If you've ever seen Henry Jaglom's 1995 film Last Summer in The Hamptons, you'll know what kind of shock it throws your way in the opening moments. Jaglom (for this is his production company) takes an unrelenting approach in cold-plunging us into his directorial vision - when you start up the film, you're immediately greeted by none other than Orson Welles' steely gaze staring you down from above a miniature wooden rainbow. The camera zooms in, with Welles refusing to break his glare, and the words "A Rainbow Release" materialise on screen. Fade to black, and we're in that promised summer in the Hamptons. This inexplicable image (to those unversed in Jaglom's filmography, anyhow) is made all the more disconcerting for playing out in total silence. No bombastic jingles here, but what we have is very bit as upsetting. In other words, the ideal logo.
The Rainbow Releasing logo is a particular favourite of mine. It's spooky, striking and above all unique - I don't think there's any other production logo out there that quite captures this one's particular flavour. For this reason, it has built up a fair amount of notoriety among logophobia aficionados, despite its relative obscurity (as far as I'm aware, it appears in only two movies - Last Summer in The Hamptons, and Jaglom's 2001 film Festival in Cannes; if you're familiar with it, then odds are that you're either a buff of logos or a buff of Jaglom). I'll admit that I find that notoriety both totally understandable and a little bemusing. It's an unsettling logo, no question, and the sheer intensity of Welles' stare really is something. But therein lies the mitigating factor - it registers immediately that this is Orson Welles we're looking at, otherwise known as the director of this masterpiece. He has one of the most recognisable mugs on the planet; his stare here may not be the most placating, but you can put a name to it. There's an immediate familiarity about this logo. But there's strangeness too, and I think this is why it strikes a nerve with so many viewers. There is an eerie kind of incongruity to just about every slightest detail. Even the name, Rainbow Releasing, seems at odds with the imagery, the presence of that wooden rainbow notwithstanding. It suggests warmth, vibrancy, effervescence, fun. Which is not quite communicated in what we see in the logo. This thing is certainly enigmatic, but it's threatening.
In actuality, the image in question is a nod to Jaglom's personal roots, for it's taken from his debut feature, A Safe Place from 1971, in which Welles starred as a character known as The Magician. Unfortunately, the film itself continues to elude me, and I have never been able to track down a copy and view it for myself, so the exact context of the scene in question remains a mystery to me. Criterion did release the film as part of a box set called America Lost and Found: The BBS Story in 2010, but not in a region coding that I can use. From what I can tell, it's about a young woman named Noah (Tuesday Weld) living in New York in the early 70s, caught up in some kind of love triangle and attempting to reconcile herself with her childhood innocence. As for Welles The Magician, he's possibly supposed to be an imaginary friends of hers. On their website, Criterion describe the picture as a "delicate, introspective drama, laced with fantasy elements." I have to admit that, on paper, the entire thing sounds absolutely fantastic. Tuesday Weld, Orson Welles and Jack Nicholson in a movie in which fantasy and reality are repeatedly mingling, so that you can't tell what's real in the context of the picture and what's not? I would watch this thing in a heartbeat, if I could just get hold of it. Unfortunately, people in 1971 felt very differently. Jaglom's debut endured a critical savaging, cinemagoers ignored it, and the film has largely languished in obscurity ever since, although Criterion's more recent recognition might be the first step in rehabilitating its tattered reputation.
Welles himself had of course been deceased for ten years by the time that Jaglon appropriated his likeness into his production logo and inducted him to the logophobic canon, so he never knew about this fantastic little footnote in his legacy. As with Ubu the dog, we have that uncanniness in being confronted with a motionless image of a dead being - there's some movement at the beginning, but the bulk of the logo is comprised of an uncomfortable close-up with a single freeze frame. Once again we have that focus on inertia, and the distillation of life to static image, only here we have the added malaise of the undead image gazing back, as if regarding us with a kind of other-worldly presence from beyond the grave.
What makes the logo particularly inspired, though, is the balance it strikes between charm and menace, between the whimsical and the downright uncanny. It's surreal enough to play like a disturbed dream that's flirting dangerously close to crossing over into nightmare territory, or an attempted retreat into a would-be reassuring memory that's taken on an unwelcome life of its own. Which may well be appropriate, given the source. Weld's character in A Safe Place is out to recreate the safety of her childhood (hence the title) and I couldn't tell you if she finds it with Welles and that box from which he produces his wooden rainbow, but I certainly don't think that Jaglom's audience finds it within the isolated space of the logo (it's been pointed out that the arched arrangement of the "A Rainbow Release" lettering does not quite sync up with the shape of Welles' wooden rainbow, adding to the off-kilter feel, although I understand that this was modified for its appearance before Festival in Cannes). What it captures, and captures beautifully, is a kind of disturbance lurking beneath the surface of the image, so that we have the feeling of being profoundly unsafe without being able to pinpoint what, exactly, is so vehemently wrong. After all, there should be nothing inherently unsettling about the sight of Orson Welles holding up a rainbow, but by focusing on the discomfiture of a single, frozen moment, Jaglon manages to bring out the ominous, creeping tension that exists only in the scene's hidden cracks.
That summer in the Hamptons wasn't any safer.
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