There exist a number of litmus tests in the field of criticism and theory; a roll call of films and filmmakers who, divisive by nature, like lines in the sand, demand that one take stock and take sides. For the cinephile, it is almost imperative that one holds an opinion on such films and filmmakers; these are the beleaguered zones of the cinema, the crossroads at which our sensibilities take shape. And there is arguably no other zone as beleaguered as the life and work of John Cassavetes.
A scholarly, if not particularly fiery, salvo, fired off into the intellectual palaver that is film studies, Australian George Kouvaros’ Where Does It Happen? John Cassavetes and Cinema at the Breaking Point marks an important contribution to the study of this remarkable filmmaker. Building on the work of numerous French theorists and critics, such as Nicole Brenez, Thierry Jousse, and Jean-Louis Comolli, whose ideas are supplemented here with those of numerous English-speaking commentators, such as Adrian Martin, Where Does It Happen? is one of the first extended formal analyses of the filmmaker’s work to appear in English. As such, with its emphasis on close reading and form, the book fashions itself as an alternative to (not to mention a conscious critique of) the dominant discourses surrounding the filmmaker; a ‘third way’, so to speak, between the crude biographical auteurism of Ray Carney and the wholesale dismissal of the filmmaker’s work by large swathes of the critical establishment.
Correctly believing that these two approaches have served only to inhibit our understanding of the filmmaker and the formal complexity of his work, Kouvaros identifies in the analysis of Cassavetes’ films a unique opportunity: as objects of critical and theoretical ‘otherness’, dismissed or denied by the mainstream for their anomalous relation to accepted paradigms, Cassavetes’ films not only offer themselves up as filmic objects ripe for textual analysis, but also as catalysts for a possible critique or metadiscourse on established ways of thinking and talking about the cinema. Kouvaros’ book is as much about film studies as it is about Cassavetes, and in this respect it can be seen to belong to an emerging tradition of what we might call ‘metacriticism’; contributions to the practice which, like Martin and Rosenbaum’s Movie Mutations, Robert B. Ray’s How a Film Theory Got Lost, and the online film journal Rouge, proceed outwards from the criticism of specific films and filmmakers towards a more fundamental critique of the history and forms of criticism itself.
This focus is made explicit in the opening chapters of the book, where the author charts both the history of Anglo-American film studies and that of its uneasy relationship with Cassavetes. This focus is made explicit again in a later chapter, when Kouvaros boldly summarizes his project as an attempt to “unsettle some of [the] inculcated techniques and compulsory actions surrounding Cassavetes’s films”. That he does so, in many cases, by adopting the ‘inculcated techniques and compulsory actions’ of Francophile criticism and theory is perhaps beside the point: to the extent that a number of the ideas espoused in the text remain comparatively unknown to an English-speaking audience, Kouvaros’ major contribution here is as a synthesiser of alternative readings. The originality of his work lies less in the formulation of ideas themselves as it does in his ability to collate and combine them, not to mention the dexterity with which he brings them to bear upon the films.
The book’s metacritical tendencies are not baldly worn its sleeve, however; for the most part, Where Does It Happen?, like the earlier Movie Mutations, advances its metacritical project implicitly, couched in a series of practical examples that demonstrate how we might read Cassavetes differently.
The book’s chapters are broken down in accordance with a curious structural schema, at once both a chronological overview of the filmmaker’s career, proceeding film by film, and a topically organised account of the same, proceeding trope by motif. Hence the book opens with a chapter on Shadows (1959), which identifies “some of the governing impulses, both formal and thematic, at work in the films”, and closes over twenty years later with a chapter on Love Streams (1984), which investigates the affective potential of alcohol and the film’s connection to the burlesque. (This chapter appeared in Metro 120 under the title ‘Intoxication, The Body, Burlesque: Cassavetes’ Love Streams‘.) In between, there are chapters on Faces (1968), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), and—for my money the best of the lot—The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976/8) and Opening Night (1977), two films that are read in conjunction with one another, in a wonderful chapter that explores their tactical assault on the permeable membrane that separates film from theatre.
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Not least of these is the films’ shared preoccupation with the performance of masculinity, a theme that is to emerge again in both The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Love Streams. Brenez has noted of Abel Ferrara that his filmography is such that we might see in it “—as one rarely does in cinema, beyond the major example of Godard—an artist reflecting on the sense of his own work”. Cassavetes undoubtedly provides a similarly striking example of this. One of the major strengths of the book, charting as it does the unfettered crosspollination of forms, themes, characters, actors, plots and images between various of Cassavetes’ films—his “creation of a textual memory”—is that it confirms the sneaking suspicion that, far from being an inchoate mass of regurgitated material, Cassavetes’ oeuvre is in constant dialogue with itself, self-reflexive and rigorously systematic on a macro, if not micro, level.
It seems to me that what’s missing from Where Does It Happen? is any sense of Kouvaros’ own personal enthusiasm for Cassavetes. The writer obviously regards his subject highly, though he never says so in as many words. One perhaps wishes he would do. His arguments are sound and, for the most part, convincing, but one can’t help but feel that others have argued more passionately on the filmmaker’s behalf, with greater verve and swagger. There’s a certain academic dryness here, not to the ideas themselves so much, but rather to their expression. This is a highly structured, highly mannered, and, unfortunately, highly staid little tome.
Of course, to put this dryness down to the book’s roots in academia would be simplistic and wrongheaded. There are numerous academics whose thematic and formal analyses of Cassavetes pulsate with the energy and urgency that Kouvaros’ sorely lacks. Take, for example, three of the writers who crop up multiple times in this book. For all their significant differences of opinion and methodology, of which there are many, Ray Carney, Adrian Martin, and Nicole Brenez—all three of whom are tenured academics—write with boundless energy on Cassavetes’ and his work. Brenez in particular, however conceptually dense and syntactically acrobatic, never fails to infuse her arguments with a fierce and intimidating enthusiasm. Kouvaros lacks the measured giddiness of any of these writers; where Carney writes with unadulterated love for the filmmaker, and Brenez as if she’s wrestling him to the ground, Kouvaros appears to write at arm’s length, however insightfully he may do so.
But this remains an important contribution to the field of film studies nevertheless. As a critical analysis of critical analysis, not to mention of Cassavetes, Where Does It Happen? is without question—to borrow from another dominant discourse—a must-read.
Metro Magazine, Iss. 153, 2007
