Customer Reviews

Postcards from the Cinema

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

 

 

"Postcards from the Cinema" begins with a long prose piece entitled "The Tracking Shot in Kapo." This was intended to be the opening chapter of a book that Daney died before completing. Imagining what that book might have been like is awe-inspiring. "The Tracking Shot" is both a confession of a life lived "cinematically" and a defense of mise-en-scene oriented criticism; it is a tribute to an ethics of movie-watching Daney must have believed was dying along with him. And it is shattering, a total vindication of Daney's guru-like status among cinephiles. I will see films differently having read it. The rest of "Postcards" consists of interviews conducted by Serge Toubiana, his erst-while co-editor at Cahiers du cinema. Daney is remarkably candid and interesting in this format as well (only one of the interviews was reviewed by Daney himself; the others, I assume, are transcriptions). While there are many moments when Daney's speech, like Godard's, becomes rather impressionistic, there is nothing obscurantist about him. He is simply trying to talk about things that are nearly impossible to talk about, and he vigilantly prunes his discourse of banalities (I especially appreciated his nuanced account of Cahiers' militant period). Many have claimed that "Postcards" was an odd choice to be the first Daney translated into English. This may be true. It IS a bit bizarre to encounter Daney at the end of his life, talking about a more or less complete body of work, with which most American readers will have little or no experience. And yet, "The Tracking Shot" alone justifies this publication and makes "Postcards" the film book of the year. (N.B. I do think the publisher is asking too much - the book itself is a rather shoddy production, rather like the Lacan seminars, and does not even include an index...nevertheless you will not regret owning it, simply because its contents are so dazzling)

Serge Daney is the best thinker on cinema i've ever read. He really deserves a large audience. Moreiover, there is no abstract obscurantisms is his vivid prose as it can be the case with some critics. He goes staight to the point with different perspectives with quick and deep insights and no laborious theoretical system. However, his knowledge and his capacity for abstration is impressive. There are also some writting between him and the philosopher gilles deleuze that i recommend.