Cinephilia Too: Martin Scorsese’s Hugo

by Erik Watschke, University of California, Irvine, Visual Studies

Hugo (2011)Hugo (2011) is the story of an orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) who hides out from authorities in the superstructure of a Paris train station circa 1930. When not winding the clocks of the station, the boy spends his time attempting to bring to life an automaton piece by piece. Hugo, it seems, is convinced his father left some profound final message encoded within this mechanical man, but Hugo's efforts come to a halt when a mysterious old toy maker (Ben Kingsley) intevenes and sets him on an adventure of discovery. The more Hugo learns about the toy maker, the more their destinies intertwine, and—as a result—the more the film drifts into an overt fascination with the silent cinema.

During the course of Hugo's investigation, the essential message of Martin Scorsese’s film becomes clear when a film scholar (Michael Stuhlbarg) remarks to Hugo that “time has not been kind to old movies.” Indeed, what Scorsese’s film presents is the most explicit self-reflexivity  encountered in Hollywood cinema in recent memory—even film scholars and the most casual entertainment-seeking filmgoer are confronted here. A lingering question remains: what is the ultimate effect of framing reflexivity in this way?

In comparison to The Artist (2011), the film that, to some, “robbed” Hugo of its prize this February,  the self-reflexivity in Scorsese’s film takes him out of the proverbial three worlds of the cinema (production, distribution, exhibition) and into the lair of the archivist. And, in so doing, he stands philosophically neutral on the actual processes of the entrepreneurial industry and merely chastises the museum in its stead. The filmmaker is still adamant to prove, as if any still had doubt, that no one loves cinema as he does.

But this is not the problem. Though I have previously argued that The Artist amounts to formal and narrative mastery without a soul, an opposing force emerges here: Hugo is all soul, no mastery—a veritable two-hour infomercial for the Scorsese film foundation. This message is brought in through the back door, however, as the first act of the film meanders around the boy and his robot, only subsequently (and abruptly) changing subjects to “the movies.” Only film historians who are immediately struck with familiarity upon seeing the toy maker might experience the first section of the film otherwise. The film might actually have been better—all other things being equal—if it had been titled “Georges” rather than “Hugo”.

A difficult premise arises: ‘movies are so magical that they are worthy of intense, explicit celebration, yet this is more than most audiences will be able to handle up-front.’ While such a problematic argument might indeed warrant consideration in a critically reflexive film, its counterpart in the serenely cinephilic text is absurd. People who have paid money to sit in a theater and watch a film are doing so because something about the art of film is appealing to them; they like movies, they do not need to be tricked into accepting this notion. And if this is really your end-game goal, then perhaps there is higher striving to be done.

Cinematographer Robert Richardson, in consultation with Scorsese, certainly understands how to fully exploit deep space in conjunction with 3D technology in virtually every shot. Nevertheless, some traditional cinematographic wisdom fails them both here. For instance, racking focus, so as to draw attention to something in the extreme background, becomes ineffective when a gigantic blurry object protrudes off the screen into the faces of the audience simultaneously.

One of the most troubling conceits is the 3D conversion of several silent cinema works presented in the film’s finale. Up to this moment, the movies watched by the characters have been graciously presented in their unadulterated 2D form—is this is not, after all, the point of showing the films? That, for these films, there is something magical that needs to be preserved in its original form? In this vein, the only error more egregious than these formal alterations of the presented diegetic films is the revisionist history of filmmakers’ lives that further corrupts the cinephilic message. If the argument concerns championing a forgotten history of silent filmmakers, then the least the film can do is get the history right. Instead the historical development of early cinema is warped to better suit the tragic beats of Scorsese’s fantasy tale. 

Unfortunate is the way in which the industry elevated Hugo (in a manner that only the most stubborn apologist could resist as anything except shameful self-promotion) to the level of absolute greatness. Or, conversely, critics and insiders lowered Scorsese to the level of their usual preoccupations: typically, the most attention around Oscar time revolves around artists working ‘out of their element,’ as if that alone should suffice to warrant acclaim. Hugo is no exception to this treatise. But, in the Hollywood cinema of the last thirty years, Martin Scorsese has never tried to be Robert Zemeckis, and such an ambition should not be so disingenuously supported by the Academy. In the quest to determine whether the violent and gritty Marty can pull off a magical, enchanting, feel-good movie of the year, critics might stop to ask whether he should.

Ultimately, no one has done more for (and spent a hundred and fifty million dollars in the creation of a blockbuster motion picture simply to raise awareness of) film preservation than Scorsese. This is what makes Hugo a noble endeavor. Not its writing, acting, editing, or cinematography, but its overwhelming passion for the cinema—a passion that cannot be contained by the explosive contrivances of the film itself.

Cinephilia Now: Michel Hazanavicious' The Artist

by Erik Watschke, University of California, Irvine, Visual Studies

The Artist (2011)A hit at Cannes, especially for the performance of its lead actor Jean Dujardin, Michel Hazanavicious' The Artist (2011) is a complexly reflexive film. On its surface, it tells the seemingly recycled story—à la Singin' in the Rain (1952) among others—of a silent film actor struggling to deal with the coming of sound in Hollywood circa 1927. George Valentin (Dujardin) is a man who prides himself on his refusal to do sound films even as his career disintegrates. A binary struggle ensues between the philosophy of Valentin and his main romantic interest Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), who embraces the new technologies of film and, as a result, vaults over him to stardom in the new sound cinema. When asked “Why won't you talk?” Valentin's exasperated reply sets the stakes of the film: “Because I'm not a puppet, I'm an artist!”

Ultimately, it is not only Valentin who refuses to talk, but Hazanavicious who handicaps his film in this way. This is immediately apparent in the film's embrace of outmoded features such as black & white photography, a noticibly square screen ratio, and the almost wholesale rejection (almost!) of synchronized sound. These factors have undoubtedly gone a long way in propelling the film to critical attention. Especially noteworthy are the almost surrealist moments that formally indicate that sound simply does not exist in the world of Valentin—on-screen or off!

Yet these apparent details are by no means the film's most sophisticated structural references to the silent cinema: one begins to recognize visual and narrative allusions to everything from The Crowd (1928) all the way back to The Gay Shoe Clerk (1903). One might be tempted to take Valentin at his word—as a stand-in for The Artist itself—that true film artistry corresponds foremost to the silent period sadly lost to history. However, this literalist reading is complicated by the myriad of film references to a long history of sound films as well. With unmistakable invocations to Citizen Kane (1941), Grand Hotel (1932), and everything in-between, a more non-historicized, auto-reflexive critique seems to take shape. In fact, the film may well have just as much to say about recent cinema as it does the early period. Whether or not the entire narratology of The Artist can be taken as a structural allegory for a contemporary debate about film technology in the 21^st century is largely contingent upon one's take on Valentin's ultimate solution (which will not be divulged here).

It is of note, nevertheless, that by far the most conspicuous reference of all is an extended sampling of Bernard Hermann's score to Vertigo (1958), just as Valentin arrives at his most desperate moment. As the broken man gazes into a shop window, framing his own reflection perfectly into the sleeves and collar of a tuxedo on display, he imagines what happiness he once possessed. This scene eerily invokes the nostalgic despair of Scottie Ferguson in the Hitchcock film sequence to which the soundtrack alludes. Like Scottie, Valentin clings to the already long dead even as he attempts, anachronistically, to revive it. This is the most poignant and reflexive of all the borrowed moments in the film; The Artist recognizes its own place in a larger history of narratively reflexive filmmaking and celebrates this history through its cinematic nostalgia.

Among the film's chief delights, the casting of Dujardin is laudable and his histrionic maneuverings bring the film as close as it gets to silent film sublimity. Yet, the familiar supporting ensemble is where the film goes the most awry. Any time a recognizable face appears—such as John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller, or, worst of all, James Cromwell (who performs admirably, but sticks out like a sore thumb in the role of Valentin's chauffeur)—the illusion is lost. One is left wondering why Goodman, for instance, is performing histrionically in juxtaposition to his well known televisual comedy style. The affect is clever intertextuality at best; awkward distraction at worst. Here, the film loses the essential pathos of the cinema of yesteryear by being a work that is—at times—recognizably outsmarting itself.

In its zeal to duplicate much of the visual iconography of the silent screen of old, The Artist fails to capture the character-driven energy of the same. What is left is a hollowed-out shell of allusions, which might inspire with its passion for the cinema itself, but falls short of capturing the mania of Valentin—the man—in an agreeable form. If he is merely being stubborn, is not the film as well?