[Marxism] Bad time for cinema

["Ernest Leif" <ernestleif@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Marxist aesthetics" is a subject that at one time did command attention.
Artists and cultural theorists felt that the form one used to tell a story
was often just as important as the story itself. I recall Godard saying that
he wanted to unsettle middle class film viewers with his approach and so he
deliberately used jump cuts, a dirty, anti-hollywood sound mix, mid-film
title sequences, and so on and so forth. Or course the irony is that the
middle class praised his films.

As for movies with a Marxist, or at least class based lens watch almost
anything by Visconti, Rosi, Petri, Pontecorvo, Fassbinder, and the list goes
on. And or course in this county, as mentioned, Sayles and even Altman. Also
look out for depression era films, especially those made by Warner Brothers.
A particularly wonderful film is "Counselor At Law" based on the play by
Elmer Rice. In it John Barrymore plays an up by his bootstraps Jewish lawyer
from the Lower East Side who has to dodge the the patrician, white shoed
protestants, who would like nothing more than to see him fail.

elb
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