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Bright Lights Film Journal
Issue 60 | May 2008

from the editor

Our bad!

We admit it; we're late. But this time, unlike so often in the past, we have a good excuse — one that doesn't involve the complete works of Thomas Love Peacock or a four-foot bottle of Galliano. (Though it's true we were distracted by both.) In fact, we were working on an exciting Bright Lights project that we think you'll appreciate. We can't divulge the details just yet, but keep watching our companion blog, Bright Lights After Dark, and, for you subscribers, your inbox for an announcement shortly.

Hat (or perhaps chapeau) in hand, we enter the features foyer to behold Associate Editor Alan Vanneman's shockingly thorough exegesis of Renoir's Rules of the Game. Speaking of things French, the second entry here is a fond return to Roger Ebert's wonderful Cannes memoir from 20 years ago, courtesy of Ken Rivers. Moving on to le articles antechamber we discover Dave Saunders' scintillating stroll through Survival Style 5+, Sarah Olley, and other enchantments. Next up is the Celluloid Liberation Front (no names, please) serving up La Grande Bouffe in a way we're sure you've never quite experienced it. On we cavort to new contributor Evert van Leeuwen's careful consideration of the "Gothic Eurowestern" complete with giant eyeballs and reanimated cowpokes. Another recent émigré to BL, Anton Karl Kozlovic, handily rehabilitates DeMille's Samson and Delilah, while BL stalwart Lesley Chow cleverly espies the cultural and linguistic motifs in Spanglish and Twice Upon a Time.

Tiptoeing into the cellar of silence, we see Charlie Chaplin, specifically The Circus, all dressed up with somewhere to go thanks to Vanneman. It's another entry in his long-running study of Charlie. Nearby, in the recent cinema roundabout, Tony Macklin gets tough with critics of Street Kings. Don't hit me, Tony! A few steps away is the empty guest room, this time occupied by the incomparable Gloria Grahame as seen through the gimlet eye of Dan Callahan.

Our writers were feeling extremely chatty this issue, so we have four entries in the interrogation alcove. First up is Isabella Rossellini, who proves delightful in discussing her tribute to horny insects, Green Porno. Interrogator Felix von Boehm, who (with compatriot Alexia Bercowicz) spoke with Rossellini, also found time to buttonhole Jonathan Caouette, of Tarnation fame. Wilkommen Herr Felix and Fraulein Alexia! Damon Smith had a thoughtful encounter with the great Charles Burnett, while Karin Luisa Badt waylaid Doris Dörrie and Natasha Arthy for un gran schmooze. Karin also took time to check out the documentaries from the Thessaloniki film festival and speak with two directors, Patricio Henriquez and Doug Pray.

There Will Be Blood has gotten so much attention we couldn't resist including two views here. Matthew Brennan filters the film through Robert Warshow's "gangster hero" trope, while Robert Ecksel uncovers its eerie riffing on the dark side of the American persona. Happily bunkered in the vale of video, Gordon Thomas watched three fabulous Miklós Janscó films and gives us the lowdown. Gordon also weighs in with another irresistible edition of his "Bright Sights" column covering cinema various 'n sundry. Megan Ratner plunged into recent French cinema courtesy of the "Rendez-Vous" series at New York's Lincoln Center, and tells us all about it.

Finally, readers (or was it reader?) demanded the return of the book review section after several years on hiatus. Matt Kennedy, whose recent book on Joan Blondell from the University Press of Mississippi has tongues wagging and perhaps clucking as well, was there at the launch, laying the lorgnette on Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood.

Cut; print.

Gary Morris

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Watch for new issues of Bright Lights every three months: August, November, February, and May. To be automatically notified when the next issue is posted, join our mailing list.

Visit the archives for hundreds of other articles, dear.

features foyer

Who Do You Love? Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game Reconsidered — Was Le Grande Jean too soft on the aristos?

Twenty-One Years in the Midday Sun: Revisiting Roger Ebert's Cannes — Here's lookin' at you, Roger

articles antechamber

What's Your Function? How Movies Are Made — You mean you've tried panicking?

One Culture, Two Systems: The Rules of Spanglish and Twice Upon a Time — "When talking to others, what needs to be articulated?"

Gothic Eurowesterns: A Grotesque Perspective on a Hollywood Myth — On the manifest destiny of Civil War tricksters and gun-slinging corpses

Consumerist Ultimate Indigestion: La Grand Bouffe's Deadly Physiological Pleasures — "To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it's a physiological act, it's urban guerrilla" — Marco Ferreri

Serpentine Evil and the Garden of Eden in DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949) — Samson, meet Adam; Delilah, meet Eve

cellar of silence

Looking at Charlie — The Circus: An Occasional Series on the Life and Work of Charlie Chaplin — Life in the ring

recent cinema roundabout

Critics Cornered: On Reviewers' Reactions to David Ayres' Street Kings — "Anyone who speaks unsanitized thought is going to lose."

the empty guest room

Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame — "I'm a girl who loves to be manhandled! After all, what are a few contusions or abrasions if you get the man you love?" — Gloria Grahame, 1953

interrogation alcove

Birds Do It, Bees Do It: Isabella Rossellini Talks About Bug Sex, Human Sex, and Green Porno — "A laugh and information!"

Man with a Movie Camera: Visiting Jonathan Caouette — "I could somehow control my own story"

A Quiet Storm: Charles Burnett on Namibia and His Post-Killer of Sheep Career — "Each film requires for me its own approach."

From a Line of Ancestors: Talking with Doris Dörrie and Natasha Arthy — "We in the West trample on them."

documentary dormer

What's Up, Docs? Nonstandard Operating Procedures in Recent Documentaries, and Interviews with Patricio Henriquez and Doug Pray — "Why didn't you just stick to the truth?"

there will be blood, and more blood

Bowling for America: Robert Warshow, There Will Be Blood, and the Topography of Desire — "The king-times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist. But the peoples will conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but I foresee it." — George Gordon, Lord Byron

The Human Monster: On Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood — "There are no good and bad men, there are only damaged men . . ."

vale of video

Dream Documents of Civil War: Three Films by Miklós Jancsó — "Jancsó's controlled aesthetic acts as a dissonance that vibrates expressively with scenes of violence, torture, and shame."

film festival flying buttress

Plus Ça Change: The 2008 Rendez-vous with French Cinema — Gingerly moving out of the 20th century, not quite into the 21st

bright sights

Bright Sights: Recent DVDs: Berlin Alexanderplatz, Harry Langdon: Lost and Found, Postwar Kurosawa, I Am Cuba, The Dragon Painter, The Wrath of the Gods, Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema  — An ongoing column that looks at some of the most intriguing of recent, under-the-radar releases

hiding in the stacks

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, by Mark Harris