Teaching film analysis last Autumn, I laid emphasis on everything
beyond the reach of the director or any fictional 'author' entity
behind the movie, trying to figure out how different directors
exploit what they decidedly or not leave out of their own control. I
showed Casavettes, of course, Vertov, Kiarostami, Herzog and even
Woody Allen's Anni Hall, for the laughing lobster scene, which was
improvized, and adds amazing life and depth to the film's acting.
Just as philosophy of biology has lately started criticizing the
crudest Darwinian approaches of expecting every part of an organism
to be already 'the best' for a designed purpose, film theory and
criticism would probably be wise to examine its own tendencies in
similar directions.
As for theoretical background, Pasolini was pointed out to me, and
even if his ideas of 'the language of cinema' being 'the language of
life' are highly inspiring, they don't really touch directly on this
issue, and far less than his trilogy of life does, in action: how
central contingency is to the nature of cinema. And yes, I bluntly
say nature.
Thanks for opening up this thread.
Haukur Már.
On Apr 20, 2006, at 10:54 PM, R J Dennis wrote:
> In the UK a few years ago there was a television series (on Channel
> 5, it think) devoted to 'movie mistakes', focusing on lapses in
> continuity etc. It was rather odd (and unspeakably boring) watching
> all these 'mistake' clips (mostly from Hollywood blockbusters) out
> of context. I think part of this public fascination can be put down
> to 'enjoying others mishaps' and seeing how even millionaire movie
> producers are fallible. There is almost a whole TV sub-industry
> based around showing actors fluffing their lines and corpsing; the
> interest in mistakes in continuity is perhaps an extension of this...
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