Jonas Mekas (1922-2019) began writing a regular column, entitled Movie Journal, in the Village Voice of November 12, 1958. A filmmaker himself and co-founder of Anthology Film Archives in New York City, which he eventually curated and supervised, Mekas was a champion of what was then called “the New American Cinema,” including the burgeoning experimental and avant-garde films, many of which constituted the “underground film” movement of the 1960s and he chronicled their showings in scattered venues in Manhattan, often subject to police raids because of the controversial and “scandalous” nature of the films. But he also wrote about the pleasures of attending “people’s movies,” i.e. Hollywood movies meant for a mass audience, and disdained the “so-called American ‘art’ film” aimed chiefly at the middlebrow mainstream movie reviewers. He wrote about the more overtly commercial films with a fan’s delight, a breezy wit and a caustic tone aimed at the regular New York newspaper movie reviewers whom he often tangled with.
He collected his reviews in a book published in 1972 entitled, Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959-1971. I’m sure Mekas was still writing reviews for the Voice when I started reading the paper in high school. Mekas had brought in Andrew Sarris to cover mainstream cinema releases in order to free himself to devote more space to the likes of Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Stan Vanderbeek, Jean Genet, and Shirley Clarke, and recount his own filmmaking adventures and the movement’s constant battles with the police and the hidebound cultural establishment which rejected so much of the new work. As a budding auteurist, I was more interested in Sarris back then, but re-reading this collection reminds me of the turbulence of the era and Mekas’s singular voice, often laced with spirited outrage, pushing for acceptance of new ways of seeing the world through cinema and freedom of voice and vision.
Jonas Mekas, Andy Warhol, ca. 1963
Jonas Mekas at Anthology Film Archives, ca. 2017
Mekas left the Voice at some point to devote himself full-time to filmmaking, distribution and running Anthology. J. Hoberman eventually occupied his slot at the Village Voice covering independent, underground and avant-garde films and would one day take over for Andrew Sarris to become the paper’s senior film critic, a position he would hold from 1986 to 2012.
There is much to quote in Mekas’s book, but here are choice passages on his continuing flirtation with Hollywood releases during this period. I’m including pieces from 1960-1965. (My comments interspersed throughout are italicized.)
February 22, 1962
PRAISE TO THE ARTIFICIALITY OF HOLLYWOOD
That’s what I like about Hollywood: its inventive artificiality. The best of Hollywood films are “made” in the true sense of the word. They are artificial from beginning to end. Watch Ford, or Sirk, or Minnelli. Hollywood started rolling downhill when it began listening to the critics yapping that Hollywood films are not realistic, that they do not portray life “as it is.” Whenever a Hollywood-trained or Hollywood-minded director falls into the trap of “realist” cinema, he becomes an empty bore, another Zinnemann.
Richard Widmark, James Stewart in John Ford’s TWO RODE TOGETHER (1961)
Lana Turner, Sandra Dee in Douglas Sirk’s IMITATION OF LIFE (1959)
Dean Martin, Judy Holliday in Vincente Minnelli’s BELLS ARE RINGING (1960)
Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Gregory Peck in Fred Zinnemann’s BEHOLD A PALE HORSE (1964)
February 20, 1964
ON THE MYSTERY OF THE LOW-BUDGET “ART” FILM
Somewhere around Hollywood, often disguised as “independents,” there are the old-school directors such as Ford, Fuller, Hitchcock, Donen making first-rate entertainment movies on million-dollar budgets, movies like Donovan’s Reef, Underworld U.S.A., The Birds, Charade. On the other extreme, there is the low-low-budget underground cinema with its own bustle of creativity. In the middle is stuck the $100,000 to $400,000 movie, the so-called American “art” film, movies like David and Lisa, The Balcony, The Greenwich Village Story. It is this middle that is the most anemic and unimaginative. Variety says there are about two hundred low-budget “art” movies waiting for distribution. I have seen a good number of them, and the best ones are dogs. American cinema remains in Hollywood and the New York underground. There is no American “art” film.
John Ford’s DONOVAN’S REEF (1963), starring John Wayne, Lee Marvin
Samuel Fuller’s UNDERWORLD U.S.A. (1961), starring Cliff Robertson
Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn in Stanley Donen’s CHARADE (1963)
Janet Margolin, Keir Dullea in Frank Perry’s DAVID AND LISA (1962)
Peter Falk, Shelley Winters in Joseph Strick’s THE BALCONY (1963)
Jack O’Connell’s GREENWICH VILLAGE STORY (1963), an independent New York feature from 1963 that I’d never heard of before reading Mekas’s reference to it.
The Deuce, 1965
Mekas and his colleagues often visited the theaters on 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue and actively defended the street and the offerings at its eleven grindhouses in two memorable short pieces, my favorites in the book, from 1960 and late 1962.
February 17, 1960
ON WESTERNS AND 42ND STREET
Go to 42nd Street, where you can always find a Western. The Times Square Theatre, which shows Westerns exclusively, is always full, day or night. A sad, lonely crowd, made up usually of older people. It’s like an old people’s home, a hundred per cent male. The American Western keeps them company. They sit there, in the midst of all that poetry sweeping grandly across the screen, dreaming away.
Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea in Sam Peckinpah’s RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962)
The Deuce, ca. 1965. The Times Square Theater is right in the center, showing INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER and the modern western, LONELY ARE THE BRAVE.
November 22, 1962
IN DEFENSE OF 42ND STREET
You fools who look down on Westerns, who go only to ‘art’ films, preferably European–you don’t know what you are missing. You are missing half of the cinema, you are missing the purest poetry of action, poetry of motion, poetry of the technicolor landscapes.
I hear some zealous people want to clean up 42nd Street. What would we do without our movie joints, our hamburgers, our secret places? Clean places! We need more shadows, that’s what I say. There we can cultivate forbidden virtues and forbidden beauties. Man needs unnecessary, unclean corners. And so we need Aldrich, and Westerns, too. I prefer the confusion of emotions to the decadent, closed, hopeless clarity and cleanliness of materialists and rationalists. Blow, you winds of anarchy, confusion, we need you badly!
Nancy Gates, Skip Homeier in Budd Boetticher’s COMANCHE STATION (1960)
John Saxon, Audie Murphy, Rodolfo Acosta in Herbert Coleman’s POSSE FROM HELL (1961)
The most recent Robert Aldrich film at the time of Mekas’s piece, it had been released a month earlier.
The Deuce, ca. 1963
There’s a great piece in the book where he compares the experience of watching Hitchcock’s MARNIE, a “people’s movie” that could be seen on 42nd Street, to that of watching Stan Brakhage’s groundbreaking avant-garde film, DOG STAR MAN, that could only be seen in specialized venues, and the different needs that each audience has. I chose an excerpt that addresses the nature of the audience on 42nd Street and notes the psychological similarity of the two audiences.
August 20, 1964
ON “PEOPLE’S MOVIES,” OR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MELODRAMA AND ART
But others say: What right do you have to disturb the peace of those on 42nd Street who sit there in people’s movies and are completely happy? But I have spent much time on 42nd Street, we all have, and we have seen many faces there, and I have seen the sadness on those faces, and stupor. Which, I guess, is very pompous of me to say; it may even mean that I think that I am better and happier than they. Which is not exactly so. Since it is becoming more and more clear to me that both those who sit through Brakhage and those who sit through Marnie, when you speak to them, or watch them, you later find out that they are really hiding their real selves, using both Marnie and Brakhage to hide themselves, and you really never know what’s really going on. There are some angels watching Marnie, and some devils watching Dog Star Man. Despite our developed tastes, and the quickness of the eye, we often remain bastards as human beings, so that one asks: What is all this big fuss about art or not art, when we are all bastards anyway—except those who are angels?
An image from Stan Brakhage’s DOG STAR MAN (1964)
Sean Connery, Tippi Hedren in Alfred Hitchcock’s MARNIE (1964)
On the Times Square Theater marquee, 3rd from right, the westerns being shown in 1966 are both European, one Italian and one German, although with American stars.
As late as 1973, the Times Square was still showing westerns, although the one here, 5 CARD STUD, was paired with a non-western.
Sometime within the last couple of years I re-watched THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961) on TCM, arguably the first all-star men-on-a-mission commando movie to come out of Hollywood and the template for dozens of war movies that followed. I was impressed with the large production scale, the acting and the skill with which it was made, and I understood why it was such a big hit in 1961. But I found it overwrought, silly and way too implausible to take seriously. Back in 1961, Mekas had a rebuttal to that assessment.
June 29, 1961
IN DEFENSE OF ACTION FILMS
Navarone insults your intelligence? There you go, always searching for ideas. The best intelligence today is no intelligence at all, if you know what I mean. No intelligence is better than false intelligence. So enjoy the mountain dangers. Enjoy the man in action. Explosions. Ocean Storms. Close escapes. Gregory Peck. Simple things like that.
As for cinema, let’s not fool ourselves. Village of the Damned, Underworld U.S.A., or Mad Dog Coll has as much of it (in any case, not less) as any “art” movie you see today. Ideas? How many ideas does a man need? Count. Some ideas are useless. If you want ideas, the right ones, don’t fool yourself: Go to India or China, study Sanskrit. Go to India and get lost, as Allen Ginsberg says. Don’t read anything after 300 B.C., after Plato—it will only confuse you more. Unless it’s the new American beat poetry, written after A.D. 1950. (Diane di Prima’s new book, Dinners and Nightmares, for instance). Or watch old slapstick movies, pure Zen.
Harold Lloyd in SAFETY LAST! (1923)
Yes, there are a few films which enrich our understanding of man and ourselves in a more realistic or, one could say, scientific manner. L’Avventura, for instance, or Ashes and Diamonds or La Dolce Vita. But that doesn’t give you the right to deny the other cinema, other kinds of knowledge, the knowledge gained through slapstick or a murder story, to name but two.
Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti in Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (Italy, 1960)
Zbigniew Cybulski in Andrzej Wajda’s ASHES AND DIAMONDS (Poland, 1958)
Anita Ekberg, Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s LA DOLCE VITA (Italy, 1960)
Some of you wonder how I can like L’Avventura and Mad Dog Coll at the same time. Yes, it is strange indeed. I will tell you my secret: It is my way of psychoanalyzing myself by embracing everything. It is the immorality, the dishonesty of man that I detest, not man himself.
Finally, we come to laudatory pieces on, arguably, the two greatest American filmmakers in motion picture history, John Ford and Orson Welles, both of whom I’ve covered multiple times on this blog. Mekas’s assessment of Ford is particularly concise and sharp and his defense of “minor” works by great artists like Welles needs to be taken to heart by more film critics and historians.
August 1, 1963
ON THE ART OF JOHN FORD
The John Ford series at the New Yorker Theatre showed clearly what a magnificent man Ford is. One of his virtues may be that he makes no fuss about film art. He simply has it in him. He is just doing his job. Like a good carpenter. Like Manny Farber. Once you realize that to practice life is more important than to practice art, you are O.K. The reverse can also be true, if you know what I mean.
Ford doesn’t look for big, important themes. He goes around and around his two or three little themes, each time digging deeper, or looking at something from a different corner of his memory eye; each time polishing something inside himself to a greater clarity. Like a bug, with no hurry, with no other motives, with no “self-expressive” designs, he keeps making these great movies. They are there to look at, to enjoy, to put your own heart into if you want. See Donovan’s Reef, his latest work. Imagine digging out a movie like this from under the sands of the Nile, say, two thousand years old! What a lightness of hand, what carelessness, what easiness of form, mastery of tools. It looks almost like nothing, like no art at all. This man, Ford, may be having his own troubles, but he looks like one who has had a glimpse or two into man’s happiness, even if it really happens only when he is making his great movies. But that makes no difference.
Cathy Downs, Henry Fonda in John Ford’s MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946)
Henry Fonda, John Wayne in John Ford’s FORT APACHE (1948)
Harry Carey Jr., Jeffrey Hunter, John Wayne in John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS (1956)
Mike Mazurki, Lee Marvin, John Wayne in DONOVAN’S REEF (1963)
Elizabeth Allen, John Wayne in DONOVAN’S REEF (1963)
Lee Marvin (and friends) in DONOVAN’S REEF (1963)
November 15, 1962
ON SECONDARY WORKS OF GREAT ARTISTS
Mr. Arkadin closed its first run. But the talk is still going around the town. Some say it is great. Others say it is not as good as Citizen Kane or even Touch of Evil. As I see it, what does it matter? When it comes to a true artist, what does it matter if one work is a bit less good than the other? Wouldn’t it be ridiculous to reduce Picasso to one great (or perfect) painting or William Carlos Williams to one single perfect poem? What fool would do such a thing? If we can learn anything from all the talk about the author’s cinema, it is this: A minor work of a true artist takes an important place in the totality of that artist’s life work and must be approached with as much love as his masterpieces. You always have to remember that the artist doesn’t exactly need you: it is you who could profit even from his minor work, if you come to it with love. End of sermon.
Robert Arden, Orson Welles in MR. ARKADIN (1955)
Mischa Auer, Robert Arden in MR. ARKADIN (1955)
Orson Welles as MR. ARKADIN (1955)
In the book, Mekas offers a number of hard-hitting pieces on the trials and tribulations of the legal battles between the underground cinema movement and the moral arbiters of the New York City administration and its enforcement arm, the New York Police Department. He provides a disturbing account of his arrest, booking, night in jail and arraignment and the brutality he suffered at the hands of officers who’ve already tried and convicted him in their minds solely because he showed films that were accused–by somebody–of obscenity (including Kenneth Anger’s underground classic, “Scorpio Rising”). His description of this encounter reminds me of a scene created by a filmmaker he cites in one of the pieces above, Alfred Hitchcock. In THE WRONG MAN (1957), Henry Fonda plays a musician mistakenly identified as a robber and forced to go through, step by step, the same harrowing process Mekas described.
I also wanted to include his complaints about the mainstream New York newspaper reviewers of the time, whom he lists by name and labels “grumpy old men,” even when they’re women, who refused to take seriously the underground filmmakers Mekas championed or even the offbeat late work of the traditional Hollywood directors Mekas also admired, like Ford, Hitchcock, Sirk and Fuller. (This was at a time when no one but the French and Andrew Sarris acknowledged the genius of Sam Fuller.) But those columns were a bit long to include here.
In any event, I was compelled by Mekas’s take on Ford’s DONOVAN’S REEF to pull my DVD of it off the shelf and re-watch it for the first time in years. He was right: “What a lightness of hand, what carelessness, what easiness of form, mastery of tools. It looks almost like nothing, like no art at all. This man, Ford, may be having his own troubles, but he looks like one who has had a glimpse or two into man’s happiness….” Next up on my watch list: Fuller’s UNDERWORLD U.S.A. (I really ought to see THE BIRDS again, also.)
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