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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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23301
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:20pm
Subject: Revenge of the Middlebrow (was Re: Staying Power)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > What I'm getting at is that several auteurist critics have suddenly
> > become very enthusiastic about the kinds of bland (it seems to me),
> > boring (it seems to me), conservative (it seems to me) middlebrow
> > filmmakers whose work tends to dominate the Academy Awards. I'd
> > always imagined that auteurists rejected this kind of 'cinema' out of
> > hand.
We don't reject anything out of hand - especially is it is fashionable to do so.
"Dicky" is a great actor who has made a couple of pretty good films: A Bridge
Too Far and Magic, which I praised in my 2ndd or 3d Letter from H'wd to CdC
just to throw down the gauntlet about my own independence as a critic.Cry
Freedom is interesting because, after all those biopics, he finally made a film
about a biographer! I praised it in CdC at the time of release. And if you
missed the end credits, you missed a moving moment of cinema.
23302
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:24pm
Subject: Re: Thoughts on BRIGHTON ROCK?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
>
> The title refers to a brand of hard candy.
>
> And any place you broke the candy stick you saw "Brighton"
written inside. The title must have had some symbolic meaning that
i forgot -- Greene's book was one of the very first novels Ii read
in English.
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
23303
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 6:36pm
Subject: Re: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
>> My take on this classic situation is that the killing or
> violence figures in the narrative less as punishment
> for desire than as Another Good Thing to Happen.
>
> Good Thing in terms of providing pleasure to the
> audience?
Yeah, I think so. I think violence is pleasurable to people for its own
sake, not just because of its effects.
> I remember watching "Eraser" with my then husband, and we came to the
> scene where Arnold's hand is nail-gunned to a refrigerator door. At
> that instant I thought: "How on earth could I consider such a scene
> 'entertaining'."
Love of violence is a weird thing, because people don't love it when it's
directed at them or their loved ones. It's an intrinsically conflicted
urge. Which is good, because otherwise socializing people out of violent
behavior probably wouldn't work at all.
> Cinema warns us when to curb desire: Montgomery
> Clift should have remembered his place within the class
> structure, married Shelley Winters, and given up all
> hopes of Elizabeth Taylor (JLM's reworking of this through
> Tennessee William's "Suddenly, Last Summer" is brilliant).
Can't cinema also inflame desire? Seems to me it can do both, either. -
Dan
23304
From:
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 7:20pm
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Middlebrow (was Re: Staying Power)
Brad Stevens asks: "Were those middlebrow critics of the 50s who regarded Kramer, Zinnemann, Stevens and Wyler as superior to Mann, Ray, Hawks, Boetticher, Sirk, and Tashlin right after all? "
The key difference between these two groups is that the first concentrated on "realistic dramas" while the second (except Ray) made "genre films": Westerns, thrillers, melodramas, farces, etc. Non-auteurist critics of the 50's thought a realistic drama such as "From Here to Eternity" (Zinnemann) automatically stood far above a mere Western such as "Rio Bravo" (Hawks). Auteurists felt differently: They valued both realist and genre films, but only if the director had a personal style and visual creativity.
This belief in the superiority of realism is still the dominant mode in American criticism. Most critics today still regard a "realistic drama of everday life in modern times" such as "Sideways" or "Yi Yi" as the Holy Grail of the cinema. And they still regard genre films such as thrillers or science fiction or music videos as low brow fodder.
As Dan Sallitt pointed out, auteurists admired the realist drama creator George Cukor, and George Stevens, too. So they are not anti-realist. But auteurists traditionally sure were against equating realist drama with Godness and Art in the cinema.
By the way, I really liked "Shakespeare in Love".
A mild disagreement with Brad Stevens: This is a real divide you are describing. But calling it "middlebrow" is misleading. It obscures the actual divide between these two types of film, IMHO, which is realist drama / genre.
Mike Grost
23305
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 7:34pm
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
I just recently saw Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" which explores
the problem of film violence in a most disturbing way. Supposedly it
was Haneke's "answer" to the unexamined sadism in Tarantino's work.
Whatever its relevance at the time of release, I found "Funny Games"
particularly strong in the context of recent news about the US and
UK torture scandals. The use of hoods and sexual humiliation in
particular chilled me to the bone.
Haneke never shows any specific acts of violence. They all take
place in offscreen space. Its points are not exactly subtle (the
sadistic villains refer to themselves as "Tom and Jerry" or "Beavis
and Butthead" throughout, and a TV set figures prominently in the
action) but the movie is effective in creating the sense of dread
and hopelessness in situations where one person has total control
over the life of another. Though the film is pitiless, Haneke makes
it impossible not to empathize with the victims. In particular, he
uses one agonizingly long take to devastating effect.
For the folks on the list who haven't seen it, I'm reluctant to give
away the more schematic elements of the film, but "Funny Games" is
basically a treatise on the function of violence and identification
in the movies.
> Love of violence is a weird thing, because people don't love it
when it's
> directed at them or their loved ones. It's an intrinsically
conflicted
> urge. Which is good, because otherwise socializing people out of
violent
> behavior probably wouldn't work at all.
23306
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 7:50pm
Subject: Realism and Middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> A mild disagreement with Brad Stevens: This is a real divide you are
describing. But calling it "middlebrow" is misleading. It obscures the actual
divide between these two types of film, IMHO, which is realist drama / genre.
That's one reason that Mankiewicz - middlebrow supreme - was embraced
along w. Sirk.
Realism means many things, of course. It can mean "conventional realism" -
what seems plausible to many. REAL realism is by definition mindblowingly
subversive, but we never see REAL realism.
Example: As the videocassette generation dies off, films-taped-from-tv are
turning up in my favorite thrift shops. For a buck yesterday I bought one that
had - along with 5 other things - "The Private Tapes of Richard Speck," the
nurse killer, aired on A&E in 1996 and swiftly forgotten. In it Speck, on-camera
with his prison lover, answers questions from the inmate who's taping. At one
point he undresses to reveal that he is wearing blue silk panties and has
breasts - presumably grown using hormones. They pretend to be cutting coke,
and rolling joints, and brag about what a good time they're having behind
bars. Speck recalls - or reconstructs - what he did on his kill spree in 1966 in
response to questions. Some of what he says isn't true. The tape was made
before Speck died of a heart attack in 1991 and sold by whoever had it to A&E
when he got out, probably. Like the Abu Ghraib photos, you couldn't have
made it up. It is very disturbing and very subversive of the worldview that's on
tv 24 hours a day, and in films. And at the same time, it's a fiction!
To a lesser extent, A Bridge Too Far by Attenborough contains things that
really happen in war and is a bit subversive to the extent that it does. Based
on researching In Harm's Way, that film does too -- like the way the Japanese
simply vanish before the invasion of that island at the end. Never explained.
It's in the book and somehow got left in the film because it's what actually
happened, but it is so unconventional that critics kind of forget about it as
soon as it has gone by. It doesn't fit into THEIR narrative about war and war
films, the one that's always going in their heads when the subject comes up.
Little bits of "how things really are" and "how things really happen" in any film
register as fantastic rather than realistic, because realism as we know it is
based on plausibility - ie commonly held beliefs about these things. The
Happy Face Murders, a Showtime movie, opens with a card: "This movie is
largely based on real events. Some scenes are made up. They are the ones
you will have no trouble believing."
23307
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:13pm
Subject: Lexiconning
Since you've all been talking about the insidious ways that TV
speeds up end credits or chops up movies for commercials, I was
wondering if anyone on the list was familiar with "lexiconning."
This is when a film is slightly sped up or slowed down (supposedly
imperceptibly) to make space for commercials. I can remember sitting
through a lexiconned broadcast of a James Bond film on TNT a few
years ago. The movie was being "expanded" into a 3 hour time slot
and sure enough, it felt like it was going on forever, yet there was
no way to gather this from examining the action.
A description below is quoted from the following site:
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/journals/btlj/articles/vol5/McNally/html/
text.html
"In lexiconning, the speed of a film is increased slightly in order
to fit the film into a smaller time slot. Speed changes may be
measured in hundredths of a frame per second, permitting changes of
6 to 7 percent of the total running time of the film. Generally,
such changes are barely discernible to the naked eye. The alteration
is accomplished by changing the rate at which the film frame runs
past the light source.
In the proposed guidelines, suggestions have been sought from the
film industry as to what percentage of the overall running time of a
film may reasonably be altered by lexiconning in preparing a work
for distribution or broadcast.
When it becomes perceptible, lexiconning alters the aesthetic
composition of the film. Under the proposed guidelines, reducing the
running time of a film by more than a fixed percentage or
lexiconning in such a way that the change would be perceptible to
the average viewer would be classified as a material alteration."
23309
From: BklynMagus
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:21pm
Subject: Re: Realism and Middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
ht666 writes:
> That's one reason that Mankiewicz - middlebrow
supreme - was embraced along w. Sirk.
What do you mean by the term middlebrow supreme?
I see and hear the term used so much that I am
confused as to its meaning. Also, does middlebrow
apply to the subject of JLM's films, his attitude toward
the subjects or both?
Personally, I have always found the divisions between
high and low art to be classist and inutile -- more of an
impediment than aid.
Brian
23310
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:36pm
Subject: Re: Realism and Middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> ht666 writes:
>
> > That's one reason that Mankiewicz - middlebrow
> supreme - was embraced along w. Sirk.
>
> What do you mean by the term middlebrow supreme?
>
> I see and hear the term used so much that I am
> confused as to its meaning. Also, does middlebrow
> apply to the subject of JLM's films, his attitude toward
> the subjects or both?
The former in some cases. Never the latter as far as I know. But HM is the kind
of filmmaker who could've been overlooked by the French if they had been
thinking in terms of middlebrow and lowbrow. Sarris relegated him to Less
Than Meets the Eye, remember. And Mankiewicz himself admired Mike
Nichols.
But I don't find the term intrinsically classist. Quoting my less excoriated
mentor John Hollander - as I have before to this effect - what happened to this
country after the 50s was the erosion of middlebrow culture. That has been a
disaster. And perhaps that is why it's hard today to know what the term means.
Few examples are left - certainly few examples of GOOD middlebrow.
23311
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:36pm
Subject: Re: Realism and Middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> ht666 writes:
>
> > That's one reason that Mankiewicz - middlebrow
> supreme - was embraced along w. Sirk.
>
> What do you mean by the term middlebrow supreme?
>
> I see and hear the term used so much that I am
> confused as to its meaning. Also, does middlebrow
> apply to the subject of JLM's films, his attitude toward
> the subjects or both?
The former in some cases. Never the latter as far as I know. But HM is the kind
of filmmaker who could've been overlooked by the French if they had been
thinking in terms of middlebrow and lowbrow. Sarris relegated him to Less
Than Meets the Eye, remember. And Mankiewicz himself admired Mike
Nichols.
But I don't find the term intrinsically classist. Quoting my less excoriated
mentor John Hollander - as I have before to this effect - what happened to this
country after the 50s was the erosion of middlebrow culture. That has been a
disaster. And perhaps that is why it's hard today to know what the term means.
Few examples are left - certainly few examples of GOOD middlebrow.
23312
From: BklynMagus
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:51pm
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
Dan writes:
> Can't cinema also inflame desire? Seems to me
it can do both, either.
You are right. My apologies if my post seemed to
indicate otherwise. Some of the most enjoyable
movies are those that inflame passion while at the
same time trying to regulate it. We are supposed
desire Elizabeth Taylor, but not so much that we
would violate the strictures of social propriety.
Something similar happens in "Shane" vis-a-vis
Jean Arthur's desire for Shane and the necessity
for that desire to go unfulfilled (Alan Ladd vs. Van
Heflin. Show of hands please.). Now, I have
something new to look for at the Stevens' retro at
MoMA. For me, Stevens has always occupied a
lower floor in the pantheon (my visualization is
of an art deco skyscraper with the great, strong
auteurs in the cloud room at the top.).
Brian
23313
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:12pm
Subject: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
look forward to at MOMA
>
> Brian
All the prewar films are very good. Don't skip I Remember Mama (which I
resaw to write about San Francisco films) - think Greed while you're watching
it. (I assume the Norris references were in the book.) And see The Only Game
in Town, which I saw finally to write about Vegas films. Marilyn Moss took the
standard tack on it in her book, but it's an interesting experiment, shot in Paris
because Taylor needed to be near Burton, who was filming Staircase in
London. Henri Decae shot it. Beatty's last line is from The Tempest.
23314
From: Craig Keller
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:22pm
Subject: Kenneth Anger on WFMU
To continue my recent series of alerting list-members what's happening
on the streaming world-wide radio, The Kenny G Show (not -that- Kenny
G) on WFMU is now playing Mick Jagger's soundtrack to Anger's
'Invocation of My Demon Brother.' Tune in! Or just tune in to the
archive from later on in the day until infinity.
craig.
23315
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:27pm
Subject: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> All the prewar films are very good. Don't skip I
> Remember Mama (which I
> resaw to write about San Francisco films) - think
> Greed while you're watching
> it.
Think Holocaust while you're watching it.
Stevens unti liberated the camps. He shot COLOR
footage that wasn't seen until "Greoge Stevens: An
American Journey" was made.
This was a man who had made light comedies before the
war. Then he came face to face with the pit of horror.
His response?
"I Remember Mama."
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - Sign up for Fantasy Baseball.
http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
23316
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:35pm
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> Dan writes:
>
> > Can't cinema also inflame desire? Seems to me
> it can do both, either.
>
> You are right. My apologies if my post seemed to
> indicate otherwise. Some of the most enjoyable
> movies are those that inflame passion while at the
> same time trying to regulate it. We are supposed
> desire Elizabeth Taylor, but not so much that we
> would violate the strictures of social propriety.
I am a little confused reading the above, and your posts on the
subject in general, Brian. Who is this "We" who is supposed to
desire E.T.? The viewer? Who identifies with Clift? What if the
viewer does not "desire" E.T.? That would be the case of most
heterosexual female viewers and most gay males (I should check with
David on the latter, though). And even of some heterosexual males (I
was never attracted to E.T. physically). But more seriously, I don't
think the movie is trying to teach us a moral lesson as you seem to
imply (the novel certainly doesn't). I think most viewers just think
that it's really bad luck for poor Clift that he can't get the
glamorous rich girl and raise himself up in society as all good
American young men should aspire to. And simultaneously we are sorry
for poor dumpy Shelley Winters who got herself pregnant, but I don't
think we are supposed to hope that Clift will do the right thing and
marry her. I think that we hope that something will happen that
somehow disposes of Shelley (she gets run over by a car and dies,
say; but then of course there's no movie...)and allows Clift to get
the rich girl and step into society. Am I being cynical? Perhaps I'm
projecting my own reactions on the communal "We".
For me, Stevens has always occupied a
> lower floor in the pantheon (my visualization is
> of an art deco skyscraper with the great, strong
> auteurs in the cloud room at the top.).
>
Actually, for Sarris, Stevens didn't even occupy the basement of
the Pantheon. He was in the "Far Side of Paradise" section with the
directors who "fall short" of said Pantheon. But he was in good
company with the likes of Borzage, Cukor, Minnelli, Preminger, Ray,
Sirk etc... Whereas for French auteurists he would have been at
best in Sarris's "Less Than Meets the Eye" category.
> Brian
23317
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:46pm
Subject: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
> Actually, for Sarris, Stevens didn't even occupy the basement of
> the Pantheon. He was in the "Far Side of Paradise" section with the
> directors who "fall short" of said Pantheon. But he was in good
> company with the likes of Borzage, Cukor, Minnelli, Preminger, Ray,
> Sirk etc... Whereas for French auteurists he would have been at
> best in Sarris's "Less Than Meets the Eye" category.
It's interesting how most American auteurists ignored Sarris's evaluation
of Stevens from the get-go, and mentally relocated him into "Less Than
Meets the Eye." One runs across the occasional Stevens fan from that
generation, but it's surprising how little resistance there was to this
tacit demotion. - Dan
23318
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 9:49pm
Subject: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
And see The Only Game
> in Town, which I saw finally to write about Vegas films. Marilyn
Moss took the
> standard tack on it in her book, but it's an interesting
experiment, shot in Paris
> because Taylor needed to be near Burton, who was filming Staircase
in
> London. Henri Decae shot it. Beatty's last line is from The
Tempest.
I found the film absolutely atrocious when I saw it at the time. I
have it on tape somewhere; maybe I should try it again? Since we're
all going middlebrow now... I also like "I Remember Mama" very
much. But I don't think the pre-war films are so good. I tend to
agree with Sarris on them.
23319
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:11pm
Subject: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon" wrote:
>
> I found the film absolutely atrocious when I saw it at the time. I
> have it on tape somewhere; maybe I should try it again?
Maybe not, but look at ten minutes sometime. The internalization of the action
- all shot on sets outside of Paris - creates a real moody of velvety
romanticism, I find. It's also the forerunner of all those 90s Vegas films set in
one room: Center of the World, Leaving Los Vegas, One Night in Paris and to
some extent The Cooler, which I rather liked - sort of Party Girl redux.
I haven't reseen Talk of the Town lately, but my memories of it shine.
23320
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:14pm
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
Manny Farber found himself developing a belated affection for Stevens' craft
in the late films just by contrast with what was around. Termitic white
elephants, so to speak.
23321
From: peckinpah20012000
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:21pm
Subject: Re: Thoughts on BRIGHTON ROCK?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Keser"
wrote:
>
>
> LiLiPUT1@a... wrote:
> "Any thoughts on BRIGHTON ROCK? Should I break a leg to see
> it?"
>
> The quite rarely seen BRIGHTON ROCK has the reputation of being
one
> of the major works of so-called Brit noir (along with THEY MADE ME
A
> FUGITIVE and THE SMALL BACK ROOM).>
> John Boulting also directed the crackling terrorist thriller SEVEN
> DAYS TO NOON (1950), another title that merits revival and re-
> evaluation..
BRIGHTON ROCK is definitely worth seeing as an example of British
film noir and the early work of the Boulting Brothers before
complacency and stagnation hit British cinema leaving the Boultings
to do comedy in the 1950s. Attenborough's performance is superb as
well as pre-DR. WHO William Hartnell in a character role after his
brief attempt at stardom (THE AGITATOR) came to nothing. However,
the film changes Greene's ending but a compromise was arrived at by
the saccharine high-key lighting and the fact that Carol Marsh will
again play the record ensuring that the needle will not get stuck a
second time.
Tony Williams
23322
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:23pm
Subject: LOS MUERTOS end credits
Sorry to return to this subject a little late. I think that in both
LA LIBERTAD and LOS MUERTOS the end credits work to contextualize
his stories--in a dialectical way. I'm very heartened to hear
(through Gabe's post) that Alonso is trying to *date* his films, and
that he's very conscious about the dichotomy between city and
country. Because to me the ultimate end of Alonso's work seems to
be to say "this is how we live now" (or "this is one way in which
we're living now") and if he shows us the country, he reminds us
just a bit of the city. He pairs sloth with speed, leisure with
labor, all these things--and the music over the stark credits is
part of that strategy.
That said, I can understand Fred Veith's concerns, and believe me, I
appreciate that the "overwhelming," in-your-face harshness that the
music marks comes in a discrete contrast and does not mark the whole
film, thus making it needlessly "provocative."
Ruy, to me THE BROWN BUNNY is peripheral to the new aesthetic I'm
convinced exists, but now that you mention it I can see the
similarities. Haven't had the chance to see SHARA, and I will
hopefully see L'INTRUS at our local Rendez-vous with French Cinema
next month.
--Zach
23323
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:28pm
Subject: Re: Thoughts on BRIGHTON ROCK?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "peckinpah20012000"
wrote:
However,
> the film changes Greene's ending but a compromise was arrived at
by
> the saccharine high-key lighting and the fact that Carol Marsh
will
> again play the record ensuring that the needle will not get stuck
a
> second time.
>
> Tony Williams
I remember the novel's closing sentence as one of the most moving
endings in modern fiction. The film's compromise was acceptable. JPC
23324
From: BklynMagus
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:30pm
Subject: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
Dan:
> All the prewar films are very good.
Don't skip I Remember Mama (which
I resaw to write about San Francisco
films) - think Greed while you're
watching it.
David:
> Think Holocaust while you're watching
it.
Heavy viewing on Friday then.
Stevens' work has always had a leaden
quality to me -- stolid rather than solid.
Hopefully, these screenings will bring
my ideas into better focus.
David:
> He shot COLOR footage that wasn't seen
until "Greoge Stevens: An American
Journey" was made.
They have 2 documentaries screening with
this footage.
Somewhere I read that Godard said something
to the effect that Stevens had to film Auschwitz
in color for Elizabeth Taylor to have her place
in the sun.
Also, the footage was mentioned in the Serge
Daney essay about Rivette's comment on the
unforgiveable tracking shot.
Brian
23325
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:31pm
Subject: Great performances by youth
Just a brief note. After I started my day taking second looks at a
great film and a very, very good one (Ruiz's ON TOP OF THE WHALE and
De Palma's CARRIE), one of my courses screened Allan Moyle's 1980
film TIMES SQUARE, starring Trini Alvarado and Robin Johnson as two
girls (playing characters roughly their ages, 13 and 16
respectively) who give probably the greatest pair of teenage
performances I've ever seen. Since the film was a flop and these
two actors never went on to become the stars they should have been,
I felt obligated to recommend this. It's also the best film I've
seen by Moyle, who basically reworked this theme in at least two
later films, PUMP UP THE VOLUME and EMPIRE RECORDS (which of course
have their own virtues).
--Zach
23326
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:37pm
Subject: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
>
> Somewhere I read that Godard said something
> to the effect that Stevens had to film Auschwitz
> in color for Elizabeth Taylor to have her place
> in the sun.
That's in Histoire(s) du cinema 1.
>
> Also, the footage was mentioned in the Serge
> Daney essay about Rivette's comment on the
> unforgiveable tracking shot.
Serge was knocked out by the Stevens footage. So was J-C Biette, who wrote
about it in Trafic.
23327
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 10:41pm
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
> Love of violence is a weird thing, because people don't love it when
it's
> directed at them or their loved ones. It's an intrinsically conflicted
> urge.
And this is what I would argue provides a major internal conflict for
L. B. Jeffries in "Rear Window"; he doesn't want to see Lisa get
hacked up like Thorwald's wife, but there's something very exciting
and attractive for him about the prospect of her being so.
I'm not sure the rape in "Irréversible" really satisfies any love for
violence, mind you. I think it reveals this "love" to be misguided and
worrying, a little like (as Matt suggests) "Funny Games" does. The
earlier scene of the former, where the guy's head is smashed to a pulp
with a fire extinguisher, strikes me being far more "satisfying" than
the rape on a love of/fascination with violence level.
23328
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 11:00pm
Subject: Re: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- BklynMagus wrote:
> Stevens' work has always had a leaden
> quality to me -- stolid rather than solid.
> Hopefully, these screenings will bring
> my ideas into better focus.
>
He became in his later years, a very DELIBERATE
filmmaker. Remember he began his career as a
cinematographer. He shot "Big Business" the classic
Laurel and Hardy short where they play Christmas tree
salesmen and destroy James Findlayson's house -- while
he destroys their car.
His best films are loaded with amazing visual ideas.
The enormous close-ups in "A Place in the Son" haven't
been matched by anyone.
But insiration oculd desert him -- as it certainly did
with "The Greatest Story Ever Told." Years and years
and years of painstaking work all to see Pasolini come
in and wipe the floor with him.
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23329
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 11:08pm
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Matthew Clayfield" <
the_silver_bullet@m...> wrote:
> And this is what I would argue provides a major internal conflict for
> L. B. Jeffries in "Rear Window"; he doesn't want to see Lisa get
> hacked up like Thorwald's wife, but there's something very exciting
> and attractive for him about the prospect of her being so.
The screenwrietr's first draft - after working out the story w. AH - made Lisa
frigid and LBJ (haha) horny and frustrated. AH told him to turn it around,
making her horny and him frigid. I'm not sure which version is more perverse,
although AH's is certainly less obvious, but in any case, it came out a classic
castrated metteur-en-scene moment: LBJ getting off on seeing the woman he
loves in the arms - and this case, under the butcher knife - of the Other. Of
course, Queer Theory tells us that LBJ, with his propensity for "backdoor"
voyeurism, would really like to be in her shoes. But that seems kind of
stretching it to me.
23330
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 11:13pm
Subject: Re: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Somewhere I read that Godard said something
> > to the effect that Stevens had to film Auschwitz
> > in color for Elizabeth Taylor to have her place
> > in the sun.
>
> That's in Histoire(s) du cinema 1.
> >
> > Also, the footage was mentioned in the Serge
> > Daney essay about Rivette's comment on the
> > unforgiveable tracking shot.
>
> Serge was knocked out by the Stevens footage. So was
> J-C Biette, who wrote
> about it in Trafic.
>
>
>
>
And leave us not forget "The Diary of Anne Frank."
Bill and I ahve come to know MilliePerkins (in
connection with something other than the cinema.) She
was a top "Junior Miss" model in New York with no
thoughts of an acting career when Stevens asked to see
her and BLAM -- she got the role of a lifetime. And
right after that she played one of Elvis Presley's two
girlfriends in "Wild in the Country."
The other girlfriend? Tuesday Weld.
She married, and divorced, Dean Stockwell. Then she
married screenwriter Robert Thom -- whose credits
include "Wild in the Streets," "Angel Angel Down We
Go" and the original television version of "The Legend
of Lylah Claire" (which starred. . . .Tuesday Weld.)
And I trust everyone on the list is familiar with
Millie's work with Monte Hellman: "The Shooting,"
"Ride in the Whirlwind," and "Cockfighter."
She still works quite a lot. In fact she just got
through doing a role in the Andy Garcia movie about
pre-Castro Cuba based on a novel by the (just) late
Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
Cabrera Infante's book "A Twentieth Century Job" (the
last word DOUBLY pronouned to mean both "work" AND the
character in the Bible) is one of the greatest volumes
of film criticism ever written.
He also penned the screenplay for "Vanishing Point" (1971)
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23331
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Feb 23, 2005 11:43pm
Subject: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
If anyone can find a copy of Robert Thom's Crimes of Cinema, an Eliotian
poem predicting his death, let me know.
Millie recalls sitting in a screning room with Stevens and Stevens Jr. on either
side of her watching Anne Frank - Pop was surreptitiously holding one of her
hands and Jr. the other.
23332
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 0:10am
Subject: Night of the living middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
> But I don't find the term intrinsically classist. Quoting my less
excoriated
> mentor John Hollander - as I have before to this effect - what
happened to this
> country after the 50s was the erosion of middlebrow culture. That
has been a
> disaster. And perhaps that is why it's hard today to know what the
term means.
> Few examples are left - certainly few examples of GOOD middlebrow.
I suspect that you are confusing middlebrow culture with popular
culture. It's great popular culture that America lost after the 50s.
But middlebrow culture is always with us: which is to say that we are
not getting modern equivalents of such great popular films as
VERTIGO, THE SEARCHERS, THE TALL T, KISS ME DEADLY, RUN OF THE ARROW,
SOME CAME RUNNING and WRITTEN ON THE WIND, but we certainly are
getting the modern equivalents of such typical middlebrow fare as
GIANT, THE DEFIANT ONES, BEN HUR and HIGH NOON (see SAVING PRIVATE
RYAN and AMERICAN BEAUTY).
I certainly don't consider Cukor or Mankiewicz to be middlebrows, and
regard the idea of 'good middlebrow' as a contradiction in terms. I
suppose some middlebrow films might be tolerable (A PLACE IN THE SUN,
the first two hours of SCHINDLER'S LIST), but we should never confuse
this stuff with the truly important achievements of America's popular
cinema.
23333
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 0:41am
Subject: Re: Stevens (Was: Back to identification)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
"It's interesting how most American auteurists ignored Sarris's
evaluation of Stevens from the get-go, and mentally relocated him
into "Less Than Meets the Eye." One runs across the occasional
Stevens fan from that generation, but it's surprising how little
resistance there was to this tacit demotion."
When I was a teenage auterist I used to read "Cinema" magazine (the
one published by Jack Hanson and edited by his brother Curtis and
much later by Paul Schrader,)a splahy auterist pictorial 'zine at the
time. They devoted an entire issue to Stevens with color cover of a
still from THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. So at least in mid-1960s
Los Angeles there were a group of auterists who put Stevens in the
Pantheon.
I was sold on him at the time as a result of that issue, but GREATEST
STORY was more than disappointing, and the post-WWII pictures became
ever more pictorial, just a "bunch of shots" (as Fred C might put it)
however beautiful they were to look at. Though I though THE ONLY GAME
IN TOWN was his best picture since the early 1940s.
Richard
23334
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:34am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>
> > But I don't find the term intrinsically classist. Quoting my less
> excoriated
> > mentor John Hollander - as I have before to this effect - what
> happened to this
> > country after the 50s was the erosion of middlebrow culture. That
> has been a
> > disaster. And perhaps that is why it's hard today to know what the
> term means.
> > Few examples are left - certainly few examples of GOOD middlebrow.
>
> I suspect that you are confusing middlebrow culture with popular
> culture. It's great popular culture that America lost after the 50s.
I don't think John was. He was thinking primarily of literature, theatre and
music, not film. GOOD moddlebrow would be Rhapsody in Blue, John O'Hara,
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ogden Nash, Guys and Dolls (Loesser was John's
father-in-law) or, for that matter, Playhouse 90 and The Late George Apley,
from a good middlebrow novel by J.P. Marquand.
John was being polemical. After critiquing the counterculture all through the
late 60s and early 70s - rightly and wrongly: he got the politics wrong - he was
correctly diagnosing a grave problem that followed that period, which was the
elimination of Book-of-the-Month-Club literacy, serious drama and reporting
on tv, Broadway as a great culture and mixtures of hibrow and pop like the
Rhapsody that are great art in themselves - as opposed to crap like Sir Paul's
Liverpool Requiem. The Beatles were still great pop, but they started during
Camelot (here), when Carl Sandburg read some poem at the Presidential
inauguration. No one like them could come along today. It couldn't happen.
John's polemical point was precisely insisiting that a pejorative term -
middlebrow - defined an area of culture we will never see again that was
crucial to the health of both highbrow and lowbrow art. I watched five minutes
of Harry Potter 3 at Tower Video yesterday, and it was indistinguishable from
every other $100+million movie H'wd has made in the last 10 years.
Bubblegum for the eyes. Maybe if the fucking Harry Potter books were a little
better, someone would have had to do something a little better with the movie
- say, something more like The Wizard of Oz?
23335
From: jaketwilson
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:35am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow
> I suspect that you are confusing middlebrow culture with popular
> culture. It's great popular culture that America lost after the
50s.
> But middlebrow culture is always with us: which is to say that we
are
> not getting modern equivalents of such great popular films as
> VERTIGO, THE SEARCHERS, THE TALL T, KISS ME DEADLY, RUN OF THE
ARROW,
> SOME CAME RUNNING and WRITTEN ON THE WIND, but we certainly are
> getting the modern equivalents of such typical middlebrow fare as
> GIANT, THE DEFIANT ONES, BEN HUR and HIGH NOON (see SAVING PRIVATE
> RYAN and AMERICAN BEAUTY).
"Middlebrow" is a word I mostly try to avoid because it has so many
loaded connotations -- I doubt it can ever be rehabilitated as
anything but a term of abuse. Recurring to the ecriture vs ideology
discussion, one could say that the films which Brad is
calling "middlebrow" are those in which ideology clearly wins out (in
his opinion -- I think RYAN at least is more complex). By and large
though, the distinction between the two lists above is not one that
would have been widely recognised at the time -- Ford, Minnelli,
Hitchcock were all successful popular entertainers who have been and
continue to be written off as "middlebrow" (whether or not the term
is used) by viewers who see ideology and not much else. Auteurism has
always been in part a paradoxical defense of the mainstream, and
Peter setting ORDINARY PEOPLE above RAGING BULL is very much in that
tradition.
But the real burning questions are: if audiences find pleasure in
having their ideologies confirmed (as they surely do) why is this a
problem? And can we, as viewers, really presume to be above all that?
JTW
23336
From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:38am
Subject: Re: Re: Ogier on Rivette/Schroeter (was: Deux)
I originally saw "Duelle", "Noiroit", "Merry Go Round" and "Out 1:
Spectre" at UCLA Film/TV Archive on their little TV monitors. I know
they have prints of these, but they never seem to show them.
The "Duelle" screening was in Paris for CdC's monthly Ciné-Club thing
which was going on at the Cinéma du Panthéon at the time (not sure if
it still is). They showed it right when "Histoire de Marie et Julien"
came out.
The print had faded and was quite reddish. Rivette was dismayed,
though not surprised, at the state of the print. I don't know if
there are any that are much better.
23337
From: Matthew Clayfield
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:42am
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
>
> Of
> course, Queer Theory tells us that LBJ, with his propensity
for "backdoor"
> voyeurism, would really like to be in her shoes. But that seems
kind of
> stretching it to me.
To me, too.
23338
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:05am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jaketwilson" wrote:
>
>
> > I suspect that you are confusing middlebrow culture with popular
> > culture. It's great popular culture that America lost after the
> 50s.
> > But middlebrow culture is always with us: which is to say that we
> are
> > not getting modern equivalents of such great popular films as
> > VERTIGO, THE SEARCHERS, THE TALL T, KISS ME DEADLY, RUN OF
THE
> ARROW,
> > SOME CAME RUNNING and WRITTEN ON THE WIND, but we certainly
are
> > getting the modern equivalents of such typical middlebrow fare as
> > GIANT, THE DEFIANT ONES, BEN HUR and HIGH NOON (see SAVING
PRIVATE
> > RYAN and AMERICAN BEAUTY).
The Searchers, Some Came Running, Written on the Wind, The Last Hurrah -
all those were middlebrow novels first.
> But the real burning questions are: if audiences find pleasure in
> having their ideologies confirmed (as they surely do) why is this a
> problem? And can we, as viewers, really presume to be above all that?
We no longer have an ideological consensus in this country. Reread what
Serge said. That requirement for films responding to our cinephilic tastes
coming out of H'wd is a ship that has sailed. It gets further away every day.
23339
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:57am
Subject: Re: Re: Night of the living middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- hotlove666 wrote:
Guys and Dolls
> (Loesser was John's
> father-in-law)
Loesser? I find nothing in the least middle-brow about
him.
Hey J-P, do you know this one? It's from "Seven Days
leave.":
I get the neck of the chicken
I get the rumble seat ride
I get the leaky umbrella
Everyone shoves me aside
When I jump in my shower each morn'
Sure as fate,
I'm too late,
All the hot water's gone
I get the neck of the chicken
I get that burnt piece of toast
I get that seat in the movies
Smacko! in back of the post
That's why I can't get over this dream that came true
If I get the neck of the chicken
How did I ever get you?
I get the neck of the chicken
That's how they give me the bird
And in the family snapshot
Mine is the face that's all blurred
When morning paper comes to the door
Sure as fate,
I'm too late
And they're mine long about four
I get the neck of the chicken
I get the plate with the crack
I get those evenings with Granma
Everyone else can relax
That's why I can't get over this fine howdy-do
If I get the neck of the chicken
How did I ever get you?
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23340
From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:58am
Subject: in Chicago this Sat: un-silent Brakhage
For those who prefer some aural-stimulation while viewing silent films,
two films by Stan Brakhage will be included in a program this Saturday
night at the Univ. of Chicago: "Sirius Remembered" (1959, 11m) & "The
Dead" (1960, 11m) with live music accompaniment by Fursaxa; more details
here:
http://whpk.uchicago.edu/events/
I guess those of us who prefer to experience the films as intended
(silent) can bring earplugs.
--
Jason Guthartz
jason@r...
http://www.restructures.net
http://www.restructures.net/chicago
--
"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."
--Hunter S. Thompson
23341
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:17am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
That requirement for films responding to our cinephilic tastes
> coming out of H'wd is a ship that has sailed. It gets further away
every day.
Yes, and we cover the waterfront foolishly waving our silly
auteurist handkerchiefs. Maybe auteurism is as hopelessly passe as
some late nineteenth century sub-sub lit trend ("zutisme"?) Because
if your ship is never going to come in again, what's the use in
pretending the cargo meant so much?
23342
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:24am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- hotlove666 wrote:
>
> Guys and Dolls
> > (Loesser was John's
> > father-in-law)
>
> Loesser? I find nothing in the least middle-brow about
> him.
>
> Hey J-P, do you know this one? It's from "Seven Days
> leave.":
>
> Didn't know it, and thanks, you made me laugh. Guess Loesser is
the loesser of two evils (bad joke I know, but I've had a bad day).
I can quote Two Sleepy People, though (Two sleepy people, by dawn's
early light, and too much in love to say good night).Which is what
I'm saying now.
23343
From: Brian Charles Dauth
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:35am
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
JPC writes:
> But more seriously, I don't think the movie is
trying to teach us a moral lesson as you seem to
imply (the novel certainly doesn't).
We will just have to disagree. Dreiser is a very
moral writer, and Stevens, though a less complex
artist, just as concerned with morality.
> I think most viewers just think that it's really
bad luck for poor Clift that he can't get the
glamorous rich girl and raise himself up in society
as all good American young men should aspire to.
Again, I disagree. The Puritan roots of Amerian
culture seem to me to run too deep and are too
powerfully embedded in the culture for most
American viewers to put Clift's situation down to
just luck.
Luck/fate has been for me an attitude I have found
more prominent in European films (Renoir immediately
springs to my mind).
> And simultaneously we are sorry for poor dumpy
Shelley Winters who got herself pregnant, but I don't
think we are supposed to hope that Clift will do the right
thing and marry her.
I think Clift is presented as a cautionary tale of the danger
of allowing an individual's desire to transcend his place in
the social order from becoming too strong. Stevens flattens
the moral ambiguity of Dreiser to fit the tale he wants to tell.
> Am I being cynical?
No, just approaching the film from your own critical headspace.
> Perhaps I'm projecting my own reactions on the communal "We".
Sorry if it offended you.
Brian
23344
From: Jason Guthartz
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:56am
Subject: aut(eur)ism, or speaking of identification...
"The researchers hook up volunteers who have autism to a device which
precisely tracks where their eyes focus as they watch the movie. When
there’s a passionate kiss, most viewers focus on the lips. But people
with autism look elsewhere — often at the light switch on the wall."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7019005/
I get the feeling many of us afb'ers would be diagnosed as "autistic"
because of our focus on the "auteuristic" elements of the filmic image
(e.g., taking in the whole and the various details of the entire
mise-en-scene, not just tracking the characters' faces).
Though I kind of understand the logic of the experiment, to the degree
that it presumes a normal or natural way of watching a film, it's as
problematic as the junk science which generated the "Mozart effect,"
debunked by John Corbett a few years ago in a Chicago Reader article,
reprinted here:
http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/18/14/News/tech.html
-Jason G
--
Jason Guthartz
jason@r...
http://www.restructures.net/chicago/film.htm
--
"America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable."
--Hunter S. Thompson
23345
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:08am
Subject: Re: Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
Because
> if your ship is never going to come in again, what's
> the use in
> pretending the cargo meant so much?
>
>
>
>
Because we're all James Masons waiting for Ava
Gardners to rescue us.
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23346
From: jaketwilson
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:08am
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
> JPC writes:
>
> > But more seriously, I don't think the movie is
> trying to teach us a moral lesson as you seem to
> imply (the novel certainly doesn't).
>
> We will just have to disagree. Dreiser is a very
> moral writer, and Stevens, though a less complex
> artist, just as concerned with morality.
But there's a big difference between being concerned with morality
and presuming to offer "lessons". The book definitely doesn't provide
easy answers, and if it did wouldn't be as powerful, seems to me.
JTW
23347
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:10am
Subject: Re: Re: Night of the living middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
> >
> > Didn't know it, and thanks, you made me laugh.
> Guess Loesser is
> the loesser of two evils (bad joke I know, but I've
> had a bad day).
> I can quote Two Sleepy People, though (Two sleepy
> people, by dawn's
> early light, and too much in love to say good
> night).Which is what
> I'm saying now.
>
Here's one for "Guys and Dolls" that mankiewicz and
Goldwyn didn't use:
At Wanamaker's and Saks and Klein's
A lesson I've been taught
You can't get alterations on a dress you haven't
bought
At any vegetable market from Borneo to Nome
You mustn't squeeze a melon till you get the melon
home.
You've simply got to gamble
You get no guarantee
Now doesn't that kind of apply to you and I
You and me.
Why not?
Why not what?
Marry the man today.
Trouble though he may be
Much as he likes to play
Crazy and wild and free
Marry the man today
Rather than sigh in sorrow
Marry the man today
And change his ways tomorrow.
Marry the man today.
Marry the man today
Maybe he's leaving town
Don't let him get away
Hurry and track him down
Counterattack him and
Marry the man today
Give him the girlish laughter
Give him your hand today
And save the fist for after.
Slowly introduce him to the better things
Respectable, conservative, and clean
Readers Digest
Guy Lombardo
Rogers Peet
Golf!
Galoshes
Ovaltine!
But marry the man today
Handle it meek and gently
Marry the man today and train him subsequently
Carefully expose him to domestic life
And if he ever tries to stray from you
Have a pot roast.
Have a headache
Have a baby
have two!
Six
Nine!
STOP!
But Marry the Man today
Rather than sign and sorrow
Marry the man today
And change his ways - change his ways - his ways
Tomorrow!
>
>
>
>
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23348
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:12am
Subject: Revenge of the Misattributed
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
>
>>> What I'm getting at is that several auteurist critics have suddenly
>>> become very enthusiastic about the kinds of bland (it seems to me),
>>> boring (it seems to me), conservative (it seems to me) middlebrow
>>> filmmakers whose work tends to dominate the Academy Awards. I'd
>>> always imagined that auteurists rejected this kind of 'cinema' out of
>>> hand.
> Dan:
>
>> All the prewar films are very good.
> Don't skip I Remember Mama (which
> I resaw to write about San Francisco
> films) - think Greed while you're
> watching it.
Just for the record, I didn't say either of these things. - Dan
23349
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:16am
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Brian Charles Dauth"
wrote:
>
> We will just have to disagree. Dreiser is a very
> moral writer, and Stevens, though a less complex
> artist, just as concerned with morality.
>
Maybe, but that was not my reading of the book (read neons ago I
must admit) and that's certainly not what makes the novel or the
movie interesting.
>
> > Perhaps I'm projecting my own reactions on the communal "We".
>
> Sorry if it offended you.
>
It didn't offend me at all. I was just asking: What/who do we
mean when we say "we". It's a very complicated issue and I was just
saying that it should not be used lightly. JPC
23350
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:33am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
>
> > >
> > > Didn't know it, and thanks, you made me laugh.
> > Guess Loesser is
> > the loesser of two evils (bad joke I know, but I've
> > had a bad day).
> > I can quote Two Sleepy People, though (Two sleepy
> > people, by dawn's
> > early light, and too much in love to say good
> > night).Which is what
> > I'm saying now.
> >
> Here's one for "Guys and Dolls" that mankiewicz and
> Goldwyn didn't use:
>
And it's absolutely great -- too good for a movie, obviously.
But in the same spirit, David, who wrote this? (Oh, I know you know):
Home work, I want to do home work. Instead of an office, I want
to work home. Staying at home and crocheing, and meekly obeying the
guy who comes home. A cosy kitchen to be in there pitching, that's
the place I'm looking to be, to be there learning when a steak needs
turning, and what goes into a stew. Home work, I want to do home
work. A genius who sits and plans with pots and pans at home, a
genius who bakes a pie that keeps a guy at home.
> At Wanamaker's and Saks and Klein's
> A lesson I've been taught
> You can't get alterations on a dress you haven't
> bought
>
> At any vegetable market from Borneo to Nome
> You mustn't squeeze a melon till you get the melon
> home.
>
> You've simply got to gamble
>
> You get no guarantee
>
> Now doesn't that kind of apply to you and I
>
> You and me.
>
> Why not?
>
> Why not what?
>
> Marry the man today.
> Trouble though he may be
> Much as he likes to play
> Crazy and wild and free
> Marry the man today
> Rather than sigh in sorrow
> Marry the man today
> And change his ways tomorrow.
> Marry the man today.
> Marry the man today
> Maybe he's leaving town
> Don't let him get away
> Hurry and track him down
> Counterattack him and
> Marry the man today
> Give him the girlish laughter
> Give him your hand today
> And save the fist for after.
> Slowly introduce him to the better things
> Respectable, conservative, and clean
> Readers Digest
> Guy Lombardo
> Rogers Peet
> Golf!
> Galoshes
> Ovaltine!
> But marry the man today
> Handle it meek and gently
> Marry the man today and train him subsequently
> Carefully expose him to domestic life
> And if he ever tries to stray from you
> Have a pot roast.
> Have a headache
> Have a baby
> have two!
> Six
> Nine!
> STOP!
> But Marry the Man today
> Rather than sign and sorrow
> Marry the man today
> And change his ways - change his ways - his ways
> Tomorrow!
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
23351
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:37am
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Misattributed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt >
> > Dan:
> Just for the record, I didn't say either of these things. - Dan
Bill K. said them, or at least some of them. That's the curse of
these exchanges. You keep losing track of who said what. I just
said this and I am JPC.
23352
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:18am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
> wrote:
>
> That requirement for films responding to our cinephilic tastes
> > coming out of H'wd is a ship that has sailed. It gets further
away
> every day.
>
> Yes, and we cover the waterfront foolishly waving our silly
> auteurist handkerchiefs. Maybe auteurism is as hopelessly passe as
> some late nineteenth century sub-sub lit trend ("zutisme"?) Because
> if your ship is never going to come in again, what's the use in
> pretending the cargo meant so much?
Well, it did and it does. And cinephile filmmakers like Godard and
Scorsese and Straub and van Sant and Wong Kar-Wai and Desplechin keep
the tradition alive all by themselves, each working off in his litle
corner. Meanwhile Korea, Japan, China and Thailand seem to have
rediscovered the magic formula. That's why I brought up that quote
from Daney in the first place: He was talking about the conditions
that might make possible industrial filmmaking that appeals to
cinephilia - just another word for taste, really. Indications are
that the ship sailed East.
23353
From:
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 0:30am
Subject: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES (Was: Back to identification)
In a message dated 2/23/05 1:36:12 PM, mattcornell@s... writes:
> Haneke never shows any specific acts of violence.
>
To quote Lisa Alspector (hey - where did she go?) on FUNNY GAMES, "to suggest
that what's depicted on-screen isn't violence is grossly inaccurate." I still
think it's one of the ten or twenty very worst films worth hating of the last
ten years.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23354
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:31am
Subject: Re: aut(eur)ism, or speaking of identification...
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Jason Guthartz wrote:
> Though I kind of understand the logic of the experiment, to the
degree
> that it presumes a normal or natural way of watching a film, it's
as
> problematic as the junk science which generated the "Mozart
effect,"
> debunked by John Corbett a few years ago in a Chicago Reader
article,
I try never to use buzz words and propaganda catchphrases invented by
the Right - junk science is one of them, as is political correctness.
So I'd call it all "rat science," which is what we used to call the
behaviorist school of psychology when I was (briefly) a psych major
in college. Although I did learn to respect some behaviorists who
were teaching me, because they were as clever at evolving hypotheses
and designing experiments to test them as high-caliber scientists of
any stripe, rat science is just a dumb way to study the mind and
emotions.
For one thing, one of us probably would test as autistic if subjected
to this particular experiment - ie the experiment would fail with us.
(A behaviorist proverb: "Don't use cats. They fuck up your data.") It
would fail because behaviorism posits the brain as a black box of
which it can only know stimulus-in, response-out, so that the reason
why the auteurist might be looking at the light switch wouldn't be a
permitted datum.
Nonetheless, it is interesting that autists can be geniuses within a
narrow range precisely because of their strange disease, which is
poorly understood. A good film about autism whose director and writer
I forget was House of Cards with Kathleen Turner. A bad one, for
which I unfortunately remember both credits: Rain Man.
23355
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:41am
Subject: Re: Revenge of the Misattributed
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
>
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > > --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt >
> > > Dan:
> > Just for the record, I didn't say either of these things. - Dan
>
>
> Bill K. said them, or at least some of them. That's the curse of
> these exchanges. You keep losing track of who said what. I just
> said this and I am JPC.
The Brad said, more or less, that auteurists should reject middlebrow
films out of hand. I said that I Remember Mama and Only Game were
good films to see at that MOMA retro.
Let me amend my defense of the Cry Freedom credits. (Actually, the
last shot - the credits are conventional.) Showing a plane carrying
Kevin Kline and his family of to safety and then rolling an endless
list of people murdered by the white supremacist regime in S. Africa
with a rousing version of the African National Anthem booming on the
soundtrack is neither middlebrow nor highbrow - it's go-for-the-guts
popular filmmaking. And because I'm fond of such trash, it moves me.
I'm sure many here would object, as they would object to the last
shot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Richard Strauss? Gimme a break! I
DESPISE being manipulated like this... But that is great popular
filmmaking too.
The Kubrick is better, of course.
23356
From: Samuel Bréan
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:31am
Subject: Simone Simon died
http://permanent.nouvelobs.com/culture/20050224.FAP6513.html?0233
She died Tuesday night, aged 93. I'm sure I'm not the only one who loves
some of the films she played in: CAT PEOPLE and CURSE OF THE C.P., La BETE
HUMAINE, LA RONDE, LE PLAISIR... OLIVIA and MADEMOISELLE FIFI are also
worthy of attention. I just loved her voice!
Samuel
23357
From: Matt Teichman
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:53am
Subject: Re: aut(eur)ism, or speaking of identification...
Jason Guthartz wrote:
>Though I kind of understand the logic of the experiment, to the degree
>that it presumes a normal or natural way of watching a film,
>
But of course this presumption isn't unique to the experimenters; it's a
presumption held by mainstream commercial narrative filmmaking. So you
might say that the experiment was true to the film, unless you wanted to
push a "subversive" reading of _Who's Afraid_.
-Matt
23358
From: Kristian Andersen
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 10:07am
Subject: Eric Mitchell's The Way It Is
Does anyone know if this film is available anywhere? It has a pretty big
good cast: Vincent Gallo, Steve Buscemi, Mark Boone Junior.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088382/
It should be a no-wave classic.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23359
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 0:19pm
Subject: Margaret Herrick Library ?
Can anyone on the list who has used this resource (Bill, I know you have!)
tell me whether somebody in Australia (i.e., me!) is able to in any way
access the holdings of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences?
Adrian
23360
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 11:34am
Subject: Dawn of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
>
> "Middlebrow" is a word I mostly try to avoid because it has so many
> loaded connotations -- I doubt it can ever be rehabilitated as
> anything but a term of abuse. Recurring to the ecriture vs ideology
> discussion, one could say that the films which Brad is
> calling "middlebrow" are those in which ideology clearly wins out
(in
> his opinion -- I think RYAN at least is more complex). By and large
> though, the distinction between the two lists above is not one that
> would have been widely recognised at the time -- Ford, Minnelli,
> Hitchcock were all successful popular entertainers who have been
and
> continue to be written off as "middlebrow" (whether or not the term
> is used) by viewers who see ideology and not much else.
But surely the films of Kramer, Zinnemann, Stevens and Wyler were
considered to be more 'important' than those of Hitchcock,
Boetticher, Minnelli, etc.
Auteurism has
> always been in part a paradoxical defense of the mainstream, and
> Peter setting ORDINARY PEOPLE above RAGING BULL is very much in
that
> tradition.
>
To me, the great achievements of American cinema since the late 60s
belong more to (I hate this word, but can't think of a better
one) 'highbrow' culture. I'm talking about the work of Hellman,
Scorsese, Ferrara, Cimino, Peckinpah. It would be absurd not to be
grateful for this, but at the same time, it is possible to mourn the
loss of a genuine popular cinema. Perhaps only Clint Eastwood and
Zalman King have kept this particular torch burning for the last 30
years (though King's recent work, such as WOMEN OF THE NIGHT, has
moved further towards the realm of the highbrow...not that anyone has
noticed).
> But the real burning questions are: if audiences find pleasure in
> having their ideologies confirmed (as they surely do) why is this a
> problem? And can we, as viewers, really presume to be above all
that?
The problem is that, for many years, American audiences seemed to
enjoy having their ideologies challenged as well as confirmed - a
situation that no longer exists.
23361
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 11:43am
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow
> Yes, and we cover the waterfront foolishly waving our silly
> auteurist handkerchiefs. Maybe auteurism is as hopelessly passe as
> some late nineteenth century sub-sub lit trend ("zutisme"?) Because
> if your ship is never going to come in again, what's the use in
> pretending the cargo meant so much?
I live in a town which was recently voted the crappiest in the UK.
Culturally, it's the asshole of the universe. Yet just a few minutes
walk from my house, I can find shops that stock DVDs of films by
Minnelli, Sirk, Aldrich, Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks, Laughton, Borzage,
Preminger, Cukor, Mann, etc, etc, etc. These films are probably now
more easily available to anyone who wants to see them than at any
time since their original theatrical releases. If this ship ever
sailed, it has come roaring back into port.
23362
From: Saul
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 0:27pm
Subject: Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein wrote:
>
> --- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> Because
> > if your ship is never going to come in again, what's
> > the use in
> > pretending the cargo meant so much?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> Because we're all James Masons waiting for Ava
> Gardners to rescue us.
Always the romantic David....
I love reading these imagistic and metaphoric exchanges between you
and JP...they're always tinged with so much .... uh...what's the
word....an air of sunny nostalgia for a first or lost love........in
this case cinema or auteurism........but everything, more or less, is
equatable.......i raise my glass of home made wine and drink a toast
that you'll both keep typing away long into the night, raging against
the dying of the light.....because it always seems to be towards the
end of the day, or at night, that such wistful posting occurs
here..........
23363
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:26pm
Subject: Re: Thoughts on BRIGHTON ROCK?
> > The title refers to a brand of hard candy.
> >
> > And any place you broke the candy stick you saw "Brighton"
> written inside. The title must have had some symbolic meaning that
> i forgot -- Greene's book was one of the very first novels Ii read
> in English.
Yeah, it has to do with a person's character being fixed and centrao,
to their being - anywhere you break them you will see the evidence of
their fundamental character.
The film is a masterpiece, very noir, with atmospheric location
filming and electrifying scenes of violence. Attenborough is not only
sensational, but surprisingly sexy.
Greene himself changed the ending, hoping audiences would see through
it, but admitted that the effect of the Boulting's persuasive
filmmaking was to oversell the "happy ending" quality a bit.
But it's a very good reinvention of the bleak ending as happy - very
skilled indeed. And I love William Hartnell's almost oriental eyes.
The Boulting Bros later satires are good, with I'M ALRIGHT JACK as
the standout, but they're nothing compared to this. The film isn't
rare at all in the UK, btw, though film screenings of it are not as
common. Their later TWISTED NERVE provides the Bernard
Herrmann whistling theme heard in KILL BILL1 and was written by
PEEPING TOM scribe Leo Marks. It's no masterpiece, though Tarantino
admires it.
23364
From: cairnsdavid1967
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:39pm
Subject: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
> The history of cinema is, among other things, the history of
> attractive (desirable) young women being threatened by any number
of
> dire fates, including the "fate worse than death" an death itself.
I
> have always felt that the frustration and resentment triggered by
> the fact that the "object of desire" cannot really be "possessed"
> tends to result in a desire to erase the object, destroy it. Rape
is
> clearly such an effort to erase. Ultimately the killing of the
> object is the only way out.
It's an interesting theory. But one "destroys" an object, one doesn't
kill torture or rape it. I think there's a mixture of things going on.
I think there is more than one motivation at work. Hitchcock
identified with his female characters and could make his audience do
the same - so "torture the heroine" became a good way to put the
audience through the ringer. But there's obviously also a part of
Hitchcock that views the woman as object of desire, and another part
that is tainted with misogyny. So all of this can be in play.
My own reaction to the Psycho rock video seems to be based around a
feeling that the effect was mainly light-hearted: the conjunction of
Billie Jean and Psycho was funny. The nudity could be read as in the
spirit of this playfulness, but the murder could not, and the
combination of sexual titillation and violence made for something a
little distasteful. I also kind of felt that since the actress/model
was being quite cooperative in showing us her ass, it was
ungentlemanly to ask her to also submit to a bloody murder.
I dunno if that makes sense / is consistent, but that's how I
responded! I guess if I'd found the thing sleazy from the start the
murder wouldn't have been a specific problem, but it seemed kind of
amusing and charming until that point.
23365
From: Charles Leary
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 1:52pm
Subject: Re: Margaret Herrick Library ?
I've been there before. It's a nice place and the staff are very
helpful. The special collections are described online, but I think you
have to be there in person to request copies of material.
Charley
On Feb 24, 2005, at 7:19 AM, Adrian Martin wrote:
> Can anyone on the list who has used this resource (Bill, I know you
> have!)
> tell me whether somebody in Australia (i.e., me!) is able to in any
> way
> access the holdings of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion
> Picture Arts and Sciences?
>
> Adrian
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23366
From: K. A. Westphal
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:05pm
Subject: Is This for Real? David Thomson's New Book
Thomson was at 57th Street Books in Chicago a few weeks ago promoting
his new book. I live a few blocks away, but I was busy that night, so
I couldn't hear him expound on that thing called the movies to a
nodding, New Yorker-reading audience.
Anyway, now I'm regretting that because this new book of his sounds
absolutely appalling. Anyone bother with it?
I bring it up because I read this review from The Guardian
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1416848,00.html
"...As a work of history The Whole Equation is idiosyncratic,
imperious, infuriating, full of lovely writing, and just a little bit
mad; but then a bumpy ride is what you get when you ask a unicorn to
pull a cart. Thomson has little time for the crudities of the silent
era, for instance, and judges DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation to
be no good when stood next to Mahler's Ninth Symphony ("listen to that
music and you cannot ignore the naiveté, the coarseness, in Griffith")."
Aside from dismissing a filmmaker who I love, Thomson is dismissing
the entire silent era? I've never known of a respected film critic who
did that ... especially one proclaimed so lofty, witty, etc. (Check
out the article. The author basically gives Thomson head for a few
paragraphs). I don't plan on reading THE WHOLE EQUATION, but if anyone
here has -- is this really Thomson's claim? Is "the crudities of the
silent era" the dismissal from Thomson or the author of this piece?
I know that most members of the a_film_by already have it against
Thomson for his book on Welles and his indifference to current world
cinema, but really ... I find this absurd.
--Kyle
23367
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:24pm
Subject: Haneke vs. Tarantino (Was: Back to identification)
> I just recently saw Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" which explores
> the problem of film violence in a most disturbing way. Supposedly it
> was Haneke's "answer" to the unexamined sadism in Tarantino's work.
Haneke is complaining about someone else's sadism?
I have a bad response to the sadism in Tarantino (a director I like), but
I don't think it's unexamined. Well, maybe unexamined, but not
unacknowledged, anyway. Tarantino's attitude seems to be, "Here are my
films, here's the sadism - what's the problem?" It's a bit of a game for
him - fortunately, like his mentor Hawks, he plays interesting games, not
all about sadism, that reflect on the fiction-making process.
> Though the film is pitiless, Haneke makes it impossible not to empathize
> with the victims.
If we didn't emphasize with the victims, then he couldn't torture us!
Haneke's control and precision is truly impressive, but I find the sadism
problem in his films less contained than in Tarantino's. - Dan
23368
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:57pm
Subject: Re: Haneke vs. Tarantino (Was: Back to identification)
>
> Haneke's control and precision is truly impressive, but I find the sadism
> problem in his films less contained than in Tarantino's. - Dan
Agreed. The most problematic aspect of Haneke's films is his attempt to justify his sadism by saying he is investigating it. I always come from Haneke's films with the feeling that they are very dishonest (outside from the scene in Code Unkown with someone behind the camera torturing Binoche). Funny Games would be a far better film if Haneke simply let his domination fantasy on screen without the apparatus around it that try to made it intelectual acceptable by claiming that he is examining it. Also I don't think it's very useful to compare Tarantino's sadism (the least interesting aspect of his films) toward some of his characters to Haneke's towards his own audience.
>
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
__________________________________________________________________________
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23369
From: Brian Dauth
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:06pm
Subject: Re: Guys and Dolls (Was Night of the living middlebrow)
JPC wrote:
> And it's absolutely great -- too good for a movie, obviously.
It is a good song, but it sticks out like a sore thumb placed as it
is at the end of Act II. My impression has always been that they
wanted Sarah Brown and Miss Adelaide to have a duet so they stuck it
in where they could. There is no other reason to have them on stage
together.
JLM's excision is smart since it would have worked against the
narrative arc as he constructed it. It is also a song that in some
ways goes against the ethos of the Mankiewicz woman -- more ideology
than ecriture.
Brian
23370
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:18pm
Subject: Re: Re: Night of the living middlebrow (was: Revenge of the Middlebrow)
--- jpcoursodon wrote:
>
> But in the same spirit, David, who wrote this? (Oh,
> I know you know):
>
> Home work, I want to do home work. Instead of an
> office, I want
> to work home. Staying at home and crocheing, and
> meekly obeying the
> guy who comes home. A cosy kitchen to be in there
> pitching, that's
> the place I'm looking to be, to be there learning
> when a steak needs
> turning, and what goes into a stew. Home work, I
> want to do home
> work. A genius who sits and plans with pots and pans
> at home, a
> genius who bakes a pie that keeps a guy at home.
Irving Berlin?
__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
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23371
From: BklynMagus
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:25pm
Subject: Re: Song Lyrics (Was: Night of the living middlebrow)
David wrote (correctly as always):
> Irving Berlin?
Miss Liberty (1949)
Brian
23372
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 3:53pm
Subject: Re: Dawn of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
>
> But surely the films of Kramer, Zinnemann, Stevens and Wyler were
> considered to be more 'important' than those of Hitchcock,
> Boetticher, Minnelli, etc.
Hitchcock and Boetticher I agree, but Minnelli isa more complicated. An American in Paris, The Bad and the Beautiful, Gigi and Some Came Running were to a certain extant respectable middlebrow films. The oscars Gigi and American in Paris won has a lot to do with they can be seen at the time as bigger and more respectable than the average 50's musical. The Bad and the Beautiful is immensely superior to The Detective Story but it's easy to see why they got high praise by the same critics and audiences at the time. The line between low/middle/high brow is often more complex than our likes and dislikes. I'm not trying to call Minnelli a middlebrow filmmaker but he was clearly flirting with it.
I think Bill is into something here (actually my fondness of James L. Brooks films has something to do with Bill's arguments), but middlebrow as a expression has such a bed rep that I do agree that maybe some other expression would help.
Also I don't think this has anything to do with genre and realism is Mike is trying to say. The difference between High Noon and The Man From Laramie has little to do with realism, actually given the allegorial aspects of Hign Noon (even tough Zinneman shot it in his matter of fact naturalist style), the action in Mann's film is far more plausible. High Noon was praised because it's themes were easy to find (the same reason why Stagecoach, to get a better western that also flirts with allegory, were), not thanks to its realism (which was not that much more realistic than most post war westerns Mann's included). Mike, your not wrong when you say that most mainstream critics prefer films to be naturalist (i think it's better than realism), but not all genre films are necessarilly running against it either. I do agrre that one of the reason why musicals, horror or sci-fi films are rarely taking seriously has to do with the artificiality that seems natural to them, but the same is not true about westerns, melodramas or crime films.
Filipe
__________________________________________________________________________
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23373
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:02pm
Subject: Re: Margaret Herrick Library ?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Charles Leary wrote:
>
> I've been there before. It's a nice place and the staff are very
> helpful. The special collections are described online, but I think
you
> have to be there in person to request copies of material.
>
My impression too. Call 310.247.3000 and ask for Barbara Hall to get
the official skinny. Looks like you'll just have to come to LA,
Adrian! I'll buy you a sandwich at the H'wd Cafe up the street when
you do.
23374
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:09pm
Subject: Dawn of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
> But surely the films of Kramer, Zinnemann, Stevens and Wyler were
> considered to be more 'important' than those of Hitchcock,
> Boetticher, Minnelli, etc.
With a handful of critics, maybe. But Hitchcock was important.
Boetticher, of course, was unknown.
>
> To me, the great achievements of American cinema since the late 60s
> belong more to (I hate this word, but can't think of a better
> one) 'highbrow' culture. I'm talking about the work of Hellman,
> Scorsese, Ferrara, Cimino, Peckinpah.
Sam and Abel would be surprised to hear that! The Wild Bunch was a
blockbuster, for example. Huge on 42nd Street. And Driller Killer
wasn't made for the NY Times! I'd say that they are film buff
directors who kept creating movies we appreciate even after the
studios were dead as a creative force. That's not the same as
highbrow, although Straub is in the same category. It's just that
Straub doesn't make westerns.
It would be absurd not to be
> grateful for this, but at the same time, it is possible to mourn
the
> loss of a genuine popular cinema. Perhaps only Clint Eastwood and
> Zalman King have kept this particular torch burning for the last 30
> years (though King's recent work, such as WOMEN OF THE NIGHT, has
> moved further towards the realm of the highbrow...not that anyone
has
> noticed).
Apparently you did, you wanker!
King and Eastwood have their own mini-studios and make films for a
particular part of the mass audience - not all of it.
23375
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:44pm
Subject: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
>
> King and Eastwood have their own mini-studios and make films for a
> particular part of the mass audience - not all of it.
But that's my point. It's not so much that the films have changed as
that the audiences have. There simply isn't the same kind of mass
audience that could be addressed by a Sirk or a Preminger. We have a
situation now where even a director as talented as Martin Scorsese
can talk about balancing films he wants to make, such as THE LAST
TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, with films he makes for them, such as CAPE
FEAR. (The 'them' in question might be either studio executives or
the mass audience.) It's impossible to imagine a Hawks or a Hitchcock
thinking in these terms, making distinctions between the kinds of
films they want to make and the kinds of films audiences want to see.
23376
From: BklynMagus
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:50pm
Subject: Re: Dawn of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
Filipe writes:
> The difference between High Noon and The Man From
Laramie has little to do with realism, actually given the
allegorial aspects of Hign Noon (even tough Zinneman
shot it in his matter of fact naturalist style), the action in
Mann's film is far more plausible.
I have always found William James' concept of "genius"
very useful in discerning strong auteurs from weaker
ones. James wrote of genuis as being a non-habitual
way of seeing. I think Mann possesses a greater
non-habitual vision than does Zinnemann (and I am
speaking of more than just mise en scene, though it
is an important component).
James also spoke of genius as being more concerned
with possibilities than probabilities. For meMann is
deeply concerned with the possibilities of the Western,
where it has been and (more importantly) where he
can take it. For me that kind of auteur is always more
interesting than one who stays within cinematic
probabilities, no matter how exquisite the crafting.
Brian
23377
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:19pm
Subject: Re: Simone Simon died
> She died Tuesday night, aged 93. I'm sure I'm not the only one who loves
> some of the films she played in: CAT PEOPLE and CURSE OF THE C.P., La BETE
> HUMAINE, LA RONDE, LE PLAISIR... OLIVIA and MADEMOISELLE FIFI are also
> worthy of attention. I just loved her voice!
She was a wonderful natural actress - she seemed incapable of falsity.
Still rather underrated, I think. - Dan
23378
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:37pm
Subject: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
> It's impossible to imagine a Hawks or a Hitchcock
> thinking in these terms, making distinctions between the kinds of
> films they want to make and the kinds of films audiences want to see.
What about Ford? "Three for them, one for me." That will always be the rule as
long as bank money is financing production, or any other steady investment
pool. What has changed, as you say, is that the audience for a certain kind of
cinephile-friendly filmmaking is fragmented: people who go to see Godard,
people who go to see Eastwood, people who go to see David O. Russell.
But shit like Harry Potter still gets the audience Hawks and Hitchcock once
had - bigger. It's rare that an auteur imprints a bit of himself on one of these
lemons - Ang Lee in Hulk, say. And the case of M. Night Shyamalan is
heartening, but I'm not sure he will be able to hold onto more than "the
Shyamalan audience" if critics keep missing the point.
23379
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:43pm
Subject: Dawn of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, BklynMagus wrote:
> Filipe writes:
> I have always found William James' concept of "genius"
> very useful in discerning strong auteurs from weaker
> ones. James wrote of genuis as being a non-habitual
> way of seeing. I think Mann possesses a greater
> non-habitual vision than does Zinnemann (and I am
> speaking of more than just mise en scene, though it
> is an important component).
> Brian
Brian, yoiu missed the early discussion of J-C Biette's untranslated article
What Is a Cineaste? He distinguishes directors (hacks), metteurs-en-scene,
auteurs and cineastes. He might allow that Zinneman is an auteur, but one
who accepts the worldview of his class and era, and techniques of filmmaking
that are the industry norm, reserving the word "cineaste" for filmmakers like
Mann whose view of the world and of their craft is original - "personal" in the
strong sense (whereas that is often used for mere auteurs, whose themes,
say, are consistent).
23380
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:43pm
Subject: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
> It's impossible to imagine a Hawks or a Hitchcock
> thinking in these terms, making distinctions between the kinds of
> films they want to make and the kinds of films audiences want to see.
What about Ford? "Three for them, one for me." That will always be the rule as
long as bank money is financing production, or any other steady investment
pool. What has changed, as you say, is that the audience for a certain kind of
cinephile-friendly filmmaking is fragmented: people who go to see Godard,
people who go to see Eastwood, people who go to see David O. Russell.
But shit like Harry Potter still gets the audience Hawks and Hitchcock once
had - bigger. It's rare that an auteur imprints a bit of himself on one of these
lemons - Ang Lee in Hulk, say. And the case of M. Night Shyamalan is
heartening, but I'm not sure he will be able to hold onto more than "the
Shyamalan audience" if critics keep missing the point.
23381
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:49pm
Subject: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
> What about Ford? "Three for them, one for me."
I tend to think that Ford was bullshitting people when he said things
like that. No such attitude is discernible from his actual films.
Compare even the worst of Ford with something like Dennis Hopper's
CHASERS, which might as well have the words 'this is the only kind of
thing I could get the money for' imprinted into every frame.
And the case of M. Night Shyamalan is
> heartening, but I'm not sure he will be able to hold onto more
than "the
> Shyamalan audience" if critics keep missing the point.
I like Shyamalan's films well enough, but you only need run SIGNS
alongside, say, Ophuls' CAUGHT in order to see that something has
changed in American cinema, and not for the better. Shyamalan's films
(like Burton's) may be stylistically audacious, but none of them can
be said to challenge their audiences in the way that Sirk, Preminger
and even Cukor did on a regular basis.
23382
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:53pm
Subject: Re: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES (Was: Back to identification)
> To quote Lisa Alspector (hey - where did she go?) on FUNNY
GAMES, "to suggest
> that what's depicted on-screen isn't violence is grossly
inaccurate." I still
> think it's one of the ten or twenty very worst films worth hating
of the last
> ten years.
When I say that the violence is offscreen, I mean images which are
traditionally defined as violent (beatings, shootings, etc.)Of
course there is threat of violence in every frame. And we see both
the cruelty of the captors and the suffering of the film's
protagonists.
What is it exactly that makes you hate this film so much?
23383
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:59pm
Subject: Re: Is This for Real? David Thomson's New Book
> "...As a work of history The Whole Equation is idiosyncratic,
> imperious, infuriating, full of lovely writing, and just a little bit
> mad; but then a bumpy ride is what you get when you ask a unicorn to
> pull a cart. Thomson has little time for the crudities of the silent
> era, for instance, and judges DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation to
> be no good when stood next to Mahler's Ninth Symphony ("listen to that
> music and you cannot ignore the naiveté, the coarseness, in Griffith")."
>
> Aside from dismissing a filmmaker who I love, Thomson is dismissing
> the entire silent era?
> I know that most members of the a_film_by already have it against
> Thomson for his book on Welles and his indifference to current world
> cinema, but really ... I find this absurd.
I haven't read this new book, but Thomson is by no means anti-silent film.
He has always been anti-Griffith, though. Seems a little odd to drag
Mahler in there, but he could as easily have used Feuillade as a club to
beat Griffith with, as he did in BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY.
I'm always a little surprised at how hated Thomson is around these parts:
he's bizarre and contentious, but his work has meant a lot for me. My
impression from the last edition of the dictionary is that he's still
seeing movies by the boatload and recommending little-known filmmakers. -
Dan
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23384
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:05pm
Subject: Re: Re: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES (Was: Back to identification)
> What is it exactly that makes you hate this film so much?
Well, it's pretty open about putting the screws to the audience, isn't it?
It shouldn't be hard to understand why any viewer who feels uncomfortable
with that kind of tension should resent Haneke - he dangles the
possibility of release in front of us, withdraws it, then laughs. - Dan
23385
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:06pm
Subject: Re: Haneke vs. Tarantino (Was: Back to identification)
> I have a bad response to the sadism in Tarantino (a director I
like), but
> I don't think it's unexamined. Well, maybe unexamined, but not
> unacknowledged, anyway. Tarantino's attitude seems to be, "Here
are my
> films, here's the sadism - what's the problem?" It's a bit of a
game for
> him - fortunately, like his mentor Hawks, he plays interesting
games, not
> all about sadism, that reflect on the fiction-making process.
It's clear that there are no Haneke fans in this group. As for
Tarantino, I think you're giving him way too much credit. I enjoy
most of his films, but when he plays rape for laughs (as he does in
both "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill"), his movies get uncomfortable
for all the wrong reasons.
As for violence, compare the ear-slicing scene in "Reservoir Dogs"
to just about any frame of "Funny Games." Though Tarantino also uses
offscreen space during the most graphic violence, he's already
established the Madsen character as a charismatic, cool psychopath.
Then by backing the scene with a cheesy 70s pop tune, he undercuts
the scene. It's more hip comedy than abject horror.
Violence has consequences in "Funny Games" and the film is
structured to suggest that viewers have a choice. I think Tarantino
is the bigger bully, dispatching bodies without consequence for
queasy laughs and/or to satisfy genre conventions.
23386
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:10pm
Subject: Re: Re: Back to identification (Was: favorite videoclips)
> Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. I was reading J. Hoberman's review of Noé's
> "Irréversible" this evening and was struck by how important the
> Belluci character's sexual attractiveness seemed to be to his
> description of the rape scene: "gorgeous," "appetizingly wrapped in
> the flimsiest of frocks," "beautiful".
I think Hoberman was trying to play up Bellucci's beauty as a way of
holding the film responsible for the attractive aspects of the rape. - Dan
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23387
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:11pm
Subject: Thomson and Thompson (was Re: Is This for Real? David Thomson's New Book
My
> impression from the last edition of the dictionary is that he's
still
> seeing movies by the boatload and recommending little-known
filmmakers. -
> Dan
>
Such as? My impression is that he has to be dragged kicking and
screaming into screenings of contemporary non-American films, and
obviously resents the experience (see his Kiarostami entry).
It's interesting that we should be discussing this a few days after
the death of Hunter S. Thompson, because David Thomson has now become
a gonzo film critic, proudly boasting of the gaps in his knowledge
rather than attempting to film them.
23388
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:20pm
Subject: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "thebradstevens"
wrote:
>
>Shyamalan's films
> (like Burton's) may be stylistically audacious, but none of them can
> be said to challenge their audiences in the way that Sirk, Preminger
> and even Cukor did on a regular basis.
Sixth Sense was a run-for-cover film (after his first feature bombed), but
Unreakable and The Village and even Signs have uncomfortable things to
say about the utility of evil -- in a context that explicitly recalls 9/11, and the
uses the Bush administration has put it to, in The Village.
Burton is more the pure esthete, but I'd say that Ed Wood challenged the
audience. And, to stay w. Ford, Edward Scissorhands is a mythopoeic portrait
of the author like Young Mister Lincoln. And Winona is a hell of a lot more
ambiguous than Anne Rutledge! Neither of those films made any money, and
Batman Returns, a freer film than Batman (and a more political one, for what
it's worth), performed disappointingly, obliging Warners to bring in
Schumacher to save the franchise.
But Burton and Shyamalan are cineastes pursuing individual paths after the
esthehtic bankruptcy of the studios, like Joe Dante. Joe actually likes Burton -
he said regretfully of Mars Attacks that he never thought Burton would make a
film that bored him, which I agree with - and hates Shyamalan. But all three of
them could end up painted into the same corner. Joe had a hit with Howling
and a blockbuster with Gremlins, but it has been slim pickins at the boxoffice
ever since. I could easily see Shyamalan going that way, and Burton as well.
Are today's cineastes as good as their ancestors? Keats was no Milton, and
Swinburne was no Keats. It tends to play out like that, although these things
are also a matter of taste. Personally, I prefer Browning to his grandfather
Shelley. But I'd be hardpressed to make a case for Browning's superiority
apart from my fondness for him.
23389
From: Matt Armstrong
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:20pm
Subject: Re: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES (Was: Back to identification)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> > What is it exactly that makes you hate this film so much?
>
> Well, it's pretty open about putting the screws to the audience,
isn't it?
> It shouldn't be hard to understand why any viewer who feels
uncomfortable
> with that kind of tension should resent Haneke - he dangles the
> possibility of release in front of us, withdraws it, then laughs. -
Dan
Dangles and withdraws. Yes. Laughs? I guess that's a matter of
interpretation.
I've read that Haneke intended the film as a "slap in the face" so I
don't think his sadism is unexamined. Someone mentioned the Binoche
scene in "Code Unknown" which is an autocritique of his style.
That you may not want to take a slap in the face is understandable,
but I don't think Haneke is unaware of the problem. I'd argue that
many great directors have put the screws to their audience, everyone
from Hitchcock to Von Trier.
23390
From: thebradstevens
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:27pm
Subject: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
> Sixth Sense was a run-for-cover film (after his first feature
bombed), but
> Unreakable and The Village and even Signs have uncomfortable things
to
> say about the utility of evil -- in a context that explicitly
recalls 9/11, and the
> uses the Bush administration has put it to, in The Village.
Haven't seen THE VILLAGE yet (I'm waiting for it to turn up on
Blockbuster's ex-rental DVD rack - hey, welcome to the 21st century),
but all I took away from SIGNS was the sense that this is what all
American films will look like once the Christian fundamentalists take
over America.
23391
From: filipefurtado
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:22pm
Subject: Re: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
> I tend to think that Ford was bullshitting people when he said things
> like that.
And so how did you take a film like Mogambo?
The change in audience taste is a very sensitive subject here in Brazil since the ticket prices are currently so high (compared to economic reality of the majority of brazilians) that only the middle upper class still go to theatres. Which combine with the fact that most of the brazilian middle class is ashamed of any brazilian film that isn't of obvious "quality" creates a current state of things were José Mojica Marins is for a decade trying to get money for a new Coffin Joe film and failing even tough his films sell really well on DVD and most TV producers would love to have him making an appearance in his shows (and Marins works on low budget!).
Anyway, changes in audience has happened for all sort of films. I was imprresed yearteday while saynmg Mike Hodges' pretty bad I'll Sleep When I'm Dead about how much it plays like a remake of Hodges' Get Carter that could play on an arthouse theatre which was probably the only way he could have some success on non-british markets. Ferrara's Ms.45 and New Rose Hotel have pretty much the same artistic sensibility but they are clearly design for different audiences.
Filipe
__________________________________________________________________________
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23392
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:29pm
Subject: Re: Re: Haneke vs. Tarantino (Was: Back to identification)
> It's clear that there are no Haneke fans in this group. As for
> Tarantino, I think you're giving him way too much credit.
Haneke is kind of a genius - his visual style is amazingly precise. But I
confess that my problems with him have kept me from liking any of his
films. The sadism issue aside, he makes some weird structural decisions
that I find kind of messy. Still, CODE INCONNU and THE PIANO TEACHER
impress me in spite of myself.
> I enjoy
> most of his films, but when he plays rape for laughs (as he does in
> both "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill"), his movies get uncomfortable
> for all the wrong reasons.
I would have said the right reasons.... Who else would have had the Ving
Rhames character raped in PULP FICTION, and then drawn it into a plot
point? This is a rather direct acknowledgment of the anxiety underlying
the male sexual posture.
> As for violence, compare the ear-slicing scene in "Reservoir Dogs" to
> just about any frame of "Funny Games." Though Tarantino also uses
> offscreen space during the most graphic violence, he's already
> established the Madsen character as a charismatic, cool psychopath. Then
> by backing the scene with a cheesy 70s pop tune, he undercuts the scene.
> It's more hip comedy than abject horror.
What's really horrifying about that scene is the way the sound mixer fades
out the tinny radio effect on the Stealers Wheel song and fades in the
exciting Dolby version. It's like Tarantino saying, "Okay, kids - have
fun!"
I am horrified by this. But, you know, he's a complicated guy. And, as
Felipe said, his sadism is offered to the audience as a pleasure, whereas
Haneke's is directed at us.
> Violence has consequences in "Funny Games" and the film is structured to
> suggest that viewers have a choice.
I must admit that I exercised my choice about halfway through FUNNY
GAMES.... What do you make of that rewind scene? The violence against
the invaders didn't have consequences! Everyone in that film seemed like
a semiotic construct rather than a person - which is fine, but then the
constructs are arranged to punish us for believing in fiction. - Dan
23393
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:28pm
Subject: Re: Thomson and Thompson (was Re: Is This for Real? David Thomson's New Book
--- thebradstevens wrote:
>
> It's interesting that we should be discussing this a
> few days after
> the death of Hunter S. Thompson, because David
> Thomson has now become
> a gonzo film critic, proudly boasting of the gaps in
> his knowledge
> rather than attempting to film them.
>
They shoukldn't be mentioned in the smae breath.
Hunter S. Thompson was/ is a writer of great
originality and insight.
David Thomson is a lower life form.
__________________________________
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23394
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:31pm
Subject: Re: Thomson and Thompson (was Re: Is This for Real? David Thomson's New Book
>> My impression from the last edition of the dictionary is that he's
> still
>> seeing movies by the boatload and recommending little-known
> filmmakers. -
>
> Such as?
Axel Corti? Christopher Hampton? There were others. - Dan
23395
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:33pm
Subject: Re: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
--- hotlove666 wrote:
> Joe actually likes Burton -
> he said regretfully of Mars Attacks that he never
> thought Burton would make a
> film that bored him, which I agree with
Now that truly surprises me. I adore "Mars Attacks!"
The Martians have much in common with Joe's "Gremlins"
Maybe it's a tad too close to J.G. Ballard for Joe's
taste.
In any event Burton is an extremely talented but
wildly uneven auteur.
__________________________________
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Yahoo! Sports - Sign up for Fantasy Baseball.
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23396
From: Craig Keller
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 6:59pm
Subject: Re: Is This for Real? David Thomson's New Book
On Thursday, February 24, 2005, at 09:05 AM, K. A. Westphal wrote:
> Thomson was at 57th Street Books in Chicago a few weeks ago promoting
> his new book. I live a few blocks away, but I was busy that night, so
> I couldn't hear him expound on that thing called the movies to a
> nodding, New Yorker-reading audience.
I'm part of the New Yorker-reading audience. Just because their movie
critics are bozos doesn't mean the entire magazine is written by, nor
presumably written for, schmucks.
craig.
23397
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:09pm
Subject: Re: Re: pieceashit FUNNY GAMES (Was: Back to identification)
> I've read that Haneke intended the film as a "slap in the face" so I
> don't think his sadism is unexamined. Someone mentioned the Binoche
> scene in "Code Unknown" which is an autocritique of his style.
I don't think it's unexamined. I've never read an interview with the guy
- I just think he should be careful about throwing stones at Tarantino
when he's living in a glass house.
> That you may not want to take a slap in the face is understandable, but
> I don't think Haneke is unaware of the problem. I'd argue that many
> great directors have put the screws to their audience, everyone from
> Hitchcock to Von Trier.
Don't get me started on von Trier....
This difference among viewers is interesting, though. Some people run
screaming from Haneke or von Trier, and others don't feel any antipathy.
I'm in the first camp, and I honestly don't know whether people in the
second camp don't feel aggressed upon, or whether they do feel it, but
accept it as a good experience, as I do with, say, Hitchcock.
Hitchcock clearly has a lot of sadism...but I must say that I think he has
pretty amazing judgment about using it to worthwhile ends. When he draws
us in to a situation, then makes us uncomfortable, the discomfort always
has some complexity, takes us to a place where we're deprived of easy
answers, forces some greater overview or empathy. Sometimes he
slips...but it's remarkable that someone whose personality is so keyed to
sadism should abuse it so little. - Dan
23398
From:
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 2:17pm
Subject: Challenged audiences (was Day of the middlebrow)
In a message dated 2/24/05 11:56:14 AM, bradstevens22@h... writes:
>
> I like Shyamalan's films well enough, but you only need run SIGNS
> alongside, say, Ophuls' CAUGHT in order to see that something has
> changed in American cinema, and not for the better. >>
>
I agree. But run THE VILLAGE or UNBREAKABLE alongside CAUGHT and Shyamalan
cuts Ophuls.
> Shyamalan's films (like Burton's) may be stylistically audacious, but none
> of them can
> be said to challenge their audiences in the way that Sirk, Preminger and
> even Cukor did on a regular basis.
>
To what precise extent did these directors actually challenge audiences? I've
yet to read a 1950s account of Sirk as a master of ironic distanciation. Did
1953 audiences really take ANGEL FACE as a masterpiece of unbearbaly creepy,
deadpan voyeurism? And lordy, how did THE WOMEN challenge 1939 audiences? I'm
seriously asking. I don't know.
Also, I don't think a challenged audience is a good one, ditto for a
challenging film. If you cried at the end of IMITATION OF LIFE (1959) and saw none of
Sirk's critiques of Lora's myopia, you still "got" it as far as I'm concerned.
Kevin John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
23399
From: Travis Miles
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:21pm
Subject: Re: Re: Haneke vs. Tarantino (Was: Back to identification)
> I must admit that I exercised my choice about halfway through FUNNY
> GAMES.... What do you make of that rewind scene? The violence against
> the invaders didn't have consequences! Everyone in that film seemed like
> a semiotic construct rather than a person - which is fine, but then the
> constructs are arranged to punish us for believing in fiction. - Dan
One of the closest analogues I can think of to FUNNY GAMES is a Spike
Jonze-directed IKEA commercial where an old desk lamp is being replaced. It
droops its head, is taken outside of the warm apartment and set by the trash
in the rain, where it longingly gazes up at the window where it used to
reside. Melancholy music swells as we see the lamp's replacement set down on
the desk and turned on. Then, a toe-headed design geek with an outrageous
Nordic accent appears: "Many of you feel bad for this lamp. That is because
you're crazy. It has no feelings! And the new one is much better." And I did
indeed feel abashed and a little crazy and a little at semiotic sea ("And
what is anything in my life but a sign for which I feel attraction or
repulsion?") Good grief.
That being said, I find FUNNY GAMES a fascinating and worthy experiment in
emotional transference (I felt bad for the lamps), and quite outside any
notion of the "morality" of violence which got bandied about by the press
and by Haneke. It turned into a ridiculous sort of contest, exemplified by
Mark Kermode saying something to the effect of "Can you outlast the
humorless Austrian?"
23400
From: Peter Henne
Date: Thu Feb 24, 2005 7:27pm
Subject: Re: Day of the middlebrow (was Re: Night of the living middlebrow
I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's impossible to ignore the huge demographic differences between today's movie audiences and those of the 1950s. Basically, most movies were made for adults back then--highbrow, lowbrow, or anywhere inbetween, but grownups who expected their concerns and fantasies to be reflected back on the screen. The industry from top to bottom is fueled by a youth market now; I would hazard to guess that the age bracket which determines what will be popular is 10 to 15 years younger than it was 50 years ago. That's going to affect everything that can be said about middlebrow tastes. You can't simply go looking for contemporary equivalents to Sirk and Hawks, because those filmmakers so often addressed an audience that was at a different, more mature stage of life, and the characters of their films struggle with moral issues (marriage, career, war service, etc.) that most of the popular audience today hasn't even encountered in life yet. More
importantly, the films had leeway to strain for higher artistic ground because the audience receiving them was (at least a little) better equipped to process complex emotions and intellectual dilemmas. The average moviegoer of 1955 was substantially older and wiser due to life experience than the 16-year-old kid of today.
Peter Henne
thebradstevens wrote:
It's not so much that the films have changed as
that the audiences have. There simply isn't the same kind of mass
audience that could be addressed by a Sirk or a Preminger. We have a
situation now where even a director as talented as Martin Scorsese
can talk about balancing films he wants to make, such as THE LAST
TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, with films he makes for them, such as CAPE
FEAR. (The 'them' in question might be either studio executives or
the mass audience.) It's impossible to imagine a Hawks or a Hitchcock
thinking in these terms, making distinctions between the kinds of
films they want to make and the kinds of films audiences want to see.
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