Essential cinema : on the necessity of film canons / Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenbaum, Jonathan, 1943-

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xxi, 445 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.

Summary:

In his astute and deeply informed film reviews and essays, Jonathan Rosenbaum regularly provides new and brilliant insights into the cinema as art, entertainment, and commerce. Guided by a personal canon of great films, Rosenbaum sees, in the ongoing hostility toward the idea of a canon shared by many within the field of film studies, a missed opportunity both to shape the discussion about cinema and to help inform and guide casual and serious filmgoers alike.

In Essential Cinema, Rosenbaum forcefully argues that canons of great films are more necessary than ever, given that film culture today is dominated by advertising executives, sixty-second film reviewers, and other players in the Hollywood publicity machine who champion mediocre films at the expense of genuinely imaginative and challenging works. He proposes specific definitions of excellence in film art through the creation of a personal canon of both well-known and obscure movies from around the world and suggests ways in which other canons might be similarly constructed.

Essential Cinema offers in-depth assessments of an astonishing range of films: established classics such as Rear Window, M, and Greed; ambitious but flawed works like The Thin Red Line and Breaking the Waves; eccentric masterpieces from around the world, including Irma Vep and Archangel; and recent films that have bitterly divided critics and viewers, among them Eyes Wide Shut and A.I. He also explores the carcers of such diverse filmmakers as Robert Altman, Raul Ruiz, Frank Tashlin, Elaine May, Sam Fuller, Terrence Davies, Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Orson Welles. In conclusion, Rosenbaum offers his own film canon of 1,000 key works from the beginning of cinema to the present day. A cogent and provocative argument about the art of film, Essential Cinema is also a fiercely independent reference book of must-see movies for film lovers everywhere.

Contents:

I. Classics

Fables of the Reconstruction: The Four-Hour Greed 3

Fascinating Rhythms: M 13

The Color of Paradise: Jour de fete 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: Satantango 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'humanite 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

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: Bunuel'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

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Gotham Book Mart Collection copy has dustjacket retained.

ISBN:

0801878403

OCLC:

52312613