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Eric Rohmer: Interviews edited by Fiona Handyside

May 21, 2013
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Eric Rohmer: Interviews edited by Fiona Handyside

I have written previously in this publication about the French film director Eric Rohmer (http://stkarnick.com/?p=4963) .  Rohmer (1920-2010) was a widely and deeply cultured man and his  marvellous cinema is one of the most beautiful and intelligent.  Its focus is on character more than plot and relies heavily on dialogue while at the same time is sensitive to the beauty of the world. Before becoming a full-time filmmaker, he was a critic and editor of Cahiers du Cinema, one of the most influential journals of…

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Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep

April 28, 2013
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Robert Redford’s The Company You Keep

The Company You Keep is a  fictional drama about former members of the violent radical leftist group, the Weather Underground (that actually existed).  A number of them went underground after a bank robbery  in Michigan committed by  some of its members in which a bank guard was killed.  The film opens thirty years afterwards when one of the perpetrators decides to give herself up.  The film follows the ramifications of this on other former members, of whom Robert Redford (who directed the film) is the…

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Letter From an Unknown Woman by Max Ophuls

February 17, 2013
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Letter From an Unknown Woman by Max Ophuls

I recently saw, for the third time over a space of many years, this well-made  (though the background music is sometimes quite intrusive) Max Ophuls  flick, based upon a Stefan Zweig tale.  This time, it struck me as somewhat more complex than I had thought. Adolescent Lisa (Joan Fontaine) falls madly in love with a new neighbor, Stefan Brand,  played by Louis Jourdan.   (By the way, I have never understood why Jourdan did not become a bigger star than he was.) He is a successful…

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The Cinema of Eric Rohmer: Irony, Imagination, and the Social World by Jacob Leigh

January 3, 2013
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The Cinema of Eric Rohmer: Irony, Imagination, and the Social World by Jacob Leigh

I have written elsewhere of Eric Rohmer (http://stkarnick.com/?p=4963), one of the great film-makers. This is the latest book in English on him. It is aimed at the cinephile or Rohmer devotee, not the casual reader, and discusses most all of his films in detail. The author, a lecturer at the University of London, does not have an overarching thesis Rather, after a brief introduction, he discusses each film in detail. His appreciation of the sophistication of Rohmer’s visual sense and techniques is a strong point…

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Ravi Shankar, R.I.P.

December 12, 2012
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Ravi Shankar, R.I.P.

No music I have ever listened to have I found so utterly compelling as that of the recently deceased master sitar player, Ravi Shankar. Part of the reason for this, I think, is how the chastening of the emotions underlying the music makes the expression of them profound. Then, too, every note played seems essential. There is nothing showy or self-indulgent in it. Yet while the emotions are chastened. they are not eliminated, so there is no aridity nor mere asbtractness. His music is proof…

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For Rootedness and Love: Wendell Berry’s “Hannah Coulter”

October 15, 2012
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For Rootedness and Love: Wendell Berry’s “Hannah Coulter”

I have heard of Wendell Berry for a long time but I have only read a few of his essays and none of his poetry. I only recently leaned he also wrote novels when I asked a friend to recommend one of his books thinking his books were collections of essays. But my friend said his wife thought that it is in his novels that Mr. Berry most effectively presents his ideas, so he recommended Hannah Coulter. It is a good novel and I am…

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Haberski’s Defense of Civil Religion Raises More Questions Than It Answers

September 11, 2012
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Haberski’s Defense of Civil Religion Raises More Questions Than It Answers

'God and War: American Civil Religion Since 1945,' by Ramond Haberski Jr., is a history of the way religion has been used in American politics since the end of World War II, especially regarding war (including the cold war). Haberski, a history professor at Marian University, discusses how various presidents have related to and used religion in this regard, as well as clerics and intellectuals. He sees the use of religion as pretty ubiquitous, though varied in purpose and effect. Unfortunately, he doesn't provide a…

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William Woos Doris

July 12, 2012
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William Woos Doris

"'I was fond of you, William,' she had told him. 'I still am fond of you. Very. But now I know what real love is and I do not want to spend the rest of my life with someone for whom I can only feel fondness. I love George and want to be with him forever.'”What happens when people become types. An original short story by Shmuel Ben-Gad.

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Review: ‘The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders: Reason, Revelation, and Revolution’

July 5, 2012
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Dr. Frazer, a professor at a Christian college, has written an analysis of the religious beliefs of many prominent members of the founding generation of the United States of America: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and James Wilson. He also discusses influential theologians and clergymen. Theological questions were important to eighteenth century intellectuals and were thought to be intertwined with moral and political issues. Dr. Frazer’s thesis is that the most prominent theological position of the founding generation was what he calls…

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An Entertaining Ironical Tale: “The Third Man.”

June 24, 2012
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An Entertaining Ironical Tale: “The Third Man.”

The Third Man (1949)is a very interesting collaboration of director Carol Reed, screenwriter Graham Greene, and actor Orson Welles. Greene did not want to write a screenplay directly but rather first wrote a novella from which he then wrote the screenplay. With the zither music of Anton Karas as background, the film tells of Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), an American writer of pulp westerns, who comes to post-Second World War Vienna to work for his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) whom he has not seen…

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“Sound of My Voice”: A Skillful Use of Uncertainty

May 6, 2012
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“Sound of My Voice”: A Skillful Use of Uncertainty

“I don’t know.” These are the final words of Sound of My Voice and might be taken to characterize the film as a whole. Peter Aiken (Christopher Denham) and Lorna Michaelson (Nicole Vicius) are lovers who join a cult in order to secretly make a documentary film about it. For Aiken, this is a kind of mission since his late mother joined a different cult with disastrous consequences. The leader of the cult, Maggie (Brit Marling, who also co-wrote the screenplay with director Zal Batmanglij),…

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Perhaps the First Film Noir: ‘Stranger on the Third Floor’

April 22, 2012
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Perhaps the First Film Noir: ‘Stranger on the Third Floor’

Recently I had the good fortune to attend a screening of Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), arguably the first film noir ever made. Film noir is hard-boiled crime film that incorporates, from German Expressionist film, stylistic elements that communicate the moral corruption of the world as depicted by film noir, and also the psychological turmoil of the characters.Film noir had its heyday in the decade and a half- or so following the Allied victory in World War II, and it is certainly a bit…

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A Tale of Destruction and Depravity: George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire.”

February 27, 2012
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A Tale of Destruction and Depravity: George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire.”

“From poetry the reader justly expects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of his comprehension and elevation of his fancy…” –Samuel Johnson. Lives of the English Poets: Waller. I first heard of the fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin last September, and have now read all five extant volumes: A Game of Thrones (1996), A Clash of Kings (1999), A Storm of Swords (2000) , A Feast for Crows (2005), and A Dance with Dragons (2011).…

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A Dramatic Documentary: ‘The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby’

January 17, 2012
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A Dramatic Documentary: ‘The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby’

A look at the excellent documentary about former CIA director William Colby. The film, by the subject’s son Carl, uses interviews, archival film footage, archival sound recordings, and a restrained but effective narration. And the title is accurate: this seems truly a search without a prior agenda.In addition to being an intriguing character study, the film explores the relationship between a spy agency and the particular democratic culture of the United States and between it and the nature of the national self-image. The film also…

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Flummery of a Fine Sort: The Nero Wolfe Tales of Rex Stout

December 8, 2011
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Flummery of a Fine Sort: The Nero Wolfe Tales of Rex Stout

The Nero Wolfe detective story series of Rex Stout (1886-1975) is, deservedly, one of the most famous American contributions to the genre. Wolfe is a classic genius detective, modelled in part, perhaps, upon Mycroft Holmes, the brilliant, corpulent elder brother of Sherlock. He is a man of strong views and has decided ideas of the sort of life he wants to live. While often an insightful observer of human beings and not exactly a misanthrope, he, unlike Agatha Christie’s Jane Marple, for example, has little…

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