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And so, while in the title Identification is certainly more light- character achieves a kind of redemption by Identification hearted than any of Antonioni’s previous being united with his newborn child thanks films. The opening scene—with film director to the backbreaking efforts and, ultimately, of a Woman Niccolò Farra (Tomas Milian) fumbling for sacrifice of the tubercular François, whose Produced by Giorgio Nocella and Antonio his keys, crawling into his apartment to life may have been shortened by his treks Macrì; directed by ; avoid setting off the burglar alarm (it goes through the snow, in Les cousins there is no screenplay by Antonioni and Gérard Brach, off anyway), struggling to answer his tele- redemption, and certainly no salvation: in collaboration with Tonino Guerra; phone before the answering machine takes Charles must die in order to preserve the cinematography by Carlo Di Palma; over, and confronting a suspicious neighbor nothingness of his cousin’s lifestyle, edited by Michelangelo Antonioni; music who investigates the commotion armed with although we don’t quite know where that by John Foxx; starring Tomas Milian, a pistol—establishes the protagonist’s mid- lifestyle is going to end up as we hear the Daniela Silverio, Christine Boisson, and life crisis with the comic panache of Woody apartment buzzer sounding to end the film. Marcel Bozzuffi. DVD and Blu-ray, color, Allen. Both films are essential Chabrol. But 130 min., with Italian dialogue and English Niccolò, recently divorced, is at an artistic there is no question that Le beau Serge might subtitles, 1982. A Criterion Collection and personal impasse, searching for a be seen more as a necessary step in the release, distributed by Image Entertainment, woman to fill the void in his upcoming dechristianization of the director than as an www.Image-Entertainment.com. movie project and in his private life (shades independent statement in and of itself. Les of 8 1/2!). The first of his new amores, Mavi cousins, on the other hand, brilliantly and With his late-career masterpiece, Identifi- (Daniela Silverio), is a very modern ragazza: cynically paves the way for the many very cation of a Woman, Michelangelo Antonioni, sexually liberated, self-absorbed (a semi- dark, brilliant, and cynical tales that will aged seventy, returned to the themes, style, nude poster of Mavi adorns her bedroom turn up in Chabrol’s oeuvre. I also need to and milieu that gained him worldwide wall), well-educated, aristocratic, impulsive, add that Les cousins, unlike Le beau Serge, prominence in the 1960s. Following a series and a bit androgynous. The erotic scenes offers a quite effective musical score, in this of films produced abroad—including Blow- between Niccolò and Mavi have a riveting case by Paul Misraki, whose cool and mildly Up, Zabriskie Point, Chung Kuo Cina, and intensity, due to their graphic explicitness. jazzy strains perfectly complement the film’s The Passenger—Identification was the director’s Yet, despite engaging in starkly photographed milieu, as does some more unsettling and first film since Red Desert (1964) to take place sex acts (including several masturbatory, rather percussive music that lead us into the in contemporary , among the decadent oral, and anal variations), Mavi refuses to final scene. bourgeoisie, the director’s usual social setting. talk about sex afterward. In addition, after Both of these black-and-white films have Antonioni’s repatriation also produced a each of these steamy couplings, Antonioni benefited here from their Blu-ray transfers, mellowing of style and a loosening of the cuts to images that hint at the emptiness of although I have not seen the original Criterion austere compositions of his earlier work, the Niccolò-Mavi relationship. After their DVDs. Le beau Serge in particular allows us without diminishing its painterly splendor first sexual encounter, Mavi experiences to take in all of the details, whether in the (courtesy of Carlo Di Palma’s cinematography). vaginal pains; simultaneously, the distant, village or in the various outdoor shots, Clearly recognizable as an Antonioni film, understated wail of a police siren subtly sug- brought into sharp definition by the lighting Identification nonetheless indicated a new gests a moral undercutting of the couple’s and camerawork of cinematographer Henri direction in his oeuvre. Although it received libertinism. After their second sex scene (the Decaë. Both releases offer audio commen- a major prize at Cannes and was nominated one featuring anal stimulation), Antonioni taries, if you are inclined to listen to them, for the Palme d’Or, a destructively negative cuts to a painting of St. Peter’s Basilica, as if and the beau Serge Blu-ray disc includes a review in The New York Times (“an excruci- to reestablish the power of the Church and wonderful documentary, directed by Francis atingly empty work”) provoked its U.S. dis- the superego. (In addition, as she reaches Girod in 2004, entitled : Mon tributor to shelve the film. So, instead of orgasm, Mavi narcissistically stares at herself premier film, which features Chabrol himself becoming a “comeback” effort, the film- in a nearby mirror.) Finally, during the third and other surviving members of crew and maker’s career ground to a halt. It is there- erotic escapade, after a beautiful shot of the cast, in particular Brialy and Bernadette fore noteworthy that The Criterion Collec- couple having joyous “make-up sex” under Lafont, who plays Serge’s oversexed sister- tion has released this underrated (and a bed sheet, we cut to a row of unfilled in-law. underseen) film. bookshelves in the morning light, an apt There is also a somewhat annoying black-and-white segment from a 1969 French TV program that shows Chabrol revisiting Sardent. I would pick a bone with film critic Terrence Rafferty who, in the booklet accompanying Les cousins, suggests that, after Les cousins, the director would not “recover his form” until the 1968 Les biches, when in fact there are a good half-dozen outstanding films that followed Les cousins, in particular (1960), an absolute masterpiece that desperately needs a decent DVD. I close by noting that chabrol is actually a word in the French language meaning a mixture of wine and broth. To faire chabrol is to drink this concoction directly out of the bowl, an act that we see in one of the direc- tor’s middle-period films, I think Les noces rouges (1973), which was shot near the region where the term originated.—Royal S. Niccolò (Tomas Milian) replaces one girlfriend with another woman, Ida (Christine Boisson), Brown in Antonioni’s Identification of a Woman (1982) (photo courtesy of The Criterion Collection).

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commentary on their empty relationship. comparison between a two-dimensional street sign leading to Mavi’s flat; slogans for In addition to his abiding focus on “sick substitute and flesh-and-blood sexuality the Italian Socialist Party and a Communist Eros,” Antonioni has always been a chroni- contains obvious wit, but it is poignantly hammer and sickle scrawled on walls; and cler of social class in postwar Italy’s il boom. recalled later when Niccolò, having lost natural landscapes) or subtle sound effects Here, in 1982, his sharp observations of the Mavi, forlornly pastes a photograph of (the motorboat, police siren, and jarring haute bourgeoisie remain intact, particularly Louise Brooks onto his rain-soaked window. New Age music). in an elegant party scene in which Niccolò’s The issue of representation is brought up After eliding the details of the breakup discomfort is apparent as he meets Mavi’s throughout the film, but representation is with Ida, Antonioni merely cuts to Niccolò vapid, icy, and haughty friends. At one not merely an individual matter; indeed, the entering his apartment (this time he has his point, Niccolò flicks his cigarette ashes into nearly nude photo of Mavi adorns not only key!). As Niccolò looks out his window, we what he mistakes for an ashtray, only to her wall but also an issue of Time devoted to share his point of view: lush trees and vege- learn that it’s actually a pricey bracelet, and “Europe’s Women Today.” Thus, Antonioni tation amid the oppression of the modern that he’s just soiled an expensive embroi- points to the lackluster state of heterosexual megalopolis, and, in particular, a peculiar dered lace tablecloth. ardor in 1982 Europe and the concurrent tree branch he had stared at before. The pre- Sometime after this soirée is the film’s riflusso, the withdrawal from passionate cise meaning of this evocative burl may most meaningful set-piece: a drive and social commitment, as well as the media- escape denotative exactness, but, like so search through dense nighttime fog. Allusions ization and commodification of pervasive many significant objects in the Antonioni imbricate over intertextual references as eroticism. Finally, Mavi, who apparently has canon, its connotations are myriad. Niccolò and Mavi, on their way to a country had a string of lesbian liaisons in her past, Niccolò, however, does not only stare house built on (metaphorical) hollow drifts into another homoerotic pairing. out at that tree; he also looks out through Roman ruins, lose their way in a blanket of Like Sandro in L’Avventura, Niccolò rose-colored glasses and closes his eyes. The whitish-gray haze. Their verbal argument is merely replaces Mavi with another woman, enrapturing images that follow—Niccolò’s as much a product of the vaporous environ- Ida (Christine Boisson), who physically thoughts, I imagine—are so jarringly incon- ment as of their basic class and emotional resembles his lost lover. Ida, however, is sistent with all that has preceded them and incompatibility. This fogbound stretch of Mavi’s emotional opposite. A working yet, in retrospect, so perfectly appropriate highway invokes the opening stanzas of actress, she has humbler roots than Mavi that each viewer must experience for him- Dante’s Inferno. Indeed, Mavi even asks, “Is (Ida has had to work from the age of fifteen or herself the sense of initial incomprehen- this the right road?” while lost (literally, alle- to support herself), and seems more mature, sion and ultimate otherworldliness these gorically, symbolically, and anagogically) in assured, and less flighty than her predeces- sumptuous images propose. (It is a level the whiteness of the mist. sor. Niccolò’s first meeting with Ida involves shift anticipated by the unexpected-but-ulti- The sequence also functions as a self- her inadvertently closing a door in his face, a mately-impeccable endings of L’eclisse, reflexive reminder of other Antonioni set- foreshadowing of the destiny of their rela- Blow-Up, Zabriskie Point, and The Passen- pieces: the photographic scenes and tionship. In fact, after this initial short circuit, ger.) These ecstatic visions of a cinematic tennis game in Blow-Up, the penultimate Antonioni completely elides the couple’s journey to the sun (to the accompaniment shot of The Passenger, the island search in more substantial meeting and, instead, sim- of extraterrestrial music) convey, on the L’Avventura, and, especially, the fogbound ply shows them together. narrative level, that Niccolò has found his dock in Red Desert. All these examples convey a Ida eventually pieces together some clues next project, a science-fiction movie. On similar sense of obscurity and inscrutability, that enable Niccolò to track down the long- another plane entirely, they express a ludic the hallmark of Antonioni’s cinematic departed Mavi. He observes her at the door aesthetic transcendence of the day-to-day mythos. Of course, reaching their destina- of her lesbian lover’s apartment (ironically, cares of modern life: unsatisfying love rela- tion (the country house) offers no clarity. now Mavi struggles to gain entry to her flat) tions, petty annoyances, and the corrupt Niccolò has difficulty stoking a fire in the and exchanges some quasimeaningful social order. This shift into the postmodern fireplace, another correlative for the lack of glances with her through a vertiginous spiral world through a leap of the imagination is real passion in the Niccolò-Mavi relation- staircase and from the piazza below. Realizing both classic Antonioni and a new direction ship. Likewise, despite all the iconography of the futility of pursuing Mavi, our hero is in his thought. It has always been his theme the thriller genre—car chases, menacing now free to commit himself wholly to Ida, a that a revolution of the inner imagination is glances, mysterious figures, reported gun- more emotionally open choice for him. a necessary precondition to meaningful shots, and a thuggish “gorilla” in a gelato However, a complication arises: Ida is transformation of the outer world. Rarely parlor—there is no ultimate resolution for pregnant by a former lover. In a stunningly have his figurations of that future (apart the thriller subplot. hesitant scene in a Venetian hotel lobby, from the slow-motion explosions in Narrative discontinuity (Niccolò is Niccolò and Ida awkwardly and alternately Zabriskie Point) taken such concrete shape. warned off Mavi in a flashforward before he draw closer to commitment and further Thinking back, this finale was not entirely even meets her) gives way to characterologi- away from it. Ida’s proposal of marriage and unexpected. Niccolò had been urged to cal fragmentation. During one of the most Niccolò’s eventual rejection of devotion are write a sci-fi script by his precocious seven- spirited lovemaking scenes, Antonioni defa- carefully choreographed amid the mirrors year-old nephew; he had also read a newspaper miliarizes the copulating couple into a and chandeliers of the fashionable mise en article (“Expanding Sun Poses Threat to mélange/montage of isolated body parts (à scène. One is reminded of the “mutual pity” Earth’s Future”); and he’d even looked la Godard’s A Married Woman)—hands shared by Claudia and Sandro at the end of through a telescope at the fiery orb. Like his clutching at the mattress, feet squirming in L’avventura, yet here the beauty of the nat- staring at the tree branch, his peering at the ecstasy, fingers being sucked, contorting ural scenery, plaintive cries of gulls soaring sun may conjure up existential reverie, but faces, orgasms observed in mirrors—to overhead, and a tranquil Edvard Grieg piano the final images of the film—the plans for illustrate their partial, merely physical, dal- sonata are interrupted by the intrusive noise Niccolò’s new movie—go beyond this, to try liance. Antonioni’s recurring theme of the of a passing motorboat. This disruptive to make contact with a visionary future. The meaninglessness of contemporary Eros is aural cue is our only intimation of the reso- concluding shots of a sculptured, crystallinelike also implied when a shopgirl caresses the lution of the affair, since Antonioni omits asteroid-cum-spacecraft approaching the genital region of a flat cardboard man- the obligatory farewell scene. Indeed, sun and the riotous phantasmagoria of pastel nequin. As she hugs the male display figure, throughout Identification, the characters’ greens, reds, and oranges that define its con- there is a cut to Niccolò and Mavi making emotions are conveyed through subtle back- tours allow us to contemplate that future far love, with him caressing her vulva. This ground visual details (a telling one-way more meaningfully than all the E.T.s, Close

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Encounters, and Star Wars combined. Anto- toire(s) to Joyce’s notoriously difficult, even nioni suggests that we may be carrying all “unreadable” Finnegans Wake; Joycean our unresolvable personal/societal problems scholar Colin McCabe declares Le mépris into that postmodern future and that hope (1963) “the greatest work of art produced in and despair, advance and retreat, fantasy post-war Europe.” and reality will coexist just as assuredly as Of all these statements, the comparison they have in the past. As in L’Avventura, to Finnegans Wake is closest to catching the where we moved from an inactive volcano musical and riverine structure of Histoire(s), to a potentially active one, so in Identifica- its plundering high and low culture, and, in tion of a Woman, Antonioni measures our particular the way each syntactical unit—the progress in natural increments. We’ve moved sentence, the “shot” (a woefully inadequate from a fog-enshrouded night of confusion, term for what Godard does to images in entrapment, and disappointment to a sun- Jean-Luc Godard appears regularly, cigar in Histoire(s))—is composed of verbal and illuminated day of potential clarity, imagina- mouth, throughout his Histoire(s) du cinema. visual puns, plays on words, pictures and tive freedom, and aesthetic jouissance— ideas, forkings of associations that multiply albeit encased in a protective shield. indefinitely. Like Histoire(s), Finnegans Perhaps, as a species and as social beings, echoes that of the average viewer to the films Wake was a legendary work before its even- that is more than we can expect. of Jean-Luc Godard. Particularly seen as tual completion, released in eagerly awaited Criterion’s HD digital transfer/restoration rebarbative are those works from 1967 on, (and judiciously stage-managed) installments, was created from the film’s original 35mm when Godard renounced a joy in cinema subject to impassioned exegesis by the likes negative and the soundtrack remastered and Anna Karina’s face for, firstly, misguided of Samuel Beckett and rejected outright by from the original monaural track. It is a politics, then dense collages investigating the vocal and influential nay-sayers. This resulted striking visual and aural achievement, with- properties of sound and image, often using in a work more read about than read (or, in out that airbrushed look or the “dead” sonic the latest audiovisual technology. Even Godard’s case, seen). But the real reason field of so many digital restorations. On the admirers faced with a forbidding work like Joyce is usually invoked is to propose down side, this is one of the very few times Histoire(s) du cinéma fall back on mere enu- Godard as a major twentieth-century mod- that Criterion has released a “bare-bones” meration of its stylistic methods—the man- ernist tout court, and to use him to raise the DVD. The only “extras” are the theatrical ipulation of imagery through editing, process- status of cinema in the hierarchy of the arts, trailer and a useful booklet containing an ing, overprinting, captions, or slow motion; in effect creating a canon of “quality” of the essay by critic John Powers and an interview the divorce of soundtrack from source film; sort young Godard and his with Gideon Bachmann.—Frank P. Tomasulo the use of voice-over, narration, music, and cohorts would have derided. speech—rather than grappling with what it If Godard is no longer written about, dis- might all “mean.” But then, meaning in the cussed, or watched as he was in his 1960s Histoire(s) sense of clarity, argument, and communica- heyday, those few who champion his late tion was never on Godard’s agenda, as works do so in the hushed tones of religious du cinéma recently demonstrated by his use of garbled acolytes. John Lennon once said that Kubrick’s Narrated, edited, written, and directed by English subtitles in Film socialisme (2010). 2001: A Space Odyssey should play in a temple Jean-Luc Godard; cinematography by Pierre This complexity is arguably what appeals twenty-four hours a day; latterly, it is Binggeli and Harvé Duhamel. Two-disc DVD, to a certain class of cinephile, nettled by Godard who seems the likely candidate for color and B&W, 266 min., French with film’s continued second-class status among such treatment. Of course, he plays along nonoptional subtitles, and multiple languages the arts. And so The Village Voice says with this in interviews, where the likes of without subtitles, 1988–2008. An Olive Films “Godard is to his medium what Joyce, Serge Daney (edited posthumously into release, www.olivefilms.com. Stravinsky, Eliot, and Picasso were to Chapter 2a, “Seul le cinéma”) and Youssef theirs”; Jonathan Rosenbaum compares His- Ishaghpour inform him how great and In 1994, Jean-Luc Godard was commis- important he is, at length, with solemnity sioned by the British Film Institute to pro- and appropriate high-cultural endorsement. duce a cine-essay on the history of French You catch this pomposity in the grave way film. The first part of Deux fois cinquante ans Godard himself intones, and often whispers, de cinéma français includes an interview paradoxes, oxymorons, epigrams, and quotations with actor , then president of in Histoire(s). His is literally an -ial the French association organizing celebra- voice: shaping meaning and defining truth. tions for the centenary of cinema. As so But is he? One of the texts quoted in His- often in Godard’s work, what begins as a toire(s) is D. H. Lawrence’s famous warning dialogue soon deteriorates into monologue about reading American literature: “Never as he criticizes the ideology of Piccoli’s pro- trust the artist. Trust the tale.” There is a ject, in particular for ignoring that it wasn’t marked, but often overlooked difference celebrating cinema as a technology or an art between Godard the filmmaker and Godard form, but as a commercial enterprise (1995 the film-construct. It is worth remembering was one hundred years since the Lumières that, in the years leading up to Histoire(s), charged audiences to see moving images Godard made at least three fiction films projected onto a wall); or that most French where he acted comic versions of his public people knew nothing of their cinema’s his- persona: Prénom: Carmen (1982), Soigne ta tory. In a marvelous ten-minute sequence, droite! (1987), and King Lear (1987). In the the camera fixes on Piccoli as he endures first two, he plays a filmmaker having diffi- Godard’s off-screen barracking, reduced culty making films; in each he mutters from an eager desire to debate with an old Godardian wisdom and non sequiturs; and colleague, to respectful, bemused, thoughtful, in each he plays a “madman,” a kind of idiot frustrated, anxious, and confused silence. savant or holy fool uttering truths that are Something of Piccoli’s experience here ignored in the “normal” but dishonest and

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culture, and confining their focus specifically to American studio films (with a few indepen- dents thrown in), Quart and Auster offer up Contributors an impressive, if necessarily condensed, survey Rebecca M. Alvin is a writer, independent of the political, cultural, and cinematic devel- documentary filmmaker, and teacher in The New School’s School of Media Studies … Christopher opments of the last sixty-five years, from the Bray writes on books and movies for The Finan- end of World War II to the beginnings of cial Times, The Observer, and The New Republic, the Obama presidency, from The Best Years and is the author of (Pegasus) … of Our Lives to No Country for Old Men. Royal S. Brown, a professor at Queens Col- Although the authors are careful to suggest lege and the CUNY Graduate Center, is the a variety of contradictory strains in the culture author of three books on film and film music … that manifest themselves in contemporaneous, Susan L. Carruthers is a professor of history yet ideologically divergent films, they do at Rutgers University in Newark and author of The Media at War (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) … Robert manage to trace a coherent historical/cultural Cashill, a Cineaste Associate, is the Film Editor of narrative that moves from the optimism of Popdose.com … Gary Crowdus is the Editor-in- the postwar era (despite the darker strains of Chief of Cineaste … Antoine de Baecque has film noir), through the cultural fragmenta- written biographies of François Truffaut, Jean- tion and loss of national confidence of the Luc Godard, and Eric Rohmer, and teaches film late Sixties and the Seventies, to the reaffir- history at the University of Nanterre Paris West … mation of family values in the Eighties, and Thomas Doherty is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University and the author of the terror and uncertainty of the first decade numerous books on film … Nicholas Forster of the new millennium. Each of the book’s attended Boston University as an undergraduate eight chapters (excluding the introduction) and currently works at the alternative charter focuses on a specific decade and begins with school Phoenix Charter Academy … Maria a brief survey of the ten-year period’s signif- Garcia is a New York City-based film critic and icant political and cultural events-as well as feature writer … Rahul Hamid teaches film at changes in the film industry-before moving But Quart and Auster aren’t here to take New York University and is completing a study on postrevolutionary Iranian cinema … Robert on to a thematically grouped survey of the potshots at Hollywood. Most of their readings Koehler also writes film criticism for Variety and period’s most significant films. of individual films, while necessarily brief, Cinema Scope … Shelly Kraicer is a Beijing- It must be noted that, because the volume given the book’s survey format, are fair- based writer, critic, and film programmer who has is clearly tended as an introduction to thinking minded and offer praise for a given movie’s written for Cinema Scope, The Village Voice, and politically about film, a textbook for more positive, progressive contributions or its aes- Screen International … Stuart Liebman contin- progressive-minded college classes, much of thetic accomplishments while pointing out ues to work on a book about the first decade of the historical background tends to feel a bit the work’s inevitable flaws. The authors’ Holocaust representation in world cinema … Louis Menashe is Professor Emeritus at Poly- like a remedial history lesson. Similarly, the feelings for Hollywood product begin to technic Institute of New York University and authors’ selection of films for discussion— change in the Sixties, where they single out author of Moscow Believes in Tears … James which they term “public classics,” those such works as Bonnie and Clyde for cautious L. Neibaur is a film historian and educator who movies that have made the most impact on the praise, while still decrying the era’s emphasis has written ten books on film … Martha P. culture—are items that have been discussed on increasingly apocalyptic films that offer Nochimson is the author of five books, most ad infinitum over decades of film criticism. plenty of societal criticism but neither ade- recently World on Film: An Introduction … Dar- Nonetheless, these choices are crucial, given quate context nor any hint of solutions. ragh O’Donoghue works as an archivist in Dublin and has published in The Irish Journal of Quart and Auster’s project. By juxtaposing Quart and Auster seem to ease up a little French Studies and Senses of Cinema … Tony the history with the films and reading the in the longer concluding chapters that cover Pipolo, a regular contributor to Artforum and individual movies in relation to that history, more recent Hollywood offerings. (The last Cineaste, is the author of : A the authors open up an easily graspable chapter, dealing with the years 2000–2009, is Passion for Film … Richard Porton is a methodology and a way of looking at cinema new to the fourth edition.) While they decry Cineaste Editor as well as a contributor to Cine- as a cultural product that may prove revela- the apolitical stance of a film like The Hurt ma Scope and Moving Image Source … tory to both students and nonstudents alike. Locker, the authors seem to give a free pass Leonard Quart is the author or coauthor of several books, including the fourth edition of Quart and Auster’s assessment of many to at least two films—Terrence Malick’s The American Film and Society Since 1945 (Praeger) of Hollywood’s offerings, particularly during Thin Red Line and Paul Greengrass’s perni- … Jared Rapfogel is a Cineaste Associate the studio era, tends to the negative. In eval- cious United 93—that don’t seem to fit their and a film programmer at Anthology Film uating the films of, say, the late Forties, they methodology since the usual concern with Archives in New York … Robert Ribera is a find that even features that take a stab at contextualization is eschewed. Still, as a the- doctoral student in American Studies at Boston timely issues (i.e., the “social problem” matically grouped overview of films dealing University … Harlow Robinson, a professor of movie) are highly unsatisfactory, since they with our turbulent last decade, the new con- history at Northeastern University, is working on focus solely on the individual’s plight while cluding chapter is invaluable. a critical biography of Lewis Milestone … Andrew Schenker is a New York-based film ignoring the larger historical/political con- Ultimately, what the authors suggest is critic whose writing has appeared in Slant Mag- text. This question of wider contextualization not that Hollywood offers any sort of the- azine, The Village Voice, and Artforum … is one of the authors’ guiding critical principles, matically or ideologically consistent picture Thomas Simonet, a professor of journalism whether dealing with a particular bête noire, of the world, but that it presents lots of dif- at Rider University, teaches Journalism in the the “old John Wayne war films,” or more ferent views as it attempts to grapple with Movies … David Sterritt is chair of the recent fare like Jonathan Demme’s Oscar- different aspects of our society. One need National Society of Film Critics and film professor winning Philadelphia, which the authors not call it the zeitgeist, but, as Quart and at Columbia University … Frank P. Tomasulo teaches film courses at The City College of New brutally but accurately describe as “the type Auster illustrate, what’s up there on the York, CUNY, and TV studies at Sarah Lawrence of skillfully, emotionally manipulative, self- screen is intimately bound up with what College … Peter Tonguette is writing a book congratulatory film that Hollywood often happens not only in the White House and on Peter Bogdanovich for the University Press of makes so that it can display its liberalism the Pentagon, but also in the private resi- Kentucky … Charles Warren teaches film while simultaneously leaving the audience dences and inner thoughts of citizens across studies at Boston University and in the Harvard emotionally and intellectually undisturbed.” the United States.—Andrew Schenker Extension School.

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