Great Movies
Albert Lewin is a name I wish more people knew. He was a genius, good at everything, smart as can be, and so talented it makes your head spin. A lot of people wanted to make literary or painterly cinema, he was the man who actually seemed to make movies out of oil paint and romantic poetry. Even now to watch his movies is to fall under a spell, to succumb to lust and impossible longing.
Poetry feels a little vulgar right now. I suppose it's too much to ask that we get used to normalcy, but I had a whole host of essays about the oddness of having survived the pandemic only to discover we haven't yet. That it hasn't ended. It may never.
So I'm trying to take our mind off of it, I guess, with a look at one of the great romantic films ever made.
We've made it this far. Maybe if we believe in ourselves and in each other (and GET VACCINATED), we can actually beat this thing, this terrible disease and this wretched mood it's left us with, a horrible purgatory of perpetual mourning and lost time.
I don't know if this will help, if anything could, but I just want to say thank you to everyone who watches, my condolences to all of us, and that I hope you get through this.
To watch the rest of Scout Tafoya's Unloved video essays, click here.
Scout Tafoya is a critic and filmmaker who writes for and edits the arts blog Apocalypse Now and directs both feature length and short films.
