Cinema (1963)

NIGHT TIDE CURTIS HARRINGTON ON “NIGHT TIDE” The best way to become a writer is to sit down and write. The best way to become a film maker is to stand up and direct a film. The latter is, however, a much more difficult situation to achieve. The physical materials involved in writing are of negligible value. In film making they are staggering. A few years ago, Jean Cocteau wrote something about the possibility of “writing with the camera!’ He was referring to a younger generation of potential creative artists who, exposed to movies from near infancy, would look to this medium to express themselves as naturally as an earlier generation looked to paper, canvas, stone. Such a generation, of course, is very much with us. The blanket term for it has become “New Wave!’ But if a certain number of such young film makers have broken through in Europe, there has been evidence of no more than a faint ripple in Hollywood. The younger directors here are mostly slick products of a long TV apprenticeship, and they don’t consider themselves “New Wave” at all. They aim to fit quite nicely into the traditional modes of Hollywood movie making, offering just a touch here and there to remind us that they are less than old and tired. They are sought after by the “majors!’ and their problem is not how to get a film made but which project to choose. Having served neither on Broadway nor for the TV tube, I could only make a first feature film by obtaining the financing myself. As a beginning step, I wrote an original screenplay. I felt, and I was right, that I could more easily convince potential investors that I lpight be capable of directing if I presented my own script rather than someone else’s. The story of the obtaining of my financing for NIGHT TIDE, in all its sordid details, would require a volume the size of “War and Peace” to relate. It took me over two years of constant, unrelenting, aggressive, mad optimism, in the face of innumerable turn-downs, finally to put the money together. I say “put together” because this is precisely what you do in financing an independent film. There are steps of money involved : “first” money, “second” money, “comple The new American cinema strives to create a reality that will give testimony to today’s times and man. This sincerity, this facing of reality, is adulterated by the Hollywood films which create a disfigured, painted, aseptic reality. Curtis Harrington’ s night tide, which belongs to the young school that struggles against the standardization of the Hollywood producers, lies between both of these. This is because it flees from reality to encrust itself in the world of legend, night tide retells the legend of the sailor and the mermaid. Breaking with reality, it blends the nightmarish and the strange to create an anguished climate that is also poetic and dream-like. The spectator is compelled tel participate directly in the mi/sl tery that surrounds Mora, a young j woman who believes she is predes I tined for the sea and who sacri I fices to it all the suitors who come I close to her mysterious being ...a mystery that is not resolved until | the end of the film and that inj volves the old sea captain who is [ her guardian and who loves her \ The atmosphere in the spirit of Poe, from whose*work the theme seems to have evolved, marks a milestone in the young school of realistic cinema. This excursion into the realm of fantasy constitutes an unexpected development \ which is made credible by the ma-\ turity and richness of Harring-l ton’s direction. This uniting of the real with fantasy, of truth with dream, is very well arranged, so well, in1 deed, that the real and the magical join together in a clearly unfolding homogeneous whole. In his domination of the picture Harrington has obtained from his ' actors an uncommon spontaneity which contributes effectively to the film’s poetic and mysterious atmosphere. The direction is totally mature, with sequences of notable value, among them the night scene during which the sailor and Mora become acquainted, the persecution of the young couple by the mysterious woman in black, Mora’s dance on the beach, the echoes underneath the pier, etc. It’s a film of considerable interest, not only because of its appearance within a totally realistic ‘school’, but due to its own merits as well. FILM IDEAL Madrid. tion” money. Only a miracle could bring all this money from one source. At any event* by searching, badgering, coaxing, pleading, begging, playing it cool one moment, expressing anguish the next, holding on to one source of money while desperately reaching for the next, knowing that in doing so time might cause me to lose whatever little gain I had made, I managed to reach that extraordinary day when I walked onto a location. set and said : “Roll ’em!’ If anyone should ask me, would you go through it all again, I would say yes, yes I would, yes I most certainly would. The making of the film was sheer, painful delight, and the response it has received at Spoleto, Venice, Coronado, and at three sneak previews, has been deeply gratifying. Now, of course, I wait to see how it will fare in the greater world. — CURTIS HARRINGTON Hollywood, 1962