Tag Gallagher: A New Reality. Roberto Rossellini's Francesco, guillare di Dio, (US 2006)
[T]here is no formula for movie criticism. Cinema is not the same cinema in Ford and Rossellini, so you don’t use the same tools to look at it. Frame enlargements can show a lot of Ford’s art -- composition, camera angles rhyming from one shot to the next, lighting – but almost nothing of Rossellini’s art, because Rossellini turns everything into motion. All the feelings, the motivations, the characters’ sense of self, even morality and philosophy are turned into motion. So I published a thousand pages about Rossellini, but I really couldn’t deal with his cinema, until I made my video about his Francesco, giullare di Dio. ['Truly Doing Film Criticism: Interview with Tag Gallagher', kunst-der-vermittlung.de, 2009]
The first video I made about Roberto Rossellini was [on Francesco, giullare di Dio]. I made it for a company that turned it down because it did not like the quality of the recording of my voice. So I lost the opportunity to publish this essay in that country, and in some others. [...] So I showed my video on Francesco only at some museums and gave some copies to friends, but that was it. [Excerpts from a January 2012 interview with Gallagher: Elpidio del Campo Cañizares, 'Los «ensayos visuales» de Tag Gallagher como paradigma de nuevos modelos de análisis cinematográfico', Revista Comunicación, No. 10, Vol.1, año 2012: 1334-1347 [PDF]]
Today, Film Studies For Free is delighted to publish online, for the first time, film critic and historian extraordinaire Tag Gallagher's first video essay on a Roberto Rossellini film.
To celebrate and accompany this publication, for which FSFF and its readers have to thank the great Tag himself, below is a list of links to Gallagher's online film studies essays (written and audiovisual), interviews with him about his work, and studies of his work. If there is anything missing from the below lists, please leave a relevant link in the comments section. Many thanks!
- Tag Gallagher, 'Geometry of Force: Abel Ferrara and Simone Weil', Screening the Past, 10 (2000)
- Tag Gallagher, 'Reading, culture, and auteur', Screening the Past, 12 (2001)
- Tag Gallagher, 'Mizoguchi and Freedom', Screening the Past, 13 (2001)
- Tag Gallagher, 'All lost in wonder: Edgar G.Ulmer', Screening the Past, 12 (2001)
- Tag Gallagher, 'Going My Way', Screening the Past, December 2001
- Tag Gallagher, 'Josef von Sternberg', Senses of Cinema, Issue 19, 2002
- Tag Gallagher, 'Raoul Walsh', Senses of Cinema, Issue 21, 2002
- Tag Gallagher, 'Max Ophuls: A New Art – But Who Notices?', Senses of Cinema, Issue 22, 2002
- Tag Gallagher, 'Hitchcock, Machines, and Us', Senses of Cinema, Issue 24, 3003
- Tag Gallagher, 'Ford Rises from the Dead. Again', Senses of Cinema, Issue 26, 2003
- Tag Gallagher, 'The Swine who Rewrote F. Scott Fitzgerald: Joseph L. Mankiewicz as Producer', Senses of Cinema, Issue 28, 2003
- Tag Gallagher, 'Ford Till '47', Senses of Cinema, Issue 31, 2004
- Tag Gallagher, 'Making Reality', Senses of Cinema, Issue 32, 2004
- Tag Gallagher, 'Renoir and the Scandal of “First Love” or The Perils of Catherine', Senses of Cinema, Issue 34, 2005
- Tag Gallagher, 'White Melodrama: Douglas Sirk', Senses of Cinema, Issue 36, 2005
- Tag Gallagher, 'Lacrimae Rerum Materialized', Senses of Cinema, Issue 37, 2005
- Tag Gallagher, 'Passage: John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln', Senses of Cinema, Issue 39, 2006
- Tag Gallagher, 'American Triptych: Vidor, Hawks and Ford', Senses of Cinema, Issue 42, 2007
- Tag Gallagher, 'Straub Anti-Straub', Senses of Cinema, Issue 43, 2007
- Tag Gallagher, How to Share a Hill', Senses of Cinema, Issue 43, 2007
- Tag Gallagher, 'Chains of Dreams: Carl Th. Dreyer', Senses of Cinema, Issue 45, 2007
- Tag Gallagher, 'Brother Feeney: Francis Ford" Senses of Cinema, Issue 53, 2009
- Tag Gallagher, 'Why Samuel Fuller?', Senses of Cinema, Issue 50, 2009
Gallagher's Video Essays Online:
Online Interviews with Gallagher:
- Toni D'Angela, 'Interview with Tag Gallagher about John Ford', La Furia Umana, No. 3, Winter 2010
- Volker Pantenburg, Stefan Pethke, and Michael Baute (et al.), 'Truly Doing Film Criticism: Interview with Tag Gallagher', kunst-der-vermittlung.de, 2009
Online Studies or Reviews of Gallagher's Work:
