718
PARTISAN REVIEW
under the Influence,
The
Killing
of
a Chinese Bookie,
and
Opening Night;
Milton Moses Ginsberg's
Coming Apart;
Robert Kramer's
Ice
and
Mile–
stones;
Elaine May's
Mikey and Nicky;
Michael Roemer's
Nothing But a
Man
and The
Plot Against Harry;
Shirley Clarke's
Bridges
Go
Round
and
Portrait
of
Jason;
Morris Engel's The
Little Fugitive;
James Ivory's
Shake–
speare Wallah, Bombay Talkie, Autobiography
of
a Princess,
and
Roseland;
Bruce Connor's
A Movie
and
Report.
These are the obvious, seminal masterworks of American fUm
art
from the late fifties through the seventies. Yet how frequently do you
hear any of them mentioned in dinner-table conversation? How many of
them are alluded to as touchstones of excellence in the review columns
even of high-toned magazines and newspapers like
The New Yorker
or
The New York Times?
I rarely meet professors of film who have seen more
than three or four of these works. These works and others define an au–
thentic "great tradition" in American film, but, given the terrifying eco–
nomics of film distribution and promotion, it is probably not surprising
that it remains a lost tradition. The journalistic situation is especially dis–
couraging for alternative work. A review is almost the only way for these
fllms to become known to the general public, yet it's as if television, ra–
dio, and the print media have become extensions of the studio PR ma–
chine. The Hollywood publicists
fill
up all of the available journalistic
space with their press kits and news releases.
What's at stake is more than a matter of column-inches. The stu–
dios dictate the definition of film itself, so that there is no imaginative
space left for alternatives to Hollywood. That's why the general level of
discussion ofjazz, opera, bridge, or chess (or practically any other area of
human expression, including sports) is more sophisticated than what passes
for film coverage in the media. At least in the chess or bridge column of
the paper there isn't such a pattern of systematically excluding acts of ge–
nius from consideration. On any day of the week, in the music pro–
gramming on your local FM station, you can hear the historical perfor–
mances of Billie Holiday or Louis Armstrong; their achievements aren't
simply written out of the official histories of their art, as the perfor–
mances of these filmmakers are.
Even American
film
scholarship has allowed its agendas to be set by
Hollywood (which is why the vast majority of so-called serious
flim
crit–
ics write about the same movies as those covered in
Time, Newsweek,
or
People).
When American film scholars look for "art," they don't look at
home; they look abroad - to French, German, and Italian fUm. The
most unfortunate consequence is that American independent filmmakers
have been denied their own history. Most of those with whom I have
spoken didn't even know there was anyone else in America other than
