As attentive followers have noticed, the rate of Mid Century Cinema’s posts has slowed down a bit in 2023. I can’t tell you how many letters the staff here has received inquiring about this. Really I can’t. Nevertheless, we felt it appropriate to check in with those imagined faithful, and offer this quick explanation (and some exciting news) to account for our somewhat more languid pace of late. One is of course familiar, which is that we are slaves to the academic calendar, and it is a challenging season in that cycle. But in addition, we’ve been working on several assignments outside the shop, such as our recent review (or was it a vivisection?) of the recent book by Quentin Tarantino, Cinema Speculation.
And with something of a “preview of coming attractions,” we can also report in on three additional external assignments, which we have embraced with some enthusiasm (if foolhardiness). The first (which, destined for an edited volume, will see the light of day last), is a chapter on Orson Welles’ minor Hollywood films of the 1940s: Journey into Fear, The Stranger, and The Lady from Shanghai. The last of these three, it should be noted, although mutilated by the studio as they all were – Welles original 155 minute cut was reduced to 86 minutes – is in no way a minor film. In any event, it has the working title ”License Revoked? Welles’ Studio Films of the mid-Forties,” designed to reflect his reduced circumstances and, especially, creative autonomy in the Hollywood system after Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. It has been a pleasure to revisit Welles, and good fun tracking down intriguing miscellany, such as the various versions of Journey, which, like many Welles films, was released in several different versions, some much better than others.
Next up after that (and a few day job detours, alas) is a feature length essay on Krzysztof Kieslowski’s Blue, White and Red trilogy (and box set packed with thrilling extras). Kieslowski is one of the auteurs in MCC’s pantheon of the all-time-greats, a filmmaker we revere, and we are eagerly looking forward to taking a deeper dive into this trilogy, as, in our estimation, Blue, featuring Juliette Binoche, is a masterpiece, and Red, with Irene Jacob and the (we’re not just saying this) legendary Jean-Louis Trintignant is perhaps Kieslowski’s greatest film—no small praise. That feature should hit the newsstands this autumn, so keep your subscriptions current.
Finally (after yet another pause), we’re quite excited to have been green-lit for an essay on a spectacular new Wim Wenders box set. Wenders has yet to receive the MCC treatment – a regrettable omission to date – but this twenty-two disc box set brimming with over a dozen features, seven shorts, and fifty extras ought to be more than enough to rectify that oversight. Not surprisingly, the main focus of the essay will be on the films from the seventies—in particular Alice in the Cities, one of the great and still under-appreciated films of that decade, as well as the outstanding The American Friend and other gems from that early era as well. But of course we’ll also feature the essential Wings of Desire, the much beloved (but actually not one of our go-to films) Paris, Texas, and other key films from his oeuvre. The essay (as pitched) will also engage Wenders’ role in the emergence of the New German Cinema, his cinephilia more generally (and reverence for Ozu and other masters) and the self-awareness/reflexivity of much of his later cinema, among other themes.
All of which is to say, if our regular posts remain somewhat more distantly spaced than usual do to these efforts, you can always wander over to the “Books, Essays and More” page on the the site to keep up with what’s new from us . . .