Written for the Australian journal Screen Education 91 in 2018. — J.R.
What I say, I do not say with words. I do not say it with images either, with all due respect to the partisans of pure cinema, who would speak with images as a deaf-mute does with his hands. After all, I do not say, I show. I show people who move and speak. That is all I know how to do, but that is my true subject. The rest, I agree, is literature. – Éric Rohmer
The least typical film by central French New Wave figure Éric Rohmer, Perceval (1978) offers a wonderfully strange and evocative version of Chrétien de Troyes’ twelfth-century poem – set to music and translated into contemporary French by Rohmer himself – about the adventures of the title character (Fabrice Luchini), a callow and innocent youth who becomes the Red Knight. It captures the essence of its medieval trappings like no other film, yet it does so without ever presuming or pretending to re-create a historical period about which we know relatively little. Thus, it might be seen – and in fact was seen when it first appeared – as a bizarre exercise in literal literary adaptation, an odd experiment in representation itself. Read more
A lecture written circa fall 2002, I forget for which occasion. I’m not even sure if this represents a complete or final draft. This was written before the belated rediscovery of The Third Man in Vienna (not one of the better episodes in Around the World with Orson Welles, alas, and now available on DVD). — J.R.
My point of departure for this paper is remarks that have been made by myself and others about Orson Welles’ three completed features of the 1950s —- Othello, Mr. Arkadin, and Touch of Evil—- and how these reflect his attitudes towards what was happening in the United States around the same time. More specifically, I’m thinking of my own speculation that Othello (1952) may have something to do with the Hollywood blacklist and witch hunts, and James Naremore’s observation that the character of Van Stratten (Robert Arden) in Mr. Arkadin (1955), “quite by accident, bears an uncanny resemblance to a young, athletic Richard Nixon,” relates to the Cold War (with Arkadin having been modeled to some degree on Josef Stalin and the character of Van Stratten suggesting Richard Nixon in certain respects).
Now I hasten to add that the conscious intentionality of Welles in relation to either of these relationships or many others like them probably fluctuates a good deal, and that this isn’t my only frame of reference.Read more
From Cineaste (Spring 2010; Vol. XXXV, No. 2). Considering the continuing lack of contact between most Americans and the remainder of the world, it probably shouldn’t be too surprising to find James Wolcott still rattling on about the alleged French worship of Jerry Lewis in the September 2011 Vanity Fair — a myth addressed briefly in my second paragraph here, whose limited factual basis in fact hasn’t really been operative for almost half a century. As Lewis himself has often pointed out, his popularity in many places around the world has clearly surpassed his reputation in France. (Today, for instance, Woody Allen is immensely more popular there, with intellectuals as well as the general public — and more popular there than he has ever been in the U.S., which has never been true with Lewis.) But presumably this cherished piece of idiocy will continue to be trotted out as long as Americans remain clueless about France and its culture and proud of its ignorance. It’s a little bit like saying, “Oh, those naughty French — ooo-la-la!” — J.R.
JerryLewis
by Chris Fujiwara. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
