Jonathan Rosenbaum's Blog: jonathanrosenbaum.com, page 50

Western Culture Coming and Going [THE CASE OF THE GRINNING CAT & WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER?]

From the July 21, 2006 Chicago Reader. — J.R.


The Case of the Grinning Cat
*** (A must see)
Directed and written by Chris Marker
Narrated by Gerard Rinaldi
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
**** (Masterpiece)
Directed and written by Frank Tashlin
With Tony Randall, Jayne Mansfield, Betsy Drake, Joan Blondell, John Williams, Henry Jones, and Mickey Hargitay


Two cheery, even hilarious works that [...]

The Guarded Intimacy of SANS SOLEIL

The following essay was commissioned by Michael Koresky at the Criterion Collection for their 2007 DVD release of Chris Marker’s Sans soleil (which they brought out with Le jetée), although they eventually decided not to include it in their booklet. They made it available on their web site for a spell until an infection obliged [...]

Memory, History, Consciousness: The Video And Television Work Of Chris Marker

From the Chicago Reader (July 1, 1996). — J.R.


A little over two hours of recent videos by the great essayistic filmmaker Chris Marker (Sans soleil), ranging from playful personal works — such as Bestiary, put together between 1985 and 1993 and consisting of a record of the filmmaker’s cat’s responses to Ravel, the repeated staring [...]

AFTER HOURS

From Monthly Film Bulletin, July 1976 (Vol. 43, No. 510). I’ve made a couple of corrections and added several basic credits, visible now at the end of my VHS copy but not accessible to me back in 1976. (I should add that the pitches made by the coproducer to potential sponsors aren’t on the VHS [...]

On Second Thoughts [THE LAST BOLSHEVIK]

From the Chicago Reader (January 21, 1994); reprinted in Movies as Politics. “Special greetings to Jonathan Rosenbaum, who wrote a very perceptive note on THE LAST BOLSHEVIK,” Chris Marker kindly emailed John Gianvito a little over nine years ago. So I don’t know how to respond to the news of his sad death, which occurred [...]

It’s a Big World After All [The Best Movies of 2001]

From the Chicago Reader (January 4, 2002). — J.R.

There is no such thing as film production. It is a joke, as much as the production of literature, pictures, or music. There are no good years for films, like good years for wine. A great film is an accident, a banana skin under [...]

Introduction to MOVIE WARS: Is the Producer Always Right?

Published by Chicago’s a cappella press in 2000.  The jacket reproduced below, which I prefer, belongs to the English edition published by Wallflower Press in 2002; the full title is Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Limit What Films We Can See.  — J.R.


To refer to a producer’s oeuvre is, at least to me, [...]

Mindless Kicks [RUMBLE IN THE BRONX & BROKEN ARROW]

From the Chicago Reader (February 23, 1996). — J.R.


Rumble in the Bronx
Directed by Stanley Tong
Written by Edward Tang and Fibe Ma
With Jackie Chan, Anita Mui, Francoise Yip, and Bill Tung.
Broken Arrow
Directed by John Woo
Written by Graham Yost
With John Travolta, Christian Slater, Samantha Mathis, Delroy Lindo, Bob Gunton, and Frank Whaley.


Many people who’ve seen [...]

Some Brief Reflections on A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG

One of my reasons for recently revisiting Chaplin’s last feature, while preparing to teach a ten-hour course about him in Brazil, was trying to figure out why it’s so bad. There are other examples one could cite of unredeemably bad films by great filmmakers, but this one seems to belong in a category all its [...]

Orson Welles: The Consumerist Version

Published under a different title in the online Barnes and Noble Review (May 18, 2010). — J.R.


John Baxter’s new Foreword to the 1956 novelization of Orson Welles’s Mr. Arkadin, aptly called “No Pilot Known,” correctly discloses on its penultimate page that the novel was actually written in French by one Maurice Bessy, who adapted Welles’s [...]