Greetings from the Upper Chamber here at I Will Devour Your Content. I am your host, John Bem. That's right, "Upper Chamber." Regular readers (hi there and thank you) will perhaps notice the change. For the eight months or so of IWDYC's existence thus far, I have been broadcasting from an Inner Chamber. And while that Chamber is indeed Inner, it is also Central, located at the IWDYC Compound's nexus, so to speak.
The Inner Chamber wasn't quite as chaotic as the Nexus of All Realities;
but some days it came pretty close to it
The Inner Chamber is located between kitchen (off of which is the laundry room) and living room. Frequently I found myself, when trying to watch or write about a movie, interrupted by Mrs. Bem's culinary rattlings and other to-ings and fro-ings; the shrill, extended, brain-piercing 'Laundry's Done!' buzzer of the ancient General Electric clothes drier; the goofy, galloping intrusions of Large Black Lab Bem, who often would repeatedly jam a football into my lap (i.e., balls) until I pressed 'pause' and went out in the yard to play with her; or Mrs. Bem's loud shrieks of laughter as she entertained herself in the living room with vodka tonics and DVD sets of My Name Is Earl.
Also, the Inner Chamber has a door which led to a shared basement. You see, I live next door to my in-laws, who are active people and don't indulge the same sorts of solitary, quiet, sedentary hobbies that I enjoy. Movie time therefore would frequently be interrupted by Mother-In-Law traipsing up the stairs to inquire about the state of curtain hems, bird feeders, laundry detergent, whatnot; or Father-In-Law climbing up the stairs to deliver Coca-Cola bottle caps (I'm collecting reward points), or corned beef (he's an excellent cook), or to ask me to shovel stones, or, again, whatnot.
Now all of this ultimately is OK, it's good stuff, it's life and activity and people going about their business. But it is also important for a writer, even a writer whose output is a weekly movie essay, to have a solitary location in which to commune with, invoke, and diddle his Muse. And so additional lines of communication have been installed, holes have been drilled, wires threaded through them, electronic implements and instruments have been schlepped up a narrow staircase. Also making the move upstairs are the two items that make I Will Devour Your Content a magical place: the fabled Sombrero of Serendipity (which has been imbued by the Lords of Midnight with the power to draw me to entertaining movies; it rarely leads me astray) and the Naugahyde Recliner of Judgment, from which I watch and decide. So it's back to business as usual, except that from this point forward I will be broadcasting from behind blackout curtains from the aforementioned Upper Chamber. It is a big deal. I am very excited.
"He will show you a large upper room, furnished and ready."
All of this schlepping and wiring and so on is one of the reasons this entry is coming to you a few days late (I try to post every weekend). The other reason for lateness is that last Saturday found me unexpectedly battling the Demon Rum. The demon won. We'll leave it at that.
All of that brings me finally to today and now, March 17, 2011, with a few days off of work (most people take off work during Christmas and Easter, which are their holy days; I take off during St. Patrick's Day and Halloween, which are mine), and the current Final Girl Film Club monthly movie, Roger Vadim's 1960 Blood and Roses.
Blood and Roses is based on Sheridan le Fanu's excellent 1871 English-language novella, Carmilla (curiously, the movie credits "le Vanu"). If you haven't read that story, you owe it to yourself to do so. It is a rich and evocative tale with shuddery details and beautifully wrought language; it is excellent to read late at night, creeping yourself out as the atmosphere builds and gathers. After watching Blood and Roses, I sought out my treasured The Dracula Book of Great Vampire Stories (1977 Citadel Press, ed. Leslie Shepard) and re-read the le Fanu source. After doing so, I would say that Blood and Roses is loosely based on Carmilla; the movie takes its core idea from the tale, but ultimately Blood and Roses is very much its own entity.
In short, plot-wise, Lord Karnstein is hosting a party at his luxurious Italian estate. Karnstein's relative Carmilla is in attendance. As the grand finale to the evening, Karnstein's had a fireworks display prepared. A mishap with the pyrotechnics unearths the ancient grave of Mircalla, who looked, based on an old family portrait, remarkably like Carmilla. Hearing whispered urgings, Carmilla is drawn to the tomb and, for want of a better word, is possessed. From that point forward, Mircalla gradually takes over Carmilla's personality and perceptions. Carmilla feels she may be going mad; she can make no sense of what is happening to her. The primary focus of Mircalla/Carmilla's attentions is a woman named Georgia, Lord Karnstein's fiancee.
Knowing Roger Vadim only from his eight-years-later science-fiction fetish-fantasy Barbarella (1968) (one of my all-time favorite movies), I was astonished and delighted that Blood and Roses is from the same director. Whereas Barbarella is a frantic, over-the-top, lurid, sexy comic book, Blood and Roses is a lush, subdued (mostly), evocative, sensual Gothic romance. It strikes its Gothic notes keenly and beautifully, from the gorgeous estate with its palatial mansion and ruined abbey, often shrouded in mists, fogs, or rain, to the gorgeous Carmilla, ghostly in a flowing white gown, moving through these thrilling, picturesque landscapes.
In my estimation, Blood and Roses doesn't take a single mis-step. I was enraptured as I watched the story unfold. There is nary a gory, or outright 'horror', moment in it; it builds deliciously all the way to its final act. Blood and Roses is evocative and eerie, subtle and lush. Georgia and Carmilla are beautiful, intelligent, active, playful women, which makes it all the more heartrending when the final tragedy overtakes them.
I watched Blood and Roses a few days ago, and I'm struggling now to capture in a satisfying manner the impressions and sensations I experienced as a viewer. So I'm going to turn to some notes I took while watching the movie. I wrote these notes about three sections in particular; in them I think I did a much better job of capturing what the film was doing to me; obviously I was aided by the immediacy of making notes while watching.
First Note
Opening credits roll over stills of a beautiful young woman as the soothing sounds of an Irish harp create a sense of otherworldly harmony and beauty; it's the sort ethereal sound I imagine I might hear someday, flowing from the long, tapered, artistic fingers of a goddess in a pure white gown, should I reach the fields of Elysium when I cross through the Veil to the Other Side. Immediately then a tone and an atmosphere is set, one of transcendent, enrapturing beauty, visual and auditory.
Second Note
The fireworks and the faulty detonator explosion symbolizing the inner chaos that Carmilla feels, despite an outward suavity and placidity, as the ancient spirit of Mircalla speaks to her, draws her nearer, seduces her into allowing her personality to give way to that of her ancient vampiric ancestor. Prior to this Carmilla eschewed the red party gown to dress in Mircalla's antique white wedding dress; she is virginally beautiful, perhaps ghostly so, as she lightly steps along the walkway bordering a pond. White peace and purity succumbing slowly to red desire and death. Mircalla wore white and red roses lost their incarnadine vitality in her vampire's grasp. So too Carmilla discards the red dress, red for blood, red for life, "the blood is the life," for the cool, otherworldly white gown, white for the vital juices drained away, white for the ghostly existence she will inhabit until the day when finally all colors fade to black.
Third Note
White dress with red stain; the red is blood, but blood from an external source; the woman inhabiting the dress remains pale, white, ghostly; the crimson passions of life, the flowing blood, must adhere to her from sources outside of herself; the woman is death, she appropriates life, she does not possess it. But only she can see the blood, and only in a mirror; so she is not even seeing life, but a reflection of it; to her life is not a real state, it is something she can behold, it is not something she can possess; her true state, her actual mode, is one of unreality, of death simulating life; for her the unreal is real and thus the actual, the blood, the life, is false. She can seem, but she cannot be.
Yes, the Blood and Roses movie watching experience lends itself to those sorts of symbolic and poetic and pseudo-philosophical ruminations. There is a shared kiss, a withered flower, white flowing gowns, a fireworks masquerade, frightened horses and foxes, storms and thunder, a ruined abbey, a pricked finger, a drop of blood on full lips. Blood and Roses contains all sorts of beautiful icons, images, themes, and tropes, lifted from Gothic romance and older vampire tales. Yet it is set in the modern day: there are automobiles and jets and electricity. Because of this modern setting, it is tempting to read Blood and Roses as a psychological tale, to view the events as mirages dreamt up by Carmilla's impressionable and excitable imagination, to say that it all happened in her mind.
Yet the vampire Millarca herself, at film's end, is on a jet plane going from "Paris Rome
Watching Blood and Roses is an incredibly rich and engaging experience. The music, much of it provided by an Irish harp, blends perfectly with on-screen events to heighten and illuminate the atmosphere of the work. In only one place did Blood and Roses come dangerously close to going astray, and this was in Georgia's dream sequence (which used color in a very striking, if not startling, manner). But I think I understand why the dream was there, and why it was filmed in a way different from the rest of the movie, and ultimately I think it fits the film. This dream sequence made me think of the third book of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, wherein Titus Groan has left the ancient byzantine labyrinth of Gormenghast Castle and has entered the square, smooth, fast modern world. It's not wrong, it's just different, and if you give it a chance you'll see that it fits and why it fits.
So, holy hell and hell yeah, Blood and Roses, what a great treat, what a wonderful movie to sink into. It draws you in and washes over you, filling and flooding your sensory apparatus. It is a gorgeous movie. It definitely provides you with a deep sense of place, as immersive as any novel. Blood and Roses is an incredible movie and I heartily recommend it to one and all.
While I'm at it, because I've already tossed everything else into this essay, I might as well trot out the long-neglected Foot Fancier's Frames and mention that at 13:20 (or so) Carmilla dances barefoot on the bedspread.
As for me, this is your host John Bem, signing out for now. Thank you for visiting I Will Devour Your Content, thank you for reading. Please feel free to come back again anytime.
That's a pretty good picture you found of that rum. The question is, does it still look that seductive to you?
ReplyDeleteLe Fanu is one of my very favorite gothic authors. His writing is evocative without being overstated, and he does the creep well. I'll definitely have to check this one out to see how it holds up in the translation.
cdck, yes that rum still entices me. The demon is seductive. I hope you enjoy Blood and Roses. It's on Netflix streaming, so it's very accessible. I'd love to read your thoughts after you've watched it.
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