Whether it’s research driven or fictional, writing generally offers an author a chance to make his presence known. This especially holds true with regards to user-led content production and digital self-publishing sites such as this one. But since this “presence” still technically relies on a reader’s will, the author may only profit from discovering deeper finalities about his own personal experiences, beliefs and knowledge. To vibrantly summarize a relevant, yet highly trafficked selection from Jean Paul Sartre’s "Literature and Existentialism,” a writer may weave an intricate web of his perceptions of the world, but the individual will always inevitably be thrown back upon himself. Stated less densely and more forwardly, Sartre believes that the emergent text will always be a product that is fringed with fragments of personal identity and biographical detail. Since it is so common for a writer to work from personal experience, I feel that this "homespun" characterization is naturally persuasive and speaks with a heavy accent of logic and sensibility. However, it should be acknowledged and noted that the philosopher’s assumptions of great breath and complication are bereft of any lists of authors that are guilty of tracing back to themselves.
Fortunately for us, Alain Resnais’s contentious film "Providence" (1977) attempts to fictionally portray the mechanics of the “existential imagination.” In a short hand lesson of the film, it can be described as a shifting and complex intellectual comedy that fictionally chronicles the eccentric writing strategies and bizarre thinking capabilities of a dying English novelist, named Clive Langham. Following this seasoned author through one sleepless night of rectal pains and unwarranted memories on the eve of his 78th birthday, we are presented with many broadcasted monologues, anti-social intimacies, and compelling instances of an author frustrated by his inability to give affirmation to a unified and omniscient vision. Although he has the unfathomable freedom to employ radically strange environments and the people to compliment them, the author waves off his near limitless opportunities by sadistically imagining the members of his own family as the main characters of his new misanthropic melodrama. With fierce relish and a peculiar selective power, the writer deftly and absurdly validates Sartre’s inflexible and generalized notion by including: his dead wife in the form of his son Claude’s extramarital lover, one of his impudent bastard progeny named Woodford and, of course, multiple factors retrieved from his personal image bank of public sources and memory.
Fascinated by this portrayal of work in progress, the perennially valid author Norman Mailer considered "Providence" to be, “simply the greatest film ever made about the writing process.” This unflagging enthusiasm may possibly be explained by the writer’s familiarity with the obsessive processes of writing and the vast array of rhetorical, organizational and stylistic decisions that come along with the task. But perhaps Mailer just simply acclimated himself to Resnais’s particular blend reticence and complexity? Whatever his attraction may have been, Mailer’s zeal stands in severe opposition to a sea of highly negative press geared towards this film. In a sense, this cult of repulsion still exists since it is the only full-length production by Resnais not to re-released on D.V.D. For these reasons, I would like to awkwardly shift my attention to the unenthusiastic American press reviews that the film “Providence” received in 1977. This will be done in hopes of not only finding a possible causality for this overwhelming distaste, but to also observe how these evaluations contrast with the critical treatment of Resnais’s films of measured popularity.
I feel that a great place to start this project would be with former New York Times writer Vincent Canby’s blitzing article entitled: “Movie House, Yes, The Movie, No.” This title refers to the Cinema 3 in New York and the movie "Providence." Among a cluster of harsh comments presented in this article, Canby considers "Providence" to be nothing more than “a lot of fuss and fake feathers about nothing.” This aversion coincides with the reinforcing claims made by Richard Schickel, where he hopes that this film will be referred to as an instructional film to “warn other film makers away from such conceit.” Dissatisfied by Resnais’s preoccupation with the working mind and its self-centered communicative expression, these article-length dissections dismiss "Providence" for undeservingly considering such an ostentatious and complex subject.
But if we recall Eugene Archer’s 1962 article entitled “The director of Enigmas,” or even Anthony Alvarez’s more recent article “Alain Resnais- The Man Who Makes Movies of the Mind,” we will quickly realize that the above calculations are troubling, for no other reason other than that complexity and lobbing epigrams are Resnais’ bag. In fact, for the screenplay for “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” Resnais gave screenwriter and novelist Marguerite Duras strict orders to be “literary.” This might not come as a surprise, but it factors in as an important thought when considering any of Resnais’s films since they aim for, and convincingly attain, a distinct blend of written fiction and theatrical drama. So, it is not that he fell for “windy pretensions,” as Schickel claims; rather it is a calculated attempt by Resnais at renewing his own methods.
More problematic to the views above though, I think is the fact that none of these authors discuss the film’s title and its forked meaning. I have read enough Writing-101 samples to understand the occupational risk involved with such an approach. But in the case of "Providence," I feel that nomenclature is a powerful method that unravels the sequence of events before us.
Based on the assumption that the upper-and lower-case form of the word -Providence, can give us adequate insight into the film, I first sought out another series of reviews. This time the periodicals were exclusively from Providence, Rhode Island; the proposed setting of the film. Although they were not nearly as crass as the reviews above, these criticisms were not filled with delight and pride, as I first thought they would. At best, they were only topological overviews of the film with benign criticisms. For example, in William K. Gale’s, “Providence guides viewer through Fascinating Journey,” the journalist barely gives a synopsis of the film, yet alone translates to his audience the link of location. I find Gale’s handle on the topic troubling, for the simple reason that I feel that setting is as vital in fiction, as in real life. Because of Providence’s mystical associations, as well as it being the life-long home of H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Corliss’ claims that the location is “key to this film.” I agree with this claim- in that there are some parallels between the fantasy writer’s corpus of work and that of David Mercer’s screenplay. But since we are presented with a distorted terrain that shifts us from France to England, England to stage-set, stage-set to Rhode Island, I must also disagree with Corliss’ claim because this is just another a game of bait and switch. However, I do feel that it is a helpful inclusion to the unctuous broth that makes up this film.
To explain the continual presentation of elaborate points of view, renewable characters, metamorphoses, and matters concerning ontology and agency then, we must consider the lower-case usage of the word -providence. After all, this is a creation story and what we are presented is, more or less, the management of this writer’s “constructs.” However, complete providential causality in the hands of the character of Langham, would be taking this creative fabulation at base.
Although discussions of realism in film, as in other art forms, tend to be tortuous and circular, film has plenty of advantages in its realistic proposals that are not easily awarded to painting, sculpture, literature, and theater. With the help of technology, narrative film shows its spectator a “world” which on one level has to be taken as “real” or, at any rate, real on its own terms, for the reason that these characters are presented in time and space. But putting the cultivation of “realistic” detail aside, in “Providence” we are constantly invited to an exhibit of Langham’s predilections and fantasies through muddled thought and dreams. This, of course, effects the viewer’s assumptions, since it allows insight in the subconscious of this character. So, due to his fictional status, Langham cannot ever be atop of this providential hierarchy because just as a watch implies a watchmaker, a film implies a filmmaker.
Consequently, Resnais and Mercer mark off all aesthetic space in "Providence" by giving it order and are credited interstitially through authorship. By facilitating and restricting the individual nature of each of the characters in "Providence," Resnais and Mercer give themselves, and authors in general, divine status. So, “Providence” purports to be film about the frustrations of writing and the paranoid landslides that can occur in advanced social interactions. But with equal billing it can be said to be a film about the pervasive and amplified voice of authors and artists in the worlds that they create. With embarrassment I will close with the exclaimationed yelp of, how empowering!
*The film can be viewed in fragments on youtube.
