Cinema Should Suffer

I feel the stilt of the air, the damp limp of that soiled T-shirt, the dust at my feet, in my lungs, or some greasy, wrung hair. I notice these qualities in other movies, but in a select group I feel them, sensation takes. Why? Why does it seem that in some work one notices what’s on screen and what it’s meant to communicate – that character’s destitute, this character’s dirty, etc. – and in others one is made to perceive the existential reality of the physical object on screen at the peak of their physical ability? Why is the texture of Brando’s oily cascading hair in Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci, 1972) more affectingly tactile than all the coiffure in Grease (Kleiser, 1978) combined? As admittedly personal as these questions are, so will my answers be. But take a moment and apply these ideas to those movies that make you feel, and I wonder if you won’t find the same relationships at work.


Truffaut, in 1970, already had a concept in mind for the kind of film about which I am speaking. In his eulogy for Jean Vigo, Truffaut wonders whether Vigo’s should be considered, in the best possible sense, a “cinema of smells.” He cites negative reviews dating from the twenties that refer to Vigo’s work as “verg[ing] on scatology” or “like water out of a bidet,” and quotes Bazin who spoke of Vigo’s “almost obscene taste for the flesh,” all the while making a case for this gross quality as being among Vigo’s primary and most enduring traits. These critics were not just taken aback by the vulgarity of the action, but I believe experiencing something of the heightened tactile reaction reference above. Just take a look at Zero de Conduite (Vigo, 1933). See how long it takes you to start edging toward discomfort once you realize this is not a “typical” boys’ school, once the disrepair and grime of the classroom and dormitory set in and the clammy hands of the fat school teacher lay on a young boy’s. (And at the same time yours as well?) Zero de Conduite is the first film I’ll cite in this short list, but I can’t lay claim to placing it in the category because Truffaut’s done it for me. It’s a film whose texture and feel, and the audience's relationship with both these components, is of primary importance; without it the film would be devoid.


When Roma città aperta (Rossellini, 1945) was released the critical community marveled at the “sexiness” and “carnality” of the characters, particularly Anglo-American critics at the time so unaccustomed to the “fiery” and “bawdy” Italians. This, however, is not only due to cross-cultural interpretation. Rossellini’s film is yet another that provides for the kind of heightened tactility found in Vigo’s work. The heat of the those summer days in Rome, we see it in Magnani’s inimitable body language, the weary and vain attempts at keeping her hair from her face. Think of her character, Pina’s, destruction by the Nazi’s, her scraping fall, and Marcello kicking and screaming to get to his mother.


On the same level of affect that I recall the emotion of these actions I also recall, to an acute extent, the tactility of that image. I remember Pina’s body hitting the ground and Marcello’s body thrashing because I had lived the same in those moments. The dust left by the Nazi transport is of emphasis in my mind’s eye. I want to cough right now.

But, to describe the effects of these films is easier than trying to get at what makes them different from any other film that involves bodily violence, grime, or a textural attention to detail. That is, the why of the questions I asked earlier. The answer comes down to suffering.


Vivian Sobchack was a founding influence on this piece (anyone familiar with her work will find that no surprise), but rather than quote her I figured I would paraphrase her ideas on the capability of evoking the passion in cinema, a suffering that breaks down the barriers between object and subject, not to the point of any sort of dissolution, but a perfect and disturbing equilibrium. In films such as Zero and Roma, the use of suffering in the narrative places the character on the level of matter, and in converse fashion, matter on the level of the character. The character is made an object in suffering. He or she is capable of taking damage, and absolutely incapable of inflicting it. As agency is removed man is degraded to the point of matter, and matter, in all its perceptibility, is forced to the fore. A narrative of true suffering, that which cannot be treated, forces the audience to recognize the passive quality of the one who suffers; the subject is further aligned with the matter of the inanimate, the inanimate made further a character/object to be perceived. In summation of this crazy idea, maybe I will quote: “…the passion of suffering brings subjective being into intimate contact with its brute materiality and links it, as well, to the passive, mute, and inanimate objects of the world.”


It’s this intimate contact that film can inspire with the use of suffering, a contact that heightens our perception of the objects in that world and augments our perception of character; we are made to perceive and feel rather than interpret. In the process the textural and tactile is made as important as action, if not more so. This connection, intimate contact with the material as sparked by suffering, is what had critics using the words scatology, carnality, and sexiness. It’s this link between the passion of life and the realities of our powerlessness as nothing more than matter that creates a cinema of smells.

In thinking about all this, before having nearly any idea what I was getting at and before I had thought to use the idea of suffering, I came up with a few titles that all gave me the same sensation, scraped up feelings of grossness and discomfort from my insides by way of their tactile effects. The list I came up with was started with the first two films, Zero and Roma, but I went on to add Los Olvidados (Buñuel, 1955), Last Tango in Paris, and Gummo (Korine, 2002). It was only after doing a little thinking that I realized that suffering was the cinematic pharmakos in question, the quality that made me feel each one of these movies, made me want to watch each one of them again, and made me shudder at the idea.


All five of these films rage in the tactile. If it’s not the meat Pedro’s mother offers him in a dream: “quivering like a dead octopus,” (thank you Bazin) it’s the sweat, wool overcoat, and aforementioned oily hair in Last Tango, or the acne ridden, unintelligent and soiled children in Gummo.


These five films are clear examples of a varied cinema of smells. They all invite the use of the senses in production design, make-up, etc., but the quality that each one of these pictures shares, that which sets them apart from millions of hours of narrative film and creates a cinema the piques the senses, is the suffering of their primary characters. Sometimes the suffering is explicit, as in Zero or Roma where characters are held under the sway of a particular party, teachers and Nazi’s respectively. Other times the suffering is implicit. We know that the children in Los Olvidados and Gummo suffer, but there is no dumb body to blame. In stead their suffering is more diffuse, and while perhaps not as oppressive it is utterly nihilistic. There is no hope of the world returning to normal in Gummo, the kids in Los Olvidados are done for.


Last Tango stands as an interesting example because the suffering is entirely emotional. Brando’s character is the martyr to a relationship he didn’t understand and will live within that passion for the rest of his life. For the duration of the film he is stuck, wanting to scream and cry like nearly every primary character in every film I’ve mentioned. This is his suffering, not wrought by any army or schoolmaster, but a controlling force just the same, irrevocable emotion.


True suffering, the passion, is found again in a case that forces a heightened response to texture, Jeanne’s huge fur coat, soft curled hair, or the cobblestones of Paris.

So the moral is this. Suffering places the subject on the same level as matter in more ways than one. By rights this brings matter to equal standing with the subject in the eyes of the audience. Should we not be surprised then that film in which suffering is the primary agent may take advantage of an excessive sense of materiality if they so choose? In asking this question I presuppose that suffering within plot, and so the viewer’s mind, begets a heightened sense of matter. You’re right. But that’s because that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. I have no other explanation for my feeling the rain so acutely in Gummo, the heat and hay in Los Olvidados.