Everyone who writes about film can name other writers about film who have influenced them. For me, the big three are Andrew Sarris, Raymond Durgnat, and Robin Wood. Wood, author of the seminal Hitchcock’s Films [Revisited] and numerous other works, and whose all-time favorite films include four by Max Ophuls (Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Reckless Moment, Le Plaisir, Madame de...) two by Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, Rio Bravo) and three by Leo McCarey (Duck Soup, Ruggles of Red Gap, and Make Way for Tomorrow) is now 77 years old, and has retired from teaching at York University in Toronto in order to write his autobiography.
I look forward to reading it.
Via The Manitoban.
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Robin Wood Retires
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4 comments:
Wood's essay "Introduction to the American Horror Film" may be the single most influential piece of writing about film I've ever read. I have not picked up his Hitchcock work, but it's probably time I did.
His book on Hawks was something I found in the public library in NJ when I was around 15 and really into the original SCARFACE. Wood made "reading into" films look easy and fun! I've read all his stuff since, even his rather grouchy book on sex and gender. He's one of the rare ones who can be academically on point, a "writer's writer" and still fun and engaging to the layman. Most of all, he makes you want to watch the movies he's writing about, rather than make you feel he's watching them for you.
So he retires from teaching to quietly watch films and write...
Thank him for that, or I would sorely miss him, as he's always interesting even (or specially?)when I disagree with him. He makes me think again, or go and see again a movie. Which I think is the real job of a film critic, rather than to say "it's good/bad, better/worse, ancient/modern, conservative/progressive". But if Robin Wood likes a lot some mysterious Canadian filmmakers I've never head about, I try to get their films. And then I may not agree, or find them half as good, but they most probably will be interesting, and help to understand Wood's arguments. He should write (again) on his favorite films. It's one of the few personal canons I would be interested in.
Miguel Marías
I just received from Amazon.com the Criterion DVD of Anthony Mann's "The Furies" starring Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston. Accompanying the DVD was a pamphlet containing an enlightening essay by Robin Wood about Anthony Mann's westerns, i.e., "The Furies." I'm sorry to say until I read Mr. Wood's essay, I had never heard of him. Now I feel as if I have discovered buried treasure!
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