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The Original Robin Wood

2011; Issue: 84 Linguagem: Inglês

2562-2528

Florence Jacobowitz, Richard Lippe,

Cinema and Media Studies

This issue celebrates Robin Wood's remarkable contribution to film criticism. Robin established himself as an important critic in sixties and wrote steadily until a year before he died in 2009. His career is marked significantly by tumultuous social and political changes that affected his professional and personal life. Robin's criticism is often described in terms of a simplistic bifurcation: first there was humanist critic and then politicized one. Arguably, work was grounded, from his earliest writings, in an engagement with social world and already evidenced a moral and political consciousness. Robin's writing was influenced by Utopian possibilities of social liberation movements of sixties and reactionary politics that followed, ending hope of revolutionary change. The latter led to his interest in films of such diverse directors as Gregg Araki, Patrice Chereau and Michael Haneke, each of whom directly speaks of social oppression and its results and consequences. Robin remained consistent in his adherence to significance of author/director as a prime creative presence responsible for work and importance of style as cinema's means of communicating ideas and meaning. He was well aware of collaborative nature of mainstream film production (as shown in his affection for work of Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey and Jean Renoir, directors who were known to encourage collaboration and improvisation) but saw director's contribution as giving film a defined vision. Robin was attracted to films that evidenced a strong directorial signature long past time it was considered by film scholarship acceptable or relevant to do so. His commitment to his convictions alienated him from reigning critical discourses of moment with their extreme, almost pathological, rejection of intentionally following the death of author. The approach to art that forced individual works within an ideological system that produced sameness was antithetical to Robin's appreciation of intervention of artist and possibility of using art to effect social change. The recognition of authorship supported idea that not all works are created equally or are of equal value. Robin's commitment to strong imprint of director is found also in his love of distinguished works of literature and classical music. In his monograph on The Wings of Dove, he describes great literature as the greatness of which resides in writer's grasp of potentialities of language--movement from word to word, sentence to sentence, paragraph to paragraph. ... (1) Aside from recognition of artist's use of style and medium, this again suggests that his critical practice had an evaluative component--some works are greater than others. Robin's steadfast critical appreciation of Yasujiro Ozu demonstrates strengths of his sensitivity to issues like aging (Tokyo Story) and loss (Late Spring) just as his love for Hawks was attributable to director's concerns with equality in personal and professional world. These filmmakers were embraced by Robin in way their work spoke about 'life'. This is not meant to restrict Robin to influence of F. R. Leavis, but to suggest that his valuation of great works of directors such as Ozu and Hawks remained a potent and valuable component in his critical practice, that accounted for its breadth beyond more overtly politicized criticism. While we understand privileging of writings on horror film, we would be saddened to see it taken as definitive of Robin's work, or representative of his most significant contribution to film criticism. His perceptive thesis that horror film can be read as a radical critique of late capitalist culture in which it proliferated is extremely relevant, but with exception of work of George Romero, films were not those that he continued particularly to value. …