Jorge Luis Borges … on the epic tradition and cinema …

– scene, Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais, dir.

– Jorge Luis Borges, from an interview, Paris Review …
“During [the 20th] century, as I say, the epic tradition has been saved for the world by, of all places, Hollywood. When I went to Paris, I felt I wanted to shock people, and when they asked me—they knew that I was interested in the films, or that I had been, because my eyesight is very dim now—and they asked me, ‘What kind of film do you like?’ And I said, ‘Candidly, what I most enjoy are the Westerns.’ They were all Frenchmen; they fully agreed with me. They said, ‘Of course we see such films as Hiroshima mon amour or L’Année dernière à Marienbad out of a sense of duty, but when we want to amuse ourselves, when we want to enjoy ourselves, when we want, well, to get a real kick, then we see American films.’”
 
 
 
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~ by samofthetenthousandthings on April 19, 2014.