Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 7 No. 53, December 2003
Vittorio Frigerio
Aesthetic Contradictions and Ideological Representations:
Anarchist Avant-Garde vs Swashbuckling Melodrama -- Porton's _Film and the Anarchist Imagination_
Richard Porton _Film and the Anarchist
Imagination_ London and New York:
Verso, 1999 ISBN:
1-85984-702-1 314 pp. A book such as Porton's
fairly defies reviewing. _Film and the Anarchist
Imagination_ represents such a monumental undertaking that
any single observation that comes to mind immediately
appears petty, somewhat like complaining about a few
misprints when reading the typescript of _War and Peace_. Of
course, there are a number of statements you could argue
with. Some small facts may not be entirely accurate and some
opinions may be definitely debatable. But the scope of the
work is such that relatively small imperfections can be very
easily forgiven. The avalanche of erudition displayed by the
author is indeed enough to awe even the most unsympathetic
reader. Porton seems to have seen and analysed just about
every film, be it documentary or fiction, that ever
featured, even in passing, anarchist characters or themes.
This is undoubtedly the main strength of his book: it can be
used almost as an encyclopaedia of anarchism on film, and
provides a well-written, thought-provoking overview of works
ranging from mainstream Hollywood movies to positively
forgotten Spanish productions of the 1930s. As such, this
book is a remarkable achievement, that will be found equally
useful and enjoyable by film historians, media buffs, and
political scientists. Now that I have stated in
clear terms how appreciative I am of the extraordinary work
done by the author, I would like, however, to discuss what
in my view is a symptomatic flaw that runs through the
entire book. To be fair to Porton, the flaw is not
exclusively his. Quite the contrary, it concerns a matter
that is consistently overlooked when dealing with the
representation of anarchism, be it in movies or in
literature. This matter is the opposition between high (or
avant-garde) art, and low, or popular
productions. In the last chapter,
entitled 'The Elusive Anarchist Aesthetic' (a chapter that
in fact may well have been placed as an introduction to the
analysis, rather than as a conclusion), Porton states: 'A
monolithic anarchist aesthetic must be dismissed as elusive
and dubiously essentialist: unlike the Marxist aesthetic,
the anarchist conception of art is not 'normative', but is
presented in the form of a project which leaves the door
wide open to the future.' (231) He goes on to suggest that,
in future years, anarchist sensibility will likely find yet
other new and surprising ways to manifest itself within
contemporary culture. This prediction certainly seems
destined to come true, if the vitality shown in the numerous
incarnations of anarchism Porton discusses continues as it
has in the past. A normative anarchist aesthetic would
indeed be a contradiction in terms. However, if libertarian
artists, writers, and filmmakers have naturally been
avoiding norms like the plague, other practical canons have
been more difficult to steer clear of entirely. First among
them, *genre*. Porton chooses to discuss
works not on the basis of the genre they belong to, but
according to their subject, their period, or their
historical context. Thus he often finds himself discussing
and comparing the relative value of documentaries
(mainstream or alternative) and movies. Moreover, and more
importantly, he opposes what one could call 'art films'
(low-budget features with relatively limited distribution)
to popular, or mass films. It could be argued that the
respective means and goals -- not to mention publics -- of
these separate genres would warrant a specific, distinct
treatment. Instead, Porton's comments tend to lean
systematically towards praise of the documentary genre as
the most apt to reveal actual historical truth, and of the
'art film' as better able to marry formal techniques and
philosophical content. Concurrently, he criticises attempts
at fictionalizing historical events for mass consumption as
inevitably destined to hopelessly deform reality. I don't
want to suggest that this point of view is entirely devoid
of value. However, I contend that the fact of not having
drawn a line between these different genres can lead, as it
does here, to a systematic devaluation of the role, the
specificity, and the usefulness of 'popular' fiction, and to
a corresponding over-evaluation of the effectiveness of
'exploratory aesthetic foraging' (52) as a means of
investigating anarchist 'reality'. The end result is an
unspoken but omnipresent equation between anarchist
aesthetic and avant-garde aesthetic. This is by no means a
novel point of view. In French culture in particular there
has been a long-standing assimilation between symbolist or
decadent poets and anarchist politics, due to a connection
between these two universes that has often been exaggerated
and deliberately mythologised. Much has been said, for
example, about high-brow poets such as Mallarme being
anarchist sympathisers, while their association to the cause
appears to be largely accidental. Porton is entirely correct
in stating: 'A series of inadequately
understood events from the late nineteenth century continue
to fuel distorted views of anarchism and anarchists. The
most powerful sources of anti-anarchist literature and
cinema probably lie in two interrelated traumas from the
late nineteenth century which still reverberate in our own
era: the brief, but spectacularly ill-fated, alliance of
Bakunin and Sergei Nechaev in 1869-70 and, some years later,
the popular misinterpretation of Malatesta and Paul
Brousse's doctrine of 'propaganda by the deed' as a
justification for random acts of terror.' (13) However, it is also this
second 'trauma' that coupled for the first time avant-garde
poets and anarchist bomb-throwers in the public's mind. The
infamous 'proces des trente' (trial of the thirty) and 'les
lois scelerates' (the iniquitous laws) that marked the high
point of government repression of anarchist activities in
the last decade of the 19th century, also put under the
spotlight a number of writers and intellectuals, such as
Felix Feneon, with close ties to anarchist groups. A few of
them also contributed articles or fiction to some anarchist
publications (notably _L'en dehors_ and _La Plume_) with a
distinct literary bent. This being said, the connection
between avant-garde aesthetic and anarchist aesthetic (at
that particular historical moment) is much thinner than
generally thought. Indeed, most of the fiction published in
anarchist publications during that time is much more
influenced by the aesthetic of the 'popular' novels that
were routinely served in daily instalments by the press.
Porton himself notes that: 'No doubt inspired by
Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre's novel which was the
source for Feuillade's _Fantomas_ (1913-14), the historian
Andre Salmon invoked the eponymous master criminal of screen
and literature to set the stage for his study of French
'illegalist' anarchists such as the notorious 'Bonnot
gang'.' (19) Salmon was not the only
one to be struck by the similarity between the heroes of
nascent mass literature and the anarchist rebels. Other
Feuillade movies inspired by popular novels were packed with
allusions to anarchists and dynamite. [1] One could
also mention the activities of Alexandre Jacob's gang, 'the
workers of the night', which supposedly inspired writer
Maurice Leblanc in the creation of his famous character,
Arsene Lupin, 'the gentleman thief'. Leblanc -- definitely
not a symbolist poet -- also published some of his short
stories in the anarchist press. There could be many more
examples of the close relationship between popular writing
and anarchist sensibilities. In his critique, however,
Porton often focuses on the techniques of popular writing to
condemn what he perceives as a misrepresentation of actual
historical truth. Speaking of the movie _Joe Hill_, for
example, he notes: 'Widerberg's film avoids
addressing these political niceties by creating a
sentimentalized Joe Hill who is more archetypal folk hero
than anarchist or libertarian Marxist. This strategy will
not surprise anyone familiar with mainstream Hollywood
bio-pics, what is interesting, for our purposes, is how the
film, consciously or not, avoids the more anarchistic
components of Hill's life while emphasizing his status as a
folksy balladeer.' (59) In the same vein, when
discussing a movie on the life of the famous Ukrainian
anarchist Nestor Makhno, he states: 'Although an oft-repeated
rumour that Makhno once worked as a village schoolteacher
has been definitely disproved, Berkman's scenario provides
the idealized peasant leader with a schoolteacher sweetheart
named Tanya whose 'sweet and appealing nature' makes her in
all respects the perfect paramour . . . this idyllic romance
becomes the aspiring screenwriter's ruse for combining the
anarchist spirit with a romantic intensity that brings to
mind Hollywood 'swashbucklers' . . . [Berkman's]
efforts to transform Makhno's life into a series of
nail-biting cinematic adventures has much in common with the
unreflective grandiosity of historical epics such as _Doctor
Zhivago_.' (73) And again, in discussing
the movies produced in Spain during the Civil War, he
remarks: 'Film historian Roman
Gubern's claim that the CNT's documentaries and newsreels
were far more innovative than their frequently clunky
fictional efforts is difficult to dispute. Yet these fiction
films' idiosyncratic synthesis of anarcho-syndicalist
agit-prop and recycled genre conventions is often
fascinating . . . Sau's blend of melodrama and
consciousness-raising is often mawkish, but the film is none
the less peppered with striking moments' (79). This somewhat half-hearted
admission, though, does not prevent him from
concluding: 'If the CNT's fiction
films grew out of an earnest, if sometimes inept, attempt to
use radical politics with mass entertainment, their
documentary shorts, particularly those focusing on the
iconographic role of the anarchist militia leader
Buenaventura Durruti -- more accurately reflect the
anarchist movement's strengths and internal contradictions.'
(80) What Porton appears to
miss is that sentimental romance, swashbuckling adventure,
and melodrama form an important part of the fictional
arsenal with which nineteenth-century anarchists viewed
themselves and their situation. These 'recycled genre
conventions' were arguably felt as providing a better
representation of the living conditions of the people and of
the struggle of the militants than the 'high brow', modern
fragmentary aesthetic of the avant-garde. Indeed, the
'lachryomose [sic] sentimentalization of poverty
that permeates _La Boheme_, Puccini's opera' (235), and the
book by Murger that it was drawn from, is not very distant
at all from the aesthetic of Naturalism -- Emile Zola's
literary movement, which often denounced the fate of the
working class in what was felt at the time to be a
'hyper-realist' style. Indeed, Zola's work, with few
exceptions, was very well received in anarchist circles.
While much of Porton's arguments about twentieth-century
anarchist-oriented artistic movements, such as Surrealism
and Situationism, holds true, I do feel that his obvious
allergy to the trappings of 'popular' genres prevents his
analysis from offering a complete picture of the evolution
of anarchist aesthetic, at a crucial time for the
development of the movement's image. In short, Porton's book
offers a wide-ranging view of anarchism in film, but does so
in a somewhat skewed manner, consistently opposing genre
movies to the more evolved and complex aesthetic of the
avant-garde, or to the supposedly more 'realistic' approach
of certain documentaries: 'after all, a fiction film . . .
which strives to fuse historical exegesis with adventure and
romance will inevitably lack the leisurely scope of a
lengthy documentary' (88). His ideal can probably be
identified in Nick MacDonald's documentary _The Liberal War_
(1972), that he describes as: 'a critique of the
ideological underpinnings of the Vietnam war that is as much
autobiographical reflection as documentary, [and] is
a paradigmatic example of the post-Romantic anarchist
impulse. Made by a committed anarchist in his own apartment,
the film is exemplary for its modesty. This stripped down
combination of documentary and autobiographical reflection
adheres to the goals of anarchist pedagogy with a bare-bones
aesthetic, which avoids the heavy-handed editing and
sentimental rhetoric that Macdonald abhorred in 'liberal
documentaries'' (246). The theoretical basis that
justifies this approach does not become evident until the
last few pages of the book, when Porton attempts -- rather
unconvincingly, I should say -- to re-evaluate the work of
Dwight MacDonald. This critic, perhaps best-known for his
book _Against the American Grain_ (which, interestingly
enough, is not mentioned by Porton), offered what is
conceivably the most extreme denunciation of the evils of
'masscult', and one of the most direct assimilations of
'high brow' avant-garde artistic creation with 'high art'.
Once again, I would recommend reading the last chapter of
the book first, in order to better appreciate the
theoretical underpinning of Porton's judgments. Two items, quite minor but
not without importance, still remain to be addressed. Porton
talks of Chabrol's thriller _Nada_ as an example of the
kinds of movies that exploit the fear of the 'anarchist
peril'. He goes on to add: 'Based on Jean-Patrick
Manchette's novel _Serie noire_, this departure from the
usual Chabrolian territory of middle-class adultery and
purely apolitical homicide focuses on a ragtag group of
Paris-based anarchists' inept kidnapping of the American
ambassador'. (30) It should be pointed out that _Serie
noire_ is not the title of the original novel, but the title
of the famous collection created by Marcel Duhamel for the
publisher Gallimard, that introduced to France the most
important post-war American detective-story writers. The
title of Manchette's book is also _Nada_. Finally, in critiquing
Lina Wertmuller's film _Love and Anarchy_ as a 'hybrid of
historical fiction and commedia all'italiana' (26), Porton
mentions the attempt on the life of Mussolini by 'committed
anarchists' such as Anteo Zamboni. Somewhat offended by the
film's representation of an anarchist would-be tyrant-slayer
as 'an unmitigated buffoon', he states that: 'The impulsive Tunin, with
his utter ignorance of the anarchist tradition, bears no
resemblance at all to the actual individuals, accused . . .
of attempting to kill Il Duce. Men such as Anteo Zamboni . .
. could never be reduced to a primal, but ultimately
apolitical, embodiment of some fancifully 'anarchist' life
force' (26). This statement is much
more categorical than it should be. In fact, it would appear
that Zamboni's knowledge of anarchist philosophy, if any,
was rudimentary at best. More likely, the unfortunate youth
was simply a pawn in a conspiracy orchestrated by extremist
elements within the Fascist party itself, as recent research
indicates. Brunella Dalla Casa's book _Attentato al duce. Le
molte storie del caso Zamboni_, certainly seems to suggest
that. [2] Heroic gestures by committed anarchists
did indeed take place, but the genre 'commedia
all'italiana', like much popular fiction, can sometimes
prove to be much closer to reality than it would appear at
first glance. Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada Notes 1. See on this subject
Serge Chazal's article on _Les Vampires_, _Belphegor_, vol.
1 no. 2, June 2002 <http://www.dal.ca/etc/belphegor/vol1_no2/articles/01_02_Chazal_Vampir_fr.html>. 2. See also Dino Taddei's
article, 'Il giovane Anteo', _Rivista anarchica_ no. 271,
April 2001 <http://www.anarca-bolo.ch/a-rivista/271/25.htm>. Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2003 Vittorio Frigerio,
'Aesthetic Contradictions and Ideological Representations:
Anarchist Avant-Garde vs Swashbuckling Melodrama -- Porton's
_Film and the Anarchist Imagination_', _Film-Philosophy_,
vol. 7 no. 53, December 2003
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n53frigerio>. Read a response by the
book's author: Richard Porton, 'Vagaries
of Taste, or How 'Popular' is Popular Culture?: A Reply to
Frigerio', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7 no. 57, December 2003
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n57porton>. and Frigerio's
reply: Vittorio Frigerio,
'Post-modern Bogeymen and the Alibi of 'Good Taste': A Reply
to Porton', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no. 18, May 2004
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n18frigerio>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
salon, and receive the journal articles via email as they
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