Take two – ‘Mirror Films’
Blog by James Oliver on March 15th, 2010
It’s always a pleasure to review a film as good as F.W. Murnau’s City Girl. Indeed, the only difficulty is fitting in all that you want to say: In addition to the remarkable use of light, Murnau’s rare ability to imbue simple stories with universal significance deserves at least a nod..
But there’s one thing that can’t be overlooked: the similarity between City Girl and an earlier Murnau film, Sunrise. Oh, that’s not to say City Girl is a ‘remake’ but in outline, the two films are so similar – very broadly, a meeting of rural and urban values – that comparisons are inevitable.
Murnau was a restless, inventive director who previously seemed keen to tackle new subjects with each new picture; what was it that lured him back to the scenes of his greatest triumph? One of the great fascinations of City Girl is the way is compliments – and contrasts – Sunrise; a director critiquing his own work.
And Murnau was far from alone in this. Obviously, the greatest directors – the auteurs – have themes and obsessions that recur throughout their work. But some take it further, crafting films that reflect on their other movies.
Sometimes they made light of it; Howard Hawks would routinely recycle bits of business, characters – hell, even entire films. His stated motivation was that if it worked once, it would stand repetition. A double bill of Rio Bravo and El Dorado proves him right, as well as being a fantastically entertaining way to spend an evening.
Hawks’ compadre John Ford pretended any similarities between his films were purely unintentional but this is unconvincing; consider the late period film Two Rode Together, in which a pair of cowboys pursue an Indian band to rescue white children captured in a raid. The echoes of The Searchers (in which a pair of cowboys etc etc) are overwhelming but while that film is a mournful elegy, Two Rode Together is brutal and cynical. It’s vital documentation of Ford’s growing pessimism.
One of the most interesting of these ‘mirror’ films is The Passionate Friends. Having already made arguably the definitive ‘woman-contemplates-leaving-her husband-for-Trevor-Howard’ film – Brief Encounter, obviously enough – David Lean was surely not obliged to make another. Lean claimed circumstances obliged him to take over the production from another director but he had been actively involved as producer. Was he, in fact, keen to intervene? The Passionate Friends is a most worthwhile melodrama in its own right and a rewarding riff on Brief Encounter.
When Roman Polanski’s film The Tenant was first released, it was dismissed as a repetition of his earlier Repulsion – both are about people slowly going mad in their apartments. Now it looks like one of his finest works and the links to the previous film seem quite deliberate. The titular tenant even ends up in a long blond wig, a la Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion – which is actually quite disturbing, since he’s played by Roman Polanski himself.
Their individual motives differ, of course. And maybe we shouldn’t read too much into it – maybe inspiration is thin on the ground in Hollywood. But then again, Van Gogh painted dozens of sunflowers and no-one accuses him of lacking inspiration. And for some of us, Murnau is an artist of the same calibre.
