Wheel of Ashes

Wheel of Ashes, made in Paris by the under-recognized Americdan director, Peter Emanuel Goldman, is a very powerful film that you will remember long after viewing it. A young man, played by French actor Pierre Clementi,(Belle de Jour) despondently wanders the Paris streets until he meets a young woman , played by the Danish actress Katinka Bo. At the same time he falls under the influence of the Indian Vedanta philosophy, which encourages giving up the world to find God. Pierre retreats to a tiny room near the Bastille to search for God, but ends up almost going insane from the terrible conflict between his search for God, his sexual desire and the attachment to his girlfriend. The black and white photography is superb, as is Clementi's acting. Goldman's first feature was the American Underground classic, "Echoes of Silence," known for its haunting imagery and faces.. Historically, it could be said that "Wheel of Ashes" is the only link between the American Underground and the French New Wave. It is an extraordinary piece of work. Goldman is a unique director whose work has been forgotten. Outside of the Museum of Modern Art in New York I don't know where one can view the film.

L.M.

Slightly more interesting than Peter Emanuel Goldman's previous surviving feature (the overpraised "Echoes of Silence"), this one mixes a bit of Herman Hesse, Ingmar Bergman and Jean-Luc Godard, with worries that would also appear prominently in the early films of Woody Allen: God, sex, family (or lack of)... For 95 minutes we follow Pierre, the alter ego of director Goldman, through the streets of Paris, meeting everybody from actors Judith Malina and Sean Flynn to sculptor David Medalla, from actress Juliet Berto and jazz poet Ted Joans to guru Swami Ritajananda, after he leaves David (Pierre Besançon), his friend and lover, when the call of women's bodies is too strong to ignore. But soon he also rejects his girlfriend Anka (Katinka Bo, Goldman's wife) and locks himself up in a poky, dirty room, while reflecting on a few steps to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Replacing Laurent Terzieff (who had to turn down the role because of a previous commitment), the "little prince of the counter-culture", Pierre Clémenti, whose presence was always used to suggest something crazy, quirky, dirty or transcendental, is the center of the whole business, but he is not enough to sustain this too-long reflection on untidy isolation in search of interior wisdom.

A very beautiful example of true cinéma vérité, slice of life, stream of consciousness. It's like Henry Miller's novels adapted by Jean Luc Godard. Loved every minute.