Film Quarterly. Fall 08.

Another one via Girish: "In the fall of 1958, fifty years ago, the inaugural issue of Film Quarterly was published," writes editor Rob White, "and it is fascinating to revisit those first years, when the European New Wave cinemas generated a scintillating critical energy in a pioneer magazine. Antonioni proved to be particularly galvanizing; almost the entire fall 1962 issue was given over to Ian Cameron's 58-page study of the filmmaker's work. 'Antonioni's role in the cinema seems to me a fundamental one,' wrote Ernest Callenbach, introducing the feature, though not a party line."

And founding editor Ernest Callenbach looks back over half a century: "Please indulge me in a succinct summary of the situation in early 1958. In London, the august journal Sight and Sound, already decades old, seemed to have a monopoly on top-level English-language writing about film. In New York, Film Culture fiercely devoted itself to independent, avant-garde cinema. In Paris Cahiers du cinéma, inspired by André Bazin and a legion of ciné-club people, brought a unique kind of polemical intellectual energy to film, nagged on the left by the lively Positif. In the US, we had Films in Review, a tiny magazine featuring lengthy filmmaker career summaries and many brief reviews." And that, of course, is just the beginning. Take a look at those covers, too.

"What was the state of film criticism in English-speaking countries in the 1950s?" Geoffrey Nowell-Smith: Basically, there wasn't any. There were writers (Manny Farber, Parker Tyler, for example) but there were few outlets for sustained critical writing in books, magazines, or newspapers. Instead there was reviewing - lots of it.... Then Breathless came out, and L'avventura. Reviewers struggled to cope." As for today, "there is once again little space for film criticism as I understand the term."

"For twenty years, [Adam] Curtis has been crawling through the vast archive of the BBC, demystifying the follies of empire to humorous and often chilling effect," writes Mark Sinker. "For whatever reason, of all Curtis's series [The Living Dead: Three Films About the Power of the Past] is currently the hardest to find; it may also be the richest expression of how he views the world, and his own role."

"Dexter's true theme is arguably what Freud called 'the psychopathology of everyday life,'" writes JM Tyree. "What happens when one fails to 'Enjoy!' life as much as television commands?"

Posted by dwhudson at October 12, 2008 1:37 PM