Essential Cinema: on the necessity of film canons

468 Pages·2008·2.325 MB·English

by  Rosenbaum, Jonathan

Essential Cinema
Books by Jonathan Rosenbaum
Rivette: Texts and Interviews (editor, ∞Ωππ)
Orson Welles: A Critical View, by Andre´ Bazin (editor and translator, ∞Ωπ∫)
Moving Places: A Life at the Movies (∞Ω∫≠)
Film: The Front Line ∞Ω∫≥ (∞Ω∫≥)
Midnight Movies (with J. Hoberman, ∞Ω∫≥)
Greed (∞ΩΩ∞)
This Is Orson Welles, by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich (editor, ∞ΩΩ≤)
Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism (∞ΩΩ∑)
Movies as Politics (∞ΩΩπ)
Another Kind of Independence: Joe Dante and the Roger Corman Class of ∞Ωπ≠
(coedited with Bill Krohn, ∞ΩΩΩ)
Dead Man (≤≠≠≠)
Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Films We Can See (≤≠≠≠)
Abbas Kiarostami (with Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, ≤≠≠≥)
Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia
(coedited with Adrian Martin, ≤≠≠≥)
Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons (≤≠≠≥)
Essential Cinema
On the Necessity of Film Canons
Jonathan Rosenbaum
The Johns Hopkins University Press
Baltimore and London
All essays were originally published in the Chicago Reader except: ‘‘Improvisations and
Interactions in Altmanville’’ and ‘‘Nashville’’ (Sight and Sound); ‘‘Reality and History as
the Apotheosis of Southern Sleaze: Phil Karlson’s The Phenix City Story’’ (The Oxford-
American); ‘‘Is Ozu Slow?’’ and ‘‘Nicholas Ray’’ (Senses of Cinema); ‘‘Stanley Kwan’s
Actress: Writing History in Quicksand’’ (Cinema Scope); ‘‘International Harvest: National
Film Histories on Video’’ and ‘‘The Battle over Orson Welles’’ (Cineaste); ‘‘Ruiz Hopping
and Buried Treasures: Twelve Selected Global Sites’’ and ‘‘*Corpus Callosum’’ (Film
Comment); ‘‘Tashlinesque’’ (Frank Tashlin, ed. Roger Garcia [Éditions du Festival Interna-
tional du Film de Locarno in collaboration with the British Film Institute [London] /
Éditions Yellow Now [Crisnée, Belgium], 1994]); ‘‘Otto Preminger’’ (Cinema: A Critical
Dictionary, ed. Richard Roud [New York: Viking Press, 1980]); ‘‘The Countercultural
Histories of Rudy Wurlitzer,’’ ‘‘Samuel Fuller: The Words of an Innocent Writer,’’ and
‘‘The Mysterious Elaine May: Hiding in Plain Sight’’ (Written By). Other articles: Copy-
right ∫ 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001,
2002 by Chicago Reader, Inc.
∫ 2004 The Johns Hopkins University Press
All rights reserved. Published 2004
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363
www.press.jhu.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rosenbaum, Jonathan.
Essential cinema: on the necessity of film canons / Jonathan Rosenbaum.
p. cm.
isbn 0-8018-7840-3 (alk. paper)
1. Motion pictures. i. Title.
pn1994.r5684 2004
791.43%09—dc21
2003010640
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
I. CLASSICS
Fables of the Reconstruction: The Four-Hour Greed 3
Fascinating Rhythms: M 13
The Color of Paradise: Jour de fête 19
Backyard Ethics: Hitchcock’s Rear Window 26
Songs in the Key of Everyday Life: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg 32
A Tale of the Wind: Joris Ivens’s Last Testament 38
Kira Muratova’s Home Truths: The Asthenic Syndrome 43
The Importance of Being Sarcastic: Sátántangó 48
Blush 53
The Ceremony 58
Thieves 62
True Grit: Rosetta 67
II. SPECIAL PROBLEMS
Malick’s Progress 75
Improvisations and Interactions in Altmanville, with an Afterword:
Nashville 80
Mixed Emotions: Breaking the Waves 95
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control 101
The Sweet Cheat: Time Regained 105
James Benning’s Four Corners 113
Overrated Solutions: L’humanité 119
The Sound of German: Straub-Huillet’s The Death of Empedocles 123
Beyond the Clouds: Return to Beauty 130
Reality and History as the Apotheosis of Southern Sleaze: Phil Karlson’s
The Phenix City Story 136
Is Ozu Slow? 146
The Human Touch: Decalogue and Fargo 152
v
III.OTHER CANONS, OTHER CANONIZERS
Life Intimidates Art: Irma Vep 163
Stanley Kwan’s Actress: Writing History in Quicksand 170
Critical Distance: Godard’s Contempt 179
Remember Amnesia? (Guy Maddin’s Archangel), with an Afterword: Ten
Years Later (Please Watch Carefully: The Heart of the World) 187
Ragged but Right: Rivette’s Up Down Fragile 194
Critic with a Camera: Marker on Tarkovsky 199
Riddles of a Sphinx: From the Journals of Jean Seberg 204
International Harvest: National Film Histories on Video 210
International Sampler: Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai 216
Not the Same Old Song and Dance: The Young Girls of Rochefort 223
Flaming Creatures and Scotch Tape 230
Ruiz Hopping and Buried Treasures: Twelve Selected Global Sites 236
IV. DISPUTABLE CONTENDERS
Back in Style: Bertolucci’s Besieged 251
The Young One: Buñuel’s Neglected Masterpiece 257
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities: Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut 262
The Best of Both Worlds: A.I. Artificial Intelligence 271
Under the Chador: The Day I Became a Woman 280
Chains of Ignorance: Charles Burnett’s Nightjohn 285
Good Vibrations: Waking Life 291
Hell on Wheels: Taxi Driver 295
Meat, John, Dough: Pretty Woman 302
Tashlinesque 306
Weird and Wonderful: Takeshi Kitano’s Kikujiro 313
*Corpus Callosum 317
V. FILMMAKERS
Mann of the West 321
Otto Preminger 326
Nicholas Ray 334
Exiles in Modernity: Films by Edward Yang 338
Hou Hsiao-hsien: Becoming Taiwanese 346
The Countercultural Histories of Rudy Wurlitzer 351
Samuel Fuller: The Words of an Innocent Warrior 357
The Mysterious Elaine May: Hiding in Plain Sight 364
Visionary Agitprop: I Am Cuba 370
The Battle over Orson Welles 376
vi CONTENTS
License to Feel: Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Neon Bible 386
Death and Life: Landscapes of the Soul—The Cinema of Alexander
Dovzhenko 399
Appendix: 1,000 Favorites (A Personal Canon) 407
Index 427
CONTENTS vii
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Acknowledgments
To attempt a nonexhaustive list of all the friends and editors who helped me with
these pieces, stretching back in time to the early 70s, I’d like to thank Raymond
Bellour, Nicole Brenez, Lisa Chambers, Peggy Chiao, Richard Combs, Gary
Crowdus, Christa Lang Fuller, Roger Garcia, Gary Graver, Tom Gunning, Shi-
gehiko Hasumi, Penelope Houston, Richard T. Jameson, Jim Jarmusch, Kent
Jones, Stuart Klawans, Oja Kodar, Kitry Krause, Bill Krohn, Mike Lenehan,
Lorenzo Mans, Adrian Martin, Tom Milne, James Naremore, Richard Peña,
Mark Peranson, Richard Porton, Mark Rappaport, Susan Ray, the late Richard
Roud, Martin Rubin, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa, Barbara Scharres, Hans Schmid,
Gavin Smith, James Stoller, Alison True, and Alan Williams. And for particular
help in guiding this book to port, I’m especially grateful to Gilberto Perez and
Mahinder Kingra.
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