x359594
19th December 2009, 16:15
Robin Wood was probably the greatest Marxist film critic of his generation. His monographs on directors ranging from Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks to Ingmar Bergman and Claude Chabrol are explamary of their kind, but probably his best piece of radical film criticism is his seminal essay The American Nightmare. His book Hollywood: From Vietnam to Reagan was recently re-printed.
Here's a link to an interview with Wood at WSWS:http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/tff7-o16.shtml
Joseph McBride's tribute:
I am very sad to learn here of Robin Woods death. He and Andrew Sarris were my role models when I started writing film criticism, and they remain my two idols in the field. Robin wrote brilliantly and in great intellectual depth and with a brave candor and passion. He showed us all the way to write about films seriously and with the kind of scholarly involvement that characterized the work of the great literary critics who paved his way before film criticism became a true scholarly field. Robin was one of the few auteurists who weathered the structuralist storm by accomodating its insights while not succumbing to its jargon or conformism. His work was actually strengthened by that challenge. I agree that his unusual willingness to evolve and rethink his ideas (as in his various editions of his Hitchcock book, especially his great chapter on MARNIE) is part of what makes him great.
And on a lighter note, I fondly recall the title of Robins two-part 1967 Focus article Who the Hell Is Howard Hawks? When Hawks appeared at the LA County Museum of Art in 1974 as part of a retrospective of his work, Peter Bogdanovich and I did a q&a with him. Hawks directed us to wait in the back of the auditorium until he could call us up by asking, Who the Hell Is Howard Hawks? He jokingly demanded, Now maybe you could tell ME. Hawks was delighted at the serious attention Robin gave to him, the highest kind of accolade for an artist (though Im still trying to figure out what Robin saw in RED LINE 7000 on more than a theoretical level).
Robin could appreciate the subtlest nuances of performance and dialogue as well as all the complexities of visual storytelling, and he always knew how to interweave the elements meaningfully in a way that few critics know how to do. He did so while bringing out and shedding light on the underlying themes of the filmmaker. And his writing style was always elegant, euphonious, and unpretentious.
We wanted to meet Robin in the early seventies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, so we put together some money to invite him to come and speak. While there, he met one of our students and fellow film buffs, Richard Lippe, who became his partner. So it was a memorable visit for Robin as well as for us. I remember him giving an especially insightful lecture on Preminger. His range of subjects was as impressive as his intellect. In addition to his seminal books on Hitchcock and Hawks, I admire his lesser-known studies of such filmmakers as Bergman and Arthur Penn, and his essay collections have illuminated the works of great filmmakers as diverse as Welles, Ophuls, and Renoir. Robins work on horror films was groundbreaking and deeply influential. His essay on teen movies was the best ever written on that subject. He grappled with the political themes of his time as they were expressed in film in both overt and covert ways. And his writing on sexuality and gender after his coming-out was always insightful and moving. His work as part of the collective that publishes CineAction and his teaching made him a mentor to many younger scholars and critics. This all shows the astonishing range of his tastes and abilities.
And he was a kind and generous and gentle and humorous man. The last time I talked with him, he told me he was mostly spending his time listening to operas. Music had become his consuming passion. His writing is always informed by his love of Mozart and other great musicians. He was a Renaissance man of the cinema, the Renoir of film critics. We will never see his like again.
Here's a link to an interview with Wood at WSWS:http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/tff7-o16.shtml
Joseph McBride's tribute:
I am very sad to learn here of Robin Woods death. He and Andrew Sarris were my role models when I started writing film criticism, and they remain my two idols in the field. Robin wrote brilliantly and in great intellectual depth and with a brave candor and passion. He showed us all the way to write about films seriously and with the kind of scholarly involvement that characterized the work of the great literary critics who paved his way before film criticism became a true scholarly field. Robin was one of the few auteurists who weathered the structuralist storm by accomodating its insights while not succumbing to its jargon or conformism. His work was actually strengthened by that challenge. I agree that his unusual willingness to evolve and rethink his ideas (as in his various editions of his Hitchcock book, especially his great chapter on MARNIE) is part of what makes him great.
And on a lighter note, I fondly recall the title of Robins two-part 1967 Focus article Who the Hell Is Howard Hawks? When Hawks appeared at the LA County Museum of Art in 1974 as part of a retrospective of his work, Peter Bogdanovich and I did a q&a with him. Hawks directed us to wait in the back of the auditorium until he could call us up by asking, Who the Hell Is Howard Hawks? He jokingly demanded, Now maybe you could tell ME. Hawks was delighted at the serious attention Robin gave to him, the highest kind of accolade for an artist (though Im still trying to figure out what Robin saw in RED LINE 7000 on more than a theoretical level).
Robin could appreciate the subtlest nuances of performance and dialogue as well as all the complexities of visual storytelling, and he always knew how to interweave the elements meaningfully in a way that few critics know how to do. He did so while bringing out and shedding light on the underlying themes of the filmmaker. And his writing style was always elegant, euphonious, and unpretentious.
We wanted to meet Robin in the early seventies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, so we put together some money to invite him to come and speak. While there, he met one of our students and fellow film buffs, Richard Lippe, who became his partner. So it was a memorable visit for Robin as well as for us. I remember him giving an especially insightful lecture on Preminger. His range of subjects was as impressive as his intellect. In addition to his seminal books on Hitchcock and Hawks, I admire his lesser-known studies of such filmmakers as Bergman and Arthur Penn, and his essay collections have illuminated the works of great filmmakers as diverse as Welles, Ophuls, and Renoir. Robins work on horror films was groundbreaking and deeply influential. His essay on teen movies was the best ever written on that subject. He grappled with the political themes of his time as they were expressed in film in both overt and covert ways. And his writing on sexuality and gender after his coming-out was always insightful and moving. His work as part of the collective that publishes CineAction and his teaching made him a mentor to many younger scholars and critics. This all shows the astonishing range of his tastes and abilities.
And he was a kind and generous and gentle and humorous man. The last time I talked with him, he told me he was mostly spending his time listening to operas. Music had become his consuming passion. His writing is always informed by his love of Mozart and other great musicians. He was a Renaissance man of the cinema, the Renoir of film critics. We will never see his like again.