uumm,film didn’t begin that way,i see..so Bazin and Eisenstein are what?remnants of a “serious” essayist school of thought?even Bergson started commenting as what does cinema mean for the whole of arts…
i prefer to become a snobbish ass and continue looking at film the same way i read poetry…be it a blockbuster or an avant-garde piece,film is all and is classified as High Art…
but if you want to look at it as something “middlebrow”,by all means,do so…
I never said there weren’t theorists in the early days of film, although Eisenstein has been rather disreputed. I was talking about Film Studies and the entire apparatus of critical theory (structuralism, really) that’s been applied to film in the past thirty or so years.
I love film, of course, but I don’t pretend that every film I watch and enjoy is high art. I think that’s a mistake. At the same time, I appreciate artistic films in a different, more reverential way. We’ve had this discussion so many times.
sorry,am new here,but i guess the regulars have finished with these convos,huh?
Eisenstein has been rather disreputed,yeah,ok,and i say Ebert is a better critic than Eisenstein,ho,ho ho,hilarious!!..
Film Studies is one of my goals,to create a new form of criticism,yes,there has to be!!in every other art form critical studies are twined to works of art or attempted projects!why shouldn’t Films become a part of this junction?
film theory is all about critical theory at the same time as Jaws is enjoyed the same way as watching Salo…weird examples?
well..i believe it can be this way,just because some genres have a light method to pull us into the big screen,doesn’t mean film as a medium won’t belong to the critical research that’s been going on in every single form of fuckin’ Art…
I guess the question is which one is more honest.
Well, you don’t have to reinvent fire, Film Studies already exists, just jump on board. And because structuralism is about seeing works of art as messages from the culture or zeitgeist rather than as the unique creations of individuals, then, yes, Jaws can be deconstructed as well as Salo can — but I don’t believe in that. My sense of film theory is still geared toward the filmmaker’s intentions, and to making distinctions between films that have ideas and films that become the ideas of the critics.
but in film theory,everything is included!!!your last sentence is a great addition to what film theory is!!!!!
so why can’t it all be as multiple horizons?it would be extremely boring to have only One way of Criticism..
i don’t mean the academic sort of Film Studies,i mean the one where film can be explored the same way as ALL OTHER ARTS!!!!!!
Because very few critics are brilliant enough to compete with actual artists in terms of generating new ideas. So it becomes masturbatory.
still,it’s not about competing with the artists!!it’s about producing expanding conceptions…
i for instance want to become a researcher of Art..i don’t care if my writings or ideas will ever reach a critical appraisal of the same status as that of Henry James’ or Simone de Beauvoir’s….i only want to share…in any way possible and without restrictions…
if that is masturbation,i suppose i’m a-sexual then…
Well, I just mean that some “highbrow” critics write about films in a way that bears little resemblance to the films themselves — you read them and think, “Is that the film I saw?” Because they’re forcing the film into a preconceived idea, using the film to promote some aspect of deconstruction. I’m basically against that.
yes,you know…i think that’s the main reason people have abandoned reading Bazin….pity…
i guess i wanna de-construct and construct films at the same time!!!!same goes for music,photography,generally all..it’s variant that way,less dullness…
thats right.
“To subordinate criticism to an externally derived critical attitude is to exaggerate the values in literature that can be related to the external source, whatever it is.” – Northrop Frye
“The axioms and postulates of criticism, however, have to grow out of the art it deals with.” – Frye
I like Bazin. I think he does respond very fully and sensually to films, appreciative of their beauty as well as the ideas in them.
Demitris,
From what I have read from Bazin I never felt like he was trying to sound smart as most critics now a days do. He writes from a “middlebrow” point of view, and maybe people don’t read his work anymore because they are too busy forcing themselves to enjoy Weekend and then trying to figure out why they should like it. They are too busy trying to sound smart, in other words they are trying to come up with a sentence such as this:
“To subordinate criticism to an externally derived critical attitude is to exaggerate the values in literature that can be related to the external source, whatever it is.”
a sentence such as that is too busy trying to sound smart? i dont know about that. ive read way more difficult concepts and writing from bazin himself.
Speaking of Bazin, I recently came across this paragraph in his Renoir book, and I think it’s really fascinating. I’m trying to understand it better and I was wondering what other people think:
“French CanCan seems to me to be more, however, than just the successful integration of a static pictorial style with film, for in film there is a new dimension: the dimension of time. And I daresay that this movie is not only as successful as Renoir’s painting; it is like a painting which exists in time and has an interior development. This proposition suggests some contradictions which should be taken care of immediately. If true painting is not anecdotal (and Auguste Renoir’s, above all, certainly is not), then any temporal development of that painting cannot be dramatic. The inestimable importance of French CanCan lies in its implicit understanding of this logic and in its original treatment of pictorial inspiration which at once fulfills and casts new light on the evolution of what was begun in Coach. In the past we have probably praised films which freed themselves from dramatic categories, but that was by way of affirming their literary inspiration. In this case it is a question of an entirely different aesthetic approach. The painting is only temporarily static in an objective sense. In fact, for the person who looks at it, it represents a universe to discover and explore. This sort of study takes time; so, practically speaking, the dimension of time is indeed inherent in the painting. But if this painting came to life, began to last, and to undergo changes affecting its plastic equilibrium as well as its subject, it is clear that this sort of objective time would not take the place of the subjective time experienced by the viewer, but would on the contrary reinforce it. And this is precisely the impression one has after seeing French CanCan: that the movie exists in two modes of duration at once, the objective mode of events and the subjective mode of contemplating these events.”
Descriptively, the high/middle/lowbrow distinction is badly dated, nearly as badly as the phrenology the terms derive from, and seems to me not especially useful unless you’re one of those self-appointed “elites” in need of a little quick self-justification.
Berjuan, I have seen all of those films, and I still believe F&A is the best, with Persona following close behind. F&A is obviously his most personal film, and I think this results in it being the one he is most passionate about. This shows up on screen.
seems like bazin is trying to compare renoir the son to renoir the father. or to somehow say the film “french can-can” operates like a painting at the same time it operates as a film, which doesnt make much sense when you try to pin that thought down. but at the end of the day, the point he seems to be trying to make is that young renoir is as much of a master as his father. the reference to painting becomes a sort of awkward accomplice in this effort, also a predictable one.
Drew,
Cool, I’m going to revisit F & A, from what I hear from you I feel that maybe I didn’t pay as much attention to it as I should have.
Bobby, what intrigues me is that Bazin seems to be praising CanCan for calling attention to the sense of time in which it moves and in which we watch it, which flies directly in the face of how we often praise films — for getting us so caught up in them that we lose all sense of time.
yes. he’s praising the film for “existing in two modes of duration at once.” no easy feat, and not easy to analyze either. he’s basically saying that the film presents objectivity AND subjectivity at the same time for the viewer to contemplate. tricky stuff, and hard to unravel. this is what i meant by the difficulty of bazin’s writing.
A lot of Bazin’s writing in poorly translated (into English, at least), so that doesn’t make him any easier to read.
What does it matter? A great film is a great film? The whole brow hierarchy is inane anyway, and it’s insulting to great works of art that have developed a middlebrow reputation for reasons unrelated to the aesthetics of the work itself.
Anyone who thinks Fanny and Alexander isn’t cinematic should watch the Christmas party scene… With no sound.
He was considered highbrow in the 60’s.
But he is definitely just an all around classic filmmaker in the league of John Ford, Fellini, Kurosawa, Kubrick, etc…just like Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso are for painting.
But Bresson:
What’s wrong with being a classic filmmaker as long as you’re great. Persona and 8 1/2 are masterpieces or at least I think so.
Monet, Van Gogh, and Picasso aren’t exactly middlebrow either. I can understand what would possess someone to label them as such, but I still think calling them middlebrow would be unfair. Andy Warhol and David Fincher are middlebrow.
He was considered “middle brow” because he always strove to entertain—or so he said—while still trying to grapple with serious issues. As I understand it, according to the “high-brow, low-brow, middle-brow logic,” low-brow filmmakers are those who are almost completely focused on entertaining (and often in “cheap” ways, through sex, violence, action, etc.), or at least with that as their primary goal, while high brow filmmakers are those who work completely beyond considerations of entertaining an audience: in other words, people aspiring to “high art”—Bresson, Tarkovski, Bela Tarr, etc. There’s a certain type of filmgoer who hates the middle brow artists, loving their Howard Hawks and their Abbas Kiarostami, but thinking the filmmakers in “the middle” are just pretentious. For me, those directors who can juggle the demands of gripping an audience emotionally while also making serous, sincere statements about issues of real importance are doing something really amazing and, yes, valuable.
The term “middlebrow” is often applied to art forms that are considered entertainment, and therefore essentially made for profit. Cinema, like pop music, has long since fallen under this category. This is what made Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band such an important album––it strove to elevate pop music to the realm often ascribed to classical music, that is: the “highbrow.” Given the great wealth of cinematic history, obviously these are outdated classifications to apply to such a vibrant art form. While it has taken the general public longer to recognize it as such, cinema is no less of an art form than the theater, or any other art form for that matter. These kinds of categorizations should be considered no more than relics of another age, no longer applicable to an ever-changing artistic landscape.
What I think this topic was initially attempting to address was the reactionary or revisionist criticism that has been leveled at Bergman, especially since his death. Jonathan Rosenbaum, in his article, “Scenes From An Overrated Career,” asserts what has already been discussed: that Bergman was essentially a theater director masquerading as a filmmaker. I, personally, consider him to be incorrect on this point, and I would cite the sheer cinematic quality of many Bergman films, notably, as has been mentioned, Fanny & Alexander. While Bergman was certainly influenced by the theater, his first love, he unified this approach with a purely cinematic vocabulary all his own. That is what is on display in his masterful approach to Cries & Whispers, starting with his use of color. In the piece, Rosenbaum also labels Bergman as an “entertainer,” in line with Hollywood mainstays like George Cukor, which is where this talk of “middlebrow” comes into context. He also claims that Bergman was too strongly tied to a bygone age for his films to have relevance at the time of their release, and even less so today. Of course, while he did have a certain predilection for material that one might consider distant to the modern age, I don’t believe his treatment of it was anything less than universal, nor do I believe that these choices defined his career. When people see The Seventh Seal, they aren’t moved on the basis of its medieval setting, they are moved by the emotion of the picture, because it translates well past its setting. Certainly The Silence or Persona cannot be considered outdated expressions, then or now. It seems that Rosenbaum is reaching to prove his point, grasping for facts that aren’t there, and to the degree that a person’s opinion cannot categorically be considered “wrong,” I do feel that he is incredibly misguided in his argument on the matter.
I’d love to live in a world where Bergman is middlebrow unfortunatley this is just a fantasy. My opinion is that people don’t relate to and may have grown out of or grown accustom to the same modern condition shown in films like Persona or Through a Glass Darkly. People might look at scenes like the one in Persona when Alma confides in the actress on the beach and laugh. People have come accustom to Bergmans themes and it may recieve little impact in return. Bergman himself said that The Theater was his wife and The Cinema his mistress but those films are spectacles of feeling and composition I mean I’m a fan and when I saw Persona he took my picture my mouth wide open.
I wonder if some people react to Antonioni in this same way?
oopyman
who has the authority to declare what brow an art form is lol