Home Film
Art
Other: (Travel, Rants, Obits)
Links About
Contact
a_film_by Main Page
Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
from an auteurist perspective. The index to these files of posts can be found at http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/ The purpose of these files is to make our posts more accessible, for downloading and reading and to search engines.
Important: The copyright of each post below is owned by the
person who wrote the post, and reproducing it in any form requires
that person's permission.
It is possible to email the author of any post by finding a post
they have written in the a_film_by archives at
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/messages and
emailing them from that Web site.
6601
From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 1:37pm
Subject: Re: Re: What Is a Cineaste
> Craig, as a French speaker I have no trouble understanding and using
> the terms, which are not at all synonymous in French.
Respect going out, but this wasn't me who posed the original question
-- 'twas Jess. It's all quite clear here: Billy Wilder is the metteur
en scène of his own auteurist ideas -- Billy Wilder is the metteur en
scène of his own auteurist ideas -- Billy Wilder is...
und so weiter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6602
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 2:27pm
Subject: Re: Chahine
--- Craig Keller wrote:
time he spent in the US after the war.
>
> I've been curious to know what others think about
> these three films. I
> own them on DVD -- bought them as a cold purchase --
> and find
> 'Alexandria...Why?' to be the best, but the last
> two, especially the
> third, to be pretty awful. Anyone?
>
I'm crazy about "Alexandria Again and Forever." We
could start a whole new discussion of camp on that one
if anybody's in the mood. Chahine is a fascinating
figure in world cinema. The West tends to regard
anything outside itselfas "ethnographic." But is he
really? he studied at the pasadena playhouse. "The
Sixth Day" is dedicated to Gene Kelly -- who Chahine
always wanted to be. And "Adieu Bonaparte" stars
Michael Piccoli and Patrice Chereau.
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6603
From: iangjohnston
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 2:51pm
Subject: Re: Son frère
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Takagi"
wrote:
> Since there are some Chéreau supporters on this list,
> could anyone give some comments on last year's "Son frère"?
> It dropped out of sight on Parisian screens right when
> I arrived in the fall, but am contemplating purchasing
> the upcoming DVD. With the strength of the euro these days,
> one must be picky.
>
> Jonathan
If you are picky, you might want to hold off on purchasing this one.
It is a good film, but it has nothing near the verve and cinematic
invention of Those Who Love Me... (whose first half hour -- or
however long the stuff on the train lasts -- must be one of the
great pieces of 90s filmmaking). The depiction of the relationship
between the two brothers is great; Maurice (Philippe's father)
Garrel's appearance as a wise old sailor is charming and mystifying;
and there's an absolutely stunning sequence when the sick brother is
being prepared for surgery; but it left me less moved than I think I
should have been.
Ian
6604
From: iangjohnston
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 2:53pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
>
> > There's nothing particularly "wrong" with it, except that it's
weaker
> > than most of his output.
>
> There's nothing particularly "weak" about it, except that it's
less
> correct than most of his output. So explain what you take to be
its
> weaknesses.
>
> craig.
Less "correct"? Please explain.
Ian
6605
From: iangjohnston
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 3:13pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Raymond P." wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
> wrote:
> >
> > > There's nothing particularly "wrong" with it, except that it's
> weaker
> > > than most of his output.
> >
> > There's nothing particularly "weak" about it, except that it's
> less
> > correct than most of his output. So explain what you take to be
> its
> > weaknesses.
> >
> > craig.
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
> It is weak because, unlike his other films which are borne out of
> his recollections and sense of history, he reveals how little he
> understand the generation in which he is trying to portray. His
> examination of the fleetingness of youth would have more
conviction
> if the film actually portrayed "youth". Plus, wasn't this much
more
> convincingly done anyways, in City of Sadness? And could you find
a
> worse actress than f***ing Shu Qi?
>
> Still, the film is not without merit. Mark Li Ping-Bin has done it
> again with the exquisite frames of beauty, shot after shot. The
film
> seems to me more of a meditation of an old man quietly wondering
> where his youth has gone. The problem is that this old man isn't
in
> the movie at all, but is sitting somewhere in a director's chair.
Great! I've finally found someone else who thinks Shu Qi is a lousy
actress... Actually, Hou's use of starlets and pop stars can
sometimes be problematic. While Annie Shizuka Inoh is fine in
Goodbye South, Goodbye, I find her pretty weak and unconvincing in
the modern section of Good Men, Good Women; similarly, pop star Yang
Lin in Daughter of the Nile. Millennium Mambo's cinematography and
mise en scene are simply masterful; the surrounding performances are
great; but Shu Qi is very weak, and a very clever narrative
structure fails to conceal the hollowness at the core of the
enterprise.
Actually, I don't think the "fleetingness of youth" is much of an
issue in City of Sadness. Dust in the Wind, surely?
Ian
6606
From: iangjohnston
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 3:17pm
Subject: Re: 2004 Not a Promising Year
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>There'll be a new Godard,
> hopefully better than the last, shot in Sarajevo.
And as Eloge de l'Amour was the most inspiring, invigorating, joyous
cinematic experiences in many a year, on this basis the new one will
be set to be one of the masterpieces of the 21st century...
Ian
6607
From: iangjohnston
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 3:25pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Gallagher" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Raymond P."
wrote:
> >
> > It is weak because, unlike his other films which are borne out
of
> > his recollections and sense of history, he reveals how little he
> > understand the generation in which he is trying to portray. His
> > examination of the fleetingness of youth would have more
conviction
> > if the film actually portrayed "youth". Plus, wasn't this much
more
> > convincingly done anyways, in City of Sadness? And could you
find a
> > worse actress than f***ing Shu Qi?
> >
> > Still, the film is not without merit. Mark Li Ping-Bin has done
it
> > again with the exquisite frames of beauty, shot after shot. The
film
> > seems to me more of a meditation of an old man quietly wondering
> > where his youth has gone. The problem is that this old man isn't
in
> > the movie at all, but is sitting somewhere in a director's chair.
>
> I'd like to defend Millennium Mambo, but I'm not sure where to
> start. I've been a Hsi Chi fan for a long time, so I have no
problem
> understanding why she should fascinate Hou. As to whether the
> film actually portrays "youth," I can see your point, but the
> film gives me the sense of either looking at Vicky and at "youth"
> from a great distance, both in time and emotionally, or looking
> in close-up -- the "magnifying glass" Hou talked about in
interviews.
> It's an unusual point of view, but I think it succeeds -- it
reminds
> me a little of the strangely compelling combination of distance
> and mundane detail in "Elephant." So many of the small details
> seem right to me, in that I've noticed them in real people I know:
> to name just a few, the way Vicky's squeaky voice comes out when
> she's drunk, Hello Kitty throughout the apartment, her taste for
> chili sauce, her two smallpox vaccination scars -- tiny details,
> but they feel true. (I doubt the techno in the clubs -- is techno
> still popular in Taipei?) The repeated emphasis on the flatness of
the
> image, on blocked or distorted view-points, the views through
> the video monitors or under black light as well as metaphors
> like the face prints in the snow and half-metaphors like the lap
> dance, all emphasize a life of vivid, pleasurable, exhilirating,
> but empty or artificial or fleeting surfaces. I think there's
> some wisdom in that. The emphasis on youth is maybe not so much
> an assertion that the lives of the young are particularly empty,
> but instead that for the young there's still the chance to escape
and
> still time to learn. I think Vicky describing her life in
> the third-person from ten years later, the example of the old
> woman hoping to live to be 100, and the metaphor of a cold
> winter, which of course is followed by spring, all empasize
> the hopefulness of the film -- in contrast there's little hope
> of escape in "Flowers of Shanghai" or "Goodbye South Goodbye"...
>
> Paul
"Hsu Chi" surely? (Or was it a typo?) What has been the basis for
your being a fan for a long time? I can't think of a halfway decent
film (apart from MM) that she's appeared in. And then there's the
deeply irritating soap commercials...
All your comments on Millennium Mambo hold pretty true, I think. I
just don't think it adds up to pretty much; and I can't be convinced
of the merits of Shu Qi/Hsu Chi's acting...
Ian
6608
From: iangjohnston
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 3:27pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Gallagher"
wrote:
> > Vicky describing her life in
> > the third-person from ten years later,
> I was tempted to bring that up in the "disembodied narrator"
thread, by the way -- here's a narrator who is and isn't "diegetic"
at the same time. (Had no way of knowing how accurate the
translation is in that respect, though.)
The translation is accurate -- she does talk of herself using the
Chinese third-person "ta".
Ian
6609
From: Raymond P.
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 3:54pm
Subject: Re: 2004 Not a Promising Year
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "iangjohnston" wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
> >There'll be a new Godard,
> > hopefully better than the last, shot in Sarajevo.
>
> And as Eloge de l'Amour was the most inspiring, invigorating,
joyous
> cinematic experiences in many a year, on this basis the new one
will
> be set to be one of the masterpieces of the 21st century...
>
> Ian
I completely concur - In Praise of Love is an amazing piece of work,
and easily one of Godard's best in a long and fruitful career. I was
literally trembling toward the end of the film, when the scope and
magnitude of the ideas presented slowly dawned on me - a film that
champions the knowledge of history and culture as a cradle of our
current civilization.
6610
From: Raymond P.
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 4:00pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "iangjohnston" wrote:
> Great! I've finally found someone else who thinks Shu Qi is a
lousy
> actress... Actually, Hou's use of starlets and pop stars can
> sometimes be problematic. While Annie Shizuka Inoh is fine in
> Goodbye South, Goodbye, I find her pretty weak and unconvincing in
> the modern section of Good Men, Good Women; similarly, pop star
Yang
> Lin in Daughter of the Nile. Millennium Mambo's cinematography and
> mise en scene are simply masterful; the surrounding performances
are
> great; but Shu Qi is very weak, and a very clever narrative
> structure fails to conceal the hollowness at the core of the
> enterprise.
>
> Actually, I don't think the "fleetingness of youth" is much of an
> issue in City of Sadness. Dust in the Wind, surely?
>
> Ian
Being that I live in Hong Kong, Shu Qi continuously annoys the
living crap out of me (though she is still leagues away from the
malignant, ever-present cancer that is Gigi Leung). I have never
seen her convincing in anything. To imply that watching her smoking
cigarettes while wondering around listening to incredibly outdated
techno (who listens to that stuff in Taiwan anyways?!?!) is somehow
a great performance is just completely beyond me.
Sorry about that - I think it is Dust in the Wind, though lately
I've been having a hard time keeping track of my Hou's (except for
Good Men, Good Women and Flowers of Shanghai, since I saw them most
recently).
And I seem to be agreeing with you quite a bit, Ian ;)
6611
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 4:10pm
Subject: Re: Re: 2004 Not a Promising Year
--- "Raymond P." wrote:
>
> I completely concur - In Praise of Love is an
> amazing piece of work,
> and easily one of Godard's best in a long and
> fruitful career. I was
> literally trembling toward the end of the film, when
> the scope and
> magnitude of the ideas presented slowly dawned on me
> - a film that
> champions the knowledge of history and culture as a
> cradle of our
> current civilization.
>
>
And I think it's his worst film. Sloppy, simplistic,
the video oooked hideous. Godard is a very important
part of my life. He practically raised me through his
films. Some of them aren't even films to me -- they're
historical events. "Nouvelle Vague" is his absolute
masterpeice, IMO. Not this thing.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6612
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 4:10pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo
> Great! I've finally found someone else who thinks Shu Qi is a lousy
> actress... Actually, Hou's use of starlets and pop stars can
> sometimes be problematic. While Annie Shizuka Inoh is fine in
> Goodbye South, Goodbye, I find her pretty weak and unconvincing in
> the modern section of Good Men, Good Women;
This is starting to sound like the Martine Carrol sinks "Lola Montes"
thing.... (then, Lola Montes gets beat over the head with Madame deCoul
and Le Plaisir... arrrrghh....)
I'm not so sure Hou is about portraiture in the "Western" sense.
Anyway I had no problem with her in GMGW, an exquisitely beautiful
and painful film....
>>in contrast there's little hope
of escape in "Flowers of Shanghai" or "Goodbye South Goodbye"...
But, my theory is that in "Goodbye South, Goodbye" Hou maps out
escape routes at the same time.... and perhaps asks the question,
"can the characters read the map ?"
-Sam
6613
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 4:27pm
Subject: Re: What Is a Cineaste
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
> The
> use of mise-en-scene as an almost mystical designation of the art in
> the art of cinema, notably by the MacMahonians, is what J-C is
> harking back to in his usage of "metteur-en-scene." And his example
> is Murnau.
P.S. I found your earlier elucidation of Biette's categories in post 5072. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/5072 (Am I imagining this or has the already feeble Yahoo search engine begun searching ever narrower increments as one travels back, like the train in Peppermint Candy, into time?)
And there, you say he called a Murnau a "cineaste." So I gather that one can be both; I had misunderstood "metteur en scene" to be a limiting category, two rungs below "cineaste"...
Also, I seem to recall that someone posted a link to Biette's article, or another one (in French); haven't found that one yet.
6614
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 4:28pm
Subject: Re: What Is a Cineaste
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> "Cineaste" is the one brand-new usage, and if you don't insist on
> translating it as "filmmaker," it is a perfectly serviceable new
> usage for an old word - French, like "auteur" before it - to
> designate a filmmaker whose films express an individual attitude
> toward his tools (cinema, understood not as a collection of
> techniques, but as an art and a tradition) and toward the world.
>
I have nothing against Biette's categories except that their
practicality seems dubious. As I said in a previous post you may have
missed or not paid attention to, Biette's is a subjective taxonomy --
almost a contradiction in terms. A cineaste to him is,
tautologically, someone he feels is a cineaste -- someone whose
films "express an individual attitude... etc etc..." Where is the
objectivity necessary to any useful taxonomy? He is just expressing
personal tastes (and biases), a personal ideology (which, like any
other ideology, is likely to be shared by some and rejected by
others). Any number of film enthusiasts will argue that Murnau,
Huston or Wilder are cineastes according to Biette's definition. This
will take us back to the old "auteur"- "non-auteur" controversies of
yore -- beyond which you say we should move. Is that necessary to the
pursuit of meaningful critical discourse?
> Someone can be a metteur-en-scene, an auteur and a cineaste all at
> once. A mere auteur like Huston
In the auteurist canon Huston was NOT an auteur; now he
becomes "a mere auteur". A bit confusing, no?
can become a cineaste in his last
> film. Or a metteur-en-scene like Curtiz can become a cineaste in
one
> film: The Breaking Point (as some seem to want to suggest)
A few of us (including myself) have had the audacity to say they
like "The Breaking Point" better than "To Have and Have Not". I would
never say that it makes Curtiz a cineaste-according-to-Biette. I
don't know what that makes him if anything. Do I have to put every
single filmmaker in a category (that's called pigeonholing)then pull
them out and switch them from one hole to another depending on what
film we're talking about?
. Etc.
> Having four terms of which three can be applied to one film artist,
> but not necessarily all the time, gives you a lot of flexibility to
> talk about something that is not as monolithic as the old
> alternative "auteur/non-auteur" tried to make it.
on them.
>
> I'm inclined to say, let's use them to see if they work, if they
make
> a difference, if they enable us to talk beter about our subject.
> Because the alternative is not being able to talk about certain
> things at all - things which NEED NAMES. But for that to be
possible,
> I have to do some translating.
>
I don't see how putting four different LABELS on filmmakers
(especially with the proviso that the labels may be changed at will)
is likely to help clarify discussions.
> I repeat, how often does anyone ever use the word "auteur" in a
post
> at "a_film_by?" Could that a symptom of something?
>
> What if we made a list of directors and tried to mark them "auteur"
> and "non-auteur"? How far would we get? Does that mean the term
> should be junked, or refined?
It has been "refined" by being demoted to below cineaste ("a mere
auteur"). Now you have to convince the ignorant crowds (who are still
not clear about the concept of auteur) that the meaning has been
changed from highest praise to patronizing dismissal.
6615
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 4:45pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
> > and if so, what is a
> >non commercial narrative film? Is that a film which is made with the
> >intention never to make money? or never to be of interest to the
> >general population?
I make quote unquote non commercial narrative films. Some people see
my narrative structures better than others; I defend them as narratives
for many reasons, not the least of which is that, because I know how
conventional narrative films are made (I've worked on them) I know where
I both construct and depart from in relation to said conventions.
Overgeneralizing here, but I'm not trying to write a post about me.
Saying that, I'll add "not making money" is NOT an intention, I'd love to
make real $$ at this.
>> and if so, what is a
>>non commercial narrative film? Is that a film which is made with the
>>intention never to make money? or never to be of interest to the
>>general population?
My standard answer to this is simply that every film reaches its audience
one person at a time; this is true of Speilberg, Brakhage, me, you, Ed wood Jr.
i.e. one should be interested in the *quality* of that reaching, as for quantity,
hey - more's the better, but the quality should be first.
> >... But even the representation of state
> >of mind does not rule out a narrative, as one has to make others
>>aware of it.
This is an area which I give a lot of thought to. Can't even skim the surface
right now, but.....
> The representation of a state of mind can be done through narrative,
> or without what most would call "narrative." Brakhage's "Romans" and
> "Arabics" are examples of the latter.
....I think there is clearly something going on here, which is patterend and
structured *as narrative is also* but is not the same, and I furthermore I
suspect that 'unnamed as yet' thing(s) underlies 'narrative" and so I
can't regard all so-called non-narrative as a negation of narrative, but
perhaps even the reverse -
-Sam Wells
6616
From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 4:52pm
Subject: Millennium Mambo / Éloge de l'amour
> Less "correct"? Please explain.
What I mean is that 'Millennium Mambo' seems a deliberate about-face
(well, maybe a 38-degree turn) from the formal structures of the other
'90s films: 'The Puppetmaster,' 'Good Men, Good Women,' and 'Flowers of
Shanghai' -- maybe not so much 'Goodbye South Goodbye.' It is many
ways an elaboration upon the modern sequences of 'Good Men, Good Women'
-- a film in which, if I consider its two eras separately, I prefer (on
a visceral level) the modern sequences. ("Intellectually," of course,
I think the film-as-a-whole approaches masterpiece status.)
Also, I find Inou's performance in 'Good Men, Good Women' to be pretty
fucking flawless. I probably know five girls like her, flopping about
sloshed and self-abused -- "disaffected, and eager to please," as the
old Radiohead song goes. And it's not just because I detect a perfect
cinematic corollary to that real-life "archetype" -- I think her
performance has a documentary naturalism wherein Inou combines a sense
of trash with something like élan. The karaoke scenes are
heart-wrenching, and the racquetball fight is truly pathetic (and the
subsequent reconciliation in the club something between pathetic and
touching).
I remember similar grace in Shu Qi's performance. I'm going to catch a
matinee of 'Millennium Mambo' today, after which I'll elaborate more.
In regard to the music -- I'll keep this in mind while rewatching, but
I don't recall it sounding particularly dated. The whole trancey
old-skool anti-jungle thing came back into resurgence around
1998/1999/2000 -- if I recall correctly, the music being spun in the
clubs and at the apartment in Hou's film fits pretty "soundly" into
this category. To say that there are no clubs where such music would
be played in Taiwan (GrimmyHK?) seems to me absurd.
On the other hand Ian, I agree with you completely about 'Éloge de
l'amour.' I find it to be an exceptionally moving masterpiece, and
David, I think you're being a curmudgeon about the videography (is that
the term?) -- I thought it was absolutely beautiful. (The
black-and-white parts shot by Christophe Pollock are, god, among the
most tonally gorgeous examples of b&w cinematography this side of 'Au
hasard Balthazar.') What rankled you in particular about the film, in
terms of its "simplistic-ness" -- the Spielberg shit, or quote-unquote
anti-American attitude?
craig.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6617
From: Craig Keller
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 5:03pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo / Éloge de l'amour
> I remember similar grace in Shu Qi's performance. I'm going to catch a
> matinee of 'Millennium Mambo' today, after which I'll elaborate more.
Erm, apparently there is no matinee of 'Millennium Mambo' today -- do I
go see 'Cold Mountain' instead?
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6618
From: samfilms2003
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 5:45pm
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo / Éloge de l'amour
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller wrote:
> -- I think her
> performance has a documentary naturalism wherein Inou combines a sense
> of trash with something like élan.
In a very real sense, I suspect that she MUST. She must be both, to use th=
e
Vietnamese phrase "dust of life" and yet convey the sense of dignity that
comes about in the knowledge of the "dust" when in the game of "surviving
history" - I think that IS the elan, but I'm not sure western audiences kno=
w
how to read this...
> On the other hand Ian, I agree with you completely about 'Éloge de
> l'amour.' I find it to be an exceptionally moving masterpiece, and
> David, I think you're being a curmudgeon about the videography (is that
> the term?) -- I thought it was absolutely beautiful.
Agree agree agree, this is how DV should be done.
ditto re the B&W.
Anyway, damn, I mean engaging any Godard from La Chinoise onwards is
an LTR, no ?
..... I mean if you don't find every other JLG film maddening at some
points....
-Sam
Now please stop this interesting discussion I've got work to do ;-)
6619
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 5:54pm
Subject: Re: Millennium_Mambo_/_Éloge_de_l'amour
--- Craig Keller wrote:
> David, I think you're being a curmudgeon about the
> videography (is that
> the term?) -- I thought it was absolutely beautiful.
It's high time you got in touch with your
Inner-Curmudgeon, Craig. I thought it looked hideous
-- and I say this as someone who thinks
"France/Tour/Detour/Deux Enfants" ranks among his
finest works. Also that video film (whose title
escapes me) that he made with Jean-Pierre Mocky and
Leaud.
> (The
> black-and-white parts shot by Christophe Pollock
> are, god, among the
> most tonally gorgeous examples of b&w cinematography
> this side of 'Au
> hasard Balthazar.')
Gorgeos B&W tonality? Give me "Bay of the Angels."
What rankled you in particular
> about the film, in
> terms of its "simplistic-ness" -- the Spielberg
> shit, or quote-unquote
> anti-American attitude?
>
Yes and Yes.
Spielberg is not George W.Bush. Likewise his
anti-Americanism is all surface. It doesn't come close
to mine.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6620
From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 5:57pm
Subject: RE: Millennium_Mambo_/_Iloge_de_l'amour
> Also that video film (whose title
> escapes me) that he made with Jean-Pierre Mocky and
> Leaud.
"Grandeur et decadance d'un petit commerce de cinema"
A great little film.
6621
From:
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 5:58pm
Subject: Re: What Is a Cineaste
JPC:
> A cineaste to him is,
> tautologically, someone he feels is a cineaste -- someone whose
> films "express an individual attitude... etc etc..." Where is the
> objectivity necessary to any useful taxonomy? He is just
expressing
> personal tastes (and biases), a personal ideology (which, like any
> other ideology, is likely to be shared by some and rejected by
> others). Any number of film enthusiasts will argue that Murnau,
> Huston or Wilder are cineastes according to Biette's definition.
This
> will take us back to the old "auteur"- "non-auteur" controversies
of
> yore -- beyond which you say we should move. Is that necessary to
the
> pursuit of meaningful critical discourse?
>
...
> >
> I don't see how putting four different LABELS on filmmakers
> (especially with the proviso that the labels may be changed at
will)
> is likely to help clarify discussions.
>
I think I agree with all this. Categories and labels are certainly
useful in spurring debate, but sometimes people feel the need to
create new categories just to try and replicate (or update) what
Sarris did with the AMERICAN CINEMA structure. Alas, I've always
felt like I was on the wrong side of things thanks to those
categories. I believe in the auteurist approach, but
Sarris's "Strained Seriousness," "Fringe Benefits," and "Less than
Meets the Eye" chapters could easily be mistaken for lists of my
favorite directors. (NOTE to anybody who actually decides to update
that book: Please put Jack Clayton in the Pantheon where he belongs.
Thank you.)
I feel like one of those people who say they believe in God but shun
organized religion.
-Bilge
6622
From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:09pm
Subject: RE: Millennium Mambo music
> In regard to the music -- I'll keep this in mind while rewatching, but
> I don't recall it sounding particularly dated.
I agree that it is a plausible sound for the time (and I
guess Hou would know, didn't he talk about hanging out in
clubs and taking ecstacy?), but it really decreases from
my viewing enjoyment. As in "Run Lola Run" (which suffered
from other problems as well), the utterly unimaginative
music (and I like "techno") really got on my nerves.
6623
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:17pm
Subject: RE: Millennium_Mambo_/_Iloge_de_l'amour
Yes that's the one. Beautifully made. Unlike "Eloge de
L'Amour."
--- Jonathan Takagi wrote:
>
> > Also that video film (whose title
> > escapes me) that he made with Jean-Pierre Mocky
> and
> > Leaud.
>
> "Grandeur et decadance d'un petit commerce de
> cinema"
>
> A great little film.
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6624
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 6:48pm
Subject: Major MPAA News!
For Immediate Release
BERTOLUCCI...UNCUT!
Fox Searchlight To Release Bernardo Bertolucci’s
NC-17-Rated THE DREAMERS in February 2004
HOLLYWOOD, CA (January 12, 2004) – Fox Searchlight
Pictures will release the uncut version of Academy
Award® winner Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE DREAMERS in
February 2004, reviving the dormant NC-17 rating. This
bold move marks the first time in its history that Fox
Searchlight has released an NC-17-rated film, and the
first time an MPAA signatory company has done so in
more than six years.
“THE DREAMERS provocatively explores human sexuality
in a frank way,” said Fox Searchlight Pictures
President Peter Rice. “By releasing the film as
Bernardo originally intended we are following in the
footsteps of classic films like MIDNIGHT COWBOY and
LAST TANGO IN PARIS. Like THE DREAMERS, those
masterpieces would not have been improved by cutting
them to an R rating. We believe that NC-17 is the
appropriate rating for THE DREAMERS given that this is
not a film for children under 17; it is an audacious
and original film for intelligent critics and
discerning adult audiences.”
Said Director Bernardo Bertolucci, “THE DREAMERS is
finally making it to the U.S. in its uncut version.
I'm relieved - in so many ways - that the distributor
has had the vision to release my original film. After
all, an orgasm is better than a bomb.”
It’s been 30 years since Bertolucci’s intensely erotic
LAST TANGO IN PARIS ignited audiences. His films have
frequently caused controversy but have stood the test
of time and are now regarded as classics.
THE DREAMERS will be unveiled in North America at the
Sundance Film Festival on January 20. The film, which
is nominated for a Goya for Best European Film,
screened to critical acclaim at the 2003 Venice Film
Festival and London Film Festival. It will open in Los
Angeles and New York on February 6 and in select
cities nationwide beginning February 13.
Set against the turbulent political backdrop of France
in the spring of 1968 when the voice of youth was
reverberating around Europe, THE DREAMERS is a story
of self-discovery as three students test each other to
see just how far they will go. Left alone while their
parents are on holiday, Isabelle (Eva Green) and her
brother Theo (Louis Garrel) invite Matthew (Michael
Pitt), a young American student, to stay at their
apartment. Here they make their own rules as they
experiment with their emotions and sexuality while
playing a series of increasingly demanding mind games.
THE DREAMERS marks Bertolucci’s third film shot in
Paris, following THE CONFORMIST and the
Oscar-nominated LAST TANGO IN PARIS. The screenplay,
adapted for the screen from his original novel, is by
English author and film critic Gilbert Adair. It
strikes a personal chord for both Bertolucci and
Adair, for, although their paths never crossed, they
were both living in Paris at the end of the 60s,
experiencing the events against which the film is set.
Their love of cinema took them to the birthplace of
the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), immersing them in a
strong international cinema culture. “There was
something magic in the 60s,” Bertolucci recalls, “in
that we were … well, let’s use the word ‘dreaming’. We
were fusing cinema, politics, music, jazz, rock ‘n
roll, sex, philosophy.”
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6625
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 8:12pm
Subject: Re: What is a Cineaste?
M. C. - I did read your post and replied, briefly, by saying that I
prefer to stay away from concepts like objective and subjective,
which have long, tangled histories in philosophy and ordinary
language that would be better dealt with in a philosophy class. I
then said what I think using the terms you introduced, quoting
Kant: Esthetic judgements are subjective in content, objective in
form. And I threw in two more troublesome terms - "form" and
"content" - just to make the sentence sound good. If you refer to
the Critique of Judgement, you'll see I didn't make it up. And for
what it's worth, I agree with it, but it would take a lot of work to
explain why.
Before going further, let me clear up a couple of factual
confusions. J-C says that Murnau is a metteur-en-scene and a
cineaste. I suggested that perhaps Curtiz was a cineaste in one
film only The Breaking Point - otherwise I'm fine with David
calling him a metteur-en-scene. You're right: there are many who
have denied Huston the title of auteur, but if you look back at
early posts in this group, I questioned how that could be true of
him and Wilder, and in subsequent discussions we decided that
in any meaningful use of the term we could think of, Huston IS an
auteur. My reference to him as a "mere" auteur was a. humorous
b. sincere c. based on that work that was already done here.
The only new term introduced in "What Is a Cineaste?'" was
"cineaste" as defined by J-C. I think he defined it clearly enough
that we can discuss the merits. When I say, following him, that
The Bicycle Thief reproduces the conventions of cinema of its
time and the ideology (and sentimentality) of the Italian petite
bourgeoisie of its time, I really don't feel obliged to add: "IMO."
When I say that Rossellini was reinventing cinema in Paisa and
at the same time breaking with the world view that De Sica
shared with a huge part of the Italian public, including most
journalists, I'm using an example that everyone here at least
knows - Bicycle Thief vs. Paisa - and where I believe most of us,
as sophisticated viewers, would agree, at a minimum, that RR is
operating on a different level than De S., to use another vague
term; and that the two very specific ways J-C explained that
vague sense of "levels" - very important to what we are doing - is
clear and at least worth discussion.
When I say that Casblanca resoundingly and resonantly
embodies the ideology of most Americans in 1942, I don't think
I'm inviting everyone to engage in a guessing game. The
ideology I'm referering to is not, for example, Islam. Or
Communism. Or feudalism. It is capitalism, expressed through
one of its most important tenents: the defense of the rights of the
individual over the prerogatives of the State. Bogie in
Casablanca. For the needs of WWII (or more recently, the War on
Terrorism), that individualism has to be modified in all sorts of
ways. Bogie has to commit to a cause, and he doesn't get the
girl. Which violates a Hollywood convention, but not as the result
of an individual decision, as when Hawks virtually eliminates plot
in Hatari. Bogie not getting the girl again reflects the ideological
imperatives of that era. Maybe you'd disagree with this reading -
which is composed entirely of common-places - but I don't think
it's vague. And when I call Casablanca a consumate example of
studio filmmaking, in its visual style, acting style, musical style
etc., we at least have something to talk about. As opposed to
Breaking Point, which Monte Hellman feels uses an
anti-conventional acting style and, according to another post,
eliminates all diegetic music.
These are all possible, if not downright easy, to understand, and
are not at all like the "chicken-sexing" approach Dan and I
discussed here months ago: "that's a cineaste, that isn't - and
don't ask me why." In fact, it's the opposite of that. Ditto for "This
is an auteur, that isn't."
The answer for many here may be '"what's wrong with bourgeois
ideology," or "what's wrong with conventional Hollywood
filmmaking," or "how can a filmmaker's attitude toward the world,
or his instrument, have anything to do with the feelings I get
watching the films I love?"
There's actually nothing wrong with that. But it is, IMO, a lot less
precise than Jean-Claude's definition of "cineaste."
One big problem no one has raised, which I'm incompetent to
deal with, is how any of the four terms can be meaningfully used
for avant-garde films!
6626
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 8:52pm
Subject: Re: Re: What is a Cineaste?
--- hotlove666 wrote:
a lot less
> precise than Jean-Claude's definition of "cineaste."
>
> One big problem no one has raised, which I'm
> incompetent to
> deal with, is how any of the four terms can be
> meaningfully used
> for avant-garde films!
>
>
Quite true. As used by Biette a "cineaste" would
appear to be a kind of "super-autuer."
In my expeirence "cineaste" referred to film
critics/scholars/fans -- not actaul filmmkaers.
Over and above all this is the VALUE that appears
inherent in such terms. One could dismiss some
directors as "mere metteurs-en-scene" as opposed to
"auteurs."
Hitchcock is an auteur, but "Topaz" is a very bad
film.
Charles Walters is not an auteur but "Good News" is a
masterpiece.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6627
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 10:32pm
Subject: Re: What is a Cineaste?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> As used by Biette a "cineaste" would
> appear to be a kind of "super-autuer."
>
> In my expeirence "cineaste" referred to film
> critics/scholars/fans -- not actaul filmmkaers.
>
David,I think Bill has made the point in an earlier post that
the use of "cineaste" as meaning "critics/scholars/fans" is an
American derivation from the French meaning, which has always
been "filmmaker" and never "film buff". As a French person I was
annoyed myself when I started seeing this erroneous use in English (a
confusion between cineaste and cinephile?)certainly more than twenty
years ago. However it is in the nature of foreign words imported into
another language to lose their original sense, so I guess there's
nothing to be done. But if someone as knowledgeable as you has been
under the impression that "cineaste" means "film buff or scholar", it
goes to show how difficult the translation and adoption of Biette's
terminology as advocated by Bill is likely to be.
JPC
6628
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 10:38pm
Subject: Re: Re: What is a Cineaste?
Wellin that case, would you say that "auteur"ranks
higher than "cineaste" ?
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> David,I think Bill has made the point in an
> earlier post that
> the use of "cineaste" as meaning
> "critics/scholars/fans" is an
> American derivation from the French meaning, which
> has always
> been "filmmaker" and never "film buff". As a French
> person I was
> annoyed myself when I started seeing this erroneous
> use in English (a
> confusion between cineaste and cinephile?)certainly
> more than twenty
> years ago. However it is in the nature of foreign
> words imported into
> another language to lose their original sense, so I
> guess there's
> nothing to be done. But if someone as knowledgeable
> as you has been
> under the impression that "cineaste" means "film
> buff or scholar", it
> goes to show how difficult the translation and
> adoption of Biette's
> terminology as advocated by Bill is likely to be.
>
> JPC
>
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6629
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 11:05pm
Subject: Re: What is a Cineaste?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> M. C. - I did read your post and replied, briefly, by saying that I
> prefer to stay away from concepts like objective and subjective,
> which have long, tangled histories in philosophy and ordinary
> language that would be better dealt with in a philosophy class. I
> then said what I think using the terms you introduced, quoting
> Kant: Esthetic judgements are subjective in content, objective in
> form. And I threw in two more troublesome terms - "form" and
> "content" - just to make the sentence sound good. If you refer to
> the Critique of Judgement, you'll see I didn't make it up. And for
> what it's worth, I agree with it, but it would take a lot of work
to
> explain why.
It's all very well to stay aloof and say that one doesn't care
to use concepts that have "tangled histories in philosophy and
ordinary language" -- although this stance would ultimately eliminate
the use of most concepts, since most concepts have a "tangled
history" by their very nature of being "concepts". However you
neglect to address my very simple (simplistic?) objection that a
taxinomy cannot be founded on aesthetic preferences. A scientist
doesn't place a flower in a category and another flower in another
category just because he likes the former's smell, or color, better.
I think that's pretty much what Biette did with his labels -- and
that is perhaps a reason why he wisely decided not to use them
himself, as you have pointed out.
Otherwise I don't disagree with anything you say in the rest of
your post (Rossellini/De Sica, Casablanca, Bicycle Thief etc...)
>
JPC
6630
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 11:11pm
Subject: Re: What is a Cineaste?
We were discussing the Biette definition (a new definition)
of "cineaste". If we revert to the traditional meaning of the word,
then of course a "cineaste" doesn't "rank" at all. He/she is just
someone who makes films. JPC
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Wellin that case, would you say that "auteur"ranks
> higher than "cineaste" ?
>
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
> > David,I think Bill has made the point in an
> > earlier post that
> > the use of "cineaste" as meaning
> > "critics/scholars/fans" is an
> > American derivation from the French meaning, which
> > has always
> > been "filmmaker" and never "film buff". As a French
> > person I was
> > annoyed myself when I started seeing this erroneous
> > use in English (a
> > confusion between cineaste and cinephile?)certainly
> > more than twenty
> > years ago. However it is in the nature of foreign
> > words imported into
> > another language to lose their original sense, so I
> > guess there's
> > nothing to be done. But if someone as knowledgeable
> > as you has been
> > under the impression that "cineaste" means "film
> > buff or scholar", it
> > goes to show how difficult the translation and
> > adoption of Biette's
> > terminology as advocated by Bill is likely to be.
> >
> > JPC
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
> http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6631
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 11:38pm
Subject: re: Qu'est-ce qu'uin cineaste
Yes, a cineaste is higher than an auteur. But nothing prevents
films by auteurs-metteurs-en-scene, like The Ghost and Mrs.
Muir or The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, from being more
beautiful than certain masterpieces by cineastes. (Biette's
examples.) Always the door left open for nuance and complexity,
which I personally appreciate. This group is brilliant at coming
up with cases that put simple definitions to the test, as in the
recent discussions of Mankiewicz and Curtiz. I'd like to be able to
pursue the questions raised when that happens!
BTW, I want to change the American usage of cineaste =
cinephile whether I ever get around to translating J-C's article or
not.
Ok, so let's talk subjectivity. Most of the judgements made by this
group are subjective, but we do try to discuss them. Also, being
true to the long tradition Kant was analyzing, we rarely add "IMO"
- we make our judgement statements in objective form: Hawks
is better than Curtiz. This is paradoxical, but per Kant, not
incoherent.
So say I have this firm conviction that Rossellini is better than De
Sica. Not just better, but of a different order or class of filmmaker.
And I feel that about Hawks/Curtiz, King Hu/John Woo,
Hitchcock/Siodmak, Tourneur/Leisen, and on and on.
At a certain point, I'm going to try to figure out WHAT THE HELL I
AM TALKING ABOUT when I make these statements. That is all
Biette is doing. And I'll repeat: His definition of cineaste is
perspicuous, precise and very open to discussion, refutation and
defense, even if it's based on a lifetime of strong subjective
feelings like we all have about these matters.
And certainly, building categories out of esthetic judgements
(=subjective feelings) is something that goes on a lot in
auteurism - list-making, which leads to ten best lists, which
leads to hierarchies, which CAN lead to analysis, reflection and
categorization. Why not?
6632
From: Maxime
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 11:50pm
Subject: Re: What is a Cineaste?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Wellin that case, would you say that "auteur"ranks
> higher than "cineaste" ?
I'd say No. Biette's theory is the expression of an absolute faith
in cinema. No subjectivity, but a strong idealism. Biette opposes
the auteur and the cineaste to the unambiguous detriment of the
auteur. Tool/Ideal. The auteur, revealed through the view he tries
to express, takes cinema as a tool, when the cineaste pursues a
secret dream and merely tries to express his own faith in Cinema.
Present/Eternity. When the auteur works for the moment (Biette
insists on the, intended, contemporaneousness of its work), the
cineaste seeks for this "essential cinema", only found through the
test of time. When the auteur has an existence outside its work,
only the solitude of the films will lead you the cineaste's dream.
[only trying to understand Biette]
6633
From:
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:32pm
Subject: Re: Chahine
Craig writes:
"I find 'Alexandria...Why?' to be the best, but the last two, An Egyptian
Story, Alexandria Again And Forever, especially the third, to be pretty awful.
Anyone? "
This was my exact reaction, too.
'Alexandria...Why?' shows Chahine's strength as a classical
storyteller-dramatist. It is a really rich mix: history, autobiography, comedy, drama, romance,
arts, politics. The same is true of the other really good Chahine film seen
here, "Destiny" (1997). He seems to be able to look at a subject from many
different sides, angles and approaches, building up a pleasantly complex view of
things. There is a sense that he is trying to combine "entertainment" and
"social commentary", in a way that somewhat recalls Preston Sturges, although he is
not primarily comic in the way Sturges is.
Normally I really like avant-garde films, and wish filmmakers would take more
chances at unconventional approaches to storytelling. But just this once, I
do not think the experiments undertaken in the two latter Alexandria films
work. The director's dance with the actor near the start of "Alexandria Again And
Forever" is good, and the costumes in the ancient Roman days in Egypt spoof
are fun (and Camp!). But mainly this film doesn't work.
Would very much like to see the famous "Cairo Station".
Mike Grost
6634
From:
Date: Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:59pm
Subject: Re: What is a Cineaste?
I'm begiining to understand!
What Biette is talking about are those glorious works, in which everything
has been re-invented in the mind and the heart of the artist.
This is the mystery of creativity and art. How something new and beautiful
can be made.
It happens where you least expect it. All of a sudden, something deeply
imaginative is there.
Mike Grost
6635
From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:00am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Fred Camper wrote:
What *I* fail to see is how the notion of wanting as many
> people as possible to see one's film can in any way be regarded as
a good thing, from an aesthetic point of view. That doesn't mean I
regard it as a bad thing either. But when you start calculating
what "as many as people as possible" will like, you're certainly on
dangerous ground. According to his own testimony, not even Howard
> Hawks did that.
Tentatively, I'd say: seeking terms which will communicate a vision
to as many people as possible IS part of the filmmaker's task, and
different from compromising that vision in pursuit of short-term
success. If you don't succeed in getting through to a particular
viewer, you've "failed" as far as that viewer is concerned -- and
from a pragmatic point of view, works which are going to survive down
the ages HAVE to appeal to a wide range of people whose backgrounds
and attitudes are unpredictable in advance. Or, putting it another
way: accessibility may not be a positive aesthetic good, but
unnecessary obscurity is always a flaw.
> The problem is with your example. Not all filmmakers want to
express something as specific as the "problem of world hunger." A
filmmaker might want to express a particular kind of emotional chaos,
or a desire to push things beyond language, or a state of
intellectual uncertainty. There are aspects of "The Man With a Movie"
camera that in fact might be said to express doubt more than
certainty. Most great films don't express single themes that can be >
> easily translated into words anyway.
Totally agree. But storytelling and moralising aren't synonymous, and
in some ways are even opposed. A good story is always more than its
moral. Even CASABLANCA!
JTW
6636
From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:16am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> What *I* fail to see is how the notion of wanting as many
> people as possible to see one's film can in any way be regarded as
a good thing, from an aesthetic point of view. That doesn't mean I
regard it as a bad thing either. But when you start calculating
what "as many as people as possible" will like, you're certainly on
dangerous ground. According to his own testimony, not even Howard
> Hawks did that.
In partial defense of this attitude, I'd say: trying to find terms
that will communicate a vision to as many people as possible IS
integral to the filmmaker's task, and different from compromising
that vision in pursuit of short term success. If you don't succeed in
getting through to a particular viewer, you've "failed" as far as
that viewer is concerned -- and pragmatically, works that are going
to survive down the ages HAVE to appeal to a wide range of people
whose backgrounds and attitudes are unpredictable. Obviously it makes
little difference to our own experience of a film whether or not it's
found accessible by others; but from the artist's point of view, if
you're more obscure than you need to be you're shooting yourself in
the foot.
> Not all filmmakers want to express
> something as specific as the "problem of world hunger." A filmmaker
> might want to express a particular kind of emotional chaos, or a
desire to push things beyond language, or a state of intellectual >
> uncertainty. There are aspects of "The Man With a Movie" camera
that in fact might be said to express doubt more than certainty. Most
great films don't express single themes that can be easily translated
> into words anyway.
Totally agree. But storytelling and moralising aren't synonymous, and
in some ways are even opposed. A good story is always more than its
moral. Even CASABLANCA!
JTW
6637
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 3:21am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
jaketwilson wrote:
>In partial defense of this attitude, I'd say: trying to find terms
>that will communicate a vision to as many people as possible IS
>integral to the filmmaker's task...
>
I strongly, passionately, and totally disagree.
I'm sure there are great films that have been made that way. It wouldn't
shock me to learn that a film I love was made by a director trying to
calculate what the audience may like. BUT, even many crowd-pleasing
great directors did NOT work that way.
Where I disagree is with the implication, perhaps unintended, that all
filmmaker should think about the audience while making work, should try
to figure out how to make a film that will reach the greatest number of
people, et cetera. I understand that a commercial filmmaker who makes
flops probably won't get to make very many of them, but that's not the
point here.
My model for cinema is drawn from the broader world of art and music and
literature. Think of the life and work of Paul Cezanne, whose boyhood
friend Emile Zola, who ought to have been a better-than-average art
viewer, thought he went seriously astray at the time that he started to
get really great, or the almost totally unpublished in his lifetime poet
Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose work was apparently not understood AT ALL
before his death, even by his closest friends such as Britain's poet
laureate Robert Bridges,, but which is now acknowledged by many (myself
included) as very great. What about John Donne, in eclipse for almost
three hundred years until T. S. Eliot helped resurrect him?
Making great art was never about making popular art. And art that will
last across the "ages" is often art that was so original in its own time
that few if any understood it. And should lasting across "ages" be a
criteria anyway? Which "ages"? Vermeer went into artistic eclipse for
more than two centuries after his death, and his discovery is largely a
twentieth century phenomenon. Does that make him less great as a
painter? If an artist speaks from his soul, and is creating original
forms, he should not be thinking about appealing to a broad public, or,
really, appealing to anyone except himself. Work made out of passion
makes itself. As Rilke wrote to a young poet asking his advice, stop
asking advice, draw into yourself, and "ask yourself in the darkest hour
of your night: must I write?"
In my view, the understanding of cinema as art has greatly suffered from
the fact that many films that are great works of art are also popular
entertainments. Some arts types refuse to take them seriously *because*
they are popular entertainment, just as many movie fans, even serious
ones, refuse to take seriously films that are not also popular
entertainments.
- Fred
6638
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 3:51am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Fred, to Jake:
>
> >In partial defense of this attitude, I'd say: trying to find
terms
> >that will communicate a vision to as many people as possible IS
> >integral to the filmmaker's task...
> >
>
> I strongly, passionately, and totally disagree.
>
> I'm sure there are great films that have been made that way. It
wouldn't
> shock me to learn that a film I love was made by a director trying
to
> calculate what the audience may like. BUT, even many crowd-
pleasing
> great directors did NOT work that way.
>
> Where I disagree is with the implication, perhaps unintended, that
all
> filmmaker should think about the audience while making work,
should try
> to figure out how to make a film that will reach the greatest
number of
> people, et cetera.
This argument has very quickly veered off into extremes, which is
unfortunate. Jake's point (as I understand it) might have been
compromised by some word choices ("as many people as possible"
sounds wrong to me), but I don't think he was implying that
filmmakers should "try to figure out how to make a film that will
reach the greatest number of people". I think the operative word in
Jake's statement is "vision." It's not about simply getting to
people, it's about serving one's vision. You may disagree with this,
too, but I think serving one's vision *does* involve trying to get
it across to *somebody*. Maybe not everybody, maybe not even a lot
of people. But somebody. I think that is integral to many art forms,
if not all.
An artist may very well wish to make his work only for him/herself --
many great ones do -- but I think that's a kind of shorthand,
really. I think an artist *wants* to communicate. Otherwise he/she
would just be happy with the thought. Take an avant-garde example
(thus insuring that you'll destroy me in any potential argument that
may ensue): If Brakhage really, truly, absolutely, and categorically
didn't make his films for anybody but himself...then why did he let
them be shown? Why did he bother to put his name on them? And if
they speak in some way to you or to me, then has he somehow failed,
or compromised? Was it just a coincidence?
-Bilge
6639
From: J. Mabe
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 3:54am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
I saved this link from some Frameworks post a long
time ago... http://www.stickyfilms.com/anti-100.htm
...thought it might relate.
I am standing in the middle of the information highway
and laughing, because a butterfly on a little flower
somewhere in China just fluttered its wings, and I
know that the entire history, culture will drastically
change because of that fluttering. A super-8
millimeter camera just made a little soft buzz
somewhere, somewhere on the lower east side of New
York, and the world will never be the same.
The real history of cinema is invisible history.
History of friends getting together, doing the thing
they love. For us, the cinema is beginning with every
new buzz of the projector, with every new buzz of our
cameras. With every new buzz of our cameras, our
hearts jump forward my friends."
-Jonas Mekas
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6640
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:31am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Bilge,
To me, you and Jake were saying different things.
I could quibble with some words in your post (I never liked
"communicate"), but quibbles aside, for the most part I agree with it.
I think Brakhage would have preferred to have had his films loved so
much that they would be shown in commercial theaters to sold-out houses,
and not for economic reasons, because he never seemed all that
interested in anything more than an ordinary middle-class lifestyle. He,
and most avant-gardists, made films that they passionately believed in,
that came from their hearts, in the hope that others would appreciate
them. And the first time I saw him present his films, in 1964, he was
clearly upset by hostile questions; years of experience helped him learn
to deal with them.
The reason I took exception to Jake's post is mostly because of the
formulation than a filmmaker should calculate his films in order to make
them appeal to the greatest number of people. A filmmaker can do this if
he wants to, and maybe some filmmakers who I count as great artists have
in fact done this (though I can't name any who have done it for most
elements in their films -- but I can name plenty who have changed some
things in consideration of "audiences"), but I think for the most part
it's an approach that's inimical to making great art, or any art.
I don't think the number of people who love a film has much to do with
how great it is.
There is a difference, though, between the "thought" of a film and
making it, because making it inevitably changes the thought as the idea
concretizes itself, so an artist who really doesn't care to show his
film to anyone still might need to make it. To be honest, though, all
the filmmakers I've known care very much about having their work
appreciated. That's very different, though, from calculating its making
to try to appeal to people.
- Fred
6641
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:24am
Subject: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'uin cineaste
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> BTW, I want to change the American usage of cineaste =
> cinephile whether I ever get around to translating J-C's article or
> not.
Great! I'd love you to do that. If I tried myself I'd probably
be dismissed as a snotty Frenchman.
>
> Ok, so let's talk subjectivity. Most of the judgements made by this
> group are subjective, but we do try to discuss them. Also, being
> true to the long tradition Kant was analyzing, we rarely add "IMO"
> - we make our judgement statements in objective form: Hawks
> is better than Curtiz. This is paradoxical, but per Kant, not
> incoherent.
>
I've always said that every judgment should be preceded or
followed by "IMO" (preferably IMHO). We usually take it for granted
that it is implied, then lots of people forget that what they're
stating is just their humble or not so humble opinion. I don't think
I have ever written or even said something like "Hawks is better than
Curtiz". I'll say any time that I prefer The Turning Point to To have
and have Not but that's just a personal opinion. I can try to support
it but I'll probably convince no one except those few who feel like
me.
> So say I have this firm conviction that Rossellini is better than
De
> Sica. Not just better, but of a different order or class of
filmmaker.
> And I feel that about Hawks/Curtiz, King Hu/John Woo,
> Hitchcock/Siodmak, Tourneur/Leisen, and on and on.
>
> At a certain point, I'm going to try to figure out WHAT THE HELL I
> AM TALKING ABOUT when I make these statements. That is all
> Biette is doing. And I'll repeat: His definition of cineaste is
> perspicuous, precise and very open to discussion, refutation and
> defense, even if it's based on a lifetime of strong subjective
> feelings like we all have about these matters.
>
> And certainly, building categories out of esthetic judgements
> (=subjective feelings) is something that goes on a lot in
> auteurism - list-making, which leads to ten best lists, which
> leads to hierarchies, which CAN lead to analysis, reflection and
> categorization. Why not?
Why not indeed. But I've never felt quite comfortable with
categories, lists and hierarchies (who really cares about your
TenBest List or mine or anybody elses's?) Auteurism has often been a
kind of intellectual terrorism -- intimidating the undecided with
categorical pronoucements. It was indeed deliberately so when it
started. And it didn't get any better. I never liked ideologies of
any kind and I'm too old to change, fortunately.
6642
From: jaketwilson
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:41am
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Fred,
I'm treading carefully here. I think Bilge got my argument right in
his post, even if he wouldn't accept everything I wrote. When I said
that filmmakers should aim to appeal to "as many people as possible"
I meant that it's always better to succeed in reaching a given viewer
than to fail. I believe the artist's primary loyalty has to be to an
original vision, and anything genuinely original is liable to seem
strange and off-putting at first. But given this, I also believe --
and I think the two beliefs are complementary -- that artists have a
responsibility, almost a moral one, not to place any more barriers
between the work and the audience than are absolutely necessary.
Otherwise you wind up making films for a coterie, which is just as
bad as being a hack.
> I don't think the number of people who love a film has much to do
with
> how great it is.
No, but I do think continued survival is an index of likely value:
that's what canons are about. Not everybody likes canons, but I've
always found them helpful. I agree with Bill that discussions of
subjectivity and objectivity aren't likely to get us far, but
granting that there's no "objective" measure of artistic value, the
consensus of the human race over time is the nearest thing we have.
Maybe there is a basic philosophical difference here. My position is
that works of art are created by human beings for human beings, and
take their significance from that context. Artists can't KNOW whether
their stuff is any good or not -- all they can is observe whether it
seems to be "working" for particular viewers. A filmmaker who
says "I'm great and someday the world will realise" is expressing
hope rather than certainty. One who says "I'm great whether anybody
ever realises or not" -- well, that way madness lies.
JTW
6643
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 0:50am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Fred Camper wrote:
>If an artist speaks from his soul, and is creating original
>forms, he should not be thinking about appealing to a broad public, or,
>really, appealing to anyone except himself.
And the wonderful thing is that it's often the works created in this frame of
mind which turn out to be the most moving for the individual viewer. I think
of Brakhage as an example and (since I recently saw it on the DVD)
particularly his deeply personal "Rage Net." On the DVD, it sounds as though this piece
was almost a kind of way to work through a very dark time in his life;
'communicating' with a public was probably the last thing on his mind. Yet I find
the film utterly engrossing and hypnotic.
There's a purity to a film like Howard Hawks' "Hatari!" because it's Hawks
working so resolutely with forms and characters he loves, seemingly unaware that
there's a world outside of the movie company. I know that some auteurists
find this film, and those like it, a little (or more than a little) closed-off
or self-enclosed... but I think that's the very reason why I love them so much.
Peter
6644
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:00am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
--- Fred Camper wrote:
>
> I don't think the number of people who love a film
> has much to do with
> how great it is.
True. However I believe more people areseeing Brakhage
through this disc than saw him in theaters or film
clubs. Moreover (and you may sharply disagree with me
on this point) I strongly believe an intimate video
setting is far more condusive to experiencing Brakhage
than a standard theatrical one.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6645
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:24am
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
David,
Brakhage always thought his films would be best seen in the home. I, who
have long had the privilege of owning some, have always agreed. And when
you own one, you can also look at it again and again, ten times in a row
if you like (and I have liked).
So while I think the DVD version is almost by definition inferior to in
prints, the ability to see them in the home, and to see them multiple
times at will, is a big plus. Even though Brakhage was no big fan of the
little DVD he had seen that's what he hoped too. I have no idea which is
better -- once in a print or many times on DVD in the home -- so I would
prefer to advocate for both. When I showed Brakhage films i in Poland
recently, I brought some DVDs along, and was happy to give them as gifts
to people who loved the films so much that they were happy to give me
gifts of the equivalent of the wholesale price in zlotys.
To Peter, I wasn't even thinking of the "late film" phenomenon, but
you're right. Even "The Searchers" has a certain brash showiness in a
few scenes compared to later films. "I don't give a fuck what the
audience thinks" masterpieces include "The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance," "Seven Women," "The Tarnished Angels," "A Time to Love and a
Time to Die," "The Naked Kiss," "Choirboys," "Day of the Outlaw," "The
Immortal Story," "Anatahan," "The Cavern," "Men in War," and of course
the entire oeuvre of Robert Bresson.
- Fred
6646
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 1:33am
Subject: Stars in My Crown
I've been watching Jacques Tourneur's "Stars in My Crown" lately; I saw it
for the first time on tape in December, have re-watched the film twice since
then, and find myself revisiting individual sequences repeatedly. I'm simply
astounded at the greatness of it. The amazing "I Walked With A Zombie" was my
favorite Tourneur film prior to "Stars," but I must say that, great as "Zombie"
is, it almost pales in comparison to "Stars." I thought I'd post some
thoughts as a way to kick start a discussion on "Stars."
There are some spoilers below.
The opening shot and the final succession of shots are stunning in the way
they are tied to the singing of the beautiful hymn "Stars in My Crown." The
opening shot is a slow reverse dolly shot moving away from the church as the
music is heard on the soundtrack. The same camera move is repeated in the film's
very last shot and it's echoed in the next-to-last-shot, which is a reverse
dolly inside the church as the congregation is singing the hymn; Tourneur
dissolves from this shot to the final shot, creating a sense of movement across
space. (Incidentally, the context of the singing of "Stars in My Crown" in the
final scene is quite different from the singing heard over the first shot due to
events which have transpired in the story.)
Another standout scene in the film, for me, is the wordless sequence when
Josiah (Joel McCrea - superb) visits the bedside of a dying woman at the request
of her doctor. He sits beside her bed in prayer as Tourneur frames him in
alternating close-ups and wide shots. After several moments, the wind suddenly
picks up outside and the woman awakens and grabs Josiah's hand; this shot is
the first time in the sequence that we see a medium shot of the woman, by the
way. Seemingly 'cured,' I suppose, she and Josiah exchange looks, and he exits
the room. Tourneur's mise-en-scene renders this scene utterly amazing.
As Mike Grost notes in his essay on the film, "Stars in My Crown" is also a
very bold film from a political standpoint, containing one of the most
clear-eyed attacks on racism of any film I've seen (let alone a film released in
1950). We were talking about movie lines on the group recently; Josiah's line
("It's the will of God") following his preventing the lynching of Famous is one of
the great lines in the cinema, I think. Wind also plays a role in this
scene; the two blank sheets of paper which are so important to the scene are swept
up by the wind for John (who narrates the film as an adult, looking back) to
find.
"Stars in My Crown" is an astonishing film and one of my very favorites.
I note on the IMDB that the author of the novel upon which the film is based,
Joe David Brown, also wrote the novel which inspired another of my favorite
films, Peter Bogdanovich's "Paper Moon." Another of his novels was the basis
for a Delmer Daves film, "Kings Go Forth." Has anyone seen this one? Zach?
Peter
6647
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:38am
Subject: Re: Qu'est ce qu'un cineaste?
Yay Maxime! Yay Mike! See my post on Stars in My Crown.
6648
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:46am
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
The shot of the trees seen by the kids lying in the hay wagon recalls
Dreyer's Vampyr. It was the omnipresent (since his death) Jean-Claude
Biette who pointed this out, in a piece on the film that begins by
listing Tourneur's recommendations for young directors in the
interview Maxime posted a bit of: "establish strong visual points of
reference and suggestive rhythmic contrasts, fix the spectators'
attention on one or two pieces of visual or aural information each
time you change shots..." Then JCB points out that in Stars in My
Crown Tourneur breaks all his stated rules: scenes that follow with
no marked change in composition of the shots, relatively little
rhythmic variation, no strong contrasts in sets or characters
("nothing could be further from the grand contrasts of Ford").
"In fact the art of Tourneur Jr. is secret and stubborn: even though
this cineaste accomodated every assignment, he was always able, even
in the worst stories, to impose objectively [your word, M. C.] and
without bothering anyone (least of all the spectator) his point of
view...The way Tourneur films - with the sureness of a sleepwalker -
imparting a unity of rhythm that borders on the monotonous to his
mise-en-scene, refers all differences to the essential one: the
thematic opposition between the medicine of the spirit and the
medicine of the body... Tourneur believes in what can seem like dime-
store irrationalism, which recurs throughout his films, but since his
mise-en-scene is entirely based on this belief, its logic gives his
belief objective form...For example, in the very beautiful scene
where the boy is poisoned objectively by the well-water, but
subjectively by the way the magician addresses him during his
performance. [There you go!]
"All this reminds us of Dreyer: the resistance of bodies,
resurrections, miracles, the force of the Word (the reading of
Famous's will to the Klan members - a scene where non-differentiation
is carried about as far as it can go), or the scene where the boys
lying on the hay-wain watch the leafy branches passing overhead,
which recalls by contrast the voyage in the coffin in Vampyr. In
Tourneur and in Dreyer there is the same close attention to light and
to vocal dynamics. But something very strong separates them, in which
we can see the influence of Hollywood.
"The laws governing the economy of the spectacle are not the same in
their respective films, but they are both extreme cineastes: Dreyer
in his revolt (and its consequence: intransigence - no one has ever
accepted less), Tourneur in his acceptance (and its consequence:
renunciation - no one ever revolted less against his working
conditions). The first wanted to seize the absolute of life; the
second explored as deeply as is possible the relativity of art."
This is essentially what Maxime and Mike both heard in JCB's
definition of "cineaste" - a word which I notice recurs twice in this
passage. And I like the fact that Mike stresses the idea of
originality: Tourneur recalls Dreyer, but creates a vision that is
completely his own, unique, based on an individual viewpoint - one
which includes but is not limited to Tourneur's occultist beliefs -
that even extends to things like the common view of race differences
in 1950. And by being original - a word I would like to underline in
relation to "What Is a Cineaste?" - the true artist creates something
that will endure.
I'll quote from a thread running parallel to this one, Fred in
6637: "Work made with passion makes itself" without aiming at short-
term success, at pleasing an audience, at anything but the
imperatives of the artist's individual viewpoint, which can be
expressed in personal styles as different as Dreyer's intransigence
and Tourneur's submission. That kind of work will last through the
ages, but it isn't even made with that aim (says idealist Fred) -- or
maybe it is, says Freudian Bill, but there we are talking about
fundamental differences in our theories of just HOW Tourneur handled
the influence of Dreyer, and that's a whole other conversation that
will get me hooted at by David if we ever get to it.
The main thing for me is that whether we accept JCB's terms or not,
some of us seem to understand what he is getting at in his definition
of "cineaste," and it beats "repeated themes and obsessions" by a
country mile.
6649
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:09am
Subject: Re: Millennium Mambo
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "iangjohnston" wrote:
>
> "Hsu Chi" surely? (Or was it a typo?)
A typo...
> What has been the basis for
> your being a fan for a long time?
How she looks, basically.
> I can't think of a halfway decent
> film (apart from MM) that she's appeared in. And then there's the
> deeply irritating soap commercials...
I'd say I'm a fan of her, not of her movies, but I liked
"Gorgeous" and "Sex and Zen 2", maybe "Street Angels." I didn't
care for "So Close" or "The Transporter." I haven't seen the
films for which she won awards. I'm surprised by some of the
praise she's received. (Here's a slightly peculiar article:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/arts/column/0,9754,108666,00.html )
>
I supposed my be
> All your comments on Millennium Mambo hold pretty true, I think. I
> just don't think it adds up to pretty much; and I can't be convinced
> of the merits of Shu Qi/Hsu Chi's acting...
>
> Ian
I liked her performance in Millennium Mambo, but I have little problem
attributing it to Hou's influence. I'm inclined (or prejudiced) to
think that a great director can get a good performance out of
almost anybody. I don't understand the response at Cannes I read
about, which was to dismiss Millennium Mambo but to praise Shu
Qi's performance.
Paul
6650
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 0:56pm
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> This is essentially what Maxime and Mike both heard in JCB's
> definition of "cineaste" - a word which I notice recurs twice in
>this passage. And I like the fact that Mike stresses the idea of
> originality: Tourneur recalls Dreyer, but creates a vision that is
> completely his own, unique, based on an individual viewpoint - one
> which includes but is not limited to Tourneur's occultist beliefs -
> that even extends to things like the common view of race
>differences in 1950. And by being original - a word I would like to
>underline in relation to "What Is a Cineaste?" - the true artist
>creates something that will endure.
> The main thing for me is that whether we accept JCB's terms or not,
> some of us seem to understand what he is getting at in his
>definition of "cineaste," and it beats "repeated themes and
>obsessions" by a country mile.
Isn't it interesting, though, how Tourneur has gradually become a
cineaste-like figure over the last couple of decades?
Sarris's "Expressive Esoterica" category seemed to stick for a
while. Even critics (at least English-speaking ones) sympathetic to
Tourneur's work in the 1970s, like Robin Wood or Roger McNiven, were
much more cautious in their praise. In an early essay on Tourneur,
Wood referred to the general excitement he felt when he first began
to discover Tourneur through things like I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and
CAT PEOPLE, wondering why Tourneur wasn't in Sarris's pantheon, and
he thought Tourneur comparable with Ford and Mizoguchi -- until he
began to see films like EASY LIVING,etc. And Roger also explicitly
resists seeing Tourneur is such canonical terms, insisting that while
Ford and Mizoguchi "offer a rather monumental concept of society in
terms of the historical evolution of cultures" Tourneur operates on a
much smaller level, more as a metteur-en-scene.
Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read Chris Fujiwara's book
yet but I wonder if he traces out JT's reception history in this
regard.
6651
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:12am
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
Wholeheartedly agree with Peter Toungette's post: "Stars in My Crown" is the
best Tourneur film ever seen here. It even surpasses his classics in the
horror film (I Walked With a Zombie, Night of the Demon) and film noir (Out of the
Past, Berlin Express, Nightfall).
I think Tourneur's reputation has risen with 1) the increasing availability
of his films, and 2) the ease of rewatching films on tape or DVD. Tourneur is a
"pictorialist" filmmaker: someone whose films are rich in beautiful
compositions, like Ford, Sternberg, Mizoguchi. Being able to watch the films again and
again, hit the pause button on frames, and so on, allows one to really
appreciate the beauty of his visual style.
"Stars in My Crown" was simply never shown on TV here, until recent
screenings by TCM. I had barely heard of it, till Jonathan Rosenbaum included it on his
list of Top 100 American films. This list is available in Rosenbaum's book
"Movie Wars", and on the Chicago Reader web site. It repays serious study - it
is full of important classics.
"Stars in My Crown" now represents Tourneur on my own list of Outstanding
American Films, on my web site (shameless stealing from another and better
scholar!) It IS an important film, and demands inclusion on any such list (my
defense).
The story of "Stars in My Crown" shows how difficult it is for people to
arrive at truth. People eventually discover the true source of the epidemic, and
how to defeat it, but only after a titanic struggle. They have to abandon all
their cherished beliefs, re-learn reality from the ground up, and struggle and
struggle to arrive at the truth. Very important lessons for anybody to keep in
mind, in all fields of study. Tourneur would be appalled at all the people
with "easy answers" about things. "Stars in My Crown" would make a good double
bill with "The Magic Alphabet", Tourneur's short film about the equally
difficult real-life discovery of vitamins.
Mike Grost
6652
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 3:48pm
Subject: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666" wrote:
>
> BTW, I want to change the American usage of cineaste =
> cinephile whether I ever get around to translating J-C's article or
> not.
It might be necessary to start with the dictionary... The current Webster's Collegiate gives the primary meaning as "a devotee of motion pictures" (also gives the primary spelling as "cineast," which I've *never* seen) - and offers this perhaps spurious derivation (I'm omitting the aigus, which seem to play havoc with Yahoo text-box submissions): "[F _cineaste_, fr. _cine_ + _-aste_ (as in _enthousiaste_ enthusiast)] (1926)". (Hmm, why not "as in orgiast"?)
6653
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 3:49pm
Subject: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson" wrote:
"Maybe there is a basic philosophical difference here. My position is
that works of art are created by human beings for human beings, and
take their significance from that context. Artists can't KNOW whether
their stuff is any good or not -- all they can is observe whether it
seems to be "working" for particular viewers. A filmmaker who
says "I'm great and someday the world will realise" is expressing
hope rather than certainty. One who says 'I'm great whether anybody
ever realises or not' -- well, that way madness lies."
All the painters, sculptors, poets and filmmakers I've known judge
their own works by their own standards and indeed know whether their
work is good or not. Sometimes their failures are popular and their
successes are unpopular and they wonder what went wrong. And though
I don't personally know any artist who thinks of him or herself
as "great" I do know many artists who think "I've created the work of
art I wanted to whether anybody ever realises or not."
Richard
6654
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:03pm
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
I repeat, Sarris's hierarchy is half esthetic, half socio-economic.
No one but H'wd A-list directors need apply for the Pantheon.
6655
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:08pm
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
And let me add that the presence of a sturdy A-lister like Stevens in
The Far Side of Paradise while Dwan, Ulmer, Boetticher, Siegel and
Tourneur languish in Expressive Esoterica confirms it. This doesn't
mean that the hierarchy isn't any good - I love The American Cinema.
But it is not based on solely esthetic criteria.
6656
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:16pm
Subject: Re: Re: Narrative/Avant-garde/Theory
Richard Modiano wrote:
> And though
>I don't personally know any artist who thinks of him or herself
>as "great" I do know many artists who think "I've created the work of
>art I wanted to whether anybody ever realizes or not."
>
>
>
There's a filmmaker I know who I'd rather not name but who is on my list
of the world's very greatest, who is relatively modest about his work,
and is an extremely nice person who I have never seen get angry -- save
perhaps for the incident below. He cares about his films a lot and
believes in them, but never uses words like "great." Many years ago I
saw a new film of his, which represented a formal break from his earlier
work in the particular way it was divided into many short sections. At
first I was a little confused by the sections. After a couple of viewing
I realized that this new type of division into sections was one of the
things that was great about it. So later I told him, "At first I was
confused by this new use of short sections, and didn't think it worked
so well, but now I love it." This is after I had written a highly
favorable article partly on that film, an article which he liked a lot.
Still, he shot me a look that I'd never seen from him before, a moment
of rage that seemed to contain the words "You blind and idiotic moron,
how could you not see the importance of the sections on your first
viewing" in the flash of his eyes, and then he said in his usual calm
and folksy way, but a bit more insistently than usual, "The division
into sections is very important to this work."
A few years later an almost exactly similar incident occurred with
another filmmaker even more modest than he, when I told her that at
first I didn't understand her use of out of focus shots in her new film,
but that now I loved them. The look I got was the same.
I agree with Richard that most artists, and I would say especially good
or great artists, "know" what they've done, and believe in it even if
others don't get it. But Bilge is also right that they really *want*
people to "get" it.
- Fred
6657
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:19pm
Subject: Re: Re: Stars in My Crown [Sarris's heirarchy]
hotlove666 wrote:
>....But [Sarris's hierarchy] is not based on solely esthetic criteria.
>
>
>
Bills point is a good one, but let us not forget what most of us already
know, which is how daring Sarris's FILM CULTURE 28 was for its time.
Given how far out on a limb he went, it shouldn't surprise us if a bit
of the industry's hierarchies remained, almost like a branch he still
needed to hang on to. And the vituperative attacks on Sarris and
auteurism over the next decade only confirm how "out there" his issue
and subsequent book were for their time.
- Fred
6658
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 4:21pm
Subject: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
Jess's information is mind-boggling. Not only does Webster's
Collegiate endorse a definition based on a popular misunderstanding,
it gives a folk etymology for the derivation!
As an editor of a certain age I am continually coming across examples
of this. The linguistic fad that says that the language is whatever
people say, with no prescriptive brakes on it, means that handbooks
like the AP Style Book now endorse what were errors of punctuation
and grammar when I was a schoolboy, simply because more people tend
to get these things wrong when it comes to little details like a
comma before "too." Balance in all things: I have advocated splitting
infinitives for years on the grounds that the no-splitting rule was a
misguided import from Latin by the first English gramamrians, and
that rule has changed, as I believe it should. But there has to be a
prescriptive element in grammar, too, and I think that a flagrant
howler like that Webster's entry, which is historically inacurrate to
boot, shouldn't simply be allowed to stand because the English
language is what a majority says it is. The entry should at least
give the correct French meaning of the word as an alternate, and of
course get the etymology right. Jesus!
6659
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:11pm
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> I repeat, Sarris's hierarchy is half esthetic, half socio-economic.
> No one but H'wd A-list directors need apply for the Pantheon.
Right, but my question was not Why did Sarris rank Tourneur as
Expressive Esoterica in 1968? Rather, I was asking why, over the
last couple of decades, has Tourneur's reputation steadily risen to
the point where Biette (and Biette doubtless does not stand alone
here in his opinion) can come to regard Tourneur as a cineaste rather
than a metteur-en-scene.
6660
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 5:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
My 1987 supplement to the first edition of the OED has virtually the
same thing as Jess's dictionary. I've asked a college student with
access to the current on-line OED to give us the latest "wisdom."
For what it's worth, I have a 1939 Petit Larousse (which I find fairly
scary, in that "Hitler" and "Mussolini" are current entries, complete
with little portrait pics -- you should see the hat Il Duce poses in! --
while the definition for the French word for Judaism seems a little
suspect to me) that defines "cinéaste" as "metteur en scène au cinéma,"
listing it as a "Neol." (neologism, right?), presumably confirming the
original French meaning. This volume further defines "metteur en scène"
as "personne qui, pendant les répeétitions d'une pièce, règle les
mouvements de chacun des acteurs, la disposition des décors, etc." -- a
theater director, right? But these linked definitions pose an
interesting question for those of us (or the one of us) who wants equal
treatment (or perhaps even affirmative action) for avant-garde cinema:
in French usage, would the roles Léger or Duchamp played in making their
lone films have been reasonably referred to as a "metteur en scène"?
Neither was moving actors or props about, to put it mildly. For reasons
such as this, I have always found French terminology primarily of use
for films made according to the industrial model, that is, with a
producer, scriptwriter, crew, and so on, and not so useful for
documentary or avant-garde filmmkaing.
- Fred
6661
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:11pm
Subject: Re: Re: Stars in My Crown
--- joe_mcelhaney wrote:
>
> Right, but my question was not Why did Sarris rank
> Tourneur as
> Expressive Esoterica in 1968? Rather, I was asking
> why, over the
> last couple of decades, has Tourneur's reputation
> steadily risen to
> the point where Biette (and Biette doubtless does
> not stand alone
> here in his opinion) can come to regard Tourneur as
> a cineaste rather
> than a metteur-en-scene.
>
>
I think this relates to Tourneur's elsusiveness in
terms of the Hollywood studio system as a whole. First
he's part of the Lewton team, then he's off on his
own. He never has a log-term contract with a major
studio the way Walsh did, nor is he a
producer-director like Hawks. He's all over the map.
While most people who are interested in his work start
with the Lewton material and then skip right to "Out
of the Past" and "Curse of the Demon," they overlook
the fact that Tourneur is a major director of
Westerns.
It should also be noted that in the same career he
managed to direct the pro-Soviet "Days of Glory"
(Gregory peck's debut) AND the McCarthy era insanity
"The Fearmakers" -- with Dana Abdrews, Mel Torme and
Veda Ann Borg.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6662
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
Bill K:
> Jess's information is mind-boggling. Not only does Webster's
> Collegiate endorse a definition based on a popular
misunderstanding,
> it gives a folk etymology for the derivation!
>
> As an editor of a certain age I am continually coming across
examples
> of this. The linguistic fad that says that the language is
whatever
> people say, with no prescriptive brakes on it...
For better and for worse, this does appear to be what language is,
and as one gets older, one sees more and more of it (hell, I'm only
30, and I experience it all the time). I don't know about the folk
etymology, but the fact is that in English today, "cineaste" (sans
italics) is pretty much a word for a film enthusiast. The same
way "entree" (sans italics) is used to denote a main course in many
restaurants, although French restaurants that still use the word in
French will (usually) use it in the correct French way. It's come
to a point where both usages have to be accepted for what they are --
different words in different languages. To be honest with you,
although it can lead to some annoyances (and, of course, mistakes
are mistakes), this is how languages develop and change. Otherwise,
we'd probably still be speaking Elizabethan English. Which would be
pretty cool, actually.
And hey, did you know "decimate" once meant "to reduce by a tenth"?
-Bilge
6663
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:36pm
Subject: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
I agree 100 per cent, Mr Hotlove! BTW The American Heritage
Dictionary does what Webster doesn't: it gives as a second meaning
of "cineaste" (or "cineast" or "cineaste" with the accent): "A person
involved in filmmaking." However the first definition they give is
the erroneous but "accepted" one: "A film or movie enthusiast" (note
the distinction made between "film" and "movie"). They also give the
correct origin as "French: cineaste, from cine, short for cinema.)
JPC
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Jess's information is mind-boggling. Not only does Webster's
> Collegiate endorse a definition based on a popular
misunderstanding,
> it gives a folk etymology for the derivation!
>
> As an editor of a certain age I am continually coming across
examples
> of this. The linguistic fad that says that the language is whatever
> people say, with no prescriptive brakes on it, means that handbooks
> like the AP Style Book now endorse what were errors of punctuation
> and grammar when I was a schoolboy, simply because more people tend
> to get these things wrong when it comes to little details like a
> comma before "too." Balance in all things: I have advocated
splitting
> infinitives for years on the grounds that the no-splitting rule was
a
> misguided import from Latin by the first English gramamrians, and
> that rule has changed, as I believe it should. But there has to be
a
> prescriptive element in grammar, too, and I think that a flagrant
> howler like that Webster's entry, which is historically inacurrate
to
> boot, shouldn't simply be allowed to stand because the English
> language is what a majority says it is. The entry should at least
> give the correct French meaning of the word as an alternate, and of
> course get the etymology right. Jesus!
6664
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
Thanks to one of our student members, I've learned that the current
on-line OED has the same entry for cinéaste as my 1987 supplement, and
the same citations. Some of the citations actually suggest the use of
cinéaste as filmmaker, unexplained in the definition, but others confirm
its long usage for enthusiast:
"1955 Times 4 July 12/3 The earnest talker on films, the cinéaste, finds his brother in the balletomane."
I don't think it makes a lot of sense to fight a half century or more of usage. I'll stick to fighting battles not yet completely lost, such as attempting to preserve the correct (and irreplaceable) meaning of "disinterested" rather than the current mistaken usage of it to mean "not interested."
The American Heritage Dictionary has always been my second favorite dictionary, after the errant-in-this-case OED.
- Fred
6665
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:50pm
Subject: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
> > The entry should at least
> > give the correct French meaning of the word as an alternate
Sorry, Webster's Collegiate does add this: "also: MOVIEMAKER"
6666
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 6:59pm
Subject: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> My 1987 supplement to the first edition of the OED has virtually
the
> same thing as Jess's dictionary. I've asked a college student with
> access to the current on-line OED to give us the latest "wisdom."
>
> For what it's worth, I have a 1939 Petit Larousse (which I find
fairly
> scary, in that "Hitler" and "Mussolini" are current entries,
complete
> with little portrait pics -- you should see the hat Il Duce poses
in! --
> while the definition for the French word for Judaism seems a little
> suspect to me) that defines "cinéaste" as "metteur en scène au
cinéma,"
> listing it as a "Neol." (neologism, right?), presumably confirming
the
> original French meaning. This volume further defines "metteur en
scène"
> as "personne qui, pendant les répeétitions d'une pièce, règle les
> mouvements de chacun des acteurs, la disposition des décors, etc." -
- a
> theater director, right? But these linked definitions pose an
> interesting question for those of us (or the one of us) who wants
equal
> treatment (or perhaps even affirmative action) for avant-garde
cinema:
> in French usage, would the roles Léger or Duchamp played in making
their
> lone films have been reasonably referred to as a "metteur en
scène"?
> Neither was moving actors or props about, to put it mildly. For
reasons
> such as this, I have always found French terminology primarily of
use
> for films made according to the industrial model, that is, with a
> producer, scriptwriter, crew, and so on, and not so useful for
> documentary or avant-garde filmmkaing.
>
> - Fred
But Fred you wouldn't object to a documentary or avant-garde
filmmaker being called "un (or une) cineaste" would you?
I wouldn't go to a 1939 Larousse for accurate definitions of
anything having to do with film. Keep in mind that even the 1939
edition was probably just a reprint of a much older edition, and film
terminology was largely unknown to the general public and unlikely to
find its way into the "Petit Larousse".
By the way what was that definition of judaism? Of course anti-
semitism was rampant in France in the thirties.
JPC
6667
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:06pm
Subject: Re: Re: Qu'est-ce qu'un cineaste?
Another example: the term "pulp fiction". Pulps were a clearly defined
category of magazines. They were printed on cheap wood pulp paper, and were sold as
very low cost magazines, mainly during the years 1900-1953, when the last
pulps largely went out of business. "Pulp fiction" always used to mean "any
fiction that originally appeared in pulp magazines", a clear, unambiguous
definition. But in recent years, some mystery historians have been using the catchy term
"pulp fiction", made even more famous by Mr. Tarantino, to refer to anything
they want it to refer: paperback novels of the 1950's, stories that appeared
in "digest size" magazines like Manhunt (NEVER considered a pulp), modern
novels that remind some critics of old pulp stories, or anything else! This takes a
term that once was understood by every man, woman and child in America (there
were hundreds of pulps on sale in every drugstore) and turns it into
something with no clear meaning.
I will stop here. My inner curmudgeon is getting liberated. In fact, he is
turning green, expanding to 20 feet high, and is about to run rampant over the
countryside, like the Incredible Hulk...
Mike Grost
PS "bi" means "every two".
"Semi" means "twice a".
A"bi-monthly magazine" appears every two months.
A "semi-monthly magazine" appears twice a month.
These are other terms with which the public has trouble.
6668
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:30pm
Subject: Sarris categories
I concluded fairly early on, in the mid 1970's, that ALL of the directors in
the first three catgories in "The American Cinema" were good. (Pantheon
Directors, Far Side of Paradise, Expressive Esoterica). Ever since, have been
regarding them as members of one big 55-director group. And I agree with Fred
Camper: I am deeply, deeply grateful to Andrew Sarris for bringing these directors
to our attention.
Sarris also defined "Expressive Esoterica" as "unsung directors with
difficult styles or unfashionable genres or both". This is not really an aesthetic
category. Instead, it seems to describe directors who might be "hard sells" to
skeptical non-auteurists, such as Dwight MacDonald, Judith Crist, Stanley
Kauffman, and other 60's critics. In 1968 Tourneur was a little known filmmaker (in
the US) who specialized in such despised genres as horror, Western, crime and
adventure. By contrast, John Ford had 6 Oscars; Orson Welles was a famous
stage director, etc.
Mike Grost
6669
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 2:44pm
Subject: Tourneur's reputation
I cannot answer Joe McElhaney's question on why Tourneur's reputation is
rising. I find the "theory and practise" of answering such questions somewhat
mysterious, in general. You cannot answer such a question simply by looking at
Tourneur's films, for example. A "viewer of Tourneur" can defend their own
ranking of Tourneur. But they cannot explain why OTHER critics have their own
oipnions.
In fact, have sometimes wondered if this sort of question requires someone
who is expert in sociological methods. Said socioligist could interview critics
such as Wood or Biette, run statistical analyses of various filmmakers'
reputations by year, conduct Gallup-like polls of critics each year, analyze changes
over time in existing polls like the Sight and Sound, and in general do all
the serious things sociologists do when engaged in scientific study. Eventually
they MIGHT come up with solidly supported reasons for the changes seen in
filmmakers' reputations.
The same is true about audience popularity. You cannot "explain" it just by
viewing a film. During the 1970's, the New York Times used to have a "think
piece" nearly every Sunday about what current hit films "said about the mood of
America". I used to find these absurd. If a hippie film like "Easy Rider" was
popular, it meant that "America was leaning leftward". If a conservative film
like "Patton" became a hit, "Amerca had suddenly lurched to the right". No
effort was made by the Times to do sociological research, hiring pollsters to
interview audience members and ask them why they liked such films, for example.
Rather, Vincent Canby or the guest pundit of the week would make these
"explanations" up out of their heads.
Mike Grost
6670
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 7:52pm
Subject: The Fearmakers
David, interestingly, the book the film was based on, which isn't
half bad, was about a returning WWII vet discovering that his ad
agency has been taken over by a right-wing cabal that is using it to
elect proto-fascist candidates. The politics was changed in the film,
which was moved to the Korean era, but not the very prophetic
gimmick - I wonder if JT signed on before that. Apart from
Fearmakers, his films are pretty liberal, and a number of them are
about revolutions. Of course, so are a number of De Milles....
6671
From: filipefurtado
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:13pm
Subject: Re: Sarris categories
Mike, you're right that Sarris seems to regard the filmmakers
in the expressive Esoterica as hard sells, but on the other
hand he do include some other filmmakers in the other
sections that are equally or even harder to sell to non
auteurists. Fuller is the Far Sideand I'm quite sure that The
Naked Kiss or White Dog are far harder to sell to a literary
type as great films than any major Tourneur (and don't forget
that Van Sternberg was in the pantheon). What I mean is that
was one of Sarris criteria, but wasn't the only one. The only
essay in any filmmaker in the expressive esoterica group that
give me the impression that Sarris like him as much as most
of the filmmakers in THe Far Side is Boetticher's.
Filipe
>
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -------------
--------~-->
> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon
or Lexmark
> Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the
US & Canada.
> http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
> http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/b5IolB/TM
> ------------------------------------------------------------
---------~->
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/
>
> 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/
>
>
>
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
6672
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:20pm
Subject: Jacques Tourneur
Biette (interviewed in 1988): JCB started making short films in the
70s, after working in Italy as an asistant to Pasolini and acting in
Othon, by the Straubs. He says he was looking at that time for a link
between the alternative cinema he and his friends were making -
Arietta and Guiget, but also people like Duras, Straub - and the H'wd
cinema he had always loved. In the mid-70s he showed his short films
to Serge Daney and Louis Skorecki, and in talking about them they
brought up Tourneur, because JCB's stuff reminded them of
JT. "Jacques Tourneur had never interested me in the 60s, because he
was making a kind of hollow cinema [my stab at translating "cinema en
creux" - M.C.?], obliging the spectator's imagination to work by
inversing the codes he was working with, a bit like Haks, but in a
less rewarding way. For me those codes were natural signs, and when
they were turned aside from their principal functions, I felt
frustrated. But during this period of calling into question and
rejecting American [sic] cinema for political reasons, someone with a
more perverse relationship to that codified system became more
interesting than other directors whose relationship to Hollywood
was 'glorious.'....So I wrote on Tourneur. For a few years there, he
was for me the greatest of all cineastes. I went to see him in
Bergerac, and I still consider him the most original man I ever met,
among all the cineastes I have admired. He was indifferent to vanity.
No doubt his films weren't the greatest films of all times. He had no
artistic ambition or personal wishes. But more than anyone, he knew
the secret of cinema. He was a serene seer who knew everything about
life and considered it sufficient, perhaps, in his films, to suggest
it. He amused himself by denigrating his films, saying that he had
nothing to do with them. Which is almost true."
6673
From: Craig Keller
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:35pm
Subject: Cahiers du cinéma, Jan. issue
The latest issue of Cahiers came yesterday. The contents:
Cover: 'Lost in Translation' ("Sofia Coppola et la dérive des
sentiments")
-Frodon editorial
-Two page letter "Aux lecteurs des Cahiers" by Charles Tesson -- a
run-through on issues surrounding his recent departure and some of the
changes at the "revue."
-New section in place of Jousse's Bloc-Notes: "La Lettre" -- here (as
to-be-always?) by Alain Bergala: "A Frédéric M., qui va tourner son
premier court métrage."
-Thirty-one page "Spécial Chine: Voyage dans le continent le plus
fécond du cinéma contemporain" -- large sections on Jia Zhangke, Tian
Zhuang-zhuang's remake of 'Springtime in a Small Town,' Jiang Wen, Wang
Xiao-shuai, Lou Ye, Meng Jinghui, Wang Bing, and Li Yang.
Reviews:
-'Lost in Translation' by Sofia Coppola -- Emmanuel Burdeau
-'Turning Gate' by Hong Sang-soo -- Antoine Thirion
-'Uzak' by Nuri Bilge Ceylan -- Sylvain Coumoul
-'Tornando a casa' by Vincenzo Marra -- Sébastien Bénédict
-'Father and Son' by Aleksandr Sokurov -- Hélène Frappat + a report on
the Sokurov retrospective at Turin: "Dieu n'a pas besoin du cinéma"
-'L'Esquive' by Abdellatif Kechiche -- Jean-Philippe Tessé
Short Reviews -- includes lovely pans of 'The Last Samurai' and
'Gothika' (which I had no idea was directed by Mattieu Kassovitz until
now)
-Report on the Vendôme festival: "Images en région: des pros, des
types, des prototypes" by Burdeau
-Report and breakdown of French film funding by region: "Une nouvelle
manne pour le cinéma français" by Sarah Chatel
-"Friedkin, sur le fil: A Turin, redécouverte de l'oeuvre compulsive et
ambigue de William Friedkin, cinéaste d'action" by Vincent Malausa. I
love that little appellation -- "William Friedkin -- cinéaste d'action"
-Report on the festival at Nantes: "Fantômes chinois à Nantes," by
Elisabeth Lequeret, with a remark on Tsai's 'Goodbye, Dragon Inn' that
says the film is the first since 'The River' to attain such high levels
of intensity.
-"Humberto Mauro, pionnier du cinéma brésilien," on the occasion of a
retrospective at Nantes, by Nicolas Azelbert.
-"A Tokyo avec Ozu" by Frodon -- about the release (with the first two
shots I've seen from the film) of Hou's new 'Kohi ji ko' whose title
apparently is -not- exactly 'Coffee Time' as previously reported, but
rather: 'Coffee, Time, Light.'
And then a few other bits and bobs, including a piece on Stan Laurel
solo by Jean Douchet. And the news that Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach,
and Ermanno Olmi are starting a project that takes place entirely on a
train -- the first third will be directed by Olmi, then handed over to
Kiarostami, and finally to Loach. I would be three-thirds interested
in this rather than two-thirds if it didn't include Loach, whom I tend
to find squalid. Raul (for the record, is it "Raul" or "Raoul"?) Ruiz
is beginning 'Livre à vendre,' and Manoel de Oliveira 'O quinto
iimperio, ontem como hoje.'
Essays:
-"La guerre du temps (I): Enjeu ultime du marché, le temps est l'objet
du combat en quoi consiste aussi l'expérience esthétique." by Bernard
Stiegler
-"Le chant de Lee: L'eau s'infiltre dans la pierre. Eclat, précision,
souplesse, fluidité, douceur sont les intonations que Bruce Lee donne à
son chant." by Gilles Grand
-"Tourneur, le goût de laisser voir: Dans ses entretiens, le cinéaste
sait se rendre insaisissable, comme il a su détourner la machine
narrative hollywoodienne en invoquant l'invisible." by Pierre Alferi
-"Pas le paradis: La dérision suggestive de la série 'Curb Your
Enthusisasm' souligne les puissances ambiguës d'une séduction fondée
sur le néant." by François Bégaudeau
-"Minnelli double bande: Commentaire de plans, nouvelle série. Essai
no. 1: tentative de pister dans l'arrêt sur image les intermittences du
visible." by Emmanuel Burdeau -- an analysis of seven shots (with
accompanying 'scope screen-grabs) from 'Gigi.'
-"Le festival et ses dehors (sur Belfort 2003)" by Antoine Thirion
-Dictionnaire (dé)raisonné: "C comme chien (andalou)" by Francis
Marmande on, of course, 'Un chien andalou.'
Note that in addition to this Tourneur piece, there's also an ad for a
new volume out from the Centre Pompidou by Michael Henry Wilson
entitled 'Jacques Tourneur, ou la magie de la suggestion.'
The films with the highest ratings in this months Conseil des dix are
'Lost in Translation' with four stars from Burdeau and three from the
rest, and 'L'Esquive' with three across the board. 'Pas de repos' by
Guiraudie is next in line with mostly threes and a few twos.
craig.
6674
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:44pm
Subject: Re: Stars in My Crown
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "joe_mcelhaney" wrote:
>
> Isn't it interesting, though, how Tourneur has gradually become a
> cineaste-like figure over the last couple of decades?
> Sarris's "Expressive Esoterica" category seemed to stick for a
> while.
Sarris's own summation changed from "a stylist, if not a full-fledged _auteur_" (!!) in the American Directors issue, to simply "a triumph of taste over force" in the book. Was this an elevation, or otherwise?
> Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to read Chris Fujiwara's book
> yet but I wonder if he traces out JT's reception history in this
> regard.
Fujiwara ascribes "the belatedness of this attention" in France to "accidents of distribution that kept some of Tourneur's major films off French screens until the late sixties."
6675
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:46pm
Subject: Re: Cahiers_du_cinéma,_Jan._issue
--- Craig Keller wrote:
"Raul (for the record, is it "Raul" or "Raoul"?) Ruiz"
Either. Both. I've always used the former.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6676
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 8:49pm
Subject: Re: The Fearmakers
Actually he signed on as a favor to Dana Andrews.
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> David, interestingly, the book the film was based
> on, which isn't
> half bad, was about a returning WWII vet discovering
> that his ad
> agency has been taken over by a right-wing cabal
> that is using it to
> elect proto-fascist candidates. The politics was
> changed in the film,
> which was moved to the Korean era, but not the very
> prophetic
> gimmick - I wonder if JT signed on before that.
> Apart from
> Fearmakers, his films are pretty liberal, and a
> number of them are
> about revolutions. Of course, so are a number of De
> Milles....
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6677
From: Paul Fileri
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:16pm
Subject: Ruiz's name (was Re: Cahiers du cinéma, Jan. issue)
Craig wrote:
>Raul (for the record, is it "Raul" or "Raoul"?) Ruiz
> is beginning 'Livre à vendre,' [...]
Raúl is his original Spanish name. Once he left Chile and started to
make films in exile, centered in France, his name was gallicized in
articles and screen credits. I still think some of his later works
have Raúl in the credits, while others have Raoul.
- Paul
6678
From: Craig Keller
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:38pm
Subject: Re: Ruiz's name (was Re: Cahiers du cinéma, Jan. issue)
>
> Raúl is his original Spanish name. Once he left Chile and started to
> make films in exile, centered in France, his name was gallicized in
> articles and screen credits. I still think some of his later works
> have Raúl in the credits, while others have Raoul.
The Gallicization/Americanization/____ization of names always gets my
goat. A name is a pure appellative, and not a noun -- an individual
shouldn't undergo an identity-switch once he crosses borders.
Romanizations from a different alphabet in and of themselves are of
course never standard (although the American romanization of Japanese
is a lot cleaner and more concise than the French way, for sure) --
although the standard method of romanizing Chinese dialects to any
western character-set are universally botched -- but everything within
the same alphabet, well... let me just assert that 'Pierrot le fou'
translates to 'Pierrot the Mad,' and not 'Crazy Pete.' (As I've seen
it crazily represented on numerous occasions.)
craig.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6679
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:15pm
Subject: POSITIF January issue
The January issue of POSITIF (that "other" French film mag) has just
arrived.
Contents:
Cover: Nuri Bilge Ceylan's UZAK
Editorial.
L'ACTUALITE: (reviews and interviews):
Sofia Coppola:
LOST IN TRANSLATION, by Jean-Pierre Coursodon
Interview by Michel Ciment and Yann Tobin
Nuri Bilge Ceylan:
UZAK by Alain Masson
Interview by Michel Ciment et Matthieu Darras
Gilles Marchand:
QUI A TUE BAMBI? by Yannick Lemarie
Interview by Stephane Goudet and Claire Vasse
Peter jackson:
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING by Yannick Dahan
La Trilogie de Peter Jackson, by Eithne O'Neill
LES FILMS (other films): MASTER AND COMMANDER... by Jean-Loup
Bourget; PRINTEMPS DANS UNE PETITE VILLE by Hubert Niogret; L'ESQUIVE
by Vincent Thabouret.
Notes on other films
Some other articles:
Cinema et memoire, ou pourquoi nous sommes tous des heritiers du
genocide armenien, By Sylvie Rollet
Lettre de Pierre Rissient sur Jean-Michel Reynard
Reports of Festivals: Mar del Plata, Istanbul, "Cinema du reel".
Book reviews: Antoine de Baecque's "La Cinephilie" reviewed by M.
Ciment; Lee Server's "Baby I don't care" Robert Mitchum" reviewed by
Eithne O'Neill.
DVD reviews: Pasolini; "Bound"; also, 3 Tourneur/Lewton DVD issues
DOSSIER: JACQUES TOURNEUR (30 pages)
Seven articles plus a translation of an exerpt from "The Celluloid
Muse" and reviews of Michael Wilson's book on Tourneur and of "Ecrits
de Jacques Tourneur" -- both 2003.
6680
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:23pm
Subject: Ruiz's name (was Re: Cahiers du cinéma, Jan. issue)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
> well... let me just assert that 'Pierrot le fou'
> translates to 'Pierrot the Mad,' and not 'Crazy Pete.' (As I've
seen
> it crazily represented on numerous occasions.)
>
> craig.
>
> Yes but "Pierrot le fou" is not a name but a nickname,
and "Pierrot the Mad" sounds very un-idiomatic in English, unlike the
French (the original "Pierrot le fou" was a famous gangster).
On a slightly different subject, I once saw Truffaut's "Jules et
Jim" advertized as "Jewels and Gems" in a Washington, DC, newspaper
(it was a listing for a revival in a long-vanished art theatre). I
have kept the clipping.
JPC
6681
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:31pm
Subject: Re: Tourneur
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> Fujiwara ascribes "the belatedness of this attention" in France to
"accidents of distribution that kept some of Tourneur's major films
off French screens until the late sixties."
An article in the Dec. 1963 Cahiers du Cinéma lists some of the
American films that hadn't yet been released in France. Tourneur's
Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man, Stranger
on Horseback, The Fearmakers, Easy Living, Days of Glory,
Nightfall, and Night of the Demon had not yet received a release.
Not being able to see the Val Lewton films must have given a
different perspective on Tourneur...
(Some other films unreleased in France: What Price Glory (Ford);
The Man I Love, One Sunday Afternoon, A Lion Is in the
Streets (Walsh); The Pajama Game and Damn Yankees (Donen);
Force of Evil (Polonsky); Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel);
Detour (Ulmer); The Actress (Cukor); The Tall T, Ride
Lonesome, Decision at Sundown, and Comanche Station (Boetticher);
China Gate, Crimson Kimono, Forty Guns, Park Row (Fuller);
Paths of Glory (Kubrick); The Clock (Minnelli); The Track of
the Cat and Lafayette Escadrille (Wellman); The Phenix City
Story (Karlson); The Tall Target (Mann); Flame and the Flesh,
and A Catered Affair (Brooks); My Son John (McCarey); A Kiss
Before Dying and Fury at Showdown (Oswald); Carmen Jones
(Preminger); Take Me to Town, All I Desire, There's Always
Tomorrow, Hitler's Madman, Meet Me at the Fair, Has Anybody
Seen My Gal (Sirk); Comrade X, H.M. Pulham, Esq., An American
Romance (Vidor); The Damned, The Boy with Green Hair, The Big
Night (Losey). Carmen Jones wasn't released because of a dispute
with the estate of the opera's librettists. What Price Glory,
Lafayette Escadrille, and China Gate were unreleased, and Paths
of Glory was banned, because of unfavorable depictions of the
French military. My Son John and Force of Evil were too
politically controversial for the distributors.)
In a discussion on Usenet you mentioned the fairly obscure
Tourneur films two Cahiers critics chose as among the best
American films: Bernard Eisenschitz chose "Way of the Gaucho"
and Dominique Rabourdin selected "Wichita." (I haven't seen
either -- I don't think they were at the Tourneur retrospective at
Lincoln Center.)
Here's the entry on Tourneur by Jean-Louis Comolli in the dictionary
of American directors that appeared in the Dec. 1963 issue.
Jacques Tourneur
Erreur de le croire précis parce que raffiné : Tourneur,
précieux à ses moments perdus, et surtout (et quand il est pressé)
cinéaste du mal-à-l'aise et de l'instable. En marge d'Hollywood
funambule et somnambule, il traverse le cinéma U.S. sur une
corde et dans un rêve. Il a l'air tout autant égaré en
lui-même qu'en ses films, où il perd pas mal de plans et
gagne plus d'inquiétude à se chercher. Quand il se trouve :
efficace et concis, il montre un peu de sa force à foire
rimer présence et violence (Nightfall) ; quand il se cherche,
il s'épuise en méandres : filandreux et faible, il s'embrouille
dans ses scénarios (Cet People) ou dissipe son esthétisme
en épiphénomènes (Flame and Arrow). Quand il ne se cherche
ni ne cherche, il se rencontre et se possède : c'est la
rigueur et le dénuement d'un poète des contrastes (Timbuktu),
ce sont aussi les variations d'un découvreur d'accords
subtils (Great Day in the Morning). Dons tous les cas, soins
et soucis extrêmes se retournent contre lui ; l'audace peut
le sauver, le laisser aller doit le mener, et la décontraction
l'accomplirait, mais ce ne serait plus Tourneur, cinéaste de
l'entredeux mises et des demi-mesures par excès déplacé.
- J.-L. C.
6682
From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:53pm
Subject: Re: Tourneur's reputation
Below you'll find the introduction to the 1975 Edinburgh Film
festival Jacques Tourneur book. It may give an idea of the ambigous
status of Touneur among "auteurists" then.
About "Stars in My Crown", Tourneur says to Tavernier in the
interview included in the book (from '71 POSITIF): "As far as I'm
concerned this is my best film. And yet, nobody has seen it".
"Despite the undoubted advances in film criticism brought about by
the auteur theory in the last fifteen years, auteurism as a method
of describing and analyzing the unity of a particular director's
work has distinct limitations. These limitations are most clearly
demonstrated by the fact that while some critics have felt almost
instinctively that the work of some directors undoubtedly bore the
mark of an artistic individuality, their work has nevertheless
remained largely unexplored by auteur critics. Such is the case with
Tourneur. Robin Wood and Michael Henry have attempted to concretise
this feeling, but they discovered that the material itself resisted
their efforts to establish a coherent thematic. They concluded that
the hallmark of Tourneur as an author consisted precisely in that
very resistance. Hence their insistence on Tourneur's essential
ambiguity. Without wishing to denigrate the pioneering and often
perceptive efforts of these critics, the essays in this collection
locate the principle(s) of coherence of a Tourneur text, not in some
thematic unity, but in a procedural unity. Both Sylvie Pierre and J -
L. Noames point out that it is not the semantic content, nor the
arrangement of the themes (i.e. the form of the content) which
distinguishes the films under consideration, but the process of
signification itself. They therefore emphasise that Tourneur's
cinema is a "cinema of traces", a cinema in which the relations
between signifying elements are more important than the units which
are being combined It is for this reason that traditional auteurism
has been unable to come to terms with Tourneur's films: it searches
for the repetition/variation of units instead of the repetition of
patterns of relations between signs. This means that it is
impossible to consider Tourneur as an artist expressing a coherent
world-view, a coherent and individual thematic. Instead, the
Tourneur text demands to be approached as a textual practice, a
practice of signification. Whether this holds true for all the films
directed by Tourneur is immaterial in this context. A sufficient
number of them require this approach to justify the enterprise of
collecting his films and examining in which way they function.
Obviously, as will become evident from the contributions made by the
editors of this book, the methods of analysis required by such texts
as these, and the film theory underlying these methods, must diverge
considerably from more conventional approaches. The object of study
differs from the objects scrutinised by more conventional forms of
film criticism. This problem is discussed in the form of a
hypothesis in the essay "Notes Towards the Construction of Readings
of Tourneur", whereas "Femininity and the Masquerade: Anne of the
Indies" approaches this question from a feminist perspective,
attempting to clarify a number of crucial theoretical issues which
feminist film criticism has brought to the fore.
Elaborating on the new policy initiated by last year's Edinburgh
Film Festival book on Raoul Walsh, edited by Phil Hardy, the
Tourneur Retrospective emphasises the shift away from traditional
auteurist retrospectives towards a fore- grounding of the problem of
reading and text construction. The retrospective does not propose a
new author to be discovered, but a series of texts the reading of
which will hopefully contribute to the clarification or formulation
of important critical/theoretical issues in relation to the wider
question of the development of a film culture. It should be pointed
out that we find no fundamental contradiction in the fact that
Tourneur's films are being shown in a festival devoted primarily to
new developments in the political and avant-garde cinema. The
progressive historical avant-gardes were by no means indifferent to
popular culture (e.g. futurism, Brechtian practice etc.) and while
much of the theory drawn on in these essays derives from avant-garde
textual practices, we see no reason why such theoretical concepts
should be excluded from any analysis of Hollywood cinema. Indeed, we
would argue that it is perhaps the main merit of avant-garde
practices that they stimulate the forging of new theoretical
concepts which allow us to re-read earlier, supposedly transparent
texts. Far from the critique of classic Hollywood cinema being made
at the expense of focussing on political or avant-garde cinema, we
see the analysis of text construction, representation and other such
processes inaugurated by these new concepts, as being the only
possible foundation for any aesthetico-political vanguard Hun-making
in Britain today."
Claire Johnston
Paul Willemen
6683
From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:09pm
Subject: Re: The Fearmakers
I don't understand why the movie should be qualified as "insanity".
It deals more with mass manipulation than anything else. In 1966 (in
Présence du cinéma), Tourneur says that he believes the film "was a
failure", but he describes the subject as "admirable".
(Very)anecdotal question: the film ends with a kiss in front of the
Lincoln memorial; the geometry of the shot is such that the kiss
fits exactly with Lincoln's face in the background. I'm just curious
to know if this figure was frequent, among so many ending shots of
this statue.
6684
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
--- Maxime wrote:
> I don't understand why the movie should be qualified
> as "insanity".
> It deals more with mass manipulation than anything
> else.
No it doesn't. It's a Red Scare movie. Xenophobic and
stupid.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6685
From: Paul Gallagher
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:30pm
Subject: Movie's "Pantheon"
Movie magazine's editorial board listed its favored American
and British directors in May 1962. It seems to be limited to
directors still working in 1962. Tourneur rates high.
GREAT
Howard Hawks Alfred Hitchcock
BRILLIANT
(American)
George Cukor Stanley Donen Anthony Mann Leo McCarey
Vincente Minnelli Otto Preminger Nicholas Ray
Douglas Sirk Jacques Tourneur Raoul Walsh Orson Welles
(British)
Joseph Losey
VERY TALENTED
(American)
Robert Aldrich Budd Boetticher Richard Brooks Frank Capra
Blake Edwards Richard Fleischer John Ford Samuel Fuller
Henry Hathaway Elia Kazan Jerry Lewis Sidney Lumet
J. L. Mankiewicz Gerd Oswald Arthur Penn Don Siegel
George Stevens Frank Tashlin Edgar Ulmer King Vidor
Charles Walters
(British)
Hugo Fregonese
TALENTED
(American)
Richard Breen Roger Corman Andre de Toth Gordon Douglas
Allan Dwan J. Frankenheimer Michael Gordon Byron Haskin
John Huston Phil Karlson Stanley Kubrick Mervyn LeRoy
Rudolph Mate Robert Mulligan Joseph Newman Robert Parrish
Richard Quine Mark Robson Alexander Singer Andrew Stone
Don Weis Paul Wendkos Fred M. Wilcox Richard Wilson
(British)
Robert Hamer Seth Host Karel Reisz
COMPETENT OR AMBITIOUS
(American)
Joseph Anthony Jack Arnold Laszlo Benedek David Butler
John Cassavetes Joseph Cates Shirley Clarke Herbert Coleman
Hubert Cornfield Michael Curtiz Delmer Daves
Edward Dmytryk V. J. Donehue Philip Dunne John Farrow
Jose Ferrer Mel Ferrer Melvin Frank Jack Garfein
Hal Kanter Harry Keller Gene Kelly Irvin Kershner
Henry King Howard W. Koch Stanley Kramer Anatole Litvak
Joshua Logan Ranald MacDougall Daniel Mann Delbert Mann
George Marshall Lewis Milestone David Miller Richard Murphy
Norman Panama Joseph Pevney Irving Rapper Martin Ritt
Robert Rossen George Sidney Jack Webb William Wellman
Billy Wilder Robert Wise William Wyler Fred Zinnemann
(British)
Michael Anderson Ken Annakin Anthony Asquith Roy Baker
John Boulting Roy Boulting Jack Cardiff Michael Carreras
Don Chaffey Jack Clayton Robert Day Basil Dearden
Charles Frend Guy Green Val Guest John Guillermin
Guy Hamilton Ken Hughes Pat Jackson Philip Leacock
David Lean Jack Lee J. Lee Thompson Michael McCarthy
John Moxey Ronald Neame Michael Powell Alvin Rakoff
Carol Reed Tony Richardson Wolf Rilla Wendy Toye Harry Watt
THE REST
(American)
Irwin Allen Hall Bartlett James Clavell Morton da Cos
Jerry Hopper Bruce Humberstone Nunnally Johnson Nathan Juran
Henry Koster Walter Lang Robert Z. Leonard Jean Negulesco
George Pal Daniel Petrie Dick Powell Russell Rouse Roy Rowland
George Seaton Jack Sher George Sherman Vincent Sherman
R. G. Springsteen John Sturges Norman Taurog Richard Thorpe
Robert D. Webb William Whitney
(British)
Julian Amyes Robert Asher Baker & Berman Compton Bennett
Muriel Box Stuart Burge J. Paddy Carstairs Henry Cass
Arthur Crabtree Charles Crichton Paul Czinner Cy Endfield
William Fairchild Terence Fisher Lewis Gilbert Sidney Gilliatt
John Gilling B. Desmond Hurst Anthony Kimmins Frank Launder
John Lemont Jay Lewis David MacDonald Kevin McClory
Leslie Norman George Pollock Vernon Sewell Alfred Shaughnessy
Gerald Thomas Ralph Thomas Herbert Wilcox Terence Young
Mario Zampi
6686
From: Maxime
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:32pm
Subject: Re: The Fearmakers
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein >
No it doesn't. It's a Red Scare movie. Xenophobic and
> stupid.
It may be just me, but, viewing the film, I wasn't that much
concerned by the "Red Scare". The fact that Andrews come back from
Corea contributes more to the fatigue of his caracter that to any
incidental historical/political matter. Jacques Lourcelles, who
(excessively) praises the movie, writes: "the true subject of the
movie is fatigue, the wear of the main character, and, trough it,
the wear of democracy itself". I don't think poll manipulation is a
stupid subject. Now and then.
6687
From: brack_28
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:59pm
Subject: very far off topic, but...
Does anyone have an email adress for the Howard Hampton (occasional
writer for Film Comment and Village Voice)? I haven't contacted him
in about a year and his old addy no longer works... just figured
someone here might know.
Thanks,
Josh Mabe
6688
From: Chris Fujiwara
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 0:07am
Subject: Re: Tourneur's reputation
Reception history is not, I admit, a strong point of my book on
Tourneur, but I did find room to make the perhaps facile point,
quoting from the same passage of the Willemen-Johnston text that
Maxime cites, that because Sarris had sort of dropped the ball on
Tourneur, and Wood refused to consider him as a full auteur, Willemen
and Johnston felt able to use Tourneur against "auteurism" and to
claim him as a kind of post- or anti-auteur (my terms, not theirs).
In the US, Tourneur was (and perhaps still is) usually seen as a
horror director under the shadow of Val Lewton.
Regarding Tourneur in France, I think that up until 1967, you will
search in vain for reviews of Tourneur films in Cahiers, apart from
Skorecki's piece "Trois Tourneur," Comolli's double review of Great
Day in the Morning and The Flame and the Arrow, and short notices on
Battle of Marathon and Timbuktu. Brion and Comolli's interview with
Tourneur was published in 1966. Then in 1967, Sylvie Pierre reviewed
I Walked with a Zombie, Fieschi reviewed Night of the Demon, and
Gerard Legrand reviewed Out of the Past for Positif (which had also I
believe been fairly silent on Tourneur).
M. Biette wrote me a wonderful letter about Tourneur which I seem to
have momentarily misplaced, but if I can find it, I'll post some of
it here.
Tourneur had been claimed by the cinephiles of the early '60s
associated with the "Mac-Mahon circle" and the magazine Présence du
cinéma, whose special issue on Tourneur and Dwan (1966) contains a
four-page "Note" by Jacques Lourcelles which doesn't so much as
mention the Lewton films, Out of the Past, or Stars in My Crown and
lists as Tourneur's best films only films from the '50s, starting
with Circle of Danger.
In 1963, Rivette, writing in Cahiers, specifically mentions Tourneur
(and Walsh, Dwan, and Minnelli) in attacking a cinephilia he then
perceived as dominant and pernicious. He criticizes "the attitude of
the 'pure look' that leads to submitting oneself to the film, to
accepting it as it is, to contemplate it, as is said, but, I'm
afraid, as cows do trains that pass, fascinated by movement or color,
and with little chance of understanding one day what moves these
objects of fascination, and makes them go right instead of left." (In
a recent interview whose translation is on Senses of Cinema
somewhere, Rivette seems now to like Tourneur but rejects Minnelli.)
Rivette comes out in favor of a cinema of "cinéastes" who recreate
the world, and turns away (announcing what would become the major
trend at Cahiers) from the cinephilic adoration of American genre
cinema.
The history of Tourneur's critical reception is fascinating, then,
since he was adopted in France by cinephiles who were seen as
extremists (including politically) and in the UK by academics who saw
themselves as combatting the naive romanticism of "auteurism." It's
only recently that Tourneur seems to have become a less politically
charged, more widely accepted figure.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime" wrote:
> Below you'll find the introduction to the 1975 Edinburgh Film
> festival Jacques Tourneur book. It may give an idea of the ambigous
> status of Touneur among "auteurists" then.
> About "Stars in My Crown", Tourneur says to Tavernier in the
> interview included in the book (from '71 POSITIF): "As far as I'm
> concerned this is my best film. And yet, nobody has seen it".
>
> "Despite the undoubted advances in film criticism brought about by
> the auteur theory in the last fifteen years, auteurism as a method
> of describing and analyzing the unity of a particular director's
> work has distinct limitations. These limitations are most clearly
> demonstrated by the fact that while some critics have felt almost
> instinctively that the work of some directors undoubtedly bore the
> mark of an artistic individuality, their work has nevertheless
> remained largely unexplored by auteur critics. Such is the case
with
> Tourneur. Robin Wood and Michael Henry have attempted to concretise
> this feeling, but they discovered that the material itself resisted
> their efforts to establish a coherent thematic. They concluded that
> the hallmark of Tourneur as an author consisted precisely in that
> very resistance. Hence their insistence on Tourneur's essential
> ambiguity. Without wishing to denigrate the pioneering and often
> perceptive efforts of these critics, the essays in this collection
> locate the principle(s) of coherence of a Tourneur text, not in
some
> thematic unity, but in a procedural unity. Both Sylvie Pierre and
J -
> L. Noames point out that it is not the semantic content, nor the
> arrangement of the themes (i.e. the form of the content) which
> distinguishes the films under consideration, but the process of
> signification itself. They therefore emphasise that Tourneur's
> cinema is a "cinema of traces", a cinema in which the relations
> between signifying elements are more important than the units which
> are being combined It is for this reason that traditional auteurism
> has been unable to come to terms with Tourneur's films: it searches
> for the repetition/variation of units instead of the repetition of
> patterns of relations between signs. This means that it is
> impossible to consider Tourneur as an artist expressing a coherent
> world-view, a coherent and individual thematic. Instead, the
> Tourneur text demands to be approached as a textual practice, a
> practice of signification. Whether this holds true for all the
films
> directed by Tourneur is immaterial in this context. A sufficient
> number of them require this approach to justify the enterprise of
> collecting his films and examining in which way they function.
> Obviously, as will become evident from the contributions made by
the
> editors of this book, the methods of analysis required by such
texts
> as these, and the film theory underlying these methods, must
diverge
> considerably from more conventional approaches. The object of study
> differs from the objects scrutinised by more conventional forms of
> film criticism. This problem is discussed in the form of a
> hypothesis in the essay "Notes Towards the Construction of Readings
> of Tourneur", whereas "Femininity and the Masquerade: Anne of the
> Indies" approaches this question from a feminist perspective,
> attempting to clarify a number of crucial theoretical issues which
> feminist film criticism has brought to the fore.
> Elaborating on the new policy initiated by last year's Edinburgh
> Film Festival book on Raoul Walsh, edited by Phil Hardy, the
> Tourneur Retrospective emphasises the shift away from traditional
> auteurist retrospectives towards a fore- grounding of the problem
of
> reading and text construction. The retrospective does not propose a
> new author to be discovered, but a series of texts the reading of
> which will hopefully contribute to the clarification or formulation
> of important critical/theoretical issues in relation to the wider
> question of the development of a film culture. It should be pointed
> out that we find no fundamental contradiction in the fact that
> Tourneur's films are being shown in a festival devoted primarily to
> new developments in the political and avant-garde cinema. The
> progressive historical avant-gardes were by no means indifferent to
> popular culture (e.g. futurism, Brechtian practice etc.) and while
> much of the theory drawn on in these essays derives from avant-
garde
> textual practices, we see no reason why such theoretical concepts
> should be excluded from any analysis of Hollywood cinema. Indeed,
we
> would argue that it is perhaps the main merit of avant-garde
> practices that they stimulate the forging of new theoretical
> concepts which allow us to re-read earlier, supposedly transparent
> texts. Far from the critique of classic Hollywood cinema being made
> at the expense of focussing on political or avant-garde cinema, we
> see the analysis of text construction, representation and other
such
> processes inaugurated by these new concepts, as being the only
> possible foundation for any aesthetico-political vanguard Hun-
making
> in Britain today."
> Claire Johnston
> Paul Willemen
6689
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 0:17am
Subject: Re: Cahiers du cinéma, Jan. issue
> Cover: 'Lost in Translation' ("Sofia Coppola et la dérive de
s
> sentiments")
Interesting. The film actually had got a mixed reception in
Lallane's Venice coverage.
Filipe
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
6690
From: programming
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 0:25am
Subject: Help with Portuguese?
Hi All,
Are there any Portuguese speakers out there who can assist me with figuring
out HOW to purchase the following:
http://www.dvdpt.com/o_p/obras_documentais_de_artavazd_pelechian.php
Any help most welcome.
Best,
Patrick Friel
6691
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:00am
Subject: Re: Cahiers du cinema, Jan. issue
New ballgame. BTW, M. C., I was pleased to note in the
previous issue of Positif that they liked In the Cut, as did I. It was
dismissed in a notule in the December issue of Cahiers - the
last before the new board of editors, which would be the first
thing I'D read...
6692
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:03am
Subject: re: Jacques Tourneur
Daney's footnote in his Rio Lobo piece summed up the work on
Tourneur up till then (1971), particularly the important Comolli
piece. Then Skorecki did his kamikaze "On the New Cinephilia"
piece, with a section on JT, and Biette took over the Tourneur
franchise in 1975. It's a pretty coherent line of development.
6693
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 1:21am
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
--- Maxime wrote:
> It may be just me, but, viewing the film, I wasn't
> that much
> concerned by the "Red Scare". The fact that Andrews
> come back from
> Corea contributes more to the fatigue of his
> caracter that to any
> incidental historical/political matter.
Sorry, but history isn't overlooked so easily. I
should like to direct your attention to "My Son John,"
"The Red Menace" and above all "Woman on Pier 13"
which under its original title "I Married a Communist"
was a script Hughes used to "expose" any "Commies" who
might be working for RKO. If they turned down making
it they were "reds" and therefore fired.
Jacques
> Lourcelles, who
> (excessively) praises the movie, writes: "the true
> subject of the
> movie is fatigue, the wear of the main character,
> and, trough it,
> the wear of democracy itself". I don't think poll
> manipulation is a
> stupid subject. Now and then.
>
Neither do I. But when it's being "pushed" by Mel
Torme I find it impossible to withhold my laughter --
or my scorn.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6694
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 9:08pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
In a message dated 1/14/04 7:32:36 PM, cellar47@y... writes:
> The fact that Andrews
> > come back from
> > Corea contributes more to the fatigue of his
> > caracter that to any
> > incidental historical/political matter.
>
> Sorry, but history isn't overlooked so easily. I
> should like to direct your attention to "My Son John,"
> "The Red Menace" and above all "Woman on Pier 13"
>
David, I just want to make sure I understand you correctly. Are you saying
that this historical matter is far from incidental given the number of red scare
films made around the same time?
Kevin
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6695
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 2:58am
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> David, I just want to make sure I understand you
> correctly. Are you saying
> that this historical matter is far from incidental
> given the number of red scare
> films made around the same time?
>
>
Well DUH!
And isn't it ironic that this same filmmkaer was
responsible for the pro-Soviet "Days of Glory"? Could
making "The Fearmakers" have been presented as
Tourneur's price for further employment?
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6696
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 10:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
In a message dated 1/14/04 9:00:47 PM, cellar47@y... writes:
> > David, I just want to make sure I understand you
> > correctly. Are you saying
> > that this historical matter is far from incidental
> > given the number of red scare
> > films made around the same time?
> >
> >
>
> Well DUH!
>
Sheesh - sorry I asked!
Kevin the (apparently) Stupid
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6697
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 3:59am
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> >
> Sheesh - sorry I asked!
>
> Kevin the (apparently) Stupid
>
>
>
Seriously, Kevin, la politique des auteurs can go only
so far. In this case Realpolitique intervenes. In
other instances it's perfectly obvious that a
performer or screenwriter is in the driver's seat, no
matter who's in the director's chair.
Context is all. And one of the most interesting things
about Tourneur is that there are so many contexts.
When your talking Vincente Minnelli it's all rather
simple. he came to MGM and stayed there until almost
the end of his career. There's a consistency that's
quite obvious -- and he isn't even a writer.
As for Tourneur and "The Fearmakers" is should also be
pointed out that Fuller's "Pickup On South Street" is
also a RedScare film. But Fuller is so powerful that
he overtakes the Mccarthite mise en scene to create
something all his own. One of his best filsm,in fact.
Tourneur doesn't have that power or authority. He's a
stylist, not an all-stops-out auteur.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
6698
From:
Date: Wed Jan 14, 2004 11:16pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
David, I agree with you 1000% percent. I was just asking to make sure that I
do agree with you 1000%. The question wasn't along the lines of "Are you
actually making such a ridiculous suggestion?" It was "I'm a bit confused. This is
what you mean to say, right?"
Probably the last person on this list to take la politique des auteurs too
far,
Kevin
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
6699
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 5:24am
Subject: Re: Help with Portuguese?
Patrick, as far as I can tell there's no purchase link there.
But I get into the distributor's home page. Their mail is
info@c... From what I get, you can buy for it.
Filipe
> Hi All,
>
> Are there any Portuguese speakers out there who can assist m
e with figuring
> out HOW to purchase the following:
>
> http://www.dvdpt.com/o_p/obras_documentais_de_artavazd_pelec
hian.php
>
>
> Any help most welcome.
>
> Best,
>
> Patrick Friel
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/
>
> 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/
>
>
>
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
6700
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Jan 15, 2004 5:45am
Subject: Re: Re: The Fearmakers
>
Well, let seems with I get it. There's bad commies in it, so
it is a RED SCARE film and so obviously a very right-wing
thing... Can't Tourneur actually got the job for political
pressure and them after read the script decide there were
actually interesting possibilities in there to explore that
didn't have anything to do with the villains being reds?
Actually, one of the most right-wing films that come from
Hollywood in the last few years was The Majestic, which have
the HUAC as villains.
I haven't seen the film and I'm actually haven't made my mind
on Tiurneur yet since I've seen only three films by him (for
the reccord Cat People is great, The Flame and the Arrow is
good fun and The Comedy of Terrors isn't much different from
other AIP films of the period).
Filipe
> --- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
>
> >
> > David, I just want to make sure I understand you
> > correctly. Are you saying
> > that this historical matter is far from incidental
> > given the number of red scare
> > films made around the same time?
> >
> >
>
> Well DUH!
>
>
>
> And isn't it ironic that this same filmmkaer was
> responsible for the pro-Soviet "Days of Glory"? Could
> making "The Fearmakers" have been presented as
> Tourneur's price for further employment?
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
> http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
>
>
>
> ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor -------------
--------~-->
> Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon
or Lexmark
> Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the
US & Canada.
> http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
> http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/b5IolB/TM
> ------------------------------------------------------------
---------~->
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/
>
> 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/
>
>
>
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
a_film_by Main Page
Home Film
Art
Other: (Travel, Rants, Obits)
Links About
Contact