This is not a review.
I want to be upfront about this for obvious reasons. We’ve all seen a million opinions about the quality of Ti West’s two punch horror fest this year, from rapturous praise to bitter dismissals. Divisive is an overused word, but it’s accurate here. No, I don’t want to discuss the narrative quality of these films (all going well, you might get some of that in the end of year wrap ups), because it’s cinematography time, bitches.
If one thing about ‘Pearl’ stood out upon first announcement, it was the style as showcased in marketing. A bright, graphic poster with Mia Goth’s too eager smile at the centre. A trailer showcasing some brilliant colours. Typography that suggested the golden age of Hollywood.
It’s catnip to a certain type of person - and he is me.
I’ve described the plot of Pearl to friends as “Wizard of Oz, but Dorothy fucks the Wizard and goes on a killing spree at the farm”, which is probably too limited, but I think works. And in many ways, that encapsulates the nature of the film’s aesthetic references. Mia Goth is styled in farm chic - cute overalls, a white ribbon in her hair, and a “natural” red lip. The animals are adorable, and the barn is freshly painted.
MGM’s house style is referenced all over this modern production. The studio, well known during its heyday for glamour and beauty, provides a great foundation of understanding for the film’s aesthetic sensibilities. In many ways, the fantasy of Oz could only have been handled by a studio so adept in making even the regular world dazzling. Under the watchful eye of Mayer and Goldwyn, shopgirls wore perfectly fitted coats, trees grew uniform in the park, and clouds were always a fluffy white distraction.
In Pearl, it’s corrupted.
This film has all the hallmarks of these productions. The grass is perfectly green, the sky is perfectly blue, the lighting is perfectly flattering. Even the goose on a pitchfork is styled to oblivion. This is obviously to contrast the increasingly erratic and terrifying actions of our leading lady, but in its own right, it also feels wrong. Because this type of look to a film has another lineage.
While MGM has its own history, there’s also the following decades of parody for this style (along with its many cheaper imitators), that itself has bred a cinematic language. Films like ‘The Producers’ (1967), made at the tail end of the studio system, successfully heightened the aesthetic in their own ridiculous way. Over time, it’s become the norm that a highly stylised, aggressively clean look in cinema suggests something unsettled. ‘Down With Love’ (2003) takes the 1960s romantic comedy and makes it ridiculous, while The Stepford Wives (2004) parodies the suburban equivalent. Even Austin Powers as a franchise has many of the foundational jokes based of this. There’s a throughline of these films, and so in 2022, we understand what it means when colours pop like this. There’s a sense of awkwardness, established not in spite of these beautiful scenes, but because of them.
Then there’s the framing. In many ways, the film continued to take notes from the cinema of the 1950s. The cinemascope aspect ratio (wide screen) forced a lot of tried-and-true methods of framing a scene to be rethought in the wake of all the excess space. For some, it felt like an insurmountable problem, and you can see a lot of the era’s cinema struggle to adapt to having to use so much of the set.
To put it simply, the Academy ratio (1.375:1) was a nearly square style of presentation, that was highly effective for bringing the audience very close to an actor’s face. The close-up, as it is known, became an oft-overused weapon of forging audience connection. But with the introduction of wide screen as the norm by studio autocrats in the wake of television, creatives behind the camera were forced to explore different ways of effectively telling their stories. An unintended purpose was how movement was captured.
The musicals of a pre-widescreen world weren’t static, but choreography and dance were not the standard focal point. In contrast, the wider frame and struggles capturing attractive close ups (attempts early on for ‘A Star Is Born’ (1954) allegedly deformed Judy Garland’s face) meant that many films found it easier to create masses of movement. And in ‘Pearl’s imagination, the dancing girls of the silent era, cramped in the Academy ratio, are replaced with dancing soldiers in wide screen.
Within the context of the film, these references are a little harder to place. Not because they’re especially niche, but because I’m not sure how they relate to the time period? It’s an undoubtably beautiful film, but it has nothing to do with the cinema it is clearly pulling from. Pearl’s era was almost pre-feature, not to mention pre-technicolour and pre-widescreen. It feels disconnected.
Or does it?
‘Pearl’ looks like a film from today that imitates the cinema of the 1950s; but is set in the 1910s. Classics like ‘Singin’ In The Rain’ from that second era treat the time period with just as much sparkle as this film. We’ve always looked back. This is the story of fantasies collapsing, and in that way, the popping colours and careful framing gradually rotting under the weight of the Pearl’s actions feels right.
Maybe.
Whatever the point, it’s success in screenshots.
Select bibliography
Film Aspect Ratio: The History of Widescreen Movies
A Star Is Born: The Making of the 1954 movie and its 1983 restoration by Ronald Haver - link
Letterboxed: The Evolution of Widescreen Cinema by Harper Cossar - link
Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical by Steven Cohn - link