This is a Tribute?

[MikeBSG]

I was looking at the Roget Ebert website yesterday, when I saw a feature by Jim Emerson, who has apparently been running the website during Ebert's illness, called "The Legend of Richard Widmark."

Emerson began by saying how impressed he was by Widmark's speech at the Teluride film festival in 1983. He (Emerson) remembered this speech when he learned of Widmark's death and spent several days tracking down accounts of the speech and the circumstances around it.

So I read the article. In short, Andrei Tarkovsky, an exiled Soviet filmmaker, came to Telluride to present his latest film "Nostalghia." Before showing the movie, Tarkovsky made an arrogant speech in which he said that the art of moviemaking had been in the clutches of commerce since its origins, but in the passage of time, real art would win out. (I'm paraphrasing.) Then "Nostalghia" was shown, and it was a three-hour ordeal.

The next day, Widmark made his speech, in which he said that Griffith and Chaplin showed that movies could be entertaining as well as art. In private, Widmark let people know that he considered Tarkovsky "a phony."

And that was this great tribute to Richard Widmark.

I'm thinking: This is a tribute? He tells off an exiled filmmaker from a system utterly different from Hollywood, and somebody thinks this is what Richard Widmark should be remembered for?

I don't especially like Tarkovsky. His early film "Ivan's childhood" is marvellous. I think "Andrei Rublev" is too long, and "Solaris" was tedious. I think this incident doesn't show either man, Tarkovsky or Widmark, at their best, and I wonder about the judgment of someone who reconstructed it thinking he was doing Widmark's memory a service.

[moira finnie]

Here's a link to the full Jim Emerson entry begun on the Ebert page that Mike is referring to here.

I've only seen Solaris, (I liked it alot), so maybe I'm not a good judge of Tarkovsky. It seems that the director's comments about art winning out over commerce in the movies is just the kind of stuff you always hear coming out of a film festival. I bet there were many people there who ate it up. Of course, without the corporate underwriters for many big film fests such as Telluride, no artistic visions would be unspooling on the big screen, would they? I suppose the tension between the Soviets & the U.S. didn't help at the time, but wouldn't it be possible that the director might have been told before leaving Moscow to say such anti-Western stuff if he wanted to attend any more international film festivals?

That being said, it does seem pretty lame to sort of half repeat a barely remembered moment in Richard Widmark's long life at the Telluride Film Festival in 1983 as a tribute. Why not write about what, if anything, Jim Emerson liked about the man's work? Or do you think it's possible that this Emerson guy may not have seen too many of Mr. W.'s movies? It's puzzling. And seems kind of lazy too.

Hope Roger Ebert gets well enough to come back full time someday soon. I don't always agree with him, but I do enjoy his astute observations.

[Ollie]

Mike, please change your name to HAMMER HITS NAIL RIGHT ON ITS HEAD. Well stated arguments, and I agree.

I wouldn't call him a 'favorite' actor of mine, but he's become one of my 'collected' actors. His brutal bad guys and his sincere good guys strikes me as a range that few other actors accomplish.