film on TV
There is really no longer any point ir
disputing the importance of the Western's
place in American and world cinema, anc
even less reason to argue the preeminence o
John Ford in this fundamental genre.
Andrew Sarris has stated that Ford's
Stagecoach signalled the virth of the moderr
American cinema. With this film, Fore
proved that the formerly unfashionable
Western no longer had to be limited to grade
B cowboys and Indians grist for a crass en
tertainment mill. American film has never
been the same since Even such a bona fide
"respectable" American director as Orsor
Welles freely acknowleges his debt to Ford's
art. Today, the cinema is still haunted by the
spirit of Ford's vision. The singing ol
"Gather at the River" in Sam Peckinpah's
The Wild Bunch and Sidney Pollack's
Jeremiah Johnson is not mere accident anc
coincidence These are conscious references
to the West that Ford made his own with a
visual mastery and overwhelmingly com
passionate sensibility. Ford's images,
themes, characters and social structures
have entered into the realm of legend
appropriate, indeed, considering his con
stant use of legend and tradition throughout
his career
Of particular interest iO me, an
unabashed, woFshipful devotee of the man, is
the latter part of Ford's career. Having
created an artistic world of his own, having
written the history of its people and
progress, Ford seems to sit back and
meditate on what he has wrought. He is a
man of the past facing the present,
preparing for the future and his films, from
1960's Sergeant Rugledge to 1967's Seven
Women, are a vital chapter in his and the
entire cinema's art.
i wo Koae i ogemer, a ivoi turn, marKs tne
firs? appearance of James Stewart and
Richard Widmark in Ford's films. This has
a special significance considering that the
leading characters of most of Ford's earlier
important works were portrayed either by
Henry Fonda or John Wayne This new
casting reflects the shtft of focus of Ford's
lat*r career Stewart is a more cynical and
self interested version of the unshakably
stoic Wayne while Widmark is a more
pragmatic and resigned counterpart to Jhe
idealistic Fonda character Two Rode
Together is, at times, an uncharacteristical
ly bitfer re evaluation of Ford?sown vision of
people and societies. The likeable bumpkin
played by Ken Curtis in The Searchers (an
excellent film for comparison) is now a
demented religious fanatic and the crowds of
honest settlers of Ford's earlier films are
cpable of degenerating to the level of the
lynch mob. Ford is dealing with issues of
racism, religious intolerance, corruption
and hatred, themes rarely encountered
with such intensity in his more optimistic
earlier days It is a tribute to his artistic
courage that Ford calls into question so
many of the basic issues that form the
artistic backbone of his career. From the
opening shot, with its visual reference to the
sunny sensibility of his masterpiece My
Darling Clementine, Two Rode Together
represents a sell imposed challenge of’ all
that the artist has done before. It will be
shown Monday on Channel 12 at I p.m.
If Ford isn't enough for one day, Monday
morning offers the opportunity of seeing
Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief,
again with issues of guilt and the pursuit of
salvation and self understanding, the film
stars Cary Grant as a retired cat burgler
suddenly suspected of being behind a
rash of second story jewel robberies on the
Riviera The police, as usual in Hitchcock's
films, are unable to do more than make
threatening noises and harrass the presently
innocent Grant, making it necessary *hat he
revert to his former ways to snare his
criminal heir Grace Kelly, as a spoiled,
rich, potential victim of the thief does her
part in complicating matters with her
suspicions and arrogant teasing As with
any Hitchcock production this is a textbook
of visual technique and an eminently en
toyable way to spend a morning It's shown
Monday at 9:30 a m on Channel 9.
Blake Edwards is represented by three
films this week Wild Rovers tonight at 9 on
Channels 5 and 6, The The Perfect Furlough,
Saturday at 3 p.m. on Channel 6 and Ex
periment in Terror, Wednesday at 10:30 a m.
on Channel 12.
Lynn Couch
COLE
A R TIS i "» S v! P P i 1 P >
celluloid
Dave Foster
Photo by Steve Twedt
Dave Foster-part one
“The road to success is strewn with failure. I think it’s part of the
way. People shouldn’t be discouraged by it. They are—and
understandably. I think that when you develop an understanding of
growth, and learning, and change, you then have to really accept
failure as part of the working situation, and use it, and understand it.
Then you begin to get a little humility, you back off a bit, and see
things clearly. Otherwise you’re feeling totally dispossessed if you
don’t buzz out of here in four years and get some top-notch job right off
the bat. That’s what the abstract character of education leads a person
to expect. You’re in no contact with reality. We’ve had people leave
with no degrees, nothing resolved, emotional basket cases, and they go
out and get right into it. And do fairly well. Really shock themselves.
They have learned something, but never realized it, because they were
too busy trying to win. They were busy trying to be successful, but
were learning, you see, in spite of themselves. They thought they were
total failures. This is the thing that we have that really is tough to deal
with, and that’s because most everybody thinks of art as the beautiful,
superior Thing. That isn’t my idea of education—that isn’t the process,
as I see it. It’s being able to crawl out of just a huge mountain of
failures and walk off with a thing that makes sense. Now, that’s what I
call scholarship—being able to digest a hell of a lot of experience,
sorting out what you can use, passing the rest of it, and moving toward
a little understanding.”
This conception of education as a process of self-discovery rests
squarely behind Cinemagraphics instructor David Foster’s approach
to art. It could also be said just as accurately that David Foster’s
conception of art as a process of self-discovery lies behind his
approach to education. The distinction between the attitude toward
film education which Foster holds and that held by William Cadbury of
the English department is basically the same as the distinction which
Foster draws between the art school and the rest of the University.
Cadbury sees films from a critic’s standpoint, as objects consisting of
distinguishable parts which, when related to each other, convey a
meaning to the audience; Foster, on the other hand, comes to film as
an artist, for whom film is a tool with which he can come to grips with
his own ideas.
Foster s position on film education is in line with his basic feeling
that the studio approach is an important addition to the learning
experience which the rest of the University would do well to borrow
from the art school. Working with the entire process of film-making,
from the birth of the idea to its presentation on the screen, the student
(or artist) can learn as much through error as he or she can, in a
different sense, from books.
Foster’s emphasis on process rather than produce was nicely
exemplified on one occasion when he was invited to exhibit some
recent work. He came up with an inspired notion that served to display
his approach as well as his drawings: gathering a number of
blackboards, he set them up in the gallery and proceeded to execute
his drawings on the spot. In this way he gave the exhibition hall his
latest work, beyond question. At the same time, by making his
drawings readily eraseable, he made clear that it was the drawing
process itself, as well as the individual artworks, that had value. But if
it is the creation of the work that is important, where does the
audience fit in?
First and foremost among the audience members, to Foster’s way of
t.. thinking, is the artist j&nsetf. The Artist examines his own ideas by
' giving'1 them artistic form.
“We don’t listen to ourselves. I think that to find out whether you
have something to communicate, you have to begin to communicate.
There has to be feedback. You have to get it out—begin to form it—and
therefore, you become your first audience. Many students can’t read
their own work. They’ve been so busy, getting ready for the
audience— the audience being the teacher, the school system, or
whatever—that they cease to listen to themselves or read their own
work. They’re trampling all the daisies, looking for the marigolds.’’
Because the artist creates primarily to understand and clarify his
own thoughts, this does not mean no one else can comprehend his
work—all people share the same perceptual equipment, as Foster
points out—nor does it mean on the other hand that the work must be
universally comprehensible. The audience for a given work consists,
for Foster, of those who “are in sympathy and understanding with
what you’re doing, or curious about it, or even who challenge it—and
hopefully you will be able to include yourself in that grouping. At any
rate, those people who would respond to it, and not necessarily the first
batch that rolls up against the stop light out here on any given day.”
When I asked him if he felt that first-hand experience with the
medium was necessary for full appreciation of the movies, Foster
quickly corrected me:
“If you want to appreciate a film, it certainly is possible to
appreciate it without having made one. I think there are people who
will respond and read the experience sensitively. In the first place,
what is the film? It’s an experience you’re going to have. You’re an
authority on your own experiences. If there were 40 people in the
theater, there can be 40 different versions of what happened, and 40
legitimate feelings about it. If anybody’s moved by it, they appreciate
it. In that sense, it worked for them. Understanding of what the guy
had done, as a process, could be greatly enhanced by having some
contact with the film process. I think people also read, and really,
some of the books they read are deep emotional experiences. I would
call that great and meaningful appreciation of the man’s writing. But
you might not even be able to spell, you might not have knowledge of
grammar at all, you might be absolutely ignorant of that. So if you’re
going to say, ‘You really don’t appreciate this until you really know
what it is to write a book yourself,’ well, that puts most of us behind the
eight ball.”
Foster had much more to say about film and film education, but the
rest will be saved for another time. And even so, there will never be
room in a column like this to do justice to the “processing” of an eager
mind like David Foster’s.
Coming Soon
Those people at the Oakway pulled a fast one on me. True, they only
held Don’t Look Now for a week, just as they said they would, but they
have since moved it into the Mayflower, closer to the audience that
» can appreciate it best. I have to say that if I were to make a list of the
10 best films put out in 1973, that film would have to be on it.
Coming on campus this weekend are two golden masterpieces, a
rarity by a third master, and a disaster by a fourth. Renoir’s The
Golden Coach (1954), being shown by Bijou-Dream tonight at 8 in 180
PLC, takes the film-maker out of simpler realism into the
fiction-within-a-fiction format, with a film that stands grandly
somewhere between Ophuls’ Lola Montes and Fellini’s Sl/2. On Friday
and Saturday nights, the Film Society will show Chaplin’s classic The
Gold Rush (1925), along with a newly rereleased short, Payday (1922),
at 7 and 9 both nights in 150 Science.
The rarity is the late John Ford’s last film, Seven Women (1966),
which has been both lauded and condemned by those few lucky enough
to have seen it. The Ford film series brings the film to 177 Lawrence at
8 on Monday night. And the disaster is Fellini’s Roma (1972), which
the Cultural Forum treats us to (if that is the word) on Sunday at 6:30
and 9 in the EMU Ballroom. I am glad I had the chance to mention
Fellini’s 8'2, one of the very greatest films ever made, in this column,
since I felt compelled to mention Roma, in which he bottoms out.
Pierre G. Dunn
University Theater preseats
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