An elegant and rigorous demonstration of the richness of contemporary film art and the need for humanistic criticism.
In Search of Cinema chronicles the vitality of international film art in the last two decades. At a time when the movie review has degenerated into mere publicity for Hollywood pictures and film scholarship has become entangled in its own pseudo-scientific discourse, Bert Cardullo reclaims the territory of a certain type of film critic, somewhere between a reviewer-journalist and a scholar-theorist. With elegance, clarity, and rigour, he offers close readings of individual films to show how moviemakers use the resources of the medium to pursue complex, significant human goals.
The essays collected here reflect the spectacular rise of Iranian cinema in recent years as well as the strong contributions of contemporary filmmakers from countries such as Belgium, Canada, China, Israel, Lebanon, Scotland, and Spain. But In Search of Cinema does not neglect the best recent films from major film-producing nations like the United States, France, and Italy and includes retrospective pieces on the careers of Ingmar Bergman and Woody Allen as well as several essays on the interrelationship between film form, or film genres, and drama and the novel, the two forms from which the cinema continues to draw a wealth of its material.
Details
416 Pages, 6 x 9
30 Black & white photographs
ISBN 9780773527072
April 2004
Formats: Paperback, eBook
"Cardullo's carefully crafted and elegant essays do an especially good job of explaining the contribution of a film's cinematic style to the pleasures and emotions stirred it stirs. He writes in the tradition of Warshow and the early Robin Wood and, like the best work of those critics, his work stands as an example of clear writing, and his insights help us better appreciate the films he writes about." Dave Jones, Media Arts, Drexel University
"Cardullo's highly readable and often brilliantly elucidating essays reveal intricate connections and parallels between film content and film form. There are few recent books that provide this kind of close reading of contemporary films. Cardullo offers a refreshing alternative to both the facile star-gazing monographs that one can find in any bookstore and the arcane publications that deal with phenomenology, sexual-identity politics, historiography, and the cognitive dissection of film styles and techniques." André Loiselle, Film Studies, Carleton University
"Cardullo has a fine eye for detail and his writing is crisp and clear, unhampered by cinematic, theoretical, or dogmatic jargon. In all respects, it is superb prose... There is an unmistakable edge to Cardullo's work: the razor-sharp language of the critic-as-provocateur. He demands our attention, but unlike many provocateurs he supports his arguments about films with hard facts, placing each motion picture in a larger artistic and social context so that its outlines come into sharp relief and its substance becomes palpable. Whether we accept his arguments does not matter - his ideas challenge us to meet them, and the films they illumine, on a higher intellectual plane, making us better moviegoers in the process." Richard Gilman, from the Foreword
Bert Cardullo is a professor of theatre at Hunter College of the City University of New York, and has been the film critic for the Hudson Review since 1987.
Richard Gilman is professor emeritus of Dramatic Literature and Criticism, Yale University, drama critic for Newsweek and The Nation, and the author of many books of criticism.
Foreword: Of Films, Critics, and Chronicity ix
RICHARD GILMAN
Introduction: First Principles 3
PART ONE FOCUS ON IRANIAN CINEMA
1 Writing about Iranian Cinema 21
2 A Girl and Two Women: On Panahi’s The White Balloon
(1995, Iran) and Dugowson’s Mina Tannenbaum (1994, France) 27
3 Blood and Cherries, Snow and Dust: On Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997, Canada) and Kiarostami’s A Taste of Cherry (1997, Iran) 39
4 Mirror Images, or Children of Paradise: On Makhmalbaf’s
The Apple (1998, Iran) and Panahi’s The Mirror (1997, Iran) 62
5 Angels beyond America: On Majidi’s The Children of Heaven (1997, Iran) and Zonca’s The Dreamlife of Angels (1998, France) 72
6 The Children Are Watching Us: On De Sica’s The Children Are
Watching Us (1943, Italy) and Majidi’s The Color of Paradise (1999, Iran) 83
7 Women and Children First: On Panahi’s The Circle (2000, Iran) and Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999, Scotland) 97
8 Carry Me Home: On Zhang Yimou’s The Road Home (2000, China), Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Iran), and Rossellini’s Europe ’51 (1952, Italy) 113
PART TWO EUROPE, THE AMERICAS, AND BEYOND
9 The Happiness of Your Friends and Neighbors: On LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbors (1998, USA) and Solondz’s Happiness (1998, USA) 139
10 Getting Straight: On Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999, USA) 151
11 Stones and Roses: On the Dardennes’ Rosetta (1999, Belgium) and Schrader’s Affliction (1998, USA) 164
12 Hot and Cold, or Seasons Change: On Rohmer’s Autumn Tale (1998, France) and Assayas’s Late August, Early September (1999, France) 175
13 All about My, Your, Their Mother: On Zambrano’s Solas (1999, Spain) and Waddington’s Me, You, Them (2000, Brazil) 187
14 Of Virgin Suicide, Human Bondage, and Male Indulgence: On Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (2000, USA), Gitai’s Kadosh (1999, Israel), and Doueiri’s West Beirut (1998, Lebanon) 202
15 The Space of Time, the Sound of Silence: On Ozon’s Under the Sand (2000, France) and Tsai’s What Time Is It There? (2001, Taiwan) 215
16 Aberdeen on the Adriatic: On Moland’s Aberdeen (2000, Norway) and Moretti’s The Son’s Room (2001, Italy) 232
PART THREE FORM, GENRE, OEUVRE, AND OTHER ARTS
17 Wooden Allen, or Artificial Exteriors: On the Film Career of Woody Allen 251
18 Latter-Day Bergman: Autumn Sonata as Paradigm 260
19 Notes on Film Genre: On Stagecoach (1939, USA), The Organizer (1963, Italy), The Cameraman (1928, USA), Psycho (1960, USA), and In Which We Serve (1942, UK) 267
20 Notes on Film Form: On General della Rovere (1959, Italy), Just Before Nightfall (1971, France), and Claire’s Knee (1970, France) 284
21 Theatre and Fiction into Film: Notes on Two Paradigmatic Scenes, One Metaphoric Fiction, and An Omnibus Adaptation: On The Little Foxes (1941, USA), Housekeeping (1987, USA),
Trainspotting (1996, Scotland), and Dangerous Liaisons (1988, UK) 292
22 The Preemptive Image 315
Further Reading 323
Selected Directorial Fil