Green Fog Guy Maddine and His Permanent Co-authors of the last years - Evan's brothers and Galen Johnsonovv's co-authorship with Evan and Galen Johnson Removed and / or Movied Movies: "Sessions" (Sences, 2016), "Green Fog" (The Green Fog, 2017 ), "Elements" (Accidence, 2018), "bring me a head of Tim Horton" (Bring Me The Head Of Tim Horton, 2018). It appeared thanks to utilitarian orders for the creation of a postcard film dedicated to the 60th International Film Festival in San Francisco. In the filmography of Maddina, there was already one "postcard" - "My Father is 100 years old" (My Dad IS 100 years old, 2005) for the anniversary of Roberto Rossellini, but the case was special. The script for the film wrote Isabella Rosselini, the daughter of the jubilee and one of the permanent actresses of Maddine; She also performed almost all the roles in this cinematic fantasy. The source of inspiration served as extremely closest history, and children's childhood memories, and his work.
The creation of a "green fog" (The Green Fog, 2017) put a complex task before directors. "Film-postcard about the city" brings thoughts about the boring of the same type of recognizable species, unnecessary pathos and some false. Primitive form, involving flatness, low timing and recognizable features ... However, there are other samples, for example "about Nice" (à Propos de Nice, 1930) Jean Vigo. Together with the operator, Boris Kaufman Vigo enthusiastically launched "Nature" - colorful characters for his essay about the city. "Regarding Nice" - only the visibility of the species picture. The director's disease and his despair dictated optics for a very personal film of the author enclosed in a foreign and rejection space.
One of the "urban" films Madedina is "My Winnipeg" (My Winnipeg, 2007). Autobiographical, and therefore, the most intimate film director is devoted not only to the history of the native city, but also the author's family. The narration in it is carried out by the mouth of the hero trying, oddly enough, Winnipeg leave. Scrolling voice from the face of Maddine himself tells non-liberty details about Winnipeg: that this is the coldest city on Earth, that this is the city of Lunatikov, that in Winnipegians the word "if" is inspired by horror, and at the same time every day in Winnipeg - the day "if " The hero of this picture most of all wants to escape from the city and sits on the train, which the winter night is lucky. In the lulling heat of the car, he falls asleep. Dreams and memories create a subjective logic filled with associations, a priori does not coincide with any scheme. The author of this logic is immersed deep into the time and begins an experiment on creating a film about this journey. If you believe Maddine yourself, "only creating a film, you can free yourself from the power of the family and the city." Sleeping sleep and memory helps to make it impossible: to restore the connection with the dead relatives (their hero in his film replaced on specially selected actors) and long-lost topography, reconstructed thanks to the chronicle frames. The result of the practical experience is the serenity of forgotten. The hero stops remembering that the cities of his childhood no longer, that his brother and father died. He takes the city and reconciles with him in revelation, which it is thanks to Winnipega that he has been who he is. And the city finally lets him.
But if Winnipeg is a space rich in personal experiences, childish fears and youthful offensions, that is, literally copyright images, then San Francisco is absolutely someone else's uncharted city. To approach him, the avid Sinefil can only through the already existing cinema facilities. To create a "green fog" Maddin and its co-authors with Azart Vigo searched for the material. But not in real San Francisco, but in films that captured the appearance of the city. "Green fog" is a fully assembly film, which peacefully adjacent frames from classic films, TV shows, little-known products category B, rollers with YouTube. The authors of the film equalized more than a hundred paintings in the rights - only the presence of the selection was only the presence in the frames of San Francisco or its environs.
Probably the most iconic film for San Francisco is a cult "dizziness" (Vertigo, 1958) Alfred Hichkoka. The "green fog" critics called the collage "remake" of this film (directly from "dizziness" was used only one short frame), the authors really reconstruct "dizziness", but this reconstruction is speculative and more resembles the hunt for phantoms of Hichkok film, rather than scrupulous puzzle . In the "green fog," as in "dizziness", the obsession disappeared and the desire to subjugate him leads to the vague foreboding of the return of the remote past. The viewer really recognizes the plot of the Film Hitchcock, but only on associations with the original. While working on the picture Maddin and its co-authors were amazed at how often the same objects removed from the same angle fell into the lens of the camera of different cinematographers, with the same mitanese, with similar to each other figures. Famous images are so deeply asssets in consciousness that once at once, the directors repeat the schemes and clichés, producing more and more new films into the world, and the audience read the spectators at once, even without realizing this fully. The twins of the heroes of the Hitchcock film, circling in flights and the pursuit of completely other paintings, not only inspire the fear of loss of the uniqueness of the memories, but also demonstrate the horrific scarcity of the cylinder.
"Green fog" is more difficult than just "Cleaning" dizziness ": the authors are introduced additional - the second - film reality. Detectives, investigating the appearance of a green fog in the city, watches films, from the fragments of which and the plot of "dizziness" is lined up. This plot goes beyond the projection apparatus and scares its widespread - he overcomes the boundaries of all initially given reality, it comes out of control. In the final, heroes there is nothing else, except to destroy selected frames.
Detectives are Alter Ego Maddine and Johnson. In search of a response to the question about the nature of the fog, the heroes are stumbled on the clip popular in the 1990s of the American Boise Band 'N Sync. The appearance of sweet-haired young men in the forest near San Francisco discourages the characters so that they are asking the assistant to show the "other" forest record. In the technical break between the views, one detective asks another: "And what are we looking for?" And gets a very honest answer: "I do not know." Similarly, the authors of the Green Tuman did not know exactly what they were looking for, but as soon as during many hours, the search appeared frame appeared, the unconscious with confidence signaled that it was what is needed. Frames were seemed as if themselves were arranged in a narrative thanks to associations. The idea that all films whose tiny frames entered the "green fog" were potentially related to each other, confronted into the abyss of the irrational - the authorities of the authors over the material turns out to be lost. The film mastering reality, determines the place of San Francisco and creates its image. Cinema ceases to be a reflection of reality, it begins to form it.
In his exquisite ommage, Hitchkoku "dressed to murder" (Dressed to Kill, 1980) Brian de Palma took a meeting of heroes in the Museum of Modern Art without a single word. Exactly ten minutes later the tense scene lasts, during which there is a game with changing roles: in male and female, sacrifice and pursuer. The museum is a space, bevented by visual images, and therefore - the space of silence. The first words of the heroine of Angie Dickinson utters only having taken away from the steps, on the border of the ordinary reality. In comparison with similar frames in a museum from "dizziness" - this is deliberately long and slow, painful for the viewer scene. The lack of dialogues in it naturally and supernaturally simultaneously.
Maddine (John's thyough fan) and Johnson went to a more radical step: they neatly cut almost all replicas from the frames used in the green fog. In the scenes implying dialogues, only interjections, pauses, grimaces, eloquent views, paradoxically reinforcing the effect of non-credible words. For a comic effect, inevitably arising from contemplating such an attraction, it is necessary to realize that the scenes are not deprived of meaning. According to the fact that it is shown literally between words, by experience accumulated during other films with the same typical scenes, you can restore the content. But this reception is not at all in order for the viewer to break the challenge of the chance. Rather, in order to consider the layer absolutely incomprehensible without the use of assembly scissors, hidden behind the author's dictatorship and inert visual thinking, accustomed to the junction of clispusted phrases and genre schemes.
Frames with an icon of the militants of the 1990s Chuck Norris are lovingly mounted in the second part of the film under the title "Catatonia". Katatonia, or a stupor, is that it is completely unexpected to see in the performance of Norris, but it gives even more - literally an existential longing that is located for not one and not even two frames. Maddine and Johnson make the viewer doubt the truth of their perception, paying attention to the degree of glorification and subordination to the codes and contexts formed in the industry.
One of the few phrases, after all, sounding in the "green fog": "Cities in the world are dying." In their place there are monsters and polyps, rusked on the facades of buildings. And not just buildings - stories, memory and private experiences. In the "Green Tuman" a continuous cascade of cinematic techniques, the history of the city is told - from the arrival of Spaniards to the Earth of the future San Francisco to the earthquake and the complete destruction of this city. The harvest of the catastrophe, and possibly, the very green fog was the same - and this is just one of the possible interpretations. The city, destroyed by the earthquake, on the one hand, was inscribed in the plot of the paintings, on the other, in a real story, which is largely typical for the American coastal settlement. Ruins in many respects - the image of reflexivity, self-consciousness of culture, reflections on their own sources. The search and inclusion in the film of numerous frames of the destruction of the city is a sight, which belongs to the aesthetic category of sublime. It inspires fear, it deprives the consciousness of the opportunity to act and opens the potential for the unconscious.
In addition to the "dizziness", Maddine and its co-authors had at least another source of inspiration - the film of John Carpenter "Fog" (The Fog, 1980). It is not only about the partial coincidence of plots, but also about the attitude towards the city. In the film Carpenter, Antonio Bay's town is preparing for the celebration of the century from the date of foundation, but the holiday is overshadowed by an unknown natural phenomenon - a dense cold flickering fog that goes straight from the ocean. The legend, told in the Prolog, says that the ship sailed to the shores to base the settlement, drowned, trying to approach the fires visible from the shore. Fog hid from the team the danger of shipwreck. The crew of that ship is still resting at the bottom, but their eyes are open. The fog, who led to the shipwreck, disappeared also inexplicably, as it appeared, but everyone said that the fog will return, and people who lie at the bottom of the sea, will rise again and will look for a bonfire, which led them to dark cold death. In the fog hide gloomy ghosts, thirsty. Maddine and Johnson's film is the return of fog, however, this time is not in the damned Antonio Bay (nearby Los Angeles), and in San Francisco. Therefore, it is not a crew, but a forgotten image.
Carpenter has repeatedly noted the effect of Hitchcock on his films, "fog" is associated with the "dizziness" by contacting "Laeye" Edgar Allan By. Carpenter took the lines from the story as an epigraph, Hichkok created in his film a paraphrase of a literary work. In addition, one of the roles in "Tuman" performs Janet Lee - Hichkokovskaya actress, for many years he has become a challenge of a brilliant "psycho", and the daughter of Lee - Jamie Lee Curtis in the 1970s and 1980s will be one of the favorite actresses of the Carpenter and will play the main The role in "Tuman". Maddin himself also applied to works by, however, indirectly through the artist of Odylone Redon. The film "Odilon Redon, or Eye, Rising Eternity, like a balloon" (Odilon Redon Or The Eye Like A Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity, 1995) was created under the impression of gloomy images from the artist's paintings, which was under great influence of poetry all the same . A. P. Around the "green fog" arises the unity of confidentiality to the general implicit world of the "Art of Nightmare".
The "fog" carpenter and "dizziness" of Hichkok are located on different poles: irrational (low-budget mystical horror) and rational (highly intelligent detective / thriller). In the "green fog", these formal antipodes, while maintaining their own characterity, generate a new convincing image.
Forgotten, otherwise unknown films become a window into the future of cinema, because they show that even in such a form they continue to exist that their strength is not exhausted, despite the "violence", produced by mounting. Thanks to the "green fog", these films create a new form and a new meaning, release the subconscious energy of the creators and instill in the viewer the taste of unfamiliar, shapeless, breaking frame. "Green fog" is a multi-layer, ghosts woven the cloth, in which the history of the city, sign films, reflections on the nature and evolution of the film language are connected.