Word: warhols
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...earlier films, his approach works, and not just because his talkative superstars sustain one's interest without a dramatic plan. Warhol's first films were long static takes of nearly motionless objects- the Empire State Building, a man sleeping. Despite their notoriety for selecting events and objects at random, and thus trying to destroy designed art, these films pushed cinema to its fundamentals and were Warhol's purest formal works. A subsequent series of sharply lit deep-focus features sustained interest through one's shifting attention within the static frame. One continually rediscovered the composition's different elements...
Starting with extremely formal attempts to discover basic cinema, Warhol has found a more extensive natural order in events, people, and settings informally composed. His new shooting style directs one's attention to his characters' behavior. Warhol, like Hawks, builds characters in their mannerisms, the way they deliver lines, and in their relations with others- their constant bluffing to preserve their dignity or identity. Their physical appearances are important to our perception of them, but looks are secondary to the way they carry themselves...
...characters behave together in Lonesome Cowboys is more simply sympathetic than in Warhol's earlier movies. It perceives them in a sustained erotic way: in two scenes the camera zooms in and out on skin and underlying ground while a cowboy makes love to Viva. Hawks's existential bitterness disappears, leaving Warhol looking sentimental. He is sympathetic to the isolated woman, to the boys wandering around looking for security in others' love, toward the cowboys' leader who, older than the rest, sees the band breaking up and the boys abandoning...
...this knowledge that ties Warhol's film to the others playing with it. In each the well-made formula film breaks down under the changed situation of individuals in modern society. Each film builds from a different genre and testifies to a different sort of personal change...
...overt existential anguish of these films is at odds with Warhol's low-key "documentary" of behavior. But Lonesome Cowboys , coming out of and replacing Hawks's adventure dramas, has its own brand of despair. If Hawks's characters approached neurosis in their rivalry and their avoidance of domination by women, their constant games of bluff at least gave them a personal style which could become heroic. Warhol's treatment of his characters goes to bedrock; they have nothing but their bodies to back up their actions. They and their world are completely anti-general and anti-ideal. They...