Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics (Introduction)

The First "Philosophers?"

In textbooks and other studies regarding the history of philosophy, we begin, in the 6th century BCE, with a group of thinkers that are loosely linked together under the name of "pre-Socratics." Naturally, as the name implies, this means that they all lived and did their philosophizing before the life and times of Socrates, who lived in Athens from 470/469 to 399 BCE. And that is is significant, as Socrates took Western philosophy off on a completely novel direction. But the designation implies much more than this. The "pre-Socratics" are distinguished primarily by their early investigation of the nature of physical reality itself. Socrates, on the other hand, would lead it more into the investigation of the human sphere, particularly in the realms of knowledge and ethics.

But the pre-Socratics are important, we are told, because they were the first thinkers to attempt to understand and explain the world in purely "natural" terms, rather than relying upon "mythological" explanations. In essence, the fact that they asked questions or searched for answers without any reference to "the gods" is supposed to be a significant jump in the intellectual history of humankind. Indeed, many texts blatantly assert that this was the beginning of a new era, in which both the concepts and traditions of rational philosophy and natural science were born.

And to some degree, I suppose this is true. But I’m afraid that this both oversimplifies and overstates the case. In the first place, this generalization has to be come to be seen as unsatisfactory, since such a statement neglects the entire history of the philosophical thought of India and the Far East. The earliest Upanishads, for example, which contain vast speculations on the nature and order of Being at the highest levels, could predate the Ionian Greek philosophers of Miletus by two or more centuries, at least. So, to be more exact, we are compelled to regard the pre-Socratics as the inaugurators of the tradition of the project known as "Western philosophy" and they should be described and designated as such.

To any objections that "Eastern philosophy" is inextricably tied up with "Eastern religion," I would first point out that there are many different ways of interpreting these Eastern thought traditions. Not only can, in many places, purely "philosophical" ideas be conceptually separated from some of their origins in religious traditions, but when we are speaking of the pre-modern, pre-scientific world in general, terms such as "philosophy" and "religion" are inherently vague and often distorting. We can see some of the same problems of strict distinctions just as clearly in the West.

There is a tendency to see the pre-Socratic philosophers, beginning with Thales, as taking the first tentative steps towards both science and philosophy in the West. It is said that Thales predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BCE, and if this is true, then he was using advanced powers both of observation and deduction. But did not the Babylonian astrologers not make such bold predictions as well? They certainly relied heavily on observation and mathematical formulas, and the very fact that they were doing so indicates that they were certainly highly aware of measurable, uniform patterns in the actions of nature. Yet, they did not, ostensibly, make the next step, which was to treat the rhythms of nature in a purely rational, secular sense of cause-and-effect, cut off from any divine influence of the gods. On the contrary, the Babylonians probably saw such uniformity in nature as a validation of the presence of such deities embedded in the cosmos themselves. Where phenomena behaved rationally, there must be reason - something very akin to human reason, but unimaginably magnified, to stretch to the entirety of nature as a governing effect.

As we shall see, the pre-Socratics themselves did not make this radical separation and distinction between the "natural" and "supernatural" worlds. Did not Thales himself declare that "everything is full of gods?" What did he mean by that? I suppose that we shall never know for certain. But even in the most rationalistic cosmogonies of the ancient Greeks, there was never the kind of clear and distinct chasm between "rationality" and "mythology" that we tend to think of today. Indeed, it was only in the most advanced stages of the Enlightenment, probably not before the 18th century, that thinkers began to systematically remove "mytho-poetic" elements from their conceptual ruminations. And even today, we must question whether they, in their enthusiasm for the new, did not go too far.

For the great problem exists still today, though certainly in modified form, that existed for Thales and the other early truth-seekers. We observe a regularity of patterns in nature, the behavior of phenomena according to certain predictable cycles of action which we label "laws." But what, precisely, is it, that gives legitimacy or even cogency to these so-called "laws?" We believe in cause-and-effect, of course, despite the warnings of David Hume that it could not be either observed or rationally demonstrated. Undoubtedly the Babylonians believed in it as well. As far back as man’s mind was capable of making the connection, what went up always came back down. (Even animals can be observed to believe in sequence, even if not causality.) The larger question: how do we explain such things? - has never really been answered.

Scientists today must presume a universal system of causality with a regularity that is entirely predictable in order to continue their labors. But have we not lived almost an entire century with the perplexing irregularities of sub-atomic particles to recognize that there must be some larger principle at hand which requires further explaining? And even if we were not confronted with the bogeyman of quantum mechanics, could we still maintain to our utter satisfaction why indeed things must behave as they do behave? Is this not a question that transcends science itself and treks off into that abstract realm that we still quietly (and ashamedly) call philosophy?

Finally, in the last analysis, is this not where we attempt to explain - at least in theoretical, hypothetical, but very frequently (if not always) in metaphorical or even mythological language? We pretend we understand, but the real source of a power like gravity utterly eludes us. We cannot observe cause-and-effect, and we have absolutely no idea whatsoever why it should be there. We should certainly stop pretending that we do!

This "world" we inhabit, whatever its limits, its origins (if it has any) and its ultimate inner workings remains what it was before the Enlightenment, and certainly before the pre-Socratics. It remains, ultimately, a mystery.

Now, that is not to say that we have not advanced quite a way since the time of pre-pre-Socratic Greece. The beginning impulse to look at the world around us in quite abstract terms, to come to think of it primarily in terms of its regular mechanical operations - particularly on a very large scale - is absolutely an enormous achievement. And I will not deny Thales and his progenitors their rightful claims to be - to an enormous degree - the chief initiators of the great Western philosophical/scientific project. These designations certainly have merit.

But we must also be cautious lest we overstate the facts. And the fact remains that there was no radical "Copernican revolution" in 6th century Ionia (or anywhere else) that suddenly set mens’ minds free to see "reality" as it truly is, without the aid of miracles - that is, ideas and effects that can really not be exhaustively explained.

What I would prefer to say is that these primitive scientists-slash-philosophers achieved was the beginning of a long change in human perspective in the tendency of regarding certain natural phenomena. And that is quite a long way from saying that they "secularized" nature. Indeed, everything still did, and would continue to, even up until the present day "be filled with gods."

Yes, we can look back upon these thinkers and separate their "science" from their "philosophy," and we can even presume (though I think we do it much too freely and frequently) to separate both from their "religion." (Though, I think that we’ll see, especially when we come to dealing with Plato, that is not so very easy a thing to do.) For us, the inheritors of the modern "scientific revolution", the term "science" implies a certain method of asking and receiving tentative answers about certain types of questions. And those questions are primarily about the mathematically measurable (quantifiable) predictions based upon observations of that queerly predictable realm of causes which Aristotle named "efficient," - at least they seem predictable in the limited macrocosmic realm in which we find them activating. And in the last analysis, that’s all we can say about them. Anyone who makes any grand and ultimate statements on the very fundamental nature of reality based upon that slim (though impressive) gateway of experience is certainly going so far as to look as a pure fool to someone who has just a half-step through the next portal of discovery.

But even if we can identify the pre-Socratics’ science and separate it from their philosophy, are we sure we can truthfully say we fully understand, and what’s more, give answer to, their "philosophy" as we see it in its purest sense?

I, for one, seriously doubt it. For even if we cannot remain in the pre-Socratic realm and must push on forward to larger, more complex and critical systems of thought, that does not mean we have resolved or settled their ultimate enigmas.

We must be ever wary and careful of arrogance and overconfidence. And I say this as regards to what we might consider the advance of the pre-Socratics over the so-called "mythological world", and just as much, perhaps more, to our supposed progress beyond the pre-Socratics themselves. Their final answers may not satisfy us, but they did not satisfy their own fellows even for a single generation. Their enigmas, on the other hand, are still quite with us today.

What then, do we say about the pre-Socratics? How should they be characterized?

Perhaps we should say that there began with Thales, a general intellectual movement that took in hand the project of trying to explain the larger questions about reality through the use of both reason and observation as an emphasis, rather than make any grand pronouncements about a "radical" shift in fundamental perspective. True, in some places, and with certain individuals, there came about a certain degree of, in not "demythologization" then at least a retreat from the "traditional" or "orthodox" mythologies of the period, but that was quite exceptional - it was not the norm. No, I would prefer to talk about a tendency in the development of a new tradition of thought that places the new emphasis in its proper cultural and intellectual perspective. Such thinking had both significance in itself, particularly in the questions that it brought up and the methods of approach that certain thinkers took, as well as all types of influences on the future of European (and other) thought-traditions.

Perhaps I’m making much too big of an issue out of this. There is no real question here that Thales and company helped to launch or initiate a very significant and uniquely new tradition that would ultimately bear rich fruit with the advanced speculative systems of Plato and Aristotle. And there is no question that their methods and conceptual goals were quite different from Homer’s and Hesiod’s. I suppose that I just object to the maintenance of the notion that there was such a dramatic cleavage from one type of cultural thought-tradition to another, one that quite rightly and cleanly left the world of "mythology" behind to take on a new, independent life. For we must not forget that philosophy flourished in the high Middle Ages, side-by-side with religious (or "mythological" thought) quite nicely for several hundred harmonious years.

I suppose what I really want to stress here in my introduction to the pre-Socratics is to give what I consider a more reasonable and balanced approach that is often found in introductory texts. It is probably because I detect a certain assumption of superiority with which I take exception when I read such books. I think it shows a lack of respect for the "mythological" approach to life - one that I find not only positive, but absolutely necessary for a full appreciation of the position and story of humanity.
The first Greek philosophers were the Milesians - so-called because they dwelt in the Ionian city of Asia Minor known as Miletus. Thales, Anaximenes, and Anaximander, in succession, these are universally regarded as the West’s first true philosophers because they asked the question: what is the nature of the world? And beginning with Thales, each of them responded to this perplexing dilemma by reducing the vast multiplicity of the world of infinite distinguishable thing to one basic element - something that in Greek might be called a physis.

Now, that word in itself implies for us a physical - and therefore strictly "scientific" theory. For if the universe is reduced ultimately to its physical manifestation and is discussed as such, then these early thinkers amount ultimately to materialists by default. And while it is true that each of them gave an ultimately "physical" answer to the question of what is the ultimate physis of all things - and all three were quite wrong, of course - when seen in this light, they do seem to occupy the position of the forerunners, at least, to what we would call "real" science. However, they did not test their hypotheses - how on earth could they have? They relied on pure reason. And since each one disagreed with his predecessor, it is obvious (at least to us) that pure reason cannot give a true answer to a question of physics.

But their intuitive reasoning was not so far off the mark, was it? If we ask a modern physicist the same question, "What is the universe made of," we might get a similar answer, such as "energy," might we not? And is this answer any more specific or any less puzzling than the answers given by the Milesians, even if today, our scientists assert that they can "prove or demonstrate" that such is the case?

However, Aristotle used a different term than physis, and in doing so, may have made all the difference. The Milesians, quotes the Macedonian genius, were all searching for the ultimate arche - that is, "principle," of the world. And a "principle" is not necessarily a physical substance at all. Is it not, rather, ultimately, first and foremost, a conceptual principle? And if it is, are the Milesians, then, not truly the first philosophers after all? For when one deals in the realm of pure concepts and abstractions, one is no longer limited to physics - one steps beyond that world to the realm of mind. And there, everything takes on a different, more subtle - and more confusing - character.

But of course, the fact remains that the Milesians themselves probably in no way made any such distinction. It would take a while for this distinction to become clear, and it would only reach its maturity in the fully developed metaphysical system of Plato, nearly 200 years later.

The fact remains, however, that this rough territory be charted out first, and the Milesians were the ones to do it. We are told that what answers they gave to their own questions were not nearly as important as the fact that they posed those questions themselves. And we are probably told correctly. At any rate, it seems unquestionable that these early "wise men" are the ones who historically kicked off the entire Western philosophico/scientific "project" with their puzzling inquiries.
Still, these questions implied some other, more puzzling questions as well, and I don’t think the Milesians managed to answer them quite as well, though heaven knows they tried. First of all, if everything is ultimately one physis (substance) or arche (concept), how the hell did everything get to be so many different things? I mean, if you think about it, if everything was ultimately one thing, wouldn’t it have a tendency to simply stay that way?

As I said, the Milesians did try to solve this, through the ideas of motion and later the more impressive reduction of quality to quantity - though we’ll get to that later. But, clever as they were, they couldn’t test their hypotheses, and so they were wrong.

Later Pre-Socratic philosophers came up with other solutions. We will read of the bold vision or logos of Heraclitus, the "weeping philosopher," who saw all harmony as the direct result of conflict itself. And we may find that he came closer to the truth than anyone around him. Empedocles thought that "love" and "hate" got things going and Anaxagoras even suggested it was "mind’ (nous). And the subtlest reasoner of all, the unbendable Parmenides, simply concluded that if everything was, then nothing could move. We were simply mistaken about what we thought we observed. (Now, that’s a true philosopher!)

　Then we’ve got the nagging problem of what keeps the entire process of reality going once it starts out? Why doesn’t everything collapse back onto some primordial state of being? Well, this is where it really gets tricky. Because one by one, each of these philosophers (Parmenides excluded, naturally, since nothing really moves) had some sort of recourse to positing some sort of natural law or rule of behavior and regulation. And what a barrel of monkeys that opened! What the hell is a law, anyway? Who says things have to behave a certain way, and why does it work?

What exactly is the ontological status (what kind of being?) is a physical law or a law of nature? What does it imply?

Some philosophers and psychologists like to point out that humans receive their concepts of "law" from the existence of social conventions within a society. We know what "law" means in our country or town - if we break one, there will be consequences. Some thinkers have suggested that when we apply such a concept as "law" to nature itself, we are thinking unduly anthropomorphically.

This can easily be seen to be true in our abstract normative concepts, such as "justice." In a sense, one could argue that this word, as an abstraction, is simply a reflection of what we experience in our own communities, and that we unthinkingly project the concept onto reality in general. We tend to think that there is such a think as "natural justice", somehow, in nature itself, whereas it may only have a relative human meaning based upon our social structures.

That may as well be. But when we are speaking of physical laws, such as "the law of gravity" or "the laws of thermodynamics", we certainly seem to assume that such "laws" or principles of behavior exist in nature, whether we conceive of them or understand them or not. Just what do we mean when we use the term "physical law?"

This goes right into the heart of the philosophy of science itself. As we have seen, the early Greek speculators had not distinguished "science" in any specific sense from any other type of ratiocination in general, but it is clear that when the pre-Socratics, such as the Milesians, approach the concept of "law," they are coming closer and clearer to the concept of a general notion of "cause and effect" within a larger system of contained by some sort of principle of "unity." And it is, perhaps, this very principle of "unity" itself that gives the Milesians the proper title of the first scientists (or "proto-scientists") and the first philosophers of the Western world.

The concept of "unity" is a very powerful one indeed. We all know from experience that individual things are "unities" of separate and disparate things. Take a dog, for instance. We might say that he is made of four legs, a trunk, a head and a tail. We might go further and talk about fur, muscles, organs, nerves and brains. Today, of course, we can go even further and talk about individual cells, or even parts of cells that perform different functions - all the way down to atoms and sub-atomic particles.

But what justifies us in calling all these disparate parts a "unity?" Are we not just projecting our own conceptual outlook on all of these separate parts and arbitrarily calling it a "dog?" Well, if the dog starts barking, I think we have to conclude that there’s really something to this "unity principle" that stands up in the physical world!

So what happens if we take this same concept of "unity" and apply it to reality as a whole? Is that not just as valid as applying it to an individual thing within reality, such as a dog?

Well, that depends.

If we are talking about "the physical universe," that is, the observable part of reality that we can view - or at least have the theoretical potential to view, then if we use a term like "unity", what we mean is that all of "the physical universe" operates together as one inter-related system. How do we know this? Well, we could hypothesize such a notion, but then we would have to verify this hypothesis, somehow, through observation.

Well it just happens to be an accepted axiom of physical science, that the "physical universe" - that is all of nature - actually is a unified system in which everything is inter-related. And that’s why we can postulate laws, and using those laws, make predictions about the behavior of the physical world. This basic assumption is what makes "science" even possible.

But what about the more abstract concept of reality itself? Can we legitimately say that everything that is - no matter what it is - is itself a unity? Can we talk about a general "unity of being?"

See, this is why the Milesians and the other pre-Socratics can be said to be philosophers, and not merely scientists. Because when they brought up the questions of change within unity or the harmony of the unity of being, they elevated the status of these questions to a purely abstract level. As long as you remain on the level of nature - that is, the "physical universe" that can be (at least in theory) observed, then you are in the realm of science. Once you go beyond this concept and apply it to all "conceivable reality," then the only way you can (theoretically) prove it is through the use of pure reason.

And this is, apparently, what the pre-Socratics actually did. But were they justified in so doing?

Well, I suppose that depends upon your stance on the limits of human knowledge. If you are a Kantian, for example, you will argue that "unity" is a category of thought, a precondition for the way that we perceive things in nature - what Kant called "the phenomenal world." As long as the principle of "unity" is consistent with the world we perceive with our senses, it can be considered as a valid construct or element of that world.

As for the world beyond our sense-perception, however - the thing-in-itself stuff that Kant referred to as "the noumenal world," there is no way that we have access to that sort of knowledge. By its very definition, reality itself, or absolute, pure being - however you want to put it - is incapable of being observed, and is thus, ultimately unknowable. We can only speak of it metaphorically.

Now, not everyone agrees with Immanuel Kant, and these are very technical points that he makes. But one thing is for certain, and that is that the pre-Socratics never got down to asking these fundamental questions about epistemology, or the conditions and limits of human knowledge. They simply looked out at what they saw of the world, accepted it, and presumed that you could simply reason about it.

That doesn’t mean that they were all oblivious to the problems of human knowledge, however. Even with the bold postulations of the Milesians, there was at least an inherent understanding that the world isn’t exactly how it appears. Everything in the universe may ultimately be made of one single physis, but that’s certainly not the way it seems to the ordinary person’s perspective. Early philosophers like Heraclitus would have to go far past ordinary observation to reach the profound conclusions that could only be achieved through abstract reasoning. And when we get to Parmenides, he will insist that we cannot even begin to trust in what we see!

As far as the conclusions of the pre-Socratics go, I don’t think that we will find any of them that won’t be fraught with problems. But on the other hand, I think we will see that their arguments and solutions provided extraordinary insights that would not only lead for further and deeper philosophical analysis and speculation, but that in many cases, still hold fascinating implications for us even today.

Coming next: The Milesians!

- petey
 

Charlie Parker Discography, Part 2A (1945)

 

We Were Talking About Bird, Right?

Okay, so let’s continue. 1945 would be the big coming-out party for Charlie Parker, and for the new music called "bebop" in general. The beginning of the year would see the great alto saxophone virtuoso in two seminal recording sessions led by his friend, the spectacular trumpeter, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie. These two sessions would be, arguably, the most important and exciting jazz recordings since Louis Armstrong first recorded with his Hot Fives and Sevens in the 1920s. These amazing sides are the documentation of a musical revolution that, in essence, broke the history of jazz in two halves. Beginning here, we finally, definitively arrive at what we today term "modern jazz."

Where Are These Recordings?

These sides are so essential, that they should be readily available anywhere, right? But you may have to do some hunting. Now, you should be able to purchase these tunes separately on MP3. There are seven titles in total, and should be listed under "Dizzy Gillespie." But if you want "hard copies" on Compact Disc, it’s ridiculously tougher.

If you’ve got the big Bird box set that I have - The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings 1944-1948 - they you already have them. But for some reason, on the "essential" 3-disc collection, The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes, these revolutionary statements of bebop are nowhere to be found! Where can you get them?

Well, you could buy the 3-disc Dizzy Gillespie set, Odyssey 1945-1952, which is great if you want a lot of Diz. But as we’re charting Charlie Parker here, I’d try to find the single-disc Groovin’ High (Savoy, 1992). It features six of the seven (omitting Sarah Vaughan singing "Lover Man"), and includes other early Dizzy favorites like "Blue ‘n’ Boogie." There are some other collections on cheap labels, so you might just look around until you find these. Still, it’s a crime that some of the greatest, most important recordings in jazz history are so neglected and hard to find.

Still, you can hear them here, right?!!

Alright, Parker and Gillespie recorded two sessions together in early 1945, each with a different set of musicians. The first session is as follows:

Dizzy Gillespie Sextet - February 28, 1945

Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet); Charlie Parker (alto saxophone); Clyde Hart (piano); Remo Palmieri (guitar); Slam Stewart (bass); Cozy Cole (drums)

1. "Groovin’ High"

2. "All the Things You Are"

3. "Dizzy Atmosphere"

 

Now, aside from Bird and Diz, who the hell are these guys?

Well, they weren’t all beboppers. And they were mostly older. (Gillespie was born in 1917 and Parker in 1920.) I don’t know how or why Diz picked them up. Clyde Hart, the pianist, was a swing player who was born in 1910. (Sadly and kind of strangely, he would die the very next month of TB at the age of 35.) Remo Palmieri, the guitarist (born 1923), was one of the hot new players, who was extending the ideas of the great Charlie Christian. (He spent most of his life as a session musician and playing for Arthur Godfrey! Slam Stewart (born 1914) was a swing player who had the unique (some might say annoying) style of bowing his bass while humming along an octave higher. Finally, Cozy Cole (born 1909) was a veteran swing drummer who had played with many bands, and would later go on to play with Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars.

 

No matter, though. Diz and Bird were both playing light-years beyond what anybody outside the inner circle at Minton’s had ever heard before, and these records absolutely knocked the fans and critics out. (Not everybody liked them, however. A lot of music critics despised them. Louis Armstrong famously dismissed the new sound as "Chinese music.")

 

Although both Bird and Diz play equally on these cuts, you can definitely tell that Gillespie’s in charge. Contrasting greatly with Parker’s later method of "theme-solo-theme," Dizzy was highly interested in arrangements - he would go on to start the first bebop big band - and these pieces are highly and tightly structured.

Groovin’ High

This Dizzy Gillespie composition is an adaptation of the chord structure of "Whispering," a standard first recorded by Paul Whiteman in 1920. Its article in Wikipedia discusses its impact:

 

First published on the 1945 album Shaw ‘Nuff, the song is one of seven on that album that, according to jazz critic Scott Yanow, "shocked" Gillespie’s contemporaries, contributing to that album’s "permanently [changing]...jazz and (indirectly) the entire music world". In Jazz: A Regional Exploration, Yanow explained that at the time such songs "were unprecedented . . . displaying a radically different language" from contemporary swing. But though fans and fellow musicians found the material "very strange and difficult", The Sax & Brass Book notes, they were quickly adopted as classics. According to Yanow, "Parker and Gillespie’s solos seemed to have little relation to the melody, but they were connected. It was a giant step forward for jazz".

Thomas Owens highlights the innovative use of source material, pointing out that while it was not uncommon for jazz musicians to utilize existing chord structures in their compositions in 1945, Gillespie’s "melodic contrafact was the most complex jazz melody superimposed on a pre-existing chordal scheme", "atypically elaborate".

After a full 70 years of "modern jazz," It’s difficult for us to travel back in time to imagine how outrageous this new language employed by Gillespie and Parker sounded to listeners at the time. Formally speaking, "Groovin’ High" is a 32-bar ABAB structure, which Gillespie has arranged with a couple of little tricks.

 

He begins with 6-bar introduction that leads into the main theme. The ensemble blows the first 16-bar AB pattern, then begins to repeat it. However, after playing the 8 bars of the second A, instead of moving on to the B section, Gillespie has the ensemble suddenly shift to a 6-bar transition section, which on closer inspection, reveals itself to be an altered form of the introduction. Parker immediately enters and plays a 2-bar "mini-intro" to his own solo, which fills out the full 8 bars of what would normally be the length of the B section. (Thus, after the intro, there are a full 32 bars played before Parker’s solo proper begins.)

 

After Parker’s full 16-bar AB solo, Slam Stewart enters as if he is going to play the second AB section, but Gillespie pulls a variation on the stunt that he did during the statement of the theme. Stewart solos over the first 8 bars of the A section, but when he continues playing into the B section, he suddenly stops after 6 bars, and there abruptly appears a truncated version of the transition section, this time measuring only 3 bars. Gillespie then immediately launches into his own "mini-intro" in the manner Parker did, but he plays a full 4 bars before his solo starts. Thus, there is a total of 9 full bars where the second B section should go here (lengthening the entire "chorus" to 37 bars total). This quirky, unexpected, asymmetrical stunt certainly lives up to the name, "Dizzy."

 

Gillespie then plays his full solo of a half-chorus (16 bars of both the A and B section). The second AB section is then begun by Palmieri on the guitar. But like Stewart before him, Palmieri gets interrupted. He only plays the first 8 bars, (the second A section), when suddenly, Gillespie unexpectedly and dramatically re-enters, the band shifts abruptly to a slow tempo, and Dizzy finishes out what becomes a dramatic trumpet coda (which is actually a slowed-down version of the second 8-bar B section) before the piece ends with Gillespie holding an impossibly high and triumphant Eb note.

 

Thus, the entire structure is basically this:

Intro: 6 bars, ensemble

Theme: 24 bars, ensemble (ABA)

Transition: 6 bars, ensemble

Parker mini-intro: 2 bars

Parker solo: 16 bars (AB)

Stewart solo: 14 bars (A, 1/2B)

Transition: 3 bars, ensemble

Gillespie mini-intro: 4 bars

Gillespie solo: 16 bars (AB)

Palmieri solo: 8 bars (A)

Gillespie coda: 8 bars (B)

 

 

 

 

 

Gillespie’s stops and starts, and his slowed-down coda at the end all serve to accentuate the power and novelty of the new style. The intro and the theme alone are enough to grab the listener’s full, startled attention. Then before the theme ends, there is a sudden twist and turn before (BAM!) there comes a fully developed and beautifully delivered Charlie Parker solo that is absolutely unlike anything ever heard on earth before.

The sound of Bird’s "mini-intro" alone must have sent chills down many a spine. (What the hell was that?) But that solo . . . As always, the winking nonchalance of Charlie Parker sailing in full command, knowing he is displaying the impossible, is absolutely devastating in itself. His first phrase flows a full 5 bars, floating to its end, carelessly, one full bar into the first B section. And such speed, grace and brilliant construction! And where did all those notes come from? Remember, nobody outside the "inner circle" at Minton’s had heard Charlie Parker’s brilliantly extended chromatic approach to soloing before. This must have sounded like it came from outer space!

There is a brief pause, so that the listener can momentarily take in what has just occurred. Then Bird casually resumes, playing a total of three more phrases that nobody on earth had ever played before, and then (BAM!): he’s done.

I wonder how many people picked up the needle right there and started the record over before they got to the end of Slam Stewart’s solo? I wonder how many times they played it? It is impossible to convey the kind of absolute, stunned shock and wonder at hearing Charlie Parker for the first time - especially in this kind of wild and bizarre context!

Make no mistake, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie records were played over and over and over again by the jazz cognoscenti - especially the young, and especially the musicians - until every note was thoroughly memorized and absorbed into the bloodstream.

Stewart’s solo, of course, is a bizarre experience to hear, just because of his strange gimmick. But somehow it fits in nicely here with Dizzy’s outrageous design. And speaking of Dizzy . . .

(BAM!) Nobody expected that. In the most electrifying entrance since Louis Armstrong’s "Cornet Chop Sooey" twenty years earlier, Dizzy Gillespie, in one bold stroke, completely revised the power and potential of the trumpet. If Parker was slyly cocky and smooth about his immortal powers, Dizzy was bold, brash and in your face. Even if you were so dull that you missed Parker’s brilliance, you could not escape this extraordinary onslaught of notes. God, he could play fast - and high - and dramatically. Though Gillespie and Parker were different as night and day, they were both right there, at a new peak in music, locked in together as equals. Listeners and players sat stunned, once again, to these 16 bars. And the son-of-a-watcha’ goes into double time on the last two! Wow, indeed.

 

Every heard of Remo Palmieri before? Well, there’s probably a reason for that. I know that’s unfair, because he really plays a lovely (and truly modern) solo on the guitar here. Unfortunately for him, however, his surroundings are too much for him, and he becomes the point on the record where you get to rest until the big unexpected finish.

And there it is! As if descending out of a cloud, the pure, impossibly brilliant, impossibly high sound of Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet comes down from heaven, granting a bebop benediction on the world below. You have been touched by the new gods, my friends! All in under three minutes, no less.

And this was just the first tune they recorded that afternoon!

All the Things You Are

This is a beautiful rendition of a 1939 song composed by Jerome Kern (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II). The harmonic structure of this piece gives it a lovely, mysterious air, and all the musicians sound wonderful playing over its fascinating chord changes. Unfortunately, there are no extended solos by Parker or Gillespie, though Parker’s love for the composition would return with his own, later embellishment, "Bird of Paradise," recorded a couple of years later.

The tune grabs the listener right away with its cool, evocative 8-bar introduction in a minor key, its dark and inviting riff repeating on bass and the left hand of the piano. The structure of the song proper is 36 bars, arranged like this:

A1 A2 B A3

The melody and harmony of the 8 bars of the 2nd A section are the same as the first, but lowered down a fourth. After the bridge, the third A section begins the same as the first, but it suddenly detours and then adds four extra bars at the end to extend the phrase and round it out.

Gillespie’s arrangement on the recording is like this:

Intro: 8 bars, rhythm section

Theme: 16 bars, Gillespie (A1A2)

Theme: 8 bars, Parker (B)

Theme: 12 bars, Steward (A3)

Theme (repeat): 16 bars, Hart (A1A2)

Theme: 8 bars, Palmieri (B)

Gillespie solo: 12 bars (A3)

Outro: 8 bars, rhythm section, Gillespie



 

 

 

 

Notice that the only indication I have given for a solo improvisation in the performance is on Gillespie’s final 12 bars of the final A3 section. The reason for this is that it seems to me that each of the players stays close to the melodic exposition, even though the entire piece is played twice through. It is not until the end of the second time through that Gillespie pulls away and delivers his own, radically different "bebop" approach.

 

Even though each player "holds back" in the sense of hewing close to the written melody, there is quite a good deal of "modernistic" embellishment, and things generally become looser on the bridges. Gillespie’s simple scheme here pulls the listener into the beauty of the piece and allows each player to luxuriantly demonstrate the beauty of his respective tone and approach to this lovely ballad material. (This is, of course, especially true for Parker, whose elegant sound glides effortlessly over his 8 bars, and for Gillespie, who plays with a mute, close to the microphone, in the manner of a later Miles Davis.)

 

Finally, after all the melodic sections have been passed around, Gillespie returns - still muted - with an astonishing (but still restrained) fast double-line run, which he plays out cooly in the extended length of the final A section.

 

After the intro is repeated at the end (this time serving as an outro), Gillespie quickly enters as the rhythm section ends suspended in space, to add a beautiful little phrase, amounting to a musical question mark. The entire effect is absolutely gorgeous, no doubt stunning contemporary listeners, and it remains a classic to this day.

 

Dizzy Atmosphere

This Gillespie composition is based on the harmonic changes of "I Got Rhythm," a tune that the early beboppers often practiced playing over. This is one of the wildest and most overt demonstrations of the new improvisational style, and both Parker and Gillespie’s solos on this piece must have been absolutely jaw-dropping to their contemporaries. (They’re still mighty impressive today.)

 

The melody that Gillespie gives for the theme is pure bebop, almost to the point of parody. He and Parker play a short, fast figure that is continually repeated at different pitches in the standard 32-bar AABA format. The bridge section uses two shorter phrases, followed by two even briefer ones, giving the entire piece a hurried, "cartoon-sounding" character. It is also taken at extraordinary breakneck tempo that may have fooled some record-buyers into thinking that it was somehow playing at double-speed!

 

Even if Dizzy is living up to his nickname with the humor of his composition, the solos are all business. The basic structure of the piece, up until the time for the restatement of the main theme is this:

 

Intro: bass & drums, 4 bars, Gillespie over bass & drums, 8 bars (12 bars total)

Theme: 32 bars, Gillespie and Parker (AABA)

Parker solo: 1 chorus (32 bars, AABA)

Gillespie solo: 1 chorus (32 bars, AABA)

Stewart solo: 1 chorus (32 bars, AABA)

Alternate theme: 24 bars, Gillespie and Parker (AAB)

Original theme: 8 bars, Gillespie and Parker (A)

Outro: bass & drums, 4 bars, Gillespie (then Parker) 8 bars (12 bars total)

 

 

 

 

Stewart and Cole begin the piece alone for four bars, setting a tone of expectation. Suddenly, Gillespie enters, muted, playing a short, repeating 2-bar descending phrase that is extrapolated from the coming melody, but set in a "faux-Oriental" mode that presages his future compositions like "Night in Tunisia." This gives the whole intro a sort of mock exotic feel. On the last two bars, he plays the phrase out, and he and Parker suddenly jump into the wild ride of the theme, in unison, with the whole band in support.

 

Charlie Parker gives the bewildered listener no time for recovery, as he launches immediately into a full chorus solo that was carefully calculated to cause an immediate mind melt. This is the fullest expression that we have heard of Parker’s extraordinary, super-human powers to date, and the effect is still devastating today. Without so much as breaking a sweat, Bird summons an entire flock of notes that had never been heard before, smooth as silk, and at lightning-fast speed. His first phrase covers the entire eight bars of the first A section with the seeming ease of taking a sip of white wine. He pauses for a breath, then delivers the second phrase, a mind-boggling series of quick downward passages that take full advantage of his mastery of chromatic thinking, only to deftly turn back up and finish out the second A all in one breath. On the bridge, he contrasts this smooth fluidity by breaking his statement up into one four-bar statement, followed by two short two-bar answers that loop around like a spiraling roller coaster. On the final A, he floats toward home, only to stop just shy of the finish line and add one last two-bar phrase for emphasis.

 

The dazed listener has no opportunity to recover from this onslaught, as Gillespie enters, his horn open now, answering Parker’s cool with a demonic assault in brass that threatens to blow him right out of his chair.

 

Dizzy’s first phrase covers four bars, and it cascades up and back down like a fireworks rocket. He pauses momentarily, then screams up into the dizzy atmosphere itself, holds in air for a second, then dramatically descends again. On the bridge, he seems to ask a musical question that he answers like a fish flopping over on all sides, hitting notes other trumpet players never even knew were ever there. And he finishes it all off on the final A with a staggering exhibition of triple-tonging before gliding out with a beautiful, clean phrase. No one ever accused this man of being shy.

 

The fireworks are now over, and we can - and I think we should - enjoy Slam Stewart’s wacky solo, hums and all. Somehow it fits right there, as if this was all a crazy cartoon.

 

Instead of giving someone else a solo (Palmieri or Hart, for example) or going back to repeat the theme, Gillespie and Parker immediately begin playing a new theme, together, in unison. Unlike the opening theme, however, this fast and busy "supertheme" has all the hallmarks of a solo (Gillespie’s or Parker’s, no doubt) that has been transcribed, and the two men amaze by playing it together perfectly, only to move away into harmony at the end of the bridge.

 

Suddenly, without warning, they switch back on the final A section to the original simple theme. As they finish it out, the bass and drums keep going, and Dizzy repeats his "Oriental" intro line three times again, which now seems like a natural extension of the main theme, and Parker joins him for the final phrase which ends it all.

 

Wow! Talk about a wild ride - this isn’t a record, it’s an amusement park. Seriously, "Dizzy Atmosphere" was the most ostentatious, in-your-face statement of the new music by its two greatest practitioners, and when it was released as a 78 rpm single (with "All the Things You Are" as the B-side), it caused waves of amazed listeners - especially musicians - to have to literally re-think their entire attitude and approach to thinking and playing - either positively or negatively.

There was some initial resistance, but in the end, the positives won. These sides are the recorded foundation not only of the style we can bebop, but of all of what we know as "modern jazz" up to this very day.

And Gillespie and Parker would return to the studio in less than three months’ time to record more!

 



- petey

The beginning of film noir: Fritz Lang's M

M (Weimar Republic, 1931) D: Fritz Lang

I love film noir. It is, in fact my very favorite of all film genres, not the least because it is so inherently cinematic. This should come as no surprise, as the methods and strategies of this pre-eminently American art form is a direct descendent of the highly stylized Expressionistic film aesthetic that developed in Weimar Germany between the two world wars. These films were the localized products of the second-generation of film-makers, those visionary artists who crafted, in the years immediately following World War I, all the varieties and forms of what would come to be known as "the classic era of silent film."

While Hollywood developed its own styles and genres, its comedies, its melodramas, its swashbuckling adventure films, and its most very unique product, the western, two other cinematic production centers would go on radically different routes of internal development. In the young Soviet Union, theorists such as Lev Kuleshov and film-makers such as the great Sergei M. Eisenstein would develop and perfect the use of montage in order to create a didactic cinema that was prime for the education and modernization of masses in a collective society. As for Germany, however, the troubled, tumultuous history of a defeated nation struggling for a national identity would produce a much different way of looking at itself and the world through the camera lens than anywhere on earth.

The threads of despair, hope and uncertainty would give to German silent cinema its own very unique tone and approach. The term "expressionism," which came from the country’s modernist visual art tradition, as well as its development on stage would soon find its vision on the screen, as transformed by such brilliant artists as Robert Wiene (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, The Last Laugh), and perhaps most strikingly, in the fantastic films of Fritz Lang, such as Destiny, Dr. Mabuse the Gambler and Metropolis. The sometimes highly exaggerated, non-realistic décor and elaborate lighting schemes of these films were designed to project a heightened mood of internal conflict, obsession, paranoia and fear onto the visual world depicted onscreen.

With the rise of Nazism and the gradual decline of the Weimar experiment with democracy, expressionism fell by the wayside. But many of the masters of German cinema would flee to the United States, bringing their dark-hued native aesthetic with them, as well as their ingrained fear and pessimism. Beginning even before the end of Wold War II, the effects of this style began appearing on American screens in Hollywood productions. As the new style spread and became both popular and influential in this country, it gradually solidified into the definitive style that would shape and define America’s struggle to deal with its own post-war traumas and anxieties, up until the late 1950s.

Of course, one of the most fascinating facts about film noir was its almost total and complete lack of consciousness in documenting the dark undercurrents of the American psyche. It took years for the form to even find a name - it was christened by French critics and film students in the late 1940s - and it was even longer, after the cycle of films was actually completed, that it began to become truly understood and appreciated for what it was. The horrors of the war and its aftermath were consciously swept away by the semi-official optimism of the booming nation and its obsession with becoming a superficially defined commodity/consumer culture.

This self-enforced mental hygiene was so completely pervasive on all levels of American life, especially as reflected in the mainstream popular cinema of the day, that it could not help but explode into nightmarish apparitions of the most desperate and violent sort in a form that would be acceptable because it would not be recognizable for what it truly was. Film noir was wholesome America’s great transgressive popular art. It spoke for the subconscious repercussions of the horrific experiences that could not be articulated in the light of day. The dazed and self-repressed victims of the nation’s plunge into hell could be safely enacted and exorcised in the dark of a movie theater. And they could be left behind when the show was over. Their viewers could return, cathartically cleansed, much like the ancient Athenian after the festival of Dionysus, to the land of endless opportunity and boundless freedom - while the world they left in the dark below went on pitilessly being ruled by the iron-clad laws of relentless fatalism.

While it is important to make very clear distinctions between the organic development of film noir within this country and the very different circumstances that gave birth to expressionism in Germany, it is also quite necessary to point out the close relationships between the two movements. The similarities in historical situation aside, we also have the fact that noir would be, to a large degree, the product of expatriate director’s who fled from Hitler’s Germany both before, and during the war. And no single German director would have more impact that Fritz Lang, who would go on to help develop the new style in Hollywood and put his indelible personal stamp on those films.

But a good ten years before the birth of anything that we can properly can call film noir would begin to appear in the U.S., Lang directed what he considered to be the greatest accomplishment of his career: Germany’s first "sound" film, the dark, baroque and endlessly fascinating nightmare world of M (1931).

M is, arguably, the culmination of all of Lang’s work in Germany, as well as a kind of swan song for the expressionist film, per se. But it is not very difficult to look at this masterful work and see in it virtually all the formally stylistic and thematic elements that would contribute to making the American noir movement so potent and powerful. In fact, to tell the story of film noir, you must begin with M as your basic point of reference. (Unless you want to go all the way back to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [1920].)

 

What Is M About, Anyway?

Fritz Lang’s M is one of the most distinctive films ever made, both in its style and its content. It is a crime story, but of a very unconventional kind. The story concerns the searching of the city of Berlin, by both the police and the underworld for the capture of a serial child-killer. Such a strange and morbid subject came directly out of recent horrific events in Germany, along with the society of the day’s obsession with them, especially as they played out in the mass media of the new urban environment. The sensationalized exploits of Peter Kürten, for example, the so-called "Vampire of Düsseldorf", who had committed a long string of sexually violent murders in 1929 was certainly much in the news at the time. Lang insisted, however, that his film was not based on the exploits of one man, but that it was inspired by a number of serial killers of the time.

 

M’s murderer was a mild-looking and apparently innocuous petit-bourgeoise loner named Hans Beckert. While the urban jungle of Berlin was crawling with rough professional criminals, Beckert would unnoticeably prowl the streets, looking for little girls whom he would sweetly seduce with candy and balloons. M was almost certainly the most savage and horrific film ever made when it was first released, and its uncanny power and eerie tone remain extraordinarily disturbing up to the present day. Although the movie did not visually depict any of the killings, Lang used all his camera’s resources to force display the terror and pain of lost children and their families, and he made them squirm by forcing them to travel along with the mild-mannered Beckert while he makes his deadly seductions on beautiful small girls.

With such monster running in its midst, Berlin is transformed into a trapped, frightened city. The police begin cracking down on all gangland operations in an attempt to find the killer, thus shutting down all illegal activities. The criminals, just as organized as the police, begin their own investigation and work together to hunt the madman down. Through careful planning, close observation and military-like efficiency, the denizens of the underworld manage to identify, locate, and finally capture Beckert, and they take him, literally, to their underground headquarters where they hold him at trial and decide on his fate.

If this sounds like a really tough, hard-hitting melodrama, you haven’t seen anything. Fritz Lang fills the screen with dark, frightening images from beginning to end, painting the city of Berlin as a nightmare landscape, filled with a crawling vermin of unseen terrors. M is a landmark film in more ways than one: its purely cinematic approach to suspense was a great influence on Alfred Hitchcock, for one, and that’s saying quite a bit. It also serves as a summation of all the experiments of German cinema during the days of the Weimar Republic, and is its great last - probably its greatest - expression. It’s paranoia is repellently appropriate for a nation where fascists are about to remake the law into their own image. (Joseph Goebbels was very impressed by the film, and supposedly asked Lang to become the Nazi party’s chief movie-maker. Lang’s response was to immediately flee to America.)

 

But what we are precisely interested in here is perhaps M’s greatest influence - on the long and sustained impact the film and its creator would have on the great long Hollywood tradition which we so lovingly refer to today as film noir.

 

There is no possible way that I could do absolute justice to every piece of the noir world that M helped to much to contribute to its creation. So I will limit myself to just pointing out a few key elements here that we should keep in mind.

  

The City as Hell

The modern industrial city was truly a fascinating and endlessly enigmatic place. We must remember that what we know as the great modern city - the metropolis with its countless massive buildings, dark streets, bright lights and back alleys was a relatively new phenomenon. Great cities - whether Berlin, New York, San Francisco or Hong Kong - were mysterious places where an anonymous mankind wandered alone, alienated and cut off from itself. As more and more people moved from the familiar countryside and small towns to these gritty urban centers, the stranger and more congested they became, filled with darkness, dirt . . . and most of all, danger. Yes, cities, with all their neon glitter were seductive sights for sinners, but behind every lonely streetlight lurked another potential horror.

The city gives material form to unspoken fears and alienation. Its size, first of all, is massive, almost unknowable. Negotiating one takes an "insider’s" knowledge, something we still call "street smarts," and nobody who knew their way around could be fully innocent. And the sheer number of people - literally millions of souls cluster in and around these strange streets and tenements, yet all of them are strangers, both to each other, and perhaps to themselves. They are anonymous, interchangeable, and any one of them could likely be out for trouble. Then there are the buildings themselves, so enormous that they dwarf their inhabitants like ants, all scurrying around in their own pointless, meaningless directions. The giant skyscrapers are like gargantuan tombs, casting their shadows on the doomed and desperate population in mute observation and silent warning. Finally, there are the lights of the night. Everywhere there must be lights for the darkness - and their patterns reflect a strange artificial glow of crazy cross-works and dazzling pools that gives every inhabitant a constant reminder that the world they live in is not of the world that nature intended. Instead, it is a man-made jungle that disguises and distorts. And there is no way to tell where in whose face the dangers lie.

 

M’s Berlin is the archetypal dark city, the city of night. Its buildings dominate the environment, the night enshrouds the street-wanderer. And when the sun goes down and the dazzling lights come on, out of the hidden cracks come the swarming mass of criminals, crawling like cockroaches, and you will not see them unless they want you to see them - and by then it will be too late.

Berlin is also a forbidden world, a world literally underground, complete with hidden places that are connected by subterranean tunnels that only those "in the know" suspect they are there, and it is in these dark hidden places that they congregate, they conduct their private business, so black and foul that it cannot be truly named, parts of a maze that only the damned can negotiate. Sometimes they emerge, then just as quickly they are gone. But you cannot escape them. Here, you can walk side-by-side with a killer on a brightly neon lighted boulevard, happy as the day. Then you can step in a shadow and be gone in an instant.

This is the city as seen by Fritz Lang. It can even be said to be the film’s ultimate subject, it’s protagonist, even. This dark, seething world of alienation and fear, where everything is hidden and anything can happen was bequeathed to American filmmakers from their German predecessors. But the Germans didn’t invent the fear of the cities - that fear was real. They merely focused their lights on it. They gave it its style. And its style in M, complete with all its menacing power would be the world of the film noir jungle, the home of the malaise, the dirty and dark pit of hell itself. No one was innocent here. Or if they were, they would not last very long.
 

The "Double World" - The Cops and the Criminals

In the city, there are two worlds that function simultaneously and in many ways mirror one another. The world and operation of the police, above ground and in daylight, functions as a counterpoint to the similarly organized world of criminals who operate below the surface and in darkness. M not only makes this dichotomy explicit by intercutting between both of these world in operation, acting in a similar manner, but actually has them performing the same function: searching out and hunting down the mystery child-killer.

 

Lang is very insistent to show that despite their relative legal status (and in his film, their class status as well), that these two worlds necessarily intersect and often function on the same level. The result is a moral ambiguity between each of the two worlds: they are not so much a dichotomy between good and evil as much as they are two different aspects of the same wheel of necessity - one is approved of, and one is not, though they are both dependent upon the other.

In later American film noirs, we will see that the boundary line between these two sides of the law are very fluid and indistinct. "Crooked" cops will constantly be descending below the line, playing on both sides, and "underworld" figures will periodically surface to help the police (or as they do in M, to supplant them.)

We of course will also become familiar with that very unique archetype, the American private detective - the Sam Spade or Philip Marlow character who is equally at home on both sides of this dividing line so that he can operate more easily and efficiently. Though such figures are usually ultimately related to the daylight side of the law, they must know, work, and live in the darkness if they are to succeed. In later, more pessimistic noirs, the detective’s role becomes more ambiguous, as he is tempted to the dark side. Even the police will become increasingly more corrupt, supporting, or in some cases (i.e., Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil [1958]), actually becoming them.
 

The Unstated War

What both M and the later film noir depict onscreen is an unstated counterpoint and reference to something occurring offscreen - that is, an actual war that is going on (or has recently gone on). Though rarely, if ever, made explicit, the rampant violence of the battlefield is reflected in the continued violence of the world of the street. In later film noir, even the noblest protagonists are quietly suffering victims of recent holocausts which has altered their perspectives not only towards violence, but to general morality and truth as well. This sickness, that was present in so many veterans of World War II was officially non-existent, shoved under the carpet of propaganda, and thus is almost never openly talked about.

As a matter of fact, it is apparently not even a recognizable factor in the written scenarios or made explicit in the direction of many films noir, but since we can see its suppression bursting into violence, over and over throughout the films of the postwar period, it is almost as if it exists in a filmic subconscious, which functions - as it did in real life - to cover up the brutal facts of experience and horror.

In Fritz Lang’s Weimar Republic, no one would need to be reminded of the fact of World War I. The entire country and culture was explicitly designed to be both an official and a psychological response, to Germany’s horrific experience in the war, as well as the consequences of its loss. Still, Lang chooses to make references explicit to those who will recognize his signals. His streets, teeming with organizations of beggars on the prowl, many blind or lame, missing one or both legs - these were familiar sights in postwar Berlin, as the crippled and the hungry survivors of a lost cause could be seen on every street corner.

Some critics have even speculated that Hans Beckert’s violent insanity is the likely result of shell-shock during the war. But while that as a plot point is highly speculative, there is no mistaking the fact that the social tendency toward both violence and madness, had its ultimate root in that horrific conflagration.

The fact that the results of such a trauma are buried in the wartime past of the villain/protagonist of such films make both M and American film noirs necessarily psychological - and perhaps more importantly, psychopathological - makes it essential for the viewer or analyst to look at them deeply, in psychoanalytic terms. By their very definition, such films carry guilty secrets just as do the mentally disturbed creations of traumas themselves. Such films can even be unaware of themselves and need to be picked apart in order to be comprehended.

Since these films function, like sick people, to repress a violent past or a current reality, we see the unintended consequences pouring out all over the screens. And, likewise, just as in life, such hidden secrets and fears emerge in all their vivid and terrible glory in dreams, so too, do the baroque, evocative styles of these movies come to the cinematic surface in all types of fantastic visual schematics and guises. As with German Expressionism, film noir is one of the genres of movie that is most naturally given to elaborate visual expression. It is, I believe, one of the most inherently cinematic forms of movie ever created, as what is hidden within must be, somehow, visually depicted on the screen using often extreme and fantastic schemes.
 

Fate - the Ultimate Deliverer

In M, the murderer is hunted down and trapped like a rat by the denizens of the underworld. He is utterly lost and helpless in their secret, dark and abandoned labyrinthine environment, and despite all his hiding and desperate struggle, he is caught and carried away to their underground abode. Here, he is to be tried and judged by the criminals themselves, who have supplanted the legal authorities and set themselves up to be both his judges and executioners.

What follows is one of the most horrific and shocking scenes ever put on the screen. Hans Beckert, the child-murderer (played to wide-eyed perfection by the great Peter Lorre) delivers his terrified and pathetic defense. While his accusers are ordinary criminals and therefore choose the laws that they will break, he - Beckert - is not free to follow either his conscience or his will. He kills, in short, because he must! In one of the most convincing scenes of pure hysteria ever recorded, Beckert shouts out that he is also a victim:

 

 

Where can there be justice if Beckert’s protestations are indeed true? Many would argue that compulsion is no excuse for a crime, but whether one ultimately feels sympathy or revulsion for the killer, he is quite convincing in his expression of his own pain and aguish.
Later film noir anti-heroes will be inextricably led, like a character in a Dostoevsky novel, to commit a crime or at the very least, to perform some idiotic blunder that will ultimately bring about their ruin. Like Hans Beckert, many of these people will be shown to act it such a way that they seemingly can’t avoid. They somehow get sucked into a whirlpool of evil, swept along either by a compulsion - often love for a beautiful but deadly woman - or by what seems like a general malaise that is in fact the very structure of the worlds they inhabit.

Ultimately, whether the faults lie within themselves or with a distortion they cannot help but being blinded by, it seems that from many a pictures’ very beginning, the chief character is doomed. And that is because the world around them is doomed - completely fallen and corrupt. How can one small person survive in such odds, when the entire environment is corrupt to the core? How can a person help but go down the drain when they live in a vast sewer?

Incomprehensibility: The Final Truth

There is no real catharsis in film noir. Good does not triumph over evil. Evil triumphs over evil. In M, Hans Beckert is saved from the mob by the police, and is brought into a courtroom where his crimes are judged by the law.

But what difference does it make? We do not even get to hear the sentence pronounced. Instead Lang cuts to a shot of three weeping, grieving mothers sitting in the courtroom. One of them weeps, "This won’t bring our children back!"

And it won’t. Once again, the archetype is set up in this classic picture for what will eventually become the moral of all films noir: that there is no moral. Rather, life is random, chaotic, cruel and ultimately meaningless.

Perhaps I should not say it is "meaningless." Often, true meaning - positive values, happiness, and even human goodness are ultimately affirmed. But they are denied to the hapless victims at the center of the struggle.

Once again, it is like the madness of the battlefield. One can go on and make all of the patriotic declarations and statements of need one wants - still, when it comes to the actual experience, it is pure chaos and hell, and nothing on earth can seem to explain it or justify it.

On the eve of the Nazi takeover, one must ultimately wonder what a relentless picture like M spoke to the soul of the average German viewer. And what, indeed, did nearly 20 years of relentless, fatalistic film noirs say to the shattered inner innocence of the brave American men who had experienced the unspeakable, and were now doomed to a life of silence about the entire affair?

It is, indeed, difficult to say. But we plan to look at films noirs. Lots of them. And we’re going to keep our eyes open for the savage subtexts that may very well be lurking underneath. For in the final analysis, it just may be that the triumph of fate, of the void - call it what you will - just might be the thing to soothe a mortal soul suffering in the quiet and buried world of confused agony and guilt.