Frans van de Staak… chooses a scene
Frans van de Staak, 1988
Translated by Veva Leye
The following was originally published in the now-defunct Dutch film journal Skrien, no. 163 (Dec-Jan 1988-89), as part of a regular column inviting filmmakers to discuss a scene from a film. Just before the release of Deed Undone (1989), Frans van de Staak offered remarks on moments from Michelangelo Antonioni, F.W. Murnau, and Johan van der Keuken.
Monica Vitti runs away in L'Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
Frans van de Staak (1943), filmmaker, graphic artist. Started at the Dutch Film Academy in 1963. Made films from 1964 on, which, with the help of the BKR, he was mostly able to finance himself. First long film: The Imperfect Tulip (1980). Followed by People Passing Through Me In Endless Procession (1981), Your Garden Plot (1982), The Delayed Departure (1984) and Windshade (1986). Van de Staak co-wrote his screenplays with Gerrit Kouwenaar, Jacq Firmin Vogelaar and Lidy van Marissing, among others. Most probably the upcoming Rotterdam Film Festival will show his latest film, Deed Undone.
“I would actually like to mention two scenes. The first is a moment from Antonioni's L'Avventura. I must have been about 18 years old when I saw that film. Because of this film I really wanted to go to film school. And in particular the scene at the end, where Monica Vitti discovers that her lover is lying on the couch with a hotel sex worker. She is staggered and runs away from them, right through the immense hotel. You suddenly feel that all those distances covered in the film, his constant search for his ex-lover who vanished, crystallize in that one moment. A kind of line is drawn. Perhaps I can use a side note to clarify what I mean. In The Eye Above the Well by Johan van der Keuken, there’s this moment when a schoolmaster goes to a river to freshen up. First you see that he has been teaching all day and only afterwards you see him walking to the river. The distance he covers is not just a distance anymore. You feel that the man is carrying with him the entire teaching day. He is not just walking that distance. That distance is more than just meters. It contains all of the teaching day.
The Eye Above the Well (Johan van der Keuken, 1988)
In L'Avventura, he follows her. Outside, at a bench, they both cry. This crying is very moving, but I actually liked this running of hers much more. How all those distances, all those searches in the film, culminate in this one scene. How this scene is full of meaning because of everything that happened before. There’s often a number of moments in a film that don't mean much in themselves. And then suddenly there is a scene that draws all those loose ends together and fixes them in a movement of someone in a space. But what I actually want to get to is a moment from a film by Murnau, I think Nosferatu, but I'm not sure. My fascination with that moment is in the vein of [the moment I chose from] L'Avventura, but it’s slightly different. I saw the film a few years later, right after I finished Film Academy. Actually, it’s only the image of a man walking through a village.
That is basically all. I have totally forgotten what happened. I only remember very precisely the image of this man. He is not walking on the screen, but through the village. At the time this caused a cinematic shock with me that I will never forget. That man covers a distance that is impossible on screen. Film is a flat surface. Distances do not exist. Of course, if you make someone in the film walk from left to right and you make that distance be as big as the canvas, it can be done. By the way, in Murnau’s film, this man didn't walk from left to right either, but towards the camera. Of course, there is a distance in the image that recalls distances in reality. But it remains a representation of those distances. What intrigues me so much is that this flat surface comes to life, gains depth, through all those distances bridged throughout the film, through the succession of all those movements.
Actors meeting and leaving, and so on. Those distances materialize as if they really exist. What I actually want to say is that at some point in a film, you reach a point where all those distances really exist, as time. The only way film can represent distances is by converting them into time, into duration. That is what film tries to do: convert into duration the meters that exist in reality. Ideally, I would say musical duration. Why? Because like in music, you're dealing with elements that succeed each other. You're dealing with an arrangement. If you cut a scene from a film, it would lose that operation. In The Eye Above the Well, for example, if you don't know that this man has been teaching all day, the walk to the river no longer functions. Because you remove it from its context. I’d also like to call it musical because that’s both abstract and poetic. Since it’s not a purely technical issue. It doesn't necessarily work. The film has to bring the distance to life. Something has to happen, something has to be experienced in those distances.
In Murnau’s film, I don't really remember exactly what preceded [this scene]; but that I suddenly discovered the possibility of musical duration sticks in my mind. That suddenly dawned on me then. Whereas I usually immediately forget the moments in films that make me cry or laugh.”
- Frans van de Staak
Translated from Dutch by Veva Leye
