Quote for the Week

Earlier this week I watched Jacques Tourneur's rather great film Night of the Demon for the first time. Though less well known than some of his other work, I think it's my favourite from the ones that I've seen, slightly flawed though it is. Looking for material to read on the film I came across Curse of the Demon: Of Evil, Myth and Reason by Pedro Blas Gonzalez on the ever-dependable Senses of Cinema. One of the things which struck me most about the essay was its final quote from Jung, which I am therefore reproducing here as my 'Quote of the Week':

One of the most fatal of the sociological and psychological errors in which our time is so fruitful is the supposition that something can become entirely different all in a moment; for instance, that man can radically change his nature, or that some formula or truth might be found which would represent an entirely new beginning.

- C. G. Jung, Psychology and the Occult (quoted in Curse of the Demon: Of Evil, Myth and Reason).

As well as offering an interesting perspective on human psychology in general, I think the quote is especially interesting when applied to the common conception of screenwriting, and in particular to the idea that all of the characters have to undergo a major change – and often a sudden, last minute change at that. In my opinion Jung, and indeed Night of the Demon, show us a much more interesting, and much less pat, path that I wish was explored in far more films.

Scorsese and Intertextuality

A few weeks ago I mentioned in passing that I commented in my BA dissertation on the way that both New York, New York and Raging Bull can be traced back to The Red Shoes, and said that I would post it up here sometime. Since then I've given the work another read...It's interesting to come back to it after four and a half years. Reading it again I can see things that I would do differently now and ideas which I should have clarified or expanded upon. However, I did also feel that I had raised some interesting points within it.

So, here it is: A Critical Analysis of the Application of Genettean Transtextuality to the Filmic Text, with Reference to whether this Notion has Gained New Relevance with the Advent of the DVD. I hope that anyone reading it today will keep in mind that it was written a while ago now and that, as I said above, there are things that I would do differently if I was writing it today.

In its own way, this post should also be understood as the promised second part of my previous Scorsese post that I never got around to writing....