Arthur Penn: New Edition

Introduction

preface Between 1965 and 1971, Robin Wood wrote monographs on Alfred Hitchcock, Arthur Penn, Howard Hawks, Ingmar Bergman, Satyajit Ray, and, in collaboration with Ian Cameron and Michael Walker, respectively , Michelangelo Antonioni and Claude Chabrol. Each of the monographs was a groundbreaking contribution to English-language film criticism. That the first three were devoted to American directors speaks of Robin’s commitment to the classical and postclassical Hollywood cinema as a form of collaborative filmmaking that allows for a personal vision. Arthur Penn provides insightful and eloquent analysis of the director ’s films but additionally is a highly pleasurable book to read. It clearly conveys the exhilaration that Robin experienced viewing this filmmaker’s work. Penn’s films inspired Robin not only through their thematic concerns and stylistics but also with the intelligence, creativity , and moral responsibility that they express. It is evident in Robin ’s writings on Penn that he values the director’s humanism and his visual emphasis on movement as well as the spontaneous reaction, the desire to protest. It is worthwhile to consider Arthur Penn in relation to the Bergman book that was first published two years later. When reading Ingmar Bergman, one finds a similar emotional commitment and intellectual awareness, but the tone is strikingly different, giving the impression of single-minded seriousness and reverence. In evaluating Robin’s writing on Bergman, it is necessary to consider his reaction to the films. Robin encountered Bergman’s films in 1958, the first year that he lived in Sweden and saw the films without subtitles; the impact xiv preface that they made on him was so strong that he immersed himself in the director’s work and continued to do so through the 1960s. Ingmar Bergman was the culmination of an intense period in Robin’s personal life in which he was trying to come to terms with his sexual identity in the oppressive confines of his British upbringing. Bergman’s vision of the “human condition” afforded Robin a degree of comfort in dealing with his compliance with the demands of “normality” as defined by patriarchy and the prevailing culture. It wasn’t until Robin’s acknowledgment of being gay in the early 1970s that he established and articulated a political identity. The back-cover description of the 1967 Studio Vista edition of Arthur Penn claims that it is the first book to be published about the director. Robin’s decision to devote a monograph to Penn’s relatively small output of five films in nine years indicates Robin’s strong connection to the work. As he points out in his discussions of the films, Penn, a postclassical filmmaker, employed the tradition of narrative realism using, for example, plot and characterization. He heightened these elements visually through his mise-en-scène, which often was used to depict the emotional and/or physical reactions of his protagonists . yet Penn’s approach to his subject matter, America, and its history and mythology is analytical and, in Robin’s words, produces a meaningful “complexity” and “ambivalence.” The political nature of Penn’s films undoubtedly had significance to Robin even though he tended to emphasize their deeply felt humanity. Conceivably , Robin was prompted to write Arthur Penn on the strength of his reaction to The Chase, which explicitly depicts America’s capitalistic society in the process of a civil and moral breakdown. Penn presents a community out of control but avoids simplifying the reasons for its behavior. In his essay on Alice’s Restaurant, found in the 1969 Praeger edition of Arthur Penn, Robin approaches the concept of revolution through a comparison of Arthur’s film and Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend (1967) and Le Gai Savoir (1968). He points to Weekend’s presentation of the hippies as an example of Godard’s lack of feeling in a concept-based film and questions what Godard “conceives preface xv revolution for, as human life seems no longer to have much meaning for him.” In his 1986 essay “The Chase: Flashback, 1965,” Robin says that he wrote the original piece on the film “in the days of my critical . . . innocence , above all, of concepts of ideology, and of any clearly defined political position.” yet he also goes on to say that “My evaluation of The Chase has not changed.” Robin’s perception of his 1960s’ self as a critic needs to be given a context. The “concepts of ideology” that...