Video Essay 1: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes

Mystery Man in Les Bonnes femmes (1960)

It's a really B I G D A Y here at Film Studies For Free. But do, please, be gentle...

This posting brings you the first ever little video essay about a film studies topic (in this case, a single film) produced by this blog's author: Unsentimental Education: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes.

The exercise probably only shows that there's a mighty long way to go with this format for this author before anything near full proficiency in it can be claimed (for example, the voiceover commentary would have sounded a lot better had the person delivering it not been quite so nervous/terrified during the recording). But it's a good enough beginning for what FSFF sincerely hopes will go on to be a regular, if occasional, feature.

The essay has been produced, as previously promised, to coincide with, and thus to contribute to, the final day of the wonderful Chabrol blogathon hosted by Flickhead's blog (see HERE for a list of all the fantastic contributions, so far, to the event).

Some supplementary material about this strange, beguiling film Les Bonnes femmes/The Good Time Girls (France/Italy, 1960, directed by Chabrol), together with a link to a full transcript of the video essay's commentary and some pedagogical and critical reflections on the process of making it, wlll be added to this post as soon as possible. So, do please come back for that. (Updated July 8, 2009: transcript accessible HERE).

But, time was of the essence to join in with the blogathon. So all else can wait. Here below, then, is the essay, archived at FSFF's new supplementary site, for related videos, at Vimeo. It contains a few significant plot spoilers (as few as possible...). Also, please note that, for the purposes of its critical-scholarly analysis and commentary, the essay transforms many of the original elements of the film that it 'quotes', employing newly created still images (and new sounds), slowed motion, and quite heavy (at times) re-editing (including reordering) of image and sound/music.

In other words, you must see the original film, if you haven't done so already. Les Bonnes femmes is currently available on DVD thanks to Kino Video (Region 1 only). It can be ordered from that company's website HERE, or from Amazon.com HERE

Adam Curtis Links

Image from Pandora's Box (Adam Curtis, 1992)

Film Studies For Free concurs with David Bordwell's recent assessment that Adam Curtis is one of the most remarkable documentarians working today ('Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares, [is] one of the great docs of recent years').

If you haven't yet heard of him, Curtis is a British television documentary producer who has written and directed a number of hugely influential, multi-part, political film essays, including the award-winning Century of the Self, the aforementioned The Power of Nightmares, The Mayfair Set, Pandora's Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.

FSFF was really excited, therefore, to hear of Curtis's new blog hosted at the BBC website (news courtesy of David Hudson at The Daily and also from a nice post at the great Screen Research website, which FSFF promises to profile in more detail really soon).

Curtis's blog muses mostly about his new project which Charlie Brooker, writing for The Guardian, describes as follows:

He's made a new documentary called It Felt Like A Kiss. Except it isn't just a documentary. It's also a piece of interactive theatre, with music composed by Damon Albarn and performed by the Kronos Quartet. And it doesn't take place in a cinema or concert hall, but across five floors of a deserted office block in Manchester [as part of the Manchester International Festival]July 2-9, 2009]. [...]

In summary, from what I can gather, It Felt Like A Kiss is both the craziest yet crookedly rational project I've ever heard about. Hearing Curtis talk about that huge subject, that huge building, that brink-of-madness, reality-blurring feel, there are a few unmistakeable parallels with Synecdoche, New York, Charlie Kaufman's recent film, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman takes control of an infinitely huge Manhattan warehouse and attempts to stage a boundary-shattering show that will sum up the entirety of human experience. He over-reaches and winds up creating a work of ever-expanding fractal madness. Curtis, I think, has gone a bit mad, too - but to precisely the right degree.

Curtis himself wrote in a post on June 17 - which also carries a longish trailer for the project - that

It Felt Like a Kiss started life as an experimental film I made for the BBC last year. My aim was to try and find a more involving and emotional way of doing political journalism on TV. I decided to make a film about something that has always fascinated me - how power really works in the world. To show that power is exercised not just through politics and diplomacy - but flows through our feelings and emotions, and shapes the way we think of ourselves and the world.

Film Studies For Free will, in its downtime, fantasize about a little visit up to Manchester. Meanwhile, below are some of the most interesting, freely accessible, scholarly resources, websites, and online essays about Curtis's work and related matters:

• Adam Curtis films free to view or download from the Internet Archive (e.g. films either in the public domain or licensed under a license that allows redistribution, such as those offered by Creative Commons)

• The Mayfair Set (1999 - part 1 - end missing)
• The Mayfair Set (1999 - part 4)
• The Century of the Self (three parts - 2002)
• The Power of Nightmares (three parts 2005)
• The Trap: What happened to our idea of freedom - Part 1 (2007)
  

• Zygmunt Bauman, 'The Demons of an Open Society', London School of Economics, October 20, 2005
• Graham Coulter-Smith and Maurice Owen, 'Introduction', Art in the Age of Terrorism (Paul Holberton publishing/University of Washington Press, 2005)
• David Crawford, 'Realism vs. Reality TV in the War on Terror: Artworks as Models of Interpretation', Geometer, January 19, 2009
• Adam Curtis, Panel Discussion on'Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age' in association with Routledge and King's College London, and sponsored by the Body&Soul section of The Times, An Institute of Ideas symposium at King’s College London, 22 November 2003
• Mark Jensen, 'DOCUMENTARY: 'The Power of Nightmares' by Adam Curtis -- summary of argument ', United For Peace, September 11, 2005
• Jonathan Kahana, excerpt from Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary (Columbia University Press, 2008)
• Peter Knight, 'Conspiracy Theories about 9/11', Centre for International Politics Working Paper Series, No. 34, August 2007
• Robert Koehler, 'Neo-Fantasies and Ancient Myths: Adam Curtis on The Power of Nightmares', Cinema Scope Issue 23, 2005
• Laurie A. Manwell, 'Faulty Towers of Belief: Part II. Rebuilding the Road to Freedom of Reason', Journal of 9/11 Studies, August 2007
• Sharon Lin Tay, (2008), long excerpt from ʻUndisclosed Recipients: documentary in an era of digital convergenceʼ, Studies in Documentary Film 2: 1, pp. 79–98

Also see: Erroll Morris's interview with Curtis HERE; Andrew Orlowski's recent article about Curtis for THE REGISTER HERE.

Friday Round Up

Film Studies For Free brings you a little Friday round up of just-out-now scholarly links.

• There's a truly bumper new issue of the journal JUMP CUT: A Review of Contemporary Media (issue 51), with 45 new freely accessible articles, including the following:
  

Imagining torture by Chuck Kleinhans; Torture documentaries by Julia Lesage; A Simple Case for Torture, redux by Martha Rosler; The Wire and the world: narrative and metanarrative by Helena Sheehan and Sheamus Sweeney; “Don’t Just Watch It, Live It:” technology, corporate partnerships, and The Hills by Elizabeth Affuso; Postmodern marketing, Generation Y and the multiplatform viewing experience of MTV’s The Hills by Amanda Klein; The past isn't what it used to be: the troubled homes of Mad Men by Mark Taylor; Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica reviewed by David Greven; Global formats, gender and identity: the search for The Perfect Bride on Italian television by Michela Ardizzoni; A nightmare of capitalist Japan: Spirited Away by Ayumi Suzuki; The curious cases of Salma, Siti, and Ming:representations of Indonesia’s polygamous life in Love for Share by Ekky Imanjaya; Gender and class in the Singaporean film 881 by Brenda Chan; Cinenumerology: interview with Royston Tan, one of Singapore’s most versatile filmmakers by Anne Ciecko; Visible “waves”: notes on Koreanness, pan-Asianness, and some recent Southeast Asian art films by Anne Ciecko and Hunju Lee; Asia’s beloved sassy girl: Jun Ji-Hyun’s star image and her transnational stardom by JaeYoon Park; Pornography and its critical reception: toward a theory of masturbation by Magnus Ullén; Real sex: the aesthetics and economics of art-house porn by Jon Lewis; Documentary and the anamnesis of queer space: The Polymath, or, The Life and Opinions of Samuel R. Delany, Gentleman by Nicholas de Villiers; Documentary investigations and the female porn star by Belinda Smaill; The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene reviewed by Catherine Clepper; Documenting and denial: discourses of sexual self-exploitation by Leigh Goldstein; Children of Men and I Am Legend: the disaster-capitalism complex hits Hollywood by Kirk Boyle; The exceptional darkness of The Dark Knight by Todd McGowan; The Dark Knight of American empire by Randolph Lewis; Post-Iraq cinema: the veteran hero in The Jacket and Harsh Times by Justin Vicari; WALL-E: from environmental adaptation to sentimental nostalgia by Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann; Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino: the death of America’s hero by Robert Alpert; Interpreting revolution: Che: Part I and Part II by Victor Wallis; The cold world behind the window: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Romanian cinema’s return to real-existing communism by Constantin Parvulescu; Retrieving Emir Kusturica’s Underground as a critique of ethnic nationalism by Sean Homer; Dimensions of exile in the videos of Silvia Malagrino by Ilene S. Goldman; No parking between signs: on Sadie Benning's Flat is Beautiful and early works by Burlin Barr; Sex versus the small screen: home video censorship and Alfonso Cuarón’s Y tu mamá también by Caetlin Benson-Allott; Torture, maternity, and truth in Jasmila Zbanic’s Grbavica: Land of My Dreams by Caroline Koebel; Culture wars: some new trends in art horror by Joan Hawkins; Misogyny as radical commentary: Rashomon retold in Takashi Miike’s Masters of Horror: Imprint by William Leung; The dangers of biosecurity: The Host and the geopolitics of outbreak by Hsuan L. Hsu; The return of horror to Chinese cinema: an aesthetic of restraint and space of horror by Li Zeng; Cross cultural disgust: some problems in the analysis of contemporary horror cinema by Chuck Kleinhans; Media salad by Chuck Kleinhans; Racing into the Obama era by the editors; Remembrance against manufactured amnesia: on the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident by David Leiwei Li. Plus several book reviews.

• The new issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture is available, including the following articles:

'Gypsy Stars in the New Europe' by Aniko Imre; 'When Satellites Fall: On the Trails of Cosmos 954 and USA 193' by Lisa Parks; 'Towards a Typology of Dance TV Contestants' by Christine Quail; 'No Rerun Nation: Canadian Television and Cultural Amnesia' by Serra Tinic; 'And the winner of Britain's Got Talent is . . .' by Lisa W. Kelly.

• The summer 2009 issue of the high quality journal Film Quarterly (Vol. 62, No. 4) has just come out, offering the following freely accessible columns:

Rob White, 'Editor's Notebook: Heaven Knows We're Digital Now' ; Joshua Clover, 'Marx and Coca-Cola: Cinema for a New Grand Game'; Laura Mulvey, 'Reconsideration: The Earrings of Madame de . . . ; Michael Colvino, 'Ecosystem: La malavita: Gomorrah and Naples'. As it is celebrating its 50th anniversary, it is also still offering free access to 'Da Capo,' a history of FQ written by founding editor Ernest Callenbach.

• The UK Film Council today launches its detailed research report Stories We Tell Ourselves: The Cultural Impact of UK Film 1946-2006 (also see HERE).

[According to its press release,] it’s a timely and stimulating report, confirming that film has been one of the most powerful cultural and social agents of the last 100 years. Taking 200 iconic films from the past six decades, it traces how British cinema has upheld some traditional British values – and mocked, challenged and undermined others. It shows how important film has been in sustaining and developing the identity of the UK’s nations and regions, and in reflecting the changing face of Britain’s different communities. And it charts the extraordinary power British film can wield at home and abroad – even more so with the massive economic and technological evolution film has experienced in recent years. This study highlights the cultural impact of British film. It calls on us to acknowledge and appreciate the strength, the diversity and the rude health of our film heritage and to acknowledge its increasingly vital role in contemporary culture.

Going the distance with Claude Chabrol

Film Studies For Free is rather partial to a good film blogathon and there's potentially a very good one coming up that FSFF readers absolutely must check out. In honour of Claude Chabrol's 79th birthday this June 24, Flickhead aka Ray Young is hosting Ten Days’ Wonder: The Claude Chabrol Blogathon from Sunday, June 21 through Tuesday, June 30.

To paraphrase the kind of clichéd British crime drama dialogue in which the classy Chabrol himself would never indulge, Young has 'plenty of previous' when it comes to the films of this near octogenarian: he is the author of the Claude Chabrol Project website which, among other great resources, hosts detailed interviews with and articles about Chabrol.

The Flickhead blogathon is sure to link to further comprehensive web resources on Chabrol, so below, just to flag up the e-event, is Film Studies For Free's little list of links to online scholarly highlights pertaining to this as yet most under-studied great director.

Film Studies For Free's author is aiming to join in with the Chabrol fest next week, so... à bientôt (s'il vous plaît...). [The link to FSFF's video essay - 'Unsentimental Education: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes' is HERE.]

• Acquarello, 'CLAUDE CHABROL: Le Boucher, The Story of Women, La Ceremonie, The Flower of Evil, The Bridesmaid, Bellamy', Strictly Film School, 2002
• Richard Armstrong, 'Claude Chabrol,' (Great Directors: A Critical Database) Senses of Cinema, September 2002
• David Cairns, 'Go Ask Alice', Shadowplay, August 8, 2008
  
• Claudette Charbonneau and Lucy Winer, 'Violette: Skilled, delicate, pernicious', from Jump Cut, no. 21, Nov. 1979, pp. 6-7
• Charles Derry, 'Claude Chabrol: A career overview', The Claude Chabrol Project
• dkaz, 'image series: Les Biches (Chabrol, France, 1968)', D+Kaz, Jan 29, 2007
• Mary Donaldson-Evans, 'A Medium of Exchange: The Madame Bovary film', Dix-Neuf, No. 4, April 2005
• Catherine Grant, 'Unsentimental Education: On Claude Chabrol's Les Bonnes femmes - a video essay', Film Studies For Free, June 30, 2009
  
• Stefan Gullatz, 'Exquisite Ex-timacy: Jacques Lacan vis-à-vis Contemporary Horror', Offscreen Journal, March 31, 2001
• Dan Harper, 'Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge', Senses of Cinema, March 2001
• Robert Kolker, The Altering Eye - Contemporary International Cinema (OUP, 1983) in: eLib, Hg. v. eLibrary Projekt, in: elib.at ( 16. Juni 2009 ) - numerous mentions of Chabrol - use 'find' in 'Edit'
• Julien Lapointe, 'La Cérémonie,' Senses of Cinema 13, 2001 Apr-May
• Kevin B Lee, 'Claude Chabrol: an online dossier', Shooting Down Pictures, March 27, 2008
• Peter Lev, 'Paul Gégauff', FilmReference.com, 2008
  
• Tony McKibbin, 'Slow Burn Suspense: The Films of Claude Chabrol', Images, Issue 9, December 2000
• Vladislav Mijic, 'Les Biches,' Senses of Cinema 13, 2001 Apr-May
• Marie-Claire Ropars, 'A Cinematic Language', Rouge 11, 2007
• Dan Sallitt/Kevin B Lee, 'Two Films By Claude Chabrol (Le boucher (1970) and La femme infidele (1969)) - 3 video essays', Shooting Down Pictures, March 27, 2008
• Andrew Slade, 'Chabrol for Beginners (and Other Interested Parties)', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 3, January 2001
• David Sterritt, 'Hitchcock, Hume, and the Matrix of Modern Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2007
• Quentin Turnour, 'Que la bête meure', Senses of Cinema, March 2001
• Tony Williams, 'Relations Between the Sexes in the Cinema of the Nouvelle Vague', WELL Project, February 28, 2002
• Ray Young, 'Stéphane Audran', Cinema and the Female Star - A Symposium Part 1, Senses of Cinema, 2002

Suzhou River and 'Sixth-Generation' Chinese Filmmaking

Film Studies For Free's author has been busy writing, for her day job, about 婁燁/ Lou Ye's Chinese/German coproduction 苏州河 /Suzhou he/Suzhou River (2000), a striking film which plays much more cleverly than most movies with the idea of implied authorship.

Below are some links to the freely-accessible, online resources of note pertaining to that film, as well as to 'Sixth-Generation' Chinese filmmaking more generally, which were gleaned as part of the research process:

• Cody Beckman, 'Suzhou River', Transnational Chinese Cinemas, December 8, 2008
• Robert Chi, 'Review of Hitchcock with a Chinese Face: Cinematic Doubles, Oedipal Triangles, and China's Moral Voice, by Jerome Silbergeld', MCLC Resource Center Publication, September 2006
• Jerry Clode, 'Suzhou River', Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context Issue 7, March 2002
• Gavin Collinson, 'Suzhou River', BBC4 website, April 24, 2004
• Richard Corliss, 'Bright Lights,'Time Asia 157, 12 (March 26, 2001)
• Kirk A. Denton, Bibliography of Chinese Film, Chinese Media & Print Culture resources MCLC
• Lizzie Francke, 'Review of Suzhou RIver' , Sight & Sound, Dec. 2000
• Stephanie Hemelryk Donald and John G. Gammack, 'Shanghai: World City?', Tourism and the Branded City (Ashgate, 2007)
• J. Hoberman, 'Eternal Return', Village Voice, November 7th 2000
• Brian Hu, 'Above Ground and Over His Head', Asia Pacific Arts, February 3, 2005
• Julia Kny, 'A Chinese Vertigo? Tracing Suzhou River's Musical Independence and Innovation', Jörg Lemberg's website, 2006
• Shelly Kraicer, 'Suzhou River', chinesecinemas.org, April 2000
• Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, 'Introduction' and 'Globalization and Yoythful Subculture: The Chinese Sixth-Generation Films at the Dawn of the New Century', Multiple modernities: cinemas and popular media in transcultural East Asia (Temple University Press, 2003)
• Yung Adam Lam, Identity, tradition and globalism in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese feature films, PhD e-thesis, The University of Auckland, 2000
• Charles Leary, 'Performing the Documentary, or Making it to te Other Bank', Senses of Cinema, July 2003
  
• Shannon May, Film for the New Long March: The Search for National Identity in Chinese Cinema, 1984-2000. Magna Cum Laude Thesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2000
• Shannon May, 'Power and Trauma in Chinese Film: Experiences of Zhang Yuan and the Sixth Generation” Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society 8:1 (Spring 2003), 156-160
• Peter Nellhaus, 'Two by Lou Ye', Coffee, Coffee, and More Coffee, September 24, 2006
  
• Jenni Peisa, The Unable Individual: The Actantial Analyses of Three Chinese Films and Discussion on Their Representations of the Individual’s Position in Contemporary Chinese Society, Masters e-Thesis, University of Helsinki, April 2008
• Polar Bear, 'Suzhou River (Ye Lou, 2000)', Polar Bear's Film Journal, August 4, 2008
• Peter C. Pugsley, 'Review of The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century by Zhang Zhen (ed.), Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007, Scope, Issue 12, 2008
• Ma Ran, 'The Sixth-Generation Cinema: To Continue the Dialogue with the West', Cina Oggi, September 17, 2007
  
• Bérénice Reynaud, 'Dancing with Myself, Drifting with My Camera: The Emotional Vagabonds of China's New Documentary,' Senses of Cinema, No 28, 2003
  
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'The World is Watching: Suzhou River', Chicago Reader - On Film, 2001
• Damion Searls, 'Suzhou River', Film Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2001
• Donato Totaro, 'FCMM: Into the 21st Century', Offscreen Journal, November 28, 2000
• Lara Vanderstaay, 'A case study of the influence of directorial gender on the representation of female sexuality in four contemporary Chinese films [Red Sorghum, Soul of A Painter, Blush and Suzhou River]', Proceedings of the 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia in Canberra 29 June - 2 July 2004
• Mike Walsh, 'Review of Zhang Zhen (ed.), The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century.Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007', Screening the Past, September 20, 2008
• Gary G. Xu, 'Introduction: China's (Cinematic) Century', Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)
• Neil Young, 'Suzhou River', Jigsaw Lounge, February 28, 2001

María Luisa Bemberg: online resources

Still on the subject of film authorship (see here and here), Film Studies For Free chirpily (cheekily?) cross-posts (again, with Directing Cinema - do visit that blog for some great video clips) a little list of choice, freely-accessible online resources pertaining to the Argentine film director María Luisa Bemberg.

A somewhat late starter as a filmmaker, at the tender age of fifty-eight, Bemberg directed six films against the odds of a hugely difficult economic and political situation in Argentina in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been an important influence on a number of young filmmakers, most notably a favourite of FSFF, Lucrecia Martel (also see HERE). Martel's films have been produced by Bemberg's legendary producer and friend Lita Stantic.

In honour of Bemberg and her films, below is a list of high-quality and freely-accessible online studies of her work:

In English:

• Caleb Bach, 'Maria Luisa Bemberg tells the untold,' Americas 46 (Mar/Apr 1994): 20-7
• Michael Chanan, 'Latin American Cinema in the 90's: Representational Space in Recent Latin American Cinema,' Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe 9:1 (enero-junio 1998)
• Catherine Grant, 'Intimista transformations: María Luisa Bemberg's First Feature Films,' originally published in An Argentine Passion: María Luisa Bemberg and Her Films, John King, Sheila Whitaker and Rosa Bosch, eds. (London: Verso, 2000), 73-109
• John King, Sheila Whitaker and Rosa Bosch, eds., An Argentine Passion: María Luisa Bemberg and Her Films (London: Verso, 2000)
• Bernard McGuirk, 'Review of An Argentine Passion: María Luisa Bemberg and her Films, by John King, Sheila Whitaker and Rosa Bosch (eds.), London & New York: Verso, 2000,' Scope, May 2003
• Hugo Salas, 'Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others: María Luisa Bemberg,' Senses of Cinema 22 (September-October 2002)
• Cynthia L. Stone, 'Beyond the Female Gaze: María Luisa Bemberg's Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz,' Ciberletras, Number 13, July 2005
• Fernanda Vitor Bueno,'The Myth of Camila O'Gorman in the Works of Juana Manuela Gorriti, María Luisa Bemberg and Enrique Molina', PhD e-thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, December 2007
• Bruce Williams, 'Bemberg’s Third Sex: Argentine Mothers at the Dawn of Democracy', Cinémas/Cinémas, Volume 15, numéro 1, Automne 2004, p. 125-144
  

In Spanish:

• Mary Elizabeth Barnard, 'Nietzsche y el cine latinoamericano: un estudio de tres obras,' Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos (marzo-julio 2006)
• Anke van Haastrecht, 'Mujeres en rebelión: el discurso cinematográfico de María Luisa Bemberg', (date unknown)
• Clara Kuschnir, 'La narrativa, el cine y las mujeres,' Estudios feministas = Etudés feministes (agosto-diciembre 2005)
• Jane Mooney, 'Directoras latinoamericanas: Susana Amaral, María Luisa Bemberg, Viviana Cordero y María Novaro', La Tatuana number 3, (Cinenavaja), 2005
• Lourdes Vázquez, 'De identidades: María Luisa Bemberg, filmografía y bibliografía, 1967-2006 [Segunda edición],' SALALM Latin American Information series, no. 6a, edited by Laura D. Shedenhelm, University of Georgia Libraries, 2007
• Guillermina Walas, 'María Luisa frente al espejo: la (auto)_reflexión en María Luisa Bemberg', La Tatuana number 3, (Cinenavaja), 2005
  

In Italian:

• Raffaella Bassetti, et al., María Luisa Bemberg: la passionaria . Italy: Associazione L'Occhio delle donne, 2004

On Auteurism and Film Authorship Theories

Director Jane Campion (right) and cinematographer Laurie Mcinnes on the set of After Hours (1984). Photograph (1981) by Gayle Pigalle

Film Studies For Free will be concentrating on some shorter (but hopefully still useful) posts in the next few weeks. But here's another long one in the meantime: a whole (shiny) host of links to writing devoted to FSFF's author's main topic of research: film authorship and auteur theory. It has consequently been cross-posted at her other blog Directing Cinema, where lots of discussions of authorship and auteurism may be found. The below list of links to freely accessible online material on these topics will be kept updated, so do consider yourselves warmly encouraged to bookmark this post, and also to suggest further good resources to add to the list (by commenting or via email). Latest update: June 3, 2009

• Eduardo Abrantes, ''The Principle of Revelation (review of Catherine Lupton (2005) Chris Marker: Memories of the Future London: Reaktion Books)', Film-Philosophy 10.1, 2006
• Richard Armstrong, 'They Lost It at the Movies: Film Culture in the Age of Positif and Cineaste', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 40, May 2003
• Karyn Ball, 'Hitchcock's 'Material Whirl (Review of Tom Cohen, Hitchcock's Cryptonomies. Volume 1: Secret Agents; Volume II: War Machines. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2005)', Culture Machine, 2006
• Charles Bane, 'Viewing Novels, Reading Films: Stanley Kubrick and the art of adaptation as interpretation, PhD e-thesis, Louisiana State University 2006
• Shyon Baumann, Intellectualization and Art World Development: Film in the United States', American Sociological Review 66:3 (June 2001) pp. 404-426
• Jack Boozer, 'Introduction: The Screenplay and Authorship in Adaptation', Authorship in Film Adaptation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007)
• David Bordwell, Ozu and the poetics of cinema, e-book, originally published by London: British Film Institute; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988
• Peter Brunette, 'Nowell-Smith Meets Visconti, Redux: The Old and the New,', Film-Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 16, March 2005 (See also Geoffrey Nowell- Smith, “It Ain’t Me Babe: A Response to Brunette,' Film-Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 17, March 2005)
• Alan Cholodenko - '(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix1, Part II', Animation Studies, December 9, 2007
• David Church, 'The "Cult" of Kubrick', Offscreen Journal, May 31, 2006
• Paul Coughlin, 'The Mark of Cain: Blood Simple and The Man Who Wasn't There', Scope 3, November 2005
• David Clarke, 'Welcome to Tykwer-World: Tom Tykwer as Auteur', Welcome to Tykwer-World: Tom Tykwer as Auteur', gfl-journal, No. 3/2006
• James A. Davidson, 'Some Thoughts on Alfred Hitchcock and Vladimir Nabokov', Images Journal, Issue 3, 1997
• Alexander Dhoest, 'How queer is L'Air de Paris? -- Marcel Carné and Queer Authorship', Scope, May 2003
• Lucy Fife, 'Review of Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema: Hitchcock, Lang, Minnelli. (New York; State University of New York Press, 2006)', Film-Philosophy 11.3, December 2007
• Richard Franklin, “What I Really Want to do is Direct”: (1) Directors as Depicted on Film and Television', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-Mar 2007
• Jane Gaines, 'Dorothy Arzner's trousers', from Jump Cut, no. 37, July 1992, pp. 88-98
• Tag Gallagher, 'Reading, Culture, and Auteurs' , Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Tag Gallagher, 'American Triptych: Vidor, Hawks and Ford', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-Mar 2007
• David Gerstner, 'Queer Modernism: The Cinematic Aesthetics of Vincente Minnelli', Modernity, Vol 2 2000
• Barry Keith Grant, 'Theories of Authorship: Rethinking authorship', from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986, pp. 14-16
• Catherine Grant, ‘www.auteur.com?’, originally published in Screen, Vol. 41:1, 2000, 101-108
• Catherine Grant, ‘Secret Agents: Feminist Theories of Women’s Film Authorship’, originally published in Feminist Theory 2:1, 2001, 113-130
• Catherine Grant, ‘Recognizing Billy Budd in Beau Travail: Epistemology and Hermeneutics of an Auteurist “Free” Adaptation’, originally published in Screen 43:1, 2002: 57-73
• Catherine Grant, 'The "Author Function" in Transnational Film Adaptation: The case of El lugar sin límites / The Place Without Limits / Hell Has No Limits (Arturo Ripstein, Manuel Puig, José Donoso)', originally published as 'La función de "los autores": la adaptación cinematográfica transnacional de El lugar sin límites', Revista Iberoamericana, Vol. LXVIII, Núm, 199, Abril-Junio 2002, pp. 253-268
• Asbjørn Grønstad, 'Coppola's Exhausted Eschatology: Apocalypse Now Reconsidered', Nordic Journal of English Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005
• Andrew Grossman, 'The Belated Auteurism of Johnnie To', Senses of Cinema, January 2001
• Fiona Handyside, 'The Auteur as Imposter', Film-Philosophy, 10.1, 2006
• John Hess, 'La politique des auteurs (part one) World view as aesthetics', from Jump Cut, no. 1, 1974, pp. 19-22
• John Hess, 'La politique des auteurs (part two) Truffaut's manifesto', from Jump Cut, no. 2 (1974), pp. 20-22
• Roger Hillman, 'Fassbinder, and Fassbinder/Peer Raben', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Brian Hu, 'Neither Personal nor Political (review of John Anderson (2005) Edward Yang (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press)', Film-Philosophy 10.1, 2006
• Noel King, 'Changing the Curriculum: The Place of Film in an English Department', Australian Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1983
• Donald F. Larsson, 'Every Picture Tells A Story: Agency And Narration In Film', Panel: Movies as Paradigmatic Narratives, Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Washington, D.C., December, 2000
• Katerina Loukopoulou , 'Godard Alone? (review of Michael Temple, James S.Williams and Michael Witt (eds) (2004) For Ever Godard (London: Black Dog Publishing)', Film-Philosophy, 10. 1, 2006
• Harriet Margolis, 'Introduction: "A Strange Heritage" - from Colonization to Transformation?', in Margolis (ed.), Jane Campion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
  
• Adrian Martin, 'Sign your name across my heart, or:"I want to write about Delbert Mann" ', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Tony McKibbin, 'Art Variables and Life Variables in La Belle noiseuse', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-Mar 2007
• Andrew Neal, 'Review of Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers, edited by Yvonne Tasker (London: Routledge, 2002) and Contemporary North American Filmmakers: A Wallflower Critical Guide (Second Edition), edited by Yoram Allon, Del Cullen and Hannah Patterson (London: Wallflower, 2002), Scope, May 2004
• Dan North, 'Review of Directed by Allen Smithee, edited by Jeremy Braddock and Stephen Hock (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), Scope, May 2004
• Karla Oeler, 'Signs of the Times: The thirty year trajectory of Signs and Meaning in the Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Volume 3 Number 25, June 1999
• Matt Pearson, Authorship and the Films of David Lynch, e-book, BritishFilm.org.uk, 1997
• VF Perkins, 'Moments of Choice', first published in The Movie, no. 58 (Orbis Publishing, 1981), Rouge 9, 2006
• Dana Polan, 'Auteur Desire', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
• Trevor Ponech, 'Authorship and Authorial Autonomy: The Personal Factor in the Cinematic Work of Art', Æ Canadian Aesthetics Journal / Revue canadienne d'esthétique, Volume 4 Summer/Été 1999
• Lauren Rabinovitz, 'Past Imperfect: Feminism and Social Histories of Silent Film', Cinémas/Cinémas, Volume 16, numéro 1, Automne 2005, p. 21-34
• Nicholas Rombes, 'The Rebirth of the Author, CTheory, June 2005
• Holger Römers, '“The Moral of the Auteur Theory”: Frank Borzage’s Moonrise (and Theodore Strauss’ Source Novel)', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, Jan-March 2007
• Jonathan Rosenbaum, 'Potential Perils of the Director’s Cut', originally published in French as Le Mythe du Director’s cut (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008), JonathanRosenbaum.com, August 6, 2008
• William D. Routt, 'Lois Weber, or the exigency of writing', Screening the Past, March 1, 2001
  
• William D Routt, 'L'Evidence', Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture, vol. 5 no 2 (1990)
• Girish Shambu, 'On Auteurism', girish, March 30, 2008
• David Sorfa, 'Introduction: Reanimating the Auteur', Film-Philosophy , 10.1, 2006
• David Sterritt, Introduction', The Films of Alfred Hitchcock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)
• Tony Todd, 'Meanings and Authorships in Dune', Film-Philosophy 13.1, 2009
• Kristof Van Den Troost, « Stephen Teo, Director in Action: Johnnie To and the Hong Kong Action Film », China perspectives, n°2009/1, 2009
• NEW Harry Tuttle, 'Truffaut's manifesto : La Politique des Auteurs- Part 1', Indian Auteur, February 1, 2009
  
• NEW Harry Tuttle, 'La Politique Des Auteurs-2', Indian Auteur, May 3, 2009
• NEW Harry Tuttle, 'French [cinephilic and auteurist] terms and their pronunciation', Indian Auteur, May 20, 2009
  
• Paula Willoquet-Maricondi, 'Peter Greenaway: A User's Manual', Film-Philosophy, Volume 2, 1998
• Brenda Wilson, 'Blurring the Boundaries: Auteurism & Kathryn Bigelow', UBCinephile, Vol. 1, 2005
• Ronald W. Wilson, 'Review of Chris Fujiwara, The Auteur of Darkness: Jacques Tourneur', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7 No. 2, January 2003
• Daniel Yacavone, 'Towards a Theory of Film Worlds', Film-Philosophy 12.2, September 2008