:1 VOL.XVII, No. 4 - SUMMER 1964 Editor's Notebook THE COVER: The Poor in Spirit Ingmar Bergman's The Silence In its April 3 issue, Time put on a ludicrous ARTICLES: display of pique at the recent Ford Foundation The Word, the Image, and The Silence awards to twelve independent film-makers. CAROL BRIGHTMAN 3 Ranging from tired Philistinism ("No one much about HIud, Deep in the Heart of [speak for yourself] has heard Divided Hollywood PAULINE KAEL 15 movies like Breath-Death, Cosmic Ray, and Stone Sonata") to irrelevant exaggeration of this INTERVIEW ("tuns gold"), ugly hatchet-job ap- pears, on internal evidence of ignorance, to be 12 Lindsay Anderson PETER COWIE the work of someone besides Time's regular anonymous reviewer, Brad Darrach, who is a SPECIAL FEATURE ON CINEMA-VERITE: knowledgeable critic beset by a split-level edit- THREE VIEWS ing system. The piece misunderstands the pur- Cinema of Common Sense COLIN YOUNG 26 poses of the grants, calling them "prizes" for Cindma-V&ritd in France PETER GRAHAhM 30 previous films rather than the funds for new On the Search for the Real Nitty-Gritty works which they almost all are. It assumes the HENRY BREITROSE 36 variety of films made earlier by the recipients Photo-Feature: The Technology 24 is some kind of menace, instead of a sign of vitality. It grotesquely lacks any sense of hu- FILM REVIEWS mor: Time trying to make fun of funsters like The Easy Life JOHN SEELYE 41 Stan Vanderbeek or Bruce Conner is like a II Posto ERNEST CALLENBACH 44 mechanic troubleshooting Tinguely's self-de- This Sporting Life ERNEST CALLENBACH 45 stroying machine. In the French Style SYDNEY FIELD 48 The article is a hodgepodge of disconnected Lady with the Dog ALEX SZOGYI 51 reactions. It includes a precis of Kent Mac- Sansho Dayu EILEEN BOWSER 53 kenzie's Exiles which is unutterably and in- Tide STEVEN P. HILL 54 Night sufferably fact, America ERNEST CALLENBACH 55 condescending-precisely, in America, Mackenzie took such to Point of Order ERNEST CALLENBACH 56 everything pains avoid. But it gives good marks to Carmen D'Avino, perhaps because his color "resurrec- ENTERTAINMENTS R. M. HODGENS 58 tion" of a slum apartment offers excuse for a little of Time's religious theme-mongering. SCHOLARSHIP ADDENDUM 60 Both reactions are irrelevant to the substantial virtues of the two film-makers.Or the dismissal BOOKS 61 of a mystical artist like Jordan Belson because FILM QUARTERLY is published by the University of California Press, Berkeley 4, California. $1.00 per copy, $4.00 per year (higher rates abroad-see your subscription agent). Editor: ERNEST CALLENBACH.Assistant to the Editor: CHRISTINE LEEFELDT. Los Angeles Editor: COLIN YOUNG. New York Editor: ROBERT HUGHES. Rome Editor: LETIZIA CIOTTI MILLER. Paris Editor: GINETTE BILLARD. Chicago Editor: CAROL BRIGHTMAN. Advisory Editorial Board: ANDRIEs DEINUM, AUGUST FRUGE', HUGH GRAY, ALBERT JOHNSON, PAUL JORGENSEN, NEAL OXENHANDLER.Copyright 1964 by the Regents o' the University of California. Views expressed in signed articles are those of the authors. Indexed in International Index to Periodicals and Art Index. Published quar- terly. Second-class postage paid at Berkeley, California, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. :1 VOL.XVII, No. 4 - SUMMER 1964 Editor's Notebook THE COVER: The Poor in Spirit Ingmar Bergman's The Silence In its April 3 issue, Time put on a ludicrous ARTICLES: display of pique at the recent Ford Foundation The Word, the Image, and The Silence awards to twelve independent film-makers. CAROL BRIGHTMAN 3 Ranging from tired Philistinism ("No one much about HIud, Deep in the Heart of [speak for yourself] has heard Divided Hollywood PAULINE KAEL 15 movies like Breath-Death, Cosmic Ray, and Stone Sonata") to irrelevant exaggeration of this INTERVIEW ("tuns gold"), ugly hatchet-job ap- pears, on internal evidence of ignorance, to be 12 Lindsay Anderson PETER COWIE the work of someone besides Time's regular anonymous reviewer, Brad Darrach, who is a SPECIAL FEATURE ON CINEMA-VERITE: knowledgeable critic beset by a split-level edit- THREE VIEWS ing system. The piece misunderstands the pur- Cinema of Common Sense COLIN YOUNG 26 poses of the grants, calling them "prizes" for Cindma-V&ritd in France PETER GRAHAhM 30 previous films rather than the funds for new On the Search for the Real Nitty-Gritty works which they almost all are. It assumes the HENRY BREITROSE 36 variety of films made earlier by the recipients Photo-Feature: The Technology 24 is some kind of menace, instead of a sign of vitality. It grotesquely lacks any sense of hu- FILM REVIEWS mor: Time trying to make fun of funsters like The Easy Life JOHN SEELYE 41 Stan Vanderbeek or Bruce Conner is like a II Posto ERNEST CALLENBACH 44 mechanic troubleshooting Tinguely's self-de- This Sporting Life ERNEST CALLENBACH 45 stroying machine. In the French Style SYDNEY FIELD 48 The article is a hodgepodge of disconnected Lady with the Dog ALEX SZOGYI 51 reactions. It includes a precis of Kent Mac- Sansho Dayu EILEEN BOWSER 53 kenzie's Exiles which is unutterably and in- Tide STEVEN P. HILL 54 Night sufferably fact, America ERNEST CALLENBACH 55 condescending-precisely, in America, Mackenzie took such to Point of Order ERNEST CALLENBACH 56 everything pains avoid. But it gives good marks to Carmen D'Avino, perhaps because his color "resurrec- ENTERTAINMENTS R. M. HODGENS 58 tion" of a slum apartment offers excuse for a little of Time's religious theme-mongering. SCHOLARSHIP ADDENDUM 60 Both reactions are irrelevant to the substantial virtues of the two film-makers.Or the dismissal BOOKS 61 of a mystical artist like Jordan Belson because FILM QUARTERLY is published by the University of California Press, Berkeley 4, California. $1.00 per copy, $4.00 per year (higher rates abroad-see your subscription agent). Editor: ERNEST CALLENBACH.Assistant to the Editor: CHRISTINE LEEFELDT. Los Angeles Editor: COLIN YOUNG. New York Editor: ROBERT HUGHES. Rome Editor: LETIZIA CIOTTI MILLER. Paris Editor: GINETTE BILLARD. Chicago Editor: CAROL BRIGHTMAN. Advisory Editorial Board: ANDRIEs DEINUM, AUGUST FRUGE', HUGH GRAY, ALBERT JOHNSON, PAUL JORGENSEN, NEAL OXENHANDLER.Copyright 1964 by the Regents o' the University of California. Views expressed in signed articles are those of the authors. Indexed in International Index to Periodicals and Art Index. Published quar- terly. Second-class postage paid at Berkeley, California, and at additional mailing offices. Printed in U.S.A. 2 ?EDITOR'S NOTEBOOK his talk about art as a crucible sounds odd- New Periodicals Or that kind of mystic lacks the proper stamp. Moviegoer (Box 128, New York 9, N.Y.-$1.00 per the coy omission of film-makers whose work copy, $3.25 per year) is the best of the new crop of does in fact approximate the writer's ideas U.S. film journals. Editor James Stoller has adopted about "professional" cinema-Dan Drasin, Ed the sound policy of gathering good writers and giving Emschwiller, Helen Levitt. their highly personal reactions full scope. The first What is sad about this, and worth more than issue contains a variety of articles and reviews, re- of some of a sneer from those who care for the prints Pauline Kael's fine blurbs for the passing Cinema a curious note Paul is that the are in Berkeley Guild, by art, foundations theory sup- Goodman explaining why he and his friends don't posed to provide the intellectual risk capital take films very seriously, and comments on the Great for a society whose formal power centers have Auteur Debate. little concern for art or ideas; this is, in princi- ple, why their funds are not taxed away into the government's coffers. In practice, even the giants are timorous and conventional beasties in almost all their grants. Time's sour reaction to Ford's surprisingly adventurous set of grants hence does our national cultural scene no serv- ice. But we may expect with some confidence that among the lucky film-makers at least sev- eral will produce films of top quality which are genuinely novel. This will be good return for money: the total budget for grants ["tuns of gold"] was below that for a low-budget Holly- wood film or a modest TV spectacular. The Ford Foundation, in short, deserves a modest pat on the back, and not this elbow in the kidney. Contributors EILEEN BOWSER is Assistant Curator at the Museum of Modem Art Film Library. HENRY BREITROSE is in charge of film teaching and production in the Broad- casting and Film Division, Stanford University. CAROL BRIGHTMAN has been working on several film projects in Chicago. PETER COWIE is editor of The International Film Guide [see Books section] and writes for British film magazines. SYD FIELD works for the Wolper Company, TV film-makers, in Los Angeles. PETER GRAHAM lives in Paris and writes for Films & Filming and other journals. PAULINE KAEL'S book of film criticism, I Lost It at the Movies, will be published by Atlantic Monthly Press in January. JOHN SEELYE teaches English at the Univer- sity of California, Berkeley. ALEX SZOGYIis a student of Chekov whose translation of The Cherry Orchard was a recent New York stage success; he is finishing a Chekov book for Macmillan. :3 CAROLBRIGHTMAN The Word, The Image, And The Silence In contemporary criticism, particularly when it used as sticks to beat or tame the very animals "pans," it becomes increasingly obvious that from which they are wrenched. Whenever the words of seeming description just don't meaning is attributed to man or deed within stick-at least not to what happens on the these films, it characteristically presents itself screen.