Thursday, May 14, 2009
Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and films of fifties NY
Many thanks to the Consumate Dabbler for informing me about the filmmaking team of photographers Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin. I've not yet caught up to their most noted credit, Little Fugitive, but I feel I gained a rich experience of what New York was like in the fifties when I viewed the two films that followed, Lovers and Lollipops and Weddings and Babies. They are rich and deceptively simple, naturalistic portraits of the pressures and experiences in life that are universal.
Their films, especially Little Fugitive are linked as both forerunners to the French New Wave and a source of inspiration for filmmakers like Cassavetes, but for me these films had a feel of the classic Italian Neorealist films like The Bicycle Thief, but without so much melodrama, They capture moments in time of the human condition. In Lovers and Lollipops a six year old girl learns how to adjust to her widowed mother finding a new romance. Weddings and Babies follows Al, a professional photographer unable to accept his life for where he is and move it forward in a non-emotional and positive way.
Both films are less than 90 minutes long, but they are not afraid to take their time. Engel shows us that there is something very cinematic about the moments where people and things are lost, displaced or hung out in a little bit of a limbo. Little Peggy in Lovers and Lollipops finds ways to get away from her mother and her "new friend" Larry when the three of them go out on outings. Perspective shifts between the two parties in a kind of cause and effect. At another point, Peggy sails the small boat that Larry has given to her as a gift in a museum pond. A long wide angle covers the action as guard, Larry, and, in her own way Peggy try to grab the boat, which is just out of reach. It is a simple moment, but one that the audience becomes involved in because the filmmakers are giving us the gift of the kind of life situation that are of the sort that get recounted at family gatherings years later.
A lot of what makes these films special is that they are showcases for the kind of sensitivity and sensibility that are those of folks who pursue and believe in the power of the photographic image. Bea, (Viiveca Linfords) the patient and long-suffering girl friend of Al the photographer in Weddings and Babies is seen looking out of their shop window from behind. Her body expresses more mood in that single shot than a collection of closeups could. At another point, Bea and Al depart from each other at a low angle shot that is cut off at their shoulders. It is again another lovely image that express volumes.
Sound was the Achilles pick breaker of location and portable filmmaking for years. Sound for Lovers and Lollipops was looped in post production after shooting as was the necessary and customary for a small production. (And was the practice in Italian and European cinema for decades) Weddings and Babies used a synchronized sound system that appeared in the credits which resulted in some variable quality. In retrospect, such technical imperfections can lead to the charm of a work when you visit it years later.
There are some great resources about Engel and Orkin on line. I especially enjoyed this profile a profile by Bret Wood about Engel he talks about how he was still working with film and video in his seventies and eighties. His family has done a nice job of keeping and archive of his work as well as Orkin's online.
posted by well-executed buffet at 2:52 AM
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