Raiding the Contemporary archives.

I don't want to make a polarity between the two kinds of films because I think Godard did create really interesting structures, exemplary modes and forms. I notice, though, that many of his films are not aging well. Maybe it's because of the ironic treatment of the people he's depicting, the insistent detachment from them, the way they're treated as signs, as emblems of ideas. Ideas, particularly the kind of arch-political ideas Godard has, come and go, and what remains is the feeling created by the depiction of the beings and objects present in front of the camera at the time. The more formally conventional cinema is maybe more conventional because those conventional forms have accepted a different (I won't say better) notion of the things and creatures being depicted.

Guy Maddin, interviewed by Craig Burnett:

[T]he omnipotent prehistories we all inaccurately construct for ourselves: those are intriguing. And of all the prehistories, I've stuck myself barnacle-like onto the roaring, surrealistic, intemperate 20s! Sue me.... We both like silent film, and especially Lon Chaney Sr. His great tortured tales of amputation, disfigurement and revenge! His unmatchable agonies of unrequited love, jealous brooding and masochistic longing - all of it etched on that strikingly ugly-but-heartbreaking granite mug of his! What transports of joy Isabella and I shared over the face of Lon Chaney.

Rene Daalder: "Hollywood shows little patience with true artistry, let alone a reclusive computer genius like [Richard] Baily who is an intense, well-preserved graduate of the psychedelic revolution, who sports long dark hair and is seldom seen without his trademark high-heeled women's shoes."

Kaleem Aftab and Ian Stewart: "Attitudes to portrayals of sexual violence have changed markedly since the seventies and not in the way you might expect: its depiction has now become less acceptable.... [I]t is no longer the content of the image that shocks, it's the context."

Don Bonetti: "[N]o one ever suggested that American television was superior to contemporary film, not to mention the equal of the nineteenth-century novel. Today, serious cultural critics are making just such assertions."

Posted by dwhudson at October 23, 2004 1:26 PM