Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Chewing with Bazin
I'm not hung up on Andre Bazin as a critical force of the post-WWII or the godfather of the New Wave or how he changed the face of criticism or birthed the autuer theory, although all of those things are notable in his 40 years between 1918 and 1958. When I come across a collection of his work like Bazin At Work edited by Bert Cardullo, as I used to with "What Is Cinema?" (The French title of those volumes sounds so much better not so elementary and simplistic "Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?" which I also believe was not his title since they were published posthumously) I scan the pages and find these passages that seem to have a poetic and solid truth formulated from the perspective of viewer, not theoretician.
Statements like "The fantastic in the cinema is possible only because of the irresistible realism of the photographic image." in an essay that explores the use of superimpositions in films with fantasy elements make one want to take pause and consideration of these words. Something to chew on.
.
The Ontology of the Photographic Image on the other hand is the first (and perhaps last) encounter that many folks have with Bazin. This is Bazin the theorist writing. It is a well enough thought provoking essay. It begins with "If the plastic arts were put under psychoanalysis, the practice of embalming the dead might turn out to be a fundamental factor in their creation."
But I rather prefer Bazin the moviegoer:
- On Fellinni: "One remembers the discovery of La Strada as an aesthetic experience of great emotion, of an unanticipated encounter of the world of the imagination."
- "The extraordinary richness of acting in Welles's films is this technique" (low angle, deep focus Mise-en-scène)
- "For the producer and the distributor, the western cannot be anything more than a n infantile and popular film destined to end up on television, or an ambitious superproduction with major stars."
Bazin must be considered to be one of the many patron saints of the well-executed buffet.
Labels: appreciations and tributes, film historical
posted by well-executed buffet at 12:05 PM
(0) comments
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Treasures Captured and Restored
Film Preservation is to me one of the noblest of all enterprises. The specifics of the National Film Preservation Foundation were unknown to me until beginning to work my way through the first disk of the anthology they released in 2000, "Treasures from the American Film Archives." An impressive aspect of the first anthology is how much diversity of film, history, and culture it contains. It is a collaboration of 18 different film archives in the United States including the University of Fairbanks, the National Center for Jewish Film and some of the Smithsonian museums.
My eyes are opened. I always thought of most film preservation efforts in the U.S. as being a kind of limited top down effort from the AFI running those ads on Turner Classic Movies with some scattered efforts from probably the Library of Congress. The NPFP was commissioned by Congress and is impressively doing work all over the country with a variety of initiatives including focusing on silent film, federal and partnered grants, and a focus on preserving visionary avant garde works of independent filmmakers.
I don't think they could have found a better word than TREASURES to describe the contents of these anthologies. Discovering these anthologies is a lot like falling for a jazz artist you didn't know about earlier and finding a row and half of three decades of work in a record shop. I am only 2/3 the way through the first of disk and their are 11 more that have been released in NPFP anthologies, impressions of which will likely be recorded on this here (trying to be) well-executed buffet.
Labels: film historical
posted by well-executed buffet at 6:26 AM
(0) comments
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Blacksmithing in 1893
This film is 114 years old. It portrays men at work with a pause that refreshes. I came across Edison's Blacksmithing Scene in the Treasures from American Film Archives anthology, and felt inclined to share it with you all.
Labels: film historical