I have been working my way through this packed set over the last few nights and have been quite impressed, both with the film itself and with Criterion's lush treatment of the film. As far as out-and-out canonization projects go, this is one of Criterion's best attempts (although I am personally not yet convinced that
Two-Lane Blacktop deserves a place in the upper echelon of 1967 to 1982 Hollywood films). Needless to say, this is a truly great release.
I was disappointed, however, with the "Slow Ride" essay about the film written by the usually impeccable Kent Jones. Did anyone else get the sense that way too much ink is spilt by Jones in service of tarnishing the reputations of
The Graduate and
Easy Rider, films that have already undergone a significant critical re-evaluation (de-evaluation?) over the last few decades? More importantly, reading a critic talk (again) about those films really doesn't do much to clarify the relative importance or artistic merit of
Two-Lane Blacktop. I understand that it is important to distinguish
Two-Lane Blacktop from its counter-cultural Hollywood forbears. But can't that be done in a few sentences?
Easy Rider doesn't deserve another critical drubbing in service of that point.
What bothered me the most is the essay's inconsistent logic on the above comparison. In discussing
The Graduate and
Easy Rider, Jones accuses Nichols and Hopper of merely aping the best of 1960s European cinema and appropriating its techniques to create otherwise pedestrian American fare, memorable to us now only for its place in cultural history. Jones writes:
Kent Jones wrote:The Graduate marked the beginning of countercultural consciousness in American movies. In the fading memory of that moment, now layered with so many ironic reversals, retrenchments, and disappointments, it is less the film that is recalled than the potent effect it produced, an effect largely unavailable to artists more nuanced and less fixed on the public eye than Mike Nichols. Shorn of its contemporary context, Nichols's film is a nicely executed comedy of romantic embarrassment tarted up with Felliniesque close-ups, Antonioniesque spatial configurations, and Bergmanesque silences. If nothing else, The Graduate is a profoundly "esque" experience.
Similarly, the essay continues to note that:
Kent Jones wrote: Hopper's chosen cinematic forebears were, if anything, even headier than Nichols's (Bruce Conner, Kenneth Anger, Jean-Luc Godard), but, ultimately, both films rested their thematic affectations, stylistic embellishments, and musical accoutrements on the shoulders of less noticeable items: that bravura comic timing in the former and the beautifully crafted characterization in the latter.
Even putting aside for a moment the absurd conclusions that are drawn out of the last half of the second quotation (Hellman's film is a superior work because it doesn't stoop to the level of its audience by either being truly funny or by having well-written characters in the way that the other two films deign to do), the essay becomes genuinely problematic when Jones finally gets around to praising
Two-Lane Blacktop, instead of, you know, wasting time discussing the film within its cultural context and comparing it with its cinematic influences and forebears, like all those morons who enjoy
The Graduate have done for the last forty years.
In discussing Hellman, Jones writes:
Kent Jones wrote:His European influences dovetailed with those of Nichols, but they appear to have been more fully absorbed -- in many ways, the westerns were exemplary hybrids of old Hollywood and new Europe, beautifully recombined offspring of Beckett (a Hellman hero), Rio Bravo, and L'avventura, with powerful genetic instructions from Rivette's Paris Belongs to Us . . .
What the fuck ever. Nichols and Hopper get trashed for wearing the European art house on their sleeves, but Hellman gets praised for doing the same thing in "a more fully absorbed" manner? How, exactly, is
Two-Lane Blacktop a more fully absorbed version of the European cinema and the avant garde than the earlier films? Jones conveniently never explains this. As the essay continues on to note, Hellman himself admits that the famed last shot is lifted wholesale from
Persona, appropriated for the same cinematic purpose that Bergman used it for. Jones also fawns over Hellman's "Bressonian" use of non-actors Taylor, Bird, and Wilson, again setting up Hellman as an auteurist hero. This is such nonsense. How does Hellman's
Persona rip-off show that he has more fully absorbed Bergman than Nichols's use of silences and faces? Why does Hellman's debt to Bresson demonstrate a profound autuerism where Hopper's debt to Godard demonstrates a profound creative weakness?
Armond White does this kind of thing all the time: object to films that you don't enjoy because they reference the techniques and spirit of earlier classics (evidence that the film cannot rest on its own merits), while praising films that you do enjoy because they reference the techniques and spirit of earlier films (evidence that the film is meritorious). Its a bullshit critical move, and I am disappointed that Jones makes it in his attempt to elevate
Two-Lane Blacktop into the canon.
