Re: RARA-AVIS: Deconstructions in films

From: Etienne Borgers ( wbac1203@wanadoo.be)
Date: 23 Aug 2003


At 13:49 22-08-03 -0700, you wrote:
>A quick follow-up on deconstruction. The other day, the
>Independent Film Channled showed a chapter in a series
>dedicated to film directors. This one dealt with the
>seventies, one of the great decades for American cinema.
>
>They had interviews with Corman, Scorsese, Altman, Coppola,
>Hopper, Mazursky, Hellman, and several other protagonists
>of the era (actors and directors). The protagonists
>themselves make it clear that what they were doing, despite
>the differences in temperament and thematic choices, was a
>deconstruction of Hollywood itself, of its production
>system, of its censorship system, of its star system.
>[snip]

Deconstruction? Yes in a way... but we could call most of what they do/did an indirect criticism of the American film industry system, to which they were also applying derision and sometimes even parody or satire. Mainly trying to devoid the system they live(d) in. Altman is for sure our best deconstructionist in that list... A kind of
"dynamitero of film genres".

On the other hand I always considered Peckinpah as a master of deconstruction in films: deconstruction of the Western genre, and most of all of the graphic violence (which is most of the time misunderstood by the general audience... and by most of the critics). Thinking twice, I could even claim he's also a deconstructionist of corruption, but this is less openly obvious in his films.

Anyway, Peckinpah is one of the great film directors of the second half of the 20th century. Obvious fact, seen even in his several mutilated films that were distributed at the time.

E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocities.com/Atehns/6384

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