I've got about a million comments from this jam packed piece but I'll try and keep it short. I have to ask if you're familiar with Paul Schrader's idea of "Transcendental Style," which he wrote a book on in 1972. He specifically focuses on the films of Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer, and I think you're describing something similar in section 4 when you talk about the "downward motion" of art being connected with technological progress. His main idea (at least in my understanding) is that the films of Bresson et al. are about putting the viewer into time, while "entertainment" or what we now call "content" is about taking the viewer out of time - speeding up time - via quick cutting, soundtrack, and camera movement. The films in "Transcendental Style" seem to me more about the consciousness of the characters as opposed to plot; at one point he calls this "being there" vs. "getting there."
Also very interested in this Henry James piece, as my favorite genre of novel is what I call in my head "Americans Abroad." I also put James Baldwin and Patricia Highsmith in there and I'm curious if they'll get any mention in your essay. There's a fantastic moment in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" when Ripley, aboard a steamer to Europe, absentmindedly picks up "The Ambassadors" and then puts it back after flipping through a few pages, the implication being that Ripley's trip to Europe won't engender the sort of self-knowledge that it does for Strether. I prefer "The Ambassadors" as a novel, but as a depiction of an American sensibility I find that Highsmith is spot on...
I think this is a little strong. If this is a line of internal dialogue, perhaps channeling your granny (I channel my hillbilly forebears, so no snide implied), that’s one thing. But as a plain statement, I think it goes too far.
I feel just the same about Dalí, but I think Buñuel is great, and a great contrast to the former (he and Dalí are antagonists, not similar or defined by ‘Catholic hang ups” whatever that might mean. Buñuel’ se best films. Los Olvidados; Viridiana. They don’t evade. And they are not exploitation in your sense
I like that the first part of this piece is numbered “0”. I love your writing on film. Cheers!
Sep 16, 2023·edited Sep 16, 2023Liked by Justin Smith-Ruiu
"Surrealism is nothing but an evasion" - maybe in the case of those artists/filmmakers with Catholic hangups like Dalí and Buñuel, but I find nothing evasive in the films of Švankmajer or Borowczyk!
A million comments on this intricate essay, yes. Trimming to two or three:
Much though I love The Man who Shot Liberty Valence and Gene Pitney's tribute thereof, Stagecoach strikes me as the most Renoirish of the Ford movies I've seen, with young and beautiful John Wayne filling the place of young and beautiful Jean Gabin, John Carradine as chivalrous censorious dispossessed aristocrat, and murder and promiscuity (in this instance, literal prostitution) forgiven as thoroughly as in La Règle du jeu (le jeu being not at all a courtroom). (True Fordians might point to his Will Rogers vehicles or The Grapes of Wrath as analogous to The Southerner but I am no true Fordian.)
Oh, and as regards the intersection of Renoir and Westerns, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange is pure pleasure.
Again like Derek Neal, when I consider Americans abroad I think first of James and Highsmith. The first Ripley novel is a resentfully unmandarin version of The Ambassadors, The Tremor of Forgery is a late-1960s-American L'Étranger, and The Boy who Followed Ripley has Ripley attempting the role of mentor and guide to the good, amoral, Continental life.
I've got about a million comments from this jam packed piece but I'll try and keep it short. I have to ask if you're familiar with Paul Schrader's idea of "Transcendental Style," which he wrote a book on in 1972. He specifically focuses on the films of Bresson, Ozu, and Dreyer, and I think you're describing something similar in section 4 when you talk about the "downward motion" of art being connected with technological progress. His main idea (at least in my understanding) is that the films of Bresson et al. are about putting the viewer into time, while "entertainment" or what we now call "content" is about taking the viewer out of time - speeding up time - via quick cutting, soundtrack, and camera movement. The films in "Transcendental Style" seem to me more about the consciousness of the characters as opposed to plot; at one point he calls this "being there" vs. "getting there."
Also very interested in this Henry James piece, as my favorite genre of novel is what I call in my head "Americans Abroad." I also put James Baldwin and Patricia Highsmith in there and I'm curious if they'll get any mention in your essay. There's a fantastic moment in "The Talented Mr. Ripley" when Ripley, aboard a steamer to Europe, absentmindedly picks up "The Ambassadors" and then puts it back after flipping through a few pages, the implication being that Ripley's trip to Europe won't engender the sort of self-knowledge that it does for Strether. I prefer "The Ambassadors" as a novel, but as a depiction of an American sensibility I find that Highsmith is spot on...
“Surrealism is nothing but an evasion.”
I think this is a little strong. If this is a line of internal dialogue, perhaps channeling your granny (I channel my hillbilly forebears, so no snide implied), that’s one thing. But as a plain statement, I think it goes too far.
I feel just the same about Dalí, but I think Buñuel is great, and a great contrast to the former (he and Dalí are antagonists, not similar or defined by ‘Catholic hang ups” whatever that might mean. Buñuel’ se best films. Los Olvidados; Viridiana. They don’t evade. And they are not exploitation in your sense
I like that the first part of this piece is numbered “0”. I love your writing on film. Cheers!
In using Oliphant Chuckerbutty as a "McGuffin", you seem to be paying homage to a
plump master of British and American cinema.
"Surrealism is nothing but an evasion" - maybe in the case of those artists/filmmakers with Catholic hangups like Dalí and Buñuel, but I find nothing evasive in the films of Švankmajer or Borowczyk!
A million comments on this intricate essay, yes. Trimming to two or three:
Much though I love The Man who Shot Liberty Valence and Gene Pitney's tribute thereof, Stagecoach strikes me as the most Renoirish of the Ford movies I've seen, with young and beautiful John Wayne filling the place of young and beautiful Jean Gabin, John Carradine as chivalrous censorious dispossessed aristocrat, and murder and promiscuity (in this instance, literal prostitution) forgiven as thoroughly as in La Règle du jeu (le jeu being not at all a courtroom). (True Fordians might point to his Will Rogers vehicles or The Grapes of Wrath as analogous to The Southerner but I am no true Fordian.)
Oh, and as regards the intersection of Renoir and Westerns, Le Crime de Monsieur Lange is pure pleasure.
Again like Derek Neal, when I consider Americans abroad I think first of James and Highsmith. The first Ripley novel is a resentfully unmandarin version of The Ambassadors, The Tremor of Forgery is a late-1960s-American L'Étranger, and The Boy who Followed Ripley has Ripley attempting the role of mentor and guide to the good, amoral, Continental life.