This is a response to the question “is it possible to like someone’s theory of film more than the films themselves?”. While nothing would keep one from preferring one to the other (just as one might, say, prefer Kafka’s short stories to his novels, or vice versa), the more interesting or important task – at least from an “auteurist” perspective – would be to try to understand the relation between them; the idea that unifies them, that makes each a component of a larger project. This position seems particularly relevant in regards to Bresson. It’s hard to see how one can love his film theory – structured as a series of epigraphs (with the stress placed as much on what is not said, as what is said); as the accumulation of enigmatic fragments – and not love his films, based on the same principles.
Grand finales:
L’Argent (Bresson, 1983), released when Bresson was 84
That Obscure Object of Desire (Buñuel, 1977), released when Buñuel was 77
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999), released when Kubrick was 71
L’Innocente (Visconti, 1976), released when Visconti was 70
I’d also include The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky) and Ivan the Terrible, Pt. 2 (Eisenstein), even though both Russian filmmakers were relatively young when they made their last films. So too Pasolini with Salo. Perhaps these belong on another list though: final works by filmmakers cut down in their prime. Here one might also mention Melville’s Un Flic (1972), released a year before the director’s death at the age of 56.
Finally, I concur with Bobby that Frenzy, not Family Plot, would have been a worthy Hitchcock finale. Perhaps another list? To it, I’d add La Truite (Losey, 1982), which should have been his last film – not Steaming
Some books I Love:
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard et Pecuchet
Jean Genet, Un Captif amoureux
Franz Kafka, The Castle
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Aesthetics Reader
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Edgar Allen Poe, The Dupin Tales
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
W.G. Sebald, Vertigo
Emile Zola, Therese Raquin
Lots of good ones already mentioned (thanks Michael for mentioning Joseph Losey). Here is another: Peter Watkins. Edvard Munch is one of the greatest films ever made, and La Commune is a monumental achievement.
First film viewed in 2009 (at home): Luchino Visconti, Conversation Piece (Region 2 DVD). Viewed January 1, 2009. Visconti’s second-to-last film, and possibly his greatest. Made in the period in which the ailing Visconti had hoped to make a film of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, this never realized dream project got displaced onto a series of other works: Death in Venice, Ludwig and especially this one. A sublime elegy to art, memory, and life.
First film viewed in 2009 (theatre): Nicholas Ray, Bigger than Life (new 35mm print). Viewed January 2, 2009. I own the Region 2 DVD of this, but wanted to see it again on the big screen (or semi-big screen that they have at Film Forum in NYC). Terrific melodrama, with real insight into the trap that was (or is) the American “dream.”
The best place to start with Eisenstein is FILM FORM. It is readily available in both new and used copies at affordable prices. I would suggest beginning with the last essay in this collection entitled “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today”, which is an article that Eisenstein wrote in the 1940s summarizing the Soviet filmmakers discovery (via Griffith) of the significance of montage. Although FILM FORM does not contain all of his best essays, it’s a good place to start. I also strongly recommend, if you can track down an affordable used print, Vladimir Nizhny’s LESSONS WITH EISENSTEIN. Nizhny was a student of Eisenstein’s in the 1930s, and he recounts the master’s lectures. The highlight is Eisenstein’s transformation of a scene from CRIME AND PUNISHMENT into cinema. Brilliant.
As for Bazin: WHAT IS CINEMA, VOLUME ONE contains “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”, an essential starting point; VOLUME TWO is even better, I think, with seminal essays on Italian neo-realism (especially “In Defense of Rossellini”), and many other fantastic pieces (“The Evolution of the Western”, “Marginal Notes on Eroticism in the Cinema”). BAZIN AT WORK, released many years later includes several terrific, seminal essays that, for some strange reason, were not chosen for the English edition of WHAT IS CINEMA, especially “William Wyler, or the Jansenist of Directing,” and “The Myth of Stalin in the Soviet Cinema.”
Read together, they establish without any doubt whatsoever that Bazin was the greatest film critic in the history of cinema.
Having said that, you won’t find any articles by Bazin on the French New Wave b/c he died in 1958. However, if you want to get a good sense of the critical/creative ferment that lead to the emergence of the movement, look at the reviews/articles published by Cahiers du Cinema during the 1950s. There is an English-language anthology, edited by Jim Hillier, which includes articles by Bazin, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette, Godard, et.al. It’s marvelous.
You can order the UK copy (region 2) from Amazon UK for 6 pounds, or 9 US dollars (roughly). The shipping fee will obviously be larger than if you order it from the US store, but it should still end up costing no more than $20. BTW I own the UK version and its quote good. It includes Resnais’ collaboration with Chris Marker (Toute la memoire du monde, 1956) and a wonderful visual essay on the film “Dans le labyrinthe de Marienbad.” Of course, you need a multi-region player but I see no reason why you shouldn’t already own one. (Couldn’t live without mine.)
Appreciation over 3 years ago
This is a response to the question “is it possible to like someone’s theory of film more than the films themselves?”. While nothing would keep one from preferring one to the other (just as one might, say, prefer Kafka’s short stories to his novels, or vice versa), the more interesting or important task – at least from an “auteurist” perspective – would be to try to understand the relation between them; the idea that unifies them, that makes each a component of a larger project. This position seems particularly relevant in regards to Bresson. It’s hard to see how one can love his film theory – structured as a series of epigraphs (with the stress placed as much on what is not said, as what is said); as the accumulation of enigmatic fragments – and not love his films, based on the same principles.
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Final Films by Master Filmmakers over 3 years ago
Grand finales:
L’Argent (Bresson, 1983), released when Bresson was 84
That Obscure Object of Desire (Buñuel, 1977), released when Buñuel was 77
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick, 1999), released when Kubrick was 71
L’Innocente (Visconti, 1976), released when Visconti was 70
I’d also include The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky) and Ivan the Terrible, Pt. 2 (Eisenstein), even though both Russian filmmakers were relatively young when they made their last films. So too Pasolini with Salo. Perhaps these belong on another list though: final works by filmmakers cut down in their prime. Here one might also mention Melville’s Un Flic (1972), released a year before the director’s death at the age of 56.
Finally, I concur with Bobby that Frenzy, not Family Plot, would have been a worthy Hitchcock finale. Perhaps another list? To it, I’d add La Truite (Losey, 1982), which should have been his last film – not Steaming
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Who do you read? over 3 years ago
Some books I Love:
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard et Pecuchet
Jean Genet, Un Captif amoureux
Franz Kafka, The Castle
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Aesthetics Reader
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Edgar Allen Poe, The Dupin Tales
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
W.G. Sebald, Vertigo
Emile Zola, Therese Raquin
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Favorite auteurs missing from the profile selection box. over 3 years ago
Lots of good ones already mentioned (thanks Michael for mentioning Joseph Losey). Here is another: Peter Watkins. Edvard Munch is one of the greatest films ever made, and La Commune is a monumental achievement.
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First Film of 2009 over 3 years ago
First film viewed in 2009 (at home): Luchino Visconti, Conversation Piece (Region 2 DVD). Viewed January 1, 2009. Visconti’s second-to-last film, and possibly his greatest. Made in the period in which the ailing Visconti had hoped to make a film of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, this never realized dream project got displaced onto a series of other works: Death in Venice, Ludwig and especially this one. A sublime elegy to art, memory, and life.
First film viewed in 2009 (theatre): Nicholas Ray, Bigger than Life (new 35mm print). Viewed January 2, 2009. I own the Region 2 DVD of this, but wanted to see it again on the big screen (or semi-big screen that they have at Film Forum in NYC). Terrific melodrama, with real insight into the trap that was (or is) the American “dream.”
First NEW film viewed in 2009: ?
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Any recommendations on good books about filmmaking/film theory/films in general? over 3 years ago
The best place to start with Eisenstein is FILM FORM. It is readily available in both new and used copies at affordable prices. I would suggest beginning with the last essay in this collection entitled “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today”, which is an article that Eisenstein wrote in the 1940s summarizing the Soviet filmmakers discovery (via Griffith) of the significance of montage. Although FILM FORM does not contain all of his best essays, it’s a good place to start. I also strongly recommend, if you can track down an affordable used print, Vladimir Nizhny’s LESSONS WITH EISENSTEIN. Nizhny was a student of Eisenstein’s in the 1930s, and he recounts the master’s lectures. The highlight is Eisenstein’s transformation of a scene from CRIME AND PUNISHMENT into cinema. Brilliant.
As for Bazin: WHAT IS CINEMA, VOLUME ONE contains “The Ontology of the Photographic Image”, an essential starting point; VOLUME TWO is even better, I think, with seminal essays on Italian neo-realism (especially “In Defense of Rossellini”), and many other fantastic pieces (“The Evolution of the Western”, “Marginal Notes on Eroticism in the Cinema”). BAZIN AT WORK, released many years later includes several terrific, seminal essays that, for some strange reason, were not chosen for the English edition of WHAT IS CINEMA, especially “William Wyler, or the Jansenist of Directing,” and “The Myth of Stalin in the Soviet Cinema.”
Read together, they establish without any doubt whatsoever that Bazin was the greatest film critic in the history of cinema.
Having said that, you won’t find any articles by Bazin on the French New Wave b/c he died in 1958. However, if you want to get a good sense of the critical/creative ferment that lead to the emergence of the movement, look at the reviews/articles published by Cahiers du Cinema during the 1950s. There is an English-language anthology, edited by Jim Hillier, which includes articles by Bazin, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette, Godard, et.al. It’s marvelous.
Go to Comment
Where Can I find Last Year at Marienbad? over 3 years ago
You can order the UK copy (region 2) from Amazon UK for 6 pounds, or 9 US dollars (roughly). The shipping fee will obviously be larger than if you order it from the US store, but it should still end up costing no more than $20. BTW I own the UK version and its quote good. It includes Resnais’ collaboration with Chris Marker (Toute la memoire du monde, 1956) and a wonderful visual essay on the film “Dans le labyrinthe de Marienbad.” Of course, you need a multi-region player but I see no reason why you shouldn’t already own one. (Couldn’t live without mine.)
Go to Comment