In his astute and deeply informed film reviews and essays, Jonathan Rosenbaum regularly provides new and brilliant insights into the cinema as art, entertainment, and commerce. Guided by a personal canon of great films, Rosenbaum sees, in the ongoing hostility toward the idea of a canon shared by many within the field of film studies, a missed opportunity both to shape the discussion about cinema and to help inform and guide casual and serious filmgoers alike. In Essential Cinema, Rosenbaum forcefully argues that canons of great films are more necessary than ever, given that film culture today is dominated by advertising executives, sixty-second film reviewers, and other players in the Hollywood publicity machine who champion mediocre films at the expense of genuinely imaginative and challenging works. He proposes specific definitions of excellence in film art through the creation a personal canon of both well-known and obscure movies from around the world and suggests ways in which other canons might be similarly constructed. Essential Cinema offers in-depth assessments of an astonishing range of films: established classics such as Rear Window, M, and Greed; ambitious but flawed works like The Thin Red Line and Breaking the Waves; eccentric masterpieces from around the world, including Irma Vep and Archangel; and recent films that have bitterly divided critics and viewers, among them Eyes Wide Shut and A.I. He also explores the careers of such diverse filmmakers as Robert Altman, Raul Ruiz, Frank Tashlin, Elaine May, Sam Fuller, Terrence Davies, Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, and Orson Welles. In conclusion, Rosenbaum offers his own film canon of 1,000 key works from the beginning of cinema to the present day. A cogent and provocative argument about the art of film, Essential Cinema is also a fiercely independent reference book of must-see movies for film lovers everywhere.
Given the current intellectual environment, nothing could be more provocative or welcome than a film critic who openly defends the making of canons, and who compiles an informed, discriminating list of the best pictures ever made. Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Essential Cinema performs both tasks brilliantly, at the same time giving us a bracing series of essays on the artistic, political, and entertainment value of individual films and film makers. Everyone who loves motion pictures ought to read this book. Rosenbaum’s personal canon will stimulate debate, enhance education, and provide a valuable guide to a thousand nights of pleasurable viewing. –James Naremore, author of More Than Night
Jonathan Rosenbaum is unquestionably one of the leading film critics working today. He is an invaluable guide to current movies–not because one always agrees with him, but because he enlarges our perceptions and often points us in the right direction, because he is intelligent and engages our intelligence–and has a sound grasp of the history of film, its aesthetic values and its social and political content. In many ways he is singularly well equipped for the project he undertakes in Essential Cinema: to establish a pantheon of great films in world cinema. This idea may be controversial nowadays but, in my view, that only makes it all the more worth undertaking. Bringing fresh acumen and insight to both established classics and more recent films, this book will inspire debate among those who care about the art of film. –Gilberto Perez, author of The Material Ghost
As one of our few truly thoughtful, regularly-appearing film critics, Jonathan Rosenbaum strives less to simply describe or evaluate a film than engage the reader in an argument about values. He understands that film canons need not be a conservative listing of masterpieces, but an ongoing struggle for the richness of cinema and art in a world of commercialized leisure and passive politics. –Tom Gunning, author of The Films of Fritz Lang
