David Bordwell (1947-2024)

[Maltic]

In critical condition

Among my favorite movies are The Hunt for Red October, How Green Was My Valley, Choose Me, Back to the Future, Song of the South, Passing Fancy, Advise and Consent, Zorns Lemma, and Sanshiro Sugata. I’ll also watch June Allyson, Sandra Bullock, Henry Fonda, and Chishu Ryu in almost anything.

[Michael Kerpan]

Ozu book link is here: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cjs/092005 ... l?view=toc

If you google David bordwell and pdf you find links to a number of books available online on his site and elsewhere (including U. Mich).

[jguitar]

I've been dreading this news for some months, knowing something about his health situation. I've loved film since forever, but in 2004, two events changed my life. First, I saw the Ozu retrospective that was touring, my first encounter with his films and with shoshimin-eiga. Second, in looking to read up on Ozu, I came across Bordwell's book. Instantly, many things that had been opaque to me became clear. His thorough dismantling of the incorrect notion that Ozu filmed from the "perspective of someone seated on a tatami mat" opened my eyes to what it meant to really look at film for itself and not through received opinion. As a direct result of this encounter with Ozu and Bordwell, I have curated an Asian film series at an arthouse cinema for ten-plus years and taught many film classes. I'm grateful to have met both David and Kristin at the Society for the Cognitive Study of the Moving Image conference in Madison in 2009, and thereafter at VIFF several times. I've read almost all of his and Kristin's books, and they have been my true film education. I especially treasure Narration in the Fiction Film, the Ozu book, and Figures Traced in Light. Also, the essay "Three Dimensions of Film Narrative" is essential.

[Michael Kerpan]

jpguitar -- I envy the fact that you actually got to meet with David Bordwell. I had the same reaction to his Ozu book (and then others), these radically transformed my appreciation and understanding of movies in general.

[Maltic]

Also Alexander Nevsky.

This is what I've been able to put together for him so far for supplements.

If anyone has an idea as to how I might access the Nevsky commentary, which doesn't involve me paying +$100 for the OOP DVD, my inbox is open.

I don't see on the horizon a re-release of this Mosfilm about a Russian war hero fending of Westerners, unfortunately.

[Maltic]

Naremore on some of Bordwell's books