This post is an addendum to yesterday's criticism post, specifically to the 5 books listed at the end. I'll stand by those, as my favorites, or the best criticism I've read - but today, I was thinking about an ever so slightly different set of criteria... Those five books all take a pretty narrow subject: three are devoted to single filmmakers, a fourth is by a single filmmaker - the fifth about a very small group of films. They are focused - detailed considerations of a limited group of films. Their value is depth. Today, at least briefly, I want to celebrate breadth. And some other things - but mainly, I want to note some of the books that have served me as guides to watching films....
1. Andrew Sarris - The American Cinema: this is the bible, no? at least for pre-1965 or so. (The old testament, maybe.) What is there to say? this is the place to start if you want to figure out what happened in American film through the 60s. Quick, thoughtful outlines of all those directors' careers, lists of their films, loosely ranked. A guide, without being so demanding in its judgments that you can't choose to disagree - it almost seems to invite you to argue. Great stuff.
2. Audie Bock - Japanese Films Directors: it lacks the scope of Sarris' guide to American filmmakers, but does a similar job of taking the important filmmakers and summarizing their careers, their work, their importance. As good a place as any to start on classic Japanese cinema.
3. Stephen Teo - Hong Kong Cinema: a survey of its subject, covering the history of Cantonese (mostly) film, its aesthetics, its genres... Another excellent introduction to one of the world's major film industries.
4. Hitchcock by Truffaut - this is going in a different direction, but wouldn't it be nice if every great director got something like this? the chance to sit down with a sympathetic critic, maybe one that had made a couple films himself, and go over his career, start to finish? Shouldn't Robert Altman and PT Anderson have found some time to have a good long conversation while they were making Prairie Home Companion? of course, they don't all talk like old Hitch could...
5. And finally, going off on a tangent - I want to put in a word for James Sanders' Celluloid Skylines - a book about New York City in the movies, and about place and architecture and cities.... And that's a pretty fine web site it has, too...
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3 comments:
It is surprising that as old and incomplete as Audie Bock's book is, there is nothing to take its place. I would note that it does not describe "the important" Japanese film makers -- but only a few important directors. Many quite important ones are not mentioned even in passing.
This is not a criticism of Bock's book -- as she never claimed it was a comprehensive study.
I would note that one can't really rely on her capsule comments on films -- either as to the content of those films or as to their merit. Once one has actually seen some of these, it is clear that she was simply recycling secondhand material -- and had not actually seen the film herself (as the capsule information is all too often wildly inaccurate).
Michael - I agree, on all points. Bock's book plays a bit like Sarris' book, if he'd only published the "Pantheon" chapter... which is very useful, especially as a starting place - but it leaves out Frank Capra! Billy Wilder? Kubrick? which isn't far from the effect here, I guess.... One of the criteria for these 2 sets of books is that there should be more like them - I wish there were an newer or more comprehensive survey of Japanese film around... I'm also fond of the Anderson/Richie book on Japanese films, and Noel Burch - but they're both from around the same time, and show it....
And Bock's summaries - some are good (probably the ones she was able to see) - but indeed - there are some (I noticed it in the Naruse section especially) that I could not tell which film they were supposed to refer to, when I actually saw the films....
The summaries in Narboni's new book on Naruse are much more useful overall (assuming one can read French, of course). But even in this book, some are remarkably inaccurate. For instance, the plot description for "Spring Awakens" not only misses the overall point of the film -- but is factually wrong in almost every detail.
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