I read The World Viewed as soon as it was published in 1971. Although I was outraged (and even at... more I read The World Viewed as soon as it was published in 1971. Although I was outraged (and even at times disgusted) by that first reading, I was touched by its eloquence. My hostility was undoubtedly the premature judgment of a champion of avantgarde cinema toward a critic whose taste differed so radically from mine. I could hardly attend to what Cavell actually wrote at that time. My rage began with the opening chapter's claim that "in the case of films, it is generally true that you do not really like the highest instances unless you also like the typical ones." Here, I thought, was a parodic example of a professorial movie buff, taking what the Brattle Cinema in Cambridge happened to screen as the art of film. He amply declares that only a fool would judge paintings or music on the same basis. I wondered would he would say to someone who took the full range of books in the "philosophy" section of a typical Boston bookstore as the parameters of his disciple, noting at that time that there would be nothing by Cavell himself on such a shelf. (His 1969 collection of essays, Must We Mean What We Say? had disappeared by then. I had to order the book-hardcover only-from the publisher a year later.) The fifteenth of The World Viewed's nineteen chapters, called "Excursus: Some Modernist Painting," drove home to me what a loss Cavell's mind and pen were to what I then considered serious film study. In that chapter he brilliantly enacted the characteristic moves of his best writing, above all, by investing aesthetic distinctions with moral values. It didn't take the copious footnotes to that chapter to show how indebted his choice of privileged paintings was to Michael Fried's controversial (and dubious) taste. Yet his way of writing about them was astounding, and very moving: Acceptance of such objects achieves the absolute acceptance of the moment, by defeating the sway of the momentous. It is an ambition worthy of the highest CONVERSATIONS 7 ! 9
Neste contexto, The Cinema of Poetry é uma obra organizada em duas partes dedicadas, respectivame... more Neste contexto, The Cinema of Poetry é uma obra organizada em duas partes dedicadas, respectivamente, às temáticas "Poetry and the Narrative Cinema in Europe" e "Poetry and the American Avant-Garde Cinema", num total de nove capítulos através dos quais o autor reflecte sobre as relações Cinema-Poesia e, em particular, sobre a dimensão poética dos filmes dos cineastas supracitados, entre outros. Na Introdução, subtitulada "An Autobography of Enthusiasms", Sitney sublinha o seu fascínio constante, desde a adolescência nos anos 60, pelas formas poéticas do cinema,
... energy is not concentrated in this elementary plot, but in the depiction of the male figure&a... more ... energy is not concentrated in this elementary plot, but in the depiction of the male figure's mind ... Qu'elle etait belle." The first man still has the starfish to sustain his erotic fantasy ... A thrown object shatters the mirror, making it clear for the first time that this concluding image is indeed ...
The color contrast between the story the protagonist tells in Antonioni's Il deserto rosso an... more The color contrast between the story the protagonist tells in Antonioni's Il deserto rosso and the rest of the film points to its oneiric significance. In it the otherwise unaccountable removal of the girl's bra is a clue to the repression of masturbation and menstruation latent in the recounted story.
... Taking Pasolini's quotations of Dante as a leit-motif, P. Adams Sitney situates his&... more ... Taking Pasolini's quotations of Dante as a leit-motif, P. Adams Sitney situates his' strange fascination with filming versions of the via crucis'('way of the cross') within, and also against, the predominant genre of'spiritual biography'of art cinema in the period. ...
Death, as we may call that unreality, is the most terrible thing, and to keep and hold fast what ... more Death, as we may call that unreality, is the most terrible thing, and to keep and hold fast what is dead demands the greatest force of all. Beauty, powerless and helpless, hates understanding, because the latter exacts from it what it cannot perform. But the life of the mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; it endures death and in death maintains its being. It only wins its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder. It
I read The World Viewed as soon as it was published in 1971. Although I was outraged (and even at... more I read The World Viewed as soon as it was published in 1971. Although I was outraged (and even at times disgusted) by that first reading, I was touched by its eloquence. My hostility was undoubtedly the premature judgment of a champion of avantgarde cinema toward a critic whose taste differed so radically from mine. I could hardly attend to what Cavell actually wrote at that time. My rage began with the opening chapter's claim that "in the case of films, it is generally true that you do not really like the highest instances unless you also like the typical ones." Here, I thought, was a parodic example of a professorial movie buff, taking what the Brattle Cinema in Cambridge happened to screen as the art of film. He amply declares that only a fool would judge paintings or music on the same basis. I wondered would he would say to someone who took the full range of books in the "philosophy" section of a typical Boston bookstore as the parameters of his disciple, noting at that time that there would be nothing by Cavell himself on such a shelf. (His 1969 collection of essays, Must We Mean What We Say? had disappeared by then. I had to order the book-hardcover only-from the publisher a year later.) The fifteenth of The World Viewed's nineteen chapters, called "Excursus: Some Modernist Painting," drove home to me what a loss Cavell's mind and pen were to what I then considered serious film study. In that chapter he brilliantly enacted the characteristic moves of his best writing, above all, by investing aesthetic distinctions with moral values. It didn't take the copious footnotes to that chapter to show how indebted his choice of privileged paintings was to Michael Fried's controversial (and dubious) taste. Yet his way of writing about them was astounding, and very moving: Acceptance of such objects achieves the absolute acceptance of the moment, by defeating the sway of the momentous. It is an ambition worthy of the highest CONVERSATIONS 7 ! 9
Neste contexto, The Cinema of Poetry é uma obra organizada em duas partes dedicadas, respectivame... more Neste contexto, The Cinema of Poetry é uma obra organizada em duas partes dedicadas, respectivamente, às temáticas "Poetry and the Narrative Cinema in Europe" e "Poetry and the American Avant-Garde Cinema", num total de nove capítulos através dos quais o autor reflecte sobre as relações Cinema-Poesia e, em particular, sobre a dimensão poética dos filmes dos cineastas supracitados, entre outros. Na Introdução, subtitulada "An Autobography of Enthusiasms", Sitney sublinha o seu fascínio constante, desde a adolescência nos anos 60, pelas formas poéticas do cinema,
... energy is not concentrated in this elementary plot, but in the depiction of the male figure&a... more ... energy is not concentrated in this elementary plot, but in the depiction of the male figure's mind ... Qu'elle etait belle." The first man still has the starfish to sustain his erotic fantasy ... A thrown object shatters the mirror, making it clear for the first time that this concluding image is indeed ...
The color contrast between the story the protagonist tells in Antonioni's Il deserto rosso an... more The color contrast between the story the protagonist tells in Antonioni's Il deserto rosso and the rest of the film points to its oneiric significance. In it the otherwise unaccountable removal of the girl's bra is a clue to the repression of masturbation and menstruation latent in the recounted story.
... Taking Pasolini's quotations of Dante as a leit-motif, P. Adams Sitney situates his&... more ... Taking Pasolini's quotations of Dante as a leit-motif, P. Adams Sitney situates his' strange fascination with filming versions of the via crucis'('way of the cross') within, and also against, the predominant genre of'spiritual biography'of art cinema in the period. ...
Death, as we may call that unreality, is the most terrible thing, and to keep and hold fast what ... more Death, as we may call that unreality, is the most terrible thing, and to keep and hold fast what is dead demands the greatest force of all. Beauty, powerless and helpless, hates understanding, because the latter exacts from it what it cannot perform. But the life of the mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction; it endures death and in death maintains its being. It only wins its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder. It
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