I like your post about canons and the care with which we should handle them. I agree that they should be used to broaden rather than narrow. I have been a big fan of canons because I am for the most part self-taught in so many of the arts that I love. I've made and make great use of them. Jazz, non-English European lit, classical music, art...on and on and on. But they have really been politicized at times, no? Especially the so-called literary canon, because nowadays about the only time most people read serious literature is when they are in college, so the establishment of the curriculum has become a blood sport.

So true, Jim. I was just telling Rob (in the flesh!) that my experience of film school was that films, as texts, weren't nearly as important as being able to use them to illustrate fashionable academic subjects, and since film studies wasn't even around until the '60s and '70s, it was quickly subjected to Structuralism and post-Structural interpretative schemes. I learned less about specific films in school than what topics were really hot in academic journals, it's sad to say.

I've been excited about Rosenbaum's new book for a while, so I'm happy to see it's being published. Apparently, it includes his top 1,000 movies!

Hi Doug--

That's an interesting comment about film school. I have a friend who was at UCLA in the 80's, and he said a similar thing, that the production classes were great but the theory classes were, in his opinion, absurd.

As for Rosenbaum's book, leave it to him to list a thousand essential films. If I had to come up with that many I'd have to start listing Love Bug movies.

Ha!

Actually, after browsing the book 1,000 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I realized 1,000 isn't all that many films. What is that really, like, a movie every other day for five years or something? Of course, then we'd have to list all of the films we'd ever seen.

I chanced across Essential Cinema> at the bookstore last night, but I'm embarassed to admit that I passed on it in lieu of the fact that it was $35 and I had already read a lot of the essays in it. (Like his previous Movie Wars, it's basically a collection of his better Reader essays.) Fantastic stuff if you haven't been keeping up over the years (but I think both of you have) so I do plan to get it someday, but maybe I'll wait for the paperback.

His top 1,000 list is really just that--his top ten films (sometimes more, sometimes less) from each year, 1895-2003. It's more of an appendix, actually, no commentary.

I also realized that my point about Theory taking over film studies wasn't exactly related to Jim's point about political biases, but I guess I was just thinking about how ideology always seems to trump textual analysis these days.

Doug, your point about film studies is related, the way I look at it. Canons are desirable and important in an information-rich society. We crave them. And for that reason, they are easily hijacked (or maybe I should be charitable and say "influenced") by people who ride into our brains on the back of that craving, whether it's people with an agenda, a pet theory, or something to sell.

Unrelated... I wish I had a giant graph that had years along one axis and how many movies from that year that I've seen on the other axis. I wonder how uneven my coverage is. I suspect that I'd have a dip in the 1940s.

$35 is a bit steep for something you've already read most of, but I noticed that Amazon has it for $23.80, with free shipping if you add one more item to bump you up over $25.

I thought the price was kind of steep, too, but the Amazon tip is a good one. I also didn't know he had recycled so much of his material. Good gig if you can get it!

Regarding numbers of films seen: you guys have both got me beat. I sometimes think I might go through the Video Hound book and check off all the ones I have seen...then realize I've got better things to do. Another good graph would be director versus year, to see the cluster of when one got into a given filmmaker.

Film-going is a social experience. It's the 20th century secular version of church. We share our culture and our reactions to that culture corporately. It gives us a common language and reference. We feel like we must see the same movies everyone else has seen in order to share the culture. Film is the foremost artform of the 20th century.

I like the idea of a canon of must-see films that doesn't change (especially for the 20th century), if only to teach each generation to appreciate the progress, if any, that film has undergone, and to give them a common film language. Look at the 20-year-olds who can't appreciate Citizen Kane because it's "overrated". To exclude from the canon those films which our predecessors found significant is ignorant and short-sighted. We must understand the historical context in which films were created. We need to know what the standards are in order to grasp when they've been exceeded. There's nothing new under the sun, except what's been forgotten.

Interesting comments, Becky.

A list that reflects what movies were admired by previous generations could be very interesting. Distance changes perspective, and I'm not sure things ever really settle. Vertigo continues to ascend critics' all-time lists, now often appearing in the top 3 but just 10 or 20 years ago it was much further down the list.

Or there's the ebb and flow of Chaplin vs. Keaton. Right now Keaton is rising and Chaplin is falling. But it'll reverse, perhaps ad infinitum.

Or take a look at Oscar nominations. I know, they're always a bit oddball, but it's still interesting to see what movies the industry was promoting for posterity, and how many of them are long forgotten.

Distribution formats affect things, too. Ozu seems to be having a resurgence in this country as his work is finally being made available on DVD. We can hope the same thing will happen with Bresson.