文章基本信息

标题：In Memoriam Michael Reeves
本地全文：下载
作者：Robin Wood
期刊名称：Movie: a Journal of Film Criticism
电子版ISSN：2047-1661
出版年度：2011
期号：2
出版社：University of Warwick
摘要：Ideally, perhaps, one should see everything: certainly the early work of all new directors, to search it for signs of promise. In practice, of course, it is virtually impossible. I made no pilgrimage to see Revenge of the Blood Beast: it never occurred to me to do so, nor to distinguish it from other Blood Beasts. Nor did I go to see The Sorcerers when it appeared. I wouldn't have gone to see Witchfinder General either, if it hadn't turned up at the local and if it hadn't been for Tom Milne's short notice in the Monthly Film Bulletin. It seems nicely ironic, when one looks back over the history of British film criticism in the last decade, that the director who perhaps came nearest to fulfilling the wishes of Movie for a revival in the British cinema – a di-rector working at the heart of the commercial industry, mak-ing genremovies without apparent friction or frustration – should have been discovered by Films and Filmingand the associate editor of Sight and Sound. I came out of Witchfinder telling myself that the next time a Michael Reeves film appeared I would review it forMovie and try to secure an interview with its director. Now there will be no interview, and Witchfinder General willhave no successor: Michael Reeves is dead, at the age of twenty-five, leaving behind him only three-and-a-half films. So what should have been an enthusiastic recognition of his great promise becomes a sad and (I hope) balanced assessment of his lim-ited but striking achievement.