Fred,

Over the past two days since I posted this on Film Art, I've been
editing the same entry on my blog. So for some elaboration and
clarification of my ideas I direct you to it:

http://asperfectasitcanbe.blogspot.com/

It's a paragraph or so longer, and I've changed the words. Like you, I
also reference the title "none shall escape", though I haven't seen
the film yet. I hope someday Doc will be able to show it.

I agree wholeheartedly with your analogy of the film to "a global ice
palace" or a "frozen jigsaw puzzle". Note that at the end of my notes
I put quotes around " 'better' direction". Here, I'm trying to
emphasize through irony that when Gene, Bruhn, and Starrett make their
decision to lead the band into the wild they may be making a better
decision for the farmers, but they are also condemning themselves and
others to death. Our choices, even the best of them, bear heavy
consequences in this universe. In this sense, I think freedom in de
Toth is about responsibility to the self. Starrett comes to realize,
and by his example so do we, that one has agency only over oneself,
that one is free only in terms of the power of individual choice.
Faced with this, he decides to sacrifice himself not for the
townspeople or for some noble ideal of community, as might happen in
Ford, but for the sake of his own moral integrity. It's all about the
preservation of self, I think. This is what we are driven to in a
world of rock, snow, and timber. So yes, I agree that de Toth's
universe eliminates the possibility of the forms of community we find
in Ford or Minnelli or Hawks (haven't seen enough Cukor to discuss this).

To answer your more general question as to my position on the
universal in art - you didn't put it that way specifically, but I
think this is generally the problem with auteurists, or any kind of
critic for that matter, who reduce the question to character - I think
this notion of 'character' in cinema operates, as you once put it on
a_film_by, as 'example' for us, though maybe 'surrogate' is an even
better term. Character stands in for spectator, and their adventures
through space become our own - the most essential illustration of
which is any Rossellini film, which is to say that in Rossellini's
cinema this idea is very central to what he's trying to accomplish. At
the same time, they are 'objects' within a world of objects that we
are looking at - the best instances here being Sirk with his
anti-materialism or Hitchcock with his fetishism, or Mizoguchi or
Minnelli with their aesthete/connoisseur sensibilities. Again, this is
to use your terminology. If I were to use my own, I'd cop from writing
on painting or sculpture and speak of 'figures', 'bodies', or 'forms'.
Of course, in narrative cinema, it is typically the human form that is
at issue. Gallagher has analogized cinema post-Murnau to "sculpture in
motion", and where the narrative cinema is concerned I think that
might be the best way to put it.

Finally, as to how the film's ending fits into my scheme, I try to
point out near the end of my notes, at least in the most recent
version on my blog, that in the end all we can do is "endure". We take
care of ourselves, cultivate the self, and in so doing try not to
bother anyone else. Generosity, mercy, pity, and even love - these do
exist in de Toth's world, but never in and of themselves, so that
Blaise stands by Bruhn during the operation out of genuine pity but is
only prompted to do so at all by the prospect of the bandits killing
everyone in the town. Also, Ernine falls in love with Gene, but during
the dance scene her manner suggests this is at least partly out of
fear and the desire for the sense of security and safety he ensures.
Thus, de Toth seems to acknowledge that ultimately there are things
like hope and freedom, but that these concepts are born only out of
our necessity to have ideals which we can lean on. People are always
going to be unreliable, no matter what, but if we have faith we can at
least convince ourselves and each other that that isn't true. Isn't
this wherein love consists? A mutual delusion.

So at the end, Starrett and Gene have managed to "endure" better than
the outlaws, by not deluding themselves. Starrett knew the risks and
yet he went anyway. In the end, it is almost a mystery as to how he
survives that midnight blizzard when the two bandits do not. The best
explanation is I think the "sadism" you mention in your own piece,
Fred. De Toth punishes the bandits for their sins. Starrett survives
on the one hand because he endures better than they, and on the other
because de Toth awards his nobility and purpose of self, just as
Captain Bruhn and Starrett do the same when they allow Gene a way out
by having him leave his horse to Tex.

The last scene is beautiful, one of the most overwhelming in all
cinema. It seems to embody this contradiction between de Toth's
universal law that 'none shall escape' and his truly felt affection
for Gene and Starrett who have grown so much over the course of the
film. Thus, I think those final pans across the town and the mountains
serve both to "exclude the possibility of human warmth" as you have
put it, but at the same time to carry us to a higher plateau of
consciousness. It's transcendent in the way that so much late fifties
Hollywood cinema is in its total authoritativeness. We have learned
something from the film, something about our innate human condition,
and so have the characters. Thus, there is a sense of spiritual
liberation, even if we still remain physically isolated and earthbound.

--- In FilmArt@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper <f@...> wrote:
>
> Edo,
>
> Thanks for some terrific comments on this tremendously great film, long
> a particular favorite of mine.
>
> I think you're largely right about the entrances. I would emphasize,
> though, things like your "That final word, 'murder,' hangs over
Helen as
> she walks toward the cabin," more than ideas about individual versus
> community and especially more than ideas about freedom. Sirk once said,
> "I believe that happiness exists, if only by virtue of the fact that it
> can be destroyed," and I would translate that into de Toth's
universe as
> "Freedom exists only by virtue of the fact that it can be destroyed --
> and is being destroyed at every moment." I don't think I'm really
> disagreeing with you here, as you seem to acknowledge this. The film's
> editing seems to me to fit characters together like the tightest of
> frozen jigsaw puzzles, each becoming a trap that ensnares the others,
> as Jack Bruhn serves as a trap for the other outlaws when he rescues
the
> town's women from their entrapping clutches at the dance, to take a
> minor example. The film seems to me more like a global ice palace
than a
> complexly articulated representation of varieties of human
> relationships. For that one might look to Hawks or Ford or Cukor or
> Minnelli, even though each also overlays all characters with their own
> visions. Though others won't always agree with me about this, I tend to
> see great filmmakers, including great Hollywood filmmakers, as having a
> "total vision" that should not be reduced, as some auteurists do,
and as
> I all too often have done in my own writing in the interest of
> accessibility, as primarily articulating the specifics of character
> relationships within scenes, even though many or most great Hollywood
> filmmakers do do that too. It sounds like you partly or mostly agree
> with me here, actually (and I'd be curious about your thoughts on this
> in general), in that you describe scenes and cuts in terms of the way
> they serve de Toth's overall expression.
>
> My own favorite "entrance" of the film is perhaps the one that
occurs at
> the opening, when the outlaws brutally burst into the bar, disrupting
> the complications of a "Ramrod" like plot that seems to be unfolding
> with the much more totally despairing prison they impose. Indeed, if I
> had my choice of a program to introduce de Toth, it would be those two
> films, "Ramrod" first of course.
>
> For me, the opening and closing pans that emphasize what you call a
> "circular plateau" form the film's ultimate encirclement, so to speak.
>
> The scene you call pivotal, and the line in it you cite, I have always
> found immensely moving. I think the full line (and you or others could
> check this on DVD) of Bruhn's is something like, "I know what I'm
doing,
> but what about you? What's your reason for wanting to die." (Pause) "I
> guess every fool has his reasons." So they head off into the hopeless
> snow, knowing, unlike the men, that there is no way out, that "none
> shall escape" (to quote the title of an early and great de Toth.) But
> actually, that isn't quite what happens, and the young man's final
entry
> indoors fits somewhere into your scheme, though I'm not sure exactly
> how, as does of course the reflection on the door window as it closes.
>
> Fred Camper
>