As a Cavell scholar I am very grateful for this short summary of *Cities of 
Words*. Its fragmentary quality gives a good account of what Cavell's 
writing is about. I very much like what Ross said about making philosophy 
smaller and I can very well understand what he means when he refers to the 
Rohmer and Shakespeare reading as being too -English literature-.
Reading Cavell can sometimes be very difficult and frustrating, but in his 
translation of the many moments of magic in the films he is reading he 
offers himself lots of them. You have to know and to love the films to value 
Cavell's readings of them. I love most of the films he is reading and 
rereading in *Pursuits of Happiness*, *Contesting Tears*, *Cities of Words* 
and in the recently published collection of his essays on film in *Cavell on 
Film*.  I was never bored by these repetitions of readings in the same way I 
was never bord to view films such as *Now, Voyager*, *The Lady Eve* or *The 
Awful Truth* again and again (with only one minor exception: It took me 
rather long to notice that I really don't like *The Philadelphia Story*). As 
Grant and Ross have already made clear there is a lot to learn about 
philosophy in these readings, because Cavell doesn't use them as 
illustrations for philosophical items. As the film themselves embody 
philosophy there is no -reading in- of philosophical subjects. Cavell 
regards the readings as a continuation of the experience of the films, 
following a notion offered by Benjamin in his account of the concept of 
criticism in German romanticism. The way Cavell reads films has also a lot 
do to with the  reference to Kant's aesthetics already mentioned by Ross. It 
can be summarized this way: Good films compel us to think, talk and write 
about them. We cannot prove that they are good films, but we can let others 
participate in the experience of the films. Good readings of good films 
succeed in communicating this experience, turning the reception of the 
reading itself into a worthwile and entertaining experience. It is a also 
transformative and teaching experience. That's when the philosophy embodied 
in them is more than a simple illustration of philosophical items. The film 
themselves contribute to philosophy.
I'd like to discuss a contrasting phenomenon.:What are bad and uninteresting 
movies doing to us?  Do they lead to something which could be called 
philosophical chatter? Cavell is very relunctant to talk about more recent 
films. In *Cities of Words* he refers to *The Matrix* as a film of some 
interest, but there is nothing that compels him to write about it. Isn't all 
the writing on *The Matrix* philosophical chatter? We have already discussed 
the topic of philosophically overrated movies in the salon some months ago 
(The Usual Suspects) but it is one of those items which should be discussed 
again and again. Cavell offers some good thoughts on that topic, because 
whereas as films such as *The Matrix* and *The Truman Show* have the label 
philosophy pinned on clearly visibly for everone, Cavell deals with films 
who are not forcing philosophy on us.
Another thing I'd like to discuss refers to something I dislike about the 
film philosophy of Deleuze. I'm willing to acknowledge Deleuze's writings on 
film as being very inspiring but I hate how he selects films, which is very 
uninventive. I think he is simply following the canon of Cahiers du Cinéma 
and he has a rather naive concept of the authority of film artists. In one 
interview he says that there is nothing uninteresting in the entire work of 
a great film author (Losey in this case). That seems like the return to the 
authoritarian notion of art of the 19th century. Cavell never says something 
like that, because he refers to the authority of a film and not to the 
authority of an artist. To put it simply, whereas Cavell let the films do 
the talking, Deleuze seems to me to be more authoritarian, telling us 
himself what is (really) interesting about these films. I think, Cavell and 
Deleuze epitomize two conflicting ways to approach film and philosophy so 
I'd really like to discuss whether there is something in the way Deleuze 
selects and writes about film that in the end is disencouraging for the 
thinking about film.





	

	
		
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