--- jaketwilson <upworld1@...> wrote:

>
> I'm not very familiar with Chayevksky's work, but I
> saw THE GODDESS a
> couple of months ago and it did indeed seem like "a
> film by" its
> screenwriter -- quite good on its own terms but
> basically treating
> the film medium as a delivery system for the script.
> It may be that
> I'm unfair to Chayevsky or to the film's director,
> John Cromwell, as
> I don't know much about either of them -- I believe
> that G. Cabrera
> Infante, who had pretty hip tastes in the '50s,
> admired Chayevsky's
> work.
>
Chayevsky is the auteur of all the films written by
him with the exception of "Altered States." Cromwell
and Lumet are both very fine directors (and Cromwell
in his later years acted in "Three Women" and "A
Wedding" to great effect) but -- I don't know how else
to put it -- SOMETIMES WORDS TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER
IMAGES.

We've all just got to learn to live with that and deal
with it as critics accordingly.

> I suspect that
> "realising" a script
> in cinematic terms is diametrically opposed to
> trying to preserve the
> integrity of that script as a (verbal) artwork in
> its own right,
> which I presume is what Chayevsky wanted.
>

Not at all. The verbal is not diametrically opposed to
the visual.


As for G. Cabrera Infante ( a great novelist AND a
greatfilm critic) he is without question the "autuer"
of "Vanishing Point" -- a film directed by Richard C.
Sarafian but written by "G. Cain" ie. G. Cabrera
Infante.

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