--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Fred Camper <f@f...> wrote:
>But for me it ultimately lacked the architectural kind of
> structure that makes a film more than a bundle of carefully
orchestrated
> affections. I didn't get a real visual form; the temporal form seemed
> too tied to the film's specifics; I didn't think it had a real
"vision."
> Of course it had real vision compared to almost every film released
that
> year; I'm comparing it to Ford and Bresson. You can call this a bias of
> mine if you like, and perhaps it is. Or perhaps too many movie fans,
> including the auteurist ones, are too attached to movies as vehicles
for
> involving us in the characters and the story and manipulating our
> emotions. I take the modernist view here, that film is projected light
> on the screen and that it should work on *that* level too.

Fred, I still want to reply at length, but one thing that Zach brought
up in his first long post, and that I don't think has been addressed
yet, is that if great art must necessarily transport one outside of
oneself, is submitting great cinema art to one test (one that accounts
for varying aesthetics but under which great films neverthess must
fall, as defined by the above rubric of "real vision") in fact the
subjugation of the definition of great cinema art to one's own
consciousness? I guess my idea of a great work of art is that it is
great regardless of who is perceiving it (thus a future civilization
can unlock its extinct form) but unless I'm mistaken, the full measure
of an art work's greatness is the perception it allows a
viewer-participant to have through it greatness, in your view? Maybe
this is the Modernist view (derived from Wordsworth et al?) that I
partially disagree with.

Patrick