This eloquent book draws on the author’s responses to a wide range of extraordinary films—’long takes’ on Altman’s
Nashville, Godard’s
Hail Mary, Makavejev’s
WR: Mysteries of the Organism, and von Sternberg’s
Blonde Venus, as well as ‘short takes’ on films by Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Ross Mc Elwee, Michelangelo Antonioni, Michael Haneke, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Charles Warren’s masterful close readings blend profound philosophical reflections with a treasure trove of literary and artistic references to place film, in its relations to other arts, as one of the greatest aesthetic forms. Collectively, these essays offer an original and powerful statement on the nature of film and the intimate relation of what the author calls ‘film imagination’ to our lives as human beings in the world. This important and much-needed book is no less than a celebration and affirmation of the very discipline of film criticism. One is left with one’s appetite for film refreshed.
Table of Content
Introduction
Long Takes
1.
Nashville, West of the West
2. Whim, God, and the Screen: Jean-Luc Godard’s
Hail Mary
3. Earth and Beyond: On
WR: Mysteries of the Organism
4.
Blonde Venus: Experiment Successful beyond All Dreams
Short Takes
5. The Path of Art in
Chronicle of a Summer and
Le joli mai
6. Fiction and Nonfiction in Chantal Akerman’s Films
7. Surprise and Pain, Writing and Film: On Ross Mc Elwee’s
Time Indefinite
8. Two Women in
L’Avventura
9. The Unknown Piano Teacher
10. Three Immersions: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s
Rosetta
Postscript: The Integrity of Film
Notes
Works Cited
Index
About the author
Charles Warren (1948–2021) was Senior Lecturer in the Film and Television Department at Boston University and Associate of the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard University. He was the editor or coeditor of several collections of essays, including
Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film;
Making Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film; and
Looking with Robert Gardner (with Rebecca Meyers and William Rothman), also published by SUNY Press.
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