Musicals and Musicality: The Films of Richard Quine, 2017
Although critics and scholars tend to posit that great directors transcend genre, the gargantuan ... more Although critics and scholars tend to posit that great directors transcend genre, the gargantuan influence of Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema has had the effect of conceptualizing an auteur's oeuvre as a genre unto itself, "a selfcontained world with its own laws and landscapes." 1 Many of the filmographies that populate the Pantheon, Far Side of Paradise, and Expressive Esoterica categories in The American Cinema possess a legible gestalt characteristic of genres in part because the directors enjoyed careers roughly coterminous with the 1917-1960 parameters David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson set for the classical Hollywood cinema. 2 Their filmographies thus epitomize the classical mode of filmmaking with entries that both refine and critique classicism and its limitations, especially later/last films like Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1960), Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks, 1965), and 7 Women (John Ford, 1966). Indeed, the sway of their careers fit snugly into Henri Focillon's experimental-classic-refined-baroque model of genre development in which conventions move from a state of equilibrium to a more mannerist and reflexive mode. 3 By contrast, Richard Quine's career has slipped through the historical cracks into nonentity status, occupying an awkward interzone between the classical Hollywood cinema and the New Hollywood. He received praise early in his career, especially from the French New Wave directors. Jean-Luc Godard famously used Quine's Pushover (1954) as a model for Breathless (1960). And Jacques Rivette rather confusingly lambasted critics who were "still in the Fritz Lang, Howard Hawkes [sic], Elia Kazan, Edward Dymytryk, Fred Zinnemann [sic] syndrome" while ignoring younger directors such as "Richard Aldrich [sic], Anthony Mann, Richard Quine, Edgar Ulmer, Richard Brooks, and Nicholas Ray." 4 But despite intermittent accolades, it has remained difficult to position Quine as anything but a talented journeyman. And yet the very awkwardness of Quine's place in film history lends his career a certain kind of poetry. The year 1960 bifurcates his filmography with a historical elegance unbefitting a director marooned to the junk drawer of Miscellany by Sarris in The American Cinema. 5 Having completed his first solo directing stint in 1951, Quine was relegated to television and two negligible, impersonal features after 1970-W (1974) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1979). So his filmography pivots on 1960 framed on one end by Hollywood's all-time box office high in 1946 and on the other by the dawn of the New Hollywood. It
Failure, disappointment, and a resulting cynicism have long been the chief pleasures of trash, sl... more Failure, disappointment, and a resulting cynicism have long been the chief pleasures of trash, sleaze, and exploitation cinemas. Fans of $1.99 horror quickies and "sexless sex films" 1 revel in the gap between expectation and actuality that characterizes such films whose advertising discourses (titles, posters, William Castle-style shtick) promise more gore, thrills, and sex than their micro-budget constraints or unseasoned cast and crew can actually deliver. Take this appreciation of the "more embarrassing than scary" title monster of Larry Buchanan's Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966), for example:
Although critics and scholars tend to posit that great directors transcend genre, the gargantuan ... more Although critics and scholars tend to posit that great directors transcend genre, the gargantuan influence of Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema has had the effect of conceptualizing an auteur's oeuvre as a genre unto itself, "a selfcontained world with its own laws and landscapes." 1 Many of the filmographies that populate the Pantheon, Far Side of Paradise, and Expressive Esoterica categories in The American Cinema possess a legible gestalt characteristic of genres in part because the directors enjoyed careers roughly coterminous with the 1917-1960 parameters David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson set for the classical Hollywood cinema. 2 Their filmographies thus epitomize the classical mode of filmmaking with entries that both refine and critique classicism and its limitations, especially later/last films like Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960), The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1960), Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks, 1965), and 7 Women (John Ford, 1966). Indeed, the sway of their careers fit snugly into Henri Focillon's experimental-classic-refined-baroque model of genre development in which conventions move from a state of equilibrium to a more mannerist and reflexive mode. 3 By contrast, Richard Quine's career has slipped through the historical cracks into nonentity status, occupying an awkward interzone between the classical Hollywood cinema and the New Hollywood. He received praise early in his career, especially from the French New Wave directors. Jean-Luc Godard famously used Quine's Pushover (1954) as a model for Breathless (1960). And Jacques Rivette rather confusingly lambasted critics who were "still in the Fritz Lang, Howard Hawkes [sic], Elia Kazan, Edward Dymytryk, Fred Zinnemann [sic] syndrome" while ignoring younger directors such as "Richard Aldrich [sic], Anthony Mann, Richard Quine, Edgar Ulmer, Richard Brooks, and Nicholas Ray." 4 But despite intermittent accolades, it has remained difficult to position Quine as anything but a talented journeyman. And yet the very awkwardness of Quine's place in film history lends his career a certain kind of poetry. The year 1960 bifurcates his filmography with a historical elegance unbefitting a director marooned to the junk drawer of Miscellany by Sarris in The American Cinema. 5 Having completed his first solo directing stint in 1951, Quine was relegated to television and two negligible, impersonal features after 1970-W (1974) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1979). So his filmography pivots on 1960 framed on one end by Hollywood's all-time box office high in 1946 and on the other by the dawn of the New Hollywood. It
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