Jeff Bernstein

Bittersweet perversity In innumerous Hollywood films from the earliest days to now, the “spark and fire” of love (Hamlet, 4.7.129) often leads to climactic happiness and an uplifting end-credit track. One of the fine users of Quora explains for us : “You are simply attracted to a person or you’re not.” As Juliet explains, true love is out of one’s control : My only love sprung from my only hate, Too early seen unknown, and known too late! Prodigious birth of love is it to me That I must love a loathéd enemy. (1.3.152-5) * WARNING : In the skewed world of Shakespearean-era revenge tragedies, uncontrollable love—simple attraction, the prodigious birth of what the heart says—often ends in disaster. * The White Devil Vittoria. I do protest, if any chaste denial, If anything but blood could have allay’d His long suit to me— (1.2.284–6) Vittoria explains to her mother that her forbidden love for the Duke is out of her reasonable control, and only her death could have stopped her attraction; thus her infidelity is justified by the immutable laws of Mother Nature. Alas, Vittoria’s attraction leads to her ultimate end—a sword runs through her. With her last breath, she reflects : Vittoria. Oh, my greatest sin lay in my blood! Now my blood pays for ’t. (5.6.240–1) Unfortunately, this being The White Devil, her death gets worse for her—Vittoria expires in a hell of psychological torture : Vittoria. My soul, like to a ship in a black storm, Is driven, I know not whither. (5.6.248–9) * The Revenger’s Tragedy The devil-may-care character of Junior Brother ravishes a married woman in an especially vile and violent manner, but his explanation of why he did the deed is remarkably untroubled and relaxed—the young man simply tells the simple truth as he sees it : Second Judge. What mov’d you to’t? Junior. Why, flesh and blood, my lord. What should move men unto a woman else? (1.2.47–8) Junior’s last words before facing capital punishment are perversely mock-heroic— My fault was sweet sport, which the world approves; I die for that which every woman loves. (3.4.81–2) * In Shakespearean-era revenge tragedies, beware of love. Nature leads to disaster.

The Oppenheimer (2023) phenomenon Narrative art shows us human behaviour in action. Audiences have witnessed beastly activity onscreen for over one hundred years—and have enjoyed fabricated stories of earthly depravity for millennia—yet collective society hasn’t turned one whit better for all the stories that have ever been told. Evidence : the year 2024. * * * Cinema audiences see human beings acting as horrible as themselves for about two hours or so, yet subsequently fail to change their behaviour for the better. Example : Blackett. Christ, Oppenheimer. Have you had any sleep? (4:02) The professor is in a position of authority. Shouldn’t he comport himself as an exemplar of a gentleman, since his students, consciously or unconsciously, absorb his poise as guides for their own moral and ethical positions? Blackett reveals himself as an imbecilic bully. Relatable? And since arrogance unsees one’s own weakness, he’s ripe pickings for picking off. * Yes, audiences witness human beings acting as horrible as themselves for about two hours or so, then leave the cinema and continue to act horrible to one another. But as RDJ rightly said : “What we do matters.” Why? Because of the rare individual who makes it matter. * * * Caligula 29. immanissima facta augebat atrocitate uerborum. nihil magis in natura sua laudare se ac probare dicebat quam, ut ipsius uerbo utar, ἀδιατρεψίαν, hoc est inuerecundiam. monenti Antoniae auiae tamquam parum esset non oboedire: 'memento,' ait, 'omnia mihi et in omnis licere.' To his monstrous exploits Caligula added atrocious speech. “In my nature I praise and approve nothing so much,” he said, “as my shamelessness.” When his grandmother Antonia cautioned him on his behaviour, he couldn’t help but respond : “I can do anything I want to anybody.”

Seneca, Octavia qui si senescit, tantus in caecum chaos casurus iterum: tunc adest mundo dies supremus ille, qui premat genus impium caeli ruina (391–4) The vast Everything ages, and is doomed to collapse back into blind chaos; and all the wicked on that final day shall be crushed under the falling sky.

Aeneid Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram; multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem, inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum, Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae. These four words, united in the concept of the genus (“the people”), are placed by the poet in the first stanza of his epic (which begins with the letter “A”), in the shape of a triangle. * saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram cruel Juno’s patient wrath Kitty. The truly vindictive are as patient as saints. (Oppenheimer, p154) * * * Caligula 33. quotiens uxoris uel amiculae collum exoscularetur, addebat: “tam bona ceruix simul ac iussero demetur” Whenever he kissed the neck of his wife or lover, he’d say : “Off comes this lovely head whenever I say the word.” 34. cogitauit etiam de Homeri carminibus abolendis He contemplated destroying the songs of Homer 55. Incitato equo, cuius causa pridie circenses, ne inquietaretur, uiciniae silentium per milites indicere solebat So that his horse might not be disturbed, he would send out soldiers to enforce a silence in the neighborhood.

Feeling the heat The celebrated scene in Heat (1995) in which De Niro and Pacino chat together in a restaurant—two sworn antagonists sharing a comfortable time—has an antecedent in 3.3 of The White Devil. Marcello. [ aside ] Mark this strange encounter. And with this prompt to the audience, right in the middle of the play : Lodovico and Flamineo—nihilist urban psycho on one side, and clever naive conspirator on the other—join together in conversation (“housekeeping”) for sixty-odd lines. Lodovico. Shalt thou and I join housekeeping? Flamineo. Yes, content: Let’s be unsociably sociable. It is a highly-charged interaction. Each knows the other is no good. Neither trusts the other. Lodovico. [ aside ] . . . ’tis strange. . . . I must wind him. Flamineo [ aside ] . . . There’s somewhat in’t. Compounding the Situation, Flamineo is feigning madness—yes, Hamlet—in order to dodge the Law. Remember? Flamineo. [ aside ] I do put on this feigned garb of mirth, To gull suspicion. That was back at 3.1.29–30. Now the Kind Reader enjoys interactive fun in deciding where in the dialogue with Lodovico does Flamineo suddenly become deadly serious? (A literary prototype of a speaker becoming Suddenly Deadly Serious : Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, 1178.) (Amadeus—“My music. They’ve started without me.” 19:49) Lodovico ends up killing Flamineo in 5.6, so Flamineo’s verbal bravado in 3.3 is misguided and ludicrous, similar to Moss’ swagger with Anton over the telephone (“I’ve decided to make you a special project of mine.” 1:25:52). Example : Lodovico. Your sister is a damnable whore. Flamineo. Ha! Lodovico. Look you; I spake that laughing. Flamineo. Dost ever think to speak again? The interaction escalates. Hot-headed Flamineo, motivated by a misplaced confidence in his strength, strikes Lodovico. This rash act of violence comes back to haunt him. Just here, however, Flamineo departs safe in his confidence, while creepy Lodovico reflects— Lodovico. These rogues that are most weary of their lives Still ’scape the greatest dangers.

Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (31:54–34:31).

Psychedelic Wormhole The sordid domestic sex comedy of 1.2 is followed by 2.1, an elaborate Situation featuring a husband and wife bedroom scene—a portrait of a quarrelsome marriage-hell that Ingmar Bergman might have filmed alongside episode five of Scenes from a Marriage. What follows this harrowing domestic dispute? [ Enter Bracciano, with one in the habit of a conjurer ] What? A supernatural scene? Conjurer. Pray sit down; Put on this nightcap, sir, ’tis charmed; and now I’ll show you by my strong commanding art The circumstance that breaks your duchess’ heart. . . . Strike louder, music, from this charmed ground, To yield, as fits the act, a tragic sound! At first the Conjurer strikes a mystic note evocative of, say, A Midsummer Night’s Dream—a magical vibe of charmed enchantment. Oberon. And then I will her charmed eye release From monster’s view, and all things shall be peace. However, we soon discover that the vibe here is actually closer to Macbeth— First witch. Swelter’d venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot. In 2.2, conjury and magic appear as “special guest stars” in The White Devil. Just how many stage conventions are integrated into Webster’s play? Just as a Tarantino movie is stuffed with film references, so, too, is The White Devil engineered with similar theatrical aplomb. Polonius. The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral . . . * What magic is conjured in 2.2? At the hour of “dead midnight”, Bracciano sees though a wormhole-like eruption in spacetime and witnesses two murders, as if present there—or as if he were watching a movie of them. It’s as if one sole supernatural scene exists in, say, All the President’s Men, as a matter of course. * Bracciano peeks psychedelically into the ingenious death of his “loathed duchess”— Bracciano. Excellent, then she’s dead! Conjurer. She’s poisoned By the fumed picture. ’Twas her custom nightly, Before she went to bed, to go and visit Your picture, and to feed her eyes and lips On the dead shadow. Doctor Julio, Observing this, infects it with an oil, And other poison’d stuff, which presently Did suffocate her spirits. * So steeped in corruption is The White Devil that even the peripheral character of the Conjurer is not immune to the play’s world-sickness, as his opening words reveal : You have won me by your bounty to a deed I do not often practise. * A Shakespearean-era in-joke? Is the Conjurer a surrogate for storyteller John Webster? Bracciano. Now, sir, I claim your promise: ’tis dead midnight, The time prefix’d to show me by your art, How the intended murder of Camillo, And our loath’d duchess grow to action. . . . Conjurer. Strike louder, music, from this charmed ground, To yield, as fits the act, a tragic sound! As it happens, the Conjurer is one of the very few characters in the play who gets out alive, miraculously unscathed. After 2.2, he is, to his everlasting good fortune, never seen again. * Please recall the technics of the ancient playwrights—they had no care for divisions into acts and scenes. Events occur dreamlike. And so it is with John Webster’s The White Devil. Locations, too—Webster, like the ancients, never lets us know in a stage direction where the action is taking place. W. W. Grieg, a finely studious individual : The total duration of the action could not be less than about three weeks. . . . The above analysis is of no more value than such tables usually are, for the reason that, in common with most of the dramatists of his day, the author shows a contemptuous indifference to the minutiae of time and space. Walter Wilson Grieg, “Webster’s White Devil : An Essay in Formal Criticism”, Modern Language Quarterly 3, 2 (December 1900), 112–26. Grieg fails to link this “contemptuous indifference” to the technics of the ancient authors, however; curiously, though, in the following paragraph he mentions Euripides’ Electra. * χαίρειν δ᾽ ὅστις δύναται καὶ ξυντυχίᾳ μή τινι κάμνει θνητῶν, εὐδαίμονα πράσσει. A mortal whose good luck meets with no disaster is blessed.

Agrippina’s poison mushrooms Adeoque cuncta mox pernotuere ut temporum illorum scriptores prodiderint infusum delectabili boleto venenum, nec vim medicaminis statim intellectam, socordiane an Claudii vinolentia. (Tacitus, Annals, 12.67.1) Et veneno quidem occisum convenit; ubi autem et per quem dato, discrepat. Quidam tradunt epulanti in arce cum sacerdotibus per Halotum spadonem praegustatorem; alii domestico convivio per ipsam Agrippinam, quae boletum medicatum auidissimo ciborum talium optulerat. (Suetonius, “Life of Claudius”, 44.2) * (Suetonius, “Life of Caligula”, 24.1) Cum omnibus sororibus suis consuetudinem stupri fecit plenoque convivio singulas infra se vicissim conlocabat uxore supra cubante. He had a habit of defiling all of his sisters, at parties, putting one at a time under him, while his wife reclined above them. * Friar. Why, foolish madman! Giovianni. Shall a foolish sound, A customary form, from man to man, of brother and sister, be a bar ’Twixt my perpetual happiness and me? (Ford, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, 1.1.24–7) Giovanni. Come, Annabella, no more sister now But love, a name more gracious. Do not blush . . . (2.1.1–2) * Nos e tanto visi populo digni premeret quos everso cardine mundus? in nos aetas ultima venit? o nos dura sorte creatos, seu perdidimus solum miseri, sive expulimus! abeant questus, discedo, timor: vitae est avidus quisquis non vult mundo secum pereunte mori. (Seneca, Thyestes, 875–884) Of all the people to exist, is it fitting that we are to be destroyed, overthrown by the knot of power? We were born with a heavy fate, whether we destroyed ourselves, or were destroyed. No laments! Abandon fear! Who would wish to live when the world itself is dying away? * Roman houses caught fire frequently. . . . The wealthy Crassus in the last century of the republic devised a scheme for increasing his immense fortune by exploiting these catastrophes. On hearing the news of an outbreak, he would run to the scene of the disaster and offer profuse sympathy to the owner, plunged in despair by the sudden destruction of his property. Then he would offer to buy on the spot at a sum far below its real value the parcel of ground, now nothing but a mass of smouldering ruins. Thereupon, employing one of the teams of builders whose training he had himself superintended, he erected a brand new insula, the income from which amply rewarded him for his capital outlay. Jérôme Carcopino, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (Bertelsmann, 1941), 44. cf. (Plutarch, “Life of Crassus”, 2.4) πρὸς δὲ τούτοις ὁρῶν τὰς συγγενεῖς καὶ συνοίκους τῆς Ῥώμης κῆρας ἐμπρησμοὺς καὶ συνιζήσεις διὰ βάρος καὶ πλῆθος οἰκοδομημάτων, ἐωνεῖτο δούλους ἀρχιτέκτονας καὶ οἰκοδόμους, εἶτ᾽ ἔχων τούτους ὑπὲρ πεντακοσίους ὄντας, ἐξηγόραζε τὰ καιόμενα καὶ γειτνιῶντα τοῖς καιομένοις, διὰ φόβον καὶ ἀδηλότητα τῶν δεσποτῶν ἀπ᾽ ὀλίγης τιμῆς προϊεμένων, ὥστε τῆς Ῥώμης τὸ πλεῖστον μέρος ὑπ᾽ αὐτῷ γενέσθαι, . . . In this way Crassus came to possess the largest part of Rome. * Satelles. Fama te populi nihil adversa terret? Atreus. Maximum hoc regni bonum est, quod facta domini cogitur populus sui tam ferre quam laudare. (Seneca, Thyestes, 204–7) Assistant. You don’t fear unfavorable talk among the people? Atreus. That’s the greatest good of power—the people are obliged to endure as well as praise me, their master. * The Heroic Perverse At the end of White Devil, Lodovico faces capital torture; and after all of his many depredations, the psycho hits a heroic note! Lodovico. I do glory yet, That I can call this act mine own. For my part, The rack, the gallows, and the torturing wheel Shall be but sound sleeps to me. Here’s my rest: I limn’d this night-piece, and it was my best. (5.6.294-297) cf. Vindice facing capital punishment at the end of The Revenger’s Tragedy : Vindice. I’faith, We’re well . . . We die after a nest of dukes. Adieu. (5.3.107-125) Long before Webster and Middleton . . . The cheerfully hysterically insane Atreus has just fed his brother’s two children to, oops, his brother, Thyestes. . . . Atreus. Sceleri modus debetur ubi facias scelus, non ubi reponas. hoc quoque exiguum est mihi. Crime has a limit, but not its requital. Even this is too little for me! 1052–1068; and what he goes on to say is horrible and triumphant—the Heroic Perverse.

Evolvement In 1.1, a very bad man is introduced, Lodovico, and he mentions, in passing, the Duke of Bracciano and his mistress— This in passing recalls Chance the gardener watching the U.S. President gladhanding on TV (11:52), only to later find himself shaking the President’s hand, in Rand’s library (1:00:15). [ which recalls Isabella. My jealousy? I am to learn what that Italian means. White Devil, 2.1.160–1 Chance. There is no need for a claim. I don’t even know what they look like. Being There, 36:38 ] The appearance of amoral murderous nihilist Lodovico at the outset of The White Devil is equivalent to the opening sequence of Halloween (1978) : the introduction of a highly dangerous character in a “sealed-off” way structurally. Halloween then enters a present-day suburbia unaware of the coming threat. 1.2. A domestic comedy / a sex comedy. The Duke of Bracciano enters the house of his assistant, the social-climbing Flamineo, who hopes to whore out his sister Vittoria in hopes of wealth and self-advancement. As perverse as the Situation is, the play’s tone is, as yet, comic; and rings well-nigh Monty Pythonic while Flamineo expends much verbal effort in persuading his sister’s husband not to sleep with his wife that night. However, hanging over the humorous tone (perverse as it is) is nihilist urban psycho Lodovico, like Bad Fate. No matter what these characters think they are, they’re no match for psycho Lodovico. In Act 5, he kills all three principals of 1.2. By wacky Act 5, the perversity of 1.2—a brother pimping out his sister—is now a throwback to a naive, quaint time. * Stephen King’s Pet Sematary offers an unwittingly fine general description of the structure of The White Devil : It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls—as little as we may like to admit it, human experience tends, in a good many ways, to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, that one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate, evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins to either save itself or to buckle and break down; that point when one’s sense of humor begins to resurface. * I recover like a spent taper, for a flash, And instantly go out. Let all that belong to great men remember th’ old wives’ tradition: to be like the lions i’ th’ Tower on Candlemas day, to mourn if the sun shine, for fear of the pitiful remainder of winter to come. ’Tis well yet there ’s some goodness in my death, My life was a black charnel. I have caught An everlasting cold; I have lost my voice Most irrecoverably. Farewell, glorious villains. This busy trade of life appears most vain, Since rest breeds rest, where all seek pain by pain. Let no harsh flattering bells resound my knell; Strike, thunder, and strike loud, to my farewell! [ Dies ] Flamineo’s last word— Strike, thunder, and strike loud to my farewell! is an appeal to the audience to erupt in applause—a common technique, we have seen, in Shakespearean-era plays; and The White Devil is, as it were, an “ultimate compendium” (as far as it goes) of Shakespearean-era plays. * Henry James Positive-Negative Statement Flamineo. ’Tis well yet there ’s some goodness in my death

Engineering character Flamineo is the only character in The White Devil whose speech repeatedly slips into blocks of prose. His loquaciousness can be extensive. The exuberant conspirator “loves the sound of his own voice”. 2. Flamineo’s been running off at the mouth for the entire play. But at the end, when he’s facing death? Lodovico. Oh, I could kill you forty times a day, And use ’t four years together, ’twere too little! Naught grieves but that you are too few to feed the famine of our vengeance. What dost think on? Flamineo. Nothing; of nothing: leave thy idle questions. I am i’ th’ way to study a long silence: To prate were idle. With this remark, the hushed audience absorbs the heavy gravity of the moment—the pressure of the Situation has shut riotous Flamineo’s mouth, finally. 3. —but now comes a Genius Move! Fifty-odd lines later, as Flamineo dies he reverts to type and belts out an (abbreviated) prose block. It is a “triumphant” return to character, “his old self” at the last! Here’s looking at you, kid— I recover like a spent taper, for a flash, And instantly go out. Let all that belong to great men remember th’ old wives’ tradition: to be like the lions i’ th’ Tower on Candlemas day, to mourn if the sun shine, for fear of the pitiful remainder of winter to come. ’Tis well yet there ’s some goodness in my death, My life was a black charnel. I have caught An everlasting cold; I have lost my voice Most irrecoverably.

2017 Kodak CMO Steven Overman. "We get asked all the time by filmmakers and photographers alike, ‘Are you going bring back some of these iconic film stocks like Kodachrome [and] Ektachrome?' I will say, we are investigating Kodachrome, looking at what it would take to bring that back. Ektachrome is a lot easier and faster to bring back to market. People love Kodak’s heritage products and I feel, personally, that we have a responsibility to deliver on that love.” (23:40) 2019 Kodak restarts production of 35mm Ektachrome. 2022 "Spike Lee, Euphoria cinematographer Marcel Rév, and other filmmakers spoke to IndieWire about Ektachrome’s comeback." https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/euphoria-taylor-swift-ektachrome-1234712364/

Meanwhile, Webster’s White Devil is outrageously wacky. The nobility is a snake-pit of odious characters, yet the storyteller’s art bamboozles the audience into emotional connections. Example : Noble Bracciano has no compunction about defiling a married woman, and he plots with her brother to win her affection, and thus is received by her mother, and the audience, as a vile character. Eventually, in 5.3, Bracciano is mortally poisoned, and stars as the dying one in a death scene that one might imagine as, well—please picture Hans Gruber being the evil Hans Gruber, yet imagine his death in Die Hard as portrayed with the heartfelt tender solemnity deserving of the deathbed scene of Murph. Not quite the David Cronenberg-meets-Terms of Endearment vibe of Οἰδίπους, but close. Then—hard to believe?—the death scene takes a turn for the worse. Lodovico. This is a true-love knot Sent from the Duke of Florence. Psycho Lodovico, costumed in religious garb, strangles the already dying man—strangles vile Bracciano, because, to some, revenge is sweeter than death. * May one commit to revenge as to love at first sight? * The Triple Tone is triumphant in 5.3, in which psycho Lodovico and accomplice Gasparo, both costumed and masked as Capuchin friars, preside over bedridden Bracciano with fluent Latin, a Situation to cast a solemn spell over the rapt audience—perversely so. Imagine, kind reader, the Royal Albert Hall at full audience capacity belting out “Rule, Britannia!” under the baton of a lunatic Hannibal Lecter.

Anton. If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule? Our friend Faust experienced much in Christopher Marlowe’s diabolical work. In his lifetime Faust gained worldly knowledge and wealth and fame—but, by the end, where did living in the world lead him? * [ The clock strikes eleven ] Faust. Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn’d perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come; (Remember Melody Anderson in Flash Gordon struggling to overturn the hourglass?) Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! (14.134–41; cf. rise 3.13—the repetition technique recalls Οἰδίπους Τύραννος.) * Alas, Faust recognises the following : O, no end is limited to damned souls! (14.171) cf. Grady. I should know, sir. I’ve always been here. * (14.185–6). Terrified at oncoming doom, Faust speaks out a childish hope : O soul, be chang’d into little water drops, And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found. cf. Oppenheimer Shot 1. Waterdrops = fresh souls—see the compass drawing blast radii at (1:31:00). Shot 2. The character Oppenheimer surveying, as God. * Final words. Faust. I’ll burn my books!—Ah, Mephostophilis! cf. F. W. Murnau, Faust (1926), 15:43–17:43. Also features an original “bat man” at the wondrous 2:00; at the end, an exploding sun.

Visual Style in film Visual style in film is the manner in which information is transacted to the Spectator. Visual style provides cues to receive the narrative in a certain way. Visual style is the inescapable fundament of cinema, just as the alphabet permits writing.