How’s this for a line you never thought you’d hear in a Wiseman film. "Could I have an almost naked girl inside a letter?" The letters in question spell DÉSIR on a stage set, and they need her in order to check for a lighting effect, lighting being a huge subject in Crazy Horse, named for our institution in question, the famed Paris nightclub known for its elaborate semi-nude musical numbers. Before we get to lighting, and believe me we will, let’s just figure out what’s going on here. There are a couple of groupings we might apply, just to help figure from whence this springs. One is to see it as film number three in a Paris trilogy, two dealing with high art and now one of, let’s shall we say, more popular appeal, though the price of admission is likely the highest of the three, not even counting the obligatory champagne. But Wiseman has done three films heavy on excerpts from performances, with all three alternating between rehearsal and actual stage presentations, with meetings and lots of backstage activities thrown in. So he’s taken three major French cultural institutions and highlighted their particular ways of doing things - not bad for that Boston lawyer who started out filming the criminally insane. We can also see La Danse and Crazy Horse as the first and last of a trilogy with Boxing Gym in the middle - all three heavily emphasizing the human body, and boy does Crazy Horse emphasize the human body. The idea would be that Wiseman has now done three films in a row with loads of bodies in movement for the sake of their respective arts. I have a feeling that the next one, At Berkeley, will go off in a different direction, but going backward to Boxing Gym we can see a close connection, just as with Boxing Gym it was easy to see the through line from La Danse. All the physical activity may seem unusual for Wiseman, who we might think has leaned far further to the verbal, but these three films present a pretty strong case for seeing his interest in the human form as a sustained one. But we’ve probably already talked enough about that in the other two entries in this tentative trilogy. I just brought this up to say that Crazy Horse doesn’t have to be looked at as an aberration, even though it’s the only Wiseman film not supported by PBS and pretty likely never to show on public television, at least in America. It’s a Wiseman film, through and through,
This is a good spot finally to tackle for a bit one of the major Wiseman matters, his quite unique method for constructing his films. We’ve touched on it slightly here and there, but it really deserves some attention. It’s difficult to approach, but the most important to attempt, because it’s his unique contribution to cinema, not just to documentary, and it plays a major role in what makes his films so complex and interesting. It’s also in its way almost invisible, because his films can just look like a series of episodes. If that were actually the case, I think he could edit his movies in about a month instead of the year or so he usually takes. It’s what goes on during the rest of that time that we need to think about. What we’re looking at starts with the mosaic structure, it we want to call it that. The pieces are episodes - sequences which do have time and space continuity just like in a “normal” movie. The episodes might be brief, a few shots, or they can take an hour. But then something radical happens. A new episode starts, and it doesn’t conventionally “follow” the one before it. We’re not sure what connects the two, but they’re definitely not random. So the important editing is not just within sequences, it’s between sequences, so that there is a sense of continuity as the film unfolds. Again, it’s not the customary temporal continuity that most films provide, a this happens and this happens next kind of logic, and it’s not a continuity based upon following certain characters (although sometimes that might happen). A certain degree of continuity comes from being in the same location, but in lesser hands, that would wind up random and aimless, like we’re just wandering around catching anything we happen to witness, which I don’t think is ever what happens in a Wiseman film. The sense of guiding intelligence is too strong. Sometimes there’s a grouping of similar situations, sometimes by subject matter. We find meaning in the sense that we can discover ideas developing across sequences, or through their juxtapositions. And this can go on for up to six hours, the sequences developing complexities as they accumulate through all the workings of great art - themes emerging, ideas from earlier films coming back in different forms, unexpected similarities where we wouldn’t expect them - ways that are all for the viewer to work through as they actively watch and think.
Let’s look at those individual pieces a little too, because they have their own special construction, even though they might seem like just a chunk of direct observation. While watching, we know when an episode starts and ends because they’re constructed to make that apparent. They do mark clear events that appear to be respected as such - in other words, a meeting isn’t put together out of several meetings and made to look like just one event. We sense a narrative continuity too within an episode, especially when we’re following a process to completion. Once that process is finished, the episode is over. Even though their length can vary quite a bit, understanding what constitutes an episode is always easy to understand. What’s harder is to sense their order, and why the films are so full of complex meaning. For that, let’s figure out a couple of more aspects of how this works, and then we’ll look to Crazy Horse to get the idea better.
When an episode starts, we have no idea why we’re in it. It’s on us to figure out why we might be in this new spot with different people doing whatever it is they’re doing. The burden is on us to do the work. If it’s a meeting, what kind of meeting? Who are the people in the room? Why are they there? What subjects are being discussed? Is someone mad or bored? We’ve got to start this process fresh every time, and meetings are the easy ones. Disorientation or uncertainty is a regular occurrence - no narrator, no signposts telling us why we’re here. Once this process starts, the biggest questions will be what are we after, what will the payoffs be. They will always be there, and there will likely be payoffs on several levels - things spoken that may have multiple meanings, small dramas that develop as the episode continues, performances of some sort by the people we’re watching (and who may never show up in the film again). Then we get to the inevitable end of the episode, and that looks to be a carefully chosen point. How episodes end in Wiseman’s films is an art form in itself. It’s where those “Abrupt End of Scene Lines” that I’ve mentioned before come into play - the very important concluding statement of a scene that is left hanging for us to think about. I’ve given lots of examples of these already, and I’m sure to have more, because it’s one of the keys to taking meaning from these films. An episode will end when somebody has an important thing to say that will hang in there for us to contemplate as we quickly leave the episode behind, and for us to think about what we’ve gotten from the episode just ended that might connect to the new one just begun.
While we’re on this, there are a couple of other building blocks (if we can mix metaphors with mosaics) that are both Wiseman signature shots and also important pieces of connective tissue (one last mix there, I know). We can really be in the rhythm of these movies if we’re noticing the matching of opening and closing exterior shots that will very often bracket an interior episode. Entire movies can also have these bookends - we start outside the place and end up back outside as it ends. These are all markers of beginnings and endings, markers for us to understand as indicators of the pieces we’re dealing with. When we’re in a room, we’re not going to cut to outside and then return again to the same room. When we’re outside and back, something new is happening. and while we’re outside, it’s probably our quiet moment to think about what’s just been ended. Similarly, sections of the film can be divided by general exterior shots showing night and then day, so even if we’re back in the same place, we know a separation has been made. Very often, the exterior shots may first be at night and then show somewhere in the city in question in daylight, and then back inside. We don’t read it as the next day, because we’re not really following days. While Wiseman is likely at least a month somewhere to film (or up to the three months of State Legislature), what we see is of course highly selective and not any sort of day-by-day chronicle. For all we know, the first episode of any movie might have been filmed toward the end of shooting, or the end on the first. It wouldn’t matter. Only time within episodes requires respect, which the episodes clearly receive. How they are put in the order they have is the bigger challenge. But at least now we have sense of what’s getting put together.
So let’s take an example of a subject in Crazy Horse that becomes important through Wiseman’s episodes, their construction and arrangement, and we’ll go with that one I promised - let’s call it lighting and shadows. It’s important in the movie because it shows up a lot in different ways, but mainly because of how it’s embedded within the film as an interest. We might want to say that Wiseman just happened to “find” this subject coming up a lot, but apart from that month or so he’s in a place, let’s say that if his few hours of a finished film is culled from 120 or so hours filmed, that the things he includes are here because he selected them. Then it’s a critical argument for someone other than him to make, or just things a viewer has realized, that’s needed for these things to matter. With lighting and shadow, I think it’s a great subject, especially for cinema. (Widely noted that the Lumiere Brothers were so properly named.) Its role as a creator of illusion is extensively explored in Crazy Horse, and seeing illusion created is a double-edged sword, like a magician’s trick revealed. We still might fall for the trick, but it won’t be the same. I’ll leave it to you to think more about why lighting and shadow are worth looking at, as what I want to do is to try to show some ways it becomes important through how the film is put together. It’s not just that it’s talked about or shown, but how we see it get emphasis. Because what happens with lighting and shadow in this film can lead us to how Wiseman makes his films so rich and complex.
The first shot in the film is of expert hands making shadows on a wall, first a devil, then a horse (likely for the title of the club), and then a devil again. Essentially, this is a statement of what the rest of the film will be doing in more elaborate ways - creating illusion through transforming human flesh. We might also say this is a “processing” in a nutshell, so dear to Wiseman. We could go on with associations, but the idea is that instead of the usual Wiseman opening - a city, a view outside a building (both will come later this time) - we’ve been given a quick lesson in what light and shadow are capable of. And Crazy Horse actually has a couple of endings, again pure light and shadow. After the big show finale concludes, we’re back with shadow guy again, making first an adroitly done cat and then two faces kissing - we’ve returned to the basics again - illusions created through manipulations revealed to us, as we go to the end credits. But please don’t turn off the movie there! This is another one where the final credits aren’t final. (Titicut Follies was the first time he did this.) When the credits end, look carefully - there’s a shot of one last lit backdrop, showing a gradient of light to dark across the screen, and you can see a few little ripples along the cloth - a final unexpected moment where lighting is important, as if to say when the movie ends, all that’s left is light on a screen.
But wait, as they say in late night tv ads, there’s more. After shadow guy, we go right into two numbers, called “Baby Buns” and I think “Open the Door”. The dancers in both “wear” lights for most of their costumes, polka dot shadows for the first and kaleidoscopic patterns over their bodies in the second. (Both songs by the way are in English, a little bit like how La Danse began with a couple of English-spoken scenes before the French took over.) Towards the end of the second number, if the role of light in creating illusion isn’t already evident, we cut to the computer display showing the control of lights - we’re looking behind the scenes already to view the mechanics of the process. And throughout the film, we will get shots of the lights themselves above and on the sides of the stage, different colored gels showing off their role in the dance numbers to come.
After these two opening numbers, one of the things we soon hear is that they have a film called “Shadows”, and we see more shadows on stage, along with shots of the lights producing the shadows. The ordering of scenes brings us to a rehearsal of a different number, where the director says right off (and it deserves all caps) "WE NEED TO WORK ON THE LIGHTING" over a shot of some weird light gadget, and we get a look at positioning several lights and also arranging the backdrop so that the lights can produce the desired effect. Again, that lighting keeps coming up in this succession of scenes is a Wiseman construction that requires us to make these associations - it’s absolutely not done for us. But let’s keep this going, because my claim is that especially this first part of the movie is built around sequences emphasizing lighting, so there’s still some more to notice. These sequences are not built end to end (lots of other things are going on too), but they’re in close proximity, enough for the associations to be there for the taking. A couple of dance number rehearsals later, a jazzy number is about to begin, but not until we hear the director’s command (we better do all caps again): ‘TURN THE WORK LIGHTS OFF”, and we then see another light adjusted by a stagehand, as two dancers start swaying their behinds under muted lighting. “Good on the right, bad on the left” the director says, and we’re not sure if he’s talking about the dancers or the lights, or maybe both. In what is absolutely an example of a continuity linkage, the next scene is a meeting. The very first line: "THE MAIN QUESTION IS THE LIGHTING”, as the director complains about needing more lights and that even though they cancelled an earlier show “in order to make more side lighting available” and because “part of the light plot” was dedicated to that show, he wants a complete break (which he’s refused) because without that earlier number needing it, they can “play with the colors of the side lighting.” Also, he says “We should first clean all these spotlights that all have a thick layer of dust inside: and “then we should check out the whole show on the lighting with the costumes to see the result, to see what needs to be adjusted,” and that “we may need more side lighting to outline the bodies”. Wiseman must have been excited to hear him then say “It’s the basic lighting in ballet. . . . It picks the bodies out and makes them more legible. . . . We must use it more and better”. In case you haven’t noticed, then, while other dramas have been playing out (whether the director will get what he’s asking for), we’ve been schooled in lighting, and my main argument for bringing this up is that it’s part of a construction of sequences which has made the subject important. Wiseman has made it matter through how the film is put together. This one time, we’ll look quickly at the next two scenes, because they continue the lighting thread, and again the reason we’re doing this is to see how these films create meaning through this unique mosaic structure.
The next scene shows the director (his name is Philippe) trying to put his lighting ideas into action. As a series of dancers work out their movements, Philippe is setting up the lighting of their silhouettes against a series of colored squares, in the style of James Bond credit sequences. “It’s half an inch short here” he says, and when it’s to his satisfaction and he watches the result, he says the marvelous line “The shadows are dancing”, clearly the effect they have been struggling so hard to achieve. With another dancer, rehearsing her slow movement to produce the proper silhouette, he calls it “a lesson in shadows”. This guy is good at it, no question.
And one last “next scene” follows, which I’d say also has a significant lighting component, made evident by how Wiseman has put these together. It’s a beautiful little mini-documentary in its own right, no more than a minute or so but brilliantly done. It starts with guys filling champagne buckets with ice from a machine in a side room, and then they open boxes of champagne bottles. We’re watching a process again - how the main room is set up for patrons. After the bottles are put into the ice-filled buckets, out they go to the main room, one to each table. That’s when five nice shots from different angles, as music plays, shows the created illusion. The process is complete as we see the room full of tables, each bucket with its own light, as mood music plays. We’re watching the illusion business in action, with lighting not just a major component, but more an obsession.
Obviously Crazy Horse is about a lot more than lighting and shadows. What I’ve tried to do is show how important ideas are there through Wiseman’s special and original approach to putting his films together, and we needed at least once to give it a try at seeing how this works. It’s there in the film, I’d certainly say, but it needed my own thinking about it to see how this idea comes out. We’ve only looked at this one element, and like all Wiseman films, there are many, many more issues and ideas which develop, so it’s not a “here’s the lighting part of the movie” sort of thing. I could as well have brought up any number of subjects that the film brings out. That’s why a great aspect of his films is the invitation they clearly invite for viewers both to think for themselves and then to compare notes - what you connected up and thought important alongside how others responded. That’s the case with all great movies, but Wiseman’s make the viewer’s contributions even more necessary to the process.
Because there’s so much I’ve ignored in this wonderfully trashy and fun film, I think it’s appropriate to end with someone else’s list of what Crazy Horse is about, from the fine writer Geoff Dyer’s review that was in the New York Review of Books at the time, though even his list of course is far from definitive. You need to make up yours, with each and every film.
“Since Wiseman’s films are all about looking at the world, it’s appropriate that he should film a world that is all about the business of getting people to look.
It could equally well be described as a film about theater; about France; about office politics; about art and commercialism; about female performers; about male impresarios; about esprit de corps; about making a living; about intense physical effort; about lighting effects and ice buckets and gloves; about the body; about bodies; about the objectification of showgirls and the glorification of showgirls; very obliquely, about showgirls, hardly at all except by implication about the audiences who come to look at them; finally and definitively a film about looking—and by that token just as definitively a film about showing.”