B Is for Bad Cinema

Description

B Is for Bad Cinema continues and extends, but does not limit itself to, the trends in film scholarship that have made cult and exploitation films and other "low" genres increasingly acceptable objects for critical analysis. Springing from discussions of taste and value in film, these original essays mark out the broad contours of "bad"—that is, aesthetically, morally, or commercially disreputable—cinema. While some of the essays share a kinship with recent discussions of B movies and cult films, they do not describe a single aesthetic category or represent a single methodology or critical agenda, but variously approach bad cinema in terms of aesthetics, politics, and cultural value. The volume covers a range of issues, from the aesthetic and industrial mechanics of low-budget production through the terrain of audience responses and cinematic affect, and on to the broader moral and ethical implications of the material. As a result, B Is for Bad Cinema takes an interest in a variety of film examples—overblown Hollywood blockbusters, faux pornographic works, and European art house films—to consider those that lurk on the boundaries of acceptability.
Illustrations
Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: B Is for Bad Cinema
Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis

Part I. Aesthetics

2. Explosive Apathy
Jeffery Sconce

3. B-Grade Subtitles
Tessa Dwyer

4. Being in Two Places at the Same Time: The Forgotten Geography of Rear-Projection
Adrian Danks

5. Redeeming Cruising: Tendentiously Offensive, Coherently Incoherent, Strangely Pleasurable
R. Barton Palmer

6. The Villain We Love: Notes on the Dramaturgy of Screen Evil
Murray Pomerance

7. From Bad to Good and Back to Bad Again? Cult Cinema and Its Unstable Trajectory
Jamie Sexton

Part II. Authorship

8. Coffee in Paradise: The Horn Blows at Midnight
Tom Conley

9. The Risible: On Jean-Claude Brisseau
Adrian Martin

10. The Evil Dead DVD Commentaries: Amateurishness and Bad Film Discourse
Kate Egan

11. Liking The Magus
I. Q. Hunter

12. BADaptation: Is Candy Faithful?
Constantine Verevis

Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Película fotográfica
• Popular culture
• Visual culture
• History of film
• Film

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 19 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438449975
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

B IS FOR
BAD CINEMA
Also in the series
William Rothman, editor, Cavell on Film
J. David Slocum, editor, Rebel Without a Cause
Joe McElhaney, The Death of Classical Cinema
Kirsten Moana Thompson, Apocalyptic Dread
Frances Gateward, editor, Seoul Searching
Michael Atkinson, editor, Exile Cinema
Paul S. Moore, Now Playing
Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Ecology and Popular Film
William Rothman, editor, Three Documentary Filmmakers
Sean Griffin, editor, Hetero
Jean-Michel Frodon, editor, Cinema and the Shoah
Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, editors, Second Takes
Matthew Solomon, editor, Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
R. Barton Palmer and David Boyd, editors, Hitchcock at the Source
William Rothman, Hitchcock, Second Edition
Joanna Hearne, Native Recognition
Marc Raymond, Hollywood’s New Yorker
Steven Rybin and Will Scheibel, editors, Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground
B IS FOR
BAD CINEMA
Aesthetics, Politics, and Cultural Value
Edited by
Claire Perkins
and
Constantine Verevis
Cover art: film still, Denis Lavant in Holy Motors (2012). Courtesy Canal+/The Kobal Collection
Published by S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS , A LBANY , NY www.sunypress.edu
Production, Laurie Searl Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
B is for bad cinema : aesthetics, politics, and cultural value / edited by Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis.
pages cm — (SUNY series, horizons of cinema)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4995-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures—Aesthetics. I. Perkins, Claire (Claire Elizabeth) editor of compilation. II. Verevis, Constantine editor of compilation.
PN1995.B15 2014
791.43 01—dc23
2013012454
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Dad
—CP
For Anna, Chrissie, and George
—CV
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction: B Is for Bad Cinema
Claire Perkins and Constantine Verevis
P ART I
AESTHETICS
2. Explosive Apathy
Jeffrey Sconce
3. B-Grade Subtitles
Tessa Dwyer
4. Being in Two Places at the Same Time: The Forgotten Geography of Rear-Projection
Adrian Danks
5. Redeeming Cruising : Tendentiously Offensive, Coherently Incoherent, Strangely Pleasurable
R. Barton Palmer
6. The Villain We Love: Notes on the Dramaturgy of Screen Evil
Murray Pomerance
7. From Bad to Good and Back to Bad Again? Cult Cinema and Its Unstable Trajectory
Jamie Sexton
P ART II
AUTHORSHIP
8. Coffee in Paradise: The Horn Blows at Midnight
Tom Conley
9. The Risible: On Jean-Claude Brisseau
Adrian Martin
10. The Evil Dead DVD Commentaries: Amateurishness and Bad Film Discourse
Kate Egan
11. Liking The Magus
I. Q. Hunter
12. BADaptation: Is Candy Faithful?
Constantine Verevis
Contributors
Index
Illustrations Figure 1.1 Monsieur Merde (Denis Levant) and fashion model (Eva Mendes) in Holy Motors (2012). Courtesy Canal+ / The Kobal Collection. Figure 1.2 Jack Smith’s muse, Maria Montez, in Cobra Woman (1944). Courtesy Universal / The Kobal Collection / Ray Jones. Figure 1.3 Joan Fontaine on the movie poster for Born to Be Bad (1950). Courtesy RKO / The Kobal Collection. Figure 2.1 George Clooney walks away from an explosion in Syriana (2005) Courtesy Warner Bros. / The Kobal Collection. Figure 2.2 Megan Fox and Shia LaBeouf make their escape in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). Courtesy Paramount / The Kobal Collection. Figure 3.1 Bad subtitles for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002). Source http://www.angelfire.com/rings/ttt-subtitles/000-020/index.html . Figure 4.1 Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in rear-projection shot from To Catch a Thief (1954) Courtesy Paramount / The Kobal Collection. Figure 5.1 Undercover cop Steve Burns (Al Pacino) in Cruising (1980). Courtesy Lorimar / The Kobal Collection. Figure 6.1 Anthony Hopkins as the villain Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Courtesy Orion / The Kobal Collection. Figure 7.1 Cult favorites Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) in Casablanca (1942). Courtesy Warner Bros. / The Kobal Collection / Jack Woods. Figure 8.1 Elizabeth (Alexis Smith), the orchestra’s harpist in The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945). Courtesy Warner Bros. / The Kobal Collection. Figure 9.1 François Négret and Vanessa Paradis in Noce Blanche (1989). Courtesy Films du Losange / The Kobal Collection. Figure 10.1 Amateur horrors in The Evil Dead (1982). Courtesy Renaissance Pictures / The Kobal Collection. Figure 11.1 Lily (Candice Bergen) in The Magus (1968). Courtesy 20th Century Fox / The Kobal Collection. Figure 12.1 Ewa Aulin is a child of the universe in Candy (1968). Courtesy Selmur/Dear/Corona / The Kobal Collection.
Acknowledgments
The editors would like to thank the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies and the Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne, for the generous support provided for hosting “B for Bad Cinema,” a conference co-convened by Alexia Kannas, Claire Perkins, Julia Vassilieva, and Constantine Verevis (Monash University, April 2009), from which this book project was developed. Thanks also to the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies for furnishing the book with images. The editors would also like to thank R. Barton Palmer and Murray Pomerance, not only for their direct contributions to the volume, but for their advice at various stages of its development. At SUNY Press, James Peltz and Murray Pomerance have acted as supportive and encouraging editors from the start, and are thanked for their feedback and sharp editorial vision at various stages of the project. Finally, a special word of thanks to our contributors: it has been a genuine pleasure to work with each one of you.
1
Introduction
B Is for Bad Cinema
C LAIRE P ERKINS AND C ONSTANTINE V EREVIS
A batsqueak of genius, dishevelment and derangement.
—Peter Bradshaw (“Cannes 2012: Holy Motors ”)
Taken from the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw’s review comment for Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012) has become the most famous description of a film that was anticipated, received, and reviewed in a state of near-constant hyperbole. Rarely mentioned outside of the superlatives that guaranteed it the leading spot in Film Comment ’s “Top Films of 2012” poll, descriptions of Holy Motors include, “the most astonishing film at Cannes” (Powers, Vogue ) and “one of the most electrifying films you will ever see” (Ebiri, New York Magazine ). At the same time, reviews of Holy Motors , Carax’s long-awaited fifth feature and first film since the critical and commercial failure of Pola X (1999), have also emphasized the delirium of Carax’s vision, describing the film as: “[an] ecstatic, idiotic, fizzy, frightening provocation” (Lodge, Time Out ); “an exhilarating lunatic odyssey” (Collins, The Telegraph ); “[a] baffling, bonkers and utterly brilliant [film]” (Mottram, Total Film ); a “mad hatter’s monsterpiece” (Hillis, The Village Voice ), and “[a] balls-to-the-wall crazy, beautiful and unbelievably strange [work]” (Kohn, Indiewire ).
For those who see Carax’s film as a meditation on life, death, and artifice—and a profound reflection on the history and future of cinema itself —Holy Motors is a “visionary, game-changing masterpiece” (Romney, Screen Daily ). More urgently, though, the superlative qualities of Holy Motors are perceived to lie in an energy that is framed as craziness ; in what Bradshaw details as a “ferociously eccentric” drive to really use the fluidity of cinema in a way that “makes most other films look very buttoned-up” (“Cannes 2012: Holy Motor s”). “Craziness” is a term that here stands for freedom, and in turn stands for goodness. At the same time, it readily—if not straightforwardly—opens onto badness .
In the tradition of polarizing “event” films— The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)—the enthusiastic reactions to Holy Motors are naturally offset by those who see it more coolly. Many critics prefaced their own approval by noting that some audiences would find the film irritating, pretentious, and overdone. Writing in Sight and Sound , Ginette Vincendeau makes note of the film’s “invention and energy,” but also writes that the film’s structure—a series of performative episodes around the character of Oscar (Denis Lavant)—and its investment in “images and feelings over storytelling” results in “uneven,” indulgent filmmaking (89). An Indiewire blogger finds the film “sloppy