by p. adams sitney

466 Pages·2016·22.6 MB·English

Film Culture Reader
Edited and with an Introduction by
P. Adams Sitney
Eer Square Press
"The Cosmic Cinema of Jordan Belson" by Gene Youngblood, from the book Expanded
Cinema by Gene Youngblood. Reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
First Cooper Square Press edition 2000
This Cooper Square Press paperback edition of Film Culture Reader is an unabridged
republication of the edition first published in New York in 1970. It is reprinted by arrangement
with Arthouse, Inc.
Copyright© 1970 by Film Culture Non-Profit Corporation
Book design by Una McGeehan
All rights reserved.
Published by Cooper Square Press
An Imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
150 Fifth Avenue, Suite 911
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by National Book Network
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Film culture reader I edited and with an introduction by P. Adams
Sitney.-1st Cooper Square Pressed.
p.cm.
Originally published: New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970, in
series: Praeger film books ; Praeger paperbacks.
ISBN 978-0-8154-11 01-7
1. Experimental films-History and criticism. I. Sitney, P. Adams.
PN1995.9.E96 S5 2000
791.43'3-dc21
00-045152
8""
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
lS
CON
Preface, by P. Adams Sitney v
Introduction: A Reader's Guide to the American Avant-Garde
Film, by P. ADAMs SITNEY 3
One: The Formative Years, 1955-58 13
The Film as an Original Art Form, by HANS RICHTER 15
The Experimental Film in America, by JoNAS MEKAS 21
Metaphysic of Ordet: A Letter from CARL TH. DREYER 27
Citizen Kane: The American Baroque, by ANDREW SARRIS 29
In Memoriam of Dimitri Kirsanov, a Neglected Master, by
WALTERS. MICHEL 37
A Preface to the Problems of the Experimental Film, by
pARKER TYLER 42
The Merry Widow, Introduced by ERICH voN STROHEIM 52
Portrait of an Artist, by RuDOLF ARNHEIM 57
A Footnote to Foolish Wives, by HERMAN G. WEINBERG 6z
Coffee, Brandy, & Cigars XXX, by HERMAN G. WEINBERG 65
Two: The New American Cinema 71
A Call for a New Generation of Film-Makers, by JoNAS MEKAS 73
For an Uncontrolled Cinema, by RICHARD LEACOCK 76
The First Statement of the New American Cinema Group 79
To Maya Deren, by RuDOLF ARNHEIM 84
Notes on the New American Cinema, by JoNAS MEKAS 87
For Shadows, Against Pull My Daisy, by PARKER TYLER 108
Contents iii
Three: The Commercial Cinema and the Auteur Theory
Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962, by ANDREW SARRIS
The Camera as a God, by CHARLES BouLTENHOUSE
Dreyer, by KEN KELMAN
Defense of Jayne Mansfield, by MICHAEL McCLURE
Four: The American Avant-Garde
Poetry and the Film: A Symposium with Maya Deren,
Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas, Parker Tyler. Chairman,
Willard Maas. Organized by Amos Vogel. 171
Imagism in Four Avant-Garde Films, by P. AoAMS SrTNEY 187
Interview with Stan Brakhage, by P. AoAMS SITNEY 201
The Birth Film, by JANE BRAKHAGE
2~0
Respond Dance, by STAN BRAKHAGE 234
On The Art of Vision, by RoBERT KELLY 258
Harry Smith Interview, by P. ADAMS SITNEY 200
Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising, by CAROLEE ScHNEEMANN 277
Smith Myth, by KEN KELMAN 280
Interview with Peter Kubelka, by JoNAS MEKAS 285
Some Notes on Sleep, by HENRY GELDZAHLER 300
The Cosmic Cinema of Jordan Belson, by GENE YouNGBLOOD 302
Notes on Some New Movies and Happiness, by JoNAS MEKAS 317
Structural Film, by P. ADAMS SrTNEY 326
On "Structural Film" (by P. Adams Sitney )
by GEORGE MACIUNAS 349
Five: Overviews and Theoretical Considerations 351
The Writings of Dziga Vertov 353
Orson Welles and the Big Experimental Film Cult,
by pARKER TYLER
376
Classic Plastics (and Total Tectonics), by KEN KELMAN 387
The Image of the Body, by RoBERT KELLY
393
A Note on Comedy in Experimental Film,
by SIDNEY PETERSON
398
Film and the Radical Aspiration, by ANNETTE MICHELSON
4°4
Appendix: The Independent Film Award
423
Index
430
A section of illustrations follows page 214.
iv Contents
A
~IP~I~IIEIF C~IE
Magazines have been the bulwarks
of polemical aesthetics in our times. Renato Poggioli, the theorist of
avant-gardism, writes of "one of the external signs most characteris
tically avant-garde: periodicals of a group or movement; all of them
were organs for a specific creative current and, especially, for a par
ticular tendency of taste." To learn the character and to trace the
evolution of a single such magazine, there is no better way than to
peruse an entire "run" of its issues. Often, the least memorable,
flimsiest articles provide an insight into the individuality of a pub
lication that its "features" cannot reveal, especially, after a number
of years; for, in a given period, several magazines share the best au
thors or compete for an author's best work. The peripheral pieces
indicate the ideas and needs of individual editors.
This complicates the task of an anthologist who would collect the
best of a periodical and still preserve a sense of its uniqueness. No
anthology (the present volume included) can contain all the best
and all the most characteristic of a magazine over many years. The
present collection does not pretend to be comprehensive. It attempts
to satisfy three needs. First, there is the need to bring back into print
the crucial contributions to film criticism and aesthetics that have
appeared in Film Culture since its inception, in January, 1955. Next,
we have tried to document Film Culture as an organic entity, recog
nizing its various changes over the past fifteen years. Finally, we
have designed the collection as a source book for readings in the
avant-garde cinema, a field with which the magazine has come to be
identified in the last decade.
Almost from the beginning, Film Culture has subtitled itself
"America's Independent Motion Picture Magazine," indicating its
critical attitude as well as its domain of interest. Jonas Mekas
founded Film Culture not long after he came to the United States
from Lithuania by way of postwar Germany. A formalist (and ro
mantic) poet in his native language, he discovered the cinema in
New York. In his initial editorial, he outlined the vision of a publica
tion that would combine the interests and needs of film-makers and
film viewers.
Preface v
Today, the needs for a searching revaluation of the aesthetic standards
obtaining both among film-makers and audiences and for thorough
revision of the prevalent attitude to the function of cinema have
assumed more challenging proportions than ever before. Cinematic
creation tends to be approached primarily as a production of com
modities, and large sections of the public-to whom film-going is still
merely a mode of diversion-remain unaware of the full significance
of filmic art.
The original editorial board contained Mekas's brother Adolfas,
George Fenin, Louis Brigante, and Edouard de Laurot, a Marxist
critic whose long theoretical articles dominated many of the early
issues. Many foreign correspondents contributed articles and letters.
Although it was oriented toward the European cinema, Film Cul
ture, from its very first issue, focused critical attention on the em
bryonic "experimental" (as it was then called) cinema in America.
Although it may have been a harsh critic of the avant-garde, Film
Culture was the one place where it was taken seriously. The first
chapter of this collection represents the initial position of the editors
and contributors in respect to the avant-garde cinema. The final
chapter is its complement, with recent sophisticated overviews of the
American avant-garde in the context of film history and recent inter
national achievements in the formal cinema.
Film Culture has never been solvent; in 1958, it collapsed as a
monthly (it had been a bimonthly for its first eleven issues). Mekas
wrote in the editorial of the last regular numh er ( # 18), the von
Stroheim issue:
For three years, we have been publishing in this country a periodical
devoted to the advanced criticism of motion pictures-motion pic
tures as an art and as a social phenomenon. But as yet we have not
had sufficient support on the part of the audience. There are not
enough people in this country who realize that film is an art and that
motion-picture fan-magazines are not enough. The institutions and
foundations whose functions include the support of cultural activities
have refused to help us, and, what is more, Film Culture has been
asked to pay taxes! Film Culture has suffered the same sort of "men's
stupidity" that killed Erich von Stroheim.
Therefore, beginning with this issue, Film Culture will appear on
an unperiodical basis, with selected collections of articles and essays
on cinema-partisan-like, the most effective way at this juncture.
After that, Film Culture began to assume a new character. Mekas
recognized the potential for an independent cinema in the United
States and attempted to make the magazine a vehicle for its emer
gence. With the nineteenth issue, he initiated the Independent Film
vi Preface
Awards, given yearly (more or less) to call attention to the finest
American films made outside of the commercial system.
Perhaps guided by the success of a group of French film-makers
who had edited the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, Mekas made his
first film, Guns of the Trees ( 1960-61), with his· coeditors Brigante,
de Laurot, and Adolfas Mekas assisting him. The experience trans
figured his vision of the cinema. In the first place, Film Culture
immediately became a forum of ideas of economic alternatives to
commercial production and distribution. At the same time, it· re
discovered the native avant-garde cinema, which had existed for
years without commercialization or concession.
In the eleven issues from 19 to 29, Film Culture gradually became
the apologist of the New American Cinema (Mekas's term) of
which it had once been so critical. Yet film has always perpetuated
dualities and bifurcations. Film criticism can seem as schizophrenic
as film production. As the magazine became the forum for an
emerging avant-garde cinema, to which most other magazines had
been and continue to be hostile or indifferent, it turned, simultane
ously, from reviewing European films with an academic and intellec
tual viewpoint to demanding serious attention for the traditional out
put of Hollywood. Andrew Sarris, who had become an editor of the
magazine, epitomized the American orientation with his special issue
(# 28) devoted to creating a hierarchy of Hollywood directors and
summarizing their styles.
Even after the thirtieth issue, by which time it had become the
quasiofficial magazine of the avant-garde film-maker, Film Culture
continued to devote part of almost every issue to Sarris or other
Americanist critics. In Cahiers du Cinema, the dichotomy between
the film-makers and the apologists of the commercial cinema was
not great. In the first place, they were often the same persons. Sec
ondly, as film-makers they were much more "commercial," certainly
far less radical than the artists associated with Film Culture, and as
critics of the traditional American film, they were seldom as en
thusiastic as Sarris.
The presence of Andrew Sarris in the pages of Film Culture is
complemented by that of Parker Tyler. Both began to write for the
magazine soon after it was founded; both became frequent con
tributors during its transitional period in the early sixties; neither
has contributed more than one article in the past few years, the
magazine's most radical stage. Tyler gave measured support to the
avant-garde film-maker during the period in which Film Culture was
most critical and measured criticism as the editors became more
fervid in their support of the movement. The articles of his we have
Preface vii
selected represent a crucial station in the evolution of Film Culture.
We would have included even more of his writings were they not
all available in several recent editions of his essays.
The editors of Film Culture have at times devoted entire issues or
large sections of an issue to a single topic. Sarris's critical index of
American directors was one such issue; it has been omitted here
because of its recent republication, in book form, as The American
Cinema. Likewise, Seymour Stern's monumental study of D. W.
Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, the first part of which filled issue
36, defies excerpting; and its complete version is immanent. We have
attempted to encapsulate the issue ( # 18) devoted to Erich von
Stroheim. From the volume of Stan Brakhage's writings Metaphors
on Vision (issue 30), we have taken the introductory interview and
the final chapter. The issue still remains in print but may soon be
exhausted.
A copy of the cumulative index of Film Cultur~ may be obtained
free from Film Culture, Box 1499, G.P.O., New York, N.Y. 10001.
I am most indebted to Annette Michelson, the advisory editor in
the film-book program at Praeger, for her encouragement and help
in the preparation of this volume. Her careful reading of the manu
script guided me in making the final selection; what clarity and
intellectual thrust there may be in my Introduction derive from her
notes; the confusions are my own. It is a pleasure to have the oppor
tunity to thank Malcolm Mills, who typed the manuscript, Valerie
Curtis, who helped me proofread it, Susan Saunders, who made the
initial index, and Gwen Thomas and Perlyn Goodman who helped
me read the galleys.
The living authors have been most generous in allowing me to
reprint their articles. I wish also to acknowledge Amos Vogel, who
organized the symposium "Poetry and the Film" at Cinema 16, for
his permission to reprint the transcription of that event, and E. P.
Dutton & Co. for permission to use "The Cosmic Cinema of Jordan
Belson" from Gene Youngblood's forthcoming book, Expanded
Cinema.
The achievements of Film Culture reflect the spirit and genius of
its founder and editor-in-chief, Jonas Mekas. I am grateful to him
for allowing me to make this collection and for his consistent help
and advice from its conception and throughout its production.
Finally, I wish to thank my wife, who has willingly shared all my
labors in making this book and seeing it through to publication.
p. ADAMS SITNEY
viii Preface
FILM CULTURE READER
To Jerome Hill