Sometimes received ideas become reinforced and cemented by being brought up repeatedly as critical short-hand. For example: Samuel Fuller's films are "primitive"; Lang is all about fate; Ozu celebrates quiet resignation, and keeps his camera low and static; Chabrol makes Hitchcockian films that are bourgeois satires; Bresson is austere and minimalist; Peckinpah's films revel in ultraviolence, etc, etc. Now, these pronouncements aren't exactly false, but by no means are they the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The problem is that they 'fix' filmmakers too easily and quickly, thus constraining our thinking about them to certain pre-determined pathways. Girish.
O mais sintético possível, que eu já deveria estar na cama: resistir a estas received ideas, quando a nossa cabeça já está quase integralmente formatada segundo teorias e lugares-comuns disseminados ao longo de anos e décadas, é, como escrever, um bocadinho complicado. Se alguém se atrever a caminhar pelos suspeitos caminhos da originalidade, e escrever que Ozu's films revel in ultraviolence e Peckinpah is austere and minimalist, a história encarregar-se-à de o tratar devidamente.
