Film Museum Master Class: Paul Schrader

Among the key representatives of New Hollywood cinema, Paul Schrader has often been called the most ‘European’. As a young film critic in the late 60s and early 70s, he wrote several influential essays and a unique book, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. These three names indicate the path that Schrader would soon take in his own career: Following the example of the critics-turned-filmmakers who had launched the French New Wave, he became a celebrated screenwriter and director of American art films. Works such as Blue Collar, American Gigolo, Mishima, Light of Day, Patty Hearst, The Comfort of Strangers, Light Sleeper, Affliction and The Walker are lasting evidence of Schrader’s philosophically inclined “termite art” (to use Manny Farber’s phrase) which for more than 35 years has defied the pressures and limits of the Hollywood film industry.

 

The Film Museum is honored to welcome Paul Schrader for two evenings. As part of the Ozu retrospective, he will give an introduction to Ozu’s last film, An Autumn Afternoon. On January 20, Schrader will present his own “Japanese film,” Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), and offer a master class centering on his work as a director and screenwriter.