About This Site
The photograph of me on the right, taken in Buenos Aires, is by Dolores Sánchez.
Apart from Notes (comments on books, films, paintings, music, etc.), which are posted periodically, along with reprints of texts of mine that may not otherwise be readily available, this web site includes Featured Texts which are, most often, long reviews which appeared in the Chicago Reader between 1987 and early 2008 -– and a list of recent publications and upcoming events, updated with some regularity. (An index to all my long reviews in the Reader can be accessed here.)
According to my calculations, based on scrapbook entries, I’ve published over 8,000 items since the late 60s. And according to my former technical adviser and helper Benjamin Coy, over 5,500 of these appeared in the Chicago Reader. Thanks in part to Ben’s diligent work, there are now (as of July 29, 2010) 7,813 separate items or “posts” on this web site (not counting 25 or so items which have been prepared or reformatted but not yet published) , which most likely include virtually all of my articles and capsule reviews from the Reader, approximately 206 Notes (some of which are republished texts), 63 other “featured texts” that haven’t appeared in the Reader, and, I would guess, some other posts that are either unwitting duplications or else mystery texts that haven’t yet been identified (unless that estimate of “over 5,500” was unduly conservative).
In some cases, if one looks up a particular film title, one may even find shorter and longer versions of the same capsule — a reflection of the Reader’s practice in recent years of trimming some of its longer capsules to conserve space. However, most of my published writing apart from my work for the Reader is not on this site. In a few cases, due to some computer glitch, capsule reviews have been transported from the Reader web site in incomplete form. In those cases, I would advise going to the Reader’s own web site for the full version of the capsule, and would appreciate it if readers who encounter this problem could email me about it (at jonathanrosenbaum at earthlink dot net) so that I can restore the full version of the review on my site.
A caveat regarding the dates in the right-hand column: Many of these are correct, but at least a tenth of them and possibly many more than that are not to be trusted. The reason for this is that computers compute and follow some orders but don’t think. Over 700 of my capsule reviews were never dated on the Reader’s database, and then had to be dated arbitrarily in order to be imported; and there are probably some others that were already dated incorrectly on the database for one reason or another. There are most likely other glitches as well. I would welcome information from readers about ones that might be correctable, if they wish to email me (jonathanrosenbaum at earthlink.net), and I’ll correct these if I can.
I can happily report that the traffic on this site has nearly tripled since it was launched a couple of years ago. According to Google Analytics’ Dashboard, checked most recently on July 29, 2010, this site received 32,384 visits from 21,322 people and 54,286 pageviews over the previous month. (It’s gratifying to discover that since my visit to Córdoba last week, the number of Argentinians visiting this site has grown enormously.) These visitors used 80 languages and came from 140 countries/territories, including, among others, 16,802 from the U.S., 2,127 from Canada, 1,806 from the U.K., 1,221 from Germany, 785 from Australia, 684 from Argentina, 672 from India, 653 from France, 634 from Spain, 437 from Brazil, 401 from Italy, 342 from Sweden, 313 from the Netherlands, 279 from Poland, 273 from the Philippines, 261 from Portugal, 256 from Japan, 233 from Russia, 218 from Finland, 210 from Iran, 204 from Romania, 192 from New Zealand, 196 from New Zealand, 195 from Ireland, 191 from Israel, 171 from Mexico, 167 from Turkey, 154 from Austria, 146 from Chile, 145 from Indonesia, 143 from Belgium, 141 from South Korea, 125 from China, 116 from Denmark, 115 from Norway, 108 from Greece, 105 each from the Czech Republic and Peru, 99 from Serbia, 97 from Singapore, 92 from Switzerland, 80 from Thailand, 74 from Hungary, 71 from Egypt, 63 from the Ukraine, 59 from Croatia, 57 each from Pakistan and Hong Kong, 56 from Saudi Arabia, 50 from Colombia, 49 from Malaysia, 41 from United Arab Emirates, 38 from South Africa, 35 each from Bulgaria and Taiwan, 33 each from Georgia and Vietnam, 32 from Puerto Rico, 29 from Slovakia, 26 from Slovenia, 24 from Bosnia and Herzegovina, 23 from Estonia, 21 from Uruguay, 20 from Ecuador, 19 from Tunisia, 17 each from Algeria and Sri Lanka, 16 each from Iceland and Venezuela, 15 from Montenegro, 14 from Qatar, 13 each from Lebanon, Macedonia, and Montenegro, 12 from Latvia, 11 each from the Dominican Republic and Paraguay, 10 each from Costa Rica, Jordan, Kuwait, and Palestinian territories, 9 each from Albania and Armenia, 8 from Belarus, 6 each from Moldova and Nepal, 6 each from Cyprus, Honduras, Iraq, and Kazakhstan, 4 each from Bangladesh, El Salvador, and Jamaica, 3 each from Azerbaijan, Fiji, Libya, Malta, Mauritius, and Rwanda, 2 each from Bahrain, Brunei, Cuba, Luxembourg, Mynanmar, Nicaragua, Oman, Panama, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, and Trinidad and Tobago, and 1 each from Andorra, Antigua and Baruda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cambodia, Cote d’Ivoire, French Polynesia, Gabon, Ghana, Guam, the Isle of Man, Kenya, Mauritius, Mongolia, Namibia, Netherlands Antilles, New Caldonia, Senegal, Trinidad and Tobago, Yemen, and Zimbabwe.
***
The below items list most of my posts to date under “Notes”:
2008:
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (Chicago Reader review, 5/1)
Ernest Borneman (5/16)
Douglas Sirk on DVD (5/18)
Recommended Reading: Naomi Klein (5/20)
Jean Eustache (5/20)
Two late books by William Styron (5/21)
Ahmad Jamal (5/22)
THE LAST HUNT (5/22)
Shklovsky’s LIERATURE AND CINEMATOGRAPHY (5/25)
Alain Resnais/Harry Dickson (5/26)
David Bordwell web site (5/26)
“Zhang Ke Jie, Poetic Prophet” (5/28)
AT THE DEATH HOUSE DOOR (5/29)
Forugh Farrokhzad poems (5/29)
Jean-Pierre Gorin DVD extra about PIERROT LE FOU (6/1)
IN A DARK DARK HOUSE (LaBute play) (6/1)
Barack Obama/TV commentators (6/4)
THE SCOUNDREL (6/5)
THE FURIES (6/6)
BLAST OF SILENCE (6/9)
Mark Rappaport book (in French) (6/11)
“Cassavetes’ Prelude and Postscript” (6/12)
THE TENDER TRAP (6/13)
Fred Camper art (6/13)
RED-HEADED WOMAN (6/19)
Tim Russert/Dennis Kucinich (6/22)
Manoel de Oliveira (6/25)
“A Few Eruptions in the House of Lava” (on CASA DE LAVA) (6/25)
THE LAST FRONTIER (6/26)
IT’S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER (7/6)
A DANDY IN ASPIC/DESPERATE (7/14)
Barack Obama/The New Yorker (7/14)
TEX AVERY: A UNIQUE LEGACY (7/19)
PETE KELLY’S BLUES (7/23)
THE RACK/TIME LIMIT/John McCain (7/25)
MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT/Kim Novak (7/29)
Books on Charles Fort and Mayakovsky (8/5)
OUSMANE SEMBENE: INTERVIEWS (8/6)
KISS ME, STUPID (8/10)
UNFIT FOR PUBLICATION (8/14)
Buñuel & Fuller (photograph) (8/17)
Chris Fujiwara on STRANGER ON HORSEBACK (8/18)
Letter from Patricia Patterson to John Powers (8/27)
Kiarostami’s SHIRIN: A Fiction (8/31)
A Reduced GIANT (9/2)
THE LUCKY ONES (at the Toronto Film Festival) (9/12)
PATTI SMITH: DREAM OF LIFE (9/15)
Two Ambitious Web Sites (10/11)
LOVE ME TONIGHT & MULHOLLAND DRIVE (10/13)
God as a Litigant (10/15)
Two Early Long-Take Climaxes (THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS and A STAR IS BORN) (11/1)
CHANGLING (11/2)
Euphoria (Obama’s Election) (11/5)
MY SON JOHN (11/16)
SKIPALONG ROSENBLOOM (11/16)
THE STRUGGLE (11/18)
Among the Missing (Malraux’s L’ESPOIR) (11/27)
American Self-Scrutiny, Writ Large (12/5)
THE ORDER OF MYTHS/MILK (12/7)
DVD Beaver’s New Toolbar (12/11)
Elizabeth Drew on FROST/NIXON (12/17)
THE STRANGER’S RETURN (12/20)
Sadeq Hedayat’s THREE DROPS OF BLOOD (12/24)
On the Web: Cinema Treasures (12/25)
Two Nervy End-of-the-Year Pictures (THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON and GRAN TORINO) (12/26)
***
2009:
Gilbert Adair’s AND THEN THERE WAS NO ONE (1/4)
WALTZ WITH BASHIR (1/12)
Vanity Frame Enlargement (FOUR NIGHTS OF A DREAMER) (1/17)
Leos Carax’s MERDE (1/22)
BIRD OF PARADISE (1/28)
SEDUCED AND ABANDONED Revisited (2/2)
NOT ENOUGH AIR (An Amazing Play) (2/6)
SATANTANGO at 15 (2/7)
NATIVE SON (novel and play) (2/10)
One Observation and Three Figures (2/13)
Barack Obama’s DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE (2/17)
HELSINKI, FOREVER (A City Symphony) (2/20)
FRANKLY, MY DEAR: GONE WITH THE WIND REVISITED (3/3)
Dave Hickey’s THE INVISIBLE DRAGON (3/18)
FLANNERY: A LIFE OF FLANNERY O’CONNOR (3/20)
Fredric Brown, Madness, and CRACK-UP (3/22)
Stanley Rosenbaum Residence: The Dream Version (3/24)
Correction of Previous Post (3/24)
J. Hoberman in French and in English (3/31)
Joe Klein on Why We Should Legalize Pot (4/4)
THE COMEDIAN (1957) (4/11)
FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM (4/16)
A Piece of Folk Wisdom from Little Rock (4/21)
On WINSTANLY (4/24)
Jarmusch Unlimited: THE LIMITS OF CONTROL (4/24)
On Luc Moullet books and DVD (5/3)
What is Cinema? (and, if you know what that is, what is film study?) (on new translation of Bazin) (5/4)
New Yorker Profile of Jia Zhangke (5/11)
QUO VADIS Revisited (5/14)
A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (5/18)
Thornton Wilder’s HEAVEN’S MY DESTINATION (5/20)
Jerry Lewis Film Series in Los Angeles in June (5/21)
The Online William K. Everson Collection (5/24)
Everybody’s Orson Welles (5/28)
Books by Alfred Leslie (5/30)
STRAUSS AT MIDNIGHT (Theater Oobleck play) (6/19)
Makhmalbaf’s Message (6/19)
Rhetoric About Iran: Americans Learning from Their Mistakes (5/23)
Notes on Two D’Arrast Films (6/25)
Michael Jackson and the Suspension of World History (6/25)
PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN in Bologna (7/3)
Interview with Jia Zhangke by Dudley Andrew (7/5)
The Ayatollahs Have Spoken (Michael Jackson Memorial) (7/11)
On the Denied Politics of THE HURT LOCKER (7/14)
J. Hoberman on IN A LONELY PLACE (7/17)
Tati’s Influence on David Lynch (7/22)
Two 2006 Reader film blogs (& one afterword) (7/27)
“Rediscovering ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL” (7/29)
TV News and the Myth of Public Opinion (Kinsley vs. Borneman) (7/31)
“In defense of spoilers” (2006 Reader blog post) (8/4)
Racist Shorthand in the U.S. (8/6)
Cukor and Sensuality (8/10)
My Favorite Films of the 1930s (8/11)
‘Film history that is open to the present” (2006 Reader blog post) (8/14)
Daniel Mendelsohn on the New Tarantino (8/17)
VINCENTE MINNELLI: THE ART OF ENTERTAINMENT (8/19)
Some Afterthoughts about Tarantino (8/27)
On Scalping [+ postscript] (8/29)
Christian Keathley on Otto Preminger (9/1)
Alexis A. Tioseco, R.I.P. (9/2)
“The Origins of Goofus McPherson” (2007 Reader blog post) (9/5)
Masterpiece Alert (UN SOIR, UN TRAIN) (9/14)
Eric Hobsbawm on Americn Empire (9/17)
WILD GRASS (LES HERBES FOLLES) (9/27)
Morris Dickstein’s DANCING IN THE DARK (9/28)
On the Arrest of Roman Polanski [updated, 10/2/09] (9/28)
A dialogue about death by Milan Kundera (10/4)
CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY (10/5)
Recommended Reading: Two Books by and about Lindsay Anderson (10/13)
Jafar Panahi and Early Portabella: On DON”T COUNT ON YOUR FINGERS and CUADECUC, VAMPIR (10/15)
Orson Welles’ Failure vs. David Thomson’s Success (10/23; expanded 10/25)
Two Good Reasons to be Back in the U.K. (and three quotes) (10/28)
BRIGHT STAR (11/09)
A SERIOUS MAN (11/14)
DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN (11/17; written 2/05)
WINTER DREAMS: Cassavetes Meets Frankenheimer (& Sternberg & Cassavetes) (11/26)
A Quote from a Famous General (12/1)
Ten Best Lists, 1972-76 (12/21)
Robin Wood’s Final Top Ten (12/24)
“American Cinema” as Seen From the U.K. (12/26)
THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES: half a dozen responses (12/31)
***
2010:
Ten Best Lists, 1980s (1/6)
Ten Best Lists, 1990-1994 (1/8)
Note on the death of Eric Rohmer (see “Master of Reality”) (1/13)
Richard Combs on Michael Haneke (1/15)
CITIZEN KANE and The New York Times (just for the record…) (1/16)
Ten & Twenty Best Lists, 1995-1999 (1/19)
Ten Best Lists, 2000-2004 (1/23)
J.D. Salinger (1919-2010): A Minor Memoir (1/29)
Inroduction to an Index compiled for this site (2/7)
Ten Best Lists (2000-2005) (2/13)
Keith Jarrett, Symphony Center (Chicago) (2/13)
Preface to the Argentinian edition of MOVIE MUTATIONS (2002) (2/20)
Index of long reviews from the Chicago Reader (2/25)
The Apotheosis of Donald Phelps (and David Wayne) (3/6)
The Most Alarming News of the New Millennium (3/19)
Recommended Viewing: MURDER BY CONTRACT (3/21)
“Make No Mistake: The Day the Towers Fell” (previously unpublished) (3/22)
An Unidentified Subject (Egoyan’s CHLOE) (3/29)
Esoterica (4/6)
Two Films at the French Film Festival (4/17)
The New York Times Celebrates and Cheerfully Perpetuates Neanderthal Thinking (4/19)
A Forthcoming Novel by Robin Wood (4/20)
Theatrical Invention (THE FARNSWORTH INVENTION) (4/22)
Early Silents in Oberhausen (5/10) (upgraded, 5/23)
Recommended Viewing: THE GHOST SONATA at the Oracle (5/14)
FILM SOCIALISME, etc., 40 Years Ago and Now (5/25)
Farewell to Dennis Hopper, R.I. P. (1936-2010) (5/30)
Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards 2010 (7/2)
Two French Godard Books: Informational Obstacles (and Teasers) (7/7)
PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN on DVD and the Irretrievable Past (7/8)
A Little More on Truffaut (7/11)
***********************************************************************************************
Below is a list of all my earlier texts posted to this site preceding my work at the Chicago Reader – most of which can now also be found by checking the dates prior to 1987 in the right-hand column. I’ve also included some non-Reader texts published since August 1987 that have been posted here. The main purpose behind this second list, which is very far from exhaustive, is to provide texts that weren’t written specifically for this site (found in the above list) or for the Reader.
Here are some abbreviations for the publications in which some of the pieces below appeared: AF: American Film, BO: Bard Observer, CDCE: Cahiers du Cinéma España, CO: Camera Obscura, FC: Film Comment, FQ: Film Quarterly, MSF: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, MFB: Monthly Film Bulletin, R: Rouge, S: Slate, S&S: Sight and Sound, SN: Soho News, SS: Stop Smiling, TO: Take One, VT: Video Times, VV: The Village Voice.
“Now and Then” (MSF, Nov. 1957)
Review of THE CRYING OF LOT 49 (BO, May 1966)
“Moviegoing at Cannes: Classics without labels” (VV, June 1971)
Paris Journal (Demy, Pollet, Franju, Tati, Rivette) (FC, Sept. 1971)
Paris Journal (Paris moviegoing, MODERN TIMES) (FC, April 1972)
“Surprises at Cannes: Huston redeemed, Tashlin reincarnated” (VV, June 1972)
PARK ROW (FC, Summer 1972)
Paris Journal (Ozu) (FC, July 1972)
Paris Journal (ENTHUSIASM, TOUT VA BIEN, THE ENCHANTED DESNA) (FC, Oct. 1972)
“Home movie of homelessness” (REMINISCENCES OF A JOURNEY TO LITHUANIA) (VV, Nov. 2, 1972)
Review of GRAVITY’S RAINBOW (VV, March 1973)
“Tati’s Democracy: An Interview & Introduction” (FC, May 1973)
“Cannes Journal” (FC, September-October 1973)
“Second Thoughts on Stroheim” (FC, May 1974)
AMARCORD (MFB, Sept. 1974)
BLACKMAIL (MFB, Oct. 1974)
JUGGERNAUT (MFB, Oct. 1974)
TONI (MFB, October 1974)
Review of Gore Vidal’s MYRON (VV, Nov. 1974)
BADLANDS (MFB, Nov. 1974)
Review of Noel Burch’s THEORY OF FILM PRACTICE (S&S, Winter 1974/75
THE LIFE OF OHARU (MFB, March 1975)
Review of GRAVITY’S RAINBOW (VV, March 1975)
NIGHT MOVES (MFB, May 1975)
LA SIGNORA SENZA CAMELIE (MFB, May 1975)
LETTER TO JANE (MFB, July 1975)
MURDER (MFB, July 1975)
NUMBER SEVENTEEN (MFB, August 1975)
SOME CALL IT LOVING (S&S, Autumn 1975)
MOANA (MFB, December 1975)
WINSTANLEY (FC, January-February 1976)
NOT RECONCILED (MFB, March 1976)
THE HOMECOMING/THE MAIDS (MFB, March 1976)
WHAT’S UP, TIGER LILY? (MFB, March 1976)
HOT TIMES (MFB, April 1976)
RENDEZVOUS AT BRAY (MFB, April 1976)
LITTLE RURAL RIDING HOOD (MFB, May 1976)
Tex Avery entry (Cinema: A Critical Dictionary) (May 1976)
SCREWBALL SQUIRREL (MFB, May 1976)
FATS WALLER (MFB, July 1976)
THE RING (MFB, July 1976)
BLACK AND TAN (MFB, July 1976)
FAMILY PLOT (S&S, July 1976)
“DUELLE: Notes on a First Viewing” (FC, September 1976)
OBSESSION (MFB, October 1976)
“Truffaut & Me & Bazin (a memoir, a review, and three letters)” (November 1976)
DIE MARQUISE VON O… (MFB, December 1976)
“Regrouping: Reflections on the Edinburgh Festival 1976″ (S&S, January 1977)
“A la Recherche de Luc Moullet” (FC, November 1977)
“Aspects of Anatahan” (FC, January-February 1978)
“Obscure Objects of Desire: A Jam Session on Non-Narrative” (with Raymond Durgnat & David Ehrenstein) (FC, July 1978)
“Take Two: THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T.” (AF, October, 1978)
REMEMBER MY NAME (FQ, April 1979)
“The True Auteur: RICHARD PRYOR LIVE IN CONCERT” (TO, May 1979)
“Glum is Beautiful: LES RENDEZ-VOUS D’ANNA” (TO, July 19790
Review of Graham Greene’s DR. FISCHER OF GENEVA (SN, May 1980)
“May the Force Leave Us Alone” [on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK] (SN, May 1980)
“Dr. Percy to the Rescue” [on Walker Percy’s THE SECOND COMING] (SN, July 1980]
“Sam Fuller Spills His Guts” [on THE BIG RED ONE, including interview] (SN, July 1980)
“A Fine Madness” [The Legacy of Mad Comics] (SN, July 1980)
“Reactionary Humor and Southern Comfort” [Review of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES] (SN, August 1980)
“Sirk’s Works” (SN, August 1980)
“Barthes of My Heart” [review of Roland Barthes’ NEW CRITICAL ESSAYS] (SN, September 1980)
“Catching Up with Godard” (interview) (SN, September 1980)
“Hollywood or Bust” (SN, October 1980)
“Under the Sign of Sontag” [review of UNDER THE SIGN OF SATURN] (SN, November 1980)
“Mudpie Modernism” [review of PERFUMED NIGHTMARE] (SN, November 1980)
“The Awkward Agee” [review of AGEE] (SN, November 1980)
“Cliff Notes from Mt. Olympus” [review of Nabokov’s LECTURES ON LITERATURE] (SN, November 1980)
“Powell & Pressburger: English to the Core” (SN, December 1980)
“McCarthy’s Law” [review of IDEAS AND THE NOVEL] (SN, February 1981)
“Ad Hominem” [review of DIXIANA MOON] (SN, March 1981)
“The `PRESENTS’ of Michael Snow” (FC, May-June 1981)
Review of MOVING PLACES by “Nancy Rothstein” (FC, May-June 1981)
“Ivan the Bearable” [interview with Ivan Passer on CUTTER’S WAY] (SN, July 1981)
Review of Vito Russo’s THE CELLULOID CLOSET (SN, August 1981)
“Reading about Looking and Looking at Reading” [review of CAMERA LUCIDA and IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELER] (SN, August 18, 1981)
“Excremental Visionary” [review of John Waters’ SHOCK VALUE] (SN, September 1981)
“Take That Corn and Shuck It” (SN, Septemner 1981)
“Nick’s Kicks” (SN, November 1981)
“Czar Babies” [Review of Nabokov’s LECTURES ON RUSSIAN LITERATURE] (SN, November 1981)
Bordwell on Dreyer (a book review) (FC, November-December 1981)
“LONESOME” (The Movie no. 117, 1982)
“THE SAVAGE EYE and SHADOWS” (The American New Wave, 1958-1967, 1982)
“Barthes & Film: 12 Suggestions” (S&S, Winter 1982/83)
“Snowbound: A Dialogue with a Dialogue” [interview with Michael Snow] (Afterimage, Winter 1982/83)
Manuel De Landa (from Film: The Front Line 1983) (April 1983)
“THE GOLD DIGGERS: A Preview” (CO, July 1984)
“Gee, Dad, It’s a Wurlitzer” [Review of SLOW FADE] (Los Angeles Reader, December 1984)
“Gertrud as Nonnarrative: The Desire for the Image” (S&S, January 1985)
1984 (VT, June 1985)
GREMLINS (VT, December 1985)
“Myths of the New Narrative (and a Few Counter-Suggestions” (catalogue essay), Independent America: New Film 1978-1988, 1988
“Then and Now: The San Sebastian International Film Festival ” (The Independent: Film & Video Monthly), April 1989
“Putting Back the Ritz” (Seeing in the Dark: A Compendium of Cinemagoing, 1990; originally written in the early 1980s)
“The Wild One” (review of Richard Schickel’s Brando biography), Newsday, July 1991
“Talking Back to the Screen” (Toronto 1992) (FC, November-December 1992)
“They Drive By Night: The Criticism of Manny Farber” (Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism, 1995; written in 1993)
Review of THE EARLY FILM CRITICISM OF FRANCOIS TRUFFAUT (Cineaste, Spring 1993)
Review of James Naremore’s THE FILMS OF VINCENTE MINNELLI (Cineaste, Fall 1995)
Review of Michel Chion’s AUDIO-VISION: SOUND ON SCREEN (Cineaste, Winter 1995)
Orson Welles’ OTHELLO (Voyager/Criterion laser disc liner notes, 1995)
“SAFE and Sorry” (Artforum, December 1995)
Review of MASON & DIXON (In These Times, July 1997)
“The Mysterious Elaine May: Hiding in Plain Sight” (Written By, August 1997)
“My Filmgoing in 1968: An Exploration” (That Magic Moment: 1968 Und Das Kino Eine Filmschau, spring 1998)
“THE NUTTY PROFESSOR” (American Movie Classic program guide, 1999)
“Resnais as Regionalist” (?, written March 2000)
“BEFORE THE REVOLUTION” (1964) (Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2001)
“LES BONNES FEMMES” (1960) (Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2001)
“CHRONIQUE D’UN ÉTÉ” (CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER) (1961) (Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2001)
“DAISIES” (1966) (Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2001)
“RED PSALM” (Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2001)
“SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER” (Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2001)
“TEOREMA” (Film: The Critics’ Choice, 2001)
“Life and Nothing More: Abbas Kiarostami’s African Musical” (FC, September-October 2001)
“The American Cinema Revisited” (Cinema Scope, Winter 2001)
“What Dope Does to Movies” (Grass: The Paged Experience, 2001)
“American Hunger” [on Eric Saks] (FC, July-August 2001)
“Falling Down, Walking, Destroying, Thinking: A Conversation with Béla Tarr” (Cinema Scope, Fall 2001)
Paradjanov on DVD (Cineaste, circa 2002)
Preface to the Argentinian edition of MOVIE MUTATIONS (February 2002)
“Masumura’s Madness” + sidebar (”Among the Missing: 10 Key Masumura Features”) (written for FC, August 2002)
“Before He Was Famous” (Kiarostami’s Early Shorts) (Guardian, September 2002)
“Memories of 1974″ (Positif, 2002)
2 Oxford Companion entries (Albert Brooks and découpage; previously unpublished, written circa early 2003)
“Letter from Chicago” (Trafic, 2003)
“Metaphysical” [on C’EST VRAI!/ONE HOUR] (Robert Frank catalogue, 2003)
“Watch with Mother” [on Carl Dreyer] (Guardian, May 2003)
Review of Peter Wollen’s PARIS HOLLYWOOD (Cineaste, Fall 2003)
“BENILDE, OR THE VIRGIN MOTHER” (Chicago International Film Festival catalogue, 2003)
“ELEPHANT” (de Filmkrant, January 2004)
“Jean Renoir’s Trilogy of Spectacle” (Criterion DVD liner notes, 2004)
“‘New Hollywood’ and the 60s Melting Pot” (The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema of the 1970s, 2004; originally written in the mid-1990s)
Review of Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision (previously unpublished; written for the Guardian in June 2004)
Review of Colin MacCabe’s Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy (Cineaste, Summer 2004)
“Jarmusch in the American Weeds” (Guardian, August 2004)
“The Doddering Relics of a Lost Cause”: John Ford’s THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT (Viennale, 2004)
“Medieval Foreword” (The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy, 2004)
“Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia” (Trafic, 2004)
“On the New Renaissance” (Philippe Grandrieux) (La Vie nouvelle/nouvelle vision: à propos d’un film de Philippe Grandrieux; Éditions Léo Scheer, 2005)
“Radical Humanism and the Coexistence of Film and Poetry in The House is Black” (Facets Video DVD liner notes, 2005)
“Kim Novak as Midwestern Independent” (SS, 2006)
“Reasons for Kicking and Screaming” (Criterion DVD liner notes, March 2006)
“Five Letters from Godard Apropos of INSIDE/OUT” (Jean-Luc Godard: Documents, 2006)
“Kid Stuff: A Glimpse at Movie Wonder” (1000 Films to Change Your Life, 2006)
Review of Icons of Grief: Val Lewton’s Home Front Pictures (SS, 2006)
“David Holzman’s Diary/My Girlfriend’s Wedding: Historical Artifacts of the Past and Present” (Second Run DVD liner notes, 2006)
“Voluptuous Defeat: Philippe Garrel’s LES AMANTS REGULIERS” (S&S, August 2004)
“The Dance of PLAYTIME” (Criterion DVD liner notes, 2006)
“Figuring Out DAY OF WRATH” (Madman DVD liner notes, 2007)
“Mise en Scène as Miracle in Dreyer’s ORDET” (Madman DVD liner notes, 2007)
“The Guarded Intimacy of SANS SOLEIL” (written for Criterion DVD, 2007)
“Ritwik Ghatak: Reinventing the Cinema” (R, 2007; written in 2006)
“Cinema of Tomorrow” (CDCE, May 2007)
“Oberhausen” (CDCE, July-August 2007)
“Ingmar Bergman Today” (written for the New York Times in late July, 2007)
“Cassavetes’ Prelude and Postscript” (Torino Film Festival, 2007)
“Three Sequences from DEFINING MOMENTS IN MOVIES [WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER?, PISTOL OPERA, & THE WORLD]” (Defining Moments in Movies, 2007)
“Three Key Moments from Three Alain Resnais Films” (Defining Moments in Movies, 2007)
“Two Key Moments from DEFINING MOMENTS IN MOVIES [from FULL METAL JACKET & THE NEON BIBLE]” (Defining Moments in Movies, 2007)
“Anna Biller in Torino” (a 2007 Chicago Reader Movies blog post)
“The Attractions and Perils of Internationalism” (CDCE, December 2007)
“Portabella in the U.S.” (Vanguardia, 2008; written in 2007)
“The Example of KATZELMACHER” (Madman DVD liner notes, 2008)
“National Stereotypes and Expatriates” (CDCE, February 2008)
“Mise en Scène as Power Struggle: THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT” (Madman DVD liner notes, 2008)
“Rediscovering ALI: FEAR EASTS THE SOUL” (Madman DVD liner notes, 2008)
“MARTHA: Fassbinder’s Uneasy Testament” (Madman DVD liner notes, 2008)
“Keith Jarrett, Cross-Referencer” (SS, February 2008)
“Potential Perils of the Director’s Cut” (Le Mythe du Director’s cut, 2008; written in 2007)
“Bushwhacked” (Time Out Film Guide, 17th edition, 2008)
“Cinema versus TV News” (CDCE, September 2008)
“Historical Meditations in Two Films by John Gianvito” (FQ, Winter 2008/2009)
“Revisiting THE GODFATHER” (de Filmkrant, 2009; written in 2008)
“SATANTANGO at 15″ (Hungarian newspaper, January 2009)
‘The End-of-Film-Criticism Industry” (CDCE, January 2009)
On DON’T COUNT ON YOUR FINGERS and CUADECUC, VAMPIR (Jeonju International Film Festival, 2009)
“Addressing the Present” (CDCE, March 2009)
“One Key Event & Two Key Scenes” (Cinema: 1000 Momenti Fondamentali, 2009)
“Death of a Thousand Director’s Cuts” (S, June 2009)
“Introduction to the Chinese Edition of More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts” ( June 2009)
“The Undermining of Intimacy: HOME and EVERYONE ELSE” (previously unpublished; written for FIPRESCI web site, June 15, 2009)
On A GENTLEMAN OF PARIS and LAUGHTER (Il Cinema Ritrovato, June 2009)
“Business as Usual at Cannes”(CDCE, July-August 2009)
Review of INHERENT VICE (S, August 2009)
“A Few Eruptions in the House of Lava” (cem mil cigarros: os filmes de Pedro Costa, 2009; written in 2008)
A Dialogue with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa about Kiarostami’s SHIRIN (Chicago Reader, October 2009) (10/28)
“Roman Polanski and the Catastrophe of Public Discourse” (commissioned by Der Standard and written in October 2009)
“Can a “Complete History of American Film Criticism” Exist? (CDCE, March 2010)
Voluptuous Defeat: Philippe Garrel and LES AMANTS RÉGULIERS
Commissioned by Sight and Sound, and written for their August 2006 issue. — J.R.
Considering how much admiration I have for the films of Philippe Garrel, it’s hard to avoid some feelings of guilt and consternation for not liking them more – especially when I consider how much they mean to others whose tastes I admire. Why do I find myself preferring the work of his best-known disciple, Leos Carax?
This is a problem I’ve been wrestling with for a quarter of a century. For the past decade, I’ve been trying to theorize my disaffection by ascribing the passion of my younger friends for this melancholy star of the French underground to a generational taste I can’t share. In some respects, I even like the way they like Garrel’s films more than I like the films themselves. They generate a kind of awe that few other filmmakers inspire, and the fact that he’s a minority taste in no way disqualifies him from being a major talent.
These far-flung cinéphiles, all born around 1960, include Nicole Brenez, based in Paris; Alexander Horwath, based in Vienna; Kent Jones, based in New York; and Adrian Martin, based in Melbourne —- all of whom share similarly acute feelings for John Cassavetes, Abel Ferrara, Monte Hellman, and Maurice Pialat. They all collaborated on a 2003 book I co-edited with Martin, Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia (BFI Publishing) -— a book that started out as an attempt to account for their curious synchronicity of interests. More recently, I’ve been discussing Garrel’s latest film with South Korean cinéphiles who saw it at the Jeonju International Film Festival, many of whom singled it out as their favorite film of the past year —- a sentiment shared by several western friends and acquaintances.
Strangely, most die-hard Garrel fans I know were born over a decade later than him, whereas I was born five years earlier. So the problem obviously can’t be reduced to simple time frames. I feel far more in tune with Jean Eustache, born in 1958, and Jacques Rivette, born in 1928, than I do with Garrel, born in 1948. The post-1968 political despair in the separate 12 and 4-hour versions of Rivette’s Out 1 (1971/72) and Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (1973) all speak to me directly and even urgently, whereas Garrel’s recent Les Amants Réguliers (Regular Lovers, 2004), which attacks the same subject in an even more literal fashion, seems to be addressing a different constituency entirely.
Rivette’s desperate vision is fully tuned into 60s madness and Eustache’s angry vision is equally tuned into 60s neurosis. But Garrel’s lament is neither desperate nor angry, and his `regular’ lovers are basically innocents, basking or drowning in the banality of bourgeois comforts. Maybe my friends and I were doing the same thing, but I can’t recognize the portrait either poetically or otherwise. Rightly or wrongly, we were fighting a game that had stakes; these charming deadbeats don’t appear to be.
At least I can agree with my younger friends that Garrel’s three-hour epic about Parisian youth in 1968 belongs somewhere near the peak of his oeuvre to date. Shot in exquisite high-contrast black and white by William Lubtchansky, and virtually beginning with an account of the May ’68 street skirmishes, it distills the brooding melancholy of Garrel’s work as a whole into a nocturnal reverie about retreat that certainly reverberates. But I can’t say I’m easily reconciled with the hopelessness of its vision, So maybe it can also serve as a useful index of why and how certain tastes and historical understandings differ.
***
As a side-product of my long-term theorizing, I was honored to have been the sole dissenter invited in June 2001 to participate in what was probably the only Garrel conference that has ever been held anywhere. As an immediate follow-up to the four-day For Ever Godard symposium held at the London’s Tate Modern, a much more modest but no less intense two-day gathering, Garrel éternel, was held at Dublin’s Irish Film Centre. The combined panelists and audience came to scarcely more than a dozen people, but the energy never flagged.
An observation emerging shortly afterwards in the online Senses of Cinema, in an open letter to Martin from the conference’s organizer, Fergus Daly, came closest to explaining my distance from the others. Alluding to `this preoccupation with the couple and little else (a persistent one in Garrel),’ Daly noted that ‘For those like you and I who developed their affective lines of investment and expectation as adolescents in the late ’70s, politics in the accepted (macro-) sense was already a thing of the past — art and love seemed the only things that mattered.’
This is clearly true of the characters during the second two-thirds of Les Amants Réguliers. And it can’t help but affect the way we view the characters’ politics —- and how we view the characters politically — during the first third.
***
Garrel’s first films were made in his teens, shortly before the upheavals of ’68; apart from the one-hour, black and white Le Révélateur, which was briefly available in France on video, these remain impossible for most people to see today. Based on what I’ve sampled, and not counting his TV commissions of that period (basically documentaries, including one about Godard), they resemble his subsequent work insofar as they’re mainly autobiographical, focus on homey and everyday details while remaining detached and painterly, inspired by silent cinema (and, in the case of Le Révélateur — which critic Brad Stevens has compared to David Lynch’s The Grandmother —- literally silent), and employ actors associated with the French New Wave (including Garrel’s own father Maurice, who worked for Jacques Rozier and François Truffaut, as well as Bernadette Lafont, Jean-Pierre Léaud, and Zouzou). And unlike many other experimental films, they’re mostly in 35-millimeter.
Some of Garrel’s more ambitious films of the ‘60s and ‘70s also take on certain epic and mythopoetic dimensions. The best known of these is probably his 1971 La Cicatrice Intérieure (The Inner Scar), shot in deserts found in Egypt, Iceland, Italy, and New Mexico, with Pierre Clémenti, Clémenti’s infant son Balthazar, Daniel Pommereuille, Garrel himself, and Warhol superstar Nico. The latter went on to become the love of Garrel’s life; his next half-dozen films were made with her, and it appears that most of those made after their separation and her death continue to evoke her in one way or another. The only other Garrel film with Nico I’ve seen, Les Hautes Solitudes (1974), is another silent feature, relatively non-fictional; Jean Seberg, Tina Aumont, and Laurent Terzieff also appear in it, and the voyeuristic way it views Seberg, sometimes while she’s either sleeping or just waking up, struck me as intrusive when I saw it at the Dublin conference. It’s a development that heralds some of the more violent psychodramas found in the later narrative features.
Since the ‘70s, Garrel has spent much of his time recasting his brooding style in terms more compatible with narrative conventions and arthouse norms — Brenez has written persuasively about the ways his films might be regarded as Bressonian — while sustaining most of his autobiographical preoccupations and never compromising his vision one iota. The influence of silent cinema, for instance, remains in force, becoming especially apparent in his uses of solo piano for musical accompaniments, including the effective score by Jean-Claude Vannier in Les Amants Réguliers. No less relevant are tat film’s poetic intertitles introducing various sections — despite the irony with which they’re used, which often seems to reflect the irony of the brief, enigmatic fantasy sequences evoking 18th century military battles. In both these instances, Garrel seems to be looking back on his younger self with a certain indulgent skepticism, meanwhile projecting an overall sympathy towards all his other characters, including even the cops, that is both refreshing and unexpected. Gabe Klinger, writing online, has even plausibly compared him to Jean Renoir.
***
Until fairly recently, the Paris Cinémathèque was mainly inhospitable to and incurious about contemporary experimental films. But Garrel, a particular favorite of Henri Langlois (who regarded La Cicatrice Intérieure as a ‘total masterpiece’), was a notable exception, and the fact that he grew up in some proximity to the local film world because of his father probably helped to establish him early on as a legendary as well as highly respected figure. As Cahiers du Cinéma’s Jean Douchet has observed, Garrel `occupies a singular position within French cinema’ because his ‘small but devoted public’ is essentially the one that has traditionally developed in France around poets. (Douchet adds that Garrel’s tradition is closer to André Breton’s in his Nadja mode than to Jean Cocteau’s, and that `his cinema descends in a direct line from that of Lumière, not that of Méliès.’)
As with Werner Schroeter in West Germany and Carmelo Bene in Italy —- two other avant-garde masters of slow-motion portraiture who developed over the same period — another pertinent parallel might be to chamber music. Even though Garrel pitched his own tent far from the operatic and camp registers of Schroeter and Bene, there’s a similar sense of transporting the viewer to a meditative, almost nonnarrative realm, a soft and somber perpetual present similar to the intimate world of a string quartet. Whatever one’s qualms, it’s a kind of cinema that needs defending today more than ever. Thanks to digital technology, making chamber pieces is theoretically much easier than it used to be, yet thanks to advertising and multicorporate monopolies, finding one’s way to such works and other niche market items is a good deal harder.
In this respect, Garrel might be regarded as a kind of romantic luxury that only a culture such as France’s can fully support, or perhaps envision: relatively free from most commercial restraints, including many of the usual obligations associated with telling a story; surviving on the fringes of art cinema (where Garrel eventually settled by the early 80s) while retaining the same overall ambitions; defiantly remaining, as Kent Jones put it in the title of one appreciation, ‘Sad But Proud of It’.
It isn’t clear to me whether Garrel met Nico before or after he became a heroin addict. I suspect it was after, because opium plays a significant role in Les Amants Réguliers and Nico, apart from the use of her song “Vegas,” seemingly doesn’t — though it’s surely wrong to treat the autobiographical elements in his films too literally. But it does seem evident that Nico and heroin were the two key elements in Garrel’s life during the ‘70s, that they largely overlap, and that they both have haunted his work ever since. François, the 20-year-old hero of Les Amants Réguliers, played by his son Louis, is identified as a talented poet but not as a filmmaker, and Lilie (Clotilde Hesme), his lover, whom he meets on the streets during May ’68, is a French sculptress of roughly the same age, not a German-born pop vocalist who’s ten years older.
***
Among the psychodramas of Garrel that I’ve seen, the two that I’ve found most compelling are Liberté, la nuit (1983) and La Naissance de l’amour (The Birth of Love, 1993), both in black and white. The former — Garrel’s only period film prior to Les Amants Réguliers — is set during the Algerian war and has highly emotional performances by Emmanuelle Riva, Maurice Garrel, and Christine Boisson. The latter oscillates between an actor (Lou Castel) undergoing a midlife crisis who periodically leaves his wife, teenage son, and infant daughter to sleep with younger women and a friend of his (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a blocked writer who’s just been ditched by his girlfriend and can’t get over her.
Sometimes Garrel’s films are sufficiently direct in their personal references to be about filmmakers and filmmaking. The most complex example is Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1984), which contrives to alternate the stories of two filmmaking couples in a splintered, ambiguous fashion, mixing documentary and self-referential fiction while also including Garrel’s interviews with Chantal Akerman and Jacques Doillon. This 35mm black and white feature led to a 16mm color television documentary four years later, Les Ministères de l’Art, dedicated to the memory of Eustache. Here Garrel interrogates not only Akerman and Doillon, but also, among others, Léaud, Carax, Juliet Berto, Benoît Jacquot, André Téchiné, and Werner Schroeter, most often while taking extended walks with them. He also manages to show his five-year-old son Louis, the future star of Les Amants Réguliers, riding a tricycle around in circles while he pontificates nearby.
Finally, in Sauvage innocence (2001), we find a bitter personal allegory (as well as a teasing film à clé) about filmmaking, again in black and white. A filmmaker (Mehdi Belhaj Kacem) whose wife dies from a drug overdose arranges to make an autobiographical, anti-heroin feature, meanwhile becoming involved with his star (Julia Faure). Then, after he loses financing, he finds it again in exchange for helping the new producer (Michel Subor) — an addict who has meanwhile hooked his leading lady —- smuggle a large quantity of heroin into France.
***
Louis Garrel costarred as one of the three young leads in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003), another film set around May ’68. This has understandably led many to interpret Les Amants Réguliers as Garrel’s response to that film —- an interpretation he encourages when he has his characters briefly mention Prima della rivoluzione (1964) and cite Bertolucci by name. It also should be noted that Louis Garrel is one of the clearest assets of both films —-not only due to his skill as an actor but because he physically evokes the era in question, often calling to mind Léaud.
But it should be stressed that the characters he plays in the two films are different, even if both come from unusually privileged and educated backgrounds. Theo — his more cocky character in The Dreamers, who throws a Molotov cocktail just to be part of the action — is a far cry from François, a more vulnerable and sheltered youth who isn’t even sure he should publish his poems (‘It would feel like betraying something — although I don’t know what’) — though his writing talent is seemingly what wins him a suspended sentence when he comically goes to trial for evading the draft. (Warning: spoilers ahead.) François, who’s ultimately both likable and doomed, can’t even survive the shock of Lilie breaking up with him —- an act rendered in a masterful two-minute take, shot on the street.
The Dreamers was supposed to show how great it was in 1968 to be young and horny and in Paris and political and smitten with movies seen at the Cinémathèque. But I must confess I was all of those things and the movie brought back none of my experience — perhaps because it was aimed at viewers the same age as Gilbert Adair’s and Bertolucci’s characters, not at me, even though one of those characters was an American cinephile like myself. Admittedly, I’d arrived in Paris that summer by mid-June, just after the police had taken the Odéon Theatre back from the students and cleared away the makeshift street barricades. But remnants of felled trees still lined portions of Boulevard St-Michel, and the city felt strangely energized. I found myself fleeing from a police charge one day and getting a sudden and potent whiff of tear gas on another.
Garrel’s film is only about French kids, and it starts rather than ends with the May events. It understandably feels much more authentic because Garrel was a participant in the May events (albeit a `very nonviolent’ one, by his own account) as well as an observer. As filmmaker Jackie Raynal, who worked as Garrel’s editor and assistant director during this period, once told me in an interview, ‘Godard had an Alfa Romeo with a 35mm camera [at the time], and he and Alain Jouffroy and Garrel went around shooting footage,’ adding that, ‘Because of the Alfa Romeo, the police left them alone.’ (The ten-minute collective film that resulted, Actua I, which Godard has praised, was lost in a processing lab and never seen again.)
Authentic or not, Garrel’s treatment of the event is arguably no less postpolitical (or prepolitical) than Bertolucci’s. One can admire his honesty about his characters’ overall lethargy without being entranced by the lethargy itself, as some viewers apparently are. (Paradoxically, the nostalgia attached nowadays to black and white films automatically gives this film’s surfaces a certain allure.) Given how supportive Francois’ parents (and his grandfather, played by Maurice Garrel) are of his street activism, he doesn’t come across as much of a rebel. The political discourse we hear (‘Organizing is for sheep; what we want is anarchism’; ‘Can we make a revolution for the working class despite the working class?’) certainly matches the flavor of the period, but its overall function in the film isn’t very far from that of period décor.
Above all, the importance of drugs in Francois’ life is established even before his political concerns are faintly broached — with the result that they can’t help but inform his politics. It isn’t clear to me if he’s smoking hashish or opium with his friends in an early scene. But even if it’s the former, opium clearly becomes the drug of choice soon afterwards. And you don’t have to read the Appendix to William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch to understand that the philosophical and political implications of hallucinogenic drugs and those of opiates are virtually antithetical, and were understood as such by a good many radicals of the ‘60s.
This isn’t an understanding Garrel appears to have much truck with. It’s a comprehensible position for a former heroin addict to have, but it can’t illuminate why radicals who smoked grass in the ‘60s didn’t regard their activity as a political copout, whereas those who favored heroin were unlikely to be involved with any sort of politics, except peripherally. Maybe that’s why this film feels, like Keats in `Ode to a Nightingale,’ ‘half in love with easeful Death’ — almost viewing political defeat itself as a kind of voluptuous embrace.
SAFE and Sorry
A kind of ten-best meditation for Artforum, December 1995 (vol. 34, issue 4), that anticipates some of my arguments in my subsequent book Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Films We Can See. Incidentally, I’ve since then come to value Showgirls (and, more generally, Paul Verhoeven) far more than I did 15 years ago, politically and otherwise. — J.R.
In October I compiled three lists for my own schizoid edification. The first consisted of the 50 best films I had seen this year at festivals in Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, and Toronto and as a member of the New York Film Festival selection committee (which entailed a screening of 100 more films in August). The second was my impression of what comprised the 50 most discussed films released in the United States this year; my third list was a selection of what I considered the 20 most important releases, whether they were widely discussed or not. Only one feature appears on all three lists — Todd Haynes’ Safe.
One reason for the lack of overlap between my three lists is that, unless it’s a big-studio product, a film usually takes at least a year to open commercially in the United States after its premiere at festivals, ensuring that we remain something of a last-stop backwater when it comes to most non-Hollywood movies. And a significant contributing factor to this state of affairs is the eye of the needle represented by reviews in The New York Times, which, in the minds of most distributors, all films must pass through before they can make it in markets outside New York. For those who wonder why the New York Film Festival showcases only 20-odd programs compared with the hundreds found at other major festivals, I suspect that the capacities of the Times have something (if not everything) to do with this. Similar forces are at work in the launchings given to American independent features at Sundance — an event partially sponsored (albeit quietly) by the Times, thereby enabling it to offer its disinterested, “in-depth” daily coverage of the annual sellouts of independent filmmakers to studio agents in a ski-resort setting while discreetly fueling the same process from the wings — a packaging combo that offers a neat corporate alternative to recently gutted NEA funding.
Ever since sex, lies, and videotape six years ago, a central part of the spurious Sundance jive is the notion that independents can only triumph as artists if they land big-studio contracts. A simple look at the mainstream debuts of Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith (Desperado and Mallrats, respectively — not to mention the horrific forthcoming Four Rooms (by four Sundance alumnae) should disabuse most people of this crippling myth, but considering how much vested interest the studios have in its perpetuation, the same homilies get trotted out by obliging journalists in spite of all the contrary evidence. (How many even noticed that Rodriguez’s El Mariachi was a tragic parable about losing one’s status as an independent, working-class folk artist, or that Smith’s Clerks was in part a comedy about proletarian revenge? Take away their class trimmings and you get the dispiriting second features of both filmmakers.)
On the other hand, Todd Haynes has clearly taken a major step forward despite continuing to work without studio backing. Working with a poetry of absence evocative of both Chantal Akerman and Michelangelo Antonioni in the upscale suburban reaches of the San Fernando Valley, where overstuffed living rooms and manicured gardens are made to seem as vast and as hollow as city railway terminals, and the sound track is no less instrumental in creating a sharp sense of distance and displacement, Haynes creates a glowering atmosphere of nameless dread that, along with the heroine played by Julianne Moore, most reviewers have felt obliged to name — generally calling it “environmental illness” — if only to assign this movie a coherent narrative curve. Fortunately, even with its false-happy ending, the mystery goes on being mysterious, and potentially lethal to boot. Unlike Exotica — Atom Egoyan’s cuddly and pornographic fantasy about incest and erotic loss, Canadian to the core in its hothouse claustrophobia — Safe didn’t make it into many malls, but it haunted one’s experiences of those places just the same.
Two film reviews from this year epitomize the myopic effect of self-fulfilling business prophecies on the critical apparatus of film culture. In USA Today, a review of Crimson Tide noted that, even though the movie was an all-too-familiar rehash of cold war thrillers, there was obviously a brain behind it (duly noted as that of Quentin Tarantino, who did an uncredited polish of the script) because of all the Star Trek references in the dialogue. The second fragment comes from the Times‘ review of Larry Clark’s Kids and was quoted in many of the origina ads, which is where I encountered it: “A wake-up call to the world.”
Consider the respective definitions of “brain” and “world” implied here. I especially treasure the ringing clarity of “a wake-up call to the world”; it draws a firm line in the sand and declares that rice paddy workers everywhere — or at least those with phones — should lay down their hoes and stop evading the problems of white Manhattan teenagers. And in case anyone’s still wondering how a slightly better-than-average, sour, and cautionary youth-exploitation item could galvanize the same media that studiously ignored most of the best movies released this year — to the extent that one major news weekly could inform its first-string reviewer in advance that Kids was one of the only movies at Cannes worthy of any coverage — at least four interlocking factors come into play: the hysteria of American puritanism, a distributor (Miramax) that often knows precisely how to milk such hysteria in the name of esthetics (though it was less lucky with Priest, which it whimsically planned to open on Good Friday), a “special” Sundance preview held at midnight to foster a proper journalistic sense of melodrama, and a paper like the Times already primed to go for such middle-class bait.
Though it’s seldom noted, the degree to which institutions like the Times, Miramax, and Sundance set our current critical agendas (including our canons) and crowd out others is hard to ignore. All three institutions had a lot to do with the launching of Tarantino as well as Kids, not to mention the even less interesting Brothers McMullen, which apparently thrilled some viewers because it reminded them of Woody Allen (another Times favorite distributed by Miramax, though not a Sundance regular). The fact that Miramax dwarfs all competitors in terms of its acquisitions power and ad budgets — spending as much money, for instance, on hyping Pulp Fiction as on producing it (which undermines part of that movie’s credibility as a grassroots cult sensation) — might be relatively innocuous if the company didn’t dump or revise so many of its best pictures, including Richard Williams’ Arabian Knight, Abbas Kiarostami’s Through the Olive Trees, and Charles Burnett’s The Glass Shield. The first two — an eclectic animated feature of compulsive two-dimensionality worked on as a labor of love since the ’60s, and the first Iranian feature ever distributed in the United States, made by the greatest of all Iranian filmmakers, respectively — were virtually shot down at the start, implying a certain company bias against Persian miniatures. After purchasing and sloppily completing Arabian Knight without any input from Williams, Miramax opened it with silly ads comparing it to Aladdin and no press shows at all. The Kiarostami film — while perhaps not as interesting a film as his Homework, Close Up, and And Life Goes On . . . (which also deal with the potent theme of interchanges between filmmakers and ordinary people), still arguably superior to everything else on Miramax’s recent slate and a superb introduction to his cosmic view of landscape and witty sense of character — was similarly treated as if it were a worthless embarrassment, and it was scarcely a surprise to find most of the mainstream press passively agreeing that it should be ignored. (When the Music Box, a prominent Chicago art house, had the temerity to try booking Through the Olive Trees anyway, it was summarily rebuffed by Miramax.)
No less a case in point were the parallel treatments accorded by Miramax to Paul Auster and Wayne Wang’s Smoke, with its flattering view of good-hearted middle-class whites saving the souls of poor blacks in Brooklyn, and The Glass Shield, which sorrowfully and persuasively demonstrates the price to be paid when a black rookie cop in L.A., desperate for acceptance in an all-white precinct, perjures another black man. Smoke was treated as a gilt-edged art house item, earmarked for “thoughtful” white patrons, whereas the second was test-marketed with black teenagers in the Bronx, whose predictable complaints obligle Burnett to come up with a more “upbeat” ending to get his picture released. Undoubtedly flawed in its top-heavy plot in a way that Smoke (or Burnett’s wonderful subsequent short When It Rains) is not, The Glass Shield is still honest about the way we live and maintains an integrity of purpose that makes Smoke register at best like a seductive lie. Compare, for instance, Lori Petty’s fresh and offbeat performance as a Jewish cop in Shield with the work of such normally gifted players as Stockard Channing and Ashley Judd in Smoke. (Petty also brought distinction to Rachel Talalay’s goofy and neglected Tank Girl.) Indeed, if Smoke, with its soupcon of plantation-house paternalism, had been test-marketed like Shield with the same ghetto teenagers, they might have conceivably torn the screen off the wall.
The arrogant expedience of assuming that African and Taiwanese cinema, for example, are negligible if they are ignored by Miramax and other big distributors is another creepy symptom of our insulated isolationism. Such impulses — and today’s movie culture is full of them — are ultimately reducible to the Reaganite economic philosophy of exhausting existing markets without investing in any potential future ones, yielding the self-protective gestures of critics periodically announcing the “collapse” of European cinema and happily accepting the limitations of distributors as reliable indices of the state of world cinema. What such provincialism has already fostered in American movies is a certain stroking of the spectator’s alleged savvy and hipness in recognizing certain TV touchstones — providing much of the basis for last year’s Pulp Fiction, Natural Born Killers, and Forrest Gump, and this year’s The Brady Bunch Movie and Crimson Tide.
Of course, it’s a truism that films with reduced promotional budgets, regardless of their quality, tend to get marginalized. But the capacity of these films to reach their intended audiences anyway is greater than one might initially suspect. Tony Gatlif’s Latcho Drom, a formally and politically radical Gypsy musical, confounding the standard industry wisdom that the genre is a dead form, attracted short shrift from most of the press but enough word of mouth to spark several return engagements. Like Jacques Tati’s equally overlooked Parade of 1974, the movie boldly breaks down the usual distinctions between documentary and fiction, between performer and audience, and even between finishing a given sequence and starting another. Mark Malone’s Bulletproof Heart, a virtual inversion of Pulp Fiction that puts the pain back into hitman murder while sustaining a related form of play with narrative form and actors (Anthony LaPaglia, Mimi Rogers, Peter Boyle, and Matt Craven), was similarly rebuffed in the mainstream press but enjoyed by many who sought it out. Interestingly enough, Bosnian director Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream and French director André Téchiné’s Wild Reeds both benefited from opening outside New York, arriving in Manhattan only after garnering plenty of raves elsewhere. The first, which Warner Communications prematurely shelved back in 1993, enlists Johnny Depp, Jerry Lewis, Vincent Gallo, Lili Taylor, and Faye Dunaway in a black comedy about American dreams and two terminally dysfunctional families; the film is a good illustration that many European filmmakers who use this country as a site for fantasies at least know they’re dreaming. Wild Reeds, set in southwest France in 1962, shows another European — Téchiné, peaking in his 12th feature — looking back with honesty, urgency, and warmth at aspects of his own adolescence.
Many of my other favorite releases of the year were mixed bags, but there were still plenty of reasons for seeing them. The Addiction wedded Abel Ferrara’s beautifully intense direction in nocturnal black and white with one of the dumbest scripts ever written; Clint Eastwood’s The Bridges of Madison County worked a few aural and visual wonders with its own dubious literary source. Yim Ho carved out a crime melodrama, The Day tbe Sun Turned Cold, that was worthy of John Frankenheimer in the ’60s, and, with Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, Jean-Luc Godard went on being Jean-Luc Godard (for whom the disassembly of the Berlin Wall coincided tragically with the last days of Lemmy Caution). From a plastic arts perspective, the most notable filmic achievements included Jon Jost’s monumental diptych compositions in The Bed You Sleep In, most of them corresponding to various thematic duplicities (and resulting alienations); the inspired art direction of Bob Balaban’s The Last Good Time (and the sheer life-sculptured earthiness of Lionel Stander in his last screen performance); the exemplary analysis of an artist’s relation to his work in Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb; the extended historical footnotes to a single jazz photograph (taken in 1958 by Art Kane) in Jean Bach’s A Great Day in Harlem; some eerie work with subjective camera and color filters in Steven Soderbergh’s The Underneath; and the Stan Brakhage-like credits sequence and the designer-vomit interiors in David Fincher’s Seven. And at least there was the inspiring implication of the commercial flop of Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas’ blowsy Showgirls: that you can underestimate the taste of the American public, especially when self-loathing is the main bill of fare.
The Driller Killer
I put off seeing Abel Ferrara’s second feature (which came after his pseudonymous Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy) for years because of its title, but when I finally caught up with it I found it a lot more interesting and substantial than I’d imaginedand only incidentally the exploitation horror item it was apparently supposed to be. Ferrara stars (again pseudonymously) as a painter sharing a downtown Manhattan loft with two women who, gradually driven insane by money problems, a punk band located on the floor below, and other frustrations, starts murdering street derelicts with a power drill. The script by Nicholas St. John (who would become a Ferrara regular) not only anticipates American Psycho but offers a fascinating look at New York’s bohemian art scene circa 1979. 96 min. (JR)
Film Capital of the Week
Heaven knows what possessed the Chicago International Film Festival to adopt “Film capital of the world” as its slogan this year, but considering some of the movies that played in New York and Los Angeles recently and never made it here, it’s more than a stretch. Among the remarkable films they could see and we couldn’t were the subtitled, not the dubbed, version of Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Abbas Kiarostami’s Five (2003), Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Cafe Lumiere (2003), and several 2005 films, including Tickets (with 40-minute episodes by Kiarostami, Ken Loach, and Ermanno Olmi), Hou’s Three Times, Alexander Sokurov’s The Sun, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s L’enfant. Of course even if you lived in New York or LA you might not have heard about them, because the industry, which assumes no one’s interested in such films, kept their profiles so low.
Plenty of what the industry thinks we should be interested in was on display a month ago at the 30th Toronto International Film Festival. More than ever before the industry reps casually took over the city as they previewed their latest “indie” and “art”–as opposed to mainstream–product.
American journalists these days are showing more compassion for ordinary people in dire straits, but the main headline on the Toronto-based National Post on September 15–”Ottawa’s Afghan Warning: Bill Graham expected to tell nation troops will die”–was overshadowed by a huge glamour shot captioned “Cameron Diaz Snaps at Photographers.” On the front page of the same edition’s film-festival section was the story “Modine a casualty of the red carpet: Actor pays price for wearing open-toed shoes.”
The tale about Matthew Modine’s foot being stepped on by someone in high heels ended with “Read into this what you may: Modine has been in town for the screening of his new one, the not-so-serious and acquired-taste film Mary. He plays Jesus.” Having seen Mary–an exceptionally serious film that won’t be coming here anytime soon, if at all, even though it won the special jury prize at Venice–I suddenly found myself wanting to defend it. Abel Ferrara’s film is indeed difficult and disjointed, but it also has many powerful elements, including bold ideas about religion and fine performances by Forest Whitaker, Juliette Binoche, and Modine, as a writer-director playing Jesus in his own film.
All the same, Toronto is by common consensus the site of the most important film festival in North America, having bypassed Sundance as a marketing tool of the studios, though still trailing far behind Cannes in terms of prestige. With a bit of goodwill, Chicago’s festival might qualify our city as the “film capital of the midwest.” The studios’ lack of interest in this event may be a blessing, because we’re not being bullied by celebrity journalism and advertising for a few favored films and can make our own choices.
I have to applaud the festival’s faithfulness in sticking with certain filmmakers year after year, even when nobody else likes them (Claude Lelouch, Lina Wertmuller) or when they run off the rails (Tsai Ming-liang, with this year’s The Wayward Cloud). I’m not sure if this is a critical position–the New York film festival does the same thing with Lars von Trier–but it’s a likable one. The Chicago festival did miss Manoel de Oliveira’s last feature, O Quinto Imperio (2004), but it’s been showing his work with such devoted regularity for so long that the 96-year-old Portuguese master said he might turn up here this year. Whether or not he makes it, the festival deserves our gratitude for championing him–and for screening such exceptional films as The Squid and the Whale, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Play, and The Boys of Baraka.
Screenings this year are being held through October 20. Many directors and a few actors are scheduled to appear at screenings of their films. Check the festival Web site for up-to-date information.
