Criterion has released Larisa Shepitko’s two best-known films, “Wings” (1966, above) and “The Ascent” (1977), on the company’s no-frills Eclipse label, and they remain stunning fragments from a career that never was — Shepitko died in a car accident at the age of 40. Seen again, they bear a closer resemblance to the work of her near contemporary Andrei Tarkovksy than I remembered: the first time around, for example, I missed Anatoli Solonitsyn, Tarkovsky’s favorite actor and the lead in “Andrei Rublov,” playing the diabolical German collaborator in “The Ascent.” More musings in the New York Times.
Manny Farber has died at the age of 91. J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum have fine appreciations. Carrie Rickey, who studied with Farber, has posted her appreciation here.
I’ve learned a lot from reading Manny Farber’s work.
RIP
Sad to hear about Farber’s passing, though I wish the obits I’ve read had more to say about his paintings, which I like quite a bit despite having seen them only on the web and in fuzzy newsleaf reproductions. I’d especially like to know more about the relation of his art to the paintings of his contemporaries, assuming there’s a substantial one.
About his film criticism my feelings are somewhat mixed. Great claims are made for him as a stylist, but while his prose is certainly distinctive–unmistakable, even–it’s also maddeningly obscure, and the pedant in me bridles at solecisms like “mitigate against”. Farber is frequently imprecise in his placement of modifiers, as when he writes “notes in a recurring musical score” when he means “recurring notes in a musical score”, and the tough guy cute of name jokes like “Angles Dickinson” and “Sleet Marvin” is tiresome. Still, like Clement Greenberg on painting, Farber was unsurpassed in his ability to excite you about the formal properties of visual art. The interview with him and Patricia Patterson at the end of “Negative Space” is phenomenal, particularly when the subject turns to THE FAR COUNTRY. And “The Power and the Gory” remains far and away the best thing ever written about TAXI DRIVER: it’s an article which exemplifies Farber’s refusal to deliver final verdicts. That’s a laudable attitude, really a belief that the experience of a film (or any work of art) is never finite, and it’s one we could use a lot more of nowadays.
A good piece on Farber’s painting: http://www.artcritical.com/gelber/EGFarber.htm
Photocopy of special issue containing reprints of articles by Farber from The Nation, New Republic and other periodicals.
http://www.mip.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cine_doc_detail.pl/cine_img/?16359?38802?0?43362?0?24059?0?19936?0?18396?1?20800?1?9520?1?34931?1?103?1?39124?1?48331?1?35605?1?26604?1?34944?1?48303?1?35658?1?15295?1?9446?1?32454?1?15067?1?6372?1?7800?1?35674?1?29167?1?9533?1?17750?1?5130?1?15827?1?18147?1?2563?1?44532?1?35645?1?8382?1?35717?1?4230?0?22824?1?42188?0?12336?1?23489?0?27707?0?40380?0?14124?0?16373?0?16360?0?16375?0?24820?0?16376?0?22209?0?16370?0?43428?0?16363?0?16368?0?16364?0?16367?0?16372?0?16374?0?16369?0?16380?0?16362?0?16361?0?16382?0?49076?0?16377?0?6660?1?16379?1?16383?0?14119?1?16378?0?10435?1?11608?1?12928?1?16359?1?16365?0?16366?0?16371?1?16381?0?25009?1?42187?1
From DK’s engaging words on the virtually unviewed work of Larisa Shepitko to a heads up on the little seen 102 minute UK version of Carol Reed’s “Outcast of the Islands,” this Friday, 08-22, at 9:00PM (EDT) on TCM.
For ensemble performance with a foot in inter-War Anglo-American theater, it’s up there with the Mercury-Theater Welles; and the mix of this with on-site East Indies locations and Conrad’s tale of social alienation and personal unravelling as “going native” is enthralling.
There! Shepitko has been introduced into this thread’s posts, so to speak.
I had the pleasure to meet mr farber in 2004, through Patrice Rollet, at France Culture. We talked about Elie Faure and Raymond Durgnat. Manny Farber stressed on his admiration towards Durgnat, a vastly ignored wrioter here in france. Only two of his texts have been translated in POSITIF. Like Elie Faure, and Durgnat, Farber’s vision was wide and I think that Dave’s blog is the best tribute to his vision.
Great news about Outcast of the Islands, Alex. Not sure if the version I saw is the one you mention. I rented it from Eddie Brandt’s video store in North Hollywood, but it was clearly not a commercial release. Probably someone recorded it from a film chain. At any rate, great film and a definite must-record.
Many thanks to Tellos for posting the For Now link. I was especially amazed to discover the “Inside Humour” article, with reviews of performances by Lenny Bruce, and Nichols and May!
@nicolas saada: there were also a few articles by Durgnat in “Midi-Minuit Fantastique”:
http://calindex.eu/auteur.php?op=listart&num=754
(Greaaaat site, by the way…)
I was just searching for your post on the Godard box set that came out earlier this year and noticed that your archives before April 2008 have disappeared. Is this a temporary hiccup or the online equivalent of the fire at Universal?
Nicolas, also, Ray Durgnat’s very final piece, on Jancso’s RED PSALM, was commissioned and published – albeit in a highly edited translation – in the French university journal THEOREME. You can read the original English (lacking the final page of the manuscript, which has been lost, but otherwise unexpurgated) in ROUGE.
Thanks also to Tellos and Samuel for these amazing links to hitherto unknown (by me) sites!! That is one long, surreal URL for the Phelps/Farber, but it’s worth it!!
I used to visit this site a lot years ago, then I lost the url, so thanks Tallos for posting it here. There’s plenty of articles there (including Farber’s pan of Nashville), there’s even some Dave’s articles for Chicago Reader.