William Rothman - Tuitions and Intuitions: Essays at the Intersection of Film Criticism and Philosophy

TUITIONS
AND
INTUITIONS

TUITIONS
AND
INTUITIONS

Essays at the Intersection of
Film Criticism and Philosophy

WILLIAM ROTHMAN

Cover image: Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1959), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Credit: MGM/Photofest

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2019 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rothman, William, author.

Title: Tuitions and intuitions : essays at the intersection of film criticism and philosophy / William Rothman.

Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2019. | Series: SUNY series, horizons of cinema | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018045643 | ISBN 9781438475790 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438475783 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438475806 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures. | Film criticismPhilosophy.

Classification: LCC PN1995 .R6853 2019 | DDC 791.43dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045643

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Kitty, the love of my life

CONTENTS

Introduction: How John the Baptist Kept His Head,
or My Life in Film Philosophy

PART I
A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

PART II
STUDIES IN CRITICISM

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A relatively neglected passage of Pursuits of Happiness invokes Matthew Arnolds concept of the best selfa possibility or potential in the human self, Cavell writes, not normally open to view, or not open to the normal view. Call this ones invisible self; it is what the movie camera would make visible (1981, 157). When I was a callow Harvard undergraduate taking his graduate seminar on the aesthetics of film more than a half-century ago, what Cavell saw in meas he always did, as he always encouraged me to see in myselfwas my best self. Without his teaching, his inspiration, and his friendship, I could not have written the essays in this book. Nor could I have written these essays if my wife, Kitty Morgan, had not seen the best self in me, too.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Murray Pomerance, the editor of SUNYs Horizons of Cinema series, for his enthusiastic support of this volume, for our many years of friendship, and for his own work, which resonates deeply with my own.

The essays in Tuitions and Intuitions span so many years of my life that there is no way I can acknowledge individually here all the colleagues, students, and friends to whom this book is indebted. Marian Keane, Charles Warren, George Toles, and Andrew Klevanalong with Gilberto Perez and Victor Perkins, whose loss deeply saddens mewill have to stand in for the rest.

CHAPTER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

. How John the Baptist Kept His Head: My Life in Film Philosophy appeared in The Film Theory Handbook (2018). Reprinted by permission of the Anthem Press.

. Why Not Realize Your World? was first published as Why Not Realize Your World? Philosopher/Film Scholar William Rothman Interviewed by Jeffrey Crouse in Film International , vol. 9, issue 6, December 2011. Reprinted by permission.

. Silence and Stasis appeared in The Language and Style of Film Criticism (2011). Reprinted by permission of Palgrave Macmillan

. Film and Modernity appeared in Cinema and Modernity (2006). Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.

. Andr Bazin as Cavellian Realist appeared in Film International , Spring 2008. Reprinted by permission.

. What Becomes of the Camera in the World on Film? appeared in Theorizing Screen Acting , published by Routledge (2013). Reprinted by permission of the Taylor & Francis Group.

. I Never Thought I Would Sink So Low as to Become an Actor : John Barrymore in Twentieth Century appeared in Hamlet Lives in Hollywood: John Barrymore and the Acting Tradition on Screen (2017). Reprinted by permission of Edinburgh University Press.

. I Look Up, I Look Down: James Stewart in Vertigo appeared in Close-Up: Great Cinematic Performances Volume I: America (2017). Reprinted by permission of Edinburgh University Press.

. Hats Off to George Cukor! was published in Hollywoods Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema (2012). Reprinted by permission of Wayne State University Press.

. Woody Allens New York was published in The City that Never Sleeps (2007). Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.

. Blood is Thicker than Water: The Family in Hitchcock was published in A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home (2008). Reprinted by permission of Columbia University Press.

. Space and Speech in the Films of Yasujir Ozu appeared in Film International , Summer 2006. Reprinted by permission.

. Romance, Eroticism and the Cameras Gaze in Jean Genets Un Chant damour appeared in Film International , Winter 2010. Reprinted by permission.

. Seeing the Light in The Tree of Life appeared in The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical Footholds on Terrence Malicks The Tree of Life (2016). Reprinted by permission of Northwestern University Press.

. Justifying Justified was published in Television Aesthetics and Style (2013). Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.

. Sometimes Daddies Dont Talk about Things Like That appeared in Three Documentary Filmmakers (2009). Reprinted by permission of SUNY Press.

. Jean Rouch as Film Artist includes sections from Jean Rouch as Film Theorist in Thinking in the Dark: Cinema, Theory, Practice (2015). Reprinted by permission of Rutgers University Press.

. Dancing with Gardner: Robert Gardners Films on Art (2007) appeared in The Cinema of Robert Gardner , published by Berg Publishers. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.

PREFACE

T his volume collects under one cover most of the essays I have written since 2004, the year of the publication of the expanded second edition of The I of the Camera , my first book of essays. (Rothman 1988/2004). Three are previously unpublished. The others have appeared in diverse film studies journals or anthologies.

The essays in Tuitions and Intuitions , like those in The I of the Camera , address a wide range of films, including classical Hollywood movies; the work of auteur directors like Alfred Hitchcock, George Cukor, Woody Allen, and Yasujir Ozu; John Barrymores acting; unconventional works by Jean Genet, Chantal Akerman, Terrence Malick, and the Dardenne brothers; the television series Justified ; and documentaries by Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch, and Robert Gardner. All the essays pose and address questions of philosophical significance, including the nature of screen performance; self-expression and authorship in film; film and modernity; films relationship to reality; the agency of the camera; silence and movement; the relationship of theory to critical practice; and the need for the marriage of film studies and philosophy exemplified by Stanley Cavells writing and my own.