Overview

"This eloquent book draws on the author's responses to a wide range of extraordinary films—""long takes"" on Altman's Nashville, Godard's Hail Mary, Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism, and von Sternberg's Blonde Venus, as well as ""short takes"" on films by Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Chantal Akerman, Ross McElwee, Michelangelo Antonioni, Michael Haneke, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Charles Warren's masterful close readings blend profound philosophical reflections with a treasure trove of literary and artistic references to place film, in its relations to other arts, as one of the greatest aesthetic forms. Collectively, these essays offer an original and powerful statement on the nature of film and the intimate relation of what the author calls ""film imagination"" to our lives as human beings in the world. This important and much-needed book is no less than a celebration and affirmation of the very discipline of film criticism. One is left with one's appetite for film refreshed."

Full Product Details

Author:   Charles Warren
Publisher:   State University of New York Press
Imprint:   State University of New York Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.227kg
ISBN:  

9781438488103

ISBN 10:   1438488106
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   02 October 2022
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction Long Takes 1. Nashville, West of the West 2. Whim, God, and the Screen: Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary 3. Earth and Beyond: On WR: Mysteries of the Organism 4. Blonde Venus: Experiment Successful beyond All Dreams Short Takes 5. The Path of Art in Chronicle of a Summer and Le joli mai 6. Fiction and Nonfiction in Chantal Akerman's Films 7. Surprise and Pain, Writing and Film: On Ross McElwee's Time Indefinite 8. Two Women in L'Avventura 9. The Unknown Piano Teacher 10. Three Immersions: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Rosetta Postscript: The Integrity of Film Notes Works Cited Index

Reviews

Writ on Water aims to do no less than reignite questions about what is the film imagination, and how does it provoke our questioning-philosophizing even-on the nature of the human condition as expressed in cinema? Warren draws on his own personal responses to the films under discussion to demonstrate the point of the argument: that one cannot ignore one's subjective response to the influence of cinema. It is, in this way, a powerful statement on the nature of film and film spectatorship. - Daniel Varndell, author of Hollywood Remakes, Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox

Author Information

Charles Warren (1948–2021) was Senior Lecturer in the Film and Television Department at Boston University and Associate of the Visual and Environmental Studies Department at Harvard University. He was the editor or coeditor of several collections of essays, including Beyond Document: Essays on Nonfiction Film; Making Dead Birds: Chronicle of a Film; and Looking with Robert Gardner (with Rebecca Meyers and William Rothman), also published by SUNY Press.

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