Yale News
There are few hard and fast rules for defining an artistic masterpiece. Whether in literature, music, painting or film, so much of a masterpiece’s status as such hinges precariously on its impact on an audience. Does it sting you, resonate with you, make you want to return to it again and again? Does it impress you as something you’ve never quite seen or felt before, as something that changes the way you think about both the art itself and the subject it depicts?
“Interpreting Film Masterpieces,” a new series of public screenings and lectures held at the Whitney Humanities Center every Monday night this fall, not only helps identify 14 films that merit such praiseworthy consideration, but also offers a key to understanding just what constitutes a film masterpiece. Or, at least, what criteria one might use when thinking about the best works an art form has to offer.
“I don’t think we’d back [“masterpiece”] as an accurate caption for every single film we have on the list, maybe half of them,” said Yale professor David Bromwich in a recent interview on WNHH’s “Deep Focus.” Bromwich and fellow Yale Professor Dudley Andrew are the co-organizers and co-presenters of this series, and both came by the studio on Thursday afternoon to talk about these 14 films. “What we’re saying is that any audience … is likely to be interested in this film for some element of perfection brought to the craft, invention, originality, thinking through the medium and so on. But in every case I think we chose these films because they’re also films we’ve seen more than twice and would want to see again for the reasons that any work of art sends you back to it.”
But just what might those reasons be? The details arise from watching, thinking, and talking about the films themselves.
As an example, let’s take a look at the second film in the series: The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir. “[Renoir] brought to the cinema a kind of effervescence that is both casual and so deep that he is often better than the sources that he adapts when he adapts things,” said Andrew, reflecting on a filmmaker he has written extensively about, and whom he regards as one of the best there ever was. “He has a way of using the cinema as driving into a kind of truth that is very difficult to get at in any art form.” With The Rules of the Game, Renoir achieved a rare, and, for 1938, completely innovate feat for any film: he captured the fluidity, momentum, and musicality of human interactions, leveraging his camera and screenplay and community of actors and fellow artists to capture a unique experience, never to be repeated in exactly the same way, but forever to be memorialized on this strip of film. As Bromwich articulated later in the conversation, Renoir achieved in this film something that lies at the core of film as an an art form: “Life in motion somehow captured.”
To listen to the episode, which also includes a coversation between Breen and Allan Appel about the new movie Black Mass, click on the audio above or find it in iTunes or any podcatcher under “WNHH Community Radio.”
Below is a complete list of films scheduled for the “Interpreting Film Masterpieces” series.
Grand Illusion (1937) by Jean Renoir — Monday, September 7, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Rules of the Game (1939) by Jean Renoir — Monday, September 14, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
His Girl Friday (1940) by Howard Hawks — Monday, September 21, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
The Big Sleep (1946) by Howard Hawks — Monday, September 28, 8:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Citizen Kane (1941) by Orson Welles — Monday, October 5, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) by Orson Welles — Monday, October 12, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Notorious (1946) by Alfred Hitchcock — Monday, October 19, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Johnny Guitar (1954) by Nicholas Ray — Monday, October 26, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
A Man Escaped (1956) by Robert Bresson — Monday, November 2, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Pickpocket (1959) by Robert Bresson — Monday, November 9, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Los Olvidados (1950) by Luis Buñuel — Monday, November 16, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) by Luis Buñuel — Monday, November 30, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) and Persona (1966) by Ingmar Bergman — Monday, December 6, 6:30pm at the Whitney Humanities Center
