Episode 621: L'Age D'or (1930)

Hold you is, folks, It show time. People pay good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters. In the projection booth. Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring of Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host. Mike White joined me once again. Is mister Rob Saint Mary. It's all section violins front and center. Also back in the booth is mister Robert Bellissimo. Hello everyone, bonjou and olah for the French and Spanish fans. We

conclude French Month with Louis Bunol's nineteen thirty film Las Or. Released in the wake of the Sound Revolution, the film straddles the line between silence and sound, presenting a series of stories that represent the five prismatic segments of a scorpion's tale. We will be spoiling each of these as we go along, So if you haven't seen las Or, turn off the podcast and come back after you have, we will still be here. So, Rob, when did

you first see the movie? In what did you think? Sir? My entry into Bunol was probably discreet, charm and, as I said on the discreet charm episode and I've talked about but well before. When I first saw his I didn't understand it. It was in my late deads. It didn't connect with me at all. When I went back a few years later and we rewatched it and then became obviously one of my favorite films of all time, if not the number one. It then led me down the path to

try and watch everything that I could get my hands on. Working at Thomas Video was good because I could gets at the time, which was mostly what you had to get. So I think I may have seen this originally on a VHS tape. It wasn't a very good dub, subtitles, garbage trags, it parts, and I don't think that I really appreciated it the first time I saw it because I was expecting something more in line with the later work. Not that his stuff is narratively heavy at times, but at least

had something that felt more together. Shan and delous. These images that stick in your head, there's some in here that's stick in your head for different reasons. Like I said, I just thought it was okay. It was only in later years that I went back and looked at it and said Jenna Andaloo gives you sort of visual hence later work. This gives you a lot of thematic. This is a proto version. This is Stooges to punk rock or something. It's yeah, I go listen to that stuff and then you

can understand where it comes from. So it's only grown in years, but it's not one that I watch on the regulars. One i'd probably see maybe once every five years or more. And Robert, how about yourself. I'm new with boon Well. Part of the appeal for doing this episode on your show, Mike was just because he's a director I've been meaning to get to, and I just I've seen Baldejore and Tristan, I had seen The Milky

Way, but he's just someone I hadn't got into yet. And so you don't have to know much about boon Well to know what he was interested in. His films, which are making foot of the bourgeois sexual fetishes and tearing the religious Catolic Church apart, and so you certainly see that in this film. But I knew it was gonna be toff watch. I just had an instinct, so I thought, I'm gonna have to watch us a few times. So what you do with any really any great artists, you go back

time and time again. But when I first saw it, just maybe a month ago or so, my initial feeling was that is this is fucking crazy, but in a good way. And I just immediately took to it. I just let it hit me, and I could clearly see those themes we mentioned, it mentioned, and what he was getting at. And when I watched it again about a week ago, I was able to then appreciate it

much more. And it's a film that I feel invites you to participate in having your own takes, in opinions and possibilities, and those things may change with each of you doing. But it's a challenging watch but at the same time is very funny. And see just his audacity and boldness and just not caring what anyone thinks or worried about anyone criticizing him. That's ultimately from what

I read him. And Daddy wanted that wants to shock people, wants to wake people up, wants they showed up at the movie theaters with rocks in their pockets just because they thought I was for their short film. There might be some protests, so let's make sure we're armed. But I don't know, I just took to it. I just really loved it. I just

really felt I could feel what he was getting to. And I know some people hate things that don't make sense on a narrative level, but if you're trying to make sense out of this and some kind of traditional story, you're gonna be lost. You're gonna hate it. You can't watch it that way. But I don't know, I just loved it. So I'm looking forward to just really diving in with the two of you to see really what we

think of what's going on here. Now. I can't remember if I said this during our discrete Charm episode or not, but the first Bunwal film that I watched was Lu and shen Andalu, and I watched it this interesting colorized version that they had for MTV. It would show it as like a break which was weird because the movies twenty some minutes long. And then I saw the original and I was like, this is pretty much the movie that I

saw. But my first exposure to him was seeing this and not really knowing what I was looking at, and was starting off with the cloud across the moon and the eyeball getting slice that was all right there on MTV for me to enjoy throughout the years. And occasionally there'd be a shot where was somebody looking at the camera and then background would blow out in this animation thing. So it was actually very well done in the way that they did this,

and then the constant music going through the entire thing. So that was my first exposure to moonwal even not really connecting that this was a director of many things and that's something I needed to look out for. Probably ninety one, I was in David's books up in ann Arbor and I found a look at the script of Lodge Door and I remember reading on the back how it talked about this movie caused riots, and I was just like, how could a

movie cause riots? I just didn't understand. That was my first idea, my first concept that a movie could have that much power that it would cause riots. I still didn't watch the movie. It took until twenty nineteen when I went to the Nitrate Film Festival out in Rochester where they actually showed at night rate print of Lodge Door, and they didn't have it was the original French so they didn't have subtimes its burned onto it. And they didn't do

over titles or anything. Was actually one of the organizers of the festival, our friend Jared Case, who's been on the show several times, him with a microphone, reading the translation as we were going through, so like the title cards, the dialogue, any of that. He's up there reading this

as the movie's going along. Very unique experience for me and seeing this beautiful print from I can't remember if it was from the actual cinema attack or where it was from, but it was gorgeous the sea, and as soon as I saw it, I was just like, I have to do an episode on this. So that it's been been the backlog for a while as far

as okay, yeah, we're going to get to this. And then when I was like putting together this year and there are all these French films and like, okay, cool, fine, they going to do last or this will be great, and yeah, revisiting this it's of course it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's what I love about it. And then like you were saying, where this is that almost like a Rosetta stone as far as translating these obsessions and things from the early days, all the

way up until his later films. It's funny because last week we talked about Rules of the Game and there's guest On modou in there as the game's keeper. I forgot that he was also in Building a Paradise, which we talked about two weeks ago. So he's shot through this entire month pretty much. So him as the man back in this nineteen thirty film because there are no

real character names, so it's basically like your roles. He's terrific and he makes me want to see more films with him in it because he's just wonderful, especially how angry he gets through this whole thing, and especially when he kicks that dog. It's probably one of my favorite things. That was the thing I put in my notes. I go, yeah, I'm sure Peta loves this film. Oh God, between the dog and the scorpions and the rat and how the blind man. It don't care if humans get hurt,

it's just the animals. He had such a great look, looks like a football player or like an athlete or a hockey player. You just don't see those kinds of faces. And he's really compelling this and Rules of the Game. I'm gonna have to seek out more of his films performances. Yeah, I forgot. He's in Peppe the Moco, which I've been wanting to do a rewatch of that. So yeah, I'm probably going to be having a

guest on the Dope Film Festival over here at some point. But he doesn't even show up in the movie until we have two of these sequences where we've got this Nature documentary about scorpions and talking about scorpions, and of course it's one of those even though I was saying joking, lad, this movie doesn't

make sense, there are reasons for all of this. I feel like there are reasons for every single thing that we see on screen, and so starting it off with the scorpions, I'm just like, Okay, what do scorpions represent? And that's scorpio? Are we talking about this? We're talking about just what are we think about these scorpions and this Nature documentary all about scorpions,

and how do we see that playing through the to this film. Other than the idea of the five segments of the tale with the venom sack, we've got a very venomous ending to this film. The whole thing was scorpions. To me, plays into when you learn about Budwell's biography. He was a I may say word versus bugs, so anthropologists people who study bugs.

So he had an obsession books, Like I think if he had to become a filmmaker, he probably would have became a scientist of study books, because there's like a lot in his biography where he talks about collecting samples and collecting bugs and so he so I think there's some of that. But I would also say that kind of delicateness venom it gets damned in for humanity in some way that it's like he's saying, look at this thing. It can be

very destructive. A lot of the things that run through the film is this question of appearances and how do we make appearances within society and what society expects of us, and how far will society go to forces into these positions, the most obvious being, the most over the top being the literal sex on

the beach. So we could talking about that a bit. Like I say, the first time you see it, you're like, okay, the eat your documentary, and then it's never brought up again, so you have to think of what is it signifying We're no different than these scorpions who can be destructive. Shows that he's swallowing up a rat. I love that he shows one of them going that doesn't like this. They don't like the sun.

They like to be isolated, and they like to be alone. And then one of them goes under a rock and the other one is trying to follow,

and you see it just obviously was getting pushed aggressively kicked back. I didn't get a chance to read all of that BFI book that you shared, Mike, but the writer mentioned I don't know how obvious it is, but two of the scorpions look like they're having sex, and one of them just rams through them, which, of course, as we see time time and time again in this film, so he could be I think he's saying a

combination of this. We are basically we are animals, but we still have this kind of behaviors, and people hate to think, oh, how can you compare a human too behavior of an animal. But I think what he's saying is, no, we do behave in this ferocious manner that scorpions do. Or perhaps it's a warning in the sense that if you keep oppressing people, they're going We're going to go back to the Neanderthal times and start to it's just going to be total destruction. So I really saw it as a

simple metaphor what he was getting at there. The other aspect that I was thinking of that you brought up there, Robert, is the Surrealists were about trying to make friends with or accept that which was thin us and the passions that we have and as human animals. And so I can see that reading as well, where it's fine by itself. It's only when the outside world comes in and starts playing with it that it's kind to attack. So it's if you allow the creature to live as it is, to be in its

natural state, it's fine. It's just don't hit it in that way. And which brings me to I actually learned to read. So if anyone, it's amazing almost three years of college will do for you. In the past three years during COVID. This is an ongoing joke for those who haven't listened my previous appearances on the show, Mike would always read the books. I didn't ever have time to read the books, so notoriously slow reader. I

want to thank. Al Gore said to me many years ago this is a book from the late seventies, Virginia Kicking Bottom, and I think that to me when I read analysis here she said that basically A Shennanalou was a personal vision of erotic obsession and anxiety will lodge door when on to indict social institutions and beliefs that repress the individual spotanity. That's the difference between those two early

films and how one builds on the other. And I think this is maybe to the point even in those early frames talking about those scorpions pressing the spotaneity. Yeah, from what I've read, scorpions are symbols of protection, transformation, independence, solitude, and intelligence, but they're also the symbol of death, raybirth, a symbol of power, and also lost sex and fertility.

In the commentary, the commentator talks about how scorpions are more the symbol of genitals and the anus, and I'm just like, Okay, that's got Dally written all over him, which is wonderful. Dolly didn't really have that much to do this one. According to what you read is sometimes people say yes, he had a ton to do with this, and other times no, he didn't. There's this whole falling out between Bunwell and Dolly at some point, and I guess he didn't like Gala. Bunol didn't like Gala at all

and was just like, get this lady out of here. I want nothing to do with you. Maybe this little jealous I don't know, but it's not as in your face with some of the ally stuff. Even though when we move on to the next segment, we've got all of these consider them bandits. I suppose there's this whole crutch thing. There's least one that has a crutch, and I'm just like, okay, because you see those like crutches inside of Dolly's paintings a lot, like holding up different things. So

I was seeing that as being a Dolly touched to that. But yeah, with these scorpions, yeah, I definitely agree. The whole idea of the bitis interrupt us trying to push the other scorpion out of the way, very pushy with this stuff, and embracing that animal nature and seeing the rest of the people in this movie as scorpions and just to them of the behavior, I would say, is what I'm getting from this early segment. And I

like how poorly framed this nature documentary is quite a few times. There's like a lot of times where you can barely see the scorpions, they're down at the bottom of the frame. And then you get this very dry not necessarily David Attenborough, but these intertitles in here, and I like that. The

last inner title that you see is what's it saying? It says some hours later, and that takes us to the next section of the film, and that totally reminds me of when shen Andalou and just all of those time transitions last week on Sunday in the Spring, just all of those different transitions that he has, and he does that a few times in this one as well,

where you're just like, wait, how much time has passed? Because we move on to that next section where it's all taking place at the shore, you have one of the bandits coming across this group of I guess they're bishops, these religious figures, and they're all chanting on the soundtrack, and he leaves, and then in the subsequent sequence we see them and they're all skeletons and we're just like, wait, how much time has passed here?

And we see the cornerstone for Rome being laid down, and then we cut to quote unquote imperial Rome and it's basically the modern city. So I'm like, what can't really trust to Time in this at all? I think he's it's partly a joke and then partly just to say here were these beggars, and we see these few religious people begin to come and then they clearly took over the land, and then we see these boatloads of bourgeois and the religious

figures coming and finding the bones there. So I think, ultimately what that is really what he wants you to take from it. So I think the Time thing was just a way to mess with you. Even in the short film, it's sixteen years earlier and then it's no one looks any different. This is what happened, and only had built up to Rome, and slowly it came these old loads of people taking over. I guess that's what he was getting at with the Time. That was the thing that I liked.

And some of the readings was talking about how the censors originally just thought it was a big joke. They couldn't understand why anyone this is of that kind of ridiculousness that you're talking about. Yeah, that whole thing with this group of beggars, bandits, hunters. I'm calling them bandits because they looked like beggars. They all have guns, so I'm like, Okay, maybe they're out robbing people or maybe they're just hunting. I don't know, but they

are all hold up like they're starving too. They're like on their deathbed. Yeah, so they're terrible hunters. Yes, they don't have a lot to choose from, and this very desolate shoreline that they're on. Maybe they're members of PEDA. Like they said that, they seem to be accepting their feets because they're like, oh, we know it's over for us, but we're gonna go anyway. So it was almost like they were going to fight it

out. And then I don't know if you guys saw, I could have swore that when the boatload of people came and they found their bones, you see the hats of the religious figures, I could have swore one of the hats that the beggar who found the bodies, he's just like this big farmer's hat. So I don't know if if he's getting at that. There was some fight that broke out and that and they all died right there together. But I don't know if you guys have picked up on that. They look

to me, like, what the hat that guy's hat was? With all of those bishops there, there's so much detail and times that it's you have to watch it several times to get certain things, and if you have like attention problems, you may have to rewind it. Watch the sea, you can't figure out what the hell you just saw because you moved from one segment to another a lot of times without any warning. It's just okay, we're off to this new thing. Yeah, we're bored trying to move on to

the next thing, which I think is why it's so important. I won't say is a fellow movie YouTuber that I know he reviewed it and hated it because it doesn't make sense. And I'm like, again, do your dreams make sense? I don't know about you guys, but I have that have vivid dreams and they make no sense, and you could take something from it, but I think it's much more valuable to just look at what do the people do and what does that say about the story? What is actually forget

about traditional narrative. I don't understand why people get so hung up on that there was a great I mean, I think it was like just two or three images of Dart. And I don't know if this was from an actual interview that was translated or not. I can't say where it was, but it was something like Goddard saying, you're married and you don't like same movies, you're bound to get divorced. So talking about my ex wife, I was a putting well fan. She was like, I have enough ambiguity in

my life. I don't want it in my art. So this was a lady like to watch in no offense to anyone. He enjoys it, just arathods of like Coulkeye files. Yeah, I'm a side life on the streets in one order. So she wanted, oh, structured work. She couldn't get her head into it. She was just like, no, She's like, how don't mind watch Ford film? Jesus don't make me watch another foot

in. Wilson could tell that our relationship at the end. At that point, Robert, you mentioned that BFI book, The Paul Hammond One, and I had to say, I haven't been doing a lot of drugs lately, but my god, I felt like I was high when I was reading his

book. I was just having such a hard time understanding what he was saying a lot of times because he would flip from talk about the movie and then he would flip to the making of the movie and then go back into the movie, and there was no real again talking about transitions, there was no transition between I'm like, oh, now we're talking about the movie again. Okay, now we're talking about the making of again, all right. But it just all flowed from one to the other. And there were so many

parentheticals where I was just like, what are you doing here? What are you trying to talk about here? I was so confused. He would wrote it like a Boonwall film. Baby, I think that's what you're going to stay Rob, I go, So it appears to book structures by the film. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are all I don't know if you've read a lot of those, be if I bye. I find them all a little hard to read. They're not easier to read. I've read some

good ones, but they're extremely intellectual. I've gone back and reread passages, got my dictionary handy. They're definitely very dense. But I've read some good ones, but yeah, they're that this one in particular was very challenging.

The one thing I liked that he did was he would go through some of the actors and talk about who they were, Like, I recognize Max Stearns as the bandit leader inside of the little hunting lodge hideaway type thing that he's doing, and I think he's the one that has the first line of the film where he just yells at the rest of them to stop it. That's cool, But then Hammond would go through a lot of the other actors in the film and tell you, oh, it's this person, was this,

and this person was. Then gave you like a little bit of a biography of each surrealist that was showing up in the film, which I thought was pretty cool. But then again, I'm just like trying to make sense of it. We're already talking about a movie that doesn't hould together a lot more narratively, But then the book itself has that weird structure where I'm just like, what the house happening? So I'm glad that I wasn't the only one that was a little confused by that one, to the point where I was

looking for reviews to be like, is it just me? Am I just being dumb or what's happening? So rus partly why I put it down. I'm like, I'm just gonna go watch it again and read other things on it. There's spoken dialogue in this, and it reminds me of Hitchcock. Like Hitchcock's first sound silent film was Blackmail, where he shot it silently and then he went back and he added sound bits to it. You already have him using like subjective sound. So when the murder us, here's somebody talking

about a knife, Like she doesn't hear the rest of the conversation. She just hears the word knife over and over again after she had stabbed this artist. And in this one, here we are it's a few years after the sound revolution is starting, but we've got straight dialogue, people just talking, okay. You've got unsourced sounds, so you have things that are on the soundtrack where you're just like, I'm not exactly sure where that's coming from.

You have sound effects like when you see those bishops the first time, you hear them chanting, but you can't really make out what they're saying. Necessarily, you've got thought conversations later on in the film where people are just thinking things and we're supposed to think that the other person can almost hear them, and then you even have at one point there's a telephone conversation and it just sounds like cartoon voices and they are not matched up to mouths whatsoever. And

it's just what am I seeing? But I love that he's playing was sound so much in his first sound film, that he's just doing all of these different things with it. And that was the first time when I watched this movie in Rochester, I was just like, am I supposed to be hearing something? Was this added later on? You know? What was the life cycle of this movie? Was it all silent at first but then they added sound. It's really tough to tell, but I think that he was just

like, Okay, I've got this new tool. I'm just going to mess around with it as much as possible. The thing that's interesting here about that use of sound as when you think about the fact that it's not only his first sound film, but it's my understanding, it's like one of the first sound film out of France, and at the same time, also consider the use of sound experimentation outside of a theater context. There really wasn't a lot

because radio. It only started less than ten years before, and a lot of that was just live music and live read so you didn't have a ton of special sound effects and different things like that. They were just starting to get into those kind of radio play dramas and things like it would come later

into the thirties. When we watch it now as a modern audience, if we don't understand that historically, guess it's the same as watching I don't know, maybe like Passion Joan of Arc going oh the deal close ups, but you have to understand it in context at the time, as opposed to now where it's shit close ups all day long, like TikTok so what So It's one of those things where you have to have a historical understanding in order to

get something. It's funny because I didn't find these Nothing in the sound was throwing me unless it maybe I've seen enough old the older films that it doesn't necessarily pop out as being unusual. I did. The fact that he was using very like music, was very happy, which I love, which was such an interesting that hitch good Dad sometimes as well. Sometimes his music was very direct, but the imaged necessarily always match the music was using but again,

is that mess with people? Is that a joke? Is that to make it feel like these things could happen to you do? And so we're used to seeing there's happy music on films, so it brings you a little more into it as opposed to being something from a distance or out of an over film. On YouTube, someone remixed the sound of it, like uploaded. On my second viewing, I was like, I don't remember these sounds, and the whole time that someone coughing and moan was and I was like,

this is really interesting. I don't even remember this. And then I and then in the car I was like, I don't think this is it. And then in the comments someone said, the hell remixed? You could find it on YouTube. Bizarre, but it's really good. Like I would not recommend anyone do that to anyone, touch anyone's movies, but in this case it was bizarre. It was really unique. This is a couple of things in there. As someone who worked in radio for a long time that

I'm just like, this stuff is not like sound effects. We're not trying to be seamless in a way. They were not trying to be naturalists, but they were not mixed at a particular level in order to make them seem normal, quote unquote, to bring you into a realism. There were a lot of them were heightened, a lot of them were you could tell that they were not from that scene, they were from somewhere else. In that way, the use of the music, as you were saying, could be

early form of musical commentary. Like we often think about Tente Banger or Martin Scorsese using ironic music. I can't think of anyone who was doing ironic music in nineteen thirty film. She was saying, Yeah, that was that would take another thirty years, but there's all that in there, and I think that's a really interesting thing, Like you say, for an early soundship, I did find her scream and they were a big sex on the beach there.

At first I thought someone screaming, like it sounded like someone was being kit or killed. And then I'm like, are they what's kind of like is he raping her? Like? Are they having sex? Is it? I'm like, is he hitting her? I don't know if that was intentional, because it's not like it obvious sex sounds. It sounds maybe that's because of the oppression that it's just like coming out in Screams and Pleasure at the

same time, that to me was a little jarring. When you think about one of the big influences, and this is later in the film that influence really shows up was Marquitisad. So the idea of on the surrealists they discovered, They saw it and just thought he was great and a kind of liberator type. So when you're talking about, okay, well maybe there's like this violent screaming sexuality that might not be too far removed from that idea within the

Surrealists in that period. One thing that I picked up on the first time I watched this and was I thought it was in there a lot more, but it's only a few mentions, but they're in enough sections that I thought it was interesting. Is the bandism. One point they say the Majorcans are here, and then we've got references to Majorca throughout a lot of this movie. And that was one thing that I was glad that Hammond talked about,

was this what treaty that was signed in Majorca. And that's maybe this is commentary on that because Majorka, I mean, it's just this tiny little island out there in the right off the coast of Spain. We'll probably not right off the coast, but off the coast of Spain. And yeah, there's Majorkans come throughout this whole movie. There are little references to Majorca on them because apparently all of these people that are arriving on the shore are all from

Majorca, and there's a lot of them. Like you said, they do feel like very much an invading force and they all feel very bourgeois. And that's where we get introduced to Guestan Madoe and Leah liss Is the woman's same. I believe all of these people are walking across these kind of barren dscapes by the shore. See the bishops their skeletons, They give them a salute, and off they go. I guess they're there to dedicate this kind of

cornerstone to child our land now. And that's where we meet the man and the woman and them in the mud having sex. And you mentioned that screen that we have that even sages us seeing them, people around them having to pull them apart and take them away. She gets taken away first, he's

there in the mud, and then they finally get him up. And these two men just march him off, and then really, for a long time, this movie is cutting back and forth between her and what she's doing, kind of fantasizing about him, and then him being marched by these guys. And yeah, he sees this dog and this dog is just bothers him. And the way that he breaks away from the men to go up and kick this dog. Oh, and he breaks away later to smash a bug,

and he breaks away again and he kicks a blind man. He's just the spont of rage. Yes, that's the meat cute, I guess, because the rest of the film is really a romatic comedy. They want to get back together, so it's like, how did we be? We were fucking on the beach in front of everyone and we got really dirty and then people came but said, no, I can't do that. So trying to get

together ever since. There's one thing you didn't mention is the toilet sea And I was thinking about this, and granted we don't actually see it flush, but we hear it. So I remember thinking like, like, oh, Psycho showed a toilet flush of the innovation, so I'm like, maybe boom Well was thirty years ahead of that. You hear the toilet flush and he's cutting to it looks either like mud or shit, just spiraling down. And

I saw that as the interim how they were both feeling. It's like, you're just making our life shit and crap and flushing it right down to it. And what I liked about the fact that, again, how he's playing with time is it's okay. So the major gains came, it took over, and then we see this couple there having sex on the beach, and it's just like, this feeling of this has happened right away, right away they started to tell people what to do, how to control people. He's

just he doesn't gradually work its way up to it. It's like it's happening right now, and it doesn't even feel like they just met there. It just feels like they've they've been together for years. And I think that's why he had this rage of not being allowed to have sex with this woman and so kicking the dog, kicking the blind man, squashing the beatle. This has been happening forever, and I think that's why it goes all the way

back to the major gains in the Ancient Rome. And he's making you feel like This isn't just a few scenes a month or a week, his years and years of oppression. And what I also really I didn't spotted until this third time I stopped, was the other people that he cuts to gives you

the impression. And it's not just this couple, it's everybody, Like the one guy he comes out of a cafeer at bar and he also has like mud or dust all over his jacket, and then they follow him and he's kicking the violin and I'm thinking, yeah, so I took that as okay, So it's not just this couple for whatever reason, it's everybody, down to that conductor at the end who suddenly stops and he's got this throbbing headache again. I think he's say, this is what oppression does. It's like

people can't get on with their lives. It's like with the what you said, rob with the scorpions. If you stop them from their natural state of being in spontaneity, they're gonna, they're gonna bite, they're gonna they're gonna get aggressive, but they're not gonna be able to do what they need, what they want to do. And down to that conductor at the end with that brobbing headache. I really like that. I really like that he doesn't

just make it all about these two people. It's like everybody, everybody's experiencing this. That's also part of it is that when people watch this, if they're used to conventional narrative, they may go, Okay, who is he and who is she? And what are their names and what is their backstory? And it's no, They're just man and woman. They're just humanity. They're not characters through symbolic ideas of alerture issue. I love how we have

different views of the toilet scene in certain ways. Because I thought that was lava. So there was part of me that thinks, oh, this is lava, This is passion inside that's being pushed down or submerged. We have to submerge these things. We have to hide these things. We have to get rid of these things, these things that the outside world says are filthy or dirty, we have to hide them and be clean and respect. Yeah.

I thought that was also lava or mudflow or something. Yeah, And it almost seemed like it was reversed out the way that the footage was being shown. I think there might have been another reverse shot as far as that goes, But like we see the negative image and I forgot that they are there too. That only that cornerstone, but it's also it's a dedication to the Majorcans who died there in nineteen thirty, which is the year that this

movie is coming out. And also while the man is being marched through the city, feels like they're going to take him to jail or something. He sees man with a placard and there's a set of legs on there. So of course he's thinking of his girlfriend, thinking of the woman, and just

thinking of her legs. But there's also another moment where we have this picture of a hand and then he imagines the hand becoming her hand, and this we're going to talk about wigs and hair and stuff, but we have this kind of mound of hair all so in that image, and it's so completely a masturbation image. It's undeniable. Even when we see that placard with the legs, and it's more like the crotch than the legs is what I'm seeing when it comes to that, And I'm going to get her crotch much later

on in this film as well. He's just so obsessed with her sex. I think it would be very easy for a filmmaker to have male masturbation, but for it to be female masturbation with the way the fingers are being Like in nineteen thirty, it's like people were really uptight about talking about men at alone, how a woman would here's your Dolly reference, because when you read anything about Dolly, he was guilt ritten constantly, shame and guilt ritten over

the amount of masturbation. And it comes out in his art like it's all over the place, it is work. So I'm like, Okay, that's definitely a Dolly. It's all the masturbatorist. She's planning this party that we see later at this chateau. If you notice I didn't spot this to the third time, but she has a bandage on her finger, and I think it's her sister. I think that was her sister, and who says,

oh, I was Jerry. I think she asks like, oh, the your finger or whenever she's like, oh yeah, it's been like this for a weekik or so, And I was like, Okay, if he has her finger bandage, just gotta be a reason. So I took that as she's been massed, he's been bores the mass only masturbatedge. She's been masturbating so much that she injured herself. I was like, that must have been

what he was getting at, but I just thought that as hilarious. That's one other thing that I liked about that Hammond book was that he could translate the French and also talk about how words and French have different meanings. Those French have a different word for everything, but just like the word bandaged also refers to like sexual stuff. So when her mother says bandaged, she just asked that rather than says anything else, just that one word and you know,

oh, yes, it's been sore four weeks as the woman. Bandage has us different context over there. And there's a few other times where he would point out things that would have devil sometimes triple on andres and almost owe us related to sex. So it's us having different critical code words for sex as we talk about things, and the French are the same when it comes to this word could also mean this, and this one could mean this.

A Cleveland steamer could be a hot dog, or it could be something completely different. It was also interesting there because you don't even have to think about this too much. But in terms of the time we talked about gay cutting back and forth between time and messing with does. But the guy gets hauled off of her and arrested, and she, you assume, goes home. It seems as if more time has passed. With her, she's in different

Wardjobe. She's planning this party again the bandage, whereas with him, it's like the next shot is what we just saw, So it's for him, it's like the next half an hour. It seems like for her it's like the next week at least. So why he did that, I don't know, but I like it again, it's surrealist nature of it all. But this thing with time, I want to go see it again, just to

see if there was be something I'm missing about that. There's the one inner title that says sometimes on Sundays and then we have this looks like a tidal wave or something. All these buildings are collapsing, and they show that a few times, and it's just okay. Sometimes on Sundays. This happens Sundays, which, of course people go to church, which I must have been intentional. It's like he would obstruction them to society, knock down some buildings,

why not once they pull him off the beach. I always got this feeling that they were like going to take him to jail ors, because there's the two guys, he's handcuffed, he walking between him, and he never ends up there. He ends up actually free of them. So there's part of me that goes Maybe it's just the idea that he's saying there is that we hold each other together, like we in a way kind of force each other into this position where we're trying to get these needs met, we're interested

in these other things that we're talking about. He has these images of the posters coming to life and things like that. That's where we go if we weren't held in literal bondage in cuffs by those who are around us. One that amazing thing that he's doing again was sound like at one point, the woman goes into her bedroom and there's a cow on the bed, and the cow gets off, and you don't see the cow anymore, but you hear

the cowbell. But then you cut back to the man and you hear the cowbell over the soundtrack, or he's there walking and there's a barking dog, which probably makes them very angry because they probably want to kick that dog. And then you cut back to her and you hear the dog on her soundtrack, or then it's very windy where he's at, and then you cut back to her and her hair is blowing in the breeze, as if she is experiencing the same wind. It's like they are so tied together that they even

experience the same sounds from one to another. It's almost like this huge psychic connection that they have. Those sound elements didn't pop out to me as much clearly they did because I was thinking about that as well, why are we hearing these sounds she can only hear and then seeking hear what you mentioned with the cow bows. How can he suddenly be hearing that if we're cutting back

to him. But that's how I took it. It's like they are they are one almost, They're thinking the same thoughts, they're they know what each other are thinking or what each other is, what they're both experiencing at the same time. So just interesting because it feels like he's not even separating yet, and as sense, even though people are trying to separate yet, it's like they have this spiritual connection. So yeah, that's it's really interesting how

either that with the sounds, the use of sound. Yeah, and then we have a flashback because suddenly, I don't know where, I don't know why the man hasn't done this before, but he's just hey, wait a second, and he hands them these papers, and then we have a flashback to when he got the papers. The international good Will Delegate has given him

their decree that he's on now on a good will mission. And so great because the guys are reading this and the man just basically just walks away from them, breaks away just like, hey, I'm not a good will mission, leaves his papers with them. He goes over. There's a taxi that's pulling up. There's a blind man who's I guess maybe waiting for the taxi or whatever. But he goes over and he has to kick the blind man before he sent in a taxi. This guy's good will mission isn't working out

so well. Yeah, that was the great hire Nye. And what I liked was like it seemed he says something about politics there too, like how privileged they are. It's like they're arresting this guy for what he did. But because it seems as if he has some kind of political position. Oh, it's like you're work for the government. Yeah, no problem, you can if you can be corrupt, you could abuse your power. No worries.

I was thinking of it. And maybe this is just because, as I was saying, I've been in school too long during COVID, that there's a certain amount of respectability that comes with having degrees or education within the society.

So I saw it as he must have passed something, he was given this honor, so therefore he is a higher status than just an average person, and therefore he can get away with certain he's allowed to have a certain amount of freedom within the context of the box that they've given him, which includes being able to basically hate on the people who are lower than him, which obviously a blind man would be because he's of course he's a blind man. So why not kick the blind man? Why not kick the dog?

Why not? Oh, be shitty to the people that have it worse than you. That's acceptable. There's there's actually a document there's a documentary on YouTube, and he's his personality shines in his movies. Certainly, if anyone who's watched him in interviews, he mentions his I hope I'm getting to someone right. I probably should have went back to say what he said, but he mentioned something about not trusting anyone blind or not liking anyone blind. Just think

about it. If they're the ones cutting your meat in the Delhi He's like, would you trust He's like, that's a surrealist image right there, blind man cutting the meat. I'm like, okay, yeah, the blind butcher. So I was as as funny as just when he said that. I thought, Oh, no, wonder he's got Maybe he didn't like dogs either.

I don't who knows. Oh. I love that we've been talking about this movie longer than this movie has been running, because we're about halfway through the film, just at this point where we get to meet the Marquis of X and the first time we see him, he's got all of these dead flies all over his face. I love it. And this is the party scene, and the party is really going to take us through pretty much the rest of the movie other than this day New Mob the Venom Sack, as

I mentioned earlier, but this whole thing of this big party. You've got this car pulling up and these guys coming out, and there's this I just described as a symbol. I wasn't exactly sure what this thing was that they take out of the car that people get out, they put the symbol back in the backseat of the car. I think it was a reliquary, which

ir reliquary is a looks like a frost. It stands up and it usually has like raised to come out of it, and in the center there's usually a piece of flesh or clothing or something that is related to a saint. So this is part of Catholicism in which reliquaries are that are given adoration, they are prey to in that way. So that's what I saw that as maybe something else, but that's what it looked like to me. Makes as much sense to me as anything else. And it did feel like it had

a religious symbolism to it. And yeah, it felt like rays of the sun coming out from this thing. I wasn't sure if it was that or fell off the ark of the Covenant or what it was. This is the hunter actually finally gets a chill or something. I don't know. It's like somebody finally learns how to shoot the damn gun. Ah. I didn't connect that. Yeah, that's the best part that's just this little shit eating kids

a hunter outside. We cut to him. He's outside of the party and there's this little kid that comes up, and this little kid's being a jokester and knocks this thing out of the guy's hand. Guy just fucking shoots him. More than that, he fucking shoots his corpse, which is fantastic. Oh my, again, I saw what I said with the man kicking the violin, right, it's again it's like, here's another character who's maybe experiencing

what the man and woman in this film are experiencing him. So every little thing that pisses him off is gonna come out in a ferocious, violent manner, kicking a dog, kicking a violin, and even shooting this poor kid. God, and you get those shots in here where we're in the ballroom and you've got these two guys drinking wine or whatever driving their wagon through the

middle of the ballroom. Or the poor woman who comes out of the kitchen looks like a maid and she's smoking and the fire, yeah, just shooting out of the kitchen. Oh I love the fire. No one notices, which again is the appathe from all of the bourgeois. And that's what I took from the flies on the face. This guy can't even notice that there's flies on his frigging face, just like is it noticed a fire? And

again just no one carrying or feeling for another. And when they all look at the kids shot, they're like, oh, okay, back to the party. Nobody cares. That's all I saw that sequence, which was again funny and certainly audacious, that that kitchen sequence after the jump. I want

to talk about how I see that influenced another scene that I know. This a great moment too, where the man finally shows up at the party and he's got this dress and I'm guessing it's the woman's dress, and he is dragging it on the floor, and then through trick photography through backwards shooting, he throws the dress onto this chair and it lends perfectly there, and then we do a nice dissolve between that dress and the woman who's wearing that dress

in the main part of the ballroom, or going back and forth before he goes into ballroom itself and sees her across the room and see the lust on his face. He's trying to get over there, but her mother stops him. Her mother gets to him a drink spills a little bit on his hand, and that's the only time where the bourgeois really react is when he stands up and smacks her in the face. Yeah, yeah, you don't touch

one of ours. Everyone else is okay. But again, I see this whole thing where they're like looking at each other, and then I think there's like a woman or something that comes over to the woman and starts talking to her. So it's like, this is the polite way in which we keep you away from each other. Well, this isn't the forest. This is oh, it's pleasant trees and conversation, all this stuff, like, how do we mollify you to keep you from the thing, How do we keep

you socialized amongst each other? This goes back to the scorpion, right, Like the people coming in at the scorpion is scorpions pushing out of my old And I saw the dress as another tink, as another fetish. It's like when you're when you're having sex, you always have these fantasies. Wouldn't it be great if you wore this? He knew she was going to be there, and here's the dress he wants her to wear. But that's all I took that. So he gets kicked out of the party because of smacking your

mom, but then he just doesn't really leave. He comes back, and when he comes back, nobody says anything. There's some unpleasant looks that he's getting. There's at least one guy who's shooting daggers at him with his eyes, but they just let him go along. And that's when they end up going out into the I guess it's like a rock garden or a topiari or something. It looks like there's a little bit of a edge maze happening here.

And then so much of the rest of this film is them in this area and then going back and forth because that's also where we've got the music is starting. And you talked about the violin being kicked down the street. There's this whole thing about this looks like some sort of like a munk or a priest or something that he's really good with the violin. But then there's pick. There's four of them in the band itself. They all are dressed

the same. Reminds me of those two priests that are being pulled on the was it the back of piano and Shenandalude? There there, and we keep getting close ups of these figures in the orchestra, going back and forth between them and then the conductor, and yeah, we'll definitely talk about that conductor in a bit, but we've got that amazing scene of them, the man and woman sucking down each other's hands, and this bird trilling on the soundtrack.

And then the one thing that I when I saw this the first time, it was I was in a theater, so I couldn't say, oh, I got to rewind that when suddenly the hand is caressing her face, but then you realize it doesn't have any fingers, and I was like, oh, okay, did she eat his fingers? But later on he's got fingers again. It's kind of like how that bandage appears or reappears. I saw that as he couldn't eat because they've been separated for so long at it's

now it's not working out, it's not gonna feel good. It's like he's down to the fact that he's lost fingers. I mean, maybe that goes back to the sore of dumb. He's had to now masturbate himself, masturbate too much that he's lost his hand. Could be a castration fear. They have their fingers in each other's mouths, and then the fingers aren't there. It's vagina than Tata kind of thing. Oh she's want this, but I'm

afraid that she's going to take away my power. So there's this way in which they have to negotiate themselves outside of the context of what the society says. Then their own their own mental issues. And then right after this, I go, I know it's Wooden Wells foot of the statue. I go extra quint and Tarantino wouldn't well thinking of the foot fetishes sun filed throughout its films. It starts here. I can't remember of a foot scene in the

Shennanalu, but it definitely starts here. It goes on and on through his entire work. I love that scene because it's relatable in the sense of I don't know about you guys, but it's sometimes you're just trying to get with someone and so it's building in your head, and it's the imagination is so strong that you think it's going to be the greatest sex of your life. And then when they finally have the time together, they're disappointed because again the

oppression. It's like has been now as a result, that has been built up in their heads so much so they at first can't even get comfortable. Their heads are hitting together, they hear the music, which stops them, and even when they are kissing, it's like, oh, this is a little disappointing, and so that's when oh, look at this toe. Maybe we'll bring this into this and it's just again it's outrageous, but I think he was really getting at something at the core. It was very emotional.

I found dan just the power of the imagination of how when who particularly would sex when it's you're waiting and waiting, and finally it can be disappointed because it's, you know, always the fantasy is always stronger sometimes whereas if it had sex right away that maybe it would have been the best sex ever. But it goes down to that being forced to hurt. Yeah, him staring at that toe, and I appreciate that he seems to be so fascinated by

that toe. But then she's the one that starts shrimming it. Yeah. I love that he gets called away. The Minister of the Interior is on the phone for you, sir Yea, to improvise with what's around it, and I love that she clearly masturbated and got herself off. So when he comes back, she's I'm tired. I just want to go to bed.

Even that image of suddenly he's seeing her old and it's means it was just like his fear of God, I'm never gonna have this a little bit, We're gonna be We're gonna be old by the time we can be together. He's eating at something there. Just in terms of relationships, it's when you really want to be with someone, it's that fear that it's not gonna happen, or it won't happen under an ideal circumstance, and then before you know what, you're dead or you're at that's door. That was really a really

powerful shot. I really memorable. I felt that call from the Minister of Interior where you have just that. This is where I was talking about the cartoon voices, because feels very much these are just and I know this is strange to say, we're not coming from the actor's mouths whatsoever. They just feel like they are really overdubbed on here, and you've got this voice like you're entirely to blame. No child survived and I'm just like, what is

happening? And then we go to a black screen. We hear a gunshot and a thump, and then we see the minister and he's dead, but he's on the ceiling. He's not on the floor. Just that's a great image. Yeah, I'm wrestling with that one. It reminded me of Exorcist three, when I forget which character it wasn't suddenly crawling on the ceiling. The fact that whatever the hell this guy's job was, that he couldn't focus on it to the point because of because that he was so focused on epic

sex with this woman that he wasn't allowed to sleep with it. Now everything has just blown up and the world. I think he was getting at something that it's like if again, like with the Scorpion, if you take them away from their spontaneity, shit gets ferocious, right, and then this things are gonna blow up, and to the point where he doesn't even care. He's like, I don't give a shit about those kids. You even see that when he hits her mother, she's like pleased by it or she's like,

oh wow, this is she takes pleasure from it. I just took that as these warped reactions that we have. When you know, when if someone beats you down and beats you down and beats you down and then you see them get beat up, feels good and look, which is why she's like even like what the kids getting killed? She has a line about it where she's, yeah, this is just so great. It's just it fucks

people right up. He even mentions later on, when they're having these kind of thought discussions, I think he says, what joy and having killed our children? This is twenty nine, nineteen thirty, and as we've talked about a few years later, when we get into the universal horror cycle, there's all of that residue of World War One. You know, what a joy

it isn't killing our children? Sending these young kids to die in a trench out in the west of Eastern fronts that wasn't too far removed from people's minds at that point in the interwar before the Second World War kicks off in another ten years. Maybe that's what that comment is. It's just basically, we can't accept ourselves, you can't accept our nature. We repress it, and

then we just destroy all the good. It's if we till the buildings, the children ever, all of them talking to each other via their thoughts.

We've got that amazing shot of him with all the blood on his face and it looks like one of his eyes is really screwed up, and that's just a momentary thing before we go back to him looking the way that he did before, and that says right around the time where we've got the climax of the music going on, and then the conductor, like you said before, he just stops and he holds his head like it was going to burst open or something, and just wanders off, and he wanders down that same path

and wanders to where the couple is, and when the woman sees him, she's just like oh and just runs over to the conductor and starts French kissing this guy, making the man a little angry. But then he stands up, and he's a great comedy moment. He stands up and hits his head out a potted plant. So then he starts grabbing his head and wandering back.

And I thought he would go up and start conducting the music again, because it just feels like they're switching places with the whole thing of the hands on the head and walking blindly down this path. That's why I felt he was another character who clearly was also experiencing this oppression, who can't then do what he wants to do or needs to do. These headaches come and so

when she kisses him, it's a little like medicine. For now he's okay, but these headaches are going to probably come up again, and so it gets transferred over too, because he poses in the exact same way. He walks away with his hands on his head, and it's been now transferred over it to him. And then it gets even worse as he goes home and rips the pillow apart, throws the frigging the bishops out the window. I just like, again, it's just this destruction, and from one person to

the next, it's just the violence being transferred over and over again. And I can see the conductor's position and as he's another one who is not just oppressed by things, but he's also the manager of the culture. So I look at him and go he's been given position of authority, but at the same time, he still asked to play the music that they want, like he's got to follow the sport. There there's a script that he has so

bebe. At some point it just becomes I'm battling between my position and myself, and that's why my head is the way it is. That's why I had to go off, and I couldn't do this anymore. I was looking at conductor and classical music as being this representation of what high culture was supposed to be, but was expected as though, of course, if you're an educated person, if you're the lead person, of course you would love this

stuff because it's considered the pinnacle of European music. You've got him going back to that room, tearing up that pillow, and then and there's a I guess it's like a plow wars something on the floor. He's getting angry at that before he starts to tear up the pillow, and then he goes and after he's tearing up stuff, he decides that he's going to start throwing things out the window. He mentioned he throws the bishop out the window. He

throws that plow out the window. To get that very obvious miniature shot where he throws a giraffe out the window. Looks like a flaming Christmas tree. Yeah, that starts it all off. Yeah, the whole thing with the giraffe. I'm just like, Okay, that's totally Dolly right there. He was obsessed with giraffes. His script for The March Brothers was called Giraffes on Horseback Salad. There's the burning giraffe painting. Giraffes just show up in a

lot of his work. It's one of those no offense to giraffes that are listening to this, But giraffes are ridiculous looking animals, and I think he just really got off on just how crazy these things look. It's just almost like a surrealist animal. I think that's part of it. But I also read again this maybe masspiratory thing in match Dolly had erection issues, So I think maybe the long neck of the giraffe sitsider stand in for a very well

and outdirection. I saw that as a connection to the cow in a sense, because here's these people took over the land and built up all these chateaus, but now these poor animals can't even be in their own habitat that they got to live in this fucking chateau, and we don't give a shit about these animals. Throw these girafts out the window. I like that read as well. Yeah, I would have loved to have seen the producer of the day. The cow had to be filmed, guys, do we really need

this? How are we going to get this cow in the room on the bed, off the bed that must have been. I could just see them fighting, like, no, we must shoot this, and I'm glad they did because it's love it. I love that of all the images from this movie, the cow on the bed and the woman's sucking on the toe, those are like the two things that I remember seeing for years before I ever

saw the film. The woman sucking on the toe was on the front of that screenplay or book about Lodge to War that I saw way back in ninety one, even before the BFI book came out. Like I know you said you saw this in a movie theater or people laughing or were they just what the fuck? Or both. Everybody that was there was a film fan so if not a film fanatic, and it was people driving from or flying from all over the world to come to this nitrate film festival. We are there

for these movies. And even my friend Jeff, who isn't into movies that much, but he goes with me to this night trate Festival, which I really love him for doing that. He was just absolutely fine with that. He was just like, yep, he's there for it, and yeah, I know what the hell was that when we left the theater, which was nice. And plus they do that little speech before they show any movies to put it into context as well. Oh we didn't get the screen like they

did in nineteen thirty. I would love to see this in a movie theater. I actually regret they showed it recently here in Toronto at a movie theater. I fucking wish I had went. I didn't realize how any Obviously, any movie in a theater is going to be a much different, richer experience, but this particular, I feel like seeing this when people would be really valuable and so hopefully I'm sure it'll happen again. But they I was curious what it was like to see it with an audience. Yeah, it was

really good. Like I said, everybody was there for it, so it wasn't like some little old lady walked in from off the street and it's just what is this and no one's yelling scandal or shaquies or anything. There were no right wing French extremists there to try to burn down the theater. Film is really in three parts, if you think about it, is that what you think Mike I was saying. I've the assumption that this is told like

a scorpion's tale is a good way to read it. And some of the parts are smaller than the Obviously this party sequence is probably the longest sequence of the film. But then we get to that poison sack that we'll talk about in a second. Mean, yeah, I figure five, but I could see three. I saw a three scorpion, a couple and then the last like the saylo Jesus orgy. That's how I saw it. Yeah, I

saw it more and more as three. Yeah, we are right at the title card that talks about how the survivors are emerged in a returning to Paris, and there's a miniature of this castle up on the cliff. And if we get more of this title card and actually get to scroll now at this point and it talks about how one hundred and twenty days earlier, these four

godless scoundrels locked themselves in a castle to indulge in bestial orgies. We are right there in decd territory with this, and I love how the door opens and the first person to leave is fucking Jesus Christ himself, just this beatific, has that kind of far away look in his eyes, as if mess have really gotten his rocks off really well in that orgy he had a great time, which, oh my god, but I can't bring myself to see

the Passoweni. I love Pasomini, but it looks like really disturbing. I can't bring myself to say, but that's the same story, right, and I to take it from the same story. It's one of our favorite episodes, or as I like to call it, on our episode Children's Programming. We'll make sure to link that one. Listen. Apparently Roger Edberg died without ever he couldn't bring himself to watch it. He just thought it looked like I think he didn't think it was going to be good. But I think

he was afraid of it, that's all. I feel like. I'm like, I can't go there. I can't the clips I've seen him look, oh god, it's definitely afraid of it for a long time. And that I watched it and then it as I talked about in the episode, It reminds me of Francis Bacon painting, or there's another painter, Jerome Wicken, who does these really dark scenes, and I'm like, I don't mind going to museum to see those paintings, but I don't want them over my couch.

That's basically want to each it every so often. I don't. That's not everything, No, But the thing that's really funny about one hundred twenty Days is sodom I actually read a large portion of it, is that it's so over the top, so ridiculous in terms of the stories, that you can't help but to laugh at it. It's so ridiculous. Dasad's writing is

just over the top in terms of his description. Even though it's like horrific things, it's just done in such a way that it's such a burlesque that it just I don't think anyone could take it seriously but in the hands of pastility. And what he was trying to do is to take that idea and say, this is fashion. This is the core of what it is in here. I think what Bunwell is because that's why I asked about the three segments is to me, with the scorpions, you can say, okay,

that is about humanity or animal nature. This is about man and woman nature. And then this is about what happens when the aristocrats, that the bourgeois, go too far, when they become so nihilistic that nothing matters anymore, literally nothing matters. That it becomes they sub will be that it will be. This nihilism is really what I always use if Day sad by both and then also Pessolini, you're certainly onto something there, and he down to like

the last shot of the crucif things with the scalps. At first I was like, what the hell is that? Is that some arth? But it's that, and then I just that's that's when people in saying it is. I'm like, wow, women scalps on a crucifix. Jesus Christ literally so yeah, So Jesus comes out, three libertines follow him from out of this chet or castle, and then a survivor comes out, this poor girl who is just very worse for wear, so they have to take care of her.

And other than it being one of the three other libertines, it's Jesus that goes back into the castle quote unquote, takes care of her, comes out, he's missing his beard now, but he still has that same beatific look on his face. And then yeah, we cut to that cross and that cross, so you talked about how it's like women's scalps on there. I was also thinking of the hair we saw earlier with the masturbation sequence Jesus's

beard as well. I'm just like, okay, maybe that's up on this cross, but what an amazing way to end this movie with this real middle finger of Jesus being one of these libertines. I even took it one further and that maybe when Well was saying, Okay, it's one thing to be destroyed by a bunch of libertines, it's another thing to be destroyed or taken over the church, which Jeeus represented, that's the final absolute assault on the

individual for him being an atheist. Thank God, as he would say that is hopefully the worst thing is not so much that violence under you by man, but the violence by the church that's a level higher. It was still wrestling with what this was, why he suddenly went to this, But what you're boat sitting makes a lot of sense to me. And again just the audacity in a good way. Des Boon Well and Dally to do that. Even if someone did this now, it would be and I think you'd get

the same reaction. It's not worse, it's quite something. All right, So let's go ahead. We're gonna take a break and we'll be right back

after these brief messages. Build your collection of cinematic classics, now available for the first time in studying four K Ultra HD Academy Award winner Humphrey Bogart and the Multese Falcon Academy Award winner Paul Newman and cool Hand Luke and Iconic James Dean and Rebel without a Cause. Be sure to go to www dot WB one hundred that's WB one zero zero dot com and pick up the four K

Classic Movie Bundle today. All right, we're back, and we were talking about Lage Door and Bobby mentioned before how this is the opening salvo here from mister Boonewell. Of course we had to win Shenandalu, which had a lot of stuff, But I would say that's really more Dolly and Boonewal, whereas this one feels more I would say, like ninety percent Boonewell and ten percent Dolly. But what are your thoughts on that? I definitely see a lot

of the through line sing here. In terms of his later work, there is party scenes in those clue things such as Discrete Charmigel, even some of the other films. You could look at the whole thing with Jesus with the beard, without the beard. It's the milky way. You can see. There's different things in here that come up again and again. Foot stuff, It's all over the place. There's so much foot fetish stuff, like we talked about, like I was joking about Tarantino and his love of feet.

WoT well was there before and he did it in a much out of your weight at Tarantino did it for no reason other than that he likes But I actually think when well like feet two. So I'm not knocking it for it. It's just that it was more subtle to me to actually notice it in I had had to go back. I was watching it and go, okay,

there's that again. There's the shoes again. There's there's all these but me a lot of the early kind of proto social commentaries, he obviously taking apart the bourgeois, the church clergy, all the way up until his last felt you look at that obscure objective desire is all about people wrestling with sexuality, people wrestling with their attractions. How do they engage those This was made nineteen thirty. For the next forty seven years, the man basically was making

you want to talk about tour theory. It's in there in terms of thematics. One of the things I thought was interesting, Like I said, since I learned how to read over the course of COVID, went back over my last side, and there's a couple of things in here. You were talking about Gala in Dali, and he talks about here, and he says how basically when Gala came into his life, just everything is over, says our ideas clashed to such an extent we finally stopped collaborating on Lajdor. It was

complete metamorphosis. I'll he would talk about with Gala, he echoed or every word utterance, and you just got more and more tired of dealing with him. The thing that I like here is so Lajdor was actually made at a gift by account nobleman basically a member of the bourgeois, as a gift to his wife. And he would do this every year, where he would hire an artist to make something and typically for this some sculpture, paints, whatever.

So he started making these films and he was invited to this dinner where he met this guy and he was told, okay, here's our proposal. He said, you can make a twenty minute film. We'll have complete freedom to do whatever you want, only one condition. Stravinsky has to write the music for it. Sorry, I replied, you can imagine me collaborating with someone who's always falling on his knees and beating his breast. That's what I

was saying about Stravinsky. His reaction totally unexpected. He goes, you're right, you and Stravinsky would never get along. Choose your composer, make the film you want, we'll get something else for Igor. So basically he was left to go do whatever he wants. Now, I think, to a certain extent, maybe the conductor character is also boun well, poking at Stravinsky

as well. That's interesting that you say that, right, because when I was talking way back at the beginning of this episode, when I read about lajd War causing a riot, the other piece of art that I thought of was the Right of Spring. How that also caused a riot. So that's funny that they almost worked together at least two very controversial figures. Yeah, and Stravinsky in that period was like the punk. He was like the rock

star. He was this guy who was taking classical music in a direction at the people who thought, oh you would changed to that, He's just taking it in directions. I mean, go listen to the Right of Spring, which was actually a ballet as well. One of my favorites is the Firebirds, amazing piece of modern classical music. So it's interesting to me, like, how, like I said, Struvinsky is mixed up in this and I

go, maybe he's making fun up Servinsky in subway with the conductor. The other thing here, it says in its final version, the film ran about an hour bunch longer than shen Andalou. Dolly gave me several ideas. One of them they found its way into the film was a man with a rock on his head walking through a public garden. He pauses that a statue that also has a rock on its head. Oh yes, I forgot about that.

Looks like in America, he told me. Is was Dolly's idea of a compliment simply, undoubtedly from a technical point of view, that it was more put together. Keith later says his intentions in writing the screenplay were to expose the shameful machinations of contemporary society for me, and the film was about passion, an irresistible force to thrust two people together at about the impossibility of

ever becoming one. Oh yeah. After they made the film, it said, apparently the church threatnecks communicate him, this was the aristocrat, and gave them money. His mother had to go to Rome to negotiate. Oh like sen. Lajador opened at Studio twenty eight, where a play to packed houses for six days, and then the right wing press, however, attacked the theater in full battle dress, lacerating painting, surrealist exhibit in the foyer,

smashing chairs, the annuals of Paris history. The episode was known as the Lajador scandal. A week later, police Chief Chef closed the theater. The film was centered who remained so for fifty years. So this book was written and released in nineteen eighty two or three. It was only seen in private screenings and in cinema techs, and then eventually opened in New York in nineteen

eighty and in Paris in nineteen eighty one. He said that he would go back and see this nobleman from time to time, and everas in Paris, he said he never blamed me for any of the trouble of the film. In fact, he was actually delighted. Three lists received, three lists received, and so enthusiastically. I remember one of the parties in nineteen thirty three where all the artists were invited, were told to do whatever they wanted.

Fearing trouble, Dolly and another friend declined the invitation. So he was just saying that I just love the fact that the guy made for it. Was like could have got excommunicating from the church and then really wasn't like, yeah, it's fine, like you pissed off about that happened, Hey, it happens. Documentary. I saw you mentioning that people didn't see this for forty

fifty years that they showed on the documentary. Maybe you guys saw it, but some of the people worked on it, they brought damn to see it, and it was so fascinating to see them watching it after a fifty years for the first time, because they literally cut from the movie to them just watching it, which must have been like surreal in a sense. To now like they probably never thought they'd ever see it again, and how they commented

on to them how well it still stood up. So it's an interesting documentary that you could find on YouTube. And I don't know it when Well actually ever saw the film again, because he said in the book, which for those who don't know, the book was basically it was written by Jean Claukerrier his collaborator, but he didn't take credit. He basically just interviewed Well and

then wrote it. But it's said in there in that section unlashed or that basically he he has memories of it, he members of making it, but he I haven't seen it since the premiere and so and this book came out right around the time he died. So there's part of me to think of me being never saw it again after it came up and then was banned. One of the things that I think it's funny when we talk about also again influence I'm going well is in Diary of the Chambermain which he made in sixty

three sixty four. I believe that the final scene because this takes place in the twenties, right around the time in twenties and thirties right around the time Flash Door is the final scene or the fascist marching, and he's got this guy who's screaming Viva Ship, Viva Ship over and over again, which is the name of the police commander who ultimately banned Flage Door. So to me, I think that's been well like having fun and giving the finger to the

suit who censured in most of many years ago. Always there's a great film. Also, I just saw it and loved it. That's a film you got to go back again it again because it's there's so much going on. It's a tough watch also. But I was also thinking about beyond influence of you can trace back to this film. Everything that kind of comes after for him is the influence of this film onto other pieces of film that we may

know. And the first one that kind of stuck out to me is the fingers and the fingers sucking scene feels like John Water's toe sucking scene in Pink Flamingos. Oh God, yeah, I haven't seen that yet, but I could now. I haven't seen that one. Oh you are in for a treat, my friend. He's another guy I don't know very well, but it just reminds you of that same kind of something that's not typically sexual being sexualized in that way. The other thing that I was thinking of is that

scene with the kitchen the fire. It's almost beat for beat, the same as in Brazil where he goes to have lunch with his mother and that the boom the bomb goes off in the kitchen. Doors fly open with the big blast of fire, and then it's like, oh, everything's fine, we'll clean that up. So to me, it almost feels exactly the same staging, like it could even be shot or shot against each other, because the

framing really reminded me of that last of fire out the kitchen. I feel like we are probably missing so much of the context of this movie from it being what ninety three years old. How I talked about the whole majorcan thing Terry Jones, We did a whole thing Canterbury Tales, and he said, Canterbury Tales are fucking hilarious. The problem is most of us don't know what the hell the references are too, so it's not funny to us. They thought they were a spree for us being able to get as much as we

can, and then also having the historical thing. When I think about movies like this when we talk about historical references or the jokes or whatever. It's almost like back in the day we were talking about watching the version Vishinna and the Loo on MTV. One of the things I always like, because I was a fucking was pop up video over on beach one. I always thought it was interesting put the little things in a point at various things, but

annotated look at things. It almost feels like he would need something like that for this. The only connection between these two was to putt Well edited a version of this film when he worked at almap Is. I was thinking about

the Triumph with Will. I own a copy of Triumph of Will, that is copy that was fundraising for the Holocausts in the US, and there is a historian commentary track, and there's also sub there's like a subtitle I think that can come up that will point to you as to who certain people are.

Because if you're not that hip to understanding who all of these guys in the fucking Third Reich are and what the positions were and why they fucking matter, all you know is you're like, Hey, there's Hitler, and there's Curing, and there's sucking the Hibler. Yeah, like you might know, like the top five, and so him going Okay, this guy is this is why he and this is when he's talking about this, he's talking about this history. So there's all of these things that just an average person watching

it just may not yet and so maybe hope would be good. Sadly, like I said, I watched this on YouTube and I know that I used to have a version that I think Keno put out maybe twenty years ago on DVD, and to be honest, the YouTube version didn't look much better than the Keno version. Is I would love to see them take that copy. I'm willing to bet maybe that's almost copy or something that you saw at the Nitratee Festival. And to have someone really transfer this and cleaned it up.

I know there's no money in it, because there isn't, but it would be great if somebody could do a really nice version, really cleaned it up, beautiful scan and to have someone do that context to really give us an understanding a little bit more in it. At the same time, do you think that bun Well a lot of times was very much against explaining his own work. He hated that. He was like, don't ask me what it's about. You figure it out. It's the eye of the duck, the

not to put anybody down. But the commentary track for this off of that keynote disc, it only runs approximately twenty six minutes, so it's not the first twenty six minutes either. He just dips in and out throughout this whole thing, and you're just like, this movie's only sixty seven minutes long. He does a good job with what he says, but it's just no, I want talk the whole time. Like I feel like I would get fired if I did a commentary track for an hour long movie and only handed in

twenty six minutes. That just doesn't work. Give me the stuff that we've talked about. Give me you his future stuff, how this influenced things later. Give me more of that relationship with Dali and Gala. Give me more of this is Max Stearnston. This is this person and this is this person and how they all relate. We get a little bit of that story of Is, but we don't really even get the whole thing of the reaction to it. As I was watching it again yesterday and listening to the commentary,

I'm like, is he going to talk about the riots. Is he going to talk about the reception of this film? It never does, just kind of ends go, Okay, there's a place not only just for a film whole story, and but also for the story and art movements and surrealism, because one of the things that you read about when you talk about this film is the shift for surrealism when from the internal to the extra, and there

was a lot of debate on that. There was a lot of splintering in the late twenties and into the thirties where there was a lot of people who, I think this is give you a similar movement that I know a decent amount about for my own research, is like punk rock, where there were those who go, now, punk is your own thing, it's for you. Fuck the establishment, fuck the order, fuck everything cares about that. We're not engaging, that this is just about me and my own thing.

And then there were those that go, no, it's about this, and

then being political, it's about this to fix that out there. So there were these splinterings within surrealism where there were those who were like, no, we need to maintain what the purity of the surreal surrealist movement was, and then there were those that say, no, we need it because we're seeing the rise of fascists, we're seeing authoritarianism, we're seeing all of these things, and that those comments on the rich and the powerful in the church and

all of these things can be the way to wake people up so that we don't go down these horrible paths, which eventually they did, which eventually led to If you read My Last Sight, Well talks about the death of Lorca, and Lorca it was Lrcadali and when Weld who were all in school together and Lorca was killed by the fascist Spain and Francokine. So that loss for him was so profound. Don't think it plays into his work so much, but it definitely plays into his life, and that he lost this great trend

of his who was amazing quot an artist. And there's a lot of conjecture as to why he was killed. Was he killed just because he was an artist and a poet. Was he killed because he was gay? Was some combination? But two that's another aspect of when I read Glenwell's book, that I go for a guy who was so evolved and fuck you to the system.

He still couldn't accept that Laura was gay. It bothered him. So there was all of this and there too, so it interesting, Like I say, I look at that movement and say, I don't think it kept it Obviously didn't keep Europe from becoming fascist takeover, but I think he definitely poked the air a bit and got some people to think and had an influence.

He said something in this documentary I saw which was interesting was that he didn't care that he had artistic success, Like he wanted these his worked and Daly and these people to change the world, and so he saw them he saw it as a failure. He could care less that people liked the movies, which again is really should stay where we live in a world where people mostly put myself in that or care about six succeeding in their own lives.

And here's a guy who had this success, but it's like he didn't kiddy, wasn't enoughs not, didn't have the value that he wanted, which was to change the world with these films. I was pretty impressed by, pretty admirable. I felt, all right, let's go ahead and take a break and we'll play preview for next week's show. In my lifetime, I have

recorded some sixty cases demonstrating the singular gift of my friend Sherlock Holmes. But there were other adventures which, for reasons of discretion I have decided to withhold from the public until this much data date. They involve matters of a dedicate sunt sometimes scandalous nature, as will shortly become a film. Why did you bring her here? I found this inner end two hundred twenty one beat Bake Streets. One of you is Sherlock const whose We've never had a case like

this. We don't know who the woman is, we don't know what the problem is. Don't you find that challenging? Quine as you like to put it in your chronicles, The game is a foot. There's more to this case than meets the eye. Has come to my attention that you are interested in the whereabouts to a certain engineer. When I said drop this case, it's not merely a suggestion, Kiowe from Rocknation, I swear to you I

saw it as clear as any blots are you clients? That's right. We'll be back next week when they look at the private life of Sherlock Holmes, which kicks off a whole month of discussions all about Sherlock Holmes's career vas seventies Incarnations of the Master Sleuth till then I want to thank my co host Robin Robert. So, Rob, what is the latest with you, sir? I'm just finishing up my third degree in three years, Masters and nonprofit administration

should be done in August. After that, I don't know, but it is my understanding that beyond this episode you may be hearing me speak again about movies on the show. And I always love coming on and hanging out with you. Of course, my kid whomever whoever you have as a guest co host, which is great. So it's I think is the first time I've done on with Robert, so it was a lot of fun. And remembert how about yourself. I have my YouTube channel which keeps me busy on my

exploration of films. So if people want to check out the podcast I suppose or vodcast I suppose you call it if it's a video, it's www dot YouTube dot com slash Robert Bellissimo at the Movies and I'm also on Twitter at rb at the Movies, a little different and Instagram and Facebook is the same

as the YouTube channel at Robert Bellissimo at the movies. So I do about six episodes a month with guests where we just do deep dive explorations similar to Mike and just exploring storytelling on film in general is the focus of the podcast, as well as interviews with people who work in film and television and theater.

Yeah. So I'm also an actor and an acting teacher, and I teach virtually still even in the what post pandemic world, So if you're looking for a class, you could go to my website our Bellissimo dot CAA. So this has been a treat, This has been great. Thanks so much Mike for having me on, and Mike Rob it was nice to meet you. I learned a lot and got to explore such a fantastic filmmaker. So

thanks for having me, Thank you, and thanks everybody for listening. You want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows I work on. They're all available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our patriarch community. If you want to join the community, is it Patreon dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world. M M. Y