§§1930. The fishing village of Esperanza on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. AnAmerican nightclub singer is hanging out with a group of English friends -- anarchaeologist and his niece, a drunken poet, and a racing car driver who isabout to attempt a new land speed record on the flat sand beach nearby. Thesinger, a femme fatale who has come here from London with the poet, is abeautiful bitch who suffers from a love hangover or more accurately too muchattention from all the wrong lovers. In short, the men just don't measure up.
And just why is shehere on the gypsy coast? Is she drifting into an unwise marriage throughboredom or is she here for a unknown, fatal rendezvous? Once again, it's thelost generation playing in a lost land. There's something unreal aboutEsperanza, as if it exists between now and then in a twilight of broken statuesand mythological memory. The characters are from the modern, industrializedworld, but Esperanza with its gypsy culture and primitive instinct is like aneo-classical garden replete with follies and supernatural possibility. Andwhat stitches the distant past to the existential present? Why, the legend ofthe Flying Dutchman.
Pandora & TheFlying Dutchman (1951) is a peculiar yet fascinating mix of modern art andromantic mysticism. Its pedigree is film noir -- i.e. the femme fataleand the extensive use of night shadow cinematography -- although the story isliterary with its European setting and extensive symbolism. Pandora Reynolds(Ava Gardner) is a reset of Hemingway's Lady Brett -- pure sensuality in anon-intellectual body (Ava Gardner said that she had no idea what the film wasabout, even after playing her character to the finish), a refugee from theclubs of New York and London as a goddess of urban noir. Her phantom lover,Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason), is an intellectual of no fixed address,arrives in a crewless yacht dressed in mystery. He paints, he writes, hereads... but where his money comes from is never part of the conversation. He'sthe anti-thesis of the film noir hard male protagonist, comes directly from thedesperate heroes of Romantic literature. He doesn't need a knife or a gunbecause, like H.G. Wells' Time Traveller, he gets around,regardless.
the geometricalhinges of death
Evening. Las DosTortugas (the Two Turtles), a bodega/cafe on the beach. Pandora is there withher friends, smoking and drinking. A flamenco ensemble performs.
The flamenco interludemight seem to be just a bit of location atmosphere, yet it is more than this. Amale dancer takes the floor, then the woman, and then another male, and bothmales circle the woman. Just as in a stage play where symbolism is used bynecessity when verbal exposition won't do, the competition for the woman'sattention mirrors exactly the situation at the start of the story. Pandora hastwo suitors -- Reggie Demarest, the alcoholic poet, now on the way out... andStephen Cameron, the racing car driver, her latest lover. All that is missingfrom this Lorca-esque routine is the fourth dancer, Death.
After the flamencoperformance, she goes to the piano, sings a slow club song, the sort of pianoteaser popular for the period. Reggie leans against the upright, pissed andbesotted; he thinks this party is a celebration of their anniversary sincemeeting in London one year ago and when Pandora finishes, he proposes. Herdismissal isn't so much a rejection as it is a deferral. Anything a drunk sayscan't be serious. However, he is serious; he spikes his drink with some fatalpowder, smiles, downs it all, staggers towards the table where their friendssit, has one final poetic declaration:
Reggie: I knowDeath has 10,000 special doors for men to make their exits... and they move onsuch strange geometrical hinges you may open them both ways... and anyway'sfine out of your whispering....
He then falls dead ina theatrical flourish. Some gesture, some anniversary.
Again, you might thinkhis final words are mere effect, yet their imagery -- a direct lift fromWebster's play, The duch*ess of Malfi -- fits perfectly with the mystical intentof the story and its surrealist patina. As Geoffrey Fielding recalls, "The moonwas at the full, erotic and disturbing." Indeed.
Pandora: in Greekmythology, the first woman. Created by Zeus to punish Man after Prometheus hadcreated the human race (Man). She came with a box or jar in which all sorts ofevils and diseases were stored. Bad news woman, and this "Pandora" is noexception. Despite the fact that they should know better, a procession of mencompete for her as if she is a mystic trophy in disguise: a poem, a racing car,a bull, or even Jesus Christ. She is a pure sexual lure, a modernist siren whor*sponds to her lovers' sacrifices with the diffidence of a gentle sociopath.Her cool response to Reggie's death seems baffling, or even appalling, yet thespeed of the narrative shift doesn't allow much ethical deliberation. I'm abitch, therefore I am. Janet -- her rival for Stephen Cameron's affections --attempts to call her on it, yet Janet merely comes across as a jealoushysteric.
the lover as aFuturist racer
As Reggie suspected,Pandora and Stephen Cameron are already an item, even though Janet thinksStephen belongs to her. Again, here is another lover as an exotic figure, a manwho races with Death... although, possibly, Stephen doesn't see it that way.He's a steady man, not easily perturbed or provoked, even if he thinks he's inlove with Pandora. He names his racing car "Pandora" -- she's a muse, aninspiration, a mojo.
Stephen Cameron isout of the tradition of British adventurers like Mallory the climber (Everest)Colonel Fawcett the explorer (Amazon) -- a "great man" as Pandora tells thebullfighter, Juan Montalvo, when rationalizing her impending marriage.
As the death ofReggie seems to be no big deal, he passes out-of-frame with little discussion,the first of Pandora Reynold's victims, erased as easily as a wet face on a newpainting. "Do you think he killed himself because he knew about us?" saysStephen on the boardwalk outside the bodega. "No," says Pandora. She thendemands that Stephen takes her for a moonlight drive in his large racer -- anabsurdity really seeing as the co*ckpit is for a single occupant, and as theScottish mechanic cautions, "only has a hand-brake."
Nevertheless themonster is rolled from its shack on the beach and Stephen and Pandora roar awayinto the gloom. It's fantastic, improbable, yet possible. They leave the beach,follow a winding road to a headland where a megalith stands as a reminder ofthe pagan sanctity of the location. Down on the bay, the mast light of a mooredsloop twinkles. Pandora is intrigued by the mysterious boat, but is distractedby Stephen's need to know what he must do to prove his love. Pandora's reply ispreposterous, even vicious -- would he be willing to roll his car over thecliff? To sacrifice his ambition is only one step short of sacrificing hislife, yet Stephen is willing. He releases the brake, and the car goes over inan elegant moonlit plunge into the sleeping sea below.
Madness? Pandora,like her mythical antecedent, is a natural born destroyer, it seems. The factthat the car -- "Pandora" -- is later salvaged, and Stephen goes on to set anew land speed record watched by Pandora and her friends hardly normalizes theincident. But the men who love this femme fatale are all subject to moments ofviolence... except the mysterious stranger, Hendrick van der Zee, a.k.a. theFlying Dutchman.
Cars and racing werecentral to the Futurist obsession with speed. Stephen Cameron is a figuretypical of the British racer that emerged in the twenties with Henry Seagraveand Parry Thomas and their record runs on the flat beach at Southport Sands,UK. [both Seagrave & Thomas were killed in separate record attempts in1930] Sir Malcolm Campbell set a record of 272 mph at Daytona driving theCampbell-Railton Rolls Royce V-12 Bluebird -- a large modernist machinestreamed like a missile, not that dissimilar to the car used in Pandora &The Flying Dutchman, which is John Cobb's famousRapier-Railton .
And the object of allthis need for speed? To shrink Time, arrive (paradoxically) at eternal stasis?"And like young lions we ran after Death," says Marinetti, the Italian poetcredited with founding Futurism. In the Futurist Manifesto (1909), he says, "Weaffirm that the worlds magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty:the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, likeserpents of explosive breatha roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshotis more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace."
This polemicalrhetoric could easily describe Stephen Cameron's record-breaking run on thesands of Esperanza, especially when the engine catches fire and his fate is indoubt.
The racing car,salvaged from the sea just like the statues that lie on the beach at the HotelIsabella or in the garden of the archaeologist Geoffrey Fielding, becomes partof the mythological zeitgeist that extends through time and space... and indream.
De Chirico and theFlying Dutchman
Drawn inexorably tothe enigma of the mysterious yacht (or sloop) anchored in the bay, Pandoradrops her clothes, goes buff into the Mediterranean, swims to within hailingdistance. The deck is lit, the portholes too, but no one answers. Naked, sheascends the dingy stairs, moves through the shadows to the skylight above themain cabin, sees a man standing before a large canvas, paint-brush in hand. Heis deaf to her calls, oblivious to all except the work at hand. She finds thestairs, descends.
This first encounteris the pivotal scene in the film as it not only introduces the principals butalso establishes the symbolism that undertows the story's mystical intent. Isthe Dutchman surprised by this visit by a beautiful mermaid who insists on hiscompany, transgressing his solitude? No. Or is he surprised that PandoraReynolds is the literal embodiment of the woman in his painting? No. In theRomantic world there are no coincidences within the architecture of destiny.
His painting -- a pureplagiarism (or "appropriation") of the early metaphysical style of Giorgio deChirico -- is drawn by the hand of fate. Giorgio de Chirico (1888--1978) was aninfluential precursor of surrealism, itself rooted in neo-primitivism anddream. The Dutchman's painting includes the familiar De Chirico classicallandscape, an empty plaza with a distant Grecian building... it looksprimitive, like a fresco or a print motif for some fabric, and in theforeground the woman is only as real as you allow her to be. It's mythology asexpressed in dream, fragments from another dimension. The De Chirico influencein this drama extends not only through the symbolisms and the color scheme butin the "Nietzche Autumn" lighting that pervades much of the action, i.e. theprivate matador display that Juan Montalvo gives to impress Pandora, or thelove scene between Pandora and Hendrik van der Zee on the beach with thestatues. Even the idea for the story is pure De Chirico in its metaphysicalrecasting of the laws of Time and Space.
Pandora -- never shyor particularly well-mannered -- decides she doesn't like herself in thispainting (surely van der Zee has seen pictures of her in magazines or perhapsseen her in a nightclub in New York), grabs a paint-brush and like an angry,spoiled child, mutilates her portrait with a few ugly swipes.
The Dutchman isunmoved -- why? "I was angry once," he says. "But not anymore." He examines thepainting, has an idea: "No," he says, "you have improved it." He picks up hisbrush, removes all the details of the face so that the figure has the facelessmystery of a mannequin. This is more De Chirico. The figure has now become thefamous "Manichino", a figure De Chirico took from the dramatic poem "The FlutePlayer of Saint Merry" (1914) by his friend Guillaime Appollinaire, the mangenerally credited with coming up with the term surrealism.
Appollinaire'sfaceless flute player, both sinister and ravishing, moves through Paris atnight, collecting an entourage of hypnotized citizens and beautiful women, whofollow him into an abandoned building and disappear. Here, in the Dutchman'spainting, Pandora becomes such a figure -- beautiful, enigmatic, possiblyfatal. Behind her sit relics of the ancient world, dreamlike and abandoned.
As a character, Masonplays van der Zee as if he too is part of a painting, and has emerged into thisworld only by leaving his soul in another. He's usually seen in stasis, intenseand other-worldly. When he speaks, he speaks sotto voce. He seemsindifferent, yet has the manners of a highly disciplined intellectual. A statueor a figure in a painting, he only moves from his pedestal when surprised.James Mason could always play the role of the understated villain toperfection, so his Dutchman has the faint menace of the wounded beast. When he"translates" the Flying Dutchman's journal for the archaeologist/antiquitiescollector Geoffrey Fielding -- thereby revealing his tragic secret -- you knowhe was a villain, a murderer, and his eternal navigation of space and time ishis punishment.
But... a genuine badman ("I was angry once") or a victim? Hendrick van der Zee's story -- aShakespearean replay of Othello's doubt and despair in the face of blindingmoral beauty -- isn't a story about murder for venal advantage but rathermadness. So van der Zee is a tragic figure, someone to be pitied, a victim notof hubris but rather the capricious hand of Fate. Condemned to wander, aprisoner of a cruel memory, his solitude is the solitude of all men, regardlessof situation. He is, essentially, a Romantic hero, a Byronic figurereincarnating through History. His nemesis was a woman, yet his salvation willbe a woman.
"I sing not of thisworld or other stars/ I sing the possibilities of myself beyond this world andthe stars/ I sing the joy of wandering and the pleasure of a wanderer's death"(Appollinaire)
romanticism andmadness
Madness or the testingof madness is the vocation of the Romantic. Theatrical Reggie or speed-lustStephen... or the bullfighter Juan Montalvo.
Montalvo is part ofthe flamenco expression, a professional dancer with Death as his partner. Fetedand famous as Spain's greatest matador, he returns to Esperanza to reclaimPandora. Full of Latin intensity, this confident man is certain he canforestall her planned wedding to Stephen Cameron. He stages a private nocturnaldemonstration of his skills in a local bull ring, and then, following thisshadow dance, takes Pandora and her friends to meet his mother, a gypsy whor*ads the cards. In a dimly lit room with a picture of her deceased husband(Juan's father) on the wall, she deals the cards, doesn't like what she sees.As she and Juan argue, Pandora and the others withdraw. Obviously SenoraMontalvo disapproves of Pandora, and the future is doom. Juan, enraged,mutilates his father's portrait in a fated reprise of Pandora's action on theDutchman's yacht. But he knows what's wrong -- the Dutchman is what's wrong.
Pandora's romance withthe Dutchman is like a blank verse drama by Lord Byron. All is poetry, andperhaps this riddling dialogue is too much for the rank and file to absorb. Yetthe beauty of the settings and Jack Cardiff's cinematography carries the actionregardless of what is said or what is missed. The party on the beach is moresurrealist decor, staged in various De Chirico stylistic tableauxs. Themusicians are photographed at odd angles, suggesting various vanishing points,as if their co-mingling with the salvaged statues has pulled them into anotherdimension where the quake rubble of the ancient world has washed up on somemythological beach.
Pandora: (asshe wraps her scarf around a statue) What do you see out there? The past andthe future? Or some fabulous land... I'm interested in the present tonight, thehere and now.
The Dutchman looks atthe sea, then answers by reciting Matthew Arnold's famous poem "Dover Beach"("We are are here as on a darkling plain... where ignorant armies clash bynight" etc). She's reaching out to him, yet he's a prisoner of too much memoryand too much second sight. "I know where destructiveness comes from," saysPandora. "It's a lack of love." What she says is a paradox of course because,if anything, she has had too much love, so... it must have been the wrong kindof love. Reggie, Juan, Stephen... others unnamed, all wrong, all like thebroken statues on the beach.
Night. The Dutchman'sgarden cabana at the Hotel Isabella. Hendrik van der Zee is surprised byMontalvo, who knifes him in the back, leaves him for dead. Montalvo also killsPandora's terrier dog whom van der Zee has been minding. The action lookssupernatural, is supernatural because when Pandora arrives later -- aware thatMontalvo has murder on his mind -- she finds a broken lamp and a fallenhourglass, but no body. The Dutchman appears, goes poetic: "What strange dreamhave you had to bring you here at night?" He insists he is unharmed, but admitsthe dog has been killed. It's a resurrection scene, mystical, yet almostwithout mysticism. A flying 8 inch dagger in the back should be fatal, but thenit might cleanly miss any organ that matters. Anyway, the Dutchman lives, andhe lives to see Montalvo die.
Like many of thescenes in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, the demise of Juan Montalvo bysupernatural intervention is excellent. Although warned by his mother, Montalvoinsists on yet another corrida to satisfy his local fans and impress uponPandora that he is a greater man than either The Dutchman or Stephen Cameron.Again the ambiguity between the rational and the irrational is played; Montalvodrinks a good luck potion prepared by his gypsy mother, which doesn't sit welland he seems less than sharp when he meets the bull. He looks at the emptychair beside Pandora with satisfaction, knowing the Dutchman is dead. But thenthe Dutchman appears... and Montalvo, stunned, takes his eyes off the bull, andis swiftly gored. Even the scene at the hospital where the dying bullfighterconfesses the murder and describes the supernatural nature of the Dutchman'sappearance at the bullfight is excellent; Montalvo accepts his fate, asapparitions and divine judgement are part of his gypsy code, even if the priestthinks he's mad. Pandora, dressed in green, knows he isn't. He kisses her hand."Adios," he murmurs. "Adios," she says, leaves, walks towards herfate.
death as aromantic destination
All of Pandora'slovers confront Death as a matter of engagement: Reggie, by poetry; Stephen, byracing; Juan, by bullfighting. And Hendrik van...? Also a poet -- just considerhis written confession. Or the lines from Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach that hequotes when standing on the twilight beach. And he also paints... why not? Hehas been cruising the seas a long time in search of the woman who will set himfree.
Pandora & theFlying Dutchman is an outstanding expression of modern Romanticism, using thepowerful twentieth century styles of metaphysical and surrealist art to a)suggest that existence is multi-dimensional, b) suggest that Death is simply ashadow between these dimensions, c) suggest that true love is fated, d) suggestthat beauty is female, e) suggest that solitude is male... and that onlythrough the reconciliation of the male and the female is the immortal soul ofhuman existence possible. Old notions, yes, but expressed with a genuine feelfor the mystical complexion of life.
Needless to say, theoccasional poetic dialogue interferes with the modern need for simple talk andsimple solutions. As such, it is not a p*rnographic film, or is itnarcissistic. The darkened settings -- that "Nietzche Autumn" pallor -- perhapsadd to the obscurity of many scenes, yet are essential to the feeling of"enigma". The story core -- the legend of the Flying Dutchman -- is all aboutenigma. While the narrator/archaeologist Geoffrey Fielding initially considersit "a hoax of the period, a literary invention" he -- like us -- is eventuallyforced to accept that it might be true. It's a metaphor, and what is ametaphor? A metaphor is one object bonding with another hoping to bereal.
While such scenes asthe Dutchman's flashback to his renaissance past or even the final scenebetween him and Pandora on his yacht seem too long and slagged by poetics, ithas to be admitted that the narrative structure of the film is superb. Ofcourse it relies on the film noir convention of the frame narrative -- anarrator, who begins the story at the end, ends the story at the beginning; ofcourse it steals a trendy fatalism from Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises; ofcourse it relies on people who play rather than work, but... scene by scene,the narrative is superb.
The technique oflooping -- the use of objects, characters and incidents -- that somehow repeatfurther along in the story to ironic and/or revelatory effect is used like thegearing of a magic machine. The Dutchman's hourglass, Pandora's dog, thestatues, the portrait of Pandora, the disfigurements, the stabbing -- it's alla beautiful blend of metaphor and naturalism. The writer/director Albert Lewinhad a Harvard Master's degree in literature, and it shows. Some will saythere's too much intellect and not enough action, that whole scenes and certainsequences are merely posing or just talk. If so, the wrong man gotPandora.
