The Film Journal. 11.

The centerpiece of the new issue of the Film Journal is a special focus on Robert Mulligan, introduced by features editor Peter Tonguette (more):

Just as there has never been a filmmaker like him - one with his particular use of cinematic subjectivity (discussed by John Belton in his essay); with his appreciation of the ways in which places inform our notions about people (discussed by Tom Ryan in his essay); or with his singular abilities with the camera (discussed by every one of the writers who contributed to this feature) - it seems to me, as I write this late in 2004, almost impossible that there are many Robert Mulligans in the current or future generations of American filmmakers. As Sidney Levin, the editor of Clara's Heart, said to me in my interview with him, "The rhythm and pacing of his films are not of this time."

More Mulligan:

• Co-founding Rouge editor Adrian Martin: "Anyone could learn a lot about the art and craft of film direction from the first five-and-a-half minutes of Robert Mulligan's The Man in the Moon." Mark Pfeiffer (who blogs here), too, offers an appreciation.

• Richard Armstrong approaches To Kill a Mockingbird from a variety of angles - structure, director, actors, social milieu - to raise a series of questions. Zach Campbell addresses a few of them, too, in his piece on how Mulligan deals with race in America.

• Robert Keser on what Clara's Heart reveals of Mulligan's voice: "It seems more useful to regard Robert Mulligan as a recorder of intimacy rather than 'true rawness,' his films achieving an intensely emotional presence that is sorely missing from contemporary American work with its emphasis on aggressive visual stimulation."

• Gabe Klinger remembers Summer of '42.

November, 1972. George Cukor hosts a party for Luis Buñuel.
Back row from left: Robert Mulligan, William Wyler, Cukor, Robert Wise, Jean-Claude Carriere and Serge Silverman.
Front Row from left: Billy Wilder, George Stevens, Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock and Rouben Mamoulian.

Also in this issue, two interviews: Editor Rick Curnutte talks with the unique Andrew Repasky McElhinney and Tonguette has an extraordinarily wide-ranging discussion with Bob Rafelson.

Essays:

• Christian Crouse argues that Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will "is about art and the part that art plays in shaping reality. The film, like Nazism, is political theory and theatre combined."

• Mark Richardson presents "A Lacanian Report on the Health of the Antiwar Film."

• To maintain their relevance in the "post-Millennial, postmodern and increasingly post-Christian period," those who teach religion and theology had better start incorporating popular film into their studies, argues Anton Karl Kozlovic.

Book, film and video reviews:

• JD France, a regular contributor at Erasing Clouds and WhatDVD, on Joshua Clover's The Matrix and Michel Chion's The Thin Red Line, both entries in the BFI Modern Classics series.

• Ian Johnston on The Rules of the Game.

• Saul Symonds, who's recently launched Light Sleeper: Late Night Writings on Cinema, on Steamboy.

• Abou Farman on The Incredibles.

  Karin Louisa Badt on Palindromes.

Posted by dwhudson at January 29, 2005 9:23 AM