For Armond White
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I posted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating…
White should have been booted from the NYFCC after his kerfuffle with Baumbach and Hoberman. He is an embarrassment to profession of film criticism and he degrades all of you. His fellow critics need to stop being cowed by his “truth to power” schtick and disassociate themselves from him in every possible way. If his superiors at the New York Press want to continue to exploit his personality defects to generate page hits and ad revenue that’s their business, but the critical and cinema establishment should not continue to act as their accomplices.
Let’s not forget Kyle Smith, who’s gleefully crouching behind White and sniveling “Hit him again” at Darren Aronofsky. He’s a distant second to White, but man, his naked resentment of successful artists is kinda sad, considering Smith’s Mencken fixation and the fact that all the reams of copy Smith’s churned out wouldn’t be worthy of mopping up the contents of one of Mencken’s spittoons.
Also, I bet White wouldn’t have pulled that bullshit if Sidney Korshak was still alive.
What the hell did White do now?
@ Jeff: Yes, exactly. I understand why the Press keeps him on—he’s like the Glenn Beck of the film world. But I truly don’t understand why the critical establishment tolerates him. After his performance at the Slate Movie Club I thought he was done, but he inexplicably keeps getting invited to emcee, host, and otherwise represent at all sorts of events way about his ability. I really, truly, don’t understand why, and I’m not saying that rhetorically. Anyone have a theory?
There’s a simple answer: because he volunteered two years in a row and everyone else was undoubtedly happy that someone had taken on the drudgery of booking the venue, inviting the guests, sending the invites, selling the advertising, etc.
The Tourist > The Social Network. Can I get a job with the NY Press now?
What DID he do now?
@ Casey and S. Porath
http://www.avclub.com/articles/armond-white-debuts-live-version-of-his-contrarian,49901/
It’s not pretty…
Love Armond. Plus the director of Black Swan kicked it all off which is his right, but you are all covering for him. And you never thought the joke was funny Glenn so don’t act like you are just some innocent observer coming to this conclusion. Long live the great Armond.
FUCK ARMOND WHITE!
Dick Cheney > Audrey Hepburn
Pancreatic cancer > Cotton candy
The Ebola virus > Kinkaku-ji temple
See how easy it is?
I actually thought his list this year was somewhat more palatable than past years…but his act at the NYFC shindig, that is just grotesque.
Many critics get away with contrarianism – David Thomson for example. The crucial difference is Thomson, for all his much-publicised dislike of Bogart and Kurosawa, doesn’t stoop to petulantly and repeatedly insisting that ‘Battle Beyond the Stars’ and ‘The Ghost and The Darkness’ are superior to ‘Seven Samurai’ and ‘The African Queen’ respectively.
Very well put, Oliver_C.
Thomson doesn’t like Bogart?? Isn’t that sort of, I don’t know, completely inexcusable?
bill, I strongly advise you against reading Thomson on John Ford. He’s an infinitely better critic than AW (because who isn’t these days), but the slide from contrarian to crank may begin right there.
I’ve read Thomson in the past, but my reading has been fairly random, so I guess I haven’t read him on Ford. It sounds like I’d remember it. It’s my understanding that he likes Nicole Kidman an awful lot. I mean, he *like* likes her.
Opinions, opinions… Thomson never wrote, to my knowledge, that he “doesn’t like” Bogart, but that he was a limited actor. His thinking on John Ford is something else. His complaint – that Ford cosmeticizes US history and worships the military, that he is a dangerous purveyor of an assortment of myths – is redolent of an earlier era, a Vietnam era kneejerk reaction to Ford (on the other hand, he’s written beautifully on John Wayne). Personally speaking, I don’t think he ever became a crank or a contrarian, but that he invested so much of himself in cinema that he never found a way of regaining his faith once he had lost it, and then started spinning his wheels as a critic. His best recent writing was that beautiful memoir from a couple years back.
A far cry from relentlessly attacking your peers and assuming that you are the only one who knows The Truth.
Kent, I have a huge if lately somewhat chastened admiration for Thomson. As a thinker or (god knows) stylist, White doesn’t even belong in the same locker room. The single thing they may have in common is a readiness to tilt against the conventional wisdom that has evolved into a distorting self-dramatization – an anguished one in Thomson’s case, I think, since he *did* invest too much of himself in movies and now seems to feel his subject let him down. But something like The Whole Equation makes pretty painful reading for a fan of his earlier work.
I also don’t have BDoF in front of me (books in storage, dammit). As I recall his entry on Ford, though, the right word would be “spluttering.” He scores some good points, especially about booziness as an ingredient in Ford’s world view. But beyond the dated Vietnam-era attitudes you mention, there’s an irascibility at work that I don’t think DT is able to rationalize even as opinion, and that, yes, cranky tone has gotten much more prominent in his recent writing if you ask me. I haven’t read his memoir, though, which sounds like it’s very affecting.
“Thomson, we should recall, was once a serious critic who became
disillusioned with cinema, and unexpectedly discovered that writing
about this disillusionment was far more financially profitable than
celebrating the work of Angelopoulos and Ophuls.
‘There are beter things to do than watching films’ is essentially the subject of everything Thomson has written in the last two decades. Would a serious literary critic asked to write about, say, Faulkner dare turn in a text encouraging readers to put away those dusty books and take a bracing walk?”
– Brad Stevens
Tom, as someone who got into trouble for writing unfavorably about the 2004 (I think it was 2004) edition of BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY, I suppose that your sentiments align pretty much with my own. As a critic, Thomson meant so much in the late 70s and early 80s. And then he started on the treadmill of articulation and re-articulation of his disappointment with cinema. At the time, I was pretty harsh on the very point made in the quoted passage from Brad Stevens – his disillusionment, coupled with his immense talent, made him the go-to guy for major news outlets and magazines. In the final analysis, I think he’s been struggling with the expression of something enormously complex and painful, which can be pieced together from various writings – entries on certain British filmmakers and on Nick Ray in the dictionary, the memoir (title: TRY TO TELL THE STORY). It has something to do with identity, being English or American, the American side of the issue question to cinema.
Regarding Brad’s Faulkner reference, on one level I agree with him wholeheartedly. On the other hand, I believe that David has something of a point to make buried within his highly questionable critiques. One problem with film culture is its inflationary rhetoric, which is generated from within a great big bubble. This filmmaker is a genius while that one is beneath contempt, this film is the greatest expression of human longing for home since THE ODYSSEY, while the negative of that film should be melted down and converted into guitar picks. Within the movie culture bubble, there are hundreds of Faulkners. The problem, of course, is that David doesn’t bother that much with newer cinema, so he can’t really claim with any authority to find it lacking.
Make that: “…the American side of the question tied to cinema.”
While many of his argument are problematic, I don’t really see Thomson as a “contrarian” in the pejorative sense – he doesn’t seem express idiosyncratic views solely to piss people off. To put it another way, Thomson even at his most dubious is writing about movies, actors, directors, etc., while White has become pretty much solely concerned not about movies but about the perceived critical reaction to movies. You could predict White’s reaction to a movie with 99% accuracy by scanning the Metacritic scores (and looking to see whether Speilberg directed it) – Thomson’s judgments are nowhere near as predictable or offered in such transparent bad faith.
Thomson remains interesting to me. He’s certainly not the only retirement-age critic with public problems of engagement. It’s disappointing that Jonathan Rosenbaum has totally punched out of modern popular cinema since he left the Reader, and of course at the other end of the scale there’s the train wreck of Richard Schickel (whose LA Times hatchet-jobs on worthwhile movie books are more objectionable than any “disillusionment” piece Thomson has penned). Roger Ebert was never one of my favorite writers, but I admire him more now than I used to because he stays so effortlessly contemporary (without losing touch with the films he championed 40+ years ago).
I wish I had time to engage with Thomson on Ford, which I mostly agree with (even though anti-Fordian sentiments seem totally unwelcome, at least in the internet discussions I frequent).
Thomson drives me nuts (like it takes a lot, I know). That Naruse stunt in one edition of BDOF was inexcusable, and his trying to charm readers around it in a subsequent edition even worse. And don’t even get me started on “Watch this space.” Then he’ll turn around and write about a figure such as Rivette with such perception and sensitivity that I want to marry him. Like I said, nuts.
Putting him in the same room with Armond is like putting Lenny Bruce in the same room with Gallagher.
What was the Naruse stunt?
Just for the record, I don’t think of “contrarian” as a pejorative term. “A readiness to tilt against the conventional wisdom” strikes me as a useful stance in a critic. An addiction to same, on the other hand – White’s case, not DT’s – is a recipe for worthlessness.
@ T. Russell, re “Naruse stunt:” Too depressing for me to detail, particularly in my weakened state. It’s easily pieced together via canny use of search engines, I’d reckon. Sorry!
Lenny Bruce wasn’t funny, either. Yeah, THAT JUST HAPPENED!
Is THE WHOLE EQUATION really that bad? It’s the one Thomson book I own, and thought, due to its proximity, it would be a good first Thomson book to read through to completion (prior to this it’s all been browsing various editions of the BDOF, and yeah, “watch this space” bugs me, too).
The “Naruse stunt” is in reference to the Naruse entry, which basically amounts to: people tell me this guy is great and it’s always nice to have something to look forward to. This was “updated” in a later edition to: people told me this guy was great, I saw some of his movies, and they were right. In other words, ANYTHING but actually trying to WRITE about the films.
@bill Not funny? Come on! “Comic at the Palladium” is CLASSIC! And let us not forget “poor Vaughn Meader,” that was good, too.
I think the best, and kindest, word for “The Whole Equation” would be “eccentric.” Whatever you do, steer clear of “Rosebud” and “Showman.”
@Kent: The other part of the Naruse stunt that killed me was something concerning the films Thomson’s son would someday make. Oy.
Okay. Now I’m going back to bed for real.
Okay, the Vaughn Meader joke was funny, but pretty much all the rest of it – especially that goddamn Beatnik, be-bop, bongos crap – is for the birds. THE BIRDS!
Thanks, Kent. Understood, Glenn; hope you feel better soon!
I think there’s an unacknowledged fissure in movie culture. For people of Thomson’s generation, the parameters of cinema were a lot narrower: Hollywood, American independents, 20 filmmakers from Italy, 40 from France, 10 from Germany, 15 from Japan, 15 from Russia, a smattering from here and there and Satyajit Ray. For many reasons, awareness of filmmakers past and present from all over the world has widened over the years. Obviously this is for the best. But the responses to the situation, the way of processing all those films and filmmakers, has split along generational lines, with two extremes at either end. On the one hand, there are younger people who see “masters” and “masterpieces” everywhere. On the other hand, there are older people who hear about Apichatpong Weerasetakhul or Lav Diaz and just sigh: “Oh no, not another one…it seems like we just got through with New German Cinema.”
bill, at least for my money, the BDoF – preferably in one of its earlier iterations – is the must-own. The Whole Equation, like all of Thomson, has wonderful passages that make you think the man can do no wrong… and then you turn the page. As the history of Hollywood it purports to be, I’d call “eccentric” an understatement.
As for Lenny Bruce, have you ever run across a cartoon short called THANK YOU MASK MAN, based on a Bruce routine about the Lone Ranger and with him supplying the audio? I’ve got my own misgivings about the Legend of St. Lenny, but if that one doesn’t convince he could be funny, probably nothing will.
With regard to Thomson, what Glenn said, although I was unaware of the so-called Naruse stunt, and half-envisioned Thomson taking a cellphone call during Sound of the Mountain or something. He has some BDOF entries that are sheer joy, and not just the big hitters, either; his entries on Greenstreet and Lorre pulse with real affection.
Thomson on Ford does strike me as contrarian, though, and I couldn’t resist going back to BDOF here. Kent’s assessment of Thomson’s philosophical differences with Ford is utterly dead-on, but Thomson also says “No one has done so much to invalidate the Western as a form.” I’d call that contrarian. In fact, I’d call that completely insupportable. And I get a positively Armond-ian kick out of this sentence: “Ford’s visual grace, it seems to me, needs the flush of drink in the viewer before it is sufficiently lulling to disguise to the lack of intellectual integrity.” That’s beautiful, it really is; I’m not joking, the sentence is marvelous. If I love My Darling Clementine when I’m sober, I must have checked my intellectual integrity at the popcorn stand. I have the Ford section of BDOF dog-eared. Usually that’s so I can avoid it. But sometimes it is so I can re-read in indignant delight.
I get no such charge out of any Armond has written, whether I agree or disagree, I must say.
Just pulled the library’s copy of the BDOF off the shelf and read the offending entry. Oy indeed.
While you’re there, Mr Russell, do check out how he retroactively blames Bruce Lee for the 9/11 attacks.
Shiren, I wush jusht washing SHEARCHERS again – bootiful, jusht bootiful…
Personally, I think that once you get into moralizing rhetoric on the order of the “visual grace…flush of drink” passage, you’ve moved away from criticism. I’m speaking as someone who perpetrated my share of moralizing rhetoric in earlier years. Unfortunately, it’s all the rage now.
@Tom Carson – I’ve never seen the cartoon, but I’m vaguely aware of the routine. I saw a production of LENNY with Eddie Izzard, and that bit was part of it, although the odd thing about the production is that Izzard did a great deal of his own material, and while he was funny, it’s not at all like what Bruce did, so it was an odd fit. But Elizabeth Berkley played Honny Harlow, and she was, you know, so there was that anyway.
In any case, wasn’t the Lone Ranger bit really early for Bruce? Like, before his “speaker of truths” phase? I’ve long suspected that I might actually find that stuff funnier than the material that made him famous.
On a side note, I remember reading a typically angry essay by Harlan Ellison that included his outrage over Bruce’s treatment by the law, and at one point Ellison – who, also typically, claimed to be Bruce’s pal – said that he, Ellison, used to write for him, Bruce. I’ve always wondered if that was true, because Ellison has a tendency to just say things.
A ha, thankfully a report in the NY Press has given a different take on the nights proceedings. Seems like just another case of all the popular kids picking on the odd kid in school for sport. And another reason why you should never trust the media. And Jeez is every writer/journalist in NY related in someway to J Hoberman? he has his fingers in every brain out there and makes Rupert Murdoch’s influence look minimal.
As for David Thomson, he is great but an easy strawman in this debate.
And GOD Bless Lenny Bruce for everything he did for freedom of speech but its the biggest secret in comedy that he was not funny. But he was the 1st, and deserves our love and respect for that alone.
Armond White’s freebie rag gives pro-White spin, well I never!
“Has anyone ever seen Armond White and Jared Loughner together at the same time? They are both big, ugly, bald and batshit fucking crazy attention whores.”
– From the AV Club.com thread linked to earlier
As much as I dislike White, I haven’t read any reports that indicate why Benning was reduced to tears.
My favorite line from the report by Jerry Portwood, who appears to exist, if at all, for the sole purpose of being White’s own flesh-and-blood Vivian Darkbloom: “Since Armond White lacks the web of relationships his nemeses all seem to use for their benefit, he took control of this platform.”
Just for the record, I don’t think of “contrarian” as a pejorative term. “A readiness to tilt against the conventional wisdom” strikes me as a useful stance in a critic.
I should say that I agree with this entirely – I was trying to distinguish between “contrarianism” as engaged skepticism (which is indeed very useful) and “contrarianism” as reflexive attempts to irritate that aren’t linked to any actual view of art (or politics or whatever.)
A belated (well, by today’s standards) answer to bill: Bruce’s “speaker of truths” phase strikes me as turgid too, though to be fair I’ve only read those routines and not heard him perform them. Just because he does qualify as a martyr in some limited sense doesn’t mean he was well cast as one, much less that it brought out the best in him.
As for the Armond kerfuffle that started this thread, I gotta admit there are days when it just makes me feel good that I’m 1300 miles from NY and a member of no crits’ association. Save that conferred by friendship with GK and others, of course.
I think SUSPECTS is the best work of non-fiction/fiction by a film critic.
I read THE MOMENT OF PSYCHO over Christmas and really enjoyed it.
I enjoyed SHOWMAN and THE WHOLE EQUATION and BENEATH MULHOLLAND.
I loved BDOF. Sure, you disagree with some entries, but what the fuck! It’s a fucking mammoth dictionary of film!
I loved ROSEBUD!!! I think it’s better than Leaming’s bio, and better than Peter Noble’s THE FABULOUS ORSON WELLES. Bogdanovich’s interview book is probably the best so far on Welles, though, and the one I’d recommend first.
Why did you hate ROSEBUD, Glenn?
@ Lord Henry: “Hate” is kind of a strong word, but I see your point. I dislike, as ever, Thomson’s presumption—his implication that he can see inside of Welles’ mind, which allows him (Thomson) to ascribe all sorts of scurrilous motivations to the man. I am also irritated by Thomson’s pompous pronouncements that “The Other Side of the Wind” and “Don Quixote” should never be seen. That sort of thing.
“the best work of non-fiction/fiction by a film critic” – a puzzler. What exactly is non-fiction/fiction? SUSPECTS is about the existences of other people’s fictional creations before and/or after those fictions, correct? I would file that, quite simply, under fiction.
James Agee was a film critic, and A DEATH IN THE FAMILY turned out pretty well. I also recall that Graham Greene wrote a novel or two.
As for Welles, try Simon Callow’s massive and impeccably researched, multi-part biography. Or Joe McBride’s wonderful books on Welles.
Jeez. I can remember when everyone thought the best piece of fiction by a film critic was Pauline Kael’s “Raising Kane.”
Oh, I almost forgot: I’ve said my piece about Armond White elsewhere, but what I found funny was how widely varied the accounts of his remarks (and the actors’ comments, and whether Aronofsky or White started it) varied between the four or five accounts of the event that I read on-line. I mean … wasn’t this a room full of professional journalists?
@ Kent Jones
“SUSPECTS is about the existences of other people’s fictional creations before and/or after those fictions, correct?”
Well, no. Before, DURING, and after. But we can file it under “fiction”, sure.
A DEATH IN THE FAMILY is a dull book. LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN is better. SUSPECTS is better than both.
I think you’re being a little disingenuous with the Graham Greene reference. Surely no one, when Greene’s named is mentioned, thinks, “Oh yes, Graham Greene, the film critic who wrote novels.”
Thanks for the tips, though. I dipped into the first Callow biography and was really annoyed by something in it, so put it back on the shelf. I might try the McBrides as I loved his book on Ford.
@ Glenn Kenny
“Thomson’s pompous pronouncements that “The Other Side of the Wind” and “Don Quixote” should never be seen.”
I remember seeing an extract (about 30 minutes) from DON QUIXOTE years and years ago and wondering whatever happened to it, as it doesn’t seem to have re-emerged since. Anyone know?
@Tom Carson: ::clap clap clap clap clap::
Beautiful, sir.
Not to be all “me, too” but ambivalence towards Thomson appears to be widely shared here (to say nothing of disdain for White’s strenuous douchery, but that must go without saying by now, mustn’t it?) – and, well, me, too. It’s Dave’s tendency towards the definitive statement that makes him all the more disappointing when his prejudices rear their head, whether negative in re: Tarkovsky, Kurosawa, &c., or positive in re:, say (and, maybe, explain?), Johnny Carson. But he’s awfully right, e.g., about THE PASSENGER being one of the 70’s greatest films – thus, of course, reinforcing my own prejudices. Thus, I think, the crux of the matter for many of us, and Thomson’s attendant value, notwithstanding his “Watch this space” cutesiness and ex-pat cluelessness, the latter seen in such things as praising the authenticity of Sir Ian Holm’s NYC cop in NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN. As I think I’ve said here before, G‑d bless Sir Ian, but homeboy can’t even chew gum like a New Yorker.
I can’t pretend to have done as close a watching of Korine’s oeuvre, but I can’t imagine considering his films in any way superior to Jarmusch’s, mindful of mr. oates’ enumeration of JJ’s cinematic virtues, which seem to swamp HK’s, or at least sure don’t seem shared. Looking at his recent work, both BROKEN FLOWERS and LIMITS are unnervingly static, even for JJ, and I had the same reaction as soon as both ended: “Is that it?” And yet, for me they subsequently generated compellingly contemplative spaces around each (and, for all the similarity of tone and dry irony that pervades all his work, markedly different contemplative responses) that drew me into discursive reflections around the films, ones which persisted long after the closing credits. I mean, up to today. And both films’ Occam-shaved formal purity/ies are there for all to cinematically absorb, whatever language one speaks – cf. Ozu, Bresson, &c., in this metalinguistic regard. Whereas my responses to GUMMO and JDB are much closer to something like JACKASS than to LATE SPRING or MOUCHETTE.
Stephen:
yes, but they had all come from a screening of RASHOMON
I have to say that if all White’s guilty of this time is publicly disparaging BLUE VALENTINE, THE SOCIAL NETWORK, THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, BLACK SWAN, and GREENBERG, he’s making strides. I liked a couple of those five, but strong arguments can be, and have been, made against all of them. And while it is horribly tacky to air his views at an award show, I’ve often wished some brave presenter would pierce the self-congratulatory bubble of the Oscars and say how awful a film like SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE or CRASH or THE BLIND SIDE was. I know I would find it impossible to present an award to one of those with a straight face.
Asher wrote: “I know I would find it impossible to present an award to one of those with a straight face.” And there’s one reason you’re not in show business, I guess.
I do love these internet tough guys, I gotta tell you. Even intelligent people—and Asher here has demonstrated frequently that he is one—can get amusingly (well, sort of amusingly) caught up in this “you-tell-’em” cheering on from the sidelines. And they’re cheering on behavior that does not, as it happens, constitute a Dadaesque puncturing of pomposity, or a stance of brave truth-telling, but is rather not much more than a snide hateful acting out of multiple resentments. That Armond feels particularly safe needling women makes it even more…oh, what’s the word?…oh yeah, “tacky.” I’m not exactly without my moments of unprovoked hostility myself, but anybody who honestly believes that White’s behavior does anything real to undermine the plinth on which the meaningless institution of the awards show stands is likely on even stronger drugs than the ones White ought to be prescribed.
“strong arguments can, and have been, made against all of them”
Strong arguments can and have been made against everything. With the possible exception of using one’s chairmanship of a voting body whose decisions were arrived at democratically as a bully pulpit.
@ Glenn Kenny & Kent Jones
Ha ha ha! Good finish to this.
I find Armond White to be sometimes amusing, but mostly disturbed.
Can I ask a question? Have you guys met him, and dislike him personally as well as professionally?
And off-topic – I watched Mitchell Leisen’s EASY LIVING last night and was blown away by it. Or should it be Preston Sturges’ EASY LIVING? Checking out MIDNIGHT to find out.
@ Lord Henry: I can’t speak for Kent, but I believe he’ll be inclined, if not obliged, to take a pass on this question. As White stated in a much-quoted interview with Stephen Boone, in which he could not come up with the name of a single other critic whose work he thought was any good, he DOES try to “be collegial,” and is known to make some form of pleasant chit-chat with colleagues pre-screening and whatnot. I spoke on a panel with him without experiencing much discomfort, and some time after that, had a lunch with him that was only slightly more awkward. But after a certain point I felt like I didn’t want to play that game with someone so insistent on communicating his contempt for his colleagues in pretty much everything he files. I know that I’m not entirely Mr. Nice Guy myself, but if I have to, or feel compelled to, discuss critics of whom I have a poor opinion, I try to be very specific about who I’m talking about and why I think/feel as I do. Armond’s frequent disinclination to name names when bemoaning the moral degeneracy of his fellows strikes me as a real pussy move, if you’ll excuse the term. Seeing as I’d never gotten an insight, or a laugh, or, really, anything of value out of the limited conversations I had with him prior to resolving to just have nothing to do with him personally ever again, I don’t feel I’m missing/have missed much.
Leisen possesses virtues that are not entirely contingent on Sturges’ participation. You’ll enjoy MIDNIGHT.
Lord Henry, let’s just say that I don’t have anything to add to Glenn’s description.
Leisen wasn’t exactly a towering artist, but he was involved with, like, 10 or 12 very good films. Of the Wilder/Brackett movies, I think I like HOLD BACK THE DAWN (in which he actually makes an appearance, as a film director) the best. ARISE MY LOVE has the most beautiful title, but it’s the least satisfying. Of the Sturges films, REMEMBER THE NIGHT is just as good as EASY LIVING, a very moving film. When writers of that calibre were no longer available, the work became less compelling.
Had the good fortune of seeing a lovely nitrate print of Leisen’s LADY IN THE DARK a couple days ago. The sexual politics by way of Freud are more than a little thorny (yeesh – that ending), but the Ginger-Rogers’-id-extravaganzas are as singularly weird as anything Hollywood ever turned out and all real joys to watch. One image of an audience of painted eggs turning in unison to watch Rogers strut around in a $35,000 dress built out of mink and sequins is going to haunt/amuse me forever. Apparently going to be showing on TCM a few times in April/May.
Impatiently waiting in my Netflix Instant Watch queue is Leisen’s NO MAN OF HER OWN. Saw and enjoyed the hard to find KITTY a couple of years back, a really handsome film that has maybe Paulette Goddard’s strongest role. Leisen’s direction and the script by Darrell Ware and Karl Tunberg may lack the snap and wit that a Lubitsch or Wilder would have provided, but the result is still highly pleasurable and more adult than the general fare of the time.
I’m a huge fan of MIDNIGHT, ever since I saw it in 35mm on a double bill with THE AWFUL TRUTH a decade or so ago.
The most odious thing about Armond, I think, is that he pretends to be a populist, or at least a defender of ostensibly populist films. Yet he uses rhetoric so full of academic sounding gibberish (and that’s truly what it is, since he seems to have a large vocabulary without actually knowing what the words mean) that the “regular folks” he claims to speak for wouldn’t give his writing the time of day.
Frank, I think there are a lot of people out there who play the inane “I’m just writing for Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public” card, which goes hand in hand with the tried-and-true “anti-elitist” number. To be precise, I think Armond trades in the latter but not the former, and that when he is talking about “elites,” he’s not doing in the way that, say, Sarah Palin is. Unlike many people I come across on the web, Armond has a deep and abiding love of cinema, and a real commitment to transmitting that love through his writing – who’s on the receiving end of it all is just as abstract for him as it is for anyone who is writing seriously about art. So, the question of an audience is not so clear-cut. His judgments, prejudices and sense of himself as a sort of missionary are something else.
Kent: You certainly have a point there, and having considered it I think I may have been misinterpreting Armond’s use of the term “elitist”. I agree that he is clearly passionate about film in a way that most internet film “writers” clearly aren’t, but I’m not sure I feel the love. I think he uses his writing primarily as a means to flex his own dubious intellectual muscles (not that it was always that way since, as many have pointed out, he was once a credible and interesting critic), and to assert feelings superiority over his colleagues and readership. The serious engagement of film as art has been secondary to that for quite some time, at least from my perspective. Perhaps that’s a bit too overzealous/harsh, but he’s the kind of writer who gets my blood going a bit.
Two things. As it happens I am watching “Guess who’s coming to dinner” on TCM. Wasn’t Armond White perhaps the only critic to say something nice about this movie since 1968, and about Stanley Kramer as a whole? Second, I was going to actually agree with David Thomson that John Ford was a problematic director. But then I rewatched “Days and Nights in the Forest” and thought I’d point out that Thomson was unfair to Satyajit Ray. Ray actually seems cruelly served by DVD: no Criterion entries at all (is there any other major director of whom this can’t be said?) and the English on the subtitles on the DVD I was watching seemed worse than that of the actual actors.
Partisan: “Ray actually seems cruelly served by DVD: no Criterion entries at all (is there any other major director of whom this can’t be said?)”
Off the top of my head, Jacques Rivette.
Frank, you’ll get no argument from me on most of the points you make – the degree of success in transmitting love of cinema to the readership is unfailingly short-circuited by self-righteousness and an addiction to scolding critics and artists for imagined shortcomings that are automatically inflated into crimes against humanity.
Satyajit Ray’s films are beset by all kinds of issues. Unless I’m mistaken, Criterion is on the case. Before everyone starts making a long and boring list of all the people they haven’t done (let’s not forget Hou, Jia and Murnau), it’s important to remember that a) they can’t just snap their fingers and make legal and QC-related difficulties vanish, b) they can only handle so many films at once, and c) many companies (WB, for instance) prefer to do their own releases.
Mitchell Leisen – Thanks for all the suggestions, everybody! They did a retrospective on him at Edinburgh a few years ago, and I’ve been meaning to catch up on him since, but got sidetracked.
Re: “who’s on the receiving end of it all is just as abstract for him as it is for anyone who is writing seriously about art.” If Kent considers this a praiseworthy quality in a reviewer who’s ostensibly practicing journalism, I sure don’t. Having a sense of who your readers are and figuring out how whatever you bring to the party will be of use to them is a pretty basic professional obligation in my book.
It’s not a question of tailoring your opinions or POV to please “Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public” – or Mr. and Ms. Arty Bohemian, for that matter. The job is to communicate those opinions and that POV as persuasively and interestingly as you can to the audience – large or small, generalist or specialized – you happen to be addressing at the moment. Even back in my misspent rock-crit days, I knew a review in the Village Voice could get into areas and make in-group assumptions that one in Rolling Stone couldn’t, and tackled each task accordingly. I’d have been doing readers a disservice if I hadn’t.
Tom, your point is well-taken. To be precise, I was thinking of all the ridiculous posturing that goes on now around the question of elitism. My idea of “abstract” here is on some ultimate level, but on a the more basic, nuts and bolts level, of course one always has to be thinking of the reader. I know that I do, I’m sure that Armond does. Anyway, I probably expressed myself poorly, because I certainly didn’t mean to imply that it was “praiseworthy” to discard any notion of an audience. If Armond is deeply involved in “transmitting” (my term) his love of movies, then it would follow that he’s transmitting it TO someone, i.e. the reader. What I meant was that the question of who the reader/s is/are always reaches a certain level of abstraction. But that doesn’t make it any less important.
Your “rock-crit days” were hardly “misspent.” Take it from an avid reader of your writing.
Thanks, Kent. No doubt I just got unduly cranky at the “for anyone who is writing seriously about art” formulation, since it seemed to imply that writing with an audience in mind puts a critic lower on the seriousness ladder (something any number of academics do seem to actually believe). But I should probably have guessed you were driving at something different.
I thought it would be appropriate given the discussion about David Thomson earlier to note that he is currently narrating a ten part series (each of fifteen minutes duration) about the cinema for BBC Radio 4’s current film season called Life At 24 Frames A Second.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to listen in on any as they are being transmitted whilst I’m at work, but I wonder if this would have been able shed any light on Thomson’s ideas of cinema and identity that Kent Jones was talking of earlier?
http://www.filmdetail.com/2010/12/22/bbc-radio-4-film-season/
Wow, I somehow missed that you are “that” Tom Carson. I second Kent’s sentiment – your byline always indicated a must-read to me.
As for Armond, I admit I found his contrarianism semi-charming for a hot minute a couple of years ago, because he could occasionally make a good defense of an unfairly maligned film, but it has truly curdled into something that’s no longer even fun to read really (though he did inspire a great read – Paul Brunick’s take-down of his TOY STORY 3 review).
@jbryant: Many thanks. I don’t think I’ve ever been called “that” Tom Carson before. Don’t want to hijack the thread, but I’m certainly grateful.
@ Tom Carson: Count me as another who noticed “that Tom Carson” was posting—I very much miss reading you in the Voice. And really enjoyed Gilligan’s Wake, a remarkable funny/sad/fascinating novel with one hell of a finale.
(even if you are wrong wrong wrong about Nashville and Gosford Park, which I just watched again last night and is as terrific and full of life as ever)
@ That Fuzzy Bastard: Robert Altman’s best films can defend themselves quite well. But it would be nice if GQ and other mass media journals could remind people that Sokurov or Hou and Angelopolous exist, or indeed Satyajit Ray. It’s not as if this year was positively overflowing with movies better than, say, “The Music Room.”
@Partisan: it would be tiresome and probably impolitic to explain the in-house priorities at GQ and other mass-market magazines, but I do try – as do, I think, most of my colleagues in similar gigs – to remind readers that other countries besides God’s favorite one are in possession of movie cameras. And @TFB: Gilligan’s Wake, really? Now, that’s flattering. Sorry about Gosford Park/Nashville, but I’m certainly aware of being in the minority about both.
It certainly is possible that GQ will suddenly see the light and run a cover story about all the great cinema they’ve missed over the years. I suppose it’s just as possible that Apichatpong Weerasetakhul will be offered a sequel to DATE NIGHT, or that the Atlantic Ocean will transform itself into chicken soup.
Tom, I enjoyed GOSFORD PARK at the time, but I now find NASHVILLE just about 100% unwatchable, Lily Tomlin and a few odds and ends aside.
My most recent viewing of NASHVILLE was a 25th anniversary screening at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, with Altman, Joan Tewksbury and most of the surviving cast in attendance and on stage. So maybe I wasn’t in a super-critical mood, but I still dug it. Afterward, I got to meet and chat with both Paul Dooley (who was in the audience) and Ned Beatty, so nothing but great memories that night. I’m sure I’ll check it out again some day without the rose-colored glasses and see if I still feel the same.
Like GOSFORD PARK at lot and own the DVD, but haven’t seen it since the theatrical run. I do wish the mystery had more of a payoff, but on the whole it was a pretty stunning piece of direction.
I do find it sort of fascinating that we can have a back-and-forth about the merits of (the greatest goddamn movie ever made) NASHVILLE, but David Thomspon’s dislike of Ford, who made one stone-cold classic (THE SEARCHERS) and a whole bunch of pretty decent flicks marred by leaden blocking, painful “comic relief” and thoughtless jingoism, is considered so beyond the pale that it can only be treated as contrarianism or senility.
Having just watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance a few nights ago, I can assure you it is not “marred by leaden blocking, painful “comic relief” and thoughtless jingoism.” In fact, the whole film seems to be a complex study of the falseness of many American myths, making it about as far from “thoughtless jingoism” as you can get. I can’t weigh in on the rest of his films, as sadly I have only seen The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (my great shame), but I disagree with Liberty Valance being thrown into the “decent flicks” pile.
Gee, I must have forgotten that NASHVILLE was the greatest goddamn movie ever made. I’ll have to keep reminding myself.
It’s Thomson, not Thompson, and he wrote it in 1974 so I doubt that anyone ever considered “senility” as a deciding factor. Personally, I don’t think there’s anything beyond the pale about David’s argument. I just happen to disagree with it.
Jason, there are many more Ford films available on DVD, around 60 or so. But maybe you want to see them on the big screen? Most of the transfers are excellent…thus affording you an excellent opportunity to study his leaden blocking, savor his painful comic relief and revel in his thoughtless jingoism.
Just to add to the above, Jason, Criterion released Ford’s 1939 films YOUNG MR. LINCOLN and STAGECOACH (the latter also in a wonderful Blu-Ray edition), which you may want to check out right away. He plays with myth in the former as well.
@Kent- I would love to see a Ford film on the big screen, especially for a first viewing, but unfortunately classic films are not shown on the big screen very often where I live. I have just been a bad film watcher, but I do intend to catch up on a lot of his films this year, as I have found myself quite haunted by LIBERTY VALANCE.
@Chris O. Thanks for the recommendations, I was intending on purchasing STAGECOACH ASAP, maybe I will have to pick up YOUNG MR. LINCOLN as well.
Jason, off the top of my head, a few others you might seek out: PILGRIMAGE, THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND, THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, FORT APACHE, WAGON MASTER, THE LONG GRAY LINE. And you’ll definitely have to pick up YOUNG MR. LINCOLN. While you’re at it, you might want to round out Ford’s 1939 output with his first Technicolor film, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK. Then you can share your impressions with the rest of us thoughtlessly jingoistic connoisseurs of painful comic relief and leaden blocking…and postcard vistas, falsifying nostalgia, racism and misogyny. Then, if so inclined, you can cleanse yourself by watching NASHVILLE.
Thanks Kent. With so many films directed by Ford, it is hard to know where to start, but this seems like a good jumping off point. I really can’t wait to watch STAGECOACH, I know its leaden blocking was a big influence on Orson Welles.
True. And on Bergman, Kazan, Godard, Straub and Huillet, Kurosawa, Scorsese, Pedro Costa and a few other modest talents.
Okay, okay, I’ll admit that I was largely kidding about Ford (a perfectly good, workmanlike director, with plenty of good films to his credit, though creatively not in the same league as Lang or Murnau). I just find it irritating that he’s on such a pedestal that Thomson’s perfectly valid dislike of him is automatically treated as proof that Thomson is trolling.
If there’s a case to be made that Ford is less than great, fine. I wouldn’t be simpatico and doubt many other SCR commenters would be either, but it takes all kinds and nobody should be sacrosanct. The problem is that Thomson’s long BDoF entry on Ford doesn’t make that case. At least as I remember, it’s full of captiousness and ad hominem attacks that just make it sound like Ford’s reputation bugs the bejesus out of him at a level he’s too exasperated to articulate cogently.
I’m inclined to agree with Thomson that Ford is overrated, though I think the great Ford film is “The Grapes of Wrath,” not “The Searchers.” To ask some rhetorical questions, if one of the best scenes of “Young Mr. Lincoln” is Lincoln’s regrets over the death of the woman who WASN’T the love of his life, why do we have to view Lincoln’s life through myth? One could say there are more nuances and complexities in Ford’s work than Thomson suggests. But isn’t it the nature of literary theory and film theory that if you want to look for complexity, you will eventually find it? Given what we know about the American west, is the fact that Tom Doniphon did not get his due really the worst thing that should be on Ransom Stoddard’s conscience?
Is Ethan Edwards’ complexity a result of Ford’s grasp of human nature, or is it a matter of having it both ways? Does “The Searchers” really do a better job of looking at American racism, than “Ivan the Terrible” does viewing Stalinism, or “Army of Shadows” does the French Resistance? One might agree that Ford’s grasp of history is not as good as Welles, Visconti or Hou, that his female role are not as rich as Bergman’s, Ozu’s or Ophuls’, and that his humanism is not as hard won as Tarkovsky’s or Bresson’s. But is Ford’s grasp of history better than Lean’s or Attenborough’s, his female roles better than Ritt’s, De Vito’s or Polanski’s, his humanism more subtle than Lumet’s or Ritt’s?
Damn, I hope those are rhetorical questions, Partisan. Is there ANY director who’s ouevre would get a “yes” response to all of those?
Wait…“His female roles better than…DeVito’s…?” Um, THROW MAMA FROM THE TRAIN? DEATH TO SMOOCHY? 🙂
@Tom Carson–Thank you. That’s the best summary of Thomson’s BDoF entry on Ford I’ve ever read.
Tom, I don’t have the energy to pull the offending entry down from the shelf, but I remember it pretty well, and it accurately reflects a position that was sort of popular back in the day and apparently still has some traction (see above): the Irish thing, the supposed embrace of militarism, the prettification/mythologizing of American history, the idea of Ford as a “dangerous” talent, that kind of stuff. At this point in history, a lot of it has dissolved into thin air, and the rest is a matter of taste and how much one cares about it. But back then he could get away with enumerating Ford’s alleged shortcomings and leaving the hard work of building a real argument to someone else.
Actually, the most persuasive arguments against the perfectly good, workmanlike Ford that I’ve come across were made by Noël Carroll and John Carpenter (not as a team, mind you). Both arguments have to do with perceptual issues, the way that Ford was so used to cutting in his head that he could sometimes fail to build spatial relationships and distances properly. I know exactly what they’re talking about, but I don’t agree that it hurts the movies – I think his energies went elsewhere.
@jbryant–The DeVito role I am thinking of is Mara Wilson in “Matilda.” As for the three comparative questions, I would say that Bergman, Tarkovsky, Rossellini, and Mizoguchi could answer all three questions with a yes.
@ jbryant: Hey, Catherine Keener is great in DEATH TO SMOOCHY! Actually, that whole movie is pretty underrated—some great shot choreography in the assassination scene, a very funny musical number in the methadone clinic, and “That had picture in picture!” cracks me up.
Kent, you don’t have the energy and my copy’s in storage, but do our memories at least accord that DT’s tone is unusually choleric and his arguments aren’t set out with his usual grace? Usually, he’s witty and disdainful about his betes noires, not overwrought. I remember how the Ford entry jumped out at me on my first reading of BDoF and made me think the animus went deeper than critical or even political disapprobation. And I was very struck by your own suggestion much earlier in this thread that, like some other DT writings, it reflected a deeply personal conflict about embracing American-ness vs. Englishness that he hadn’t (hasn’t?) yet resolved.
Armond White: Ongoing Asshattery
http://www.avclub.com/articles/armond-white-blames-the-negative-response-to-his‑n,50387/
Tom, I rallied and re-read the Ford entry.
Here’s a key sentence, added in 2004: “[The above] was written before the author had spent any time in the American West, and before he had begun to consider the tangle that has been made between Hollywood movies and what Americans take for their history.” Six graphs of post-Vietnam era prejudices followed by five graphs of post-Reagan era prejudices. The “tangle that has been made?” By whom exactly? John Ford? Then there is attention drawn to the “odd artistic link” between Ford’s Monument Valley films and the car commercials that were shot there. The real west is unexplored in Ford’s films, which is conflated with the endings of FORT APACHE and LIBERTY VALANCE. The defense of Ford’s “heady obscurantism” in the era of Watergate followed by Iran-Contra is something to marvel at, and to begin to take Ford to task may lead to a “dissatisfaction with cinema.” In other words, to like John Ford is to approach a pathological state and to deny the realities of American history and the west as well, but it’s possible that John Ford = cinema. So, it was fun, folks…until it wasn’t.
Yes, it’s a pretty grim and fearful text, but I think you overrate his wit when it comes to bêtes noires. And, it seems to me that only someone who had come to know America through movies only to be confronted with the real thing at full dimensional force could have written that entry.
Fuzzy: Catherine Keener is generally great – but I haven’t actually seen DEATH TO SMOOCHY. In fact, I was just joshing around, since I thought “De Vito” was Partisan’s typo for “De Sica” or something. Nothing against Danny De Vito; I’m just a bit surprised he’s one of the sticks being used to beat John Ford! Maybe I shouldn’t be. After all, his films are funnier than Bergman’s, Tarkovsky’s, Rossellini’s and Mizoguchi’s put together. I haven’t seen HOFFA, but I’m sure his sense of history in that also puts Ford to shame.