Jonathan Rosenbaum

Peter Bogdanovich

Orson Welles

Conversations reveal Welles's feelings about films, theater, the radio and television industries, and various other directors and stars

This Is Orson Welles

J. Hoberman

These are a few of the over 100 films discussed in Midnight Movies, a comprehensive and in-depth look at the subculture movies of the past three decades. Here is the complete history of cult films, their makers, and their audience; an examination of how films become "midnight movies," and what keeps audiences coming back to see them over and over; an exploration of the connections between subversive film and the subcultures from which it emerges. Supplemented with a new afterward detailing the accommodation of midnight movies into the mainstream and speculating on the future of the genre, Midnight Movies is essential reading for anyone interested in the history and future of American cinema.

Midnight Movies

Innovative film and theater director, radio producer, actor, writer, painter, narrator, and magician, Orson Welles (1915–1985) was the last true Renaissance man of the twentieth century. From such great radio works as "War of the Worlds" to his cinematic masterpieces Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Othello, Macbeth, Touch of Evil, and Chimes at Midnight, Welles was a master storyteller, as expansive as he was enigmatic. This Is Orson Welles, a collection of penetrating and witty conversations between Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, includes insights into Welles's radio, theater, film, and television work; Hollywood producers, directors, and stars; and almost everything else, from acting to magic, literature to comic strips, bullfighters to gangsters. Now including Welles's revealing memo to Universal about his artistic intentions for Touch of Evil, (of which the "director's edition" was released in Fall 1998) this book, which Welles ultimately considered his autobiography, is a masterpiece as unique and engaging as the best of his works.

A cogent and provocative argument about the art of film, Essential Cinema is a fiercely independent reference book of must-see movies for film lovers everywhere.

On the Necessity of Film Canons

Essential Cinema

"Once or twice a generation a film critic comes along who expands or even redefines how we talk about the medium. Jonathan Rosenbaum is one of these figures."—Alan Williams, author of Republic of Images

The Practice of Film Criticism

Placing Movies

Orson Welles will leave you agreeing with Marlene Dietrich, who also said (using Welles' words from Touch of Evil): "He was some kind of man. What does it matter what you say about people?"

Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa

Abbas Kiarostami (Contemporary Film Directors)

Overall look at world cinema and examination of the market forces that shape films. Politicized observations, viewing films as products of ideological decisions.

Movies as Politics

Jonathan Rosenbaum, longtime contributor to such publications as Film Quarterly, Sight and Sound, and The Village Voice, is arguably the most eloquent, insightful film critic writing in America today. Placing Movies, the first collection of his work, gathers together thirty of his most distinctive and illuminating pieces. Written over a span of twenty-one years, these essays cover an extraordinarily broad range of films—from Hollywood blockbusters to foreign art movies to experimental cinema. They include not just reviews but perceptive commentary on directors, actors, and trends; and thoughtful analysis of the practice of film criticism. It is this last element—Rosenbaum's reflections on the art of film criticism—that sets this collection apart from other volumes of film writing. Both in the essays themselves and in the section introductions, Rosenbaum provides a rare insider's view of his profession: the backstage politics, the formulation of critical judgments, the function of film commentary. Taken together, these pieces serve as a guided tour of the profession of film criticism. They also serve as representative samples of Rosenbaum's unique brand of film writing. Among the highlights are memoirs of director Jacques Tati and maverick critic Manny Farber, celebrations of classics such as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Manchurian Candidate, and considered reevaluations of Orson Welles and Woody Allen.

The Front Line, 1983

Film

'Discovering Orson Welles' collects Rosenbaum's writings to date on Welles and makes an irrefutable case for the seriousness of his work, illuminating both Welles the artist and Welles the man. The book is also a chronicle of Rosenbaum's highly personal writer's journey and his efforts to arrive at the truth.

Discovering Orson Welles

For the author, Dead Man represents a quantum leap and a logical step for Jim Jarmusch, America's foremost independent filmmaker. As well as analysing Jarmusch's masterpiece, the author includes an interview with him in this student text.

Dead Man

Contrary to what a number of disillusioned critics have written and what appears to be the pervading conventional wisdom, Jonathan Rosenbaum believes that cinema is very much alive and well. The problem is, he feels, that all too often we just do not get the opportunity to see the best of it. In Movie Wars, America's leading film critic explores the production, distribution and promotion of mainstream contemporary cinema and how, at every turn, the industry treats the viewer with contempt. Using examples such as Miramax's buying of films solely to keep them out of the hands of competitors with no intention of distributing them, the American Film Institute's narrow championing of Hollywood studio product in their 'Best 100 Films' list, and the mainstream media's unquestioning acceptance of the Hollywood PR machine, Movie Wars is a damning critique of corporate cinematic culture and a no- holds-barred call to arms for those looking for life outside the multiplex.

How Hollywood and the Media Limit what Films We Can See

Movie Wars

This book gathers examples of the author'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.

Film Culture in Transition

Goodbye Cinema, Hello Cinephilia

Interviews and Dialogues

Cinematic Encounters

Godard. Fuller. Rivette. Endfield. Tarr. In his celebrated career as a film critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum has undertaken wide-ranging dialogues with many of the most daring and important auteurs of our time. Cinematic Encounters collects more than forty years of interviews that embrace Rosenbaum's vision of film criticism as a collaboration involving multiple voices. Rosenbaum accompanies Orson Welles on a journey back to Heart of Darkness , the unmade film meant to be Welles's Hollywood debut. Jacques Tati addresses the primacy of décor and soundtrack in his comedic masterpiece PlayTime, while Jim Jarmusch explains the influence of real and Hollywoodized Native Americans in Dead Man. By arranging the chapters chronologically, Rosenbaum invites readers to pursue thematic threads as if the discussions were dialogues between separate interviews. The result is a rare gathering of filmmakers trading thoughts on art and process, on great works and false starts, and on actors and intimate moments.

When it was released in 1995, Dead Man puzzled many audiences and critics. Jim Jarmusch's reputation was for directing slick, hip contemporary films. And Dead Man was a black-and-white Western. As time has passed, though, the number of its admirers has grown rapidly. Indeed Dead Man, with its dark and unconventional treatment of violence, racism and capitalism, may be Jarmusch's finest work to date. This is Jonathan Rosenbaum's view. For him, Dead Man is both a quantum leap and a logical next step in Jarmusch's career. Starring Johnny Depp as the uprooted accountant William Blake and Gary Farmer as his enigmatic Native American companion, Nobody, and with startling cameos from Robert Mitchum, John Hurt and Iggy Pop, Dead Man is by turns shocking, comic and deeply moving. This book explorers and celebrates a masterpiece of 1990s American cinema.

Eschewing the idea of film reviewer-as-solitary-expert, Jonathan Rosenbaum continues to advance his belief that a critic's ideal role is to mediate and facilitate our public discussion of cinema. Portraits and Polemics presents debate as an important form of cinematic encounter whether one argues with filmmakers themselves, on behalf of their work, or with one's self. Rosenbaum takes on filmmakers like Chantal Akerman, Richard Linklater, Manoel De Oliveira, Mark Rappaport, Elaine May, and Béla Tarr. He also engages, implicitly and explicitly, with other writers, arguing with Pauline Kael--and Wikipedia--over Jacques Demy, with the Hollywood Reporter and Variety reviewers of Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control, with David Thomson about James L. Brooks, and with many American and English film critics about misrepresented figures from Jerry Lewis to Yasujiro Ozu to Orson Welles. Throughout, Rosenbaum mines insights, pursues pet notions, and invites readers to join the fray.

Jonathan Rosenbaum

About

Books

Join the club