Pye Douglas - V F Perkins on Movies: Contemporary Film and Media Series

Praise for V. F. Perkins on Movies

Victor Perkins carved a unique path as a film critic. He was neither a reviewer nor a reporter; neither a polemical iconoclast nor a follower of academic fashion. His aim was clear, true, and steadfastly maintained: to understand the art of film, and the work of its finest artists, better.

Adrian Martin, film critic

The idea of gathering all of Perkinss shorter pieces into one volume is excellent. In my judgment, he is one of the absolutely indispensable critics of film. He was a legendary teacher, and all his criticism has the capacity to educate even sophisticated filmgoers in how to think more cogently about movie art as moral and emotional experience, and how to read films with greater precision and discrimination. Douglas Pye has provided a valuable overview of the phases of Perkinss career and offers a first-rate assessment of his major preoccupations and strengths.

George Toles, University of Manitoba

Since film studies became an academic field, no one has attended to movies with more care and insight than Victor Perkins, and no one has so inspiringly and effectively taught several generations of students and readers to attempt the same. The full range of his achievement is on view in V. F. Perkins on Movies, from his theoretical work to his critical studies. Anyone with any sort of interest in film owes a great debt of gratitude to Douglas Pye for making these powerful essays accessible.

Robert B. Pippin, The University of Chicago

Douglas Pye has performed a great service by putting together this indispensable collection of V. F. Perkinss writings and introducing it so eloquently. The tyrannical reign of theoretical systematizing, which for decades led academic film studies to subordinate criticism to what the field called theory, has ended. But to move forward, the field must now visit its origins and history. Victor Perkins, perhaps the most brilliant, the most rigorous and perceptive writer of film criticism we have ever had, trusted the films he loved to teach him how to think about them, without letting some theory or other blind him to his own experience. He took the best popular movies to be exemplary of the art of film and stuck to his guns when academic film studies embraced a theoretical orthodoxy and it became dogma that the kind of movies Perkins wrote about were pernicious ideological constructs, not works of art to be valued. And he kept faith with his conviction that the study of film cannot be a worthwhile human enterprise if it isolates itself from the kind of criticism that seeks to articulate a works ideanot a thought lying behind the work, but a thought the work expresses, in its own way, in its own mediumthe kind of criticism Perkins never stopped writingthe kind of criticism whose value it is now more than ever incumbent upon the field to acknowledge.

William Rothman, professor of cinematic arts at the University of Miami

Contemporary Film and Media Series

Series Editor

Barry Keith Grant

Brock University

A complete listing of the advisory editors and the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu.

Edited by Douglas Pye

Assistant Editor: Edward Lamberti

Edward Gallafent

John Gibbs

Andrew Klevan

James MacDowell

Polly Perkins

2020 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

ISBN 978-0-8143-4643-3 (paperback)

ISBN 978-0-8143-4642-6 (hardback)

ISBN 978-0-8143-4644-0 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943886

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Visit us online at wsupress.wayne.edu

George M. Wilson

No one writing on film since I became interested in the area has had the impact on me and on my work that Victor Perkins has had. No one has been even close in the extent of their influence and inspiration.

When I first read Victors Film as Film, its effect on me was enormous. I was fascinated by what he had to say in the various chapters of the book but I was also captivated by the fact that the author of this terrific book wrote with perfect clarity, grace, and rhetorical force. I was much struck that someone could write in an utterly intelligible way on questions of the most probing and systematic aesthetic interest. I had read a number of the notable French critics of the period, and I was quite taken by much of their work. However, none of themand no one else at that time or laterwrote with the exemplary depth and lucidity that I found in Victors writing. I went on from Film as Film to read a range of Victors film criticism, and I was also led to read a lot of the essays by the best contributors to Movie. These authors, and Victor especially, constituted the models I adopted as I began to write and teach in film.

Several years later, I published my first film book, Narration in Light (1986). The book did not sell a lot of copies, and, during the period in question, I think I never even saw it in a bookstore. Then I received a letter from Victor, and it explained at gracious length why he liked my book a lot. I had never received a commentary on any of my work that pleased me so much and that I valued as highly as this unexpected letter, and in all the time since it arrived, I have never been more pleased than I was by his generous remarks. I believe that it is pretty rare to get a strongly supportive letter from someone you have never met, but who has from long distance crucially shaped your own thinking about the fundamental area of research in question. I was simply thrilled, and it was his support at this juncture, more than anything else, that encouraged me to continue writing on film.

A few years later, we finally did meet in person, and our friendship was deepened by the personal contact. Meeting him several times in Britain and the United States, I came to learn that he was one of the kindest and most generous people I had ever met. He was also one of the wittiest and funniest. Over the years, we searched for lost film sites in San Francisco, following in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock, spotted swans in Stratford, admired Warwick Castle by moonlight, explored the ruins of Coventry Cathedral and, most recently, wandered the shores of Lake Windermere, all the time with Victor attired in his usual coat, tie, and V-neck sweater. We miss him.

I warmly welcome this collection of Victors shorter writing. The volume is in itself a fitting tribute and a rich addition to the literature of film. Taking its place alongside his monographs, its publication also enables readers to access the whole of Victors film criticism in book form for the first time and more readily to appreciate his remarkable achievements. It is an indispensable body of work for anyone with a serious interest in film.

When Polly Perkins, Victors daughter and literary executor, convened a group of friends and colleagues to consider his legacy, a volume of his uncollected film criticism became a major objective, and Wayne State University Press, publishers of Britton on Film and new editions of Robin Woods work, was the logical publisher to approach. Barry K. Grant, editor of their series Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media, was immediately enthusiastic and has been the source of invaluable support and guidance throughout the books evolution. Annie Martin, acquisitions editor at the press when the project began, and her successor, Marie Sweetman, have been unfailingly encouraging and helpful. I am also grateful for the advice of their colleague Ceylan Akturk. It has been a pleasure to work closely with Ed Lamberti, who crucially kept track of the various stages of the books development and assembled the contents, as well as sharing many of the detailed editorial tasks; his meticulous work has been indispensable. The Editorial Advisory Group guided the decisions about the shape of the volume and have been the guardian angels of the project as it developed, contributing advice and help whenever it was needed. Pollys total commitment, on behalf of Victors estate, has been an inspiration throughout.