Dir. Robert Florey + Slavko Vorkapic
I hate the term 'up its own ass', and I hate how many use it as a cheap criticism of experimental film. True, some films have pretensions of deeper meaning where none exist, but if you've read any of my past posts, it's clear I'm not opposed towards reading 'too much' into things. If you have an emotional response to a film, and in a way which may seem bonkers when externalised, then that film has spoken to you in a way it hasn't to someone else, and that's something that should be celebrated. The documentary Room 237, about various people's interpretations and theories about the titular room of Kubrick's The Shining, is far more entertaining than it has any right to be for this very reason. People's responses can be so off-the-wall towards 'regular' film, so when experimental film-making and deliberately interpretive works are presented, you can get some fantastic responses. I'm reminded of an interview with Nicolas Winding Refn, where after a screening of his film Only God Forgives, a woman informed him that the film clearly took place within a vagina.
Funnily enough, none of that applies here. There is a beautiful simplicity to this film, despite its experimental nature. A simplicity that may seem empty to some: "So what? Extra goes to Hollywood, wasn't good enough to become a star, died in poverty. Heaven. Big whoop!". But underneath that simple plot is a beauty of expression in the telling. And underneath again, subtext, which due to the nature of the film is arguably, well...text due to how obvious it telegraphs the message.
In this 13 minute film, our protagonist 9413 (Jules Raucort), is a man who travels to Hollywood, the land of dreams, to become a movie star. He's greeted by an agent, drawing the number 9413 onto his forehead, as he becomes just another extra. A woman, 13 (Adriane Marsh), obeys a director to the letter. 15 (Voya George), 'performs' by presenting various masks in front of his face, wowing his audience, as his forehead now boasts a drawn star, the allusion pretty obvious - he's made it. 9413 meets 'Star' who doesn't give him the time of day. 9413 is met with 'No Casting Today', to the point where he lives in poverty, unable to pay his bills, and later dies. He leaves his body, and we see a cut-out version of him rise away from Hollywood, away from Casting (literally expressed in words), and onto Heaven, where he now has wings, his forehead free of the numbers, and he flies, happy again.
Very simple plot, of a story heard a thousand times. Firstly, it's novel to us now that such a story is told in 1928, as many of today's film viewers, including myself despite knowing better, don't really equate the silent age with the concept of a big-budget blockbuster, one requiring copious amounts of extras. It seems an odd concept, but just like theatre, film has always needed extras, silent or not. The film satirises the big Hollywood pipeline which fed productions such as Thief of Baghdad, Ben-Hur, countless Zorro and Robin Hood films, The Black Pirate, even the famed Intolerance, released a decade prior, but take a look at that Babylon set and count the extras, you'll be there for hours.
Secondly, there is a beauty in the economy of this satirisation. All it requires is very few actors, a couple of face-masks, and an ingenuity in presenting Hollywood itself - made of cardboard tubes, re-dressed toy trains, and a few wires. Take the masks for example. 15's first mask is a Douglas Fairbanks type, moustached, angular jaw, handsome - and the crowd eats it up, turning to themselves and expressing surprise at the great acting being shown. The next mask, noticeably the same face, but angry, scarred - a villain, but one played by the same man. This is even more commendable, you'e one guy but you can play good and bad? Welcome to Hollywood!
After a montage of flashing 'SUCCESS', clapping hands, and blaring trumpets, Star places a simple mask (the first image on this page) briefly on his face. Now here then, my interpretation comes in. As he does this we see the crowd clap, mouths opening (like almost all do in the film), fish-like - their praise as empty as the still performance of Star. Indeed, this is what I love about the bare mask (two eye dots, and a triangular, simple smile) - to me, it represents when an actor has made it, and any performance they give, while different, defaults to the viewer as 'The Star'. Think George Clooney, the man can act, but I'll be damned if he doesn't look exactly the same in most of his films, and acts fairly similarly in them all. So at this point, Star has reached that stratified height of Hollywood, where the acting itself is of little quality, the star-power is all-important, which of course contrasts to the 9413 atop 9413's forehead.
When in a scene together, the mask for Star shifts to the one pictured above, more detail, more ornate, in comparison to the floppy, ugly mask of 9413. Even from scene to scene, the masks represent different things, and are used in a different way. Now here, we are into 'reading too much into it' territory, but again, if one mask is fancy, and another crappy in a scene, isn't it clear what the message is? A past scene with Star has the blank mask, representing (in my own interpretation) the star-power quality of his acting career, but by having different masks, which mean different things in different scenes, there is a richness and life to the prop choices of the filmmakers. You could say it reflects the themes of how status is represented to and perceived by a crowd of movie-goers, as compared to the perception of an extra vs. a high-profile film-star. Or maybe, I'm opening my mouth like a fish, thinking that the words I speak (type) have any higher meaning.
That's the beauty of interpretation. Having said all that, as I stated earlier, beyond a few instances, the film is clear in its message: Hollywood chews up and spits out the dreams of hard-working actors to, ironically, create films which make you dream of bettering yourself. That last part is again, my interpretation, now I come to think of it. But the film couldn't be clearer in showing 9413 being happy in Heaven, far from the earthly concerns of Hollywood. There's a deeper message there to unpack, but it's a simple one at the core - Hollywood is shit. That is the core. I could argue it warns jobbing actors to be wary of Hollywood, I could argue that it represents stardom as empty and vacuous (as I did above), and I could argue that Hollywood has no place for ambition. Hell, if I dig deep I even think that when we see 13, the female extra, bend down and back up again repeatedly at the command of a male director, that that's a commentary on the sexual abuse that many actresses go through in Hollywood to get a break. I don't know for a fact if that was the case in the 1920s, but it still echoes into Hollywood's future.
Like any great experimental film, The Life and Death of 9413 leaves room for the imagination. It is stylised, has a clear plot and message, but has elements, such as the masks, which while telegraphing a message pretty heavily, allow the viewer to think for themselves about what it means. Any film does this, silent or not, experimental or not, but some leave more room for interpretation than others, and as this post shows, there's still life and accuracy in the meaning behind this film. Most of what I've said doesn't buck the trend from the central theme of the film, that Hollywood is shit, and so remain in the realm of plausibility. But as Room 237 shows us, there's entertainment, to say nothing of value, in a compelling argument, even if it's a highly implausible one.
If you have 13 minutes, you can view the film on YouTube here, and if you've read this far, you've probably killed a few minutes anyway, so what's the harm in giving it a watch yourself, and draw your own interpretation.
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