A Book That Celebrates a Love of Art Films

Phillip Lopate, who taught for many years in the Writing Program at School of the Arts, fell hard for the movies as an adolescent. As he matured into an acclaimed critic and essayist, his infatuation deepened into a lifelong passion. My Affair With Art House Cinema presents Lopate’s selected essays and reviews from the last quarter century, inviting readers to experience films he found exhilarating and beguiling—and sometimes disappointing or frustrating—through his eyes.

Lopate captures the mastery, imagination, and intensity of art house essentials like Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, along with works by contemporary filmmakers such as Maren Ade, Hong Sang-soo, Christian Petzold, and Jafar Panahi. Essays explore Chantal Akerman’s honesty, Ingmar Bergman’s intimacy, and Frederick Wiseman’s vision of the human condition. Lopate also reflects on the work of fellow critics, including Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, and Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Lopate discusses the book with Columbia News, along with books he recommends and why he doesn’t miss teaching.

How did this book come about?

During Covid, I was idly going over my pieces in magazines, and I realized that I had written a ton about movies over the years. It struck me that some of the writing was rather good, and also, peculiarly enough, all the pieces were about art movies. I had never been asked to write about the latest Marvel Comics movie, only about art films. So that became the premise of the collection.

Do you have a favorite essay or film from the book? If so, why?

Frankly, I do not have a favorite piece about a movie, although I suppose the closest that comes to it is the one about Ingmar Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage, because it gave me the opportunity to write about marital relationships as well as Bergman's formalist aesthetics. 

Do you still frequent film theaters, or do you watch most movies at home now?

I certainly go to movie theaters, as well as stream many movies at home. I love to see something projected on a large screen, with lots of background detail and deep focus. But I also like to re-see many favorite films, and for that, the TV screen or laptop works all right.  

What books have you read lately that you would recommend, and why?

Some books I’ve read recently that I enjoyed are Carrie Rickey's A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda, which captures this very important filmmaker; Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters by Rosanna Warren, one of the best biographies I've ever read, about the French modernist poet; and Weather by Jenny Offill, a very funny novel about daily life. 

What's next on your reading list?

Proust's Cities of the Plain, a volume of Byron's letters, the autobiography of the English critic and writer Leigh Hunt, and Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End. 

Do you miss teaching?

No, I don’t. I did it for 60 years, gave it my all, loved my students, but that’s enough.