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The Cinema House and the World: The Cahiers du Cinema Years, 1962-1981
One of the greatest film critics of his generation on topics ranging from the auteur approach of the French New Wave to a more structural examination of film.
One of the greatest film critics of his generation, Serge Daney wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma before becoming a journalist for the daily newspaper Libération. The writings collected in this volume reflect Daney's evolving interests, from the auteur approach of the French New Wave to a more structural examination of film, psychoanalysis, and popular culture.
Openly gay throughout his lifetime, Daney rarely wrote explicitly about homosexuality but his writings reflect a queer sensibility that would influence future generations. In regular intellectual exchanges with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Roland Barthes, Daney wrote about cinema autobiographically, while lyrically analyzing the transition from modern cinema to postmodern media. A noted polymath, Daney also published books about tennis and Haiti's notorious Duvalier regime. His criticism is open and challenging, polyvocal and compulsively readable.
One of the greatest film critics of his generation, Serge Daney wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma before becoming a journalist for the daily newspaper Libération. The writings collected in this volume reflect Daney's evolving interests, from the auteur approach of the French New Wave to a more structural examination of film, psychoanalysis, and popular culture.
Openly gay throughout his lifetime, Daney rarely wrote explicitly about homosexuality but his writings reflect a queer sensibility that would influence future generations. In regular intellectual exchanges with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Roland Barthes, Daney wrote about cinema autobiographically, while lyrically analyzing the transition from modern cinema to postmodern media. A noted polymath, Daney also published books about tennis and Haiti's notorious Duvalier regime. His criticism is open and challenging, polyvocal and compulsively readable.
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616 pages, Hardcover
Published September 6, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 30, 2024
These are going to be some notes on the book that I update as I go along, more than a review.
***
I started off with reading a review by Matthew Wilder here. Since it's unlikely that this volume is going to get lots lots of responses on Goodreads, it's quite likely our two takes are going to stay the only ones for quite a while, so I'm going to address some of the points he's making here. First off, Matthew's perception of Daney's writing clashed pretty strongly with what I've previously read by Daney. Non- "problematic", grandiose, and lacking "the feel"? Please! He also mentions Pauline Kael as a better alternative to Daney, which to me personally is a red flag. Still, there's much more Daney in this book than I've ever read, so who knows, all of this might very well be true.
***
I have to admit that the first pieces in the book are somewhat disappointing. They're something one might expect a good student to write these days for an assignment, having read some structuralists and absorbed the auterist canon. Naturally, Daney was one of the people who actually introduced this trend into film criticism, but his essays on Hawk's Rio Bravo and Preminger's Advise and Consent don't offer much in terms of personal style, original concepts, or indeed, how watching these movies actually felt. Daney himself, though, is ready with a defense: "Those who find Anatomy of a Murder cold might be surprised to hear us describe it as moving, but ice also burns, does it not?" This could very well describe his somewhat impersonal early writing, too. I do hope most of it isn't going to be like this, though.
***
I started off with reading a review by Matthew Wilder here. Since it's unlikely that this volume is going to get lots lots of responses on Goodreads, it's quite likely our two takes are going to stay the only ones for quite a while, so I'm going to address some of the points he's making here. First off, Matthew's perception of Daney's writing clashed pretty strongly with what I've previously read by Daney. Non- "problematic", grandiose, and lacking "the feel"? Please! He also mentions Pauline Kael as a better alternative to Daney, which to me personally is a red flag. Still, there's much more Daney in this book than I've ever read, so who knows, all of this might very well be true.
***
I have to admit that the first pieces in the book are somewhat disappointing. They're something one might expect a good student to write these days for an assignment, having read some structuralists and absorbed the auterist canon. Naturally, Daney was one of the people who actually introduced this trend into film criticism, but his essays on Hawk's Rio Bravo and Preminger's Advise and Consent don't offer much in terms of personal style, original concepts, or indeed, how watching these movies actually felt. Daney himself, though, is ready with a defense: "Those who find Anatomy of a Murder cold might be surprised to hear us describe it as moving, but ice also burns, does it not?" This could very well describe his somewhat impersonal early writing, too. I do hope most of it isn't going to be like this, though.
May 3, 2024
The Bible of film criticism
April 27, 2023
At first one feels the weekly reviews of Serge Daney are a bit like what one would imagine Gilles Deleuze putting out if on a weekly beat. Yes, he gets to Bergman’s FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES, or the tv debut of Chaplin’s LIMELIGHT, but he also gets handed Larry Hagman’s BEWARE THE BLOB! To everything he brings a philosophical voice that is elevated, abstract, but always—and here’s why he’s an easy sell in 2023!—keen on finding the political angle.
That; and the fact that he is no way “problematic” on any matters of gender or race—well, that’s why an English language Daney is a slam dunk for 2023 (though one can much more easily see this from a university press than edgy old Semiotexte).
What struck me throughout was that no matter how deeply Daney plunged into his theory-jargon playbook, he never got *inside* the movie in the way that Manny Farber, who relied on the language of painting and painting criticism, spelunked into the guts of a picture. Maybe the only time I felt really inside a movie alongside Daney was in his unusually sensitive and astute reading of Lynch’s ELEPHANT MAN, which, to Daney’s credit, appears to have moved him deeply.
Today’s movie reviewers must read this collection with some pleasure, as at all times Daney writes as if each sentence will be read in the crepuscular half-light of Eternity. But oh, how like our 2023 folks is Daney when he spells out the credo of the Politically Engaged Critic—he really thinks this stuff amounts to a hill of beans, *politically.* His massive amount of writing on forgotten film festivals could be judiciously pruned; and he doesn’t get down to that nitty-gritty that Pauline Kael was ao good at it: what did the bloody thing feel like?
That; and the fact that he is no way “problematic” on any matters of gender or race—well, that’s why an English language Daney is a slam dunk for 2023 (though one can much more easily see this from a university press than edgy old Semiotexte).
What struck me throughout was that no matter how deeply Daney plunged into his theory-jargon playbook, he never got *inside* the movie in the way that Manny Farber, who relied on the language of painting and painting criticism, spelunked into the guts of a picture. Maybe the only time I felt really inside a movie alongside Daney was in his unusually sensitive and astute reading of Lynch’s ELEPHANT MAN, which, to Daney’s credit, appears to have moved him deeply.
Today’s movie reviewers must read this collection with some pleasure, as at all times Daney writes as if each sentence will be read in the crepuscular half-light of Eternity. But oh, how like our 2023 folks is Daney when he spells out the credo of the Politically Engaged Critic—he really thinks this stuff amounts to a hill of beans, *politically.* His massive amount of writing on forgotten film festivals could be judiciously pruned; and he doesn’t get down to that nitty-gritty that Pauline Kael was ao good at it: what did the bloody thing feel like?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews