Godina izdanja: Ostalo
ISBN: Ostalo
Jezik: Engleski
Oblast: Film
Autor: Strani

GRAND ILLUSIONS

GRAND ILLUSIONS represents a selection of the most beautiful photographs ever to come out of Hollywood`s Golden Years. The motion pictures of that era, stumbling perhaps across a new poetics, projected gorgeous fantasies which soared beyond the plots and elaborate sets, even beyond the luminous glamour of the stars. Once on film, subjects had a beguiling sense of

drifting through space as though painted by a casual, barely visible presence. And in truth, the visual intelligence behind these filma was often one of genius; genius which could dream and still con- trol a new technology.

`Hollywood-what we understand by Hollywood - could not have happened anywhere else. A motion picture industry might have sprung up in another place, but it would not have been seared with the same baffiling luminance.

`The power of Hollywood is undeniable; and yet, for all its talent, productivity, imagination, the very word suggests a fantasy which skips across the water like a flat stone. Where is the philosophy which can describe this power, this frippery? How do we know so surely that this intractable name will live in legend?

`Standing here amid the cactus, close to the hills overlooking the city, I think of the land, of the desert and mountains, the chaparral. It has not been tamed and settled, merely built upon. At night you can hear the land breathe. The hills roll up against the night sky like great dromedaries slumbering on their knees while the city plays.

`Think of the early film makers who burst into this valley in search of eternal sunlight; how they must have opened their arms to this semi-paradise, free from smog and concrete. How they must have stood in silence near these hills and heard the deep, muffled breathing of the beast. At what instant would it rise up and lumber into another age? How they must have turned their cameras from this dark, troubled sleep with a sense of frenzy and escape.`

- from Grand Illusions