Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia: Film Culture in Transition »

Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote for many periodicals (including the Village Voice, Sight and Sound, Film Quarterly, and Film Comment) before becoming principal film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until his retirement in 2008. He is the author of many books, most recently including Discovering Orson Welles and the major collection of essays Essential Cinema. He continues to write for both print and online publications and maintains a blog at www.jonathanrosenbaum.com.

The esteemed film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum has brought global cinema to American audiences for the last four decades. His incisive writings on individual filmmakers define film culture as a diverse and ever-evolving practice, unpredictable yet subject to analyses just as diversified as his own discriminating tastes. For Rosenbaum, there is no high or low cinema, only more interesting or less interesting films, and the pieces collected here, from an appreciation of Marilyn Monroe's intelligence to a classic discussion on and with Jean-Luc Godard, amply testify to his broad intellect and multifaceted talent.

Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia gathers together over fifty examples of Rosenbaum's criticism from the span of his writing career, each of which demonstrates his passion for the way we view movies, as well as how we write about them. Charting our changing concerns with the interconnected issues that surround video, DVDs, the Internet, and new media, the writings collected here also highlight Rosenbaum's polemics concerning the digital age. From the rediscovery and recirculation of classic films, to the social and aesthetic impact of technological changes, Rosenbaum doesn't disappoint in assembling a magisterial cast of little-known filmmakers as well as the familiar faces and iconic names that have helped to define our era.

As we move into this new decade of moviegoing-one in which Hollywood will continue to feel the Shockwaves of the digital age-Jonathan Rosenbaum remains a valuable guide. Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia is a consummate collection of his work, not simply for fans of this seminal critic, but for all those open to the wide variety of films he embraces and helps us to understand.

Times (UK)

“One of the finest film critics currently active.”—Times (UK)

Introduction ix

I Position Papers

Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia 3

In Defense of Spoilers 10

Potential Perils of the Director's Cut 12

Southern Movies, Actual and Fanciful: A Personal Survey 25

À la recherche de Luc Moullet 25

Propositions 31

Bushwhacked Cinema 44

What Dope Does to Movies 51

Fever Dreams in Bologna: II Cinema Ritrovato 58

From Playtime to The World: The Expansion and Depletion of Space within Global Economies 62

II Actors, Actors-Writers-Directors, Filmmakers

Kim Novak as Midwestern Independent 71

Marilyn Monroe's Brains 75

A Free Man: White Hunter, Black Heart 78

Bit Actors 82

Rediscovering Charlie Chaplin 86

Second Thoughts on Stroheim 97

Sweet and Sour: Lubitsch and Wilder in Old Hollywood 114

Ritwik Ghatak: Reinventing the Cinema 123

Introducing Pere Portabella 127

Portabella and Continuity 131

Two Neglected Filmmakers: Eduardo de Gregorio and Sara Driver 136

Vietnam in Fragments: William Klein in 1967-68: A Radical Reevaluation 141

Movie Heaven: Defending Your Life 146

The World as a Circus: Tati's Parade 152

The Sun Also Sets: The Films of Nagisa Oshima 160

III Films

Inside the Vault [on Spione] 169

Family Plot 177

"The Doddering Relics of a Lost Cause": John Ford's The Sun Shines Bright 181

Prisoners of War: Bitter Victory 192

Art of Darkenss: Wichita 199

Cinema of the Future: Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa 204

A Few Eruptions in the House of Lava 207

Unsatisfied Men: Beau travail 213

Viridiana on DVD 219

Doing the California Split 224

Mise en Scène as Miracle in Dreyer's Ordet 229

David Holzman's Diary/My Girlfriend's Wedding: Historical Artifacts of the Past and Present 240

Two Early Long-Take Climaxes: The Magnificent Ambersons and A Star Is Born 245

Wrinkles in Time: Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy 246

Martha: Fassbinder's Uneasy Testament 251

India Matri Buhmi 256

Radical Humanism and the Coexistence of Film and Poetry in The House Is Black 260

WR, Sex, and the Art of Radical Juxtaposition 266

Revisiting The Godfather 271

IV Criticism

Film Writing on the Web: Some Personal Reflections 277

Goodbye, Susan, Goodbye: Sontag and Movies 285

Daney in English: A Letter to Trafic 292

Trailer for Godard's Histoire(s) du cinéma 305

Moullet retrouvé (2006/2009) 320

The Farber Mystery 325

The American Cinema Revisited 331

Raymond Durgnat 337

Surviving the Sixties 351

L.A. Existential 361

Index 369