MAKING LIGHT OF IT

As is fairly familiar knowledge by now, John Cassavetes first work, Shadows, actually exists in two versions, the first having undergone significant revisions after various private screenings left a desire for further change.  Upon the release of the second version, a bit of controversy was created when those smitten with the first version, exemplified by Jonas Mekas, did not take kindly to the new incarnation.  Eventually the first version fell out of circulation, and to most, out of existence altogether, until many years later, after a prolonged search, the film scholar Ray Carney was able to track down a print.  The controversy was re-ignited when the Cassavetes estate, including Gena Rowlands, objected to the release of the first version, and interesting questions soon arose as to who could rightly lay claim to it. 

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“….There remains a serious problem, of which you already know.  I refer to the fact that a number of people—including Jonas Mekas and Gideon Bachmann—feel that the second version, as shown by us, is totally inferior and a ‘commercial compromise.’  I have spent hours with them, attempting to convince them that they are wrong.  Jonas intended to make a public attack on the film at our showing, but I convinced him to first write you, since he also plans to write in SIGHT AND SOUND and elsewhere about the new version.

    There now does exist a controversy in New York regarding the film, and a confusion as to what is the ‘proper’ version.  I have discussed this with Cassel and assume he has told you about it.  I cannot discuss it in detail in a letter, except to say that you must have a very clear-cut stand on the issue, as shown, for example, in your decision to send this new version to the various festivals and to have this be the version that will be distributed.

    You will further confuse the issue, were you to decide to permit the earlier version to be show.  The result will be that you will compete with yourself and create confusion in people’s mind, so that they will think there are two SHADOWS in existence.

    For example, it is now being stated by certain people that Kingsley financed the new version; that it was done in accord with his wishes, and that thus it constitutes a commercial ‘betrayal.’  You and I know that Kinsley stepped out of the deal at a very stage; and that, in fact, the changes are due to your desire to strengthen the film, not to commercially compromise it.

    Nevertheless, you will have to take a very strong stand, it seems to me, in favor of the new version being ‘the’ film.  I realize that this is none of my business; I am simply giving you my opinion; in fact, I do not wish to become involved in this matter and prefer my name be kept out of it completely especially since the decision rests entirely with you.  By my opinion stands…..”

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"It may seem to some that enough has already been said about John Cassavetes’ Shadows.  After seeing it again last Tuesday at the Film Center, in its original version, and after comparing the exultation of this audience with the perplexity at Cinema 16, I definitely feel that the real case of Shadows is only just beginning.

    I have no further doubt that wheras the second version of Shadows is just another Hollywood film—however inspired, at moments—the first version is the most frontier-breaking American feature film in at least a decade.  Rightly understood and properly presented, it could influence and change the tone, subject matter, and style of the ntire independent American cinema.  And it is already beginning to do so.

    The crowds of people that were pressing to get into the Film Center (Pull My Daisy was screened on the same program) illustrated only too well the shortsightedness of the New York film distributors who blindly stick to their old hats.  Shadows is still without a distributor.  Distributors seem to have no imagination, no courage, no vision, no eyes for the new.

    Again, I stress that I am talking about the first version of Shadows only.  For I want to be certain not to be misunderstood.  I have been put into a situation, one which a film critic can get into only once in a lifetime (I hope).  I have been praising and supporting Shadows from the very beginning (see Cassavetes’ letter, Village Voice, December 16, 1959; Ben Carruthers’ letter, December 30, 1959), writing about it, pulling everybody into it, making enemies because of it (including the director of the film himself)—and here I am, ridiculously betrayed by an ‘improved’ version of that film, with the same title but different footage, different cutting, story, attitude, character, style, everything: a bad commercial film, with everything that I was praising completely destroyed.  So everybody says: What was he raving about?  Is he blind or something?  Therefore I repeat and repeat: It is the first version I was and I am still talking about.  (Here is the stay-away identification marker: the second version begins with a rock-and-roll session.)

    I have no space for a detailed analysis and comparison of the two versions.  It is enough to say that the difference is radical.  The first Shadows could be considered as standing at the opposite pole from Citizen Kane; it makes as strong an attempt at catching (and retaining) life as Citizen Kane was making an attempt at destroying life and creating art.  Which of the two aims is more important, I do not know.  Both are equally difficult to achieve.  In any case, Shadows breaks with the official staged cinema, with made-up faces, with written scripts, with plot continuities.  Even its inexperience in editing, sound, and camera work becomes a part of its style, the roughness that only life (and Alfred Leslie’s painting) have.  It doesn’t prove anything, it doesn’t even want to say anything, but really it tells more than ten or one hundred and ten other recent American films.  The tone and rhythms of a new America are caught in Shadows for the very first time.  (Pull My Daisy does it too, perhaps better, but it came out one year after Shadows.)  Shadows has caught more life than Cassavetes himself realizes.  Perhaps now he is too close to his work, but I am confident he will change his mind.  And the sooner the second version is taken out of circulation, the better.  Meanwhile, the bastardized version is being sent to festivals and being pushed officially, while the true film, the first Shadows, is being treated as a stepchild.  It is enough to make one sick and shut up."

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“Despite the fact that Jonas Mekas promised me not to write anything about the film until after having spoken to you, you will be by the enclosed that he rushed into print with his first attack on the film.

    By referring to a ‘commercialized version,’ ‘in no way to be confused with the original’ which was shown at Cinema 16, and then urging people to see the presumably ‘un-commercialized’ version elsewhere, he has compounded the confusion which I warned you would exist if two versions of what is only one film continue to circulate.

    It is clearer now that the ‘other version’ should never have been publicized and certainly should not continue to circulate.

    Retroactively, he cheapens our showing and your artistic integrity.  While as a critic he has a perfect right to his opinon, we are both harmed by this.

    For this reason, I have already sent a strong letter to Village Voice and urge you to immediately send them a strong statement of your own, upholding the version shown as ‘the film’.  Perhaps it would be good to even wire them, asking them to be sure to print your statement…”

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Excerpt from essay by Ray Carney detailing his search for the long-lost first version (a the complete essay can be found here, with a considerable amount of additional background information and further exposition on a whole host of issues involving Cassavetes):

“…One could ask whether the discovery proves Jonas Mekas right; but that’s the wrong question. It doesn’t really matter. The two versions of Shadows are sufficiently different from each other, with different scenes, settings, and emphases, that they deserve to be thought of as different films. Each stands on its own as an independent work of art.

    The real value of the first version is that it gives us an opportunity to go behind the scenes into the workshop of the artist. Art historians X-ray Rembrandt’s work to glimpse his changing intentions. Critics study the differences between the quarto and folio versions of Shakespeare’s plays. There is almost never an equivalent to these things in film. That is the value of the first version of Shadows. It allows us to eavesdrop on Cassavetes’ creative process–to, as it were, stand behind him as he films and edits his first feature….”

(all stills from the second version of 'Shadows')

Having recently (several weeks ago) been involved in a very unpleasant experience involving a sort of impromptu screening I put on of several works (Anger, Brakhage, etc., for accessibilities sake projected on video rather than film, for free of course) in a public area (i.e. library) in hopes of gauging the possibility of putting on a more official screening (ON FILM), and having just re-read Jonas Mekas’ enthralling Movie Journal..., I thought I would post one of his columns that relates in part to said incident (the lack of specific detail is intentional, but if anyone were perhaps aware of the cultural climate I currently reside in further light would be shed):

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    What is this 'pornography,' 'obscenity,' 'blue movie' business?

    The human body, unclad and naked, has been often and uninhibitedly (or, truer--aesthetically) portrayed in painting and sculpture.  It disappears, sometimes, for a generation or two, and reappears again.  It disappeared, partially, with the coming of Cubism, during the period of abstract explorations; now it's coming back.  Each time it comes back, it comes as a new discovery, as if the artist had never seen a naked body in his life.  He doesn't know how to deal with it aesthetically; subject matter takes over form.  Only slowly the balance is regained, the subject mastered, the ways of dealing with it aesthetically are found.

    Cinema is entering this naked stage for the first time.  The film artist did not know how to deal with the naked body so he stayed away from it.  Not that he didn't really know how to deal with it: There was, apparently, no real urgency for it.  Cinema had its hands full with the exploration of other aspects and areas of reality.  Cinema was looked at as basically naturalistic art--and who walks streets naked?  So he concentrated all his lights, all his shadows, lenses, and ingenuity on the only naturalistically possible open area: the face, with an occasional ankle, or a neck line, or --daringly!-- a leg.

    The renaissance of the poetic cinema during the last few years broke down the barricades of naturalism.  The avant-garde artist, the new poet mastered new techniques and approaches which now enable him to put on film poetically and filmically some of the 'untouchable' reality, including the body.  Against the screams of the majority of the public, the artist proceeds to reveal to that public (and to himself) the beauty of the world that surrounds us.  We can safely say now that the first and perhaps most important ground work in this area--in the aesthetic use of human body in cinema--has been laid down.  It can be seen in the work of Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Ron Rice, Gregory Markopoulos, Robert Nelson, Jack Smith, Bill Vehr, Naomi Levine, Barbara Rubin (and, some years earlier, in the work of Willard Mass).  In some of the cases it is being used decoratively, in others dramatically, in still others phenomenalistically. 

    Newspapers and magazines, for their own perverted reasons, have often accused the new cinema of being too preoccupied with 'pornography' --by which they mean the human body.  Nakedness in most cases is identified with pornography.  The poetry escapes them.  The beauty escapes them.  Venus herself, in cinema, should be clad, they tell us.  A culture of penis without Venus.

    The public (and the film-maker) should not let themselves be distracted and confused by an irresponsible press.  There is a tradition of human body in art, and our work continues that tradition, although with natural and unaccustomed changes called for by the implicit qualities of the film medium.  Cinema is (or will be) revealing different aspects of the body from those sculpture or painting reveal.  It is true that cinema doesn't yet know all of the aesthetic possibilities of this new subject, in terms of the medium--but the subject is there.  As with every newly discovered subject, there is much empty and excited running around--but that doesn't change the historical importance of what's happening, of what's going to happen.  It's part of the larger revolution that is taking place in us.

    These artists are working with no real precedent--there are no real masters to learn from in their own art, as far as the naked body goes--they are the first masters.  Many mistakes are being committed and all for the good.  Let the gentlemen and ladies scream: It will do them some good, they have to scream out their own ugliness.  Time will pass, like this summer is passing, and they will call us 'classics,' and our children will be amazed and wonder what all that noise was all about. 

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After again having breezed through the compilation, its hard to imagine such confrontational (at times) and inspiring columns appearing in what was at the time a very influential publication.  I suppose for many this could serve as some sort of very distant relative of the blog, but I imagine you would be very hard-pressed to find one written with the mastery, poetry, insight and vitality contained on these pages.

I happened to find myself in a conversation earlier this morning in which the words 'minor' and 'amateur' were both used as a form of negative criticism of a film.  These two words are employed time and again to discredit and demean, but they need not be used for such means, rather they can be used as a source of both growth and encouragement. Why not, little by little, try to untwist the gnarled mess created by those who have misguidedly wielded these words...           

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Main Entry: am·a·teur 

Pronunciation: \ˈa-mə-(ˌ)tər, -ˌtu̇r, -ˌtyu̇r, -ˌchu̇r, -chər\

Function: noun

Etymology: French, from Latin amator lover, from amare to love

Date: 1784

This will be the first in a series of informal "profiles" on film artists, gathering various articles and bits of information together that hopefully may act as some sort of resource for interested parties.  Naturally I had thought about starting with Brakhage, but in truth there isn't much sense in doing so considering Camper's invaluable Brakhage page (I recently gathered updated addresses for all the dead or misdirected links on that page, if anyone is interested I can send them).  In light of that I have decided to begin with the inimitable Jonas Mekas, whose influence and impact on the arts simply cannot be understated....

GENERAL INTRODUCTION:  

Biography of Jonas Mekas

Senses of Cinema Profile

Complied Filmography/Videography

Jonas Mekas Website

 WRITINGS BY/ON MEKAS:

End of the Year Letter to Friends

Jonas Mekas 

Jonas Mekas: Just Like a Shadow 

Jonas Mekas: To Petrarca (Zagzig) 

Mekas in Eyes Upside Down (P. Adams Sitney)

Mekas' Poetry

Mekas' Brakhage Reminiscence

FOOT FETISH: Amy Taubin on Jonas Mekas

Movie Journal-The Rise of the New American Cinema, 1959-1971

Film Culture Reader

MEKAS ON FILM/VIDEO:

 

Canyon Cinema

Film-makers' Coop

Lightcone

LUX

Walden-Diaries, Notes and Sketches

Collection of 40

365 Series

Mekas on UbuWeb

INTERVIEWS WITH MEKAS:

 ALAINFINKIELKRAUTROCK Interview

Klaus Wyborny Interview

Luca 2008 Interview

Rouge Interview

Mekas speaking at Whitney Museum

Screening Room with Jonas Mekas

Senses of Cinema Interview

3am Interview

Time Out New York Interview

(If anyone has additional links, please let me know and I will be grateful to add them)