A CINEMA OF LONELINESS: Penn, Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese, Altman

by Robert Phillip Kolker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

Critical closeups of five directors whose films, though ""formally adventurous, structurally coherent and challenging,"" nonetheless ""only perpetrate the passivity and aloneness that have become their central image."" Kolker, as you may have already gathered, is a ""cinema"" (as opposed to ""movie"") man--academic, Marxist, Europhile. (He laments that the U.S. film tradition seems unable to produce a Godard or Fassbinder.) So these essays, though often strong on technical analysis and film-lit cross-references, are lumbered by a dependence on Cahiers du Cin≤ma vocabulary (virtually everything becomes a variant of ""film noir"") and a heavy auteur approach. Kolker is weakest on Arthur Penn, concentrating on the influential violence in Bonnie and Clyde and attributing Penn's decline to his convention-bound American-ness: ""He must define his characters by action and, inevitably, by violence."" Stanley Kubrick (especially Dr. Strangelove) is admixed for a Welles-ian ""realization of cinematic space"" and a Ford-ian narrative structure--but though these emotion-charged techniques ""force us to come to terms with our perceptions,"" the near-Brechtian result is still ""a reinforcement of our passivity and impotence."" F. F. Coppola's Godfathers are marvels of manipulative craftsmanship, and they may go a bit further ""in exposing the brutality and limitations of capitalism; but they hedge by allowing us simple responses to familiar categories."" Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver gets slightly higher marks: it's ""responsible--responsible in the sense that it offers . . . the lack of clarity and the lack of definition that characterize solitude and madness."" And Robert Altman, though he too finds no ""response"" to the ""lies"" he satirizes, comes closest to encouraging us to overcome ""the prison that our contemporary cinema seems dead set on insisting we inhabit."" Wearying didacticism--but wary film students (who'll keep Kolker's jargon and bias in perspective) Will appreciate the less pretentious pages here--especially the frame-by-frame analyses of point-of-view.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Oxford Univ. Press

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION