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humanities 517 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 this inadequacy, let me end with some salient quotations from Potworowski . >After grammar, after philosophy B history. Reason, after the analysis of words and the critique of ideas, examine facts. Only those who believe facts to be simple realities, useless to the life of the spirit, would be astonished at this progression in three stages.= >The eternal is incarnate in time where only the spirit of man can reach it.= >The given is found only in history. This is the law of incarnation.= >The absolutization of St Thomas is a first-class burial.= >The entry of history into theology contemplated by Chenu ... heralded a revolution in the status, method, and object of theological reflection, a revolution whose impact is difficult to imagine.= >No theology without a new birth.= The latter half of the book deals with Chenu=s negotiation of the thickets of French Catholicism constituted by the awakening to de-Christianization. As Chenu saw it, the de-Christianization of society is not a tragedy to be lamented in a way that soon becomes nostalgic, but a growth-crisis of the church. Potworowski points out that >there is no denying that Chenu fails to clarify in a sufficiently systematic way the precise relationships between the unique event of the incarnation in the person of Christ and the actualization of this event in the history of the church.= Can a vision so broad and deep as Chenu=s be so clarified? Is his use of the word >incarnation= sometimes with and sometimes without the article indicative of a weakness, or only of the magnitude of the undertaking? The clarity of Chenu=s oeuvre, as so splendidly seen in Potworowski=s presentation of it, consists in its centredness, and in the contemplative vividness of the centre. (SEBASTIAN MOORE) Osmond Borradaile with Anita Borradaile Hadley. Life through a Lens: Memoirs of a Cinematographer McGill-Queen=s University Press. xii, 224. $49.95 Osmond Borradaile is a virtually forgotten name in film history. With the publication of his memoirs edited by a daughter, Anita Borradaile Hadley, this injustice ought finally to be rectified. This lively, informative volume outlines the singular contribution that this unsung hero made to the evolution of outdoor cinematography. Some of his work was done for commercial feature films, some for documentaries. Much of it was done in the most challenging of landscapes and climates. >Bordie= reports on both his outdoor adventures and his technical challenges with clarity, charm, and unusual modesty. Born in Winnipeg in 1898, Borradaile lived a long and healthy life, passing away in British Columbia more than a hundred years later, in 1999. But this patriotic Canadian spent many of his professional years elsewhere, 518 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 living and filming in Hollywood, Britain, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica. It was only at age eighty that he undertook his memoirs in order to provide an organized record for his children and grandchildren. His daughter=s careful editorial contribution was a labour of love. Particularly admirable is her astute choice of stills from Bordie=s personal archives. Borradaile traces a trail of circumstances that lead slowly but surely to his chosen career. His father was an amateur photographer. His mother had a love of travel. At age seven, eagerly seated at the first screening ever in Medicine Hat, the young Osmond was more impressed by the explosion in the projector than by the plot of the little films. A tubercular brother caused the family to move from Canada to California for a warmer climate. There, in 1914, he witnessed the filming of a Mary Pickford movie, became an unlicensed film projectionist, and was hired to mop floors as a >laboratory technician= by the Jesse Lasky film company. After serving in the Canadian forces in the First World War, he returned to the expanded studio, where a good friend taught him the intricacies of the camera. There, Bordie worked primarily on films directed by the legendary Sam Wood. Later bosses included the encouraging Alexander Korda in Britain, and the crusty John Grierson at the...

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