The Telluride legend of Richard Widmark
and the art of entertainment
You may have heard some version of this story about Richard Widmark, who died last week at age 93. I was there, at the Telluride Film Festival in 1983 when it happened, in the Sheridan Opera House for the tributes to Andrei Tarkovsky and Widmark. Emotions were heightened, perhaps, not only by the thin mountain atmosphere, but but by a terrifying Cold War showdown between Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union and Ronald Reagan's USA (I don't know which scared me more at the time) over the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which we didn't learn about until we got to Telluride. Things were chilly up there.
The emotions associated with my memories are indelible, even if their precision has faded. But the gist of what Richard Widmark said that weekend, and the eloquence with which he said it, will always stay with me. Shortly after Widmark's death, I contacted Gary Meyer, director of the Telluride Film Festival (whom I'd known as co-founder of Landmark Theatres), to see if Widmark's tribute speech was transcribed anywhere, because I would love to reprint it. Those were relatively early days for the Telluride festival (which began in 1974 and seemed much more remote than it is now) and Gary couldn't find any record of the speech, which I remember Widmark reading from notes he produced from his jacket pocket. But he did find some 1983 press coverage, from which I have pieced together the following "story."
(Thank you again, Gary!)
First, Telluride, Tarkovsky and 1983 must set the scene for Widmark's entrance:
The Russian Tarkovsky ("Andrei Rublev," "Solaris," "Stalker") and Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Zanussi ("Camouflage," "The Constant Factor," "The Balance") had driven to Telluride through Monument Valley -- which provided the source of an idea, and a stunning image, that Zanussi would use in his next masterpiece, "A Year of the Quiet Sun" (winner of the Golden Lion at the 1984 Venice Film Festival). The multi-lingual Zanussi -- mentor to Krzysztof Kieslowski ("The Double Life of Veronique," the "Three Colors" trilogy) who would later become more much more famous -- seemed to be translating for everyone that year, including Tarkovsky.
Joan Juliet Buck, Vanity Fair, December, 1983:
For the past ten years the extremely small (population 1,100 Colorado town of Telluride has been dedicated to the proposition that there is more to films than glamour. The festival is high-minded and obscure. European directors know about it because many of them have been honored here before they were heard of in the rest of America. It is familiar to the American avant-garde: abstract filmmaker Stan Brakhage and documentary filmmaker Les Blank are recurrent visitors with the status of mascots. [...]
Sheila Benson, The Los Angeles Times, September, 1983:
The Korean jetliner incident had just occurred, throwing everything into a peculiar bas relief. There was the town's remoteness, a dot on the map surrounded by the towering San Juan mountains in southwest Colorado, and there was at the same time the presence of an extremely international community: film makers from Poland, the Soviet Union, West Germany, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Mexico, Hungary, France, Italy and Sweden.
It gave the town a second dimension, one in which international politics were never absent. And at the gilt and velvet Sheridan Opera House, films were passionately championed, denounced, booed and walked-out upon. It seemed that everyone with a deeply held artistic or political point of view managed to air it, frequently from the Opera House stage.
The result was the scrappiest, most polarized festival since they mounted a tribute to Leni Riefenstahl 10 years ago -- and the most extraordinary.
Buck, Vanity Fair:
Tarkovsky was talking in Italian about his drive through the Southwest: "Monument Valley: It's not American. It's another world, not the material one. It wasn't put there so westerns could be shot, but as a place to meditate. The Indians were right to pray there and look for God."
The Festival crowd was hungry... for meaning -- itchy for big answers to the big questions. [...]
That night was the tribute to Andrei Tarkovsky. The Sheridan Opera House was full, little pink lights aglow on its balconies. Zanussi and Tarkovsky stood in front of the stage curtain, which depicts a Swiss-Venetian fantasy with swans. Tarkovsky's speech, translated by Zanussi, sounded like a call to throw the money changers out of the bank.
Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News, September 11, 1983:
"The birth of cinema was sinful and took place in the marketplace," said Tarkovsky, whose films have won no popularity contests in the Soviet Union. "Cinema was born to earn money. No other discipline of art was born for this purpose. Up until now, whoever made films must face the fact of this birth.
"Cinema is not an entertainment; it is a high poetical discipline of art. As Goethe said, 'It is equally difficult to read a good book as to write a good book....' If I ever make a film that would please everybody, I would feel I had done something wrong. My intuition tells me that the audience is in a very critical moment now, that they are willing to find in cinema something different -- not an entertainment but something deeper and more substantial."
William K. Everson, Daily Variety:
There is no question that in some ways Tarkovsky is entitled to be ranked as a contemporary Eisenstein, but alas, the man was somewhat less impressive than his films.
In a very pretentious address, he underlined old artistic cliches. The cinema, he said, was not and should not be an entertainment, only an art. He went on to say that his new film ["Nostalghia"] did not contain a single frame of "entertainment," but was purely art, and anybody who just wanted to be entertained should leave.
Benson, LA Times:
"For years the spectator demanded from us films that entertained. Now that spectator is bored and abandons theaters" [said Tarkovsky]. "... I am not like a $100 bill which pleases everybody. But just the experience of such a festival as this brings hope to my life.... My intuition tells me that masses of spectators are at a critical moment now, willing to find something far deeper and more substantial that will refer to their lives.
"You may say that I'm an idealist. I am an optimist and this festival supports my great hope."
Everson, Variety:
The audience, much impressed by his work, and to a degree sympathetic to him as a person (his personal and public problems in Russia are well known and ongoing) applauded and there were no signs of dissent at his comments, but it was more a matter of politeness -- and of assuming that possibly his zeal did not translate well.
Buck, Vanity Fair:
"Nostalghia" is a slow film. A Russian writer in Italy yearns for home and dreams of his dacha, refuses the advances of a beautiful Italian interpreter, while Italians bathe in the steamy waters that fill what looks like a cloister garden, a madman sets himself on fire astride Marcus Aurelius's statue in the Campidoglio while more mad people look on, and the writer at last attempts to cross the captive water holding a lit candle, and dies. The image of the dacha returns, and is ringed at the end by the walls of a ruined church.
People lied a lot about this one.
Everson, Variety:
However, there were balancing repercussions the next day, the kind of non-passive response that has always made Telluride lively.
Richard Widmark, at his tribute, seemed relatively restrained. He is a shy and self-effacing person, an facing a large crowd obviously made him uncomfortable. But after the expected pleasantries, he suddenly turned passionate...
Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News:
Widmark's long career began in 1947 with "Kiss of Death," in which he played Tommy Udo, a sadist who pushed a woman in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs. And giggled. [Widmark received an Oscar nomination for the role.] After an especially entertaining selection of clips, Widmark took to the stage, where he thanked the festival -- the first he had ever attended -- and read from a prepared statement.
"Before I go," said Widmark, I'd like to say a word in defense of entertainment. Film is a medium in which there is room for everyone. But we should never forget that it's a medium that had its beginnings in simpler times...."
Everson, Variety:
Without specifically referring to Tarkovsky, he pointed out that there as room for art and entertainment -- and that Griffith, Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin were all "entertainers." The applause was deafening, and clearly Widmark was saying what most would only say privately.
[I also recall him mentioning Orson Welles and John Ford -- with whom he had worked twice, though maybe my memory is just chiming in from a distance. Widmark's tribute film was Jules Dassin's "Night and the City."]
Benson, LA Times:
To at least one audience member, Tarkovsky's words demanded an answer. The next night, Widmark waded into the fray like the John Ford stalwart he played in "Two Rode Together," which the audience had seen only minutes ago [in career clips]. Calling film a medium with room for every kind of expression, and listing a dozen or more of its great actors and directors, "entertainers all," Widmark said that each person was entitled to his own opinion, "but in the real world, let us not denigrate entertainment. Pretentiousness and pomposity are not art."
Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News:
The next morning I spotted Widmark at a restaurant and asked him why he felt he needed to defend entertainment, which isn't exactly under seige anyway. Why had he made such an impassioned plea? Widmark replied with a single word.
"Tarkovsky."
Buck, Vanity Fair:
... Richard Widmark, interviewed at his own tribute, said: "Tarkovsky. He's a phony. He stinks."
* * * *
The ironies of the occasion(s) still thrill and fascinate me. They began with the spectacle of Zanussi, in my opinion a more profound artist than Tarkovsky could dream of being, acting as a humble translator. Zanussi would reveal a spiritual and distinctly American vision of Monument Valley in "A Year of the Quiet Sun." I don't know if Tarkovsky (who died in 1986) ever saw Zanussi's film, or if he would have understood it if he had.
Tarkovsky was clearly giving a crowd-pleasing performance, doing a "Mad Russian" routine for the American film festival audience that was perhaps a variation on Oscar Wilde's more effete schtick when he visited -- and entertained -- Colorado and the American West in 1882. (At least he didn't go full-cretin on us and start pounding his shoe on the stage, Khrushchev-style.) I agree with him that his movie was not remotely entertaining -- at least no more so than Ridley Scott's "American Gangster," from which I am taking a break to write this because I find it so incredibly tedious.
As Everson wrote, it is easy to sympathize with showman Tarkovsky's passion on the stage, even if you don't see it in a film like "Nostalghia." Widmark was just as impassioned, only classier (even when saying, "He stinks," in private), because his vision of cinema was both broader and deeper than Tarkovsky's. (And let me add that Zanussi could make anyone sound more eloquent than they already were. Widmark didn't even have the benefit of Zanussi's translation skills!) Entertainment does not preclude art. For that matter, neither do pretentiousness and pomposity, and there's no question Tarkovky unashamedly aspired to both. Meanwhile, strangely, it was Tarkovsky, not Widmark, who was promoting the idea that "masses of spectators" should drive or determine what could be explored in cinema -- asserting his own false correlation between artistry and popular acceptance. (Who would believe it possible that any film could "please everyone"? Only someone who believed that was the definition of "entertainment.")
Still, I wouldn't trade the poetry and artistry of all Tarkovsky's work for that one long shot of Widmark and James Stewart on the bank of the river in "Two Rode Together." What's more, I would never think that I had to.
At Telluride, Tarkovsky was a tourist. His provincialism and condescension were palpable. Nobody is surprised by arrogance in film directors, but he knew nothing about the westerns he was pontificating against. Besides, you don't come through Monument Valley to Telluride to assert your artistic superiority to the likes of John Ford -- especially when you know there's a man who worked with Ford right there. Widmark saw that the town -- and the world, and the cinema -- was big enough for both of them. Tarkovsky, if we take him at his word, could not. (I don't think this was due to his conditioning under Soviet-style "communism," but goes back to something more ancient and fundamental -- plain old aesthetic messianism.)
Today I like to think that Widmark's Telluride speech could stand as his epitaph, and that he, too, ranks among those film artists, entertainers all.
* * * *
See Dennis Cozzalio's splendid appreciation of Widmark at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule and Kim Morgan's at Sunset Gun.
* * * *
Tarkovsky post-script: While some of us were nervously joking (heh-heh) that perhaps remote little Telluride was not such a bad place to be on this weekend of what felt like nuclear brinksmanship, Lynne Littman's "Testament" premiered. As if to underscore the political tension and paranoia of the moment, it featured Jane Alexander as a small-town survivor in the fallout (literally) of a massive missile attack on the US. The characters' willingness to go gently into that good nightmare rang false to me. So, I appreciated Tarkovsky's comment at a panel discussion (reported by Buck): "I congratulate the author to be able to imagine what a nuclear war is. I am envious when I see such a naive and unrebellious vision of atomic war, amazed at how out of such tragic material you may make such a limited, mild fairy tale."
Then he returned to the polemical Christian mysticism that typifies him and his work: "Human spirit, soul, are immortal. If I were of a different opinion I wouldn't be able to survive ten minutes because my life would be senseless. If happiness and senselessness are identical, I don't want happiness -- who told you you were born to be happy?" [That last inquiry is among the key questions of our time, but the premise that "happiness = senselessness" is as absurd as Littman's film. It's also a characteristic Tarkovsky false dilemma. What he was really saying, perhaps, was that, for him, "senselessness = negation" -- with the perhaps unconscious corollary that, for him, "meaning = self." Which is pretty much what you'd expect a messianic artist to believe with all his might.]
"Humanity is falling into war. We want to be saved and yet ask others for our salvation. If somebody is ready to sacrifice, it will be his self-realization and he will never suffer. I make films in order to share. Sharing the substance. I hope to be a medium between the universal spirit and human beings. But I won't make a step in your direction to make your perception of my work any easier."
Tarkovsky defected to Western Europe the next year. His final film, "The Sacrifice," premiered at Telluride in 1987, the year after his death. It was a nightmare of nuclear holocaust, and a promise to his son. I mean no disrespect when I say I found it both moving and entertaining.
Comments
Very interesting post. Watching most of Tarkovsky's films and several of Widmark's performances have provided some of the most intensely rewarding experiences I've had at the movies. I've never liked having to choose, especially when it's not necessary, so I'm not going to pick sides here. I will say that our culture's use of the words "art" and "entertainment" is limited and patronizing, and drives wedges between the head, heart, and stomach. I'd probably rather hang out with Widmark, but I don't find his or Tarkovsky's comments eloquent or representative of their worth as creative people. The work speaks better than they do.
Taste is a funny thing, isn't it? I find Zanussi's films thin, annoying, and, yes, tedious, but I was floating about three feet off the ground while watching "Nostalghia" and "Stalker," I loved them so much. However, I love that shot in "Two Rode Together," too.
Keep up the great blog. This is one of the only film sites I regularly read in which the comments section doesn't devolve into personal attack.
Posted by: Josh | March 29, 2008 11:43 PM
I really think you are being a bit naive judging Tarkovsky by "Nostalgia" which is his worst film(judge Bergman by "The Serpants Egg" do you?). See Andrei Rublev, Stalker and especially his masterpiece The Mirror and then you can assess him. And read Sculpting in Time, the best book about film making while you are at it. I agree that John Ford is more popular until now, but Cinema is but a child. In less than 150 years of literature, who knows what kind of sh*t books were the most popular? When Film truly develops into a great artform like music or literature, in 500 years, they will still be talking about the great "Art" Films, not about the great entertainers. Not because Art is more important(it is) but because entertainment is subjective and relevant only to a certain era, while art is eternal and everlasting. People will be watching more Bresson and Tarkovsky than John Ford or Frank Capra (If we have moved forward as a species at all...).
JE: I'm not "judging" Tarkovsky based on "Nostalghia" (and, yes, I've seen all his films). I'm saying I don't agree with the definition of "art" (or "entertainment") he offered in Telluride. His work stands on its own, and so does John Ford's. A work's age or its popularity is irrelevant to its artistry. The cinema may still be a child, but its artists are not children.
Posted by: Gouthem | March 29, 2008 11:55 PM
Wow. Your memories of 1983 Telluride are definitely different than mine.
But I would like for you to explain in more detail this rather bold claim: "A work's age or its popularity is irrelevant to its artistry."
JE: Not bold at all. Whether a work is centuries old or brand new, popular or unpopular (then or now or in the future), has nothing to do with its value as art, or entertainment. The quality of the art doesn't change over time. Only the times change. Meanwhile, art and artists go in and out of fashion. (See the opening of Robert Altman's "Vincent and Theo" for a beautiful illustration of that truth.)
As you see, this post is compiled from four separate accounts printed in 1983. If you have memories to add (or that differ from them), please contribute!
Posted by: Dave M. | March 30, 2008 01:11 AM
Personally I find comparing Ford, Capra, and perhaps Hitchcock, to Tarkovsky and Bergman similar to comparing Beethoven and Stravinsky to Cole Porter or Irving Berlin.
I don't see how we can determine what will be remembered 500 years from now; certainly not with the idea that a well-made film that appeals to a smaller crowd automatically qualifies it as art, whereas a well-made film that appeals to the masses is destined to obscurity when my seven year old daughter reaches her 80's. Hopefully our descendents won't think that way, but instead judge each film on its own accord and award it its destined place in history as "art" or "sludge".
Posted by: Wade | March 30, 2008 08:27 AM
But isn't the "quality" of art also determined by which social milieu it is judged in? There is no objective panel that is able to divorce art from its time and place and judge its transcendent artistry. Quality will always hinge on the audience's perception and claiming that "a work's age or its popularity is irrelevant to its artistry" ignores the role of the audience in determining a work's meaning, importance, and, well, artistry.
A 16th century culture and a 21st century culture would almost certainly have differing views on what is entertaining or what is artistic. A work of art does not exist in a vacuum and its quality is not preserved; rather, its perceived quality or entertainment value is mutable and malleable in relation to whomever is sitting around and talking about it.
Posted by: Brandon Colvin | March 30, 2008 11:20 AM
Brandon: I think we're coming at virtually the same thing from different angles. I completely agree that art does not exist in a vacuum and that there's no "objective panel" to judge it. That's exactly what I mean -- the work stays the same, but the times change, and art goes in and out of fashion. Sometimes it may take centuries to be understood or appreciated; sometimes its moment may pass and what was once considered great art or great popular art/entertainment will fade from prominence. And yet, what was once hailed, then dismissed, may still be rediscovered in a new context later on. Hitchcock might be a good example of that, even during his own lifetime. He was considered a brilliant British filmmaker, thought to have "sold out" and become a mere entertainer after he came to America, then rediscovered by French critics (and Robin Wood) who acclaimed him as a master. Right now the conventional assessment is that his American work is generally superior to his earlier British stuff.
You're right that its "perceived quality or entertainment value is mutable and malleable" -- I'm just saying its the same work, and that the work does not change, but the contexts (cultural, historical, etc.) in which it is evaluated do. Tarkovsky spoke of art and entertainment as if they had distinct, fixed, objectively determinable values -- that one was made of magnesium and the other of potassium, and you could always measure which was which. Maybe that's arrogant or maybe it's naive, but either way it's wrong.
I have a rubber stamp with which I used to "tag" selected objects and people. It says: "This is not art." It raises a lot of questions and interpretations depending on where you put it: on a tree, under a painting, on a window, a forehead, a movie poster...
Posted by: jim emerson | March 30, 2008 01:50 PM
This is a great post. If you're correct in interpreting what Tarkovsky was on about, then certainly he is holding a naive and patently false view. It comes from the modernists, surely.
But let's take a principle of charity here: Tarkovsky was speaking through an interpreter, right? It's possible something essential was lost in translation. The usual distinction is between 'pure entertainment' and art. Art is expressive and quite useless, whereas a work made exclusively for entertainment, or money, is crafted for some purpose (viz. entertaining). This isn't such a naive view after all, though it is certainly old and cliched. Sometimes old, cliched philosophical distinctions of this sort--essentialist/functionalist-- persist because they're right. It's likely Tarkovsky had this in mind, despite his own apparent desire to make thoroughly unentertaining films. He's too intelligent for the more naive view.
Posted by: S. C.-North | March 30, 2008 11:00 PM
I agree that films cannot easily be distinguished as art or entertainment. But the way we distinguish art is longevity. Juno is entertaining now(and best film of the year according to your evil master). In 500 years, will viewers understand why teenage pregnancy is taboo? Society becomes more accepting every year. And all the other joke/cutesy moments will fall flatter and flatter each year. Cries and Whispers(not exactly popcorn entertainment), on the other hand, will scare viewers even then.
Posted by: Gouthem | March 31, 2008 06:19 AM
let me give you an example. I am of the new generation-19. I have seen many Hollywood classics-Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Some like it Hot, Star Wars etc. They were...o.k. Nothing more. I was entertained, and glad I watched them. I also know I will probably never watch most of them again. Why, because there is nothing there I missed on the first viewing . Persona, on the other hand, I wasn't entertained , and still I returned to it 9 times(yet). There's something there I haven't quite devoured. My record is Tarkovsky's Mirror-17 and counting. An entertaining film gets less entertaining on each subsequent viewing-as you can remember the punchlines, the kisses, the dialogue, the gunshots(assuming the viewer has a decent memory). A work of art has that aura, that mystery that remains after subsequent samplings. They hold you at a distance always, tantalising you. Entertainment is the fun blonde-friendly, fun, attractive, approachable,great for a limited period. Art, is the brunette-not really attractive, distant, unapproachable, but magnetic In other words, entertainment is Cameron Diaz, art is Isabelle Huppert.
Posted by: Gouthem | March 31, 2008 06:38 AM
Just one more point. Art should transcend time and space. You say that art goes in and out of fashion. Not great art. James Joyce goes in and out of favour, not Dostoyevsky or Omar Khayyam. But what about transcending space, or to be precise-geography. The Seventh seal can be appreciated by any culture, people of any nativity(here in India in film festivals, it plays to full crowds). But can Pulp Fiction be enjoyed by anyone who doesn't understand the pop cultural references or the humour as he is unfamiliar with the American life? People in Iran will find Seventh Seal a great film, as they can understand it fully. Will they react so to Pulp Fiction? I don't think so-not because it may be offensive to them, but because most of the entertainment will be over their head due to the cultural gap . If so, it doesn't transcend culture, national boundaries, or language. Hence, is it art? I don't know- I am asking. Isn't it ironic, Seventh seal is actually a film with better commercial possibilities and popularity possibility than the cool and entertaining films such as Pulp Fiction and Juno(considering every person in the world will see see all movies) as simply, everyone will understand it provided that they can read the subtitles. I am done now(finally...)
JE: You write: "Art should transcend time and space." Absolutely. But that doesn't mean people always recognize it. I don't think that's always necessarily the fault of the art, but of the people who can't see it. Mahler is another example: Very popular in his lifetime, then out of fashion (considered rather gauche by some) and rarely played until Leonard Bernstein revived interest in him in the 1960s. His music never changed, just the public response to it.
Posted by: Gouthem | March 31, 2008 06:56 AM
Gouthern and Brandon make excellent points. When Brandon wrote, "But isn't the "quality" of art also determined by which social milieu it is judged in? There is no objective panel that is able to divorce art from its time and place and judge its transcendent artistry. Quality will always hinge on the audience's perception and claiming that 'a work's age or its popularity is irrelevant to its artistry' ignores the role of the audience in determining a work's meaning, importance, and, well, artistry" it reminded me of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."
Recently I made a list of all the films which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival from 1975 until 2007 (Prior to 1975, the top award was called "Grand Prix International - I'll make a list of 1974-1947 later). When looking over all the winners, "Fahrenheit 9/11" stuck out like "Juno" among the 2008 Academy Award nominees.
I haven't seen it, but I have seen Michael Moore's "Sicko" and "Bowling for Columbine." I liked both, but the man is not exactly an "artist." I usually trust the Cannes Film Festival's choice for winner of the Top Prize because so many of my most beloved films (Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, The Pianist, Secrets & Lies, Barton Fink, Wild at Heart, The Conversation) have won it!
"Fahrenheit 9/11" as far as I can tell won SOLELY for the reasons Brandon specified, which was that it had a seismic impact in that brief window of time due to its pertinence and audacity. Michael Moore saw that tiny window zipping by, shot, and scored the Palme d' f****ng Or! If Cannes can fall prey to this sort of clouded judgment, then I imagine anybody can.
Posted by: Harry lime | March 31, 2008 12:53 PM
If we're going to talk about what sort of art will be remembered in 500 years, it's probably worth bringing up William Friggin' Shakespeare. He falls on the "entertainment" side of fence, doesn't he?
Posted by: Grant | March 31, 2008 02:17 PM
Thank you for this discussion. I am a little leery of entering it, because I am not the intellectual type.
I grew up in the 80s watching old Hollywood movies (it's actually wonderful that Spain only had two TV channels then, because I never had the option to choose between Two Rode Together on TVE1 and the latest teenage sex comedy on HBO or crapfest on Lifetime); and later exposure to Pasolini and Antonioni and some of the more arcane Bergman and Fellini (although I have been able to very much enjoy some of the more accessible films of the latter two) had as an unfortunate result the fact that I tend to dread even the mention of "art" films, even though I eventually came to realize that most of the movies I love where also highly appreciated by critics. Just not in that high-brow "art", the-masses-just-wouldn't-understand kind of way. Eventually, I came to realize that not all art is pretentious and inaccessible, and that not all entertainment is disposable. Thank you Josh and Wade for your comments to that effect. You put it much more cogently than I ever could.
Gouthem, I disagree with you in so many ways, it's hard to keep them straight. First of all, how can you dismiss entertainment as a factor of art?
I think you are falling into the fallacy of believing that all great art has survived and come to be eventually appreciated, and so your favorite movies must, even if they are not popular. How can you possibly know? Bach's works were almost lost until Mendelsson rescued them from obscurity. For how many other artists did this not happen? I have often wondered before now, out of the hundreds of movies that come out world-wide each year, how many gems have been irretrievably lost because they didn't reach a wide enough audience - because they didn't "entertain" a wide enough audience?
And also, just what is it about Pulp Fiction that is so hard to understand in other cultures? Sex, drugs, violence, MacDonald's. Really? This is the age of globalization, come on. My 70-year-old Spanish mother enjoyed Juno very much (of course, she also likes The General, Metropolis, and Death in Venice, to name a few.) I do appreciate the point (I know in Rashomon I was far more affected by the more universal and simple stuff about the people in the rain and the baby than by the whole weird wife-channeling-ghost stuff, which left me scratching my head and wondering about cultural differences,) but "understanding" art is far different from "appreciating" it and "agreeing" on it. I understand why Mondrian's works are considered by many to be influential art - I still hate the sight of them and wouldn't care if they disappeared from the face of the earth. And I don't get every bit of symbolism or story in old master paintings - I still tend to love them. But maybe it isn't because I understand that they are art, but because they "entertain" me. Understanding helps (and that's where commentary tracks in DVDs come in handy) but it's hardly everything.
As for transcending time and space, right now it is absolutely impossible for you to determine what current entertainment (excuse me, "art") will transcend them, unless you have a hell of a crystal ball. The cavemen at Altamira and Lascaux probably never figured that thousands of years on, people would still be awed by their cavemate's doodlings. Shakespeare's contemporaries appreciated his plays as popular entertainment. Many of them probably dismissed them as nothing more than funny or gory stuff without the power to transcend time and geography. All popular entertainment and just about all art revolves around the same universal themes: death, sex, power, family, allegiances, mythology... And while I myself would die if I find out that 300 years from now "Mother, may I sleep with danger" or "Calendar Girl, Cop, Killer?: The Bambi Bembenek Story" (don't you just love those Lifetime network TV movie titles?) are considered high art, hell, I wouldn't necessarily dismiss the possibility right out of hand. Now, if Goodfellas, Ed Wood, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Singin' in the Rain and yes, still, Casablanca, are considered high art then, that would be a perfect world!
Posted by: Mosca | March 31, 2008 05:46 PM
Lessee... completely gratuitous dig at Ronald Reagan that has nothing to do with your story? Check! You're approved for publication.
If only you'd had 25 years (oh, wait) to look up what Reagan actually did in response to the Korean airliner tragedy: He ordered that GPS, which was about to come online as a U.S. military system, would be made available to the entire civilian world for free.
Yeah, what a dangerous old coot. Definitely as scary as the USSR under Brezhnev.
Posted by: Jim | March 31, 2008 07:26 PM
And Jules Dassin passes away, too. Dropping like flies, the last of the old guard...
Posted by: Ali Arikan | April 1, 2008 03:34 AM
Sorry, out of town for a day without net connection. Elaborating on Pulp Fiction- it can only be "enjoyed"/"appreciated" fully(thats FULLY) by an American or someone with a good knowledge about the American culture. I should know,I am an Indian with a fair knowledge of American language and lifestyle and I liked Pulp Fiction very much. Some of my less westernized friends liked it a bit, but they said-"not enough action, too much dialog. Not as good as Die Hard". They viewed Floating Weeds/Tokyo Story without subtitles, not knowing a word of the language and were moved to tears by the films. They knew nothing about Japan. Why should this little film from Japan transcend boundaries and this film from America,made in the international language of English, not do so?
Posted by: Gouthem | April 1, 2008 07:58 PM
Let me tell you about two film-viewing experiences. I saw Kubrick's 2001 in 2003 March and thought it was a masterful film. still do. I saw Tarkovsky's Solaris in 2003 November(I think) and thought it was a very good, if slow film. A lesser 2001, I said to my friends. In the 4 years since, while I have thought seldom of 2001, I have never quite managed to get Solaris out of my mind. Now, while I think of the two films, I find that 2001 was all technique and style(wonderful, I might add) with great scenes that never quite add up to much. In the end, what is it saying? The universe is a mystery beyond our comprehension? We(humans) may be a great deal less important than we may think? We are all stardust? Don't stop the presses. What does Tarkovsky say in Solaris? He says nothing. He implies, he ever so subtly gestures, not to the whole audience, just the ones worthy of his attention(i.e the ones who are willing to think, to contemplate what happens on the screen in the absense of action, to go where the film ends in without the need to be led-do you think he puts in the long takes and uncut shots so that we can admire his camerawork? He is not Welles). 2001 says that our view of life may be an illusion. Solaris implies something far more scary- that our view of love may be an illusion.
Posted by: Gouthem | April 1, 2008 08:26 PM
But why the difference. I think the difference is that Tarkovsky was a discriminating director. Not just about the films he made, but also about the viewers. He selected his viewers. He selected his audience- people like him. People with a trace of melancholy, with a fierce dread of what humans are capable of. Let us create two blocs of great directors- Hitchcock, Scorsese, Godard, Chaplin, Welles(I don't rate Welles but I digress) and on the other Bresson, Tarkovsky and perhaps Bergman and Ozu. Ironically the ones in the top, all from democratic backgrounds, were master directors in every sense. They controlled the audience emotions(playing the audience like a piano). With their camera tricks and using likable actors/stars, they pulled you into the film and the particular point of view without you even realising it. They are/were from democracies, but they were in a way dictatorial towards their viewers(not cruel mind, just very little free will or choice). The latter half, on the other hand, although they were mostly from repressive countries, were less flashy, more subtle and more charitable. With every Bresson and Tarkovsky film, you could chose to be involved in the film, to identify with the characters, or you could fall asleep, or leave. There would be no excess, no style, no "I'm a genius. See what I can do with a camera" moments. Just the film. Take it or leave it. I call the former group the great film entertainers, and the latter group the great film artists. maybe you feel it's the other way, maybe you feel there is no way to distinguish great directors. That is your opinion. This is mine. This is not about my favorite directors- I love Tarkovsky the most, but I love Godard a lot more than Bresson. But it's the old quote "Chaplin wanted you to love him, Keaton didn't care".
Posted by: Gouthem | April 1, 2008 08:58 PM
Bresson and Tarkovsky didn't care about the perception of their films. They wanted to make a film, they did. To hell with the government, the audience and the critics. you could choose to love or hate their film. They(and I) respect your right. Whenever I see some scenes by Welles and Hitchcock, i feel an insecurity, a desperate need to be loved and admired. I feel that if a film was not well recieved, they would go back to the drawing board. They are like a puppy I once knew, desperate for attention and love and miserable when they aren't loved. Hell they reminds me of myself in female company! I am aware of the saying- "A film does not exist without an audience between the projector and the screen", but surely that only means that the audience does not exist? To answer the question, can entertainment be great art or vice versa- the answer I agree is yes. In literature, the works of Garcia Marquez and especially P.G.Wodehouse come to mind. It's just that I feel this is yet to happen in the cinema. I have not defined entertainment yet. Pray let me do that now. I got the feeling by reading some of your comments that you define entertainment as the lack of boredom. It may be incorrect, but I see it as anything that is made with the major purpose being to capture the attention of the viewer than any other, more visionary reason, and to succeed in it admirably. Hence I classified Hitchcock and Welles and Goddard as entertainers and Bresson, Tarkovsky and Ozu as artists. Pray forgive if I offend. fin
Posted by: Gouthem | April 1, 2008 09:31 PM
Jim: really, another fabulous post. As a major Tarkovsky fan -- perhaps because of the Christian dimension, rather than in spite of it -- I am grateful for it.
The notion of art not being entertaining is ridiculous, and Tarkovsky was doubtless playing to an audience as you describe. He was known to do that.
The notion that he was somehow removed from the pressures of other film-makers is ridiculous as well. He cared tremendously about the reaction to his films, I think, as some of his correspondence on nostalghia.com imply. He was as "artistically constrained" as others; forced into exile (with great drama, no doubt) before he made Nostalghia, he fought with the Soviets over various cuts in his films, producing a 185-minute version of "Andrei Rublev" that was clearly due to that pressure, but that he claimed later was not. The reason parts of Solaris are in black & white is not due to artistic reasons, but because color film-stock was scarce in Soviet Russia (although he did make a silk purse out of that sow's ear).
To claim that if he and Bresson "wanted to make a film, they just did. To hell with the government, the audience, the critics" is just silly.
One question, Jim (that perhaps illustrates the contextual nature of art appreciation): does the fact of Tarkovsky's clear Christian viewpoint affect your view? I haven't seen Zanussi's work ... did it have any "polemical Christian mysticism"? What do you mean by that, how is Tarkovsky's work polemically Christian? And how is he messianic?
All told, a meaty and thought-provoking post.
Posted by: Rick Olson | April 2, 2008 06:35 AM
I find the question of art vs. entertainment to be a silly one, though it is not entirely invaluable. But that's not why I'm posting, really.
...Reading Gouthem's posts drive me crazy because they seem to focus on a bunch of different things that he seems to know very little about, including the subversive nature of the films produced in the classical Hollywood studio system. While touting great international 'art' directors, he simultaneously disses 'Western' directors like Scorsese, Hitchcock and even classic films like CASABLANCA. This is unthinkable. The Hollywood system operated with just as much to say and with as much gusto in its prime as any of the international cinemas, and there are literally treasure troves of information about gender relations, sexuality, politics, and social life that would never be gathered on first glance. He says he's enjoyed movies like CASABLANCA, but that he has no need or desire to watch them again. This is tragic, because Hollywood does have a lot to offer. Having your creative tendencies stifled by a system of oppression within your chosen form is reason enough to use subversion as a method to get your point out to movie-going audiences.
What this says for the future state of criticism is even more harrowing. As a student of film, and having written essays on Cronenberg, Scorsese and various projects on 70's horror, all influenced by and researched with genuine scholarship (Carol Clover, Theresa DeLaurentis, etc.), and all of them focusing on works I think of having considerable artistic merit, I wonder what one would think of the validity of my work, or indeed of my predecessor's work. Or, even, of Paul Schrader's article on the film canon in FILM COMMENT which presents many films, including THE BIG LEBOWSKI and TAXI DRIVER as seminal pieces of cinema.
Lastly, anyone who says that Scorsese and Hitchcock aren't on the same level of artistic integrity as Tarkovsky or Bergman has surely never seen RAGING BULL or VERTIGO, two pieces of cinema that are so perfect they make me ache inside upon viewing them.
Posted by: matt | April 3, 2008 07:44 AM
Interesting article and talkback debate, too. But the REAL question is, are videogames art, or just entertainment ;-)
Posted by: monorail77 | April 3, 2008 02:54 PM
Dear Matt(and others). Firstly, using CAPITALS to write the name of a film does not a masterpiece make. Yes I have seen Raging Bull and Vertigo. I find some of Scorsese to be artistic(Mean Streets, Last Temptation and Raging Bull). Hitchcock, I have never rated as a great filmmaker. I go to the movies to be moved, to be touched, sometimes by humour, sometimes by pain, mostly by the humanity and dignity of the artists- the directors. Fact of the matter is, Welles, Hitchcock never touched me. The Hollywood classics never touched me. I was entertained by some and I appreciated the skill put into the films, but they never haunted me. I rarely remembered them a week later. Tarkovsky, on the other hand, seems like . I don't know how I brought down the standard of film criticism since I am not a critic. "saw The Mirror, loved it, saw it 16 times more. Saw Psycho. Tedious. Never watched again. Hence-The Mirror=Masterpiece, Psycho=forgettable slasher movie". That is merely my opinion. Not criticism. "We went to see greatness in cinema and were most often disappointed. We waited for a movie like the one we wanted to make, and secretly wanted to live in". That Godard quote expresses all that I feel about cinema and my perception of it. I wanted to live in the Bergman/Tarkovsky films. To be perfectly honest, on reflection,our favorite films and directors and our disagreements say more about us than about the films themselves.
Posted by: Gouthem | April 3, 2008 02:59 PM
That sounds like a personal problem rather than an evaluation of the quality of the films. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not great art.
Posted by: Sean O'Hara | April 3, 2008 05:31 PM
I do not want to challenge your recollections. I would like to quibble about your remarks about senselessness , (sigh, sometimes he really did think he was the second coming) and argue against your description of Tarkovsky as a polemical religious artist.
I think that Tarkovsky's division between "art" and entertainment is incorrect, because as you say about "The Sacrifice" art can be both moving and entertaining. But I think there is also a cultural disconnect here as well. Russians prize patience and endurance far more than happiness. I have heard a Russian professor say that in Russian that there is no equivalent to "happy." Soviet commercial films were extremely happy and senseless. So outside of his occasional experience of Western films, happy and senselessness would seem the same. In 1936 there was a musical produced that contained the lines "I know of no land where people are more free," while the secret police was sending people to the GULAG (in Russian the word for GULAG is synonymous with "concentration camp"), and Stalinist practices were killing millions of Ukrainian peasants.
Also, Russian artists have a tendency to think of themselves as being prophets (proto-Messiahs), starting with Aleksander Pushkin's poem "The Prophet." He wrote this poem after returning to St. Petersburg from internal exile and it was oath to speak truth to power. Tarkovsky may have certainly had a "messiah complex," but it was in a long tradition of Russian artists who did figuratively suffer for their art.
I do not think that Tarkovsky is didactically Christian. His remarks about the soul were (and are) shared by many Russians. There is something inside, and it must be fed the best and nurtured, and this is the reason to read and memorize poetry. And how are Tarkovsky's remarks about the soul any different from what Kubrick demonstrated in the ending of 2001? Man can be reborn, and can continue to live, and that there is a higher intelligence at work in the universe.
Also, "Andrei Rublev" consists of pagan and Christian ideals filtered through a national identity. It is not the literal Jesus Christ that is portrayed in the film, but the Russian Christ--the Russian essence--that was crucified by the Mongols, by the Tsars and landowners, and then by the Stalinists. The story is still being reenacted. Plus, Tarkovsky does not reject the Pagan element found in the scenes that portray the "The Feast of St. John." Mussorgsky (and later Disney) portrayed this midsummer festival as something chaotic and demonic, while Tarkovsky shows the "witches" as participating in the same act, which is enacted in "Nostalghia," when the Russian carries the candle over the surface of the pool: a "holy" ritual. In one of the scenes Rublev is detained and questioned by a "witch" about Hell, "Revelations" and the Last Judgment, and this later leads to him refusing to paint such a picture.
An intermingling of the pagan and the Christian can also be found in "The Sacrifice," where the Christian forestalls the end of the world by sleeping with a "witch." Furthermore, I think that there is a kind of pantheism that runs throughout his movies. The various moments of levitation, (Ivan at the sea, the hot air balloon in "Rublev", The 30 seconds of weightlessness in "Solaris," the mother's levitation in "Zerkalo" and the floating sex in "The Sacrifice") all happen in the context of the natural (not Christian) world, where it is the essence of the earth that leads to weightlessness (sensible and sensual levity). Willow trees and birches appear far more often than crosses.
If all of this true, then his orthodoxy is not orthodox, and so probably should not be considered as Christian dogmatism.
Yes, he was a Christian, but he perceived himself as being human first and foremost, and that his art was fundamentally humanist.
I have nothing against the Hollywood classics (Sometimes I wish I could be Bogie, though I act more like Moe), and I would disagree with Gouthem about "Casablanca."
And I don't think that the religiosity of Tarkovsky's films are much different than what is shown in "How Green Was My Valley" and "The Grapes of Wrath."
PS. I hope threads like these are more of practice, so then we convince our near and dear that "Superhero Movie" would be a bad idea. I also apologize for the length of this comment.
Posted by: eriol | April 3, 2008 11:28 PM
Interesting, Mr Emerson, did you intend a tribute to a great actor, who passed away after a long a fulfilled life. Or was this your try at a Western set-piece, letting two dead men duelling it out for your sake?
First of all, comparing different artists and works of art on, say, technical merits is quite sensible and necessary to hone once tastes. comparing them in general, on a scale, is just plain stupid. Since any work of art is the expression of an individual [in film: often a group of people with one or two very clear leads] on anything [s]he deems worthy of expressing on, it does not make much sense to say 'x is better than y'. How?
Even worse, in this piece you use the death of one person to say something about another person. It is not a memory so much of Richard Widmark, it is an essay on your memory about what you perceive[d] as a pretentious statement by a man lesser - in your opinion - than at least two others in the vicinity.
Nice. Don't think, from what I have seen and read about the late Mr Widmark, not least in your very own piece here, he'd like this. Even if he agrees with your opinion*.
PS: This is not to say that any of the mentioned artists is better than the other. I am not defending Tarkovsky, his ideas about cinema - which, BTW, are based in a completely different cultural and political tradition than the average American filmgoers/-critics. I just take exception to the postmodern selöf-centrism exhibited in Mr Emerson's piece, exploiting the death of one person to push his own agenda, viable and interesting as it may be.
*It is not quite clear if the additional words about Tarkovsky being a phony and stinker have actually been uttered by Mr Widmark; more probable that they were added later.
Posted by: Dierk | April 4, 2008 12:15 AM
Sean,I did not dislike all the films-they never seemed to elicit any kind of a strong reaction. They didn't make me care. And it's not a personal problem. Many people love The Sacrifice and Scenes from a Marriage. Many people also love Vertigo and Psycho. The former group end up learning something from the films, perhaps even become better human beings. No one becomes a better person after watching a Hitchcock film. They don't affect any person at all at a very personal level. He cannot change the way you perceive and approach life, whats even worse is that he doesn't even try. Hitchcock was much more popular than Bergman, but when he died, I don't think many apart from the most enthusiastic of fans were in despair-many were saddened, but not many would've shed a tear. Most true Bergman fans were inconsolable when he passed away. This is because admiration and hero-worship is not the same as love. This was because Bergman truly connected with the audience in his great films. Ditto Tarkovsky. Hitchcock never even tried. Or Welles. CINEMA IS A MEDIUM. For a medium to be relevant, there must be a message in that medium. Otherwise, it is merely a vacuum. Art should affect people deeply, not just superficially. Can anyone say they were affected deeply by Psycho? Were you moved? In the way a Tarkovsky fan was moved when they watched The Sacrifice? Did you become a better person? No. 'Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
Posted by: Gouthem | April 4, 2008 01:21 AM
Tarkovsky once said "The purpose of art is not to entertain the audience, it is to prepare them for death." I quite like this, and all I disagree with is any suggestion that "being prepared for death" cannot be entertaining. Widmark and Dassin's work in Night and the City is totally entertaining, but it also has a good deal to say about how a human being can choose to meet their death. I think that TRUE entertainment often results from an artist applying their skills to (a) exploring the abstract formal qualities of the medium and (b) exploring human existence in a deeply serious way.
Posted by: D Cairns | April 4, 2008 06:53 AM
I don't put films in capital letters to make them seem "classic" or important, but because that is my preferred method of (online) differentiating a film title from just another word I'm typing. Just thought I should clear that up.
However, my point isn't that what you say about not enjoying these films isn't a valid feeling, but to deny their place as art is simply outrageous, especially when it's based solely on your opinion of not wanting to "live in them." I don't care a bit for Tarkovsky outside of SOLARIS. In reality I find him boring, much like I find a lot of Kubrick's work overly technical and pretty sanitized (I love BARRY LYNDON, THE SHINING and DR. STRANGELOVE) and devoid of any real life. That does not, however, mean that neither he nor Tarkovsky weren't or can't be considered artists. My main point was that you fault Hitchcock and Scorsese and films like CASABLANCA for coming from an entirely different set of circumstances than any of Tarkovsky's or Bresson's films, and your view of the Hollywood system may be a bit uninformed. That was my point, and I'll stick by it, as you've yet to justify your stance beyond "I don't like/wasn't affected by this, so it can't be art."
Jim, I just wanted to say that I find your blog invaluable as a resource for daily discussion. Hopefully I'll join in much more. And please, keep making the posts on NCFOM. Ignore the "haters." While my favorite film of last year was EASTERN PROMISES, I love love love NCFOM. I have the one-sheet hanging in my living room. I can't read/hear/discuss it enough.
Posted by: matt | April 4, 2008 08:27 AM
Oh, grow up, Dierk ... we all write to "push our own agendas." I'm a Christian myself (and a Tarkovsky-lover), but I found a lot in Jim's post to like.
You do have a good point about Tarkovsky's opinions being formed in "a completely different cultural and political tradition." But, I would add, it's not one that should be immune from critique.
Posted by: Rick Olson | April 4, 2008 08:43 AM
Great post. Very fascinating. Of course this was immediately after the great blockbuster filmmakers had released the last of their seminal hits. ET and Return of the Jedi had recently debuted. On top of this, with Tarkovsky insecure about releasing the weaker of his films, and I would add, low on oxygen due to the altitude, was probably experiencing a severe lack of self-confidence, and lashing out, out of his misery. He felt the world was moving on, turning him into a relic. A little pysch-evaluation from a guy who was five at the time. (RotJ and ET, incidentally, are two of my first memories, burned indelibly in MY imagination.)
Thanks for the work recreating this event!
Posted by: Robert T | April 5, 2008 08:26 AM
OMG, the old chestnut of "art vs. entertainment".
How anybody could dimiss Hitchcock's, Wilder's or Scorsese's films as mindless entertainment and waste a considerable amount of their lifetime on watching "The Mirror" about 16 times, is beyond me. Not only because I don't care much for Tarkovsky - who recycled the same themes over and over again, in a manner I find mostly tedious; his condescension towards "Testament" is ridiculous, given the fact that "The Sacrifice", which trods pretty much the same ground, manages to be even more shallow in its imagery and execution than the aforementioned film, driving home its "point" with all the subtlety of a poorly greased jackhammer - but because it seems to be based on the - quite common - misunderstanding that anything that masks as art by (in this case) willfully playing against the rules of narrative cinema must automatically BE art.
The notion of art and entertainment being more or less incompatible was basically unknown up until WWI. Before that, art was merely a by-product of entertainment. What we call world literature today, is mainly the bestseller lists of days gone by. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Sterne, Dickens, Dumas, Dostoyevsky et al. were best-selling authors who certainly didn't set out to create a major piece of art but did so by putting their genius to the job at hand. Just like Hitchcock and Ford ("I make westerns") first and foremost saw themseleves as craftsmen telling a story as best they could. (And anybody who thinks they "got" their films on first viewing should definitely go back and watch them again. Reading up on them wouldn't do any harm, either.) In other words, time will tell what's art and what's not. Or, the other way round: Anybody setting out to create great art will very probably produce pretentious claptrap.
Especially Americans seem to be quite susceptible to this and more often than not regard anything that looks different from your run-of-the-mill Hollywood movie as a so-called "art film". (A notion Bergman, for example, despised. He was a great admirer of Hollywood cinema, as was Godard: the quote mentioned above may well have been written about some Richard Fleischer or Jacques Tourneur noir or one of Hitchcock's late 40s/early 50s masterpieces which Godard loved, and fervently so.) Cultural differences seem to play a major part in this. Take, for instance, "Downfall" which was heaped with praise by foreign critics but mostly - and rightfully - dismissed as "Prom Night at the Nazi Funhouse" in its home country, by the same critics who adored "American Beauty" and "Crash" - two films which to accuse of being clichéd has become a bit of a cliché itself around these parts, I may add. Which brings me back to Tarkovsky whose films, in all their plodding slowness (which some seem to regard as a surefire indicator of "art" by itself) and evocation of the "Russian soul" are just as clichéd as the image of France presented in the abysmal "Amélie". Worst of all, though, is that these films aren't "touching" in any way (at least for me), simply because they're not about characters but about ideas which, again, firmly roots them in their day and age and makes them seem far more dated than any 30s screwball comedy. Which is why in all their stilted, artificial artiness I find them much more artless than "Psycho" or "Some Like It Hot".
Posted by: Sling Blade | April 5, 2008 09:49 AM
Rick, my point was not that a critic should not push his own agenda - far from it. If anything, a critic should push his and only his views. I just take exception to the hook used and they way Jim went about it.
I do not even say the story isn't good, it is one of those anecdotes spicing up sometimes serious and often dry subjects. Nevertheless, playing one recently deceased against anotheris disenginous - particularly when the point the author tries to make is at best debatable.
Posted by: Dierk | April 5, 2008 10:37 AM
Matt,
firstly(?), my view of the Hollywood system is more than a bit uninformed since I am from India and was born long after the end of the Hollywood system(1988). But surely when and where the films were made has nothing to do with its appreiciation? I don't rate Casablanca because I found it to be an average romantic melodrama better than say Titanic, but not as good(touching) as Leaving Las Vegas, The Piano or Scenes from a Marriage. And I was wondering how much better an actor Peter Lorre was than the two leads. But you love it, what did Casablanca teach you? How did it improve you as a person? Read the post I wrote as a reply to Sean. I repeat-CINEMA IS A MEDIUM. For a medium to be relevant, there must be a message in that medium. Otherwise, it is merely a vacuum. The message must atleast affect the viewers, whether they act on it is another thing. My main problem is with Hitchcock and the many classics of Hollywood, notwith Scorsese(Scorsese made some wonderful, personal films like Mean Streets and Raging Bull. Then after the problems with Last Temptation, he seems to have decided to become a big name(and very good) director instead of the great one he possibly could have been, deciding that the greatness wasn't worth the hassle. Thats how I read his career). They want to control the emotions of the audience(The subtitles should read "Cry now","Laugh","Shriek in terror"). Especially Hitchcock and Frank Capra. They want you to love the people they want you to love and hate the ones they want you to hate. Hence the use of likeable actors(mostly mediocre actors but very charming and charismatic), the soundtracks that tell you when to FEEL what. In Bresson and Tarkovsky(and Ozu) there is no dictatorship of the audience emotions. It's because they have the confidence in their own ability-that the substance is sufficient and the style is merely an adornment and not the other way around.
Posted by: Gouthem | April 5, 2008 11:29 AM
Dierk: I've been called a lot of things, but never (to my recollection), "postmodern." That's hitting below the belt.
Rick: I hadn't really thought about Tarkovsky as a Christian artist at that time -- not until I caught up with more of his films and (particularly) "The Sacrifice," which he made a few years later. Zanussi is an explicitly Catholic filmmaker, too (he was a school friend of Pope John Paul II and even directed a film biography of him) so, no, religion doesn't affect my view of these artists.
Posted by: jim emerson | April 5, 2008 11:17 PM
I'm sorry, Gouthem, there seems to be no getting through to you. I don't really care that you don't like CASABLANCA or that you read Scorsese's career as one of resignment. I'm done arguing this point because it seems to make no difference. A last statement for Hitchcock, though: anyone who thinks that Hitchcock was unambiguous about his characters and whether we (the audience) should like or dislike them has deeper problems than just understanding films and the way that they all work to manipulate the viewers. What that man created is a treasure trove of psychological insight, and one of the most morally troubling and problematic oeuvres in all of cinema history - bar none.
Sling Blade,
I too hate how Americans (I am one) use the term "art" cinema. As if Kurosawa or Bergman needed to be classified as anything other than what they truly were: masters of storytelling and craft. I especially hate it when the term is automatically blanketed over any film with a foreign origin. THE ORPHANAGE, for example, while a great film, and one of my favorites from last year, is no more an "art" film than THE OTHERS, which was similar in many ways, but because it was made in English, did not have the eponymous term applied to it. Calling something an "art" film is akin to calling non-Western music "world" music - a despicable reality that should be overthrown.
Posted by: matt | April 5, 2008 11:39 PM
"Prom Night at the Nazi Funhouse?"
That makes no sense. Have you seen "Downfall?"
Posted by: Gqm | April 6, 2008 03:38 PM
Gouthem, darlin', you keep having to admit that you are simply presenting your personal opinion, but then go back to presuming to speak for humanity at large, making sweeping statements about how none of us can take anything away from this movie or that movie, and therefore it isn't art, and so on ad nauseam and ad infinitum. OK, so your sensibilities bristle at common entertainment and prefer abstruseness. You're welcome to it. Just STOP telling the rest of us that the stuff that YOU don't quite appreciate can't possibly ever be considered art, end of story. Let's meet back here in 500 years and see what has survived and what has come to be considered art through the ages. Wait - what? We can't? That's the whole damn point, dearie. Many other people have already made it in this thread. And believe me when I say that I will always take more away from a movie that entertains me than from one that bores me stiff (be it high art or a piece of dreck). And to answer your question, Casablanca didn't teach me a damn thing I didn't already know: Nazism was bad, people do what they have to do to survive, people sometimes unexpectedly act unselfishly. But since all this was wrapped up in a conventional narrative that knew how to press my buttons and keep me raptly entertained, I guess it's terrible that I gleaned these things I already knew from this movie. Besides, the fun starts later, when the eternal questions of "what would you have done if you were Rick?" "would you have gotten on that plane if you were Ilsa?" and "are you really really sure you can trust Louis, Rick?" come up. I am sure you are now in tears at my bourgeois tastes and my lack of imagination and higher purpose in life, thinking that if I were watching Bergman or Tarkovsky I would somehow be watching their movies and then going out there and changing the world... Sure.
Posted by: Mosca | April 6, 2008 09:19 PM