Jonathan Rosenbaum Quotes

• Judging by the the movie's enduring popularity, the message that stupidity is redemption is clearly what a lot of Americans want to hear.

  Jonathan Rosenbaum

  Judging, Stupidity, Redemption

  53 Copy quote

• It's a sign of this film's greatness that the enormous sadness that accompanies the final leave-taking of the circus interior is a good deal more than the conclusion of an unpretentious evening's entertainments; it's a sublime and awesome coda to the career of one of this century's greatest artists.

  Jonathan Rosenbaum

  Sadness, Artist, Greatness

  14 Copy quote

• Since many people have been asking me to elaborate on why I think "Inglourious Basterds" is akin to Holocaust denial, I'll try to explain what I mean as succinctly as possible, by paraphrasing Roland Barthes: anything that makes Fascism unreal is wrong. For me, "Inglourious Basterds" makes the Holocaust harder, not easier to grasp -- as a historical reality, I mean, not as a movie convention. Insofar as it becomes a movie convention, it loses its historical reality.

  Jonathan Rosenbaum

  Mean, Reality, Thinking

  12 Copy quote

• Just as Freud couldn’t always be blamed for the Freudians, Bresson didn’t always feel obliged to behave like a Bressonian.

  Jonathan Rosenbaum

  Feels, Behave, Obliged

  "Critical Consensus: Kent Jones and Jonathan Rosenbaum Discuss Robert Bresson and Jean-Luc Godard". Interview with Eric Kohn, www.indiewire.com. January 6, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• Whether these characters are lovable or detestable, they're lovable or detestable in a TV way - defined by a minimal set of traits that are endlessly reiterated and incapable of expansion or alteration, a fixed loop.

  Jonathan Rosenbaum

  Character, Expansion, Way

  Jonathan Rosenbaum (2004). “Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons”, p.155, JHU Press

  9 Copy quote

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin