More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
23 April
Some people (no names mentioned!) are quite dogmatic about what BB postulated about fairy tales:
It's a bit like being a strict Freudian* and - as Arthur Koestler expressed it in Bricks to Babel (1980) - filtering out everything that is inconsistent with your adopted (to be pretentious) Weltanschauung, so BB (probably quitely kicking and screaming, from what little I know of him) becomes the new God.
Thus adherents say that He Has Spoken, and henceforth Fairy Stories shall be hallowed, imbued with dark meanings, and with the purpose of helping us manage our difficult inner feelings by projecting them onto a story (no quibbles, no refund).
I think of this from hearing Debussy's familiar (though thankfully off the air for a while) L'Après-Midi d'une Faune (1894), and a decent explanation - for once - of its roots in Mallarmé's poem of 1865. It requires little invention to imagine sexual sublimation (of writer, reader or listener, though, for me, the lattermost remains a stretch, as does finding the text behind other works of Claude's): the faun can safely do - or dream of doing - what we can conveniently enjoy in him, and deny as being our desire.
Which brings us to yesterday's screening, accompanied by Neil Brand and Mark Kermode (why else was everyone there?) in The Dodge Brothers, of The Ghost that Never Returns (1929), the penultimate event in the 15th British Silent Film Festival, which was hosted by the Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, this year.
More to come...
End-notes
* Woody Allen's passing quip is my favourite, which goes something like During my time in therapy, my analyst retired - as he was a strict Freudian, it was only six sessions later that I realized.
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A bid to give expression to my view of the breadth and depth of one of Cambridge's gems, the Cambridge Film Festival, and what goes on there (including not just the odd passing comment on films and events, but also material more in the nature of a short review (up to 500 words), which will then be posted in the reviews for that film on the Official web-site).
Happy and peaceful viewing!
Showing posts with label The Ghost that Never Returns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Ghost that Never Returns. Show all posts
Monday, 23 April 2012
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