Few films dwell on the erotic importance of shoes and feet to the same degree that “Harbor Drift” does. The only work that comes to mind us that of Buñuel, in which images of feet and shoes take on a different weight in the framework of erotic obsession. The focus here is an odd one, which at first glance might appear to be pointless, but in fact accomplishes something important to understanding the rest of the film: it makes one pay attention to apparently minor details. The film opens with a pair of sexualized feet, a female's legs clad in knee-high lace up boots, which dangle in our view partially obscured by the newspaper of a plump man with a twitching, phallic cigar. He neglects to remove the paper; instead he peeks underneath it, interested only in the lightly bobbing legs and their leather casings. It slowly will become apparent that this man is us, the viewers. He takes pleasure in the world around him as if it was made for him; a spectacle of amusing shapes and sounds. The legs are carefully divorced from a face and body-- they are not a woman, but the idea of a woman, something which can be entirely possessed by the imagination. The Fat Man with the twitching cigar is distracted momentarily by an item in the newspaper, which tells of a debated murder or suicide of an old man. Without any fancy camera trick or visual announcement, we shoot back in time, and watch the events unfold that will lead to the newspaper article, and even to the boots.
The narrative of “Harbor Drift” is, at first glance, quite simple. A series of archetypal characters-- The Young Man, The Old Beggar, The Grifter, The Prostitute – are set into a series of motions circling a dropped pearl necklace. The Beggar sees its owner lose it an attempts to return it, but fails and pockets the necklace for his own benefit, as well as that of his associate, The Young Man. However, The Prostitute sees this transpire and begins to shadow the Beggar, with hopes of obtaining the necklace and passing it off to The Grifter for a profit. Things go downhill from there. The Prostitute discovers the friendship between the Beggar and the Young Man, and decides to exploit the Young Man's sexual desire to obtain the necklace. Onto her scheme, the Old Man carries the necklace on his person at all times. After The Grifter beats The Prostitute for failing to deliver her goods, the Young Man goes to force the necklace out of the Beggar's possession in order to save The Prostitute from her lot in life. A desperate, frantic chase along the docks and water results in the old man drowning to death, still clutching the pearls in his hand. A coda reveals him as the subject of the newspaper article, and when the Fat Man finally lowers his paper, we see who the boots belong to. The Prostitute, having separated from the Young Man, is back on her beat. The final punch: it turns out the pearls were fake all along.
This narrative could be an enjoyable series of confirmed expectations, but instead become startling. Not because of the direction the plot moves in, but because of the ways these archetypes are slowly transformed into human beings. Their attitudes become less flat, and begin to reveal hidden aspects: the Young Man, seemingly virtuous, is fickle and lustful. The Beggar, sometimes kind, is also greedy and cruel. The Prostitute is brutal only because she is scared, as one realizes while watching her as she washes her face and prepares breakfast. The film forces the viewer to misjudge, then reassess, all of these people. At first they appear merely to be characters, even stereotypes. But the film argues that underneath every stereotype there is a human being. It is this underlying humanity which is hidden in the details of the film, which one could almost gloss over, if it wasn't for the strange focus on feet and shoes, on the way hands touch the pearl necklaces and the way everyone looks at one another like hungry wolves. If the film was presented in a clean Hollywood style these intricacies would be lost.
The transformation of the characters into people runs parallel to a stylistic transformation from relative realism to expressionism. The result is a constant tension between character and cinematic style. Due to the slow evolution of this relationship, the tension cannot be easily dismissed. Every time one becomes complacent or comfortable, the film shifts slightly, and you are forced to reconsider everything once more. All this being said, the film is far from technically perfect. The rapid fire editing, clearly influenced by Soviet montage, is regularly a hindrance. Clearly the filmmakers believe that “lots of cuts = lots of energy,” a mistaken equation still made regularly by directors and editors to this day. There is none of the discourse between images one associates with Eisenstein, and what we are left with is a string of short, disparate images, which more often than not amount to nothing. Likewise, the use of title cards contributes almost nothing to the film; one gains some insight into the German movement against titles (exemplified in Murnau's “Der letzte Mann”) when reading these. Invariably they disrupt the flow, and provide information already gleaned by the expressions and attitudes of the actors.
The film reaches its visual height near its conclusion, in an arresting sequence of superimpositions which blend the various characters, locations and events into a solid stream of image. The interior thoughts of each individual, the city that surrounds them, and the physical actions they take all begin to merge in a series of almost abstract pulsations of light. In this sequence, the meaning of the film becomes apparent; It is a film about the modern city, and the effect that this city has on those who dwell in it. It is a social film, which sets out to force the attention of the spectator on the individuals that surround them every day. It aims to expose the result of the social structure created by urban life: the lower class human beings, transformed into rats, all clamoring and biting one another for a small piece of cheese. Finally the film insists that we, the Fat Men with twitching cigars, do not think of The Prostitute as a whore, but as a human being.
Viewed at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, 01/14/2011.
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