Archive: Book Reviews, November 2004
The European Cinema Reader
By Catherine Fowler (ed.)
London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-24092-1. 4 illustrations, xii+268pp. £17.00
A Review by Eugenie Brinkema, State University of New York at Buffalo, US
Not to quibble right off, but might Catherine Fowler’s The European Cinema Reader been better off calling itself A European Cinema Reader? After all, European cinema in history, practice, and theory is a mighty big topic, and that one little article could have served us with the crucial disclaimer for any anthology tackling such an enormous field: I know my limits, I am not attempting it all. Sadly, no such qualifiers precede Fowler’s collection, and as a result, the Reader’s over-broad aim and the mixed quality of its articles fail to live up to its misguided, grandiose title.
Fowler’s strategy for this slender book (a mere twenty-two articles, several of which are only a few pages long) is evidenced by the four sections of the Reader: "European Film Culture," "Moments from European Film History," "European Films and Theory," and "The Boundaries of European Film Criticism." Each section has subsections: for example, the final part is divided between "Europe and America" and "European Film Industry" (a breakdown inconsistent with the rubric "film criticism" -- these articles are industry analyses, no more, no less). The bibliography is extensive and excellent; a library card and a few quarters can make those pages yours for far less than the price of the book.
Although the "Introduction" nicely problematises what a European cinema looks like, brings in requisite problem topics like auteurism, national cinema, and the relationship between high and low art, and would make a fine first-day article for an undergraduate survey course on European film, this theoretical framework does not seem to impact the articles chosen for the Reader proper. Each section begins with a short introductory essay by Fowler, but while these pieces are designed to historicise and contextualise the coming articles, their broad scope simply underscores how spare and insufficient the selections are. For example, while Fowler nicely problematises the false dichotomy between European (read: art) and American (read: entertainment) films in her opening remarks, the Reader provides a paltry two articles (a combined twenty-six pages) on the issue.
The most valuable section, entitled "Moments from European Film History," would have made an excellent anthology on its own; indeed, one wonders why such a nicely focused topic was ignored in favor of this sloppy assemblage. Selections here run the gamut from André Bazin’s famous remarks on Italian neo-realism to the oft-anthologized Dogme 95 "Vow of Chastity." They are undoubtedly useful. They are also, however, undoubtedly anthologized elsewhere. Why read them here? This Reader’s audience would seem to be the undergraduate film student beginning a course of study in European film who requires a short, brief exposure to various ways of looking at Europe and film. What is this student offered here? Are students who care about detailed aesthetic analyses the very same who are interested in the economic structure of the Spanish film industry? Does Eisenstein’s rigorous, formal shot-by-shot breakdown of his Strike (1925) not make an odd bedfellow with Janet Thumin’s account of British box office attractions? This monstrous assemblage fails to achieve a quirky post-modern pastiche (and I’m not at all convinced that that was Fowler’s goal); rather, it just seems at best messy, and at worst completely useless. Given that the collection is so short, every article bears an enormous burden and the laws of competition fatefully intervene: pieces that are boring take up valuable literary space. Like persons with a similar designation, they come to be quickly resented.
And the omissions! Where are auteurs like Marguerite Duras or Alain Robbe-Grillet? Neither has a mention in the index. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s omission is shocking, for both his cinematic and theoretical contributions ought to be required knowledge for any student of film. And although Fowler mentions the crucial presence of two world wars in the history of European cinema, the few textual references are in regard to World War I’s impact on film production and industry -- where is the theoretical work on the structural and thematic impact of the wars? Given that numerous books have been filled with analyses of fascism and its impact on modern European cinema, doesn’t it deserve at least one essayistic nod in this collection? Finally, one wonders why a selection from Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Continuum, 1989) is missing from the section on Europe and film theory: that philosopher’s brilliant account of the structural changes in European cinema after World War II would have been welcome as both a truly theoretical piece of writing (film theory proper is given little attention here) and a pan-European analysis.
The final great elision, the unforgivable gap, is forthrightly acknowledged in the Introduction: "The omissions of the canon are also present here, thus there are no articles on women directors and only brief mentions of smaller European countries; however, the bibliography at the end of the book does offer detailed references to work in these areas" (10). Well. Female directors and smaller countries have been condescendingly awarded bibliographic mention for decades; we might have hoped that a Reader from 2002 would have finally granted them permission to sit at the big kids’ table. It would not be inappropriate to ask what "European Cinema" this Reader refers to in its title when it systematically excludes from real critical attention a sizable portion of Europe’s population. That old ridiculous fantasy of continental wholeness is maintained only through the wilful disavowal of minority presences. Let us hope that in the future, cinema studies is actively, viciously, wonderfully ripped asunder; let us hope for many readers, many Readers, and far less use of the exclusive, exclusionary The.