Film Follies: The Cinema Out of Order

Film Follies is about the greatest films that never should have been made. Stuart Klawans proposes that, as well as the auteurist film: where a director, operating within the studio system manages to an individual stamp on an assembly-line product. And, as well as the independent film, where the director, operating with a minimal budget and crew, can defy the conventions of generic filmmaking, there is a third, generally overlooked type of production, large, unwieldy, almost always a disaster at the box office, but fascinating to watch and consider. These are the follies, productions by filmmakers who, in the ambitious pursuit of a thoroughly idiosyncratic vision, somehow get their hands on the full resources of a studio.

Klawans, film critic for the Nation, looks at those over-the-top, beyond-extravagant films that are the consummate creation of one person. A "film folly" is not only overly ambitious but ruinously expensive to make, destroying careers and studios. It is an act of hubris or megalomania on the part of its creator, and the logical development of story line or characters isn't this type of film's strong point. Klawans examines some examples of this genre, among them Intolerance, Greed, Metropolis, Duel in the Sun, Fitzcarraldo, Cleopatra, I Am Cuba, and Apocalypse Now. Proceeding chronologically, he considers not only the film itself but the circumstances in the film industry at the time that made its creation possible. Aside from an overemphasis on the influence of Richard Wagner in the first third of the book, what Klawans has to say is interesting and far from dry. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries. Marianne Cawley, Charleston Cty. Lib., SC Copyright 1999 Library Journal Reviews