'THE
CABINET OF DR CALIGARI' (WITH LIVE SOUNDTRACK)
Fabrica,
Brighton, Thurs 10th Sept
This
expressionist classic from 1920 is always good to catch again, but
was given a new lease of life by improvising troupe Partial
Facsimile. With a demonstration they wouldn't be pulling out any
stops, they started proceedings by processing onto the stage dressed
as characters from the film. Fabrica's origins as a church came into
its own, the vocalist even performing silhouetted in the pulpit.
They
had the good sense to set a mood rather than try to dominate the
film; employing Godspeed-like 'spectral tremolo' guitar, with low
double bass that seemed to counterpoint rather than underline it,
above a refreshingly sparse use of electronics and effects. But
perhaps most memorable was the the vocalist's contribution,
quaveringly coaxing uncanny sounds from his mouth. Since it became
possible to electronically treat the voice, every supernatural voice
in every Hollywood horror film has been sent super-low. While,
happily, the cliché was countered here as all the sounds here came
from the tongue rather than the throat. These slid in and out of
forming words, sometimes reciting the film's captions sometimes
merely babbling, always sounding like broken letters dribbling from
thin lips.
The
very first line of the film - “spirits surround us on every side”
- seemed to set the tone. I was reminded of the way new technologies
of the time such as radio waves increased belief
in spirits, seemingly proving the existence of unseen forces. After a
while I even came to conceive the players were mediumistically
calling the film into being through their performance. (I am given to
flights of fancy like that.)
Perhaps
the test of a live soundtrack is that it leads you to see a film in a
new way. I had previously tended to see the somnambulist Cesare as
the shadow self of hero Francis. He happily tells his pal Alan they
shouldn't fight over the affections of heroine Jane, yet later that
night Alan is murdered by Cesare. Cesare then goes to stab Jane under
Caligari's orders, but on raising the knife hesitates and abducts her
instead.
This
time, and perhaps through the vocalist being dressed as Caligari, I
came to see the film as being about the title character. Cesare's
first victim, after all, is the clerk – who only Caligari has any
beef with. As Caligari finds the book by - bear with me here - the
historical Caligari he is himself possessed by it, just as he comes
to control Cesare. The key scene becomes where, after reading it, he
sees “You must become Caligari” written across the sides of
buildings. (This became the film's tag line on release.) The
overpowering force of the past, its ability to inscribe itself upon
the present until it can rewrite itself, is of course a common Gothic
theme.
But
perhaps my favourite reading of the film is undimmed. It is of course
most famous for its expressionist style, the crazy angular sets and
so on. Perhaps we have become too familiar with these, and what's
often overlooked is the way this style persists. It's never framed or
contextualised. Caligari's arrival doesn't visually 'corrupt' the
once-innocent town in the manner of 'Nosferatu',
it looks that way before he gets there. It exists even in the (often
argued-over) framing sequence, which supposedly makes sense of the
whole thing. We're subliminally aware there are no exterior shots,
that this style is all-pervasive and inescapable.
And
it's this setting which determines everything. Like Romanticism, the
urban environment is alienating, it drives us all into somnambulists
wandering its streets. Unlike Romanticism there's no escape from
this, it's all dream and no waking, all Oz and no Kansas. The
establishing shot of the town, covering a whole hill, rising to an
apex, are similar to many of the images of the Tower of Babel.
(Compare it with Breugel the Elder's version below.)
And
underlying this is how... well, filmic the film
is. It is often called 'theatrical', and true its sets are very often
theatre flats. Most bizarrely, it has a redundant division into
'Acts' which recalls the guy with the flag walking in front of the
motor vehicle. But our rush to the term 'theatrical' most likely
comes from our cultural assumptions that film is a more 'realist'
medium, and anything not conforming to that narrow view is reassigned
to the theatrical. (The popular conception of Expressionism is that
it was merely a visual art movement.) Many of the shots are extremely
short, for example the classic image of Cesare with Jane on the
rooftop lasts only a few seconds. The classic scene of him awakening,
slowly opening his eyes, is only possible through close-up. The urban
environment was a common theme of modern art in this period. And its
this association of the medium of film with the equally modern urban
environment which cements it. An skewed environment for a world bent
out of shape.
Partial Facsimile promise “we will re-appear in the Spring/Summer of 2016 with an
hour-long sonic-visual concept performance”.
CUZ
FEATURING MIKE WATT
Sticky
Mike's Frog Bar, Brighton, Sat 12th Sept
Legendary
ex-Minutemen bassist Mike Watt, you are allowed to play up his name
like that – after all it's what they did for the poster. Last time the man played our humble town, with the Missingmen,
he'd brought with him a punk rock opera about the paintings of
Hieronymous Bosch. These assuming his return would naturally deal
with Breugel the Elder may have to wait a while longer. For instead
he's playing in a trio with Sam Dook of the Go! Team. (Who, despite
being a Brighton band, I know not of.)
This
is one of those reviews that tries to hit a moving target. The set's
wide-ranging nature often seemed to be vocal-led, in that very often
different vocal styles (or even methods) determined the differing
nature of numbers. There'd be for example an incantatory folk-style
vocal, a Slint-style narrative-to-musical-soundtrack vocal, a
recorded vocal (which didn't sound sampled but like a whole thing
committed to tape) and a beat poetry vocal by Watt. (Described by him
afterwards as “my Walt Whitman shit”.)
And
when they're good, they can be very good. But unfortunately quality
seemd as wide-ranging as style. Nothing fails exactly, but not
everything is all that memorable either. The set proceeds in the
manner of mud slung at a wall, with the inevitable mixture of
sticking and not-sticking. Had I been listening at home, I would have
pressed fast-forward more than a few times.
Perhaps
the problem was that there didn't seem to be any one colour of mud
sticking better than the others, not the muscular boogie rock
workouts or the more reflective folky stuff. And the lack of any
distinct identity was compounded by the 'odd couple' performers –
Watt the outgoing and avuncular American, Dook the reserved
Englishman hidden behind a combination of cap, beard and thick
glasses. Bands these days can sound like an i-Pod on shuffle, like
they're just regurgiating back music they've heard without character
of their own. This sounded more nascent, like an early rehearsal
somehow promoted to gig status. It was different. But it was too
different to even be itself.
Not
from Sussex but Kent...
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