Sambizanga – 1972, Sarah Maldoror
by Allan Fish
At the end of the interminably gestating book I hope to release on Kindle by the end of the year there’s a section I call the Final Apologies. To some, it may seem superfluous to requirements, especially given there are over 2,000 entries in the main text, but there are times when I have come to believe it the most important part of the book. It’s relatively easy to wax lyrical about why you love certain films, why they should be preserved above all others. It’s not as straightforward to say why certain other films shouldn’t.
The Final Apologies is the multi-task section of the book. On one level it’s what it says on the tin, apologies for the films left at reception when the hotel reaches capacity. On another, it’s my Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card, a way of saying that “no, I didn’t forget these, I just didn’t think them up to scratch because…” Yet on another it’s an admission of guilt, an Exhibit A for the prosecution, as it were. The fact remains that no man’s opinion is gospel, there is no arbiter of taste. But it goes beyond that, for to any discerning film buff there are films that are just not for you. It may be a taste thing, a sense of humour or outlook alien to oneself, but it may go deeper, to the point where you know that the deficit is not the film’s, but yours. A recognition that certain films are masterpieces but just not in your eyes; they don’t travel.
So what exactly do I mean? It’s a favourite line of mine, that used by Mark Cousins in The Story of Film, that film history is “racist by omission.” Often, however, it’s been ignorant by choice. Film histories are very happy with their so-called comprehensiveness, thank you very much, and don’t need masterpieces discovering left, right and centre that demand a rewriting of their pages, even whole new chapters. Film History 101 has always been blinkered, blind, focusing us on what it thinks are the accepted essentials, but in doing so people have taken these histories – and the canons they create – as inviolable. They’re not. Canons should only be stepping stones to undertake our own journeys where we go way beyond them.
Yet even with regards to zealots like me who take accepted film history as inadequate, we have to admit our shortcomings. Only recently someone asked me what I felt was my biggest cinematic blind spot, and after careful deliberation I selected African cinema. But acknowledging that is again only the first step of the journey, for one must then ask the obvious question; why?
As it stands, and it’s unlikely to change between here and launch, there are only six African films in my book, two Sembenes from Senegal (Xala and Moolaadé), one Mambéty from the same country (Hyenas), one Cissé from Mali (Yeelen) and Chahine’s Cairo Station and Abouseif’s I Never Sleep from Egypt. And to all intents and purposes, one could reduce that to four, for in reality, Egyptian cinema shouldn’t count as African at all. Yes, geographically it’s in Africa, but its gaze has always led north to the Mediterranean or east beyond the Sinai to the Middle East. This isn’t Black Africa but an Africa familiar to the west, and both films chosen have distinct European leanings.
Of Black African film, few would doubt the inclusion of the four I have selected, or at least few would doubt selections from those three directors, but they may well ask where Sembene’s Black Girl and Camp de Thiaroye, Cissé’s The Wind or Mambéty’s Badou Boy and Touki Bouki are. But I’ll go further to films not available on DVD but all essential to African film’s heritage. So I doff my hat to Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga from Angola, Gadala Gabara’s Tajouj from Sudan, Flora Gomes’ The Blue Eyes of Yonta from Guinea-Bissau, Med Hondo’s O Sun from Mauritania, Mohammad Lakhdar Hamina’s Chronicle of the Years of Embers and Assia Djebbar’s La Nouba from Algeria, Haile Gerima’s Harvest 3,000 Years from Ethiopia, Safi Faye’s Peasant Letter from Senegal, Glauber Rocha’s The Lion Has Seven Heads from Congo, Moustapha Allasane’s Toula, or the Water Spirit from Niger, Ossie Davis’ Kongi’s Harvest from Nigeria, Abdellatif Ben Ammar’s Sejnane from Tunisia, Ahmed el Maanouni’s Trances and Merzak Allouache’s Bab el-Oued City from Morocco…you could go on all night. And there are plenty of others from Egypt I could have taken, not just from Youssef Chahine. There’s a couple in there I haven’t been able to track down, but it gives you an idea of what we’re missing in the West.
So how do we explain it? Or to return to the original query, how do I explain my own inadequacy with regard to them. On reflection to make sense of it one really has to look at the deeper question, beyond mere indoctrination, experience and taste to an answer to all such areas of neglect. The problem with African film is that for those from the west we don’t really have ‘an in’. There’s no core reference we can grasp to allow us to experience the film by anything other than some alien proxy. African culture and history is generally speaking unknown to us. We’re aware of the effect of colonialism but only because we in the west were the colonisers. We’re the Lamberger Gesslers African nationalists were rightly wanting to kick out. It’s perhaps no surprise that the two Sembenes I included, while very much dealing with Senegalese society had ‘an in’ for western audiences. In the case of Xala we may not have experienced colonialism’s boot, but we recognise political satire. In the case of Moolaadé the treatment of women, if not this specific treatment of women, is very much in our eye line. Most aspects of African culture are not, however. This writer just couldn’t quite reach out to the films listed in the previous paragraph because I was not conditioned to do so. More than any culture on Earth, or at least more than any other culture on Earth making movies, African film can, to these eyes, only be truly appreciated if you have some experience of said culture, its rhythms, its smells, its tastes. You need to have walked its red sands, experienced its mixture of poverty, exploitation and simple – by our judgmental standards – pleasures. I haven’t. I’ve never been to Africa, and that’s my fault, not the fault of the films that are created there.
It’s an admission that works everywhere you go. Take the general western reaction of cringing at the slapstick comedy asides in Hong Kong kung-fu and wuxia films, of the o.t.t. stylistic anti-realism of many Japanese yakuza flicks, of the habit of Bollywood melodramas of bursting into song at inopportune moments, or the styles of the Soviet musicals and comedies with their forever smiling protagonists seemingly telling us “aren’t we happy little Communists?” that were so influential in Bollywood. Even closer to home there are things that turn one off; I have problems with some of the more broad Italian comedies, with their Mediterranean hot-blooded and tempered caricatures. Or then there’s those dramas and comedies out of the old Yugoslavia and Romania dealing with the Romany gypsy culture, from Aleksandr Petrovic to Lucian Pintilie to Emir Kusturica, which seem to belong to a different world. They rub me up the wrong way because the culture is alien to me.
Petrovic’s Happy Gypsies, 1967 – alien culture?
Take Indian cinema in general, seen as the arthouse films of Satyajit Ray from Calcutta’s East Coast on one extreme and the melodramas of Bollywood (Bombay/Mumbai) on the other. It’s not too far wrong, but with India we in the west, and especially in Britain, have ‘an in’. So much of Indian culture has permeated our own, we once ruled the place, for God’s sake, and ghostly remnants of the Raj can be seen everywhere right down the use of English itself, where whole words and sentences creep into everyday language on both east and west coasts and where in some quarters the mother tongue is more accessible than either Bengali or Hindi, depending on what part of the country you are in. As such, while few would argue with the selection of seven or eight Satyajit Ray films, I also have twice as many other Indian films selected as from the whole of Africa. That ‘in’ is essential, it’s undeniable.
There are other default settings, too. There are a lot of British entries in the book, not least from TV where there are seven or eight times as many as from American TV, even accounting for the rise in American TV in the 21st century since being released from the mediocrity shackles of the networks. But that’s again because British cinema has suffered from neglect. For too long we believed the French belief that cinema and British don’t belong in the same sentence. They weren’t being nationalistic, or at least only in part, they were dumping on British film by default. They believed auteur theory was everything, while British film disproved the theory and was always about collaboration towards a common goal. To prove their theory they had to dismiss an entire national cinema, unless it was Hitchcock, who quickly got out and left for Hollywood. Yet even now American views of British film are blinkered. In the States British film is seen as Hitchcock, Korda, Olivier’s Shakespeare films, Lean, Reed, Powell and Pressburger, Ealing comedies, the new wave and kitchen sink realists, American in London Joseph Losey, Leigh, Frears and Loach. All worthy, but what of Anthony Asquith, Walter Forde, Will Hay comedies, Jessie Matthews musicals, Launder and Gilliat, the Boulting Brothers (and not the Peter Sellers comedies but the far superior forties work), the documentary school led by Humphrey Jennings, Peter Watkins, Ken Russell’s BBC pieces, Alan Clarke, Bill Douglas, Terence Davies, the great TV plays and serials of the seventies, eighties and nineties, to name but a few. A few are finally coming to attention Stateside, but it’s all so pitifully slow. America doesn’t want the real Britain, it wants Downton bleeding Abbey, interminably sanitised costume drama adaptations and quaint British detective dramas, all enough to make me want to puke.
All of which returns us to those goddamn canons. For too long Polish film has been seen as Polanski, Wajda and Kieslowski. Czech film as Menzel, Forman, Chytilova’s Daisies, Kadar’s The Shop on Main Street, and more recently Jires’ Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and Vlacil’s Marketa Lazarova. Hungarian film is just Jancsó, Szábo and Tarr. Romanian film is treated as if it didn’t exist prior to the 21st century. Bulgarian film as if it never existed at all. Greece is just Angelopoulos and the classical tragedies of Cacoyannis. Turkey is just Serif Gören, if it’s anything at all prior to Nuri Bilge Ceylan. Dutch cinema is just Verhoeven. Spain is just Buñuel, Saura and Almodóvar. Scandinavia is just the silent masters climaxed by Dreyer, then Bergman and Von Trier. And then there’s the old Soviet Union, where if it isn’t Vertov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin or Dovzhenko, or later on the prestige films of Bondarchuk, Kozintsev and Tarkovsky, we don’t want to know.
And it goes beyond Europe. How many have seen Argentinian, Mexican or Brazilian masterpieces older than 1970 (aside from those made by Buñuel)? How many have asked the obvious question, that if there was a Chinese Fifth Generation led by Yimou, Zhuangzhuang and Kaige, doesn’t that tell you there were four others beforehand. Or who has seen Hong Kong masterpieces from before Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan?
We’re still living with the consequences of the self-denial. We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented. One must always look to go beyond the pale. We must realise that a film can be a masterpiece without an endorsement from the Criterion Collection, for they’re out to make money and maintain the status quo, not to educate you. But even when you do seek beyond the accepted, accept your own shortcomings and make people look beyond even your own horizons. That’s the purpose of the Final Apologies. It’s not just a covering of my tracks.
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Yet even now American views of British film are blinkered. In the States British film is seen as Hitchcock, Korda, Olivier’s Shakespeare films, Lean, Reed, Powell and Pressburger, Ealing comedies, the new wave and kitchen sink realists, American in London Joseph Losey, Leigh, Frears and Loach. All worthy, but what of Anthony Asquith, Walter Forde, Will Hay comedies, Jessie Matthews musicals, Launder and Gilliat, the Boulting Brothers (and not the Peter Sellers comedies but the far superior forties work), the documentary school led by Humphrey Jennings, Peter Watkins, Ken Russell’s BBC pieces, Alan Clarke, Bill Douglas, Terence Davies, the great TV plays and serials of the seventies, eighties and nineties, to name but a few. A few are finally coming to attention Stateside, but it’s all so pitifully slow. America doesn’t want the real Britain, it wants Downton bleeding Abbey, interminably sanitised costume drama adaptations and quaint British detective dramas, all enough to make me want to puke.
Well, it depends who you talk to. In every country there exists the film fanatic sub-culture of which you, myself, Jamie Uhler, Joel Bocko, Jon Warner, Tony d’Ambra, Maurizio Roca, Jim Clark, Dean Treadway, Peter Marose, John Grant, Jaimie Grijalba, John Greco, Duane Porter, Pat Perry, Marilyn Ferdinand, Brian Wilson, Sachin Gandhi and numerous others are part and parcel to. Most people are happy to make the leaps and bounds slowly, as film is only one part of the artistic equation. Of course to a film fanatic there can never be movement fast enough. You have penned a most perceptive and accomplished piece here.
Is that a swipe you are taking at the end there of my beloved British POIROT series? Ha!
Greatly looking forward to the Kindle release!
Always there to make a defence, like you’ve been personally assaulted. American views of British film are blinkered and towards the ‘tasteful’. How many Americans – not counting those I have prompted – have seen Boys from the Blackstuff, our Friends in the North, G.B.H., Cathy Come Home, Talking to a Stranger, In a Land of Plenty, the Douglas trilogy, Penda’s Fen, Road, the Jennings masterpieces (especially The Silent Village), Thunder Rock, Brighton Rock, so many others.
Stop using every post as opportunity to say “aren’t my friends brilliant?” It embarrasses me and it should embarrass them.
Allan, I was civil, non-compative and humorous in my post here. I’ll let the onlookers determine what is “embarrassing.” To answer your question about the lot of British works I have seen all but one, and my friends here have seen the lion’s share of them. I am not reacting like I have been “personally assaulted.” How could I be? I’ve passed the test repeatedly over the years. As I say film is NOT nor should it be one’s sole pre-occupation in life and this is coming from someone who is an admitted junkie. So yeah not everyone will put their lives aside and strive to uncover every last rarity on the planet. You have a book to attend to and a mission to accomplish, which is certainly fair enough. More power to you. Speaking just for myself, I love books, theater, music, art and politics, and like to juggle, getting as much as I can out of each interest, even with the tilt toward movies.
As far as my “brilliant” friends, I always thought they were your friends as well, and that mentioning them would be in the shared interest of community.
No “defense” here. You always say that when I politely respond to you as I have here. Just a comment. Am I missing something? I just re-read my comment and it was as benign and polite as any comment could be. But looks at yours.
Funny that this part of my comment was completely ignored, as if I didn’t even write it:
You have penned a most perceptive and accomplished piece here.
Is that a swipe you are taking at the end there of my beloved British POIROT series? Ha!
Greatly looking forward to the Kindle release!
You don’t need to ring off a load of names every five minutes, you may as well add Bill Brewer, Jan Stewer, ‘Arry Hawk, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all for all that it matters. The point is that for decades British critics ignored their own heritage and American views of British cinema are still limited – views of British film/TV is still heritage costume drama, Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, and only Kes and the post 1990s stuff from Loach. Just look at how many major works are not available in the US, literally dozens of masterworks. Only one reason for that – IGNORANCE.
In the end, there is only so much time in a day to see films (along with other interests and responsibilities that eat up hours). For those that have the passion, the attempt is made. But in the end, we all gravitate where our taste’s primarily reside. This is partially the impossibility of being fair (that you state quite well in this masterful essay), and also utilizing free time to one’s own sense of maximum efficiency.
Unfortunately, we don’t live very long in the larger scheme of things, and its basically impossible to be a film completist. Thus, one must make a personal compromise at some point, and gravitate where they find the most personal rewards.
Your main thesis is something I’ve thought about a lot as well when exploring film. I’ve found it hard to relate to certain countries’ cinematic output also. Even a movie I adore like Memories Of Murder by Bong Joon-Ho perplexes me at times with it’s tonal shifts. It’s the worthwhile price we pay for living in a vast multicultural world.
As a child of Italian immigrants, I’ve watched many broad mainstream Italian comedies through my life (mostly when I was younger and living at home), and despised every single one of them. It was partially due to my American upbringing (not understanding that culture fully), and also because those movies are commercial works meant to only appeal to that particular population. It’s not designed for universal consumption in the end, and further examination is not required.
In the end, there is only so much time in a day to see films (along with other interests and responsibilities that eat up hours). For those that have the passion, the attempt is made. But in the end, we all gravitate where our taste’s primarily reside. This is partially the impossibility of being fair (that you state quite well in this masterful essay), and also utilizing free time to one’s own sense of maximum efficiency.
Unfortunately, we don’t live very long in the larger scheme of things, and its basically impossible to be a film completist. Thus, one must make a personal compromise at some point, and gravitate where they find the most personal rewards.
Yes this is what I was broaching in my comment above. If Americans or others around the world took the position that film is the only reason to live, they might be plundering every last work that Allan laments they are not plundering. They are simply unwilling to do that, and I can’t say I blame them.
I always give credit when credit is due. There is no person on this planet who has praised Allan more than me. None. Not a single one. That is why when this kind of argument comes up I am frustrated. People are not blinkered or blind. They are simply not interested in setting their existence aside to pursue film rarities. And if they do, they will do it at their own pace.
We need a literature major to come in now and tell everyone who hasn’t read hundreds of books that they are blinkered.
A very interesting piece, Allan.
America doesn’t want the real Britain, it wants Downton bleeding Abbey, interminably sanitised costume drama adaptations and quaint British detective dramas, all enough to make me want to puke.
While obviously this isn’t universally true, as Sam quite rightly points out, there’s a very great deal of truth in it, as can be seen by simply examining the movies shown on the commercial cable channels and PBS. (You could probably say the same of Australian cinema/tv: there seems very little shown of it over here, with the exception of the Phyrne Fisher series,* which falls into the “quaint . . . detective dramas” category you mention.) That said, I’m probably guilty myself of watching an imbalance of British movies to the detriment of US ones (although at the moment that often seems no great loss) and certainly to the detriment of the stuff with subtitles — which latter, of course, is barely shown on the movie channels here.
And, if you feel self-critical about covering only a few African movies, remind yourself that you’ve done better than all the other guys, who probably don’t cover any African movies at all.
Scattered thoughts, but my wife’s pestering me to go out and look at tiles.
*Which I happen to love, but then I’m an Essie Davies fanboy.
I struggle to respond here. Better if I said nothing. But there is a challenge. To defend a life not defined by an obsession.
Ozu left the Japanese character ‘nothing’ on his tombstone. As an artist his life is defined by his art. Yet his obsession was not cinema. It was the expression of what he wanted to say about Japanese life. Cinema was the tool of his trade. Yet even in that valedictory there is a conceit. Why not leave the monument blank? Why have a monument at all? Because we all want our lives to have a meaning beyond the ephemera of physical existence. We all want religion.
Cinema as religion is fine by me. Just don’t hector me if I don’t define my life by it, or peddle the idea that I am not serious about cinema or that I am less qualified to talk about cinema.
We bring to cinema who we are. A life narrowly defined may bring passion, authority and insights, but it is narrow nevertheless. Let all who have something to say about cinema the freedom to speak unhindered by the admonition of Pharisees.
Tony, you’re absolutely right. At the end of the day film is a commodity when taken to its core DNA, it’s not necessary for the continuation of life, it’s even arbitrary. It’s a divertissement and for many that’s all they want it to be. It’s when people try and pass off superhero films, Spielberg and the like as high art because they often are given nothing to compare it to that I have to draw the line. Yes, film is an obsession for me and there are many more important things in life, as I know more than anyone. But I feel that it has to be an obsession for anyone to if not change things then at least not meekly accept the status quo. I’m admitting my own weaknesses in this piece, but that doesn’t mean I should quit.
We have an art that is transposable, in that it can be duplicated and travel round the world. It’s not like painting or sculpture where the original generally has to stay in one place and you have to travel to see it. Only this week I was looking at paintings by Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Leonardo, Boticelli, Van Gogh et al, masterpieces you can stand and gaze at for hours, but a very costly exercise. But at the moment, cinema is elitist. Those living in cities are seen as worthy and are given a variety diet, those in the sticks are being given a choice of Burger King, McDonalds or KFC. Last week’s rant led into this week’s. Our film histories are written by people brought up on a generation’s film output and this generation’s is dire indeed, in the Anglo-American axis certainly.
Let’s use film canons as, to paraphrase one of Don Draper’s rejected pitches, a stepping off point. Enough of saying “right, done Wajda, done Polanski, done Kieslowski, so that’s Poland done. Now for the old Yugoslavia.” Don’t take ANYONE’S word for it. In Poland alone, there’s Wojciech Has, Krzysztof Zanusi, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Aleksandr Ford, Ryszard Bugajski, Tadeusz Chmielewski, Tadeusz Konwicki, Andrzej Munk, Andrzej Zulawski, Lech Majowski, Janusz Morgenstern, Jerzy Skolimowski, Witold Leszczynski, Wojciech Marczewski, Piotr Szulkin, Juliusz Machulski, Dorota Kedzierzawska, and I’m stopping myself now.
Thanks Allan. You have made a compelling case and given me more to think about.
This post hits very hard to home Allan. I have thought about so many omissions and I am often frustrated that many are unavailable. Legally, there are many many great films that cannot be found and have no distribution. Many masterpieces exist in torrents hidden away unless one knows what they are looking for.
The film world we are looking at is not accurate. It never was and will never be. We have not caught up with the cinema of the past and won’t ever. Every year, we fall further behind with contemporary cinema. So many great films get made, some show at a film festival and then disappear. It is a race that we film lovers are always losing because all around us, the films that hog the screens and legal digital streams are mostly the ones that are not worth remembering.
Which is exactly why last week’s piece had to precede this week’s. The current status quo prevents most art-house films finding an audience beyond living in great metropolises like New York, Chicago, Paris, London, Tokyo, and for people living there they couldn’t care less. But most of the world’s filmgoers do not live there, and when they’re force fed junk as art with the subtlety of jailers shoving pipes down the throats of suffragettes on hunger strike, what chance to they have. People need to see great cinema from Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Portugal, Iceland, Mexico, Brazil, Iran, etc, so they can then begin journeys into their national heritage. If we don’t even have signs leading us there, then our view of cinema is dead.
People need to see great cinema from Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Portugal, Iceland, Mexico, Brazil, Iran, etc, so they can then begin journeys into their national heritage. If we don’t even have signs leading us there, then our view of cinema is dead.
We opera fans/fanatics are in the same boat. At least cinema fans have the vast majority of great stuff either directly available at their fingertips, and people like yourself and Sachin has previously summoned up the passion and commitment towards obtaining these films though friends and contacts. As a lifelong fan of what is arguably the world’s greatest art I have been repeatedly frustrated with the inability to either obtain or access what I feel are essential operatic works, either on DVD or blu ray or on the stages of the word’s opera capital NYC. As far as people living in NYC, Chicago, Paris, London, Tokyo etc., caring less for film art house rarities, that is true of every place through the world. Not everyone cares about film at all, much less as an art form – the world is diverse and interests run in every direction. I know musicians who are hip only to the release and availability of the newest chamber works or the latest performances or recordings of the classics. Same goes for art lovers, and fans of the written word. When my friend Sachin Gandhi (above) laments the sad state of affairs in the world of cinema he speaks as a fantastic of that form. I don’t see him, or Allan or anyone else showing any mercy for us opera fans, nor would they as their focus is understandably in the art they spend all their time and dedication to. Allan’s argument here is pretty much a rant against the ills of capitalist society not against any inherent ignorance on the part of movie lovers or programmers. It always comes down to money. And only those who program film festivals, or are writing books about the cinema (completism rules) are the ones who will feel the inability to have the opportunity to take in every last film every made on this planet.
I understand the frustration. Where is Aaron Copland’s sublime THE TENDER LAND on DVD or blu ray? The opera is available only to hear on a single CD set. Opera fans deserve the full nine yards here. Why is it that American’s greatest opera composer (and yes we do have a very fine opera tradition here despite what some might think) Carlisle Floyd is so scantily represented? Shamefully so I might add. We don’t even have a single video recording of what is probably America’s greatest opera, SUSANNAH, nor do we have Floyd’s OF MICE AND MEN, WUTHERING HEIGHTS nor COLD SASSY TREE, and are lucky to have a minor label recording of his underrated WILLIE STARK. The failure of the Steinbeck based opera to appear on video is an affront to opera fans. Then we have Phillip Glass, a 20th century musical titan. It is frankly a disgrace that we don’t have EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH, AKHNATEN nor SATYAGRAHA on any record of permanence, and even CDs are very hard to come by now. There isn’t a single recording of Samuel Barber’s lovely VANESSA or his splendid ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA on any kind of video source–we are lucky even to have both on CDs. Douglas Moore’s beautiful THE BALLAD OF BABY DOE has been eternally MIA (the main aria is one of the greatest ever written by an American) and us fervent fans of the remarkable GIAN CARLO MENOTTI can stamp our feet as loudly as our tenants will stand, and it still won’t get us any closer to having a permanent record of THE MEDIUM, THE CONSUL or THE SAINT OF BLEECKER STREET, all as essential to us opera fans as the cinematic works from Iceland, Brazil or Iran that Allan bemoans are not made available to film fans. Minimalist John Adams is also scantily represented. There are many other American opera figures of worth who have been ignored.
But the disease has spread far beyond these shores. It is unfathomable that there are key works and in many cases complete supposed “ignorance” of the likes of Massenet, Walton, Smetena, Tchaikovsky, J. Strauss, R. Strauss, Williams, Stravinsky, Tibbett, Rimsky-Korsakov, Prokofiev, Meyerbeer, Ravel, Shostokovich, Sallinen, Schonberg, Von Weber, Thomas, Janacek, Hinedmith, Monteverdi, Purcell, Poulenc, Offenbach, Glinka, Holst, Gounod, Mascagni, Mussorgsky, Milhaud, Rachmaninov, Bellini, Giordano, Delius, Gluck, Donizetti, Leoncavallo, Orff, Schubert, Weill, Saint-Saens and numerous others. There are more than enough stagings of these works around the world for there to be recordings, but it all comes down to money, and how they can turn a profit much less break even.
The ills of a capitalist society are to blame, not “ignorance” or a lack of ambition. I lament the state of affairs as far as getting copies of so many of my beloved operas -much like film all the major players are very well represented- Puccini, Verdi, Mozart, Wagner, Rossini, Bizet, Britten, Dvorak for starters- but I know what is the root of the problems. The world doesn’t revolve around opera, as it doesn’t around film. Like every other art, the most passionate will always reap their just rewards.
So I can certainly end my comment here with Allan’s finale, with a single word changed:
If we don’t even have signs leading us there, then our view of opera is dead.
But I won’t. I have gone the same nine yards as Allan has gone with cinematic rarities, and have gained my own kind of enlightenment through dogged pursuing of all available recordings and through years of opera attendance. Other opera fans who count their passion as an important part of their lives will find the way despite the suffocation of capitalists woes.
Yes, absolutely right with opera, though in the case of opera it was never really open to everyone, it was always a rather elitist art (apart from parts of Northern Italy), part of the reason it essentially largely died out when the ruling classes of Europe disappeared after World War I (not a coincidence). Plus, there are comprehensive literate overviews of opera where there aren’t any massive gaps in knowledge, the same cannot be said of film. Opera historians are seeking out works they know about. With film, they’re often seeking for films that virtually no-one is mentioning.
And again, I ask you, where would you have been as an opera fan who didn’t live on New York’s doorstep? That’s part of my point, you’re one of the lucky few living near a cultural metropolis. The vast majority don’t have that privilege.
Allan, no overview whatever the perceived scope can ever replace the actual experience, one where many elements of art coalesce. Many fanatical opera fans live far from big cities, as was the case with one of this site’s longtime contributors Robert Webb, who resides in Kansas, and peruses his hobby by traveling. There are opera fan clubs are over the US of course, and beyond that worldwide. Am I lucky because I live in the NYC area? Absolutely. And I count my blessings for the opportunities I’ve had that many others have not. That’s a good point you make about film not even being a matter of awareness for some, but my main point here was the reason why any art is not taken to the limit. It is always about money.
All about the almighty dollar.
Interesting piece with many areas worth discussing further. I’m intrigued by the mention of needing an “in”. By this do you mean an “in” to the cinematic language of that culture or just an “in” to that particular film? There is something to this but I don’t think it’s all or nothing. You assert then that the majority of films in my blind spot area I don’t have an in, but maybe a few titles within that culture I may have an in for? Hypothetically couldn’t you just post-evaluate and say for every supposed masterpiece one doesn’t gravitate to, it’s because there was no in? What about supposed masterpieces for which I should have an easy in but find to be rubbish instead? There is more to this than just the in, right? I just want to make sure I understand your point.
You’re speaking generally. Of course there are films which are proclaimed great which you may find crap, that happens. But when it’s consistently the same sort of film, or the same national cinema, or subject, then you have to acknowledge the insufficiency may be your own. Just because I don’t respond well to the excesses of Romany films doesn’t mean the best of them aren’t masterpieces, it’s just that I don’t have the connection. Certain aspects of individual national styles and tastes don’t travel. I can’t stand Chinese opera, but western ears are not attuned to it. It doesn’t mean it isn’t art. Sometimes ‘the in’ is familiarity.
Right. Consistently is the key word there for me. I would say I struggle at times with Asian cinema. Often Japanese films work for me, but outside of that I can be challenged. I usually end up giving my evaluation an “incomplete” and then I try again another time. The point is not to give up though, right? I mean if I live another 30 years or more Lord willing maybe I can find my way into some of these films.
It’ll come in time, my problem is I always felt I was working against time. I’ve felt I’ve been on borrowed time for 20 years.
Some more heresy from me 🙂
I don’t think we need more art. We need more relevance. More subversion. Iconoclasm. Shit-stirring and mud flinging.
British TV until recently has stepped up to the plate and delivered with GBH and Our Friends in the North, and the like.
American cinema and TV hardly ever. The Wire and Breaking Bad apparently but with dark scenarios dwelling on criminality and violence. What about the precursors? Inequality. Corporate greed and malfeasance. The failure of American democratic representation and the festering of the racial divide. Mr Robot started out strongly but is being pulled back to the predicable.
Better a failed attempt critiquing the Zeitgeist than something laboured and pretentious from the usual suspects.
To a degree, yes, but that’s always been the case in America. America despises criticism of itself, always has. That’s why Wilder’s Ace in the Hole was lambasted at the time, why Network was seen as hysterical. GBH and Our Friends and Boys from the Blackstuff would never be possible at the time in America, but sadly now Britain has followed the American model for formula. And ironically now HBO and the cables have been released from the captivity of the networks’ mediocrity and The Wire was as good as any of the old UK series, but then, who watched it at the time?
There will never be a criticism of corporate greed and malfeasance as to do so would be seen as un-American. This is the country that still clings to gun laws 250 years old, believes science that disproves religion is the work of Satan and refuses to admit that it doesn’t know what sot of a society it is. The average American thinks they’re a democracy, they’re not. Officially, they’re a republic. But in the end it’s not a republic either. It’s an oligarchy, the rest is just misdirection. Obama’s inability to do anything about the problems at the heart of America just shows up that the real power isn’t in Washington, it’s in Wall Street, in the media giants and in the business conglomerates. The political system in Washington is set up to defy change and obfuscate.