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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.
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emailing them from that Web site.
20201
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:29am
Subject: Chat
I went to the chat room and it was empty! Story of my life kind of
thing. What did I do wrong?
20202
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:35am
Subject: Re: Chat
>
>
> I went to the chat room and it was empty! Story of my life kind of
> thing. What did I do wrong?
Go to the group homepage, and then click on "chat" on the left-hand
strip. Then, once the page loads, wait for the chat-applet to load in
the middle -- it might take a few seconds to show up.
20203
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:34am
Subject: Re: Chat
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> I went to the chat room and it was empty! Story of my life kind of
> thing. What did I do wrong?
*****
It's ongoing. The more the merrier, etc
Tom "Mr. Joviality" Sutpen
20204
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:38am
Subject: Sleep (was Re: New year resolutions)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Gabe Klinger"
wrote:
> > How do you do that? I mean, make mental notes. Not when
> you're
> > half-asleep, but at anytime.
>
> Are you joking?
*****
In a word. Yes.
> > Reason I ask is, I wanna be a Big Time Film Critic/Essayist
> (you know,
> > respected, read and admired by capital-C Cinephiles from sea
> to
> > shining sea) and, if you can believe it, someone told me in an
> email
> > today that the members here who've achieved absolute
> Stardom in their
> > lifetimes are . . . let's see . . . "generous with their time and
> > help". Yep, that's it.
>
> Are you joking?
*****
Same answer.
> I thought mental note-taking was a fairly common thing that all of
> us -- not just Big Time Film Critic-Essayists -- do.
>
> And I find your plea kind of disturbing -- if it's indeed sincere.
*****
Nothing to be disturbed about. I have an odd sense of humor when
I've been up for 36 hours straight.
Tom "Who Very Much Needs Sleep" Sutpen
20205
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:38am
Subject: Re: Dell Mapbacks, Floor Plans (was: Cinema, taste, merit)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> I recall seeing somewhere a plan of the courtyard from LE CRIME DE
> M.LANGE.
>
> Richard
Yes, with a diagram of the 360 degree panning shot in a
Bazin "Telerama" article which was reproduced in "Premier Plan:
Renoir" (#22-23-24), 1961. I have it here in front of me.
20206
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:40am
Subject: Re: Chat
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
> >
> >
> > I went to the chat room and it was empty! Story of my life kind
of
> > thing. What did I do wrong?
>
> Go to the group homepage, and then click on "chat" on the left-
hand
> strip. Then, once the page loads, wait for the chat-applet to
load in
> the middle -- it might take a few seconds to show up.
That's what I did, of course!
20207
From:
Date: Sat Jan 1, 2005 9:47pm
Subject: Re: Dell Mapbacks, Floor Plans (was: Cinema, taste, merit)
In a message dated 05-01-01 21:39:22 EST, JPC writes:
<< > I recall seeing somewhere a plan of the courtyard from LE CRIME DE
> M.LANGE.
>
> Richard
Yes, with a diagram of the 360 degree panning shot in a
Bazin "Telerama" article which was reproduced in "Premier Plan:
Renoir" (#22-23-24), 1961. I have it here in front of me. >>
It's also in the book "Jean Renoir" by Andre Bazin.
I had forgotten all about this.
I think David Dresser's book on Mizoguchi does something similar for "The 47
Ronin".
Mike Grost
20208
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 3:01am
Subject: Re: Chat
JPC, you have to be using a real ISP, not Web TV. If so, and you still
can't get into chat, you might need to have a Java-enabled computer.
If you're using a Windows machine you might have to download and
install Java (http://www.java.com/en/download/manual.jsp ) This won't
hurt in any case; I can't be sure if I'm right (and Yahoo! help is
worthless on the subject) but it seems likely. I just checked and there
were definitely people there -- and they were all talking about you!
(Just kidding on the last.)
Fred Camper
20209
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 4:14am
Subject: Off (kind of) topic: Form and Content
I want to reply (belatedly when I do) to Fred and Zach's illuminating
exchange when I have a little more time to do so, but in the mean
time, in an extension of the literary angle of the abstract form and
content debate, I offer you the first two paragraphs of the
Illustrated Classics version of MOBY-DICK that I bought on the street
for 50 cents:
Call me Ishmael. I am a schoolmaster, and whenever life got me down, I
would leave my job and head for one special place. When my spirits
needed restoring, I could always count on the sea.
I don't mean I'd travel as a passenger. No, for me the way to escape
the closeness of my home town of Manhatto, New York, was to go to sea
as a plain seaman. I liked the exercise, I liked getting paid instead
of having to pay, plus I liked satisfying for seeing faraway places.
No cetology chapters in this edition.
PWC
20210
From: Saul Symonds
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 4:42am
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit
David Ehrenstein wrote:
> Well I hope it was more than awhile.
Yes, it was for a long while, and her films are still one of my guilty
pleasures. For a few months, every Saturday afternoon there played a
Doris Day musical on television, and I always looked forward to them,
and always enjoyed them, even the lesser ones such as "On Moonlight
Bay" and its followup, "By the Light of the Silvery Moon". I agree
that she was born to play "Pajama Game" - although she definitely
tries to be alluring, and has a certain cute coyness about her, I
think part the reason she's so suited to musicals lies in her
asexuality. I think if musicals are reduced to being mere love stories
with songs, then they can become somewhat dull - it's always in the
subtexts, and of course in those glorious songs, that their attraction
lies. Scorsese has a great chapter in his "Personal Journey through
American Cinema" on the 'director as smuggler' which I always like
applying to musicals, and which I think accounts for the lack of
meaning, unidimensionality, and dullness, of modern Hollywood productions.
-- Saul.
20211
From: Damien Bona
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 5:10am
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds" wrote:
For a few months, every Saturday afternoon there played a
> Doris Day musical on television, and I always looked forward to
them,
> and always enjoyed them, even the lesser ones such as "On Moonlight
> Bay" and its followup, "By the Light of the Silvery Moon".
You must read Jonathan's "Moving Places" -- well, everyone should
read it, it's a wonderful book -- because he writes extensively about
warching (or more acccurately, experiencing) "On Moonlight Bay" on
four different occasions, under four very dissimilar conditions over
thew course of 27 years in the pre-viseo era.
(And, tying this in to another thread, the film is based (loosely) on
Booth Tarkington's "Penrod.")
-- Damien
20212
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 5:37am
Subject: Re: Dell Mapbacks, Floor Plans (was: Cinema, taste, merit)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> Have seen Ozu scholars suggest that Ozu's sets are deliberately
> geographically confusing, unlike those vulgar, low-brow Hollywood
movies in which
> everything is made vulgarly clear.
There is a school of esthetics that holds that "respect for spatial
reality" is a cardinal virtue in a filmmaker. Greg Ford often used
this position to dump on Hitchcock. But the famous interview w.
Farber, Greg's mentor, in Film Comment, reprinted in the new Negative
Space (?), shows that Farber and Patterson are fascinated by the
spatial IRrationality of a scene in The Far Country, which they
discuss for pages on end.
20213
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 5:39am
Subject: Re: Dell Mapbacks, Floor Plans (was: Cinema, taste, merit)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
> I recall seeing somewhere a plan of the courtyard from LE CRIME DE
> M.LANGE.
It's in Jean Renoir by Andre Bazin - at least it's in the French
edition.
20214
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 5:40am
Subject: Re: ROPE floor plan explanation
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
The novelization begins, "The lid of the big chest slammed
> shut and Philip realized that the thing was done."
I wd assume that the gay implications are purged in the novelization.
I have the Hatari novelization. The gag about Red Buttons milking the
male goat is suppressed in it.
20215
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 5:43am
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Saul Symonds" wrote:
>
although she definitely
> tries to be alluring, and has a certain cute coyness about her, I
> think part the reason she's so suited to musicals lies in her
> asexuality.
She isn't/wasn't asexual, IMO. At all.
20216
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 5:46am
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
wrote:
>
> You must read Jonathan's "Moving Places" -- well, everyone should
> read it, it's a wonderful book -- because he writes extensively
about
> warching (or more acccurately, experiencing) "On Moonlight Bay" on
> four different occasions
"On Moonlight Bay as Time Machine" is a great imaginative
achievement - worth all the novels of Pynchon PUT TOGETHER.
20217
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 6:09am
Subject: Re: Re: Cinema, taste, merit
For any still-up a_f_b'ers, the chat is still ongoing, with different
folk than earliestly in the night.
Also, I'm on page 600 of 'Mason & Dixon' and really waiting for the
revelation-moment to come, -- it came way earlier than this in both
'Gravity's Rainbow' and 'V.'
craig.
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Damien Bona"
> wrote:
>>
>> You must read Jonathan's "Moving Places" -- well, everyone should
>> read it, it's a wonderful book -- because he writes extensively
> about
>> warching (or more acccurately, experiencing) "On Moonlight Bay" on
>> four different occasions
>
> "On Moonlight Bay as Time Machine" is a great imaginative
> achievement - worth all the novels of Pynchon PUT TOGETHER.
20218
From: Craig Keller
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 6:13am
Subject: Re: Re: Cinema, taste, merit
On Sunday, January 2, 2005, at 01:09 AM, Craig Keller wrote:
>
> Also, I'm on page 600 of 'Mason & Dixon' and really waiting for the
> revelation-moment to come, -- it came way earlier than this in both
> 'Gravity's Rainbow' and 'V.'
Just an addendum to my own post -- only cite those two because they're
the longest besides 'M&D.' I'm a fan of all of the first four -- and
reading 'Vineland' way back was the first time I encountered Artie
Shaw, r.i.p.
cmk.
20219
From:
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:33am
Subject: Norman Foster
The name of Norman Foster came up during the most interesting chat session we
had this evening. I know him only as the credited director of the Orson
Welles project, "Journey Into Fear," but several members championed other films by
him. So I'd like to ask the a_film_by body at large for their opinions of
Foster's work, particularly his subsequent work (which might go some way in
disproving the notion that Welles was the only one behind "Journey").
Thanks!
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
20220
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 7:54am
Subject: Re: ROPE floor plan explanation
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"I wd assume that the gay implications are purged in the
novelization."
The gay implications are there, especially in a back story concerning
Philip and Brandon at prep school (and also on the floor plan showing
a single bedroom with one double bed.)
Richard
20221
From:
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 7:28am
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
All I have is out-of-date impressions.
I grew up on Foster's version of the Zorro legend. Thoroughly enjoyed "The
Sign of Zorro" (1958) at age 5. This seems to be re-edited from the Zorro TV
series from Disney. A few years before, Foster's "Davy Crockett" TV shows had
created a nation-wide craze. I was just a bit too young to live through this. I
remember old, discarded coon-skin caps lying in basements, that had belonged to
the older brothers of friends of mine. Apparently, every boy in America had
one. Hope that no real racoons were harmed in the making of these caps! I still
remember "The Sign of Zorro" vividly, especially the secret passage in
Diego's room leading outdoors. However, cannot claim that my 5-year old impressions
were of full auteurist, Camperian complexity!
Later I saw "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island". Liked it the first time seen.
But seeing it again years later, thought I must have been out of my mind. It
is one of the most admired Charlie Chan movies - but this is a series I just do
not like much (give me the Saint or the Falcon or Nancy Drew any day!) Have
never seen any of Foster's work on the Mr. Moto series. And the only John P.
Marquand novel read here is "Sincerely, Willis Wade", one of the author's
interesting business satires about America's upper classes.
The collection of plays:
"Strictly Dishonorable, and other Lost American Plays" (1986), edited by
Richard Nelson
has a frontispiece showing the 1927 Broadway production of Bartlett Cormack's
gangster drama, "The Racket". One sees a young Edward G. Robinson, as the
gangster villain, pretending to slug young Norman Foster, the play's naive young
reporter just out of Nebraska. Later photos in the book show John Cromwell
playing the play's policeman lead. Lots of future directors as actors...
I must have seen Foster as a film actor in "Pilgrimage" (John Ford), but have
no memory of him after a single viewing. It's a very good movie.
Mike Grost
20222
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 1:06pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> The name of Norman Foster came up during the most interesting chat
session we
> had this evening. I know him only as the credited director of the
Orson
> Welles project, "Journey Into Fear," but several members championed
other films by
> him. So I'd like to ask the a_film_by body at large for their
opinions of
> Foster's work, particularly his subsequent work (which might go some
way in
> disproving the notion that Welles was the only one behind "Journey").
*****
I think one thing is plain: Norman Foster was a competent director of
mysteries (Charlie Chan pictures, the Mr. Moto Series) who became
deeply influenced by Welles after working with him on "Journey Into
Fear", even though the minutiae of 'who directed what?' or 'what got
chopped out?' of that film rests far outside my competence to
determine or even conjecture with any authority; I simply don't know
(though now that I think of it, Peter, didn't Welles address this
matter in his 1982 BBC interview? My recollection is hazy on that,
sorry to say). But in a way it doesn't matter if Welles really
directed most of that film or not. Foster clearly absorbed a great
deal just from being on the set with him. It shows in the best of his
subsequent work.
"My Friend Bonito", his segment of Welles' aborted "It's All True"
catastrophe from 1943, is a wholly conventional narrative that
nevertheless is imbued to the occipital rims with Welles' sense of
space; a muted replica of his compositional eye (few that I've read
have remarked upon how incredibly *sharp* the images in Welles early
work often were; something, I suspect, which was born out of all those
"Stagecoach" screenings), but with a far less baroque cast to it than
the Man himself might have brought had he in fact directed it.
Foster's film is just "Wellesian" enough visually to lead one who
didn't know better to conclude that, once again, Welles must have been
riding shotgun.
But Foster does it again five years later in "Rachel and the
Stranger"; an RKO film that Welles probably never even saw, much less
worked on. It was the first film he directed for a Hollywood studio
sunce "Journey Into Fear" and, as before, it's a conventional
narrative; albeit a superb one (a species of Domestic Western). But
what's fascinating in this context is that the daylight exteriors
which make up much of the film have the exact spatial physiognomy
Foster used in "My Friend Bonito". The two films look so much alike at
times it becomes clear that, to whatever degree it derived from Orson
Welles, this was a visual approach Foster took to early on; something
he believed suited him comfortably.
That same year, 1948, Norman Foster directed a little remarked upon,
somewhat by-the-numbers 'film noir'for Universal. "Kiss the Blood Off
My Hands" is not nearly as celebrated as the works in Robert Siodmak's
great hitting streak for that studio in the 40s, but it possesses a
visual sense so baroque that it makes the Siodmak 'Noir' landmarks
look like the kind of 6-day cheapies Max Nosseck and Felix Feist were
directing back then. Drenched in shadow courtesy of a master
cinematographer, Russell Metty (who two years prior had breathed some
visual life into Orson Welles' "The Stranger" and, in the next decade,
more or less drove the getaway car for Welles in one of the
epoch-making visual feasts of Cinema, "Touch of Evil"), "Kiss the
Blood Off My Hands" is the closest Norman Foster ever came to
addressing Welles visual legacy in its totality.
Those are the high points; at least of the films of his I remember
seeing. There may well be others, but I can't think of any right now.
Tom "Exhausted" Sutpen
20223
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 1:19pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> I must have seen Foster as a film actor in "Pilgrimage" (John Ford),
but have
> no memory of him after a single viewing. It's a very good movie.
*****
Agreed as to "Pilgrimage".
Before working with Ford, Norman Foster was fairly ubiquitous in what
are known today as 'Pre-Code' films: fast, lurid, high-spirited smut
that the major studios turned out during one of the great vanished
epochs of American Cinema. He was in pictures like "Men Call It Love",
"Confessions of a Co-ed", "Skyscraper Souls", "Play Girl", "Under 18"
and (my favorite) "Professional Sweetheart"; usually playing dumb
juveiles.
And for those playing along at home, that's Norman Foster as the
abortionist in Frank Perry's "Play It as It Lays".
(leave us not forget his presence in Orson Welles' unfinished jigsaw
puzzle, "The Other Side of the Wind")
Tom Sutpen
20224
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 2:40pm
Subject: Re: Re: ROPE floor plan explanation
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> I wd assume that the gay implications are purged in
> the novelization.
>
Not possible. Gayness is the "structuring absence of
the text."
Also there was a whole world of postwar gay pulp
novels being churned out at that time.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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20225
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 3:20pm
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> "On Moonlight Bay as Time Machine" is a great imaginative
> achievement - worth all the novels of Pynchon PUT TOGETHER.
I praised it (and the book) in the Del Ruth entry of "50 ans de
cinema americain" (1995 soft cover edition). JPC
20226
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 3:42pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
>
>
> That same year, 1948, Norman Foster directed a little remarked
upon,
> somewhat by-the-numbers 'film noir'for Universal. "Kiss the Blood
Off
> My Hands" is not nearly as celebrated as the works in Robert
Siodmak's
> great hitting streak for that studio in the 40s, but it possesses a
> visual sense so baroque that it makes the Siodmak 'Noir' landmarks
> look like the kind of 6-day cheapies Max Nosseck and Felix Feist
were
> directing back then. Drenched in shadow courtesy of a master
> cinematographer, Russell Metty (who two years prior had breathed
some
> visual life into Orson Welles' "The Stranger" and, in the next
decade,
> more or less drove the getaway car for Welles in one of the
> epoch-making visual feasts of Cinema, "Touch of Evil"), "Kiss the
> Blood Off My Hands" is the closest Norman Foster ever came to
> addressing Welles visual legacy in its totality.
The other neglected noir film by Foster is "Woman on the Run",
less uneven than "Kiss the Blood..." (which is partially ruined by a
conventional, moralizing ending), it also shows the Welles influence
(the final scene with Ann Sheridan stalked by Dennis O'Keefe in a
carnival -- she hides in a roller coaster). Great cinematography by
Hal Mohr. Mostly shot on location, outdoors... JPC
>
> Those are the high points; at least of the films of his I remember
> seeing. There may well be others, but I can't think of any right
now.
>
> Tom "Exhausted" Sutpen
20227
From: Tom Sutpen
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 4:50pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
> > Drenched in shadow courtesy of a master
> > cinematographer, Russell Metty (who two years prior had breathed
> some
> > visual life into Orson Welles' "The Stranger" and, in the next
> decade,
> > more or less drove the getaway car for Welles in one of the
> > epoch-making visual feasts of Cinema, "Touch of Evil"), "Kiss the
> > Blood Off My Hands" is the closest Norman Foster ever came to
> > addressing Welles visual legacy in its totality.
>
> The other neglected noir film by Foster is "Woman on the Run",
> less uneven than "Kiss the Blood..." (which is partially ruined by a
> conventional, moralizing ending), it also shows the Welles influence
> (the final scene with Ann Sheridan stalked by Dennis O'Keefe in a
> carnival -- she hides in a roller coaster). Great cinematography by
> Hal Mohr. Mostly shot on location, outdoors... JPC
*****
Dammit. I should have remembered "Woman on the Run". And you're
absolutely correct. The Welles influence was still alive in his work.
Tom Sutpen
20228
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 6:34pm
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
> My aesthetic seems quite in the minority to me, even among auteurists,
> though others may see it differently. In part because of this, I think I
> still have important things to say (that I've not yet said). Even if I
> never get the "other" stuff, I think too little has been said about most
> of my favorites from a "formal" point of view.
I wonder when I'll ever catch up with my email, so maybe I'll jump in
again without knowing how the conversation has evolved.
I don't mean this as any kind of slight, Fred, but I think that the reason
that your aesthetic is in a minority among auteurists is that it doesn't
seem to me to grow from the auteurist tradition. There's almost nothing
of the Bazinian antithesis in your writing, none of that sense that the
mere act of recording reality is important to cinema's effect. If your
thinking about cinema reminds me of anyone, it might be Eisenstein a
little, or perhaps the "pure cinema" school.
Certainly the whole Bach/Coltrane "argument from complexity" is very far
from Bazin's aesthetic.
Elizabeth recently made the shrewd observation about IN AMERICA that the
mother didn't hold onto her children as she climbed that slum staircase.
This kind of observation - which vertically integrates direction, writing,
and production - is, I would say, closer to the mainstream of auteurist
thought than your particular deployment of formal analysis. Godard: "We
cannot forgive you for never having filmed girls as we love them, boys as
we see them every day, parents as we despise or admire them, children as
they astonish us or leave us indifferent: in other words, things as they
are." (Of course, any appeal to reality at all gets one into a sticky
situation, and requires the greatest care, compromise, and concession in
order to preserve the kernel of truth that one is trying to convey.)
Again, no value judgments are attached, at least not a priori. There's no
good reason to try to stay within the auteurist tradition. And my
description of said tradition no doubt has subjective aspects.
When you talk about Hawks, you seem to me to be in touch with the idea
that I keep wanting to scream out during this discussion: that the
director affects cinema acting, not just with composition, lighting, etc.,
but by *telling the bloody actors what to do*. Perhaps you can't see your
way to extending this principle to Hitchcock and other directors, but I
don't think it's so big a stretch. I find it a lot easier to recognize
even so-so directors by the way people move and talk in their films than
by their compositions.
And it almost goes without saying that rhythm and emphasis in narrative
cinema are intimately bound up with performance, and that the director has
to control the last to create the first two.
One last observation: you seem not to have noted one of Zach's most
important points: that direction of actors or manipulation of time,
rhythm, emphasis, etc. is no more or less "formal" than what's in a
composition. Rebuttal is welcome, of course, but several writers here
have continued to oppose form to acting without dealing with the issue.
- Dan
20229
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 7:57pm
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
First, in case someone missed it, Zach is traveling for the next ten
days or so, which is why he is not further engaged in this thread.
Dan, thanks for your gentle comments, which allow me to clarify my
thinking about all this.
Dan: "I think that the reason that your aesthetic is in a minority among
auteurists is that it doesn't seem to me to grow from the auteurist
tradition. There's almost nothing of the Bazinian antithesis in your
writing, none of that sense that the mere act of recording reality is
important to cinema's effect."
I think this "sense" is important to certain films, and not others, and
therefore I don't think it's an essential aspect of cinema. My posts
here about "why film and Bach are great to me" are attempts to think
about that essence. When I write about films in which the "act of
recording reality is important," which is most commercial narratives
films, I believe I do engage them on these terms. So perhaps you're just
cauterizing my posts here when you say there's "almost none of that
sense..." in my writing? Because I think that would be a grotesquely
inaccurate characterization of my writing on commercial narrative
cinema, unless I just don't understand what you mean.
To test this, I went to the first article listed in the writing about
film page on my Web site, a review of "Eureka." (
http://www.fredcamper.com/Film/Aoyama.html )
Here's the opening paragraph:
*****************************************
Last week the New York Times published an article on Sara J. Rudolph, a
survivor of the infamous 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four
little girls, one of them Rudolph's older sister. While the motive
behind the bombing was racist, Rudolph said she would never understand
how "someone could be that cold." Now 50, she jumps at loud noises. She
said, "There will never be any closure for me."
*****************************************
I then try to relate this real-life story to the characters of the film.
Most of my analysis of the film talks about framing and editing and
(gulp!) acting in terms that, while not precisely Bazinian, certainly
depend on implicit comparisons of those elements to more "realistic"
films and to what we know of people from daily life. Here are some excerpts:
*****************************************
,,,,Eureka is more deeply about the immeasurable and lasting damage
suffered by those who experience senseless violence.,,, most of the time
it appears to mirror the shell-shocked trauma of its characters....
Those "long, barren sequences" enrich Eureka as surprisingly powerful
and precise articulations of the void within the characters. .....
....Aoyama's characters do not "come to life" in the usual sense - and
that's the point. They are traumatized and don't even understand
themselves. The two children never speak; they use hand signals when
necessary. Both Miyazakis offer wonderfully restrained performances.
Their faces manage to hint at emotions while rarely displaying
them...... When Makoto meets his estranged wife, the scene begins with a
shot of tall buildings and bridges seen through a restaurant window; the
camera then moves around the characters as they talk, deflecting
attention from their faces and suggesting that their growing alienation
is somehow out of their control.... The first instance of Aoyama
intercutting head-on close-ups occurs when Makoto arrives at the kids'
house and they face each other. He is seeking to forge a bond with them,
and the relationship becomes central to the film and to all of their
redemptions. The last two instances occur between Makoto and each of the
kids - at moments when they connect deeply. ....
*****************************************
There is much much more of this sort of thing in my review, and I think
you'd find similar analysis in most all my reviews of and articles about
commercial narrative films.
Dan: "Certainly the whole Bach/Coltrane 'argument from complexity' is
very far from Bazin's aesthetic."
Yes. But Bazin's aesthetic is also not identical to auteurism. Anyway,
this is my attempt to get at what's in common about the greatness of a
wide range of films, for me, from Borzage to Bresson to Brakhage. Thus
it must exclude what's particular to sync sound commercial narrative
films featuring actors walking around and talking. Even then, my Bach
argument doesn't get at what I often like about home movies,
instructional films, industrial films, some documentaries, films by
Maurice Lemaitre, and so on.
I've always wondered, though, if Bazin's superb essay on Bresson isn't a
little bit far from his own "aesthetic." As a great film critic, he
talked about Bresson in the terms the films required him to use.
Dan: "Godard: 'We cannot forgive you for never having filmed girls as we
love them, boys as we see them every day, parents as we despise or
admire them, children as they astonish us or leave us indifferent: in
other words, things as they are.'"
As a filmmaker defining what kind of cinema he wants to see, this is
very nice. (What year was it written, I wonder? It sounds to me like it
could be the starting point for a pretty acidic attack on Godard's
"Hélas, pour moi.") As a definition of what makes great cinema, it's
seriously wrong. A great film can film people without any of this
affectional baggage. A great film can show us things as we never
expected them to be.
Dan: "When you talk about Hawks, you seem to me to be in touch with the
idea that I keep wanting to scream out during this discussion: that the
director affects cinema acting, not just with composition, lighting, etc"
I completely agree with you about this. I do think it's true of
Hitchcock too; I'm just not sure I have the language to articulate it
yet in his films. It's true of many filmmakers I love. Borzage and Sirk
are opposites formally and in their treatment of actors. Margaret
Sullivan, the quintessential Borzage performer with her passion brimming
and bubbling on the surface, would be very out of place in Sirk. I'd
cite the Robert Stack of "Written on the Wind" and "The Tarnished
Angels" as offering the perfect vacant and inward division of Sirk's
fantastically divided heroes of failure. But I'm just not sure every
director that I love yields all that much. Acting style in "Strange
Illusion." I dunno, I think it's middle-period Hardy Boys, and it
doesn't seem to connect all that well with acting style in "The Naked
Dawn." Acting styles in de Toth's noirs versus Anthony Mann's noirs?
Perhaps there are just things I've missed here. As I've said, I can miss
acting more easily than compositions, and since acting is talked about
so much by everyone else as long as I do my best to notice as much about
it as I can I'm not going to worry about this all that much.
"One last observation: you seem not to have noted one of Zach's most
important points: that direction of actors or manipulation of time,
rhythm, emphasis, etc. is no more or less 'formal' than what's in a
composition."
I didn't miss it, I asked Zach to write an essay about it. I'd like to
see this defended, particularly in films I haven't really gotten.
I would defend it, myself, up to a point, in Leone's "Once Upon a Time
in America," which I saw twice in the week it opened in New York around
1984 (so this was some version of long four hour version). I went the
second time because I was incredibly moved the first time and wanted to
see it again, and also because I wondered if I had been wrong about
Leone, if he might be great. I was just as moved the second time. The
intersection of editing rhythm and performance, particularly for example
in the scene between the de Niro character and the actress in her
dressing room when they are aged, is enormously powerful. The varying
rhythms of acting and movement for different time periods and character
ages are beautifully calculated. The use of time-crossing structure is
great: not as a gimmick to hook you into the storytelling (which is one
thing I hated about its later use in "Pulp Fiction"), but as a
meditation on the paradox of life lived in irreversible time. But
finally the film failed my "great art" test because I couldn't see
sufficient structural or spatial integrity in its imagery. All of the
things I loved about it fed into its "human" elements, into the ways in
which it moved me. This still made it a pretty significant achievement;
if it was just opening now and I was charged with reviewing it I'd give
it four stars. But for me it ultimately lacked the architectural kind of
structure that makes a film more than a bundle of carefully orchestrated
affections. I didn't get a real visual form; the temporal form seemed
too tied to the film's specifics; I didn't think it had a real "vision."
Of course it had real vision compared to almost every film released that
year; I'm comparing it to Ford and Bresson. You can call this a bias of
mine if you like, and perhaps it is. Or perhaps too many movie fans,
including the auteurist ones, are too attached to movies as vehicles for
involving us in the characters and the story and manipulating our
emotions. I take the modernist view here, that film is projected light
on the screen and that it should work on *that* level too.
Fred Camper
20230
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 7:59pm
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> When you talk about Hawks, you seem to me to be in
> touch with the idea
> that I keep wanting to scream out during this
> discussion: that the
> director affects cinema acting, not just with
> composition, lighting, etc.,
> but by *telling the bloody actors what to do*.
> Perhaps you can't see your
> way to extending this principle to Hitchcock and
> other directors, but I
> don't think it's so big a stretch. I find it a lot
> easier to recognize
> even so-so directors by the way people move and talk
> in their films than
> by their compositions.
>
This is the heart of Rivette's complaint about
Minnelli and why he finds him inferior to Walters. But
it arose entirely out of Rivete's personal experience
in directing actors in a wide variety of ways. "Paris
Belongs to Us" was a traditional film in that it had a
script to be executed. "Le Religieuse" as well. But
"L'Amour Fou," "Out One," and "Celine and Julie Go
Boating" go off into improvisationland. The films that
came later, such as "Duelle" and "Hurlevent" mix both
modes.
"Secret Defense" is particularly revelatory in this
regard as its central sequence is a series of train
rides where we observe externally Sandrine Bonnaire
going through an internal crisis of consciousness.
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20231
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 8:42pm
Subject: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
>But for me it ultimately lacked the architectural kind of
> structure that makes a film more than a bundle of carefully
orchestrated
> affections. I didn't get a real visual form; the temporal form seemed
> too tied to the film's specifics; I didn't think it had a real
"vision."
> Of course it had real vision compared to almost every film released
that
> year; I'm comparing it to Ford and Bresson. You can call this a bias of
> mine if you like, and perhaps it is. Or perhaps too many movie fans,
> including the auteurist ones, are too attached to movies as vehicles
for
> involving us in the characters and the story and manipulating our
> emotions. I take the modernist view here, that film is projected light
> on the screen and that it should work on *that* level too.
Fred, I still want to reply at length, but one thing that Zach brought
up in his first long post, and that I don't think has been addressed
yet, is that if great art must necessarily transport one outside of
oneself, is submitting great cinema art to one test (one that accounts
for varying aesthetics but under which great films neverthess must
fall, as defined by the above rubric of "real vision") in fact the
subjugation of the definition of great cinema art to one's own
consciousness? I guess my idea of a great work of art is that it is
great regardless of who is perceiving it (thus a future civilization
can unlock its extinct form) but unless I'm mistaken, the full measure
of an art work's greatness is the perception it allows a
viewer-participant to have through it greatness, in your view? Maybe
this is the Modernist view (derived from Wordsworth et al?) that I
partially disagree with.
Patrick
20232
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 8:49pm
Subject: Norman Foster and Richard Wilson
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Sutpen" wrote:
Foster directed the unfinished Bonito section of It's All True. (The
All the b&w of IAT survived some Paramount lawyer's order to destroy
anything "personally directed by Welles" that was on the lotwas that
all the b&w neg was in cans labelled Bonito.) Arguably, Welles had a
lot to do w. Bonito, but he wasn't in Mexico - just sent very
detailed telegrams after seeing rushes, sometimes dictating reshoots.
If disaster hadn't struck he'd have directed the climactic scenes in
the bullring in Mexico City himself. But Catherine Benamou thinks
Foster's Cathoilicism can be seen in the Blessing of the Animals
section, which is far and away the most exciting sequence in It's All
True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles.
Foster's performance as Billy the stooge in the projection room scene
of The Other Side of the Wind should get a Best Supporting Actor
nomination whenever they finish it. And while I agree w. Mike's post
generally, I will point out that Charlie Chan on Treasure Island is
at least better directed than Charlie Chan in the Wax Museum, one of
the few films "signed" by Lynn Shores, the racist production manger
on the Rio part of It's All True, whose memos did more than anything
else to sabotage Welles with RKO's management.
A forgotten Welles associate whose work really needs to be revived is
my old friend Richard Wilson, a very good director whose Pay or Die
influenced the big assassination scene in Godfather 2. Al Capone,
Invitation to a Gunfighter, Man with the Gun, et al. are all worth
revisiting. I wrote a little about Dick's realistic counter-Wellesian
esthetic in his CdC obituary, The Cinema of Sancho Panza. For my
money he was the best Welles "protege" (except that Welles didn't
really HAVE proteges - he ate people alive, like Saturn) - better
than Wise, Robson, Foster, maybe even Enfield, who is good but wasn't
around Welles all that much. Dick WAS around off and on for 50 years,
and somehow survived - no doubt thanks to Betty - to forge his own
modest but important oeuvre.
20233
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 8:58pm
Subject: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
I think that the reason
> that your aesthetic is in a minority among auteurists is that it
doesn't
> seem to me to grow from the auteurist tradition. There's almost
nothing
> of the Bazinian antithesis in your writing, none of that sense that
the
> mere act of recording reality is important to cinema's effect.
This is true re: Fred, I think, but not necessarily re: auteurism.
Certainly the French auteurists of the first generation were very
Bazinian, but I'm not sure those who followed were - they tended to
react against Bazin. Of course they were still under Bazin's
influence, and a big revisisionist like Comolli eventually returned
to Bazin, and ended up a documentarian to boot!
Nonetheless, the estehtic of reality is, as far as I can see,
relatively unimportant in Fred's formulations, and that's a big
difference beteween him and many of us who were influenced by that
tradition. I'll repeat my oft-repeated soundbite: The CdC has always
been about the relations between film and its "others" (other arts,
other media: an important part of Fred's agenda) and between film and
the big "Other," the world.
the
> director affects cinema acting, not just with composition,
lighting, etc.,
> but by *telling the bloody actors what to do*. Perhaps you can't
see your
> way to extending this principle to Hitchcock and other directors,
but I
> don't think it's so big a stretch.
Not if you read the pages and pages of conversations between
Hitchcock and Hedren pre-The Birds (or pre-Marnie, I forget which
transcript Dan reproduced) in Auiler's Hitchcock's Notebooks. Ever
beat, every gesture was dictated in advance.
20234
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:03pm
Subject: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> Dan: "When you talk about Hawks, you seem to me to be in touch with
the
> idea that I keep wanting to scream out during this discussion: that
the
> director affects cinema acting, not just with composition,
lighting, etc"
>
> I completely agree with you about this.
And of course, as Fred points out, it doesn't have to be part of an
articulated whole to happen. It's debatable whether Tim Burton ever
gets beyond the scene, but my favorite example of a great modern
performance that wouldn't be great without framing, editing etc. is
Landau's Lugosi in Ed Wood. Watch those scenes sometime: Almost no
directors are doing that anymore!
20235
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:05pm
Subject: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> This is the heart of Rivette's complaint about
> Minnelli and why he finds him inferior to Walters.
Clarify, David: He thought Minnelli was too controlling or not
enough? Where did this polemic appear?
20236
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:10pm
Subject: re: Richard Wilson
Bill, here's a film-within-a-film reference you may not know from
Australian cinema of the 1990s: in THE NOSTRADAMUS KID, an
autobiographical film by the Australian writer/celebrity Bob Ellis
(very much in the style of Truffaut's Doinel series) there's a bit
where Ellis' late-teen alter ego, played by Noah Taylor (who is in the
new Malick film - and Miranda Otto from THIN RED LINE is the other main
actor!) sits around in the early/mid 1960s with a budding poet who, in
real life, came to be the very famous Les Murray. They watch TV and
fetishistically celebrate, shot by shot, a sequence from MAN WITH THE
GUN. It is an excellent scene of youthful mise en scene/auteurist
ritual, one of the best in Ellis' patchy but endearing film. It is
undoubedly modeled on the analyses offered in the 50s and beyond by the
Australian cinephile legend John Flaus (still alive and active - in
that period he was turning Workers Education classes into auteurist
hotbeds), a guy who regularly took striking 'non canonical' examples to
prove his points - like the Joan Crawford film THIS WOMAN IS DANGEROUS.
Flaus was one of the first people in the world who, in the 50s,
analysed and worshipped in detail the Boetticher/Scott westerns. The
MAN WITH THE GUN scene in NOSTRADAMUS KID is also a homage to that.
Adrian
20237
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:11pm
Subject: Re: Pasolini (and Godard's Weekend)
I just rewatched Weekend, made one year after Hawks and Sparrows, and
Paolini's influence on Godard is very apparent there - even though
Godard's unsutured long-shots are EXTREME long-shots, unlike
Pasolini's. To indulge a bit in hyperbole, it would be hard to
understand what's going on in Weekend without knowing that it is a
response to Pasolini - as proved by the lame reviews (by Aumont and
Collet) that appeared in CdC at the time. Since Vent d'Est derives
formally from Weekend, one could even say, in retrospect, that PPP
had a big influence on the Dziga Vertov group as well.
20238
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:13pm
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> Clarify, David: He thought Minnelli was too
> controlling or not
> enough? Where did this polemic appear?
>
Not enough. It was a recent interview in "Senses of Cinema."
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20239
From:
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 4:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Norman Foster
I really appreciate everybody's comments on Foster's work! He certainly
sounds like a "subject for further study"...
Tom, there's a Welles quotation in Frank Brady's "Citizen Welles" which
addresses the issue of who did what on the wonderful "Journey Into Fear." Welles
is quoted as saying, "For the first five sequences, I was on the set and
decided angles; from then on, I often said where to put the camera, described the
framings, made light tests. I designed the film but can't be called the
director. It's Norman Foster's film."
In any event, whether Foster was the director or co-director or whatever, it
certainly sounds as though his time with Welles influenced his subsequent
work. But I'm also intrigued by the notion Jean-Pierre sets forth in his entry on
Foster in "American Directors": that it was Welles who was influenced by
Foster's early work! Jean-Pierre specifically mentions Welles being impressed
enough by Foster's films to hire him for "It's All True" and "Journey Into Fear";
JP, do you remember how you found this information out? Maybe it's as simple
as Welles and Foster's visual sensibilities were just similar - making it
even more difficult to sort out the authorship of "Journey"!
I love the Blessing of the Animals sequence in "It's All True," Bill.
Finally, Foster's performance in "The Other Side of the Wind" (or what I've
seen of it: namely, one single scene) is indeed brilliant.
Peter
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
20240
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:14pm
Subject: Re: Richard Wilson
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin wrote:
> Bill, here's a film-within-a-film reference you may not know from
> Australian cinema of the 1990s: in THE NOSTRADAMUS KID
Fascinating, Adrian - really fascinating. I'll try to track down that
film and send it to Dick's son if and when he ever comes back from
his ongoing midlife-crisis trek up the Amazon.
20241
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:16pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
>
> Finally, Foster's performance in "The Other Side of the Wind" (or
what I've
> seen of it: namely, one single scene) is indeed brilliant.
He's mixing it up with actors like Edmomnd O'Brien and John Huston,
and the performance you remember is Norman Foster. Also Dan Tobin.
20242
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:38pm
Subject: Blandine Jeanson - question for JP
Looking up verious credits in Weekend I learned that Blandine Jeanson
(Emily Bronte) a) only appeared in 3 Godard films, b) co-founded
J'Accuse and Libe and 3) died in 1999 at a rather young age. Was she
an important journalist?
20243
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:40pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
But I'm also intrigued by the notion Jean-Pierre sets forth in
his entry on
> Foster in "American Directors": that it was Welles who was
influenced by
> Foster's early work! Jean-Pierre specifically mentions Welles
being impressed
> enough by Foster's films to hire him for "It's All True"
and "Journey Into Fear";
> JP, do you remember how you found this information out?
It may have been more speculation than information, although I
must have read something about Welles watching Foster's films. I had
forgotten everything about that essay, Peter, so I can't help you
much.
Maybe it's as simple
> as Welles and Foster's visual sensibilities were just similar -
making it
> even more difficult to sort out the authorship of "Journey"!
>
You're probably right!
20244
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:47pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
"'For the first five sequences, I was on the set and decided angles;
from then on, I often said where to put the camera, described the
framings, made light tests. I designed the film but can't be called
the director.'"
That procedure very accurately describes a lot of TV shows and movies
done by tyro directors according to stories told by my gaffer friend
and his buddies (which also includes an assistant director,)and the
guiding hand is the director of photography. The nominal director
concentrates on the actors and leaves almost everything else to the
d.p.
"In any event, whether Foster was the director or co-director or
whatever, it certainly sounds as though his time with Welles
influenced his subsequent work. But I'm also intrigued by the
notion Jean-Pierre sets forth in his entry on Foster in 'American
Directors': that it was Welles who was influenced by
Foster's early work!"
The evidence of his previous films shows that Foster had something
going for him before he worked with Welles. I remember seeing a Mr.
Moto picture at Theatre 80 many years ago and was struck by how much
atmosphric mileage Foster got out of it.
Richard
20245
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:53pm
Subject: Re: Blandine Jeanson - question for JP
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> Looking up verious credits in Weekend I learned that Blandine
Jeanson
> (Emily Bronte) a) only appeared in 3 Godard films, b) co-founded
> J'Accuse and Libe and 3) died in 1999 at a rather young age. Was
she
> an important journalist?
Not a question for me, I'm afraid, as this is the first time I
heard/saw her name -- which of course proves nothing. I should be
the one asking questions. Was she related (daughter of) Henri
Jeanson? What does she do in "Weekend"? (I haven't seen the film in
twenty years! I mostly remember Mireille Darc, my wife's dead
ringer). And if she co-founded Liberation, she must have been quite
old in 1999 (the paper was launched around 1945).
20246
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:54pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> The evidence of his previous films shows that Foster had something
> going for him before he worked with Welles.
The sad thing is that Journey was cut to ribbons. Reg Armour told
Dick that it was the failure of Journey that sealed Welles' fate at
RKO - not Ambersons, which they hadn't been expecting to turn a
profit. But they recut both anyway, and I suspect that Journey cut by
Welles would be one of his better entertainments. It's still great!
20247
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 9:59pm
Subject: Re: Blandine Jeanson - question for JP
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
Was she related (daughter of) Henri
> Jeanson?
The question occured to me too.
What does she do in "Weekend"?
She's Emily Bronte, w. red hair, and as a brunette, the girl who
stands next to the piano Gegauff plays in the courtyard of the farm.
Delicate features, not actress-y.
(I haven't seen the film in
> twenty years! I mostly remember Mireille Darc, my wife's dead
> ringer).
Wow! MD is good in Weekend, BTW.
And if she co-founded Liberation, she must have been quite
> old in 1999 (the paper was launched around 1945).
I'm just quoting the sketchy info on google.fr. She must have had
something to do w. the paper, because they ran separate articles on
four days after her death, which I'm too cheap to access.
20248
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 10:28pm
Subject: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
"Most of my analysis of the film talks about framing and editing and
(gulp!) acting in terms that, while not precisely Bazinian, certainly
depend on implicit comparisons of those elements to more "realistic"
films and to what we know of people from daily life...Anyway,
this is my attempt to get at what's in common about the greatness of
a wide range of films, for me, from Borzage to Bresson to Brakhage.
Thus it must exclude what's particular to sync sound commercial
narrative films featuring actors walking around and talking. Even
then, my Bach argument doesn't get at what I often like about home
movies, instructional films, industrial films, some documentaries,
films by Maurice Lemaitre, and so on."
Somewhere I have a long paper you wrote in the mid-70s spelling this
out in detail. Those of us who saw it then called it "Fred Camper's
Unified Theory of Film." I was really convinced by the aesthetic you
articulated there but I kept liking movies that fell outside its
parameters, so I fell back on the "two truths" of classical Indian
philosophy and concluded that you were an adherent of "pure vision,"
and only the most sublime works of art can be viewed with pure
vision. Other works gave varying degrees of emotional or
intellectual pleasure (as described in your reaction to ONCE UPON A
TIME IN AMERICA) but only in terms of "conventional truth."
And then there are non-artistic considerations that are also of
interest to some cinephiles, ideology for example or racial or sexual
portrayals. These issues are of interest to me for personal reasons
(such as my cross-cultural background, my gay brother, my non-white
significant other)and come into play when I see movies. But I do
believe that the greatest artworks transcend these issues which exist
as subsidiary elements in the larger work.
Richard
20249
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 10:42pm
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- Richard Modiano wrote:
>
> And then there are non-artistic considerations that
> are also of
> interest to some cinephiles, ideology for example or
> racial or sexual
> portrayals. These issues are of interest to me for
> personal reasons
> (such as my cross-cultural background, my gay
> brother, my non-white
> significant other)and come into play when I see
> movies. But I do
> believe that the greatest artworks transcend these
> issues which exist
> as subsidiary elements in the larger work.
>
I'm not entirely sure that's true. Our tastes aren't
acquired in a vaccum. And art isn't unsullied by
ideology.
Ever.
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20250
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 10:42pm
Subject: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
In the chat room, I mentioned that discussion posts might be focused on
a common screening experience, but as we are all around the world, even
recent releases are difficult to see in a timely fashion. (Million
Dollar Baby is not screening in San Diego until 28JAN). I suggested
that viewing the TCM Essentials (shown on Saturday and Sunday) might
provide a common movie to talk about as many have probably seen the
selections and the tv showing offers a re-viewing.
These are the films for January (sometimes TCM changes the schedule
with the untimely death of a star / director); I assume they are over
the next four weekends. This weekend is Casablanca.
Dr Strangelove
The Red Badge of Courage
Singin in the Rain
Spellbound
Unfortunately, if a chat discussion develops, I'll probably be in a
Palm Springs International FF screening the next two weekends; I'll be
glad to follow any posts as I have seen these movies. Incidentally, I
glad to follow posts of movies I haven't seen, helps direct the viewing
choices.
Any recommendations of something not to miss at the PSIFF are
appreciated.
http://www.psfilmfest.org/
Elizabeth
20251
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 10:57pm
Subject: Film and Politics (was: Cinema, taste, merit )
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- Richard Modiano wrote:
>
>
> >
> > And then there are non-artistic considerations that
> > are also of
> > interest to some cinephiles, ideology for example
But I do
> > believe that the greatest artworks transcend these
> > issues which exist
> > as subsidiary elements in the larger work.
> >
>
>
> I'm not entirely sure that's true. Our tastes aren't
> acquired in a vaccum. And art isn't unsullied by
> ideology.
>
> Ever.
Agree. I'm also worried by the transcendental terminology, even if it
isn't being used "seriously." Since Fred is in the middle of the
dodge-ball arena, Fred: How do you feel about film and ideology?
20252
From: Samuel Bréan
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 11:06pm
Subject: RE: Re: Blandine Jeanson - question for JP
>From: "jpcoursodon"
(...)
>And if [Blandine Jeanson] co-founded Liberation, she must have been quite
>old in 1999 (the paper was launched around 1945).
Jean-Pierre, it's actually the second incarnation of "Libération," launched
in 1973 (as I'm sure you know!). The newspaper had a first life (it was
indeed created in 1945), but it was Sartre who was at the origin of its
rebirth. From what I could gather (being to cheap to buy articles too!), she
was born in 1948 and died in 1999, and here is the beginning of her obit in
"Le Monde" : "BLANDINE JEANSON, ancienne journaliste à Libération et
cofondatrice de l'agence photo Vu, est morte lundi 19 juillet, à l'âge de
cinquante et un ans. A la fin des années 60, Blandine Jeanson joue dans
trois films de Jean-Luc Godard (Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle,
Week-end, La Chinoise) et milite dans les mouvements de l'après-68. En 1972,
elle devient journaliste à La Cause du peuple, avant de rejoindre
Libération." [I'll get the whole article in a library, when I have the
chance.]
There are two pictures of her in Godard par Godard: one on the set of
Week-end (first Godard I saw, when I was... too young to remember it now)
and one where she's standing next to JLG in a demonstration, during Mai 68.
I couldn't find out if she's related to Henri Jeanson.
Samuel.
20253
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 11:37pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster and Richard Wilson
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> A forgotten Welles associate whose work really needs to be revived
is
> my old friend Richard Wilson, a very good director whose Pay or
Die
> influenced the big assassination scene in Godfather 2. Al Capone,
> Invitation to a Gunfighter, Man with the Gun, et al. are all worth
> revisiting. I wrote a little about Dick's realistic counter-
Wellesian
> esthetic in his CdC obituary, The Cinema of Sancho Panza. For my
> money he was the best Welles "protege" (except that Welles didn't
> really HAVE proteges - he ate people alive, like Saturn) - better
> than Wise, Robson, Foster, maybe even Enfield, who is good but
wasn't
> around Welles all that much. Dick WAS around off and on for 50
years,
> and somehow survived - no doubt thanks to Betty - to forge his own
> modest but important oeuvre.
I very much agree about Richard Wilson with some reservations
about INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER. I've not see AL CAPONE or PAY OR
DIE since their first release but many scenes still remain in my
mind, most notably Nehemiah Persoff's performance and the climax in
the first and the accidental killing of a Capo daughter and
Borgnine's futile flight from the Mafia in Sicily. Borgnine's
performance in PAY OR DIE is one of his best as well as the often
overlooked actress Zohra Lampert who never disappointed one with her
work.
Tony Williams
20254
From: Chris Fujiwara
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 11:42pm
Subject: Re: Norman Foster
I'm surprised more people haven't spoken up for Foster's Mr. Moto
films, which are good. They tend to be exotic thrillers first and
whodunits second, giving Foster a lot more to do than just run
through dialogue with suspects (as in the Chan films, although as
Bill noted CC at Treasure Island is superior to others in that
series). They tend to have really good supporting people such as
George Sanders and John Carradine. The Moto character is, at least in
some of the films, portrayed as a figure of morally ambiguous stature
and a potential villain. It's easy to see from the Moto films why
Welles would have recognized Foster as an interesting director.
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Modiano"
wrote:
>
> The evidence of his previous films shows that Foster had something
> going for him before he worked with Welles. I remember seeing a
Mr.
> Moto picture at Theatre 80 many years ago and was struck by how
much
> atmosphric mileage Foster got out of it.
>
> Richard
20255
From: Jonathan Rosenbaum
Date: Sun Jan 2, 2005 11:49pm
Subject: Re: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
I'll probably be in a
> Palm Springs International FF screening the next two weekends;
I'll be
> glad to follow any posts as I have seen these movies.
Incidentally, I
> glad to follow posts of movies I haven't seen, helps direct the
viewing
> choices.
> Any recommendations of something not to miss at the PSIFF are
> appreciated.
> http://www.psfilmfest.org/
> Elizabeth
I just checked the list, and the one absolutely unmissable item
among the films I've seen is THE WORLD. Two other recommendations;
STRAY DOGS and (to a lesser extent) DEAR FRANKIE.
Jonathan
20256
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 0:14am
Subject: Re: Blandine Jeanson - question for JP
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Samuel Bréan
wrote:
>
> Jean-Pierre, it's actually the second incarnation of "Libération,"
launched
> in 1973 (as I'm sure you know!). The newspaper had a first life
(it was
> indeed created in 1945), but it was Sartre who was at the origin
of its
> rebirth.
I suspected so, except that it was never clear in my mind how the
second incarnation came into being, or exactly when (I had been
living in New York for several years when it took place).
20257
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 0:28am
Subject: Re: Norman Foster and Richard Wilson
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
>
> I very much agree about Richard Wilson with some reservations
> about INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER. I've not see AL CAPONE or PAY OR
> DIE since their first release but many scenes still remain in my
> mind, most notably Nehemiah Persoff's performance and the climax
in
> the first and the accidental killing of a Capo daughter and
> Borgnine's futile flight from the Mafia in Sicily. Borgnine's
> performance in PAY OR DIE is one of his best as well as the often
> overlooked actress Zohra Lampert who never disappointed one with
her
> work.
>
> Tony Williams
I haven't seen "Pay or Die" since its release either but I never
forgot Zohra Lampert in it ( she is also wonderful in the closing
sequence of "Splendor in the Grass"). "Al capone" I remember as one
of the very best films about a real life gangster... No one has
mentioned Wilson's last film, "Three in the Attic" which was,
unfortunately, atrocious. JPC
20258
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 0:43am
Subject: Re: Film and Politics (was: Cinema, taste, merit )
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>>
> Agree. I'm also worried by the transcendental terminology, even if
it
> isn't being used "seriously." Since Fred is in the middle of the
> dodge-ball arena, Fred: How do you feel about film and ideology?
Ohmegod! Another can of worms!
20259
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 1:06am
Subject: Re: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
In reply to Patrick (
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/20231 ), I don't
claim to be totally free of my own biases; no one is. I *try* to
appreciate works whose world-view, ideology, form, or all of the above,
are not in agreement with me or not to my usual tastes, and I wouldn't
want to use a reason like "I don't agree with its politics" to condemn a
film.
I thought I in effect did respond to this point of Zach's, albeit
indirectly, by saying that I was open to the defense of other, more
acting-based, films. But I would want it to be a defense of some
sophistication, not, "I loved the film because her sad eyes made me
cry." Yet to reject that as a defense of a film, as I assume you would
also do if the film had little else going for it, is itself the
application of a particular set of criteria: we want the film to be in
some sense a film, not simply a container for a single human look, no?
I'm trying to make my criteria as general as possible, while at the same
time doubting that a film that only pushes emotional buttons, which is
the way commercial narrative films are typically defended, is going to
make it even onto my B list. I mean, if a film is good, it seems to me
it should offer something different from life. Simply replicating my
feeling of fear when pursued on a dark street is not enough for me, but
to say that is to impose my own criteria too, I suppose.
Twenty years ago in response I believe to a polemical position of mine a
filmmaker named Ken Kobland issued a screed against masterpieces, which
concept he claimed served the interests of curators and professors and
the like. As I was unemployed and broke at the time, I took mild
offense, since my position in their defense didn't seem to have done me
any good, and cracked (not to him), "It is in his self-interest to
object to the idea of the masterpiece as a criterion, since he sure as
hell knows he's not ever going to make any of them."
But then a decade later came a filmmaker named Brian Frye, influenced by
home movies, instructional films, all manner of odd film fragments, live
performance, and more, and whose films I liked greatly and have written
on more than once in highly positive terms. He in fact did redefine the
criteria. His films asked to be seen in a different way.
Maybe asking for aesthetic pleasure at all is a bias? Maybe we should
learn to appreciate bad art? But I do. There was a great traveling show
of the early 90s called "Thrift Shop Art," selected from the collection
of California artist Jim Shaw, who collected it with an eye not just to
buying anything but for seeking out the unusual, the "bad" painting
whose perspective is interestingly nutty, the crazy choices of subject
matter. This work was amazing. (There's a book with some of it
reproduced in it.) One of my favorites: a Caspar David Friedrich like
mountain range, not well painted though, receding into the distance. In
the sky above the mountains floated a giant, disembodied penis. "What
*was* he thinking," one might ask.
But none of these paintings gave me conventional aesthetic pleasure.
That's OK. They did something else. Do Frye's films? Somewhat and
sometimes. He's pushing at the boundary.
The core of what I'm trying to do here is to defend the idea of abstract
form and an aesthetic effect coming from composition, light, rhythm, and
so on, in many many films, and to an extent that while acting may be a
vital part of it it is in no way the controlling element, over the
experiences I've had from the very best of acting and rhythm based films
I've seen, such as "Once Upon a Time in America." I'm guessing that this
is the sort of "other" film that Zach would defend. And it could be that
there are depths to such films that I'm just missing. I want to see that
argued in some kind of systematic way.
In reply to Richard (
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/20248 ), I
suppose it would be self-serving to admit that I loved your post, but I
did. I mean, across the decades it made me feel like I've been
understood, and useful to someone I hadn't known (before you joined our
group) that I'd been useful to. Of course I'm all for non-artistic
reasons for watching films or videos too, nor have I ever wanted to
adumbrate anyone's pleasures. And though David and Bill may be
uncomfortable with terms such as "pure vision," I think the reason such
terms crop up again and again in almost all cultures except when they're
snuffed out with truncheons and guns as in the worst of the communist
ones is that they speak to an essential truth of human psychology.
In fact, I'm both an atheist and a materialist, at least in the sense
that I think all these great experiences I've had happened in my brain
as a result of chemical and/or electrical reactions, not because I'm
connecting with some "other" plane, and I'd agree too that those
reactions are influenced by all the messiness of my individual and
cultural pasts. Religion to me is mostly about the deep truths of and
possibilities of human psychology.
Thus in reply to David (
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/20249 ) and Bill
( http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/20251 ), at
least in part I agree with you.
First of all, it seems to me that to say, "I'm only interested in films
that take me out of the present, that show me the sublime, that have
nothing to do with my moods or emotions or politics," would itself be an
ideological position, and would say something about the ways in which I
direct my attention and spend my time. And I don't say that. Nor do I
say that I'm only interested in the "transcendental" aspects of the
films I love, to the exclusion of meaning. Please once again consider
the quotations from my review of "Eureka" in my previous post in this
thread. I mean, I began the review with a newspaper story about a racist
bombing! That doesn't seem like the move of a "transcendentalist" critic
to me, especially since the point of doing so was to discuss the effects
of trauma on real people in the present, and to limn how the film
articulates those effects.
At the same time, at the core of all my greatest experiences of art has
been something like "pure vision," that seems in some ways to oppose
what Richard called "conventional truth." In terms of the present
discussion, one example of "conventional truth" would be to defend one
of those actors-walking-around-and-talking films by saying, "It really
made me feel what it means to grow old, and all the paradoxes of that,
and to lose a love, and all the sadness of that." There's nothing wrong
with such feelings; these are among the reasons I loved "Once Upon a
Time in America." But the best art gives me much more.
I may discuss "Eureka," or "Touch of Evil," in terms of things they can
tell us about the people in them and our world, but there's something
else going on (at least in the Welles) as well. It's not that the form
of it is free of its ideology, or that ideology should be stripped away
from it. There's stuff about border towns, about violence, about obesity
and addiction, about racial tensions, about growing old and seeing a
former love through the veil of time, and all that isn't just in the
acting but in the cutting too. But, but, but, the way Welles's eye seems
to plumb the spaces of the scenes, the way the cutting seems to stretch
and compress and fragment space, the way the wide angle lens sensualizes
the surfaces of everything we see, while all these can be related to
Welles's notion of Quinlan's psychology and/or to notions of corruption
and/or to other things you may want to bring in, they don't have to be,
they have another level. The film, like most of the films I love in my
"aesthetic tradition," becomes something like a mix of music and "frozen
music" (architecture) on its own, it defines a new space, it sings a
previously unheard melody. Every time you take that great art down back
to the "conventional truths" level of articulatable themes, you're
reducing it a bit, bringing it into line with things that we already
know. As Brakhage once said, just as he was starting to make the films
that would lead up to what I still think is his greatest work (the
"Arabics"), what interests *him* is that which he doesn't know.
But great art has a non-verbal and non-translatable element too; there's
something beyond anything we can speak in words. One reason I keep
insisting on this, and on terms not normally used in even auteurist film
discussion groups such as "great art," is that it's common in film
discussions to discuss films as contiguous with emotions, and to see a
giant smooth gray scale between the good and the bad. There's in fact
some truth to the gray scale idea, but I also think it's legitimate to
draw a sharp line between works that really do articulate a vision
through form and works that are collections of manipulations and
affections.
Art its best is something that, as in the quantum mechanical view of
light, has a dual and opposing nature. Like light, a film can be one
thing or another or both, depending on specific conditions -- for film,
the condition of the viewer.
Some years ago I discovered that my friend Sascha, a Bach lover all his
life, was claiming to have no idea what the words in the "B Minor Mass"
meant, even though he loved it. "What!!!??" said I. "You don't have know
Latin to make a pretty good guess as to that repeated highly chromatic
Passacaglia with voices singing very slowly in descending notes,
'Croo-see-feeks-ooos,' *especially* when the very next number is a rapid
and loud affair starting with drums and ascending notes in the trumpet
and the voices as they sing, 'Et ressurexit.' You surely ought to have
some idea that Bach is using music to articulate the meanings of the
words." Sascha listened to it some more and admitted I was right, and
that there was another dimension there. And my point about this goes
back to "Touch of Evil," that you can experience together both the
transcendent effects of form and its coloration by the effects of local
meanings. But when I listen to a new Bach cantata, or one I don't
remember well, I often don't look at the text for the first few
listenings. The music holds together even if you have no idea what
they're singing. No analogy is exact, but that one will have to do for now.
I've got a lot of work in the coming week so I'll probably not reply for
four or five days to further posts, which should also help anyone
interested to get caught up, since my posts have admittedly been really
long.
Fred Camper
20260
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 1:14am
Subject: Cinema, taste, merit (was Re: varying...)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
"I'm not entirely sure that's true. Our tastes aren't
acquired in a vaccum. And art isn't unsullied by
ideology.
"Ever."
You're right of course, but the great artwork is more than its
ideology even if it can be appreciated in terms of its ideology. And
being more than its ideology means it can be understood or
appreciated in ways that aren't ideological. That's what I meant by
transcending ideology. Like the mud-sullied melon in Basho's poem
it's still sweet.
Richard
20261
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:17am
Subject: Re: Blandine Jeanson - question for JP
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Samuel Bréan wrote:
Thanks very much, Samuel. I imagine there is an interesting story
there.
20262
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:29am
Subject: Fred's post #20259
This is a fantastic post,a lot of which I disagree with and a lot of
which I agree with (esp. the final part on "TOUCH of EVIL")and quite
a bit of it I'm not sure I understand but although I'm too tired
(not to mention incompetent) to respond to it, I think it shouldn't
be allowed to sort of vanish into cyberspace. There's a lot of
important stuff in there.
20263
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:39am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> This is a fantastic post,a lot of which I disagree with and a lot
of
> which I agree with (esp. the final part on "TOUCH of EVIL")and
quite
> a bit of it I'm not sure I understand but although I'm too tired
> (not to mention incompetent) to respond to it, I think it
shouldn't
> be allowed to sort of vanish into cyberspace. There's a lot of
> important stuff in there.
PS I keep thinking of Fred as our Martin Luther, nailing his 95
(was it 95?) theses on the immaterial door of the cyberspatial
a_film_by church.
20264
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:42am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> This is a fantastic post,a lot of which I disagree with and a lot
of
> which I agree with (esp. the final part on "TOUCH of EVIL")
I'm a bit bemused to find myself quoting Stephen Heath, but the life
of the mind makes strange bedfellows. His analysis of Touch of Evil
in Screen, reprinted (I think) in Questions of Cinema (love that
title), argues that the subversion of borders is what the film is
about, both visually and ideologically.
20265
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:52am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
>
> I'm a bit bemused to find myself quoting Stephen Heath, but the
life
> of the mind makes strange bedfellows. His analysis of Touch of
Evil
> in Screen, reprinted (I think) in Questions of Cinema (love that
> title), argues that the subversion of borders is what the film is
> about, both visually and ideologically.
I'm always reluctant to say that a film is "about" anything, but
I would go along with the idea that this one is about the subversion
of space (borders beeing just part and parcel of the more general
subversion). Of course I'd like a definition of "subversion" (a glib
term, although I can pretend to know what it means.) In a sense I
think Fred was talking about that thing we call subversion here. JPC
20266
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:58am
Subject: Re: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> I'm a bit bemused to find myself quoting Stephen
> Heath, but the life
> of the mind makes strange bedfellows. His analysis
> of Touch of Evil
> in Screen, reprinted (I think) in Questions of
> Cinema (love that
> title), argues that the subversion of borders is
> what the film is
> about, both visually and ideologically.
>
>
Actually only PART of his analysis of "Touch of Evil"
is reprinted in "Questions of Cinema."
Fred's post recalls for me Gielgud's big speech in
"Providence" where he declares "Form IS content."
What Fred's responding to is the way the sensuousness
of "Touch of Evil" doevtails into its expressivness.
This exemplifies what's best about film as an art.
There's always another level to slip through.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good.
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20267
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 4:58am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>>
> Fred's post recalls for me Gielgud's big speech in
> "Providence" where he declares "Form IS content."
>
That's what I wrote about Welles somewhere when I was young and
foolish circa 1960.
> What Fred's responding to is the way the sensuousness
> of "Touch of Evil" doevtails into its expressivness.
> This exemplifies what's best about film as an art.
> There's always another level to slip through.
>
>
> Do they "dovetail"? They're the same thing, ain't they?
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Send holiday email and support a worthy cause. Do good.
> http://celebrity.mail.yahoo.com
20268
From:
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 0:34am
Subject: John Flaus (Was: Richard Wilson)
Adrian, thanx for the post on John Flaus. Yet another figure to obsess over.
And it turns out I've already seen him (in the awful, hipper-than-thou THE
CASTLE, unfortunately).
A word on THIS WOMAN IS DANGEROUS - MUCH better than all the negativity
surrounding it (from even Crawford herself) suggests. The cigarette scene is a
classic of feminist empathy.
Pop music, film, teen comedies, non-canonical examples, barefoot eccentrics,
Joan Crawford - it seems as if my spiritual brethren reside in Australia.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
20269
From: Sam Adams
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:39am
Subject: Re: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
A big ditto on the WORLD, and a recommend for HOLY GIRL, STORY OF THE WEEPING
CAMEL and STRAY DOGS. People who saw EARTH AND ASHES and NO ONE KNOWS in
Toronto seemed to like the, and HOME OF THE BRAVE was very popular at the Philadelphia
Film Festival.
Sam
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jonathan Rosenbaum"
wrote:
>
> I'll probably be in a
> > Palm Springs International FF screening the next two weekends;
> I'll be
> > glad to follow any posts as I have seen these movies.
> Incidentally, I
> > glad to follow posts of movies I haven't seen, helps direct the
> viewing
> > choices.
> > Any recommendations of something not to miss at the PSIFF are
> > appreciated.
> > http://www.psfilmfest.org/
> > Elizabeth
>
>
20270
From:
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 0:49am
Subject: Aaron Spelling/Dynasty (OT?)
Not sure if this is OT but:
I was quite pleasantly shocked at how, well, substantial DYNASTY: BEHIND THE
SCENES turned out to be. But the Aaron Spelling character confused me. He was
played like (the great) Paul Lynde, with a sweet, sweater-choker lover (no?)
in tow. Also, okay, a wife who he kisses. But he appears in full Alexis drag in
the final scene! I've seen footage of Aaron Spelling but never got "Paul
Lynde" from him. And even if I had, I was stunned at how openly queer he was in
this TV movie. This sounds like a job for Ehrenstein but does anyone know of
Spelling's sexual proclivities and how he might think of this kind of portrayal?
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
20271
From: Damien Bona
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:58am
Subject: Re: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Sam Adams" wrote:
> People who saw EARTH AND ASHES and NO ONE KNOWS in
> Toronto seemed to like the, and HOME OF THE BRAVE was very popular
at the Philadelphia
> Film Festival.
>
"Home of the Brave" is an extraordinary documentary. Using the life
of the civil rights hero Viola Liuzzo as its focus, the film becomes
a contemplation of how America has responded to the results of the
civil rights movement over the last few decades and specifically how,
with Viola's older son, a national and a personal tragedy melded into
one. Although a "small" film, in terms of what it says, Paolo di
Florio's film plays like an epic. And, because it is so
inspirational, it also convinced me to stay in this country and do
what I can against Bush's evil instead of throwing in the towel and
moving to Paris.
20272
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 6:04am
Subject: Re: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
Elizabeth -- I've heard wonderful things about Wang Chao's DAY
AND NIGHT. On the basis of his first, THE ORPHAN OF
ANYANG, I would say this one's a safe bet.
Also worth a look is O MILAGRO DE SALOME, the directorial
debut of the great Portuguese cinematographer Mario Barroso.
VENTO DI TERRA has been widely praised, and I heard at least
one person say SPIDER FOREST is good.
By the way, I couldn't find the full list of films on the Palm Springs
web site -- has it been posted yet?
Gabe
20273
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 7:16am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
> Fred's post recalls for me Gielgud's big speech in
> "Providence" where he declares "Form IS content."
>
> What Fred's responding to is the way the sensuousness
> of "Touch of Evil" doevtails into its expressivness.
> This exemplifies what's best about film as an art.
> There's always another level to slip through.
Also, those ideas about escaping from the private self
and "conventional truth" suddenly made me think of I HEART HUCKABEES!
Fred, if you saw that, I'd love to know what you thought. Admittedly,
it would be hard to detach its formal qualities from its "message"
(which Mark Wahlberg and Jason Schwartzman make a fair stab at
summarising at the end) and a good deal of it consists of actors
walking round and talking. But... Above all it's a comedy, and much
of its comic effect arises, exactly, from the gap between its
highflown ideas and the absurdly literal images used to represent
them, starting with the fenced-off rock which stands in for "Nature".
So from the outset the very notion of symbolic meaning is being
parodied, short-circuiting straightforward "interpretation" and to my
mind, automatically moving us into the realm of formal play. I can
see why you might not make high claims for your junkshop penis
painting (which sounds like found Magritte) but I think it devalues
comedy as a genre to deny that amusement is a species of aesthetic
pleasure. Though what we laugh at is highly personal and linked to
our day-to-day emotions, the pleasure of laughter is connected with
being able to stand at a distance from those emotions; perhaps from
ideology, too.
For what it's worth, there are plenty of games with the stretching
and fragmentation of space in HUCKABEES, though maybe these would
look superficial and not especially unifying from a formalist
perspective. (Actually, calling it "a collection of manipulations and
affections" sounds on target as well.) But moving to the next level,
it would be hard to analyse the film in any detail without treating
its obvious formal features (which I'd take to include plot
structure) as itself symbolically suggestive: if the characters and
situations are "real" yet cartoonish, it's perhaps to suggest that
selves generally are hastily contrived vessels for a reality that
sloshes in all directions. Again, it's demonstrated how through
repetition a casual question ("How am I not myself?") can become a
portentous mantra, then a string of empty syllables used to drive
forward the already hectic rhythm of a scene. Form and content as the
same side of the same coin: the holistic viewpoint, which the film
endorses (or doesn't -– depending where you stand).
A film which is explicitly about the quest for meaning is a special
case, but everyone knows that the core experience of cinema is non-
verbal and non-paraphrasable. Nobody thinks that listening to someone
discuss the plot (or themes) of an action movie is the same as
watching it. And people don't stay away from Jane Austen adaptations
because they've read the book. In general I can see only a very
abstract (formal?) distinction between saying that an artwork
transcends its content and that it exists as this content's unique
expression: if that's what's meant by art's "dual and opposing
nature" I guess I'd agree. Still, is it always useful to insist on
the opposition? Why can't the two sides just get along?
JTW
20274
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 7:34am
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson"
wrote:
those ideas about escaping from the private self
> and "conventional truth" suddenly made me think of I HEART
HUCKABEES!
Thanks, Jake. I'm still trying to figure out why Huckabee's struck me
as the most formally innovative film I've seen lately, and your post
is a first step toward clarifying that. No one can possibly take
seriously on a literal level a film about "existential detectives"
who are New Agers, while their French opposite number is closer to
existentialism than they are. It is really ALL about acting, framing,
image size, editing, rhythms, language, objects, music, colors. Quite
the most daring thing I've seen in some time. I need to see it again,
soon!
20275
From:
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 1:07pm
Subject: Re: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
Amen to that. I had the same feeling after reading Helen Prejean's
new book, THE DEATH OF INNOCENCE. (I suppose there's an oblique DEAD
MAN WALKING reference there and so this isn't completely off-topic).
That and a stubborn sense that the country is mine and they can't
have it are what keeps me from heading north of the border.
Sam
>
> Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2005 05:58:07 -0000
> From: "Damien Bona"
>Subject: Re: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
>
>
>--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Sam Adams" wrote:
>> People who saw EARTH AND ASHES and NO ONE KNOWS in
>> Toronto seemed to like the, and HOME OF THE BRAVE was very popular
>at the Philadelphia
>> Film Festival.
>>
>
>"Home of the Brave" is an extraordinary documentary. Using the life
>of the civil rights hero Viola Liuzzo as its focus, the film becomes
>a contemplation of how America has responded to the results of the
>civil rights movement over the last few decades and specifically how,
>with Viola's older son, a national and a personal tragedy melded into
>one. Although a "small" film, in terms of what it says, Paolo di
>Florio's film plays like an epic. And, because it is so
>inspirational, it also convinced me to stay in this country and do
>what I can against Bush's evil instead of throwing in the towel and
>moving to Paris.
20276
From:
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 1:30pm
Subject: speaking of TCM...
I don't know if anyone has been watching Cartoon Alley, TCM's new
monthly cartoon showcase, but they've had a few nifty half-hour shows
so far (even if it does mean having to watch the insufferable Ben
Mankiewicz). However I was pretty surprised when I tuned into the new
episode yesterday and it led off with a censored version of Tex
Avery's BLITZ WOLF. (A "No Japs/Dogs Allowed" sign on a doghouse was
blurred, and an entire sequence involving the island of Japan being
bombed out of the ocean and being replaced with a sign reading
"Doolittle Dood It" was removed.) Either carelessness or censorship
is out of character on TCM's part, needless to say, although such
disrespect and carelessness is sadly to be expected where "kids'
stuff" is concerned. The choice is surprising, though, since I know
TCM has aired Ford and Toland's overtly racist (if conflicted)
DECEMBER 7 in the past. Poor Tex. From what I understand, even the
"complete" box set available in France features censored versions and
omits some cartoons altogether. Even Disney managed to find a way to
release their anti-Japanese cartoons under a "historical" banner (the
fascinating ON THE FRONT LINES dvd). If anyone wants to join me in
writing the channel a peevish email, be my guest.
Sam
20277
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 1:36pm
Subject: Re: Ambersons (was Re: Welles and the Canon)
> The lost Carnaval, made right after Amebersons, was about a place
> that had already vanished before he got to Brazil,
FYI, Praça Onze (Eleventh Square).
and Four Men is a
> hymn to a vanishing way of life - one that, amazingly, has hung in
> there against all odds, although in a much compromised form, like
> Carnaval, which is held today in a soccer stadium.
It's NOT!! Street carnaval is being revived in Rio de Janeiro lately, but
the major parade runs in Sambodromo, which was made especially for the
parade. It's actually a street with stalls on one side and a box building on
the other. THis box building is a public school in non-carnaval days (school
holidays in Brazil are from december to february).
20278
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 1:48pm
Subject: Re: Aaron Spelling/Dynasty (OT?)
I didn't watch the thing, but it sounds more like Doug
Cramer than Aaron Spelling.
Calling Tori Spelling!
--- LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
I've seen footage of Aaron Spelling
> but never got "Paul
> Lynde" from him. And even if I had, I was stunned at
> how openly queer he was in
> this TV movie. This sounds like a job for Ehrenstein
> but does anyone know of
> Spelling's sexual proclivities and how he might
> think of this kind of portrayal?
>
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
20279
From: Michael Lieberman
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: January TCM Essentials / The World
Does anyone know when Jia's "The World" opens theatrically? I had to miss it last fall (one of my most regrettable misses at the NYFF), and am a fan of Jia's
previous work (am
referencing his "Unknown Pleasures" in a film I am making).
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Rosenbaum"
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: January TCM Essentials / PSIFF
Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2005 23:49:30 -0000
I'll probably be in a
> Palm Springs International FF screening the next two weekends;
I'll be
> glad to follow any posts as I have seen these movies.
Incidentally, I
> glad to follow posts of movies I haven't seen, helps direct the
viewing
> choices.
> Any recommendations of something not to miss at the PSIFF are
> appreciated.
> http://www.psfilmfest.org/">http://www.psfilmfest.org/">http://www.psfilmfest.org/
> Elizabeth
I just checked the list, and the one absolutely unmissable item
among the films I've seen is THE WORLD. Two other recommendations;
STRAY DOGS and (to a lesser extent) DEAR FRANKIE.
Jonathan
Yahoo! Groups Links
--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
20280
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 2:44pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> I thought I in effect did respond to this point of Zach's, albeit
> indirectly, by saying that I was open to the defense of other, more
> acting-based, films. But I would want it to be a defense of some
> sophistication, not, "I loved the film because her sad eyes made me
> cry." Yet to reject that as a defense of a film, as I assume you would
> also do if the film had little else going for it, is itself the
> application of a particular set of criteria: we want the film to be in
> some sense a film, not simply a container for a single human look, no?
> I'm trying to make my criteria as general as possible, while at the
same
> time doubting that a film that only pushes emotional buttons, which is
> the way commercial narrative films are typically defended, is going to
> make it even onto my B list. I mean, if a film is good, it seems to me
> it should offer something different from life. Simply replicating my
> feeling of fear when pursued on a dark street is not enough for me, but
> to say that is to impose my own criteria too, I suppose.
Indeed a great note by Fred, which made me think about what I want
from film.
I find myself drifting more and more towards films by directors who
have little if any concern about the reaction by the audience, by
filmmakers who make film because they want to express an idea or a
thought in ways only possible on film.
I find myself more and more dissapointed with films that try to please
me (as an audience), films that don't dare to be different as it would
fail to attact a mass audience. To me, these films simply state the
obvious and as such are predictable, hence bore me.
In a recent article in Variety, Alexander Payne wrote, that he wanted
film to be reverberate the heart of the filmmaker, that he wanted film
to be intelligent and uplifting, that he wanted film to connect people.
"To portray real people with real problems, real joys, real tears will
serve as a positive political force, a force for comfort and possibly
for change. With the inhumanity forced upon us by governments and
terrorists and corporations, to make a purely human film is today a
political act." (Alexander Payne)
Yet, despite such noble thoughts, I find Payne's latest films boring,
as they are navel picking sentimental and almost desperate in their
attempt to please.
On the other side, a film like "American Splendor" also is about real
people, real joys and real problems. I found myself sitting and
watching it and saying to myself, "Why should I care for Pekar?", only
later to stand in the lobby, literary shaking, being so emotional
overwhelmed not since I saw "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter".
For me, the answer was, that the film didn't try to make me care, but
just wanted to tell the story about Pekar. As Thoureau said, "We all
live our lifes in quiet desperation", and to me that is what film
about real people should be about. We, as people, are hesitant, thus
never make the right decision and condemned to live a life regretting.
In terms of the two films above mentioned, I want to realise this, not
being told so.
Henrik
20281
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:21pm
Subject: Ambersons (was Re: Welles and the Canon)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
wrote:
Street carnaval is being revived in Rio de Janeiro lately, but
> the major parade runs in Sambodromo, which was made especially for
the
> parade.
I'm glad to hear that you are taking back the streets!
20282
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:25pm
Subject: Delayed Reactions (Was: Fred's post #20259)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Henrik Sylow"
wrote:
a film like "American Splendor" also is about real
> people, real joys and real problems. I found myself sitting and
> watching it and saying to myself, "Why should I care for Pekar?",
only
> later to stand in the lobby, literary shaking, being so emotional
> overwhelmed not since I saw "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter".
The only film i've had that delayed reaction to was Harry and Son.
Anyone else ever experience this? IMO it's a very good sign re: the
quality of the film.
20283
From: Ruy Gardnier
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 5:45pm
Subject: Re: Re: OT: dating, and not dating Have you ever seen a womanlike this in the m
Ninotchka: "Must you flirt?"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Sutpen"
To:
Sent: Saturday, January 01, 2005 8:33 PM
Subject: [a_film_by] Re: OT: dating, and not dating Have you ever seen a
womanlike this in the m
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Elizabeth Nolan wrote:
> > Some thoughts:
>
> > Have you ever seen a woman like this in the movies?
>
> *****
> Well, Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell used to demonstrate the same
> whithering disdain toward Allen Jenkins, Guy Kibbee and, sometimes,
> Lyle Talbott in about 500 Warners/First National pictures from the
> early 30s.
>
> And the dialogue *does* kinda sound like Blake Edwards wrote it.
>
> But I haven't seen a melding of those two conditions in any film
> recently, so I guess the answer's no.
>
> Tom "Mr. Tact" Sutpen
20284
From: Elizabeth Anne Nolan
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 6:32pm
Subject: Re: PSIFF - Thanks to all for your recommendations. Elizabeth
20285
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 7:20pm
Subject: to lurkers, and others...
This is not directed at anyone in particular.
It has come to my attention that there are people out there who
are too intimidated to post to a_film_by. Others, who have posted
once or twice, are often insecure about what they write and
seldom post anything.
Let me assure you there is nothing to be intimidated about. Or let
me put that another way: I post here regularly and I am probably
more insecure than you.
Yes, there's a heavy-hitting contingent of critics and scholars
who post here, but there are also people who have never written
on or worked in film. No one should come off with the
impression that this place is reserved for discussion among
those who are "established".
But, really, what I'm getting at is...
if more of you posted here, the list wouldn't look like this as often:
David
JP
JP
David
JP
Bill
Bill
Bill
David
David
JP
David
JP
David
etc.
This is an invitation for all you lurkers out there....
Gabe
20286
From: peterhenne
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 8:40pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
Why do I find myself agreeing with the letter of Fred's post, but
not the spirit? Formalism, which is how I would classify his
statement, is great for making an empirical survey of all the
filmmaking components and explaining how they may work together to
narrate or do something other than narrate. But it stumbles
upon "other minds" in the frame and/or on the soundtrack, those
being the actors. Once you admit that an actor is present playing a
character, which means there are potentially two other minds (or a
mind and a "personality"?) to discuss, the empirical cataloguing
that formalism is so good at begins to strain to account for this
remaining element which is caught on film. And that element is all
of the actor's expressiveness. Formalism keeps to a detailed
description of the physical but is not equipped to penetrate beyond
the formal plasticity of the performer; yet I am certain that almost
all audiences do go beyond, and the nature of most performances
invite them to do so. Certainly in some scenes we feel a warmth
coming from Setsuko Hara's character (and perhaps Hara herself) that
is much more than an indefinite yet recognizable shape of the mouth
which we call a "smile"? Imagine watching a film with black cut-out
shapes where the actors are positioned and move, and on some of
these shapes are written simple descriptions, such as "elated"
or "distraught." That is close to how formalism treats a film,
except it would also describe the lighting, clothing, etc. of the
actors' bodies. I have come to acknowledge that formalism can't do
the complete job, that it is out of touch with a vital aspect of
film as an art. Presently I have a hodge-podge theory which tries to
yank together formalism with an acknowledgement of performance, but
I'm hoping to find a simple account which combines all the
components belonging to formalism with the living presences of the
performers.
Peter Henne
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> This is a fantastic post,a lot of which I disagree with and a lot
of
> which I agree with (esp. the final part on "TOUCH of EVIL")and
quite
> a bit of it I'm not sure I understand but although I'm too tired
> (not to mention incompetent) to respond to it, I think it
shouldn't
> be allowed to sort of vanish into cyberspace. There's a lot of
> important stuff in there.
20287
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 9:01pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
I shall say I mostly, strongly, disagree with Fred's post, if I
understood it correctly. The risk being here that we actually all
agree on the subject, but all have different words to express it!
First of all, I have never understood this recurrent idea among some
of the group's members of stigmatizing in such way so-
called "narrative" films, in opposition to abstract/art ones. If
there is, notably in American cinema, a strong tradition of
narrative structure in films, telling a story from A to C, this
tradition is, mostly, the result of agreed conventions and the
definition of a general framework rather than an aim to reach, and,
moreover, was, for the best (i.e. by ours auteurs), constantly
twisted in favour of a secret (this damned secret film) object.
There are few, if any, great "narrative" films, whose success relies
in the sole achievement of a story.
All great narrative (my god I hate that word, just trying to be
clear) films are fed, filled by a thought, an idea of world. This
idea, this thought, resolves, expresses itself in the abstract of
the form. Yes, Fred, of course, I guess we all agree on that, cinema
is, by its very nature, abstract. But, this idea is, must be – it
cannot be differently – rooted in our world. An idea about what we
are. Human being is at the very centre of every art, including
Cinema.
You defend the "idea of abstract form and an aesthetic effect coming
from composition, light, rhythm, and so on". I follow you, 100%, in
defending composition, light, rhythm, and so on (why not sound for
example?)? But what do you mean by "aesthetic effect"? An effect for
what? I hate effects that are only effects. I don't believe there
is any aesthetic pleasure that does not hold you a mirror. If the
composition, the light, the rhythm burned you eyes, that's because
they told you something about what you are.
> If a film is good, it seems to me it should offer something
different from life
Agree. If you try here to deny any specific virtue to realism. I
hate realism and don't think that Cinema has anything to gain from
it. But you can't throw life out of the set, unless you want to deny
the very specificity of Cinema as an art, i.e. its so-called
ontological nature. Or this fascinating contradiction of Cinema,
which is a machine to eat the real, to deny it immediately, as a
machine to produce lie.
Godard told once: "What is Cinema? The expression of nice
sentiments". I stick to that. Which leads to actors. Flesh and
blood. The boiling life, the yelling life. What we are. What we will
be. Dust and death. Yes, the miracle of Cinema is that all the
happiness in the world, all the distress also, may rely in the smile
of a woman's face. My favourite, and only, definition. Love the
actors.
All that does not exclude abstraction. On the contrary. Needs
abstraction. But abstraction must participate in the revelation of
this sentiment, or of any thought that one would like to make fit in
this sacred smile.
Maxime
20288
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 9:18pm
Subject: Re: OT: dating, and not dating Have you ever seen a womanlike this in the m
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Ruy Gardnier"
wrote:
> \ Joan Blondell and Glenda Farrell used to demonstrate the same
> > whithering disdain toward Allen Jenkins, Guy Kibbee and, sometimes,
> > Lyle Talbott in about 500 Warners/First National pictures from the
> > early 30s.
Brisseau's Secret Things is a silly, toothless imitation of those films.
20289
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 9:18pm
Subject: Re: Re: Fred's post #20259
Thanks to all who have commented on my post. The response is heartening,
especially since much of this material is destined for my new "unified
field theory of film" article within a few years. Disagreements are to
be expected; that people found it worth engaging is what counts to me now.
I missed "Huckabees," but sometimes I'm able to catch up on commercial
films I've missed at Doc, so perhaps I'll get to see it.
peterhenne wrote:
>...Imagine watching a film with black cut-out
>shapes where the actors are positioned and move, and on some of
>these shapes are written simple descriptions, such as "elated"
>or "distraught." That is close to how formalism treats a film....
>
What film critics do you know who actually do this, all the time?
I hope you also looked at my earlier post,
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/20229 , to which
the one cited in this thread's subject line was a follow-up. I took the
first review linked to from my Web site (where they're linked
alphabetically by director) and found that I'd discussed acting in more
than a few words as contributing to the film's theme. I don't claim my
discussion of acting was unusually insightful or anything, merely that I
trying to include it.
What's notable is how rarely, even in our group, is a discussion of a
film that refers *only* to the acting, or to the moods it transmitted,
met with something like, "Yes, but you haven't accounted for how the
film works as a film." In other words, the bias here and in film
discussions generally is massively, and in a passive and unexamined
way, toward acting discussed in isolation or in conjunction only with
script and plot, and/or toward explaining what mood a film transmitted
or how it made one feel, and against discussing a film as a coherent (or
interestingly non-coherent) system. For every ten critics who mostly
discusses acting and plot, find me even one who discusses the other
elements of a film with similar intensity. The kind of writing I'm
speaking against makes it hard to tell that you're even watching a film:
often (unless there's a discussion of special effects) the same review
would work for a stage play. The problem in the body of film writing as
a whole is not that insufficient attention is paid to acting, or acting
plus script, it's that insufficient attention is paid to everything
else! If I were a critic who never discussed acting, that would be my
defense.
Fred Camper
20290
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 9:22pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peterhenne" wrote:
On "yanking together form and performance": Check out Manny Farber, an
actor-centered critic who is also the supreme formalist, being himself a
wonderful painter.
20291
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 9:26pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper wrote:
> The problem in the body of film writing as
> a whole is not that insufficient attention is paid to acting, or
acting
> plus script, it's that insufficient attention is paid to
everything
> else!
Unfortunately, that's desperately true. Many critics don't pay
attention to Cinema as an abstract art. Or don't know how to express
it. When they are talking about actors, it often appears that they
are totally unable to link acting to mise-en-scène.
20292
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 9:30pm
Subject: Re: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
Maxime,
I think you misunderstand me. I value narrative films as much as any
other kind. If there's a slant in my posts it's only because members of
this group sometimes use the word "film" to mean "sync sound narrative
film with a story made with a union crew." That is only one kind of
cinema, one narrow possibility for the medium. When you write of "the
very specificity of Cinema as an art, i.e. its so-called ontological
nature," I assume referring to Bazin, I think you are doing the same
thing, especially since you also say that cinema requires actors. That
is only true of one type of cinema.
I don't hate narrative. Some of my favorite films ever are the films of
Ford and Hawks and Sirk and Borzage. I don't hate "realism." I love some
direct cinema or cinema verite documentaries. I'm trying to find a way
for accounting for what I love in as wide a range of cinema as I can
include.
The "aesthetic effect" is the same kind of thing that happens to me when
looking at a great painting, whether an abstract one by Tobey or a
representational one by Titian, or when listening to the music of Bach,
whether vocal (and thus with a theme) or instrumental. I'm not sure if
such things hold me to a "mirror," but they certainly make me think
about the world and myself in new ways.
Have you ever seen one of Brakhage's hand painted film, or any other
abstract non-narrative film? To me the great ones have something,
however distant, in common with the films of Hawks and Ford. But perhaps
more importantly, the range of cinema that doesn't use actors is just as
vast as the cinema that does, and films without actors (or people!) are
films too, just like abstract paintings are paintings too.
Fred Camper
20293
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 9:59pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259 NOOOO!
> Have you ever seen one of Brakhage's hand painted film, or any
other abstract non-narrative film?
As it has been already discussed here, I believe, it can be
reasonably argued that Brakhage's films are also narrative, in a
way. No? And, and consider, in an anthropomorphic view, figures as
human gestures.
What I mean is that there should not be such a straight line between
abstract non-narrative films and figurative narrative films. These
labels don't restore the power of images (I'm not just trying to
play with words)
> When you write of "the very specificity of Cinema as an art,
> i.e. its so-called ontological nature," I assume referring to
> Bazin, I think you are doing the same thing, especially since
> you also say that cinema requires actors. That
> is only true of one type of cinema.
I don't think that cinema necessarily require actors. But flesh and
blood actors are magnificent vectors of this life feeling, which I
require. In so-called abstract films too.
> I don't hate "realism."
I do.
20294
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 10:12pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> Check out Manny Farber, an
> actor-centered critic who is also the supreme formalist, being
himself a
> wonderful painter.
Makes me remember Mourlet's text "Prééminence de l'acteur" in "Sur
un art ignoré". Not sure it was ever translated in English.
20295
From: peterhenne
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 10:23pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
Fred,
Your review does have some indications of the acting, but when you
move to discussion on a theoretical level in other posts you seem to
downplay the element of performance. I've been in this group for
little more than a month, so I'm not prepared to re-state what your
position is, only what I've read by you in some recent posts. And,
yes, I can name a writer who treats performances in the manner I
described: David Bordwell. At least, he did for a long stretch of
time, in the '80s and early '90s. In his book on Ozu, does he ever
say anything about the performances by Hara and Tanaka? Not that I
can find. Those omissions are egregious. I submit that his formalism
prevents him from delving into this area. Bordwell is a great but
limited thinker on cinema.
I wholeheartedly agree that film critics typically review stage
plays, not films, and when I was a critic I vigorously tried to
avoid that trap. But oftentimes it's necessary to go further
than "trying to include" discussion of acting; it's a must! Usually,
the fact that living beings occupy the screen is no less essential
than the stylistic traits. Countless directors tell us so, including
some deep in the formalist canon such as Dreyer and Duras.
Peter Henne
>
> peterhenne wrote:
>
> >...Imagine watching a film with black cut-out
> >shapes where the actors are positioned and move, and on some of
> >these shapes are written simple descriptions, such as "elated"
> >or "distraught." That is close to how formalism treats a film....
> >
>
> What film critics do you know who actually do this, all the time?
>
I don't claim my
> discussion of acting was unusually insightful or anything, merely
that I
> trying to include it.
>
For every ten critics who mostly
> discusses acting and plot, find me even one who discusses the
other
> elements of a film with similar intensity. The kind of writing I'm
> speaking against makes it hard to tell that you're even watching a
film:
> often (unless there's a discussion of special effects) the same
review
> would work for a stage play. The problem in the body of film
writing as
> a whole is not that insufficient attention is paid to acting, or
acting
> plus script, it's that insufficient attention is paid to
everything
> else! If I were a critic who never discussed acting, that would be
my
> defense.
>
> Fred Camper
20296
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 10:24pm
Subject: Re: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- Maxime Renaudin wrote:
>
> Makes me remember Mourlet's text "Prééminence de
> l'acteur" in "Sur
> un art ignoré". Not sure it was ever translated in
> English.
>
>
Better still Mourlet's "In Defense of Violence" with
it's immortal "Charlton Heston is an axiom. He
constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any
film being enough to instil beauty."
Exchange Alain Delon for Heston and I am so THERE!
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20297
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 10:34pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein >
> Better still Mourlet's "In Defense of Violence" with
> it's immortal "Charlton Heston is an axiom. He
> constitutes a tragedy in himself, his presence in any
> film being enough to instil beauty."
>
> Exchange Alain Delon for Heston and I am so THERE!
"Hymn to the glory of bodies, cinema admits erotism as its suprem
motive".
" The obssessed search for an equation that gathers the balanced
terms of a flesh and a world".
20298
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 10:59pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
wrote:
>As Maxime says, Mourlet's criticism is also actor-centered, and formalist, but
unlike Farber, it's not available in English, as far as I know., The other thing
about Farber: He is definitely interested in the avant-garde - at least some of
it.
20299
From: Maxime Renaudin
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 11:03pm
Subject: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
Mourlet's criticism is also actor-centered, and formalist, but
> unlike Farber, it's not available in English, as far as I know.,
In defense of violence is in Hillier's
20300
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Jan 3, 2005 11:04pm
Subject: Re: Re: Fred's post #20259
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Maxime Renaudin"
>
> wrote:
> >As Maxime says, Mourlet's criticism is also
> actor-centered, and formalist, but
> unlike Farber, it's not available in English, as far
> as I know.
You can find it volume II of the "Caheirs du Cinema"
translations that University of California Press
published.
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