Description:
Formative writings by French avant-garde filmmaker Chris Marker
It is hard to imagine French cinema without La Jetée (1962), the time-travel short feature by the reclusive French filmmaker Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, better known as Chris Marker. He not only influenced artists ranging from David Bowie to J. G. Ballard but also inspired the cult film 12 Monkeys. Marker's influence expanded beyond his own films through his writings for the French monthly Esprit as well as anthologies and newly founded film publications.
This first English translation of Marker's early writings on film brings together reviews and essays, published between 1948 and 1955, that span the topics of film style, adaptation, and ideology, as well as animation and the debates surrounding 3-D and wide-screen technologies, ranging from late silent-era films to postwar Hollywood's efforts to contend with the rise of television. Readers will find commentary on Laurence Olivier's 1944 screen adaptation of Henry V, a scathing review of Robert Montgomery's Lady in the Lake (1947), critiques of Walt Disney productions, a discussion of the pitfalls of prioritizing commercial success over aesthetic values, and more.
An indispensable resource for cinephiles and scholars alike, these texts document the emergence of Marker's critical voice and situate him alongside such contemporaries as André Bazin and Eric Rohmer, as well as the future French New Wave figures Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. They show how his remarks on individual films open onto his engagement with films as social and cultural phenomena.
Review Quotes:
"One of the pleasures of Chris Marker's films is the singular literary voice of his inimitable commentaries, in all its wit and quicksilver intelligence. That voice is present here, being honed through contact with others' images and before Marker moved from the page to the screen himself. This groundbreaking collection introduces aficionados old and new to work likely unknown to them and allows us all to discover another dimension of this prodigious artist: Marker the film critic."--Chris Darke, author of La Jetée (BFI Film Classics)
"There is much to recommend in Early Film Writings."--Film Comment
"[The pieces] are engagingly presented and argued, and Marker has a keen eye, offering interesting observations."--The Complete Review
"The essays collected here combine the ardour of an amateur with the obvious understanding of narrative and film technique that he was soon to bring to his own work."--Times Literary Supplement
"Ungar's introduction--as vital a read for cinephiles and scholars as are the Marker texts--underscores Marker's famed wit, incisive perception, and multimedia commitment to a metaphysics of time and affect."--Cineaste
"A remarkable work of translation... This book encourages scholars to not only think about Marker's films but also to think with Marker himself." --Studies in Twentieth Twenty-First Century Literature