Down the Rabbit Hole Project: Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974): Hour 1 (identity, fluidity and houses)

 This is part 2 of a 4 post look at Rivette's 1974 film Celine and Julie go Boating. The introduction can be read here.

HOUR 1

"Besides, she’s she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is!" (Carroll, "Wonderland" , 14)

Unlike Alice, Celine and Julie are untroubled by their identities (even if it may be one sole person that exists) 

The first half of Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974) functions as an introduction to its characters and themes. For this first hour much emphasizes is placed upon Celine’s boredom with day to day living (specifically her job, her absent boyfriend and her empty flat) and the disruptive and welcome change Julie brings with her. In a sense Julie is a white Rabbit to Celine’s Alice at the beginning of the film. The film paints Celine and Julie’s meeting as seemingly pre-destined by tarot cards and library books. When the two do finally meet, Celine is destined to look after the now amnesiac Julie, and both are destined to solve the mystery of the house on rue des pommes. This first hour frequently presents themes of predestined fate, from Celine’s tarot cards to Julie’s stumble into Celine’s flat. 

"suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her. There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” (Carroll, Wonderland, 2)

Scholar Beatrice Loayza identifies the first scene of Celine sitting on a park bench, reading a book and suddenly seeing Julie as “like the muttering White Rabbit running late for his appointment in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” (Loayza, 2021, State of Play)  By making this the key first scene, Rivette places notions of carrollian whimsy at the forefront of his film. This can also be seen in this first half in the many scenes in which the two women swap identities (Julie becoming Celine to break up the other’s relationship to her boyfriend, Celine becoming Julie when she has to miss a magic show) In essence Rivette’s film absorbs the identity themes of Carroll’s novels and takes them to their furthest point: here both Alice like characters are “split” but are so intertwined that other characters easily mistake them for each other. As such Julie could also be considered an invention by Celine due to boredom or a projection of a more carefree side of her psyche. This could be a potential reason as to why Celine is not unnerved by Celine's sudden arrival at her flat and integration into her life. 

The first hour of the film is all about this act of merging identities and places. Many parts of this hour feel arbitrary but later take on a deeper significance. Celine standing in at the magic show and Julie annoying Celine’s boyfriend all seem like detours but can be also perceived as laying the groundwork for future intrigues. Like the Maries in Daisies (1966), an influence on this film, Celine and Julie's personalities appear Interchangeable and interlinked. Less hedonistic and a few years older than the 17 year old Maries of Daisies, Celine and Julie do share a similar sense of playfulness and by extension and Alice style sense of curiosity. Scholar Kirsten Yoonsoo Kim identifies that structurally this first hour also mimics Daisies,  "Céline... Julie... meet, move in together, and frolic around the city and fool men." Like the Maries, their identity swapping is an act of rebellion, the identity swapping detours involve both Celine and Julie not bowing to the wishes of the people around them: “Julie... intentionally blows an audition that might have catapulted Céline into globe-trotting fame” (Broughton, 2021, a Feminist adventure...) 

By smashing up other character’s perceptions and wants from them, Celine and Julie free themselves to dive head-first into the carrollian mystery of the house on rue des pommes. The house is at this point seen only in glimpses, Celine remembers glimpses of working there, but the audience at this point are only shown flashes. The most we glimpse of the house in this first hour is in an carroll like scene where Celine attempts to get into the house, after seeing a cat rush out of the door. The house is set up as a hanging mystery which is elaborated on much later in the film.

Essays:

Broughton, Lee "A feminist adventure unfolds when Celine and Julie Go Boating" Popmatters, January 9th, 2018. https://www.popmatters.com/celine-and-julie-go-boating-feminist-film-2522111673.html 

Kim, Kristen Yoonsoo. “The Triumph of 'Céline and Julie Go Boating'.” The Nation, April 6, 2021. https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/celine-julie-boating-review/

Loayza, Beatrice. “Céline and Julie Go Boating: State of Play.” The Criterion Collection. Accessed July 13, 2021. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7316-c-line-and-julie-go-boating-state-of-play. 

Books:

Carroll, Lewis "Alice's adventures in Wonderland" London: Puffin Books, 1994.

  

Down the Rabbit hole project: An introduction to Celine and Julie go boating

“We didn’t have a message. We wanted to create a performance film, a magical film.” Julliet Berto on Celine and Julie go boating 

 "I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole ... without the least idea what was to happen afterwards" - Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) on the creation of Alice's adventures in Wonderland

CONTEXT

Made in 1974 by French New wave director Jacques Rivette and filmed over a summer in paris, Celine and Julie go boating is a bizarre looping dream of a film about 2 interconnected Parisian women who share each others lives and stumble upon a mystery in a house which involves memory, a troubled young girl and magic sweets. 

For the basis of this film Jaques Rivette performed a “controlled improvisation” with the actors, mainly the two leads, Juliet Berto and Dominique Labourier. In particular Juliet Berto remembers that during filming “we started off with the notion of amusing ourselves by creating interchangeable characters”. (Berto, Celine and Julie... BFI booklet) This freewheeling nature also extended to the narrative itself. For example the key story point of the magic sweets that transport Celine and Julie in and out of the world in the mysterious house was thought of by Rivette quite late: “it allowed us to link all the elements together to provide… a mechanism for holding the film together” (Rivette, Celine and Julie.. BFI booklet)

 Other examples of spontaneous ideas are identified by essayist Beatrice Loayza. For example of the chase sequence towards the beginning of the film, where Celine runs after Julie in the streets of Paris: “Rivette’s handheld 16 mm camera captures Berto and Labourier’s antics and comes across as free and spontaneous” (Loayza, 2021, State of Play) 

Due to the sheer weight of ideas and lines used from the actors in the film, from small ideas to last night’s dreams. Of the process, Labourier who played Julie, reminisced:  “We got up early in the morning and told each other our dreams, which the film depended on” (Labourier, 2021, state...) . As such, the script for Celine and Jullie is split in attribution several ways. “scénario” credits are given to “Berto / Labourier / Ogier / Pisier / Rivette” (Kristen Yoonsoo Kim, 2021, Thick as Thieves) Nearly all of the main actors are credited with the story. 

The other major influence on the film was literature, particularly the Victorian melodramas of Henry James, and also the whimsy and nonsense of Lewis Carroll. Carroll’s influence is a strong one and shines through clearly, even down to the impromptu story ideas, and the dream logic tone the film takes, Celine and Julie’s curiosity “It doesn’t matter who understands Céline and Julie so long as they understand each other.” (Kristen Yoonsoo Kim, 2021, Thick...) this is also prominently seen in film’s detours into other worlds. 

Note:

We have covered the French New Wave era of cinema previously in Down the Rabbit Hole project essays with Zazie dans le metro, Black Moon and Alice or the Last Escapade respectively. 

REFERENCES:

Essays:

Kim, Kristen Yoonsoo. “The Triumph of 'Céline and Julie Go Boating'.” The Nation, April 6, 2021. https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/celine-julie-boating-review/

Loayza, Beatrice. “Céline and Julie Go Boating: State of Play.” The Criterion Collection. Accessed July 13, 2021. https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/7316-c-line-and-julie-go-boating-state-of-play. 

Booklets:

BFI. Celine and Julie Go Boating. London: BFI, 2004. Essay booklet from the UK BFI DVD

Celine and Julie Go Boating: a down the rabbit hole project special

This summer down the rabbit hole film reviews are back, but I will only be looking at one film. Because the film in question is 3 hours and 19 minutes long, making it the longest film I have explored for this project.

Celine et Julie vont au bateau, or Celine and Julie go Boating, is a sprawling labyrinthine film about bored Celine who upon befriending magician Julie, finds they begin to share lives and relationships. When Celine one day stumbles out of a mysterious house with no memory of what happened to her there, the two friends become entangled in a complex mystery involving magical sweets and a potential murder. 

In French, "to go boating" or "vont au bateau" is similar to the English phrase "a shaggy dog story" essentially it means to become entwined in a unbelievable story.  You can probably guess how this theme links in with the film and also Carroll's Alice. 

I have put this film off due to its length, so I have decided to essay/review this in parts.

Here on the blog we will have 3/4 essays corresponding with different parts of the film (context, 1 hour, 2 hour, ending) whereas on Instagram you might be able to see my notes for each hour with first thoughts...

Very much aware that I have probably bitten off more than I can chew here but if ACMI thinks this film is Carrollian... it would be amiss for this blog not to explore this work. 

My attempt at essays for this film starts this July, wish me luck :)

Down the Rabbit Hole Project: After Hours (1985)

Office worker Paul Hackett faces the weirdest and worst night imaginable after a date goes wrong and he is stuck in late night downtown New York. He encounters an unstable woman with a bizarre fixation on burns,  a cynical artist who makes sculptures shaped like bagels, and a doorman who recites Franz Kafka. As the night goes from bad to worse, Paul begins to wonder if he'll ever make it back home, or even alive.

 

A black comedy nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions, After Hours is a fantastic exercise in paranoia. Despite all its recalling of Kafka's works several reviewers and essayists have drawn comparisons to Lewis Carroll's work, and it is these comparisons that this essay will focus on an explore. 

Whilst the film is devoid of any wonder it does play with some of the darkest aspects and tones of the Alice stories, as an extremely subtle down the rabbit hole film it conveys a sense of carrollian unease several ways.

 

Curiously comparisons with After Hours and other works have been made by reviewers but not generally with carroll. The comparisons include the film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz (1939), Franz Kafka's novels and Greek Myth, but only Arnette Wernblad's 2014 essay Down the Rabbit Hole in her book The Passion of Scorsese makes a direct scholarly comparison with the works of Lewis Carroll.

 

Context

 

"An exercise completely in style," (Martin Scorsese on After Hours)

 

Made in 1985 on a tight budget of 4 million dollars, and a script written by Joseph Minion, director Martin Scorsese has characterized his film as a emotional "reaction against [Scorsese's] year... In Hollywood trying to get The Last Temptation of Christ made" (Wernblad, 2014, passion of Scorsese) This sense of frustration is embodied in the film itself, and multiple producers persuaded Scorsese away from a darker ending. British director Michael Powell "kept repeating that Paul not only had to live at the end, but to end up back at his office." (Ebert et al, After Hours review, 2019) and it is this ending that made it into the finished film.

 

Curiously about half an hour of Minion's script was plagiarized almost word for word from a radio play called lies which was written by Joe Frank.  According to Andrew Hurst, who has written an analysis of this affair: Frank was “paid handsomely by producers of a Hollywood film... that plagiarized his dialogue.” (Hurst, 2004, After hours... origins) And certainly listening to the radio monologue it is undoubtedly the same dialogue and set up as the first half of After Hours.

 

A taxi cab ride as a fall

"Down, down, down. Would the fall NEVER come to an end!" (Carroll, "Wonderland", 3)

 

Paul's hurtle into late night new York begins with a taxi cab ride which is filmed akin to a fall. And it is significant that Paul is leaving Manhattan and travelling downwards: towards SoHo. The fast editing and occasional lights conveying to the audience that the ride is framed like a tumble into the unknown. Paul also has no time to reflect on if going to see Marcy was a bad decision as his last dollar flies out of the window. In her video essay from 2016, Film Formula compared this scene to the tornado scene in the Wizard of Oz (1939) but in a way this scene is also reminiscent of Carroll's line about Alice jumping down the rabbit hole:

 

"never once considering how in the world she was to get out again." (Carroll, "Wonderland", 2)

 

and unfortunately the consequences for Paul are largely negative.

A Dreaming Protagonist?

The film opens with boredom. Paul's office colleagues are so dull they nearly put him to sleep (or do, depending on if you subscribe to the dream theory in regards to this film). Hearing a colleague boast about where he is going in life, Paul longs for something different. 

Much like Carroll's works this evocation of boredom by the protagonist gives way to a bizarre series of events contained in a dream state which entrap the protagonist in ever stranger situations.

 

There are several hints in After Hours that Paul's late night voyage may be at the very least unreal, and at most extreme an actual dream or rather a nightmare. We do not see Paul fall asleep or awaken but from the scene where he first meets Marcy the film begins to take on an increasingly surreal tone. 

Early on in the film at his flat "Paul is lying on the sofa... And it is possible to assume he falls asleep and that his journey...is a dream" (Wernblad, 2014, passion of Scorsese) Paul could also have fallen asleep at his office, as he ends up there at the film's close. "In a... surrealistic moment Paul enters the office... And his computer says good morning paul" (Filmformula, 2016, After Hours urban Oz)

 

Like Alice, Paul's reading from waking life returns to manifest in his dreams. In much the same way that in the trial scene, Alice in Alice's adventures in Wonderland:

 

"Had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read about them in books and newspapers, and was quite pleased to find she knew the name of nearly everything there" (Carroll, "Wonderland", 117)

 

Paul's desk at work contains a newspaper with a story about burns, and his apartment contains at least one alarm clock by his sofa. As a word processor, Paul's work allows him to interact with bizarre news stories daily. The newspaper story about burns manifests itself when Marcy is revealed to have connections to Paul's childhood traumas. Similarly a clock ticking, which could well be the clock on the table next to Paul's sofa is the film's near constant soundtrack, leading Paul deeper into the night.

Doors, mirrors,  Paul's personality and plays with time

 

 "at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then." (Carroll, "Wonderland", 43 - 44)

In keeping with mythic elements essayists such as Arnette Wernblad have seen in After Hours, the film focuses a lot in its first act on doorways and entrances. There are two significant entrances that Paul goes through in the first act, the entrance to Marcy's apartment, which is signaled by Marcy's artist friend Kiki throwing down a key to him, This door is "on the threshold of an unfamiliar world"(Wernblad, 2014, passion of Scorsese) Other entrances are the Taxi ride and the blocked entrance down in the Subway, which Paul cannot traverse due to the subway fare going up just a minute earlier.

 

Wernblad also points out that the earlier taxi ride could be considered "a symbolic crossing into hades" (Wernblad, 2014, passion of Scorsese) referencing the Greek myth or Orpheus and Eurydice, but this element of the story in regards to the subway also functions in a similar way to the garden door in Carroll's Wonderland, an unattainable entrance leaving the protagonist trapped in an unreal place.

There is also the visual motif of mirrors as at significant points in the film Paul walks into bathrooms to reflect figuratively and literally on what is happening to him. In later parts of the film he rushes into these spaces and splashes his face with water as if he is trying to wake himself out of a nightmare (a point I have established in this essay earlier)

 

The mirror is also a symbol of reflection and is a way on reflecting on Paul's personality. Like Carroll's Alice, Paul's personality adjusts to what other character he is with and the situation he is in. Through the film, Paul's personality changes from his actual self, who is fairly unassuming, mild mannered and occasionally annoyed, and metamorphizes into several sides of himself he didn't know existed. 

We see the character turn hostile, to grief, to disbelief, to cynicism and even to begging, asking the world itself what it wants with him. This is reminiscent of the character of Josef K in Franz Kafka's the Trial but also of Lewis Carroll's Alice who is forced to behave in ways she would normally consider impolite in order to deal with absurdities. 

One of the film's main visual motifs is a ticking clock or radio to show how late into the night Paul is. This is reflected in the score by Howard Shore which has pieces like "Midnight" and "6am". These musical pieces occur in the film as Paul transitions from one encounter to another, effectively leading the audience deeper down the rabbit hole and into the night. 

The ticking clock motif heightens the audience's reaction to the action onscreen, and also serves to illuminate the film's general preoccupation with time. Paul is aware at the beginning of the film that he is meeting Marcy despite the fact it is 11:30. Later, Tom the bartender notes that "its after hours" and muses how this late hour means different logic applies. Crucially in several scenes the clocks appear not to move, signifying to the audience the potential unreality of Paul's experiences and highlighting the film's surreal nature.

 

An entrance to a hostile place

 

The scene at the entrance to the club where a bouncer doesn't allow Paul to enter to see Kiki, and instead recites pieces from the Franz Kafka story Before the Law, is also reminiscent of the scenes between Alice a frog who guards the door of the Duchess in Wonderland. In Alice's adventures in Wonderland, Alice is presented with an illogical argument about the ethics of door knocking. In the same way the bouncer's dialogue in After Hours only serves to increase Paul's frustration. The joke in these parts of both stories is that both Alice and Paul quickly wish they were back outside as they both end up in hostile places.

 

The citizens of an unreal New York

 

`It’s really dreadful,’ she muttered to herself, `the way all the creatures argue. It’s enough to drive one crazy!’ (Carroll, "Wonderland", 58)

From the bizarre Marcy to the grief stricken Tom and the lonely June, the personalities Paul collides with in After Hours all have distinct, sometimes downright unsettling quirks. Most promise to help get Paul home somehow but end up using that as a pretence to talk about themselves or get what they want. It is notable that many of the people Paul encounters are women and this may be tied to his guilt about what happens to Marcy. However as Gregory Smalley points out in his essay for 366weird movies: "the women of After Hours can be... seen... as Furies come to pursue and punish Paul for his sins. Not that Paul’s sins are profound" (Smalley, 330: After Hours, 2018) If anything Paul's only sin is looking for lust/romance with Marcy, a feeling which is portrayed as mutual. Just as in Franz Kafka, the punishment does not fit the alleged "crime".

 

Not unlike Carroll's dream worlds, many of the characters in After Hours appear normal at first but reveal odd preoccupations. "Like Alice's Wonderland... [After Hours's fictional New York] it is inhabited by strange creatures...who may seem friendly, but turn hostile" (Wernblad, 2014, passion of Scorsese) 

This is most seen in the character of Julie, who pretends to want to help Paul get home but is in actuality just disappointed that he won't stay the night with her or listen to her talk about how she hates her job. Due to a spate of thefts around the neighbourhood and the fact Paul was in Tom's apartment earlier, Julie vengefully assumes the thief is Paul. She later becomes a tyrannical figure and organises a mob that Paul must flee from at the end of the film.

 

 It is not unreasonable to see these personalities as the people Paul could worry he will bump into in daytime hours, if anything these characters are over exaggerated aspects of New Yorkers and society as a whole.

 

By contrast towards the end of his journey into the night Paul comes across two normal characters without quirks. Young man Mark, and 50 something June. Mark is up late because he is looking for a gay encounter. Mark becomes increasingly bored as Paul rants at him for seemingly hours about the night he is trapped in. But even the accommodating Mark is not interested in "saving" Paul from the night and makes him leave because he is tired of Paul's talking. Similarly the lonely June only helps Paul because he offered her a dance at an empty party by using his last piece of money on the jukebox. It is this act of kindness by her that begins to release Paul from his nightmare. 

Conclusion

 

With After Hours, Martin Scorsese managed to create a masterful comic nightmare which feeds into its long literary heritage of stories about people trapped in strange places. Whilst the humour is pitch black dark and it may induce anxiety or remind the viewer of a nightmare, it is interesting to see something which leans into the darker side of the absurdist genre, and tangentially Carroll's work.

 

References:

 

Books:

 

Carroll, Lewis. Alice's adventures in Wonderland, London: Puffin Books, 1994.

 

Wernblad, Annette. “‘Down the Rabbit Hole.’” Essay. In The Passion of Martin Scorsese: A Critical Study of the Films, 58–67. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.

 

Online articles:

 

Ebert, Roger, et al. “After Hours Movie Review & Film Summary (1985): Roger Ebert,” published February 14, 2019. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/after-hours-1985-1.

 

Hearst, Andrew et al. “The Scandalous Origins of Martin Scorsese's After Hours.” Andrew Hearst, published May 27, 2008. http://andrewhearst.com/blog/2008/05/the_scandalous_origins_of_martin_scorseses_after_hours.

 

Smalley, Gregory J. “330. AFTER HOURS (1985).” 366 Weird Movies, published May 3, 2018. https://366weirdmovies.com/330-after-hours-1985/.

 

Video Essays:

 

After Hours Analysis: Urban Wizard of Oz. Film Formula, Youtube, published in 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzT28uMfPdU.

 

Audio:

 

Frank, Joe. “Lies.” http://andrewhearst.com/audio/joefrank_lies.mp3

 

The original monologue by Joe Frank that the set up and some of the dialogue from "After Hours" is taken from. Joseph Minion was successfully sued for using this.