Phillip Lopate has been obsessed with movies from the start. As an undergraduate at Columbia, he organized the school's first film society. Later, he even tried his own hand at filmmaking. But it was not until his ascent as a major essayist that Lopate found his truest and most lasting contribution to the medium. And, over the past twenty-five years, tackling subjects ranging from Visconti to Jerry Lewis, from the first New York Film Festival to the thirty-second, Phillip Lopate has made film his most cherished subject. Here, in one place, are the very best of these essays, a joy for anyone who loves movies.
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Phillip Lopate's reputation in American letters resides primarily in his championing of the personal essay, both as an editor (The Art of the Personal Essay, The Anchor Essay Annual) and as a writer (Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body). So it might seem odd, at first, to imagine him as a film critic--but as his thoughtful considerations of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris demonstrate, the movies are as likely a subject for a skilled essayist's reflection as any other. Like his favorite critics, "I have sought out," Lopate writes, "precisely those films that would take me to a place where the uncanny, the sublime, the tragic, the ecstatic, the beautifully resigned, all converge."
These are not, then, so much reviews--although Lopate happily discusses the strengths and weaknesses of his chosen films--as they are meditations. In his best pieces, such as his essays on Godard's Contempt (the film from which this collection derives its title) and Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, Lopate performs extended readings that tease out the richness of the films' texts with delicate intricacy. But this artful approach can only be carried so far--not even Lopate can quite redeem Jerry Lewis's Three on a Couch, which the most ardent Lewis fans acknowledge as a lesser work, no matter how earnestly he probes it for Freudian subtext. Folks who simply want to enjoy the movies may find the high culture assumptions of Totally, Tenderly, Tragically, including Lopate's overwhelming emphasis on foreign directors, a bit much, but if even one reader is inspired to seek out a film by Luchino Visconti, Kenji Mizoguchi, or Yazujiro Ozu on the basis of the descriptions herein, Lopate's efforts at conveying the artistic value of film will have been a success. --Ron Hogan
From Publishers Weekly
Best known as a personal essayist par excellence, Lopate (Portrait of My Body) is an inveterate film buff who, by his count, has spent more than 50,000 hours watching movies?and, it would seem, many more writing about them. This mixed collection is a cross section of that writing, from a dead-earnest review of the first New York Film Festival in 1963, written for the Columbia Daily Spectator when Lopate was an undergraduate, to a savvy appraisal of the 32nd, which marked the New York debut of such films as Pulp Fiction and Hoop Dreams. So occasional are these essays? which range from film reviews to polemical essays, reflections on the medium to interviews with directors?that, like films, there are hits and misses. Among the highlights are Lopate's account of his days as an impoverished student at Columbia, locus of his cinematic coming of age, where a monastic fixation with the flickering screen eventually led to a suicide attempt; a bracing look at the dumbing down of contemporary American cinema that champions "rural idiocy" and asks audiences to "groove on the mysterious, ineffable, surreal charm of the premental"; and searching appraisals of Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris. Lopate's early musings on Jerry Lewis and Antonioni might have been left on the cutting-room floor. Though Lopate gravitates toward obscure work by famous directors and international pictures that never crack the American market, his curiosity about even the most mainstream Hollywood fare shines through the collection, even as he reserves particular scorn for phony sentiments, recycled plots and movies like Krzsztof Kieslowski's Red that he deems exercises des styles without intellectual substance. Lopate's writing, by contrast, has considerable style and substance.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reflections on life and on cinema, which for some of us amounts to the same thing
May 14, 2009
Format:Paperback
Some go to the movies for entertainment, as a temporary escape from the day to day. For some, and certainly Phillip Lopate is among them, filmgoing is as much a part of everyday life as eating and breathing. Visiting a friend, going to work, writing, conversing, watching movies, reading books, each give texture to a life and call for thoughtful consideration. In that case "criticism" - reflecting on films, their revelations and disappointments - is not a merely "academic" discipline. It is as vital to the quality of life as, say, planning and reflection.
Lopate's excellent collection of essays on film and on a life in which filmgoing is central serves as an exemplar for criticism in this vital sense: criticism as engaged self-reflection as much as it is aesthetic contemplation. I loved reading this book, maybe because it validates my own obsessions, but mostly because it shows how to raise obsession with quality filmmaking to the level of art. Particularly valuable to me were his reflections on the "essay film" - because there is very little written on that subject and I find Lopate's thoughts to be the most insightful I've encountered. Highly recommended for those who can't do without good cinema and who value good writing.
Lopate's excellent collection of essays on film and on a life in which filmgoing is central serves as an exemplar for criticism in this vital sense: criticism as engaged self-reflection as much as it is aesthetic contemplation. I loved reading this book, maybe because it validates my own obsessions, but mostly because it shows how to raise obsession with quality filmmaking to the level of art. Particularly valuable to me were his reflections on the "essay film" - because there is very little written on that subject and I find Lopate's thoughts to be the most insightful I've encountered. Highly recommended for those who can't do without good cinema and who value good writing.
9 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Lopate's new book is a showcase for his brilliance, his ability to graze not only far but wide. But I can't help thinking that here, more than in any other of his books (all of which I have read) the brilliance is not as much in the insight but in the perfect choice of every word, the absolutely right adjective and adverb, which create a passionate sensual delight.While Lopate has a remarkable linguistic intelligence his work becomes even more impressive when he writes about movies than when he writes about anything else.I could have done without the Lewis commentary which wasn't necessary and seemed half-hearted, and I could have done without the suicide attempt because it seemed it could have led him to another book, one which I would very much want to read, but the recounting of his days in college were fabulous.
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