21m 42 DV Col and B&W 2023

videographic essay UK

In all our films we put our hearts our desires and everything that we love and everything that’s betrayed us

Jean Luc Godard and Fritz Lang 1967

I began being drawn to what Mr Lang says about children and then I returned again and again to the interview with William Friedkin and then to the interview 7 years earlier with Jean Luc Godard. During this time two sudden deaths of the lecturers who had taught me at university introducing me to Fritz Lang and film theory distilled in the background and provided a motivation to pursue an end.

GIRL OVERBOARD. SEQUENCE 5 ELSEA

A memory that kept recurring was of being a young girl on a boat far out at sea with a group of men. Men: involved in the arts and the sudden shock of freezing cold water and blindness as I was pushed overboard plunging into the depths, losing my bearings and struggling to the surface.

Shadows of a Master: Fritz Lang’s Cinematic Duality”

“Filming Ambiguity,” is an art essay film that delves into the multifaceted world of Fritz Lang’s films, drawing inspiration from two contrasting interviews with esteemed directors

“Filming Ambiguity,” explores Lang’s enigmatic persona, his turbulent relationship with his ex-wife and former screenwriting partner Thea Von Harbou, and the profound dichotomies that shaped his distinctive filmmaking style. Sarah Miles, an accomplished filmmaker who herself studied the works of Fritz Lang during her film studies education in 1980, provides a unique and personal reflection on his enduring impact.

DIALOGUE SCRIPT

HUMAN DESIRE

METROPOLIS

MARIA in red and yellow

WILLIAM FRIEDKIN INTERVIEW WITH FRITZ LANG 1974

W you say you’re not interested in criminality and yet the themes of your films deal with in some way these major social evils with murderers

F the social evils not murderers …with social evil

W Wasn’t the message of Metropolis at the time could that not be taken as a Marxist kind of message

F I don’t know I haven’t seen Metropolis in a long time

W What’s your feeling about Metropolis as a film now

F When I made it I liked it when I finished it I hated it because the thesis of my wife Thea Von Harbou was that the go between the head capital and the hand must be the heart

STILL Thea Von Harbou and Fritz Lang writing together in Berlin

HUMAN DESIRE Glen Ford and Gloria GRAHAME
M The Hand in marriage

There must be someplace we can go

STILL Thea with a bouquet of flowers

If only I was free

We’ll work things out somehow

TOMBSTONE THEA VON HARBOU d.1954

F and then in the fifties anonymously I got some letters from the Washington post in which the head of the corporation said he had seen Metropolis and he agrees there must be a heart for the workers

HUMAN DESIRE The train Glen Ford

F At the end of the 60’s when I was at universities doing questions and answer sessions..

MASCULIN AND FEMININE Jean Luc GODARD

Sarah Miles at UEA smoking credit JOHN MILES

THE SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR LANG

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW LANG

MANHUNT LANG

Won’t you kiss me?

HANGMEN ALSO DIE LANG

FRITZ LANG THE IMAGE AND THE LOOK. ED STEPHEN JENKINS

THE BIG HEAT LANG

I need the car keys

Go on Daddy

3 little kittens they lost their mittens

And they began to cry

CROSSROADS BRUCE CONNOR
RANCHO NOTORIOUS

I don’t know how to tell you this they didn’t spare her anything

Give me a gun

Elsie!

F I asked the students What do you hate in the establishment?

MARIA Kill them

They said it is a a computer generated society

And what we miss in it is the heart

M writing M in chalk on a hand

F I hate to tell American jews they can commit crime and go free

ELSIE RAVEN
I hate to show violence I did it myself in one picture (pleasure at the memory) when Gary Cooper fought a fascist

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Fritz Lang was an émigré in Hollywood

Thea von Harbou remained in Germany as a Trummerfrau a ruins woman

Helping clear bombed cities. There were 7 million more women than men in Germany

FURY

F There still exists a kind of lynching

It is an evil I cannot change it

I can only point it out

I wanted to do a personal film with one human being with one social evil

When you put your finger on an evil you are not a politician

You cannot change it you can only point it out

That’s it

YELLOW

CHINATOWN NORA CROSS
W Mr Polanski told me that he feels if one is making a film about violence and murder one is compelled to show it you have to show otherwise it’s like telling a dirty joke and leaving all the dirty words out it’s embarassing

F And

W I’m asking why you chose not to show the murder..show the results of what a child molester does

ROBOT MARIA
F It would be tasteless I myself would have hated to show it but by not showing it

THE EXORCIST 1973 FRIEDKIN

The whole audience could think about the most horrible thing and so

by not showing it the whole audience became a collaborator

MARIA ROBOT

Elsie!

F I had a very wonderful sweetheart but I didn’t have money

DESTINY LANG

Then one day

Wounded losing my most everything

Metonymy

LANG’S FIRST WIFE LISA ROSENTHAL WALKED IN ON HIM

AND HIS MISTRESS THEA VON HARBOU

gunlisa jpeg

Weimar Republic Germany 1931 M screengrab

F Do you think that most murderers are committed right from the start

W No

M Blind man wearing blind man sign

I want to escape myself

But I can’t I can’t escape myself

KANGAROO COURT Annihilate the beast

F I told you before I don’t like producers

The end of the film was the kangaroo court with all the real criminals

The hand goes on the shoulder in the name of the law

Quick dissolve

And then you see the judge

Many years later when I couldn’t do anything anymore

M I can’t go on

F The producer cut off the real end

The real end was three mothers and one mother

And the one mother says this does not bring our children

back to life

You have to watch your children much better

This is why I made the film

for this one line

You have to watch your children much better

Hand

HUMAN DESIRE train corridor

YOU

MANHUNT train station leavetaking

Godard’s remark that cinema is “the goodwill for a meeting” – to which JLG added, “it is the love of ourselves on earth”. Cinema must be dialogue, and it must be love

GODARD

JLG My name is

JLG How many films 42

F Oh my god too many

JLG You’ve seen many upheavals in Europe and America

FURY

JLG I’d like to ask what makes a man a director?

Film crew on a boat during the making of LE MEPRIS

SPLASH Elsie!

A film crew on the beach with Brigitte Bardot JLG runs away from the incoming tide

What makes a director?

A red sports car is crushed under a lorry

TITLE THE DEATH OF A WOMAN AND A PRODUCER

ALPHAVILLE

ROMANTIC

THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW

Joan Bennett and Edward G Robinson

Lang lights up

CONTEMPT 1963

The producer arrives in a red sportscar

LANG approaches

Brigitte tells him how much she loved his western

He tells her he prefers M

STRANGE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

IMPOSSIBLE RESCUE

Lang left Germany in 1933

Thea von Harbou remained and joined the Nazi party

Marrying her Indian lover

Lang returned to Germany to make

The Indian Tomb

Dance sequence with DEBRA PAGET TIGER OF ESCHNAPAUR/THE INDIAN TOMB

MINISTRY OF FEAR

F one other thing

In response to your question what makes a director?

I believe he must be a little …he has to know why people in the script do what they do

What makes people tick

MARIA ROBOT
GLORIA GRAHAME with her face bandaged

F He has to be a ….a …  psychoanalyst

He has to get beneath the skin of the actor

So I think he has to be a psychoanalyst

HUMAN DESIRE

THE SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR Joan Bennett smoking

DIANA PRODUCTIONS
F in all our films

our desires

everything that we love and that has betrayed us

and I believe one day

if there is someone who could analyse you and me

JLG Yes

F Perhaps

LE MEPRIS RAVEN

F I don’t know why I made my films

Do you know?

G No

SPLASH dankeshun

F Maybe we would know why

M Mother lays table child bounces ball

Elsie! Elsie! Elsie

What a pretty ball

What’s your name?

Elsie Beckman

M

STRANGE AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
HUMAN DESIRE
it isn’t love it’s human desire

DESTINY

F And one day

Langs first wife walked in on Lang and his mistress

Thea Von Harbou

ACCORDING TO LANG LISA THEN shot herself in the heart with Lang’s ww1 firearm

F Shall I tell you the truth?

Elsie!

I WAS HAPPY TO BE AN ACTOR IN CONTEMPT
I said to myself that’s it that’s the end

Let me tell you something

DESTINY
F There is one big difference between you and me

Almost no one from that time is still with us

F You’re a baby

JLG mother’s smack babies

Children are always punished

Human Desire Kiss

F but no Why?

DIRTY WINDOW
JLG because the cinema is ….

F romantic

JLG because the cinema is a youthful  art

F Yes

JLG Exactly because if the cinema is a young persons art

Maybe that’s why because it is young it is often taunted

Elsie Elsie Elsie

JLG I’d like to ask you

How we should react to not quite censorship…to

Something heavier

The tyranny

MANHUNT
JLG should we be like children and throw a tantrum

or try to outsmart it

F I know nothing about children

F No but we should always fight against tyranny

METROPOLIS BEHIND THE SCENES
GOLDEN SYRUP With JOHN KOBAL

BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT

IF I COULD MAKE A FILM WITH MY EYES

F I was at Chaillot the Cinemateque Francais

FURY
SYLVIA SIDNEY AND SPENCER TRACY
Say for example how does a fifteen year old girl who is pregnant….

LILLIOM

FURY        

I’m hard to get rid of

Like my right arm

But I love you more

F there were 2 or 3 young people in the theatre girls and boys who said

Mr Lang your films have given us so much

MASCULIN FEMININ
F Make more films

I will make one more film

JLG What will it be called?

F Death of A Career Girl

JLG Is the death a punishment?

F No a living death
DESTINY
LE MEPRIS

Elsie!

SPLASH

ELSIE!