Allein im Licht by Robert P. Kolker


Allein im Licht
Title : Allein im Licht
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 3828450415
ISBN-10 : 9783828450417
Language : German
Format Type : Hardcover
Number of Pages : 637
Publication : First published January 3, 1980

In this twentieth-anniversary millennial edition, Kolker continues and expands his inquiry into the cinematic representation of culture by updating and revising the chapters on the directors discussed in the first edition--Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, and Steven Spielberg--to include their most important works since 1988, analyzing those films which have made important advances in the directors' careers and which have given cause for rethinking the films that preceded them. Included is a profile of Arthur Penn's career followed by a new comparative study of Oliver Stone, who mirrors Penn's practice of drawing his films out of historical and ideological currents. Placing the films of Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, and Altman in an ideological perspective, Kolker both illuminates their relationship to one another and to larger currents in our culture, and emphasizes the statements their films make about American society and culture. This edition includes a new preface, a requiem for Stanley Kubrick, updated filmography, and 48 images from various films discussed through the text.


Allein im Licht Reviews


  • Emily

    The title of this book is what grabbed me, but the penetrating essays on film form—and the directors who subverted convention to create an open, inquisitive cinema—are what held me. There were many revelations. For example, I’d always experienced Stanley Kubrick as icy and inaccessible; this book helped me see how he used that cold eye to “document (human) loneliness in the face of progress” through films such as “2001.” For Kubrick, characters are “less the psychologically motivated creations we are used to seeing in American film and instead more obsessive, maniacal ideas released in human form” (think “Full Metal Jacket” and “The Shining”). The author deepened my appreciation for the body of Oliver Stone’s work by explaining that he consistently uses “temporal editing as a major tool in the cinematic representation of history… inviting us to look at what we believe we know and to imagine alternative fictions…” That explains the exhilarating feeling I get each time I watch “JFK.” We can all appreciate the kinetic energy of a Martin Scorsese film, but for those of us who seek to understand what drives Scorsese’s manic violence, consider this: “He is addicted to cinema… a filmmaker who devours other films and infuses what he absorbs into his own work… to create films in dialogue with one another.” In this way—through allusion—he keeps “the history of cinema alive within any individual film.” I get chills just thinking about the sweep of this statement!

  • Alex Abbott

    Largely delved into the Marty and Altman chapters for my thesis, but really neat piece of film criticism. Rocks there’s multiple moments where I was reading something about The Long Goodbye or Mean Streets and said to myself “I thought the same exact thing!”

    Agree with my professor who recommended this 1) It’s a little reliant on auteur theory 2) there could certainly be a little more female representation in film subject and director, I don’t think looking at Elaine May’s first two screwball riffs would be too unheard of for this subject (especially considering how much Kolker refers back to Hawks), but she made 4 films vs Altman making something like 300 million. But still Kolker’s head is in the right place for most of these films and knows what he’s talking about.

  • Martin Raybould

    Robert P. Kolker loves Scorsese and hates Tarantino. Whether you agree with his opinions or not it cannot be denied that Kolker's analysis of U.S. movies is rigorous and incisive. His critique of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull made me want to watch all three masterpieces again. The chapters on other great American auteurs illustrate how superficial the writing of other film critics is.

  • Carol Storm

    The sections on Stanley Kubrick are brilliant, especially A CLOCKWORK ORANGE and DR. STRANGELOVE. On the other hand, it's hard to take THE SHINING seriously, and Professor Kolker takes it very, very seriously indeed.

    The more you read of Kosker's writing, the more unpleasant his personality becomes. It's a classic case of a dazed, embittered Sixties Survivor who wants to keep fighting all the old battles over and over, just like some old Kentucky colonel forever mourning the fall of the Confederacy.

    I have nothing against the Sixties, or Sixties radicals, but the premise of this book seems to be that the only movies that matter are the movies that reinforce the leftist politics of the critic. This makes some sense, I suppose, with a movie like Dr. Strangelove, which can be read as an anti-military satire. But when it's a movie like A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, the whole thing becomes problematic. Because the radicals who "rescue" Alex after his "cure" are revealed to be just as stupidly greedy for power as the government ministers they attack. This is not a complex insight, but it seems to be completely beyond Kolker's grasp. He goes so far as to call psychotic teen murderer Alex "admirable" (the reasons are a little vague) but never seems to notice that the canting, preening, murderous radical F. Alexander is simply contemptible. Stanley Kubrick and Anthony Burgess were men of the world, guys who came up the hard way, and they had no illusions about the sanctity of the left. Robert Kolker is a college professor who knows from nothing about hard times. Or hard men. Or anything, really, but the sanctity of his own convictions.

  • Josh

    Everything about phallic symbols, patriarchy, and film as a tool of social change and collectivization is pretty silly, and Kolker tends to look at film a lot differently than I do, but he's one of the most readable academic film theorists, and his focus on form and content instead of plot mechanics and symbolism (again, except for the phallic symbol stuff) is welcome. He's admittedly weak on analysis of acting and music, but he has some insightful things to say about each filmmaker's specific formal style, especially Scorsese's and Altman's.

  • Thom Sutton

    Really insightful analysis of a few select directors whose work revitalized American film in the 60s and 70s.
    My copy is the 2nd edition, which is unfortunate in that it excludes any films post its 1985 publication date (and the decision to replace a section on Coppola with one on Spielberg makes a lot less sense now than it must have then), but is also a great edition in that one of the blurbs featured on the back cover is a quote from Scorsese recommending it to people who have directed films written about in the book.

  • Blair

    I confess - I've only read the Scorsese and Kubrick chapters. But the Kubrick chapter is groundbreaking. To prevent all of our ears bleeding, I wrote my thesis with many of Kolker's principles in mind. If you want to know more, contact me. Really - I could use any extra interpretations.

  • Michael Clayton

    A fantastic look at five of the most influential directors from the best period in Hollywood's history.

  • Joey

    i enjoy films. i enjoy loneliness. this book is a must read for anyone who wants to read about loneliness in some of the most intersting films of the past 30 or 40 years.