Film International. Robin Wood x 2.

What's the blogging world's equivalent of "Stop the presses!"? Whatever it might be, consider it yelped. Film International has made two pieces by Robin Wood available online.

I should explain that when I write about a film I carefully avoid reading what anyone else has said about it... What fascinates me (and constitutes my own personal view of criticism) is the relationship between the critic and the work, and the task of defining that relationship; I want no intermediaries. Writing about a film (or any work of art) is therefore a deeply personal matter, and I set aside anything that might intrude upon it. (I am also very easily intimidated - if I read someone else's account of a film that differs from my own I habitually assume that I must be wrong, and if they say more or less what I was going to say they render me superfluous).

Hardly. This is from an "Afterward" to a close reading of Claire Denis's J'ai pas sommeil (I Can't Sleep) that follows "Confessions of an Incompetent Film Critic," so delightfully readable that even newcomers to Wood will dismiss the "Incompetent" in the time it takes to wink.

In "Revenge is Sweet: The Bitterness of Audition," Wood counts on one hand the number of Takashi Miike films he's seen and remarks that Audition "is the only one of the four that interests - more than interests, fascinates - me." Then he starts reading: "For all their obvious surface differences, Audition on close inspection offers striking structural parallels with Vertigo (1958)."

Posted by dwhudson at July 16, 2006 5:04 PM