Parker Tyler (1904–1974)

The key word in the title is "Critical," and thank god for that. Too often, reviews and histories of underground or avant-garde arts are little more than exercises in boosterism, friends championing friends. This seemed to be the case even more so in 1969 when the book was first published. In this book, Tyler himself says underground criticism of the time amounted to little more than blurbing. But despite friendships and alliances with many of the filmmakers he discusses here, he manages to cast a demanding and skeptical eye on the underground film scene. He was especially harsh on self-indulgent, narcissistic "pad films" (a now almost humorously dated term) and the lack of any real thought-out aesthetic sensibility behind them. Most heartening for me was the ambivalence he seemed to have for Stan Brakhage's films, and the honesty with which Tyler was able to write about this, despite an apparently fairly close relationship with the filmmaker. I recently rewatched Criterion's first Brakhage collection, and was put off by the essay included with it, as it amounted to little more than hagiography by a Brakhage friend and scholar, who took Brakhage's genius as a collective given, without offering sufficient context or explication. Tyler's obvious lengthy and serious engagement with the same material yielded much different and more complex thinking. I enjoy so much underground/avant-garde/whathaveyou art, music and film, but frequently feel conflicted about or just flat out don't care for much of it. It's rare to find a similar attitude in art or film historians, understandably, so it was nice to read a book by someone so fully engaged and knowledgeable about film who wasn't afraid to challenge prevailing attitudes and fashions of the time (and for the most part, now) for the sake of honest criticism and love of the medium.

Having reread the above, I make it sound like the book is something of a take down of underground film. It's far from that. There's plenty of praise and encouragement to go with the tsking. Tyler's just wise enough to know and brave enough to say not all "artists" are created equal. Like he says, "A thing way well be groovy but far from great."… (meer)

On the back of my (2nd) edition of Sitney's "Visionary Film" one of the reviewers claims that it's "the first serious book that I know of to be devoted to the subject." Well.. Parker Tyler's bk was earlier - & it's the 1st one I read. It's probably not as in-depth as the bks that followed but it still gets across the feeling of there being something important happening out there that's off the mainstream map - something hedonistic, critical, inspired, daring.. It definitely got me curious about all the movies I had little or no idea how to go about seeing. In the back, there's a list of films organized by yrs. Throughout the decades since I read this, I've periodically checked off the films that I've seen. There are still maybe a half to a third that I've missed. As w/ all Grove Press bks of the time, of wch I've read many, reading this left me w/ a feeling - a feeling of uncensored access to free thinking, a feeling that's still important to me to this day.… (meer)