“For the past half century and more, it has been generally taken for granted that the director of a film is to be considered its ‘author,’ the individual who is primarily responsible for the film’s total effect, even when the weight of factual evidence pertaining to a specific film clearly indicates otherwise. Yet it remains unusual for the average American filmgoer to be able to name the directors of more than a handful of his favorite movies, and prior to the Fifties, when the ‘auteur theory’ became fashionable, it was far less common. For years, the only Hollywood directors widely known by name were those who, like Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles, also starred in the films they directed–and a mostly forgotten man named Cecil B. DeMille…”
Archives for November 30, 2010
TT: Just because
Nat King Cole sings “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” accompanied by Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, Stan Getz, and the Oscar Peterson Trio with Jo Jones on drums:
TT: Memories on the walls
One of the frustrating things about changing apartments on the fly is that Mrs. T and I haven’t had time to hang any of the two-dozen-odd pieces in the Teachout Museum. If you’re serious about it, hanging pictures is an excruciatingly serious business, especially when you have a lot of them, and we’re still in the maybe-this-one-should-go-there stage of what promises to be a protracted process. Hence it’s pleasant to be reminded of what we’re missing, and on Saturday The Wall Street Journal ran a very good interview with one of our favorite artists, Jane Wilson, whose “Breaking Light” (pictured above) is one of our proudest possessions.
We met Wilson in a midtown elevator last year—she’s eighty-six years old and still a beauty—but can’t claim to know her, so it’s nice to find out that she likes to listen to the music of Francis Poulenc while painting, and that she sees her work as being filled with sky and space:
Ms. Wilson starts each new work with a horizontal line near the bottom of the canvas. Not necessarily a bold line, but something she can use to orient herself. “I know I want a lot of sky,” she said. “My subject is really atmosphere and the quality of air as we live it. That’s what I think about: the vitality in surrounding spaces.”
Read the whole piece, then pick up a copy of Elisabeth Sussman’s Jane Wilson: Horizons. You won’t be sorry.
TT: Almanac
“‘Yes, sir,’ said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.”
P.G. Wodehouse, Carry On, Jeeves