It's a western! A continental western from the mid 70's when the western was winding down. Terence Hill and Bud Spencer wern't in it, though it did have a lot of stars. But none of them had ever made westerns before and they'd never make any others again. Same goes for the director. It wasn't shot in Almeria either, it was shot in Paris. In fact it's set in Paris. On a building site.
The Italian director Marco Ferrari was a maverick, somewhat avant-garde figure, very much in the shadow of his many more illustrious compatriots. Something of a Dadaist, he had more in common with Alfred Jarry than he did Roberto Rossellini and by the early 1970's his career was flat-lining with each obscure-by-intent, release. In his contemporaneous films of the period he'd cast his favourite actor, Ugo Tognazzi in "L'Udieze", as a pimp working for the Vatican, and in "Dillinger e Morte" it's Michel Piccoli as an ennui-filled bourgeois who absent-mindedly murders his wife. In "La Cagne", Marcello Mastrioianni stars as a Messerschmitt obsessed Robinson Crusoe who finds himself besieged by a woman who wants to be his dog. Pretty odd films.
Michel Piccoli, snacking
Inspired by a sumptuous banquet that precipitated life-saving diabetes treatment, Ferrari gathered his actors together for le film de scandale of 1973, "La Grande Bouffe". With the addition of Phillipe Noiret, they portrayed a group of respectable men of society, who inspired by somewhat elusive motives, affect their own demise through excessive over consumption. Along the way they indulge themselves with a group of prostitutes and overcome dangerous bouts of flatulence. The film chimed with the post-May 68 political climate which saw many established directors paying homage to the radical agenda set by Jean-Luc Godard and the younger generation of cineastes he'd inspired. At one end of the scale Pasolini's "Teorema" (1968) made it's radical commentary within a minimalist context, whilst Fellini's papal fashion-show in "Roma" (1972) took things towards giddy excess. However nobody could begrudge Ferrari's effort as being crowned the intemperate "Citizen Kane" of this whole period; a film that would inspire adulation and revulsion in equal measure.
High on this reception, Ferrari immediately re-assembled his cast and plunged straight into his next project. This time round his incarnate love of absurdity and improvisation would hit un-paralleled heights.
The film was shot in the summer of 1973 in the vast crater burrowed out from the demolished Les Halles food market. For 800 years this central space had functioned as the Le Ventre des Paris or Belly of Paris, a designation immortalised in Emile Zola’s novel of the same name. But like London’s Covent Garden, Paris had long outgrown the efficiency of hosting such services in a congested central location. Under Georges Pompidou, plans were made to re-imagine the area as a central hub for the subterranean RER rail interchange, with shopping and culture sat aloft like a concrete layer of icing. That this gateau was not to the taste of the Parisians is of no great surprise and subsequent attempts to sweeten the pudding have been met so far with very little civic enthusiasm. I like to think that Ferrari was prescient in this regard, with the setting not merely a happy accident but one imbued with a deeper sense of iconoclasm. It also preserves a la Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris, an immortal record of a city in turmoil and transfiguration.
In this hollowed out building site, Ferrari decided to shoot of all things a satirical recreation of the Battle of the Little Big Horn…with Custer’s last stand…Indians et al. He juxtaposed the semi-straight depiction of the story by actors in authentic period costumes, against the jarringly modern setting. Scenes are clearly shot whilst the demolition is in progress. At one point an Indian massacre is conducted in the fire lit to topple on old market chimney and cannons are fired bringing down the iron-work of a large covered hall. Soldiers idle in street cafes awaiting orders and executions are held in the site’s moulded plastic viewing platform. At one point Sitting Bull leads an expedition to a boutique to purchase guns. In another an exhibition is held of embalmed Indians, their bodies stuffed with back copies of Paris-Soir.
Wounded Knee 1973
The mood is comical but dark, with the history of the Indian genocide linked to contemporary American foreign policy. There is a whiff of Vietnam in the air and pictures of President Nixon decorate the walls with Watergate referenced. In the February of 1973, a few months before filming commenced the ghosts of the Big Horn were revisited in the Wounded Knee Occupation which resulted in a 71 day stand-off between the American Indian Movement and the FBI which resulted in three fatalities. In the film, the character Pinkerton, a Professor of Anthropology, oversees events dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. As the 7th Cavalry descend on the Oglala Sioux, his shirt is emblazoned with the letters CIA and he exits the stage en-route to Chile. It’s that sort of film.
Perhaps the closest comparison to this film is the surreal end scene of the contemporaneous “Blazing Saddles” when the mass bar room fight collapses into the Busby Berkeley sound stage, though the farce here never quite transcends the polemics.
The cast however look like they’re enjoying the shoot and with the director inserting himself into the assembly we are forgiven for thinking the whole thing was shot in between courses for another of Ferrari’s gastronomic feasts. In addition to Mastroianni as Custer, Noiret as General Terry and Piccoli as Buffalo Bill the film is a-wash with European acting talent. Alain Cuny plays a stone-faced Sitting Bull, Serge Reggiani with shaved head japes as a king's fool and Catherine Deneuve is Custer’s romantic foil. The film's title "Touche Pas a la Femme Blanche!" (Don't touch the white woman!) is a phrase addressed repeatedly throughout the film to Ugo Tognazzi's character Mitch, the Indian scout who plays a pivotal role to the film's chief protagonists. His character carries the greatest satirical depth and pathos. Ridiculed by his Army paymasters, abused by the Govt. civilians and despised by his Indian brethren, his painfully duplicitous role is revealed as a blessing compared to his miserable existence in a subterranean sweat shop.
So its a film about colonial exploitation, racism, economic subjugation and the folly of valour...amongst heavy-duty earth-moving machines. It’s a curio and one worth seeing. At least once, anyway, if only to remind ourselves that wise lessons about civil insurrection used to be a subject of inspiration to the producers of mainstream entertainment.
When you think of Brazil there are probably one or two
things that spring to mind, depending upon your age and geographical location.
For much of the world a mention of the country will bring up images of the
famous golden football shirts and world cups of the 1970’s and 80’s, of
football played the way that so many wish it were still played and skills that
have yet to be bettered. For others it is Carnaval with its huge street
parades, magnificent ornate floats and of course scantily, if extravagantly,
clothed women, or the miles of golden beaches with scantily clad women…I may be
getting slightly off track here, but nevertheless these are images that come to
mind at the very mention of the word Brazil. However, there is another thing
that is so fundamentally Brazilian that it is intrinsic to the things mentioned
above and that is music.Again, when you think about Brazil, the first thing that
comes to mind when thinking about music is probably Samba, the music that
accompanies every Carnaval video and every film tracking along a Brazilian
beach, but there is other music that has come out of Brazil. Bossa Nova,
developed sometime in the 1950’s as a fusion of Samba and Jazz, became very
popular for a short time and still has its fans today, but then in the
mid-sixties came an art movement that gave rise to a new style of music that
would reflect a much wider set of influences than those that were internal to
Brazil.
The Tropicalia movement started, like so many it seems, as
a small group of musicians and poets, amongst whom the most famous is probably
Gilberto Gil, in the north-east of Brazil, before shifting the whole movement
to Sao Paulo, where, through a series of connections, they would come into
contact with a band by the name of Os Mutantes. Gil invited them to play with
him at the 3rd Annual Festival of Brazilian Popular Music, which, the following
year, led to them being invited to work with him in 1968 on his eponymous
second album as well as featuring on the album Tropicalia: ou Panis et
Circencis, a statement album for the movement as a whole, which would create a
connection that would lead to conflict with the military government of Brazil.
In the same year they would release their debut album, titled Os Mutantes,
which would start their journey to becoming one of the most influential
Brazilian bands to make themselves known beyond the borders of the country.
Listening to a band singing in a language different to that
which you speak is always an interesting experience, the connections and clues
that can be gleaned from the lyric of a song are missing which, as a result,
means that a lot of room for nuance is also missing. The music on this album
tends toward the whimsical, with the occasional delve into more serious,
contemplative sounding tunes, but does the way the music sounds relate to what
the songs actually mean? Anyone who has listened to music for any amount of
time, particularly the era this album originates from, will be aware of a
strong tendency of disparity between music and lyric in songs, the
juxtaposition of cheery music with lyrics that tend toward the dark, menacing
tone or the sad song which carries a message of hope are common tropes, but
they depend upon an understanding of both elements to create their effect. So
what do you do when one of those elements is obscure to you? Well, one
suggestion would be to stop trying.
When you just sit back and listen to this album it becomes
an enjoyable experience. The sounds that are put together, from fuzztone guitar
and keyboards, distortion and what would appear to be environmental sounds, and
the use of different forms and ideas of music, the obvious Brazilian influence,
with both Samba and Bossa Nova playing their parts, as well as the obvious
influence of The Beatles, are all amalgamated into a coherent and pleasing
whole, whilst still having enough edges to keep it all interesting. They have
also stayed relatively relevant, Kurt Cobain and Flea have both expressed a
love of their work and The Bees covered A Minha Menina on their debut album in
2002, and that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as this is an album
that looks both backward and forward musically, taking in the musical
influences of Brazil and mixing them together with psychedelic pop, jazz and
soul to create a sound that, although very much of its era, was a strong
suggestion of music to come in later decades.
(MS)
I remember Maite from Stockwell in those late
90’s. Studying towards a doctorate in Latin American studies. One October she
speculated on how she was split between buying a winter coat or buying a ticket
to Rio. Even then it was fantastic bullshit, but the previous year she’d been
on a field trip in the Amazon and entertained us with tales of plucking fresh
fruit and avocados from the foliage. That Autumn we saw Maria Bethania at Drury
Lane and newly inspired I criss crossed the (now cleared) forests of the London
record shop community in search of Brazilian music. Like the fruit, I picked
out album sleeves on the strength of their colourful and exotic skins. One of
the first was by Os Mutantes.
Os Mutantes. Mutants. Plant or animals that
are different from other plants or animals of the same kind because of a change
in the structure of their genes. A hybrid or composite entity. Something that
has assimilated foreign bodies to create something else.
The indigenous Tupi Indians of the Brazilian
central plains would eat their adversaries to utilise their power. The
preference for strength ensuring only the bravest warriors were consumed in
this way. Through time the Tupi were exiled to the outer coastal fringes of the
South American land mass where they encountered the Portuguese Empire. Through
the mass cultivation of sugar cane, an influx of more than 2.8 million West
African slaves entered the mix. The burgeoning state gained its independence
and in the late 19th Century set upon on its path towards nation
building. By the 20’s the modernist writer Osvaldo De Andres would define the cannibalistic
culture of Brazil as both a unique and essential catalyst in the country’s
evolving culture. By the 30’s this artistic intelligentsia would be absorbed
into high office.
Glauber Rocha’s “Terra Am Transe”
reflects on this political turmoil. In his film a poet rides the wave of a
newly birthed administration, enjoying the patronage of his cohorts on their
rise to executive power. On the regime’s lurch towards tyranny he rejects the
transformation and is shot.
By the 50s the country’s journey to the
modern world found permanent expression in the vision of communist architect Oscar Niemeyer’s new capital city of Brazilia, founded on the central plains of the
Tupi. Turning into the 60’s this utopian vision became married to progressive
socialist ideals. But comme toujours the progressive Left simply furnished a
waiting room ready for the far Right to occupy. In 1964 a coup d’etat with US
backing overthrew the progressive President Goulat and a temporary military
regime was installed. Temporary for over 20 years.
Round about this time other rebellions were
breaking out. Culture is identity and music is a highly important and emotive
issue within Brazil. The raw material of samba from the Afro-American
north-east was refined with gringo jazz into the exportable bossa-nova. The
Left rebelled against the sun and sex banality of the lyrical content. There
were rumblings that the white bleached transformation of the music had
sacrificed something en-route to it becoming the emblematic sound of the
Copacabana bourgeois. But across the world a million cocktail glasses clinked
in easy listening ignorance. The closet influence of America and England
influenced the working class Jovem Guarda (the ie-ie-ie equivalent of the
French ye-ye) which in turn influenced the evolving Musica Popular Brasileira.
Televised song festivals took on the fervor of football matches with partisan
clans alternately singing along via printed lyric sheets or drowning out the
music in loud opposition.
And then in 1967 with Che prowling the jungle
borders and the spirit of Simona Bolivar in the air, the rebellious
Tropicalistas from Bahia dropped an anarchist bomb into this highly charged
atmosphere. Wrapped up in Sgt Pepper-imagery, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Tom
Ze and Gal Costa briefly turned contemporary Brazilian pop culture on its head.
Putting the Dada into Carmen Miranda-da they shook a cocktail of bossa, samba,
tango, psychedelia, bolero, hard rock, cumbia, chanson and rumba to revisit the
‘20s cultural cannibalism. And in only12 months they would alienate both Left
and the Right acting as the primary catalyst for the State’s repressive lurch
towards an oppression that would stretch into the 1970’s.
And Os Mutantes, the pop group? They were a
sort of house band to this revolution. Alongside arranger Rogerio Duprat they
would contribute to much of the music created by this incestuous collective,
backing Gil’s landmark Beatlesque-Capoeira West Side Story “Domingo No Parque”
and Veloso at his incendiary appearance at the 3rd International
Song Festival which resulted in a sort of Dylan at Newport type clash of
cultures. Their own albums stand up well, with the opening two particularly
fine examples of the movements aesthetic melting pot. Like planets circling
round the sun, when The Beatles shone at their brightest so the band’s they
inspired found their radiant peak. By 1969 with Gil and Veloso in London exile
they moved to more generic rock, their light increasingly diluted in the outer
rings of the cosmos.
But the legacy of this period left us an
abundance of wonderful music both before, during and after the Tropicalistas.
Put on your new winter coat and take a walk through your local forest to pick
out as many colourful consumables as you can.
(PS)
Occasionally you hear an album
that grabs you by the lapels and demands that you snap out of whatever funk
you’re currently in and just bloody smile, why don’t you.
Os Mutantes’s 1968 debut is
ostensibly a pop album infused with psych and prog flavours throughout, like
the stripes in Willy Wonka’s sticks of rock; it also has elements of
avant-garde, but without the pretention that can sometimes go hand in hand with
that. I don’t actually think they’re trying to be Art in any formal sense, this
LP seems like a genuine desire to create interesting and diverting sounds, it’s
sonic experimentation and exploration in its purest sense.
For parts of this LP I get a
taste of contemporary Mothers of Invention works like Uncle Meat or Lumpy
Gravy, but with less complexity and focus on musicianship. These guys didn’t
have the Serious Chops that the Mothers had, but there’s certainly a fair helping
of invention there – and there are still some non-standard rhythms, as in the
alternating 3/4, 3/4, 2/4 pattern of the first part of Panis et Cirenses; and
Baby is a doo-wop number that wouldn’t be too far out of place on any early
Mothers LP.
I also get the lo-fi aesthetic
of the first couple of Velvet Underground LPs, with Rita Lee in the Nico role,
especially in the dreamy O Relógio - but there’s much less self-conscious cool
imagery here, they’re clearly not taking themselves too seriously like the
Velvets did. This to me is pure far-out entertainment... it also sounds like it
was recorded on a cornflakes packet through a sock for 50p, which only adds to
its innocent charm.
It still seems rooted in
Brazilian musical tradition too, despite the freaky influences of contemporary
overseas popular counter-culture; there are precious few (if any) Americanisms
in there, and the instrumentation and harmonisation give an authentic feel to
the sound, especially in the samba rhythm of Ave Genghis Khan before it
meanders off in its various directions.
It’s joyous, liberating fun…
even the hammy music hall sound of Senhor F grates less than usual for me, as
it all seems to fit into the chaotic ‘everything including the kitchen sink’
aesthetic. It’s a glorious festival of the absurd, which evidently caused a few
establishment feathers to ruffle in its year of release… 1968 was the yearof
rebellion and protest, after all. Weird and wonderful stuff.
.jpg)
