People get very pretentious about movies and I thought she injected a certain healthy .....skepticism.
Why do we have to have a serious love of film "as aesthetic expression"? Why can't we just love it, period?
Joanna
Brian Charles Dauth wrote:
> joanna:
>
>> That's odd. I'm not contradicting, but I remember she
>
> treated Last Tango more as a monument than a movie.
> Seems inconsistent with what you say.
>
> She called it the most erotic movie ever made. She
> never talked about it as a work of art. To engage
> aesthetics was not Pauline's style.
>
> Here is the link to an essay with Pauline at her best
> (which means worst for anyone who has a serious
> love of film as aesthetic expression).
>
> http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/trashartandthemovies.html
>
> For those with weak constiutions or better things to do like
> cataloging their collection of bird droppings, here are a
> few highlights:
>
> "There is so much talk now about the art of the film that we may be
> in danger of forgetting that most of the movies we enjoy are not
> works of art."
>
> "Movies make hash of the schoolmarm's approach of how well the
> artist fulfilled his intentions. Whatever the original intention of the
> writers and director, it is usually supplanted, as the production gets
> under way, by the intention to make money."
>
> Notice the anti-intellectualism -- to worry about an artist's intentions
> is a schoolmarm approach. Hitchcock and Hawks and Capra and
> Ford and Welles just made films willy-nilly. But if these directors
> were never able to fuilfill their intentions, how is it so easy to know
> which of them made a particular film even without seeing the credits?
>
> "People who are just getting 'seriously interested' in film always ask
> a critic, "Why don't you talk about technique and 'the visuals' more?"
> The answer is that American movie technique is generally more like
> technology and it usually isn't very interesting."
>
> A personal favorite of mine. I am sure that if Pauline were reviewing an
> opera, she would avoid talking about the music since it isn't very
> interesting.
>
> And here is the key to Pauline:
>
> "Simply to be enjoyable, movies don't need a very high level of
> craftsmanship: wit, imagination, fresh subject matter, skillful
> performers,
> a good idea-either alone or in any combination-can more than
> compensate for lack of technical knowledge or a big budget."
>
> She was about having a good time. Now I believe that art does give
> pleasure, but that it also requires a high level of craftsmanship to
> be art -- in fact that is one of the hallmarks of art -- the fact that
> it is well-made.
>
> But if Pauline had to admit this, then her dismissal of artistic
> intention
> goes out the window since craftsmanship betrays intent, and would
> require investigation on the part of a critic.
>
> Further on:
>
> "We generally become interested in movies because we enjoy them and
> what we enjoy them for has little to do with what we think of as art."
>
> Again, Pauline must separate the aesthetic from what is pleasurable.
>
> A last example:
>
> "There is talk now about von Sternberg's technique-his use of light and
> décor and detail-and he is, of course, a kitsch master in these areas, a
> master of studied artfulness and pretty excess. Unfortunately, some
> students
> take this technique as proof that his films are works of art, once
> again, I think,
> falsifying what they really respond to-the satisfying romantic glamour
> of his
> very pretty trash. "Morocco" is great trash, and movies are so rarely
> great art,
> that if we cannot appreciate great trash, we have very little reason
> to be
> interested in them."
>
> And here is Pauline's problem. Her aesthetic response is limited.
> She can
> only respond to trash, and out of this limitation comes the idiocy
> that movies
> are rarely great art. She loves movies, but does not want to engage
> them on
> the level of art, so she solves the problem by claiming that they
> rarely are art
> and must be antagonistic to those critics (mostly, but not exclusively
> auteurists)
> who see film differently. Her battle with Andrew Sarris was epic (at
> least in
> film culture LOL).
>
> This also led to her hostility to those filmmakers she once championed
> who
> were taken up by other critics who regarded film as art. She felt
> that these
> directors had betrayed her and her trash aesthetic.
>
> Brian
>
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