The film maudit - my favorite film genre!

J. Hoberman has a (mostly) terrific new piece in Sight & Sound on the film maudit, my favorite film genre ever! Translated literally from the French as a "cursed film," a film maudit is one that is "widely panned even as it is staunchly defended by a devoted minority." My real-time example of the film maudit process is Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995) which, as I never tire of proclaiming, I saw on opening night and deemed a masterpiece within ten minutes. But Hoberman dives into the long history of the genre including its origin in the Festival du Film Maudit, a counter-Cannes organized in 1949 by André Bazin and Jean Cocteau to showcase those films that in “their indifference to censorship and the demands of exploitation were cursed like the books of certain poets," as per Cocteau.

The gambit worked since many of the titles shown at the festival have long since passed on to masterpiece status: L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934), The Long Voyage Home (John Ford, 1940), Les Dames du Bois de Bologne (Robert Bresson, 1945). But I know of no maudit energy surrounding The Flame of New Orleans (René Clair, 1941) beyond a brief, warm mention in Henri Agel's 1950 Hollywood Quarterly piece "What is a Cursed Film?" And I'm intrigued by the inclusion of Mourning Becomes Electra (Dudley Andrew, 1947), a three-hour adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play that always seemed like a slog to me but has suddenly risen near the top of my must-watch list, especially since Bazin considered it “the film maudit par excellence.”

But here's where the messiness of generic boundaries seeps in because Hoberman loses me in trying to define this genre. To my mind, there must be something of the preposterous to a film maudit. Thus, Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970) and Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1977), both masterful but sober, don't count, not even as rehabilitated films maudits just because they "suffer[ed] all manner of indignities before being hailed as national treasures." And then there's the matter of determining both the panning and the defending necessary for a film to become maudit. Hoberman claims Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970) "remains unredeemed." But he should check out David Scott Diffrient's 2013 Cinema Journal article "'Hard to Handle': Camp Criticism, Trash-Film Reception, and the Transgressive Pleasures of Myra Breckinridge" which details the film's redemption. And I know a vocal minority who hail Cats (Tom Hopper, 2019) as a masterpiece and "not just a titanic flop," even one Hoberman calls "ridiculous" as if such a designation weren't central to the maudit process.

Weirdest of all, Hoberman claims the genre is no more, a situation he blames on social media. Wondering if Southland Tales (Richard Kelly, 2006) might be the last film maudit ever, he concludes that "the net has fostered a cinematic counterculture capable of embracing, defending and blessing nearly anything." But that's always been true even during the era which Hoberman perplexingly labels "the great age of cinephilia (1945-2000)" (huh?). From "Charlton Heston is an axiom" to the Gay Girls Riding Club to the Psychotronic encyclopedias, plenty of energy has been expended on blessing all manner of cinematic detritus and it will continue to happen. Cats is proof of that. Cameron Crowe's 2015 fiasco Aloha might be too although I've yet to see it. I imagine there's a candidate ripe for mauditation among the nominees and winners of the Golden Raspberry Awards (there was a Basic Instinct 2??). For sure, M. Night Shyamalan has enjoyed the most maudit career of any mainstream Hollywood director this century with at least two fabulous films maudits, my beloved Lady in the Water (2006) and The Happening (2008), and one irredeemably awful movie, The Last Airbender (2010), to his name. His gripping new Apple TV series, Servant, is suffused with maudit energy, continually threatening to jump the shark but never yet doing so over the course of two seasons. As a panning and defending machine, the internet will keep all this maudit energy alive. 

Still, Hoberman's essay is a fantastic repository for the cursed and the adored that put my mind in overdrive. I should finally get to that Shelley Winters/Liberace entry South Sea Sinner (Bruce Humberstone, 1950). Was Major Dundee (Sam Peckinpah, 1965) really maudit? I've never even heard of Kid Blue (James Frawley, 1973). And I should really watch my beloved Skidoo (Otto Preminger, 1968) again sometime soon. 

Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)

I slated Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (John Huston, 1967) in a genre I called Feel That New Hollywood Train Comin'. But you can sense Preminger barreling toward it with this 1959 classic. There's an exciting disconnect watching old-guard actors like James Stewart (as "humble" country attorney Biegler, a virtuosic performance that's quite possibly his greatest ever) and Eve Arden exist in a world where words like "rape" and even "bitch" (!) are uttered (not to mention going toe-to-toe with such Methody new-guard actors as Ben Gazzara, Lee Remick [in a role abandoned by Lana Turner!], and George C. Scott). 

Not that 1959 (or any era) had the corner on modernity. Anatomy of a Murder recalls prior milestones in sophistication, exhibiting a bit of the Lubitsch touch in its ending. Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) comes to a close, for instance, when Mariette (Kay Francis) allows Gaston (Herbert Marshall) and Lily (Miriam Hopkins) to steal ₣100,000 and a string of pearls from her. Her tone is bittersweet rather than enraged or screaming for vengeance. She may be in a funk for a day or so. But soon, she'll struggle to remember Gaston's name. Similarly, Biegler and his colleague McCarthy [sic] (Arthur O'Connell) shrug off the fact that Manion (Gazzara) has left town without paying them, a mindset perhaps absorbed from Biegler's secretary Maida (Arden) who never seems overly concerned that she hasn't received a paycheck in a while. Biegler isn't even bittersweet here. He's probably just eager to get back out on the lake to fish. Both endings still startle and even confuse today for how they flout expectations of rage and depression.

And even at that, I can think of at least six or seven Preminger films that cut it (Angel Face, Fallen Angel, The Human Factor, Bunny Lake is Missing, Bonjour Tristesse, maybe Daisy Kenyon if I can sift out my Joan Crawford idolatry, etc.) and many more that are its equal. After Sirk, he's my favorite classical Hollywood director.
Grade: A