Commentary on Charlie Chaplin, James Agee, African-American filmmakers, popular film art, and cultural criticism…

 

On Charlie Chaplin and James Agee, via Offscreen.com

 

Excerpt: Reading the interviews of Charlie Chaplin, the actor, writer, director, and musician, a phenomenon in film and world culture, is to see a poor boy, of talent, ambition, intelligence, and spirit go from impoverishment and humility to public acclaim and affection and increasing self-confidence and then on to international respect (worship, really) and self-conscious mastery of work, self, and ideas, only to be sabotaged by controversies involving his own personal life, the narrowing of political tolerance, resentment and time. Charlie Chaplin’s filmography is made up of many works, including Making A Living, His New Job, The Tramp, The Vagabond, Easy Street, A Dog’s Life, A Woman of Paris, The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, Monsieur Verdoux, Limelight, A King in New York, and A Countess from Hong Kong. The English-born, Hollywood king of comedy Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977) spent his last years in Switzerland with his family, a sometimes neglected, sometimes revered, still-legendary master of film art…Chaplin remarks on the world-weariness he sometimes feels, and says, “Solitude is the only relief. The dream-world is then the great reality; the real world an illusion. I go to my library and live with the great abstract thinkers—Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Walter Pater” (47)… In considering the film’s weaknesses, Agee will discuss the extent to which an individual is responsible for his own fate, and the limits of society’s power, but first he argues for the film’s strengths. Survival in the modern world is Chaplin’s theme, wrote Agee, noting that Europeans more than Americans are aware of the relevance of such a theme. Agee compares Chaplin’s new character to his old one: “The tramp is the free soul intact in its gallantry, innocence, eagerness for love, ridiculousness, and sorrow; we recognize in him much that is dear to us in ourselves. Verdoux is so much nearer and darker that we can hardly bear to recognize ourselves in him. He is the committed, dedicated soul, and this soul is not intact: we watch its death agonies. And this tragic process is only the more dreadful because it is depicted not gravely but briskly, with a cold savage gaiety; the self-destroying soul is rarely aware of its own predicament” (297-298).

 

http://www.offscreen.com/biblio/phile/essays/reading_charlie_chaplin/

 

On Why We Make Movies: Black Filmmakers Talk about the Magic of Cinema, and Michele Wallace’s Dark Designs and Visual Culture, via Offscreen.com:

 

http://www.offscreen.com/biblio/phile/essays/dark_designs/

 

On Akeelah and the Bee and Popular Film Art, via Cinetext.Philo.at:

 

Excerpt: Akeelah’s story is filled with new associates, new words, new tests, new places; and she is becoming a new person. The elements in her story can be compared and contrasted with some of the elements in the other films under consideration: Thank You for Smoking, L’Enfant, V for Vendetta, Lucky Number Slevin, Mission Impossible 3, X-Men: The Last Stand, Three Times, The Da Vinci Code, and Art School Confidential. Such considerations allow for the exploration of film as a multifaceted and popular art: and to essay—to approach, and to attempt to explore—the subject of popular film art involves looking at particular objects of study closely, with interesting digressions, and the potential to discover principles of value. In addition to essaying these moving pictures, sometimes with reference to the work of Noel Carroll, Armond White, John Dewey, and other writers, I would like, as well, to think again about Pauline Kael’s essay “Trash, Art, and the Movies,” first published in Harper’s magazine in February 1969, an essay in which Kael talked about the appeal, value, and limitations of American and international movies, and the attitudes that are brought to film-viewing and the uses that are made of movies, the irresponsibility involved in watching a film that is part of its liberating pleasure, the appeal of transgression, the identification with movie characters, the relative importance of film technique, and what movie art is. She wrote of the need for facts, for diverse forms of culture. In language that appeared plain, but was not—for its analyses, ecstasies, mockeries, rages, and varied slang—Pauline Kael, a great critic, said yes to both common sense and idiosyncratic perception, art tradition and disposable entertainment; and in doing so she encouraged and encourages individual response. It is individual response that is fascinating—and dangerous.

 

http://cinetext.philo.at/magazine/garrett/akeelah.html

 

On Friends with Money, via Cinetext:

http://cinetext.philo.at/magazine/garrett/friendswithmoney.html

 

On Saverio Costanzo’s Private, via TheCompulsiveReader.com:

http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1277

 

On Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, via TheCompulsiveReader.com:

http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1250