A Cinema Canon for the Ages

[Chris Knipp]

No mention was made of Abel Gance back then, for instance. Now it's become clear that "soviet montage" is heavily indebted to French films like Gance's La Roue

That about no mention of Gance seems odd. I heard about it in the Sixties. It was certainly famous. Eisenstein wrote theory about montage, and it's probaby for that reason that the Russians are associated with it, but Eisenstein's use of it is very strong. I'm self-taught. I heard about the great silents from my father and his friend Kirk Bond who was friends with Herman G. Weinberg and attended all he screenings at the Museum of Art Film Library in its early days. I also had the benefit of the F.W. Murnau Film Society's showings on the Berkeley campus. The FWMFS was run by Tom Luddy, later to be founder of the Pacific Film Archives. Who is this guy who knows everything about films? I wondered. Now he runs the Telluride festival. One time Luddy had Godard on for a Q&A. He conducted it just like the one in BREATHLESS.

[oscar jubis]

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks for challenging my inaccurate and exaggerated statement that "no mention of Gance was made back then" (meaning the 70s and early 80s when film history courses were being offered for the first time in many colleges and universities in the US). At that time, we were being taught about the Lumieres, Melies, Porter, Griffith, Chaplin, Soviet Montage, etc. but Abel Gance (and also the British innovators of the Brighton School and women filmmakers in general) were overlooked, often completely ignored in these courses. Nowadays, Gance, Brits like George Albert Smith, and women such as Germaine Dulac, Marie Epstein, and Alice Guy are deservedly being incorporated into the film history curriculum.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks in turn for this reply too.

[cinemabon]

I was reading back over this blog. Oscar, you never mentioned, "Lawrence of Arabia." Big films not worthy of the list?

[Chris Knipp]

Anyway, you started an interesting discussion of the film in your David Lean thread here.
Oscar is not taking an active part anymore, so I don't think he'll reply. I'm sure he didn't mean to exclude "big films."

[oscar jubis]

Anyway, you started an interesting discussion of the film in your David Lean thread here.
Oscar is not taking an active part anymore, so I don't think he'll reply. I'm sure he didn't mean to exclude "big films."

Hello Chris and cinemabon. I think very highly of Lawrence of Arabia and yet I don't include it because I don't feel a personal connection to it. That's it. There are big, epic, spectacular films that really hit a nerve with me like Reds and The Last Emperor.

[Chris Knipp]

That makes sense, Oscar. Very nice to hear from you, by the way. My greater connection with Lawrence of Arabia than to Reds and The Last Emperor is obvious -- my many years of studying Arabic and my few years of living in Arabic countries. I have a personal memory/connection with Reds too though, through a very dear friend of that time when it came out.

The concept of "long films" seems more and more extended lately as commercial features (I believe) are more often longer now, and increased focus on TV miniseries, which occasionally get a limited theatrical release (like Assayas' Carlos).