Although Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Jean Renoir do
not pontificate about "eternal verities or analytical niceties," as
Irving Singer remarks in Three Philosophical Filmmakers, each expresses,
through his work, his particular vision of reality. In this study of these
great directors, Singer examines the ways in which meaning and technique
interact within their different visions.Singer's account reveals Hitchcock,
Welles, and Renoir to be not only consummate artists and inspired craftsmen but
also sophisticated theorists of film and its place in human experience. They
left behind numerous essays, articles, and interviews in which they discuss the
nature of their own work as well as more extensive issues. Singer draws on
their writings, as well as their movies, to show the pervasive importance of
what they did as dedicated filmmakers.Hitchcock used his mastery of contrived
devices not as mere formalism divorced from content, Singer notes, but in order
to evoke emotional responses that are meaningful in themselves and that matter
greatly to millions of people. Singer's discussion of Hitchcock's work
analyzes, among other things, his ideas about suspense, romance, and the comic.
Singer also makes a detailed comparison of the original Psycho with Gus Van
Sant's recent remake. Considering the work of Welles, Singer shows how and why
the theme of vanished origins -- "the myth of the past" -- recurs in
many of his films, starting with the Rosebud motif in Citizen Kane and
continuing much later in his little-known masterpiece The Immortal Story.
Expanding upon Renoir's comment that his own films were "always the same film,"
Singer studies his entire work as a coherent though evolving search for contact
and "conversation" with the audience. While recognizing the primacy
of technique, Renoir used cinematic artifice in the service of that humanistic
aspiration.
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