In 1948, documentarian Robert Flaherty made a film that is now regarded as one of American cinema's best evocation of a place -- the Louisiana bayou. Forty years later, cultural documentarian Les Blank took a wide-ranging musical tour across the bayou and prairies of this same region to film a landmark music documentary. Both films are now available on DVD; in their own way, both recall a time in Louisiana that has passed on.
Louisiana Story
How curious it is that the legendary documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty's
masterpiece would feature an obsession with an oil derrick. After all, the man
who practically invented the genre began his career with the groundbreaking
Nanook of the North, and his magnificent camera lens rarely strayed from
the wonders of man and nature in such future works as Man of Aran and
Elephant Boy. Who would have thought his last great work, 1948's Louisiana
Story -- recently released on DVD, along with Man of Aran, by Home
Vision Entertainment (www.homevision.com)
-- would throw industry into the mix?
Part of it was the set-up; Flaherty, in the twilight of both his career and
life (he died in 1951), accepted a commission from Standard Oil to film a positive
look at its initial work in the Louisiana bayou. Flaherty and his wife and collaborator,
Frances, explored the oil fields of Texas and Oklahoma before Flaherty finally
found his inspiration: his father had been a mining engineer (for gold, not
black gold) in Canada, and the 64-year-old Flaherty would use the piece as a
bit of an autobiography.
The result is a breathtaking visual and symphonic poem to a land and its people;
the Flahertys received Oscar nominations for Motion Picture Story (as opposed
to screenplay), while Virgil Thomson's swirling score won a Pulitzer Prize.
The film eventually was selected for the National Film Registry, confirming
its status as a cinematic national treasure.
Never one to simply shoot and run, Flaherty developed his narrative using
all of his storytelling repertoire, and nowhere is this more evident than in
the opening shot, which features Flaherty offering three haikus. A young Cajun
boy (Joseph Boudreaux, whom Flaherty had recruited from a nearby town) snakes
his way through the waters of the Petit Anse Bayou in his pirogue. But even
before that, Flaherty's camera has captured perfect bayou images: an alligator
struggling onto a half-submerged log, a heron perched on a tree limb, flecks
of water glistening on a plant. And then the boy floats into the screen, at
first obscured by moss and tree. His eyes sparkle with wonder and delight at
the nature crawling, floating and planted about him.
Flaherty speaks: "His name is Alexander Napoleon Ulysses Latour. Mermaids,
their hair is green, he says, swim up these waters from the sea. He's seen their
bubbles often. And werewolves, with long noses and big red eyes, come to dance
on moonless nights. He'd never dream of being without this little bag of salt
at his waist. And the little something he carries inside his shirt." The camera
continues to follow the boy, changing his size and scale from shot to shot
a major theme throughout the film as Flaherty attempts to place the bayou in
its proper visual perspective.
"No one ... ever handled the camera so lovingly," Frances Flaherty says in
a recorded interview, one of several bonus features on the DVD. "His attitude
towards it was as that of a mystic. The camera was a thing for seeing more than
the eye could see. He asked the camera, 'What is this mystery that you can see
better than I can see?' It was a purely visual process. Words had nothing to
do with it. It went beyond words."
From there, the story follows the boy's wonderment at the arrival of the oil
derrick and his relationship with its "roughneck" crew. It ends rather opaquely.
Some accused Flaherty of selling out by not taking industry more to task --
without apparently realizing who was funding the thing. But Louisiana Story
remains a rare, early, magical look at a people and a place so inextricably
woven together. -- Simmons
J'ai Été au Bal
Among the many memorable scenes of Les Blank's documentary J'ai Été
au Bal: accordionist Marc Savoy, in the midst of a discussion about accordions,
unexpectedly places one on the ground. He steps on top of it and does a little
balancing act. "What is this a demonstration of?" asks off-camera interviewer
Chris Strachwitz. Savoy says it's the "sheer strength" of the accordion. Then,
with a certain air of superiority toward lesser instruments, Savoy asks, "Can
you imagine doing this to a fiddle?"
Should a musical instrument really be judged on its ability to withstand the
weight of a man? Maybe in south Louisiana. After all, as J'ai Été
au Bal recounts, Cajuns were trodden upon throughout their history. They
needed music that was tough.
First released in 1989, J'ai Été au Bal is likely to stand
as the best cinematic treatment of the historical emergence of Cajun identity
through music. The most didactic of Les Blank's often impressionistic films,
it features commentary from musician Michael Doucet and folklorist Barry Jean
Ancelet and is inspired by Ann Allen Savoy's landmark self-published book Cajun
Music: A Reflection of a People.
Cajun and Creole roots are represented by interviews with then-living pioneers
such as Dennis McGee and Canray Fontenot. Contemporary giants like Dewey Balfa,
D.L. Menard and the Hackberry Ramblers all get big play. Zydeco doesn't fare
quite so well, however. Clifton Chenier footage is recycled from Blank's previous
Chenier film Hot Pepper, and interviews with some zydeco players seem
rushed. It bears noting that J'ai Été au Bal appeared years
before Beau Jocque and Keith Frank would lead an emerging zydeco renaissance.
Witnessed today, Blank's scenes of a younger Boozoo Chavis on a trail ride and
playing "Johnny Billy Goat" provide a harbinger of trends and sounds that were
yet to come.
Still, J'ai Été au Bal records countless sublime displays
of offhand artistry. Dennis McGee doesn't just recall hearing Baudoin Ardoin
-- legendary Creole accordionist Amédé Ardoin's brother -- stumble
down the road after a party. He recreates Baudoin's drunken song, words and
hiccups and all. Saxophonist John Hart's stage intro for Clifton Chenier at
the 1977 Jazz Fest is a study in stage intros. The Balfa Brothers' performance
of "The Criminal Waltz" at the 1979 Tribute to Cajun Music in Lafayette is haunting.
And included in the DVD's 30 minutes of bonus footage is Canray Fontenot's elegant
recreation of the group drinking song "Allons Chercher" and a head-banging duet
by Michael Doucet and Wayne Toups on "Zydeco Sont Pas Sale."
Les Blank's subjects have ranged from flower children to Lightnin' Hopkins,
from Werner Herzog to polka. But Blank, a Tulane University graduate, has returned
most often to Louisiana music and musicians. As a filmmaker-explorer, he established
cinematic lexicons that others followed with varying results. Reportedly, Walter
Hill based scenes from his 1981 psychos-in-the-swamp yarn Southern Comfort
(a film regarded as degrading to Cajuns) on Blank's folkloric depictions of
Cajun life in films like Spend It All and Dry Wood. And if J'ai
Été au Bal's generous pans of Louisiana countryside, accompanied
by the music of BeauSoleil, seem familiar, it may be because, nearly a decade
later, they would be echoed in the opening tracking shot of Jim McBride's 1989
Cajun detective film The Big Easy, which featured BeauSoleil on the soundtrack.
But there are better ways to measure Blank's Louisiana films. J'ai Été
au Bal, an edited version of which aired nationally on PBS' "The American
Experience" series, captures fleeting moments with some of south Louisiana's
most gifted musicians. In doing so, it provides a lasting touchstone for artists
yet to emerge. In one scene, zydeco player John Delafose stands to the side
while his son, Geno, then a teenager in a baseball cap, picks up the accordion
and plays a quick riff. More than a decade later, Geno would be leading his
own band. That's a legacy you can stand on. -- Tisserand
