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This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
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1801
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 8:08am
Subject: Re: The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini
> The reason I mentioned Stan & Ollie (and Arthur Lake) was to
indicate
> that Jack Lemmon was not bringing a new sensibility to fioms in the
> 50s. Dominated males have been a staple of comedies from Day One.
L&H were never sexy, though Chaplin and Keaton kind of were. (Louise
Brooks called Keaton the most beautiful man alive, which is
surprising but makes more sense than if she's said it about, say,
Harold Lloyd.)
Broad comedy is clearly a special case, though not so special it
should be ignored when thinking about H'wood's range of male
archetypes. Lemmon is a bit different because he was a "leading man"
(of sorts) and played seriocomic roles. What strikes me is that where
Grant, Stewart, Fonda etc could be put through all kinds of
humiliating paces and emerge with masculinity intact, the same
doesn't seem so true of their successors circa 1960. SOME LIKE IT HOT
works differently from how it would have earlier because neither
Lemmon the worrywart nor Curtis the pretty-boy really has male
authority in the first place. In a different way Rock Hudson seems
like a symptom of the same thing: compare BRINGING UP BABY to MAN'S
FAVORITE SPORT.
JTW
1802
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 8:50am
Subject: Re: Re: The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini
Nice catch, Damien, with the Sarris quote.
It seems particularly apposite to decry smugness when one is talking (even
indirectly) about Joel Schumacher, whose films reek of that quality.
George Robinson
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Damien Bona"
To:
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 2:34 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> > David,
> >
> > I'll stand pat on my statement that the exception that tests
> (probat)
> > one rule (Cocteau as an exception to the run of European directors)
> > is no more probative about the rule's existence or non-existence
> than
> > is another exception (Laurel and Hardy as exceptions to the
> > representation of male stars by Hollywood) that tests another rule.
>
> The reason I mentioned Stan & Ollie (and Arthur Lake) was to indicate
> that Jack Lemmon was not bringing a new sensibility to fioms in the
> 50s. Dominated males have been a staple of comedies from Day One.
>
> I haven't seen Back To God's Country or Yankee Pasha so I can't
> comment on those, but I do agree with David that, star status
> notwithstanding, leading men have long been degraded in the American
> cinema. In addition to comedies, this is especially true in such
> genres as the social drama (Paul Muni in I Am A Fugitive; Henry Fonda
> in The Grapes of Wrath), and film noir -- where the heroes were
> almost always made chumps because their libidoes led them to
> treacherous women and they were often slipped a mickey (Ralph Meeker
> in Kiss Me Deadly, Mitchum in Out Of The Past, Fred MacMurray in
> Double Indemnity).
>
>
> > Anyway, it's totally unimportant, unless we want to argue that
> Joseph > Pevney's feature career is important, but "that way lies
> madness," as
> > Sarris would say.
>
> The second half of Sarris's quote is along the lines of "madness is
> always preferable to smugness," with which I think we would all
> agree.
>
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>
1803
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 10:16am
Subject: Re: Auteurism? Don't shoot the critic!
> > I think this is correct. Among other things, there's the legacy of
> > Bazin, but there's also the legacy of classicism: Hawks, for
example,
> > is praised as a classical artist; personal expression is far from
the
> > highest value.
On other hand there's an interesting essay by Edward Buscombe, 'Ideas
of Authorship,' reprinted in "Theories of Authorship," edited by John
Caughie. He emphasizes how the idea of the Romantic artist persists in
auteurism. I think this helps explain why calling someone an auteur is
so often considered a term of praise. Since the Romantic era at least
there has been the belief that art depends on personal expression and
organic unity. Since the auteur is often defined in terms of personal
expression, and the auteur seems the likely source of whatever unity
is in a work, the work of an auteur is, seemingly by definition, good
art.
Some other, pre-Romantic ideas about art depict the good artist as a
master of prexisisting techniques and traditions, or emphasize the
artists' ability to faithfully depict nature and human action. In
other words, Buscombe writes, they emphasize things outside the
personality of the artist: the world outside, and the traditions and
codes in the art itself.
Another interesting essay in "Theories of Authorship" is "Fiction of
the author/author of the fiction" by Michel Foucalt. Foucault tries to
identify the "function" of the author and finds four basic principles:
"the author is defined as a standard level of quality...
the author is defined as a certain field of conceptual or theoretical
coherence...
the author is seen as a stylistic uniformity...
the author is thus a definite historical figure in which a series of
events converge... Governing this function is the belief that there
must be - at a particular level of an author's thought, of his
conscious or unconscious desire - a point where contradictions are
resolved..."
Foucault for his part thinks the "author-function" operates
differently at different times and in different contexts and does not
refer simply to an actual individual. Foucault is not sympathetic to
criticism centered on the author: "Behind all these questions we could
here little more than the murmur of indifference: 'What matters who's
speaking.'"
I'll add one more point: I think there was in the mid-1960's a fissure
appearing between two conceptions of film: between an art of showing
and an art of images, between a clear window onto human action and a
series of images and sounds, the latter either read as symbols or seen
and heard as abstract forms comparable to music.
Having brought up these points, I'll mention two roundtable
discussions that deal with the above issues in interesting ways:
'Vingt ans après: le cinéma américan et la politique des
auteurs'
(Cahiers du Cinéma 172, Nov. 1965) and 'Movie Differences' in
Movie 8.
The former is available in Jim Hillier's "Cahiers du Cinéma: The
1960's." In it there's a consensus that the auteur should not be
identified with a thematic -- in other words, I think, the trend is to
separate the idea of the auteur from the idea of thematic coherence
(one kind of "conceptual or theoretical coherence," to use Foucault's
phrase.) At the same there is a renewed emphasis on personal
expression. From the persective of later developments -- attempts to
read films, to reject the idea of personal expression, to view art
works as constructions with internal contradictions to be exposed --
many of these ideas look regressive. There is on the other hand an
attempt to locate formal concerns that are deeper than personal style.
In particular modern or mannerist forms are as legitimate as
"classical" forms: an admission that seemed absolutely necessary in
the 1960's, even if there were many steps backward in theory and in
taste...
The "Movie" roundtable debates the importance of thematics vs. action
and action vs. images.
Paul
1804
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 10:20am
Subject: Re: Auteurism? Don't shoot the critic!
Some excerpts from "20 Years After."
Comolli: The politique des auteurs was at one and the same time an
ambitious assertion - allowing cinema all the prestige of a complete
and separate art - and a very modest one - the cinematic auteur was
quite simply the equivalent of the writer, painter, or musician,
confronting his work as they confronted theirs. At the same time, this
definition was married to a premise which derived less from a critical
appreciation than from a value judgment. From the point at which the
quality of auteur was recognized in a certain film-maker his films
accorded each other a mutual value so that each succeeding film by
that 'auteur', when it wasn't absolutely excellent, had to be
'interesting' at least.
In other words, recognition was given to a certain fidelity of the
auteur to himself, to certain constants in interpretation, theme,
expression, etc. Which not only characterized the film-maker and every
one of his films, but signalled their essential interest.
This led to a kind of slippage. A confusion arose between the concept
of auteur and the concept of theme: you only had to identify certain
constants, a particular obsession in a film-maker, for him to be
labelled an 'auteur' - which is fair enough - and for him to be
considered great - which is in most cases not justified.
And on the other hand, it for some reason you liked a film-maker who
had previously not been recognized as an auteur, you fought tooth and
nail -- and what's more, successfully - to uncover some kind of
'thematic' in his oeuvre, thereby automatically authenticating the the
auteur and demonstrating the presumed quality of his work. To put it
in a nutshell, every great auteur had a thematic, every film-maker you
decided to call a great auteur had a thematic and the slightest trace
of a thematic meant that the oeuvre fell within the politique des
auteurs.
The phenomenon we are dealing with here is the stretching of the
politique des auteurs to the point where the auteur and his subject
matter endow each other with a mutual value. Obviously, even the worst
film-makers have their obsessions and they deal with them. Badly,
naturally. And they're of no great interest.
Fieschi: The question of the thematic is on the whole one big joke
- at least in the terms proposed. Ford's could make a breviary for
reactionaries. As for Walsh's, it boils down to two or three basic
principles in adventure stories; it obviously doesn't ever guarantee
the success of a particular film. Distant Drums is a fairly close
reworking of Objective Burma which in no way explains why the latter
is a great film an( first is not.
Comolli: In the same way you can say that Fuller's thematic isn't the
interesting thing in the world. If you're looking for ideas in
film-makers better look elsewhere. I'm not sure they are best
expressed in film.
...
Fieschi: It's a question of clarification through examples and it's
precisely at the level of examples that things get complicated. There
are, let's say, about sixty American film-makers who have signed their
name to films that are well-made, interesting or enthralling for
various reasons, whether for their plot, or because they had Bogart or
Cooper, or for some intuitive sense of landscape and other
aesthetically pleasing details.
Of course, these aspects are far from negligible. They have a great
part to play in the physical pleasure of the spectacle which America
has brought to perfection. But not overlooking them does not mean
seeing them only at the expense of more fundamental ideas. We all know
that cinephile's aberration of only seeing in a film that wonderful
moment when Jack Elam crushes a cigarette butt into the left eye of a
one-legged Apache chief while whistling the 'Marseillaise', or the
retort which Lee Marvin spews out a moment before he is rubbed out by
a hail of machine-gun bullets. The politique des auteurs rapidly
degenerated into a politique of the craftsman and then of the jobber.
These days it is fairly general practice to search the work of Ray
Enright or Joseph Pevney for the curiosities we used to excuse in a
Ford or a Boetticher. Soon we'll have the age of Henry Levin or Jean
Negulesco.
Excesses of this kind are evidence of the irreversible victory of
American cinema, and it is precisely because a particular battle has
been won that we must once again show ourselves to be demanding. Films
and film-makers are no longer unjustly ignored by the cinephile
audience, even if they are by distributors. The time has therefore
come to discuss things more calmly and to recognize that The
Sandpiper, In Harm's Way, even Lord Jim, are bad films. This in no way
robs The Bandwagon, Angel Face and Elmer Gantry of their merits.
Similarly, to praise some film by Gordon Douglas, Hathaway or Stuart
Heisler does not mean that their oeuvre as a whole has to be taken
into consideration. No doubt we are reaching the impossible stage as
far as a theory of cinema in general, and American cinema in
particular, is concerned; but for years, if Cahiers' position was to
be productive, a certain rigid dogmatic control was control was
needed. So were the appropriate classifications to separate the wheat
from the chaff.
Today we have to recover some sense of the film itself, which does
not, however, imply abandoning our basic options concerning people
like Hawks, Hitchcock, Ford and Kazan. We have to be alert, able to
recognize that Lilith (and The Brave Bulls makes no difference) is one
of the finest American films of recent years.
Comolli: : In short, if you ask what characterizes an auteur, what
makes a film-maker an auteur in the strong sense of the term, you fall
into a new trap: it's his 'style', in other words the 'mise en scene',
a notion as dangerous, risky, infinitely variable and impossible to
pin down as auteur. Mise en scene means two things, one obvious - the
directing process; the other mysterious - the result of that process.
So when criticism talks about the mise en scene of a film, passes
judgment on it and discovers some special beauty in it, it is
sustaining a confusion - which may only be one of terminology -
between what is seen on the screen, i.e. a result, and what is deemed
to have produced the result, i.e. a set of means, a series of acts.
But in precise terms these means, these acts have no intrinsic value:
they are worth only what the result, the film, is worth. The latter
established the value of the former and not viceversa. In other words,
the fate of the mise en scene is to be wiped out in other words again,
the mise en scene is not and cannot be the object an object of
aesthetic appreciation. Its end product, the film, may make such a
claim. Mise en scene is not an object and not a work of art. Nor is it
an expression of anything. It is a means of expression - stylistic,
rhetorical, technical, etc. You can't judge a means. Conversely, the
essence of the cinema doesn't lie in its means. The mise en scene is
not part of the order of values. In Cahiers it has played the role of
an artefact; it was brought to the forefront because it was claimed
that the criteria for the beauty of a film were to be sought in the
mise en scene, but this was only an illusory explanation. The beauty
of films has to be looked for in the actual reality of films as
objects.
Mardore: The question is not to deny mise en scene in favour of
'style', which in any case should not be so different from it, but to
distinguish the people with a genuine personality from those with
'obsessions'. Character, as Welles would say, remains the sole
criterion. We don't take enough account of the personality, of
everything the auteur carries in himself, what he represents in the
world, the power he has to express the world. There are no aesthetic
criteria, just criteria of the individual. Cinephiles have denied this
in the name of some 'pure mise en scene' which is the least definable
notion imaginable. In fact the least gifted person whose personality
'explodes' in the work will always carry the day over the most skilled
technician. We have to learn that there aren't any rules. Intuition
and sensibility triumph over all theories.
Fieschi: The notion of 'character' stressed by Mardore is in fact of
primary importance for a correct definition of the auteur. And I
should add that it's better to have a bad character than no character
at all. Over a period of time people like Huston and Wilder, who have
after all had more failures than Wyler or Preminger, have over them
the advantage of a line followed with obstinacy if not always with
rigour. The fact that that line culminates in films like The Night of
the Iguana and Kiss Me Stupid is sufficient proof of its validity.
Mardore: The arbitrary definition of 'mise en scene' carried with it
an a priori refutation of all heresies and variants. Ten years ago a
film like Lilith would have been violently panned, and precisely in
the name of the politique des auteurs and mise en scene. Lilith uses
visual effects, camera angles, and cutting devices which would have
appeared obsolete and anti-aesthetic. In the mind of the politique des
auteurs the American cinema limited itself to a denial of any
dramatic, 'demiurgic' intervention from the auteur in question. That
over-simplification condemned a priori all mannered, baroque, in the
end non-conventional, forms (since simplicity and effacement are
variants of convention). In Lilith it is impossible to pinpoint the
extent of Rossen's intervention. A writer who uses an archaic form,
the preciosity of another age, isn't necessarily retarded or
simple-minded. He may have chosen the style in order to give himself a
certain narrative distance. We don't have the right to lay down the
law, to elevate one form at the expense of another. We have to defend
the notion of a pluralism of styles against a desiccated classicism,
which in any case was never there in the minds of American
film-makers. The important thing is to throw off the aesthetic and
moral shackles.
...
Claude Ollier:
Perhaps, at the point we have reached, it is in fact absolutely
essential to speak of the cinema in terms of formal innovation. Make
no mistake about it, what draws our interest to a particular film is
that it strikes a new note - what Celine called 'a minor music'. But
that 'minor music" can only be the art of using metaphor and metonymy
to assemble a new personal discourse out of both new and traditional
forms. The originality of a creative and innovatory mise en scene,
which is the hallmark of an auteur, must be analysed in terms of signs
and meanings If certain films in current production interest us
(Brazilian, Polish, Italian, French) it is because we are intrigued by
the forms they create. Our task is to establish what it is that
intrigues us in them and what links can be established between them
and earlier forms.
There is no reason why cinema should differ in this respect from
music or literature. However more complex it is, the problem remain
the same: forms have a future, an irreversible development. The
critic's role is to determine the precise extent of that innovation
and, as a result, the extent of what has to be shed.
1805
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 10:49am
Subject: Re: Auteurism? Don't shoot the critic!
An excerpt from "Movie 8":
Theme and Action
Mark Shivas: (to Perkins): Your arguments against Vivre sa Vie and The
Eclipse make it sound as if you want to draw up rules about film
direction.
V.F. Perkins: Not rules exactly. As a critic I look for a harmony
between action and presentation. We're all accustomed to the idea of
an essential harmony between form and content, but I think "content"
has been too narrowly defined : we use it only of a film's thematic
subject. If this were all one could demand, then I would have to
regard Vivre sa Vie as a near-perfect movie. But I think there is
another requirement -- a correspondence between form and actual
content, that is between event and presentation. I don't think Vivre
sa Vie gives you a correspondence between the shape of the film, in
particular the shot-to-shot layout of its individual sequences, and
what happens in them. This sort of dislocation seems to occur whenever
a director regards his attitude as more important than the event he's
portraying.
Paul Mayersberg : But the thematic coherence is more important. Your
coherence of event and presentation is an extra. You couldn't do a
Mabuse on this basis.
VFP: The harmony should obtain for both sorts of content. I don't want
to impugn the traditional form/content relationship, but I think it's
important to extend it.
PM: For me, actual content that is not related to thematic content is
not much use. I could never regard Tourneur's Night of the Demon as a
masterpiece because in the last analysis it's a meaningless movie.
That doesn't stop it being very enjoyable.
VFP: I would regard your preference for theme over event as a
restatement of the old heresy -- which the cinema was virtually
invented to disprove -- that the intellect is superior to the body.
Perhaps I can best define my position through an example: in Wyler's
Loudest Whisper, during a sequence in a car the camera withdraws to
chauffeur position in order to get behind glass and prevent you from
hearing what the passengers are saying. You would not allow me to say
simply "This is wrong because it betrays the event"?
PM: It depends on the particular circumstance. In The Loudest Whisper
it's just a crude device intended to build up menace. But it all
depends what the director is trying to do.
VFP: You don't think it's crude in relation to a harmony that one can
insist on between what happens and the way it's shown
PM: That's exactly what I think. But the harmony is not yours, it's
the director's. You want things to be presented in the way you would
look at them. You shouldn't try to impose your way of looking at
things on other directors.
VFP: It doesn't amount to that. There's a huge range of ways of
filming any piece of action. But I would insist that the chosen method
maintain the integrity of the event. For example, I think it's almost
inevitably wrong to use the camera, as Wyler does, in order to
conceal. Film is the art of showing; it seems a contradiction to use
it in order not to show.
PM: Much more importantly it's an art of revealing. It's just as
legitimate to get an effect through what you omit as through what you
show. You show something, you get one effect; you don't show it, you
get another. But they're both effects, and they're both artificial.
It's all a question of selection. I think your distinction of event
from presentation is, from a director's point of view, the difference
between coming to film someone else's script and visualising a film
from the start. Quite often it's the film of which the director is
sole author that you object to in this way.
VFP: Perhaps, but there are obvious exceptions: Fuller, Preminger,
Hawks ...
PM: Antonioni and Godard have this in common, that they conceive
their films in shots. They don't write a scenario and then think how
to do it. A distinction between the event and the treatment is
meaningless for "The Eclipse" because the shots are events in
themselves. The film has a different kind of unity which does not the
involve the doing or making element that your preferred films involve.
VFP: All films involve it. On the set, for any film. the director does
two things: he sets up the action and he records it in a particular
way. He takes, say, a close-up of a woman. He doesn't produce some
phenomenon -- womancloseup -- just because he knows what he's going to
do before he gets to the shooting stage. But the best directors do
synthesise these two distinct functions. Baldly, it's no use setting
up a love-scene and then photographing the floor.
Ian A. Cameron: But what happens on the set can to be totally
different according to the way you've shown it.
VFP: Yes. My point is that the way it's photographed, edited etc. must
be designed to give the most lucid portrayal of what did happen.
PM: There's no such thing as the event distinct from what you are
shown.
MS: (to Perkins): Doesn't your requirements boil down to a demand for
an appearance of objectivity? Events can be arranged for effect in any
number of ways. Provided the arrangement doesn't *seem* to involve the
camera you are happy.
VFP: Provided that it's not only in the camera. A director shouldn't
use his camera and editing bench to impose something which he hasn't
been able to put into the action. One of the wonderful properties of
film is its lie-detector aspect: if an idea can't be expressed in
action then it's invalid. This is as true on the screen as it is in
life.
PM: You can't rule things out as easily as you seem to want, on
aesthetic or any other grounds. As Fieschi said, "you should love, not
a particular cinema, but the cinema." There's nothing a director can't
do, though there are things which may limit him if he tires. If a
device doesn't work, then there are specific reasons for the failure
in its specific context. It's a question of establishing a coherent
pattern. The problem with bad directors like Dearden is that their
devices stand out as devices. But a film that sets out to use devices
unashamedly, and incorporates them into a coherent pattern, is more
than acceptable.
IAC: (to Mayersberg): Do you think this coherence is essential ?
PM: Absolutely essential. The most important thing. Some coherences
are less interesting than others. But I can't imagine a good film
without its own coherence. I believe that films ought to have
"equations", whether their authors are aware of them or not. And I
need to feel that I've found that equation before I'm equipped to
tackle the detail.
MS: How would you decide after your first experience of a film whether
to go back to look for its "equation" ?
PM: Let's take a recent example -- Vanina Vanini. The first time, I
thought it was tremendous, obviously, but I couldn't reconcile the
film's apparently pessimistic ending with Rossellini's obvious
endorsement of his hero's faith in the French Revolution and its
meaning for Italy. So I went back and tried to work out the process of
the film step by step, to find a pattern that enclosed the characters
or at least would account for every scene. I will only regard a film
as significant if it has this pattern. I want a clear movement that I
can define and explain.
VFP: Two points. I don't believe the greatest films are to this extent
coherent. No matter how many times I see Vertigo or Rio Bravo or
Bigger Than Life, and no matter how clear I am about their essential
subjects, there's always a mystery, something that doesn't fit. Their
power would be weakened if all these mysteries were solved, if the
director was unwilling to say (with Nicholas Ray via Walt Whitman) "I
contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself." Also if you
applied this as a conscious and consistent critical method you would
get too far from what happens when you're actually in front of a film.
So completely intellectualised an attitude would be very dangerous.
PM: Obviously mine isn't the only way of looking at films. But it's a
method that works for me, so I use it. I'm not a spectator: I'm either
a potential film-maker or I'm a critic. I think in terms of functions.
I don't just sit there and let it hit me. On principle you should
accept everything in any film initially, for the purposes of its
argument. Once you've made the effort to understand it, and can say
what you think its intentions are, you're in a position to reject it
if necessary. But you can't do one without the other.
IAC: Your kind of criticism can only provoke two reactions : I
disagree or I agree. The first may be useful as a starting
point for a discussion, but the second effectively stops any.
Everything is explicable in terms of the equation, once it's been
discovered. You can't go on and ask more questions, because a complete
explanation has been provided. This is the equation take it or leave
it.
PM: This is untrue simply because a really good film works on so many
levels. Though one equation may fit very nicely, that doesn't mean
that there aren't others equally applicable. You can take a set of
scenes from films by Minnelli, say, or Preminger and explain them
thematically. It may be quite satisfactory. But you can also explain
precisely the same scenes with an entirely different set of themes.
There's no need to pretend that your equation is the only valid one.
VFP: Surely any sort of criticism is valuable provided that it's
intelligent, that it's closely related to what actually occurs on the
screen and, most important, that it opens up avenues for discussion
rather than closing them down. This is where strictly evaluative
criticism is so annoying. If I wrote an article expanding my opinion
of the first sequence of The Eclipse it would probably be valueless:
the action is either convincing or implausible according to one's
particular experience. I think we all attempt to write criticism which
is useful whether or not it meets with agreement, criticism which
suggests more questions than it answers. I'd rather be an orator than
an oracle. To put it another way, the magazine won't really be a
success until it regarded as a witness stand rather than judgement
seat.
> I am in complete agreement that "Song of Songs" is
> terrible, but it's quiteunjust IMO to then say "And,
> finally, this is why Mamoulian is boring: because he
> cannot make a movie that is happening before us;
> instead, he makes a
> film that follows a text."
>
> What do you mean by that? Does "Love Me Tonight" not
> "happen before us"? What about "Applause" and "City
> Streets"? Are they phoned-in? I think not.
>
>
1806
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 1:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: Joel Schumacher and . . . .Joseph Pevney ?!?!
Mitzi Green?!?!
She introduced "The Lady is a Tramp" on Broadway.
She is also the subect of one of the funniest
anecdotes in Arthur Laurents' "Original Story By."
--- Damien Bona wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> wrote:
> > Having waded through the last through days of
> posts I
> > continue to be amazed that Joseph Pevney has
> emerged
> > as pivotial contributor to gay cinematic history.
> >
> > To say that I am unconvinced would be putting it
> > mildly.
> >
>
> Pevney has a bit of queer appreciation (at least
> among camp
> followers) because of his fierce Joan Crawford
> vehicle, Female On The
> Beach.
>
> I think that Pevney's main contribution to cinema
> was his performance
> as John Garfield's brother in Robert Rossen's Body
> And SOul.
>
> Little piece of trivia: Pevney is the widower of
> early '30s child
> actress Mitzi Green.
>
>
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1807
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 2:04pm
Subject: Claude Ollier & von Sternberg
Thanks for the long excerpt, Paul--I was wondering if anyone here can
point me to more places to find the criticism of Claude Ollier, now
that his name has come up. All I've read by him is the fabulous
essay on von Sternberg in CINEMA: A CRITICAL DICTIONARY. I know he's
also a novelist-any good?
Speaking of von Sternberg, has anybody heard about the 18-or-so retro
that Film Forum is supposed to run later this year?
Patrick
> Claude Ollier:
> Perhaps, at the point we have reached, it is in fact absolutely
> essential to speak of the cinema in terms of formal innovation. Make
> no mistake about it, what draws our interest to a particular film is
> that it strikes a new note - what Celine called 'a minor music'. But
> that 'minor music" can only be the art of using metaphor and
metonymy
> to assemble a new personal discourse out of both new and traditional
> forms. The originality of a creative and innovatory mise en scene,
> which is the hallmark of an auteur, must be analysed in terms of
signs
> and meanings If certain films in current production interest us
> (Brazilian, Polish, Italian, French) it is because we are intrigued
by
> the forms they create. Our task is to establish what it is that
> intrigues us in them and what links can be established between them
> and earlier forms.
> There is no reason why cinema should differ in this respect from
> music or literature. However more complex it is, the problem remain
> the same: forms have a future, an irreversible development. The
> critic's role is to determine the precise extent of that innovation
> and, as a result, the extent of what has to be shed.
1808
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 2:10pm
Subject: Re: Auteurism? Don't shoot the critic!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Gallagher" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
> >Somewhere I
> > can't find anymore, Antoine de Baecque claims that the "politics
of
> authors"
> > kept in itself the germ of the "effacement" of the author.
A point also made by Godard when he superimposes the words "Seulement
la main qui efface peut écrire" (Only the hand that erases can write)
over the image of the chalk M in the palm in M in the HISTOIRE(S) DU
CINEMA. This shot is elaborated in the excellent introduction in
Gunning's Lang book--which is also one of the best essays I know of
explaining what is at stake in auteurism. Someone should invite him
on board here.
Patrick
1809
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 1:52pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini
"SOME LIKE IT HOT
works differently from how it would have earlier
because neither
Lemmon the worrywart nor Curtis the pretty-boy really
has male
authority in the first place."
Thank Goodness!
Another reason why it's such a great film.
I admire the bravery/cowardice of these characters far
more than I do the macho gesturing of conventional
"heroes" who never cross gender barriers.
--- jaketwilson wrote:
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1810
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 3:19pm
Subject: Re: Claude Ollier & von Sternberg
Ollier's "Souveniers Ecran" was published by Cahiers
du Cinema / Gallimard in 1981.
High time for an English translation!
--- Patrick Ciccone wrote:
> Thanks for the long excerpt, Paul--I was wondering
> if anyone here can
> point me to more places to find the criticism of
> Claude Ollier, now
> that his name has come up. All I've read by him is
> the fabulous
> essay on von Sternberg in CINEMA: A CRITICAL
> DICTIONARY. I know he's
> also a novelist-any good?
>
> Speaking of von Sternberg, has anybody heard about
> the 18-or-so retro
> that Film Forum is supposed to run later this year?
>
> Patrick
>
> > Claude Ollier:
> > Perhaps, at the point we have reached, it is in
> fact absolutely
> > essential to speak of the cinema in terms of
> formal innovation. Make
> > no mistake about it, what draws our interest to a
> particular film is
> > that it strikes a new note - what Celine called 'a
> minor music'. But
> > that 'minor music" can only be the art of using
> metaphor and
> metonymy
> > to assemble a new personal discourse out of both
> new and traditional
> > forms. The originality of a creative and
> innovatory mise en scene,
> > which is the hallmark of an auteur, must be
> analysed in terms of
> signs
> > and meanings If certain films in current
> production interest us
> > (Brazilian, Polish, Italian, French) it is because
> we are intrigued
> by
> > the forms they create. Our task is to establish
> what it is that
> > intrigues us in them and what links can be
> established between them
> > and earlier forms.
> > There is no reason why cinema should differ in
> this respect from
> > music or literature. However more complex it is,
> the problem remain
> > the same: forms have a future, an irreversible
> development. The
> > critic's role is to determine the precise extent
> of that innovation
> > and, as a result, the extent of what has to be
> shed.
>
>
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1811
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 4:21pm
Subject: Re: Boris Barnet (was The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini)
Since you mentioned Boris Barnet, maybe one of the wonderfully bright
folks herein can answer a question for me, of which all my reference
books and websites availeth not:
Was Boris Barnet Jewish? I know he was English, but the two aren't
mutually exclusive.
(which reminds me of a story my wife tells about a naive friend from the
midwest who, upon hearing that Sandy Koufax was gay, replied in all
sincerity, "B ut I thought he was Jewish!")
George Robinson
hotlove666 wrote:
>[snip]
>
>More news from Tinseltown: As NY battens down for the first Boris
>Barnet retrospective, the Hollywood Cinematheque is preparing for a
>23-picture retrospective of 3-D films (BELCH!). 'Scuse me...
>
>To Joseph K - I'll see if Andy's interested.
>
>
>
>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>.
>
>
>
--
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
1812
From:
Date: Mon Sep 8, 2003 7:32pm
Subject: Demme
Enjoyed - and agreed with - the recent posts on Jonathan Demme.
Demme seems like a good candidate for auteur status.
In addition the films already mentioned, Swing Shift, Swimming to Cambodia,
and the music video Sun City are all fine!
The Demme-produced That Thing You Do! is also a good movie, but one is not
sure how much influence he had on it.
Only Demme film that seems not good: Silence of the Lambs. Even here the
technique is not bad, but do not like the subject matter.
Peter is right: Who Am I This Time? is fascinating.
Mike Grost
1813
From: Damien Bona
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 1:35am
Subject: Re: The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Hudson was something of a punching bag for
> directors, but what happens to him in Back to God's Country is
> extreme.
Hudson was discovered by Raoul Walsh, who put the actor in his first
film, Fighter Squadron, so I imagine Walsh probably treated him
decently on the four films they made together.
Sirk found Hudson to be a pleasant, simple young man who, unlike
Robert Stack, had no idea what Sirk was up to in his films.
1814
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 2:00am
Subject: Re: Re: The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini
Walsh intended "Fighter Squadron" to be a showcase for
new young talents he hoped to nuture. Hudson, rather
famously, ended up with an abbreviated and wordless
role as he couldn't handle dialogue at that time.
href="http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/g012/jacklarson.html"
target="_blank">A young New York poet, trying his hand
at acting got the lion's share of the film. He was
snapped up for a television series with which I'm sure
you're all familiar. Later he wrote librettos for
Virgil Thompson's operas, and produced two of his
director-boyfriend's most notable films: "The China
Syndrome" and "Mike's Murder."
--- Damien Bona wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
>
> wrote:
> > Hudson was something of a punching bag for
> > directors, but what happens to him in Back to
> God's Country is
> > extreme.
>
> Hudson was discovered by Raoul Walsh, who put the
> actor in his first
> film, Fighter Squadron, so I imagine Walsh probably
> treated him
> decently on the four films they made together.
>
> Sirk found Hudson to be a pleasant, simple young man
> who, unlike
> Robert Stack, had no idea what Sirk was up to in his
> films.
>
>
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1815
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 3:10am
Subject: Interview with Anna Karina
There's a charming recent interview with (the always charming)
Anna Karina here:
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/movies/reviews/documents/03132795.asp
I was surprised when she said that "Carmen Jones" was banned in
France. Why was this?
Paul
1816
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:00am
Subject: Re: Interview with Anna Karina
This may have to do with the rights to the Bizet
opera.
--- Paul Gallagher wrote:
> There's a charming recent interview with (the always
> charming)
> Anna Karina here:
>
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/movies/reviews/documents/03132795.asp
>
> I was surprised when she said that "Carmen Jones"
> was banned in
> France. Why was this?
>
> Paul
>
>
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1817
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:03am
Subject: The Ars Poetica of Heath Pevellini
Boetticher and Hudson got on fine. Budd said he was the clumsiest man
he ever met: "If we were sitting here and Rock was on the other side
of the commissary and started toward us, he'd crash into two tables
on the way, upending one of them, and land about there."
1818
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:07am
Subject: Demme
Amazed you don't like the subject of Silence of the Lambs, Mike. As
Peter knows, I loved The Truth about Charlie. In Brazil years ago I
saw a political documentary by JD - Haiti: Road to Freedom - which
was virtually a one-hour music video because of the heavy political
involvement of Haitian bands in the struggle. I haven't seen Buena
Vista Social Club, but it would have to go some to beat that one.
1819
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:10am
Subject: The Return of the Repressed
I hate to bring a stinkbomb to the party, but I've
come to believe the most damaging thing about
auteurism is the way it treats screenwriters. They're
kind of like a crazy relative locked away in the attic
that nobody wants to talk about, though everyone knows
is there.
Admittedly any number of scriptwriters are faceless
hacks. But not enough attention has been given to
important collaborators like I.A.L. Diamond (Wilder),
Suso Cecchi D'Amico (Visconti) and Hugo Butler (Losey)
It's fairly obvious (to me at least) that Jacques
Prevert is the auteur of "Les Enfants du Paradis,"
"Lumiere D'Ete" and "Le Crime de M.Lange."
Likewise "Singin' in the Rain" is a film by Betty
Comden and Adolph Green, and "The Manchurian
Candidate"
is the work of the creator of "Lord Love a Duck" far
more than the metteur en scene of "Seconds."
And "The Quiller Memorandum" is a Harold Pinter film
to the manner born.
Now I'll just sit back and wait for the brickbats to
rain down upon my head.
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1820
From: Paul Fileri
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:22am
Subject: Re: Interview with Anna Karina
Paul G. wrote:
> There's a charming recent interview with (the always charming)
> Anna Karina here [...]
And there's an even better one here at The Onion AV Club:
http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3918/avfeature_3918.html
The Onion, perhaps slightly flying under the radar, always tends to do very
worthwhile, lengthy interviews. Others ones to check out include recent
conversations with John Malkovich and Campbell Scott.
Paul
1821
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:26am
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
David Ehrenstein wrote:
> the most damaging thing about
> auteurism is the way it treats screenwriters.
You start about by defining "auteurism" as an ism that mistreats
screenwriters. What if there is another "auteurism" that has never
mistreated screenwriters? Seems to me that plentiful attention has been
paid to the screenwriters you mention for many decades now, in some
cases, and far more often than not, the people paying attention to them
have been critics than most people would describe as "auteurist." So I
question your assumption that "auteurism" is guilty of mistreatment --
except, of course, for what you pre-define as "auteurism" in what
appears to me to be a tautological argument . Surely, the attention
paid screenwriters is not "enough," but not enough attention is paid to
Shakespeare or Molière or Hitchcock or Welles or Ford, either, or even
to Bush.
There's no reason to blame soi-disant "auteurism" for mistreatment.
Writers have thrived in the sun of authentic auteurism.
1822
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:29am
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
Where have writers "thrived"? I must have missed it.
Surely you're not making extravagant claims for
Richard Corliss, are you?
And while we're at it, where do you stand on Lamarr
Trotti? Does he exist for you at all?
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
>
>
>
>
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> > the most damaging thing about
> > auteurism is the way it treats screenwriters.
>
>
> You start about by defining "auteurism" as an ism
> that mistreats
> screenwriters. What if there is another "auteurism"
> that has never
> mistreated screenwriters? Seems to me that
> plentiful attention has been
> paid to the screenwriters you mention for many
> decades now, in some
> cases, and far more often than not, the people
> paying attention to them
> have been critics than most people would describe as
> "auteurist." So I
> question your assumption that "auteurism" is guilty
> of mistreatment --
> except, of course, for what you pre-define as
> "auteurism" in what
> appears to me to be a tautological argument .
> Surely, the attention
> paid screenwriters is not "enough," but not enough
> attention is paid to
> Shakespeare or Molière or Hitchcock or Welles or
> Ford, either, or even
> to Bush.
>
> There's no reason to blame soi-disant "auteurism"
> for mistreatment.
> Writers have thrived in the sun of authentic
> auteurism.
>
>
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1823
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:28am
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
Zach:
> I hate to bring a stinkbomb to the party, but I've
> come to believe the most damaging thing about
> auteurism is the way it treats screenwriters.
No, the most damaging thing is the insistence that there is and must
be only one "auteur", particularly for films where two or more such
auteurs are quite clearly feasible. Consider:
> It's fairly obvious (to me at least) that Jacques
> Prevert is the auteur of "Les Enfants du Paradis,"
> "Lumiere D'Ete" and "Le Crime de M.Lange."
LE CRIME DE M. LANGE is most certainly and so obviously some Renoir!
Ignoring Prevert's major contribution is poor scholarship and
criticism, but the film would be remarkably different if someone
other than Renoir had directed it.
LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS is sort of my whipping boy for auteurism -- I
think it's as good as a film can possibly get while having plainly
mediocre direction. It does have one of the greatest performances of
all time, by Barrault.
> Admittedly any number of scriptwriters are faceless
> hacks. But not enough attention has been given to
> important collaborators like I.A.L. Diamond (Wilder),
> Suso Cecchi D'Amico (Visconti) and Hugo Butler (Losey)
Collaborators are certainly deserving of more exploration. Good
point.
--Zach
1824
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:33am
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
David Ehrenstein wrote:
>And while we're at it, where do you stand on Lamarr
>Trotti? Does he exist for you at all?
>
I stand on his shoulders.
1825
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:42am
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
Rather uncomfortable for him, don't you think?
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
>
>
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> >And while we're at it, where do you stand on Lamarr
> >Trotti? Does he exist for you at all?
> >
>
> I stand on his shoulders.
>
>
>
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1826
From: Paul Fileri
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 6:37am
Subject: Guardian Spits on Welles
Behold the London Guardian's four-article feature (a tribute?) on Orson Welles, a man
(we've heard it before) "destroyed by his own greatness," committing career "suicide."
Recoil upon reading David Thomson and B. Ruby Rich -- the latter is clearly more
interested in Allison Anders and in some mindboggling fashion manages to identify
Tarantino, Aronofsky, Cameron, Fincher, Noe, and Von Trier as Welles's "boy wonder"
acolytes.
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1031003,00.html
Paul
1827
From: Fred Camper
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 7:41am
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
Sorry, gang, I've gotten overwhelmed with work and am something like 100
posts behind reading our group, but I couldn't resist replying to this one.
Paul of course gets it right that this article is yet another version of
the old cliché, and false one, about Welles.
I've long held the view that many others consider extreme that of the
films Welles fully directed (I haven't seen a few of the
never-regularly-released ones, and I'm not counting "Hearts of Age" or
"The Making of Othello,"), "Citizen Kane," while a fine film, is
actually the weakest.
From the lead article you would think that "Touch of Evil" was a mess,
as in Tanya's "You a mess, honey," rather than the all-cylinders-firing
flat-out masterpiece it is. (My defense of it is at
http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/1998/0998/09188.html )
And the Chartres footage in "F for Fake" is among the greatest moment in
any Welles film.
What I hated so much about the lead article is that it reads as if the
writer had never seen the films. The article could have been written
from reading a couple of biographies and looking at scripts of each film
broken down into shots. And in that, it is characteristic of so much
film writing.
As for Ruby Rich's article, the blaming of Welles for the problems of
women and Hollywood seems bizarre in the extreme, and her comparison of
"Touch of Evil" to "Citizen Kane" seems to hinge entirely on their
respective plots as justification for why one is better than the other.
Plus, neither she nor the writer of the lead seem to understand that
"some kind of a man" is spoken with love, by an ex-lover.
As for Welles's influence, since our group began with my post about
"late Wendkos," I might mention that Wendkos in his early films is
clearly, as Sarris understands, deeply influenced by Welles. The opening
of "The Burglar" is a "Citizen Kane" quotation, and the imagery of "The
Brotherhood of the Bell" and "The Mephisto Waltz" presumably would not
have been possible without Welles.
The people who tell the story of Welles the profligate while neglecting
the actual evidence on the screen could tell the same story about dozens
of great artists who lead troubled lives, simply by ignoring the work.
The deaf Beethoven was apparently ridiculous when conducting the world
premiere of his Ninth Symphony, as he could hardly hear the orchestra
and they couldn't keep up with him, or something like that. If you
ignored the music you could make him seem like a real fool. The idea
that failed artists fail because their lives are a wreck is absurd.
Consider the converse: do people who live neat and moral lives make good
art? And of course great artists don't always lead good lives.
Part of the reason we get this drek is that writers need to sound
knowledgeable and superior and tell a good story. Readers also like to
see icons taken down a peg. "Famous Artist John Jones Made Sublime Art
His Whole Life" is not going to attract readers nearly as much as "John
Jones Exposed as a Fake -- Monkeys Painted his Paintings."
- Fred
1828
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:28am
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
I think that there is more than a grain of truth in what you say, David.
However, I would certainly contest a few of your specific assertions.
First, yeah, "Singin'" is as much Comden and Green as Kelly and Donen, but
the creative use of 'scope in "It's Always Fair Weather" and of color and
filters in "Funny Face" is clearly the work of either Donen or his DP and
those effects add immeasurably to both the meaning and the quality of the
films.
My father-in-law went to school with Izzy Diamond; David (may his memory be
a blessing) says that the initials stood for Interscholastic Algebra League
'cause apparently Diamond was a math wiz. (David became a physicist, not a
screenwriter.) There is a definite and major shift in the tone and focus of
Wilder's films after he stopped working with Brackett -- they are more
playful, and there are a lot more comedies than in the first part of his
directing career -- and clearly a lot of that had to do with Diamond. On the
other hand, Diamond's work before Wilder is pretty insignificant, which
suggests some combination of maturing and Wilder must have come into play.
As for M. Lange, I'm with Zach on this one; Prevert gives the film some of
its airiness and some of its politics, but Renoir gives it the visual
structure of the courtyard-as-community is the film's spine.
George Robinson
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Ehrenstein"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 12:10 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] The Return of the Repressed
> I hate to bring a stinkbomb to the party, but I've
> come to believe the most damaging thing about
> auteurism is the way it treats screenwriters. They're
> kind of like a crazy relative locked away in the attic
> that nobody wants to talk about, though everyone knows
> is there.
>
> Admittedly any number of scriptwriters are faceless
> hacks. But not enough attention has been given to
> important collaborators like I.A.L. Diamond (Wilder),
> Suso Cecchi D'Amico (Visconti) and Hugo Butler (Losey)
>
> It's fairly obvious (to me at least) that Jacques
> Prevert is the auteur of "Les Enfants du Paradis,"
> "Lumiere D'Ete" and "Le Crime de M.Lange."
>
> Likewise "Singin' in the Rain" is a film by Betty
> Comden and Adolph Green, and "The Manchurian
> Candidate"
> is the work of the creator of "Lord Love a Duck" far
> more than the metteur en scene of "Seconds."
>
> And "The Quiller Memorandum" is a Harold Pinter film
> to the manner born.
>
> Now I'll just sit back and wait for the brickbats to
> rain down upon my head.
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>
1829
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:45am
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
Unlike David Thomson, a man destroyed by his love of the sound of his own
voice.
Schmuck used to be a decent film critic until he began his love affair with
a mirror.
George Robinson
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Fileri"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 2:37 AM
Subject: [a_film_by] Guardian Spits on Welles
> Behold the London Guardian's four-article feature (a tribute?) on Orson
Welles, a man
> (we've heard it before) "destroyed by his own greatness," committing
career "suicide."
> Recoil upon reading David Thomson and B. Ruby Rich -- the latter is
clearly more
> interested in Allison Anders and in some mindboggling fashion manages to
identify
> Tarantino, Aronofsky, Cameron, Fincher, Noe, and Von Trier as Welles's
"boy wonder"
> acolytes.
>
> http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1031003,00.html
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
1830
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 0:54pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
"First, yeah, "Singin'" is as much Comden and Green as
Kelly and Donen, but
the creative use of 'scope in "It's Always Fair
Weather" and of color and
filters in "Funny Face" is clearly the work of either
Donen or his DP and
those effects add immeasurably to both the meaning and
the quality of the
films."
Not"as much" --MORE. A fortiori "It's Always Fair
Weather" (a major influence on Sondheim's "Merrily We
Roll Along") which was derived from Dumas' "Vingt Ans
Apres."
As for the color filters in "Funny Face" look not to
the veteran DR, Ray June, but rather to Richard
Avedon.
And the script was by Roger Edens' BF, Leonard Gershe.
Donen's creativity can scarcely be denied. But his
talent is that of a collaborator not an originator.
--- George Robinson wrote:
>
>
>
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1831
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 1:03pm
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
Welles "destroyed by his own genius"?
It only serves to toremind me of my favorite line in
the entire history of the cinema (from "Sunday Bloody
Sunda") :"Her come those tired old tits again."
Where would David Thomson be without the "failure" of
Orson Welles? Writing about Michael Cimino one
supposes.
--- Paul Fileri wrote:
> Behold the London Guardian's four-article feature (a
> tribute?) on Orson Welles, a man
> (we've heard it before) "destroyed by his own
> greatness," committing career "suicide."
> Recoil upon reading David Thomson and B. Ruby Rich
> -- the latter is clearly more
> interested in Allison Anders and in some
> mindboggling fashion manages to identify
> Tarantino, Aronofsky, Cameron, Fincher, Noe, and Von
> Trier as Welles's "boy wonder"
> acolytes.
>
>
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1031003,00.html
>
> Paul
>
>
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1832
From: Rick Curnutte
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 1:35pm
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I've long held the view that many others consider extreme that of
the
> films Welles fully directed (I haven't seen a few of the
> never-regularly-released ones, and I'm not counting "Hearts of
Age" or
> "The Making of Othello,"), "Citizen Kane," while a fine film, is
> actually the weakest.
Yes. For me, KANE, while certainly a revolutionary breakthrough, is
less effective than even an incomplete AMBERSONS. And my two
favorite Welles films, CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT and F FOR FAKE, seem to
encompass everything Welles was trying to say throughout his career
much more fluently and effortlessly.
I agree with Fred, as well, that most people like to see legends
torn down. While I believe that a serious reevaluation of KANE is in
order (the greatest film ever for 50 years?), but by no means does
that mean that Welles entire career was a failure.
Rick
1833
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 2:43pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
Where do you think he prefers for people to stand on him?
Don't you stand on him? I thought that was your point.
Myself, I stand on many shoulders. I have many feet.
David Ehrenstein wrote:
> Rather uncomfortable for him, don't you think?
>
> --- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> >
> >
> > David Ehrenstein wrote:
> >
> > >And while we're at it, where do you stand on Lamarr
> > >Trotti? Does he exist for you at all?
> > >
> >
> > I stand on his shoulders.
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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1834
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:29pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
My point was that people like Lamar Trotti wrote
scripts that were INTERPRETED by directors like John
Ford (eg."Young Mr. Lincoln.")
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> Where do you think he prefers for people to stand on
> him?
> Don't you stand on him? I thought that was your
> point.
>
> Myself, I stand on many shoulders. I have many
> feet.
>
>
>
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> > Rather uncomfortable for him, don't you think?
> >
> > --- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > David Ehrenstein wrote:
> > >
> > > >And while we're at it, where do you stand on
> Lamarr
> > > >Trotti? Does he exist for you at all?
> > > >
> > >
> > > I stand on his shoulders.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site
> design software
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1835
From: Paul Fileri
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:35pm
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
Rick wrote:
> I agree with Fred, as well, that most people like to see legends
> torn down. While I believe that a serious reevaluation of KANE is in
> order (the greatest film ever for 50 years?), but by no means does
> that mean that Welles entire career was a failure.
But I think it's important to note that the Guardian feature isn't an example of a
legend being torn down. It's a perfect example of a legend/myth -- of Welles as a
career self-suicide who never made anything good or at the same level of achievment
after his early roots -- being perpetuated (it was enacted long ago). No respectable
Welles scholar sticks to this convenient story, ignoring known facts, regardless of
one's opinion of his later work in comparison to his earlier output. The fable of
Welles that Thomson and Conrad cling to and caress should be torn down.
Paul
1836
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:39pm
Subject: Re: Interview with Anna Karina
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> This may have to do with the rights to the Bizet
> opera.
>
You're right. I asked on rec.arts.opera and was told that the heirs of
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, the librettists of the opera,
filed a lawsuit that prevented the film's exhibition in France.
According to IMDb, it finally premiered in France on Dec. 16, 1981.
Paul
1837
From:
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 4:50pm
Subject: Fritz Lang and Geometry
"Fritz Lang's vision of life is profoundly expressed by his visual forms" - Andrew Sarris.
So what are Lang's visual forms?
Last night, The Big Heat (1953) was on TV again. These notes were added to my Lang article. They are certainly missing many important things. They are offered as a down payment on the goal of understanding Lang.
Clocks, Mirrors and Images
Lang uses his traditional subjects here. Images on walls, both paintings and photographs, are prominent here. Ford's house has a large photograph of a group of policeman. Although the dialogue does not specify this, one suspects it is Ford's graduation picture from the police academy. It is situated in the most prominent spot in the house, where one would place a religious icon. It does have a quasi-religious significance: it expresses Ford's whole world view, the value he places on being a police officer. It expresses what he and his family find most meaningful in the world.
The second shot in the film compares the evil Jeanette Nolan character with the grandfather clock on her staircase. Both are tall vertical figures. The shot is a kind of visual pun, expressing the equivalency of these two forces. Since clocks always have a sinister meaning in Lang, this is a striking indication of Nolan's power and sinister nature. A clock also presides over the bar, another place of corruption.
Mirrors here are associated with Gloria Grahame, and her pursuit by the monstrous Lee Marvin. This is similar to Joan Bennett and the villainous Dan Duryea in The Woman in the Window. Mirrors also are linked to other corrupt characters: there is one in the commissioner's' office, and at the Lagana mansion. When Ford moves into the hotel room, it too has a mirror, as well as one of the film's numerous and sinister pitchers.
The desk of the crooked cop who dies at the beginning recalls the desks owned by villains in many early Lang films. Much of the evil in the world seems to be plotted out at this desk. It is at the center of corruption. The prominence of a nearby clock also suggests the sinister nature of this locale.
Katie Bannion is associated with her refrigerator near the start of the film. In a movie filled with fire imagery, she is the only character associated with cooling.
Sinister Circles
Sinister circles abound here, just as they do in Metropolis and Ministry of Fear. Whenever we get near any people involved in the corruption, circular objects are near them. The cop's desk at the beginning contains a round lamp. Later, the house will include a cabinet near the door with swirling lines in its front glass panels. There is also a circular table near the door. When evil Mrs. Duncan talks to the police, there is a round little pitcher behind her. This is one of many sinister pitchers in the film. Late in the film, Mrs. Duncan sits in a highly curved chair.
The bar is a riot of circular forms. There are circular booths, carved out of an extended surface that joins the booths together: a vivid geometrical form. The actual bar itself is circular. There are circular shelves and tables inside it. When Lang shows a clock over the bar, it has a circular dial, and Lang then moves his camera down to reveal a still life of round brandy snifters. The staircase leading into the bar is circular: one of the few circular stairs in Lang. The phone in the booth has a round dial, and there is a picture on the wall of the booth that is all curving lines. The canopy outside in the street has scalloped edges, forming a series of near semicircles. The dress worn by Lucy Chapman, who works at the bar, is full of circular scallops on the shoulders and elsewhere. She also wears circular earrings, and a round, almost cylindrical necklace.
Lagana's big mob mansion has a circular drive out front, and a circular porch with shallow circular steps leading down. Lagana's desk has a lamp with a large round shade, and a unique curved horn-like stand. The horn is another circular shape. The desk chair has curved shapes in its back, and a large globe is in the corner of the room, often shown in the same frame with the mobsters. A later scene shows the curved fireplace screen, and a set of round decanters on a table in front of it: one of many sinister containers of liquid in the film.
Early in the film, Lagana is in bed, while his bodyguard George stands beside him. Lagana's bed has a round region in its headboard, and fills the left of the screen with its curvilinear shapes. By contrast, George is on the right side of the screen, in a region defined exclusively by rectilinear objects. It makes a pointed contrast between the two men, and their respective worlds. Lang cuts to this scene directly after a shot of the desk at Duncan's and its circular lamp, and shows another circular lamp here; this is perhaps an example of the associational montage found at its peak in M.
The commissioner's office has a long, oddly curved lamp on the desk, and a circular backed chair in which Ford sits - one of the few times Ford is against circular imagery in the film. Somehow, the chair seems to belong to the commissioner, and Ford is an alien presence in it, deeply uncomfortable. The commissioner also pours from another of the film's sinister circular pitchers.
Lee Marvin's apartment has a round hanging lantern, a semi-circular table in front of the mirror, a pair of lamps whose shiny stands are strangely curving pyramidal shapes, and that most sinister pitcher of all, the coffee pot. There is also an umbrella on the outdoor patio. Debby wears circular earrings, with hollow centers. By contrast, there is also an octagonal table in the apartment; such polygonal imagery is more often associated with Glenn Ford's hero in the film.
The auto-wrecking firm is full of tires, and circular shapes provided by the cars. There is also a round stool inside for the boss Mr. Atkins. This industrial area anticipates the railroad yard in Human Desire. Its chain link fence recalls the grill work in the window of Lt. Wilkes.
Larry's room has fans of cards in pictures on the wall. Lang also showed fans of cards in Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler. The fans here have a nearly circular shape.
One use of circles in the film has nothing to do with corruption, although it is deeply sad and tragic. When Ford's house is being emptied out, the last objects taken from it are all circular: the lamps, the baby carriage with its round wheels, the phone on the floor. This scene is highly moving.
Ford and Geometry
By contrast, the hero played by Glenn Ford is associated with both polygonal and complex rectilinear imagery.
We see Ford in a series of three mirrors at Mrs. Duncan's. The mirrors are arranged at slight angles to each other, forming one of Lang's favorite polygonal shapes. Ford also moves near a bay window, one whose seat is a series of polygonal lines of alternating lengths. This is a geometrically complex window. We also see him with an octagonal table in front of the window. The teletype machine at the police station also has a non-90 degree arc on its surface; it provides information to Ford.
These are the only polygons linked to Ford, but his spaces also tend to form "complex rectilinear regions". Ford's office is an open region at the station, with many twists and turns in its outline, all strictly rectangular. His hotel room is also irregular in shape but rectilinear. Ford has two big scenes on the complex rectilinear staircase at his in-laws' apartment, a staircase also full of open space. There is also an outside staircase leading up to this typically urban building, which recalls Joan Bennett's apartment exterior in The Woman in the Window.
Ford's house has almost nothing circular in it, aside from a few glasses and some paper towels. It too is an open region of a complex rectilinear shape. The rectilinear purity of this house is striking. His daughter's bed, on which Ford sits, is a unique rectilinear blend of side walls with slats, an open area for sitting near the foot, and a flattened U baseboard. It is both complex and three dimensional, one of the film's unique shapes.
Mike Grost
1838
From: Rick Curnutte
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 5:42pm
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Fileri" wrote:
> But I think it's important to note that the Guardian feature isn't
an example of a
> legend being torn down.
No, you're right and I realized this. I was making a general comment
on Welles and perception of him, not on the exact content of the
story at hand. Thanks for helping me make that clear, which I didn't
in my original post.
Rick
1839
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 6:14pm
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
Jesus, the Thomson and Conrad are bad, but the B. Ruby Rich has to be
the stupidest, most-ill-conceived film-related article I've ever
read. And there is definitely some tough competition there.
PWC
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Fileri" wrote:
> Behold the London Guardian's four-article feature (a tribute?) on
Orson Welles, a man
> (we've heard it before) "destroyed by his own greatness,"
committing career "suicide."
> Recoil upon reading David Thomson and B. Ruby Rich -- the latter is
clearly more
> interested in Allison Anders and in some mindboggling fashion
manages to identify
> Tarantino, Aronofsky, Cameron, Fincher, Noe, and Von Trier as
Welles's "boy wonder"
> acolytes.
>
>
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1031003,00.htm
l
>
> Paul
1840
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 6:27pm
Subject: Return of the Repressed
1.Directors interpret scripts - even their own. When Joe Dante
decided to film the approach to the house in "It's a Good Life" set
against a backdrop of burned trees, he was interpreting Matheson's
script and even his career by identifying that house with the one in
Usher, also scripted by Matheson. I again quote Jean-Claude Biette's
conclusion to his piece on Wichita: "The job of the director is to
get the mosr out of the script - psychologically, morally,
ideologically. I can imagine no other definition of 'mise-en-scene.'
2. Directors have lots of input into the script-writing process, and
often continue making director's rewrites during shooting. This can
range from Cronenberg rewriter Poague's ghastly script for The Fly
and just not taking credit to sitting in the room every day together
(Welles and Manckiewicz, co-credited on Kane), to sitting with the
writer till a 65-pp treatment with detailed scene renditions is on
paper (Hitchcock), then reading drafts and giving "notes." Everyone
thought it was some kind of surrealist gesture when Resnais said he
followed Robbe-Grillet's Marienbad script closely, but AR pointed out
at the time that the way they worked on the script was SOP in
Hollywood.
There's a pricey French book which I wish we could have in English
comparing all versions of The Big Heat from book to film - The Double
Scenario of Fritz Lang - to show how mise-en-scene really begins at
the script stage, and writing continues in production and post-
production. Conversely, there's a funny article you can find in the
Herrick by a school teacher called "Rear Window: A Film by John
Michael Hayes," entirely based on the fact that there was a script
and Hayes'was the only name on it. Read the Cahiers Young Mr. Lincoln
piece for what this meant in that instance.
3. Look at M. Lange and Lumiere d'Ete, by two very distinctive film
authors, and tell me that Prevert is the author of those films.
4. Donen is a special case because his collaborators on the musicals
are so visible, and often co-signed. (Did you know, by the way, that
the sound of Kelly dancing was often looped by Donen, who was also a
dancer?) He pays tribute to collaborators more than anyone - look at
his Oscar speech - but he is also a lifelong technical innovator, and
I'd be careful about atributing any technical innovation in a Donen
film to Avedon or anyone else. Compare Donen to Sidney (also a
technical wiz, also at MGM) and it's night and day. I like both, but
Harvey Girls is definitely a small pleasure next to Singin' or Fair
Weather. And the latter are different in kind from The Bandwagon and
An American in Paris. That scale is a scale of film authors, from
minor to good to great, and it will continue to be constructed and
written about that way for the same reason that that school teacher
didn't do a follow-up article called "Peyton Place: A Film by John
Michael Hayes."
5. I love Evan Hunter's books as Ed McBain, and I just had the
pleasure of watching for the first time Strangers When We Meet, which
he adaptated from his novel. I'd say there's more Hunter in that film
than in The Birds, for obvious reasons, but I can tell without
reading it what the book would be like, and it would have few of the
qualities that make SWWM Quine's best film. However it was written,
it's Quine's handling of the party scene, ably executed by a great
ensemble cast, that makes the magic, not Hunter's cliched speeches
about crabgrass. Hats off to Hunter, whom Hitchcock considered a real
writer, capable of inventing stories and characters, and not just a
technician, but the visual plan of that party is the kind of blood in
the water I move toward - and I'm an old English major!
1841
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 6:35pm
Subject: The Guardian Spits on Welles
The myth was created by the RKO Publicity Dept. at the behest of
George Scahefer in order to justify throwing the Mercury off the lot.
GS met personally with the editor of Hollywood Reporter (aka The
Repeater) to tell him how the story should be played. All this
happened while Welles was still in South Ameica, Subsequently,
writers like Higham and Thomson just kept printing and elaborating on
the myth.
1842
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 6:37pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
Joe Dante, by the way, has pointedly declined to take
a possessive credit on his films. They're "directed by
Joe Dante" not "a Joe Dante film" -- even though they
couldn't be by anyone else.
--- hotlove666 wrote:
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1843
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 6:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
Indeed. Ruby takes the cake.
But it's fairly obvious that Orson Welles is in no way
responsible for Alison Anders' manifest lack of
talent.
--- Patrick Ciccone wrote:
> Jesus, the Thomson and Conrad are bad, but the B.
> Ruby Rich has to be
> the stupidest, most-ill-conceived film-related
> article I've ever
> read. And there is definitely some tough
> competition there.
>
> PWC
>
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Fileri"
> wrote:
> > Behold the London Guardian's four-article feature
> (a tribute?) on
> Orson Welles, a man
> > (we've heard it before) "destroyed by his own
> greatness,"
> committing career "suicide."
> > Recoil upon reading David Thomson and B. Ruby Rich
> -- the latter is
> clearly more
> > interested in Allison Anders and in some
> mindboggling fashion
> manages to identify
> > Tarantino, Aronofsky, Cameron, Fincher, Noe, and
> Von Trier as
> Welles's "boy wonder"
> > acolytes.
> >
> >
>
http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1031003,00.htm
> l
> >
> > Paul
>
>
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1844
From: Rick Curnutte
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 6:45pm
Subject: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Indeed. Ruby takes the cake.
>
> But it's fairly obvious that Orson Welles is in no way
> responsible for Alison Anders' manifest lack of
> talent.
Yeah, the highlight of her extraordinarily lackluster filmography is
probably the episode of SEX AND THE CITY that she directed.
Rick
1845
From:
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 2:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: Guardian Spits on Welles
Echoing Fred and Rick, I prefer at least half a dozen other Welles films to
"Citizen Kane" - "The Magnificent Ambersons," "Touch of Evil," "Chimes at
Midnight," "The Immortal Story," "F for Fake," "Filming 'Othello'" - and would even
go so far as to say that the best material from "The Dreamers" surpasses the
entirety of "Kane." That isn't to say that it's not a marvelous movie: a
sequence like the transition from the library to Kane's boyhood is a key moment in
Welles; the performances of Orson, Cotten, Moorehead, et al, are superb; and
the film has the gleeful tone of a master discovering his tools. But even
Welles himself (who, like King Vidor, must be considered one of the most
'conscious' of all film artists; I think he knew exactly what he was doing and could
speak quite elegantly his films) preferred other movies to "Kane"; he was on
record as saying "The Trial" was his favorite until he made "Chimes," whereupon
that became the film he cited when asked for his own personal favorite. ("If
I had to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that would be the one I'd
offer up.")
There are many reasons why I prefer "late" Welles to early Welles (though
"Ambersons" can scarcely be considered "late" in chronological terms, it's
definitely more "mature" than "Kane" in cinematic expressiveness terms), but
generally they relate to the greater degree of personal expression evidenced in the
former category; "Kane," for all its brilliance and resonance, has always felt
the tiniest bit hollow to me when compared to the deep feeling on display in
"Ambersons" and "Chimes" and, of course, "The Dreamers." I also just think he
became a better, more sophisticated film artist: maybe he never replicated the
stylistic panache and glitz of "Kane," but I don't see anything in that film
to match the use of space in the Battle of Shrewsbury or the rejection scene
in "Chimes at Midnight."
I'll admit to a possible bias in my part in that I came to Welles' body of
work in an unconventional order: "Ambersons" was the first one I saw, the
restored "Touch of Evil" was the first one I saw theatrically, then "The Trial,"
then "Chimes"... and only then did I see "Kane."
I think the most productive way to think about Welles' career was proposed, I
believe, by Jonathan: not as a failed studio director, but as a successful
independent director. In that context, what stands out to me, having over the
last year seen so many Welles films (released and unreleased), is Welles'
remarkable adaptability: nothing was going to stop him from making movies, even if
that meant financing them himself or shooting them (literally) in his own
backyard. And nothing did stop him until the very end: the night he died he was
preparing to shoot some final scenes at UCLA for his 10-years in the making
magic film.
Ruby Rich's article is just painful. And it's even more painful once you
reflect on the profound way with which Welles collaborated with a woman - Oja
Kodar - during the last twenty years of his life. In this light, to try and
saddle Welles with this macho reputation is simply idiotic. Oja even directed
sections of "The Other Side of the Wind"! (And to David: I've always gone to
pains to recognize the importance of Kodar and Gary Graver's collaborations in
the late Welles films - and I'm as much of an auteurist as anyone here!)
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
1846
From: Tristan
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 7:25pm
Subject: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
If you hadn't heard yet... Thoughts anyone?
1847
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 7:31pm
Subject: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
75 years too late!!!
--- Tristan wrote:
> If you hadn't heard yet... Thoughts anyone?
>
>
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1848
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 5:07pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
You asked me where I stood on Trotti.
Your main point was that people whom you maliciously define as
"auteurists" mistreat screenwriters. I replied that auteurist critics
have written a great deal about screenwriters, not simply in books
devoted to screenwriters but in books devoted to directors with whom
they worked. Apparently you're unfamiliar with the works done on
Hitchcock and his screenwriters by Ken Mogg and many other people who've
written about Hitchcock, not to mention many other directors, not to
mention my own work on Ford and Rossellini. Before asking if I've heard
of Trotti you could at least have checked the index of my book (which
was written before any of the Fox papers became available).
Where do you "stand on" Trotti? Where do you "stand on" screenwriters?
How many books and articles have you written about screenwriters? Why
have you ignored the vast literature about screenwriters during the last
hundred years? When are you going to reveal in detail exactly what
Trotti's scripts and ideas and input were to the films he collaborated on?
But, more to the point of what started this exchange: do you seriously
feel that anyone who does NOT mistreat screenwriters is automatically
NOT an auteurist? Why do you define "auteurists" as people who abuse
screenwriters?
If you want to praise screenwriters, why don't you just do so (without
attacking "auteurists" (and me))?
David Ehrenstein wrote:
> My point was that people like Lamar Trotti wrote
> scripts that were INTERPRETED by directors like John
> Ford (eg."Young Mr. Lincoln.")
>
> --- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> > Where do you think he prefers for people to stand on
> > him?
> > Don't you stand on him? I thought that was your
> > point.
> >
> > Myself, I stand on many shoulders. I have many
> > feet.
> >
> >
> >
> > David Ehrenstein wrote:
> >
> > > Rather uncomfortable for him, don't you think?
> > >
> > > --- Tag Gallagher wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > David Ehrenstein wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >And while we're at it, where do you stand on
> > Lamarr
> > > > >Trotti? Does he exist for you at all?
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > I stand on his shoulders.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________
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1849
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:29pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
"But, more to the point of what started this exchange:
do you seriously
feel that anyone who does NOT mistreat screenwriters
is automatically
NOT an auteurist? Why do you define "auteurists" as
people who abuse
screenwriters?"
Whoa! Hold the phone!
"Screenwriter abuse" is going way overboard.
"Screenwirter neglect" is more to the point.
What I've been trying to bring to this discussion is
some semblance of concern for those elements of
filmmaking can't be knee-jerkingly attributed to the
director.
In my opinion there are very few real auteurs. Fellini
and Hitchcock certainly qualify, but I wouldn't call
my favorite director of all time, Patrice Chereau, an
autuer.
There ae a host of really good and really better than
just good directors who aren't auteurs.
And there are more ways of looking at a film that
"through" it's director.
Frankly in most cases I find director-centered
analysis to be of increasingly minimal interest.
And I say this as someone who has written a lot about
directors in the past.
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
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1850
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:43pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
>
>
> What I've been trying to bring to this discussion is
> some semblance of concern for those elements of
> filmmaking can't be knee-jerkingly attributed to the
> director.
The concern has not been lacking among authentic auteurists. That's my
point. Your either/or situation that simply does not exist.
Most good director studies try as much as possible to trace the genesis
of a film through its writers. It is very difficult to determine what
Lamar Trotti contributed to films -- all the more so when people like
Will Rogers, Irwin Cobb and Ford were also on board. If documents and
memos and transcripts of discussions existed, this would be fabulous.
But I don't know of such materials. It was far easier to trace the
writing and scripts and treatments of Paisan or Roma città aperta with
their dozens of writers than with any Ford film: but I haven't had
access to recently available documents.
The attention to "auteur" directors has served to bring a lot of
attention to various films that would otherwise have been neglected, and
along with that attention, attention to the writers. Would Hermann
Mankiewicz be so well known if Hathaway had directed Kane? This is not
to denigrate writers, only to point out that, as I said, screenwriters
have profitted from the sun of auteurism. Screenwriters are also
auteurs. No one ever denied this, least of all Truffaut, Ford or me.
>
>
> In my opinion there are very few real auteurs. Fellini
> and Hitchcock certainly qualify, but I wouldn't call
> my favorite director of all time, Patrice Chereau, an
> autuer.
You can define "auteur" anyway you like; everybody else does. But when
you start accusing "auteurists" of these terrible crimes, I take it
personally. Besides, it's not true, just not true.
Myself, I think that if a hundred people contributed to a film in ways
that leave trace of their personality, then each of those hundred people
is an auteur. Ford said it was wrong to compare directors to writers,
that it is more appropriate to compare them to architects. But others
directors do it all themselves...
The question isn't if someone is an "auteur." It's whether their
artists and what the peculiar nature of their art is. For me, any great
artist entirely redefines "cinema."
>
>
> There ae a host of really good and really better than
> just good directors who aren't auteurs.
>
> And there are more ways of looking at a film that
> "through" it's director.
Again, you're shadow boxing with non-existent demons. Nobody worth
listening to ever made any statements stating otherwise. Least of all
any authentic auteurist.
1851
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:49pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
"Again, you're shadow boxing with non-existent demons.
Nobody worth
listening to ever made any statements stating
otherwise. Least of all
any authentic auteurist."
Then we're going to have to throw out half of film
criticism. These "demons" (your word, not mine) have
existed for years.
> Myself, I think that if a hundred people contributed
> to a film in ways
> that leave trace of their personality, then each of
> those hundred people
> is an auteur.
Well I certainly don't.
> Ford said it was wrong to compare
> directors to writers,
> that it is more appropriate to compare them to
> architects.
I'd compare them to orchestra conductors.
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
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1852
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:54pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
Oooh, screenwriter abuse! Sounds like kinky fun to me.
Where do I sign up?
All joking aside, one of my minor misgivings about this list in the
month or two since I joined has been that we seem to be spend an
inordinate amount of time rehashing these thirty-year-old battles -- who
is an auteur? can a screenwriter be an auteur? and so on.
There really comes a point at which these questions, while never to be
answered definitively, just aren't that compelling anymore. I began
writing film criticism in 1971 when these wars -- and that's what they
felt like back then -- were in full flame. But after thirty-plus years I
find other questions more interesting, at least in part (I suspect)
because I've seen all the Hawks films, all the Hitchcocks, all the
whoevers, and I can't work up that much enthusiasm for determining if
Reginald LeBorg is an auteur. In recent years, I find myself drawn much
more to questions of narrative and signification -- how do films create
meaning, how do they tell stories, how did film "grammar" evolve --
which are somewhat old hat also, but for me of more current interest.
Similarly, I've become fascinated with questions about genre and have
even developed a certain perverse interest in the B western (Ah, the
joys of Joseph Kane and Lesley Selander -- not to mention Ed Killy and
David Selman!)
Besides, aren't we all more or less on the same page here? Or at least
in the same chapter?
George (Lost my place in the book altogether) Robinson
David Ehrenstein wrote:
>"But, more to the point of what started this exchange:
>do you seriously
>feel that anyone who does NOT mistreat screenwriters
>is automatically
>NOT an auteurist? Why do you define "auteurists" as
>people who abuse
>screenwriters?"
>
>Whoa! Hold the phone!
>
>"Screenwriter abuse" is going way overboard.
>"Screenwirter neglect" is more to the point.
>
>What I've been trying to bring to this discussion is
>some semblance of concern for those elements of
>filmmaking can't be knee-jerkingly attributed to the
>director.
>
>In my opinion there are very few real auteurs. Fellini
>and Hitchcock certainly qualify, but I wouldn't call
>my favorite director of all time, Patrice Chereau, an
>autuer.
>
>There ae a host of really good and really better than
>just good directors who aren't auteurs.
>
>And there are more ways of looking at a film that
>"through" it's director.
>
>Frankly in most cases I find director-centered
>analysis to be of increasingly minimal interest.
>And I say this as someone who has written a lot about
>directors in the past.
>
>--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
>
>
>__________________________________
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>
>
>
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>
>
>
>.
>
>
>
--
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
1853
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:11pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
I wouldn't argue with that. Indeed, I'm not that big a Donen fan --
except for Funny Face and It's Always Fair Weather.
Incidentally, I think there is a lot more thematic consistency (and
structural consistency for that matter) in Comden and Green's writing
than in Donen's filmography.
g
David Ehrenstein wrote:
>"First, yeah, "Singin'" is as much Comden and Green as
>Kelly and Donen, but
>the creative use of 'scope in "It's Always Fair
>Weather" and of color and
>filters in "Funny Face" is clearly the work of either
>Donen or his DP and
>those effects add immeasurably to both the meaning and
>the quality of the
>films."
>
>Not"as much" --MORE. A fortiori "It's Always Fair
>Weather" (a major influence on Sondheim's "Merrily We
>Roll Along") which was derived from Dumas' "Vingt Ans
>Apres."
>
>As for the color filters in "Funny Face" look not to
>the veteran DR, Ray June, but rather to Richard
>Avedon.
>And the script was by Roger Edens' BF, Leonard Gershe.
>
>Donen's creativity can scarcely be denied. But his
>talent is that of a collaborator not an originator.
>
>
>--- George Robinson wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>__________________________________
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>
>
>
>.
>
>
>
--
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
1854
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:26pm
Subject: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Yeah. She was a Nazi-loving bitch who made wildly overrated very boring
films.
She had 60 camera crews for Triumph of the Will and still managed to use
footage that was out of focus.
And in or out of focus, the film is an attempt to make Hitler into God.
May she burn in hell, the fucking bitch.
George Robinson
Tristan wrote:
>If you hadn't heard yet... Thoughts anyone?
>
>
>
>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
>Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>.
>
>
>
--
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
1855
From: George Robinson
Date: Tue Sep 9, 2003 8:24pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
I'm five foot eight myself.
But if I was going to stand on someone's shoulders, it would be
Shaquille O'Neal. He's tall and his shoulders are broad enough to
support my (not inconsiderable) weight.
George (My weight? None of your damned business) Robinson
Tag Gallagher wrote:
>Where do you think he prefers for people to stand on him?
>Don't you stand on him? I thought that was your point.
>
>Myself, I stand on many shoulders. I have many feet.
>
>
>
>David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
>
>
>>Rather uncomfortable for him, don't you think?
>>
>>--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
>>
>>
>>>David Ehrenstein wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>And while we're at it, where do you stand on Lamarr
>>>>Trotti? Does he exist for you at all?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I stand on his shoulders.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>__________________________________
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>
>
>
>[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
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--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
1856
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 1:11am
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> 1.Directors interpret scripts - even their own. When Joe Dante
> decided to film the approach to the house in "It's a Good Life" set
> against a backdrop of burned trees, he was interpreting Matheson's
> script and even his career by identifying that house with the one
in
> Usher, also scripted by Matheson. I again quote Jean-Claude
Biette's
> conclusion to his piece on Wichita: "The job of the director is to
> get the most out of the script - psychologically, morally,
> ideologically. I can imagine no other definition of 'mise-en-scene.'
I find the word "interpretation" misleading, since I think of film
direction as, at least in certain films, a creative act. It's also
rather demeaning, since interpretation implies that the screenplay has
aesthetic, ontological, or moral priority: it implies that the
director serves the script. On the contrary the script serves the
film: in mainstream narrative film, a good script provides
opportunities for effective mise en scene. The script rarely stands on
its own, and its literary value may be in exact opposition to its
cinematic value. Are scripts of any interest apart from the film? In
the theater, speech usually predominates, and the written play is the
origin of speech. In films speech is only one element among many;
"filmed theater" can make great films, but it's a limited strategy.
Lionel Trilling reviewed Bergman films without seeing the films, but
by only reading the scripts. Each to his own, but I think he was
missing out on something.
I think the idea of director as interpreter of the script also implies
that the film ought to serve the narrative of the film -- which I
don't think is the case.
Rather than the analogy to orchestral conductors -- I think directors
have far from freedom than even the Mahlers and Furtwänglers among
conductors -- I'd choose, for some films, the idea of composite
cinema, where the analogy is made to opera ("simultaneously narrative
and abstract, with the story bearing the same relation to the other
'codes' as the libretto of an opera bears to the music." - Noël
Burch.) Yoshikata Yoda and Carl Mayer can be our Beaumarchais and
Boito. If people can't bear to call directors "creators," I'd choose
to emphasize the role of choice, not interpretation. In the last 20
years popular music has become dominated by the role of choice -- hip
hop sampling and a DJ culture, sampling and mixing preexisting sounds
-- the role of choice has reached a qualitatively new level. Mizoguchi
and Murnau can be our Public Enemy and DJ Shadow.
Plus remember that the chef gets all the praise for the steak. The
cow
never gets any credit. That's life, that's art.
Paul
"I have never said that. What I said is that they deserve to be
treated like cattle."
1857
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 4:44am
Subject: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
>If you hadn't heard yet... Thoughts anyone?
She was guest of honor for the 1997 Cinecon convention. An
aberration for this organization that normally screens hard-to-see
silents and early talkies and has old Hollywood stars as guests. She
was given a prize for her body of cinematic work. The guy who ran
the convention that year and was responsible for the prize was ousted
and I don't think I've seen him around since. The award ceremony was
more fractious than when Elia Kazan received his lifetime achievement
Oscar.
Leni managed to get her picture taken with the mayor of Glendale, CA,
which later proved to be a public embarrassment for him. He pleaded
ignorance of who she was.
I met her briefly at the convention and my impression was that she
had tremendous energy, but that there was something deeply
duplicitous just under the surface. (No surprise there, perhaps.)
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
1858
From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:00am
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
> I find the word "interpretation" misleading, since I think of film
> direction as, at least in certain films, a creative act.
Maybe more like the way a portrait painter "interprets" his or her
model?
> I think the idea of director as interpreter of the script also
implies
> that the film ought to serve the narrative of the film -- which I
> don't think is the case.
I don't understand the viewpoint that looks down on narrative (as if
telling stories were a vulgar, populist thing to do). And I don't
think the librettist/composer analogy holds, because most filmmakers,
the avant-garde included, use representations as their raw material,
& this is only true of composers in a much more nebulous way. Debate
over screenwriters vs directors ignores the reality that most
worthwhile directors ARE screenwriters to some extent, as hotlove666
points out (post 1840). Though historically it may have been a useful
rhetorical gesture to claim that what happens at the production stage
is the only thing that matters, the saner argument for auteurism is
simply that filmmaking is a holistic process and the director is the
person whose job it is to unify all the elements.
Cinema remains a bastard form, and there is probably an enduring
split between those who borrow critical terms from theories of
theatre and literature, and those who think more about its relation
to painting and the other visual arts. Falling temperamentally into
the former camp, I've been struck by a couple of interviews where
Olivier Assayas talks about filmmaking as "writing" -- mentioning
Bergman and Cassavetes as filmmakers whose achievement was founded on
the fact that they were also great writers in the full literary sense.
JTW
1859
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 7:51am
Subject: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, George Robinson wrote:
> Yeah. She was a Nazi-loving bitch who made wildly overrated very
boring films.
I am deeply offended and surprised that such a comment of slur is
allowed here, as Mr. Robinsons comment is notning but that of an
ignorant Troll. I hope Peter takes actions against him.
Leni was not and never was a Nazi. She was an oppotunist, who took
advantage of the regime, a crime she spend four years in prison for,
and later her friendship with Hitler, to make films that changed the
nature of film (I doubt that Ichikawa ever would have gotten the idea
or structure of "Tokyo Olympia" had it not been for Olympia).
On many occassions Leni has been questioned and attacked by the press
and others on her relationship with Hitler (it was rumored she was his
lover). On equal number of occassions she expressed shame and regret
about The Third Reich did and maintained, that she never was a member,
that she never was an antisemit, that she never participated in any
nazi activities (unless balls and social gatherings) and that she
never was Hitlers lover.
In a recent interview made in the mid 90s, she broke the interview,
put her hand on the knee of the interviewer and said "Please, no more
talk about the nazis. Im (90 something), I live with the shame every
day, isnt it about time to give me some peace?"
I want to end this short defence of Leni's genius and legacy with an
anecdote about how she became a director.
During the early twenties a very popular film series existed in
Germany; The Arnold Frank "Bergfilme". Very formulaic, good
mountaineer is in love with nice girl, bad mountaineer kidnaps her,
they climp alot, fight in the end, bad mountaineer falls and dies,
happy end. One day Mr. Frank got a letter from Leni saying "Im twice
as beautiful and twice as good an actress than your leading lady.
Employ me". He did and she became an actress. Some years went by and
during a scene she told Mr. Frank, I am twice the director you are,
let me direct a film. So she directed her next film (under the
guidence of Frank). That was her nature. If she wanted something, she
got her way and did it.
I will miss her.
Henrik Sylow
1860
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 8:45am
Subject: Return of the Repressed
I don't object to David's use of "interpretation" for what a director
does as long as interpretation is understood as a creative act, and
not in a narrow way. The example I use from Joe Dante - a modest man,
as David notes - is one that actually recalls the way a critic
interprets: Joe knows Richard Matheson's work well, so his
extraordinary film of the script he and Matheson worked out together
includes a piece of pure criticism, associating the house in It's a
Good Life with the House of Usher (Corman's version, scripted by RM).
But of course much more than that intellectual connection went into
creating that little film. I used that example and the
word "interpretation" in an article I wrote on Matheson (see, we
auteurists love writers, too) for Written By, the magazine of the
WGA, which may still be posted on their web site. It was a way of
acknowledging that a writer may have independently created a great
screenplay, which the director then creatively interprets into a
film. One could say the same thing about Herrmann's score for
Vertigo, written after viewing a rough cut - that's interpretation,
and it certainly is creation in my book.
1861
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 1:10pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
Glad you brought up Herrmann, who I'm sure everyone
would agree is far more than just another film
composer.
--- hotlove666 wrote:
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1862
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 1:16pm
Subject: Re: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
>Leni was not and never was a Nazi. She was an
oppotunist, who took
advantage of the regime, a crime she spend four years
in prison for,
and later her friendship with Hitler, to make films
that changed the
nature of film (I doubt that Ichikawa ever would have
gotten the idea
or structure of "Tokyo Olympia" had it not been for
Olympia).
And I in turn am deeply offended by this slur against
Kon Ichikawa, a great filmmaker.
Leni Riefenstahl has spent the better part of her life
trying to gain leverage from the mere technicality of
not being an actual party member. Yet she was the
creator of SEVERAL Nazi propaganda films ( a fact that
she has always tried to deny) and had as Mr. Sylow
points out a "friendship with Hitler."
ENOUGH!
--- Henrik Sylow wrote:
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1863
From: Tosh
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 4:10pm
Subject: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Leni Riefenstahl was one of those fascinating figures. I think one
can go on forever (and people will for decades) if her work is art or
not - but one thing for sure she helped invented the aesthetic that
is used in fashion photography for the last twenty years. I am
thinking of Herb Ritts, etc.
After reading the biography and her memoir I do believe that she
wasn't a participating Nazi - but even more interesting to me - and I
think people are missing the point - is her aesthetic work Fascist?
I think it is - and I am not making a good or wrong judgement
regarding Fascist art. But for sure she realized the importance and
power of the spectacle - and used it quite well, or at its worst it
was camp. But nevertheless she went out to portray 'beauty' and that
sense of 'beauty' has been used in the commercial advertising world
on and on.
Just some rambling thoughts before my morning coffee....
--
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
http://www.tamtambooks.com
1864
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 4:09pm
Subject: Re: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Henrik Sylow wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, George Robinson wrote:
> >Yeah. She was a Nazi-loving bitch
I agree we shouldn't be using terms like "bitch" here. But "Nazi-loving"
seems somewhat defensible. Can you be a good friend of Hitler's and not
be Nazi-loving? I suppose you could argue "yes," but it would be an
argument, and the other side can be aruged too. It's not like being
chief Nazi was just Hitler's day job.
I think these issues are more nuanced than the opposite sides of this
old debate usually account for. Nazism was not some legitimate ideology
that took a wrong turn into anti-Semitism; Nazism was founded on
anti-Semitism, and was anti-Jewish from the beginning, and when you make
a film of a Nazi rally you are implicitly endorsing that. On the other
hand it could be that Riefenstahl herself was not an anti-Jewish bigot
and would have voted against the Shoah if it had been put up for a vote,
and in that sense I think Henrik might be right about her being "just"
an opportunist, though it's not clear that we can ever know this for
sure, and I'm not sure it matters that one was "merely" an "opportunist"
if the effect of one's opportunism is persecution. It's well documented
that Jews were beaten at the premieres of "The Triumph of the Will" in
various towns across Germany, and it's hard to believe that Leni didn't
know about this.
Hitler is an exception to the proposition that few people -- or few
films -- are all good or all evil. I think there's a lot of great cinema
in Riefenstahl's work, even though it's also hard to separate it from
the ideology of fascism, and hard to miss the attempt to deify Hitler
that opens "The Triumph of the Will." But it's also easy to take a
morally superior tone to other people with the hindsight offered us by
history. And doing so tends to deflect judgement from the tougher
questions that face us today, such as what we should do about the
Israelis and Palestinians, or about the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The
important thing about Riefenstahl's films is to consider them in all
their ramifications. And I have trouble believing that Ichikawa didn't
look to "Olympia" for inspiration.
It's also interesting to see how much Leni has suffered compared to
other historical figures. The architect Philip Johnson, still living and
still a hugely successful architect, really *was* a Nazi supporter in
the thirties. He visited Poland and described Jews that surrounded his
car as "...a different breed of humanity, flitting about like locusts."
After the German invasion, he described one town as "...unrecognizable
[from his previous visit]. The German green uniforms made the place look
gay and happy. There were not many Jews to be seen." He agitated on
behalf of bringing some form fascism to America, and lamented the low
reproductive rates of his favored "race." The evidence of his actual
anti-Semitism is stronger than anything I've seen about Riefestahl, yet
he doesn't get the ire that she does.
Some more of my thoughts on Riefenstahl can be found at
http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw20/1144.html
- Fred
1865
From: chris_fujiwara
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 4:20pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
Hello:
I've read many posts here with interest and, sometimes, admiration.
This is my first post. I know it's an old topic, but it interests me.
The sense in which the author of a film's screenplay can be called
the author of the film seems to me very limited.
There can be little difficulty in accepting Prévert as an author or
even the author of his films, if the purpose at hand is a study of
Prévert's life or the style and themes of his work.
There is another sense in which Prévert can be called the author of a
film he wrote (say Les Enfants du paradis): if we find the film as a
whole interesting and valuable mainly because of the qualities that
can be directly attributed to the script: especially dialogue,
narrative structure, and certain aspects of characterization.
But - and to me, this is where the importance of auteurism as
aesthetic criticism and political practice lies entirely - the class
of films that are mainly interesting because of their scripts is
different from the class of films that are mainly interesting because
of their direction, and auteurism holds the second class to be
superior to the first.
If there is any such thing as an "auteur theory," its concerns can
only be to demonstrate and account for the difference between the two
classes, elaborate and defend the reasons for preferring the second
to the first, and ground that preference in a general aesthetics or
politics of film.
A film by a great director may also happen to have a great script
written by someone else. But I'd argue (if it ever became necessary)
that what makes Le crime de M. Lange and Lumière d'été great has
essentially to do with the art of cinema as practiced by Renoir and
Grémillon through their direction, not with the very different art of
cinema as practiced through Prévert's writing of the dialogue.
I'm reminded of something someone (Jean-Claude Biette? I don't have
the reference handy) wrote about Preminger's Exodus: that if in
certain scenes, the mise-en-scène seems to be just shots of people
talking, that's because at these moments, the mise-en-scène is
happening in the dialogue and the direction of actors. An anecdote
seems relevant here. While they were working on the script for
Exodus, Preminger told Dalton Trumbo that one of the scenes was not
up to his usual standard. Trumbo defended himself by saying that if
all the scenes were equally brilliant, the film would end up being
monotonous. Preminger came back with, "Make them all brilliant, and
I'll direct unevenly."
The meaning of this story (and of the critical observation to which
I've linked it) is that direction, when practiced in a way that
deserves to be called an art of cinema, encompasses and surpasses the
script, not merely interprets it.
1866
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 4:34pm
Subject: Re: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Hi Tosh!
It's clear that Leni was a big influence on Herb --
particularly in his Janet Jackson video. Very "Last of
the Nuba."
--- Tosh wrote:
> Leni Riefenstahl was one of those fascinating
> figures. I think one
> can go on forever (and people will for decades) if
> her work is art or
> not - but one thing for sure she helped invented the
> aesthetic that
> is used in fashion photography for the last twenty
> years. I am
> thinking of Herb Ritts, etc.
>
> After reading the biography and her memoir I do
> believe that she
> wasn't a participating Nazi - but even more
> interesting to me - and I
> think people are missing the point - is her
> aesthetic work Fascist?
> I think it is - and I am not making a good or wrong
> judgement
> regarding Fascist art. But for sure she realized
> the importance and
> power of the spectacle - and used it quite well, or
> at its worst it
> was camp. But nevertheless she went out to portray
> 'beauty' and that
> sense of 'beauty' has been used in the commercial
> advertising world
> on and on.
>
> Just some rambling thoughts before my morning
> coffee....
> --
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books
> http://www.tamtambooks.com
>
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1867
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 4:49pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "chris_fujiwara"
wrote:
> But - and to me, this is where the importance of auteurism as
> aesthetic criticism and political practice lies entirely - the
class
> of films that are mainly interesting because of their scripts is
> different from the class of films that are mainly interesting
because
> of their direction, and auteurism holds the second class to be
> superior to the first.
>
> If there is any such thing as an "auteur theory," its concerns can
> only be to demonstrate and account for the difference between the
two
> classes, elaborate and defend the reasons for preferring the second
> to the first, and ground that preference in a general aesthetics or
> politics of film.
Welcome Chris! This is, I think, the linchpin of auteurism and its
importance to understanding film. The debate awhile back over
whether Cahiers and Sarris et al had fundamentally offered a new
critical approach to cinema, especially Hollywood cinema. I think on
these grounds, the answer has to be yes, and that the importance of
the auteur theory or whatever we call is defining film art through
the lens of film art* with the artist as director--I think other
approaches may have defined film art with the artist as a director,
but through a lens that was not that of film form, however we define
it. It seems to me that other art forms have a much better, well-
understood sense of the artist-art relation, which is why Astruc's
camera-stylo, which I sometimes see as the whole firecracker for the
politique, seems crucial to the evolution of a critical understanding
of film as film: if I remember correctly, his point is that the
camera-pen is metaphorical, since the terms don't yet exist to
describe the director's relation to his material. Maybe I'm
recalling this incorrectly, though.
Patrick
*I know this term is vague, but at the moment I can't think of
anything better.
1868
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 4:56pm
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed
> The debate awhile back over
> whether Cahiers and Sarris et al had fundamentally offered a new
> critical approach to cinema, especially Hollywood cinema. I think on
> these grounds, the answer has to be yes,
I don't think it's possible to make this statement without a deep,
profound, widespread and all pervasive unfamiliarity with American movie
criticism prior to ww2. Not to mention French or Italian.
> and that the importance of
> the auteur theory or whatever we call is defining film art through
> the lens of film art* with the artist as director--I think other
> approaches may have defined film art with the artist as a director,
> but through a lens that was not that of film form, however we define
> it.
See response above.
1869
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:37pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher wrote:
>
> > The debate awhile back over
> > whether Cahiers and Sarris et al had fundamentally offered a new
> > critical approach to cinema, especially Hollywood cinema. I
think on
> > these grounds, the answer has to be yes,
>
>
> I don't think it's possible to make this statement without a deep,
> profound, widespread and all pervasive unfamiliarity with American
movie
> criticism prior to ww2. Not to mention French or Italian.
>
Which works of criticism do you have in mind? In the history of film
criticism, when have fundamentally new critical approaches appeared?
Paul
1870
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:07pm
Subject: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Fred Camper wrote
...in that sense I think Henrik might be right about her being "just"
an opportunist... It's well documented that Jews were beaten at the
premieres of "The Triumph of the Will" in various towns across
Germany, and it's hard to believe that Leni didn't know about this.
It doesnt matter if she was aware of this or not. Personally I believe
she to begin with didnt care, because she didnt realised the path that
was being laid, and when it was to late, she had to pretend not to
care, as most germans had to and did. As smart as she was, I believe
she was equally naive. Personally I believe that she got blinded by
the attention she got (she was very beautiful), by the power she got
and by the power that surrounded her, and only to late realised what
she was in the middle of. All that does not make you a nazi; She did
not practice their "rituals", she was not a member. Its funny how this
discussion is as taken our of Klaus Mann's novel "Mephisto", where the
protagonist, an actor who rose to fame thru the nazis, when confronted
says "Im just an actor". Also, as many industry barons later said,
that they changed sides, because the Nazis did alot of good things for
the germans and were winning. Its all about oppotunism, its all about
naivity; We may condemn it, but at the end, our conviction is a luxery
of hindsight most germans couldnt affort.
Im happy that you (Fred) mention Phillip Johnson. And what about the
countless of non germans, take Knut Hamson, who even after the war
believed that Hitler did the right thing?
In also happy that you recognize "Olympiad" influence on "Tokyo
Olympia". As different they are in motif, as equal they are in
approach.
1871
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:10pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher wrote:
>
> > The debate awhile back over
> > whether Cahiers and Sarris et al had fundamentally offered a new
> > critical approach to cinema, especially Hollywood cinema. I
think on
> > these grounds, the answer has to be yes,
>
>
> I don't think it's possible to make this statement without a deep,
> profound, widespread and all pervasive unfamiliarity with American
movie
> criticism prior to ww2. Not to mention French or Italian.
Thanks Tag, I admit as such, and should qualify that auteurism has
always been, and remains more a method of analysis more relevant to
the talking picture. But who exactly (American) are you talking
about, and any of it still in print or collected outside of journals
of newspapers? And (am I completely wrong about this?) were figures
like Ford or von Sternberg or Lubitsch, all famous at the time,
celebrated and understood in a similar way to late auteurist
understanding of the same figures? Were figures like Hawks or Cukor
or likewise recognized as artists at all? I am ignorant.
Patrick
1872
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed
I understand you to be asking two questions. One is where is all the
wonderful pre-www2 movie criticism in English, French and Italian. A
fair answer would cover four or five decades and demonstrate that the
director was generally considered the primary creative authority for a
film, even during the industrial period when directors had least
authority among serious critics, and even to a degree in fan magazines,
and certainly if you look through the voluminous industry journals of
the 1907-193? period. John Ford's first pictures at Universal were
unabashedly promoted as Jack Ford films, he was the power behind them,
almost Zarathustrian.
Take a look at Welford Beaton in The Film Spectator, always a rousing
auteurist from the early 20s (if not before).
What about D.W.Griffith's defenses of his authorship of the Biographs in
1913 (or was it 14?).
Follow the coverage of King Vidor's career, from his first self-paid
advertisements for himself, through his coverage in the serious American
journals -- there are several large anthologies of American 30s film
criticism -- not forgetting the remarkable issue that Revue du Cinéma
(formatted exactly like the postwar yellow Cahiers and with direct
continuity into Cahiers) devoted to the Paris premiere of Hallelujah
(1930) where they assembled a couple dozen of the nation's leading
intellectuals, artists, etc., to each contribute an article on the film
-- and even VARIETY published three reviews of its NYC premiere -- all
centered on Vidor, all very much concerned with questions of style and
cinematic art.
Films like these were studied in the Italian film school in Rome in the
1930s, and histories of film written around them. Vidor was the direct,
acknowledged inspiration for most of so-called "neo-realism"; De Sica
didn't hide his debt to The Crowd for Bicycle Thief. There are whole
"lineages" in Hollywood and between Hollywood and European cinemas where
leading filmmakers are stylistically and auteurishly influencing their
colleagues. DeMille and Chaplin and Lubitsch and von Sternberg were not
obscure names, their styles were not invisible, there was no need for an
Astruc to speak of a caméra-stylo because people were already DOING it,
and had been egotistically proclaiming themselves for decades.
Anyhow, one could go on. There's tons of good stuff. Not much in The
New York Times, except for Frank Nugent.
Your second question is when have fundamentally new idea gotten born in
human history. I do not know. As far as I can tell, they don't begin,
they just always were, and now and then someone fixates on something and
out comes The Critique of Pure Reason, which certainly marked a sea
change, but far be it from me to trace where all Kant's notions came from.
Cinema was born at a time when we humans already had a rich tradition in
aesthetic criticism. Right from the first painters looked at movies
differently than theater critics, etc. But also right from the start
many people proclaimed that cinema was NOT (as someone herabouts
proclaimed recently) a "bastard" art, but a legitimate seventh art.
Ideas are very strange. Bazin, for example, made derogatory remarks
about cutting in "classic" (I hate that word) Hollywood cinema, and this
got picked up as a dogma by American academics in the 1960s and the
result was that two generations of film scholars did not pay attention
to cutting. Then there's Brown University which cannot decide if it has
a department of cinema studies, of semiotics, or of culture theory. The
problem is that idea which blow around in Parisian cafes like so much
cigarette smoke get transported to the US and become marble monuments of
Unchanging Verities. And so people in this group are forever asking
"what is auteurism?" (etc.) with the apparent conviction that there is
some kind of true answer to the question. And somehow it is necessary
to say that auterism began on such and such a date by such and such an
author, or all cinema can be divided into pre- and post-Citizen Kane.
Maybe we should just adopt the dates of Brown U's name changes as the
chapter headings for The History of Ideas?
Paul Gallagher wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher wrote:
> >
> > > The debate awhile back over
> > > whether Cahiers and Sarris et al had fundamentally offered a new
> > > critical approach to cinema, especially Hollywood cinema. I
> think on
> > > these grounds, the answer has to be yes,
> >
> >
> > I don't think it's possible to make this statement without a deep,
> > profound, widespread and all pervasive unfamiliarity with American
> movie
> > criticism prior to ww2. Not to mention French or Italian.
> >
>
> Which works of criticism do you have in mind? In the history of film
> criticism, when have fundamentally new critical approaches appeared?
>
> Paul
>
1873
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:16pm
Subject: Re: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Phillip Johnson and Knut Hamsen are every bit as
worthy of scorn as Leni Riefenstahl.
--- Henrik Sylow wrote:
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1874
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Could you give us a complete list of personages worth of scorn?
David Ehrenstein wrote:
> Phillip Johnson and Knut Hamsen are every bit as
> worthy of scorn as Leni Riefenstahl.
>
1875
From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:22pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson" wrote:
> Cinema remains a bastard form, and there is probably an enduring
> split between those who borrow critical terms from theories of
> theatre and literature, and those who think more about its relation
> to painting and the other visual arts.
I think it would be more accurate to locate the essential split not
in "theater/literature vs. painting/visual art" so much as
in "representation vs. abstraction," since the latter can be
reflected in and related among the various artforms. For example, in
literature you can make a distinction between prose and poetry, in
painting between genre and color-field. We still have label
problems, but I think this distinction better alludes to the
different ways of viewing, better isolates the elements unique to
film as art. The difficulties many have in seeing the art in film
seem to be similar to the difficulties in seeing the art of modern
abstract art -- a failure (or ideologically-motivated unwillingness)
to see pictures (moving or still) in terms other than those based in
representation: focusing on character identification, picturesque
prettiness, verisimilitudineity (new word there?), realism,
interpretation, etc. Such representation-centered approaches result
in and are reinforced by dominant notions of cinema as photographed-
theatricalized storytelling-in-narrative-form-with-message, as a form
diluted by several degrees of filtration (which allow questionable
agendas to intervene) rather than as an art right there in the strip,
on the screen for us to see.
Any modernist worth his/her salt will insist on film as film, not as
a bastard or composite form, but as light projected through
celluloid, reflected by a screen into the eyes, with/out sound.
These are the only necessary and unique qualities of film, the
creative manipulations of which I call "art," and which
representation-centered approaches tend to marginalize.
Of course none of these distinctions or theories should or do account
for everything valuable in cinema. The ideal critical approach
starts with particular films and personal encounters with them and
works outwards, rather than starting from labels and working inwards;
theory, by its very nature, tends towards the latter. I think this
was Tag's point in his rejection of "genre" in an earlier thread, in
that "genre" is based on non-cinematic typologies which ignore
cinematic form and/or aesthetics. So, yes, destroy all labels!!
(even art), but unfortunately most of us get caught up taking sides
in the polemical battle of false dichotomies, which probably serves
more to reinforce these dichotomies rather than achieving something
like a healthy balance.
That said, to the degree we presume a distinction between art and non-
art, and to the degree theory (and other discussion-outside-of-
encounter) can be used to help us locate the aesthetic and socio-
political aspects of film as art ("seeing more"), I believe director-
as-auteur theory is the best thing going. Locating auteurs in
actors, screenwriters, art directors or cinematographers tends to
reflect and perpetuate the content/style distinction at the center of
the representational bias, hindering rather than helping the ability
to see the "big picture."
Jason
1876
From: George Robinson
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
Are you kidding?
That would use up so much bandwidth people would think that the SoBigF virus
had returned.
George (Never enough scorn) Robinson
Cry later, but for now let's enjoy the laughter.
--Tupac Shakur, "God Bless the Dead"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tag Gallagher"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 2:19 PM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
> Could you give us a complete list of personages worth of scorn?
>
>
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> > Phillip Johnson and Knut Hamsen are every bit as
> > worthy of scorn as Leni Riefenstahl.
> >
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
>
>
1877
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 6:47pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
Tag:
> film, even during the industrial period when directors had least
> authority among serious critics, and even to a degree in fan
magazines,
> and certainly if you look through the voluminous industry journals
of
> the 1907-193? period. John Ford's first pictures at Universal were
> unabashedly promoted as Jack Ford films, he was the power behind
them,
> almost Zarathustrian.
[...]
> centered on Vidor, all very much concerned with questions of style
and
> cinematic art.
>
> Films like these were studied in the Italian film school in Rome in
the
> 1930s, and histories of film written around them
Again, I profess ignorance of most of this period of criticism, but
my point was never that the director was ignored as author of a film,
but that the approach used in describing and analyzing the director's
contribution changed. If all that groundwork was already laid pre-
politique, would the careers of Ford or Lang or other directors
famous in the 1930s but whose later works were deemed unworthy of
their earlier artistry need to have been resurrected as major artists
with an evolving career? Maybe something was lost in America between
the 1930s and the 1960s.
PWC
1878
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 5:01pm
Subject: Re: The Return of the Repressed
i'm not following this thred and giving it the attention i like, but i
couldn't avoid writing this one.
if you take a look at the work of hou hsiao-hsien, you'll see major
differences in his cinema when he works with writer chu tien-wen or
photographer lee ping-bin. but they are no less hou's films because of that.
i think that majorly when a writer or a photographer are the authors of the
film, hat's because it sucks and the artist in question thinks his art is
equal with full cinema. take mamet (script) or storaro (light) or jonze
(performance). of course i admit some exceptions to that, majorly when it
deals with actors. even though i'd agree that a film like THE GODS AND THE
DEAD (hope someone in the list has seen) by ruy guerra is much more a
photographer dib lutfi's film than a ruy guerra's one.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tag Gallagher"
To:
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2003 5:43 PM
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] The Return of the Repressed
>
>
>
> >
> >
> > What I've been trying to bring to this discussion is
> > some semblance of concern for those elements of
> > filmmaking can't be knee-jerkingly attributed to the
> > director.
>
> The concern has not been lacking among authentic auteurists. That's my
> point. Your either/or situation that simply does not exist.
>
> Most good director studies try as much as possible to trace the genesis
> of a film through its writers. It is very difficult to determine what
> Lamar Trotti contributed to films -- all the more so when people like
> Will Rogers, Irwin Cobb and Ford were also on board. If documents and
> memos and transcripts of discussions existed, this would be fabulous.
> But I don't know of such materials. It was far easier to trace the
> writing and scripts and treatments of Paisan or Roma città aperta with
> their dozens of writers than with any Ford film: but I haven't had
> access to recently available documents.
>
> The attention to "auteur" directors has served to bring a lot of
> attention to various films that would otherwise have been neglected, and
> along with that attention, attention to the writers. Would Hermann
> Mankiewicz be so well known if Hathaway had directed Kane? This is not
> to denigrate writers, only to point out that, as I said, screenwriters
> have profitted from the sun of auteurism. Screenwriters are also
> auteurs. No one ever denied this, least of all Truffaut, Ford or me.
>
> >
> >
> > In my opinion there are very few real auteurs. Fellini
> > and Hitchcock certainly qualify, but I wouldn't call
> > my favorite director of all time, Patrice Chereau, an
> > autuer.
>
> You can define "auteur" anyway you like; everybody else does. But when
> you start accusing "auteurists" of these terrible crimes, I take it
> personally. Besides, it's not true, just not true.
>
> Myself, I think that if a hundred people contributed to a film in ways
> that leave trace of their personality, then each of those hundred people
> is an auteur. Ford said it was wrong to compare directors to writers,
> that it is more appropriate to compare them to architects. But others
> directors do it all themselves...
>
> The question isn't if someone is an "auteur." It's whether their
> artists and what the peculiar nature of their art is. For me, any great
> artist entirely redefines "cinema."
>
> >
> >
> > There ae a host of really good and really better than
> > just good directors who aren't auteurs.
> >
> > And there are more ways of looking at a film that
> > "through" it's director.
>
> Again, you're shadow boxing with non-existent demons. Nobody worth
> listening to ever made any statements stating otherwise. Least of all
> any authentic auteurist.
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
>
>
1879
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 7:37pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher wrote:
> I understand you to be asking two questions. One is where is all
the
> wonderful pre-www2 movie criticism in English, French and Italian.
A
> fair answer would cover four or five decades and demonstrate that
the
> director was generally considered the primary creative authority
for a
> film, even during the industrial period when directors had least
> authority among serious critics, and even to a degree in fan
magazines,
> and certainly if you look through the voluminous industry journals
of
> the 1907-193? period.
I'm not sure that's where auteurism's originality lies. The idea that
directors are authors of their films and that they are artists in ways
similar to writers of literature, composers, painters, etc., were
around before Cahiers du Cinema, and I'm sure there are precedents for
Bazin's ideas, for ideas about mise en scene, etc. But Cahiers
obsessed over these questions. So there are differences in details,
and some of the details are important: for example, the difference
between criticism that can't understand the importance of Hawks and
Nicholas Ray and one that does. And CduC exposed the contradictions in
the ideas of authorship. So it's not just the intuition that directors
are authors, but of understanding why this is important, the ways in
which it's right and the way in which it's wrong: the idea was once
inadequately theorized; now thanks to Cahiers it's theorized to death.
Someone in the audience at the Lincoln Center conference on Cahiers du
Cinema mentioned that Cahiers raised many of the issues about realism,
authorship, and meaning that were later to preoccupy much criticism
and philosophy. That doesn't prove CduC's originality or influence,
but the magazine brought up lots of questions. Somewhere along the
line, a vague intuition about directors turned into the big questions
of the late 20th century (at least the Gitane smoking portion of it):
to use Foucault's words, they asked "What are the modes of existence
of this discourse?" "Where does it come from; how is it circulated;
who controls it?" "What placements are determined for possible
subjects?" "Who can fulfil these diverse functions of the subject?" Or
to use other words, they found in the cinema the Shadow "between the
idea / and the reality / between the motion / and the act ... between
the conception / and the creation / between the emotion / and the
response."
For example, these statements by Andrew Sarris from the early 1960's,
so far as I can tell, seem to be ahead of their time: "interior
meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director's
personality and his material... It is not quite the vision of the
world a director projects... It is ambiguous, in any literary sense,
because part of it is imbedded in the stuff of cinema and cannot be
rendered in noncinematic terms"; "mise en scene is not merely a gap
between what see and feel on the screen and what we can express in
words, but it is also the gap between the intention of the director
and his effect upon the spectator." This seems a lot like what Barthes
would write later in the decade. That might be an example where
Cahiers-ists were exploring new territory.
Paul
1880
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 8:21pm
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed
Patrick Ciccone wrote:
>
> my point was ... that the approach used in describing and analyzing
> the director's
> contribution changed. If all that groundwork was already laid pre-
> politique,
1) I am not aware of "the approach" either before or after www2. What
is "the approach"?
2) Which approaches do you feel changed? Which approaches do you feel
were not being exercised, even embryonically, at earlier dates?
3) The policies in treating directors were virtually identical in La
Revue du Cinéma in 1930 as in Cahiers du Cinéma 1950s. True, the word
"politique" was seldom used, but it was seldom used in Cahiers in the
1950s either. It has mostly been the privileged domain of those who
write diatribes against what they call, derisively, "auteurism."
Anyhow, my point is that the packaging got updated but the policies
were much the same.
In addition, there was much more cinema worthy of being taken account
of. Keep in mind that most of Europe had been deprived of American
films since the mid or late 30s (with a few exceptions) and that in the
postwar period, about ten years worth of Hollywood productions started
flooding the European markets. This gave people a perspective and quantity.
Also, early movies were marketed in the US as cheap fun for the popular
classes, a kind of virtual reality. In Europe they were marketed as
upscale art for the middle classes, a kind of representation. This
distinction holds today. Fun assumes an authorless product, thus
directors are still not listed in TV Guide or newspapers (or even on
AMC's web site), whereas in Europe it's been automatic since I don't
know when. But in the serious coverage of movies in the US, and in
industry journals, the director was always preceived as the center of
the show -- if that person took command. The distinction was realised
that there were films that were "studio" products and other than were
fundamentally individual. The French in the 50s made a similar
distinction between "auteurs" and "metteurs-en-scène" some of whom
weren't auteurs.
> would the careers of Ford or Lang or other directors
> famous in the 1930s but whose later works were deemed unworthy of
> their earlier artistry need to have been resurrected as major artists
> with an evolving career? Maybe something was lost in America between
> the 1930s and the 1960s.
>
There is always someone who will deem x superior or inferior to y.
There is seldom a consensus about these things. Part of the reason
Lang got dumped on is that in the 1960s it was Gospel that Hollywood
movies were shit and European movies were personal art; therefore,
Q.E.D., when Lang left Germany and came to Hollywood he left art and
made shit. Same thesis was expounded for years about von Sternberg --
Der blaue Engel versus the tinsel stuff Dietrich did at Paramount.
Ford's work in the late 1930s was deemed superior to his work in the
early 1930s. Lindsay Anderson suggested some of his postwar work was
superior to his prewar work. Cahiers championed Lang's work in the 50s
over his German films. They ignored Ford, pretty much, even panned The
Searchers in two lines; but when 7 Women came along Ford was God.
There's also the problem that you couldn't see pre-Code films in the US
until Turner bought MGM, because the films were either taken out of
circulation entirely or had scenes chopped out. The case of Fox was
different: we're still waiting, which is the difference between Turner
and Murdock, but one employee in the early 70s managed to get a lot of
stuff out of the vaults, and this was the first time in forty years that
anyone had been able to see Ford's 1928-34 pictures. People writing the
official film histories in the 1950s and 1960s had a terrible time,
because it was impossible to see anything.
1881
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 8:37pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson" wrote:
> > I find the word "interpretation" misleading, since I think of film
> > direction as, at least in certain films, a creative act.
>
> Maybe more like the way a portrait painter "interprets" his or her
> model?
Well, the identity and personality of the model is of interest. A
person sitting for a portrait might think that his or her particular
beauty is the source of the painting's beauty, and might be offended
or flattered by the portrayal. However, most viewers tend to consider
the particular value of a painting to arise from particular features
specific to the painting, and the source is usually identified as the
painter. This is partly just cultural convention, since there also is
the tradition of considering artists to be interpreters or even mimics
of nature. I suppose it's partly a question of what one values, and
not a matter of facts.
>
> I don't understand the viewpoint that looks down on narrative (as if
> telling stories were a vulgar, populist thing to do).
I don't want to oppose narrative films, but there's a similar
viewpoint in other arts. For example, it's usually considered an error
to reduce a work of fiction to its plot, although plot can be
extremely important. For example, even if Shakespeare borrowed most of
the plot of "Hamlet" from another play, most of what's interesting in
that "Hamlet" is in what's unique to the play, even though the
reader's interest in the plot is considerable.
A side issue is that when scholars show the debt of Shakespeare's
"Hamlet" to Saxo or Thomas Kyd, they usually don't intend to diminish
Shakespeare's contribution. In contrast some attempts to emphasize the
screenwriter are at the expense of the director –- such as giving
credit for "Citizen Kane" to Herman Mankiewicz -- or at the expense of
the film -- such as the habit of judging a film based on the literary
value of its dialogue.
> And I don't
> think the librettist/composer analogy holds, because most filmmakers,
> the avant-garde included, use representations as their raw material,
> & this is only true of composers in a much more nebulous way.
In this case the film is showing images of people, things, actions and
recordings of speech and other sounds. Only some of that information
is contained in the screenplay. A picture is worth a thousand words...
As an example, I think "Showgirls" is a better film than Kenneth
Branagh's version of "Hamlet," even though I think Shakespeare is a
better writer than Joe Eszterhas. That may be more of a statement
about me, or a certain kind of viewer, than it is about the films, but
I think my way of viewing films is generally more pleasurable than an
approach that mentally extracts the literary content of the film. But
not only is "Showgirls" more pleasurable than "Hamlet," I think it's
more meaningful. The meaning of many films is obviously strongly
reinforced by the dialogue, but often the meaning doesn't seem to
originate there. Actually I always have a hard time expaining where it
does come from -- it's easier just to point to it, and that usually
means naming films and naming directors. (In other words, auteurism is
a way into the cinema; once you're in there in the dark, you're on
your own.)
Paul
1882
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 8:58pm
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed ( Meaning in film)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher wrote:
>
>
> 1) I am not aware of "the approach" either before or after www2.
What
> is "the approach"?
> 2) Which approaches do you feel changed? Which approaches do you
feel
> were not being exercised, even embryonically, at earlier dates?
I think I can answer these both at once. Of course, "approach" is
way too vague, especially, as I said, I am deeply ignorant of pre-war
film critical schools here and in Europe, but it seems to me that the
underlying critical method from Bazin to Rohmer and Godard and
Rivette and afterward to Sarris is that cinematic form creates
meaning on a director-by-director basis. Maybe this is not a new
idea or interprestaion but the depth to which Cahiers or Sarris and
their successors grasped upon this idea and used it to explain the
film and careers of their charished directors seems to me a crucial
shift, or at least evolution. [think of Sarris' general approach as
defined in "Notes on the Auteur Theory 1962", as Paul G. "interior
meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director's
personality and his material... It is not quite the vision of the
world a director projects... It is ambiguous, in any literary sense,
because part of it is imbedded in the stuff of cinema and cannot be
rendered in noncinematic terms"; Godard's essay on THE WRONG MAN or
Rivette's on BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. Again, maybe there are
precedents.
PWC
1883
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Sep 10, 2003 11:02pm
Subject: Return of the Repressed
The only copy I own of Revue de cinema certainly looks like the
yellow Cahiers, and also contains a group of articles on
Hitchcock's films which they were discovering after the war, one
by Doniol-Valcroze if memory serves. Another is by Maurice
Scherer (= Eric Rohmer). However, the only piece which is like
the articles that began to appear on AH in CdC from 1954 on is
the Scherer review of Notorious. Scherer hypothesizes that
Hitchcock [who in fact cowrote the script with Hecht] had
contempt for the silly spy story and focused instead on the actors
faces - an effect he finds bizarre and isn't quite sure he approves
of at this point in his life.
However misinformed it may be about the production details,
this is a very important observation which echoes a passage that
appears badly garbled in Truffaut-Hitchcock, where AH talks
about how, in the scene where Bergman tells the feds that
Raines has proposed to her, he played it on the faces,
emphasizing the second story that was going on (the love story)
at the expense of the "silly spy story." (I reprint what AH actually
said in the Notorious chapter of HAW.) I certainly don't asssume
that AH was the first director who ever did this, and perhaps
there is somewhere an identical comment by another critic about
another film, but a) I haven't seen it and b) in any event,
Scherer/Rohmer by noticing what AH was doing in that scene
carved himself away from the other articles on AH in the same
issue of Revue de cinema.
Obviously, the idea of "making the film against the screenplay'"
would be carried much further in the actually CdC, but there it is
in embyo, and it sticks out like a sore thumb in the context of the
other Revue de cinema articles on Hitchcock.
As I recall the issue also contains a piece by Langois on some
version of L'assassinat du duc de Guise which Godard still
remembered fondly many years later. I'd love to have every issue
- it looks like it was a great and very influential magazine. But I do
think there was progress after that, which can be seen in the
contrast between Scherer/Rohmer, who would later be one of
the key Cahiers critics, and everything else in the issue,
including the Langois article. And that difference is what we're
talking about. Otherwise Kael and Sarris would be doing the
same thing with different likes and dislikes - and in my opinion
they aren't.
1884
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 1:52am
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed
Paul Gallagher wrote:
> But Cahiers
> obsessed over these questions. So there are differences in details,
> and some of the details are important: for example, the difference
> between criticism that can't understand the importance of Hawks and
> Nicholas Ray and one that does.
But you say that you're not familiar with pre-www2 writings, so how can
you make these remarks until you are?
I don't think Cahiers "obsessed" over these details. It was more the
Brits and Americans who've been pulling their hair out. Cahiers never
made any attempt to define what you call "auteurism"; they didn't have
that word. Each critic did his thing. Each of them, if pressed, would
have given you a different definition of "auteur." There was very
little in the way of theorizing. (I'm not convinced that there is a
difference between theory and criticism and bullshit, but to the extent
that theory is abstract, there was little of that, and Bazin is
deceptive, because he didn't realise his words were going to be
subjected to Noel Carroll.)
The difference between criticism that could/couldn't understand the
importance of Hawks was already apparent before Hawks's name was known.
> And CduC exposed the contradictions in
> the ideas of authorship. So it's not just the intuition that directors
> are authors, but of understanding why this is important, the ways in
> which it's right and the way in which it's wrong: the idea was once
> inadequately theorized; now thanks to Cahiers it's theorized to death.
No, it still has not been theorized. There is no definition of
"auteur." Even on this group, it's a free-for-all, and that's the way
it's always been. How can you talk about how "it" is wrong before you
define what "it" is? Every damning critique of "auteurism" I have ever
read has been logically true, because the criticizer has incorporated
the "flaw" is his initial definition. There's not even a sense of an
obligation to go back and read what people wrote in the teens, 20s and 30s.
>
>
> Someone in the audience at the Lincoln Center conference on Cahiers du
> Cinema mentioned that Cahiers raised many of the issues about realism,
> authorship, and meaning that were later to preoccupy much criticism
> and philosophy.
How could they have avoided doing so?
Even this group, in its short history, has done this.
Cahiers didn't "raise" these issues. They had been on the table for
centuries. The world did not begin in 1950.
>
> to use Foucault's words, they asked "What are the modes of existence
> of this discourse?" "Where does it come from; how is it circulated;
> who controls it?" "What placements are determined for possible
> subjects?" "Who can fulfil these diverse functions of the subject?" Or
> to use other words, they found in the cinema the Shadow "between the
> idea / and the reality / between the motion / and the act ... between
> the conception / and the creation / between the emotion / and the
> response."
Nothing novel in any of this. Had all be said/asked a zillion times
before. The difference was that Foucault was addressing people who
hadn't bothered to get educated.
>
>
> For example, these statements by Andrew Sarris from the early 1960's,
> so far as I can tell, seem to be ahead of their time: "interior
> meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director's
> personality and his material...
Talk about gobbledygook.
Put this into plain English, and I think your find people talking about
Griffith in the same tones prior to www1.
> imbedded in the stuff of cinema and cannot be
> rendered in noncinematic terms"
> That might be an example where
> Cahiers-ists were exploring new territory.
>
Wasn't new territory.
>
1885
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 1:59am
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed
Patrick Ciccone wrote:
> were figures
> like Ford or von Sternberg or Lubitsch, all famous at the time,
> celebrated and understood in a similar way to late auteurist
> understanding of the same figures? Were figures like Hawks or Cukor
> or likewise recognized as artists at all? I am ignorant.
>
Don't know about Cukor. But Hawks was virtually an independent producer
in the 30s (as were most of our "auteurs," by the way). I don't have
references handy, but if you dig up what was published about the other
names in the 30s, you'll be impressed by it. In Ford's case, the two
most noted ones are: Howard Sharpe, .The Star Creators of Hollywood,.
Photoplay, October 1936; reprinted in Richard Griffith, ed, *The
Talkies*, Dover 1971. and Emmanuel Eisenberg, in New Theater, April 1936.
1886
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 3:14am
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed
Cukor was never an independent. He was always on the
edge, however, in that he had all sorts of frequent
collaborators. I suspect he was shy of taking on the
responsibility of hiring and firing that he'd seen
producers wield.
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
>
>
> Patrick Ciccone wrote:
>
> > were figures
> > like Ford or von Sternberg or Lubitsch, all famous
> at the time,
> > celebrated and understood in a similar way to late
> auteurist
> > understanding of the same figures? Were figures
> like Hawks or Cukor
> > or likewise recognized as artists at all? I am
> ignorant.
> >
> Don't know about Cukor. But Hawks was virtually an
> independent producer
> in the 30s (as were most of our "auteurs," by the
> way). I don't have
> references handy, but if you dig up what was
> published about the other
> names in the 30s, you'll be impressed by it. In
> Ford's case, the two
> most noted ones are: Howard Sharpe, .The Star
> Creators of Hollywood,.
> Photoplay, October 1936; reprinted in Richard
> Griffith, ed, *The
> Talkies*, Dover 1971. and Emmanuel Eisenberg, in New
> Theater, April 1936.
>
>
>
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1887
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 3:17am
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed
"Nothing novel in any of this. Had all be said/asked
a zillion times
before. The difference was that Foucault was
addressing people who
hadn't bothered to get educated."
Foucault was if anything addressing the OVER-educated.
--- Tag Gallagher wrote:
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1888
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 3:50am
Subject: Ted Allan materials?
Dear colleagues -
I am trying to do some research into the plays written the late Ted Allan,
especially those of the early '80s that John Cassavetes directed on stage
and/or film: KNIVES, THE THIRD DAY COMES and LOVE STREAMS.
Does anyone have a clue how the playscripts for these could be obtained?
Were they ever published in any way, shape or form?
And please please please don't anyone reply 'why don't you ask the
self-proclaimed world's-leading-Cassavetes-expert Professor Raymond Carney',
or I will merely sigh very deeply ...
thanks, Adrian Martin
1889
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:09am
Subject: Re: Re: Return of the Repressed ( Meaning in film)
Patrick Ciccone wrote:
> the
> underlying critical method from Bazin to Rohmer and Godard and
> Rivette and afterward to Sarris is that cinematic form creates
> meaning on a director-by-director basis. Maybe this is not a new
> idea or interprestaion but the depth to which Cahiers or Sarris and
> their successors grasped upon this idea and used it to explain the
> film and careers of their charished directors seems to me a crucial
> shift, or at least evolution.
It was certainly a shift if, like most everyone, all one had been
exposed to was writing in the daily newspaper. And equally in Europe,
"normal" people don't sit around contemplating movie auteurs and the
magic of god-cinema. But I have already cited the June 1930 number of
La Revue du Cinema in which the editors did exactly the things you cite.
And that was their "politique," which did not change much until the mid
60s. (They even used the same techniques and vocabularly and critical
"methods" to try to market Rossellini in 1954 as they had for Vidor in
1930. For me Rohmer is the greatest writer on Rossellini, and no one
was writing about Rossellini in 1930, but without those people in 1930
Rohmer would not have written the way he did.) It's a little unfair to
cite four of the history's great critics (but in another sense they
weren't "critics" at all, more like poets singing of their loves)
against the inevitably less inspired writing of the 1930s. But these
four were all loyal children of the earlier generation which, in
essence, was the one that parented Cahiers and the New Wave.
> Godard's essay on THE WRONG MAN or
> Rivette's on BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT. Again, maybe there are
> precedents.
>
Curious you should mention the Godard essay. I was a grad student at
NYU in 1969 and, at prof's request, read in class a translation I'd made
of that essay, and every cinema-studies student there was bowled over --
they'd never imagined anyone approaching a movie in that fashion.
I think for various reasons France in the early 50s offered great
opportunities for this sort of essaying, not only for such (until then)
rare extended analysis of scenes, but for Godard's paeons to Ray and
Sirk which were probably not too intelligible even to Cahiers' readers
at the time.
So there're no argument here that this was something "new." But that
begs the question of how new something has to be in order to be new.
The sort of analysis that I've been doing in French magazines, for
example, would have been impossible in the 1950s, but I'm standing on
Godard's shoulders, and he too has many feet and stands on many
shoulders. Yes, there are precedents.
>
1890
From: jaketwilson
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:12am
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
> Your second question is when have fundamentally new idea gotten
> born in human history. I do not know. As far as I can tell, they
don't begin, they just always were, and now and then someone fixates
> on something and out comes The Critique of Pure Reason, which
certainly marked a sea change, but far be it from me to trace
> where all Kant's notions came from.
Surely the invention of cinema as a technology was a fundamentally
new event in human history.
Maybe therefore productive of new ideas?
JTW
1891
From: jaketwilson
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:18am
Subject: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
David Ehrenstein wrote:
> Phillip Johnson and Knut Hamsen are every bit as
> worthy of scorn as Leni Riefenstahl.
Hamsun was a great writer, far from a Nazi hack like Riefenstahl. He
had his problematic side, but his best-known novels were published
pre-1900 & occupy a different universe from TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.
JTW
1892
From: jaketwilson
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 6:08am
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
In reply to Jason & Paul's very interesting posts (1875 and 1881):
Cinema as a bastard art? Well, most arts are "bastard" in the sense
of being contingent by-products of the technology available at a
particular moment. The invention of writing was one such moment;
cinema is another. There's no saying what any of this means in the
long run, but plenty of precedents to show that the demand for purity
is the enemy of invention. The angst felt over the coming of sound
provides an example.
While I'm suspicious of essentialist notions of "modernism", I'm cool
with the abstract vs representational distinction, viewed as two ways
of seeing (or describing?) rather than two types of art. I think it
breaks down, though, once you turn it into a hierarchy: treating,
say, a Preminger film as abstract can be a valuable exercise, but no
more so than treating an abstract film as representational (as I
think Manny Farber did with Michael Snow). Both procedures are
seemingly perverse, but then I think the critic's main role is to be
perverse, i.e. to point out the non-obvious.
My earlier point was that images are, willy-nilly, more
representational than are musical phrases: the colours we see in
movies are not wholly different from the colours we see every day,
and it's impossible not to view the one in terms of the other.
(Similarly, most modernist poetry -- most poetry? -- makes use of
words which conventionally carry particular meanings; the poem
becomes the unique object that it is by playing on the apparent gap
or tension between word-as-sign and word-as-sound.) Going back to an
earlier discussion, I think "mimesis" still serves as a workable
description of what art does, provided we accept that artworks have
impact as gestures partly through the inevitable failure of mimesis,
i.e. their difference from what they imitate.
Historically, it's at least arguable that cinematic forms have been
derived from theatrical traditions first and foremost, and to the
extent this is the case, I agree with Aristotle that plot is
paramount or, putting it in New Critical fashion, serves as the main
structural device allowing the maximum of diversity within unity. So
I stick to "telling stories" as a reasonable definition of what a
narrative filmmaker does -- with emphasis on the "telling" as much as
the "story". This does NOT mean I think the screenwriter takes
precedence over the director: it's more a way of saying, I hope
uncontroversially, that movies are less about images than about the
relations between images (and sounds) and plot is one major way of
letting us figure out what we can't see on the basis of what we can.
Incidentally, while "abstract" films in themselves may not tell
stories, I think it's already been pointed out here that critics have
to turn their experiences of such films INTO stories in order to
convey something of what delighted them.
Re critical innovations, my rule no. 1 is that artists are smarter
than critics. If Hitchcock and Rossellini were up to something new in
the '50s -- which I guess we agree they were -- then finding words
for their activities inevitably called for new techniques of
description. But good as Rohmer's criticism is (what I've read of it
in translation) it's of infinitely less value than his films.
JTW
1893
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 9:28am
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher wrote:
> But you say that you're not familiar with pre-www2 writings, so how
can
> you make these remarks until you are?
I don't recall saying that, but I won't claim any particular
familiarity with film criticism.
I'll look for the articles on Ford and the issue of "Revue du
cinéma"
you mentioned. However, I didn't claim that CduC invented the idea
that the director can be the creator of a film. Obviously those ideas
were around. What I doubt is the claim that Cahiers added nothing to
the well-established ideas.
> Cahiers never
> made any attempt to define what you call "auteurism";
Never?
> There was very
> little in the way of theorizing.
Are you maybe thinking Cahiers = "les années jaunes"?
> (I'm not convinced that there is a
> difference between theory and criticism and bullshit, but to the
extent
> that theory is abstract, there was little of that
How little is little?
Could you discuss specific examples, or point to someone who does?
Since you mentioned Ford -- some people think of the Aug. 1970 Cahiers
on "Young Mister Lincoln" as an important theoretical work...
Is that not theory? Is it "bullshit"? Or is just a restatement of what
had been common wisdom for decades?
>
> The difference between criticism that could/couldn't understand the
> importance of Hawks was already apparent before Hawks's name was
known.
Well, recall my earlier discussion of Marcorelles and Gauteur on the
Brussels referendum. The percentage of critics that couldn't
understand the importance of Hawks was very high back in the 1950's.
> No, it still has not been theorized. There is no definition of
> "auteur."
Is there any theory in the humanities in which the vocabulary is
precise and never in dispute? That's what philosophical disputes
mostly are -- disputes over the meaning of concepts.
That's probably relevant to whether critics have been innovative. You
might acknowledge that critics provide new vocabulary, but then argue
that when translated back into the old terms, it's all been done
before (and better).
Every damning critique of "auteurism" I have ever
> read has been logically true, because the criticizer has
incorporated
> the "flaw" is his initial definition.
Perhaps. Do you think "auteur" and "auteurism" are meaningless,
useless, or just banal?
> Cahiers didn't "raise" these issues. They had been on the table
for
> centuries. The world did not begin in 1950.
Well, something can be on the table and subsequently raised -- even
taken off the table.
Also, how many centuries have they been on the table? It's common to
reduce the idea of the auteur to the Romantic conception of the artist
-- is that what you mean?
>Nothing novel in any of this. Had all be said/asked a zillion times
>before. The difference was that Foucault was addressing people who
>hadn't bothered to get educated.
...
> Talk about gobbledygook.
> Put this into plain English, and I think your find people talking
about
> Griffith in the same tones prior to www1.
That may well be true. It probably wouldn't be hard to find -- Louis
Delluc maybe -- maybe you can find the idea in Longinus. Why not do
this -- find people talking in the same tones -- rather than state
that anyone who thinks otherwise is uneducated? How else will we the
benighted become educated?
Paul
1894
From:
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 9:02am
Subject: Re: Return of the Repressed
Tag Gallagher writes:
"a deep, profound, widespread and all pervasive unfamiliarity with American
movie criticism prior to ww2. Not to mention French or Italian."
In my case, this is absolutely true.
Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about film critcism of this era.
(As this old joke goes, "I resemble this remark"!)
Occasional excerpts have read seem very interesting sometimes.
Andrew Sarris reprinted an old article on the working methods of Frank
Borzage.
Borzage reportedly acted out all the parts in his films for the actors during
rehearsal, then told them "do them this way". Lubitsch reportedly did the
same thing.This is in complete contrast to today's Hollywood, where apparently
even giving an actor a "line reading" is considered the height of Bad Form. The
wonderful performances in Borzage and Lubitsch films speak for themselves.
Similarly, I have been learning a lot from Bill Krohn's posts about Cahiers
and other French criticism of recent decades. This too is new here.
There is a similar problem in mystery critcism. Much of it is buried in old
newspapers and is inaccessable. Dorothy L. Sayers' 1930's pieces on John
Dickson Carr and Georgette Heyer, which established those writers' reputations, have
been reprinted. But the bulk of Sayers' critical writing, hundreds of
newspaper articles and reviews, are not available today. Similarly, almost none of
Dashiell Hammett's 1920's mystery reviews are available. Francis M. Nevins has
recently been reprinting the 1940's writings of Anthony Boucher, the much loved
author, editor and critic of mystery and science fiction. The big annual
convention of mystery fans is called the Bouchercon in his honor.
Mike Grost
1895
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 1:47pm
Subject: Re: Re: Leni Riefenstahl Dead at 101
The "problematic side" of Knut Hamsen ? HAH!
That's a good one. He wasn't really a Nazi, just
PROBLEMATIC!
"his best-known novels
> were published
> pre-1900 & occupy a different universe from TRIUMPH
> OF THE WILL."
So it's all a matter of timing, eh? Good one!
--- jaketwilson wrote:
> David Ehrenstein wrote:
> > Phillip Johnson and Knut Hamsen are every bit as
> > worthy of scorn as Leni Riefenstahl.
>
> Hamsun was a great writer, far from a Nazi hack like
> Riefenstahl. He
> had his problematic side, but his best-known novels
> were published
> pre-1900 & occupy a different universe from TRIUMPH
> OF THE WILL.
>
> JTW
>
>
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1896
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 1:49pm
Subject: Re: Ted Allan materials?
I would suggest you try getting in touch with Gena
Rowlands via the Screen Actors Guild.
--- Adrian Martin wrote:
> Dear colleagues -
>
> I am trying to do some research into the plays
> written the late Ted Allan,
> especially those of the early '80s that John
> Cassavetes directed on stage
> and/or film: KNIVES, THE THIRD DAY COMES and LOVE
> STREAMS.
>
> Does anyone have a clue how the playscripts for
> these could be obtained?
> Were they ever published in any way, shape or form?
>
> And please please please don't anyone reply 'why
> don't you ask the
> self-proclaimed world's-leading-Cassavetes-expert
> Professor Raymond Carney',
> or I will merely sigh very deeply ...
>
> thanks, Adrian Martin
>
>
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1897
From:
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 11:33am
Subject: Writers and Film
David Ehrenstein started a long series of posts, criticizing auteurists for
neglecting screen writers.
As a contemporary critic whose film web site has long been explicitly and
proudly labeled Auteurist, I should respond.
First, I share David Ehrenstein's respect for writers' contributions to film.
I believe writers are artists, and have made major artistic accomplishments
in film history. I believe that most writers on a_film_by are much closer to
David Ehrenstein's core aesthetic views than his post suggests.
Many other posts here on a_film_by make good points about this.
Bill Krohn (AKA hotlove666) points out how much many directors have
contributed to the writing of the scripts of their films. A good deal of what we
consider "direction" is actually writing. His book "Hitchcock at Work" documents
much of this. It also documents the scriptwriters who worked with Hitchcock.
Tag Gallagher correctly points out that many contemporary auteurists pay
close attention to the works of writers in their criticism. His own outstanding
book on Rossellini has much information about the writing of films directed by
Rossellini.
Rossellini is a good example of how writing and direction work together.
Rossellini's films show a profound sense of logic. If Mr. Spock, the logic-loving
Vulcan on Star Trek, made films, they would look much like Rossellini's. This
is partly the result of the screenplays, which are deeply logical in their
approach, and partly the result of Rossellini's images, which show superb logic,
clarity and organization. The same personality shines through in both, partly
literary in expression, partly pictorial. One wishes that "The Rise of Louis
XIV" (1966) were more widely available. What a work of storytelling and
direction!
My own article of Fritz Lang on my web site goes into detail about several of
the screenwriters who worked with Lang. There are auteurist style analyses of
Viginia Van Upp (You and Me) and Nunnally Johnson (The Woman in the Window),
for instance. These create "author personalities" for these writers, pointing
out recurrent themes and techniques in their work. I'm also working on a
similar study of Bartlett Cormack, comparing his Broadway play "The Racket" (1927)
to his screenplay for "Fury" (1936). Edward G. Robinson first became famous
for his stage portrait of an Al Capone style gangster in this play, three years
before his film "Little Caesar" (1930).
The Lang article also looks at other kinds of literary creativity. It
examines source writers whose novels were turned into Lang films. There is a
comparison of Rufus King's novel "Museum Piece No. 13" with the film version, "Secret
Beyond the Door". It also links into my mystery web site, where there is a
detailed discussion of King's prose mystery work. King was a once highly admired
and popular writer, whose career extended from the 1920's to the 1960's. He
was a gifted literary stylist, with a beautiful command of the English language,
and a rich use of imagery. He was also notable as an explorer of gay themes
in his mystery fiction, with such works as "Murder By Latitude" (1930) and
"Murder Masks Miami" (1939) as landmarks in gay-themed mystery fiction.
Thirdly, I also tried to fit Lang films into cultural contexts in prose
mystery fiction history. There are comparisons of Spione / Spies (1928) with the
English prose spy writer William Le Queux (writing since 1890), and of M (1931)
with the police procedural school of mystery fiction founded by Freeman Will
Crofts' "The Cask" (1920). Critics need to start thinking about how mystery
films interact with prose mystery history. Lang did not entirely invent the spy
fiction approaches in Spione or the police procedure work in M out of whole
cloth; like other creators of mystery works, he was influenced by pre-existing
schools of crime fiction.
Similarly, my Antonioni article compares L'avventura with Clifford Knight's
prose mystery novels.
Finally, one should also add that looking at visual style in film, something
that has little to with writing, is all-important. My recent post on the
geometry of Lang's images is an attempt to study this. Fred Camper has emphasized
again and again in his writings the greatness and artistic importance of visual
style. Visual style is still deeply neglected in much critical writing on
film. We need to do much more in this direction!
Mike Grost
1898
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:22pm
Subject: Re: Writers and Film
What's the URL to your website?
--- MG4273@a... wrote:
> David Ehrenstein started a long series of posts,
> criticizing auteurists for
> neglecting screen writers.
> As a contemporary critic whose film web site has
> long been explicitly and
> proudly labeled Auteurist, I should respond.
> First, I share David Ehrenstein's respect for
> writers' contributions to film.
> I believe writers are artists, and have made major
> artistic accomplishments
> in film history. I believe that most writers on
> a_film_by are much closer to
> David Ehrenstein's core aesthetic views than his
> post suggests.
> Many other posts here on a_film_by make good points
> about this.
> Bill Krohn (AKA hotlove666) points out how much many
> directors have
> contributed to the writing of the scripts of their
> films. A good deal of what we
> consider "direction" is actually writing. His book
> "Hitchcock at Work" documents
> much of this. It also documents the scriptwriters
> who worked with Hitchcock.
> Tag Gallagher correctly points out that many
> contemporary auteurists pay
> close attention to the works of writers in their
> criticism. His own outstanding
> book on Rossellini has much information about the
> writing of films directed by
> Rossellini.
> Rossellini is a good example of how writing and
> direction work together.
> Rossellini's films show a profound sense of logic.
> If Mr. Spock, the logic-loving
> Vulcan on Star Trek, made films, they would look
> much like Rossellini's. This
> is partly the result of the screenplays, which are
> deeply logical in their
> approach, and partly the result of Rossellini's
> images, which show superb logic,
> clarity and organization. The same personality
> shines through in both, partly
> literary in expression, partly pictorial. One wishes
> that "The Rise of Louis
> XIV" (1966) were more widely available. What a work
> of storytelling and
> direction!
> My own article of Fritz Lang on my web site goes
> into detail about several of
> the screenwriters who worked with Lang. There are
> auteurist style analyses of
> Viginia Van Upp (You and Me) and Nunnally Johnson
> (The Woman in the Window),
> for instance. These create "author personalities"
> for these writers, pointing
> out recurrent themes and techniques in their work.
> I'm also working on a
> similar study of Bartlett Cormack, comparing his
> Broadway play "The Racket" (1927)
> to his screenplay for "Fury" (1936). Edward G.
> Robinson first became famous
> for his stage portrait of an Al Capone style
> gangster in this play, three years
> before his film "Little Caesar" (1930).
> The Lang article also looks at other kinds of
> literary creativity. It
> examines source writers whose novels were turned
> into Lang films. There is a
> comparison of Rufus King's novel "Museum Piece No.
> 13" with the film version, "Secret
> Beyond the Door". It also links into my mystery web
> site, where there is a
> detailed discussion of King's prose mystery work.
> King was a once highly admired
> and popular writer, whose career extended from the
> 1920's to the 1960's. He
> was a gifted literary stylist, with a beautiful
> command of the English language,
> and a rich use of imagery. He was also notable as an
> explorer of gay themes
> in his mystery fiction, with such works as "Murder
> By Latitude" (1930) and
> "Murder Masks Miami" (1939) as landmarks in
> gay-themed mystery fiction.
> Thirdly, I also tried to fit Lang films into
> cultural contexts in prose
> mystery fiction history. There are comparisons of
> Spione / Spies (1928) with the
> English prose spy writer William Le Queux (writing
> since 1890), and of M (1931)
> with the police procedural school of mystery fiction
> founded by Freeman Will
> Crofts' "The Cask" (1920). Critics need to start
> thinking about how mystery
> films interact with prose mystery history. Lang did
> not entirely invent the spy
> fiction approaches in Spione or the police procedure
> work in M out of whole
> cloth; like other creators of mystery works, he was
> influenced by pre-existing
> schools of crime fiction.
> Similarly, my Antonioni article compares L'avventura
> with Clifford Knight's
> prose mystery novels.
> Finally, one should also add that looking at visual
> style in film, something
> that has little to with writing, is all-important.
> My recent post on the
> geometry of Lang's images is an attempt to study
> this. Fred Camper has emphasized
> again and again in his writings the greatness and
> artistic importance of visual
> style. Visual style is still deeply neglected in
> much critical writing on
> film. We need to do much more in this direction!
> Mike Grost
>
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1899
From:
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 0:40pm
Subject: Fashion, Beauty and Film
With all due respect to other writers, I do not belive that Leni Riefenstahl
had anything to do with the rise of fashion photography, fashion in film, or
the worship of beautiful people by the camera.
Fashion images in still photography have a long history in magazines. Many
great photographers have specialized in fashion photos, such as Cecil Beaton.
This was long before the 1930's and Riefenstahl (an evil director whose hideous
Nazi propoganda films have rightly earned her a place of infamy and loathing).
Fashion shows regularly appeared in silent newsreels in the 1920's, and as
episodes in silent films, such as the society ladies in the latest fashions
Lillian Gish encounters at the party in Griffith's "Way Down East" (1920). Some
fashion shows in movies are delightful, including those which also appeared in
the sound era. One thinks of the fashion show that ends "Roberta" (1935). Fred
Astaire and Ginger Rodgers dance to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", as the film
soars off into emotional ecstasy!
During the 1920's, famous fashion designers were lured to Hollywood, to dress
the stars. One thinks of Clare West's spectacular costumes for the ladies in
Cecil B. De Mille films. Who can ever forget movie vamp Bebe Daniels' red
"queen of the spiders" outfit West created for her in "The Affairs of Anatol"
(1921) (you can see it in two-color Technicolor in the movie). Greatest of all was
Travis Banton, who arrived in Hollywood in 1924 after a career in New York.
His feathers dress for Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express" (1932) is one of
the screen's most beautiful images. Marlene wore countless Banton outfirs in
her films.
Women were not the only ones who duded up for the camera. I just saw King
Vidor's "Love Never Dies" (1921), a rare silent, and posted earlier about how its
star Lloyd Hughes made 95 films but is largely forgotten today. Hughes was
the clean cut Arrow Collar Man type that was so popular in the 1920's. Writers
on the IMDB are quite startled by him, calling him "a gorgeous hunk" and "an
amazingly beautiful man". Vidor has him change well-tailored suits roughly every
two minutes. "Love Never Dies" is as much a fashion show as it is a movie.
People all over the world went to movies to see the latest styles. Even
before that, they went to the theater to see fashions. Maria Falconetti, the great
star of "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928), helped set fashion in France.
People went to her stage shows on opening night to see what she was wearing.
Mike Grost
1900
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2003 4:45pm
Subject: Re: Writers and Film
It is easy to overlook the influence of the writer in the work of an
auteur. The auteur often is so involved in the scriptwriting proces,
that he would recieve screencredit if he wanted to; Some to a degree,
that they almost drive the writer insane or away.
But are those writing blind to the fact that there was a screenwriter
involved in the proces or do they chose to ignore him, as the
screenwriter only assists the auteur in shaping his film.
Take Ernest Lehman, by all accounts an amazing screenwriter, strong
stories, solid and tight structure, but unpersonal. "North by
Northwest" is as much his creation as Hitchcocks, but how often is
Lehman's influence on the story only mentioned in a footnote or as an
anecdote. Take Paul Gégauff, who wrote for Chabrol. Regardless of that
Chabrol believed that filmmaking was a collective process, Gégauff is
a footnote, because its a Chabrol film.
When writers, as professionals, become 2nd division, even when being
amongst the best screenwriters in history, even when having written
some of the best films in history, then its because the theorists and
historians (and journalists) chose to do so.
However, writers get mentions. Cinematographers and editors are worse
of. I agree with Mr. Camper when he stresses the importance of visual
style, as Mr. Grost said "Visual style is still deeply neglected in
much critical writing on film. We need to do much more in this
direction!"
When I studied Soderbergh's "Solaris", I noted how beautiful and
complex his editing was, how it was influenced by Sarah Flack and how
he had taken what he had learned from her and developed into a new
dialect. She edited "Schitzopolis", "The Limey" and "Full Frontal" for
Soderberg and developed a ideosyncratic style. Even in a abyssmal film
as "Swimfan" her technical presence is visible. But I have yet to read
one review or essey of any of the above mentioned films, who give her
credit for the visual style and the films aestetics.
Equally, Ive read alot about hos von Sternberg shot the face of
Dietrich, but how many write about Néstor Almendros' photokinetics and
how he shoots the human face?
While we rise the issue, I cant say why it is. I can speculate, I can
trace it back, but I also can defend my speculatons. Personally, I
draw attention to the writer as much I can, if the writer deserves
credit (I never fail to mention for instance Brian Helgelands skills)
and equally I always draw attention to the cinematography and editing.
I rather not speculate why other writers dont. But I would very much
like to hear from others, why they, if they neglect writers and
technical personal, do so.
Henrik Sylow
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