giving energy to what led to a mere insanity.

 Sedgwick, who derived from a prestigious family, desired to live, live the pulse of the people, the cause of the time. Her black and white portrait given in Ciao Manhattan, partial documentary, partial interview, known sieges laid to her during many of her films with Andy Warhol, notably, [Poor Little Rich Girl, ]. A beautiful girl who never knew she was beautiful, she hid herself under addiction and club dim lights and the subculture of homosexuality to feel the beauty she yearned for. Footage of her displays a woman alive during the days, radical in the nights, vague sleep and the days return in their monotonous, viral ways. Amongst her liveliness, was the haunts of the suicide of two of her brothers which gave over to Sedgwick's eventual self-destruction. Her quote about blossoming into the scene, into a "healthy young drug addict," gives the account of a woman who wasn't interested in her own self-destruction though it was the scene and she who imposed it on herself.

 Sporadically, the interviews return, followed by silent moments of her responses muted out, only her body language and lips telling the tale as that of the orient theatre. Darkness of the reel also is used to tell the tale of Sedgwick, her discussions with photographers and filmmakers reveals Edie's very versed knowledge of filmography and had she lived on, she could have made more of what her family believed was a terrifying ideal. Though she mentioned that her family would "endorse modeling 100 times over before entertaining the idea of her in films," Edie loved the Warhol idea of people buying her life in motion. There was no need for scripts, no need for ideas, nor need for scenes; Edie had grown out of what most actresses would need to appeal to the public- her life within itself was an unrehearsed script given over to the desires, the curiosities of the movement, of the public's rendering at the time. It was Warhol who gave her the true notion that if her life was interesting enough, people would go on and believe in her, that very life and continue to be influence and magnetized to her condition. That very idea came with a drastic price, an exact price that Edie would have to pay and many stars before and after her had also been in debt to.

 If the relationship with Warhol went sour, severed on bad terms, it was because Warhol took advantage of her love to make art with her life, with her body and her blossoming day's over. It was from Warhol that she grew out of as well as she did scripts (that she still felt she needed.) Warhol experimented, and as he did, Sedgwick continued to reach and grasp. Her use of drugs gave her the notion to trip out of many life and begin to live another after the binge ended its distortion. "You live alone, creating your life as you go. You only contend with two things; yourself and other people."

Sedgwick's life was a tiresome, fanciful one, living in a dream can be an exhausting plight for the dream world isn't our world- there is a cost to live there. Drugs were the channels to reach the nirvana she believe would take her from one life to the other, from one day to the next. If any fault lied in the life of Edie Sedgwick, it was her mishap of overdose, forfeiting the world of her beauty and brilliance.

[Beauty No.2] Andy Warhol & the Posthumous Acclaim to Fame

by Dontrell Lovet't

from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]

Warhol never penetrated Hollywood in the way that he would have preferred, instead, he was the dominate whale in the small pool of indie film. A dapper dandy, the "Good-Time Charlie" of his era, film invited invited him nor his art, despite its unorthodox stylism of pop art. Artistic expression came alive as never before under his experimentation with film. The pioneer of Interview Magazine and author of "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism; The Warhol Sixties," his openly gay lifestyle, bohemian trysts with intellectuals, the term "15 minutes of fame," was coined; in a Warhol film, that was all he needed to solidify his diversity.

Why in all of his charismatic artism did Andy Warhol fail to make it to mainstream prominence?

It is irrefutable that most of Warhol's collections are highly valuable. A 2009 article in the Economist described Warhol as "the bellweather of the art market;" his works are considered some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. Of his numerous works of art, his filmography details the visual scrapbook of genius, notably the films "Beauty No. 2 and Poor Little Rich Girl, both of which starred the most popular underground film actress, the late Edie Sedgewick.

Both display an instrumental demise to Sedgewick, a siege of personal and derogatory questions whilst she is in bed with another man, then the subsequent crime of passion, the strangulation. In the admixture of both film, we see that Warhol was partial to not only Sedgewick but to female characters in general. The chauvinistic manner blanketed over the seemingly internal Sedgewick in unleashes in an unforgiving climax, a foreign object embedded into the skin of a sufferer imprinted with a slave's mentality. There is a seemingly hidden desire, an inalienable desire, to completely dispose of the fragilly intact character and scatter its remnants completely, severe it from its only source of metastasizing confidence, dismember the source at almost an identical desire. There is no question nor debate as there is in Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina," whether Warhol loves or hates his characters in these two films, his loathing spills over from film to reality as evident in his split from Sedgewick personally and professionally.

The pathology of the filmmaker is that the true desire itself cannot be contained; it shifts and varies itself through the dimension that separates film and life, fiction and non; the only pretension is that it allows them to breathe and bare the brunt of true life. A filmmaker discovers the world only because they must and for the reason that art depends on it.  But before there is anything at all, the desire must embed itself, the bliss of the desire when finally expelled and placed upon the reel. It is a mutual encounter, as the parasite and the host, the degradation of one and the life of another, portraiture of the artist at the limits of themselves.

Warhol's desire was of a deeper pathology than some pundits may believe; he revised and pioneered a world of his own in spite of one that would not accept him rightfully. One traces the movements of the desire a thousand times over but desire cannot live if it too has not the opportunity to breath. Warhol created that opportunity, created his world, now scattered and displayed on the walls of wealthy connoisseurs.

[Etcetra] A study on the Short film II

by Dontrell Lovet't

from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]

We has been said has been said; now let's make the painful plight to say the truth.........



There purpose of life is that there is no definite purpose other than to be and become. The film, made in the image of man, is on that purpose of becoming, ever-becoming, yet it still stumbles and trips on the straights of its own creation. Being that film is made in the image of man, it too holds the imperfections of man, so beyond the interstitial, it is said that film was created to construct the future of humanity- upon its conclusion, the mind is set to wander, wonder and sequence what can become of the human race.

Actors are artist and as such able to grasp all cruelties that transpires and transfigure the mode of a film, whether consistent or shifting; it is with the compound that has become their life that details the rhythm of a film, moreover, a fiction so telling, so emphasizing, so captivating, that in a matter of moments, the moment teir physical language begins to speak, that fiction then becomes a reality corrosive to the life of audience, rekindles a flame that is reminiscent to pain perhaps most have felt. To be placed in the language, whether bliss, rather melancholy, rather terror or lustful desire, the momentous captivity that carries the eyes of viewers through the body of the film as blow flow through the arteries, cements a purpose, decimates the limitations of the filmmaker imposed by the filmmaker. In the short film left to its seemingly vague being, a conclusion is written in the hearts of the audience, and it is the heart that determines an "happily ever after" or a "tragic" ending, the filmmaker has no true control over this sequence. The actor is only the intermediary that drafts what cannot be forged by the novice mind, by the vacu
um void of any pride of its own tale of emptiness.

It must be said that film in itself is a viral manifestation upon the human condition, the sweetest and most detriment of vices that plagues. But as an image of man, the day film was created, the very next day, it was being perverse as man came about, the preceding day, he enslaved his fellow. If film has not sought freedom to live freely, it is because man has not, serves itself in a platter as an indigent example to ignite a subsidiary revolution, planted a kernal in an unsown soil that cannot take fruit, a wingless bird that dreams of the sky but cannot take flight.

The disharmonious endeavor is a definite symptom of decay, a malignancy along the vertebrae ignoring the anatomical structure of uprightness and refuses the plight of both feet upon the earth. Bygone filmmakers were aware of this malignancy, aware of the disarticulation that follows in a sole effort to save the body from the spread of infection. Major film is bleeding but it has not yet been bled dry of its metaphysical inaccuracies, its ignorance and ignoring of opportunity to introduce this world that those who know not of its splendor, its pains, its wanders, its mysteries. Furthermore to solve the intricate wound that art has been inflicted upon the artist, a greater understanding of the artist's desire, depravities, past and constructed worlds must be documented accurately, else it is left upon us as a confounded event.

[Ana, 2014] film review

[Ana, 2014]

by Dontrell Lovet't

from, [PscyhoNeuroFilmography]

Based on "Autopsicografia" by the portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa


As one would expect from any film or production based on a poem, [Ana] opens with a profound depth- a woman confessing her love of another, to what is seemingly a therapist. She confesses that she cannot live without the "perfect" love of her life nor she could without her. In a devil's avocation, her therapist tells her that humans love perfection because we can't have it and to describe her lover as "perfect" is an idealizing standard; all relationships have problems and as such, it is all in her imagination. In a turn of events, the film turns to see from the therapist point-of-view- she understands her perfectly, even goes so far as to live vicariously through her words about her lover. But even so, this woman who she loves is truly only a figment of her imagination, a being so frail yet holds so much significance in not only her life and mind but the life and mind of the therapist.

In an effort to free this woman from her figmented, perfect lover (and perhaps himself as well), he wants her to think of her as someone she once had who has left her life. This then leads the film to see the woman's lonesome and destructive life without her feminine figment, a treacherous trial where one is set free by their peers and convicted by the judge's render alone. Though with an unvarying endeavor, the woman, though she knows her figment is just that, she has declared her life empty without her, that if her life has any worth, it would be better to live with the figment than without it, that she would prefer "to continue insane but keep her by my side." 

It is in her refusal to relinquish her figment that in her sincerity, the therapist begin to be endeared by her "inhumane devotion," which his identification with her leads him to believe he may be insane as well. He feels envious of a woman created "in delirium," envying her madness, contemplating if we in our human imperfection are capable of creating such a perfect design if we ourselves have never known it. 

It is then that we see the therapist return home alone, grab a bottle of wine and two glasses, sits in chair, across from the figment in his patient's mind and tells her that he loves her.

[Ana] is a film under the influence of perfection so much so it itself is perfection, its poetics mirrors the poetry of Pessoa, where one "insane" patient deliriums are so robust, so fruitful in their dream life as to be taken in by someone who is "sane" and of this world. 

[Juste Amis] A study on the Short Film

by Dontrell Lovet't

from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]

Too many films have adopted the notion of an illegitimate plot, a thing if distorted enough, the audience will not see, and if they do not see, they do not question, rather become obliged to follow, praise and dignify. Man, as a film, must first fall to know that it can stand upright; and this fall, cannot afford to come in the release of it to the public, the fall must come in the mind of the film
maker before they commit to a more drastic fault when their work meets cinema. These vital mistakes are committed and not only committed but committed to; If one is enable to escape the consequence of their crimes, then the criminal will then commit to more mayhem, he will feel God-like inasmuch he is the sole exception of all humanity that has no ill-relationship with punishment.

Despite how much planning goes into life, Murphy's Law pertains to every facade of this life. Whatever is made by man is made in the image of man and thus imperfect, flawed and contemptuous. Life is about perpetual movement, we all have to figure that out sometime, and it isn't always pleasant. But without movement, everything that is myopic is the only thing that will be found. Film, as humanity, must move forward to its destination; art has more than one fate inasmuch it lives on far past the point we all return to dust. But from plans, from all we try to gain in preparation, spontaneity can also provide a function in which to find success. The 2007 French short film "Juste Amis" (Just Friends) starring Armelle Lecoeur was shot in a matter of five hours. The director, his camera and a few actors, no script, no crew, all flutter of experimental. Lecoeur, portraying a Parisianne woman on her way home who encounters a man in the window of a nearby hotel. She is starstruck and amazed to see him, Bastien, a childhood romance that stained upon her memory and immediately caused the yearn of reconcilement. Invigorated and flustered, she hides in the doorway of a building, smokes a cigarette and calls her friend Elsa, who is in a cab headed for her location. Once Elsa arrives, she rants to her, attempting to convince Elsa to go to the hotel to find out if he's married, how many kids do he have, how long have he been staying at the hotel and if he has been thinking about her. Elsa, in a look of confusion, believes her friend has lost it but out of friendship, she goes to the hotel, checks and returns to tell Lecoeur that Bastien wasn't there, kisses her and leaves. During the duration of her frantic breakdown, her boyfriend has been calling looking for her and once she answered the phone, she finds out that her friend Elsa has called and told him about Bastien. She panics. She attempts to calm her boyfriend who has been trying to reach her for 2 hours that Bastien is just a childhood friend. He doesn't buy it, tells her to come home or he will kill her and hangs up. She calls Elsa, frantic once again in a terror disgusted of her betrayal, warning her that she will be thrown out on the streets or killed by her boyfriend. Elsa attempts to calm Lecoeur but to no avail; she is torn in between her childhood lover Bastien, her murderous boyfriend awaiting her at home and the betrayal at the hands of her friend. In under 12 minutes, there is an unfolding of dramatic fevor, destructive humor, frantic wit in a romantic language in a minute fraction of a romantic city. Spontaneity in this light has a corrosive intent; that 12 minutes can capture, captivate and hold captive an audience in a way that most major films cannot. There is only a splinter of time that a short film has to open, progress to the climax, recruit the audience to its cause, and take them down into a mad murder-suicidal plummet.

The short film must surpass the ordinary limits of this life, flagellate itself as a flagellate at the base of life for the fracture that has become the major motion film. Nothing can diminish the authenticity a poetic sense of a profound, original idea- originality declares itself as a glow amongst the inane. It is in the very unwritten, unscripted murmur of material as "Juste Amis" that we see the significance that unravels when timing and authenticity collides and becomes an immortal compound.

[The Film & its Double III] Fellini, [La Strada] & the Likes of Humanity

By Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]


 If one is to stop and look behind them, they may find similarities when their attention is returned forward; the cliche of the past having nothing for is timeless, though the artist, while anticipating establishing their immortality through the medium of art, must rely on the past, on memories, fortunes, misfortunes, adventures and misadventures all the same.


  Federico Fellini was a master of giving an audience a widen view of humanity within a session of his films. The Maestro's 1954 film, [La Strada], gives us an eartly feel of things most of us may have felt, and if not encountered, are bound to. Gelsomina, a woman whose intellect is nothing special to speak of, is purchase from her mother by Zampano, a primitive who takes her on the road in an almost mythical and harsh tale, where delays can be viewed as gifts, even in a ragtag traveling circus, which gives us the epitome of what we believe would be the Italian personality. Gelsomina becomes a percussionist alongside of Zampano street performing, giving little to the modest living they are making as a patchworked and purchase-couple, though Zampano wants nothing of a marriage with Gelsomina, who offers her hand out of the planted idea of a nun.

  Il Matto, a man who too is a member of the circus, appears and fixes himself as a tormentor of Zampano, though we never discover why and when Zampano is at his wit's end, he pulls a knife and chases Il Matto, which causes him to get arrested, where he is jailed soon after for the offense. When Zampano is released, he and Gelsomina sees Il Matto on side of the road changing a tire. Zampano stops the car, kills the clown Il Matto and attempts to conceal the body in the car, which goes into flames as Zampano pushes it off the road. But the killing of Il Matto causes Gelsomina to come apart and her coming apart causes Zampano to abandon her while she sleeps, awakening to her clothes, money and her trumpet, one of the other instruments she played on occassions when she and Zampano would perform in the streets to make their modest and almost meager living.

  The story only comes to a close when Zampano encounters Gelsomina year's later, having been taken in by her father, well-wasted away till the point she inevitably dies and Zampano finds a beach and breaks down in tears. Is his crying out of regret for never having loved Gelsomina or for not having taken care of her properly? Is it because he bought her from her mother who could have given her a bit more love then he had shown her? Or was it empathy for her having to have to witness and live with the haunting memory of watching him kill Il Matto?


  Any conclusion can be made by anyone who has the care to offer their perspective of [La Strada], but all we do know and what many can agree on, is the depiction of [La Strada] gives us an almost tragic-comedy of humanity, terrifying but not all the way, as smiles can be invoked from the views and scenes of performing clowns, and the chuckles we humans tend to take on when we observe misfortune familiar and unfamiliar to us.

  Fellini is the ultimate misfit of film, a true maestro of embracing this human condition for all it is, reserving judgement, forfeiting any such altruism for endeavors to shapeshift it, rather give human kindness, human darkness and human existence its benefit of a doubt for a due in proper.

[The Integrity Cell] on the Decadence of the Short Film

by Dontrell Lovet't
from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]

The short film has long been the most transparent form of film in America; neither major production nor aphorism, it projects the most potent apex that is diluted over a longer time extent than the major motion picture. Lost in its own resplendence, reduced by its own significance, fed only by a metaphysical hunger, it is a body that must empty itself of the most mainstream cliches and rediscover the origins the moment the reel begin to turn. Man has long dwelled in its own reduction, in its own illusion of grandeur; it is in film, namely the short, that imperfection isn't hidden in a slow anticipation to something predicted, but a truth willing to come out of thin air to risk everything.

The film can bring the sun into a focal and reduce it in the same manner, create a deep chasm of deceit, cleverly hoist darkness from its association and disassociate it. More often than not, the footage will fail, and if it does not, it will do no more than to create the shell of its own disquiet. Because the mainstream film is littered with brand and popular names, it prevents the perspective of one seeing it as the dismemberment, as unoriginal, a stolen thing from the past which Artaud believe masterpieces must remain. To resurrect these masterpieces are not a stroke of genius, but a retreat of the auteurs into the darker corners of themselves. Truffaut believed that the filmmaker is the author of the film and thus exposes their own perceptions. The perception is major motion picture has been compromised, an impossible compromise tainted with incapability, borrowed visions from bygone greats, brought into modern, is inane when it has not become from a dream in utero.

If there is no risk, no outrage, no shock or awh, then there is no need to compose. Silence will claim us as a vast mist descending from the nothingness that has become. In the short film, there is an opportunity to reclaim the light we've lost in film today, reconcile with what was, bury it, say our peace and never again feel the need to exhume it. Exhumation means that art as we know it has not evolve but devolved. Embarking on a journey means to decimate even the ideal of the loiter, not to declare who we are because we do not know until the reel stops once and for all. In our mind is the draft, the unseen, to create, the instrument of the seen is then projected, and not only on us to meet the dream we once dream, but onto the whole of the audience, who is the dreaming world awaiting movement, awaiting the initial reason to be moved.

Perhaps Chapman knew this dream, perhaps Bunuel, perhaps Truffaut in bed with all whom he fancied and fetished; it is impossible to doubt the world that has plunged into mimicry and mockery, into the pseudo-placental depth that all artist must plummet into if their art is to ever become. The events of a film must speak for themselves, as Samuel Beckett's art, introducing nothing, giving nothing; and from that nothingness, everything is translated, transferable, transmuted and transmutated. These events must not be manipulated but nurtured, as a child who first begins to walk, and from this walk, this child must fall, as man must first fall, to know that he is able to stay upright. The human perspective, the human walk, has thus nowadays been narrowed, its path narrowed, rudimentary thought suspended by capital and advertisement to cajole artist and hypnotize a somnambulate public.

Think of the scientific method in which scientist use to test disease. First, they begin with a lesser life form, rodents, then an advancement to larger mammals and then, the human cell is brought into a petri-dish. With film, the disease is taken directly into the human cell via histrionics, in a myopic manner where the moral and the box office is the true means to an end. Though man makes films, it cannot be in the image of him, for man is awaiting death and the film is made to be immortal.

The desperate straights taken in a flawed thesis is now showing its arrogance, its fits of sequels, borrowings from the posthumous. There then is a scorn in the discourse for all interest other than self-interest, a waltz around the subcultural and subterranean, self-reassurance via acknowledgement and annual award validation. Film has found itself in a perilous, revolving vanity, a mirror of said and stymied petulance, the lack of a visceral and cerebral capability, adrenal possibility. If it continues on its present course, it will again be a twofold image of man, headed for an inevitable doomsday plague.

A short film is a pretext to evolution from revolution, filmmakers unknown to the mainstream, ignored, blacklisted and ousted motion artists. As a cell splits and reproduces, the body, which is it represented shell, too reproduces, its function a reproduction of that splice, its genetics nonethesame. What can be altered must be manipulated, what can be changed only can undergo a gradual shape-shift, though it too, as the human personality, remains constant. The body as we know it is intricate and diverse but the cell always is true, functions to its own truth, cadence and tandem flow. In this, its integrity maintains. If film is to ever rediscover its integrity, it will be through the short film, the first cell before its split, that growth must begin, be nurtured with a mirrored truth, until such time it divides and meets its double.

Roger Ebert & [The Death of the Film]

 Film critiques and pundits have come out of the woodwork in this latest century; we must attribute this to the average film connoisseur believing they are entitled to an opinion. On the contrary, if one is to look into their own biographies, we'll find that none have created any successful work of filmography themselves...

This is where Roger Ebert stood alone, the greatest film pundit perhaps to ever walk this earth.

Ebert had a way with film, as though film spoke to him immediately upon viewing, and in so doing, he find their flaws as one does psychoanalyzing the human personality. He was meticulous, his eye was a third, his methodology and dedication to film itself was of a gargantuan measure. If film evolved at all, it was not due to the creativity or the auteur's exploration of unorthodox measure and truth, it was in fear of Ebert's critique, one that alone, could make or break a film, become a ladder to a filmmaker's career or the precipice they'd plummet from.

In my perspective, film critiques are separated in 4 distinct genres;

1. The Preference: Filmmakers, as most humans, take into the likeness of certain genres, be it, horror, drama, comedy, action, so much so, they lose perspective in the critique outside of their chosen genre. The door is closed when one adhere fanatically to standards and preference, disallowing their capabilities to see anything outside of their desired view.

2. The Comparable: This is the erroneous form of judgment where one film (namely the film under review) is judged in comparison with another. This is commonplace when judging an original with a sequel or trilogy but a film cannot be judged on its own merits if it is compared to the work of another filmmaker. As Antonin Artaud once said "Masterpieces of the past are only good for the past." The budding filmmaker garners experience as they grow, as they produce, as opposed to an experienced filmmaker who has gained world renown recognition for their work; there comparison is an unrealistic practice and one that needs to be dealt away with if film is to ever receive its due in proper.

3. The Incapable: As success is well-pursued and well-desired, there are some in this world who are not driven and thus receive no accolades to their loiter. It is easier to break down a film, tear it apart from its foundation and axis, then to start at that very axis and foundation and create a film. The failed filmmaker who has lost their momentum can easily become competitive only in the nature of destroying films in reviews. For those who are familiar with Francois Truffaut, film director of the French New Wave, known as "The Gravedigger of French Cinema." Unforgiving in critique, his every notion was to push filmmakers into a direction of forward and remove them from complacency. With the 1959 release of "The 400 Blows," it is clear that Truffaut wasn't an incapable, but the 4th genre of the film critique.....

4. The Capable: This is the filmmaker who has accomplished a solid, legendary film that lives one and rival those of the "modern." His Pulitzer prize for criticism aside, his near four decades of the most notorious pundit in perhaps all history of film remarks him in a hallmark of nothing but, nothing less than brilliant and genius. The 1970 screenplay to Ross Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, co-written by Ebert himself was slowly received by the public, now hailed as a cult classic of the crest. 1999 saw Ebert lose his colleague Gene Siskel; modern film critic great Richard Roeper, admixing a different taste to Ebert's dispassionate reviews, joined him in transforming the method that had begun to take film a step back rather a step forward into transcendence.

 As the loss of Buddy Holly was known to Don McLean as the "Death of the music," the loss of Roger Ebert has come to be known as "The Death of the Film." No one is left to drive filmmakers into their desire, into transcendence; we are now burdened in the realm of art to lose our dreams, borrow those from the past, and recreate them in a petulant complacency

Dontrell Lovet't

from, [PsychoNeuroFilmography]