French filmmaker FJ Ossang prefaced his directorial work with numerous novels and albums, recorded with his punk band MKB Fraction Provisoire. Since the early 1980s he has continued to supplement his film activity with other artistic dispatches.
Recovering the urgency, energy and potency from an array of twentieth-century iconography and artistic manifestos, Ossang’s films stand apart in contemporary cinema. His masterpiece Docteur Chance overlaps the vector lines of rock ‘n’ roll, surrealist poetry, expressionist silent cinema and the crime thriller.
A William Burrough’s cut-up would do as well to convey the intensity and indefinable quality of L’Affaire Des Divisions Morituri, Le Trésor Des Iles Chiennes and Docteur Chance as any formulated interpretation – in fact, Burrough’s voice is heard hi-jacking the radio airwaves in the latter. The first three features directed by Ossang focus on mysterious gang networks and ominous ringleaders vying for uncertain terrain and power – the first using a situationist gutter punk aesthetic, the second a post-industrial sci-fi aura, and the third film noir tropes.
Viewers with a penchant for clear storylines, character development and coherence through editing will find their cinematic preferences flouted by Ossang’s strategy of codenames, unmapped landscapes and expert chiaroscuro that revels in darkness and paranoia. Docteur Chance, Ossang’s first colour film, has a palette of hues unmatched in any other film you are likely to see; it’s thick, opulent reds, greens and dazzling light the result of incredible production design and bleach bypass in the development of the film print. Each feature leaves us guessing when we are in time, with a litany of cultural references spanning a century of cinema, literature, art and music dissolving the chance of any definite answer.
With cross-country flights, shoot outs, love and death played out against barren landscapes, Ossang weaves Murnau, Hawks, Ford, Tarkovsky and Godard with the libidinal rebellion of ’50s rock ‘n’roll and the political agitation of ’70s punk and Industrial music. Joe Strummer makes an inspired appearance as a pilot saviour in Docteur Chance, a role which was originally intended for Vince Taylor. Then there is the palpable, subverting spirit of the European Dadaists guiding the illogical poetry, which forms Ossang’s incendiary dialogue.
Ossang’s latest film, Dharma Guns, is suffering the same fate as his previous films, currently without a UK release date despite the fact that British rock singer Guy McKnight (previously the frontman in the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster) takes the lead role.
However, a fantastic boxset has recently been issued in France, which contains Ossang’s first films, including two early shorts La Dernière Enigme and Zona Inquinata – all with English subtitles. This makes the collection one of the most vital releases of the year and gives non-French speaking viewers the chance to catch up.
In an age where the past is ransacked for images, words, costumes and music and rehashed, often diluting the vitality of the original, Ossang manages to renew the poetry and passion of well-worn cultural gestures and interlace their combined energy across the film strip. The Stooges’ ’1969′ blasts from a stereo, a speeding American automobile tears across a wide desert expanse, silent cinema irises and intertitles shape romance and expression. The world is conspiratorial, untagged and indecipherable again.
Ossang’s films sit outside of the canons of hallowed classics, cult films, guilty pleasures and any other classifying boxes that typically organise film collections. Language is not tough enough to unpack and codify Ossang’s evasive, exigent bursts of cinema, where colour, light and shadow are governing forces.
Recalling the occasion when the director presented Docteur Chance at the BFI London Film Festival, Joe Strummer told Punk magazine: “After the film – there’s about a thousand people in the house – me and Ossang got up on the stage and they opened the floor to questions. The whole audience sat there like that. Like that. Not daring to move a muscle. Cause no one could understand what the fuck had just gone on.”
Docteur Chance can be held up as a Rorschach test, to see what language tumbles out of the viewer in response. We should not be as hesitant as the London Film Festival audience was. The film itself promotes the power of language and the central character, Angstel, holds literature above all endeavours. The late Clash frontman was certainly willing to plunge into the mystery: “I had no fucking idea what the film was about! I was trying to get hold of it as it was. Then I felt, this is the proper behaviour for a rock ‘n’ roller – to get involved in this type of thing.”
Wide Angle – FJ Ossang (text) by Yusef Sayed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
