Frederick's review
Stories of Anton Chekhov
by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Oh, come now; do you really imagine a sparse modernist and innovator of realism would have been caught up in a fantastical exploration of archetype loosely wound around an obtuse and flawed political allegory?
I don't argue that Chekhov works in a movie mode, in that his stories operate by deep yet accessible emotional content framed around simple, character-driven stories. However, he is a dramatist, so it should hardly surprise that his mode of emotional expression becomes so fast-paced and visual.
If there is surrealism in him, it comes not in the form of Baum's hodge-podge dustbowl fairy tale, but in Gogol's deadpanning of the absurd as more reasonable than reality, itself.
Hey, Keely,
Thanks for your comment.
You have said:
"I don't argue that Chekhov works in a movie mode, in that his stories operate by deep yet accessible emotional content framed around simple, character-driven stories." In that sentence, you have hit upon the exact thing I wanted to express about what I find to be an outlook shared by Chekov and the Hollywood of the Moguls. "Deep yet accessible" is the key phrase.
A little backstory (to use a cinematic term): I've been reading Eudora Welty's ON WRITING, which singles out Chekhov's story "The Darling." I was instantly intrigued when she described it and sought Chekhov in the library. I've only read the opening three stories. They go in chronological order in this translation. The stories I read were "The Death of a Clerk," "Small Fry" and "The Huntsman." I find these three very realistic (although marked by tremendous economy) and, while I would say that Chekhov seems to regard the Russian hierarchy in the same way Gogol does, I see Gogol as something of a humorist. "The Overcoat" is a really funny story.
Back to Hollywood: Its Golden Age is the work of European expatriates. The sensibility, from the mid-twenties until about 1955, did not stem from Mark Twain, Vaudeville or Jazz, even though, on a surface level, it did. The absolute love of story-telling, visual balance and swelling music in mid-century Hollywood was not in the Puritan tradition. The novel GONE WITH THE WIND is much more arch than the sweeping movie.
Shakespeare says brevity is the soul of wit, so if I have a smidgen of wit, I'll make a stab at brevity and conclude. The first reel of THE WIZARD OF OZ is what makes it a great movie. That part of the movie is entirely realistic up to the moment Dorothy loses consciousness. Yes, she sings a song, but it is a song of yearning; entirely different from the bubbly music of the rest of the movie. It is a harrowing, sepia environment she lives in, among hard-working, simple folk. While America has a pastoral tradition in its art, this sort of thing was something the artisans who made costumes, worked the lighting, sound and photography in Hollywood had as an inheritance from countries across the Atlantic. Working long hours and with tremendous speed, they gave America a film-making tradition which ended once the government, in 1950 or so, took the movie-theatre chains out of the hands of the studios, which, hitherto, had controlled the product and its distribution completely. The grandchildren of the Moguls now have some stock in the companies and the directors are film-school graduates. In short, Hollywood has become Americanized, and this most American institution is thus, ironically, a pale shadow of what it was.
So Chekhov spoke more to Hollywood than Mark Twain.
A lot of earlier cinema was straight out of the vaudeville theaters (and indeed, in them); there were also the more avant influences coming from French and Russian silent film, but I think what we are looking at here is the thread of stage drama which runs through both film and literature and which began with Chekhov and Ibsen.
Chekhov was part of the original realist movement in theater, his 'Seagull' being the play which threw the emerging Moscow Art Theater and Naturalism onto the world stage. It is not surprising that his style of succinct and idiomatic characterization should remind us of modern film acting, as he developed it amongst the school which created the first 'modern' film actor in Brando.
William's 'A Streetcar Named Desire' caused an uproar and the effects of 'method' acting are now so widespread that it has become a joke. Williams himself was out of the Chekhovian school, his 'Notebook of Trigorin' being a stylized rewriting of 'The Seagull'; the original realist work from which our ideal of 'realistic fiction' comes.
Mark Twain may be American to the core, and may even be Vaudeville, but as for film he has little claim. His silly, satyrical, sprawling works may have entered (and even helped to define) the American consciousness, but as for simple, honest expression, they (often) prove overwrought.
I am always slow to jump on any bandwagon that says 'things were better in the old days'. It is true that there is an aesthetic of the 'golden age' which cannot be recaptured, but it is folly to take the top examples of this and compare them to the modern populist films. There were just as many bad movies made back then, and just as many copies of copies, but we've only kept the best.
Not only that, but those pieces helped to change and shape our culture to the degree that they cannot but seem iconic, familiar, and natural now. I won't say they aren't good, but it's easy to find the gold when all the sifting's been done.
As to the thought on Chekhov and Gogol, a professor and Chekhov scholar I knew used to say that people often asked how he could stand Chekhov's pessimistic, dreary work. To this, he could only respond that he found Chekhov to be a lighthearted, comical optimist.
I have found that with Chekhov, people often fall into these two camps. I cannot help but think of Lewis's 'Screwtape Letters' and wish I could find the precise quote. It goes on about how there are two kinds of people in the world, those who like to imagine everything will turn out fine because they cannot imagine the alternative, and those who like to imagine everything is hopeless, so they can enjoy the sensation of righteous struggling and of being surprised if things do go well. It seems from these two perspectives, Chekhov becomes either dark and hopeless, or terribly funny. I fall in the latter camp.
Hey, Keely,
I bet you have that C. S. Lewis remark about right. It sounds very much like him. I read THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (with SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST) when I was fourteen. Years later I listened to an audiobook of John Cleese reading it and he did a wonderful job.
By no means do I wish us to return to the studio system of the thirties and forties. For my money, the works of the auteurs in the late sixties and early seventies were more realistic and honest than anything before or since. Some of the Depression-era directors were able to get much of their vision across despite the presence of Goldwyn or Jack Warner. John Huston was consistently individualistic throughout his career and became a direct link to young directors who were, indeed, his WORKING contemporaries in the early seventies. (Jack Nicholson seems to be the link between Huston and Dennis Hopper, Milos Foreman and Polanski.)
From the very little Chekhov I've been exposed to, I can say I find him lighthearted but not comic, although lightheartedness certainly implies a sense of humor. He is definitely deep, but he doesn't belabor his points. Gogol (judging by the one piece of his I've read, which is, as I've said earlir, "The Overcoat," seems to be trying to be funny, and succeeding.) Chekhov is the more universal writer. Here's a bit of cinematic writing. The end of "The Huntsman" features a figure fading in the distance until his hat blends into the forest far away. We see this through the eyes of the woman who loves him. This would transfer perfectly to the screen. Of course, Chekhov died in 1906, so film was in its infancy. Maybe naturalism transfers well to film. (John Huston comes to mind here, with THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE.)
Frederick's review
Stories of Anton Chekhov by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Frederick's review
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Of course, as of this writing (May 7th, 2008), I'm still in the middle of reading this, but I have one or two things to say. First, I notice that these stories share a sensibility with Depression-era Hollywood. If what I've just written sounds insane, so be it: Chekhov would have thrived at M-G-M. The first reel of THE WIZARD OF OZ could very easily have been scripted by Chekhov. ("Narrator: The old magician, pitying the urchin, begged her to heed the vision shown him in the crystal ball; her ancient aunt, cheeks grooved with worry, hands pressed in prayer, beseeching Providence to return the wayward chick to her modest nest.") Of course, he'd have ENDED it with Dorothy getting knocked out by the screen door, but we can't have everything.
I'm also noticing that a lot must be lost in translation. The moral of each story comes through, but even Pevear and Volokhonsky can't convince me that the frequent mid-sentence mood swings represent a cultural difference. There's something...more
I'm also noticing that a lot must be lost in translation. The moral of each story comes through, but even Pevear and Volokhonsky can't convince me that the frequent mid-sentence mood swings represent a cultural difference. There's something...more
Oh, come now; do you really imagine a sparse modernist and innovator of realism would have been caught up in a fantastical exploration of archetype loosely wound around an obtuse and flawed political allegory?
I don't argue that Chekhov works in a movie mode, in that his stories operate by deep yet accessible emotional content framed around simple, character-driven stories. However, he is a dramatist, so it should hardly surprise that his mode of emotional expression becomes so fast-paced and visual.
If there is surrealism in him, it comes not in the form of Baum's hodge-podge dustbowl fairy tale, but in Gogol's deadpanning of the absurd as more reasonable than reality, itself.
Hey, Keely,Thanks for your comment.
You have said:
"I don't argue that Chekhov works in a movie mode, in that his stories operate by deep yet accessible emotional content framed around simple, character-driven stories." In that sentence, you have hit upon the exact thing I wanted to express about what I find to be an outlook shared by Chekov and the Hollywood of the Moguls. "Deep yet accessible" is the key phrase.
A little backstory (to use a cinematic term): I've been reading Eudora Welty's ON WRITING, which singles out Chekhov's story "The Darling." I was instantly intrigued when she described it and sought Chekhov in the library. I've only read the opening three stories. They go in chronological order in this translation. The stories I read were "The Death of a Clerk," "Small Fry" and "The Huntsman." I find these three very realistic (although marked by tremendous economy) and, while I would say that Chekhov seems to regard the Russian hierarchy in the same way Gogol does, I see Gogol as something of a humorist. "The Overcoat" is a really funny story.
Back to Hollywood: Its Golden Age is the work of European expatriates. The sensibility, from the mid-twenties until about 1955, did not stem from Mark Twain, Vaudeville or Jazz, even though, on a surface level, it did. The absolute love of story-telling, visual balance and swelling music in mid-century Hollywood was not in the Puritan tradition. The novel GONE WITH THE WIND is much more arch than the sweeping movie.
Shakespeare says brevity is the soul of wit, so if I have a smidgen of wit, I'll make a stab at brevity and conclude. The first reel of THE WIZARD OF OZ is what makes it a great movie. That part of the movie is entirely realistic up to the moment Dorothy loses consciousness. Yes, she sings a song, but it is a song of yearning; entirely different from the bubbly music of the rest of the movie. It is a harrowing, sepia environment she lives in, among hard-working, simple folk. While America has a pastoral tradition in its art, this sort of thing was something the artisans who made costumes, worked the lighting, sound and photography in Hollywood had as an inheritance from countries across the Atlantic. Working long hours and with tremendous speed, they gave America a film-making tradition which ended once the government, in 1950 or so, took the movie-theatre chains out of the hands of the studios, which, hitherto, had controlled the product and its distribution completely. The grandchildren of the Moguls now have some stock in the companies and the directors are film-school graduates. In short, Hollywood has become Americanized, and this most American institution is thus, ironically, a pale shadow of what it was.
So Chekhov spoke more to Hollywood than Mark Twain.
A lot of earlier cinema was straight out of the vaudeville theaters (and indeed, in them); there were also the more avant influences coming from French and Russian silent film, but I think what we are looking at here is the thread of stage drama which runs through both film and literature and which began with Chekhov and Ibsen.
Chekhov was part of the original realist movement in theater, his 'Seagull' being the play which threw the emerging Moscow Art Theater and Naturalism onto the world stage. It is not surprising that his style of succinct and idiomatic characterization should remind us of modern film acting, as he developed it amongst the school which created the first 'modern' film actor in Brando.
William's 'A Streetcar Named Desire' caused an uproar and the effects of 'method' acting are now so widespread that it has become a joke. Williams himself was out of the Chekhovian school, his 'Notebook of Trigorin' being a stylized rewriting of 'The Seagull'; the original realist work from which our ideal of 'realistic fiction' comes.
Mark Twain may be American to the core, and may even be Vaudeville, but as for film he has little claim. His silly, satyrical, sprawling works may have entered (and even helped to define) the American consciousness, but as for simple, honest expression, they (often) prove overwrought.
I am always slow to jump on any bandwagon that says 'things were better in the old days'. It is true that there is an aesthetic of the 'golden age' which cannot be recaptured, but it is folly to take the top examples of this and compare them to the modern populist films. There were just as many bad movies made back then, and just as many copies of copies, but we've only kept the best.
Not only that, but those pieces helped to change and shape our culture to the degree that they cannot but seem iconic, familiar, and natural now. I won't say they aren't good, but it's easy to find the gold when all the sifting's been done.
As to the thought on Chekhov and Gogol, a professor and Chekhov scholar I knew used to say that people often asked how he could stand Chekhov's pessimistic, dreary work. To this, he could only respond that he found Chekhov to be a lighthearted, comical optimist.
I have found that with Chekhov, people often fall into these two camps. I cannot help but think of Lewis's 'Screwtape Letters' and wish I could find the precise quote. It goes on about how there are two kinds of people in the world, those who like to imagine everything will turn out fine because they cannot imagine the alternative, and those who like to imagine everything is hopeless, so they can enjoy the sensation of righteous struggling and of being surprised if things do go well. It seems from these two perspectives, Chekhov becomes either dark and hopeless, or terribly funny. I fall in the latter camp.
Hey, Keely,I bet you have that C. S. Lewis remark about right. It sounds very much like him. I read THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (with SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST) when I was fourteen. Years later I listened to an audiobook of John Cleese reading it and he did a wonderful job.
By no means do I wish us to return to the studio system of the thirties and forties. For my money, the works of the auteurs in the late sixties and early seventies were more realistic and honest than anything before or since. Some of the Depression-era directors were able to get much of their vision across despite the presence of Goldwyn or Jack Warner. John Huston was consistently individualistic throughout his career and became a direct link to young directors who were, indeed, his WORKING contemporaries in the early seventies. (Jack Nicholson seems to be the link between Huston and Dennis Hopper, Milos Foreman and Polanski.)
From the very little Chekhov I've been exposed to, I can say I find him lighthearted but not comic, although lightheartedness certainly implies a sense of humor. He is definitely deep, but he doesn't belabor his points. Gogol (judging by the one piece of his I've read, which is, as I've said earlir, "The Overcoat," seems to be trying to be funny, and succeeding.) Chekhov is the more universal writer. Here's a bit of cinematic writing. The end of "The Huntsman" features a figure fading in the distance until his hat blends into the forest far away. We see this through the eyes of the woman who loves him. This would transfer perfectly to the screen. Of course, Chekhov died in 1906, so film was in its infancy. Maybe naturalism transfers well to film. (John Huston comes to mind here, with THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE.)