the virtues and flaws of Paul Schrader's "building a film canon" article in Sept-Oct Film Comment

You should read the full text, as his criteria are the focus: Beauty, Strangeness, Unity of form and subject, Tradition, Repeatability, Viewer engagement, Morality.

I like that he reps for All That Jazz. One of my personal faves.

No, I haven't found the full text anywhere online; check the library for FC.

I read Schrader's little book on transcendental style a few years ago; it had some useful insights into Ozu and Bresson.

and then there's this:
http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.cinematical.com/media/2006/11/schraderjma.jpg

and:
he claims that cinema, and especially the idea of finding aesthetic art therein, is mostly dead, a relic of the 20th century. He calls cinema a "broken down horse"

"He shoot me there!"

(For me, the funniest bit from Easy Riders, Raging Bulls)

anyone who thinks most great movies were made before 1970 is probably an asshole

It's no more valid than thinking most great novels were written before 1930.

anthony, are you saying sirk is an outsider? srsly?

like douglas sirk!

or in terms of its master-thinkers even more so. canons are usually testament not just to prejudices but moreover of amnesia and ignorance of the past.

I agree with Kurzweil that humankind is on an evolutionary cusp. We can foresee both the end of the 20,000-year reign of Homo sapiens and the beginnings of the life-forms that will replace it (something Kurzweil and Garreau predict will happen in the next hundred years). Art looks to the future; it is society’s harbinger. The demise of Art’s human narrative is not a sign of creative bankruptcy. It’s the twinkling of changes to come. Such thoughts fill me not with despair but envy: I wish I could be there to see the curtain rise.

ok he might actually just be a little crazy.

well i liked it, but i was more just pointing out that when given the choice between the two dude picked one with the antiquated sensibilities.

(neither would make my super awesome filmographic cannon.)

anyone who thinks most great movies were made before 1970 is probably an asshole.

Since nearly two-thirds of the Century of Cinema falls in this period, you need more than a drive-by one-liner to be taken seriously with this. And since the aesthetics of film developed and matured almost entirely in this time, its supremacy seems even more undeniable. This strikes me as the kind of thing somebody who hasn't even bothered to see hardly any Renoir, Bresson, Ford, Ozu, Sturges, Rossellini etc. would say. Have you?

Over 90% of great Hollywood studio films were likely made before '70, maybe '65. (The early '70s is balanced out by the preeminence of crap in the last 25 years.)

The "broken down horse" thing makes sense to me, as I don't think there's any question we're going to be watching exclusively digital media in theaters in 10-20 years (hello, NOT FILM. Most of what either gets discussed heavily or anticipated on ILX -- Borat, Inland Empire, Jackass 1 & 2, or my recent favorite The Joy of Life -- is not cinema).

re the Kurzweil and Garreau stuff (which I plan to look at) about our imminent evolutionary leap: Can't you see people already using their phones and PDAs with the frequency and utility of organs? They're already half-machine. (Which is why I'm kinda surprised Cronenberg didn't make Schrader's 60.)

semantics!

over 90% of great Hollywood studio films were likely made before '70, maybe '65. (The early '70s is balanced out by the preeminence of crap in the last 25 years.)

this would only constitute an argument if no one else was making movies. (and of course there were tons in the 70's).

re the Kurzweil and Garreau stuff (which I plan to look at) about our imminent evolutionary leap: Can't you see people already using their phones and PDAs with the frequency and utility of organs? They're already half-machine. (Which is why I'm kinda surprised Cronenberg didn't make Schrader's 60.)

half-pointy stick > half-plow > half-tv > half-smart-phone: the evolution of man!!!

(and yeah i've seen movies by all those dudes you mentioned w/ozu being the one i have true affection for. although why everyone loves toyko story so much better than good morning {which has fart jokes, hello!} is a mystery to me.)

We're not talking about whether you have a great affection for them, we're talking if they made canonical films.

semantics!

No, something's either made on film or isn't, or is a stitched-together TV sketch show or isn't.

celluloid is not a medium. that's like saying literature is paper or some shit.

well some of them can be in my cannon any day, but i must warn you it's gonna be based on affection. and of course i wasn't partiularly saying that movies after 1970 were better, just that there's a lot of good ones there too, right?

woman under the influence, terminator, mulholland dr, borat - how u be leavin these out?

xpost

tbh tv >>>>>> the cinema for a long-ass time. but then cinema used to be more like tv; films would be melted down; it was an ephemeral medium.

Literature is experienced via paper (this may change, let's see); film is experienced via projected light through celluloid.

i wasn't partiularly saying that movies after 1970 were better

More films were made en toto before '70; you said "most great movies were made before 1970" is assholism. You were, by the math, saying they're better since.

that's all you're doing! but just claiming high art values for it, universalizing it.

dude has two movies post 1990 on his list!!!!!!!

But that math says that there are many fewer canonical films since '90, which I wouldn't quarrel with -- for one thing, by Schrader's criterion of Repeatability, we don't entirely know their place in the firmament yet.

where was schrader's criteria, i was just looking for it? morality was included lol.

where was schrader's criteria, i was just looking for it? morality was included lol.

This explains you purty well.

xp

No, it doesn't, but since it speaks so directly to his cause (and conveniently uses the language of "the enemy"), I can see why he temporarily lowered his lofty standards.

How is Schrader anti-theory -- isn't setting up "refurbished criteria" for creating a film canon a theory?

Also, to clarify, I love compelling criticism, regardless of the presence/lack of solid theory. I don't use it (by "it" I mean theory, though I suppose it's also fair to say "compelling criticism"), but it if's there and used in a way that makes sense, I have no arguments. I don't think Schrader's anti-theory so much as he's anti-new-theory, or boring stuff to that extent.

I especially love overweening articles that attempt to tear down an entire way of thinking (i.e. "Trash, Art and the Movies"). Even though there's probably no real way to quantify the success of these articles, in the case of this particular article, the defensiveness doesn't sit well with Schrader's aims, and he's even further undercut by Gavin Smith's introduction (the this-is-a-grand-moment-in-film-culture-because-it's-the-second-longest-article-we've-ever-run). Couple that with a canon that introduces nothing other than what Sight & Sound just re-confirmed for the third or fourth straight decade, and I think it's a failure.

who knows maybe schrader is talking abt compelling moral dynamics in film, in which case, by all means. (don't know, don't have the magazine)

but no, i wouldn't say that roth is generally moral at the core, whatever that means.

Yeah, otm. A lot of us consider Schrader "humorless" because he's not compelling enough a writer or thinker to consider how any lengthy essay needs irony and wit. "Trash, Art, and the Movies" has both, whatever else.

As for Schrader's essay not being "A MOMENT in film culture." I agree, it fails. (We might fail similarly in our early 60s -- maybe that'll be yr comeuppance, Eric Amberson Minafer.) But the questions intrigue me. Do wejust to continue to stack Spielberg next to Jenni Olson next to Apichatpong Weerasethakul without knowing why?

I think lit-crit has more agreed-upon canonical criteria than film-crit, but since I don't read much of it that could be a delusion.

pdf of the whole essay here:

http://www.m31films.com/?p=8

Schrader on morality, for jhoshea (as mayb you shouldn't snicker at the word, but how he defines its role in his aesthetic):

I'm reluctant to introduce the oldest (and hoariest) artistic criterion, morality, a criterion that streches from Plato... to Ruskin and Leavis (every great work is a great moral work). It's not that I feel moral arguments have no place in the discussion of art, just that they are better implied than spelled out... It makes sense that great films have great moral resonance. I just don't see the aesthetic value of setting one moral resonance against another. Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi documentary Triumph of the Will is arguably the quintessential motion picture, the fulcrum of the century of cinema ...of course, it's a work of moral resonance. Good or bad resonance? Most everyone would agree it's evil, but that's beside the point. The point is that no work that fails to strike moral chords can be canonical.

xpost

Tracer, the Schrader quote? or asserting that the collage/Corleone analogy is funny?

We can "fuck" L.R. all we want (and why not), but the grammar of film was altered permanently by her.

xpost

following Leni: Frank Capra? Kenneth Anger? David Fincher?

which is curious, i note idly, given that tarantino can be very funny, and warm, while michael corleone is famous for his punishing absence of either

anyway, it's hard to talk about this either way, since i imagine very few people have read his thoughts and reasons behind his criteria, which i gather is the only thing up for discussion (since you don't want to debate the list and i don't blame you)

that said, i am suspicious of his criteria, given how many titles on his list are predictable "what a movie critic would like" movies; i am suspicious of "repeatability" (i have had very little desire to see any movie twice, ESPECIALLY my favorites); suspicious of the idea that there is a firmament of great movies

Dude, this is just damn weird (and I buy DVDs with reluctance and infrequently, as I don't believe in endless rewatchings).

The trouble with building a canon of films today is that the art is so new that no one knows what will last or why. Certainly, mere technical excellence or innovation are not useful criteria. Longevity in maintaining an audience is not yet established. As a result, far, far too many films will be listed and only a handful of these are likely to interest more than a few academics in 2100.

In any case, this year's detrius thread may be diminished significantly if the VV doesn't do their poll. (I hear Lim is trying to coordinate a reasonable alternative, though I haven't heard anything about which venue he wants to use ... NYT?)

-- Aimless (aimles...), November 20th, 2006.

"The rule of thumb for literature has long been that, if a signifigant number of people (not merely a few academic specialists) still read a book with pleasure and interest 100 years after it was published, then it qualifies as a classic."

old farts like harold bloom would disagree.

"Certainly, mere technical excellence or innovation are not useful criteria."

no? james joyce does ok on these grounds

"The trouble with building a canon of films today is that the art is so new that no one knows what will last or why."

this has been true of literature also. but people do think they know why things wil survive -- eg because it belongs to a tradition. that's how eng lit canonistas roll, anyway.

"Longevity in maintaining an audience is not yet established."

more so than with literature!

I hate to get all Godfrey Cheshire on yo ass, but the art is on its deathbed.

im (re?)reading this

he sure makes some odd claims

like pauline kael's 'trash art and the movies' is 'the most influential article in the history of film criticism'

really dude? really?

idk

i guess there's no such thing rly

influential = lots of non-critics read it

Matt Zoller Seitz is murdering the classics! You can too...

http://www.salon.com/life/slide_shows/index.html?story=/ent/movies/film_salon/2010/09/10/movie_heresy_slide_show

Gran Torino is a classic?

maybe this guy can put together the Kill Your Idols of cinema!

can't wait to find out what the cinematic equivalent of Paul McCartney's Ram is

The Science of Sleep.

Good thread revives all around today, Morbs. I was just thinking about starting that "Make your own S&S '12 ballots" list thread this afternoon.

if he wanted to take down an eastwood movie he should have gone with unforgiven

or, given its surprisingly unimpeachable status among cinephiles, Bridges of Madison County

is that unimpeachable? i always thought it was on the lesser end of his critical adorations. could be mistaking Anthony Lane with general consensus.

MZS right about Gran Torino. Unforgiven is great fuiud.

Unforgiven realy did not break new ground, even Clintwise, as was claimed.

I had Madison Co on for the first 15 mins on TCM last week and myGgod, they hadnt even gotten to Clint and Meryl yet. Never seen, but I will skip the first reel if I ever do.

Not necessarily about breaking new ground though is it.

Madison County is pretty tedious.

Streep and Eastwood are excellent together; it's still one of her best.

just wanted to pop in and say I caught Blue Collar on cable last night, had seen it before, but damn that is a good movie.

I've only seen it once, but thought it was good--best after Affliction for me, being a director I don't usually care for.

i totally want to build a film cannon, to shoot film critics with

I was talking about Light of Day with a friend this morning. Schrader misjudges (typically) how good Joan Jett is.

whoah WTF never even heard of that before

you don't remember the Jett song? It's a Springsteen number – and great performance.

Hardcore is still probably my favorite Schrader movie.

Mishima's pretty good too, IIRC, but it's been years since I've seen it so I mostly remember the score now.

I'm replying to history mayne upthread:

I DO think that books are a medium. You said

celluloid is not a medium. that's like saying literature is paper or some shit.

but I think that literature was changed by paper. Actually, that's not even a remotely controversial thing to say - it's more of a truism than anything - so it feels weird disagreeing. I agree that "literature" is more than books, but if you said, "Books are dead," then it would be unfair to reply, "But look at all of the good writing happening on the Internet," because the nature of the literature would be different. I have never and will never read a novel on the internet, for instance. I admit that there is a remote possibility I would do it on an ebook. If I were arguing with you back in 2006 or whenever, I would think the celluloid to non-celluloid shift would be something like the book to ebook shift. The celluloid shift is probably less severe, so point taken, but I sympathize with morbz's position because I'm most drawn to movies made before 1980.

I think that in 2009 or 2011 that Leni Reifenstahl hiccup would have lasted a few hundred posts longer.

Meanwhile, Ellis, Pope and Schrader battled over the film’s final cut. Pope screened a rough cut of The Canyons for Steven Soderbergh. Intrigued, Soderbergh offered to do an edit of the movie if he was given the footage for 72 hours.

Schrader said no. […] "The idea of 72 hours is a joke,” Schrader said. “It would take him 72 hours to look at all the footage. And you know what Soderbergh would do if another director offered to cut his film?”

I said I didn’t. Schrader leaned back in his chair and gave me two middle fingers.

“That’s what Soderbergh would do.”

Premiere of The Canyons at Lincoln Center!

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/an-evening-with-paul-schrader-the-canyons

Film Comment really doubling down on this in the next issue.

gtfo w/ 180 minutes !

shouldve def let sodes edit

I think that's the time of the event, including the Q&A with Schrader.

well it better be

now listed at 100 mins.

aaaand I forgot the public sale started at midnight, and the tix are gone.

Checked back to see what I wrote about Auto Focus at the time, and it did improve some. What seemed like a very limiting flatness then was still there, but shrunk down, it wasn't so bothersome. One of the better Schrader films, I'd say. Similar to Star 80 in a lot of ways.

I just saw Mishima yesterday, and...WOW. Kind of mad that the most intriguing of the stories adapted (Kyoko's House) is one of the handful of Mishima novels that's never been released or translated in the west.

I saw Blue Collar once before, about 10 or 15 years ago, and don't really remember how I felt. It seemed very strong this time--I'd say Schrader's best film after Affliction. Pryor, Keitel, and Kotto are so good, the essential blandness that drags down most of Schrader's films for me was never an issue.

Pryor hisses invective--at the union steward during the meeting, at the IRS guy--as well as anyone I can remember. Kael singles out Kotto, and he really is great; one of those performances that feels completely natural, without a trace of acting. And Keitel does one of his best jobs ever of laying back and letting those around him be the focus of attention.

Really liked seeing a couple of Scorsese bit players: George "What's a mook?" Memmoli, and Harry Northup (Doughboy) from Taxi Driver.

I'm sympathetic, but at the same time wincing at the thought of a Nicholas Cage thriller:

http://deadline.com/2014/10/paul-schrader-dying-of-the-light-nicolas-cage-protest-853521/

As for the state of cinema itself, Schrader has long put forth the position that the moviegoing experience was we know it is on it's way out the door. "...the 20th-century concept of a projected image in a dark room in front of a paying audience. If you’re wedded to that concept, you’re in trouble, because that concept is dead," he states. Pointing toward both longer form storytelling on TV and shorter form moviemaking on the internet, Schrader says the definition of a "movie" is up for grabs, and the three-act, two-hour movie is becoming stale. And so, when it comes to the push lately for 35mm projection and saving analog formats, you better bring that nostalgia somewhere else.

"It’s all revanchist claptrap. The goal of art is not to tell people what tools they want to use, but to use whatever tools are around. The tools are always changing and the artists need to change with the tools. We didn’t have movies 100 years ago, and we did quite fine without them, and now they’re going to become something else again," Schrader says.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/paul-schrader-talks-bad-people-behind-dying-of-the-light-says-push-for-35mm-projection-is-claptrap-20141121

Damn, there's no region 2 of Mishima. A lot of high quality picture dvds look pretty bad on my multi-region player and I'm reluctant to shell out for another multi-region player, especially with bluray possibly pushing dvds out the way.

The Criterion Mishima is gorgeous on pretty much every level (transfer, artwork, packaging...)

Somebody posted it on YouTube but I'm going to resist it.

Wish Eureka would pick it up but they don't tend to do as many newer films as Criterion.

as noted elsewhere, his tormented clergyman movie is getting him his best press in eons

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4875-the-daily-venice-toronto-2017-schrader-s-first-reformed

^it's one of his best, indeed.

also has a revised edition of his transcendental film book out next year

Dog Eat Dog never really topped the insane opening sequence, but the cartoonish gruesomeness of the film on the whole was hmmm memorable.

The point is not to *get* the canonical movie, but use it as a tool to learn a different style or perspective or world (KANE got its position because it’s an extremely teachable movie in terms of narrative / aesthetic strategies)

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) March 20, 2018

^^ a point often missed by conservatives bemoaning what lib English faculty are doing.

Girish Shambu on the male canon and auteurism

https://filmquarterly.org/2018/09/21/times-up-for-the-male-canon/

gee i wonder why pic.twitter.com/nQstniXRHM

— paul schrader's facebook posts (@paul_posts) August 4, 2021

gee i wonder why pic.twitter.com/nQstniXRHM

— paul schrader's facebook posts (@paul_posts) August 4, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvGktPaDAPM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6psa1ptpGTc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PJhhwtBt70

The possibly 9/11-anniversary-timed (hard to say with release schedules right now) The Card Counter is supposed to be cathartic, I suppose, but I found it to be more and more of an ordeal as it went along. The truly dreadful soundtrack played a part in that. I thought I was headed out to see a good poker film.

You do what you must. But I was impressed that Schrader got such a wide opening for a film exploring the impact and legacy of Abu Ghraib. Has this, or other episodes of the War on Terror, been treated in such detail before?

Also, I hope that the desk jockeys who defended "enhanced interrogation" will be questioned again. But somehow I suspect once again they'll not experience material or professional discomfort.

Just saw it, unsure if I “get” it. The first movie in a while (in a theater, anyway) where I feel like I missed something.

https://www.facebook.com/1631212662/posts/10223350640467517/?d=n

As ever, the use of “woke” as an epithet makes me less likely to take someone seriously.

Thanks, Eric. I aged ten years reading those comments.

Card Counter was good. That camera trick in Abu Ghraib was pretty good.

oh, i was going to look and see if anyone had posted about it and i forgot. i did NOT like the card counter. goofy, unbelievable story. it was like what if i made first reformed again, but this time it's bad?

it wasn’t as good as first reformed but i liked it a lot

noticed this name as an exec producer lol - https://m.imdb.com/name/nm13254828/?ref_=m_ttfcd_cr1

this movie was largely tedious and bad btw but i couldnt help thinking if you play everything about the last scene exactly as it was but have the USA poker bro instead of tiffany haddish visit oscar isaac in prison the movie would be improved

On Facebook:

I’M SEEING DEAD FILM CRITICS. Attending film festivals was always a buzz. You would go, meet filmmakers whose work you knew, run into old film critic friends, make new ones, talk, argue, drink. That moment has passed. Earlier tonight I spotted Richard Corliss in the lobby of the Excelsior. I went over to greet him then realized he’d died two years ago. So many ghosts.