Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

La Pointe-Courte

La Pointe-Courte. Agnès Varda, 1956.

😿

Edition screened: Edition screened: Included in Criterion Blu-ray box set The Complete Films of Agnès Varda (disc 2) released 2020, and also as DVD #419 in Criterion box set #418 4 by Agnès Varda, released 2008. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 81 minutes.

Summary: Real image of a dead cat.

Details:

1) A dead cat has washed ashore, 38:58–39:07.

2) Fish netted then struggling in a box, 54:48-55:00

3) Discussion of drowning kittens as though it were a normal and acceptable practice, around 1:20:00, at the very end of the film as the small boat is leaving the dock.


Agnès Varda is an animal lover and her films frequently feature flattering vignettes of cats in homes and outdoors. La Pointe-Courte show many of the cats that work in this fishing village, along with one that has died.


Supplement material for the film includes a 9-minute segment from Cinéastes de notre temps called “La Nouvelle vague par elle-même” (1964, Robert Valey), and a 2007 interview with Varda about the artistic sense of this early film, both very good and free of animal violance.
















at
Labels: ,