Adrian
Cârlugea, Bogdan Coste and Ion Indolean’s
Fata care mănâncă pizza (Girl
Eating Pizza) is a five-minute short film shot on a Romanian street corner
in which an unseen director choreographs the entrances, exits, and actions while
in frame, of people, vehicles and the occasional pigeon. Except it becomes apparent that in fact these
are general passers-by going about their daily business with a voice-over
making it seem they are being directed to perform the gestures they are
making anyway. The concept is lifted
(with acknowledgement) from The Girl
Chewing Gum, a 1976 short made in London by John Smith. Both films nod to the French New Wave and in
particular Francois Truffaut’s La Nuit américaine,
were shot on random, though busy, corners, and utlise limited camera movements. The films’ titles are taken from small
moments which pass quickly and would not stand out unless drawn attention to,
the young lady eating pizza as she walks echoing the earlier girl chewing gum.
There are obvious differences of
course, not least the Romanian street’s greater attractiveness compared to
Smith’s grimy Dalston Junction. The modern film is in colour and apparently
recorded on a phone, though thankfully the image is stable, whereas Smith’s is
black-and-white 16 mm. The former also
observes the unities, whereas Smith eventually claims to be standing in a field
15 miles from Hackney and switches to a 360-degree pan of a rural landscape to
conclude his film. Most significantly, in
terms of style it could be argued that Fata
care mănâncă pizza is purer in following through its intention than is The Girl Chewing Gum.
That is because Smith quickly
abandons the deception he is conducting proceedings, by panning up to a clock and
pretending to direct the speed of the hands, and giving rapid-fire lists of
‘instructions’ no assistant director could follow. He breaks the link between voice-over and
events, and therefore the assumption of cause and effect; we see the narration
had to have been added afterwards and he is describing what has happened, not
giving orders. Eventually he abandons
the pose of director altogether and makes up stories about passers-by (a man is
going home, another robbed a post office and has a gun), including surreal
elements (references to a blackbird with a nine-foot wingspan, a man with a
helicopter in his pocket).
Cârlugea, Coste and Indolean,
however, maintain the illusion that they are dictating the mise-en-scène longer,
the cumulative implausibility being how one would organise so many actors and
why one would want to. But when the
camera pans to the right to show a busy main thoroughfare full of pedestrians
and traffic (echoing Smith’s pan to show the queue outside the Odeon cinema)
they cannot convince they are able to synchronise the landing of a bird on a
distant building and the appearance of a priest, just as Smith cannot convince
that his pigeon wrangler is able to organise specific flight paths through the
frame. Even so, Fata care mănâncă pizza concludes by implying the shot has been
ruined by a careless camera movement and needs to be redone.
Smith is rightly celebrated for the
trick he plays on audiences used to the idea of the auteur commanding the
action like a monarch (instead he is subservient to it), and for demonstrating
that originality need not be constrained by resources. Irrespective of
the experimental film conceit of pretending to control the arbitrary, once we
realise we are not watching fiction we can appreciate the documentary aspect of
both these films. Such ordinary scenes have their own fascination which
grows stronger as they recede in time. Supplementing such pleasures,
Smith, Cârlugea, Coste and Indolean remind us that those who claim to govern
may only give the impression of being in charge while life swirls, unheeding,
around them.
Fata care mănâncă is
available on CinePub:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkiwJVlF2qk&list=PLn0Jy9I2VIyRdOlNnOsu8TCaUSUDHrwzP&index=49&t=0s
