What do you think?
Rate this book
Conversations With Filmmakers Series
Peter Greenaway: Interviews
In these twenty-one interviews, filmmaker Peter Greenaway expresses his film aesthetic and discusses his combat with the dominant Hollywood style of filmmaking. His films have run unmistakably against the main current of present cinematic practice, from the short film Windows in the mid-seventies, to his more popular but nonetheless challenging films such as A Zed and Two Noughts and The Pillow Book in the nineties.
In this collection the ever-controversial Greenaway discusses his philosophies of film, art, aesthetics, literature, and reality, criticizing and even condemning the standard fare of what he calls Hollywood cinema. For him such films tell stories or they translate literature with its linear narrative onto a medium that he feels should be preeminently visual. He finds that, instead of foregrounding the image and the composition of visual elements as in the long history of painting, Hollywood-style directors seem mesmerized by the -and then and then- narrative.
In these provocative interviews Greenaway tells of his ambition to make cinema a medium based more on image than on narrative. He explains his painterly approach in such films as Prospero's Books and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, defends his use of total nudity of both sexes, and declares that traditional literary-based cinema is dead. He believes that the most creative imaginations, the most innovative technologies, and the greatest financial resources are being devoted to television and the Internet and that Hollywood moviemaking is no longer in the vanguard.
-If you go into the basilica of St. Peter in Rome, - he says, -and sit through a service near the high altar of Bernini, you will experience a synthesis of stone, light, music, incense. It is a form of total art, which is what the cinema of the 20th century was supposed to be, even if it only rarely lives up to this ideal.-
Vernon Gras is a professor of English and cultural studies at George Mason University. Marguerite Gras was a legislative research staffer at the U.S. House of Representatives, 1974-1991.
In this collection the ever-controversial Greenaway discusses his philosophies of film, art, aesthetics, literature, and reality, criticizing and even condemning the standard fare of what he calls Hollywood cinema. For him such films tell stories or they translate literature with its linear narrative onto a medium that he feels should be preeminently visual. He finds that, instead of foregrounding the image and the composition of visual elements as in the long history of painting, Hollywood-style directors seem mesmerized by the -and then and then- narrative.
In these provocative interviews Greenaway tells of his ambition to make cinema a medium based more on image than on narrative. He explains his painterly approach in such films as Prospero's Books and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, defends his use of total nudity of both sexes, and declares that traditional literary-based cinema is dead. He believes that the most creative imaginations, the most innovative technologies, and the greatest financial resources are being devoted to television and the Internet and that Hollywood moviemaking is no longer in the vanguard.
-If you go into the basilica of St. Peter in Rome, - he says, -and sit through a service near the high altar of Bernini, you will experience a synthesis of stone, light, music, incense. It is a form of total art, which is what the cinema of the 20th century was supposed to be, even if it only rarely lives up to this ideal.-
Vernon Gras is a professor of English and cultural studies at George Mason University. Marguerite Gras was a legislative research staffer at the U.S. House of Representatives, 1974-1991.
- GenresFilmNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2000
6 people are currently reading
88 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 12, 2020
It's fascinating to see these interviews presented in chronological order as if they present a linear narrative of Peter Greenaway's life--linear narrative, of course, being absolutely abhorrent in his eyes, as he reiterates over and over in the conversations presented in this collection. Of course, all his bombastic declamations about the state of "Hollywood cinema" are the least interesting thing Greenaway has to say, so thankfully this collection includes a solid if not exactly in-depth survey of the various production histories his own films, such as the anecdotes about Miramax's US release of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
Perhaps a bit misleading is the book's implication it will cover Greenaway’s work with (at the time) new technologies such as the CD-ROM format in The Tulse Luper Suitcases, which it barely covers. The project was still in its early stages at the time of this collection's publication, but it comes across as little more than tantalizing tease to read of Greenaway's breaking down of cinematic and formal barriers with no actual explanation of what that entails.
The interviews themselves range somewhat widely in quality and density of information. The first three presented as well as those conducted by Tran, Petrakis and Rodman move from boring to superfluous, but aside from these missteps the collection is an excellent peek at Greenaway's production process and influences.
Perhaps a bit misleading is the book's implication it will cover Greenaway’s work with (at the time) new technologies such as the CD-ROM format in The Tulse Luper Suitcases, which it barely covers. The project was still in its early stages at the time of this collection's publication, but it comes across as little more than tantalizing tease to read of Greenaway's breaking down of cinematic and formal barriers with no actual explanation of what that entails.
The interviews themselves range somewhat widely in quality and density of information. The first three presented as well as those conducted by Tran, Petrakis and Rodman move from boring to superfluous, but aside from these missteps the collection is an excellent peek at Greenaway's production process and influences.
February 26, 2008
Greenaway is a remarkable filmmaker - for "The Falls" if for nothing else. But his work can be a extremely terse and "rigorous". In the end, though, he builds a peculiar relationship with the spectator, and I think that perhaps this book of interviews helps to understand how a guy like Greenaway could manage to make movies, while millions of other obsessives wallow in obscurity.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews