This intemperate outburst — possibly written at some point during my stint at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the mid-80s, but far more likely written closer to the book’s publication date (1979), perhaps when I was still living in San Diego — was wisely and tactfully rejected by Chick (Ernest) Callenbach when I submitted it to Film Quarterly. (He added, as I recall, by way of explanation, that Film Quarterly tended to be a “friendly” publication.) Had I written it while I was at Santa Barbara, it would have probably been motivated in part by the fact that the late Frank McConnell (1942-1999) was far and away the most popular English professor at the university. But I’m pretty sure that my objections to his book were textual and ideological rather than personal — even if I later grumpily reflected that his popularity at UCSB was partly predicated on his uncanny capacity to both validate and extravagantly flatter not only whatever was most popular at the time, but also (it seemed) whatever his students said during his lectures, no matter how ill-informed or inane. Read more
A Letter to Evergreen Review (1969)
From Evergreen Review, April 1969. –- J.R.
TO THE EDITOR:
Now that Cahiers du Cinéma in English is no longer with us, it is good that Evergreen Review will be filling in part of the gap by translating and publishing “those articles from its pages which we feel are of greatest interest to our readers.” But already with its first selection —“Death at Dawn Each Day: An Interview with Ingmar Bergman” (No. 63) –- I am led to wonder how carefully, or thoughtfully, Evergreen intends to handle this task. If the last part of the interview is to be chopped off, one might at least hope that Evergreen would acknowledge this in some way, however euphemistically.
In addition, despite a translation that reads better and seems more accurate than most of the ones in Cahiers in English, the same problem of translating French film titles instead of using their American equivalents is bound to create confusion in the minds of most of your readers. For the record, Le Visage is The Magician, not Faces (which, as your translator apparently doesn’t realize, is a recent American film by John Cassavetes); Les Communiants is Winter Light, not The Communicants; and L’Été avec Monika is just Monika. Read more
War Is Swell [HOPE AND GLORY]
From the Chicago Reader (November 13, 1987). — J.R.
HOPE AND GLORY
*** (A must-see)
Directed and written by John Boorman
With Sebastian Rice Edwards, Sarah Miles, David Hayman, Derrick O’Connor, Susan Wooldridge, Sammi Davis, and Ian Bannen.
Disasters sometimes take on a certain nostalgic coziness when seen through the filter of public memory. Southerners’ recollections of the Civil War and the afterglow felt by many who lived through the Depression are probably the two strongest examples of this in our national history — perhaps because such catastrophes tend to bring people together out of fear and necessity, obliterating many of the artificial barriers that keep them apart in calmer times. When I attended an interracial, coed camp for teenagers in Tennessee in the summer of 1961, shortly after the Freedom Rides, the very fact that our lives were in potential danger every time we left the grounds en masse — or were threatened with raids by local irate whites — automatically turned all of us into an extended family. Considering some of the cultural differences between us, I wonder if we could have bridged the gaps so speedily if the fear of mutually shared violence hadn’t been so palpable.
The images that we inherit of other people’s disasters are often suffused by a similar nostalgia. Read more
Born to Swing (1974 review)
From Monthly Film Bulletin, October 1974 (Vol. 41, No. 489). Postscript: Thanks (once again!) to Ehsan Khoshbakht for providing me with an extra illustration for this review. — J.R.
Born to Swing
Great Britain, 1973
Director: John Jeremy
Dist–TCB. p.c–Silverscreen Productions. p–John Jeremy. p. manager—
Angus Trowbridge. sc–John Jeremy. ph–Peter Davis, Tohru Nakamura.
photographs–Ernie Smith, Valerie Wilmer. ed–John Jererny. m–Buddy
Tate, Earle Warren, Joe Newman, Dicky Wells, Eddie Durham, Snub
Mosley, Gene Ramey, Tommy Flanagan, Jo Jones, The Count Basie
Band (1943). m. rec—Fred Miller. sd. rec—Ron Yoshida. sd. re-rec—
Hugh Strain. narrator–Humphrey Lyttelton. with–Buck Clayton, John
Hammond, Andy Kirk, Jo Jones, Albert McCarthy, Gene Krupa, Snub
Mosley, Joe Newman, Buddy Tate, Earle Warren, Dicky Wells. 1,773 ft.
49 mins. (16 mm.).
This engaging jazz film has both a general subject and a specific
one. Generally, it is about American swing music of the past;
specifically, its main focus is six veterans of Count Basie’s band in
the present. Interspersed with a 1943 clip of the Basie band inspiring
some athletic dancers are album covers, flurries of sheet music,
neon signs, and a string of short reminiscences: by Andy Kirk,
about his stint with the Eleven Clouds of Joy; Snub Mosley, about
New York in the Thirties; the doorman at Jimmy Ryan’s, about
52nd Street; Gene Krupa, mainly about himself. Read more
Improvisations and Interactions in Altmanville
From Sight and Sound (Spring 1975); I’ve mainly followed the editorial changes (mostly trims) used in the version that appears in my collection Essential Cinema….My apologies for the format problems with this piece, only some of which I’ve managed to resolve satisfactorily. — J.R.
[. . .] Unless it is claimed that a pianist’s hands move haphazardly up and down the keyboard — and no one would be willing to claim this seriously — it must be admitted that there exists a guiding thought, conscious or subconscious, behind the succession of organized sound patterns . . . Of course, it does happen, and not too infrequently, that an instrumentalist’s fingers ‘recite’ a lesson they have learned; but in such cases there is no reason to talk about creation.
— André Hodeir, Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence
I can never think and play at the same time. It’s emotionally impossible.
— Lennie Tristano, circa 1962
CHARLIE (Elliott Gould): This is the truth. You’re an animal lover, right?/ SUSAN (Gwen Welles): Yeah./CHARLIE: Okay, well: the great blue whale, right? You know about a great blue whale?/ SUSAN (semi-audible): . . . got that wrestling guy, hunh? /CHARLIE: No, it’s a big fish, a big fish, there’s only two or three left in the world. Read more
Violins at the Ball
From Oui (August 1974). — J.R.
Violins at the Ball. It appears that the two obsessive themes of French cinema right now are movies about movies and movies about the German Occupation. Michel Drach’s Violins at the Ball combines both of these, but on a very personal level, for the story he has to tell is Drach’s own. It is told in two tenses: a present in black and white showing Drach as he tries to interest a producer in his film and he travels around Paris and Oise with his cameraman; a past in color that he is filming, which describes his adventures as a Jewish child during the Occupation.Drach’s wife, actress Marie-José Nat, plays herself in the present and his mother in the past, while their son David portrays Michel at the age of eight. To complicate matters further, the producer declares that the film can’t be made without a star, and Drach immediately replaces himself with Jean-Louis Tringtignant – who also happens to be his best friend. Drach has wanted to make this film for 15 years, and it shows in the careful attention given to various details, the subtle transactions between memory and invention, fear and comfort, yesterday and today. Read more
Jacqueline Susann’s Once is Not Enough
From Monthly Film Bulletin, August 1975, Vol. 42, No. 499. — J.R.
Jacqueline Susann’s Once is Not Enough
U. S.A., 1974Director: Guy Green
Cert--AA. dist–CIC. p.c–Paramount Pictures. In association with
Sujac Productions and Aries Films. exec. p–Irving Mansfield. p–Howard
W. Koch. p. manager–Howard W. Koch Jnr. asst. d–Howard W. Koch
Jnr., Lee Rafner. sc–Julius J. Epstein. Based on the novel Once Is Not
Enough by Jacqueline Susann. ph–John A. Alonzo. Panavision. col—
Movielab. ed–Rita Roland. p. designer--John DeCuir. a.d–David
Marshall. setdec–Ruby Levitt. m–Henry Mancini. songs—“Once Is
Not Enough” by Henry Mancini, Larry Kusik, sung by–The Mancni
Singers; “All the wav” by Sammy Cahn, James van Heusen, sung by
Frank Sinatra. titles–Dan Perri. sd. ed–Robert Cornett. sd. rec–Larry
Jost. sd. re-rec–Doc Wilkinson. l.p–Kirk Douglas (Mike Wayne),
Alexis Smith (Deidre Milford Granger), David Janssen (Tom Colt),
George Hamilton (David Milford), Melina Mercouri (Karla), Gary
Conway (Hugh Robertson), Brenda Vaccaro (Linda Riggs), Deborah
Raffin, (January Wayne), Lillian Randolph (Mabel), Renata Vanni (Maria),
Mark Roberts (Rhinegold), John Roper (Franco), Leonard Sachs (Dr. Read more
Truffaut Lite [THE LITTLE THIEF]
From the Chicago Reader (October 6, 1989). — J.R.
THE LITTLE THIEF ** (Worth seeing)
Directed by Claude Miller
Written by Annie Miller, Claude Miller, and Luc Beraud
With Charlotte Gainsbourg, Didier Bezace, Simon de la Brosse, Raoul Billerey, and Chantal Banlier.
The French cinema has perhaps never been more desperately in the doldrums than now, and this slump is best represented by the trips down memory lane that seem to be a major preoccupation in current French movies. Never entailing research or reevaluation, these simplified, nostalgic foreshortenings of the past often pare away much of what makes that past interesting.
Claude Miller’s The Little Thief (La petite voleuse) is a case in point because it purports to be, at least in this country, the last work of the late Francois Truffaut. (I’m told that no such claims were made about the film when it opened in France, and can understand why; even French amnesia doesn’t ordinarily extend quite as far as our own.) The film was developed out of a long-nurtured Truffaut project that Truffaut considered filming at various points throughout his career; a 30- or 40-page treatment (accounts differ) he wrote with Claude de Givray served as Miller’s starting point, although by all accounts this story has been extensively reworked and embellished, and even given a new ending. Read more
All Is Forgiven [MONSTER’S BALL]
From the Chicago Reader (February 22, 2002). — J.R.
Monster’s Ball
** (Worth seeing)
Directed by Marc Forster
Written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos
With Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, Heath Ledger, Sean Combs, Mos Def, and Coronji Calhoun.
Monster’s Ball is a Hollywood art movie; even the fancy color graphics imposed on the seedy milieu behind the opening credits tell us that. For some viewers, including a few reviewers, the movie becomes bearable only after an hour of misery, when the lead characters, Hank Grotowski (Billy Bob Thornton) and Leticia Musgrove (Halle Berry), finally get around to having their big sex scene (which I have to admit is worth the price of admission). Maybe the sex is prompted by these characters’ mutual misery, but it also happens because this is a Hollywood movie and these are its stars. And because it’s also an art movie, all the misery preceding the scene makes it feel earned.
Hank is a white corrections officer at the state pen in Georgia who recently guided Leticia’s husband, who’s black, to the electric chair, though it takes him a long time — and her even longer — to figure out the connection. Read more
THE PROJECTIONIST (1975 review)
From Monthly Film Bulletin, January 1975 (Vol. 42, No. 492). -– J.R.
The Projectionist
U.S.A., 1970
Director: Harry Hurwitz
Chuck, a stocky film projectionist who works in midtown Manhattan, hears on a radio about an old man mugged on the Lower East Side, and imagines himself coming to the rescue as Captain Flash. The reverie is broken off by the arrival of his friend Harry, an usher, who hears him describe meeting a pretty girl on the way to work (provoking a romantic-movie pastiche); this is interrupted in turn by Renaldi, the tyrannical theatre manager, who orders Harry out of the booth. Chuck next fantasizes a preview,’The Terrible World of Tomorrow”, before getting off work. As Captain Flash, he loses a fight with the thugs, and the old man informs him that The Bat is after his death ray; they proceed to The Bat’s hideout, where Flash sees the same pretty girl he had described to Harry. In the cinema lobby, Chuck chats with the Czech candy man, who is eventually reprimanded by Renaldi for giving Chuck free lemon drops from the counter. Chuck imagines another preview (“The Wonderful World of Tomorrow”) and a Flash episode in which he visits ‘Rick’s Bar’ in Casablanca and tangles with a prehistoric beast in The Bat’s cave. Passing a movie premiere, he imagines arriving there as a celebrity. Read more
Program Notes for the North American Theatrical Premiere of THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR & THE INDIAN TOMB
On January 3, 1978, during what must have been my first visit back to London after moving from there to San Diego in early 1977, I attended a private screening at the British Film Institute of glorious new prints of Fritz Lang’s Indian films. Over four years later, when I was invited to program “Buried Treasures” at the Toronto Festival of Festivals, I was delighted to be able to book these prints and thus hold what I believe was the North American premiere of Fritz Lang’s penultimate films in their correct versions, uncut and subtitled in English rather than dubbed. Luckily, Film Forum’s Karen Cooper attended this screening, and two years later, when she booked these prints for a theatrical run, she commissioned me to write program notes, reprinted below. — J.R. 
THE TIGER OF ESCHNAPUR/THE INDIAN TOMB 
(1958, 1959/101, 97 min.) Directed by Fritz Lang. Exec. Producer: Arthur Brauner. Screenplay by Lang & Werner Jorg Luddecke from a novel by Thea von Harbou & a scenario by Lang & von Harbou. Photographed by Richard Angst. Art direction by Helmut Nentwig, Willy Schatz. With: Debra Paget (Seetha), Paul Hubschmid (Harald Berger), Walter Reyer (Chandra), Claus Holm (Dr. Rhode), Sabine Bethmann (Irene Rhode), René Deltman (Ramigani). Read more
I WAS BORN, BUT… (1975 review)
From Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1975 (Vol. 42, No. 493). — J.R.
Umarete wa Mita Keredo (l Was Born, But . . .)
Japan, 1932 Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Yoshi moves with his wife and two sons, Ryoichi and Keiji, from
Azabu to a Tokyo suburb, close to the home of the director of the
company where he works. His sons are ostracized and persecuted
by the other boys in the neighborhood; arriving late for school
after Yoshi urges them to get high marks, they decide to play
hooky and do their lessons in a nearby field, forging high marks on
their papers which they bring home to show their father. But Yoshi
is informed by Ryoichi’s teacher that they were absent from school,
and makes sure that they attend the following day. After a delivery
boy whom they befriend overpowers a bully who previously
defeated Keiji, the boys are accepted as leaders by their local
schoolmates. Yoshi’s boss screens home movies for his family
and friends, including his son Taro, Yoshi, Ryoichi and Keiji;
the latter two are horrified when they see Yoshi making faces and
otherwise demeaning himself in the films to please his boss, and a
family fight ensues after they and their father return home. Read more
THE BIRDS
Written for the catalogue of Il Cinema Ritrovato in June 2018. — J.R.
A subtle, complex follow-up to Alfred Hitchcock’s biggest hit, Psycho, his 50th feature (1963) is quite different — and not just because this apocalyptic fantasy is his most abstract film, as Dave Kehr has noted, but also because his shift from black and white to widescreen color works in tandem with the abstraction. The same abstraction extends to cosmic long shots worthy of Abbas Kiarostami that seem posed more as philosophical questions than as rhetorical answers. And as soon as we notice that the flippant heroine, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), has been color-coordinated, thanks to her blond hair and green dress, with the two lovebirds in their cage that she’s bringing to Bodega Bay as part of an elaborately flirtatious grudge match waged against a disapproving stranger, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), it’s already clear that Hitchcock has something metaphysical as well as physical in mind.
What keeps his scare show so unnervingly unpredictable is that the explanation we crave for why birds have started to attack humanity is never forthcoming. (Hitchcock said in interviews that The Birds was about “complacency,” without spelling out whether he meant that of his characters, his audience, or both.) Read more
Best of a Bad Year [The Best Films of 1989]
From the Chicago Reader (January 5, 1990). — J.R.
As a moviegoer who was privileged to see a good many films, both new and old, in a number of contexts, places, and formats in 1989, I can’t say it was a bad year for me at all. I saw two incontestably great films at the Rotterdam film festival (Jacques Rivette’s Out 1: Noli me tangere and Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan’s A Story of the Wind), and several uncommonly good ones both there and at the festivals in Berlin, Toronto, and Chicago. (Istvan Darday and Gyorgyu Szalai’s The Documentator and Jane Campion’s Sweetie — the latter due to be released in the U.S. early this year–are particular standouts.) Thanks to the increasing availability of older films on video, I was able to catch up with certain major works that I’d missed and see many others that I already cherished.
But considering only the movies that played theatrically for the first time in Chicago, I have to admit that it was a discouraging year. In fact, 1989 was the worst year for movies that I can remember, particularly when it comes to U.S. releases. Gifted filmmakers are granted less and less freedom as the Hollywood studios are taken over by conglomerates and European films are set up as international coproductions — both trends that have been in process for some time now; and the grim consequences of these changes become much more apparent when one takes a long backward look rather than when one considers the immediate surface effects of movies on a week-by-week basis. Read more
Washington Paranoia from the Left and Right: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL & MY SON JOHN
Written in July 2008 for an issue of Stop Smiling devoted to Washington, D.C. 2022: In a way, the recent Arrival might be said to qualify as a mystical remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and I found it every bit as gripping. — J.R.
To get the full measure of what Cold War paranoia was doing
to the American soul, two of the best Hollywood A-pictures
of the early 50s, each of which pivots around its Washington,
D.C. locations – The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and My
Son John (1952) — still speak volumes about their shared zeitgeist,
even though they couldn’t be further apart politically.
An archetypal liberal parable in the form of a science fiction
thriller and an archetypal right-wing family tragedy (with deft
slapstick interludes) that’s even scarier, they’re hardly equal in
terms of their reputations. Leo McCarey’s My Son John, widely
regarded today as an embarrassment for its more hysterical elements,
has scandalously never come out on video or DVD [2014 footnote, it’s
now available from Olive Films], though in its own era it garnered
even more prestige than Robert Wise’s SF thriller, having received
an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. Read more