A Grin Without A Cat (1977/Icarus Films DVD)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C Documentary: B
Though editing and juxtaposition, Chris Marker’s A Grin Without A Cat (1977) shows the
rise and fall of the original Left and to some extent, that of the Popular
Front, though it makes the mistake of acting like the Left point of view is
coherent, monolithic and all participating were intellectualizing it and fully
aware of the pint of view of this work’s point of view. The film begins with a woman talking about
how her awareness (which is implied as self-awareness, though it is really
awareness of being part of something else, a mass of people, which is a
contradiction and some would say the beginning of the propaganda of this film)
of the Left began with a screening of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.
She picks the scene where bad food causes a violent scene
that is interrupted by the word ‘Brother’ (though she would be a sister in this
movement, which was definitely sexist; one reason for its eventual decline)
flashes across the screen. Suddenly,
this unity (via editing) becomes a movement, then it becomes what rises out of
perceived failure of Capitalism (which is referred to as Imperialism
throughout, something never applied to the now-defunct USSR) becomes the counterpart to what become the
Vietnam
fiasco. The rest of the film views the
world in this dichotomy.
What is interesting is that this film recognizes the
movement concluded the year of the film, that various factions that made the
larger Left ended and split up. There is
much history here, including footage you would never see anywhere else, so it
is worth a look to see how this kind of counter-text works and functions. It shows how Leftist movements challenged The
West and how problems from The West and mistakes like Vietnam (and
the Kennedy Assassination) allowed the Left to continue to thrive and give it a
reason to exist. The film is conscious
of the 1960s, which spilled into the 1970’s first few years as a movement, but
it ignores other things.
It calls the Shaw of Iran a dictator, yet glorifies Fidel
Castro who is guilty of the same exact things they accuse the Shaw of when it
comes to oppression and worse. The
murder of Trotsky is barely noted as a turning point in the rise of the USSR, while the
era of Stalin is barley explained at all, but is acknowledged as if it were an
anomaly, though 40+ years of a murderous dictatorship is somehow acceptable as
long as it is of the Left. Then Che
comes up and is also dismissed as “one of those things that happened” instead
of explaining that he too was a threat to making the likes of Castro
accountable for being true to what the Cuban Revolution was supposed to be
about, but he was too honest and had to die.
Thus, the film juggles history and propaganda very
effectively (not unlike an early Eisenstein film), but the fall of the USSR and
failures of even the moderate left against the worldwide spread of Late
Capitalism, China’s permanent embrace of this and how the lazy assumptions of
any Left (some of which are included here, such as the scene where a concert by
The Who implicates that they are somehow specifically part of the movement;
wonder if anyone told them) has stopped any new Left movement from happening
(save the Stalinism of Political Correctness, the great UFO of Leftist thinking
of our time, another product of lazy, automatic non-thinking) bringing us to
the problematic state of things today (unchallenged Right thinking in
particular) as this film admits early on how the movement failed. Note it did this over a decade before the USSR fell. A Grin
Without A Cat is a time capsule of the end of an era that did what it could
for the masses, but is over.
The 1.33 X 1 image is a compilation of all kinds of film
footage old and new (going back to silent documentary footage) telling its
story well enough, but not overdoing the agitprop angle as much as you might
expect. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono shows
its age, but the sources are so varied that it is amazing this all sounds as
good as it does. There are no extras on
the DVD, but a 16-page booklet is included with essays (including one by
Marker) and information from 2008 updating the film.
- Nicholas Sheffo
