Filmmaker Magazine: Blog

The always titillating Camille Paglia dedicated her monthly Salon column to what she considers to be an era with no art films.

Here's an excerpt:

On the culture front, fabled film directors Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni dying on the same day was certainly a cold douche for my narcissistic generation of the 1960s. We who revered those great artists, we who sat stunned and spellbound before their masterpieces -- what have we achieved? Aside from Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, is there a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" or "Persona"? Perhaps only George Lucas' multilayered, six-film "Star Wars" epic can genuinely claim classic status, and it descends not from Bergman or Antonioni but from Stanley Kubrick and his pop antecedents in Hollywood science fiction.

Tragically, very few young people today, teethed on dazzling special effects and a hyperactive visual style, seem to have patience for the long, slow take that deep-think European directors once specialized in. It's a technique already painfully time-bound -- that luxurious scrutiny of the tiniest facial expressions or the chilly sweep of a sterile room or bleak landscape. What my generation was passionately responding to in European films was their sexual candor and their low-budget protest against the peachy Technicolor artifice and forced jollity of mainstream Hollywood filmmaking in the Marilyn Monroe/Rock Hudson/Doris Day era, with its postwar myths of ever-imperiled virginity and ideal marriage.

I'm not sure who, if anyone, still views moviegoing as a quasi-mystical experience. As a college student in the mid-'60s, I saw the movie screen as a door into another world. When Roman Polanski's hypnotic "Knife in the Water" was shown in my very first week at Harpur College (the State University of New York at Binghamton), life seemed to change overnight. Jean Cocteau's "Orphée," a surreal modernization of the Orpheus legend in existential Paris, sent me staggering out speechless under the twinkling upstate stars.

Other indelible memories: the grinding of the collapsing stone balustrade in the baroque gardens of Alain Resnais's "Last Year at Marienbad." The night wind eerily stirring the spray-painted green trees in the London park of Antonioni's "Blow-Up." The column of army tanks ominously rumbling through the city street in the unknown land of Bergman's "The Silence." The life-giving waters of the Fountain of Trevi suddenly stopping in Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita," stranding Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg mid-kiss.

Here's the link.

# posted by Benjamin Crossley-Marra @ 8/11/2007 10:46:00 AM

Comments (9)

Yeah, I've been trying to decide whether she's taking a swipe at Kubrick there...
# posted by Anonymous @ 8/11/2007 11:44 AM

I couldn't disagree more with Mrs. Paglia's opinion that the past 35 years have produced no masterpieces to rival Bergman's. She obviously doesn't catch much of the thriving if underappreciated world cinema that is more widely available than ever thanks to the internet, the advent of home video, etc. You just have to dig. Also, why does she can't expect anyone else to care about her tastes? Because she's an educated, nostalgic westerner? The spectatorship of the masses will always skew toward low culture, but really, why should high brows (or in Mrs. Paglia's case middlebrows) go around bemoaning this?
# posted by Anonymous @ 8/11/2007 4:58 PM

Why does anyone care about anyone's opinion? I posted my take on this here:
http://blog.spout.com/2007/08/08/camille-paglia-star-wars-is-a-classic-epic-and-kelly-clarkson-will-save-fine-art/
# posted by karina @ 8/12/2007 8:41 AM

Disagree with her view. First response is Lynch and Malick; but of course there is a long list of others. And she is taking a swipe at Kubrick, who was every bit as good as those she mentions.
# posted by Anonymous @ 8/12/2007 2:36 PM

To participate in the exaltation of media.arts is to fall victim to the tropes of Modern Cinema. Solondz, Almodóvar, Herzog, Jordowosky (to name filmmakers of "chain-cinema" releases). "Filmmaking" as a term has been jeapordized by heirachical pilars of media.controllerz.

Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y� �h3 d�f Ȣ� �E� �6 @ m �,� Y�
# posted by L1SM0R3 @ 8/13/2007 6:03 PM

My "take" (ha, pun intended) on what passes for "art films" is that they seem to have the following criteria. *lack of cohesive story *poor technical quality *poor micing *very poor editing or lacking any sense of editorial. By the Grace of God, and equally inept suporters, these people have survived.

Furthermore, they have not discovered the ease and vastly superior quality of video cameras. Despite this, they stay mired in 8mm or 16mm film cameras because "ooooh, it's FILM!!! And this archaic way of making movies is perpetuated by so-called teachers, who couldn't get a job anywhere else.

Get with it! Discover the ease an beauty of video!!!
# posted by Anonymous @ 8/14/2007 2:47 PM

there are plenty of talented filmmakers from the this generation: harmony korine, todd haynes, vincent gallo, won kar wi, lars von trier, the brothers quay, martin arnold, jennifer reeves, jem cohen, etc. etc.

the best so-called art film of last year was david lynch's "island empire," which was shoot on obsolete video equipment. the viewing experience of island empire was just as engulfing as anything bergman or antonioni ever produced.

think camille paglia needs to change her netflix queue from the best of the 1960s to the best of the 2000s.
# posted by anti hero @ 8/16/2007 12:30 AM

If you have need a student loan or you have student loans and you want to consolidate them check out his website http://www.mytuition.com The company has a great team and the site should be very helpful.
# posted by Anonymous @ 8/17/2007 2:36 PM

I'm catching this blog late, but I can't resist posting a few names -
Apichatpong Weresethekul - blissfully yours and syndrome of a century, Pedro Costa - In Vanda's Room and Colossal Youth, Sharon Lockhart - many, James Benning - all, Won Kar Wai - I don't want to sleep alone, and so many many more... paglia doesn't know what she's talking about.
# posted by Anonymous @ 3/27/2008 5:41 AM

Post a Comment

FILMMAKER BLOG

Saturday, August 11, 2007

ART FILM IS DEAD

Comments (9)

FALL 2008

buy print contents back issues

buy digital digital sample FAQ

RECENT POSTS

ARCHIVES