Customer Reviews

Where Does It Happen: John Cassavetes And Cinema At The Breaking Point

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Many regard John Cassavetes as something of a wild home movie-maker, shooting improvisational and self-indulgent slices of autobiography in his own house, enlisting friends and family as collaborators, paying little regard to aesthetic or formal concerns. It is this idea that George Kouvaros sets out to challenge in his splendid new book. Courageously determined not to take Cassavetes at his own word, Kouvaros very title, WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN?, seems deliberately intended as a provocation, attached as it is to this study of a director who privileged the 'who' over the 'where'. But the word 'where' in Kouvaros' title refers equally to that place where his book 'happens', namely the arena of film theory. It is here that Kouvaros excels, since he has clearly read everything there is to read about Cassavetes, and puts his research to good use. WHERE DOES IT HAPPEN? is, then, as much a history of critical trends as a study of one man's oeuvre, and Kouvaros' book provides a fine overview of approaches to the director. Which is not to say that Kouvaros' book adds nothing new to the debate. On the contrary, chapters dedicated to THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE and LOVE STREAMS provide a series of sustained insights which made me eager to watch these masterpieces again.

The shocking intolerance and hysteria of "idiephile"'s review demands a response. Comparing the writing of Ray Carney to ice cream and the writing of Kouvaros to ground glass is cheap-shot sloganeering and advertising, not criticism of any kind. In fact, the prose of Kouvaros is lucid and pleasurable, and what he has to say about Cassavetes is thoughtful and unpredictable. What a strident anti-intellectual like Cassavetes might have thought about any book written about him, especially an academic one, is irrelevant.

An excellent essay about Cassavetes, perfectly clear, well informed and innovative. Among many strong proposals, it shows in a very rigorous and fascinating way how and why films are welcomed in a temporal context, what aspects of them are seen or not seen... How deeply films are historical subjects. A sensitive and exciting book.