Pedantry Adrift

Durgnat on Film

by Raymond Durgnat.

238 pages, Faber paperbacks, $5.95.

Book reviewed by Simon Wilson

It is beyond me how Raymond Durgnat ever achieved his status. A critic of international note, he appears to be without love for his subject, without communicable insight, without even a serviceable method. In short, an academic without vocation. For those who missed his recent lecture tour, here is the book to prove it.

Durgnat on Film is basically an amalgam of earlier works, designed as an introduction to the critic's thought. Finding that thought is difficult. Durgnat is much given to pointless observation. For example, "Much science fiction is in the tradition of 'Paradise Lost', in that it relates the human condition to the basic physical and mental structures of the cosmos." The considerable qualification which follows does not really help.

Even on those occasions when he does attempt serious reasoning the results are unsatisfactory. Chapter One is mainly devoted to proving the inseparability and mutual value of content and form, using all the tricks from false analogy to bewildering grammar to justify a narrow point of view. Naturally we accept that meaning emerges from the utilisation of means (such as subject of focus, appearance of the baddie, etc) yet nowhere does Durgnat seem to realise that with a given piece of film we can separate what is said from the techniques used, and can judge one against the other. This is exactly what we do with well-made commercials. Roving around these 'ideas' of his are a whole host of film examples. The author's adherence to the current trend of calling on Hollywood B-grade movies instead of European 'art' films does broaden one's knowledge of titles, but defeats his own purpose. There is no index of films because little is said about any one; the general lack of conciseness prohibits inclusion of a subject index; and there is not even a bibliography. No attempt has been made at summation, nor to sub-head the cryptic chapter headings (I Was a Middle Aged Water Baby, Pizzicato Pussycats, and twenty more). The result is a book too ill-organised and ill-argued for reference value, and much too pedantic for pleasure.

Putting one's name in the title of a book must be a sign of something. Prestige? That the purely subjective lies within? Durgnat makes a farce of both answers—for him, it is nothing other than pretension.