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Pynchonian cinema

(Pynchonian? Pynchonesque? Pynchon-heads can no doubt supply the most common descriptor but for now Pynchonian will do.)

Is it possible to identify a Pynchonian strand in cinema? This question came to mind while I was reading the end of Gravity’s Rainbow, and probably a little before then during a scene that takes place in the Neubabelsberg studio in Berlin. The Pynchon reading binge is still ongoing here—after finishing the Rocket book I went straight on to Vineland, and I’m currently immersed in Mason and Dixon—so I’ve been watching films that complement some of the preoccupations in the Pynchon oeuvre, at least up to and including Vineland. This is a small and no doubt contentious list but I’m open to further suggestions. Inherent Vice is excluded, I’ve been thinking more of films that are reminiscent of Pynchon without being derived from his work.

Elements that increase the Pynchon factor would include: a serio-comic quality (essential, this, otherwise you’d have to include a huge number of thrillers); detective work; paranoia; songs; and a conspiracy of some sort, or the suspicion of the same: a mysterious cabal–the “They” of Gravity’s Rainbow—who may or may not be manipulating the course of events.

The President’s Analyst (1967)
I’d be very surprised if Pynchon didn’t like this one. James Coburn as the titular analyst, Dr Sidney Schaefer, has little time to enjoy his new job in Washington DC before half the security services in the world are trying to kidnap him to discover what he’s learned about the President’s neuroses. This in turn leads the ~~FBI~~ FBR to attempt to kill Schaefer in order to protect national security. Pynchonian moments include a bout of total paranoia in a restaurant, Canadian spies disguised as a British pop group (“The ‘Pudlians”), and a visit to the home of a “typical American family” where the father has a house full of guns, the mother is a karate expert, and the son uses his “Junior Spy Kit” to monitor phone conversations. Later on, an entire nightclub gets spiked with LSD. This is also the only film in which someone evades abduction to a foreign country by the cunning use of psychoanalysis.
Is it serio-comic? Yes.
Is there detection? In the background: the ~~CIA~~ CEA and KGB agents have to work together in order to outwit the ~~FBI~~ FBR and discover who the ultimate villains might be.
Is there paranoia? You only get more paranoia in one of the serious conspiracy dramas of the 1970s like The Conversation or The Parallax View. (The latter includes the same actor who plays the All American Dad, William Daniels.)
Any songs? Yes. Coburn hides out for a while with the real-life psychedelic group Clear Light, and helps with their performance in the acid-spiked nightclub.
“They”? There are multiple “Theys” in this one.
Pynchon factor: 5. Maybe a 6 for the LSD.

Nashville (1975)
This one is a stretch but Robert Altman is the director I think of as closest to Pynchon’s sensibility even if individual works are light on the Pynchon factor. His films are often rambling, quirky and satirical—especially when he goes the ensemble route—but never too comic to avoid a sudden lurch into the dark. The Long Goodbye might seem a more likely choice, given the way it points to subsequent Chandler variations like The Big Lebowski (see below) and Inherent Vice, but it’s still Chandler’s story. Nashville is pure Altman, the best of his ensemble entries and my choice for his best film of all, a portrait of America in the mid-1970s where someone can be loved by millions yet still be a target for assassination. It’s worth noting that the director of Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson, was the insurance standby when Altman was directing his final film, The Prairie Home Companion.
Is it serio-comic? Yes.
Is there detection? No.
Is there paranoia? No, although as a portrait of the USA in the 1970s it can’t avoid a lurking sense of unease.
Any songs? Lots of songs.
“They”? No.
Pynchon factor: 2

Simon (1980)
The debut feature from Marshall Brickman, Simon is an overlooked oddity with a great performance by Alan Arkin as a college professor, Simon Mendelssohn, who gets tricked by the Institute for Advanced Concepts into believing he’s an extraterrestrial. Parts of this play like a comic version of Altered States, which coincidentally was released the same year. Both films feature reckless quests for academic glory, flotation tank experiments (Simon includes a reference to Dr John Lilly), and regressions to earlier stages of evolution. Pynchonian moments include a church commune who worship the television, a gas that reduces intelligence, and a self-aware computer called “Mother” whose human interface is a giant phone receiver.
Is it serio-comic? Yes.
Is there detection? No.
Is there paranoia? A little.
Any songs? No.
“They”? The IAC are a small but powerful “They”, with carte blanche to foist their whims on an unsuspecting nation.
Pynchon factor: 2.5

The Big Lebowski (1998)
When the book trailer for Inherent Vice appeared in 2009 (with narration by the author himself…or was it? etc), a common reaction was “This sounds just like The Big Lebowski“. If The President’s Analyst is the closest Hollywood gets to The Crying of Lot 49 then The Big Lebowski may be the closest to Vineland‘s story of the youth of the hippy era coping with life in a world that’s passed them by.
Is it serio-comic? Yes.
Is there detection? Yes.
Is there paranoia? A little. Most of the time The Dude is more concerned with trying to keep up with his continual changes of fortune.
Any songs? Lots of songs on the soundtrack, plus the Busby Berkeley-style dream sequence.
“They”? Yes.
Pynchon factor: 4.5

I Heart Huckabees (2004)
David O’Russell’s mélange of existential philosophy, environmentalism and coincidence is like Wes Anderson with a more political edge, and the kind of quirky comedy there was still space for in the Hollywood of the late 1990s/early 2000s. Jason Schwartzman is Albert Markovski, a poetry-writing environmental activist with a coincidence problem who turns to existential detectives, Vivian Jaffe (Lily Tomlin) and husband Bernard Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman), for a solution. “Everything is connected”, Bernard insists, so it’s no surprise that the presence of Lily Tomlin returns us to Nashville, while the pair require a little of Sidney Schaefer’s psychoanalysis to get to the bottom of Albert’s problems. Meanwhile, the Jaffes’ former pupil, Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), is lurking in the wings, tempting Albert with the attractions of sex and nihilist philosophy (shades of The Big Lebowski).
Is it serio-comic? Yes.
Is there detection? Yes.
Is there paranoia? A little. Albert is increasingly worried about losing control of his protest group.
Any songs? Shania Twain puts in an appearance but she doesn’t sing.
“They”? The Huckabees Corporation is a small-scale “They”, manipulating the environmentalists for their own ends.
Pynchon factor: 3.5

Under the Silver Lake (2018)
David Robert Mitchell’s surprising follow-up to the excellent It Follows is self-consciously Lynchian, and quite possibly self-consciously Pynchonian too. A long and rambling tale of burgeoning paranoia in the hip Los Angeles enclave of Silver Lake where slacker Sam (Andrew Garfield) discovers a web of interconnected mysteries after trying to find out why his attractive female neighbour has disappeared. It’s sinister, funny and bizarre, with mysterious deaths, hidden codes, treasure maps, chess games, pop music, Californian cults and more. Mitchell wisely avoids explaining too much which means the film now has a cult following determined to dredge its alleged secrets.
Is it serio-comic? Yes.
Is there detection? Yes.
Is there paranoia? Yes.
Any songs? Lots of songs, also a mysterious Songwriter character and an indie band, Jesus and the Brides of Dracula.
“They”? Multiple “Theys”.
Pynchon factor: 5

Lodge 49 (2018–2019)
Several people recommended this TV series (thanks!) so here it is. And while Jim Gavin’s creation may not be a feature film it’s very definitely Pynchonian. See this post for details.
Is it serio-comic? Yes.
Is there detection? Yes.
Is there paranoia? A little. Dud and Ernie have a paranoid episode involving a drone.
Any songs? Yes, from the characters themselves and also from Broadcast and others on the soundtrack.
“They”? Once again, there are multiple “Theys”.
Pynchon factor: 49

Honourable mentions: WD Richter’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) makes it to the Pynchon Zone via its appropriation of “Yoyodyne”, the name of the defence contractor from V. and The Crying of Lot 49. Despite this, and much as I like Buckaroo Banzai, I don’t think it’s Pynchonian enough for this list, although the writers at the defunct Pynchon site, Spermatikos Logos, might disagree. This archived page makes a case for the film, and also mentions a possible reciprocation from the author which I missed when I was reading Vineland.

Likewise, Richard Linklater’s debut, Slacker (1990), also came to mind. It has the requisite large cast of idlers and eccentrics (including a couple of conspiracy obsessives), plus a meandering yet connected structure, but it doesn’t otherwise seem Pynchonian enough.

Anything else I’ve missed?

Update 1: Added Lodge 49.
Update 2: Further recommendations at Letterboxd.
Update 3: Finally added Under the Silver Lake.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Going beyond the zero
• Pynchon and Varo
• Thomas Pynchon – A Journey into the Mind of [P.]

Weekend links 577

Black Lake (1904) by Jan Preisler.

• Upcoming releases on the Ghost Box label will include a new album by {feuilleton} faves Pye Corner Audio, plus the surprising appearance of figures from Bruegel on a Ghost Box cover design.

• Tilda Swinton and Olivier Saillard pay tribute to the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini. (Or to Pasolini’s costume designer, Danilo Donati.)

• New music: Spectral Corridor by The House In The Woods, and Re:Moving (Music for Choreographies by Yin Yue) by Machinefabriek.

• At Spoon & Tamago, Technopolis gets all the good things: “Giant kitty now greets commuters at Shinjuku Station.”

• Anil Ananthaswamy on the ways in which psychedelics open a new window on the mechanisms of perception.

• Mixes of the week: Isolated Mix 112 by Suna, and GGHQ Mix #56, “An Unfortunate Kink”, by Abigail Ward.

• In this week’s impossible task, Alexis Petridis attempts to rank The Velvet Underground’s greatest songs.

• DJ Food unearths more flyers for London’s Middle Earth club, plus covers for the East Village Other.

• Global signals: Aki Onda on Holger Czukay and radio’s power to connect.

• At The Paris Review: Paintings and collages by Eileen Agar (1899–1991).

• Will Sergeant’s favourite albums.

• The Babel Tower Notice Board

• Shaking Down The Tower Of Babel (1983) by Richard H. Kirk | Pärt: An Den Wassern Zu Babel (1991) by Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir conducted by Paul Hillier | The Black Meat (Deconstruction Of The Babel-Tower of Reason) (1994) by Automaton

Weekend links 576

Cover art by Bob Haberfield, 1976.

• I’ve been reliably informed that Australian artist Bob Haberfield died recently but I can’t point to an online confirmation of this so you’ll have to take my word for it. “Science” and “sorcery” might describe the two poles of Haberfield’s career while he was working as a cover artist. His paintings made a big impression on British readers of fantasy and science fiction in the 1970s, especially if you were interested in Michael Moorcock’s books when they appeared en masse as Mayflower paperbacks covered in Haberfield’s art. Haberfield also appeared alongside Bruce Pennington providing covers for Panther paperbacks by HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and others, although his work there isn’t always credited. Dangerous Minds collected some of his covers for a feature in 2017. (The US cover for The Iron Dream isn’t a Haberfield, however.)

• “Like Alice, who can only reach the house in Through the Looking-Glass by turning her back to it, Gorey reversed the usual advice to ‘write what you know’ and wrote the apparent opposite of his own situation.” Rosemary Hill reviewing Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery.

• “Orvil…wanders the countryside, visits churches, rummages in antique shops, and encounters strange men to whom he is no doubt equally strange.” John Self reviewing a new edition of In Youth Is Pleasure by Denton Welch.

• At the Wyrd Daze blog: Q&A sessions with Stephen Buckley (aka Polypores), Gareth Hanrahan, and Kemper Norton.

• “Fellini liked to say that ‘I fall asleep, and the fête begins’.” Matt Hanson on Federico Fellini’s phenomenal films.

• A Beautiful Space: Ned Raggett talks to Mick Harris about the thirty-year history of Scorn.

• Deep in the dial: Lawrence English on the enduring appeal of shortwave radio.

• Clive Hicks-Jenkins on making a picture for Annie Darwin (1841–1851).

• DJ Food looks at pages from Grunt Free Press circa 1970.

• Mix of the week: Fact Mix 814 by Loraine James.

• New music: Clash (feat. Logan) by The Bug.

• At BLDGBLOG: Terrestrial Astronomy.

• LoneLady‘s favourite albums.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Porn 2.

• Tilings Encyclopedia

• Betrayal (Sorcerer Theme) (1977) by Tangerine Dream | Science Fiction (1981) by Andy Burnham | Sorceress (2018) by Beautify Junkyards

Sounds off the Beaten Track

In 1987 the Glastonbury Festival opened its WOMAD stage for the first time to provide a showcase for the kind of acts you might expect to see at the separate World Of Music And Dance festival. Sounds off the Beaten Track is a 52-minute TV documentary about the acts who appeared on the WOMAD stage at Worthy Farm that year, and also about the WOMAD ethos itself, a project inaugurated in 1980 by Peter Gabriel and others to give greater prominence to musicians from all over the world. One of the WOMAD initiators, Mark Kidel, also directed the film, while co-founders Peter Gabriel and Thomas Brooman talk on camera. The film captures the Glastonbury Festival at a time when it was still a relatively small and rather ramshackle affair, closer to its hippy roots, and very different from the sprawling tent city of later years.

The main interest, however, is the music, especially the amount of time given to the Burkina Faso group, Farafina, and to Jon Hassell, whose Flash Of The Spirit collaboration with Farafina was released the following year. This was the first I saw of Hassell on TV, and also the last until he turned up much later as a guest on MTV’s Seal Unplugged session. I remembered the Farafina performance but I’d forgotten that Hassell also talks a little about his Fourth World idea. Among the other featured artists are The Bhundu Boys, Toumani Diabaté, Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, The Inspirational Choir, and Najma Akhtar who subsequently appeared on another unplugged (or partly plugged) session with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. Jon Hassell had been under the WOMAD umbrella since 1982 via the excellent Music And Rhythm compilation album which included an exclusive live recording of Ba-Benzélé. He was often critical of the “world music” marketing label, seeing it as a convenient way for record companies and music sellers to appear to be supporting musical diversity while placing all the non-Anglophone recordings in a ghetto area away from everything else. He preferred to talk of “worldly music”, an idiom that was of the world, uncloistered, freed from the ghetto; music where the beaten and unbeaten tracks might combine to form a new highway.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jon Hassell, 1937–2021
• Jon Hassell, live 1989
• Power Spot by Michael Scroggins

Hands with a mind of their own

My weekend viewing included two films based on The Hands of Orlac (1920), a novel by Maurice Renard. This is one of those books that remains little read and seldom discussed even though its central idea—a concert pianist injured in a train wreck is given the hands of an executed murderer in a transplant operation—has prompted many film adaptations, almost enough to make the novel the origin of a sub-genre of hand-transplant horror. Robert Wiene’s The Hands of Orlac was the first screen adaptation made in 1924, and is another in the long list of silent films I’ve known about for decades but had to wait until now to see. The film is notable for reuniting the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari with Conrad Veidt, the actor who portrayed Caligari’s murderous somnambulist, Cesare, in a mute role that mostly required stalking around acutely-angled sets in a black body stocking.

The Hands of Orlac: Paul Orlac (Conrad Veidt) is besieged by nightmares in his colossal hospital room.

Veidt has much more to do as the lead in The Hands of Orlac, giving a suitably tormented performance as the pianist convinced that his new hands retain the violent impulses of their former owner. The acting from Veidt and Alexandra Sorina as Orlac’s wife, Yvonne, is often wildly emotive, surprisingly so for a film made near the end of the silent era when the mannerisms of early silent pictures were being replaced by greater naturalism. Lotte Eisner in The Haunted Screen explains this in terms of the Expressionist influence which was still prevalent in German cinema, and which extends beyond lighting and set design. A scene in which Orlac is overwhelmed by his predicament is described by Eisner as “an Expressionist ballet”; when Orlac holds a dagger aloft this becomes an unmistakable mirroring of a climactic moment in Caligari.

Continue reading “Hands with a mind of their own”