It’s a rarity—a satire that fully works. My only criticism is that the frantic camera-work is better suited to television, and paradoxically decreases the realism Ianucci’s going for.
Ianucci appeared in person at the film’s SFIFF screening and said that he’d like to make a slapstick comedy—he’s a big fan of What’s Up Doc? and wanted to do something in a similar vein.
I’m currently writing an article on Preston Sturges and in the middle of rewatching and watching all of his films. So far I’ve found all of them except for Les Carnets du Major Thompson, aka The French, They Are a Funny Race.
The film seems to be totally unavailable for viewing—unlike more obscure entries like The Sin of Harold Diddlebock or Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, it doesn’t even air on television.
Its reputation isn’t particularly high, and most of the reviews are negative. Bosley Crowther, who’d championed Sturges’s 40s comedies, called it “a generally listless little picture, without wit, electricity or even plot” in his New York Times review. The Radio Times called it a “very sad last outing” but admits “there’s much to enjoy here (‘Three goodish jokes,’ asserted the late, great film critic David Shipman) in this semi-sophisticated farce with a genuinely Gallic air… But be warned: the crude dubbing mars the American version, saddling such French stars as the delectable Martine Carol and the funny Noël-Noël with extremely unfortunate voice talents.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum is more positive: “The critical consensus finds this work painfully unfunny, but that wasn’t my reaction when I managed to find a print in the early 80s. ‘Painfully unfunny’ is the way I’d describe The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949), Sturges’s last Hollywood picture, but Les carnets was funny, albeit in an uncharacteristically quiet way–-thoughtful and courtly rather than raucous and lunatic, as Sturges’s best pictures were. Viewers hoping for the old Sturges had their expectations dashed, and that apparently prevented them from seeing more fragile and less obvious traits.”
Pauline Kael, another Sturges fan, wrote that “a film based on a collection of minor essays has, at the outset, a certain skittishness; the essays themselves formed The Notebooks of Major Thompson, which was written, not by Major Thompson, but by Pierre Daninos, and it was a Frenchman’s idea of an Englishman’s account of French life. The American writer-director Preston Sturges, an expatriate in the late 50s, turned all this into an amusing series of wheezes—-a kind of literate vaudeville. Maybe you can no longer laugh at anecdotes like the British mother’s wedding-night advice to her daughter (‘My dear, it’s utterly unbearable, but just close your eyes and think of England’) but acted out, this sort of thing acquires a fresh insanity. There is one routine that is Sturges at his best: an English courtship on horseback, and there are divertissements on French bureaucracy, English body-fitness, and so on.”
The most positive review appeared in Films and Filming and is reproduced at http://chainedandperfumed.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/dig-the-critics-3/ . It reveals that the picture was “savagely cut from 105 minutes to 74”—one wonders what the original cut was like, and whether it would have had a higher reputation.
I’m curious know why this film has remained so hard to watch. What archive is it stored in, and what are the rights issues? Is there any way to score a print or DVD-r?
If anyone can suggest a way to see this incredibly rare film I’d be most grateful.
You are right Francisco, they do have a print: http://www.cinematheque.fr/fr/projections/archives/fiche-manifestation/carnets-major-thompson,3541.html
And they screened it twice in 2007 for a Sturges retrospective. I curse fate that I don’t live a few thousand miles nearer Paris.
Further updates: the UCLA Film & Theater Archive several copies of the film on VHS tape and 16 mm. safety prints. LA is considerably closer than Paris, so I might end up making the 400 mile journey down there.
“I don’t like Yasujirō Ozu. In Japan I hate Yasujirō Ozu. Everyone likes him but… because Ozu’s a god of Japanese movies. The Anti-god. The Antichrist.”
Link to full interview here: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/channeling-chaos-an-interview-with-sion-sono/
(Excerpt posted for amusement and not out of any negative feelings toward Ozu the Antichrist.)
I think he’s serious in disliking Ozu, or at least Ozu’s influence, though that doesn’t mean we have to. Another excerpt from the interview:
“SS: This is basically Japanese movies. Almost all Japanese movies are about families, about couples, about getting married, about the bond of parents, sons and daughters. Ozu’s – all including Japanese films. So I don’t like this. Yes, always I’m interested in families and Noriko’s Dinner Table is about families…So…Love Exposure too. And, ah…but the contemporary family, almost all aren’t that peaceful or close – they’re broken. Every day parents kill children, children kill parents. We always hear this news. It’s not Ozu’s world. But Japanese movies are in the tradition of Ozu’s family. The peaceful family. The lovely family. They always make these movies. Peaceful family. Lovely couple. This is not real.
“3:AM: You think Ozu’s films are irrelevant?
“SS: Yes.”
He seems to be reacting against the fact that Ozu’s films are held up by many Japanese for their family values, reinforcing dominant trends in mainstream domestic Japanese film.
“As if there aren’t enough Japanese films that show parents killing children or children killing parents or ghosts killing children or monster dogs killing babies, ad nauseum.”
For Westerners Japan can often seem like the site of all things fucked-up. Sion however is speaking from a Japanese perspective—when he says that “all Japanese movies are about families, about couples, about getting married, about the bond of parents, sons and daughters” he’s speaking from the vantage point of someone within a specific culture, one where Ozu is (according to him) held up as the sort of model for family stories. It raises the issue of how Ozu is ideologically seen and co-opted in Japan, and whether his status there can seem like a negative example for current Japanese filmmakers. Those issue are ultimately separate from the actual quality of Ozu’s films, which few here would deny.
I wouldn’t call him the greatest, but Clive Brook’s On Approval leaves one wishing he’d directed more than one film. I had never known the surrealist potential of stuffy drawing-room comedy until Brook had adapted, directed and starred in that cracked little comedy.
- Sono is not a mere shock artist-his latest film has after all received coverage in the Auteur’s Notebook of all places. Not a plaudit reserved for directors who analyze a society superficially.
—The question of Koreda’s influences is an interesting one. At a Q&A for Still Walking Koreda was asked about Ozu. He replied that the greater influence on the film was that of Naruse.
-Ari: what I was trying to say was that to a Western audience Japan seems to crank an endless stream of fucked-up movies (not all of which are critical of the family), but to someone within Japan itself this may not be an accurate picture of the cultural landscape. The serene (even in conflict or when critical) family story taken from/inspired by Ozu-and apparently still popular—may seem more oppressive and culturally prevalent to a Japanese filmmaker like Sono, who claims that foreigners like his films whereas Japanese hate them. It raises the issue of how much Ozu is has been conservatively co-opted in Japan, and whether young filmmakers feel the need to escape from his influence.
—I love Ozu as much as the next man on this forum, so I hope no one will think I am taking Sono’s side, rather than explaining why he might have it.
Josh, I am not trying to avoid your point. But I was suggesting, that just as the questioner was sure Ozu was the dominant influence on Koreda’s film until she was contradicted, that the nature of a specific influence can seem like a sure thing when it actually isn’t. This doesn’t mean that I discount Ozu’s undoubted influence on Koreda.
I don’t think Sono is childishly blaming Ozu for not making films more like his. I think he resents Ozu’s work for reinforcing a culturally prevalent and maybe even oppressive set of expectations in Japan that influences the reception of his work in Japan. Sono’s view of Ozu’s work is obviously simplistic and exaggerated, and should hardly be viewed as a penetrating takedown of the director. But it may say a great deal about how Ozu is viewed by the mainstream in Japan, and I think that is the most interesting issue raised by his comments.
I have dim memories of watching a bad quality video tape—as an experiment in editing it’s quite interesting. As a performance film it’s a failure, but it has no interest in being one anyway. Yet, since the performances themselves are now legendary and regarded as some of the best in the history of rock, it’s frustrating to see them cut to pieces.
The “An Autumn Afternoon” anecdote would be the best piece of evidence with regard to Ozu’s sexuality (It would be good to know its actual source). The love letter wouldn’t be conclusive in itself, since situational homosexuality occurs often enough in all boys schools. That would leave devotion to one’s mother, which is not the best evidence one would hope for.
During the last weekend I managed to see the film on VHS at UCLA. (I’m guessing UCLA had made the VHS from one of the two 16mm prints in their collection.
And yes, it really is a rather underrated film—a more gentle Sturges, though with occasional slapstick flourishes. According to one reviewer it was originally 105 minutes, and the 80 minute version I saw felt abrupt at times.
The media lab I saw it in prohibited making copies of course,but I took several pages of notes. Though I can’t help raise the film’s reputation by spreading it around, I can try turning my notes into an article, with the hope that some online film magazine will be interested in running it.
I wish I knew. Apparently the film was played on television a few decades back, but I don’t believe it’s aired since then. And while even The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend received a VHS release, Funny Race is bereft of that. (I wonder if Criterion would ever consider releasing Diddlebock, Blonde and Funny Race as an Eclipse set.) The film’s near total unavailability would be the sort of thing worth contacting the Sturges family about, but the official Sturges website doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2007.
Josh—I naturally second the idea of a Late Sturges set, but it could probably do without THE GREAT MOMENT, since it’s already in Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection. It would be different if someone found the a print of the original version, TRIUMPH OVER PAIN, since, judging from Sturges’ script (which can be read in the book Four More Screenplays ) the studio really fucked up the original.
Including DIDDLEBOCK on an Eclipse set would be great, because it’s currently circulating in several public domain DVDs of questionable quality (and it’s hard to tell whether they’re the Sturges or Howard Hughes versions).
MAJOR THOMPSON is ripe for rediscovery, but I confess to having very little desire to see BEAUTIFUL BLONDE ever again. Still it might improve with another viewing. I think it’s definitely Sturges’ worst film, but an Eclipse set with only two discs might seem skimpy, and it should be included for the sake of completists.
Thanks for the bump Josh. What’s also curious is why the film hasn’t received a DVD release in France, since Gaumont presumably holds the rights to the French language version. The latter is apparently longer than the American release—if a Late Sturges Eclipse set was ever released it would hopefully include both versions.
Kael was a great admirer of Warshow’s (she even helped out his son after his early death), and Warshow’s dictum “A man watches a movie, and the critic must acknowledge that he is that man” pretty much explains Kael’s approach (well, once you substitute “woman” for “man” anyway). Critical discussions of her work, as on this forum, seem to revolve around how her pans don’t match up with the present critical consensus. I wouldn’t mind some focus being given to her raves as well—they’re what attracted many people to her work.
Christgau and Marcus happen to be huge Kael fans by the way—Marcus dedicated Invisible Republic/The Old Weird America to her, after she’d looked over the manuscript.
Some more pieces emerging in the wake of the biography and Library of America collection—
Tom Carson’s review notes the decline in Kael’s work over the decades:
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/Pauline-Kael-A-Life-in-the-Dark/ba-p/6021
Self-Styled Siren reviews the reception of Kael’s work:
http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2011/10/lucking-out-and-pauline-kael-life-in.html
L Magazine also wades in:
http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/tough-movie-love-pauline-kael/Content?oid=2187436
“Kael approached film reviewing with the ardor, the violence and sometimes the shyness of a lover. She was the most subjective of writers, but she often used “you” instead of “I” because she so much wanted us to share her enthusiasms. It’s impossible to pigeonhole her on just about any issue because she was always restlessly, even furiously making her points and then moving forward; her positions were forever in flux and alive, shifting even as she wrote. She became obsessed with sensations, sex and the impudent laughter of sheer survival and was deeply suspicious of anything that smacked of over-solemnity, so that Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni usually didn’t make her cut, but Jean Renoir did, and Max Ophuls.”
On previous board responses—Greg I think overstates the case for the prosecution. Mass media and mass audiences have never lacked for reasons to marginalize works that can’t be surefire product, and while the quality of the Paulettes varies significantly, they’re usually less anti-intellectual than other mainstream critics (Stephanie Zacharek praising Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a good thing in my book). I don’t think that it’s “the particular tone of [Kael’s] writing on ‘trash’ that continues to have appeal”—most of the films Kael called out-and-out trash weren’t the ones she went to bat for. Criticizing her for focusing on “what the work could do for her, not what she might be able to get from it” doesn’t quite make sense to me. Kael was not a passive viewer, and I think what a person gets from a movie is what it can do for them, regardless if they’ve arrived at it by a dumb blurb or an exhaustive analysis.
More press clippings, this time from Mark Feeney in the Boston Globe. He quotes a line from Kenneth Tynan’s diaries: “I invent a nice rumour: that Pauline Kael nowadays refuses to review movies unless she has final cut. (With new directors she also insists on a solo credit: ’Reviewed by Pauline Kael.)”
http://articles.boston.com/2011-10-29/ae/30339565_1_pauline-kael-robert-warshow-andrew-sarris
To paraphrase Robert Benchley, there are two kinds of critics in the world—those who believe there are two kinds of critics in the world and those who don’t.
At the very least I hope Kael never descended to saying there were two types of critics in the world—that’s way too easy a duality (just as calling Kael a confessionalist and autobiographer—presumably on the basis of the occasional personal anecdote she ornamented a review with—is too easy). I think that if you abhor a critic for certain tendencies, you probably shouldn’t help yourself to those tendencies when they suit your case. I also think Rodney is ill-advised to deride frame-by-frame study of Antonioni, but he doesn’t stand in for everyone who appreciated some aspects of Kael’s work. As a critic she had ample flaws, and they’ve been explicated admirably and at length by the Salon article I linked to earlier.
I understand your point, but it again seems to rely on another duality, this time between emotionally inflected writing and serious analysis. “Serious, in-depth analysis and interpretation of any work of art pretty much demands that you retain a degree of sobriety” sounds agreeable, but is not, I think, accurate or applicable, to, say, the arts criticism of Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, or Greil Marcus (to take a very random sample). There’s room for all sorts of responses in criticism, provided no one insists that theirs is the only valid way to go. Kael was sometimes guilty of that (though to her credit she said seeing a movie once wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone), and while I wish she hadn’t abandoned Antonioni after sticking up for L’Avventurra, that would involve wishing she’d go against her own taste. I don’t think Kael’s writing neatly divides into analytic and emotional passages—I do think that her writing deteriorated over time as her range of taste shrank, and that she increasingly took refuge in the excesses of her style and rhetoric.
“Greil Marcus is not anywhere close to being a great critic”
What authority is such a sweeping dismissal based on? I think many people in Marcus’s field—popular music and culture—would say the opposite.
“Walter Pater is appreciated more as a prose stylist and a general theoretician of aesthetics than for any particular reading of any particular work of art.”
Besides the fact that Pater’s reading of the Mona Lisa was quoted and praised by Wilde among others, and that Pater is still valued for his writings on Renaissance art, I don’t see the relevance of the statement. Someone who is a prose stylist and general theoretician of aesthetics is still a critic.
“This is typical Pater”
Not really. It’s just the most famous passage of Pater, because it’s the most flamboyant. Read “Studies in the History of the Renaissance,” (where that quote is taken from) and you’ll see that Pater was hardly just making “general statement[s] about life” throughout the book. And arts criticism, which is not a science, has room for that anyway, unless one believes it’s little more than analysis. Kael isn’t on Pater’s level for the simple fact that no one nowadays writes Victorian prose poems. But at her ragged best, she can use evocation of a work as he did.
“It seems to me Kael’s writing could only be considered lightyears more “fun” and full of “zest” and “energy” is if you associate these things with mean-spiritedness and sarcasm.”
Since “fun” and “full of zest” were also adjectives applied to her raves, the statement doesn’t work.
“I suppose Kael could be a lot of fun to read when it’s a movie she loved”
What critic isn’t more fun to read when they’re addressing a movie they love? And what critic is anywhere as interesting when they’re addressing a movie they were obviously bored by? If you focus on a critic’s pans of movies you liked, you’ll naturally be antagonistic toward them.
In the Loop almost 3 years ago
It’s a rarity—a satire that fully works. My only criticism is that the frantic camera-work is better suited to television, and paradoxically decreases the realism Ianucci’s going for.
Ianucci appeared in person at the film’s SFIFF screening and said that he’d like to make a slapstick comedy—he’s a big fan of What’s Up Doc? and wanted to do something in a similar vein.
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Preston Sturges--His last film almost 3 years ago
I’m currently writing an article on Preston Sturges and in the middle of rewatching and watching all of his films. So far I’ve found all of them except for Les Carnets du Major Thompson, aka The French, They Are a Funny Race.The film seems to be totally unavailable for viewing—unlike more obscure entries like The Sin of Harold Diddlebock or Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, it doesn’t even air on television.
Its reputation isn’t particularly high, and most of the reviews are negative. Bosley Crowther, who’d championed Sturges’s 40s comedies, called it “a generally listless little picture, without wit, electricity or even plot” in his New York Times review. The Radio Times called it a “very sad last outing” but admits “there’s much to enjoy here (‘Three goodish jokes,’ asserted the late, great film critic David Shipman) in this semi-sophisticated farce with a genuinely Gallic air… But be warned: the crude dubbing mars the American version, saddling such French stars as the delectable Martine Carol and the funny Noël-Noël with extremely unfortunate voice talents.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum is more positive: “The critical consensus finds this work painfully unfunny, but that wasn’t my reaction when I managed to find a print in the early 80s. ‘Painfully unfunny’ is the way I’d describe The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949), Sturges’s last Hollywood picture, but Les carnets was funny, albeit in an uncharacteristically quiet way–-thoughtful and courtly rather than raucous and lunatic, as Sturges’s best pictures were. Viewers hoping for the old Sturges had their expectations dashed, and that apparently prevented them from seeing more fragile and less obvious traits.”
Pauline Kael, another Sturges fan, wrote that “a film based on a collection of minor essays has, at the outset, a certain skittishness; the essays themselves formed The Notebooks of Major Thompson, which was written, not by Major Thompson, but by Pierre Daninos, and it was a Frenchman’s idea of an Englishman’s account of French life. The American writer-director Preston Sturges, an expatriate in the late 50s, turned all this into an amusing series of wheezes—-a kind of literate vaudeville. Maybe you can no longer laugh at anecdotes like the British mother’s wedding-night advice to her daughter (‘My dear, it’s utterly unbearable, but just close your eyes and think of England’) but acted out, this sort of thing acquires a fresh insanity. There is one routine that is Sturges at his best: an English courtship on horseback, and there are divertissements on French bureaucracy, English body-fitness, and so on.”
The most positive review appeared in Films and Filming and is reproduced at http://chainedandperfumed.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/dig-the-critics-3/ . It reveals that the picture was “savagely cut from 105 minutes to 74”—one wonders what the original cut was like, and whether it would have had a higher reputation.
I’m curious know why this film has remained so hard to watch. What archive is it stored in, and what are the rights issues? Is there any way to score a print or DVD-r? If anyone can suggest a way to see this incredibly rare film I’d be most grateful.Go to Comment
Preston Sturges--His last film almost 3 years ago
You are right Francisco, they do have a print: http://www.cinematheque.fr/fr/projections/archives/fiche-manifestation/carnets-major-thompson,3541.html
And they screened it twice in 2007 for a Sturges retrospective. I curse fate that I don’t live a few thousand miles nearer Paris.
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Preston Sturges--His last film almost 3 years ago
Further updates: the UCLA Film & Theater Archive several copies of the film on VHS tape and 16 mm. safety prints. LA is considerably closer than Paris, so I might end up making the 400 mile journey down there.
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Ozu = Evil? almost 3 years ago
From an interview with Sion Sono:
“I don’t like Yasujirō Ozu. In Japan I hate Yasujirō Ozu. Everyone likes him but… because Ozu’s a god of Japanese movies. The Anti-god. The Antichrist.”
Link to full interview here: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/channeling-chaos-an-interview-with-sion-sono/
(Excerpt posted for amusement and not out of any negative feelings toward Ozu the Antichrist.)
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Ozu = Evil? almost 3 years ago
I think he’s serious in disliking Ozu, or at least Ozu’s influence, though that doesn’t mean we have to. Another excerpt from the interview:
“SS: This is basically Japanese movies. Almost all Japanese movies are about families, about couples, about getting married, about the bond of parents, sons and daughters. Ozu’s – all including Japanese films. So I don’t like this. Yes, always I’m interested in families and Noriko’s Dinner Table is about families…So…Love Exposure too. And, ah…but the contemporary family, almost all aren’t that peaceful or close – they’re broken. Every day parents kill children, children kill parents. We always hear this news. It’s not Ozu’s world. But Japanese movies are in the tradition of Ozu’s family. The peaceful family. The lovely family. They always make these movies. Peaceful family. Lovely couple. This is not real.
“3:AM: You think Ozu’s films are irrelevant?
“SS: Yes.”
He seems to be reacting against the fact that Ozu’s films are held up by many Japanese for their family values, reinforcing dominant trends in mainstream domestic Japanese film.
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Ozu = Evil? almost 3 years ago
“As if there aren’t enough Japanese films that show parents killing children or children killing parents or ghosts killing children or monster dogs killing babies, ad nauseum.”
For Westerners Japan can often seem like the site of all things fucked-up. Sion however is speaking from a Japanese perspective—when he says that “all Japanese movies are about families, about couples, about getting married, about the bond of parents, sons and daughters” he’s speaking from the vantage point of someone within a specific culture, one where Ozu is (according to him) held up as the sort of model for family stories. It raises the issue of how Ozu is ideologically seen and co-opted in Japan, and whether his status there can seem like a negative example for current Japanese filmmakers. Those issue are ultimately separate from the actual quality of Ozu’s films, which few here would deny.
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Greatest director that only made a few films? almost 3 years ago
I wouldn’t call him the greatest, but Clive Brook’s On Approval leaves one wishing he’d directed more than one film. I had never known the surrealist potential of stuffy drawing-room comedy until Brook had adapted, directed and starred in that cracked little comedy.
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Ozu = Evil? almost 3 years ago
Replies to various points from various people:
- Sono is not a mere shock artist-his latest film has after all received coverage in the Auteur’s Notebook of all places. Not a plaudit reserved for directors who analyze a society superficially.—The question of Koreda’s influences is an interesting one. At a Q&A for Still Walking Koreda was asked about Ozu. He replied that the greater influence on the film was that of Naruse.
-Ari: what I was trying to say was that to a Western audience Japan seems to crank an endless stream of fucked-up movies (not all of which are critical of the family), but to someone within Japan itself this may not be an accurate picture of the cultural landscape. The serene (even in conflict or when critical) family story taken from/inspired by Ozu-and apparently still popular—may seem more oppressive and culturally prevalent to a Japanese filmmaker like Sono, who claims that foreigners like his films whereas Japanese hate them. It raises the issue of how much Ozu is has been conservatively co-opted in Japan, and whether young filmmakers feel the need to escape from his influence.—I love Ozu as much as the next man on this forum, so I hope no one will think I am taking Sono’s side, rather than explaining why he might have it.
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Ozu = Evil? almost 3 years ago
Josh, I am not trying to avoid your point. But I was suggesting, that just as the questioner was sure Ozu was the dominant influence on Koreda’s film until she was contradicted, that the nature of a specific influence can seem like a sure thing when it actually isn’t. This doesn’t mean that I discount Ozu’s undoubted influence on Koreda.
I don’t think Sono is childishly blaming Ozu for not making films more like his. I think he resents Ozu’s work for reinforcing a culturally prevalent and maybe even oppressive set of expectations in Japan that influences the reception of his work in Japan. Sono’s view of Ozu’s work is obviously simplistic and exaggerated, and should hardly be viewed as a penetrating takedown of the director. But it may say a great deal about how Ozu is viewed by the mainstream in Japan, and I think that is the most interesting issue raised by his comments.
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"Eat the Document" dir. Bob Dylan (1972) almost 3 years ago
I have dim memories of watching a bad quality video tape—as an experiment in editing it’s quite interesting. As a performance film it’s a failure, but it has no interest in being one anyway. Yet, since the performances themselves are now legendary and regarded as some of the best in the history of rock, it’s frustrating to see them cut to pieces.
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What are the best Neo-Screwball comedies? almost 3 years ago
I’d second A Fish Called Wanda, and also put in its much maligned follow-up, Fierce Creatures.
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Ozu = Evil? almost 3 years ago
The “An Autumn Afternoon” anecdote would be the best piece of evidence with regard to Ozu’s sexuality (It would be good to know its actual source). The love letter wouldn’t be conclusive in itself, since situational homosexuality occurs often enough in all boys schools. That would leave devotion to one’s mother, which is not the best evidence one would hope for.
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Preston Sturges--His last film almost 3 years ago
During the last weekend I managed to see the film on VHS at UCLA. (I’m guessing UCLA had made the VHS from one of the two 16mm prints in their collection.
And yes, it really is a rather underrated film—a more gentle Sturges, though with occasional slapstick flourishes. According to one reviewer it was originally 105 minutes, and the 80 minute version I saw felt abrupt at times.
The media lab I saw it in prohibited making copies of course,but I took several pages of notes. Though I can’t help raise the film’s reputation by spreading it around, I can try turning my notes into an article, with the hope that some online film magazine will be interested in running it.
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Preston Sturges--His last film almost 3 years ago
I wish I knew. Apparently the film was played on television a few decades back, but I don’t believe it’s aired since then. And while even The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend received a VHS release, Funny Race is bereft of that. (I wonder if Criterion would ever consider releasing Diddlebock, Blonde and Funny Race as an Eclipse set.) The film’s near total unavailability would be the sort of thing worth contacting the Sturges family about, but the official Sturges website doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2007.
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What films would you like to see included in future ECLIPSE releases? over 2 years ago
Josh—I naturally second the idea of a Late Sturges set, but it could probably do without THE GREAT MOMENT, since it’s already in Preston Sturges: The Filmmaker Collection. It would be different if someone found the a print of the original version, TRIUMPH OVER PAIN, since, judging from Sturges’ script (which can be read in the book Four More Screenplays ) the studio really fucked up the original.
Including DIDDLEBOCK on an Eclipse set would be great, because it’s currently circulating in several public domain DVDs of questionable quality (and it’s hard to tell whether they’re the Sturges or Howard Hughes versions).
MAJOR THOMPSON is ripe for rediscovery, but I confess to having very little desire to see BEAUTIFUL BLONDE ever again. Still it might improve with another viewing. I think it’s definitely Sturges’ worst film, but an Eclipse set with only two discs might seem skimpy, and it should be included for the sake of completists.
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Preston Sturges--His last film over 2 years ago
Thanks for the bump Josh. What’s also curious is why the film hasn’t received a DVD release in France, since Gaumont presumably holds the rights to the French language version. The latter is apparently longer than the American release—if a Late Sturges Eclipse set was ever released it would hopefully include both versions.
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
Kael was a great admirer of Warshow’s (she even helped out his son after his early death), and Warshow’s dictum “A man watches a movie, and the critic must acknowledge that he is that man” pretty much explains Kael’s approach (well, once you substitute “woman” for “man” anyway). Critical discussions of her work, as on this forum, seem to revolve around how her pans don’t match up with the present critical consensus. I wouldn’t mind some focus being given to her raves as well—they’re what attracted many people to her work.
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
Christgau and Marcus happen to be huge Kael fans by the way—Marcus dedicated Invisible Republic/The Old Weird America to her, after she’d looked over the manuscript.
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
Some more pieces emerging in the wake of the biography and Library of America collection—
Tom Carson’s review notes the decline in Kael’s work over the decades:
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Reviews-Essays/Pauline-Kael-A-Life-in-the-Dark/ba-p/6021
Self-Styled Siren reviews the reception of Kael’s work:
http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2011/10/lucking-out-and-pauline-kael-life-in.html
L Magazine also wades in:
http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/tough-movie-love-pauline-kael/Content?oid=2187436
“Kael approached film reviewing with the ardor, the violence and sometimes the shyness of a lover. She was the most subjective of writers, but she often used “you” instead of “I” because she so much wanted us to share her enthusiasms. It’s impossible to pigeonhole her on just about any issue because she was always restlessly, even furiously making her points and then moving forward; her positions were forever in flux and alive, shifting even as she wrote. She became obsessed with sensations, sex and the impudent laughter of sheer survival and was deeply suspicious of anything that smacked of over-solemnity, so that Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni usually didn’t make her cut, but Jean Renoir did, and Max Ophuls.”
On previous board responses—Greg I think overstates the case for the prosecution. Mass media and mass audiences have never lacked for reasons to marginalize works that can’t be surefire product, and while the quality of the Paulettes varies significantly, they’re usually less anti-intellectual than other mainstream critics (Stephanie Zacharek praising Apichatpong Weerasethakul is a good thing in my book). I don’t think that it’s “the particular tone of [Kael’s] writing on ‘trash’ that continues to have appeal”—most of the films Kael called out-and-out trash weren’t the ones she went to bat for. Criticizing her for focusing on “what the work could do for her, not what she might be able to get from it” doesn’t quite make sense to me. Kael was not a passive viewer, and I think what a person gets from a movie is what it can do for them, regardless if they’ve arrived at it by a dumb blurb or an exhaustive analysis.
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
A critical discussion between Andrew O’Hehir and Matt Zoller Seitz at Salon:
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/27/pauline_kael_hero_or_hack/singleton/
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
More press clippings, this time from Mark Feeney in the Boston Globe. He quotes a line from Kenneth Tynan’s diaries: “I invent a nice rumour: that Pauline Kael nowadays refuses to review movies unless she has final cut. (With new directors she also insists on a solo credit: ’Reviewed by Pauline Kael.)”
http://articles.boston.com/2011-10-29/ae/30339565_1_pauline-kael-robert-warshow-andrew-sarris
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
“There are only two kinds of critics, really”
To paraphrase Robert Benchley, there are two kinds of critics in the world—those who believe there are two kinds of critics in the world and those who don’t.
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
At the very least I hope Kael never descended to saying there were two types of critics in the world—that’s way too easy a duality (just as calling Kael a confessionalist and autobiographer—presumably on the basis of the occasional personal anecdote she ornamented a review with—is too easy). I think that if you abhor a critic for certain tendencies, you probably shouldn’t help yourself to those tendencies when they suit your case. I also think Rodney is ill-advised to deride frame-by-frame study of Antonioni, but he doesn’t stand in for everyone who appreciated some aspects of Kael’s work. As a critic she had ample flaws, and they’ve been explicated admirably and at length by the Salon article I linked to earlier.
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
@Sail
I understand your point, but it again seems to rely on another duality, this time between emotionally inflected writing and serious analysis. “Serious, in-depth analysis and interpretation of any work of art pretty much demands that you retain a degree of sobriety” sounds agreeable, but is not, I think, accurate or applicable, to, say, the arts criticism of Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, or Greil Marcus (to take a very random sample). There’s room for all sorts of responses in criticism, provided no one insists that theirs is the only valid way to go. Kael was sometimes guilty of that (though to her credit she said seeing a movie once wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone), and while I wish she hadn’t abandoned Antonioni after sticking up for L’Avventurra, that would involve wishing she’d go against her own taste. I don’t think Kael’s writing neatly divides into analytic and emotional passages—I do think that her writing deteriorated over time as her range of taste shrank, and that she increasingly took refuge in the excesses of her style and rhetoric.
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What's so great about Pauline Kael? 7 months ago
“Greil Marcus is not anywhere close to being a great critic”
What authority is such a sweeping dismissal based on? I think many people in Marcus’s field—popular music and culture—would say the opposite.
“Walter Pater is appreciated more as a prose stylist and a general theoretician of aesthetics than for any particular reading of any particular work of art.”
Besides the fact that Pater’s reading of the Mona Lisa was quoted and praised by Wilde among others, and that Pater is still valued for his writings on Renaissance art, I don’t see the relevance of the statement. Someone who is a prose stylist and general theoretician of aesthetics is still a critic.
“This is typical Pater”
Not really. It’s just the most famous passage of Pater, because it’s the most flamboyant. Read “Studies in the History of the Renaissance,” (where that quote is taken from) and you’ll see that Pater was hardly just making “general statement[s] about life” throughout the book. And arts criticism, which is not a science, has room for that anyway, unless one believes it’s little more than analysis. Kael isn’t on Pater’s level for the simple fact that no one nowadays writes Victorian prose poems. But at her ragged best, she can use evocation of a work as he did.
“It seems to me Kael’s writing could only be considered lightyears more “fun” and full of “zest” and “energy” is if you associate these things with mean-spiritedness and sarcasm.”
Since “fun” and “full of zest” were also adjectives applied to her raves, the statement doesn’t work.
“I suppose Kael could be a lot of fun to read when it’s a movie she loved”
What critic isn’t more fun to read when they’re addressing a movie they love? And what critic is anywhere as interesting when they’re addressing a movie they were obviously bored by? If you focus on a critic’s pans of movies you liked, you’ll naturally be antagonistic toward them.
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