Prophecy too?

*

…The lines you refer to probably start more like lines on an instrument, say a zither, and then proceed to those structural supports of a Big Wheel, as the shadow side is gradually revealed. Good film that. Well worth a second look, although, Holly in the final analysis fails utterly. He destroys the Shadow and the girl walks off without him… Poor, poor Holly…

Big Wheels

*

… ‘I didn’t see his face. He was just ordinary. He might have been anybody.’ Did you get to see the film yet? It is even better than I remembered, particularly when viewed from a certain angle… ‘Harry never grew up. The world grew up around him that’s all – and buried him.’

Riddles and Runes

*

 … Pity you have had no time for the film, although I feared that might be the case. There appear to be a number of Dashwood-like Golden Balls on the roofs of many of the buildings of the Josefplatz, and something is missing from over the doorway of ‘Harry’s Gaff’… Weirdly, the ‘timeline’ in the film is authentic, by which I mean that it was shot in 1948 and the events in the film purportedly take place in that same year. I shall bring a copy along with me, when we head north, or as Jaw-Dark would have it to ‘The North!’ Good book, that…

Lunatic Fringe

*

… There is no reason to suspect that the film is anything other than what it purports to be in a traditional, nay almost classic sense, save for the cinematography… They seem to have sculpted friezes around the ‘Golden Globes’ don’t they? The abundant use of the ‘Dutch Angle’ may be indicative of more than the lead character’s disorientation in an alien, war-torn environment. More even than the apparent mis-reading of his old friend’s motives for friendship… They could symbolise the light of reason, or simply the sun. They could even be ‘alchemical’. All of which is intriguing to say the very least. If post-war Vienna represents the fractured modern psyche, then Holly is a man lost and in search of his shadow. All this, in the film, is intricately bound up with the ‘feminine perspective’. Any ideas on the identity of the caryatids gathering around ‘Harry’s doorway’? They were much later additions, apparently, and utterly preposterous! Our cinematographer is careful never to shoot them ‘face on’ bless him, a true artist in every sense of the word…

Shadow-Play

*

*

Well, it may be a palace but it is still only a ‘semi, which sort of also lends new meaning to the term, ‘Gated Institution’. ‘Gates’ being how the Caryatids are now described, and it is not your usual film noir location either, although the front rooms were once let as apartments. It is so spacious that in the film Holly has to run everywhere so as not to call attention to the fact. Sure enough, the character of Anna is given most of the pivotal lines of the film. When asked if she loved Harry she says, ‘How can you know something like that afterwards? All I know is that I want to be dead too.’ As improvements to the facade ‘Our Ladies’ were introduced to better fit the other three sides of the square. They may have tried to outdo what was already there as a statement of defiance. The missing Golden Globe would have been removed to preserve the view out of one of the windows. When Holly stops by at a bad time, Anna says, ‘I’ve been frightened, I’ve been alone, I’ve been without friends and money but I’ve never know anything like this.’ Presumably, the trace of Harry’s memory. When Holly discovers the extent of Harry’s racketeering Anna says, ‘Stop making him in your image. Harry was real. He wasn’t just your friend and my lover. He was Harry.’

Old Moore’s

*

…No mention of the Moon in the film, unfortunately, although all the night time locations were doused with water so that they would shine and glisten and throw shadows onto the screen… ‘He’s already in Hell,’ says the Porter and points to the sky, ‘or Heaven,’ he shrugs, and indicates the earth. It would be easy to regard this as merely a piece of black humour were it not mirrored later in the film by something Anna says to Major Calloway when he is ‘needling’ her for information about Harry and his gang, ‘What can I tell you but – that you have it all upside down’. Surely, it would have been much more natural to say, ‘wrong’? The Austrian Porter knows only a, ‘little English’ so his mistake is, perhaps, understandable. Anna, at this point in the screenplay, still knows nothing of Harry’s serious crimes so her statement is entirely understandable and yet, from the psychological perspective, what they say is true. In the integrated psyche the ‘I’ overcomes the ‘over I’, and elevates the shadow from the depths of the subconcious…

Heaven ‘n’ Earth

*

In the film, the military policeman, Major Calloway, represents, the’Uber ich’ or ‘Over I’.  Calloway refers to the Second World War as ‘Business’. His name may be a contraction of ‘callous way’. When Holly declares that he wants to get to the bottom of things, Calloway responds, ‘Death’s at the bottom of everything Martins, leave death to the professionals.’ Which is certainly a very callous reply… Yet, in a way, Holly, a rank amateur, does get to the bottom of things. After seeing Harry in a momentarily lit but otherwise shadowed doorway and chasing him, or rather his shadow, into a square, where both man and shadow have somehow disappeard, he contacts Calloway. ‘It wasn’t the German gin,’ the Major confides to his Sergeant, Paine, upon discovering an entrance to the sewers, and then, ‘We should have dug deeper than the grave!’…

Gravid

*

…The military police turn up at Anna’s flat in the middle of the night to arrest her. When they arrive she is wearing night clothes so she goes to change. There is no edit in the film at this point. Anna simply walks into the vanishing point of the shot which is filled with the darkness of her room, and then re-emerges from it wearing her day clothes… During the time that Anna is gone from sight the arresting officers’ stand in silence looking sheepish and ashamed, as well they might. ‘Sorry about this, miss,’ says one of the brave men when she is finally ready to leave, ‘it’s protocol.’ ‘I don’t even know what protocol means,’ says Anna. ‘Neither do I, miss,’ says the policeman…

Art ‘n’ Soul

*

… If anyone doubts the veracity of a psychological approach to the interpretation of this film we are bound to point out that both Freud and Jung lived and worked in Vienna, which could therefore be called the home of psychology. It is certainly the home of the psychoanalytic method. There are also a number of stills from the film which were used for promotion purposes which have been, ‘doctored’ to show, Holly and Anna casting Harry’s shadow. ‘What can I do, I’m dead aren’t I?’ Gives a new perspective to the term carte blanche, perhaps. In the film, Harry, the ‘eternal child’ who even dresses in black, like a shadow, does get raised, or rather elevated. He takes a ride on the Big Wheel, but he does so at his own instigation, and not Holly’s. Holly has arranged to meet him there, simply to be out in the open, and safe! Has he worked out that Harry murdered the Porter and the Medical Orderly we wonder? Quite possibly. In the event, Holly almost gets shot and thrown out of the cabin of the wheel when it has reached its zenith. Only the fact that the police have dug up Harry’s coffin saves him… In defence of his flagrant racketeering Harry compares himself to the state authorities. They have their five year plans and so does he. They refer to the proletariat, he to the mugs and suckers. It is hardly a convincing argument but recent events may have revealed it to have more truth than, perhaps, was previously thought. The film does possess a capacity to leave its mark, and that is in huge part down to the exquisitely poignant cinematography, and to the musical score. Could there ever have been a more effective marriage between tone, tune, and content? Harry departs the meeting with Holly, as he arrived, with a smile and a spring in his step, after delivering the infamous ‘cuckoo clock’ speech. There is something profoundly true in what he says and also something dangerously beguiling in the position that he appears to hold. But Holly is no longer having any of it…

Greater Things

*

…In the film, there was never any chance of a reconciliation between Holly and Harry. Although as viewers we are led to hope and believe that there can be. They had lost that opportunity nine years earlier when the ‘war broke out’. Neither can Holly and Anna ‘get it together’. The film presents us with an ‘End Game’ in which those options have been ruled out by what went on before. And leaves us as its inevitable conclusion, ‘Post-war European man’ in search of his soul… And so, seventy-five years later we are justified in asking, well, how did he get on? Not very well. Instead of integrating the Shadow into the Personality and so regaining his Soul. ‘He’ has merely promoted the Shadow to the position of Super-Ego. Harry no longer skulks around the sewers of the capital cities of Europe, oh no, instead he now fronts the news briefings and insists we obey his every whim, however ridiculous, all for the good of our soul, old boy, all for the good of our soul…

End Game