This is an ongoing survey of narrative cinema from the beginning of the sound era (~1929) to the present. Consider it a book, in the process of being written, that will never be finished. As life, art, and experience change my perception, so will its contents change. It’s a living text.
That the section “The Filmmakers” is organized by director– and that this decision is more than merely organizational– should not imply that I have even a qualified allegiance to “auteur theory.” In truth, I am simply most interested in the ways directors work, and why they work. An organizing framework based around screenwriters or cinematographers, as examples, could be very interesting, but there is only so much time in the day. If there is a kind of crude authorship to directing, I consider it most interesting not only in the context of the works themselves, but also of history as a progressive fact.
Each profile in “The Filmmakers” begins with a filmographical summary, followed by more complete reviews of each individual work. These are not professional film reviews. Calling them “capsules” would probably be understating it. Consider them “supercapsules”. That they so greatly vary in length and approach might be best explained by a quip (and its implied inverse) of the late poet John Ashbery: “The worse your art is, the easier it is to talk about.” Some of them stretch the notion of even “supercapsule” so far it beggars the point. I try to keep them around 500 words as a practicality. I’m reluctant to change that format.
The section “The Films” is my attempt toward a Canon.
films and filmmakers 