In Search of a Marxist Method for Film Criticism
Reading Trotsky While Watching Kurosawa
by LOUIS PROYECT
A couple of weeks ago an Australian friend and fellow Marxist raised
some interesting questions about film:
I have just moved to the capital city of the state and attended my
first film festival. I have always enjoyed movies but in the past have
been living in regional centers.
It got me thinking about what constitutes a “good movie” and yourself
and David Walsh are the only two Marxist movie critics I can think of.
David never seems to like anything very much and his discussion of
culture – which is interesting- relies heavily on Trotsky’s ‘Literature
and Revolution’.
I know you have written in passing about the sort of movies you like
but wondered if you’d written more systematic about Marxism movie criticism.
Despite having written over nine hundred film reviews in the past twenty
years or so, I have never really given much thought to the question of
“Marxist movie criticism”.
Unfortunately Walsh has stopped writing film reviews for the World
Socialist Website, which for my money was the only thing worth reading
there. It’s a dirty little secret but most of the material that appears
on wsws.org is extracted from the bourgeois press and then spiked with
Marxist rhetoric about how evil the capitalist system is, as if we
needed any reminding. I’d rather read the NY Times and make such
observations myself.
full:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/12/26/reading-trotsky-while-watching-kurosawa/
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