Author Archive for: ‘Bill Routt’
Ford At Fox Part Two (c)
Note: here is the fourth instalment of what has already turned out to be a long review. It is late and longer than ever. In this section the last of the second group of films which I think sort of “belong together” are discussed. That second group begins with Born Reckless (1930) and ends with The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936). There are eight …
Read MoreIn Confidence: Sam Rohdie
Sam Rohdie – Photograph by Margaret Lam [This act of mourning has as its origin a letter of reference, itself updated and revised over 13 years. Because the letter was always truly “in confidence”, Sam never read what it said, and I want to use it here partly because I am sorry now that he never did. On the other hand, …
Read MoreFord At Fox Part Two
Ford At Fox Part Two (a) A Brief(er) Introduction Born Reckless (1930) – Addendum: Cast and Character Issues Up The River (1930) What would you think of an architect who arrived at his building wondering where to put the staircase? You don’t ‘compose’ a film on the set, you put a predesigned composition on film. It is wrong to liken a director …
Read MoreLois Weber, or the exigency of writing
[1] Uploaded 1 March 2001 Table of contents 1. The exigency of writing 2. On writing and directing 3. Lois Weber, writer of cinema 4. Lois Weber, writing exigence 5. Lois Weber and the mirror of cinema 6. Appendix: Lois Weber’s surviving films 1. The exigency of writing The infinite conversation [2] Wait, what is the “exigency of writing” of which Blanchot …
Read MoreThe Film of Memory
Some explanation Historical memory is most often a matter of textual presence, and this paper constitutes an absence, which somehow seems fitting. As I remember it, the earliest version of “The Film of Memory” was given as a conference paper for the first Australian History and Film Conference in 1981. I have to write “as I remember it”, because the …
Read MoreTenth Memoire: Screening The Past Askew
The pun of our journal’s name should not be ignored in the context of remembering what we hoped for it ten years ago and what it may actually have accomplished. On the face of it, the name tells everyone what we are about: visual media and history. But surely everyone also knows that in screening some things are kept back, …
Read MoreTextual Criticism in the Study of Film
[1] Film Restoration and Textual Criticism In 1980 the London Film Festival screened a new print of Napoléon vu par Abel Gance (Abel Gance, 1927), a film originally shot during 1925-1926. The near five-hour version of the film projected that evening had been “restored”, and reconstructed, by Kevin Brownlow, who had been working on the project since 1969. In his research …
Read MoreLeonie Naughton: ‘touched by what she has left behind’
Screen Hub Friday 21 September, 2007 Screen Hub wishes to remember Leonie Naughton, who taught many members of the screen community, and made an important contribution to the intellectual environment for cinema in Australia. Bill Routt remembers her. Leonie Naughton died in Melbourne on Sunday, September 9. She was 52. Leonie was a member of the first “generation” of film academics …
Read MoreThe Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900-1910
The Spoor of the Woozle Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900-1910. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999. ISBN 0-520-21478-1 (pb) 301pp US$24.95 (Review copy supplied by University of California Press) Uploaded 1 March 2001 All of Richard Abel’s six books begin with epigraphs from Winnie-the-Pooh (not The House at Pooh Corner). A sizeable chunk of Pooh-Piglet dialogue about hunting …
Read MoreThe Ritual Model of Form
The following article is not exactly a Classic or Re-Run; it is a chapter from Bill Routt’s PhD thesis and was selected by Bill for inclusion here. Popular art, which is as often highly individualized as it is not, is certainly art in which “lived reality” plays an important role. Those whose ideas we have just been considering have used …
Read MoreFord At Fox Part Three (a)
Introduction When it is completed, Part Three will be the fifth instalment of a review of the lesser John Ford films contained in the gigantic Ford At Fox box set. It will cover most of the movies Ford directed at Twentieth-Century Fox from 1937 until he enlisted in the United States Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. This segment, Part …
Read MoreDe la figure en général et du corps en particulier: l’invention figurative au cinéma
William D. Routt Uploaded 1 March 2000 Nicole Brenez, De la figure en général et du corps en particulier: l’invention figurative au cinéma. Paris, Brussels: De Boeck Université. 1998. ISBN 2-8041-2999-3. 466pp. For Criticism: part one Readers of this journal should not need much of an introduction to Nicole Brenez, maître de conférences in Cinematographic Studies for the University of Paris I, …
Read MoreFord At Fox
Part 3c[1] Introduction to Part 3c [Young Mr Lincoln (1939)] [Drums Along The Mohawk (1939)] [The Grapes of Wrath (1940)] Tobacco Road (1941) – The question of mode – The novel – The play – The screenplay – Lindsay Anderson – Not resolved – Characters and their treatment – Two wrong directions – Addendum askew: The Primrose Path – Honi …
Read MoreFord At Fox Part Two (b)
Note: this is the third tranche of a multi-tranche review. It deals with some of the films made by John Ford at the Fox Studios in the first half of the 1930s. One context for these films is provided in the Brief(er) Introduction to Part Two (a), which deals with the first two of Ford’s sound features included in the Ford At …
Read MoreIntroduction: A New Source of History
This piece has an interesting cultural history. It was originally published in Le Figaro on 25 March 1898 and reprinted later that year as a twelve-page pamphlet, Une nouvelle source de l’histoire: création d’un dépôt de cinématographie historique . Then it appears to have been forgotten for sixty-five years – or, at least, I cannot find it mentioned in the books I have at …
Read MoreMisprision (note version)
[1] misprision, n., misdemeanor. — ME., fr. OF. mesprision, mesprison, ‘mistake, wrongdoing’, fr. mespris, pp. Of mesprendre (F. se méprendre), ‘to take amiss, do wrong’, fr. pejorative pref. mes– (see mis-) and prendre, ‘to take’, fr. L. prehendere, prendere. Cp. F. méprise, ‘mistake’, and see prehensile. Cp. Also prison. (Klein’s Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language) I think it is a truism that history and criticism always commit the misdemeanours of …
Read MoreFord at Fox 4
Ford At Fox 4.1 Introduction to Part 4 4.2 Documentaries (1941-43) 4.3 [My Darling Clementine (1946)] 4.4 When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950) 4.5 This Is Korea! (1951) 4.6 What Price Glory (1952) 4.7 Summations 4.1 Introduction to Part 4 1. Ford At Fox 17 May 2013. This is a good moment, even a good week, to look swiftly …
Read MorePieces
Cover Introduction When I first saw Jigsaw, a film released by United Artists in 1949, it reminded me strongly of Kiss Me Deadly, a film released by United Artists in 1955. My original idea for this paper was to trace the resemblances between the two, implying some kind of ancestral relation. However, when I looked at the two of them “back-to-back” as …
Read MoreBlack Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and their Fans
Jeffrey A. Brown, Black Superheroes, Milestone Comics, and their Fans. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. ISBN 1 57806 282 9 (pb) 232pp US$18.00 (Review copy supplied by University Press of Mississippi) Uploaded 1 December 2001 Why read this book? Jeffrey Brown’s book ought to interest anyone interested in contemporary popular culture. For the past fifteen years, comics have occupied …
Read MoreFeature Review: Ford At Fox
[Screening the Past asked Bill Routt to review this archival DVD set documenting most of the surviving films John Ford directed at (Twentieth-Century) Fox from 1920—1952. More of the review will appear in future issues.] Ford at Fox. Published by Twentieth-Century Fox, 2007. 21 disks. Includes coffee-table photo album, Ford at Fox, 168 pp. with essays by Joseph McBride (“Ford at Fox: …
Read MoreListening to the egg
[1] Production still from Dad And Dave Come To Town (Australia 1938). Dir. Ken Hall. Cast: Bert Bailey (Dad Rudd), Connie Martyn (Mum). [2] The joke here is a sound joke. Moreover it is a sound joke which gains its punch from the silence in which it is made. The reader/viewer of this still hears nothing, imagines a tiny shifting …
Read MoreFord At Fox Part 3b
Four Men and a Prayer (1938) Let’s get this straight first off: Four Men and a Prayer is not a religious picture. Far from it. Or, at least, given the angelic overtones of this last shot, it is no more a religious picture than Doctor Bull is. The print on the DVD is excellent. There are no extras. It shares …
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