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May 1994

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Subject:
From:
Robert Withers <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 10 May 1994 10:27:24 EDT
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To those who are contributing to BEST OVERLOOKED FILMS, it would be much
more rewarding if you could say *why* you are contributing a title, maybe
some speculation about why the film was overlooked, maybe even what this has
to do with film theory, if this thread does have anything to do with film
theory. Wasn't Citizen Kane "overlooked" for ten or fifteen years after its
release? Hasn't Abram Room's "Bed and Sofa" been overlooked for many years?
This is a gentle,psychological,feminist story about a woman who loves both her
husband and a (boarder? live-in friend?), only to decide in the end that
they're both using her, as she strikes out for freedom, with the last scene
showing her waiting for her appointment at the abortion clinic. Completed in
1927, Jay Leyda calls it a "chamber work," and it's certainly been overshadowed
by the self-promotion, institutional support and theoretical and revolutionary
glamor of Eisenstein and the others. In fact, after Eisenstein, the history
books then mention Pudovkin and Dovzhenko, and then maybe get around to that
other master of self-promotion, Vertov. This is not at all to belittle their
work, certainly not Vertov's. Just interesting that the manifesto and the
techniques of self-promotion in film were functioning well during this
revolutionary period. Interesting too that revolutionary theory and film
theory were both so useful to the publicity process, and that Room, who
worked in his quiet careful way with revolutionary issues of personal life and
feminism, but I gather issued no manifestos and promolgated no theories, has
been overlooked.
                                        Robert

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