Customer Reviews

The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies (Cambridge Film Classics)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book changed my life. It wasn't a pretty experience, either. I argued with it. I dismissed it. I fought it tooth and nail. But in the end, reading this book and seeing the films it discusses represented the single most important educational, emotional, and artistic experience I've ever had. I tell you, the thing is a mental a-bomb. I broke down. It literally caused me a crisis of the faith regarding everything that I though I knew or held dear about filmmaking, and maybe even the world. I lost friends. Not only does this book chronicle in deep, loving detail the films, working methods, and world-view of one of the most important (yet underappreciated) filmmakers in American cinematic history, it is a manifesto, articulating and illustrating an entirely original and brain re-wiring theory of flimmaking, present in the films of John Cassavetes; a theory at odds with 99% of the films EVER MADE. Everything you though you knew is suspect in the glaring light of Ray Carney's prose. Forget Citizen Kane. Forget Cassablanca. Forget Vertigo. They're like fingerpaintings next to a Piccaso. Neither lightweight nor academically verbose for its own sake, Carney's tone is as friendly as if he were chatting with you over a beer, yet what he says is nothing short of revolutionary. It was simple: I was blown away. Finding precedent for Cassavetes' work in the long-standing American Romantic tradition of Walt Whitman, Emerson, William James, John Dewey and others, Carney's book gives film its proper due as the greatest 20th century artform. An artform, it suggests, still in its infancy. What Cassavetes' films did to me was simple and profound -- they showed me a new way to expereince the world. A new attitude. A new awareness. Carney did the same thing, articulating those ways, and celebrating them with the reader. I read a lot of film books, but this is the beat-up, dog-eared one I go back to time and time again. No plain-jane film text is as insightful or inspirational. Read it and you will never be the same again. I wasn't.

I'd like to corroborate Matthew Langdon's review (above or below this one). I had the advantage of having Ray Carney as a professor at Boston University. By some stroke of genius (possibly by administrative accident), all entering film students were required to take a survey course from him on film art before taking anything else. Carney started with warhorses like Hitchcock's "Psycho" and made the roomful of us (vocally) do exercises during the screening that exposed the highly polished but rather ridiculously superficial artifice of the "classic film". We all thought he was crazy. Here was this man -- that one friend described as a combination of Andy Warhol and Orville Reddenbacher -- unsubtly undermining a number of the most globally revered films. He then paraded a host of highly experimental films (many from the library of Congress that practically noone outside of a Carney class has ever or will ever see) before us that were appallingly difficult and often downright confrontational. It's pretty safe to say that practically none of us really "got it" until long after that semester, possibly years. At some point I did. Carney loves film just like we all do, however he had recognized something that we (and, most likely, you, too) had not, that film can be so much more than anything we had imagined (or yet been exposed to). That's largely what he wanted to show us in this class. Film is still a nascent art, highly immature in scope and depth. So far, Cassavetes -- one of the EASIER filmmakers Carney introduced us to -- is one of the handful of film artists that has done something deeply new with the form since its inception. If you develop an interest in Cassavetes, you will find this book essential, and you will return to it after every screening.

Carney offers an utterly convincing critical analysis of the great artist's work. The author compares Cassavetes to Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Dewey in consciousness-shifting ways useful to anyone interested in media, culture, philosophy, and art.

Now, Carney, the leading Cassavetes expert, MUST (I hope) offer the definitive biography of this great artist: clearly one of the most original, courageous, and mature American filmmakers.

See Cassavetes's work on video ("A Woman Under the Influence" and "Love Streams" are absolutely wonderful; shockingly good), and then read this book. I heartily endorse it and sincerely hope for that definitive biography.

Viva Cassavetes (and Carney)!

I originally got this book and read the whole thing, before i had seen any of cassavetes movies. This is not a recommended route. I have now seen all of his films, except for husbands, and i can't tell you how amazing i think the importance of this book is. I wonder what the ratio is between the people who disagree and agree with it's context, in respect to it's attitude towards american cinema. the book really does rewire your brain. The people who i am friends with, who are also interested in film are dumb founded when ever i casually undermine 2001 or citizen kane in a conversation. More importantly though, this book, like Cassavetes films, extends into life and actually opens you up to knew spiritual territory
you didn't think about. One last point: Does any one notice how suprisingly objective Carney is when he mentions his most hated film makers like Spielberg ? Get this book. It may feel too intellectual, but it really isn't. If you think that then you are reading it too quickly and not thinking about what it's actually saying.

Almost everything Carney says, you tend to utterly hate him for at first. His most recent article seemed so pessimistic that I spent an hour in my apartment, sitting in front of the TV depressed by it all.

Everything Carney writes tends to be tough at first, because, like Cassavetes, he mentions truths about life that very few people wish to confront. There is no evasion of reality in this book. People can be horrible to each other. We all die in the end. That's life.

Carney doesn't analyse Cassavetes' work in relation to other movies and cultural trends (as most film professors tend to do), but prefers to focus entirely on the performances of the characters on screen. Like Cassavetes, he never really explains the characters' motivations, but instead focuses on how they react to their environments. Everything he writes is about life -- you'll find nothing about tendentious compositions, popular culture, or auteur theory. The only important thing here is Carney's love for the characters and their creator.

One of the greatest books ever written on American film.

I'm not sure what book the reviewer below this read, but I don't know how many times I'd have to read about films that completely re-imagine the way I (and our popular culture) see the world and my own experience before I'd feel "bored" or anything less than inspired and envigorated. In fact, I read this book very often - not just to gain information, like a dictionary or an encyclopedia, giving me facts and figure data I didn't have before, but as mental calethenics, or something like spiritual openess training. This is a much more meaningful and important activity than thematic comparison and contrsating, no matter how technically interesting that is. As the concepts and points of view on the world process thru my brain as I read them off the page, I gain new abilities to understand and see - and this takes work, and often repetition. So I reccomend anyone who reads this book and hopes to gain insight, not just into Cassavetes and his films, but into their own personal attitudes, to keep themselves OPEN, as Cassavetes explicitly did in every frame of film he exposed, and to always give the artist (or author) the benefit of the doubt before passing judgement based on arbitrary ulterior motives (which, naturally, we all have). This isn't easy (especially to the greatly film cultured), but I dare say you'll enjoy this book, and your life, a lot more.

I doubt that I can say anything about this book that hasn't been said before but this is, by every measure, an outstanding examination of Cassavetes amazing body of work.
I go back to this book every six months or so and have for a number of years. It is a very thorough, reverent, and insightful reference book but it goes well beyond that. Though very full of information, it is personal enough that it has allowed (and encouraged) me to go and evaluate the films myself without the feeling that there is a "law" or an agenda already set with these films.
The greatest beauty of Cassavetes' films is that each one belongs to the individual; meaning that every person who chooses to lend his or her heart to the characters, stories, and subject matter(s) can get something out of it that belongs solely to that person. The films can excite, enrage, entertain, and rattle you in ways that films seldom do.

Cassavetes films make you more than an audience member as they make you more aware than ever that you just might still be human.

Great book and highly reccomended.

Carney's book is scientific writing at its best. The book, despite the level of abstraction, is totally captivating. A lot of connections to sociological theories (pragmatism) are used to penetrate the characters and C:s way of filming (as well as interesting observations about Hitchcock and Orson Welles). Also, this is a book about being human as much as it is about the films of Cassavetes. The book is well structured with one film and analysis per chapter. I'm not a film student but I learned a lot from reading this. Highly recommended!