Jonathan Rosenbaum 
Movies as Politics [EPUB ebook] 

In this new collection of reviews and essays, Jonathan Rosenbaum focuses on the political and social dynamics of the contemporary movie scene. Rosenbaum, widely regarded as the most gifted contemporary American commentator on the cinema, explores the many links between film and our ideological identities as individuals and as a society. Readers will find revealing examinations of, for example, racial stereotyping in the debates surrounding
Do the Right Thing, key films from Africa, China, Japan, and Taiwan, Hollywood musicals and French serials, and the cultural amnesia accompanying cinematic treatments of the Russian Revolution, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. From
Schindler’s List, Star Wars, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Piano, and
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective to the maverick careers of Orson Welles, Jacques Tati, Nicholas Ray, Chantal Akerman, Todd Haynes, and Andrei Tarkovsky, Rosenbaum offers a polemically pointed survey that makes clear the high stakes involved in every aspect of filmmaking and filmgoing.



In this new collection of reviews and essays, Jonathan Rosenbaum focuses on the political and social dynamics of the contemporary movie scene. Rosenbaum, widely regarded as the most gifted contemporary American commentator on the cinema, explores the many

Table des matières

Acknowledgments

How to Live in Air Conditioning


One  The Politics of Form


Language, Representation, Narrative

Say the Right Thing (DO THE RIGHT THING)

Interruption as Style: Bufiuel’s THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE

Polanski and the American Experiment (BITTER MOON)


Utopian Space and Urban Encounters

Tati’s Democracy

His Mistress’s Voice: Akerman’s NIGHT AND DAY

Seen and Unseen Encounters: Kieslowski’s RED


Chance and Control

Altman and the Spirit of Improvisation (CALIFORNIA SPLIT)

Lies of the Mind (TALKING TO STRANGERS)


Classification and Genre: Musical Ghettos

On LATCHO DROM

Four Books on the Hollywood Musical


Two  Entertainment as Oppression:


The Hollywood Apparatus

Entertainment as Oppression

Missing the Target

Spielberg’s Gentiles (SCHINDLER’s LIST)

The Solitary Pleasures of STAR WARS

Jack Reed’s Christmas Puppy: Reflections on REDS

A Perversion of the Past (MISSISSIPPI BURNING)

Circle of Pain: The Cinema of Nicholas Ray

Vietnam, the Theme Park (HEARTS OF DARKNESS:

A FILMMAKER’S APOCALYPSE)

Sexual Discourse (THE PIANO)

Hollywood Radical (MALCOLM X)

ACE VENTURA Reconsidered

The World According to Harvey and Bob (SMOKE, THE GLASS SHIELD)

Stupidity as Redemption (FORREST GUMP)

Allusion Profusion (ED WOOD, PULP FICTION)


Three I Issues of Ideology


Alternatives

The Problem with Poetry: Leos Carax

No Stars, a Must-See (THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY)

The Rattle of Armor, the Softness of Flesh: Bresson’s LANCELOT DULAC

The Functions of a Disease (SAFE)

England on the Inside: The Films of Mike Leigh


Political Subjects

The Significance of Sniggering: Zwigoff’s CRUMB

Jean Eustache’s LA MAMAN ET LA PUTAIN

Film Writing Degree Zero: The Marketplace and the University

Tribal Trouble (Atom Egoyan’s CALENDAR)

Us and Them (BLOOD IN THE FACE)


Other Cinemas

Feudal Attraction (JU DOU)

The Vision of the Conquered (Kurosawa’s RHAPSODY IN AUGUST)

Searching for Taiwan (THE PUPPET MASTER)

Inner Space (Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS)

Tribal Scars (Sembene’s BLACK GIRL)


Alternate Histories

The Seven ARKADINS

TIH-MINH, OUT I: On the Nonreception of Two French Serials

His Twentieth Century: Godard’s HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA

Pages from the Endfield File

On Second Thoughts (Marker’s THE LAST BOLSHEVIK)


Index

A propos de l’auteur

Jonathan Rosenbaum is film critic at the Chicago Reader, author of Moving Places (1995) and Placing Movies (1995), both published by California, editor of This is Orson Welles (1993), and a member of the New York Film Festival selection committee.