Regarding Susan Sontag Page #5

It's fantasy.

It doesn't happen to anybody.

MAN:
Its a very

strange movie.

You think?

Politics--yeah,

I think it's strange.

Politics is

involved in some way.

The sexuality of these

people, the ideology

of these people

are played with.

Most people you see in movies

have very little relation

to real people.

In the average Hollywood movie,

you don't see real people,

either mainstream people

or marginal people.

[Speaking native language]

You're a little annoyed with

them, I mean, because they're

not eating or

whatever it is.

WOMAN, AS SONTAG:

Filmmaking is blind instinct,

petty calculations,

smooth generalship,

daydreaming, pig-headedness,

grace, bluff, risk.

[People speaking

native language]

I remember the films as feeling

very Bergman-esque to me,

you know?

But she was learning how to

do it right in front of us.

Yes, I know.

I read the reviews.

MAN:

Have you any comments?

I think they're wrong.

SONTAG:

I love photography

so much.

I look at pictures.

I think about

pictures all the time.

If I were to say to you

right now, "Susan Sontag, I'd

like to take your picture,"

you'd pull yourself up,

arrange yourself.

Sure, and I'd do

this and--that's right.

We have a notion

about a photograph.

You see, we want photographs

to tell us the truth,

and we value them

because they really are

records in a sense,

let's say,

that painting isn't.

At the same time we

want photographs to lie.

We want them to make us

look good, that is

to say, better

than we normally look.

SONTAG, VOICE-OVER:

Our sense of the world is

now ruled and shaped by

photographed images.

What was the first

photograph you saw

that shocked

and horrified you?

Does it still

horrify you?

I think the overall effect

of photographs, of painful,

terrible photographs, is

that one is less shocked.

I think that when you

see a lot of very

shocking and painful

photographs,

you flinch less.

She's very deeply concerned

about the way that the image

is consuming all the

public space for thinking.

She thinks we should

be dieting, right,

that we should be

consuming fewer images.

WOMAN, AS SONTAG:

The problem is not that people

remember through photographs,

but that they remember

only the photographs.

LEVINE:
I come in--

I had my own keys--

and I see the first sort

of pre-copy of "On Photography,"

so I take the book and I go

running upstairs,

and there she is,

indeed, lying spread-eagled

on her back on her bed.

And I say, "Oh, you know, it

looks so beautiful in the two

tones of gray," and all

of this, and nothing.

Not a word.

Sit down on the bed, and

she just turns her head,

looks at me straight

in the eyes, and said,

"But it's not as good as

Walter Benjamin, is it?"

And I thought, "OK,

moment of truth."

And I took a breath and I

said, "No, it's not, but that

doesn't mean it isn't the best

book of essays by an American

since the Second World War."

SONTAG:
The first time

I ever saw photographs

of the Nazi camps,

I was 12 years old.

And I was in a bookstore

and I opened this book,

and I thought I

was going to faint.

I was so upset.

I immediately closed the book.

I was trembling, and

then I opened it again.

And I knew--I knew

what I was seeing.

I knew that the Nazis had

killed a lot of Jews.

I knew that I was Jewish,

but I didn't know it meant

what I saw.

WOMAN, AS SONTAG:

Let the atrocious

images haunt us.

This is what human beings

are capable of doing,

may volunteer to do,

enthusiastically,

self-righteously.

Don't forget.

MAN:
Being Jewish--does

that matter to you?

It matters in the sense

that I would always

stand up and be

counted any time that it

mattered for other people.

I'm Jewish because

other people say I am

and because that's what

I am sociologically or

historically.

I come from a family which

generations ago belonged to

a religious culture.

KOLLISCH:
We talked

a lot about my life

as a German Jewish refugee,

my having come out of that

background, and Susan just...

I guess peeling down to

certain essentials.

It was very important to live

a mundane life and yet also be

in touch with the possibility

that your life could change

radically any moment.

WOMAN, AS SONTAG:

I feel, as a Jew,

a special responsibility

to side with the oppressed

and the weak.

[Man speaking French]

[Sontag speaking French]

What are we gonna do

about Susan Sontag?

Is there is something to

be done about her?

I don't know. I haven't--

I can't read her.

She's unfathomable to me.

She is as useful as anybody

else to recall a mood

about America which is very

fashionable these days--

America as being philistine,

conformist, dedicated--

in the words of

Howard Zinn--to death.

SONTAG, VOICE-OVER:

At this moment, firm-bodied

children are being charred by

napalm bombs.

Young men, Vietnamese and

American, are falling like trees

to lie forever with

their faces in the mud.

As writers, guardians of

language, we may and should

conceive ourselves to have a

vocational connection with

the life of truth, that is,

of seriousness.

Let's be serious.

[People shouting]

SONTAG, VOICE-OVER: I had

accepted an invitation from the

North Vietnamese government

to visit North Vietnam

as a reward for all

the public speaking and

getting arrested and whatnot

that I had done.

[Applause]

Shakespeare, parliamentary

government, baroque churches,

Newton, the emancipation

of women, Kant, Marx,

and Ballanchine ballets don't

redeem what this particular

civilization has wrought

upon the world.

Indeed, I think she

epitomizes what Albert Camus

said:
"The day when I am no

more than a writer, I shall

cease to write".

[Bell clanging]

WOMAN, AS SONTAG:

I arrived in Israel with a

small crew during the recent

Arab Israeli war to make a

so-called documentary.

Being rather tuned into

sadness, to the tears

of things, I put a lot

of that in the film.

SONTAG:
What I want

people to think about

is how serious war is.

It is more horrible than any

kind of pictures could convey.

And maybe one of the most

horrible parts of it is that

it becomes a normality.

There is a culture of war.

[People praying]

I have may criticisms

of the government,

but I'm generally a supporter

of Israel, and I don't feel

that this is incompatible

with a general left-wing

point of view.

[Man singing]

KOCH:
"Promised Lands" was made

possible by Nicole Stephane.

She was born

Nicole Rothschild.

She had had to flee

France from the Nazis.

She entered into

the Resistance.

She was arrested.

Then she became a movie star,

in these fantastic films--

the great film "Les Enfants

Terribles," in which she's this

wonderful butch girl ...

[Shouting]

[Knock on door]

And she was Jewish.

So there was absolutely

everything to fascinate

Susan Sontag.

LEVINE:

She had rented an apartment

on the Place St. Germain,

and of course,

being Susan, it wasn't just

any old apartment.

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