Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear: Some Key Film Makers of the Sixties

by John Russell Taylor

Since the cinema first began to be taken seriously as an art form, there has been a constant debate on the question: who is the real creator of the film, the writer or the director? This study of a group of key film-makers in the sixties suggests that during this decade there was an emergence of a generation of film-makers who conceived a whole film in their minds just as an architect conceives a whole cathedral or a composer a whole symphony.

The book presents detailed critical studies of the work of six commanding figures in the international cinema: four who have made their major reputations since 1950, the Italians Frederico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, the Frenchman Robert Bresson and the Swede Ingmar Bergman; and two film-makers of an older generation, the Spaniard Luis Bu�uel and the Anglo-American Alfred Hitchcock, who have reached the height of their powers and exerted their most important influence on the cinema during the same period. There is also a section on the new talents to emerge more recently in the French 'New Wave', in particular Fran�ois Truffaut, Jen-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais. In addition, the book contains detailed filmographies of the directors discussed.

Genres: Film

294 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

John Russell Taylor was an English critic, author, and historian whose work shaped modern writing on film, theatre, and visual art. Educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, he emerged in the early 1960s as one of Britain’s most influential cultural commentators. He wrote on cinema for Sight and Sound and Monthly Film Bulletin, and became film critic of The Times, later serving for decades as its art critic.
Taylor authored landmark studies of British drama and cinema, as well as acclaimed biographies of figures such as Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh, and Alec Guinness. His book Strangers in Paradise: The Hollywood Emigres 1933–1950 remains a key work on European artists in American film. After developing a close friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, he became the director’s authorised biographer.
From the early 1970s he also taught film at the University of Southern California, while contributing to major British and American publications. In addition to film and theatre, Taylor wrote extensively on modern and contemporary art, producing numerous monographs and broader studies. He also served on juries at major international film festivals and edited Films and Filming magazine for several years.

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

Taylor is a kind of Renaissance man who has been an art, theatre and film critic. This volume, which deserves a wide audience, examines some directors who won international fame in the 60s -- a decade of exploding creativity in movies. He includes Hitchcock because, Taylor says, he made his best films then (Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds). But he has a fascinating discussion of my 2 favs, Strangers on a Train ("mature, dazzling") and Notorious ("his most visually ravishing"). Without raising his voice or being show-offy like Kael or pursuing the paradox like Sarris, Taylor writes with assured eloquence and instinctive good will. I wish this book had a sequel.

Fellini, he observes, is one of the cinema's great extroverts whose work has a baroque boldness and opulence and is never concerned w the niceties of taste. By contrast, Antonioni is the complete introvert and meticulously self-disciplined. He also hit upon a star - Monica Vitti - whose personality and physical beauty gave warmth to his chilly landscape.

Bunuel miraculously puts onscreen "his own private world, his own individual way of looking at things." Recognizing Bunuel as an irreplacable original, Taylor cites Viridiana as arguably Bunuel's greatest. (This was written before Belle de Jour was made). And then, there's Bresson : "His films are not easy, they do not go out of their way to please or attract" with their hermetic perfection. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne merges Diderot and Cocteau with Maria Casares, "the greatest tragedienne of her day."

Beginning an essay on Ingmar Bergman, Taylor writes : "I go to a new Bergman with none of the pleasant anticipation I feel at the prospect of a new Bunuel, Fellini or Hitchcock." It's possible to be a brilliant metteur-en-scene and first-rate technician, he adds, without the two talents being fused into one.

The French New Wave was shaking up the film world in the 60s. Taylor reminds us that four directors had been film critics -- Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, Rohmer. Other dirs were Resnais, Malle, de Broca, Demy... all of whom made it a remarkable age. "In America most films tend to be made by committees," he concludes. In France, a one-man creation is "an ideal toward which everyone strives."

[Truett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn’t that interesting but I looked cool asf reading it

[Keram · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific book written from the ground floor of the emerging nouveau cinema movement of the late fifties, early sixties with chapters devoted to Antonioni, Bunuel, Fellini (pre-dating Amacord), Hitchcock and Godard/Truffaut.