CANONICAL LOOSE ENDS: Paul Schrader responds to the readers
The omission of Rossellini was a major boo-boo. I’d sent a copy of the
manuscript to Michel Ciment of Positif who objected to my inclusion
of The Battle of Algiers at the expense of Salvatore Guiliano.
Rosi’s film, Ciment implored, was not only the father of both Battle of
Algiers and Z but better than either of them. I realized how right he was and asked Film Comment to replace Algiers with Salvatore, but through some mix-up it replaced Voyage in Italy instead. Rossellini is essential to any Canon, especially mine.
As for the “Canon” itself, my original intention was to limit myself to the
20 films I wished to discuss, using them to illuminate various criteria.
Film Comment prevailed upon me to expand the list and I inched my
way up to 60 films.
The idea of an exclusive Canon (the dreaded antecedent to High Art) is to
leave things out. Film studies have been swamped by inclusiveness and
nonjudgmental standards. “Everybody has his reasons,” Octave says in
Rules of the Game. Likewise, every filmmaker has his advocates. I
wrote the article in reaction to this, attempting to look back at the
Century of Cinema with a cold eye and a very high brow.
Eisenstein is a case in point. Potemkin and Alexander
Nevsky are classics; they changed the way films were made. Yet, in
rewatching them, I found their value was more historical than aesthetic.
Would you really watch Eisenstein to learn more about what it means to be
human or, to put it in grand terms, ennoble the soul? I think that we watch
Eisenstein today to learn about political and film history. If I included
Potemkin, I would also need to include Intolerance and
Pulp Fiction, films that had an equally seismic effect on film
history. Likewise, Cassavetes, whose films forever altered the nature of
storytelling. A Woman Under the Influence is a great film, as is
Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, but I
couldn’t find a justification to place either of those films in the rarefied
company of Renoir, Ozu, Bergman, and Ford. Almodóvar went on to make
Talk to Her, which I did include in the Bronze category. Cassavetes
never made that next step, the step to Talk to Her; instead he
repeated and recycled. Similarly, Huston and Hawks: masters of the studio
era, Hawks’s achievements plateaued while Huston’s reached above and beyond
his filmography to create The Dead.
“Eurocentrism?” Damn straight. And, if I hadn’t limited myself to one film
per director, the list would have been even more Eurocentric. When I
contemplated the films that really mattered, I was surprised by the number
that had come from France. Any thoughts I’d harbored about cultural,
geographic, or racial equilibrium ended then and there. What place do
fairness, democracy, and political correctness have in the judgment of art?
The fact that I’m an American born of parents of European descent, the
product of the Western educational system, of course colors my perceptions.
But then, if I’d been in Asia or Africa during the Renaissance, I doubt
whether I’d have had a very high opinion of Greek and Roman art. In
addition, there’s a good argument to made for the fact that the greatest
non-Western cinemas (Japan for example) are the cinemas which built on
Western achievements.
And lastly, Andrew Sarris, whose The American Cinema was my
well-worn companion for many years. Sarris’s intent in that book was not so
much to define a Canon as to apply auteur theory to American film criticism
which, at that time, was dominated by literary, social, and moral criteria.
I’d love to see Andy’s list today, not just American films, but all films.
When it comes to the golden era of film criticism, he’s the Last Man
Standing.
