GOING TO THE MOVI ES
Jonathan Baumbach
EUROPE IN AMERICA
For those who resist subtitles a number of new America n direc–
tors, many of them from academic backgrounds, offer us, through the mediation
of personal disguise and/or vision, the glories of the new (wave) Europea n cin–
ema. We tend to like our culture wa tered a nd for all our bo i terous cha uvinism
have genera lly had contempt for our own achievements in the arts. The irony
of course is that that selfsame new wave, in France at leas t, crea ted itself outof
a love for American genre film s-for mov ies-most o f which went uncele–
bra ted in their own time and country.
The mos t successful o f the new breed o f critic-filmmakers, Peter Bog–
danovich , is an oblique exceptio n to the rul e. Bogdanovich 's nosta lg ia-his
mode and essential theme-has to do w ith American, no t European, filmmak–
ers (Hawks, Ford, Welles, etc.), to who m he pays homage by doing serious
imita tions and varia tions on their best work . Bogdanovich has a lways seemed
to me a prema ture old master, hi s vision a pastiche, meticulo usly wro ught and
controlled, of grea t moments from class ic America n movies. His films have
been calculatedly moving and funn y, avoiding sma ll mistakes at the expense
of spontaneity, as if a talented a rchivi st were redoing pieces of film history in
case the originals were destroyed by fire.
So a lthough I've never particularly di sliked his "qua lity" films-some–
times taste and intelligence go a long way-my ardor for Bogdanovich 's
oeuvre has a lways been slight. With middling expecta tions thenr-I had been
Gatsbyized a few weeks before a nd expected I could live a full life without
