Creating an Endurable Film Canon
Nov. 17th, 2006 01:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat[After comforting myself watching Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy, I'm NOW comforting myself with Barbara Walters' 30 Interview Mistakes in 30 Years - made by Barbara and her guests. Somewhat reassuring to know that no one is infallible and we all screw up royally or at least be reminded of that. I'm also glad that I'm not famous and don't have my faux pas on tape saved for all time. Warning mucho typos, I'm certain. No real time to edit.]
Just finished a fantastic article by Paul Schrader in Film Comment entitled Canon Fodder: As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks
In the article Schrader defines what a canon is, the history of canon, devises criteria to set up a film canon, and lists 60 films that he'd put in the canon. I'll list the 60 at the end of this as a sort of film meme, putting in bold the ones I've seen. I'm not going to reproduce the article here, since that would be a huge violation of copyright. If you want to read the reader's responses to the canon and Schrader's responses, go here. For the article? You can probably still find it in a copy of the Sept/Oct 2006 issue of Film Comment.
First, how should canon be defined? Schrader argues: "Any time a qualitative adjective is used ("better", "more integral,", "purer"), a canon is implied. If art objects are to be compared qualitatively they can be ranked; if they can be ranked, there must be a canon."
He goes on to describe the historical origin of the canon - which is from the Latin "canon" or rule - "an ecclesticial code of law or standard of judgment, usually based on canonical books, such as the Scriptures." The first canons according to Schrader were literary and British. And the "driving force behind the creation of an English literary canon was Joseph Addison. Through his articles in The Spectator, Addison relentlessly advocated the role of critics in establishing standards of taste and hierarchies of judgement." Then of course, like all critics, published his own. Schrader details the fall of canon, or disillusionment in it - due to largly the ever expanding definition of art as creative expression, and how the fact that the arts have become more democratic and populist - the notion of high art is less and less defensible. (I paraphrasing here.) There's at least five pages on the history of art, how it is defined, etc - which I won't bore you with or reproduce in depth, since I see it as merely Schrader arguing against the ability to really create a film canon. I disagree with Schrader about canon - he says it is *not* merely another subjective list of works of art based on "personal taste", while I tend to think it has to be. We are, like or not, the products of our own experience and just as it is impossible to read every book written in English, let alone translated into it, it is equally impossible to see every film created. And unless you have, how can you possibly begin to identify the best of the best? Assuming you have seen them all for arguments sake, how can you impartially do so or know for certain that you are being impartial and objective? In short how can you state your list is any less a "best of" than any other list? The criteria you present? And what makes you the authority on the manner? Years of experience in the field? I don't know. Perhaps some of my discomfort with the word "canon" comes from my own experiences with the word - both as a former English Literature major ( a field that was fun at the time but quite useless in the world outside of academia where you actually have to find a job), and as a Catholic. To me the word canon connotes a rigid structure or suffocating set of rules or guidelines that you cannot move outside of. Like a third grade teacher telling you that these are the only books you can read or only activities permitted, anything else is just "stupid". And well, being a person who hates to be told what to do, unless it makes logical sense - this tends to annoy me.
That said, I agree with Schrader's criteria for his film canon, which I'll explain shortly, even if I don't entirely agree with his film choices, but mainly because I have not seen all of them and there are a few missing that I would put in their stead.
Schrader states and I agree with this statement: "It is much easier to make lists than to explain why. When you logically resolve Kant's contradiction - if there are judgements of taste, some judgements must be true and some false, resulting in criteria - you descend into a purgatory of shifting sentiments. This, scholars tell us, was the fallacy of David Hume. I'm not so sure. Standards of taste, as Hume understood, do not restrict art; the work of art will always find a way around the rules. They do, however, establish a necessary framork for judgement."
This is true. You can't put human creativity or even nature in a box. It cannot be contained. It will evolve. It will change. It will find its way out of the box, outgrow the box, possibly even redesign the box. People like it or not do not stay put, stagnate. We are ever changing life-forms. That however does not mean rules should not be created nor for that matter criteria made to assess art, to better understand what moves us, and what does not, what lasts and what hasn't. To understand in a matter of speaking our own personal taste - or rather the "why" of liking something as opposed to the merely liking. And more to the point - to what extent can we come to agreement on those works of art that are "brilliant" amongst the multitude produced, an agreement based on something other than popular opinion or emotion, ie. gut response? Hence the criteria.
Here it is - and I like it so much, I've decided to attempt a second post, possibly tomorrow depending on how bored I am - applying said criteria to the Television medium.
1. Beauty, Schrader states "is the bedrock of all judgements of taste, as Kant knew well, and without a respect for Beauty, judgements topple in the winds of fashion." The trick is to expand the definition - not define it narrowly. So for the purposes of the canon - Beauty is defined by "its ability to qualitatively transform reality" or as Crispin Sartwell states in his book Six Names of Beauty - 1) the object of longing (English), 2) glow bloom (Hebrew) 3) whole, holy (Sanskrit), 4) idea ideal (Greek), 5) humility, imperfection (Japanese), and 5) health, harmony (Navaho).
2. Strangeness - This is another word for originality or uniqueness. Something we can't completely assimilate. Schrader uses Jean Cocteau's work as an example - the guy who did the black and white version of Beauty and The Beast - which Disney borrowed heavily from. "Orginiality" states Schrader, "is a prerequisite for the canon - the matter at hand must be expressed in a fresh way - but it is the addition of strangeness to the originality that gives these works their enduring status. This strangeness, this unpredictable burst of originality, is the attribute of a work of art that causes successive generations to puzzle over it, to debate it, to be awed by it." Another word is defamiliarization.
3. Unity of form and subject matter: "The greatness and excellence of art," Schrader quotes Hegel from Aesthetics, " will depend upon the degree of intimacy with which...form and subject matter are fused and united." What he means is - how does everything in the film play off of each other? "In a great film the frictions of form join to express the function in a new, strange way." You can't discuss form without also describing the subject matter. It's the interaction between dialogue, visuals, acts, etc. An example - in the film Memento - Christopher Nolan plays with form - he tells his story backwards, yet you can follow the narrative and find out something new through the telling of it. David Lynch is another example - "his juxtaposition of realistic decor and stylized acting" in say films such as Blue Velvet or in the tv series Twin Peaks - is an instance of the interplay of form and function, the friction between the two, to tell a story. That is not to say of course that less stylistic directors such as say Scorsese aren't creating something excellent. Scorsese does the same thing - with how he lays each scene, the juxtaposition of those scenes to portray the subject matter in a new ay. Schrader explains it like this: " Motion pictures are multiform, juxtaposing real and artificial imagery, music, sound, decor, and acting styles to contrasting effect. Film does not have a significant form, it has significant juxtapositions of form." "In architechture, form has been said to follow function; in film, form follows friction. These juxtapositions of form necessarily exist at any given moment during a film; in addition, over the course of the film, the evolve, fluctuate, metamorphose. The form of a film at the middle or end need not be the same as at the beginning. In judgind a motion picture a critic judges the interplay of forms in relation to function (commericial, educational, aesthetic) and subject matter."
4. Tradition: Quoting TS Eliot from Tradition and the Individual Talent, "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead." Or as Harold Bloom states in The Western Canon - "Tradition is not only a handing down or process of benign transmission, it is also a conflict between past genius and present aspiration in which the prize is literary survival or canonical inclusion." In short, to some extent when we create art, we play homage to those who came before - those we've read and seen. Art cannot exist in a vaccume. Our work is not judged on its own, but by its place in the evolution of film. Where does it fall? Think of Quentin Tartino's films or say the work of Steven Spielberg - or say Star Wars - or Serenity - work that echoes the films of John Ford and Howard Hawks? Or Francis Truffut? How does the film stand amongst what came before it. Does it redefine something? Remake it in a new and interesting way? What effect will it have on new films? Does it break with tradition? Uphold it?
5. Timelessness. Can it hold up over time? Is it rewatchable? Will it grow in importance with successive generations and in context? Example - Van Gogh's Starry Night has been remade and echoed a million ways, yet we never lose interest in the original, each time we see it we see something new. Schrader uses Citizen Kane as an example. But I think Wizard of Oz also works here - a film that has bits and pieces recopied, copied, seen by successive generations of filmgoers, that finds its way into our language and our reference points, and yet, we never stop wanting to see it. Kane, he states, "like all art that endures, engages both the first time and repeat viewer." - For novels, Jane Austen would be an excellent example. How many times have they copied and made Pride and Prejudice? And yet we still want to read the original.
6. Viewer Engagement: I'll just quote Schrader here: " A film viewer doesn't have to do anything. Music conjures images, theater demands the viewer to fill in spaces, painting implies a world beyond the frame; film, by comparision, demands precious little. Everything is done for the audience: the information they receive and the emotions they feel are as pre-planned as a railway schedule. The primary appeal of movies may be, in fact that they ask so little of us. The viewer needs only sit and stare." (This is an excellent description of films such as say Pirates of The Carribean or the pop-corn film. You see it. You forget it. For a moment, just a moment or two, you escape your world. But you don't have to think. Mindless entertainment. And about 50% of films made are that way. Although people can read more into pop-corn entertainment if they want to, you can analyze anything apparently - I saw a book in Barnes and Noble entitled James Bond and Philosophy or the Philosophy of the Bond films - with philosophical essays. Having spent time online doing the same thing with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this did not shock me. Although I think finding philosophical meaning in Bond is pushing it a bit, but what do I know?) Now, this is what he says about a great film: "A great film is one that to some degree frees the viewer from this passive stupor and engages him or her in the creative process of viewing. The dynamic must be two-way. The great film not only comes at the viewer, it draws the viewer toward it. The film, either by withholding expected elements or by positing contradictions, causes the viewer to reach into the screen, as it were, and move the creative furniture around. This isn't a viewer trying to guess "Who done it?" This instead is a viewer making identifications he or she had no intention of making, coming to conclusions the film can't control, reassembling the film in a unique personal way. A great film, a film that endures, demands and receives the viewer's creative complicity. What he's talking about here is more or less what Joss Whedon and other filmmakers mean when they state: don't give the audience what they want. Withhold. Do NOT cater to them. Or leaning forward on the couch. It's not the same as figuring out a puzzle - ie. say seeing a "caper" film or " mystery" such as Presumed Innocent - in which it is a race to see who figures out the mystery first and you brag afterwards on how quickly you got it. But, rather, on something deeper. Blue Velvet is an example of this type of film. But Sixth Sense isn't necessarily - that was a gimmick, it did not demand as much of you, the viewer as Blue Velvet does. The gimmick while fun, does not necessarily challenge you. A better contrast might be an Agatha Christie mystery in contrast to say Robert Altman's Gosford Park.
7. Morality: Again, I want to just quote Schrader on this one, who like me is reluctant about it but feels it must be included and makes the statement that no value judgement should be placed upon the moral message of the work - whether or not you agree with the message is irrelevant, what matters is it has one - that the resonance is there. "It's not that I feel moral arguments have no place in the discussion of art, just that they are better implied than spelled out. Movies will always have a moral component. One can't depict real-life situations, develop characters, and tell stories over time without moral ramifications. To paraphrase the injunction Jung had inscribed on his gravestone, "Called or not, morality will be there." It makes sense that great films have great moral resonance. I just don't see the aesthetic value of setting one moral resonance against another. Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi documentary Triumphe of the Will is arguably the quintessential motion picture, the fulcrum of the century of cinema, combining film's ability to document with its propensity for narrative, illustrating the new medium's emancipation of female artists, embelmatizing the Marxist mix of art and aesthetics - of course, it's a work of moral resonance. Good or bad resonance? Most everyone would agree it's evil, but that's beside the point. The point is that no work that fails to strike moral chords can be canonical." I think that's as close a thing as we can get to an "objective" criteria. By not placing a value judgment on the message being conveyed. It is tempting and easy to deride works that promote messages that offend or annoy or enrage us - but, we must be careful in our criticism to state that the reason we dislike it is based on the fact we did not like the message, but the work itself may in of itself be brilliant. To discount something based solely on the fact that we don't like what it says - the theme so to speak - is I think problematic. You can appreciate, maybe not love, but appreciate the beauty of a scorpion even if you wish it did not exist. Suppressing messages we do not agree with, censoring them is a dangerous practice which will definitely bite us in the butt.
Paul Schrader's Canon - which he limits to narrative/fictional films, excluding short films, documentaries and experimental films. He does not delineate based on director, money, cultural environment, time period, gender, race, etc - since he feels such criteria is irrelevant stating - while such factors enrich discussion they don't define it. "There is no equal-opportunity canon". And that "motion pictures are the most collaborative of the arts...." "A film may be the creation of one strong individual, it may be the product of several; in either case only the film can be judged." "The merit of the film is the film itself."
Of all the films he ranks, the one he starts with, the one he considers the one work in which a canon of film cannot properly exist without, is one I have not seen, entitled "The Rules of the Game" by Jean Renoir. For the literary Canon, Harold Bloom listed William Shakespeare and Hamlet. Beginning the discussion with that work. I don't know, never been a huge fan of Hamlet, but then again it has been the most produced of any work, and referenced. Which may be why I'm not a fan, I got burnt out after the tenth viewing of it. I think I've seen every film of it made at least once. My favorite version may well be either Kenneth Branagh's or Derek Jacobi's. Although have an odd fondness for the modernized Ethan Hawk. But I digress.
I've updated this to include a brief analysis of my thoughts regarding the selections I've seen. Can't comment on the ones I haven't.
I'm highlighting in bold the one's I've seen or rather remember seeing.
Gold
1. The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
2. Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
3. City Lights (1931, Charles Chaplin)
4. Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
5. Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang)
6. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
7. Orphée (1950, Jean Cocteau)
8. Masculin-Feminin (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
9. Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
10. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
11. Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
12. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
13. The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
14. The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
15. 8 ½ (1963, Federico Fellini)
16. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
17. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)
18. The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
19. Performance (1970, Donald Cammell/Nicholas Roeg)
20. La Notte (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Can't remark on the one's I haven't seen of course, nor can I remark on personal preferences - we all have them and if Schrader is honest, I think anything you'd put on list is more or less your personal preference. After all we don't see anything the same. Read an interview with Peter O'Toole recently where O'Toole more or less stated that what he saw of himself on the screen was not what he thought he looked like in his head, nor how others told him that he appeared. One person may for example think Elizabeth Taylor is or rather was the most beautiful woman in the world, while another may think it was Princess Diana. That said - of this list 20, and the one's I've seen based on Schrader's criteria - I agree with most of the choices. I personally prefer Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt, but Vertigo is the film that advanced the tradition the most and each time you see it, you see something else. It is also an excellent example of friction between unity of form and subject matter - we are taken inside the mind of a man who may well be losing it. Same with The Searchers - which at times feels sluggish and overlong in comparison to shorter Ford films, advanced difficult themes in new ways, it changed the Western from the simple cowboys and Indians, to a darker grayer territory. Wayne the pop culture guy in the white hat at the time, came close to wearing a black one. Also the length in of itself was utilized to demonstrate the weariness of the characters. Granted you may prefer Stagecoach or even My Darling Clementine (which is equally dark in moral tones and ambiguity) but neither have the ambitious scope of The Searchers. You don't find other filmmakers playing homage to the technique. I can barely recall Cocteau's Orphee, yet have vivid memories of his Beauty and The Beast. So am not sure, I'd have picked the one over the other. Beauty and The Beast - has been remade, referenced, and played with in more than one film - in Cocteau - creates the castle of ghosts. Where the servants are utensils. Then there's 8 1/2, The Godfather, The Third Man, and In The Mood For Love. I found In The Mood For Love incredibly dull but oddly soothing. It did not engage me in quite the way Schrader states a great film should - and I would not have put it here over say Quentin Taratino's Pulp Fiction or John Woo's The Killer (which is a film that has been copied and recopied, and also engages one's imagination). It felt far too romantic to me and at times scattered. I lost it in the midst of color and shadings and musical wanderings. That said, I do understand the selection - it does expand on the tradition before, remake it, change it, it also comments on it - the film is about a man traveling through time from one doomed romance to the next, falling what appears to be a femme fatale, the plot does not quite follow in a line, so much as meander off course - hence my inability to truly remember it. Christopher Nolan's experiment with short term memory loss in say Memento had for me more resonance. On the other hand, I can't disagree with 8 1/2 (which does what In The Mood For Love appears to attempt...in some ways, I think, better. The disassociation of connectivity.) I don't know why Death in Venice isn't here - because that film did things that blew me away and haunted me far more than Mood does or 8 1/2 for that matter. Third Man and Godfather - both of course belong. Like them or not - you cannot deny their place in the cinematic tradition. Or their repeatability. Or their beauty. The Third Man is the quintessential noir film, a mystery of the mind, forcing you to commit more brain activity to it than you might guess. And the harbringer of later films. The Godfather similarily changes the cinematic landscape. Plays with the concept of flashback in a new way, and centers around a tragic family of anti-heroes. A triumph of form - where every ingredient magically works. What's missing here? Good question. I'm sure people can come up with films they'd replace with others - if you do, defend your choices - don't just state a preference.
Silver
21. Mother and Son (1997, Alexander Sokurov)
22. The Leopard (1963, Luchino Visconti)
23. The Dead (1987, John Huston)
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
25. Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais)
26. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
27. Jules and Jim (1961, Francois Truffaut)
28. The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah)
29. All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
30. The Life of Oharu (1952, Kenji Mizoguchi)
31. High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
32. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)
33. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977, Luis Bunuel)
34. An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli)
35. The Battle of Algiers (1966, Gillo Pontecorvo)
36. Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
37. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
38. Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)
39. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Woody Allen)
40. The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel Coen)
[Within this group? I'd probably kick out The Big Lebowski, which is to me a film that is hugely overrated and replace it with Robert Altman's MASH. I've seen it and can't for the life of me remember the film that well.
Except that I was bored during most of it, and found the technique less than ground-breaking. My friend W would disagree, she adores The Big Lebowski as does Schrader obviously. See personal preferance cannot be denied. MASH to me changed the format, it played with it, forced engagement, and commented on what came before. Also I'm on the fence regarding Allen's Crimes and MisDemeanors, although it may well be the best of his films and one of the few that does not overwhelm you with Allen's voice. The Wild Bunch does belong, because it is the film that redefined the Western genre and played with images to define character. The opening sequence along puts it on this list - where we see fire ants attacking a scorpion in a circle, then kids in a circle attacking the ants, then the Wild Bunch running into the town. Same with That Obscure Object of Desire - the only Luis Bunuel film that sticks in my memory. What sticks? The way Bunuel plays with mirrors in the film. ]
Bronze
41. The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)
42. Singin' in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen)
43. Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
44. The Crowd (1928, King Vidor)
45. Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
46. Talk to Her (2002, Pedro Almodovar)
47. Shanghai Express (1932, Josef von Sternberg)
48. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948, Max Ophuls)
49. Once Upon a Time in the West (1969, Sergio Leone)
50. Salvatore Giuliano (1962, Francesco Rosi)
51. Nostalghia (1983, Andrei Tarkovsky)
52. Seven Men from Now (1956, Budd Boetticher)
53. Claire's Knee (1970, Eric Rohmer)
54. Earth (1930, Alexander Dovzhenko)
55. Gun Crazy (1949, Joseph H. Lewis)
56. Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur)
57. Children of Paradise (1945, Marcel Carne)
58. The Naked Spur (1953, Anthony Mann)
59. A Place in the Sun (1951, George Stevens)
60. The General (1927, Buster Keaton)
I think I also saw Out of the Past, Gun Crazy and the Naked Spur, but can't remember. Am tempted to disagree on A Place in The Sun - except that he is correct, it has been remade and redefined many times, most recently by Woody Allen in Match Point. And it is a work of beauty. Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift never looked better. The moral resonance is there, but does not overwhelm, and it falls within an odd sense of ambiguity. I may have inserted The Wizard of OZ or Gone With The Wind - but I can see why he didn't. They are in some ways populist films. Yet, by the same token, I'd say no more so than The Godfather.
If you want links on each film and more info, go here: http://www.cinematical.com/2006/11/14/paul-schraders-film-canon/ - another film reviewer's comment on the list.
Too tired to come up with my own list. So going by his.
Just finished a fantastic article by Paul Schrader in Film Comment entitled Canon Fodder: As the sun finally sets on the century of cinema, by what criteria do we determine its masterworks
In the article Schrader defines what a canon is, the history of canon, devises criteria to set up a film canon, and lists 60 films that he'd put in the canon. I'll list the 60 at the end of this as a sort of film meme, putting in bold the ones I've seen. I'm not going to reproduce the article here, since that would be a huge violation of copyright. If you want to read the reader's responses to the canon and Schrader's responses, go here. For the article? You can probably still find it in a copy of the Sept/Oct 2006 issue of Film Comment.
First, how should canon be defined? Schrader argues: "Any time a qualitative adjective is used ("better", "more integral,", "purer"), a canon is implied. If art objects are to be compared qualitatively they can be ranked; if they can be ranked, there must be a canon."
He goes on to describe the historical origin of the canon - which is from the Latin "canon" or rule - "an ecclesticial code of law or standard of judgment, usually based on canonical books, such as the Scriptures." The first canons according to Schrader were literary and British. And the "driving force behind the creation of an English literary canon was Joseph Addison. Through his articles in The Spectator, Addison relentlessly advocated the role of critics in establishing standards of taste and hierarchies of judgement." Then of course, like all critics, published his own. Schrader details the fall of canon, or disillusionment in it - due to largly the ever expanding definition of art as creative expression, and how the fact that the arts have become more democratic and populist - the notion of high art is less and less defensible. (I paraphrasing here.) There's at least five pages on the history of art, how it is defined, etc - which I won't bore you with or reproduce in depth, since I see it as merely Schrader arguing against the ability to really create a film canon. I disagree with Schrader about canon - he says it is *not* merely another subjective list of works of art based on "personal taste", while I tend to think it has to be. We are, like or not, the products of our own experience and just as it is impossible to read every book written in English, let alone translated into it, it is equally impossible to see every film created. And unless you have, how can you possibly begin to identify the best of the best? Assuming you have seen them all for arguments sake, how can you impartially do so or know for certain that you are being impartial and objective? In short how can you state your list is any less a "best of" than any other list? The criteria you present? And what makes you the authority on the manner? Years of experience in the field? I don't know. Perhaps some of my discomfort with the word "canon" comes from my own experiences with the word - both as a former English Literature major ( a field that was fun at the time but quite useless in the world outside of academia where you actually have to find a job), and as a Catholic. To me the word canon connotes a rigid structure or suffocating set of rules or guidelines that you cannot move outside of. Like a third grade teacher telling you that these are the only books you can read or only activities permitted, anything else is just "stupid". And well, being a person who hates to be told what to do, unless it makes logical sense - this tends to annoy me.
That said, I agree with Schrader's criteria for his film canon, which I'll explain shortly, even if I don't entirely agree with his film choices, but mainly because I have not seen all of them and there are a few missing that I would put in their stead.
Schrader states and I agree with this statement: "It is much easier to make lists than to explain why. When you logically resolve Kant's contradiction - if there are judgements of taste, some judgements must be true and some false, resulting in criteria - you descend into a purgatory of shifting sentiments. This, scholars tell us, was the fallacy of David Hume. I'm not so sure. Standards of taste, as Hume understood, do not restrict art; the work of art will always find a way around the rules. They do, however, establish a necessary framork for judgement."
This is true. You can't put human creativity or even nature in a box. It cannot be contained. It will evolve. It will change. It will find its way out of the box, outgrow the box, possibly even redesign the box. People like it or not do not stay put, stagnate. We are ever changing life-forms. That however does not mean rules should not be created nor for that matter criteria made to assess art, to better understand what moves us, and what does not, what lasts and what hasn't. To understand in a matter of speaking our own personal taste - or rather the "why" of liking something as opposed to the merely liking. And more to the point - to what extent can we come to agreement on those works of art that are "brilliant" amongst the multitude produced, an agreement based on something other than popular opinion or emotion, ie. gut response? Hence the criteria.
Here it is - and I like it so much, I've decided to attempt a second post, possibly tomorrow depending on how bored I am - applying said criteria to the Television medium.
1. Beauty, Schrader states "is the bedrock of all judgements of taste, as Kant knew well, and without a respect for Beauty, judgements topple in the winds of fashion." The trick is to expand the definition - not define it narrowly. So for the purposes of the canon - Beauty is defined by "its ability to qualitatively transform reality" or as Crispin Sartwell states in his book Six Names of Beauty - 1) the object of longing (English), 2) glow bloom (Hebrew) 3) whole, holy (Sanskrit), 4) idea ideal (Greek), 5) humility, imperfection (Japanese), and 5) health, harmony (Navaho).
2. Strangeness - This is another word for originality or uniqueness. Something we can't completely assimilate. Schrader uses Jean Cocteau's work as an example - the guy who did the black and white version of Beauty and The Beast - which Disney borrowed heavily from. "Orginiality" states Schrader, "is a prerequisite for the canon - the matter at hand must be expressed in a fresh way - but it is the addition of strangeness to the originality that gives these works their enduring status. This strangeness, this unpredictable burst of originality, is the attribute of a work of art that causes successive generations to puzzle over it, to debate it, to be awed by it." Another word is defamiliarization.
3. Unity of form and subject matter: "The greatness and excellence of art," Schrader quotes Hegel from Aesthetics, " will depend upon the degree of intimacy with which...form and subject matter are fused and united." What he means is - how does everything in the film play off of each other? "In a great film the frictions of form join to express the function in a new, strange way." You can't discuss form without also describing the subject matter. It's the interaction between dialogue, visuals, acts, etc. An example - in the film Memento - Christopher Nolan plays with form - he tells his story backwards, yet you can follow the narrative and find out something new through the telling of it. David Lynch is another example - "his juxtaposition of realistic decor and stylized acting" in say films such as Blue Velvet or in the tv series Twin Peaks - is an instance of the interplay of form and function, the friction between the two, to tell a story. That is not to say of course that less stylistic directors such as say Scorsese aren't creating something excellent. Scorsese does the same thing - with how he lays each scene, the juxtaposition of those scenes to portray the subject matter in a new ay. Schrader explains it like this: " Motion pictures are multiform, juxtaposing real and artificial imagery, music, sound, decor, and acting styles to contrasting effect. Film does not have a significant form, it has significant juxtapositions of form." "In architechture, form has been said to follow function; in film, form follows friction. These juxtapositions of form necessarily exist at any given moment during a film; in addition, over the course of the film, the evolve, fluctuate, metamorphose. The form of a film at the middle or end need not be the same as at the beginning. In judgind a motion picture a critic judges the interplay of forms in relation to function (commericial, educational, aesthetic) and subject matter."
4. Tradition: Quoting TS Eliot from Tradition and the Individual Talent, "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead." Or as Harold Bloom states in The Western Canon - "Tradition is not only a handing down or process of benign transmission, it is also a conflict between past genius and present aspiration in which the prize is literary survival or canonical inclusion." In short, to some extent when we create art, we play homage to those who came before - those we've read and seen. Art cannot exist in a vaccume. Our work is not judged on its own, but by its place in the evolution of film. Where does it fall? Think of Quentin Tartino's films or say the work of Steven Spielberg - or say Star Wars - or Serenity - work that echoes the films of John Ford and Howard Hawks? Or Francis Truffut? How does the film stand amongst what came before it. Does it redefine something? Remake it in a new and interesting way? What effect will it have on new films? Does it break with tradition? Uphold it?
5. Timelessness. Can it hold up over time? Is it rewatchable? Will it grow in importance with successive generations and in context? Example - Van Gogh's Starry Night has been remade and echoed a million ways, yet we never lose interest in the original, each time we see it we see something new. Schrader uses Citizen Kane as an example. But I think Wizard of Oz also works here - a film that has bits and pieces recopied, copied, seen by successive generations of filmgoers, that finds its way into our language and our reference points, and yet, we never stop wanting to see it. Kane, he states, "like all art that endures, engages both the first time and repeat viewer." - For novels, Jane Austen would be an excellent example. How many times have they copied and made Pride and Prejudice? And yet we still want to read the original.
6. Viewer Engagement: I'll just quote Schrader here: " A film viewer doesn't have to do anything. Music conjures images, theater demands the viewer to fill in spaces, painting implies a world beyond the frame; film, by comparision, demands precious little. Everything is done for the audience: the information they receive and the emotions they feel are as pre-planned as a railway schedule. The primary appeal of movies may be, in fact that they ask so little of us. The viewer needs only sit and stare." (This is an excellent description of films such as say Pirates of The Carribean or the pop-corn film. You see it. You forget it. For a moment, just a moment or two, you escape your world. But you don't have to think. Mindless entertainment. And about 50% of films made are that way. Although people can read more into pop-corn entertainment if they want to, you can analyze anything apparently - I saw a book in Barnes and Noble entitled James Bond and Philosophy or the Philosophy of the Bond films - with philosophical essays. Having spent time online doing the same thing with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this did not shock me. Although I think finding philosophical meaning in Bond is pushing it a bit, but what do I know?) Now, this is what he says about a great film: "A great film is one that to some degree frees the viewer from this passive stupor and engages him or her in the creative process of viewing. The dynamic must be two-way. The great film not only comes at the viewer, it draws the viewer toward it. The film, either by withholding expected elements or by positing contradictions, causes the viewer to reach into the screen, as it were, and move the creative furniture around. This isn't a viewer trying to guess "Who done it?" This instead is a viewer making identifications he or she had no intention of making, coming to conclusions the film can't control, reassembling the film in a unique personal way. A great film, a film that endures, demands and receives the viewer's creative complicity. What he's talking about here is more or less what Joss Whedon and other filmmakers mean when they state: don't give the audience what they want. Withhold. Do NOT cater to them. Or leaning forward on the couch. It's not the same as figuring out a puzzle - ie. say seeing a "caper" film or " mystery" such as Presumed Innocent - in which it is a race to see who figures out the mystery first and you brag afterwards on how quickly you got it. But, rather, on something deeper. Blue Velvet is an example of this type of film. But Sixth Sense isn't necessarily - that was a gimmick, it did not demand as much of you, the viewer as Blue Velvet does. The gimmick while fun, does not necessarily challenge you. A better contrast might be an Agatha Christie mystery in contrast to say Robert Altman's Gosford Park.
7. Morality: Again, I want to just quote Schrader on this one, who like me is reluctant about it but feels it must be included and makes the statement that no value judgement should be placed upon the moral message of the work - whether or not you agree with the message is irrelevant, what matters is it has one - that the resonance is there. "It's not that I feel moral arguments have no place in the discussion of art, just that they are better implied than spelled out. Movies will always have a moral component. One can't depict real-life situations, develop characters, and tell stories over time without moral ramifications. To paraphrase the injunction Jung had inscribed on his gravestone, "Called or not, morality will be there." It makes sense that great films have great moral resonance. I just don't see the aesthetic value of setting one moral resonance against another. Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi documentary Triumphe of the Will is arguably the quintessential motion picture, the fulcrum of the century of cinema, combining film's ability to document with its propensity for narrative, illustrating the new medium's emancipation of female artists, embelmatizing the Marxist mix of art and aesthetics - of course, it's a work of moral resonance. Good or bad resonance? Most everyone would agree it's evil, but that's beside the point. The point is that no work that fails to strike moral chords can be canonical." I think that's as close a thing as we can get to an "objective" criteria. By not placing a value judgment on the message being conveyed. It is tempting and easy to deride works that promote messages that offend or annoy or enrage us - but, we must be careful in our criticism to state that the reason we dislike it is based on the fact we did not like the message, but the work itself may in of itself be brilliant. To discount something based solely on the fact that we don't like what it says - the theme so to speak - is I think problematic. You can appreciate, maybe not love, but appreciate the beauty of a scorpion even if you wish it did not exist. Suppressing messages we do not agree with, censoring them is a dangerous practice which will definitely bite us in the butt.
Paul Schrader's Canon - which he limits to narrative/fictional films, excluding short films, documentaries and experimental films. He does not delineate based on director, money, cultural environment, time period, gender, race, etc - since he feels such criteria is irrelevant stating - while such factors enrich discussion they don't define it. "There is no equal-opportunity canon". And that "motion pictures are the most collaborative of the arts...." "A film may be the creation of one strong individual, it may be the product of several; in either case only the film can be judged." "The merit of the film is the film itself."
Of all the films he ranks, the one he starts with, the one he considers the one work in which a canon of film cannot properly exist without, is one I have not seen, entitled "The Rules of the Game" by Jean Renoir. For the literary Canon, Harold Bloom listed William Shakespeare and Hamlet. Beginning the discussion with that work. I don't know, never been a huge fan of Hamlet, but then again it has been the most produced of any work, and referenced. Which may be why I'm not a fan, I got burnt out after the tenth viewing of it. I think I've seen every film of it made at least once. My favorite version may well be either Kenneth Branagh's or Derek Jacobi's. Although have an odd fondness for the modernized Ethan Hawk. But I digress.
I've updated this to include a brief analysis of my thoughts regarding the selections I've seen. Can't comment on the ones I haven't.
I'm highlighting in bold the one's I've seen or rather remember seeing.
Gold
1. The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
2. Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
3. City Lights (1931, Charles Chaplin)
4. Pickpocket (1959, Robert Bresson)
5. Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang)
6. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
7. Orphée (1950, Jean Cocteau)
8. Masculin-Feminin (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
9. Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
10. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
11. Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
12. The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
13. The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
14. The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
15. 8 ½ (1963, Federico Fellini)
16. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
17. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)
18. The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
19. Performance (1970, Donald Cammell/Nicholas Roeg)
20. La Notte (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Can't remark on the one's I haven't seen of course, nor can I remark on personal preferences - we all have them and if Schrader is honest, I think anything you'd put on list is more or less your personal preference. After all we don't see anything the same. Read an interview with Peter O'Toole recently where O'Toole more or less stated that what he saw of himself on the screen was not what he thought he looked like in his head, nor how others told him that he appeared. One person may for example think Elizabeth Taylor is or rather was the most beautiful woman in the world, while another may think it was Princess Diana. That said - of this list 20, and the one's I've seen based on Schrader's criteria - I agree with most of the choices. I personally prefer Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train and Shadow of a Doubt, but Vertigo is the film that advanced the tradition the most and each time you see it, you see something else. It is also an excellent example of friction between unity of form and subject matter - we are taken inside the mind of a man who may well be losing it. Same with The Searchers - which at times feels sluggish and overlong in comparison to shorter Ford films, advanced difficult themes in new ways, it changed the Western from the simple cowboys and Indians, to a darker grayer territory. Wayne the pop culture guy in the white hat at the time, came close to wearing a black one. Also the length in of itself was utilized to demonstrate the weariness of the characters. Granted you may prefer Stagecoach or even My Darling Clementine (which is equally dark in moral tones and ambiguity) but neither have the ambitious scope of The Searchers. You don't find other filmmakers playing homage to the technique. I can barely recall Cocteau's Orphee, yet have vivid memories of his Beauty and The Beast. So am not sure, I'd have picked the one over the other. Beauty and The Beast - has been remade, referenced, and played with in more than one film - in Cocteau - creates the castle of ghosts. Where the servants are utensils. Then there's 8 1/2, The Godfather, The Third Man, and In The Mood For Love. I found In The Mood For Love incredibly dull but oddly soothing. It did not engage me in quite the way Schrader states a great film should - and I would not have put it here over say Quentin Taratino's Pulp Fiction or John Woo's The Killer (which is a film that has been copied and recopied, and also engages one's imagination). It felt far too romantic to me and at times scattered. I lost it in the midst of color and shadings and musical wanderings. That said, I do understand the selection - it does expand on the tradition before, remake it, change it, it also comments on it - the film is about a man traveling through time from one doomed romance to the next, falling what appears to be a femme fatale, the plot does not quite follow in a line, so much as meander off course - hence my inability to truly remember it. Christopher Nolan's experiment with short term memory loss in say Memento had for me more resonance. On the other hand, I can't disagree with 8 1/2 (which does what In The Mood For Love appears to attempt...in some ways, I think, better. The disassociation of connectivity.) I don't know why Death in Venice isn't here - because that film did things that blew me away and haunted me far more than Mood does or 8 1/2 for that matter. Third Man and Godfather - both of course belong. Like them or not - you cannot deny their place in the cinematic tradition. Or their repeatability. Or their beauty. The Third Man is the quintessential noir film, a mystery of the mind, forcing you to commit more brain activity to it than you might guess. And the harbringer of later films. The Godfather similarily changes the cinematic landscape. Plays with the concept of flashback in a new way, and centers around a tragic family of anti-heroes. A triumph of form - where every ingredient magically works. What's missing here? Good question. I'm sure people can come up with films they'd replace with others - if you do, defend your choices - don't just state a preference.
Silver
21. Mother and Son (1997, Alexander Sokurov)
22. The Leopard (1963, Luchino Visconti)
23. The Dead (1987, John Huston)
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
25. Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais)
26. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
27. Jules and Jim (1961, Francois Truffaut)
28. The Wild Bunch (1969, Sam Peckinpah)
29. All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
30. The Life of Oharu (1952, Kenji Mizoguchi)
31. High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
32. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)
33. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977, Luis Bunuel)
34. An American in Paris (1951, Vincente Minnelli)
35. The Battle of Algiers (1966, Gillo Pontecorvo)
36. Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
37. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
38. Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)
39. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Woody Allen)
40. The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel Coen)
[Within this group? I'd probably kick out The Big Lebowski, which is to me a film that is hugely overrated and replace it with Robert Altman's MASH. I've seen it and can't for the life of me remember the film that well.
Except that I was bored during most of it, and found the technique less than ground-breaking. My friend W would disagree, she adores The Big Lebowski as does Schrader obviously. See personal preferance cannot be denied. MASH to me changed the format, it played with it, forced engagement, and commented on what came before. Also I'm on the fence regarding Allen's Crimes and MisDemeanors, although it may well be the best of his films and one of the few that does not overwhelm you with Allen's voice. The Wild Bunch does belong, because it is the film that redefined the Western genre and played with images to define character. The opening sequence along puts it on this list - where we see fire ants attacking a scorpion in a circle, then kids in a circle attacking the ants, then the Wild Bunch running into the town. Same with That Obscure Object of Desire - the only Luis Bunuel film that sticks in my memory. What sticks? The way Bunuel plays with mirrors in the film. ]
Bronze
41. The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)
42. Singin' in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen)
43. Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
44. The Crowd (1928, King Vidor)
45. Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
46. Talk to Her (2002, Pedro Almodovar)
47. Shanghai Express (1932, Josef von Sternberg)
48. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948, Max Ophuls)
49. Once Upon a Time in the West (1969, Sergio Leone)
50. Salvatore Giuliano (1962, Francesco Rosi)
51. Nostalghia (1983, Andrei Tarkovsky)
52. Seven Men from Now (1956, Budd Boetticher)
53. Claire's Knee (1970, Eric Rohmer)
54. Earth (1930, Alexander Dovzhenko)
55. Gun Crazy (1949, Joseph H. Lewis)
56. Out of the Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur)
57. Children of Paradise (1945, Marcel Carne)
58. The Naked Spur (1953, Anthony Mann)
59. A Place in the Sun (1951, George Stevens)
60. The General (1927, Buster Keaton)
I think I also saw Out of the Past, Gun Crazy and the Naked Spur, but can't remember. Am tempted to disagree on A Place in The Sun - except that he is correct, it has been remade and redefined many times, most recently by Woody Allen in Match Point. And it is a work of beauty. Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift never looked better. The moral resonance is there, but does not overwhelm, and it falls within an odd sense of ambiguity. I may have inserted The Wizard of OZ or Gone With The Wind - but I can see why he didn't. They are in some ways populist films. Yet, by the same token, I'd say no more so than The Godfather.
If you want links on each film and more info, go here: http://www.cinematical.com/2006/11/14/paul-schraders-film-canon/ - another film reviewer's comment on the list.
Too tired to come up with my own list. So going by his.
