
Don't even talk to me if you haven't seen Peter Tscherkassky's 1999 Outer Space, above...
In the comments thread for the below post on Jess Franco, a couple of friends seem to be asking me to weigh in on Mick La Salle's San Francisco Chronicle piece, in which La Salle, the movie reviewer for the paper, admits to not having seen five putatively canonical films; chronicles his viewing of said five, To Kill a Mockingbird, Blade Runner and 2001: A Space Odyssey among them; and offers some banal and relatively unhelpful assessments of them, deeming, for instance, 2001 "impenetrable."
I can't say I am all too agitated by any of this. First off, we all have movies we haven't seen; one of the glories of being a cinephile, professional or otherwise, is that the learning curve's forever a straight line, going up. More pertinent to me is that Mr. La Salle, who apparently has some bona fides in the field of pre-code Hollywood film, has never impinged on my consciousness prior to this, and appears to come from a perspective/sensibility I have about zero interest in. Read La Salle's take on Leo McCarey's An Affair to Remember. "[N]ot quite the sappy indulgence I remember," he says, and how nice for him. Now, if you'd like, check out Dave Kehr's careful, detailed assessment of the 50th Anniversary DVD of the film in The New York Times. "An Affair to Remember evolves effortlessly, almost invisibly, from light romantic comedy to a kind of spiritual drama, as the characters cast off their public identities (they are both performers: he in the tabloids, she on nightclub stages) and approach their essences..."
Not everyone is Dave Kehr, whose incredible erudition is an organic feature of his work. That's true. But while Kehr's around and writing, what do I need La Salle for? Which isn't to say I don't understand that Dave's taste and perspective aren't for everyone, that some readers and potential film-goers are more comfortable in La Salle's sphere.
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