Category Archive for: ‘Issue 27 – First Release’

“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” – from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) In a prescient 1993 essay, Greg Solman warily explores the growing trend of “director’s cuts” on home video. “No conviction,” he writes, “is more thoroughly ingrained in the film-critical consciousness than the notion that directors would sacrifice anything to preserve art, while studio decision-makers appreciate …

Palimpsests of time and space: palpable space Sometimes the very best essays are the ones that reveal their flaws with the greatest clarity. Cynthia Contreras’ analysis of Kobayashi Masaki’s film, Harakiri (Japan, 1962), titled “Kobayashi’s Widescreen Aesthetic”, represents a limit case in the application of some key methods of art history and the study of visual culture to the analysis of film.[1] …

Abstract In the critical discourse surrounding filmic adaptations of literary works, the concept of “fidelity” frequently rears its ugly head – the idea that a film’s literary source material is a sacrosanct text, and that any changes to plot, character or theme are somehow violations of a prior artistic vision. In 2000, English director Terence Davies was subjected to numerous …

After rating little more than a curt mention in Australian cinema histories for several decades, Giorgio Mangiamele’s status as a pioneer of the Australian cinema has more recently come to receive greater recognition in a growing number of articles, both in print and online, as well as in documentaries like Nigel Buesst’s Carlton + Godard = Cinema (Australia 2003).[1] Not surprisingly, perhaps, …

Every piece of film that you put in a picture should have a purpose. You cannot put it together indiscriminately. It’s like notes of music. They must make their point. I put first and foremost cinematic style before content…I don’t care what a film is about…Content is quite secondary to me. (Alfred Hitchcock) Introduction In Hitchcock’s films the clothing of …