Philip Kaufman

Notes

age—what could be called fauxtography—acknowledges that it can also be manipulative: to be aware is to assume a wary or skeptically active relationship to the image. This is what Philip Kaufman asks of his audience—an invitation that contributes to his personal stamp as a filmmaker—whether his focus is erotic freedom, artistic expression, male codes of honor, or twisted perception. Nevertheless, a coherence of vision does not always constitute the auteurist mark that leads to recognition of a director’s oeuvre. Must a consummate filmmaker’s body of work be recognizable? Even if we can make a case for the coherence of Kaufman’s films, why should this be a higher standard of value than the greatness of an individual movie? Over the past fifty years, the auteurist approach to film criticism has become entrenched, elevating the appreciation of repetitions within a director’s work. It is abundantly clear, however, that even a gifted director cannot make a masterpiece without a terrific screenplay. And the contributions of cinematographers, editors, producers, production designers, composers, or actors are often the reasons why a motion picture achieves classic status. Ultimately, Kaufman is also part of a tradition that has been neglected : namely, directors better known as craftsmen than auteurs. Film studies has perhaps done a disservice to directors like William Wyler (The Best Years of Our Lives, The Heiress), Fred Zinneman (High Noon, A Man for All Seasons), George Stevens (Shane, Giant), Arthur Penn (The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde), Alan J. Pakula (Klute, All the President’s Men), Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa), and Peter Weir (The Truman Show, Master and Commander) precisely because of their versatility. In evaluating the work of such artisans, we see not only that particular motion pictures they directed are masterpieces but that each career constitutes a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Even if it were not possible to connect Philip Kaufman’s motion pictures via thematic and stylistic consistencies, they would still be worthy of study. Notes 1. The editor was Adolfas Mekas, who, together with his brother Jonas, was central to the experimental “underground” film movement of the early 1960s. 2. “Monique van Vooren bursts into song on occasion, a sort of homage to those almost comic-book moments in ’40s and ’50s films where Bacall, Rita 124 | Philip Kaufman Hayworth, etc. had their seemingly compulsory chanteuse scenes,” Kaufman explained in the March 2005 letter. 3. In the same letter, Kaufman wrote, “It just dawned on me that Frank’s first flight might be somewhat similar to Yeager’s breaking the sound barrier, including the joyous spin at the end.” 4. Colette Lindroth perceived that “they are not the sighs and gasps of sexual pleasure, however, though that is what they sound like (and the notion of so many rooms with so many beds suggests a bordello). These are the gasps of pain and effort, and the rooms are scenes of physical therapy rather than physical pleasure” (230). This scene informs her understanding of Kaufman’s contrasts: “Like Kundera, Kaufman structures his fiction around polar opposites: sickness/ vitality, fidelity/infidelity, freedom/imprisonment, ugliness/beauty; above all, around the opposition of lightness/heaviness. Wisely, Kaufman moves to capture abstractions like ideas and authorial attitude by making rich use of the novel’s real and implied symbols” (230). 5. Kaufman wrote in October 2005, “One area that we shot that I regretted losing was Tereza’s arrival in Prague: getting off the train with her huge suitcase; then struggling down a huge flight of stairs with the suitcase, falling and sliding down in a great clown act worthy of Buster Keaton (as a child she had studied to be a clown with the Fratellinis). . . . Binoche was amazing: not enough of her clown side has been revealed in her films. But we decided to stick with the Tomas story at this point . . . alas.” 6. Kaufman acknowledged in an email of February 21, 2005, about casting the son (and lookalike) of Luis Buñuel, “I thought having Buñuel kiss her on the lips was some sort of message sent to the departed master.” 7. A brief shot of the dance teacher (Feodor Atkin) glancing at Eduardo, and of Eduardo looking back, suggests a homosexual flirtation. This is picked up just before Anaïs seduces Eduardo in the nightclub: a knowing look is exchanged between him and a waiter at the bar. Eduardo later warns her to beware of abnormal pleasures because...